Look-Alike

by Meredith Fletcher

  The passenger clambered out as well. He was smooth shaven and wore sunglasses. “Agent Petrenko?”

  “Yes,” Elle answered, going forward.

  “I am Colonel Lutikov.” The colonel tucked his chin briefly. “I am commanding officer at the detention center.”

  “I appreciate the personal attention, Colonel,” Elle said, “but I assure you it wasn’t necessary.”

  “It’s my pleasure.” Lutikov gestured to the passenger’s seat. “You see, we don’t get many visitors up here.”

  Elle sat in the passenger’s seat and closed the door, grateful that she was out of the wind. The few short minutes she was exposed to the unforgiving cold had left her feeling frozen to the bone.

  The colonel gestured to the driver, assigning him to the back while sliding behind the steering wheel. Without a word, the driver climbed onto the rear deck and hunkered down. Ahnost nonchalantly, the colonel put the jeep into gear and eased out on the clutch. He drove confidently over the hard-packed ice.

  “No one mentioned who you were here to see,” Lutikov said.

  “They were given instructions not to.”

  “Yes. But sooner or later, I will know. Curiosity won’t kill me, but I will admit to some discomfort.”

  Elle laughed. “Alexi Zemanov.”

  A frown tightened Lutikov’s face. “You were told that he hasn’t spoken to anyone in twenty years, weren’t you?”

  “He will speak to me,” Elle replied.

  The colonel regarded her with heightened interest. “Really? I don’t even know why he’s here.”

  “I’m afraid,” Elle said, “that’s something you’ll have to remain curious about.”

  Mykonos Town

  The Cyclades Islands, Greece

  Sweltering afternoon heat baked into the harbor and made the brine and the fish odors stronger. In the shaded comfort of the tavema overlooking the fishing and tourist boats tied up in the docks, Joachim sat at a table and drank a bottle of flavored water. Beads of sweat ran down the bottle and dampened the coaster.

  Colorful plastic orange lobsters, purple squids, pink fish and green crabs lay in nets hanging from the ceiling. A swordfish hung on one wall over a small saltwater aquarium that held a seahorse, a few fish and a deep-sea diver bubbler. That was the only effort the taverna made at ddcor. An awning blocked some of the afternoon sun. The small, round bar occupied the center of the room.

  Tourists walked along the harbor, ducking into the small restaurants and curio shops. Taxi boats plied their trade, calling out to passersby and offering their services. Fishermen ignored the tourists who snapped their pictures, working on their nets and boats now that their catch had been put away. The fishing boats put out into the Aegean Sea hours before dawn to cast their nets for red mullet, Dover sole, prawns, red sea bream, swordfish and baby squid.

  Joachim stared out at the sea. For three days, since his arrival from Prague, he’d kept watch over the harbor. Greece consisted of one major land mass and fifty-six islands. According to Günter, Arnaud Beck lived in seclusion on one of them. But Beck favored the nightlife in Mykonos Town, which offered a mixture of locals as well as tourists from around the world.

  The trick in hunting a man was in knowing where to look and what to look for. Günter had known about Beck’s proclivities regarding young women. Beck didn’t buy them because he preferred to win them over with charm and wealth. Mykonos, known for its nightlife, was the obvious place to set up watch.

  “Would you care for another, sir?”

  Glancing up at the server, Joachim nodded. She took the empty bottle away and brought a fresh one. She was young and pretty, her black hair a mass of wild ringlets that tumbled nearly to her waist, and she liked to flirt.

  Joachim paid her for the water and added a generous tip.

  She stood with a hand on her slim hip, poised and confident. “You spend a lot of time looking out that window or one like it.” Her English only carried a light accent.

  “Does my sitting here bother you?”

  “No. It makes me…curious.”

  Joachim just smiled at her.

  “What are you watching for?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Should I be watching for anything?”

  A frown knitted her dark eyebrows. “Where are you from?”

  “Germany.” Joachim didn’t hesitate about answering. Beck would have no reason to worry about anyone coming from Germany.

  “I’ve never been to Germany.”

  “I’ve never before been to Greece.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Yes.”

  “There is much to do and see.”

  “So I’ve been told.” Joachim sipped the flavored water.

  She gazed at him again, taking in the lightweight khaki pants, the boaters and the sea green silk shirt. He looked young and successful and bored, an image he’d deliberately cultivated. The last few days’ exposure to the sun left him reddened.

  “My name is Adriana.” She offered her hand.

  “Joachim.” It was a common enough name. He took her hand.

  “Do you like to party, Joachim?”

  “If it’s a good one.”

  Mykonos Town was known for its parties. The Greek mainland had more to offer, but the islands weren’t policed as well and the ocean afforded a veritable treasure trove of escape routes.

  “It will be. This is a very private one. Invitation only.”

  Joachim didn’t get his hopes up. Arnaud Beck was supposed to be a partygoer in the islands, but that didn’t mean he’d attend this party. Still, starting to make the private party scene was a step in the right direction.

  “Are you staying in Mykonos Town?” Adriana asked.

  “Yes. I’ve rented a room at a house near Cavo Tagoo.” The hotel was only five hundred meters inland from the harbor. Joachim gave her the address.

  “Be ready tonight at eight. I will pick you up.”

  “All right.”

  Adriana turned then and walked away. She rolled her hips suggestively.

  Joachim turned back to the sea. Arnaud Beck had a yacht somewhere out there as well. Joachim kept hoping to see it come in to harbor.

  In the meantime, he was cultivating local black market connections. Beck was known to buy and sell things on the black market.

  Waiting was painless for the most part. Günter would do nothing to his family as long as Joachim kept in touch every day.

  If Beck hadn’t come to Mykonos Town for days, what was keeping him?

  Criminal Detention Center

  Siberia, Russia

  Cold filled the detention center. Walking down the quiet hallway, which was covered in dingy white paint that needed attention, Elle doubted that the building ever truly warmed. At least eighty years old, the detention center lacked a furnace that would provide adequate heat. Even Colonel Lutikov’s office had been cold.

  Her footsteps and those of the two security guards that accompanied her echoed through the hallway. A final turn put her in the wing where Alexi Zemanov had been kept for the last twenty years.

  The first door on the left bore the number 49D.

  One of the guards stepped forward and slotted a swipe card to release the locks. He had to do it twice before the locks grudgingly disengaged. He started to go in.

  “No,” Elle said. “Wait here.”

  The guard looked over his shoulder. “I should be there to protect you.”

  “He’s seventy-six years old,” Elle said. “Surely I can defend myself.”

  “Some of these inmates can be very dangerous,” the guard insisted.

  Elle fixed him with a withering glare. “All right. Have it your way. Come in. Then when I’m finished talking to this man, I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

  The man scowled. “I’ll be at the door if you need anything.” He stepped back and allowed Elle to pass.

  Alexi Zemanov lay huddled on a narrow bed covered with threadbare blankets. A small light flicke
red on the wall to Elle’s left. The rhythmic rise and fall of his thin chest told her he was asleep.

  In years past, Zemanov had been a robust man. The pictures in his personal file showed that. But the intervening twenty years had leached most of the life from him. Tangled snarls of iron-gray hair fanned out on his pillow. He’d lost weight till he was nothing more than loose, wrinkled flesh over bone. He slept like a child, his hands together beneath his bony chin to hold on to the blankets.

  Elle stopped at the foot of the bed and felt sympathy for the old man. Even as she steeled herself to wake him, he roused.

  His eyelids fluttered open and he stared at her with red-rimmed eyes filled with quiet desperation. He remained still, reminding her of a mouse caught in the baleful glare of a predator.

  “I am Elle Petrenko.” She spoke slowly and calmly, not at all certain if Zemanov still remained in control of his faculties. Her father could have been wrong. “You knew my parents, Boris and Anya Leonov.”

  Continuing to stare at her, Zemanov said nothing.

  “I am here at the request of my adoptive father,” Elle said. “Fyodor Petrenko. I believe you knew him, as well.”

  Slowly, after thinking about how to react, the old man nodded.

  “Like my adoptive father, I am an agent for the SVR,” Elle said. “I was sent here to ask you about Lenin’s Lullaby. I have been given instructions to offer you a pardon for your treason.”

  A long moment passed in the chill of the room. It was so cold Elle could see her breath. He will, of course, believe you are lying, her father had told her back in Moscow. Back in those days, he trusted people who shoved him into the compound and promptly forgot about him.

  Moving with arthritic slowness, Zemanov waved her forward with a hand.

  After only a brief hesitation, Elle moved forward. She had her pistol snugged in shoulder leather beneath her jacket. Once she was at the side of the bed, she stopped.

  Zemanov studied her with his rheumy eyes.

  “Did you hear me?” Elle asked.

  The old man nodded.

  “I need to know about Lenin’s Lullaby,” Elle stated. “And the night Boris and Anya were killed. Cooperate with me and I can get you out of here.”

  “You,” Zemanov wheezed in a weak voice that had wasted away after over twenty years of disuse, “look very much like your mother. God rest her soul.” He smiled a little. “She was a…very beautiful woman.”

  “I’ve always heard that. I’ve seen her pictures, but I never got to know her.

  “That is…most unfortunate. You have missed out on…an amazing opportunity. Your mother was kind…and vibrant. She loved flowers. Your father was a good man, as well.” Zemanov smiled sadly. “What you’ve said…it’s true?” His voice sounded thinner and weaker as he used it. “About the pardon?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes searched hers suspiciously. “What do you wish to know?”

  “Why were you locked away?”

  Lifting his thin shoulders slightly, Zemanov attempted a shrug. He didn’t quite make it. “I betrayed my country. By rights, I should have been put before the firing squad.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  “No. I still had friends within intelligence. They got me sent here.” He rolled his eyes around the room. “Though several times over the past years I have felt certain they did me a great injustice.”

  “You helped—” Elle hesitated. She’d almost said Anya and Boris instead of my parents, then caught herself. She wanted to remind the old man they had both lost something. “You helped my parents get Lenin’s Lullaby.”

  “Yes. As I was instructed.”

  That caught Elle by surprise. “You were instructed to give them the bioweapon?”

  “Yes. By my superior. General Shekhtel.”

  Elle remembered the name from the mission briefing her father had given her. Shekhtel had never been accused of anything to do with Lenin’s Lullaby. In fact, the general had retired and lived on his pension—and some black market dealings—until his murder three years ago by a jealous husband.

  “Shekhtel told you to give my parents the bioweapon?” she asked.

  “Yes. At his instruction, I gave them a sample as well as the process for making it.”

  “Why would he order that?”

  “At the time, the Berlin Wall hadn’t fallen. East Germany yet remained within Russia’s influence. General Shekhtel believed that Lenin’s Lullaby was going to be used by a terrorist group within West Germany to spread disease throughout Berlin and Munich. The terrorists planned for it to encompass Europe before it was eradicated.”

  A cold fear even deeper than the chill of the room touched Elle. “That’s madness.”

  “Perhaps. But General Shekhtel knew what dire straits Mother Russia was under. He wanted to strike a final blow.” Zemankov drew in a rattling breath. “Your parents knew this. That was why we set up the plan to double-cross Klaus Stryker.”

  “The East German Stasi agent.”

  “Yes. He and another man—”

  “Arnaud Beck,” Elle said.

  Zemanov smiled. “I see you know much about this.”

  Elle nodded.

  “Klaus Stryker and Arnaud Beck were the go-betweens for the German terrorist cell. Boris, Anya and I knew what Shekhtel intended, and we were opposed to unleashing such a weapon upon innocents. So we chose to double-cross Stryker and Beck. Boris negotiated an arrangement with the American CIA. A man code-named Stone Angel. In return for us handing over the bioweapon and Stryker, your family was supposed to get safe passage from Russia.”

  “That’s not what happened.”

  “No. At the exchange, the CIA agents did not show up. Your parents were left alone with Stryker. He tried to escape once he saw that the trap was not going to spring. Stryker took the bioweapon and nearly killed Boris and Anya. They fled back to Moscow, hoping to get you and your sister from the city. But they knew they had been betrayed. By that time, Stryker had also betrayed the German terrorists.”

  “He didn’t give them Lenin’s Lullaby?”

  “No.” Zemanov shook his head. “Stryker kept their money and the bioweapon. I was told Beck killed him for his trouble. The German terrorists also withheld their payment to General Shekhtel, which angered him greatly. By this time, he’d somehow learned of the CIA involvement that was supposed to take place. Before he could reach your parents—”

  “Stryker killed them.”

  “Yes. No one even knew Stryker was in-country.” Zemanov studied her. “I had feared you and your sister were dead as well. I didn’t know. Shekhtel’s men took me into custody. In those days, a trial wasn’t necessary to send you to a hell such as this. I was out of town, spirited away by General Shekhtel’s handpicked squad, the very night your parents were killed.”

  “You never talked about Shekhtel’s involvement.”

  “No. It would have been suicide. If I had said anything against him, he would have had someone kill me inside this place.” Zemanov looked around. “I’d always hoped to get out one day.” He focused on her. “I truly hope you are not lying to me about the pardon.”

  Elle was touched by the quiet fear and desperation she saw in the old man’s gaze. “I’m not.” She paused. “My father said that you were a man who always knew more than he told.”

  Zemanov tried a small shrug and almost pulled it off. “I always tried. Knowledge is power. You can’t buy power. Not truly. You must earn it. Or learn it. But what I know, young lady, is what your father learned.”

  “My father?” That surprised Elle.

  “Yes. The money he was paid came from a German bank, but it was paid into a Swiss account your father set up. The day your parents were killed, that Swiss account was drained of all the money in it.”

  “By who?”

  “By the man who killed them. Klaus Stryker.”

  “Stryker killed them for the money,” she whispered.

  Zemanov nodded. “I think so. Your
father gave me the number of that Swiss account.” The old man tapped his forehead. “I memorized it. If I give you the account, then perhaps you can find out what happened to the bioweapon Boris and Anya sold. Am I right?”

  “You are.” Excitement flared through Elle. Maybe she couldn’t catch and punish Klaus Stryker for the murder of her parents, but she could go after the people who helped orchestrate it.

  Chapter 17

  Ftelia

  Mykonos, Greece

  “You don’t enjoy the water?”

  Seated on the warm sand beneath an umbrella thrust into the sandy beach, Joachim shook his head. “No.”

  Adriana smiled at him. “You are a strange man.”

  “How so?”

  “To come to this place where you are surrounded by water and not enjoy getting in it.”

  “I enjoy looking at it, though.” Joachim nodded toward the white-crested waves rolling into the beach. “You don’t see something Like this in Leipzig.”

  “Someday,” the young woman said, “I shall have to go there. To see if it’s truly as bad as you say it is.”

  Joachim knew he was supposed to suggest that he show it to her at that point. But he didn’t. During the last three days, Adriana had made it apparent that she was attracted to him.

  If Joachim hadn’t been there on business, with the lives of his family hanging in the balance; if thoughts of the blond woman didn’t plague him, and if he didn’t need her to help him move through the local environment, maybe he would have been more inclined to let nature take its course.

  Lying on the beach towel only a short distance away, dressed in a crimson bikini that barely hid anything, Adriana was a sexual buffet waiting to be taken.

  So far, there had been no sign of Arnaud Beck. Although he checked in with Günter every day, the crime boss’s patience was at an all-time low.

  Lying back on his elbows, Joachim watched the afternoon sun settling into the ocean to the west. Out in the bay, windsurfers rode their boards across the waves, taking to the air on occasion. Small boats hauled water-skiers and parasails.