by Marc Cameron
Winfield Palmer was connected by video link, his face appearing in the bottom right corner of the monitor. He was able to view the same files from his remote office near Crystal City, a stone’s throw from the Pentagon.
“No word yet on the fingers you gave me,” the national security advisor said from behind his huge mahogany desk. “Or the photo of the man at the airport. I have a friend in the Japanese government who’s checking back channels, though, so I’m not giving up yet.”
“I appreciate it, sir,” Quinn said.
“As for your mystery woman at Zamora’s party,” Palmer continued, “NSA gave us everything they have on known female Eastern Bloc operatives. I had them prioritize from your description.”
A series of new photos began to flash on the screen. Quinn found the woman he was looking for less than ninety seconds into the search.
“That’s her there,” he said, hovering the cursor arrow over the headshot of a pleasant-looking woman in her twenties. She had emerald eyes and a splash of freckles across a smallish nose. Her particulars appeared under the official visa photograph. “She looks less world-weary than when I saw her and her hair is longer now, but it’s definitely the same person.”
“Agent Aleksandra Kanatova of the Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti,” Thibodaux mused. “FSB. You were close, l’ami, when you guessed SVR.”
According to official policy the FSB, or Federal Security Service, generally worked within the confines of the Russian border, much as the FBI or Homeland Security operated in the United States. Like the CIA, the Federal Intelligence Service, or SVR, was supposed to handle missions outside the Russian Federation. In reality, the lines often blurred. Each agency had authority to act on orders directly from the Russian president to carry out actions up to and including directed assassination — and agents from both worried little about borders when it came to the security and intelligence needs of Mother Russia.
Quinn scrolled through the sparse NSA file.
“She comes by her job naturally.” Palmer’s voice crackled over the video link as he perused the file on his own. “Her father was a colonel in the KGB and her mother was a gymnastics coach, so they traveled a great deal when she was young. Looks like she was an Olympic hopeful until she shattered her wrist at sixteen…. Studied international business at Moscow University… ”
“International business.” Thibodaux smirked. “Another term for majoring in spy craft.”
Miyagi glared at him.
“Just saying.” He rolled his eyes.
“You’re right, Jacques,” Palmer said. A photograph of a much younger Kanatova appeared on the screen. She was standing on a rooftop restaurant somewhere in New York with the Empire State Building in the background. A rugged-looking man with a weathered face and wide grin stood beside her. He looked to be several years older than Kanatova. His broad arm draped around her shoulders.
“This photo is from eleven years ago. She speaks fluent English and German,” Palmer said. “CIA shows her working in Manhattan as a translator for two years right after college. She was likely already set up with FSB by this time.”
“Who’s the guy with her?” Quinn asked.
“Mikhail Polzin,” Palmer said.
“Hmm.” Thibodaux gave an understanding nod. “The agent who was killed with Cooper in Uzbekistan.”
“That’s right,” Palmer said. “We don’t have any record of him coming to the U.S., so he must have been active then. Polzin was believed to be her handler.”
“They seem pretty damned cozy,” Thibodaux said. He kept his head turned so he wouldn’t have to see Miyagi’s glare.
Quinn used his remote to scroll through the attached pages on the screen. “Doesn’t appear to be much else. She shows up in Chechnya for a short time as some sort of military liaison, then nothing.”
“The fact that she and Polzin were acquainted means something,” Palmer said. “On another matter, this race you’ve signed up for is causing me no small amount of heartburn. I may as well be buying a banana republic with the money we’re paying to get you in at the last minute and on the QT. The cover is that you signed up months ago but your paperwork got lost.”
“Thanks, boss,” Quinn said. “It looked like the best way to stay close to Zamora for a while.” He couldn’t help but feel a sense of exhilaration just thinking about the sand and heat and speed of the Dakar Rally. The wildness of it made him breathe a little faster.
“Border Patrol popped a Syrian with ties to al-Qaeda coming across from Canada near Niagara Falls. Documents in his car tie him to a shipping container that delivered, among other things Chinese ATMs manufactured by Shenzhen KVSIO, the same company that made the ATMs used in the first two bombings.”
“Is he talking?” Thibodaux asked.
“Won’t shut up,” Palmer said. “He swears someone is trying to frame him. The Bureau and Homeland are putting the squeeze on all the ports as we speak… ”
“But you think the evidence was planted?” Quinn nodded in agreement.
“It all seems a little too neat,” Palmer said. “From your report, I’m not willing to write Zamora off just yet. The Russians think there’s something going on or you wouldn’t have run into Ms. Kanatova. I’ve got to tell you, though — doesn’t it seem odd that he’d be off running a race like this if he was trying to move a weapon worth over a quarter billion dollars?”
“He’s a flake,” Thibodaux offered. “Bomb or no bomb, he’s gotta have the three A’s to be happy — adventure, approval, and…” He looked at a stoic Mrs. Miyagi before continuing. “… women.”
Palmer leaned back in his chair as the phone began to ring on his desk. “Keep me informed,” he said. “Emiko, I have to take this. If you don’t mind filling them in on the rest.”
Mrs. Miyagi bowed slightly in her seat.
“Of course.”
Palmer disconnected.
Mrs. Miyagi stayed in her high-backed chair. “Due to the short lead time involved, Mr. Palmer has ordered the KTM 450 rally bike you require, along with your support truck, to be flown south to rendezvous in the South Atlantic with a cargo vessel already en route to Mar del Plata. It should arrive shortly before you do, giving you time to clear Argentine customs before the race.” She handed Quinn a small device the size and shape of a dash-mounted GPS. “This will scan for gamma radiation. You can use it to interrogate Zamora’s vehicle and equipment. If he has the bomb with him, it should leave a signature and we can take appropriate action. Now, I understand your brother is to accompany you?”
“Yes.” Quinn took the handheld sensor and slid it in his jacket pocket. “He’s a wild child, but he’s also a competent mechanic. We’ll need someone we can trust handling that side of things.”
“Very well,” she said. “A contact from State who cooperates with Mr. Palmer will provide an unregistered sidearm for each of you upon your arrival.” She rose quickly, turned away as if to leave, then spun back with a sort of snap aggressiveness that reminded Quinn of a shark.
“I am to make you truly aware of what this device will do,” she said. Her dark eyes, multihued as mossy agates, flicked back and forth between the two men.
Though he’d seen plenty of devastation and heartache during his deployments to the Middle East, Quinn was not entirely sure he comprehended the magnitude of a nuclear detonation on American soil.
Miyagi saw it in his face and her eyes softened. In her mind, ignorance was better than swagger — so long as her students were willing to learn.
“It has become almost trite,” she said with her oval face canted a little to the side as it often was when she explained things. From anyone else, it might have come across as condescending, but Emiko Miyagi looked as if she merely wanted more than just her words to be understood. “Do you remember where you were on September 11, 2001?”
Quinn nodded. Thibodaux looked at the tatami floor.
Miyagi continued. “Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists murdered almost three thousand peopl
e that day. Over six thousand more were physically injured, but we will never know the true human cost. The U.S. stock market lost almost one and a half trillion dollars in value that week — and, of course, we went to war.” She raised her hand as if to ward off a question. “I do not condemn the war. I am, as you have observed, perhaps as bellicose a woman as you will ever meet. I merely point it out as a consequence of September 11. The entire world changed that day.
“Those nineteen killed three thousand and changed so very much, but we have rebuilt and made ourselves, as Hemingway says, ‘stronger at the broken places.’ ” She sighed, slowly nodding her head. “But gentlemen, my people know something of a nuclear bomb. Even a small device will bring more destruction than we as Americans can imagine. Our economy is a fragile egg, ready to be crushed underfoot at any moment by the next catastrophe. If intelligence reports are true, Baba Yaga is capable of delivering five kilotons of destructive power. That’s a third the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima that killed a hundred and forty thousand and forced the surrender of the Japanese government.
“Now, imagine how this will change the world: A five-kiloton explosion would produce a firestorm over two square miles. If such a device were to be detonated in Lower Manhattan it would not only destroy the major buildings of the Financial District, but virtually everything from Battery Park through Chinatown and Little Italy all the way to SoHo. Great volumes of superheated air would shoot into the sky. Hurricane-force winds would drive the flames through the rest of the city. Police and fire rescue would be completely overwhelmed. National Guard would mobilize, but by then thousands more are dead or dying from radiation exposure. If detonated in the right location, tens of thousands would be gone within the week.
“I have explained the effects of such a device on New York,” Miyagi concluded. “Now think on this. A bomb such as Baba Yaga could be placed in Anchorage or New Orleans — in short, anywhere.”
Thibodaux breathed in heavily through his nose, clenching the muscles in his massive jaw. “Well,” he said. “I guess we’d better find the damned thing.”
Miyagi raised a delicate black eyebrow. “Yes, Jacques, you’d better, for there is no surrender.”
“That’s fine,” Quinn said. “Because I’m not the surrendering type.”
“And I don’t suggest you are.” Miyagi’s voice was strained, as if the weight of the world rested on her small shoulders. “But that does not matter. The people we fight now do not care if we surrender or not. They only want to see us dead.”
* * *
Quinn’s phone buzzed just as he threw a leg over his motorcycle. He tapped the Bluetooth device on the side of his helmet and answered.
“Daddy!” Mattie Quinn’s voice filled his helmet and his heart.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said, leaning forward to rest across the tank and handlebars.
“Do you have my Christmas present yet?”
“That’s a surprise,” he said. In truth, he had no idea what to buy a little girl. Kim proved little help, seeming to enjoy letting him twist in the wind with his decision. “Do you still want to be a doctor when you grow up?”
“Not anymore,” she said. “Now I want to be a scientist or maybe a teacher… or a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?”
“No.” She giggled. “Mom told me I should say that to bug you. Really and truly, right this minute, I think I want to go into the Air Force.”
“Did Mom tell you to say that?”
Mattie sucked in her breath. “Oh no.” She giggled again. “But it bugs her when I do.”
Jericho grinned while his little girl shared her dreams and goals and wishes for Christmas. She might look like her mother, but sadly for her, Mattie Quinn was an awful lot like him.
CHAPTER 22
Miami
The SinFull strip club hadn’t changed décor since it was the Booby Trap in the late eighties. Aleks Kanatova sat in a corner booth and wondered if the carpet had ever been vacuumed. A black light hung on the wooden paneling made the tonic water in her gin glow an eerie blue. Cigarette smoke hung in swirling plumes and dance music vibrated the walls with a rhythmic bass thrum. The heady odor of desperation made it difficult to breathe.
Umarov had been sitting at the bar for nearly an hour, drinking vodka martinis and throwing lousy tips at a sullen pole dancer named Cinnamon — whose black G-string did a poor job of covering her C-section scar. The only other dancer, a roundish Latina in nothing but a flimsy open teddy and a pair of red stiletto heels, ate a Big Mac and fries at the end of the bar. There was a kitchen in the back, but Aleksandra made a mental note to stick with just her drink. It was a bad sign that the hired girls wouldn’t eat from the menu.
It was midafternoon and there were less than a half dozen patrons in the place. Cinnamon hung by one arm off the pole with all the charisma of someone waiting for a bus. In a city where titty bars were as plentiful as corner gas stations, the blue-collar customers seemed more interested in a European soccer game on the flat-screen television than in any of Cinnamon’s labored gyrations. Despite the seedy atmosphere, the bartender smiled a lot and chatted easily about local politics with the Latina eating the Big Mac — as if she wasn’t naked. From the bulk of his arms, Aleksandra guessed he doubled as the bouncer during the day shift.
Following the Chechen had been easy enough. During their struggle at Zamora’s party, Aleksandra had dropped a gold money clip from a belt pouch on her swimsuit, making certain it fell right before his eyes. Umarov was known to like shiny things and Aleksandra had correctly assumed he would pick it up if given the opportunity. The clip itself was plated, but three gold ten-ruble coins bearing the head of Tsar Nicholas II were brazed along its length. Inside the hollow coins and body of the clip hid the circuitry of an electronic tracker. Even when she lost sight of him, Aleksandra could read the signal on her smartphone as long as she was within a mile of the coins.
“Finally,” she mumbled to herself. The Chechen pushed away from the bar and staggered toward the long hallway leading to the restroom without giving her a second look. He smelled of alcohol and his lap was covered with dancer dust, the telltale body glitter that had surely gotten more than one husband in trouble after he’d stopped for “drinks” on the way home from work.
She counted to twenty after Umarov shut the bathroom door, then followed him down the hall. Between the soccer game and Cinnamon, no one gave her a second look.
Relatively sure no one else had gone in the men’s room, Aleksandra waited outside for another ten count to listen just in case. Daring was good; calculated daring was more likely to keep her alive. She heard nothing but the sound of a fan through the door. Satisfied, she took a last look down the hallway behind her and, seeing no one, tried the handle. As she suspected, it was locked. Operatives like Akhmad Umarov didn’t live so long by being careless while they relieved themselves.
Restroom locks were only meant to discourage accidental walk-ins and it took Aleksandra less than fifteen seconds to quietly slip the mechanism. Drawing an H&K P7 nine-millimeter from under the tail of her loose shirt, she pushed open the door.
Inside, she eased the flimsy wooden door shut behind her, twisting the lock again. The room was small and there was barely enough space for the single urinal squeezed in between the porcelain sink and two toilet stalls. The far door was slightly ajar, but the Chechen’s feet were visible under the edge of the nearest stall, his pants pooling in a wrinkled heap around his ankles. Aleksandra had to force herself to keep from gagging at the noxious smell that hung like a biological weapon in the small room.
The Chechen coughed, the universal signal to let someone know the stall was occupied, as if his odor wasn’t already indicator enough.
Pistol in hand, Aleksandra kicked open the stall door and pointed it at the Chechen’s face. There were few things worse than facing a determined woman with a gun while sitting on the toilet.
But it was Aleksandra who froze.
What she’d thought
was a warning cough had been a death groan. Dark, arterial blood soaked Umarov’s gray T-shirt — but she hardly noticed. From the pattern on the tile floor it looked as though he’d tried to put up a fight — but that made little difference to her.
Above the Chechen’s left eye, on the greasy smooth skin of his forehead was the unmistakable imprint of a double-headed eagle.
Whoever hit him had been wearing Mikhail’s ring.
Aleksandra’s heart shivered in her chest. She’d seen no one else come or go from the restroom since Umarov had gone in and there were no windows—
She dropped instantly, spinning as she fell to shoot through the wall separating the two stalls. Working on a sudden dump of adrenaline, she heard no shots but watched bullet holes appear in the metal divider as someone — the man who’d killed her friend — returned her fire. He must have been perched on the toilet for her to have missed his feet when she first came in. She cursed herself for such stupidity. Instinctively, she grabbed the dead Chechen and yanked him down on top of her for cover, shooting around his flopping arm.
Her H&K carried nine rounds, including the one in the chamber — not enough to conduct the type of gunfight Americans called spray and pray. Aleksandra had already used six firing through the stall. She was an excellent shot but held little hope she hit anything vital shooting so blindly.
She was vaguely aware that the far stall slammed open. She caught a shadowed glimpse of the other shooter as he lunged across the room and crashed out the flimsy wooden door.
“Idiot!” Aleksandra spat, as much to herself as the dead man in her lap. She collapsed back against the clammy wall, gun in hand, half expecting the shooter to come back and finish the job. She would never have left a witness alive.
Excited voices streamed in from the hallway.
Moving quickly, she tucked the pistol back in the holster over her kidney, then ripped the buttons of her shirt to expose her bra. She rubbed her hand across the Chechen’s chest, then wiped a smear of his blood on her face and exposed shoulder.
