Close Pursuit

by Cindy Dees

  So, what the hell was wrong with him this morning?

  He knew the answer to his mental questions. He just didn’t want to accept it. Alex Peters was a player. A rolling stone. He wasn’t the kind of man to settle down with one woman in domestic bliss. Ever. The past few weeks were an anomaly, and the sooner he got back to his regularly scheduled life, the better.

  “Alex? This is a pleasant surprise, son. Come on back.”

  He looked up at his attorney and scowled. Why in the hell was he here today to do what he was about to do?

  “What can I do for you?” Chester asked as he sat down behind his big desk.

  Alex bit out, “What do you know about international adoption law?”

  * * *

  KATIE WAS SHOWN to her uncle’s office by a highly intelligent-looking and friendly young man in a suit. The guy smiled winningly and threw out interested signals at her, which she pretended obliviousness to. He was the kind of guy she’d have been wildly attracted to a few weeks ago. Before she met a brilliant surgeon with a dark past and a darker soul.

  “Hi, Uncle Charlie,” she said wryly as the door closed behind her.

  “Hi, kiddo. Have a seat.”

  “I gather this isn’t a social visit?” she wasted no time asking.

  Her uncle leaned back in his desk chair and shifted, in the blink of an eye, into the master spy. “No. It isn’t.”

  “What can I do for you?” she asked. She tried to keep her voice friendly. Open. But suspicion rattled around in her gut.

  “I gather your trip to Zaghastan was rather eventful.”

  “That’s a word for it.”

  “I’d like to hear about your experience.”

  She leaned back, studying the spy in front of her. Piercing intelligence shone in his eyes. She said pleasantly, “You’re a busy man, and I’ve got places to go and things to do today. Why don’t we just cut to the chase? What specifically do you want to know?”

  Her uncle studied her in turn, and she had no doubt he was catching every microscopic hint she gave away of her thoughts and feelings. “I always did think your immediate family underestimated you.”

  He was trying to soften her up. Get her on his side before he sprang whatever he was going to spring on her. She didn’t bother to respond to the compliment, even if it was gratifying to hear the words aloud.

  “What did you see that last night in the Karshan Valley? Who attacked the village?”

  She answered bluntly, “It was soldiers for sure. Trained Special Forces types, if I had to guess. They had extremely high-tech gear. Frankly, I thought it might be our guys.”

  “Not ours,” Charles the spy answered promptly and definitively.

  “Then whose?”

  “That’s what we’d like to know. What are the odds it was Russian military types looking for your friend?”

  She frowned. “The Russian military helped us get out of Zaghastan. Why would they try to kill us and then turn around and help us?” She shook her head. “I don’t see how it was Russians in the Karshan Valley.”

  “At least not Russian army,” her uncle replied thoughtfully.

  “What other Russians could it be?” she asked quickly.

  Charles smiled broadly at her. “Exactly. They’ve all underestimated you.”

  “You’re dodging the question.”

  He nodded. “I am, indeed.”

  “Well?”

  He picked up a single sheet of paper from his desk. She saw typing on it. “This is classified. Highly classified, in fact. Came across my desk early this morning.” He held it out to her.

  Frowning, she took it and read it quickly.

  Urgent traffic: Central Asia desk. Verification codes authenticated at 0613. EDT by Victor Echo Foxtrot Alpha. Eyes only. Top Secret. Begin message. Zaghastan station reports village of Ghun in Karshan Region attacked at 2300 hours local. All inhabitants killed. No survivors. Observer on ground verified in person at 0300 hours local. End message.

  She looked up at her uncle, aghast. “What’s going on over there?”

  “You tell me. It’s not the rebels’ style to eradicate entire villages. They don’t usually want to provoke the sort of reprisals that follow these sorts of actions. Rival clans will band together to attack another clan that oversteps the rules of tribal warfare by too much.”

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend?” she said wryly.

  “Exactly.”

  “What is this, then?”

  Charles took a deep breath. Released it. Seemed to consider whether or not to tell her the truth. And then he said, “Clans in that region have fought with each other since the dawn of time, more or less. In order to preserve their way of life, which includes a cottage industry of feuding and fighting, they tacitly agree not to destroy one another. They steal livestock and women, but they don’t wipe each other out. Their enemies need to live on to fight another day, or else the warfare that is their way of life will disappear.”

  “In other words, they like the constant fighting but have to make sure nobody wins.”

  “In a nutshell, yes. I would like to think they don’t actually like the fighting, rather they do not know any other way of life.”

  She leaned forward. “Okay. So wiping out Karshan and Ghun is not normal rebel behavior. Which brings us back to the question of who else is fighting with the rebels over there.” She frowned as an idea occurred to her. “Or maybe it wasn’t rebels at all. Maybe it was just someone impersonating rebels.”

  “Give the girl a gold star,” Charles replied grimly. “Our analysts doubt the local rebels would have allowed foreigners embedded with them to wipe out either village.”

  “Sounds like your people have a good handle on what’s going on over there. Why do you need me?”

  “You got eyes on the fake rebels, directly. We’re hoping you saw something that might give away the identity of the forces pretending to be rebels.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “That’s why I’d like you to talk to a few of my people. They’ll guide you through remembering details that might not seem important to you but which could be meaningful to them.”

  “Will they tell me what they figure out?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  Suspicion exploded in her chest. Crud. Alex’s paranoia was rubbing off on her! The first thing that came to her mind at her uncle’s question was sharp alarm followed by a dozen possibilities for why he’d answered a question with a question and dodged giving her a straight answer.

  Abruptly, she wasn’t at all sure she was willing to talk to a U.S. government official about Dawn’s parentage just yet. A sudden, sharp need to protect the infant overrode her curiosity about Dawn’s father.

  Her uncle was waiting with the patience of a Sphinx for an answer out of her. “Call me nosy,” she replied lightly.

  Charles smiled. “A true McCloud trait.”

  She smiled, relieved to have gotten past the awkward moment.

  Charles took a sip from a coffee mug he hadn’t touched until now. Huh. It was his turn to think over what he was going to say next. She mentally braced for his real gambit.

  He started blandly enough. “There’s another reason I wanted to talk with you this morning.”

  “I figured as much. If you only wanted to know who the rebels were, you’d be talking with Alex, too. He’s brilliant and freakishly observant. He’s as likely to have noticed some detail that would give away the identity of the rebels as I am.”

  Charles threw her a hard look and muttered, “We really did underestimate you, didn’t we?”

  She didn’t bother to reply. They both knew the answer to that one.

  “Here’s the thing, Katie. Alex Peters has steadfastly refused all of our overtures for the past decade. And all of a sudden, here you are, in a perfect position to observe him. Talk to him. Get to know him even. It’s a gift from God.”

  “You want me to recruit him.”

  She didn’t know wheth
er to be outraged or merely saddened that her uncle would abuse their family connection like this. She supposed he thought he was doing the right thing. Everyone in her family was deeply patriotic.

  “I wouldn’t go so far as that,” he replied quickly.

  Smart man. He must have read her disgust in her body language. He’d backed off faster than she’d expected.

  “What can you tell me about Alex?” she asked. Might as well take advantage of her uncle’s position if he was planning to take advantage of hers.

  “I expect you know more than I do.”

  “Indulge me,” she replied lightly.

  Charles pursed his lips, weighing her for a long moment. Then he leaned back in his desk chair, folded his hands across his stomach and assumed a storyteller’s tone of voice. “To understand Alex, you first must understand his father....”

  * * *

  ALEX’S LAWYER STARED at him in open shock. “You’re serious?” Chester blurted.

  “As a heart attack,” Alex replied firmly. “And Lord knows, I’ve got more money than I can ever spend.”

  “Your investments have done very well,” the lawyer conceded. “I’ll file the emergency guardianship request this morning.”

  “Text me when the judge approves it.”

  “Will do, Alex. As for the other stuff, it’ll take us a few days to draw up the long-term guardianship paperwork and get the legal adoption started. The fact that there’s no agent for the infant could be a bit of a hurdle, but our family law guys will come up with something. As for the trust fund, I can have it in place by the end of the week.”

  “Call me when the paperwork is ready to be signed.”

  “While you’re here, how are things going? You’re—” the lawyer paused delicately “—staying out of trouble?”

  “If you mean, am I drinking and driving at the same time, I’m not. I’m not gambling, and I haven’t hired a hooker since I went to jail. Haven’t you heard?” he added sarcastically. “I’m doing humanitarian work now.”

  Chester rolled his eyes at him. “I worry about you, Alex. You’ve had a rough time of it.”

  He sighed. “I know you give a damn about me. I appreciate it, Chester.” God knew, there weren’t many people he could say that about.

  “You’ve got so much potential to do great things. I’d like to see you achieve it.”

  He studied the lawyer, considering the man’s words. Potential? That would involve having goals. Real passions in life.

  “While I didn’t expect you to start a family in quite this way, I think it’ll be good for you,” Chester announced.

  A family? Alex’s mind reared back in dismay. This wasn’t a family. This was simply him looking out for a helpless infant with no family. A kid whose plight he could relate to and that he had the resources to mitigate. Nothing more. He wasn’t emotionally attached to baby Dawn. He was just making sure the child had the financial wherewithal to be safe. He knew exactly what it felt like to be alone in the world at a young age and not know how he was going to pay for shelter or even a meal. It sucked.

  Chester had stepped in and looked out for him many years ago when his life had imploded. The lawyer had quickly and quietly maneuvered Peter Koronov’s financial holdings into a trust for Alex immediately after Peter was arrested. The lawyer had taken heat for doing it from the U.S. government, which had wanted to strip Peter of everything. But, thanks to Chester, Alex had been able to stay in school. Pay for a topflight education. And then, of course, he’d staked himself in the casinos and multiplied the contents of his checking accounts by a stupid amount.

  Alex was just paying the favor forward. That was all. The million-dollar trust fund he was setting up for Dawn was a very small percentage of his overall worth.

  “Now, all you have to do is find a wife to go with your daughter,” Chester said jovially.

  Alex jolted. A wife? Him? He snorted in derision, but an image of Katie in the throes of an orgasm flashed into his mind immediately, followed by the memory of what it felt like to hold her in his arms as she cuddled up to him.

  Bah. He wasn’t the marrying kind. Hell, he didn’t even trust her. She was a spy, for God’s sake. Or if she technically wasn’t one, she damned well was working for one.

  He supposed there was a certain twisted logic in his being so attracted to her. The only family he’d ever known was in the spy business, as well. He must equate love with spies—and lies and deception—at some deep, subconscious, sick level.

  Screw that. He was done with the whole rotten, twisted head game.

  He stood up abruptly, and Chester rose with him. “I’ll be in touch, Alex.”

  “Thanks,” he said shortly. An abrupt need to get the hell out of these claustrophobic offices rolled over him. He needed fresh air. Open space. Now.

  * * *

  KATIE KNEW MOST of what Uncle Charlie told her. Peter Koronov had lived and breathed espionage. He used his son as a cover to set up housekeeping in suburban Washington, D.C., and taught the boy the tools of the trade along the way. She hadn’t heard that Peter had openly expected his son to spy for Russia, but it didn’t surprise her. The rest of it, she’d pretty much pieced together.

  She hadn’t realized the extent of Alex’s rebellion in his teens. He’d glossed over the wildness of his misspent youth, but she supposed she couldn’t blame him for that. He was clearly trying to put it behind him now. She was shocked to hear that he’d begged a judge to throw him in jail. She was less shocked to hear the CIA’s assessment that it had been an effort to hide from his father’s aggressive recruiting tactics.

  “Do you know how much money he won gambling?” she asked curiously.

  “Our estimate is around ten million dollars.”

  Wow. No wonder the mob hated his guts.

  Uncle Charlie added lightly, “I imagine that, if he has half-decent investment advisers, young Alex has parlayed that into quite a bit more by now. He wouldn’t have spent any of it while he was in jail and could have just let the money multiply.”

  She ventured to ask the one question that had been nagging at her the most. “What do you know about his mother?”

  Charlie started to open his mouth, and then he hesitated for just a nanosecond. Had she not known him so well, she wouldn’t have spotted it. But it told her plenty. Whatever he told her next was not going to be the full truth. It could even be an outright lie. Still, she was interested to hear what the CIA would lie about to her.

  He spoke slowly. “We have reason to believe she was a KGB employee. In what capacity, we have no idea. She could have been anything from a secretary to a full-blown field operative. She and Peter likely met while working. Our supposition is that the union was not sanctioned, and that a baby was entirely unsanctioned. She may or may not have been put to death for getting pregnant. Or it’s simply possible she chose to pursue her career and left the child with Peter. Either way, the KGB exploited the child. A child explained why Peter emigrated to the U.S., and the boy made for a sympathetic cover when Peter set up shop as a single parent.”

  “Any guesses at all as to her identity?”

  Charles shook his head in the negative.

  Hmm. God, she’d love to know if he was telling the truth or not. She should have known she wouldn’t get a straight answer, she supposed.

  “Which leaves us with your Alex,” her uncle said.

  Her Alex? Is that how the CIA saw him? Fascinating.

  Charlie continued, “We know he retains contacts within the FSB. We know they’d love to get their hooks into him. We suspect his father is actively working to recruit him. In fact, I’d be stunned to discover that Koronov isn’t trying anything he can to pull his son into the FSB fold.”

  She studied her uncle thoughtfully. “So, you’re hoping to turn Alex. Then what? To recruit him to work for you guys and send him into the FSB as a mole for you?”

  He shrugged. “I can neither confirm nor deny that statement nor answer your question.”


  “Whatever,” she muttered. She was right. “What makes you think the FSB will ever trust him?” she said louder. “The way I hear it, Alex has never made any secret of his preference for the United States over Russia. This is his home, and his loyalties lie here.”

  “It’s not about loyalty. It’s about leverage,” Charles replied sharply. “Alex doesn’t have to be the slightest bit loyal to Russia for his father to gain enough leverage to force Alex into working for him.”

  She turned that over in her mind and reluctantly saw the reasoning. If people could be bought or blackmailed or coerced, loyalty wouldn’t really matter. The pressure that could be brought to bear to make someone serve a master—willingly or unwillingly—was ultimately more important than things like loyalty or patriotism. A dirty business, this espionage stuff. No wonder Alex was so cynical on the subject.

  And no wonder he’d been so reluctant to call in favors from the Russian government. He’d understood full well that he was giving the FSB an opening to sink its hooks into him.

  Sudden revelation crashed through her brain. That had been why that cargo plane came racing down to Zaghastan to pick them up! The Russian government—or at least his father—desperately wanted Alex to owe them his life.

  The sacrifice he’d made to get the three of them out of Zaghastan had been larger, much larger, than she’d realized. Gratitude and renewed respect for him filled her.

  Suddenly, today’s meeting made perfect sense, too. Charlie did her a favor by pulling strings to get that embassy gate opened for her in Tashkent, and now he was collecting on it. These guys could either scratch your back and you scratched theirs in return, or they could twist your arm. Take your pick.