Look-Alike

by Meredith Fletcher

  “I don’t have any friends at the CIA,” Elle said, growing a little annoyed with his behavior.

  “What about Riley McLane?”

  Oh. That friend. “He’s not a friend,” Elle said. “He’s my—” She stopped herself. “Sister’s boyfriend” is definitely not the answer to go with here.

  “Too bad,” Joachim said. “Getting to know you might have been interesting.” Without another word, he turned, placed one hand on the edge of the bridge and vaulted over the side.

  For a moment, Elle felt certain he’d lost his mind. She rushed forward just in time to see Joachim land on top of a yacht passing under the bridge. He stood, glaring back at her, the long, wet coat whipping around his legs.

  By the time it occurred to her that she could jump as well, the yacht was out of reach.

  Elle’s cell phone rang. She answered it.

  ‘The police are converging on your position,” Riley said. “Unless you want to answer a lot of questions, you’d better get out of there.”

  “Where’s Sam?”

  “I’ve made arrangements for a safe house over on Recht Boomssloot.”

  “Near the Armenian church,” Elle said, feeling irritated with herself as she watched the night mask Joachim from her sight. “I know the place.”

  “You know about the safe house?”

  “Yes.” Elle tossed the Kalashnikov into the canal and followed it with the pistol Sam had taken at the sex shop. “But don’t worry, Riley. The CIA has maintained a few of its secrets.”

  A police boat appeared from the north. The lights flashed over the canal and other boaters hove to, clearing the way.

  Elle closed the phone, cutting off whatever response Riley might have made, and ran east. She wanted to see Sam. Her sister had a lot of questions to answer.

  Suwan, Berzhaan

  VASILIOS QUINN STARED AT THE TELEVISION footage coming out of Amsterdam. Rage filled him, but it was the panic he felt at the situation that he struggled to control. Rage was an old friend. Helplessness was something he’d never gotten used to and seldom experienced.

  On the television, the Dutch-speaking woman reporter stood in front of a blazing pyre that had once been Tuenis Meijer’s houseboat. Fireboats worked in the background, hosing the flames with water cannons.

  “What happened?” Quinn demanded.

  Arnaud Beck answered from the speakerphone. “I was wrong about the woman.”

  Quinn struggled to remember the woman’s name. “St. John? The CIA agent?” The phone connection was encrypted and scrambled.

  “Yes. She had help I wasn’t expecting.”

  “Who?” Quinn sat in front of his computer.

  “A man named Joachim Reiter.”

  “German?”

  “Yes. He’s one of Günter Stahlmann’s top lieutenants.”

  Quinn knew Stahlmann. Had known, he reminded himself. But that had been in the other life. The one that he struggled to keep buried.

  “How is Stahlmann involved in this?” Quinn asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Quinn sat back in his chair and thought about it. “Perhaps Stahlmann has business with Tuenis Meijer as well.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Did you kill Meijer?”

  Beck was quiet for a moment. “Unfortunately, no. Both the women and Joachim Reiter escaped.”

  “What of Tuenis Meijer?”

  “Gone as well.”

  Quinn pushed up from the chair. If they’d had the chance to talk to the computer hacker, if they’d backed up his files, they couldn’t live. “Find them, Beck. Wherever they go, whatever they do, find them and kill them.”

  Amsterdam, The Netherlands

  Elle seethed inside. “You’re not listening to me, Sam.” She spoke in Russian. Over the past year they had discovered they seemed to communicate better in that language. Elle felt certain it was because they had heard that language as babies and perhaps somehow communicated with each other before they were separated.

  However, communication wasn’t easy now.

  “I am listening.” Sam’s tone was flat, neutral. She stood on the other side of the living room area in the CIA safe house near Amsterdam’s waterfront.

  Losing patience, Elle paced. “Your friends have a leak in their intelligence network.”

  “If my friends had a leak,” Sam insisted calmly, “they would know it.”

  “Okay.” Elle sighed. “Okay. Let’s agree—for now—that they would know. That doesn’t mean they would tell you.”

  “If not knowing meant my life,” Sam stated, “they would have told me.”

  “If you believe that, you’re a fool. They do have a leak. They didn’t tell you.”

  “Those men could have been following Joachim,” Sam said. “Not me.”

  “He said no.”

  Sam arched an eyebrow. “And you believe him?”

  The question, asked so baldly, put Elle on notice. Did she trust the man? She remembered how he had guarded her back on the bridge as Arnaud Beck’s men had closed on them. She also thought about the fact that he hadn’t killed her when he could have. Twice.

  “I do,” Elle said.

  “I’ve known my friends a lot longer than a five-minute conversation in a crowded train station,” Sam countered.

  Ah, so you do have claws, sister, Elle thought.

  Located in the basement of the safe house, the room they were in was small, but Elle felt as if an impassable void existed between Sam and her. The closeness that had been so natural over the past year and a half now seemed to hang by a fragile thread. The living room furniture in the center of the room didn’t match the cutting-edge computer equipment that lined one whole wall.

  The basement doubled as a sound studio that specialized in special effects noises for video games. The man who lived in the safe house, and was currently upstairs, drew checks in that capacity from several computer gaming companies. Of course, the soundproof room on the other side of the thick glass window doubled as a holding cell. Tuenis Meijer sat inside the room on a stool under the boom microphone. He didn’t look happy.

  “We need to make a plan,” Elle said.

  “I have one,” Sam replied.

  “You’re going back to Athena Academy?”

  “Riley will help with transportation out of this country and to the United States,” Sam said. “He’s working on it now. We’ll be safe with him. And if you choose not to go, I’ll be safe with him.”

  Finally acknowledging that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with her sister, nor be able to actually argue the point, Elle nodded. “Okay. Fine. We’ll do it your way.”

  “You don’t have to go,” Sam said.

  That only made Elle angrier. “Do you really think I’d leave you right now? When you don’t even know what we’re facing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Elle wanted to explode. That was the course of action she would have taken with one of her sisters in the Petrenko family. They were always up for a fight, and it used to drive her father insane.

  “You know what,” Elle said coldly, “I think I need a breath of air.” Without another word, she left. As emotional as she was, there was only one person she wanted to talk to.

  Chapter 8

  Leaning into the pay phone down near the dockyard a few blocks from the safe house, Elle used a prepaid phone card to dial the number.

  Night had come to neon life in the second tier of the city behind the dockyards. The warehouses and shipping companies were mostly closed for the evening, but taverns, adult shows and restaurants competed for the wages of the cargo handlers and sailors.

  The phone was answered on the second ring.

  “Hello?” Colonel Fyodor Petrenko’s voice was thick with sleep. He had always gone to bed early and started his mornings before the dawn with a cup of black coffee and rolls that Mother made fresh from the oven. But Mother had died five years ago and there were no more homemade rolls in the mornings, except when Ell
e or one of her sisters was home. Those times weren’t often these days.

  “Father,” Elle said.

  “Elle?” Concern echoed in his voice. Springs creaked and she knew he was checking the time on the old clock by the bed. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Father,” she replied.

  “It is late,” he observed.

  Elle almost laughed at the habitual remonstration that stained his voice, and the feeling felt as good as she’d known it would. His words carried both a query and a mild rebuke. It was almost like being a teen again, getting home after curfew.

  “I know it’s late,” she replied, “but I wanted to hear your voice.”

  “You could have heard my voice in the morning. At a more reasonable hour.”

  “I wanted to hear it now.”

  Her father was silent for a moment. “Something is wrong.”

  Elle’s first impulse was to lie, but she didn’t. “Yes. Something is wrong. It’s complicated.”

  “I see.” He paused for a moment. A hiss and a soft crackling sound reached her ears and she knew he’d ht his pipe. That was another thing that had changed with her mother’s absence. As long as her mother had been alive, her father hadn’t been permitted to smoke in the bedroom. “I thought you were supposed to be with your sister.”

  “I was. I am. Sort of.” Elle turned and scanned the surrounding street.

  Drunken sailors weaved down the block. Prostitutes working the corners tried to solicit business. Shills for the peep shows called out for attention.

  “That is rather an oblique answer. Perhaps you could share a few details.”

  Quietly, quickly, Elle relayed the evening’s events.

  “You say this is not a CIA mission?”

  “No. Agent McLane seemed as surprised to learn that Sam was here as I was when she first told me.”

  “Then whom is Sam working for?”

  “Her friends at the Athena Academy.”

  “What interest would they have in Tuenis Meijer?”

  Elle hesitated then. The problem with spreading a confidence was that once spread, it was gone from her control. Spycraft was all about controlling assets as well as damage. Both of those things came from information.

  “There has been some kind of incident at Athena Academy,” she said. “Evidently there was more to Senator Marion Gracelyn’s murder than clashing political beliefs. While searching for her mother’s killer, Allison Gracelyn uncovered a computer file concerning an individual known as Spider.”

  Her father remained quiet. He’d learned from the SVR and his wife when it was proper to ask questions.

  Elle went on. “I don’t know yet, but I suspect that the Spider file they uncovered might be connected to the file the SVR has on Madame Web.”

  “Did you mention this to your sister?”

  “Of course not. Madame Web is a problem for the SVR.”

  “Madame Web is a ghost,” her father said. “Her existence has never been proven.”

  Elle knew that. According to some, Madame Web was a figment of an overactive and paranoid imagination in the intelligence community. Supposedly, Madame Web had the ability to crack into any Web site, no matter how secure, and ferret out whatever information she wanted. In the past, a few Russian politicians and businessmen had claimed to be blackmailed by her.

  “But many suspect that she does exist,” Elle said.

  “How does Madame Web connect to Tuenis Meijer?”

  “I don’t know,” Elle answered. “But someone was concerned enough about it to attempt to kill Sam.”

  “So why did you call me?”

  Elle thought about that for a moment. “I’m angry with Sam. She—she frustrates me.”

  “Because she won’t take your advice?”

  Elle grew a little irritated with her father then. “Yes.”

  “She’s proposing taking Tuenis Meijer back to her friends at Athena Academy?”

  “Yes. For all she knows, her friends leaked information and nearly got her killed tonight.”

  “And for all you know, they didn’t.”

  Elle supposed it was possible. But she did so with reluctance.

  “You have to remember that your sister is not you, Elle,” her father said gently. “She wasn’t raised as you were. From everything you said, she wasn’t given a home when she was little. Family…is new to her.”

  “She froze me out.” Elle remembered the vacant stare Sam had given her. “Like I wasn’t even there.”

  “Do you know how many times I sat in my office or at the dinner table and listened to you fight with your sisters?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You learned to fight with your sisters, Elle. You learned to fight with your brothers. Mostly, it was over inconsequential things. Territorial rights to the bathroom. Borrowed clothes. Hurtful comments uttered in the heat of the moment. And boys.” Her father chuckled. “I seem to recall many fights over boys.”

  “She’s my sister. We should be able to talk.”

  “Yes. You should. Who walked out of the conversation?”

  Elle thought about that. She hated it when her father was right. “She wasn’t listening.”

  “And the best way to get someone to listen is to stop talking,” her father said. “Your mother taught me that.”

  Elle remembered all the years spent in the Petrenko household. She had always been one of Fyodor Petrenko’s children. She’d shared the table, the chores and a bedroom, until she was grown and off to university. Then, when she came home on weekends, the usual pecking order resumed.

  “She chooses to believe her friends over my choice of caution,” Elle said.

  “Yes. From what you say, they are the only family she’s ever truly known.”

  For a moment Elle’s heart went out to Sam. In her own home, she’d had two older and three younger sisters. She’d dressed the younger ones, combed out their hair and washed their faces when they were little. As they’d gotten older, Elle had given them advice on what to wear, what boys were like and how to conduct themselves around others. Her older sisters had done that for her.

  No one did that for Sam.

  “I’ve made a mistake,” Elle said quietly. Sadness chewed at her.

  “A small one,” her father agreed. “Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind when I talk to Sam.” Elle took a deep breath. She felt better. She’d known she would after talking with him.

  “Good. Now you should go and smooth things over between your sister and you.”

  She smiled and some of the night’s chill seemed to dissipate. She told him he was right, of course, then thanked him for his time and hung up after promising to call every time she was able.

  Feeling a little better, Elle went in search of chocolate. It was one of the things she always used to break the tension with one of her sisters. But she went with her hand on a pistol inside her jacket and carefully watched the shadows. Whatever had started tonight, she was sure, was far from over.

  SAM WAS SITTING QUIETLY IN THE DARK in a chair against the wall in the basement when Elle returned. Sam had changed into jeans, a green knit long-sleeved shirt, tennis shoes and an empty shoulder holster, all supplied by the safehouse. The SIG-Sauer .40-caliber was in her right hand.

  Elle stopped at the foot of the stairs, prepared to duck for cover around the basement wall if Sam shot first and thought after. Under the circumstances, it was possible. Maybe I wouldn’t even blame her.

  “Sam? Are you awake?” Elle asked.

  “Yes.” Her voice was soft and wary.

  “Mind if I turn on a light?”

  “Whatever.”

  Elle didn’t let the passive-aggressive stance Sam had adopted bother her. She hadn’t returned to the safe house to fight. She wanted to be with her sister. And there was the matter of Madame Web.

  She turned on the light. “I took a walk.”

  Sam didn’t respond.r />
  “Cleared my head. Called my father.”

  “Oh?” A note of suspicion sounded in Sam’s voice. She knew that Fyodor Petrenko was an SVR agent, too.

  “He said that you were right and I was being bullheaded. I think he enjoys that. I’ve heard it often enough from him.” Elle sat at the table and opened a bag, revealing a half gallon of ice cream. “He reminded me that I am not the only one in the espionage game, that you have your system and your backups in place as well.”

  “I do.”

  Elle pried the lid off the ice cream. The scent of chocolate and almonds seeped into the room. “You’re still mad at me.”

  Sam hesitated only for an instant. “Yes. I don’t like being told what to do.”

  “I know. I should have realized that. I didn’t, and I’m sorry.” Elle looked at her sister. “Getting to know each other, even if we weren’t in the line of work we’re in, would be hard, Sam. Something like tonight—” she shrugged “—can make getting to know each other almost impossible. The good thing is that we’re both still alive. We’ve lived to be mad at each other at some other time. But I’m through being bullheaded and angry tonight. This is your mission, your decision. However you want to do this, I’m there for you.”

  Sam said, “All right,” but she didn’t sound convinced.

  “Now, this is chocolate-almond ice cream,” Elle said, adopting a lighter tone. “One of my personal favorites. I’ve already carried it for a while, so it’s melting. We can continue being mad at each other until it completely melts.” She produced a pair of spoons with a magician’s flourish. “Or we can eat. Which do you prefer?”

  “That’s one of my favorites, too.” Sam slipped the pistol into her shoulder holster and brought her chair over to the table. “I could go upstairs and look for bowls. I’m sure there are some.”

  “No,” Elle said. “We eat it straight out of the carton. It has fewer calories that way.”

  Sam smiled a little at that. “Are you sure that’s true?”

  “Cross my heart. My mother told me that.”

  For a second, sadness tracked Sam’s face, but then it was gone and she was smiling again. “Then let’s eat.”