“Level two hundred and two,” Cody said, pointing to the big yellow numbers. He touched the screen, just beneath the level. “Password required. Odd, don’t you think?”
“Is it?”
“It is.” Cody’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. “What’s his password then?”
“First initial, last name?”
Belkin would never have such an easily guessed password. Most likely, it was a random grouping of numbers and letters. Then again, Belkin would need to be able to remember the password, so it could be something personal. In the end, Cody didn’t have a better idea.
He typed “PBelki...” The password field shimmied and cleared itself. “We know it’s a five-character password.” Cody typed. “Peter.”
The field shimmied and cleared itself again. Then a message appeared under the field. “Three attempts remaining.”
Cody cursed. He glanced quickly up at Gregory, who was concentrating on a cookie covered in thick white icing. “Sorry,” he mouthed to Viktoria.
“You said you have information on the Mateev organization. Do you have a case file on Peter Belkin? Birthday? Wife’s name?”
“I do,” said Cody.
“Good,” said Viktoria. “We need to find out what he’s hiding behind the birds.”
* * *
Huddled in the corner of the kitchen pantry, Belkin cursed his luck. All the same, he knew it might have been worse. Even though his hands were bound behind him and the solid wood door was locked tight, he wouldn’t starve. Getting food and water had been clumsy and messy, yet he had access to both.
What Peter Belkin did not have was a toilet and the pantry reeked of urine. If he was locked in here much longer it was going to smell a lot worse.
When Belkin had awakened several hours earlier he had made a huge commotion, one that would have drawn at least the curiosity of Gregory Mateev. Since Belkin never saw tiny pajamaed feet exploring from the crack under the door, he assumed that whoever had done this to him also had taken the boy.
Belkin had only begun to catalogue all the possibilities of who had thrown him into the pantry when the front door opened and closed with a forceful bang. He froze. One of the previous scenarios—that he’d been double-crossed by the Mateev family—came to the forefront of his mind. If that were the case, then what was left of Belkin’s life would be a nightmare.
Would he be shot at short range? Tortured to death?
That was a wholly unpleasant thought.
“Belkin,” a man cried out. “Belkin? Are you here?”
He recognized the man’s voice—one of the two from Team Bravo. He thought his name was Dimitri.
“I’m in here,” Belkin called back, giving the pantry door a savage kick.
He heard scraping and clattering, then the door swung open. The man stood aside, a kitchen chair and electrical cord in his hand. “What happened?”
Belkin rolled to his knees “I was attacked.”
Dimitri hesitated and then reached out for Belkin’s elbow, helping him to his feet.
“Undo these flex-cuffs.” Belkin turned slowly on stiff legs and showed his back to his nayemnik. Mercenary.
“Those aren’t flex-cuffs. It looks like you got tied up with a power cord.”
Belkin was quick to assess his situation. Had the pantry door been blocked by a kitchen chair, the handles tied with a cord? And then his hands bound with whatever was easiest? If that were the case, then Belkin knew this hadn’t been a professional job. Or at least, the assault hadn’t been planned in advance.
The nayemnik cut through the cord and blood rushed into Belkin’s hands, sending painful pinpricks dancing over his palms and fingers. “Go upstairs and check on Gregory Mateev,” said Belkin. “Although I suspect that he’s been taken.”
“I have news.” Belkin noted that the other man hadn’t done as he was ordered. He was about to complain, when Dimitri said, “It’s about Gregory Mateev. Or his mother, actually.”
Belkin rubbed his breastbone. “Yes?”
“She survived. Escaped. A guy came from nowhere. A professional.”
The hired gun continued to talk—how he had tried to pin down Viktoria and the unknown man in the cabin with his gunfire, the death of his teammate and eventually setting fire to the cabin to destroy the evidence. His story ended with a stolen car and the treacherous journey to find Belkin. But Belkin was hardly listening. His mind had wandered back to what he could recall of last night. There wasn’t a lot. The car alarm had gone off and then there was nothing. Except a flash of something. A memory? A face along with a name.
Cody Samuels. Rocky Mountain Justice. Had the local sheriff developed a conscience after calling Belkin, and then tipped off the RMJ operative?
Belkin had seen even more bizarre scenarios in his life. And in truth, the why mattered only a little.
He quickly assessed the situation—both the good and the bad. The list of bad was long. When Viktoria had turned up in the Telluride vicinity, Belkin had seen it as fortuitous. An out-of-the-way destination, far from any direct connections to Belkin and his businesses, legal or not. Now he understood how bad his luck had been. The property in which he stood had been charged to his law firm’s account. All too soon he would be connected to the rental and therefore put in proximity to the crime. Gregory was gone—that was the worst of it. Belkin cast a weary glance around the kitchen. The laptop, which he had left on the table, also was missing. As far as Belkin’s survival was concerned, that was almost as bad as losing Nikolai’s grandson.
He had to assume that the authorities were involved.
Or were they? The easy distraction of the car alarm, along with the kitchen chair barricade and the power cord used to bind his hands spoke of people without many, or any, resources. And if the CBI or Department of Justice were involved then Belkin would have been in jail, not in a pantry and smelling of his own piss.
He leaned on the kitchen counter. Three empty syringes sat in a neat row. Belkin gripped his sore bicep. It hurt worse than it had after Gregory kicked him. In fact, it felt as if he’d received an injection or three. Drugging him with his own sedatives seemed vengeful and opportunistic.
Like something an irate mother might do.
True, the facts that Belkin had were scant. At the same time, there was only one scenario which supported them all. What if his attackers only had been Viktoria Mateev and Cody Samuels, a rogue RMJ agent?
Belkin’s day had just taken a turn for the better.
He turned to the mercenary. “Do you have your gun at least?” Belkin hadn’t carried a gun in years, yet if he was going to complete his mission, he needed a weapon, and fast.
“It only has two bullets. Our backup ammo and other firearms were left in our SUV.”
A single gun with two bullets—one for Viktoria Mateev and the other for Cody Samuels. “That will do.” He held out his hand, palm up.
Dimitri hesitated.
“That will do,” Belkin repeated, his tone sharp. He grasped at the air with his upturned hand. After another pause, he added, “Now. Dimitri.”
Dimitri shifted his weight from one foot to the other before drawing a Sig Sauer from the holster he wore under his arm. He placed the gun in Belkin’s hand, his hold lingering on the stock a moment too long. “Sure,” he said, finally relinquishing the weapon. “Anything you need.”
The gun was warm from being kept so close to the other man’s body. Belkin wrapped his fingers around the grip and aimed at Dimitri’s head. It had been years since Belkin did any of his own killing. A current, filled with the power of life over death, surged through his arm.
Dimitri held up his hands. “You aren’t going to shoot me, are you?”
Belkin exhaled and moved the sights a hairbreadth to the right, lining up perfectly with the middle of Dimit
ri’s forehead. A bead of sweat collected at his hairline. A single trail of liquid snaked down the side of his face.
“I told you, there was another guy,” Dimitri stammered. “He’s a really good shot, you know. It’s not my fault—besides it was me who found you. If it weren’t for me, you’d still be trapped in that pantry.”
Belkin grimaced. He wanted to shoot the idiot, if for no other reason than to silence anyone who had seen this shameful state. “You don’t have to remind me of that.” Belkin lowered his gun. “You’re lucky that I need both the bullets.”
Exhaling loudly, Dimitri let his hands drop.
“I’m going to get cleaned up,” Belkin said, like it was any business of Dimitri’s. “Look for the kid, although I don’t think he’s here.”
A phone sat on the counter and Belkin lifted it from the cradle. It was dead. He didn’t expect anything less. He finished with his orders to Dimitri.
“Then go to the safe house and alert everyone else. I don’t care about the weather. We rendezvous at the airfield. I want wheels up by 10:00 p.m, local. Got that, pridurok?” Jerk. “And leave the SUV that’s in the drive,” he said as he left the kitchen.
Belkin took the stairs to the master suite. As he stripped down and stepped under the scalding-hot shower spray he didn’t have a plan exactly, but a theory. And if it proved to be true, then Belkin would personally take care of Cody Samuels and Viktoria Mateev.
And if not, then he was as good as dead.
Chapter 12
Viktoria sat on the sofa next to Cody and held her breath. An open manila folder sat at his elbow. The cover page consisted of a photo of Peter Belkin, along with his personal information—birth date, address, children, former spouses. They’d tried the name of his son and the birth date for his daughter—making the month of June a 6, not an 0-6. Neither had worked and now only one attempt remained.
“His birth date won’t work if we need a five-character password.”
Viktoria rose from the sofa to get a glass of water. She needed distance and to move. The physical act of filling her glass at the sink, drinking it down slowly, gave her a moment to think and calmed her mind and she turned to Cody. “He’s very Russian. He intersperses a lot of Russian phrases into his conversation,” she said, trying to recall every detail of her single meeting with Peter Belkin. “So, the password might be in Cyrillic.”
Cody leaned back on the sofa and looked at Viktoria. “I didn’t know that you knew Belkin that well.”
“I met him once,” she continued, “or rather, he came to my apartment. It was right after Lucas’s funeral. It was midafternoon and I’d just put Gregory down for a nap.” Yes, she did recall that sultry August day, the heat so intense that it rose in waves off the city streets. It was quite the juxtaposition to today’s heavily falling snow. “He introduced himself as an attorney with Crandall Stevenson and said that he needed to speak to me about Lucas’s death. Probate in New York is ridiculous, so even though a lawyer showing up on my doorstep was odd, it wasn’t wholly unreasonable.”
“Did you have a doorman in your building or some type of security?”
“Doorman,” said Viktoria, “He’d rung the apartment in advance. I told him to send Belkin because I assumed he had legal paperwork...” Her mind trailed off and returned to her Manhattan apartment. “We chatted for a moment. Mostly he asked if I’d ever been to Russia, suggesting what I should see or do if I ever did go. Then he told me that he’d been hired by Nikolai Mateev to get custody of Gregory. He offered me a million dollars and I told him to get out of my home. He left, telling me that I’d be sorry.” She paused.
“And then?”
“The next day Child Protective Services opened a case, claiming that I was an unfit mother.” Viktoria glanced at Gregory. He still busily iced the cookies, but she wondered how much attention he’d paid to her story and more than that, how much he understood.
The sensation that she was trapped, locked in a cage with no hope of escape, made her begin to pace again. Back and forth in the tiny house. There wasn’t enough room for her thoughts. Then it came to her. “His Russian name. We discussed that my name has a Russian spelling, but his given name is Pyotr—he uses Peter for business in America.”
Cody shrugged. “It’s better than nothing.”
His fingers skipped on the keyboard and Viktoria moved back to his side and sat.
“Ready?” he said. The pointer hovered over the password field.
Viktoria exhaled. If this didn’t work, she had nothing else to contribute and her future rested in the capricious hands of fate. “Ready,” she said.
Cody clicked the mouse. The password field disappeared. Viktoria felt a smile pick up the corners mouth. They’d done it! They’d broken in to the file. The screen instantly turned white and then black. Her smile faltered and bile rose in the back of her throat.
A message appeared in the middle of the screen.
Password Error
Computer Lock Engaged
Then a timer began to count down from twelve hours. Eleven hours fifty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds. Eleven hours fifty-nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds...
Viktoria pressed her hands to her lips. “No,” she murmured. “No. No. No.” Then to Cody, “What happened?” She couldn’t believe that they’d failed. She’d failed, really. It had been her guess that did it.
“I’m not giving up,” said Cody. “We’ll get into that computer.”
“How?” Viktoria’s throat burned. Her eyes stung. Her chest was constricted and she couldn’t breathe. She was all too familiar with the feeling—despair.
Cody scratched his chin. “I might not be with the DEA anymore, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t have access to experts.”
Viktoria drew in a shuddering breath and focused her thoughts. But each beat of her heart was like another tick of a countdown clock, beating out the seconds to losing Gregory.
Now Cody was on the phone. Viktoria struggled to focus on what he was saying and to stretch for that flimsy strand of hope. But a single word rose into her mind, resonating above all others. Run, it said. Run, and never look back.
Was that the answer? To fall off the grid? She’d done so successfully for several months already; certainly she could do it again. At the same time, she loathed the idea of living an isolated life again. On some level, though, she knew that her feelings didn’t matter. She’d fought too long and hard to surrender now and let herself be arrested and to lose her son.
Cody set the phone on the table and hit a button. “Roman, you’re on speaker phone. Viktoria Mateev is right beside me.” He turned to her. “Roman DeMarco is a technical genius and can help us get into the computer.”
At that, she pushed aside any hastily made plans. Maybe it would work out after all. “I hope you can help,” said Viktoria.
“So do I,” said Roman. “The first thing I want you to do is close down the computer and restart it. Let me know when that’s done.”
Cody’s fingers danced over the keys and the screen went dark. He hit another button and the hardwood forest came into view again. “Done,” said Cody.
Viktoria’s frustration rose from the pit of her gut. Like lava from deep within the surface of the earth, her ire longed to break free. Shut down and restart? Even she could think of something as simple as that. But Roman then ordered Cody to hold down several keys at once.
“I’m in,” said Cody. Another screen appeared, this one gray.
“Type exactly what I say.”
Viktoria leaned forward and held her breath as Cody entered a series of numbers, letters and symbols. He typed line after line after line of code.
“Now hit colon,” said Roman, “and enter.”
Cody did as he was told. The screen went black. Viktoria’s insides, fiery only moments be
fore, cooled to icy. She began to tremble.
A series of electronic files appeared on the screen.
“Success,” said Cody.
“Success,” she repeated in a whisper.
Names began to appear beside each file. Or not names, rather another set of random numbers, symbols and letters—not unlike the code. Cody clicked on one file. It opened; the document was filled with the same gibberish as the title. “Damn,” cursed Cody. “They’re encrypted.”
“All of them?”
Cody scrolled slowly through the list. “Every goddamn one of them.” He cursed.
“Take out the hard drive,” said Roman, “and bring it to the office as soon as the roads are open. I have programs there that can break the encryption, but nothing for you to do remotely.”
“At least you got us in.”
“One last thing—make a copy of the files. Even if they’re encrypted, it won’t hurt to have a backup.”
“Thanks, man.”
“I’m here if you need anything else.”
Cody ended the call.
Viktoria stared at the screen until something caught her eye. It was Cyrillic, a language she both read and spoke, just as Belkin did. “That one.” She touched the screen. “It’s not encrypted—it’s in Russian.”
“Really?” Cody asked. “What does it say?”
“It’s a name,” said Viktoria. She hesitated. “It’s your name. Cody Samuels.”
* * *
For a second, Cody’s ears rang.
“My name,” he repeated. “What the hell?”
With his head buzzing, he opened the document to which Viktoria had pointed. His official DEA picture filled the screen. He scrolled down, glancing at the scrawl that filled the page, unable to make out a single word. “Can you read it?” he demanded.
Viktoria moved the computer so it faced her. She traced lines as she translated and read. “There’s some biographical information about you. An address in Arvada, Colorado?”
Her Rocky Mountain Hero Page 14
