Look-Alike

by Meredith Fletcher

  The bodyguard tossed his video game device to the couch and stood, awaiting orders.

  “Hold that thought, Emily,” Krieger said as he looked up at Joachim. “I need to put you on hold for just a moment.” Then he punched a button on the earpiece. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Günter sent me,” Joachim answered.

  “I don’t give a damn who sent you,” Krieger exploded. “You don’t just walk into my office unannounced.”

  “I was announced. I’ve been waiting outside.” Joachim kept his hands in his pockets and made no overt threat. He was too professional for that. Also, he didn’t like threatening unless there was no recourse.

  Krieger was tough. He hadn’t survived in the garment industry without being tough. Fashion was a hard business and made for harder players.

  “Then if you’ve got any sense, you’ll walk back to the door and wait until I’m ready to deal with you.” Krieger leaned back in his chair as if the matter were finished. He tapped the earpiece again. “Emily? No, no, I’m ready to talk. I just had a momentary distraction, that’s all. I’ve dealt with it already.”

  Joachim leaned over the desk and pulled the phone cord out of the plug.

  Red in the face now, Krieger pointed to Joaquin. “Irwin, throw this bastard out of my office. Now!”

  Irwin closed on Joachim without a word. Dropping his head down as close to his shoulders as he could, the bodyguard held up his massive fists and began circling to Joachim’s left.

  Joachim didn’t protest. It would have done no good. Both of them were seasoned veterans operating under orders.

  “Who gave you the black eye?” Irwin taunted.

  Raising his open hands to shoulder height in front of them, Joachim replied, “A woman. About half your size.”

  Irwin laughed. “Whoever sent you should have had his head checked. I’ll ask you once, nicely, to leave. So I don’t have to mess up your looks any more.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Irwin shrugged. “Professional courtesy.”

  “I’m staying, but I’ll offer you the same chance.”

  When Irwin attacked, it was just as Joachim figured it would be. A man Irwin’s size grew used to using his height and weight against the opponent. He was a street boxer, employing only techniques he had picked up bouncing in bars and busting heads down on the docks as part of a private security team.

  Using his hands and forearms, Joachim fended off the first few blows, turning them away from his head and body. He knew that if he gave Irwin the chance, the man would hurt him or Joachim would be forced to put him into the hospital to stop him.

  Surprised by Joachim’s skill, Irwin withdrew slightly. Joaquin followed at once, throwing a series of fist blows designed to bring Irwin’s hands up. Once Irwin’s chest was exposed, Joachim drove a snap-kick into the center of his opponent’s stomach that sent him stumbling backward. Before Irwin could recover, Joachim launched a side kick into the middle of the big man’s face.

  Irwin dropped as if he had been poleaxed. Stubbornly, though, he forced himself to his hands and knees, and stood again, swaying this time. He attacked Joachim, firing a punch right off the shoulder. Joachim slipped the punch and threw a right cross into Irwin’s face that left him sprawled unconscious on the floor.

  Joachim turned to face Krieger.

  The garment king sat calmly behind his big desk. He took a cigarette from a gold case, tapped the cigarette on the back of his hand and lit up with a gold cigarette lighter. “You’re good. Irwin’s no pushover.”

  Silently, Joachim agreed.

  “You’re just better than he is.” Krieger’s eyes danced. “But tell me this. What would you do if I pulled a pistol from this desk?”

  “Kill you,” Joachim replied.

  Some of the humor left Krieger’s eyes, but he kept the smile. “I don’t think Günter would like that.”

  “Probably not, but I would mind being dead a lot more than I would mind having Günter mad at me for a while.” Joaquin walked back toward the desk. “Besides that, you don’t have a gun in the desk. At least, not one you’re willing to use in this occasion.” He took the envelope containing the pictures from his jacket, then spread them out on the table like playing cards.

  Krieger studied the pictures but did not touch them. “So these are the stakes, then?”

  Joachim met the man’s eyes without flinching from the scorn and fear that he saw there. “Günter wants his money. Call him. Now. Make the arrangements.”

  For a moment more, Krieger held Joachim’s gaze. Then the old man gathered the pictures with a trembling hand. “All right.”

  Feeling sick and disgusted with himself, Joachim left Krieger’s office.

  Outside, Joachim stared at the leaden sky and the hard faces that filled the sidewalks. He wanted out of this business. He’d had more than enough. Pitor Schultz was going to have to make good on his promise to get him clear.

  Doing the enforcement work for Günter hadn’t been so bad when Joachim had gone after criminals who had robbed Günter and welshed on deals. Or men who had tried to kill Günter. There were no innocents among them.

  Trudging back to the ten-year-old sedan he was currently driving, Joachim wanted a drink. Anything to take the taste of what he had just done from his mouth. His hand was already swelling and his forearms would be bruised for days.

  One of the phones in his pocket vibrated for attention. From the position in his jacket, he knew it was the cell phone he kept for Pitor Schultz.

  When he got the phone out, he saw that he’d received a text message: Meet me at Heidahl’s. 9:00. I have news.

  Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women

  Outside Athens, Arizona

  Controlling the outrage that stirred within her, Sam sat at the conference table across from Alex Forsythe and Allison Gracelyn.

  “I know you’re angry, Sam.” Alex spoke softly, in her professional voice, and that irritated Sam more.

  At five feet eight inches tall with long, curly red hair and blue eyes, Alex was a hard woman to miss in a crowd. She grew up in a family fueled by Old Money. The original Forsythes had come over on the Mayflower and set about making their first million in short order.

  Charles Forsythe, Alex’s grandfather, had helped found the school and believed in its objectives. After finishing at Athena, Alex had gone on to study forensic science and was now one of the top practitioners in her field. Currently, she lived in Washington, D.C., and worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  “You’re right,” Sam said in a controlled voice. “I’m angry. I had a vacation planned with my sister. A quiet time where we could get away and get to know more about each other. Instead, I ended up in Amsterdam, in an area that is an absolute zoo and freak show where people sell their freedom and self-respect for cash,” Sam continued. “As if that wasn’t bad enough, Elle nearly gets blown up capturing the man you two wanted to question, and now, after she’s risked her life to help me with a task I still don’t even know the reason for,” Sam said, “you two turn her away like you don’t trust her. You bet I’m angry.”

  “We have a reason for talking to you without Elle at the moment,” Alex assured her.

  “Oh, really?” Sam stared at her friend. She couldn’t ever remember being so pissed at Alex. Or any of the Cassandras, for that matter. “What?”

  “I can’t tell you yet.”

  Abruptly, Sam stood to leave. “Then I can’t stay.” She turned and headed for the door. She was so mad she was shaking. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been this angry or this near to being out of control. The realization scared her. Without control, she was a victim, and victims had to go along with whatever happened to them. She’d learned that in the foster homes.

  “Sam,” Alex called. “Please don’t leave.”

  Pausing at the door, Sam turned to face the other two women. “You’ve known me for a long time. Both of you. I’ve never asked for much. From eithe
r of you. Or from anyone. I gave you help on this without ever asking why or what it was about. Elle gave me that same thing. Simply because we’re family. Something I thought you of all people would understand. You hooked me with the possibility that what we were doing had something to do with my parents.”

  Alex fixed her with an open, honest gaze. There wasn’t a hint of deceit in her blue eyes. “This is about your parents, Sam. That’s why it’s so hard. The answers you want are complicated. We’re still dealing with them ourselves. Please be a little more patient.”

  “Why couldn’t Elle be here?” Sam asked. “My mother and father were her parents, too. That’s what this is about, right? My parents?”

  “Yes,” Alex said, “and no.”

  Sam blew out an angry breath.

  “I told you it was complicated,” Alex said.

  “You’re aware that your mission was initiated by an investigation into my mother’s death,” Allison said calmly.

  For the first time, Sam saw that Allison looked frayed around the edges. In her days at the academy, Allison and Rainy had been rivals. Allison had mentored a group called the Graces, while Rainy had mentored the Cassandras. The rivalry had continued up until the time that Marion Gracelyn was murdered. Rainy had returned to the school to help Allison deal with her loss and the resulting investigation, which hadn’t turned up a murderer. After that, they had become good friends.

  Until Rainy’s death last year.

  Sam said nothing. She couldn’t be influenced by whatever pain and confusion Allison was going through. The quickest way to lose herself was to become overly concerned about someone else involved in the situation.

  “We sifted through a lot of old evidence while looking for Marion’s murderer,” Alex said. “We also turned up several e-mail communications from someone who only signed the messages ‘A.’ Most of those communications were fragmented and hidden in code we believe Marion created herself. We have been able to decipher some of them, but not all.”

  “I’m still working on it,” Allison said. “But, it seems, my mother was even more clever than I had known.”

  Curiosity nibbled at Sam’s anger. Mysteries had always appealed to her.

  “My mother was being blackmailed,” Allison said. “Months before she died, she began making weekly payments of five thousand dollars cash. We believe it was to protect you.”

  Chapter 12

  “Marion Gracelyn was blackmailed because of me?” That surprised Sam. She had graduated a few years before Marion Gracelyn had been murdered, and she was certain that the woman hadn’t known her. While at Athena, Sam had only seen the senator in the hallways a handful of times.

  “Whoever this ‘A’ is,” Alex said, “he or she was threatening to expose your parents.”

  “Marion Gracelyn knew who my parents were?” Sam couldn’t believe it “And she never mentioned it to anyone?”

  “No,” Allison said.

  “Why?” Sam’s voice was hoarse with restrained anger. Although knowing the identities of her birth parents hadn’t been a pressing need for her the way it was for some foster children, she’d still wanted to know.

  “Anya and Boris Leonov were dead,” Allison said. “I suppose my mother thought it would have been better if you weren’t burdened with that. She wanted to protect you.”

  I would have liked to have a chance to decide that for myself, Sam thought.

  “More than that, Marion wanted to protect you from international repercussions,” Alex put in. “Your right to stay in this country as an American citizen would have been questioned. Marion believed that you had been through enough and that pulling you out of the Athena environment would have been debilitating to you.”

  Sam hadn’t thought about that. Truthfully speaking, she’d been born a Russian citizen and had been brought to the United States as a baby through some illegal means. Sam still didn’t know how that had happened. Or why whoever had brought Sam over hadn’t provided her with a family like Elle’s.

  “If she had told someone, I could have met my sister before now.”

  “Sam,” Allison said, “Mother believed your sister was dead. That was in her notes. The blackmailer sent case files from the CIA and MI-6 that documented your parents’ assassination. Those reports listed both daughters as victims of the explosion as well.”

  “But Elle—” Sam started.

  “There was no mention of her surviving. Both of you were listed as casualties.”

  Sam was quiet for a moment, trying to get around it all. Silently, she returned to her chair.

  “My mother liked you, Sam,” Allison said. “She saw great promise in you. She didn’t want to lose you if she could prevent it.” She paused. “But there was more to the story than your nationality.”

  Sam waited.

  Alex looked at her and let out a breath. “The rest isn’t easy, Sam.”

  “It hasn’t ever been easy,” Sam replied.

  “There’s something you don’t know about your parents.”

  Sam laughed bitterly. “There’s a lot I don’t know about my parents. They were Russian agents doubling as British spies. They were desperate to get out of Russia so they made every deal they could with the British, got every secret they could from the Russians and pressed their luck past the breaking point. When they were trying to get out of Moscow ahead of an execution squad, someone killed them with a rocket launcher. End of story.”

  “No,” Alex said. “That was just the beginning of an even bigger story. According to the files we’ve managed to decipher—”

  “Files even my mother couldn’t decipher back then,” Allison added.

  “Your parents were in possession of a deadly nerve gas when they were killed,” Alex finished.

  Sam looked at them. “I don’t understand.”

  “Under international agreement at the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, none of the superpowers were supposed to work with nerve toxins,” Alex said. “The American government knew that Russia was. That fact has been in the news quite often lately because of the events going on in Iraq and Berzhaan.”

  Since her career had started with the CIA, Sam had been aware of biological threats. She was familiar with the agreement, and with the CIA’s attempts to locate secret Russian labs charged with designing illegal bioweapons.

  “The Soviet Union had a dedicated program to design and produce biological weapons through the 1990s,” Allison said. “Dr. Kenneth Alibek testified to that in a 1998 statement to a joint congressional committee. He was a First Deputy Director of Biopreparat in charge of those efforts. That was the civilian arm of the bioweapons development. He revealed that the research that had been going on involved over forty facilities and thirty thousand employees.”

  “Okay,” Sam said, holding up a hand. “I’ll agree that Russia had been involved in making bioweapons until that time, but what does that have to do with my parents? How do you know they were carrying a nerve toxin?”

  “It’s in the documents my mother had,” Allison said.

  “I checked through the CIA’s files on my parents,” Sam said. “The CIA hacked into MI-6’s files. There was no mention of a nerve toxin.”

  “Why did the CIA have a file on your parents?” Alex asked.

  “Because Anya and Boris Leonov were suspected spies and double agents,” Sam said. After she’d learned of her parents, she had explored the CIA’s archives looking for more information. She’d been disappointed with how little there was.

  “The files my mother had possession of suggested that the Leonovs were selling the nerve toxin to a third party,” Alex said. “Someone in East Germany. A man named Stryker was named in the documents. He was an East German Stasi. The Stasi were—”

  “East German police,” Sam interrupted. “I know. They were supposed to be very corrupt. But why would my parents work with the Stasi?”

  “Britain may have been willing to grant them asylum, but evidently the Leonovs didn’t trust the Briti
sh to take care of their financial needs.”

  Overcome, Sam sat quietly. My parents? The bad guys?

  “They were scared, Sam,” Allison said. “They were defecting from their country, going to a place that wanted them only for what they knew at the moment. They had two beautiful baby girls. They just wanted everything to be all right.”

  Stunned, Sam didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Even with Allison’s blessing, the possibility of her parents being involved in wrongdoing just seemed…wrong.

  “Do you see the problem we have if we choose to tell Elle?” Alex asked.

  Sam focused on her friend. “No. I don’t.”

  “My mother’s files almost constitute an accusation,” Allison said.

  “How?”

  “The nerve gas is named in the documents.”

  “How did the blackmailer get all that information?”

  Alex shook her head. “We don’t know. We’re still investigating.”

  “Who’s investigating?” Sam asked.

  “An agency we have friendly connections with,” Allison said. “I’ve done work with them for years. Believe me, you can trust them.”

  Sam believed Allison’s earnestness. But other thoughts bothered her. “You can tell Elle.”

  Alex leaned back in her chair. “We can. But what happens then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “One way or another, Russia is still culpable for the creation of that nerve agent,” Allison said. “We have proof of that. It was code-named Lenin’s Lullaby. If it’s used, we have enough of the chemical makeup on record to match it to them.”

  ‘“If it’s used’?” Sam echoed.

  “That’s one of the problems,” Alex said, “Lenin’s Lullaby is still out there. We just don’t know where.”

  Heidahl’s Coffee Shop

  Leipzig, Germany

  Although not as posh as the Starbucks coffee shops Joachim had seen, Heidahl’s coffee shop maintained its own elegance. The decor was Old World German. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled with old leather-bound books. Color-stained glass filled the awning over the front of the building and created a design in the main windows that depicted a coffee percolator and steaming cup of coffee.