Gates of Dawn (A Jake Adams International Espionage Thriller Series Book 12)

by Trevor Scott

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do, Ivan.”

  “Are you busting balls?”

  “Why don’t they believe her?”

  The Russian sat back down before he fell down. Then he said, “You have been out of the game a while, Jake. They don’t believe her because they consider the source. The ranting of a drunken old man. You got a sample of that last night.”

  “Jesus, Ivan. You’ve become a damn cliché. Former intelligence officer hitting the bottle. I get it. I’ve been there. A few years back I was never really sober. I woke up drinking and didn’t finish until I passed out that night.”

  “You? The boy scout.”

  “Afraid so. I’m not happy about that time in my life.” Perhaps if he had not been drinking so heavily he could have saved Anna in Austria that night. How would his life have been in that case?

  Suddenly the electronic lock clicked and Jake instinctively went for his gun, pointing it at the entrance. Ivan also went for his gun, which wasn’t under his arm.

  Zaiga came in carrying a tray with coffee and an assortment of cheese, meat and bread. “Really? Instead of shooting me, maybe a little help.”

  Jake put his gun away and took the tray from her, setting it on the little table between the chairs.

  “It smells like a men’s locker room in here,” she said, heading toward the window. She opened both sides of the window and let in the cool morning air.

  “Have you been to a lot of men’s locker rooms?” Jake asked.

  She planted her hands on her hips. “As a matter of fact, yes. During the run to the Olympics the women often got stuck in those nasty locker rooms.”

  Ivan tried to stand again, reaching his hand out. “Ivan Bragin.”

  Zaiga didn’t shake his hand. “We met last night.”

  The Russian retrieved his hand. “I like her. She is feisty.”

  “She also knows Sofia Sepp,” Jake said.

  “Really?” Ivan asked. “How do you know her?”

  Zaiga glanced at Jake and then back to the Russian before explaining. “We competed against each other in Olympic biathlon.”

  “Drive by shooting,” Ivan said. “It is funny Americans are not better at that sport. Is that coffee for us?”

  Finally, Zaiga laughed at the Russian. Then she picked up a cup of coffee and handed it to Ivan.

  “It’s probably the skiing part that blows it for Americans,” Jake said. Then he too found a cup of coffee and took a quick sip.

  Ivan went to the door and turned to the two of them. “I need to get to my hotel for a shower. The alcohol is seeping out of my pores.”

  The Russian opened the door but Jake stopped him, “Hey, are you forgetting something?”

  Ivan looked confused. “My jacket.”

  Jake lifted the man’s gun and holster and handed it to Ivan. Then he held the Russian’s coffee while he slung on his gun. Zaiga handed the man his leather coat and Ivan put that over his gun. Then he took back his coffee from Jake.

  “Now, I am ready to go,” Ivan declared.

  “Hang on,” Jake said. “Do you still want me to meet with Sofia Sepp?”

  “It could not hurt. You need a contact in Lithuania anyway.”

  Jake couldn’t argue with that reasoning. “But what about your comrades? How do we stop them?”

  Ivan gave them a look of wonder. “Did I tell you about Pavel Tursunov last night?”

  “No.”

  “He is the key to this whole case,” Ivan said. “I put him in his current position as deputy director of the Baltic States.”

  Now Jake wished he had the Agency’s intel file on that man. Maybe Jake had something better, though. Ivan knew more about the man than any CIA file. “Where do we find him?”

  Ivan laughed. “He will find you, Jake.”

  “I’d like to find him first.”

  “All right. But let me get showered and changed first. I’ll meet you back here for your meeting with Sofia.”

  “Good.”

  Jake let the Russian out and then closed and locked the door behind him. He found a piece of cheese and folded it into his mouth.

  Zaiga came to Jake and said, “Do you trust him?”

  Shrugging, Jake said, “More than most of the players in this game.”

  27

  Sofia Sepp was on edge. She had talked with her boss, Linas Sutkus, earlier that morning, and she had a feeling he was on to her. Normally the man was much more trusting, but something had changed in the past week or so. He had to sense that she was holding back information ever since she had told him about the plot described to her by the Russian, Ivan Bragin. Although she believed the man, for some reason she had had a difficult time proving the veracity of Bragin’s information. It was as if Sutkus didn’t want to believe the plot.

  She stood before a tall mirror in the bathroom of a coffee shop observing herself briefly. Although she was only in her mid-thirties, she could already see signs of aging in her face, where lines were forming at the sides of her dark eyes and on her forehead. She brushed her blonde hair back from her eyes and pulled it into a new ponytail. Then she touched her high cheekbones, which had always given her more of a Scandinavian look. In fact, she had been able to pass for Swedish and Finnish on a number of assignments. Embrace it, she thought. It helped that she spoke both of those languages fluently. She pulled down on her dark black leather coat, which came down just over the top of her butt. Then she felt inside her jacket, grasping the gun she had in a holster.

  She startled when the door opened and an older woman shuffled in, a scarf covering her head.

  Just as the old woman started into a stall, Sofia turned and headed for the exit. But something wasn’t right. She sensed it just in time through the corner of her eye as the old woman lunged for her.

  Sofia responded instinctively, twisting away from a thrusting arm with a knife, and shoving an elbow into the shorter woman’s forehead. Then she caught the woman’s arm, twisted it around, and brought the woman to her knees, her face contorting in pain. She added torque to the arm further until it snapped either at the elbow or the shoulder. Once that happened, the woman dropped the knife and let out a guttural shriek.

  Placing her hand behind the woman’s neck, Sofia simultaneously pulled her head into an upwardly thrusting knee, catching the woman’s face squarely and knocking her out.

  Now Sofia quickly checked the woman for identification. Nothing. Who walked around Vilnius without a purse or ID? Then she looked closer at the woman and saw that she was only wearing makeup to appear old. In reality she was perhaps in her thirties. What about the knife? Without touching it, she could see that it was a cheap type found in street kiosks.

  The door opened again and Sofia drew her gun instinctively, pointing it directly at the face of a woman in her early twenties. The woman was scared and nearly to the point of peeing her pants.

  Sofia waved the gun, making the younger woman enter and get into a stall. “Stay there until I come for you.”

  The woman nodded and closed the stall door, locking it tightly. Then she started to sob.

  What the hell was going on? This was why she was on edge. Sofia had a feeling her relationship with Ivan Bragin could get her killed. Now the Russians had crossed the line.

  She wandered out of the coffee shop as if nothing had happened. Maybe she should have turned the woman over to the police, or interrogated her at her own agency. But she knew how that would end up. The Russians would come and pull her from jail, ship her back to Moscow, and they would never get anything from the woman to explain why she had tried to kill her. No. Now it was time to take the fight to them.

  •

  CIA Baltic States chief, Anthony Paitrick, had driven 300 kilometers south from Riga in just three hours that morning with his two shadows, his best security officers. One man was a former Navy SEAL and the other had been Army Delta Force. After what happened recently on the border of Estonia, with the kidnapping of their Army in
telligence operative, he was taking no chances. He had a meeting soon at the American embassy in Vilnius, where they would discuss security for the upcoming summit in a few days.

  Now, the black Suburban drove slowly through the city, the former Army soldier driving and the former Navy SEAL in the back next to Paitrick. Since Paitrick spent most of his time in Riga, he was familiarizing himself more with the Lithuanian capital. More than that, though, he needed to make sure his driver was certain about the flow of traffic around the city.

  When Paitrick’s phone buzzed, he checked and saw that it wasn’t his boss at Langley, it was the boss at the Agency, John Bradford, the CIA Director.

  “Yes, sir,” Paitrick said into the phone.

  “I see you made it to Vilnius,” Bradford said.

  “Yes, sir. We’re moving about the city now checking out the traffic patterns and flow.”

  “I understand. We have a more specific threat assessment.”

  Paitrick’s eyes shifted toward the SEAL next to him. He trusted these men with his life, so anything said in this vehicle could be heard by either of the men.

  “Specifically?” Paitrick asked.

  “A Russian named Ivan Bragin gave Jake Adams a story late last night.”

  “I’ve heard of Bragin, of course. I’m not sure I would trust that old KGB officer.”

  “Adams seems to believe the man,” Bradford said.

  “Yes, sir. But Adams hasn’t worked for the Agency in years.”

  “That you know of,” Bradford corrected. “He’s worked a number of missions for us off the books over the years, including finding former Deputy Director Bill Remington.”

  “That was Adams?”

  “That’s correct. And a few months back he was the one who found and rescued those medical relief workers in Morocco.”

  Paitrick gave a little whistle. “Seriously? I thought for sure that was a SEAL team.”

  “No. It was a small group that Adams brought together with private funding.”

  “I had no idea,” Paitrick said.

  “That’s the point, Anthony. You can trust Adams.”

  Finally, Paitrick had to ask the obvious question. “What did the Russian tell Adams?”

  “The Russian SVR and its agents are planning to attack the summit,” Bradford said.

  “That’s hard to believe, sir.”

  “Why? The Russian military is already on the move through Belarus. You’re about twenty miles from the Belarus border.”

  “I understand. But what do you want us to do about it? Is the administration ready to go to war over the Baltics?”

  Hesitation on the other end. “That’s above my pay grade, Anthony. We can just do what we can do.”

  “What about the Pentagon?” he asked.

  “Air assets are the quickest to move,” Bradford said. “And that’s happening as we speak.”

  “Air power alone won’t stop the Russians.”

  “I know. But I have a feeling they’re using their military for bluster. They’re saying look over here, while we destabilize the Baltics from within.”

  “Is that an Adams theory?” Paitrick asked, trying his best not to interject a snarky attitude.

  Bradford went silent on the other end. Finally, he said, “If you can’t handle your current position and directions, I’ll fly someone out there immediately who can. Do you understand, Anthony?”

  “Yes, sir. But it sounds like you’re taking the position of a civilian over the area expert.”

  “You’ve been in place just a couple of months, Anthony. Remember that I have your resume. Australia is not the Baltics.”

  Yeah, Paitrick also knew that up until a short while ago Bradford was flying jets for the Air Force. But it wasn’t like he could argue with the director of central intelligence.

  “What do you propose, sir?” Paitrick asked.

  “Give Jake Adams every courtesy. If he asks you for something, you give it to him. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir. But how do we counter the Russians?”

  Hesitation again. “We need to stop reacting to their moves. We need to become proactive. Convince the locals to deport every one of the bastards.”

  “They’ll just send more,” Paitrick said.

  “I know. But in the meantime it’ll put them on the defensive. Hit them in the mouth. Knock them to the ground.”

  My God, Paitrick thought. He was talking about a full scale covert operative shadow war. This could get ugly.

  “Maybe we need to bring in more people,” Paitrick finally said.

  “I’ll be on the phone with my counterparts in all three Baltic States today to convince them to do as we say.”

  “I’ve got a pretty good relationship with Oskars Liepa of Latvia. I have a meeting set up with him this evening. I think I can convince him.”

  “All right. Let me deal with Olev Tamm in Estonia and Linas Sutkus from Lithuania. I’ll let you know what they say.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Then his line went blank and he simply stared at his cell phone. He had no idea it might come to this. The Russians would not go quietly, he thought. He had a feeling this new Cold War was about to turn hot in a hurry.

  28

  Jake had spent most of the day roaming the Old Town of Vilnius with Zaiga, who knew the city quite well. He had purchased a few more clothes, shoving them into his small pack. But mostly he was getting the lay of the land. In a couple of days, the Baltic summit would take place in the Old Town, and he needed to know any possible vulnerability.

  They had just taken a tour of the external grounds of the Presidential Palace, the location of the summit, and were now sitting at a coffee shop inside the walls of Vilnius University.

  “That palace is pretty impressive,” Jake said. “Did you see any vulnerabilities?”

  “Of course,” she said. “There is always a way.”

  “I agree. There are a lot of options. I’m guessing they will layer in security in concentric circles, starting with a wide perimeter.”

  “I’ve been to a meeting here in the past when our president visited Vilnius. That’s how they dealt with the problem of the university being so close to the Presidential Palace.”

  Jake glanced across the square outside at the tight buildings with narrow passageways. The possibility of sniper positions was quite extensive. But their angle of fire was not. Any sniper would have just a couple of seconds to acquire a target and fire. And that would only be a pot shot at best. He explained this to Zaiga, who had to agree with his assessment.

  “So,” Jake said, “that leaves a bomb of some type. And even that is problematic. Each of the Baltic leaders will arrive at different times.”

  “The Lithuanian president will probably already be there, since this palace now includes living quarters.”

  “True. Getting a bomb inside the palace would not be easy.”

  Zaiga looked at her watch and said, “We have to get going. You have your meeting with Sofia Sepp at our hotel bar.”

  “Right.” They had already discussed how they wanted to proceed with the Lithuanian intelligence officer.

  They got up and left, walking back to their hotel, and making sure to get there long before Sofia Sepp would arrive.

  The bar at the Narutis Hotel had probably not changed much since the hotel opened in 1581, with the exception of the installation of electricity and modern beer taps. With the wooden beams and walls, the bar reminded Jake of a high-end men’s club and he half expected Zaiga to get kicked out. However, Jake had made sure to leave Zaiga behind for now. He needed to see what this Sofia Sepp had to say.

  Jake took a position at the far end of the bar with a perfect view of the door leading to the hotel lobby and the double doors that led to a patio area. But with the weather turning a bit colder, nobody sat out on the patio at this time.

  He got a large beer and kept an eye out for Sofia Sepp. A couple of minutes past six p.m. the woman came through the door from the lobby.
She was taller than Jake remembered her from the meeting in Riga. She was wearing black jeans and a thin gray sweater covered by a leather jacket that didn’t cover her nice butt. She walked with a purposeful gate, wearing responsible, comfortable black leather shoes with soft soles. Her long blonde ponytail bounced playfully over the dark leather between her shoulder blades.

  When she saw Jake she lifted her chin and tried a nervous smile.

  Jake stood and shook the woman’s hand and then she took a stool next to him and ordered a beer from the bartender.

  “I’m sorry if I’m late,” Sofia said. “It’s been an interesting day.”

  “You’re fine. Interesting?”

  “A woman tried to kill me this morning,” she said casually.

  “We had a saying about that in the Air Force,” Jake said.

  “You were in your Air Force?”

  “Yes. Anyway, we always said you could tell when you were over your target, because that’s when you took the most flak.”

  She thought for a moment and then acknowledged she understood. Then she said, “I saw you in Riga. At the intelligence meeting.”

  “Same here. Let’s get to it. What do you have for me?”

  The woman’s beer came at that moment, and she took a couple of seconds to sip it down a bit. “Jake, before you put it in, you must prepare a girl.”

  He knew immediately he was going to like Sofia Sepp. “I didn’t know that’s what we were doing here.”

  “Oh, we are not,” she said. “You are too. . .”

  “Old?”

  “No, I don’t mind that. I was thinking intense or dangerous.” She let that sink in for a moment before continuing. “You don’t seem like the normal CIA officer.”

  “That’s because I’m not,” he said.

  She furled her brows. “I was told you were with the CIA.”

  “Was,” he said. “I’m private now.”

  “Then why am I here with you?”

  “Because this meeting was set up with a contact of yours, Ivan Bragin. And you don’t know if you should trust the man.”

  She sipped her beer again, a delay tactic. Finally, she said, “Should I trust him?”