by Tim Tigner
Wang made the decision for her. The Winsome Whisper began moving. It came about and turned south. She watched it for a few minutes to be sure it wouldn’t come about again. Sure enough, it continued heading inland up the river rather than out toward the open water of the ocean. Strange.
Why would Wang do that?
The only explanation Zoya could think of was that he wasn’t planning to make his getaway by boat. Having been discovered, Wang had decided to return to his car. But she had no idea where he’d parked. With seven hours between Bear pings, he’d gone from the city to the open water in a single jump.
He must have a car parked somewhere. On second thought, maybe not. Every time they’d met with him, Wang had used Uber.
Zoya shook her head. It didn’t really matter. She couldn’t follow Wang’s boat by foot or by car. Her only hope was electronic tracking, and for that she needed a charged phone.
She spun about and began running through the woods, ignoring the assaulting brambles and branches. By the time she reached the car, Zoya was certain she was bleeding from dozens of nicks and scratches, but she didn’t bother checking. No time for that.
She hit the gas and shot roadside gravel from beneath the tires of their modest rental car. Come what may, she wasn’t going to let Katya down.
Chapter 115
Diverted
Airborne, over the Atlantic Ocean
THEY WERE ON APPROACH to Palm Beach International Airport when the phone finally rang. Both Achilles and Max jumped at it, desperate for news from the women. They’d placed six calls since boarding the jet; all had gone to voicemail. Achilles hit Speaker so Max would also hear. “Katya?”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Zoya’s voice replied, her tone expressing immense relief. She got straight to the point. “Wang captured Katya.”
“What?” both men replied in chorus.
“She was planting the tracking pellet on the boat when he caught her.”
“Is she alright? Where is she now?” Achilles asked.
“Are you safe?” asked Max.
“I’m fine. I don’t know how Katya is. Wang sailed off with her aboard.”
“Where are you now?” Max asked.
“I’m back at the hotel. I had to recharge the phone.”
“How did you get away?” Achilles asked.
“Wang didn’t know I was there. He wasn’t docked when he caught Katya, he was anchored in the middle of nowhere. Katya swam out to plant the tracker and got caught.” Zoya spoke rapidly, her voice pitched high with strain, her breathing audible.
Achilles felt a baseball-size lump form in his throat.
Max saw him struggling and hopped in with the big question. “Is the tracker working? Do you know where they are?”
“I’m not sure. The phone died. The tracker uses a phone app — but of course you know that.” Zoya took a calming breath. “I called you the moment the battery came to life.”
“Can you check it now?”
“Yes, I’m doing that.”
Achilles began praying like he never had before. If the app showed a blank screen, if Katya was out in the wind at the whim of a foreign agent. “Well?”
“It’s loading.”
“How long ago was she captured?” Max asked.
“About an hour. I watched until the boat started moving. Then I ran to the car and sped back to the hotel.”
Achilles’ mind was racing. Whether the tracker was working or not, he had to go after Katya. Max was going to have to deal with Ignaty and brief Jamison alone. The ambassador wasn’t going to like that.
Chapter 116
Mrs. Pettygrove
Palm Beach, Florida
AMBASSADOR JAMISON was momentarily of two minds when he received Achilles’ call. On the one hand, Achilles was the subject of a manhunt initiated by none other than President Silver himself. On the other, he was a special operative Jamison personally knew to be extraordinarily patriotic and exceptionally capable.
Ultimately, the choice was easy. After forty years of service in the diplomatic corps, Jamison would choose to follow his own instincts every time over anything any politician said. And now that he was retired, he finally had the freedom to do so.
But he wasn’t prone to make rash moves or come up short on contingency planning. So he called the head of the Secret Service, an old, personal friend, and had a couple of top agents flown in to accompany him to “a highly sensitive, off-the-books rendezvous.” Then he booked an Imperial Suite at The Breakers, and waited for the appointed hour, pleased to have more on his agenda than chasing a little white ball.
Or so he thought.
Jamison’s initial reservations came crashing back to the forefront of his mind when his guests arrived, and Achilles wasn’t among them. “Where’s Achilles?”
“I’m right here, Ambassador.” The lead member of the duo held up a phone displaying Achilles’ image against the backdrop of an airplane fuselage. “The mission took a twist since we last spoke. Katya has been abducted. I’m on my way to Seattle to rescue her.”
Jamison found himself caught momentarily flat-footed. He was stuck between two thorny affairs, neither of which he’d anticipated.
“Allow me to introduce Max Aristov,” Achilles continued. “He’s holding the phone.”
Max held out a hand, and spoke using a British accent. “Pleasure to meet you, Ambassador Jamison.”
After they’d shaken hands, Achilles continued. “I believe you’ll recognize the other gentleman, the one in plasticuffs?”
Jamison looked down to see a sweater draped over wrists, then up to see big ears and a brushy mustache beneath a bald dome. He felt his stomach drop. “Are you kidding me! You kidnapped Ignaty Filippov, Korovin’s chief strategist?”
“Nobody knows he’s missing, per se. Everybody thinks he’s dead. It’s a long story, and Max is going to tell you all of it.”
Jamison didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but everybody thinks he’s dead wasn’t it. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. In situations like these — and he’d seen quite a few as a career diplomat regularly assigned to the toughest of postings — the smart move was to listen.
He turned his attention from the phone to Max. “Why don’t you start from the beginning.”
“Perhaps it would be best to isolate Ignaty in another room before I begin.”
Jamison made a motion, and one of the agents escorted the Russian strategist from the room.
With the sound of the sea seeping through the screen door, and the remaining Secret Service agent standing still as a statue in the corner, they took seats around the suite’s glass-topped dining table, and Max began. “My fiancée and I were on our way to a vacation in Sochi when we were diverted to a helicopter.”
From Zoya’s impersonation assignment to Achilles’ amnesiac awakening on a private island, Max kept the ambassador transfixed. Jamison hadn’t been this caught up in a story since debriefing with Seal Team Six after one of their Ukrainian ops. Midway through, Achilles had to sign off to focus on his current mission, but it hardly mattered. Max had an impressive grasp of the facts and their context, along with quite the oratorial flare.
Max was explaining how Achilles had determined Jas was a Russian spy when the ambassador couldn’t bite his tongue any more. “How did the Russians learn about an assignment of which only Silver, Sparkman, Collins, and Foxley knew? Surely none of them broke operations security?”
Max nodded. “That’s something we just extracted from Ignaty. He put a voice recorder in Reggie Pepper’s shoe.”
“The president’s body man?”
“That’s right.”
“Nonsense. You can’t bring a transmitter into the White House without the Secret Service’s knowledge.”
“That’s the genius,” Max said, nodding along. “It isn’t a transmitter. It has no electronic signal to detect. It’s just a tiny digital recorder. Not enough metal to ping a magnetometer but enough memory to record for a week.”
Jamison chewed on that for a second. “If it doesn’t transmit, then the Russians have to retrieve and replace it on a regular basis. Old-school style. That’s easier said than done. I’ve met Reggie, and he’s sharp as a Samurai sword. He’d be hard to play more than once.”
Max gestured toward the door through which Ignaty had disappeared. “Ignaty may be a first-class wanker, but he’s also a world-class mastermind. More on his activities later — much more. On the Pepper operation, Ignaty’s brainstorm was using an FSB agent who avoided detection because she’s nowhere near the mold of a typical spy.”
Jamison raised his eyebrows on cue.
“It’s his landlady. A sweet old thing, according to Ignaty. A real wolf in sheep’s clothing. Mrs. Pettygrove is so proud of her young tenant that she irons his shirts and polishes his shoes as part of her patriotic duty.”
“Brilliant. Bloody brilliant,” Jamison mumbled while lowering his head in defeat. “It bothers me, the extent to which we’re supplanting clever minds with high technology. It’s costing us our old-school edge and leaving us vulnerable to low-tech tactics.”
Max gave him a look that said he didn’t know the half of it.
Jamison pressed him. “How long has this been going on? What other secrets have the Russians learned?”
“Ignaty has all that information. He used it to advise Korovin on just how far he could press his expansionist agenda without serious pushback. We haven’t gotten all the details because we’ve only had him in custody for a few hours, but I’m sure President Silver’s people will find the means to access it all. Rest assured that every notable fact is locked up in his big brain. The man’s a walking computer.”
“What about the landlady?” Jamison asked. “Is she in custody? Or did you leave her in play as a source of disinformation?”
“She’s still in play. But I doubt she’ll be valuable as a source of disinformation.”
“Why’s that?” Jamison asked, standing to stretch his legs.
“There have been some other changes we need to tell you about. You’re going to want to remain seated for those.”
Chapter 117
Wangled
Seattle, Washington
KATYA HAD NEVER BEEN THE WORRYING TYPE. She had her parents to thank for that. They’d raised her in Moscow during perestroika, when the Soviet Union was dissolving and modern Russia was forming, and socio-economic upheaval was a way of life. If they’d wasted energy worrying, they wouldn’t have survived.
To this day, Katya found worry to be a useless emotion. Nose to the grindstone remained her style. Make your own luck and all that. But there was no grindstone in the Winsome Whisper stateroom that now jailed her. She was alone with her thoughts. Theoretically it was peaceful, although she had to keep the bathroom fan running to drown out the incessant sound of soap operas drifting in from whatever you called the main room — she wasn’t up on her maritime terminology.
Wang ignored her. Like a jailer, he brought her food a few times a day. Bits of whatever he was eating. Mostly spiced rice or noodles with vegetables mixed in.
He used those instances to visually check on her, but didn’t speak, and he ignored her questions. She reasoned that he was distancing himself from her, in case the $20 million didn’t come through.
Katya knew that should have worried her, but amazingly it didn’t. By now, Achilles knew Wang had her, and that meant Wang was the one who needed to be worried. She couldn’t tell if he was or not. To her, Wang seemed more anxious than nervous. He was a planner, and he had faith in his plan. To Wang’s credit, it was a good one. It would have worked had Zoya’s operation not brought Achilles into Max’s picture. But it had, and now a tracking pellet was acting like a bull’s-eye on Wang’s forehead.
Hopefully.
If the battery hadn’t died.
Or it hadn’t stopped working for some other reason.
If it had, then Achilles would use Korovin’s money to pay the $20 million. Hopefully Wang would live up to his word to set her free. Of course, he might choose not to. He might be giving her the cold shoulder because he planned to kill her anyway, but Katya chose not to worry about that. Not now, anyway. She’d cross the bridge to panic-town if and when the money appeared and not a second before.
She set her fork and bowl down by the door. She always set them there when she was done eating to discourage Wang from entering. He was a man, after all, and men had needs. The eye-full he’d gotten during her capture surely hadn’t helped him to stifle those impulses. Another thing for her not to think about.
As she sat back on the bed, Katya found herself smiling. She was smiling because she had used her time alone in the stateroom to make a decision and that decision felt good.
When you’re faced with the possibility of an early death, it’s only natural to spend time thinking about life. The prospect of losing everything gave Katya the ability to strip away all the meaningless fluff that cluttered her mind on a typical day — the objects and events and awards ostensibly related to self-worth but genuinely meaningless — and instead focus on what truly mattered. She realized that what she did was not nearly as important as who she did it with, so long as she felt safe and free to grow. The fact that Achilles would always keep her safe, no matter what, meant more than any job ever could.
Did she love him — the way she had loved his brother Colin?
Yes, of course she did. Deeply. Passionately even. She’d been suppressing her feelings beneath a blanket of grief for Colin, but locked up facing the great abyss, her emotions were bare. Achilles had a passion for life and exploration and contribution like no one she’d ever met. He was an Olympian through-and-through, and she’d been blind not to embrace the opportunity to live her life by his side.
Her hand drifted to her sensitive place with that thought on her mind, and then the door crashed open. Upon glimpsing her contented expression, Wang’s face registered surprise. But only briefly. The anger that had propelled him through the door quickly returned to center stage. “The money is late.”
“I’m sure it’s coming,” Katya said a little too quickly while scrambling to her feet.
Wang continued to scrutinize her with his eyes, as if trying to read her thoughts. “I’ve decided to send them a bit of encouragement.” He raised his big gun. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
Images began racing through her mind, unpleasant images, the kind of images she’d previously kept at bay.
Her feet didn’t move.
Her eyes locked on Wang’s, trying to read intent. His eyes locked right back on hers, as if drilling into her soul.
A ping broke the silence, like the ringing of a countertop bell. Wang’s expression changed. He blinked and smiled and whirled around, then ran from the room.
Katya stood still for a shocked second, afraid to move.
A boisterous shout broke the calm of their yacht as it slid through the black waters in the dark of night. “Ta ma de! Wo zhong le!”
She crept to the doorway and spotted Wang before a laptop computer on the opposite side of the main room. His arms were raised in victory and he was hopping about like his pants were on fire.
The money had come through.
Achilles didn’t know where she was.
The tracking signal must have died.
Chapter 118
National Security
Palm Beach, Florida
MAX CONTINUED with his story, while Jamison rubbed his temples. He left nothing out, from Zoya’s escape to Collins’ attempted murder. From his own capture and interrogation to their teaming up against Korovin.
Jamison maintained his diplomatic facade throughout the storytelling. No doubt he had endured outrageous United Nations conferences, hosted hopeless international summits, and presided over contentious trade talks — all with the tranquility of a Tibetan monk. But once Max revealed the details of Operation Sunset, his damn burst. He bolted
to his feet and began speaking with a raised voice. “Fifty planes! Crashing into fifty airport terminals! All at the same time! Tell me you’ve stopped it! Tell me it can’t possibly happen!”
“You’re safe for the moment,” Max said.
“For the moment? That’s not good enough. What does that even mean?”
“It’s likely that the planes aren’t even in service. And if they are, only Wang has the override code. He’s on a boat in the middle of Puget Sound, waiting for his $20 million retirement fund to arrive.”
“What if he gets depressed? Goes berserk? Joins ISIS?”
Max kept his own voice calm. He had to recruit Jamison — and the biggest news was yet to come. “Taking over the autopilot systems requires a lot more than a computer and a code. Sunset essentially re-couples the aircraft’s controls with remote controls. The operator still needs a setup similar to the ones used by drone pilots. Actually, Wang needs fifty drone stations if he wants to use them all at once.”
Jamison took a deep breath and sat back down. “Does Korovin have such a setup?”
“My understanding is that fifty drone stations are ready and waiting — in a warehouse in Beijing.”
“Beijing?”
“That’s right. All part of the plan to blame Sunset on the Chinese. But Korovin doesn’t have them. Actually Korovin doesn’t have anything. He’s dead.”
Again Jamison looked like he’d blown a gasket. Again he leapt to his feet. “What?”
Max pulled up a video on his phone. “This shows Korovin’s helicopter en route from his home on the Black Sea to a hospital in Sochi.”
Jamison watched as the big white bird with the presidential seal suddenly changed trajectory and plummeted toward the sea, where it disintegrated upon impact. He hit the replay button and watched it again. When it finished the second time, he looked pale. “What happened?”
