Athena Force: Books 1-6

by Justine Davis, Amy J. Fetzer, Katherine Garbera, Meredith Fletcher, Catherine Mann

  Sam studied the face, wondering if the image was a trap of some sort. “No. Who is he?”

  “A guy named Faisal Hamid. Supposed to be linked to the new arms trade that’s shaping up in Berzhaan.” Howie tapped keys. “Faisal is making the rounds throughout Suwan, trying to set up business with the Kemenis and the Q’Rajn.”

  “Those people don’t deal with the same suppliers,” Sam said. She knew that from the background reports she’d read.

  “Only if the suppliers have political aspirations,” Howie corrected. “Faisal, here, is totally apolitical. A dollar is a yen is a deutsch mark to him. Guy’s totally about the bottom line.” He paused. “You sure you don’t know him?”

  “No.”

  “That’s strange,” Howie said, “because he was one of the guys who got identified at the shootout when MI-6 filmed you in action.”

  Sam went very still, thinking quickly.

  Howie looked up at her expectantly.

  “The Cipher is very cautious about the work he’s doing there,” Sam said. “Most of us didn’t know the others.”

  “So what capacity did you serve in?”

  “Just support.”

  “Interesting.” Howie turned back to the screen.

  “What do you mean?”

  “According to the new Intel we’ve gotten, a woman was arranging for the Russian weapons that were being delivered that day.”

  My mysterious double is the ringleader of the arms suppliers? Sam couldn’t believe it. “There was more than one woman in the group.”

  “In a Middle Eastern theater?” Howie raised a skeptical eyebrow. “That’s a chancy play.”

  “Berzhaan’s not the typical Middle-Eastern country these days,” Sam pointed out. She’d seen the country and knew that what she was saying was true. Suwan was becoming something of a crossroads of Eastern and Western business and tourist travel. “I worked undercover there for the Agency a couple times.”

  “Not in a high-visibility capacity.”

  “Selling black-market arms to a country’s guerrillas and terrorists isn’t exactly a high-visibility occupation.” Sam remembered the digital sequence she’d seen. “I wasn’t supposed to be seen at all. I was just in a support capacity.”

  “All right.” Howie clicked more buttons, shifting through the pictures. He asked her about several other people sitting at tables in open-air restaurants or going into and out of homes and businesses.

  Sam didn’t know any of them. “Who are these guys?”

  Howie stopped on the picture of a tall man leaning against an alley wall. The man wore khaki pants and a white shirt rolled to midforearm. His hair was black, shot through with gray, and he wore a long mustache that nearly reached his jawline.

  “Sergei Ivanovitch,” Howie replied. “He’s a colonel in the SVR.”

  That made Sam curious. The SVR was the Russian equivalent of the CIA, an espionage agency that operated outside the country to collect information on potential international threats.

  “Russia’s very interested in Berzhaan’s political future,” Howie said. “Whichever way the political leanings and sympathies of the government in charge of the country goes, so goes the untapped oil reserves Berzhaan is sitting on.”

  The oil reserves promised to make a huge impact in the Middle East as well as the Western world and Russia. China was starting to make inroads into Middle-Eastern oil to answer that country’s own growing energy needs. Unfortunately, with the oil reserves nearing capacity production, China’s interest threatened the Western interests as well as Russia’s.

  “I don’t recall Ivanovitch on the debrief,” Sam said.

  “He’s not,” Howie said. “He’s a new addition to the Berzhaan scene.”

  “How new?”

  “We’re not certain. An…operative in Berzhaan just spotted Ivanovitch there.”

  Sam noticed Howie’s hesitation but didn’t say anything. It bothered her that Howie might not want to trust her with sensitive information. But she understood completely; she was quite certain under similar circumstances that she wouldn’t have trusted her, either.

  “Ivanovitch keeps a low profile.” Howie pressed more keys.

  The pictures on the computer monitor flickered. There were two more pictures of Ivanovitch lighting a cigarette and smoking it, then the man was gone.

  “Did Ivanovitch make our agent?” Sam asked. Too late, she realized that she’d referred to the agent as our. There was nothing our about the operation.

  “We don’t know,” Howie said.

  “Did the agent get a feeling?”

  “The agent didn’t say.”

  “You’re still in touch with him?”

  “With the agent? Yes.”

  “What is Ivanovitch doing there?”

  “We haven’t ascertained. In the past, the SVR have actively sought an American government link to the weapons the Kemenis are being supplied with. They still contend that the CIA is supplying those weapons.”

  “Are we?” Sam asked.

  “No.”

  Even though Howie sounded certain and probably believed it, Sam knew the possibility still existed. “When did these pictures come in?”

  “This morning.”

  “Why did Mitchell decide to show them to me?”

  “Because he wants results.” Howie sipped his latte. “Director Mitchell also felt there might be a Russian connection.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the first language you spoke as a child was Russian.” There was no accusation in Howie’s look.

  Sam let out a slow breath. “Understood. But you need to know that I don’t remember anything about that. I had to learn Russian again later in school.” But learning that language had come more easily than any of the other languages she spoke. The spoken language was there almost instantly, but the written portion of the language had come with difficulty.

  “Who are these other people?” Sam asked, watching the pictures as Howie flicked through them as steady as a metronome.

  “Our agent has identified them as part of a group of weapons dealers who have been in Berzhaan for the last few months. Do you recognize any of them?”

  “No,” Sam answered. She grew agitated. The lie she’d told about being involved with the Cipher wouldn’t hold up under stiff scrutiny for long. She didn’t know enough to make the story stick. She was beginning to think Mitchell suspected that, though she was certain he wouldn’t let her go, either. If anything, with the video proof he had of her guilt, the director would say she was bluffing to buy time for herself or her partners. “Let’s get back to the Cipher.” Despite her own predicament, she still wanted to protect the Cassandras if she could.

  “Sure.” Howie tapped the computer keyboard again and brought up the master file they’d created on the assassin. “Looks like we were right about the yacht crash along the Turkish coastline two months ago.”

  “The Cipher?”

  Howie brought up the news stories they’d ferreted out at Sam’s insistence. During his career, the Cipher had become a shadow, never leaving behind anything that would identify him. Ultimately, though, the leads to the Cipher came from the people who hired him.

  Despite a clean murder scene and an “accidental” death, the people who had contracted the Cipher had sometimes still fallen prey to law enforcement agencies and insurance investigators. They’d talked of the mysterious assassin-for-hire who promised a death no one would investigate.

  If the Cipher had only killed people without wealth or corporate stock or political influence, his crimes might never have been discovered. But killing those people didn’t pay.

  “I accessed the police and maritime reports concerning the crash,” Howie said.

  The newspapers and television media had published the yacht’s sudden veering out of control as the result of the boat pilot’s inebriated state at the time of the collision. The yacht had rammed two fishing vessels, resulting in four deaths besides the owner’s. All three
vessels had gone down.

  The owner had been a fifty-year-old man newly promoted to CEO of his father’s oil concerns under development in Berzhaan. Six months previously, the man had inherited his father’s controlling interest in the corporation. Upon his death, the controlling interest was disseminated among his four sons, splitting the vote and leaving the corporation open to a hostile takeover that had just happened.

  That takeover had alerted Sam to the possibility that the Cipher might have had a hand in the man’s death. Usually, the assassin’s targets had been men whose removal would trigger events favorable to governments, world leaders, political groups or financial empires. The man did not work cheaply.

  But if that was the case, why would the Cipher murder Rainy? What was there at the Athena Academy that would interest the assassin or his employer?

  She thought about the egg-mining operation that Rainy might have been subjected to while under the care of the Athena Academy staff. If she assumed Rainy had uncovered the theft of her eggs and was pursuing the truth when she was murdered, the hardest part of the whole scenario was realizing that someone from the academy might have hired the Cipher to kill Rainy.

  Sam was convinced someone had. The MO fit too tightly, and the stakes were evidently high.

  “Going over those reports last night after I left you,” Howie said, “I found details that had been omitted from the international news.” He tapped keys, and documents showed up on the monitor.

  “What am I looking at?” Sam asked.

  “Eyewitness accounts. One’s in Farsi and the other is in Italian. I know you read Italian.” Howie tapped the keys again. “I thought you might pay close attention to this section.”

  A highlighted segment of text appeared on the monitor.

  Sam read the handful of sentences quickly. “This person—”

  “One of the sexual entertainers hired to accompany the yacht,” Howie said.

  “—mentions that the pilot apparently had some kind of seizure just before the boat went out of control,” Sam said.

  “I know.” Howie tapped the keys again. Both sections, one in Italian and one in Farsi, shimmered and became sentences in English.

  Sam read through both sections. “The second statement confirms the first. The victim went down only seconds before the yacht slammed into the fishing trawlers.”

  “Right. Sounds like the Cipher’s MO, doesn’t it?”

  Sam nodded. “Was the boat owner autopsied?”

  “Yes. So were the other bodies. All of them were posted because they died a questionable death unattended.”

  “And?”

  Howie shook his head. “The tox screens came back negative. The guy had been drinking, but not enough to cause him to pass out.”

  “Was there any other physical evidence that might have caused the fainting spell?”

  “No, but there is this.” Howie tapped keys again, and a new picture filled the screen.

  The photograph on the monitor was clear, obviously taken by a professional. It showed a harbor rescue team pulling a body from the water onto a boat.

  “This was shot by a travel reporter from a helicopter,” Howie said. “She lucked onto the shot and it was used in a chain of newspapers. I found out about it and got a copy.”

  “We’ve seen this picture,” Sam said. She remembered the picture from several newspapers and magazines they’d gone through.

  “Yeah,” Howie agreed. “But we never saw a copy of the original. The guy’s death wasn’t earth-shattering, so we only saw the reduced version. Watch what happens when I blow it up.” He tapped keys again.

  Sam watched silently as the image multiplied several times. The view focused on the dead man’s left ankle. A shadow took shape there.

  “Know what it could be?” Howie asked softly.

  Studying the shadow wrapped around the dead man’s ankle, Sam recognized the image with a start. “Fingers.”

  “Yeah. Those are bruises. Evidently somebody grabbed hold of this guy’s ankle and held him under till he drowned. He must not have been completely out when he went into the water.”

  “The Cipher was there,” Sam whispered, understanding at once.

  “Right,” Howie said. “He got to the pilot somehow, with some fast-acting agent, knocked the guy out, then managed to survive the wreck and made sure of the kill he’d been hired for.”

  “We’d assumed he didn’t like to be there for the kill,” Sam said.

  “Everybody did,” Howie agreed. “Obviously the guy doesn’t take a lot of chances when he’s working a contract, but when it comes down to it, he’s not afraid of going head to head with a situation.” He paused. “That makes this guy a lot more dangerous than anybody had ever thought.”

  “I know,” Sam said, feeling excitement grow inside her, “but it also means that the Cipher was part of the group on the yacht. We’ve got copies of the film and pictures that were shot aboard the boat prior to the wreck, right?”

  Howie nodded.

  “Break it out. If we got this lucky, we might be able to identify him.”

  Riley McLane felt naked without a weapon. But getting a weapon in Berzhaan was impossible to do without drawing too much attention to himself. On guard against the Q’Rajn and the Kemeni guerrillas, the national military teams policing Suwan seemed to be everywhere. If he’d had enough cash, he could have bought a pistol from a black-market dealer. But bringing a lot of cash out of the United States and into Berzhaan was a problem, as well.

  He sat at a small table in an open-air café a few blocks from the city’s main tourist drag. The morning sun slanted across the street and left shadows pooled at the feet of the buildings on the east side. Inside the shadow of the café, the temperature was fairly moderate for the desert environment, but the heat of the day was coming.

  “Anything more I can get for you, sir?”

  Riley glanced up at the server coming over to his table. The man was young and lean, nut brown from a lifetime in the harsh sun.

  “No,” Riley replied. “I’m good.” His sweating tea glass was still half-full.

  “Of course, sir.” The server retreated to the next table, asking the same question in his broken English.

  Lounging in the chair and checking his watch frequently, Riley looked like a guy who was awaiting his wife’s return from a morning of shopping. He even wore a wedding ring to carry off the appearance. The khaki trousers and pale blue shirt featuring exotic birds completed his disguise. Wraparound sunglasses and a four-day growth of beard subtly changed his features.

  There were people in Berzhaan who could recognize him. Some of them wanted him dead, not from things that had happened there, but for things that had happened elsewhere that couldn’t be forgiven or forgotten. Riley wanted some of them dead, as well.

  He kept his attention on the man across the street. Riley’s quarry was of medium height, of Middle Eastern origins, and—by all accounts—a dangerous man. Riley had staked the man out for the last day and a half.

  Faisal Hamid, his identity confirmed through a phone call to Howie Dunn, talked on a satellite phone. He’d been caught up in his conversation for almost three minutes, doing more listening than talking.

  One of the contacts Riley had used on earlier ops in the country had pointed Hamid out as a man who was setting up munitions deals. According to the man Riley had talked to, Hamid was trying to undercut the CIA sales of weapons to the Kemenis.

  As far as Riley knew, there were no CIA-sanctioned sales of weapons to the Kemenis. Or to the Q’Rajn. The United States was actively supporting the present government in Berzhaan.

  Finished with his conversation, Hamid drained his coffee and stood. He crossed through the tables and walked to the street.

  Riley dropped money on the table to settle his bill, then followed Hamid. From what he’d been able to find out from his source, there was a woman in Hamid’s organization. Riley’s source had mentioned that she hadn’t been around in a couple months.
But the contact’s description of the woman matched Samantha St. John to a T.

  CIA involvement within Berzhaan was limited. Most of the U.S. support came in the form of troops and economic advisers and an infusion of low-interest loans garnered from American oil investors hoping to close a deal. That was why Sergei Ivanovitch’s presence and operation had gone largely undetected. The military teams didn’t share a history with Ivanovitch.

  Hamid stayed on the street, walking under the thick awnings of shops and businesses.

  Riley followed. Behind him, his hired car and driver tailed at a discreet distance. If Hamid decided to get into a vehicle at any time, Riley had that angle covered. The driver was a man Riley had used before, a guy who would stand up if things went badly, and would know enough to save himself if things turned really bad.

  A short distance farther on, Hamid turned right and stepped into an alley.

  An alarm bell went off in Riley’s head. For the last two days, he’d tailed Hamid. Without a team to work the rotation with, Riley knew he risked exposure. Even changing his appearance every day wasn’t a guarantee. During that time, Hamid hadn’t done anything more than talk on the phone. Whatever business dealings he’d had, they’d remained secret.

  Riley approached the alley, his mind rushing. The safest thing to do was keep moving and pass by without a second look. It was what he should have done, what every bit of training he’d had and every bit of field experience had taught him to do.

  But safe isn’t going to do Sam St. John any good, is it?

  During the past four nights, memories of Sam in his arms had haunted him. No matter what the digital record Mitchell had gotten from MI-6, Riley couldn’t buy the fact that Sam was guilty of treason. She’d been willing to put herself on the line to help her friends, even admitting to treasonous activity.

  Or maybe she just wanted you to think that, his more jaded side suggested. Maybe she knew that you weren’t the kind of guy to take advantage of a situation like that. Or maybe even if you had, she wouldn’t have cared.

  Those reasons and his own feelings about Sam St. John, as confusing as they were, had prompted him to cling to the medical cover long enough to get out of the U.S. and go to Berzhaan four days ago. Even then, the hope that the answer to the digital footage British intelligence had shot remained thin. Until he’d picked up the nearly invisible trail of Hamid and the woman who sometimes worked with him.