by Jack Carr
Of course, Katie could have just asked Reece over a dinner in Georgetown but then she remembered his eyes that night on Fishers Island as he fired four rounds into Ben Edwards’s face. They were ice cold. No remorse. She needed to know with absolute certainty and the “truth serum” provided her the opportunity she needed. Katie knew the clock was ticking. With every second that went by the effects of the drugs would lessen. It was now or never.
“Reece,” Katie inquired as naturally as possible, as if she were asking where he wanted to go for lunch, “when we were on Fishers Island, I asked you how you knew Ben didn’t have the detonator connected to the explosives around my neck. Do you remember that?”
Reece’s smile faded. He closed his eyes and nodded his head.
“Stay with me, Reece,” she continued in her most soothing voice, continuing to stroke his hand. “Did you know it wasn’t connected?”
Reece’s eyes stayed closed and Katie was worried he had drifted off.
Damn it, this is my only chance.
“Reece, did you think it was connected?” Katie pressed.
“I knew,” Reece said, opening his eyes to look into hers, before closing them again.
Shit, rookie move, which question was he answering? Did he know or not?
Katie’s head snapped toward the door at the sound of approaching voices. Shit.
They’d be at the room any moment. She had to know.
She just needed a few more seconds.
Spinning in her chair, she looked for a way to lock the door. Nothing. Are you kidding me? Frantically she scanned the room. She had been with her father in enough hospitals to know that as high-occupancy facilities, the doors were all required to be auto closing. However, the fire code and the practical necessities of efficiently running a hospital were often at odds. In violation of the fire code, auto-closing doors had to be kept manually open so doctors and nurses could move up and down the halls checking on patients. Seeing a rubber door stop, she grabbed it and shoved it under the door, kicking it securely in place before once again taking up her position at Reece’s bedside.
“You knew what, Reece?” she asked, switching back to a calm, inquisitive tone.
Reece murmured something almost inaudible.
“What?” she asked, leaning in closer.
“I knew it wasn’t connected.”
Katie’s body visibly trembled. All the months of pent-up wonder and doubt were answered through the side effects of narcotically induced slumber.
She heard a hand shaking the doorknob followed by the concerned voice of the nurse, “Excuse me. Excuse me!” She heard from the hallway.
Just a few more questions. Damn it.
“Reece, how did you know?”
Nothing.
“How did you know, Reece?” Katie pressed on, now hearing another set of hands rapping urgently on the door frame and knowing she had only a scant few moments before Reece emerged from his haze.
In a whisper Reece answered through the drugs, “Ben was standing too close. The blasting cap. The PETN in the det cord. He was too close.”
The knocks were now joined by another voice at the door.
She would not get another chance, so she pressed on ignoring what now must have been causing a scene in the hallway.
“Reece,” Katie continued with a bit more urgency in her voice, “why did you say that night on Fishers that you didn’t know? Why did you make me think that all these months?”
Still in the land between dreams and reality, the Versed fentanyl lowering inhibitions to a level where, no matter the answer, all would be right with the world, Reece responded truthfully, “I didn’t want you waiting on me, Katie. I was going to die that night and I didn’t want you to feel loss the way I had.”
Katie gulped, her eyes misting over, suddenly aware of a tightening in her chest.
Suddenly aware again of the banging outside, she rose and gracefully crossed the room, opening the door to the concerned faces of Dr. Rosen, Dr. Port, the nurse, and a security guard.
“I am so sorry. We just needed some privacy.”
“Ms. Buranek, you can’t block the door to the room,” a clearly agitated Dr. Rosen lectured, as she and Dr. Port moved to Reece’s side to check the monitors attached via wires and tubes to his body.
Putting on her most demure and apologetic smile, Katie lowered her head. “I really do apologize. I just did not want a special moment interrupted.”
“It’s okay, Doc,” Reece said groggily, struggling to push himself up to his elbows, “We had to discuss something here in the SCIF.”
Dr. Rosen’s demeanor softened. “Well, don’t do that again, frogman, or I’ll have you keel-hauled.”
“Aye, aye, Doc.” Reece smiled, attempting to raise his hand in salute but only managing to lift it a few inches off the bed.
“It’s okay,” Dr. Rosen assured the security guard who didn’t know quite what to do in the presence of the cable news personality and the man whose face had been plastered on televisions and newspapers across the country just over a year ago. “I’ll take it from here.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, walking back into the hall.
“You just rest up, Commander,” the doctor said, switching into military mode. “Katie, you can stay here with him if you’d like. Just promise me you will not bar the door again, no matter what powers of persuasion he attempts to exert.”
“I’ll be on my guard.”
As Dr. Port injected a micro dose of narcotic into Reece’s IV to assist with the transition out of his dream state, Dr. Rosen turned to Katie. “He’ll be up and walking around in a few hours, if you can believe that. He’s going to be fine.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
Moving toward the hallway with Dr. Port, the surgeon stopped and turned back toward Katie, who had again taken up residence at Reece’s side. “I hope you got the answer you were looking for, Ms. Buranek.”
Not taking her eyes off the frogman who had appeared to drift back to sleep, Katie replied, “I did.”
Alone again in the recovery room, Katie wondered if Reece remembered her questions. If so, she knew that memory would soon dissolve along with the remaining mixture of Versed fentanyl.
“Rest up, James. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
CHAPTER 7
SVR Headquarters, Moscow
ALEKSANDR ZHARKOV WASN’T SURE what his father was up to, but as the deputy director of Directorate S in the nation’s Foreign Intelligence Service, his ability to assist him was substantial. That was the entire reason he held the post; to be the eyes and ears of the bratva. Directorate S was responsible for the illegal intelligence operations of the former KGB: deploying strategic long term deep-cover operatives into foreign countries. They were more commonly referred to as sleeper agents. He commanded the nation’s most effective assassins.
Aleksandr knew that citizens of the West were getting soft. Most of them believed the red threat had ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and that Russian spies were now only found in eighties movies. The truth was that the SVR had more sleeper agents imbedded throughout the United States and Europe than they ever had during the Cold War. The open borders of the European Union and America’s current obsession with terrorism left them vulnerable for penetration. They remained blind even when sleeper cells were activated to kill Ukrainian military intelligence officers in 2017, a former employee of the current Russian president on the streets of Washington, D.C., in 2015, and almost one person a year in Great Britain since the beginning of the decade.
Unlike traditional intelligence officers, illegals lived a complete lie. Instead of operating under a semilegitimate “cover for status” position, usually a job at the embassy or consulate, illegals had to enter a nation with little aid from their own government and blend into their new country. Aleksandr knew he would have been a brilliant illegal because he had mastered the lie; he could do it without the slightest hint of remorse. As was his father’s wish, he
had run illegals at postings across the world, and his success had driven him rapidly up the ranks of Directorate S, eventually landing him back in Russia in a position to pass intelligence to the family business. Aleksandr could create virtually bulletproof false identities as well as produce legitimate Russian Federation passports to match them. For someone trying to smuggle a person across international borders, Aleksandr Zharkov could work magic.
A posting in the intelligence world might seem like a strange place for the son of a mafia boss, but in Russia, as Aleksandr knew, there was a long history of associations between the government and organized crime that predated their Sicilian counterparts by almost a century. From the czars to Stalinist Russia through the waning days of the Soviet Union and into the heyday after the fall, the Red Mafia was imbedded in almost all facets of state affairs. The bratva was not an outside criminal threat, but rather part of the government itself. When Stalin betrayed his criminal ties during the Great Purge, he inadvertently created an even stronger organization that had survived and thrived to this day. What might raise eyebrows in other parts of the world was business as usual for the Russian Federation. Aleksandr was simply continuing the tradition.
The director had what he described as a “functional” relationship with his mob boss father, but there was an underlying rift between them that went beyond the traditional father-son power struggle, a chasm that developed when Aleksandr was still a boy.
Ivan had insisted that his eldest son pursue a career in the nation’s intelligence services, a career that would surely pay dividends for his father’s business interests. Aleksandr had sacrificed his entire adult life climbing the ladder of the SVR, a ladder that had led him through countless third-world hellholes, places where not too many questions were asked when a man went missing.
Meanwhile, his two younger brothers lived the good life, chasing women, driving fast cars, and putting coke up their noses in Paris, London, New York, and Miami. His father promised him that, in the long run, he would be the Pakhan and his brothers would be his lieutenants. Yet, year after year, his brothers rose in influence, building their own networks. Aleksandr knew that he was too valuable to his father in his current position to leave and that his younger siblings at this point would not let him simply walk in and take what they now considered theirs. Aleksandr felt the pull born of a primal instinct from a time when people lacked the ability to reason, when they were no different from every other animal roaming the earth. Civilization was a more recent introduction to the evolution of the species. Despite that thin veneer, instinct still requires the young bull to exert his dominance over the herd. That time was approaching for the Zharkov line, and Aleksandr would soon make his move.
CHAPTER 8
Saint Petersburg, Russia
SEVEN HUNDRED KILOMETERS TO the northwest, Ivan Zharkov had left Oliver Grey in the suite, giving him a chance to bathe, rest, and recover from his travels. Prostitution was one of the Bratva’s primary rackets, and the mafia boss had offered Grey a woman for the night. Upon Grey’s refusal, Ivan had offered him a man. Grey graciously declined both, which caused some confusion on the part of his host. The embarrassment of Grey’s one sexual encounter with a female was an experience that he did not wish to repeat.
The vodka left Grey buzzing, but after a long bath in the room’s extravagant tub, he felt almost human again. He was beginning to doze when a knock on the door sent a surge of adrenaline through his body. Wrapped in a bathrobe, he peered through the peephole and spied a small bearded man carrying an attaché case.
“Can I help you?”
“I am Lev, the tailor. Pakhan sent me.”
Grey breathed a sigh of relief and opened the door. He had half-expected to see a tall American holding a suppressed pistol instead of the small, potbellied man impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit. The tailor walked into the room without shaking Grey’s hand and began to unpack the tools of his trade. Lev insisted that Grey remove the robe and began taking measurements with a physician’s disinterest in his stark nudity. Each measurement was entered into a small notebook with a small stub of a pencil. Grey was embarrassed and spoke nervously as the man worked, ignoring his attempts at conversation as though they didn’t speak the same language.
“Put on your robe, we need to pick fabrics,” Lev said as he snapped the small notebook shut and wrapped it with a thick rubber band. He spread books of swatches across the bed and motioned for Grey to examine them.
“Mr. Zharkov has generously paid for three suits and five shirts. I will make you more, if you choose, but they will come from your own pocket.”
Grey spent close to an hour narrowing his choices, ultimately picking a brown tweed, a charcoal window pane, and a blue chalk line. He didn’t want to look like another one of Zharkov’s security men. He chose plain, solid shirts that would keep his life simple; he knew better than to tackle the daily challenge of matching his clothes.
“I do not make shoes or ties. For those items, you should go to the Passage on Nevsky Prospekt. It is not far.” The man looked at the small gold watch on his wrist. “These items will be ready in two days.” He quickly packed his bag, returned his black Homburg to his head, and walked swiftly out the door.
It was late afternoon when Grey stepped out of the hotel and began a leisurely half-hour walk toward the city’s upscale shopping district.
You are safe here, Oliver. There is no need to worry.
Though he had only been to Saint Petersburg a handful of times, always on CIA business, he felt strangely at home here.
He absorbed the splendor of Saint Petersburg as he wound his way through the streets, admiring the intricate Baroque and neoclassical architecture. His path took him onto the Nevsky Prospekt and across the narrow Fontanka River via the Anichov Bridge. He took a small detour to walk the grounds of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, filled with mothers watching their bundled-up children playing in the park. Taking a seat on a bench at the edge of the Mikhailovsky Garden, he packed his pipe and tried to relax. The city was alive. It was hard to believe there was a time not that long ago when Russia’s cultural capital was almost destroyed by the Axis powers in World War II, back when it went by the name Leningrad. Grey seemed to remember that snipers were somehow associated with the siege, or was that Stalingrad? The thought of snipers caused Grey to abruptly move from his bench and continue toward his destination. He looked up at the surrounding buildings, half-expecting to see James Reece behind a scope. The analyst in him attempted to banish the notion.
Reece could never find me here. I am now protected by the bratva.
Grey crossed the street and walked the remaining block to the Passage, an upscale shopping arcade that dated back to the 1840s. As he strolled through the long building, all marble and plaster, peering into the hand-painted plate glass windows of the various shops, Grey felt transported to a different era. The building was a striking example of Russian prominence with its intricate tile floor, detailed dentil interior trim, and vaulted glass ceiling. Most of the customers displayed noticeable signs of wealth: oversize ornate watches for the men and long furs, high-end handbags, and diamonds for the women. Everyone chatted on iPhones as they shopped. The proceeds of Russia’s raw materials—oil, natural gas, gold, copper, and magnesium—extracted by tough, filthy men who drank hard and died young, were converted by the nation’s elite into hard currency that flowed through luxury arteries such as this one. Grey’s family had always been at the base of this class pyramid, but he was working his way up.
He took his time shopping, carefully selecting the ties, socks, underwear, and T-shirts that would comprise his new wardrobe. He completed the ensemble with a frightfully expensive pair of shoes that put a significant dent in his stack of euros. Each vendor made change in rubles, allowing him to accumulate local currency without having to deal with the formality of banks.
He found a barbershop and spent some of his new money on a haircut and a beard trim. The heavily tattooed staff were all young
men who obviously spent a great deal of time and effort emulating the appearance of American hipsters; it seemed that one could not escape the West’s cultural poison even in Mother Russia. Two men lounged on the black pleather couch in the corner, playing a soccer video game on a large LCD television monitor that hung on the exposed brick wall. Grey spoke little but listened intently, trying to gather as much practical knowledge as possible about his new home. He had done his best to enjoy the day, but a gnawing sensation that he couldn’t seem to erase continually interrupted his contentment.
The vodkas he downed with dinner did nothing to shake his feelings of impending doom. He stumbled more than once in his haste to return to the safety of his hotel, his eyes darting from shadow to shadow and rooftop to rooftop, the specter of James Reece his constant companion.
CHAPTER 9
Kumba Ranch, Flathead Valley, Montana
REECE CRANKED THE POWERFUL motor on his new Cruiser and listened to it hum. He pulled out of the garage and gunned the motor as he turned up the steep grade, testing the vehicle’s torque as it climbed. It responded instantly and flew up the gravel track, spitting rocks as it went. He crested the ridge and took it slowly down the switchbacks. No sense flipping his new ride on the first day.
He hit the ranch’s main road and turned in the direction of the refurbished barn that Raife used as his workshop, a twenty-minute trip by vehicle.
The two friends had joined the navy a year apart, taking separate paths until finally serving together in Ramadi, Iraq, at the height of the war. When their task unit lost two SEALs to a roadside bomb, Raife went off the reservation, using their tactical HUMINT network to find the IED cell leader responsible, a man named Hakim Al-Maliki. He then used that same network to deliver a package to the terrorist after a sanctioned raid to capture him was called off by higher authority. Al-Maliki was a CIA asset and his value as a long-term penetration agent meant he was off-limits as a target. The device that sent Al-Maliki to the afterlife contained a fertilizer-based main charge with commercial detonators from Pakistan, an IED profile common to Ramadi at the time. The CIA was furious, accusing Raife of killing their prized asset and demanding he be prosecuted. The navy had not been sure what to do and immediately launched an investigation. Reece was the only person who could identify Raife as the bomber and he refused to cooperate with investigators, causing no shortage of consternation between the navy and the CIA and between Reece and Raife. Raife didn’t want to see Reece’s reputation tarnished by investigations, and Reece wasn’t about to be a witness against his blood brother.
