Red Sky

by Chris Goff

  She really wanted to. “You should have called.”

  He took her by the shoulders and turned her toward him. “If I could do it over.”

  “But you can’t.” Trust was something you earned. Davis had broken her trust, and he was going to have to earn it back. She lifted her chin until their eyes met. “There is one thing you can do.”

  “Name it.”

  “Does your source have access to satellite images?”

  “Some.”

  She explained that she wanted images of the train being loaded at Hoholeve, leaving out the part about Operation Osoaviakhim. Davis wasn’t fooled.

  “Are you thinking the Russians might be on the train?”

  “Call it a hunch.”

  “I’ll put in a request. It could take a day or two.”

  “Thank you.” Her eyes held his for a moment or two, and then she turned away toward her father’s grave.

  Davis stepped up beside her and looped an arm around her shoulders. “Do we know this guy?”

  “He’s my dad.” But then, she figured he already knew.

  Chapter 33

  For the past day and a half, Kozachenko had suffered flashbacks of Siberia. Only living there had been worse than his current situation, with temperatures averaging minus twenty-five degrees Celsius in the wintertime. This car set around two degrees was balmy by comparison. Cold by refrigeration standards, but not freezing. Hunched down like he was inside his sleep sack with a bottle of vodka, it was tolerable.

  He and Yolkin had talked for a while once the train had begun moving, but now Yolkin snored softly in the seat beside him. There were no cell connections out here, so he’d turned off his phone to conserve the battery. Lulled by the rocking rhythm of the train, he tried to sleep, but it eluded him. Their days were running short.

  Reluctantly, he gave Stas credit. The plan seemed to be working, and they were back on schedule. He was sure the pakhan was pleased, but it irritated Kozachenko to be beholden to Stas. Not to mention it made Stas look good.

  Kozachenko took another swig of vodka, and the train lurched, spilling it down his shirt.

  “What a waste,” he mumbled.

  When the train lurched again, he realized they were stopping. He pressed the button on his watch and noted the time. It was 11:00 PM, which put them at the Polish border crossing.

  His heart rate quickened, and he kicked Yolkin’s leg. “Wake up!”

  The last thing he needed was for Yolkin to wake with a start again while the border guards searched the train.

  “What? What is going on?” Yolkin asked. “Why did you kick me?”

  “We’re at the border. It will take some time for the train to pass, and we must stay alert. First, the wagon wheels will be adjusted. The track is wider in the west than in Ukraine. Then there will be border guards.”

  Yolkin’s expression showed concern. “Will they come inside?”

  “I doubt if they can,” he said. Imagining what was stacked inside the car behind the false walls, he assumed it would be hard to search. “It’s possible they will open the doors.”

  The Ukrainian border was heavily policed. It was the most traveled border between the Eastern bloc countries and Poland and served as a smuggling route for goods and illegal immigrants to the EU. It was easy to get into Ukraine, but difficult to leave.

  He could hear the guards outside now and signaled to Yolkin to stay very still. No light seeped into the metal car, so he could only imagine that they were shining flashlights along the undercarriage. He heard a shout, and then the train crept forward.

  “We’re through,” Yolkin cried. “We’ve made it across.”

  “Ssshhh,” Kozachenko said. “We are not through yet.”

  There was a series of false stops and starts as the wheels on each car were adjusted, then the train pulled forward a distance before stopping again. There came more voices, still in Ukrainian.

  “The first guards were customs,” Kozachenko said softly. “These are Ukrainian border control.”

  Again, it seemed as though they conducted only a cursory check before the train lurched forward. This time it traveled twice the distance before grinding to a halt.

  Kozachenko listened carefully. Now the guards were speaking Polish, and from the commands, he could tell they had dogs. Would they pick up the scent of the live men among the dead?

  He strained to listen, trying to figure out what they were saying, but the language was just a jumble in his ears. Had they noticed the difference in the size of the car?

  Two men began arguing, then the latch on the door was popped open. The guards were coming inside. The door slid back, and Kozachenko sucked in his breath. He could hear the disgust in the voices of the guards. Even the dog whimpered. Then the door was slammed shut, and the train moved on.

  Kozachenko took another swig of vodka and shared the bottle with Yolkin, who was now wide awake. They drank in companionable silence. Then about the time the bottle was finished, the train stopped again.

  “What now?” Yolkin asked, his voice full of alarm.

  His fear was a bad sign, thought Kozachenko. There were too many hurdles to jump before this mission was done. It was no time to be dragging along a coward.

  Chapter 34

  Jordan woke up in Davis’s arms. It wasn’t what she’d planned or expected, but she hadn’t resisted. In her line of work, relationships were hard to maintain. She didn’t much go for casual sex, but she had to admit it—last night was nice.

  Slipping out of bed, she cinched on a cotton bathrobe and made coffee.

  “Sleep well?” Davis asked as she stirred in some creamer.

  Jordan smiled. There hadn’t been much sleep. “How do you like yours?”

  “Black.”

  She poured him a cup, thinking back on the previous night. The two of them had eaten dinner at Restauracja Baczewski, a Galician restaurant dedicated to a famous family of nineteenth-century philanthropists who also happened to own the spirits factory. The food was a delightful mix of Jewish, Polish, Ukrainian, and Hungarian dishes, each course paired with a recommended shot of vodka. They’d both had too much to drink, and now her head felt fuzzy.

  She jumped in the shower first. Then while Davis showered, she checked in with Lory about the satellite images. He told her he was still working on it. After that, she called the lab about the cell phone pictures. Henry wasn’t in yet.

  The hotel concierge recommended a place for breakfast. Finding it proved difficult, the entrance unmarked except for a small easel propped on the ground next to the door. Davis knocked, and a peephole slid open.

  “We’re looking for Kryjivka,” he said to the eyeball staring out.

  The door opened, and a guard in military uniform holding a bullpup rifle shouted, “Slava Ukraini!” Glory to Ukraine. “Moskal’ee ye?” Are there any Russians among you?

  At least that’s the closest translation she could pull.

  “No,” Jordan answered in English. “Breakfast?”

  The guard grinned, clapped an arm around Davis’s shoulders, and pulled them inside. It was a small room, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a table with a bottle of vodka and numerous glasses. He poured both of them a shot and insisted they drink.

  Hair of the dog, thought Jordan. Davis must have been thinking the same because he didn’t hesitate before clinking glasses with her, both of them slamming back the sweet-tasting vodka. Then the guard opened a panel behind the bookcase, revealing a hidden stairway. At the bottom was the restaurant, a hidden bunker filled with weapons, war memorabilia, and a well-stocked bar. They both ordered a potato with cheese and sausage skillet.

  About the time their food arrived, so did a band of guerillas. They came inside and fired off a pistol, which made Jordan reach for her weapon. Her ears ringing, she watched as they dragged away one of the customers. All part of the tourist show. She imagined it was much different during actual times of resistance.

  “Interesting place,” Davis
said.

  “Hmmm.”

  Davis set down his fork. “What gives?” He’d been watching her all morning. “Regrets?”

  “About last night?” She smiled and shook her head. “Not at all.”

  “Then what’s bothering you?”

  Last night they’d talked about nonessential things, like childhood memories, their families, their ambitions. She’d told him a few things about her father, but not the secrets, and not about her conversation with Professor Fedorov.

  “I think we’re missing something, some connection, some thread that ties all this together.”

  Before she could tell him what the elderly man had told her about the Futurists and Operation Osoaviakhim, her phone beeped. It was an incoming e-mail from Henry. He’d managed to pull the photos off the mini SD card, run facial recognition, and gotten a hit.

  Jordan opened the attached document. It was a dossier with a picture attached.

  “Check this out.” She held the up the phone so Davis could see. “It’s a picture of the Chinese buyer.”

  Sitting shoulder to shoulder, she held the phone so they could both read. His name was Deng Xue, a party committee secretary of the Hainan Province, commonly called the party chief. A rising star in the Communist Party, at forty-five he’d been named to the politburo. As party chief, he oversaw two hundred plus islands off the southern coast of China, including the disputed territory in the Spratly and Paracel Islands.

  “He’s a bigwig.” Davis sounded surprised. “The politburo is the chief political decision-making body in China.”

  “More importantly, the Chinese have a military base on the south end of Hainan,” she said, scrolling up the page to read on. “I’ll bet that’s where he was taking the gun.”

  Davis picked up his tablet, tapped on the screen, and pulled up a map and some information on the Hainan Province.

  “If China puts a railgun here, it would be able to intimidate anyone trying to stop their expansion into the South China Sea.” She reached across and pointed to the islands involved in the land-grabbing dispute.

  “Meaning the U.S.?”

  Jordan didn’t want to discuss the role she felt the United States had been forced to take in policing international policies and turned back to scrolling the dossier. Davis, to his credit, dropped his line of questioning.

  “It looks like Hainan is a booming place,” he said.

  “It’s the home of GhostNet.”

  “The cyberspying operation?”

  Jordan nodded. They’d been infiltrating high-value targets around the world for almost a decade. “Of course the Chinese government vehemently denies in it. In fact, some of the research shows it might actually be a for-profit operation run by some unknown patriotic hacker.”

  “Deng Xue?”

  “It’s an idea.”

  “If Deng’s an entrepreneur, it’s possible he’s looking for some state-of-the-art weapons technology to help him build his assets.”

  “An arms dealer?” Jordan considered it.

  “That might be the connection to the Russians.”

  “Except there’s one hitch . . . if his intention is to mass produce and export weapons, why not hack the specs himself and build them in Hainan? It would make more sense.”

  “Unless Ping outmaneuvered him.” Davis tapped a few more times on the tablet. “It says here Hainan Province is designated one of the special economic zones.”

  That didn’t surprise her. The former Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping had allowed free-market economy policies and instituted more flexible government control in several areas. It encouraged exports and drew in foreigners interested in doing business with China.

  “Hainan would be a natural choice.”

  Davis looked up from the tablet. “It seems like the policy worked.”

  “Just maybe not the way Deng planned.”

  “How so?”

  “Deng gets credited for being the architect of modern Chinese politics and expanding trade while trying to maintain the Communist Party’s socialist ideology, but it didn’t work. While the zones grew the wealth, when it came time to share and transfer the assets inland, the provincial governments fought to hold onto the money.”

  “Money corrupts,” Davis said. “Any chance the two Dengs are related?”

  Jordan picked up her phone again and scrolled down the buyer’s dossier to the section about family. “It says here that Deng Xue likes to think so, but he’s never been able to prove common lineage.”

  What she read next tugged at the elusive thread.

  “Wait a minute,” she said.

  “What?” Davis draped an arm over her shoulders and leaned in to see what had caught her attention. Jordan repositioned her phone so he could see.

  “It says here that back in the 1950s, the elder Deng helped establish a think tank system. He modeled it after the Soviet’s Science City.”

  “I don’t see how that fits in.”

  Of course he didn’t. She hadn’t told him about her talk with Professor Fedorov. The professor had indicated there were other groups scattered across the continents. If Deng Xue considered himself the inheritor of Deng Xiaoping’s legacy, the Futurists might be his tie to the Russians.

  She felt Davis squeeze her shoulders. “Are you going to tell me what you’re thinking?”

  “It’s a crazy idea.”

  “You seem to have a lot of those.” When she glared at him, Davis pulled his arm back, feigning fear of reprisal. “I’m just saying.”

  “You really want to know?”

  “I asked, didn’t I?”

  She didn’t often have the desire to confide in people. But despite the fact he’d betrayed her before, she wanted to trust him. “I was thinking that maybe Deng and the Russians are working together.”

  Chapter 35

  Glancing over Davis’s shoulder, Jordan caught sight of their waiter over by the bar. He glowered in their direction.

  “I think we’ve overstayed our welcome,” she said. “We should go.”

  Paying the bill, they’d moved outside. Finding a bench in the square, Jordan bathed in the sun, while Davis pulled out his tablet, logged in, and checked his messages. “Good, the images are here. They’re not spy quality, but they should do the job.”

  Jordan scooted across the bench to look at the tablet.

  “I asked him for everything that was taken in the last eight days within a fifty-mile radius of the crash site.”

  “You do realize how many images that is, don’t you?” Jordan asked.

  He gave her a look. “It can’t be that many. They throw out the bad ones, the ones with cloud cover or where it’s too dark to see anything. The software also filters out about forty percent because there’s been no change in the photo from the previous shot. He told me the quickest way to find what we’re after is to look through the thumbnails.”

  “We’re talking about ten thousand images.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No,” Jordan said. “If it takes a satellite roughly ninety minutes to complete an orbit of the earth, it will shoot about one million photos. Multiply that by eight days.”

  Davis whistled. “No wonder there are people whose entire job is analyzing these photos.”

  Jordan scanned through the first twenty-five images on the screen and decided if that was her job, she’d go crazy. She got faster as she flipped through the pages, and then something caught her eye. “Check this out.”

  She pointed to an image that showed a truck and two SUVs parked in a clearing in the woods to the east of Dykanka. The truck was covered in camo, and it was difficult to see the make or model of any of the vehicles.

  “You think it’s our guys?” Davis asked.

  “Can you zoom in closer?”

  “Like I said, these aren’t spy satellite images. If we accessed those, we’d be in jail. The government restricts the output on these images to fifty centimeters per pixel and requires my source to blur faces.�
��

  “Are the files time and date stamped?” Jordan flipped forward through the screens. “We need to find photos that show the train being loaded at the crash site, those taken in the last three days.”

  Davis checked the source code. The images she sought were near the end, and Jordan immediately spotted the anomaly.

  “There, that’s it. That’s the car.” She pointed at one in the middle that was longer than the others.

  Davis measured the difference in car length with his fingers. “It’s clearly bigger, but is it big enough to hide two or three vehicles and still leave loading space?”

  “I think so.” Pulling up Lory’s e-mail address on her phone, she held it up for Davis. “Can you send the photo here? Type ‘imminent threat’ in the subject line.”

  After he’d sent the e-mail, she dialed the RSO’s number. “Check your in-box.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “An e-mail from Nye Davis. It’s a satellite image of the train in Hoholeve.”

  “What the hell are you doing with Davis, Jordan?”

  “Just look at the picture.”

  It didn’t take Lory but a second to see what she was seeing. “I’ll be damned!”

  “Do we know where that train is now?”

  “They finished loading it yesterday. It’s headed for Krakow.”

  “Can you find out on what track it was routed? Did it go through Kyiv, or is it still en route somewhere? We need to locate that car.”

  Instead of saying he’d call her back, this time Lory put her on hold. He didn’t keep her waiting long.

  “Okay, I’ve got people checking. According to the Ukrainians, the train traveled a southern route through L’viv. It crossed the border into Poland last night at Mostyska II, just outside of Przemśl. They’re pulling the camera footage at the border crossing now. If you’re right about the Russians being on that train, we may have a big problem.”

  His tone opened a small fissure of fear in her. She looked at Davis, who shrugged. What hadn’t Lory told her? “I’m listening.”

  “Remember the summit I mentioned? The one the Ukrainian prime minister and the ambassador are attending.”