The Right Hand

by Derek Haas

  He hadn’t slept. As the plane touched down, he felt the jostle of the tires hitting the runway right inside his temples. A ladder butted up to the plane, and he and the others stepped down to waiting black vans, one for the heads and the other for their aides. Adams had chosen to fly solo, leaving Warren back in LA to begin managing the transition, and maybe that was why he hadn’t gotten any winks while airborne.

  Contreras, the Dallas head, swiveled in his seat to face Adams. “You need to get some rest, Michael. You look like hell.”

  “I’ll nap at the hotel. What time are we meeting Fourticq?” Fourticq was the outgoing head of EurOps. Adams knew the meeting would start at 8 p.m. local time, in a little over three hours, but he felt compelled to make small talk. He didn’t listen to the answer, but his question got the other men chatting and gave him the opportunity to check out.

  He looked at the back of the driver’s head as they passed old factories on the outskirts of Prague. The man had a shaved pate, and a couple of scars snaked across the back of it, as if someone had attempted to knife him but had slipped. The guy must work for EurOps—if he had been assigned the job of transporting four of the CIA’s most senior officers, he must’ve been thoroughly vetted.

  Adams realized how little he thought about such things anymore. He had been hiding in plain sight for so long he almost believed his life was normal.

  But something about the scars on the driver’s head brought him back to reality: he knew many dark secrets that men around the world would like to know.

  A bad feeling settled over him, like an omen. He told himself it was just because he was tired.

  Marika sat on a bench forty meters away while Clay repeated the cell phone trick. Stedding sounded resigned.

  “You’re to drop Marika Csontos at the American embassy like before.”

  “Change of plans.”

  “I knew you would say something like that,” his handler spat, focusing his anger through the line so it would be unmistakable. “You can’t change—”

  “We’re leaving Russia.”

  “Dammit, Clay, why do you insist on getting us fired? Despite what you may think, I actually like this job.”

  “You should. You’re good at it. But what excitement would you have if I just did everything the way it was drawn up?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Can’t tell me!”

  “There are bigger events going on than you or I were previously aware of. Now, I’m telling you this, Stedding, so you can plan how to sell whomever you need to sell that I’m not handing Marika over. And I’m keeping things from you because I don’t know yet who is involved.”

  “Involved in what?”

  “Don’t get nervous, Stedding. I’m protecting you. When people in the Agency say I went off the deep end, you’ll have recorded proof that I didn’t tell you anything.”

  “Clay! I—”

  But Clay pressed the End Call button. Marika looked up from the bench as he approached.

  “You look amused.”

  “Do I?”

  “You do.”

  “Sometimes this job is so absurd, all you can do is find amusement where you can. For me, it’s driving my handler insane.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t understand it myself. Come on—let’s get out of here.”

  “Out of the park?”

  “Out of Russia.”

  Chapter Ten

  THEY HAD an advantage: no one knew their faces. Police and every other government agency would be looking for a man and a young woman traveling together, but that described every couple in the country. If they had suspicious papers, it might call attention to them as they tried to cross the border; for that reason, Clay planned to avoid customs.

  There were many ways to do it, but Clay preferred the one involving the smallest number of people.

  They split, bought tickets separately, and took a train from Moscow to Smolensk. The train would continue to Prague, but they would not be on it. They met every couple of hours in the dining car, though they didn’t speak or make eye contact. It wasn’t ideal, but Clay told her how it had to be and she handled it artfully. Every time he thought she might show her age, turn into a rebellious or petulant girl, she surprised him. He had a feeling she would be tested a few more times before this mission ended, and he wondered how many taps her shell could take before the egg cracked. He wouldn’t blame her if it did.

  They arrived without incident and took separate marshrutkas from the kelly-green-painted Smolensk station. From his vantage point behind a cement column, he watched her hire the passenger van, and he didn’t make out anyone tailing her as she drove away. There were a few Russian police officers loitering around the station, but none seemed eager to move too far from the snack counter.

  He waited another ten minutes and walked to the taxi line.

  An uneventful ride later—the cabdriver barked on his cell phone at someone named Nadia for the duration—he arrived at a petrol station adjacent to the M1 highway.

  There are many ways to sneak into and out of a country, even ones whose borders are shut tighter than a vault. He had placed a phone call to a contact he’d cultivated years before, and they were to meet at this rest stop at noon. Marika was already seated at a small bar the station provided for coffee drinkers and smokers. She looked confident, but with the slightest rattle around the edges, like the creak a pipe gives long before it bursts.

  Clay moved next to her, hoping to soften that rattle. “We’re going to make it.” He didn’t know why he said it, but he felt it might help.

  “Should we be talking together?”

  “We’re not out of the woods, but we’re at least near the edge.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Nothing. It’s an American expression that I— Nothing.”

  She smiled at him, and it almost made him glad he’d attempted the joke.

  The air stirred, and Clay looked up to see the man he recognized, a pale Ukrainian named Uri Bezlo, enter the station and beeline his way.

  “Hello, Ivan,” Bezlo said softly as he approached and shook hands. If Marika was surprised by Clay’s alias, she didn’t show it.

  Uri was a small, imposing man with terrier-like features and shiny, pointed teeth. Clay noted the shoulder holster ballooning the breast of his jacket. He was wearing it wrong; his concealed pistol was about as concealed as a leg cast.

  Clay pressed cash into his hand as they shook, and Uri did not look down to count it, just put his hand back in his pocket.

  “Truck will be here in half hour. Exporting chemicals to Slovakia. You will go south through Belarus and Ukraine, yes?”

  “How long?”

  “Fifteen hundred kilometers. But you and girl will be comfortable. Much comfortable.”

  “If we’re not…”

  “Yes, yes. I’d have no business if you were not comfortable.”

  In the spy game, by necessity, Clay had to deal with men who turned his stomach. He had to compartmentalize his feelings, lie down with dogs and ignore the fleas. Uri was in the human trafficking business. He ran girls from Russia to all points inside the former Soviet bloc: Poland, Belarus, Czech Republic, Germany. He was despicable, but useful.

  “Look for Averbuch Chemical truck. When driver exits to use bathroom, climb in passenger door, slip to back of cab, and open hatch. If cabin is not to your satisfaction, you knock on door, and I will take care of it.”

  He saw the concern on Clay’s face and quickly held up both hands. “It will be right. This is excellent driver and special truck. I’ve known driver twelve years. Fine, fine, yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. How much do you weigh?”

  Clay told him.

  “And the girl?”

  Clay guessed, and Uri nodded. “I will leave you now. But I will personally accompany you on this trip, riding in cab with driver, yes. I have business
in Ukraine and I will make sure you are comfortable.”

  Clay wasn’t sorry to see him walk off. He could tell Marika had the same reaction, as if she might catch a disease just from standing next to the man.

  The hatch opened to a small cabin, not unlike the one Clay grew up inside on his uncle’s boat. It was about fifteen feet by fifteen feet, with a bed, a stuffed chair, a desk with an office chair, and even a small water closet separated by a partitioned door.

  “Amazing!” Marika exclaimed.

  It was. Uri had come through. They must’ve used this truck, or ones like it, for smuggling important people into or out of Russia, because Clay doubted they wasted such comfort on the poor women transported from brothel to brothel.

  After a moment, they heard the driver’s door open and shut and then felt the movement as they drifted from the station to the M1. The truck must’ve had a container full of chemicals on the other side of the wall, so any border agents opening the back doors would only see the designated material. Making the truck transport chemicals was a stroke of genius; no border agents wanted to search too thoroughly through poison. Uri had asked for Clay’s and Marika’s weights so the driver could take out a similar weight from the back before they left, in case they were directed to stop at a weigh station. It wasn’t an airplane ride, but it was a well-planned and well-executed smuggling operation.

  The vibration under their feet was strangely relaxing. Clay took the chair and gestured to the bed. “Might as well settle in. It’s going to be a long drive.”

  Marika fell on top of the bed. “Better than a sleeping car on a train.”

  “And no one to check our passports or tickets.”

  Marika smiled and closed her eyes. Her voice came as though it were detached from her body. “I visited Prague once when I was very young. Before my father died. Before my mother remarried. Before David.”

  “Oh?”

  “I don’t remember much. I remember the spires in the city. It looked like a fairy tale. I remember my dad smiling, and I don’t remember seeing that often. I remember he took us to an enormous castle with a green dome, and inside was a cathedral. I had never seen anything like it. It seemed old, like it would have taken lifetimes to build; I remember thinking this even as a small child. There was an enormous stained-glass window, with pictures of various religious scenes I didn’t understand, but the bottom one I noticed because there was a name printed there, Elisabeth, and that was my mother’s name. I remember thinking this woman in the glass looked like my mother, except this woman looked calm, unworried, and my mother always had worry on her face. I stared at this stained glass so long that my parents continued their tour without me, not realizing I had stopped. Through the years, I watched my mother, but she never achieved the peace of that depiction in the glass. I don’t remember much, but I have a distinct memory of that Elisabeth, and looking for that expression on my own mother’s face.”

  The truck had not been traveling long, maybe two hours, when Clay opened his eyes. He felt the vibrations slow and then stop as the truck braked and sat idle.

  He heard the hatch open and tensed. Uri ducked his head inside and smiled wanly. “Engine trouble. We’re on a deserted bit of highway, if you care to stretch your legs. We’ll be here awhile as Sergei solves the problem.”

  Marika looked up at Clay and nodded, asking without using her voice if it was okay. Clay frowned but nodded back.

  Uri clapped his hands together once, as if it was no problem, nothing to worry about, a minor inconvenience. Clay somehow missed what it really was: a signal. He should have been on alert, should have been tensed and ready as soon as their schedule was interrupted with “engine trouble,” should have seen through the façade, but he was tired and sluggish and wasn’t thinking clearly.

  He stepped down from the eighteen-wheeler’s cab to find five Russian police officers and two FSB agents with guns pointed his way. The truck’s hood was up and smoke poured from it—he had to give them credit for selling the ruse. One of the officers already had Marika by the arm.

  Uri grinned, showing those sharp incisors. “I’m sorry, friend. I can’t do what I do and not cut in the Russian police. It seems they are looking for an American man and a young woman. And then you called…” He shrugged as if it were was the simplest choice in the world. Clay clamped his anger. He glared over at the driver, who was stoically closing the truck’s hood. Then he looked at Marika, who was watching him with feral eyes, as if she was waiting for him to do something.

  The truck’s hood slammed, making a sound like a gunshot, and all eyes left him for only a moment. It was a professional’s moment, experience’s moment, when lesser men would have let their concentration flag. The only way to stay alive and free in the spy world is to recognize the tiniest of moments when you are ready and your enemy is not.

  The semi’s hood slammed, their eyes strayed, and Clay leapt on Uri. He had the pistol out of the Ukrainian’s chest holster while the surprise was still on his face. The vile man died without changing expression.

  Marika spun and clawed at the face of the officer who held her, and when he raised his hands, she drove a fist into his groin with all the force she could muster. Good girl. She had been paying attention.

  Clay started shooting then, and the police reacted like a covey of quail, dispersing in different directions with varied flutters of fear.

  The FSB agents knew better and charged, firing too. Clay reached for Marika and kicked the doubled-over police officer at the same moment, sending him directly into the path of the storming agents. Clay then flung Marika back, and she practically sailed through the air, landing on the ground and rolling under the eighteen-wheeler.

  Then he heard the truck’s engine crank and turn over, the driver getting the idea to flee. Clay shot one of the FSB agents as he tried to disentangle himself from his comrade. Then he retreated toward the truck. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the remaining FSB agent hightail it to his sedan. The ambush was out of control and growing worse by the second.

  The truck started to move, and Clay dove under the carriage, rolling and pulling Marika with him just as she was about to be flattened by the second set of tires.

  He sprang up on the other side of the semi, and the driver made a mistake, tried to turn into him to get back to the M1 instead of heading straight to plow up onto the road. Clay cut the distance, leapt onto the running board, opened the door, but was not expecting the driver to be armed. A Fort-12 pistol swung his way, but in his haste, the driver had forgotten to fasten his seat belt. Clay reached in and yanked his gun arm as the pistol fired and the driver tumbled out. Nose met earth. The truck was still turning, and all eighty thousand pounds of it rolled over him, crushing bones and pancaking skin.

  “Get in!” Clay bellowed at Marika, and she ran to his side. He knew she was stricken by what she had seen today, but he didn’t have time to calm her. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to remove that last image from her mind. She hurdled over to the passenger seat, and he took the driver’s wheel and turned the semi just in time to see the one sedan move from the cluster of cars that had arrived to execute the ambush. In the passenger seat sat the only policeman alive, and behind the wheel was the agent from the FSB. They were flooring the sedan, angling for the highway, and it took a second—but only a second—for Clay to realize they weren’t attacking but fleeing. He had one chance, but he didn’t know if the semi would respond in time.

  He gunned the truck in first gear and climbed it into second, almost sputtering the engine, but it held. The sedan was blitzing forward now; he wouldn’t have the angle, wouldn’t have the speed, but at the last moment, he tipped the wheel and clipped the back of the sedan with enough of his bumper to cause it to fishtail as it hit the highway. Tires caught on pavement and it barrel-rolled like a bowling pin.

  Clay braked the truck and looked out at the smoking sedan, which came to rest on its top, tires spinning, a beetle on its back.

  “Turn your he
ad away from this,” he said, opened his door, and dropped down onto the highway. He crossed to the sedan, stooped, and fired twice.

  He was back in the cab a few seconds later. He pulled the lever into gear, pushed on the accelerator, eased back on the clutch, and moved the truck onto the M1.

  We’re going to need some luck now, he thought and maybe said aloud. He didn’t know whether Marika had watched him execute the wounded men while they were at their most vulnerable.

  He calculated they were only thirty minutes from the border with Belarus. He hoped no one would discover the carnage before they reached it. The sun would be rising soon, and though the wreckage was all on the side of the road, with little light to illuminate it, it wouldn’t be long, perhaps minutes, before someone traveling this remote stretch of the M1 found it. Soon after, the police would be called, and he didn’t know how long after that they would put two and two together and close the border.

  He was driving blind—no map and no GPS—and he just hoped at each rise of the highway that he would see some sign of the border. He might be driving into a hornets’ nest, but it would be better than this part—the not knowing. It was his greatest enemy, not knowing. He tried to defeat it on every mission, he tried to take it out of the equation, but there it was, appearing to taunt him, not knowing. The enemy of spies, not knowing. The harbinger of death and pain. Not knowing. It could smile on you or it could bare its teeth.

  They crested another slight rise and he saw two twinkling lights that made up the border between Belarus and Russia, a couple of checkpoint stations and old wooden gates. This was not modern border security—telephones instead of satellites, Barney Fife instead of Robocop. Yet Clay kept his guard up, his senses alert, because he was in the throes of not knowing.