The Throwaway

by Michael Moreci

  O’Neal woke to the SUV jostling him as it swayed from one side to the other on a gravel road. O’Neal squinted his eyes open, unhappy about returning to the waking world, and looked out the window. There, his view was consumed by trees—oak and spruce, in particular—and the sunlight positioned nearly overhead was scattering in individual beams. He was in tranquil surroundings, which meant only one thing: This was Virginia.

  Not that anyone was trying to hide it—he had fallen asleep willingly, and no one had put a hood over his head while he was out. At least whoever was sequestering him for this meeting wasn’t making a big show of it, which was a relief.

  O’Neal looked over at Kelly, who was furiously texting with uncanny speed; if O’Neal attempted to punch text messages into his phone half as fast, the intended target would receive nothing but gibberish or a sequence of words strung together by autocorrect.

  “Four minutes,” Kelly said, her eyes glued to the phone.

  O’Neal didn’t bother to break her trance, deciding to instead drop back in his seat and take in the view. He stretched open his mouth, feeling its dryness, and Kelly kicked the console between them.

  “In here,” she said.

  Sure enough, O’Neal opened the console and found water inside. He gulped an entire bottle down in two swallows.

  The SUV pulled into the roundabout of a private estate, pushed back deep in the woods. The residence was a massive cabin. O’Neal was reminded of the Overlook Hotel, only this was a lot smaller and maybe even less inviting. Wordlessly, the driver led O’Neal and Kelly through the cabin’s front doors, where they were greeted by a stunning vestibule. A fire pit crackled at its center, and O’Neal stepped toward it, only to have the guard shuffle him along to a room on his right side. No time for sightseeing, O’Neal realized.

  The guard pulled open the room’s sliding doors, and O’Neal immediately understood just how much deep shit he was in.

  When he stepped inside the room—a two-floor study, lined from floor to ceiling with built-in bookcases and a gold-plated winding staircase providing access between floors—O’Neal had to blink twice, hard, to process what he was seeing. He’d been in plenty of situations where he was grilled by his superiors, questioned and undermined by diplomats, but he was never cornered by people like this: Senator Archibald Dudek and General Philip Hodges, together, and neither looked particularly happy.

  For the life of him, O’Neal couldn’t fathom what tied these two together, and for the second time in the same day, he found himself wondering what the hell was going on.

  Neither said a word as O’Neal entered. Then a third man, one O’Neal hadn’t noticed, stepped from around a bookcase, his arm extended as he approached O’Neal.

  “Thanks so much for making it,” the man said, vigorously shaking O’Neal’s hand. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you. I’m Jamal Trask, NSA. This is—”

  “I know who they are,” O’Neal said, cutting off Trask’s effusive and strangely kind greeting. “What do you want from me?”

  “We want to know why you failed to do your job, Agent O’Neal,” Dudek asked, swirling a drink in his hands.

  “Excuse me?” O’Neal said, struggling to unclench his jaw and follow the example—be pleasant—Trask was setting.

  “You had an enemy of the state in your grasp, son,” Dudek said, then paused to take a drink. “And you let him slip right through your fingers and return to his commie friends in good ol’ Mother Russia.”

  “I followed orders,” O’Neal spat. “If you have a problem with how things went down, take it up with the commander-in-chief.”

  “Let’s—let’s slow down a minute, here,” Hodges said, stepping in. “Agent O’Neal, did you have an opportunity to interrogate Strain before he was sent back to Russia? Were you perhaps able to ascertain the depths of his knowledge?”

  “That, if I may add,” Trask said, “is what we find most disconcerting. We don’t know what Mark—or Pyotr, whatever he’s calling himself—knows. And all that knowledge he possesses—we just shipped it to Russia.”

  O’Neal pinched the bridge of his nose; he felt like a vise was squeezing his brain. “Of all the people in the ring, Mark was the one we knew least about. I don’t know what he knows, and I don’t know why I wasn’t allowed to interrogate him. I was instructed to pick him up, play bad cop, and get him to Vienna. And that’s what I did.”

  The room was silent. Dudek poured another drink while Hodges paced, contemplating. O’Neal had heard he was a thoughtful person, and not just by a soldier’s standards.

  “Might I ask,” Trask said, “why wasn’t the NSA looped in on this? It seems like an ideal situation for knowledge-sharing to occur.”

  “Until the order to move came down, I wasn’t anywhere close to breaking up this ring,” O’Neal said. “I was particularly interested in Ania and seeing how I could get her to help me snag an even bigger fish. I wasn’t in a position to share anything of value, is what I’m saying. Not yet.”

  The sound of a whiskey bottle coming down hard turned everyone’s attention to Dudek. “Well, son, your negligence made a very dangerous man even more dangerous. Well done.”

  O’Neal studied the room and couldn’t stop himself from wanting to know how someone who seemed so innocuous made two very powerful people so tense. Mark was either getting to be more interesting or more of a nuisance; he’d decide which after this meeting was over.

  “Who is Mark Strain?” O’Neal finally asked. “Because I’ve been working this ring he’s allegedly involved in—”

  “Allegedly?!” Dudek bellowed.

  “I’ve been working this ring for a year,” O’Neal continued, “and I have no idea what this man was up to.”

  “Are you not listening?” Dudek fired. “He’s a damn menace is what he is!”

  “He potentially holds many secrets, secrets that can cause harm to important American people,” Hodges said. “Put those secrets in the hands of the Russians, and there’s no telling how they’ll be used.”

  O’Neal took a breath, calming himself down even though he wanted to crack Dudek’s whiskey glass over his head. That would do him no good, though. Because if Mark did possess valued secrets and knowledge that compromised the safety of the United States, and he used it to light up the American media and give Russian intelligence agents—or worse, state-sponsored hackers—a strategic advantage, O’Neal’s career would be over. Forget executive orders; O’Neal knew he’d fry for letting that knowledge escape his attention and fall into the hands of the enemy.

  “I understand your concern, General Hodges,” O’Neal said, “and know that I’ll do everything in my power to find out what Mark was up to, what he knew and how he knew it, in as little time as possible.”

  “You do that,” Dudek scoffed.

  Before O’Neal could sling a barb back at Dudek, Trask was shuffling him out the door.

  “Listen, I know how this goes,” Trask said, pulling him aside once they were out of the room. “Anything you can provide on Mark, believe me, would be highly valued.”

  O’Neal sighed. “I don’t see anything. I know he was lobbying hard for Verge, and Hodges just signed off on a security contract with them. Verge has ties to a Russian billionaire, Sergei Vishny, but nothing connected him to Mark, and I couldn’t even see any motive for Vishny to be involved in Verge other than pure profit. From what I saw, they’re an upstanding company.”

  “Well, they’re good until they’re not, right?” Trask asked.

  O’Neal looked up to the ceiling, which spiraled into a cylindrical shape as it ascended higher than it looked even from the outside. “None of this is making any sense.”

  Trask clasped his shoulder. “Keep working on it. I’ll be in touch.”

  O’Neal took his attention off the dizzying ceiling; by the time he looked back down, Trask was sliding the doors to the study shut. O’Neal was closed out.

  When he stepped outside, the driver was waiting outside the SUV.

&
nbsp; “Back to your car?” he asked.

  “No, take me to Disney World,” O’Neal snapped. “Yeah, my car. Get me the hell away from this place.”

  O’Neal had felt like he was being used when orders from up high forced him to ship Mark and the rest to Russia, and now he felt like he was being played by Hodges and Dudek. He didn’t like either, and it fueled his determination to figure out the mystery behind Mark Strain before this whole thing blew up in his face.

  * * *

  Inside the study, Dudek finished off the bottle of whiskey and wasted no time broaching the topic on everyone’s mind.

  “Mark Strain needs to be eliminated,” he said. “We all know it.”

  “Now that he’s back on his own playing field, it’s a significant risk,” Trask said. “Are we certain it’s worth it?”

  “Within the span of twelve hours, he blackmailed Senator Dudek, broke into the Pentagon, and coerced me into signing a security contract,” Hodges said, his voice as even as it would be if he was reciting his grocery list. “It’s doubtless that he’s a threat to our national security. I don’t see any other choice for handling him.”

  “What about the software contract?” Trask asked. “Should we consider getting that killed?”

  “Hell no,” Dudek immediately replied. “That deal is signed, sealed, and delivered. We go back on it now and that’s admitting we made a multimillion-dollar mistake with Uncle Sam’s money. No, we won’t be doing that. Hodges and me, we’ll make sure the Pentagon’s IT department keeps a close eye on it. Could be nothing wrong with the software, for all we know. And if there is, we’ll just throw one of those eggheads under the bus and let them take the blame.”

  “Agreed,” Hodges added. “It’s best our recent encounters with Strain stay hidden.”

  Trask took a deep, resigned breath and looked at Dudek. Dudek smiled playfully. “Aw hell, son, you know where my vote goes.”

  “Then there’s nothing else to discuss,” Trask said, and with that, he walked out of the room and into the lobby. Dudek and Hodges didn’t want to be around for what he had to do next.

  Inside the vestibule, Trask dialed a number that wasn’t programmed in his phone. It was committed to memory, as that was the safest way to keep it secret.

  The phone rang once, twice, three times, and Trask started to get antsy. Maybe she was already on a job; maybe it was the middle of the night wherever she was. But this wasn’t a call Trask liked to make more than once. He called, burned his phone, and that was the end of it.

  Finally, the other line picked up. She answered with a cool “Yes?” and let Trask do the talking. It was their way.

  “A new assignment’s come up. Delicate, but simple. An easy target. One no one will miss. We want fast, not neat. Collateral damage is of no concern.”

  “Understood. Send the details through my channels,” she said. “It’ll be taken care of.”

  Trask already had the dossier prepared: One Mark Strain, living in Russia under the name Pyotr Dvanisch, was to be eliminated immediately.

  “Be on the lookout,” Trask said. “You’ll have all the information you need within the hour.”

  13

  Mark awoke to what he thought was the sound of a shotgun cocking in the other room. His body burst up in bed. The fear of being gunned down was as palpable as the sheen of sweat that’d accumulated on his body over the course of his dreamless slumber.

  Without making a sound, Mark touched his feet to the ground. He stood silent for a moment, listening for footsteps stalking toward him. He was convinced he could hear the careful gait of an intruder coming his way, taking meticulous steps over the cold marble floor—with a shotgun poised in his steady grasp. Mark had to shake off the fear that clouded his mind, though, and focus on reality. And when he did that, there was only silence. Mark didn’t hear a thing except his own heartbeat pumping in his ears.

  Still, Mark didn’t believe what his ears were telling him. He felt a presence near him, surrounding him, collapsing on him. He didn’t care what his senses told him; after all, if there was one thing recent events had taught him, it was that there was no telling what awaited around the next corner—figuratively and literally. Owing to that, he’d never, ever take anything—especially his own personal safety—for granted again. With that in mind, he scanned the bedroom for a weapon, anything he could use to defend himself. Moving on the balls of his feet, Mark glided to the fireplace on the opposite end of the bedroom and wrapped his fingers around the fire iron. He pulled it off the rack and held the stout weapon parallel to his chest. Mark had no combat training, though. If there was an assassin coming for him, armed with a shotgun, Mark had no delusions about his chances for survival. Even if he could stealthily maneuver to get the jump on his would-be killer, he had a fireplace poker. Against a shotgun. Any attempt to conjure a strategy was pointless, so Mark didn’t even bother.

  “AAAAAAHHHH!” Mark screamed as he charged out of his bedroom, brandishing the fire iron.

  His battle cry, though, quickly petered out. No one was in the living room, or the kitchen, or any of the bathrooms. Mark shook out curtains, checked closets, even looked inside the fridge—no one was in the apartment except him. Wiping away the sweat that had collected on his forehead, Mark came to terms with the assurance that he wasn’t about to be killed.

  At least not this morning.

  As he walked back to his room, Mark noticed—by the sheer luck of a fortuitous sidelong glance—that the dead bolt on his front door had been released. Mark eyed the narrow sliver of space between the front door and where the dead bolt adjoined on the door’s frame. A narrow sliver to freedom.

  Cautiously, Mark cracked open the door and peered out to the lobby beyond. The space was empty, just as it had been the day before. There were no guards posted outside his door, no one on hand to keep him confined to his quarters. Whatever lockdown protocol his outburst the night before had provoked had been lifted, and that gave Mark however much more space to plan and execute his escape. Busting out of this prison was just like closing a deal: You study the details, learn your opponent inside and out, and find your opening. One step at a time. First, Mark put aside anything he was thinking or feeling—all the worries about Sarah, the anxiety over how daunting it was going to be to get out of the hotel, let alone Russia—and focused on his process for success like a Zen mantra. He calmed his mind, acknowledging panic would get him nowhere but dead. Whoever was behind the nightmare Mark was trapped in, they had taken a lot from him—but he was still alive. And no one had stripped him of his determination, his sheer force of will, which had been his greatest ally his entire life. One step at a time, Mark reminded himself.

  One step at a time.

  Surprises, Mark learned in his years dealing with fragile clients in volatile situations, were to be expected. Still, surprise didn’t quite cover Mark’s reaction when he called for the elevator, and the button acknowledged his request to be taken down. He took a nervous step back and considered scurrying back to his apartment. There was no telling, he realized, where the elevator was going to take him or, worse still, who would be waiting inside. But Mark knew nothing waited in that apartment other than despair and possibly death. No, the way out was ahead. Forward, always forward. His only choice was to follow whatever paths were presented to him and refuse to rest until he found the one weakness, the one blind spot, that he could expose for all it was worth.

  As the elevator dinged on its arrival, Mark hugged the adjacent wall; he heard the doors glide smoothly open and, seeing no one come out, he ducked his head around the edge of the wall just enough to peek inside the car. It was empty.

  “All right,” Mark said, drawing a deep breath. “Let’s see where you go.”

  Inside the elevator, the light indicating what Mark assumed was the lobby—it was all in Russian—was already lit. Mark pressed every other button, twice, but none of them worked. His destination had been selected for him.

  A brief, smooth ride took
Mark down to the lobby, which he barely remembered passing through the day before. It was like he’d been in a trance before and was now seeing his dreamlike visions unfold before his waking eyes. He recognized the golden accents, the leather furniture, and the well-postured staff moving briskly throughout the room, but only now, with a more attentive mind, could he really take it all in. Mark was already looking for a place to run toward—an exit that wasn’t the front doors—when a meaty hand clasped his shoulder. Mark turned to find he was staring directly into a man’s chest; he had to angle his head upward to look at the man in his eyes.

  “Hello, Pyotr,” the man said. “I am Oleg, your personal bodyguard and assistant. And this”—Oleg gestured to a man standing behind him—“is my partner, Alex.”

  Oleg’s shoulders were remarkably broad; the strength that they boasted already had Mark on edge. Never had he felt so physically dominated by another man, and Mark could already tell what an obstacle the burly Russian would be. Picking up on Mark’s twinge of despair, Oleg smiled through a well-groomed beard; his cold, unblinking eyes warned Mark that he was not to be trifled with. Still, Mark detected the strands of gray that crept into Oleg’s beard and hair. He had to have been an older FSB agent—he’d be on the elderly end of the CIA or FBI, there was no doubt—and maybe he’d lost a step over the years. Maybe that was why he’d been slapped with being a glorified babysitter for the American fraud. Mark was a good judge of character, and he could tell—in just a single glance—that Oleg was more than muscle. To make it as long as he had, he must have had guile, great instincts, and undying loyalty. Mark knew not to underestimate him for a second.

  Alex, meanwhile, stood uneasily behind Oleg. He awaited orders. Compared to Oleg, Alex was practically a baby. He was dwarfed by his superior, and not just physically. There was something about their posture—Oleg, tall and strong; Alex, slouched and hunched—that made it abundantly clear who was the superior in this relationship. With his pomade hairstyle and the innocent youthfulness that pooled in his eyes, Alex clearly was the charmer of the two, but that didn’t change the fact that Oleg owned him.