Let Slip the Dogs of War: A Bard's Bed & Breakfast Mystery #1

by Barton, Sara M.

  “We took her into protective custody, Bea. We had to have a bargaining chip. We planned to do a hostage exchange, only it turned out that we did our job too well. Marina turned out to be a fountain of information on her husband, and there was no way we could allow her to return to him. We needed him to believe she had died without telling tales about his exploits, so as soon as we began getting real intelligence gems from her, we blew her up in front of him, while Ben’s father launched the raid that freed Hortense.”

  Ben’s father was a spy. Of course. That was the connection I missed. Yuri wanted the son to pay for the father’s sins.

  “I’m afraid that Colonel Demitrov took out his rage on the boy. We tried to get him out in 1975, but Demitrov was expecting us. Marina was heartbroken when Stephen returned empty-handed. We tried again in 1978 and 1982, but each time, Demitrov knew we were coming for the boy.”

  “He had an informant at the CIA,” I concluded sadly.

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to Marina?” I dreaded the answer. I imagined that once she was of no further use, she was cast into the ocean, dropped from the sky, right out the cargo door.

  “Ben’s father married her. Yuri is Ben’s half-brother.”

  Chapter Sixteen --

  “Well, if that doesn’t take the cake, what does?”

  Dinner that night was a rather subdued affair. I made chicken nuggets with honey mustard sauce, dilled green beans, sweet potatoes, and corn muffins. Lorna tried to keep up a chipper front, but I could see the doubts beginning to weigh her down. Uncle Edward was lost in thought, unable to concentrate on conversation. Wardah unwittingly broke the spell. It happened when a tiny piece of chicken nugget slipped off her fork on its way to her mouth and then fell to the floor. From out of nowhere, Oberon skidded across the tile and pawed it like a hockey puck, sending it flying between the legs of the stool at the kitchen island, hoping for a goal. Titania seized the moment, jumped in as goalie, slapped it across the makeshift ice while chasing it, and when she caught up with it, swallowed the tasty morsel. Offended, Oberon jumped upon her, and the two cats rolled around the kitchen like a giant ball of fur.

  “Al’afw!” Wardah called to the cats. We all turned to the young girl at the same time, stunned that she had spoken her first word. And then Uncle Edward began to laugh. Wardah saw him and grinned. Even Lorna couldn’t contain her mirth.

  “What did she say to the cats?” I asked, watching the show with an amused smile.

  “She told them, ‘You’re welcome,’” Lorna told me.

  “The child has a sense of humor, Bea.” Uncle Edward was ever so pleased by that. “How refreshing.”

  “Indeed.”

  Lorna offered to put Wardah to bed after she had her bath. Uncle Edward wanted to speak to me in the library. “It’s important, Bea.”

  I said good night, gave Wardah a kiss on the cheek, and promised to check on her a little later. Mr. Darcy settled down at the foot of the bed to listen to the bedtime story. I headed downstairs, with Puck on my heels. I found Uncle Edward at the library table, sitting in front of a cigar box.

  “Come in, Bea. Have a seat.”

  I did as I was asked, slipping into the club chair across from the elderly man. He seemed quite worried.

  “I got a call from Langley, Bea. They’ve lost track of Yuri.”

  “And you think he’ll come back here?”

  “Yes.” There it was, plain and simple. That murderous bastard was coming back to the Bard’s Bed & Breakfast, bent on revenge. “That’s why I am showing you the contents of this box. This is your bargaining chip if you find that Yuri has you in his clutches.”

  Clutches. Such a silly phrase. It sounds like something you’d hear in an old Warner Brothers’ cartoon. Only I knew that being in Yuri’s clutches was likely to result in a lot of pain, very real pain.

  “These are some of Marina’s letters, tapes, and videos for her boy, Grigoriy. They are all dated, signed, and sealed. They will be in my safe. Yuri should be able to open it.”

  “What’s to stop him from torturing me for the whole bunch?” I asked, staring at the wooden Cuban cigar box.

  “He won’t do that, Bea, because this is only a fraction of what his mother left for him. The rest are stored elsewhere, with other people. If he harms you, he harms his chances for getting the rest.”

  “Don’t you think he’s angry with her for deserting him?”

  “He doesn’t know that the CIA tried to get him away from Colonel Demitrov several times, or that we recorded some of the attempts, because we needed to understand why they were failing. He can see for himself what his mother said.”

  “Won’t he think it’s all propaganda?”

  “Maybe. Probably not. It’s time to close this chapter of the Cold War, Beatrice. The colonel died a long time ago. Marina’s nearly seventy-five. She wants to see her son one last time before she dies.”

  “How do you know he won’t try to kill her, for betraying his father?”

  Uncle Edward was silent, his eyes on the many shelves of books in the library. The motley collection of valuable first editions, mass-produced paperbacks, and research tomes were carefully being catalogued by the ever-efficient Lorna. I saw little tags on the wood trim of the shelves, not the spines of the books. She had even organized a section of children’s books out of my own personal collection. I thought Wardah would enjoy those.

  “Grigoriy was a young boy when Stephen kidnapped Marina. We had reports that the colonel beat him every time he cried for his mother. That’s why we tried repeatedly to get him away from his father. One of our operatives in Moscow was killed when he tried to snatch the boy on the way home from school in 1975. The CIA tried in 1978 when the colonel was sent to Bolivia on assignment for the GRU, but Demitrov managed to snatch the boy back before the CIA could smuggle him out of the country. He beat the boy for not resisting his kidnappers, broke his arms to teach him a lesson.”

  “That’s horrible!” What kind of monster would do that to his own flesh and blood?

  “Even worse? He filmed it and sent it to the CIA’s Bolivian station chief, with instructions to forward it to the boy’s mother. He wanted her to know what she had caused to happen to her own son.”

  “Someone should have stopped that bastard!”

  “Believe me,” Uncle Edward sighed heavily, wearily, “we tried. Stephen mounted another effort again in 1982, this time when Demitrov was sent to South Africa. Unfortunately, the boy remembered what happened to him the last time he didn’t fight back. He was old enough to be carrying a weapon and he used it to shoot Stephen three times before he ran. One of Stephen’s agents was with him, and took him to Pretoria for medical treatment. Unfortunately, the boy didn’t fare as well. His father punished him for not killing Stephen.”

  “He broke his arms again?”

  “No. He threw him in the bear cage at the National Zoological Gardens in Pretoria.”

  “Good God!” No wonder Yuri had shot that poor mama bear. The psychological scars ran deep. “How could a father ever do that to a son?”

  “It was as much about punishing Marina as it was about controlling his son.”

  “How did Marina stand it? I would have gone back for my son. I would have given my life to save my child.” What a horrible thing to endure. How could anyone ever have a moment’s peace, knowing the gruesome things being done to a helpless young boy? “Why didn’t she try?”

  “She did, Bea, more than once. And when she couldn’t get past the CIA gatekeepers, she tried to kill herself. She couldn’t live with the guilt, the pain, of having her boy victimized that way. We finally put a stop to it by making a deal with Moscow. We let three of their best agents go in exchange for the GRU reining in Colonel Demitrov.”

  “How did they stop him, Uncle Edward?”

  “They finally had to shoot the colonel. You see, back then there were rules of conduct. We gave the Soviets the tapes of what Grigoriy’s father did to him, and eve
n they were disgusted. They got their agents back, the colonel could do no more harm to his son, and Grigoriy became Yuri Ivanovich, the adopted son of General Arseny Ivanovich.”

  “Why didn’t they charge Demitrov with a crime and put him in jail?”

  “A man that powerful, Bea, will always find a way to escape. The man was a psychopath, and if he couldn’t take out his rage on Marina, he was going to take it out on the boy, even if Yuri had such a strong protector.”

  “Grigoriy never stood a chance, did he? Even though his mother loved him that much, he was lost anyway, a victim of the Cold War.”

  “That’s one way to look at it, Bea, but there’s another. The colonel would still have abused his wife and son without the Cold War as an excuse. You’re forgetting how far the colonel went to punish me. He tied Hortense to those train tracks. He kept her a prisoner for two long years. And he used her as a hostage, to stop me. In the end, he was a danger to the Soviet GRU, because he was so bitter and so inhumane. He showed up at the general’s house, to reclaim his son. When he couldn’t find him, he raped the general’s wife, an act that was interrupted by the general himself.”

  “How very, very sad. It sounds like Demitrov would have been a serial killer if he hadn’t been a spy.”

  “A really good intelligence officer isn’t a psychopath or a sociopath, Bea. Gratuitous violence or cruelty isn’t to be confused with pleasure, and it should never be personal. Coercion is sometimes used to achieve a goal because the goal is critical. But you’d be amazed to learn how easy it is to convince a normal human being to cooperate without having to resort to torture. It’s the really bad guys and sometimes the really good guys who resist. Then it becomes necessary to use pressure, and often the greatest pressure is psychological. Colonel Demitrov knew just how much Marina loved her son, Grigoriy, and how much the boy missed his mother. His plan was to turn his son into a killer and eventually to turn the killer loose on the woman who got away.”

  “Poor Marina.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. When the colonel learned she had given birth to another son with Stephen, he began in earnest to also condition Grigoriy to kill his half-brother. The Soviets sanctioned an operation in 1976 to kidnap Ben in retaliation for the taking of Marina, but the CIA knew they were coming and made it hurt. The GRU lost six men and the CIA made it clear that any further efforts to snatch the boy would result in even greater casualties. Demitrov had to resort to programming his son to kill, because the GRU director refused to approve any further efforts.”

  “I hate this spy game,” I decided. “It’s so unconscionable. People like Ben and Grigoriy get caught in the crossfire. Neither one of them ever really got to be a child.”

  “As long as there are bad people, Bea, there will be spies to gather information, mount operations, and get things done that soil the hands. It’s less by choice and more by duty.”

  “Yes, but you can catch more flies with honey. Surely there are ways to conduct spy operations without killing everyone in sight.”

  “Is that what you think, that CIA officers and operatives go around whacking people everywhere they go? The best are so adept at keeping cover, they are rarely even spotted. They gather their information and conduct their operations without causing any alarm. They slip in and out without leaving a footprint, unless that footprint is necessary.”

  “Meaning that the honey bees don’t always swat the flies?”

  “The trouble with honey, Beatrice, is that the bees don’t like it when it’s stolen away. They get angry and they swarm. Sometimes flies get caught when they come too close to the hive. Sometimes they fly into places and situations where they don’t belong. Not every spy is a bee with a stinger. Sometimes espionage agents are the flies on the wall, listening in on conversations and reporting back on what they heard. You might want to swat a fly, but most times you will miss. It’s the advantage of having wings.”

  “What’s Ben? A fly or a bee?” I asked Uncle Edward. He looked back at me and smiled.

  “Think about it, Bea. Think about the position that Stephen and Marina were in, unable to rescue her son, desperate to protect their own. That was Ben’s childhood. What would you have taught him to do?”

  “Survive,” I replied. “And protect.”

  “Exactly. And what does it take to do that job, to not run away from that kind of duty? He either has to become a monster or a man of such high principles and clarity of mission that he acts and reacts with his head screwed on tight.”

  “All this time, I never knew these things about Ben. I’ve always given him a hard time.”

  “Don’t stop doing that, woman!” Uncle Edward laughed. “If you go soft on him now, you’ll mess with his head. No, Ben fell in love with you because you are what you are, the good part of his life that allows him to be proud of what he does. You’re the epitome of the moral compass he keeps inside of himself, so that he doesn’t lose his way. That’s why he loves you.”

  “That, and the sex,” I blurted out without thinking.

  “Yes, that too. He is, after all, a man. But it’s really knowing that you won’t take anything less than his best is what keeps him on the straight and narrow.”

  I sat there, thinking about this life I lived, caught in a world of smoke and mirrors, of guns and dead bodies, and little girls who were torn away from their mothers and fathers when war raged. This little piece of heaven here on Lake Champlain would have to be a respite from that world of cruelty and chaos. Wardah and Fatima would have what Ben and Grigoriy did not. They would know what it was like to feel safe and loved. I would insist upon it. And now I understood why Ben had insisted that the time was never right to have children. It was far too dangerous as long as the damaged Grigoriy was on the hunt.

  “Uncle Edward, what will we do if Grigoriy shows up?”

  “If? I think we can be sure that he will show up, Beatrice, and when he does, we must decide how much madness we can afford in our lives. We can share his mother’s treasures with him and it may not awaken the decent man within. It may only serve to anger him even more. As much as we understand the pain he was subjected to over many years, and we understand that it shaped him, we must consider the people we can still help in this world and the people who will suffer if we are not here to carry on the work. If Grigoriy crosses that line, we will have to take him out, no matter how much compassion and empathy we have for him. We must focus on the greater good, because our goal is to make a better world.”

  Chapter Seventeen --

  “Howdy, stranger. Long time, no see.”

  “Ben!” My heart began to beat faster at the sound of my husband’s voice on the other end of the phone. “Where are you?”

  “I’m on my way home. Can you pick me and my luggage up? The train gets into Burlington at quarter to nine. And bring Rosalind. I have a surprise for her.”

  I glanced at the kitchen wall clock. Ten after five. Time to make dinner, get Wardah into the bath, and dressed in her pajamas for the trip to the station.

  “Sure. No problem. Why are you taking the train?” I asked. It would have been quicker to fly, even to drive.

  “I’ll explain when I see you, Bea. Love you.”

  “Love you too. I can’t wait to see you.”

  As the hours passed, I realized how excited I was at the thought of finally seeing Ben again. So much time had passed and I still didn’t know all the details of what had happened in Damascus. I was just relieved that it would soon be over and Ben would be back where he belonged. And if he played his cards right, he might even have his way with me tonight, when we were back home in our bed. And in the morning, too. I just wanted to feel my arms around him and know the taste of his lips again. I ached for his touch.

  At seven-thirty, I towel-dried Wardah’s hair when she came out of the bath tub, pulled it back in a ponytail and added a colorful scrunchie. She leaned against me as I brushed her locks, hungry for that human touch. I was excited for her, knowing that she would s
oon be reunited with the real Fatima. The only thing sweeter would be when Azeezah joined us.

  We had developed a non-verbal rapport as the days passed. When I wanted Wardah to come with me, I took her hand in mine and led the way. I would often give her single word clues. As we walked to the garage, I said “car” and she smiled. She didn’t know where we were going, but she was content to go along for the ride.

  I flicked the overhead lights on, opened the garage door with the automatic opener, and helped Wardah into the seat in the back. I had tucked a pillow and blanket back there for her, in case she wanted to doze. Once she was strapped in, I climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and backed out of the garage. Still in reverse, I kept my foot on the brake while I shut the garage door. I was so focused, I didn’t hear the back door open, but I heard Wardah’s startled cry. Yuri was grinning at me when I looked into the rearview mirror.

  “Good evening, Beatrice,” he greeted me. “Please don’t make any sudden moves or I will have to kill this little girl.”

  “What’s going on, Yuri...Grigoriy?” I asked, as calmly as I could.

  “I see Edward had briefed you on my situation. How convenient for me. That will save some time. Drive, Bea. I will tell you where we are going and what we are doing when we are almost there.”

  “I see.” How I wished I had a gun handy, a weapon of some kind. I hated that he was in the backseat with that little girl, using her vulnerability to manipulate me. I glanced around, wondering what I could use. Did my eyes deceive me? Was that my trusty little Tinker Swiss Army knife? It sat in the forward cup holder, hidden from Yuri’s view by my bottle of water. Ben must have found it in the woods and returned it to my car. I tried to figure out how I was going to grab it without Yuri seeing me do it. I waited ten minutes, until we were on a dark stretch of I-89.

  “Is it okay if I drink some of my water?” Yuri looked over my shoulder at the bottle of Poland Springs.