Russian Law (Law Series ) (Volume 1)

by Camille Taylor

  Lucas looked at the screen and at the Russian letters and sank back in his chair waiting for her to tell him what they had on Ducane. Elena typed in a set of commands and Michael’s passport photo appeared on screen. She leaned back in her chair and read the information displayed.

  “No one by the name of Michael Ducane has been registered at any Russian airport but I assume known terrorists don’t travel on their own passports,” she said dryly. “However we do have Ducane leaving a Moscow hotel at ten fifty last night. The Marriot Hotel security caught him on tape meeting with Alvin Pochenchov.” She looked over at Lucas’s puzzled look and elaborated. “One of our most elusive weapons dealers. He works freelance and plays at being entrepreneur at his many nightclubs. SVR arrived a few minutes later but neither Ducane nor Pochenchov were found.”

  The slimy bastard slipped through the cracks, damn it. He couldn’t believe it they might as well give him a police escort to wherever he wanted to go. Wasn’t this once a communist country where their citizens had no rights at all? How can one man keep evading them? He wanted to hit something.

  “No offence. But you have a known terrorist enter your country and no red flags go up?”

  Elena frowned. “Are you joking? We have a summit coming up in St Petersburg this month. It may as well be Grand Central Station. So many internationals coming and going – we don’t have the resources to do background checks on all.”

  Lucas nodded, understanding. They were fighting an uphill battle and the bad guys outnumbered them ten to one easy and the moment they took one out another rose in his place.

  “Forgive me, I’m just frustrated and -”

  “I’m the nearest person,” she said, finishing his sentence. “It’s alright I understand the pressure you’re under. It can’t be easy being in your shoes.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate all your help.”

  She smiled and stood. “I haven’t helped you yet. Coffee?”

  Chapter 5

  There was something about Lucas Gates that caught Elena’s eye and had her thinking of candles and satin sheets. She had caught herself staring at his large hands more than once, at the long fingers with clean short nails. Embarrassed she felt herself blush, blood heating her cheeks until they were a rosy red.

  She had only just met the man, which to her, made everything she was feeling so much worse. It had been a long time since any man had brought this particular response to her body, which was what had surprised her the most and made her pay attention. She had noticed men of course in the past, even after Nikolai’s death, she wasn’t dead, her pulse still throbbed and her blood still ran hot but not one pair of startling beautiful eyes, strong broad shoulders or even one extremely tight bottom had caused every nerve ending in her body to sit up and take notice.

  Over the past few months her friends had tried to get her to start dating again, but she knew she wasn’t ready and wondered if she ever would be. Elena had loved with all her heart, and now that Nikolai was dead she was sure her heart had followed him. Had she had her one chance at love and now that it was gone would she be lonely for the rest of her life? she wondered.

  Her eyes flicked over the form of Lucas Gates once again, at his ruffled hair and creased clothes. What was it with that man that had her so out of sorts? What was he doing to her that made her so crazy and so warm?

  He caught her eyes and her stomach did a somersault and she quickly looked away. He didn’t appear to notice the electric charge that vibrated between them and she worried about what the hell was happening to her. She swallowed, her mouth dry and prayed her hormone surge would soon pass.

  As much as she would like to get to know Lucas more she knew she couldn’t. She was in a bad place with her emotions as it was, adding a relationship – any type of relationship - into the mix would prove volatile. Besides he had a job to do and soon he would return to the United States and she would never see him again. It would be best if she stopped thinking about him altogether. Now all she had to do was get her brain to cooperate.

  “What do you have on this Pochenchov?” Lucas asked, and she was glad for the interruption in her thoughts.

  Elena took the last sip of coffee from her cup.

  “Alvin Pochenchov was born here in Moscow in the early seventies and has sold over a million dollars worth of weapons to a variety of criminal organizations and terrorist groups. So far he has eluded arrest. He is known as the go to person for high end military grade weapons.”

  “That’s quite a bio. How is it he is still a free man?”

  Elena looked affronted. “He’s good at not being seen – much like your Ducane I’d say.”

  “Ouch,” he said, feeling the sting she had intended. He smiled. Elena Ivanova was one hell of a woman. She was also right. He certainly shouldn’t be lecturing her on something that he had yet to accomplish. “Touché.”

  “I’m sure even in your country there are men who pay their way out of trouble, that or threaten and kill to stay out of jail. He has no qualms about doing whatever he has to, to remain a free man. It‘s always about what we can prove and not what we think or know.”

  “Same shit, different country. I know that all too well,” he admitted. “Where does he get his weapons from?”

  “Mercenaries, dirty soldiers, small militia’s. You name it, he gets it and sells it to you at the double the price he paid.”

  “Talk about inflation,” Lucas commented.

  Elena nodded. “What kind of supplies will Ducane be requiring? It may give us an estimate of time. The harder to acquire the more time we might have.”

  He liked the way she thought. She had brains and beauty. A great combination in his opinion.

  “Unfortunately his shopping list is pretty easy to come by, if you have the contacts – which he clearly has,” Lucas stated. “Do you have a list of Pochenchov’s clients, maybe we can cross reference the names to those connected with Ducane.”

  “How would that help?” she enquired.

  “I don’t know. I’m grasping at straws. Ducane has never worked in Russia before and I want to know who put him in contact with Pochenchov, maybe we can squeeze him for information.”

  Elena nodded, following his line of reasoning. “I wish that could help you but all of Pochenchov’s known contacts and clients are currently serving multiple life sentences in maximum security prisons and prisons here in Russia have very little perks which don’t include phone calls or internet. They have no contact with the outside world. So setting up a meeting between a supplier and a buyer would be out of the question.”

  Lucas huffed out a deep breath.

  “So we have an arms dealer in Russia, a dead SVR agent and a known terrorist. I don’t think it could get any worse than that. I guess Zimtovich could’ve been the connection between Ducane and Pochenchov,” he wondered aloud.

  Elena typed in Igor Zimtovich into her search engine. “You’re assuming that Agent Zimtovich wasn’t there on a sanctioned mission. Perhaps he was merely following Ducane and was caught.”

  Lucas rose an eyebrow. “Is that what your computer is telling you?”

  Elena looked back down at her computer screen and read for a few moments. She looked back at him with a look of bafflement on her face. Poker player she was not.

  “What?”

  “I don’t understand. Agent Zimtovich was working as a liaison between the SVR and the FSB - another one of our agencies,” she elaborated. “There is no reason at all he should have left Russia and it isn’t the place of a liaison officer to go flitting about the world. We are always to remain in-house so to speak.”

  Lucas thought about that. He didn’t want to think that maybe she was lying, covering up for her fellow comrade. But he had to admit the possibility. He didn’t know her well enough to determine her code of ethics. Would she do as she was told if that meant lying to an American Special Agent? Were the Russian’s hiding the fact that one of their agents went AWOL when he should have remained in Russia?

/>   God this was turning out to be more complicated than he had expected.

  “Tell me, who was the agent assigned to the Pochenchov case? Assuming you have agents monitoring him and building cases against him,” he added.

  “This maybe Russia Special Agent Gates but we do try to put away the bad guy. Of course our resources are very limited and have a budget nowhere in the range of the CIA but we do our best.”

  He grimaced. “I’ve offended you again. I apologize, and its Lucas remember?”

  She gave a sharp nod. “We don’t have twenty-four hour surveillance but an Agent will be assigned, it’s his or her job to gather Intel and bring him down.”

  “Would I be able to talk to him? See if he had noticed anything in the past, give me a few leads. It couldn’t hurt.”

  “No it couldn’t,” she agreed. “I’ll get that name for you.” She turned back to her computer and again her fingers flew across the keyboard. A moment later, a file appeared on her screen and she scrolled down and her heart stopped.

  Elena swallowed hard at the lump in her throat.

  “Nikolai Nagregor,” she said barely above a whisper.

  She could barely go a day without thinking of Nikolai, to remember the life they had had and how that life had ended so abruptly. He had been the love of her life and now that love was gone and only memories were left. Good memories but memories didn’t keep a woman warm at night.

  She thought back to just a little while ago and the thoughts she had had of Lucas and her lying naked between heated sheets and suddenly felt guilty. It was like cold water had just been poured over her head and she felt the urge to roll up into a ball and cry. She knew it was an unreasonable emotion and that Nikolai himself wouldn’t blame her, would in fact encourage her to move on with her life, to find someone she could love with all her heart but in her mind she still felt married. She could still remember the feel of Nikolai beside her, kissing her, touching her. The smell of his skin and the sound of his voice.

  Lucas looked up at her face, something wasn’t right. Her face was pale and her body stiff with tension. He wondered at the change in her.

  “You know him?”

  Yes, she knew him. Nikolai, her Nikolai. She remembered the first day she had met him. He had been assigned as her supervisor when she had began working for SVR. His dark hair had streaks of grey even at thirty. She had fallen for him, hard and fast and completely. No other man had compared to him. And he had loved her. God he had loved her and she him. She had never felt more loved by anyone than she had by Nikolai. He had broken the rules for her, asking her out on a date. Normally agents were discouraged to become familiar with one another. But Nikolai hadn’t cared, never would she forget the way he had looked at her, heat in his eyes as he had asked her to dinner.

  “That wouldn’t be such a good idea,” she had replied. “Isn’t dating within the agency frowned upon?”

  Nikolai had shrugged. “I make my own rules and sooner or later Elena Ivanova I always get what I want. Something you should know since I want you.”

  It hadn’t been a threat but a promise. Her whole body had shook with desire. He had hounded her every time he saw her into complying until one day she had said yes. He had taken her to a nice romantic restaurant before walking her home and kissing her goodnight, the perfect gentleman. Within two years they had married.

  Now, she nodded. “He was my husband,” she said simply.

  Lucas looked her in the eyes.

  Husband?

  His eyes drifted to her left hand and for the first time noticed the ring adorned with a diamond on her finger.

  She was married.

  He couldn’t believe it. He usually was more observant than that. He knew the problem had been that he didn’t want to know. He had liked her, she was sassy and beautiful and had the most gorgeous smile and he had wanted to take her to bed. He felt something stir inside of him and knew it was disappointment.

  Way to focus Gates, he chastised himself.

  Wait.

  Was it just optimism on his behalf or did he actually hear the word was?

  “Was?” he asked, a weird feeling settling his stomach. Something he had never felt before that frightened the hell out of Lucas.

  Elena nodded stiffly. “He’s dead.”

  Shot. Murdered. Gone.

  Elena looked away from Lucas, out her office window. Small snowflakes continued to fall. They were in for a cold front settling in over the city. A sharp pain stabbed at her in the vicinity of her heart, a pain that never really went away but was merely hidden, buried deep beneath her grief, her guilt at arriving too late, at not being able to avenge him, in finding his killer.

  Lucas felt like an ass. “I’m sorry.”

  Elena looked back at him. “As am I but I thank you for your kind words.”

  She smiled and once again thought what a kind and sincere man he was and chided herself for wandering into forbidden territory again. Guilt once more flooded her body and she felt ashamed at her wayward thoughts. In her heart she was still married and loathed her attraction to Lucas. It had only taken the mention of her husband for her to feel disloyal and she wished with all her heart she didn’t find Lucas appealing. Nikolai had only been gone six months, but to Elena it felt like a lifetime and felt the pain of loss even more deeply now than when she had discovered his body.

  Torn, she brought her mind back to the matter at hand.

  “Nikolai was a good Agent, hardworking, dedicated. He took on the worse of the worst. He wanted to leave the world a little better than when he came into it.”

  “Sounds like a good man,” he commented and wondered what it would take for a woman to hold a candle to him long after his own death. He felt an unexpected twinge of jealously and envied the dead man.

  “He was.”

  “When?” he asked, feeling like an intruder or worse an interrogator.

  “Six months ago.”

  Lucas leaned back in his chair and contemplated. “It seems awful convenient for Pochenchov, your husband’s death,” he noted.

  Don’t get her started, she thought. She had been down that road before. Pochenchov was one of her top suspects in Nikolai’s murder.

  “A lot of people benefited from Nikolai’s death, a lot of bad people,” she said. Elena looked away for a moment, tears threatening to spill as they always did when she thought of Nikolai’s short life. When she felt composed she turned back to face Lucas. “Nikolai kept scrupulous records. I doubt he could’ve told you more than what is in this file. I’ll be happy to translate it for you.”

  “I appreciate that.” He looked about the room. “I think in the mean time, I might do some recon. See if I can’t track this Pochenchov down.”

  “And what do you plan on doing if you happen to stumble across him?” Elena asked, concerned.

  “I think I’ll ask him where Ducane is,” Lucas replied simply.

  “And what makes you think he’d tell you?”

  “I’m a very persuasive man Elena.”

  She smiled. “Of that I have no doubt. Be careful Special Agent Gates I hear Pochenchov isn’t a very nice man,” she warned.

  “That’s okay,” he told her. “The same has been said about me from time to time.”

  “This isn’t the United States Lucas, good agents don’t seem to live long here. If you need anything here is my card.”

  She produced a card from her pocket of her suit jacket and handed it to him, it was still warm from her body. She must have had it there for him waiting until she could give it to him.

  “Thank you and I promise you I will be careful.”

  He picked up his coat from the back of the visitors chair and walked out the door leaving Elena to clean up the files. She couldn’t believe her luck, of the thousands of agents in the building her case had to involve Nikolai.

  Half an hour later, Elena was filing away a folder into her file cabinet when there was a knock on her door which was immediately opened by Agent Alexei
Dmitrovich. He was dressed in a black suit and a white dress shirt, of all the years she had known him, Elena had never seen him in anything but. No jeans, no polo’s just suit pants and dress shirts. His dark hair was combed and parted to one side. He was a handsome man she supposed but she had never looked at him that way. He had always been overshadowed by Nikolai in her eyes and after Nikolai’s death he was too close a friend to consider him in that way. Not that she had ever thought of pursuing him but she could see his allure to other woman.

  Alexei had been Nikolai’s best friend. They had met at the Academy and bonded instantly. He had also been the best man at her and Nikolai’s wedding and after Nikolai had been murdered, had taken it upon himself to make sure she kept her sanity. A tough job considering what a basket case she had been and was very grateful to him for that. After all she wasn’t the only one who had lost Nikolai.

  “Elena,” he greeted and looked about her office as if expecting the entire Red Army to be camped behind her desk. “Am I interrupting anything?”

  Elena shook her head as she made her way to greet him. “No, I’m just cleaning up.”

  Alexei smiled and gave her a quick hug. She was always his friend first and a fellow agent second. “How are you?”

  His dark eyes bored into hers daring her to lie to him. She had tried it once and had suffered the consequences. Since then she always told him the truth. She liked the fact that he cared enough to call her out on her lies when she had wanted to be left alone with her pain.

  “I’m fine, Alexei really. Thank you.”

  And she was, she would never get over losing her husband. She would never stop loving him and she still felt angry at the thought that he was taken from her far too early. They had had so little time together.

  Life sucks and then you die.

  Nikolai’s favorite saying passed through her head. He had often said those six words to her when life didn’t go their way. A hint of a smile moved her lips a fraction at the memory.