by Jack Carr
GREY HAD BEEN SURPRISED by the location of his office. He knew that Zharkov effectively controlled the regional oil firm, but he wouldn’t have imagined that he would find himself working openly in the headquarters of a publicly traded company. His morning commute was a relatively easy one from his flat near the city’s center. His office was only a few blocks from the Piskaryovka rail station, in an industrial section of town.
Zharkov expected immediate results and Grey delivered. The first order of business was to turn over the names of all the men and women in Zharkov’s organization, many of them residing in the United States, who were known FBI and CIA informants. Each would then be analyzed and evaluated for possible blackmail or the most permanent of solutions as a warning to others.
As he settled into his routine, he found it was strangely similar to his time at Langley. Delivering some quick wins for Zharkov’s organization provided him a little leniency in terms of how he spent his time and resources; his most important project was a personal one.
Feeling dapper in his custom suit, he strode with a newfound confidence that would have shocked his coworkers at the Agency. He used his access card to enter the building and took the elevator to the executive level. As he passed her cubicle outside his office, he bid good day to his administrative assistant, Svetlana, a sturdy and attractive widow a few years his senior. She doted on him in a manner that he hadn’t enjoyed since childhood, taking his coat as he walked by and fetching him tea or coffee without so much as an ask. She would straighten his tie and brush lint from the shoulders of his new suits, doing everything but licking her fingers before fixing his hair.
With no social life or family to distract him, Grey devoted every waking second to his new cause: finding James Reece. His analytical brain examined seemingly endless mountains of information. He scoured the media accounts of Reece’s one-man war that had left a trail of bodies from California to Wyoming, from the southern tip of Florida to the stormy New England coast. From there Reece had vanished, only to reappear in Odessa, Ukraine, where Grey had seen him before the assassination of the former Russian president.
Other than a few media references to the presidential pardon that had been issued the previous fall, James Reece was a ghost. The White House had refused to provide justification for the act, citing “national security concerns,” but the mere existence of that pardon all but proved Reece’s involvement in thwarting the attack on the U.S. president. Save a powerful man’s life and he’ll forget about the few murders you committed along the way.
Having exhausted his media search, Grey shifted his focus to sifting through the dry minutiae that was his specialty. A detailed search of property records led to no surviving family members. Reece was an only child and Grey had arranged his father’s death years earlier. According to an obituary run in the Flagstaff, Arizona, newspaper, his mother had died in a nursing home a few months ago. The only existing property record was for his home in Coronado, and Grey confirmed that Reece was not living there. If he’d purchased a home or a car, Grey would have found it. He’d never registered on any social media platforms and didn’t appear to even own a traceable telephone or have an email address. The whiteboard of Grey’s office was covered with every detail he could gather from Reece’s past, an algorithm of names, places, and dates. So far, he couldn’t find the X, but he knew it was only a matter of time.
CHAPTER 12
SVR Headquarters, Moscow
ALEKSANDR PULLED OPEN HIS desk drawer and drew out a small braided loop of hair, a memento of his first real hunt. He had been training at the Institute when he realized how much pleasure it gave him to inflict pain on his fellow human beings. As a young and attractive male recruit, he was chosen for the famed SVR program that trained students in the art of what they unofficially termed sexpionage. The course’s goal was to position the illegal agents to manipulate assets of foreign governments or corporations using their bodies. Because fetishes made for excellent blackmail material, much of the course focused on spotting individuals with unusual or even bizarre sexual preferences.
According to the instructors, it was not uncommon for Western women in positions of influence to seek out men who would dominate and even humiliate them behind closed doors. Deep down, it seemed, these women wanted to play a subservient role to a man. Many of them liked to be choked during sex and students were taught to give them the sensation of actual asphyxiation without causing any permanent physical harm; it was a fine line. Aleksandr found himself wondering if any of what the instructors said about powerful women was true but quickly brushed the thought aside. In the SVR, one did not question authority.
Unlike in the movies, the practical applications of these lessons were not performed in front of the class but took place in a bedroom with an instructor or coach standing by. The entire sessions were filmed for later feedback. It began simply enough, with a fellow student playing the role of the female asset. Ordinary intercourse took a turn when the female began asking to be called filthy names, which Aleksandr complied with. She then requested that he tug on her hair and slap her, just as she had been instructed. Aleksandr struck the side of her head with an open hand above the hairline so as not to bruise her face and felt an immediate jolt of arousal. He struck her harder and harder, knocking her nearly unconscious before he finally wrapped his powerful hands around her throat.
His hands became a vise and he felt himself engorge with a fresh course of blood flow as an erotic switch was thrown somewhere in his brain. His female counterpart began to gasp for air and her face flushed bright red and then purple, the veins and arteries of her neck standing ropelike under her skin. She coughed out the safe word, indicating her desire to discontinue the exercise, but that only drove him to squeeze harder. The instructor stepped in and tried to pull Aleksandr’s hands from her throat but he was in a frenzy of arousal that added to his already considerable physical strength. The instructor yelled for help as the female student began to lose consciousness and, within seconds, three men were prying him from his victim.
One of the men delivered a powerful blow to Aleksandr’s kidney, just as he was reaching his climax, his knees buckling in a combination of ecstasy and pain. He was dragged from the room naked as the instructors attended to the female student’s medical needs. Aleksandr was removed from the course pending an investigation, and only his father’s significant political influence prevented him from being summarily dismissed. The emotional scars of that event caused the female student to voluntarily drop from the program and, after years of substance abuse to self-medicate the trauma of the event from her conscious mind, she eventually died of a heroin overdose.
For Aleksandr, his international postings became his hunting grounds, first for the region’s game, and then for people. It began with the killing of a prostitute in Hungary. Law enforcement officials begrudgingly investigated the murder, a small-caliber bullet to the head, but, thanks to his advanced tradecraft, false identities, and frequent movement, the killing remained unsolved. The murder of women involved in the sex trade in the developing world was not an uncommon occurrence. This sad truth allowed Aleksandr to move among the unwanted, hunting and killing for sport in back alleys and motel rooms in countries difficult to find on a map. Though Aleksandr fancied himself a hunter, criminologists would have another term for him: serial killer.
When his early human prey lost their appeal, Aleksandr needed a new challenge, and it was during an assignment in Asia that he found it. A contact in Bangkok led him to an illegal hunting operation in Myanmar, long before a cease-fire agreement ended the nation’s sixty-year civil war. Poaching was rampant in the vacuum left in the absence of a national government. He had been promised the freedom to pursue endangered animals, including the Asiatic black bear and leopard. The local guides were talented hunters, but the area was simply shot out in terms of game. The outfitter offered him a village girl as a consolation prize, which Aleksandr accepted. It wasn’t until they brought her to the camp that
he realized she was not just another female being forced to fulfill his sexual desires. She had been accused of cheating on her husband and her punishment was death. Aleksandr was being offered the thrill of hunting a human being.
She was released, barefoot and terrified, into a jungle clearing at midnight and allowed to run through the night to make her escape. The temperature was already soaring when they found her tracks at dawn, her tiny feet making deep impressions as she ran. Aleksandr had hunted his entire life but had never felt such adrenaline, even when killing whores. He knew he would never again feel any real passion for pursuing four-legged beasts. They had to bring in hounds when her tracks disappeared in a thickly canopied boulder field; the ancient monoliths offered no sign of her footsteps.
The dogs had her bayed in a tree by lunchtime, their deafening barks making the scene all the more chaotic. The guide offered Aleksandr a battered AK, but he refused it; the gun would be too quick an end.
He took a dha, a simple but effective swordlike machete, from one of the trackers and began to pelt his terrified and dehydrated prey with stones. She shouted out in agony as one of the rocks struck her knee. A well-placed stone to her temple knocked her unconscious and she fell limply from her lofty perch, striking the ground with a hollow thud. The baying barks of the dogs rose to a fever pitch, and Aleksandr yelled for their handlers to drag them back so that they could not attack his kill.
A painful slash of the dha across her naked thigh shocked the girl awake. Aleksandr paused and looked into her eyes; her enlarged pupils revealed nothing but terror. The pleasure receptors in Aleksandr’s brain sparked and flushed his body with endorphins. Holding the blade downward in a two-handed grip, he pushed it slowly into her bony chest, feeling the last beats of her heart pulsing through the blade.
CHAPTER 13
Kumba Ranch, Flathead Valley, Montana
THE ENTIRE FAMILY WAS gathered, drinks in hand, on the expansive deck of the ranch’s main house, with its commanding view of the largest lake on the property. All were dressed up for the occasion. For the men, that meant clean blue jeans, dress shirts, wool vests, and boots. Reece had gone into Whitefish to shop. It felt good to be wearing clothes that weren’t borrowed. The ladies had taken the opportunity to class it up even further.
“You men clean up well for a bunch of glorified ranch hands,” Annika teased. She was wearing an emerald green dress that clung tightly to her tall, slender frame. Her eyes were the color of her dress and, like her husband’s, almost luminescent. She carried herself with a quiet confidence, and she showed an unmistakable affection for her husband; their subtle physical contact, a touch on the back here, a grip on the elbow there, was that of a couple deeply in love. Reece could not have been happier for the two of them but couldn’t help but think of Lauren, briefly wondering where he would be today had she not been killed.
Jonathan and Caroline Hastings, both in their early sixties, made a handsome couple. A lifetime of honest hard work had kept their tall bodies lean. Caroline wore a broad-brimmed hat religiously to protect her face and neck from the sun’s devastating rays, a habit passed to her by her mother as a child on the family’s ranch outside of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. The result was a face that made her appear far younger than her actual age, with only the finest of lines peeking from the corners of her eyes. Jonathan had not been so fastidious when it came to protecting himself from the African sun and his dark complexion resembled the battered cowhide boots on his feet. Though he did his best to refrain these days, he had been a smoker in his younger years, and the broken capillaries on his nose and cheeks bore evidence of his love for drink. Caroline suspected he still snuck a hand-rolled tobacco smoke every now and again but had yet to find his stash. He had the bright green eyes inherited by his son, but they were hidden behind a broad forehead and a perpetual squint that protected them from the sun. He still had the look of a predator.
The main room was tastefully adorned in dark woods and stone, with beautifully exposed beams running along the high ceiling, leaving room for the multiple shoulder mounts of animals primarily from Africa and North America. Reece stopped in front of a full-body grizzly bear mount that dominated the room from its position next to the stone fireplace. He was so entranced that he didn’t even notice that Jonathan had joined him.
“That’s really your dad’s bear,” Jonathan said, handing Reece a Tamarack Ale in a frosted mug. “To Tom.”
The two men touched glasses and took long sips of their beers.
“I wounded that big guy in Kodiak. Not proud of it, but it happens.”
Reece had heard the story many times but knew how much Jonathan reveled in its telling.
“In we go. Into thick brush after this wounded monster, me with my .375, our guide with his .45-70, and good ol’ Thomas Reece with a twelve-gauge of all things. He’d used a shotgun in Vietnam as a point man.”
“A Model 37,” Reece confirmed.
“That’s quite the scattergun, used number four shot if memory serves.”
“That’s right. They measured those engagements in feet, not yards in the delta.”
“He was good in the woods, that one. I sure appreciated that steel nerve when this griz charged from not more than ten yards away. Tom Reece had his Ithaca to his shoulder, kneeled down for the most effective angle, and sent two slugs into the bear’s chest before I even knew what was happening. This poor devil didn’t take more than two steps. Heart-lung shots. Your dad was cool as a cucumber.”
Reece smiled, thinking of the two older men out testing their mettle on Kodiak.
“I wanted to give him this mount, but he said Judy would kill him. Ha! I think he was more afraid of her than he was of the Viet Cong.”
“You may be right about that.”
“I miss your old man, lad. Bloody good chap.”
“I do, too, Jonathan.”
“That trip he took with you when you were thirteen, that was one of his fondest memories.”
“Mine, too.”
Reece thought back to that rite of passage. Driving up through British Columbia in their old Wagoneer to Alaska, his dad had taken a detour and pulled onto an unpaved road, before stopping in a dirt pullout. For the next three weeks they’d trekked through the wilderness with only small packs and a light survival kit. Tom had taught his son to navigate, set snares, build shelters, and fish on their journey through the rugged backcountry.
Reece took one last look at the grizzly and nodded in respect before joining the rest of the family on the deck.
“It won’t be long now, boys and girls,” Jonathan said, a hand over his eyes looking to the horizon, scanning the cloudless summer evening sky. They heard it before it came into view, the two powerful Wright radial engines humming across the water. Zulu, Jonathan’s seventy-pound five-year-old Rhodesian ridgeback, barked and wagged his whiplike tail.
“There he is!” Jonathan said, pointing toward the opposite end of the lake. The setting sun reflected on the aircraft’s silver fuselage, its bright red trim making it all the more visible to the onlookers. The pilot banked the aircraft and made a low pass over the water; all hands waved as he passed them at nearly eye level. He made a wide, sweeping turn to check the lake’s condition and began to reduce power. The lake’s calm surface made for a challenging landing since it robbed the pilot of much of his depth perception, but he knew the aircraft and the conditions well. The aircraft’s keel broke the glassy surface of the water like a knife, and the pilot eased it gracefully from airplane to boat as it settled onto the lake. The plane was a 1955 Grumman Albatross, and the pilot was Tim Thornton, Annika’s father.
The family made their way down to the lake as the classic aircraft taxied to the dock. Thorn cut the power and let the flying boat drift toward his welcoming committee, waiting with bumpers and lines to secure the amphibious plane. When the plane’s door opened, Thorn’s contagious smile won the crowd.
“Hey, Dad!” Annika shouted.
“Hello, my dear. Good evening,
everyone.”
Thorn hopped down onto the dock extension built to accommodate his flying yacht, whiskey bottle in hand; he hadn’t lost his politician’s flair for the dramatic. Annika ran to him, and he lifted her off her feet. She might be the president of his multibillion-dollar empire but, in his eyes, she’d always be his little girl.
He hugged his son-in-law warmly, and greeted each member of the entourage with the same genuine warmth. He said something in Caroline’s ear that made her giggle before embracing her husband in a bear hug. He handed Jonathan the whiskey bottle and turned toward the former navy man. Reece had only met Thorn a handful of times and had not spent much time with him.
“Great to see you again, James. I’m glad to hear that your health is on the mend.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Let’s get that bottle open before Jonathan gets the shakes, shall we?”
“Lead the way,” Jonathan retorted as the extended family walked together toward the house.
Tim Thornton was one of five children of Irish immigrant parents, born and raised in Butte, Montana, during the baby boom of the 1940s. Known as “Ireland’s Fifth Province,” Butte had boasted the highest percentage of Irish residents in America at one point, exceeding even that of Boston. Thorn’s dad, like most of his former countrymen, was a miner who toiled long hours in the nearby copper mines in order to provide for his family. His father would come home from a shift looking like a stone statue, so covered in dirt and dust that his son could not even recognize him. Thorn would see the “copper sores” on his father’s forearms after he’d scrubbed the grime from his body. His parents rode him and his siblings hard, determined that academics would lead them away from the mines and to a better life. If he stayed in Butte, he’d be lucky to land a job as a machinist or boilermaker. If he was unlucky, as most were, he would find himself a mile underground, digging out copper to feed the electronics market.
