by Jack Mars
“Take it.” She gasped in pain, and then added, “Earrings. Get them to Artem. He will know… what to do.”
“Don’t try to talk,” he told her. “We’re going to get you help. We’re going to help you. We can help you…” He was rambling now, saying anything and everything that he thought she might want to hear. “Just don’t go. Not yet.”
He felt her grip on his hand weakening. Her fingers were cold, shock-white. Her other hand on the back of his neck pulled gently and he let it, let it pull him down to reach her. She kissed him softly and he tasted a tinge of iron from the blood on her lips.
“It was real,” Karina told him, her voice breathy in his ear. “It was real.”
And then she said nothing.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Zero sat on the rocky embankment, idly tugging weeds from the ground as he stared at the SUV parked beyond and slightly below him. It was cool, almost cold in the shade and the chilly October air, but he didn’t notice. He would have felt cold anywhere.
As soon as Alan was certain they weren’t being tailed, he’d driven straight out of Liège headed due east for some miles. Zero had no idea how far they’d gone, but they were in a rural area of Belgian countryside. Alan had found an old covered bridge over a nearly dry creek and drove the SUV down the embankment, parking it directly underneath. No one would be able to see it from the road.
Zero looked at his hands. He’d tried to wash the blood from them in the meager trickle of water that remained of the creek, but he could still see it in dark red crescents beneath his fingernails, smudges in the fleshy spots between his fingers, on his arms. The blood on his hands would never fully wash off.
“Zero.”
“Yeah,” he said flatly.
“We can’t stay. We need to go.”
He said nothing in response, but continued staring straight ahead at the SUV, the back seat of which still held Karina’s body. “She didn’t deserve this, Alan. This wasn’t her fight.”
Alan groaned slightly as he crouched in front of Zero so that he was forced to look him in the eye. “I’m your best friend,” he said, “which means the responsibility falls on me to tell you things that you don’t want to hear, but need to hear. The moment Karina learned what was happening between those two presidents, she was a part of this. She chose to be a part of this, and did what was necessary to fight it. Sometimes we lose people. We always have. But the job isn’t over. So right now, I need you to snap the hell out of it and help me form a plan.”
Zero rubbed his face with both hands. Alan was right; the job wasn’t over. “We need to go to Chaudfontaine. Link up with the FIS agent there, Artem. Get the earrings to Kiev, back to their creator.”
Alan looked dubious. “Zero, we could take them elsewhere. The United Nations, for example? Or… or we call Maria, explain what happened here…”
“No,” Zero snapped. It wasn’t because he was still angry with Maria; he wasn’t. He could hardly concern himself with any of that at the moment. But if they contacted Maria, the CIA would know where they were—and if the agency was being puppeteered as well, they would never let her come for them personally. Zero might trust the earrings in Maria’s hands, but only in Maria’s hands, and simply the knowledge of Zero’s whereabouts could potentially put her in direct danger.
Besides, Karina had given her life to get the earrings back into the hands of her people, so that’s what he was going to do. And he was not going to leave the sole surviving FIS agent behind to be found and killed by the Russians. “We go to Chaudfontaine. Rendezvous with Artem. FIS was always the plan. It’s still the plan.”
“Okay,” Alan relented with a sigh. “But we can’t go anywhere in this car.”
Zero knew what he meant; not only was it likely flagged by the Russians, but it was battered and dented, easily identifiable—and had a body in the back seat. “We’ll torch it, right here. We’ll find another ride and get to Chaudfontaine.”
He rose slowly to his feet and instinctively put a hand in his pocket to ensure that the two earrings were there. He’d gingerly removed them from Karina’s ears after her final breath, his hands trembling.
In his other pocket was the burner phone. She had insisted that he take it with him, but he didn’t understand why. Veronika was dead, and Artem would be utterly foolish to have kept the phone on him after making the call. What purpose would the phone serve now?
He pulled it out and inspected it. Part of the screen was slightly smeared with blood from his thumb. Karina’s blood. He tapped a button on the phone; the screen lit up, and Zero immediately noticed something strange. Right there on the home screen, an unfamiliar app had been downloaded to the phone.
He frowned and opened it. It looked like some kind of third-party calling app… and stranger still, the only number it had been used to call was the burner’s own number.
Why would she make a call to her own phone…?
He sucked in a breath as he realized the answer. Clever. The only reason Karina would call her own phone’s number would be to leave a voicemail.
He checked the messages, and sure enough there was a single voicemail waiting in its inbox.
“Zero,” Alan prodded. “We can’t stay here…”
“Hang on a second,” he murmured.
“What? What is it?”
But Zero ignored him and put the phone to his ear as he played the voicemail message.
“Zero.”
His heart broke anew at hearing the sound of her voice, knowing that her body was lying mere yards from him.
“If you’re listening to this message, it likely means I’m dead. It also means that I probably didn’t tell you everything. But I’m going to tell you now. Here’s what you need to know: Kozlovsky has some kind of serious dirt on President Harris. I believe he may have been a part of the US cabal against Iran, and I think the Russians helped get Harris elected. In the meeting between the two, Kozlovsky asked two things of Harris. The first was that the US withdraw from NATO. That part is already happening. The second was that Harris order the disarming of American missile systems in Eastern Europe. That may have already happened; it wouldn’t be public knowledge. It seems to me that Kozlovsky is intent on finishing Ivanov’s work and annexing Ukrainian assets. Possibly even planning a full-scale invasion. I don’t think I need to tell you the ramifications of this. Kozlovsky may have a bigger aim in sight: triggering a new world war. Not only would it inspire patriotism to his side, but if the US allied with him it would make the perfect pretense for seizing assets and territory from other countries.”
His hand again touched the small lumps in his pocket that were the pearl earrings, the recording. That’s what she had captured. The two conspiring presidents, one of them intent on finishing his predecessor’s work and the other commanded to sit idly by.
Karina’s voicemail paused for a moment before continuing: “I trust you to do the right thing and put a stop to it… even if I’m gone. You’ve gotten this far. Wherever you are, I hope that you’re well. And… thank you. You came for me when I needed you. I’ve never met anyone quite like you, Zero. Au revoir.”
He slowly lowered the phone, a lump forming in his throat. Karina had died so that so many others could be saved. They had to get to Chaudfontaine as soon as possible, before the Russians caught up with them. But first…
Zero looked toward the SUV and felt a stab of guilt. They didn’t have time or tools to bury her, and torching the car was not exactly a funeral pyre. But he felt that she would understand he had little choice. And when he looked around, noting the fresh air and the miles of fields and narrow, gently bubbling creek, he couldn’t help but think that there were far worse places one could be laid to rest.
Alan seemed to understand what he was thinking. He tore off a strip from the jacket/sling around his shoulder and stuffed it in the open hole of the gas tank with the end trailing. Then he handed Zero a book of matches.
He struck one and held the burning tip to t
he fabric. It took several seconds, refusing to catch quickly. “Goodbye,” he murmured. Then he hefted the black duffel bag, and he and Reidigger crested the embankment away from the vehicle.
They were only a few yards away from the covered bridge when the tank caught and exploded. Neither of them looked back.
They walked together in silence. Zero couldn’t help but wonder if in another life, things might have been different for them. If they could have been happy together—the history professor and the interpreter. If they might have taken vacations to places like Liège or Chaudfontaine, instead of harboring international secrets that would get them killed. He wondered what his daughters would think of her, and decided they would both like her. She might have taught them how to speak Ukrainian. They might have taken trips abroad to meet her family, her sister Veronika, and see her native country.
Zero felt Alan’s hand come to rest on his shoulder and squeeze it gently as they hiked across the field toward a farmhouse in the distance. He appreciated the gesture, but in the moment he didn’t want solace or sympathy. He wanted answers, and more than anything he wanted to personally ensure that Karina did not die in vain.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
After hiking from the covered bridge and crossing about a mile and a half of Belgian countryside, they came to a small farm with a barn that housed an old pickup truck, a couple of decades of wear under its hood and likely just used to run supplies across the acreage. But there was no one around, and its age only made it easier for Reidigger to hotwire it. The engine was slow to turn over, but they just needed the old truck to get them the fifteen miles to their destination, and it did that without incident.
“Pretty place,” Alan noted.
“Sure is,” Zero agreed. “Too bad we don’t have time for sightseeing.”
Chaudfontaine was a breathtakingly beautiful French commune in the heart of Belgium, rife with heritage and historical sites, situated along the edge of a small river. At least that’s what Zero noted at a glimpse, which was all he could afford in the moment.
They parked the truck on a street at the edge of town and asked a local where they might find the Chateau des Berges. The man they asked was around Zero’s age, wearing owlish glasses and a tie knotted at his throat. He chuckled lightly and told them in English, “It is only a short distance that way. Trust me, you will know it when you see it.”
The two of them got back in the truck and headed in the direction of the chateau, the name of which translated roughly to “castle on the banks.” It was easy enough to discern which building was the Chateau des Berges as they approached; he guessed it was the downright palatial estate house they were quickly approaching, built in gray stone with dark shutters on every window, with several gables bearing statues of angelic forms.
Alan parked the truck at the edge of the property and they sat there for a long moment, inspecting the front of it. The trees that dotted the front of the property made it difficult to see if anyone was waiting for them.
“So,” Alan said casually. “If this doesn’t work, what’s our backup plan?”
“We’ll have to flee,” Zero said candidly. “Get out of Europe and get somewhere non-extradition until we can figure out what to do next.”
If there’s anything that can be done. They were killers, both of them. Not CIA, not spies, not even law enforcement. Their choices were prison or be on the lam.
“I know a guy in the Malé Atoll in the Maldives,” Alan said with a thin, sad smile. “Could be nice. Do some fishing, some snorkeling.”
Zero smiled despite himself, but it evaporated quickly. They were heading into this blind, with no idea who this Artem fellow was and if he was followed—and worse, they were unarmed. Zero had dropped the Sig Sauer at some point, likely in the cathedral shootout. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any more guns in that magic bag of yours.”
Alan shook his head ruefully. “Fresh out. But I do have something else…” He searched in the bag again and came out with precisely what Zero hoped he wouldn’t suggest. “We’ll just have to make it count.”
He handed Zero what looked like a flash-bang, a silver canister with a pin and lever. But it wasn’t quite like any stun grenade he’d seen before. “What is this?”
“Not entirely sure, to be honest,” Alan replied.
Zero scoffed. “You really did raid Bixby’s lab, didn’t you?”
Alan shrugged. “That guy really needs to update his security.”
It was better than nothing. Though not by much.
They got out of the truck and crossed the front lawn, Zero keeping his eyes on the windows of the enormous estate house. But he saw no movement. The two of them entered the reception area, an opulent foyer with tall ceilings and an enormous crystal chandelier hanging overhead. To the left was a check-in counter, but there was no clerk or concierge.
In fact, as far as Zero could tell, they were alone. There were no sounds, no talking, no people around at all.
This doesn’t feel right. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the stun grenade, hiding the narrow canister as best he could in both of his palms with his hands clasped in front of him.
“Anyone home?” Alan dared to call out.
“Hello.” A male voice floated to them. They both looked sharply to their right to see a man coming down an old winding staircase just off the foyer, his hand gliding along the black iron railing. He was young, perhaps a full decade younger than Zero, well-built, with short dark hair and a passive expression, seemingly blasé in a way that made it hard to tell what he might be thinking.
“Are you Artem?” Zero asked cautiously.
“I am. And you must be Zero,” he said with a small nod as he reached the bottom of the stairs. “But who is your friend? And where is Karina?”
“Karina is somewhere safe,” Zero lied, though it pained him to say it aloud. “With the earrings. Come with us. I’ll take you to her.”
Artem hesitated. “She was supposed to meet me here…”
“She is afraid for her life,” Zero replied. He knew in that moment that his instinct had been right. This Artem was too calm, too composed for someone who was supposedly on the run from murderous Russians. “She was right to be, wasn’t she?”
Artem shook his head. “I don’t know what you are talking about…”
“Indeed she was.” A new voice, stronger, deeper—and speaking Russian. A man stepped into the round, cavernous foyer from an adjacent room. It was a man that Zero knew, or at least had met briefly once before. He was tall, his features bland, and his right hand was heavily bandaged. Zero did not need to see the wound to know that he would have only three fingers remaining on that hand, two of them having been shot off by Karina Pavlo.
President Aleksandr Kozlovsky scrutinized both Zero and Alan, a thin, almost reptilian smile on his lips. “It took us quite a while to locate you.”
“Who’s this guy?” Alan murmured.
“I’m surprised to see you here in person, Mr. President,” Zero told him in Russian.
“Well, as the saying goes, if you want something done, you must see to it yourself.” He glanced over his shoulder and said loudly, “Uviydit.” Come in. Three Bratva entered from different directions, corridors and adjacent rooms to the round foyer, each silent and armed with automatic weapons and most definitely not friendly.
“You sold out your own people in FIS,” Alan growled at Artem.
The traitorous agent shook his head. “I was given no choice. It was this or be killed.”
“That’s still a choice,” Alan countered.
Zero stared at Kozlovsky, his clasped hands sweating around the silver canister. It was this man’s fault that Karina was endangered in the first place. This man’s fault that she was dead.
“Enough talk,” Kozlovsky commanded in Russian. “We know now that the interpreter had a recording device in that meeting, hidden in her earrings. We also know that she is unwilling to hand them over to anyone but her people in Kiev. You
can tell me where she is now, or my people will torture you for the information.”
Alan narrowed his eyes angrily and said in Russian, “We’re not going to tell you anything.”
Kozlovsky sighed irritably. He turned to the nearest Russian thug and barked an order: “Shoot the chubby one.”
“Wait!” Zero stepped in front of Alan. “Wait. Don’t shoot. I have them. I have the earrings.”
“Zero, we can’t!” Alan protested.
“We have to,” he said to his friend. In a whisper he added, “Trust me.”
This is insane. But so was everything else he’d done so far. Louder, to Kozlovsky and his companions, he said, “I have them here.” He cradled the grenade in his two hands in front of him, hidden in his palms, and slowly pulled the pin, making sure the thin safety lever was pressed firmly against the grenade’s body in his sweaty palm. One small slip of the wrist or wiggling of fingers and the lever would release.
Zero held out his hand to Kozlovsky. “Here.”
The Russian president gestured to Artem. “Give them to him.”
Zero nodded tightly. He held out his fist and opened it over Artem’s waiting hand.
The FIS agent looked down and frowned. The object in his palm was not the earrings. It was the pin of the grenade.
“What…?” he said in confusion.
Zero opened his other hand and the silver canister rolled out of it, clattering to the floor as the lever released and sprang away. Kozlovsky frowned, his mouth dropping open. Two of his armed Bratva recognized the grenade and their eyes widened in shock.
Zero grabbed Alan and they leapt to the floor, both of them hitting the deck and clamping their hands over their ears before the stun grenade went off.
But as Zero had noted earlier, it wasn’t quite like any stun grenade he’d seen before.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
Even through his clenched eyelids and facing the floor, Zero still saw a blinding shock of light, as if someone had turned on the sun itself right in front of his eyes. The resonant blast that followed shook him to his core, roiled his insides, a wave of intense nausea washing over him. For what felt like several moments he could hardly move, couldn’t even take a breath.
