by Fiona Quinn
Medved’ was Slovak for “bear.” He was the head of the Zoric family in Slovakia. That Melina went to him directly with information about Anna was an important fact. “Thank you,” Anna said, barely moving her lips. What would they do with her now?
“You are obviously in pain. You will have time to rest after tonight. I promise.” She smiled, but it had a plastic, forced feel to it, and there was a worry line running up her forehead. “I wish to know your story. How it was that you survived and why you brought the special agent along with you.” She tipped her head and sent a scrutinizing gaze toward Anna. “How is he? Will he live?”
“His name is Special Agent Steve Finley. Do you know that name?” Anna asked.
Melina crossed then uncrossed her legs. She shifted, then tucked her feet under her hip. “Yes. He is a Zoric enemy. It would have been better had he been allowed to die under such innocent circumstances as a car accident. A blow to the head, he would no longer be a thorn to us.”
“I think he might be very helpful to us, though unwittingly so. I found him very helpful to me and my understanding of the situation.”
“He will survive his injuries then? You said he was taken by helicopter to a trauma hospital? This does not sound encouraging.”
“The last I knew he went into surgery. He had a very bad head injury. That’s all I know about his health status.”
“Alright, so from the beginning.”
“We spoke on the phone, you and I,” Anna said. “You’re right. I thought, since I was escorted by Johnathan to all the social events I attended in Washington, that when you said ‘you’ that it included Johnathan and not just me alone. I went to get him, with the storm coming there was no time for delay. As soon as I went into his house, the FBI SWAT team burst through the doors, and I was arrested.”
“What were the charges?”
“They never said. They read me my rights and started down the road. We were driving along the side of a mountain when Johnathan went nuts and started thrashing around, causing our car to go over a drop under the slick conditions of the snow storm. Special agent Mulvaney and Johnathan were both killed in the crash. Special Agent Finley was knocked out. I escaped my restraints.”
“You call him this? ‘Special Agent Finley?’”
“I called him Finley when I had to. I didn’t talk to him very much. He was messed up, and I didn’t have much reserve energy.”
Natasha walked back in with a gown in her hands. Red satin, heavily embroidered along the wide skirt. High-necked. Long sleeves edged with black fur cuffs. It was an empire cut, which would be loose across Anna’s bruised ribs and back. It would cover Anna’s injuries and would be as comfortable as one could hope for in an evening gown.
The distinctly Russian feel to it seemed purposeful.
Melina reached out and fingered the fabric, a smile slid across her face. “This will do very nicely.”
Natasha held up two shoes. They were the same shade of magenta pink as the threads in the embroidered flowers on the dress. The shoes were trimmed across the top of the foot in the same black fur at the cuffs.
“They are my bedroom slippers.” Natasha smiled. “But I think they will go nicely. See?” She pressed them against the floral embroidery. “Don’t you agree?”
Neither Anna nor Melina answered.
“And there is no back to the slippers.” She flipped them around to show the women. “Nothing to rub against your blistered heels. Under the dress, no one will see. And if they do? They will think that Anna is very fashion forward.”
“Yes, I approve.” Melina flicked her hand to shoo Natashia away. “I’ll call you in a few moments. I need to talk to Anna alone, right now.”
Natashia lifted the dress, so it wouldn’t drag the ground, and headed back to her bedroom.
“You call this man Finley. And what is it that he called you?”
“Anna,” she said. “He knows my real name.” Anna had to tell the absolute truth as much as possible even if it got her in trouble. Too many lies were just too hard to keep track of.
Melina scowled. “And you told him a story about why you have an alias? Only criminals use aliases.”
“Since I was under arrest. I think he was thinking about me as a criminal anyway. Not everyone is wrestled to the ground by the SWAT TEAM, throwing flash bang. That takes a special level of bad,” Anna said, trying push down her passive aggressive tone. “I was trying to play a good game. He’s a special agent in Washington. He has access to a lot of information. My time with the army means that my fingerprints, and biometric markers, my photos, they’re all easily accessible to him. When I got to Washington, I’d have to come clean about who I was. I thought it would serve the family best if I laid that out for him in advance. That when he verified this information, he would see me as honest and forthright.”
Melina shot her a stern look.
“He asked how I knew Johnathan. I told him that we’d met in Slovakia when I was visiting my family.”
The stern look turned to a scowl.
“If he checks my passport, he’ll see that I was there. If they check Johnathan’s passport they’ll find he was there at the same time I was, and that we were sitting next to each other on the plane ride back to the US. An innocent person wouldn’t hide any of this. He can’t indict an entire country and an entire people because of a single family, right? Anyway, I told Finley that when I met Johnathan I had used my bar name. That’s why I had been called Zelda.”
“What is this thing, a bar name?” Melina crossed her arms tightly over her chest and tucked her chin down, concentrating on their discussion.
Interrogation.
“It’s when you have a made-up name and basic biography that you use in a bar so if anyone takes video, or posts pictures, or you do something stupid that it’s associated with someone else’s name. In this story, I said that I had introduced myself to Johnathan as Zelda Fitzgerald.”
“How did Finley respond?”
“He laughed that I picked such a ridiculous name. If I had used that bar name on him, he would have known I was making it up. But the important thing is he bought my story. It’s not atypical. Women do it all the time.”
“And you ended up in America with this same name?”
“In talking with Johnathan, I became afraid that he might be involved in terrorism on the home front that was being developed through Southern Iron Cross. With my military background and oath to the United States, I decided I’d follow him home and see what I could turn up. Things had progressed to the point where I was uncomfortable using my given name, and I certainly didn’t want this SIC group to know who I was, so I decided to maintain the cover. I just needed to do everything in cash,” I told Finley. “Johnathan wasn’t the sharpest tool in the drawer. It wasn’t hard to pull off, which was a good thing because I’m trained as a soldier not as an intelligence officer.”
“Hmph,” Melina grunted. “He wasn’t more curious about how this Zelda person had pulled off such a thing? Driver’s licenses, passports, credit cards, flights?”
“First, Finley had major head trauma. He wasn’t exactly thinking clearly. But I needed to find the holes in my story. I was headed for civilization and incarceration. The FBI would interrogate me. My story would have been asked of me front and back. I would have had to go through a polygraph. They would have checked the details. It all had to mesh. And I had to believe it.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I believe I did,” Anna said. “’Zelda’ didn’t use those things around Johnathan. It wasn’t all that hard, Johnathan was a dimwit. Finley knew that, knew Johnathan was dumb and unstable. Johnathan’s level of crazy got him killed, Mulvaney killed, and almost killed Finley and me. And if it does end up killing Finley, if he doesn’t recover from his injuries…” Anna spun around to gather her teacup. She knew she couldn’t hide the horror of that thought as it shook through her system. She took a sip while she recovered her equilibrium and turned b
ack, nestling the cup in her lap.
Melina squinted her eyes with her appraisal.
“…At least the FBI knows I did my best by Finley,” Anna concluded. “I still don’t know why I was arrested and why they let me just walk out the door with a ‘We’ll be in touch.’”
“Yes, good.” She nodded. “I agree with these choices. Go ahead with your story.”
“I simply told Finley that I was trying to gather information to let the authorities know if SIC was up to something that was hostile to the United States. But everything I saw was legal. I was getting ready to leave. As a matter of fact, I had gone to Johnathan’s house the day of my arrest to tell him I was taking off.”
“But you had bought two plane tickets?”
“No, luckily I just bought the one, since I knew there was some meeting with Cal, and I wasn’t sure if Johnathan would be willing to come with me. He came with me alright – in the back of the FBI car, then he went nuts before we got to the ambush, which in the end was what saved my life. Small favors.”
Melina took in a deep breath. “We can be grateful then that he was such a moron.”
“A dead moron,” Anna said.
“His death had always been the plan. He was someone whom we could never trust. He wasn’t family.”
“And family is everything,” Anna said.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Anna
“Drink your tea.” Melina lifted her chin toward the cup and saucer resting in Anna’s lap. “I want to know how and why you saved the handsome special agent.”
“He wasn’t very handsome after the wreck. I didn’t get a good look at him beforehand. I’ll have to take your word for it.” Anna hid that lie behind the porcelain rim as she took a sip of her now tepid tea.
“Does he like you?”
“In what way ‘like me’?” Anna asked. “He’s beholden to me. For days I worked to save his life.”
“Do you think he wishes for you to be his lover?”
Anna couldn’t help it, she snorted, and quickly covered her mouth with her wrist. “We were fighting to stay alive, Melina. It’s hard to think sexy thoughts when you’re in life-threatening pain.”
“I disagree. Life-threatening situations often bring two people very close. There are times we even use this as a means to an end. Though, no one would have imagined this scenario. In our business, we can stage events. It’s typically something momentarily exciting by way of introduction and a forced, quickly-developed trust that bonds the mark to our asset.”
“Mmm. I’m on the same page. I was thinking in similar terms once I put two and two together out there. That my working to save Finley might profit the family.” Anna took another sip of tea while she quickly weighed what to say next. Go for it, she decided. Make the connection. “Along the way, he told me about Lacey Stewart.”
“Ah, you see? Lacey was his lover. He was supposed to be deep undercover as Steve Adamic, but he was so weak, he actually fell in love with his asset.” She pursed her lips together and nodded. “Finley telling you about Lacey means he was thinking in terms of relationships.”
Anna raised her eyebrows.
“Why else would he be letting you know that his – how do the Americans say it? His playing field is open?” Melina asked in English.
“He thought he was going to die. I think he was just reviewing his regrets.”
“He regrets knowing her? This is what he said?”
“He said that he made a mistake when he let himself get emotionally involved with her. She should have been off limits.”
Melina canted her head. “He wasn’t maybe putting a toe in the water, seeing if you didn’t have Zoric ties? Watching for your reaction? It’s odd to bring up this particular case with you.”
Anna looked at the ceiling while she considered her answer.
“I should tell you, that idiot Johnathan was yelling in Slovak before we went off the road.”
Melina leaned forward. “Finley speaks Slovak.”
“I know.”
“He spoke to you in Slovak?” Melina asked, eyebrows raised high. “Finley, that is?”
“We did. We spoke Slovak. We used it to try to finagle our way into a car. The car we ended up stealing.”
“He wondered at this? He asked how you knew?”
“Well yes, he did. But I told him that I was raised by my grandmother. He asked her name. I told him her married name, Bellová. Remember, I told you already that Finley and I had talked about my meeting Johnathan in Slovakia and how I followed him to the US. Anyway, he heard Johnathan yelling about money, about being paid millions. About signatures scrawled and a done deal.”
“Did he really?” A smile spread across Melina’s face. “Wonderful. Hopefully he will survive and remember this and tell it to his supervisors. That will play into our hands very nicely.”
Melina fell silent as she scrutinized Anna. Her eyes travelling up and down Anna’s body. “Still.” She drummed her fingers on her lap. “A repeating pattern. Would the FBI allow it? I bet they would. The FBI would assume Finley had learned his lesson with the Stewart girl and would be on his best behavior, but your saving his life already put his foot in the trap.”
“What are you talking about?” Anna asked.
Melina arched back and raised her voice toward the ceiling. “Natasha. Come and do Anna’s manicure, please. The time is passing.”
Anna read this as Melina buying herself some time to think.
There was absolute silence in the room as Natasha shaped and buffed, slathered and rubbed, and did her best to polish-up Anna to the point where she looked presentably lady-like for the evening.
The three moved back to the bathroom where Natasha worked on Anna’s hair as Anna perched on the toilet seat.
“You spoke with Medved’,” Anna said over her shoulder. “You made decisions. Perhaps you’d be willing to share the conversation with me and tell me why I’m going to this ball instead of going to bed to sleep.”
Anna could see Melina in the mirror. She pursed her lips like she was blowing an air kiss. Thinking. Thinking. Melina was a calculating, dangerous woman.
So was Anna.
“You escaped into the wilderness and evaded the SIC militia. This means that you figured out that they had targeted you. You had a map, the one provided to Mulvaney, which means you knew where the cabin was located, the place where they had planned to deal with the FBI special agents and Johnathan.”
“I read Mulvaney’s phone texts. I put it together. I also saw how she had been instructed to shoot me if I planned to escape. You knew that I had been ordered by SIC to escape if anyone ever tried to arrest me.”
“We did. But you were not supposed to be there. You were supposed to be flying into DC. What else did you figure out?”
“That Johnathan was due his payment. Millions. He said he fulfilled his duty, and the day he was arrested was supposed to be his payday. I figured you arranged to kill him so that payment never needed to be made.”
“Exactly.” Melina laced her fingers, stretching her index fingers out into a steeple and tapped them together. “And Finley must know the plan up at the cabin?”
“I told him. Again, he’s FBI, they’d have the resources to get the text messages whether they had the phones or not. They’d have the resources to track down the owner of that cabin. That information helps to frame my innocence. My protecting Finley and keeping him alive, hiking him out, getting him help, that all goes to my innocence and keeps me out of the criminal justice system.”
Melina’s gaze looked far away. She hadn’t focused on Anna’s words. “Of course,” Melina said. “That cabin was a hunting place and rarely in use by the owner,” she mused to herself. “The owner could feign disbelief that someone would use that property, not knowing the owner, or they were trying to set him up in some political trap. I’ll have to think about which angle is most expeditious.” She turned her attention back to Anna. “We will help to craft his public message. Bu
t from what you’ve said, you’ve exposed him to the FBI in such a way that it will not reflect on you or the family. But it will cause commotion. There will be an investigation. The investigation will eventually lead to exposure. Very, very well done,” Melina congratulated Anna.
Anna couldn’t even guess what Melina was talking about. She was obviously plotting something out. “This must be someone with some celebrity,” Anna said with a tip of her head. “Who owns it?”
Melina held up a finger in a just-a-moment gesture and walked out of the room. When she came back, she had a newspaper in her hand, the Charleston Times Gazette. She held it out to Anna.
Anna’s eye skimmed down the page reading the article about how just five years ago the now-governor of West Virginia had sold his coal mine to Russia for five-hundred million dollars. Miners in the area lost their jobs and it depressed the whole region because the Russians weren’t mining the ore. Now, that governor, Governor Justly, had purchased the mine back for five million dollars, so he could get the jobs back for the miners. He was being lauded for providing jobs for the area. Touted as a hero. “A hero?” Anna asked the air.
She looked at the section and page. The article was buried in middle of B. And it didn’t spell things out. Russia had given five-hundred-million and received back five million. That gave Governor Justly a four-hundred and ninety-five-million-dollar profit. His only loss was the five years of waiting to re-open the mine. He was considered a hero for laundering Russian money.
Huh.
“This isn’t national news?” Anna asked, looking up to catch Melina’s gaze.
“It turns out there are so many Russian stories and so many politicians in the papers these days, that this seems to be swept up with the rest and didn’t stand out as significant.”
“The governor did this to me? To Johnathan and Mulvaney? To Finley? He set us up to die?” Anna was flabbergasted.
“The governor did his part in the plan. The governor does what is asked of him, and he has his reward.” Melina tapped the paper.
Yes, almost five hundred million dollars was quite the reward. “I wasn’t supposed to be part of the plan?”
