Dark Cure: A Covid Thriller (Dark Plague Book 1)

by Bradley West

  “When did this happen?” Mandrake asked.

  “Earlier today. Here, this is your copy.” Chumakov handed over a scan acknowledging receipt of three million dollars from Ukraine’s Party of Plenty to the go-between’s political image consulting firm, Davis Mandrake. The signature was that of the officer manager in the Kiev office.

  “Thanks. Let me see how long it takes Boyko to notify me. He’s been slack on that count of late. I think he’s banking the interest on the float.”

  Chumakov winced at the sound of the Ukrainian surname. The receptionist rang and said he had an urgent call, prompting the Tatar to extend his hand in farewell. “Busy as Stalin launching a pogrom. You keep me posted on developments, and let’s get together with Junior or Gerard this coming week.”

  “Absolutely, Anatoly. I’ll be certain to rope in—”

  “I’m sure it will be an impressive list. Now you’ll have to excuse me.” Chumakov prodded the smaller man out of his office before he could utter anything else that the FBI would find of interest.

  After the elevator doors cut off Mandrake’s drivel, Chumakov sighed as he strode back into the reception area. He spoke in Russian to the athletic woman behind the front desk. “Valeyriya, who’s on the phone?”

  “He couldn’t wait and hung up.” She gestured him over and revealed a name on a yellow sticky.

  “I’m going downstairs for a cigarette. Please take a message should anyone ring.”

  And just when everything was on track. Something must be very wrong as Tim Weill didn’t rattle easily. In the lobby, Chumakov pulled out his cellphone and sent two secure text messages, then walked out the door onto M Street into another filthy D.C. steam room. So much for the razor-sharp creases in his shirt. He took ten minutes to reach the Four Seasons Hotel and waited less than fifteen seconds for his pickup. Then it was a short surveillance detection route circling northwest D.C. until he was certain they were clean. The off-duty embassy driver, an ex-Special Forces man he used from time to time, dropped him in a parking lot behind a liquor store fronting Wisconsin Avenue in swish Georgetown.

  Chumakov entered Peterson’s Liquor from the parking lot, found the right key on his copious ring and opened a metal door to reveal an ill-lit set of stairs blocked by another metal door. Behind that heavy barrier, the lighting improved and the temperature dropped ten degrees.

  Tim Weill was the Farewell Group’s principal asset, an ex-NSA project leader with divorce expenses and a hatred for the intel establishment. The man was usually the epitome of cool, yet here he was with hand tremors. “I chased a ghost all weekend,” he said. “He escaped and we have a major problem. Obama has had a team working undercover the past two years, so deep even I can’t penetrate the security. They’re looking for someone called Mr. Love who heads Higher Love. I called for a face-to-face to see if you can make sense of any of it.”

  “Higher Love donated funds to Wiki-whatever to encourage them to release more DNC and Crandall emails,” Chumakov said. “I don’t know anything about them other than that, and I don’t care. It’s probably the pseudonym for a three hundred-pound Republican billionaire sitting in bed. I’m hot and tired, so get on with it.”

  “I haven’t slept in two nights,” Weill said. “The NSA transmissions I’ve stumbled across include wide-ranging compartmented top-secret intel, so much so that the president or his gorilla Payne are the only ones with the clearance to read it all. This Abyss group has made rapid progress on the DNC hacks and they’re too close for comfort. They’re directed by someone who’s smarter than I am, and from the speed they’re moving, they have greater resources than the official FBI task force. Abyss’s already tied me to the theft of the twenty thousand DNC emails, and it may even know I work for Farewell Group. We need to get them off our backs. Fortunately, I planned for this day. With your approval, I’ll dump most of the NSA’s hacking tools on the dark web. That will buy us the time we need to cover our tracks.”

  “Tell me, who is the mastermind you so fear? Can we turn him?”

  “I doubt it. He’s relentless, patriotic and devious. He’s also supposed to be dead, killed two years ago in the crash—”

  “Of MH17.” Chumakov finished Weill’s sentence. “Bob Nolan is back from the grave?”

  “How do you know Nolan?”

  “He and I have a blood feud. That’s all you need to know.”

  “I can pinpoint where he’s located,” Weill said. “It will take less than two hours once I’m back online. But he’ll be well-protected. I doubt you’ll be able to get near him.”

  “You have no idea how many people will want Nolan dead once you prove he’s alive,” Chumakov said. “They will do our jobs for free. If the Kennedy assassinations taught us anything, it’s that everyone can be gotten to.”

  Weill left Chumakov sitting in the basement. In the last five minutes Chumakov’s mood had changed from deep satisfaction to a building rage that the cornerstone of his well-being—Bob Nolan’s death high above those Ukraine fields—was a fraud. Nolan had fooled him yet another time. He clenched his fists until his dead eye socket ached.

  Portnikov and Putin would tell him that there wasn’t time for personal vengeance, that the bumbling Ginger campaign and its bagmen, tricksters, cronies and blowhards required his full attention if their bombastic candidate was to win the election. Putin wanted so very much to have his own marionette in the White House, even one who didn’t yet know that he was on the end of the strings.

  Chumakov needed a drink—no, several drinks—to work out his master plan. Inside the unlocked basement cage sat a carton of Khortytsa in liter bottles. Given what the D.C. rezidentura paid each month to the shop’s owner, Peterson’s Liquor could consider it a donation to their benefactors.

  * * * * *

  Rockville, Maryland

  Weill settled into the desk chair in his attic home office. The exposed pink fiberglass insulation under the eaves irritated his skin and lungs, air purifier notwithstanding. Before climbing the rickety staircase, he’d ditched his contacts for glasses, and used eyedrops to start fresh. Old posters from James Cameron movies illustrated the otherwise barren walls. Arnold glowered at him with red eyes with Sarah Connor running away from a burning semi in an enlarged studio promo shot.

  He’d had no idea how Chumakov knew Nolan, but since he did, the Russian must have been present for the Sri Lanka beach massacre back in 2014—and also a part of the handover team escorting Watermen to the tracks where a PLA sniper put a bullet into the NSA consultant’s head. SLAUGHTER IN SRI LANKA was one tabloid headline. Two weeks later, Obama hung a medal around Nolan’s neck, and Chumakov was in intensive care recuperating from near-fatal shrapnel wounds. Yep, that would leave a grudge.

  Weill didn’t know what to make of Chumakov other than his polished manner and hard-to-place urbane English accent cloaked an obscure background that invalidated the international public relations pedigree he’d laid claim to. With a swarthy complexion and muscled physique, he looked like an ex-soldier from the Middle East, but he dressed like a Saks Fifth Avenue window display with enough bling to make an Israeli millionaire blush. Chumakov’s panache hid a filthy temper too.

  Swift keystrokes and hard labor left the former NSA program director sweat-soaked and frustrated with streaming eyes. Where in the hell was Nolan? Earlier today, he’d had a bead on his location somewhere out west, possibly inside a military installation. He’d held off digging deeper, knowing that this might alert his quarry. Now with his client urging him on, Weill had retraced his steps and there was nothing. No traceable IP addresses, no chained server locations, not even the identity of the overseas servers Tor used to chop up messages within the dark web. Apparently, Nolan had detected his presence and then eradicated all traces. But how was that possible? Weill was using the NSA’s best software. The answer had to be Nolan had access to the same toolbox and had been faster to take defensive measures.

  Chumakov wouldn’t be happy, but he’d become enraged if W
eill delayed alerting him.

  * * * * *

  Washington, D.C.

  Chumakov sleepwalked through the return trip to the office. After he locked up, he drove to his plush townhouse rental in North Alexandria and took a short, infuriating phone call from Weill. The bottle went straight into the freezer. He stood in the shower a long time. Bob Nolan’s death on MH17 two-plus years ago had catalyzed his rebirth as a trusted senior man in the Federal Security Services, the FSB. President Putin hadn’t ordered the murder of two hundred and ninety-eight airline passengers to appease him. He’d later said to Chumakov that Nolan’s death “was a down payment on five billion rubles’ worth of equipment and six lives in Pakistan.” Former KGB head Putin operated like a Mafia don: he did favors and collected obligations. Every time Putin gave Chumakov a new task, the mission was ever riskier and more grandiose. Chumakov had accepted every one of them and boasted a perfect track record to date. Riches, prestige and authority followed, and today Chumakov earned an unimaginably large salary to lead the most audacious espionage program in Russia’s history.

  Bank account overflowing, physical vitality restored, Chumakov of late courted the rich women he formerly only dreamed of. Anatoly Chumakov was someone, a player, and he had the car, clothes and accoutrements to prove it. At forty-eight, he could bench-press one hundred kilos and run ten kilometers in under forty-four minutes. He’d even become used to missing an eye and half a kidney, permanent reminders of Nolan. His implacable hatred had rescued him from an invalid’s fate, and the bliss derived from knowing that his enemy was dead cushioned his every waking minute.

  That Bob Nolan still breathed sent that hard-won self-esteem into the gutter and filled him with rage. Nolan was the architect of his disfigurement, the cause of the psychological and physical pain he’d suffered to compress six months’ rehabilitation into six weeks. Back in April 2014, a barely ambulatory Chumakov and his body man Ustinov had sprung a trap, but Nolan had triumphed instead. Singapore’s security services deported Chumakov to Russia to face capital punishment on corruption charges. The former head of the FSB’s Surveillance Directorate saved himself through a mixture of luck and meticulous management of an electronic surveillance sweep of the Boeing 777 known as MH370. Thus began the road to a spectacular career resurrection. On a July afternoon in Ukraine, a lifetime’s worth of insults, discrimination and disrespect melted away, anchored in the certain knowledge that he’d proved himself the better man as bits of Nolan and airplane rained down.

  Shower ended, Chumakov wrapped a towel and dripped downstairs for a glass of Khortytsa. The first two slugs went down without touching the sides. He pounded the glass on the countertop and poured a third measure. How could this happen to him? Nolan had outsmarted him again. That old American was laughing at him—no, he was stalking him, ready to tear down a world he’d spent the last two years constructing.

  Chumakov felt himself hyperventilating. That vodka on an empty stomach left him nauseous. He wasn’t the drinker he once was, not with his lacerated viscera. The barrel-chested Tatar forced himself to breathe deeply and steady his heartbeat. All he had to do was wait until Weill found his error and found Nolan. Chumakov would then notify Portnikov and let the FSB hand the assignment over to their overseas counterparts in the SVR.

  Chumakov left the vodka on the counter and placed a gourmet bachelor meal in the microwave. Returning to the bedroom, he dressed in silk and linen blends, Armani and Zegna accentuating his musculature. He combed his hair and looked in the mirror for reassurance. See, nothing had changed. An instant later, he backhanded every skin cream, exfoliant, conditioner and scent bottle off the marble counter, breaking glass and spraying contents across the tiled walls and floor. I’m fucking far from all right. Only one thing can make things better: Nolan’s head in a sack.

  Medieval kings solicited heads on lances, but no longer. No one took unnecessary chances as the stakes were too high in a post-9/11 surveillance-crazy United States. There wouldn’t be a scrap of Nolan’s DNA anywhere on the hit team, much less a positive identifier like a severed thumb. But Chumakov would never be whole again unless he saw Nolan’s body firsthand.

  All well and good, but Portnikov and Putin wouldn’t let their senior liaison and D.C. office head take a week, much less a month, to assemble a team, track down his foe, plan and execute the hit, and exfiltrate. Every day presented new challenges and opportunities to leak information damaging to Democratic nominee Crandall to the Ginger campaign and the press. No one save Chumakov had the complete matrix of contacts and connections stored in his head. If he abandoned D.C. without permission, his career and maybe his life would be forfeit, irrespective of whatever happened to Nolan. He had to think this through, find a way to bring Nolan to him.

  The microwave’s chime signaled that dinner was ready. He looked at the mess that littered the vanity in his bathroom. He hadn’t had a fit of rage in years.

  An idea struck him, and he grabbed his encrypted phone and dialed Weill. “Listen carefully. Dump all the NSA tools onto Tor and affix the blame on a new organization. Just make up a name. Tie it Nolan to in some obscure way. We put him on the defensive and leave Abyss leaderless. Let Obama’s hounds find our rabbit. I will then take the necessary action.”

  “Are you certain you want me to dump all the tools? We spent millions acquiring them.”

  “Give a few away to excite the hackers, then put the rest up for sale. We’ll recoup our costs, and criminals will show the West what the NSA has been doing in secret the past decade.”

  “Nolan is hard to catch and even more difficult to hold onto,” Weill said. “I doubt the Feds can keep him all the way to D.C.”

  “If he evades their grasp, I will bait a trap even clever Nolan won’t avoid. I will tear his world apart before I kill him.”

  “Whatever you say.” Weill disconnected and stared at the handset, half expecting the earpiece to glow red.

  The sound of a key in the front latch startled Chumakov. The door opened and a footfall sounded in the marble foyer. “Anatoly, it’s me!” a familiar voice rang out. “I was shopping in Old Town and thought I’d surprise you. Why don’t you take me to dinner tonight? I spoke with a woman at the salon, and she raved about the new chef at the 1789 Restaurant.”

  “Honey, I’ve just pulled dinner out of the microwave. I had a long day and would like to stay in. I’ve had a few drinks already as well.”

  “Oh, you naughty man! Drinking without moi? You’re dressed fine as usual. Throw on some shoes. I’ll drive. We have a booking for eight o’clock.”

  Here he was orchestrating the takeover of the American government and the death of his archenemy, and his girlfriend of one-month’s standing was leading him around by the nose. He was appreciating more and more that money alone wasn’t enough to keep a society woman, particularly an oligarch’s adulterous ex-wife left penniless post-divorce. Ludmilla should come with “Fragile” stickers pasted on her handbags. But she did dine at every Western embassy and chichi new restaurant, so on balance he was grateful to Portnikov for the introduction. He reached the front door, kissed the proffered cheek and spied his dark green patent leather Gucci’s by the wall. “Yes, dear, but let’s make an early night of it. I’m too tired to go clubbing.”

  Ludmilla switched to Russian. “After a romantic dinner, bring me back here and I’ll see if I can raise the dead.” She smiled and led him by his hand out the door, microwaved casserole forgotten.

  Praise for the countless lies trilogy

  Sea of Lies

  “Crisp dialog drives non-stop realistic action across Burma, Singapore, Sri Lanka, China and Australia.”

  James Hawes, SEAL Team One

  Cold War Navy SEAL: My Story of Che Guevara, War in the Congo, and the Communist Threat to Africa

  * * * * *

  “MH370’s fate remains a mystery. This compelling and well-researched novel raises questions that require answers.”

  Dr. Dan Crosswell, Distinguished Univer
sity Chair

  in Military History, Columbus State University

  Pack of Lies

  “Starts off just weeks after the disappearance of MH370, with non-stop action torn from today’s front pages.”

  John Carl Roat, SEAL Team One

  The Terrorist: a SEAL Gone Bad

  * * * * *

  “Bob Nolan is the most unlikely and intriguing espionage hero I’ve ever encountered, equal parts uncanny intelligence, improbably sexual virtuosity and unlimited capacity for self-preservation.”

  DON D. MANN

  New York Times Best Selling Author

  Inside SEAL Team SIX: My Life and Missions with America's

  Elite Warriors

  End of Lies

  “West creates realistic characters and deploys them in an intriguingly complex plot. The result is an enjoyable, fast-paced thriller that I couldn't put down.”

  Richard L. Holm

  Best Selling Author

  The Craft We Chose: My Life in the CIA

  * * * * *

  “End of Lies provides compelling characters and meticulous research to deliver nonstop action. Just when you catch your breath, another showdown looms."

  Howard Wasdin

  New York Times Best Selling Author

  SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL

  Copyright and disclaimer

  Bradley West

  www.bradleywest.net

  Copyright © 2020 by Bradley Alan West

  Singapore

  Published in 2020 by Bradley Alan West