by Thomas Waite
She watched them keenly as they checked their boats, each studying the height of their hulls. A man raised two fingers. She thought he was flashing the peace sign until he called to the others: “Two days. And then we have to leave.” He shrugged and shook his head.
Two days, that’s a long time to sit and wait with a sick girl. Too long, Galina decided at once. But she might persuade one of them to leave sooner. In the morning, when the men had their morning coffee and rolls in their bellies, she would find out just what PP’s money could buy. She would don her big dark glasses and a headscarf, but if she were recognized, she might also find out if it were true that the enemy of your enemy could be your friend.
Oleg had enjoyed his respite in Voronezh. Once he closed and locked the door to the room in the monastery and pushed the young woman onto the bed, the women’s tongues started wagging, if not the way he would have preferred with the novitiate, certainly in a manner that made him comfortable with the progress of their tête-à-tête.
He determined very quickly, for instance, that Galina and cancer kid had stayed at the monastery, now occupied by nuns. He thought the monks of old would turn over in their dusty graves if they knew all those menstrual cycles were churning within their once-sacred stone walls. Who could blame them? It made Oleg shudder, and he knew he was a man of the world, not of cloistered celibate living.
But he hadn’t been able to confirm the car Galina had been driving until he’d taken special measures. They’d balked, naturally, when he asked, even when he cupped his hand around the novitiate’s soft neck and shook her like the proverbial rag doll. And when she still wouldn’t say, he’d squeezed harder and lifted her hem to the horror of that dried-up old nun, who started saying, “Peugeot, Mercedes, Toyota” in such a frightened voice that he knew she would have said anything that might have stopped him from throttling the young woman. But why would he want to stop? How silly. Her flesh was so soft, so yielding, and he could feel her neck cords tightening—just like his pants.
“You really don’t know, do you?” he asked the nun.
“No, no. I’m so sorry.”
“So you lied to me. ‘Peugeot, Mercedes, Toyota.’” He pushed the novitiate’s face into a pillow, as though to smother her, but then released her, saying, “Don’t move or I’ll kill you.”
“You,” he turned to the nun, “I have a special treat for.”
He pulled out his knife and used it like an index finger across his own lips to indicate his sincere desire for silence. He even said “please” without making a sound, mouthing the request, modeling the behavior he was demanding of them in his most persuasive manner.
Then he pressed the blade against the nun’s lips, surprisingly succulent up close, puffy enough to part deliciously with just a tiny bit of pressure. The thinnest line of blood swelled appreciatively, exciting him immensely. The line became drips and dribbles that spilled down her chin, leaving a nice fat track.
He spoke, keeping the blade in place. But he wasn’t a cruel man; he refrained from slicing through to her gum. Instead, he just wiggled it slightly when she tried to back away. But there’s always a wall. “Don’t you know that?” he said to her. Of course, she had no idea what he was thinking. She just shook her head. But that stopped very quickly with the red blade back in place.
“Are you absolutely sure you could not see her car, even though you still have eyes?”
He knew she’d seen it, felt it in his very fiber. She might not know the make of the car but she’d seen it. He saw the truth in her eyes. He’d cut them out if he had to.
“Silver,” she gulped. “Like those cars for camping.”
Remembering all that fear now as he drove to Sochi made him laugh because only a nun wouldn’t have known enough to call it an SUV.
But that still made no sense. What would Galina be doing with—
Oleg shook his head in wonder. What was it, a month or two ago when he’d heard PP talking to Dmitri as if moron boy were actually intelligent enough to make sense of anything more complicated than his shoelaces? PP had been telling Oleg’s hulking younger brother about a new car Porsche was making.
As Oleg drove swiftly away from the monastery, he called a Moscow-area Porsche dealership. Yes, the Macan was available in silver.
He speed-dialed PP, who did not deign to pick up, so Oleg spoke slowly into the answering machine: “You bought that Porsche SUV, didn’t you, PP? And then you loaned it to Galina, didn’t you, PP? Silver. Isn’t it, PP? And that means you are aiding and abetting a known terrorist, aren’t you—”
PP picked up as Oleg presumed he would.
“What are you talking about?” PP demanded.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. You loaned Galina a new car and told no one, even though you knew she and her kid are wanted for murder. You didn’t even tell me, and I was there.”
“You would have found nothing here.”
“I would not have found your new Porsche, that’s for sure. I will turn you in, PP. I’m much more important now. I have influence. You don’t.” It felt immensely satisfying to state the obvious, force it right into the old bastard’s face.
PP didn’t respond. Oleg relished the silence, the power of a father cowed by the strength of his son.
“Tongue-tied, PP?”
“I know nothing of what you think she’s done. Nothing. I doubt she’s even done it, whatever you think it is.”
“She murdered a war hero and police sergeant. It’s on the news. You know what she did. The medical examiner says he was murdered. The police say by her. Don’t try to pretend that you don’t know what she did. And do not try to protect her. You have many enemies, PP, none so powerful or important as I. So simply tell me yes or no about the car and give me the plate number.”
Another long pause followed, but this time PP spoke up: “Yes.” Then he hung up.
Oleg figured PP was trying to preserve his dignity by not providing the number. Old men don’t have dignity; he also knew that to be true. They have only memory, and memory is a slippery whore like Galina. He had ample proof of that. He drove into Sochi at sunset, the town that had been cursed by the Olympics. It used to be packed with tourists enjoying the sunshine in a country mostly cloaked by clouds. But since the Olympics, even the Russians had stopped coming. Right now, that was good, though: so few people would make it easier for him to flush Galina and cancer kid from whatever hive they’d found.
He drove to the local police headquarters and met with the superintendent. Oleg dropped names and made promises of promotion. Then he provided photographs of Galina, all of them taken secretly as she enjoyed the pleasures of his body.
“You can see she’s not just a killer, she’s a dangerous whore,” he said.
“The most devious traitors are like that. Killers, too,” the superintendent said.
After raising a smile on the man’s face—and likely another part of his anatomy as well—Oleg knew he had the complete cooperation of the department.
“I should also tell you that she is not above trying to trade her body for freedom when she’s caught. You might want to know that. She’s very, very good.”
The superintendent assured him the search for Galina Bortnik would be thorough, indeed.
In less than a half hour, a motorcycle officer learned that a woman in a fancy silver SUV had bought takeout latkes.
“But she is not staying in Sochi,” the superintendent told him twenty minutes later. “Every hotel and inn has been checked. I took the liberty of providing the most identifying photos—of her, of course.”
He and Oleg shared a smile.
“Where would you go, if you were her?” Oleg asked.
“To bed,” the superintendent said, “with me.”
They laughed. Oleg considered him a fool, but listened closely when the man turned serious and said, “Not south. Sh
e’d run right into passport control in Abkhazia.”
Both men shook their heads at the brutal prospect of spending any time in a country so ruined by strife.
“But up north, you know what the criminals say?” the superintendent asked him.
“No, what do they say?” Oleg dutifully played the straight man.
“That both the trees and boats are thick but only the boats can save you. And I can see,” the superintendent stared at a particularly graphic photo of Galina, “that losing her would be a crime.”
“Thank you. You are a smart man. I will commend you to the Minister for Internal Affairs.”
Oleg left him smiling. But the hours of the day were not so kind to him: he would accomplish very little at night in the municipalities that lay before him. So he took a room in Sochi and checked the financial news online.
The ruble was reigning supreme among the world’s currencies. He had bought many millions of them weeks ago. In the United States they would have called that insider trading, and they might have prosecuted you for it—depending on your station in life. In Russia they would have called it the same thing, but if you were Oleg or others like him, they would only congratulate you for your sharp business acumen.
With that profitable business aside, he contacted Numero Uno, who started whining again.
“Just tell me,” Oleg interrupted, “how is Grisha Lisko?”
“Grisha is very good. Grisha is busy. Grisha is ready. The question is, are you?”
“Not yet, but you must be ready at any moment.”
To die, Oleg thought, for having the audacity to question him.
Under the cover of darkest night, Galina received an urgent message from Lana Elkins. They met on the IRC in seconds.
“I’ve been tracking Dernov’s data. He’s in Sochi. Is that close to you?”
Galina’s groin tightened. “You tell me,” she replied, wanting to shut off all her electronic devices immediately. Though surrounded by trees, she’d found another satellite dish in the small fishing village. But if she could do that, Oleg might be able to track her.
“I will tell you that we’re coming to get you,” Lana said.
“I think,” Galina typed slowly, feeling the night air close in around her, “that you are not the only one.”
CHAPTER 21
LANA HAD BARELY GOTTEN over the shock of seeing Don’s persuasive smile—and settling across from him knowing they’d been impressed into service together on the high seas under high stress—when she’d been yanked from the secure conference room by an urgent message from Jeff Jensen.
In the seclusion of her office, he’d shown her Dernov’s metadata stream, which placed him in Sochi. She’d contacted Galina in the next few seconds. The woman’s reaction had left little doubt that she was not far from the Olympic city, either—and the monster who stalked her.
Lana now rushed back to the SCIF, knowing it was time to compartmentalize—and quickly—by putting Oleg aside to deal with Doper Don.
On her second go-round with Doper Don she refused to be taken in by his grin. Instead, she bored right into his recent past: “You worked for the DEA?”
“Do we have time for this?” he replied.
“Yes, you do,” Holmes asserted as he entered the conference room on Lana’s heels. “I want you two sorting out whatever needs sorting out right here, right now. If you need a couples counselor—”
“We’re not a couple,” they both exclaimed in unison, Lana furious at what Holmes—or Don, for that matter—might perceive as the cute synchrony of their response.
“Be that as it may,” Holmes went on, “we have a mediator on hand to make sure whatever issues plague you two get put aside.”
“I don’t think we’ll need anyone,” Lana said.
“As long as you both leave here knowing there’s no room for personal animosity. And you’ll do it in the next fifteen minutes because there’s a flight waiting for you. Have I made myself clear?” Holmes stared at Don, which Lana took as a pledge of good faith in her own professionalism.
“What else is up?” she asked Holmes. She didn’t believe for a moment he’d come into a highly secure room to urge them to get along. She was right:
“We’re having difficulty communicating with our contact on the Black Sea coast.” His gaze was back on Don. “Do you have a charter you could pull out of a hat there?”
“Maybe,” Don replied.
“Come with me,” Holmes said.
When Don returned ten minutes later with Holmes, the deputy director said their flight could be delayed “a bit.” Then with a smile, he added, “Go to it.”
As he left the SCIF, Lana had only to raise her eyebrows to finally get Don’s answer about the DEA.
“Yes, I worked for them. I didn’t have much choice. Do you know how much they caught me with?”
She did, but wasn’t about to let on to him that she’d been interested enough in his criminal proceedings to read the court record, so she gave him her most censorious look and asked, “Are you going to brag?”
“No, of course not. But it was more than four thousand pounds. A lot of bud. I had to make a deal.”
“Four thousand pounds? Wasn’t that a bit much for a forty-two-foot sloop?” recognizing, as she referred to the B. Marley, that she might just have given away her close examination of his case.
“A little,” he admitted, “but my plan was never to try to outrun anyone in a freaking sailboat. I was trying to blend in. Look, Lana, when they offered me a deal, I had to take it. And now they’re offering to expunge my record if I get that woman and her kid out of Russia. They need people like me, obviously.”
“Drug smugglers?”
“No! People who know high-end sailing and navigation. I’m talking about when all your electronics go down and all you have left are the stars, and you have to sail in the black of night through hostile territorial waters with channel markers and buoys disappearing, and crowded with all kinds of boats trying to stay clear of land with the oceans rising. Not to mention the Russian Navy.”
She could buy the need for criminals like him, but not the more startling Doper Don news of late: “Did you actually tell the deputy director of the National Security Agency that you’re looking to get back together with Emma and me? I can accept that they gave you a great deal. I can even accept that there’s an ounce of patriotism in you that might just possibly outweigh the tons of drugs that have passed through your greedy hands, but I can’t accept that a man who abandoned his two-year-old daughter and wife to play a stoned version of Pirates of the Caribbean really gives a damn about his family.”
“Quite a speech.” He stared at her. “Do I get to respond?”
“Sure. Be my guest.”
“I made a huge mistake. I’m looking to make amends. I’ve risked my life to take down some real savages in Colombia who would have delighted in torturing me slowly to death. I was a shitty husband and father. I was irresponsible. I’m the opposite of all that now. And, believe it or not, I’m the right person for the job.”
“Give me a break, Don. It’s a big country. There are thousands of qualified sailors. Not all of them with a nickname that pays homage to illicit drugs.”
“By the way, I would appreciate it if you’d stop referring to me that way in front of my daughter.”
“I’ve never called you that in front of her.”
He seemed delighted. “Well, thank you.”
“I fight fair.”
“As for those thousands of sailors you just mentioned, they’re really busy right now. I could clear a couple grand a day, if I were a free man.”’
Undeniably true. In the past few days, the nautical world had been turned upside down. Yacht owners were desperate for their captains—any captains—to save their floating palaces, but the captains generally worked for several boat o
wners at once; few ocean gentry had them on the clock twenty-four seven. Plus, the feds, under emergency provisions, had forced the recruitment of thousands of seamen who had served in various government capacities—merchant marine, Coast Guard, and so forth—just as they had impressed them in past centuries. They needed them to keep harbors from getting obstructed by boats breaking loose from their moorings—or by their wealthy owners scuttling them to make a quick insurance claim in a time of crisis, which had happened with such abandon after the 2008 financial collapse.
In short, skilled sailors were in unprecedented demand by the public and private sector—and making more money than ever. Except for Don:
“Instead,” he went on, “I’m still earning twenty-three cents an hour. That’s my prison wage and will be for the foreseeable future.”
“You’re saying you’re a bargain?”
“A great one.”
“Just answer one question for me. Answer it honestly, and we can tell Holmes we’re good to go and get moving: Why are you doing this? For real now, Don.”
“Because somebody set off a nuclear missile. Because in addition to the flooding, radiation is sweeping all over the earth. Because I have a daughter I love. And, goddamn it, I have an ex-wife who does incredibly important work for a country I want to serve. And nobody will take better care of you, Lana, than I will. I will get you in there, and I will get you out.”
He was so fierce, so impassioned, he almost convinced her. She suspected a residue of doubt would always remain.
“You realize, Don, that if we get caught, we’ll be leaving Emma an orphan.”
“You’re that sure they’ll kill us?”
“I’m that sure they’ll kill you and never let me go.”
He nodded somberly.
“So did you really find a charter over there for us?” she asked.
