by Alex Carlson
His eyes narrowed. He became angry.
“Where is the bitch?” he spat. The muzzle of the gun bore down on them and he worked it in his hand as though preparing to shoot.
Svitlana Tereshchenko had not yet emerged from the safe room and the man’s eyes darted around the room.
“Where is she?” he screamed
Then his eyes looked at the hole in the floor and he understood. His face softened in satisfaction.
He calmly dropped the grenade and detached another from his belt, this one more hideous and threatening than the first. They knew he’d hurl it into the hole.
He moved the grenade to his mouth and clamped his teeth down on the pin.
And then a geyser erupted from the side of his head, a mixture of gelid matter and shards of bone surrounded by a pinkish mist. Some notion of surprise registered on his face as his entire body hung in the air for an eternity before it followed the jet of brain matter that had come from the bullet’s exit wound. He toppled to the side and lay still on the ground. A spurt of blood shot out from the small entry wound and continued to gush until the heart stopped pumping and the circulation subsided.
RHYS HAD JUST made it to the front corner of the hut when the old Russian had reached the top of the steps. Rhys stole a moment to secure the gun in a good two-handed grip and focus what remained of his concentration. He then literally fell forward, twisting to his side and firing the gun while ensuring his aim.
The hit was nauseating, reminding Rhys of the famous photo from Vietnam, when a suspected Viet Cong loyalist was executed on a street in Saigon. Yet the Russian on the porch remained standing for a stubbornly long time, as though refusing to admit defeat, even in death. When he finally fell and disappeared from view, Rhys lost all strength and collapsed, letting the gun fall to the ground. He closed his eyes.
Tyler flew out the door, followed by Colin. Rhys opened his eyes and gathered enough strength to communicate.
“Manny,” he said weakly. “He’s out there.”
He didn’t know how it happened, but the next thing he knew he was inside the hut, lying on the floor and being attended to by Lucinda and some woman he presumed was the next president of Ukraine. He doubted a trained nurse could have been more competent. They comforted him, reassured him, cleaned his wounds, and, eventually, applied gauze to his face.
A couple of minutes later, Tyler returned to the hut. Manny hung from his arms, his leg raised in pain, but the hint of a smile on his face. It was over. They had made it. Manny would come to him, they’d share a knowing smile, an understated acknowledgement that despite all odds, they had pulled it off.
But Manny didn’t go to him. His eyes glanced over to Rhys but passed over him quickly, clearly searching for someone else. He was indifferent to Rhys’ plight.
Instead, his eyes locked on Lucinda and hers on him. She rushed to him and they embraced—an embrace that spoke volumes and left no doubt about the nature of their relationship. It also explained why Manny Hernandez had been so adamant about getting up this damn mountain.
Rhys gave them a moment, but really he was trying to process what he was witnessing.
“Let me get this straight,” he said, feeling humor and love and optimism return to his being. “Lucinda is your Olga?”
Manny smiled sheepishly.
C
HAPTER THIRTY-SIX
THE LOCALS WERE incensed. Laws exist for a reason, and they apply to everyone in the jurisdiction. They were not to be flouted.
Numerous accounts had reported gunfire high up in the mountains. Some even claimed that multiple weapons were being fired. It was all quite outrageous. An old woman in a farmhouse on Michelsburgstrasse was the first to report gunfire in the early afternoon. Some time later, in the early evening, a family who lived alongside the smooth-flowing Zleinitzbach reported another series of gunshots. Numerous individuals called the gendarmerie to report extended shooting and an odd bright light high up on the mountain around midnight.
Somehow, the message had to be reiterated so that there were no misunderstandings: hunting season begins on June 1, and not the day before. Perhaps there ought to be a prohibition against outsiders hunting in Carinthia, despite the certain loss of revenue.
The town council in Oberdrauburg promised to raise the issue at the state legislature in Klagenfurt.
Despite the local outrage, no arrests were made. Nor, for that matter, did authorities find much in the way of corroborating evidence. Although the locals never saw them, a team of SEALS did finally arrive by Blackhawk helicopter an hour after the last shot had been fired. They established a security perimeter around the safe house while Manny detailed on a map where the bodies could be found. Rhys tried to contribute, but his face had swollen up like a grapefruit and his tongue kept slipping through the hole in his chin.
Soon enough, the Tereshchenkos, Lucinda, Colin, Tyler, Rhys, and Manny, were loaded into the helo and evacuated while the SEALS performed clean-up duty. It wasn’t what they travelled four thousand miles to do, but they did their task efficiently and professionally and found most of the bodies before dawn. They never found the cave Manny described and thus never found the two truncated bodies outside its mouth. Everyone figured nature would take care of them. If not, then not. Nonetheless, Langley monitored local news reports. Fortunately, there were no stories of anything unusual turning up in the Carinthian Alps.
The Blackhawk landed at the American Air Force Base in Aviano, Italy. Lucinda and Colin escorted the Tereshchenkos to a quickly and quietly arranged vacation property on Lago di Santa Croce, telling no one of the location. Lucinda did, however, enlist extra security. Meanwhile, Rhys and Manny were brought to the Aviano military hospital, where doctors were familiar with such wounds. They were quickly mended.
The doctors weren’t miracle workers, however. There would, in fact, be a scar on Rhys’ chin and it would be there for the rest of his life. Rhys figured he wasn’t winning no beauty contests anyway, so it didn’t much matter. Still, the scar—combined with hair that just wouldn’t do what he told it to—made him look like a wild man.
More painful were his gums. The knife had sliced clear through the skin and had cut to the roots of his teeth. The wound would heal, but the pain required painkillers and his face remained all bandaged up for a few days, a condition that limited his eating to sipping through a straw and completely prevented him from speaking. He didn’t much mind not being able to talk. He just wanted to sleep.
The grazed thigh scabbed over and scarring would take place there as well. He didn’t care much about that, but it did hurt when he pulled up his jeans.
His body was racking up scars. The chin and the thigh were added to a puckered bullet wound in his shoulder from a previous incident. The bullet’s exit wound on his back had been worse and had required a skin grafting from his leg.
All told, he was a mess.
Manny’s wound was never life threatening. Scharkov’s final wild barrage from the AK had successfully taken him out of the fight. One of the bullets ricocheted off Manny’s M40 and lodged into his thigh, just above the knee. The doctors dug it out, cleaned the wound, and sewed him up. Healing would just take time, first in a wheel chair, then on crutches. They offered him a cane, but he refused and spent a couple of days limping around the hospital.
After a week, the hole in Rhys’ chin had healed to the point where he could drink beer without drooling. Rhys and Manny were discharged and they rented a car and drove back to Berlin, stopping in Munich, where Rhys made good on his promise to drink Manny under the table. They went first to the Hofbräuhaus, where they each drank a couple of Maß before staggering to the Augustiner beer hall, where they ate Schweinshaxe and vinegary Bavarian potato salad and drank a few more liters. By the end of the night, they were in a small bar near the university drinking Weißbier mixed with a shot of banana juice, too drunk to realize that banana juice didn’t much improve a wheat beer and that the concoction was probably put on the menu for wo
men.
They spent the next day lounging near the Pagoda in the English Garden, lying under the warm sun in the soft grass as they slept off their hangovers, sleep that was disturbed by the subconscious memories of recent experiences. In the late afternoon, they climbed into the car and drove the final stretch to Berlin, arriving sometime after midnight.
A WEEK PASSED before Rhys got the call. He spent most of that time paging through Motorrad und Reisen and the Touratech catalogue. He hadn’t had much luck with BMWs and thought his next bike might be a KTM, an impressive looking bike, or maybe a Triumph, which even with the stock exhaust had the greatest sound on the planet. It depended on the size of the check from Stirewalt. Either way, he hadn’t given up on his dream to ride a motorcycle around the world.
The summons, when it came, didn’t surprise him; there was unfinished business and he had yet to debrief. That Sophia Venegas, not Lucinda Stirewalt, contacted him did surprise him. It meant State was involved in what should have been an Agency affair. He also had kinda wished that they would meet in Lucinda’s office on Clayallee. He always felt he needed to dress up when he went to the embassy.
It was a glorious Friday afternoon, the type of weather that made Berlin’s winters endurable, so Rhys decided to walk. He left his apartment on Torstrasse, cut down past the Volksbühne, which always reminded him of East Berlin’s communist past (though it was built at the end of the Kaiserreich), and then continued past Alexanderplatz. He crossed the Spree and walked along Unter den Linden, crossing the avenue just before he reached the Russian Embassy. As he walked by the building, he looked up at the security camera and scratched his scar with his middle finger.
He arrived at the American Embassy next to the Brandenburg Gate and presented his passport to security. The guard scanned it, confirmed the appointment, and buzzed Rhys inside. Rhys was ushered upstairs and brought directly to Venegas’ office.
Sophia stood when she saw him, a heartfelt smile on her face. Rhys had forgotten how insanely beautiful she was. She was as ravishing as she was competent and accomplished. He diverted his eyes, lest she divine what he was thinking.
She approached and drew him in for a hug. He resisted, awkwardly, knowing he wouldn’t be able to avoid feeling her breasts pressed against him. It was somehow wrong to sexualize her. Still, it felt so good.
“Thank you, Rhys. The Tereshchenkos are safe. A team from State and the Agency are working with them. We’d be dealing with a bigger tragedy if it weren’t for what you did.”
Rhys nodded and looked away. “Yeah, well, Manny had something to do with it.”
“I’m sure he did.” Sophia smiled, appreciating Rhys’ modesty and hinting at the office gossip. “I’m happy for them,” she said. “I don’t know how the relationship will work, but let them enjoy it while they can. Besides, the arrangement might soon change.”
Rhys looked at her.
“Have a seat,” she said, as she returned behind her desk and sat down. “I want to talk to you before we join the others.”
He sat and folded his hands in his lap.
“Rhys, you’re going to hate this.”
“Hate what?”
“We’ll explain inside, but I wanted to warn you so you’re not caught off guard. Just try to keep your temper in check.”
“I don’t really have much of a temper.”
“Then I ask only that you listen with an open mind.”
“What are you talking about, Sophia?”
“Setting the chessboard.”
SOPHIA LED RHYS to a secure conference room at the other end of the embassy’s third floor. She opened the door without knocking. Sitting at the round table inside were Lucinda, Manny, and Dmitri Petrov, the Russian ambassador to Berlin. The room had a single window, but it revealed another room, which was appointed like a hotel room, minus a bed. On the sofa in the side room sat a man racing his thumbs over the keyboard of his smartphone. His obliviousness told Rhys that the window was a two-way mirror. If he was smart enough to know he was being watched, he didn’t show it.
“How are you, Rhys?” Lucinda’s voice level was normal. Sound-proof glass.
“Alright.”
“Good to see you, Mr. Adler,” said Petrov, standing. “I’d offer to shake your hand, but you’d probably spit in it.”
Rhys glared at him. There was already bad blood between the two, and the incident in the Alps additionally implicated Petrov, fair or not. What was he doing here? Rhys didn’t like where this was going.
Rhys sat in a chair between Manny and Sophia as Petrov lowered his tall, thin frame back into his seat.
“Where’s McClellum?” asked Rhys.
Sophia dismissed the thought of the American ambassador with a flick of her hand. “He’s off opening some library or something in Bielefeld.” McClellum excelled at that sort of thing.
“Let’s begin,” said Lucinda, taking over. She leaned over the desk. An unused pencil lay across a blank legal pad.
“When the Agency got the Tereshchenkos out of Ukraine, I was tapped to sit them. I knew Svitlana from security conferences we had both attended. Langley picked a safe house in the Netherlands, but I switched it to the one in Carinthia because, frankly, I thought it would be more pleasant for everyone to be in the Alps rather than in Rotterdam. It had the same security level, so that wasn’t an issue. What I didn’t know was that there was someone at Langley who would reveal whatever location was chosen to the Russians.”
There it was, thought Rhys. A mole. He turned his head and looked at the man diddling with his phone on the other side of the glass. Was that him? The man was in his late forties, tense and muscular with dark cropped hair, though Rhys could tell by looking at him that he’d never been in the military.
“Yes,” said Stirewalt. “That’s him. His name is Jerod Hunter. He was a fixer on the president’s campaign, and the new administration put him on the Russian desk at Langley. He’s there to ensure that Russia’s interests are represented.”
“Is the president clueless or corrupt?”
“Both, but in this case corrupt,” said Stirewalt.
Rhys looked at Petrov and then at Lucinda. “Should you be revealing this?”
“Dmitri knows. He provided the proof of Hunter’s involvement.”
“Your president has a complicated relationship with Russia,” said Petrov, his accent strong despite his command of English. “Neither his opponents nor the press ever quite figured it out. Our intelligence services have much on him. Not the salacious stuff you read about on liberal blogs, but enough so that certain arrangements have been made to grease the wheels of a productive, mutually beneficial relationship between your president and ours. A free hand in Ukraine was one of Putin’s demands.”
Rhys didn’t have strong feelings about the president, largely because he simply didn’t think about him. He hated the idiotic ambassador the president had appointed, but that was it. This, however, changed everything. And he hoped Jerod Hunter was enjoying his time with his phone. He was about to die.
He looked at Manny. Manny’s eyes bore into him, his rage barely contained. For him, it was personal.
“No,” said Lucinda, reading their thoughts. “That’s not going to happen. The potential is too high.”
“Potential for what? He deserves to die,” said Manny.
“Yes, he does, but he’s not going to. He’s going to deliver to us what we want.”
Rhys respected Stirewalt but hated her modus operendi. She had done the same thing with Petrov, who also deserved to die but now had a seat at the table.
“This is what will happen,” said Sophia. “Hunter stays in his job. He will be talked to. The leverage we have over him will motivate him to convince POTUS to reconsider his agreement with Putin. Dmitri will provide cover. Also, Hunter will grease the wheels to get Lucinda promoted in the Agency. We’re thinking Deputy Director of Operations.”
Rhys hated it but he appreciated the magnitude of the opportunity. They now had someo
ne in their pocket to exert influence on both the Agency and the president.
“Meanwhile,” continued Sophia, “Dmitri and I will establish a more reasonable backchannel between Washington and Moscow.”
“And McClellum?”
“We’ll keep in place for the time being. There are enough Bielefelds in Germany to keep him occupied."
The room was silent. They were indeed setting up a chessboard, though Rhys didn’t know where it would end. He didn’t like it but it wasn’t his call. Still, the whole arrangement hinged on Jerod Hunter’s cooperation.
“Fine,” was all Rhys could think to say. “But Jerod Hunter here might be more cooperative if he were introduced to a real hunter.” He nodded toward Manny. The implication was clear.
“That is not necessary,” said Petrov. “I have had the same thought, though it would be better if the pressure came from our side.”
Both Rhys and Manny looked at him.
“The two of you decimated RG 405, but not entirely. One got away.” He focused his eyes on Manny. “I believe you and he had a moment at the end of your long night in the Alps.” Petrov paused, knowing Manny would remember the sniper. “He sends his respect, by the way, and wanted me to tell you it was not personal. In fact, he would like to meet you. In the right location, of course.”
THE NEXT MORNING, a Saturday, Rhys rode his secondary bike (an old R75 that he finally got working properly again—a warped piston ring had led to a sudden loss of power while accelerating) to Lucinda’s office at the embassy annex on Clayallee. He went through the usual hassle at security and was escorted to her office. Despite his misgivings, he’d accept the resolution of the situation. He didn’t want to talk about it.
“It will never work, you know,” he said after he settled into a wooden chair in her office.
Lucinda looked at him, unsure what he meant.
“You and Manny.”
She looked away. “I know. It’s not really something we wanted. It just kinda happened. He’s headed to The Farm soon for more training and I might be headed to Langley anyway. We’ll see what happens. In the meantime, we’ll take it one night at a time.”
