Chasing the White Lion

by James R. Hannibal

  Talia wanted—needed—Archangel to be a figment of the past so she could put her father’s death and Tyler’s part in it behind her. She tried pushing the conversation in a different direction. “Let’s talk about how you lied to me a moment ago. You said Volgograd was an intersection of operations when you know full well you were just shadowing me.”

  “You’re wrong. I didn’t lie.”

  Up to that point, the exchange had been something of a tennis match. Despite Talia’s attempts at gravity, Tyler had been playing a game. The quiet court jester who could kill you but probably won’t thing was part of his DNA. Talia had gotten used to it. But in that instant, the commander inside him took full control, like someone had flipped a switch.

  Tyler laid his hands on the table. “We knew Oleg was on to you, Talia. That’s why I brought the team to Volgograd. That’s why Finn and I were in the bar.” He lowered his chin, keeping those green eyes locked on hers. “Someone at the Agency sold you out.”

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  GULFSTREAM 650

  SOUTHERN RUSSIA

  THIRTY-SEVEN THOUSAND FEET

  TALIA KNEW HER ATTEMPT to turn Oleg had gone horribly wrong, but Tyler had jumped to an extreme conclusion. “You’re overreacting. Oleg was vermin, but he was connected. Maybe one of those connections broke through the curtain.”

  “You’re not listening. We knew Oleg broke through the curtain.”

  He let the statement hang. Talia had learned the same technique at the Farm. Create unacceptable silence. Force the target to engage. Was Tyler aware he was working her like a mark? “Okay. I’ll bite. How did you know?”

  “Livingston Boyd.”

  “The young investment mogul whose penthouse we broke into before the Gryphon heist?”

  “Correct.”

  Dozens of constellations sparkled in the panoramic window beside the table, so high above the Russian cloud deck. A million lights, all fixed in place no matter how fast the Gulfstream flew—as inescapable as her past.

  Tyler pressed on with his explanation. “We broke into Boyd’s London penthouse to catch up with Finn on the Fabergé carriage job, but I had an ulterior purpose. I had Finn steal a thumb drive from Boyd’s desk.”

  “The thumb drive I found in your laptop,” she said, turning her gaze to the panoramic view, “with the list of buyers for Ivanov’s hypersonic missiles.”

  “Correct. Boyd isn’t the energy stock and real estate wunderkind he pretends to be. His wealth comes from other sources.”

  The lists of buyers on Tyler’s laptop appeared in Talia’s eidetic memory. She couldn’t have blocked out the image if she tried. “So Boyd was the Englishman mentioned in our Dark Web intercepts—Ivanov’s arms broker.”

  Full circle. Talia had taken the conversation in a new direction, and Tyler had led her right back around. During the operation to stop Ivanov from selling hypersonic tech and launching a missile against Washington, DC, Talia had unmasked Tyler as the assassin who killed her father. Archangel had given the order.

  She took her eyes from the unmoving stars. “You think Boyd is linked to Archangel.”

  “Ivanov practically told us so.” Tyler eased himself up from the table and crossed the aisle to the rear galley. “Murderer or not, he had no reason to lie at the time. He told us his contact at the Agency gave him the idea for the attack and the arms sale and brought him the broker—Boyd. If Boyd was Ivanov’s link to Archangel, then he can be our link to Archangel as well.”

  She read his expression. Confidence. “This isn’t pure speculation. You’ve done some homework.”

  “Not me. Eddie.”

  “Eddie?”

  “Who else would I go to for high-level hacker work?”

  Unbelievable. “You’re using my best friend behind my back?”

  Talia had met Eddie Gupta at Georgetown and found an instant connection. Together, they were a foster care kid and a child of foreign diplomats, out of place among their Ivy League peers. The Farm had followed. Same class. Afterward, they’d been assigned as a pair to Frank Brennan’s Other branch within the Clandestine Service, then promoted to REED. “Eddie is supposed to be working with me now, at the Russian Ops desk.”

  “He is. But let the kid have a hobby.”

  “Eddie is a geek. By definition, he has a hundred hobbies.”

  A spark in the eyes. The court jester again. “And working for me is one of them.”

  “Tyler . . .”

  “The encryption on the thumb drive had a digital fingerprint—subtle, but definitely there. Eddie cross-referenced this fingerprint with data from the Gryphon heist and intercepts on the Dark Web. We were looking for connections to our CIA traitor, and—”

  “Alleged CIA traitor.”

  “Sure. If it makes you feel better.” Tyler opened the galley’s mini-fridge. “Ginger ale? I stocked up before we left.” He offered her a bottle.

  Talia accepted. “So you were looking for connections, and . . .”

  “And the markers kept taking us to remote servers.” He fiddled with the other drinks in the fridge, pausing too long for her comfort.

  “What servers, Tyler? Where?”

  Again, he prolonged the silence, pouring himself a glass of Perrier. He returned to the table just as Talia took a swig from her ginger ale. “You’re drinking straight from the bottle these days? What would Conrad say?”

  She lowered it quickly, nearly choked on the fizz. He had set her up for the wisecrack by not handing her a glass in the first place. The tennis match was in full swing. She didn’t want to play. “Tyler. The servers.”

  “They were everywhere. All across the globe. No discernible pattern. But fragments of Boyd’s digital fingerprint kept popping up. We’ve been following them for months.”

  Talia’s eyes widened. The team’s little excursions. “Zambia?”

  “And Chile. You were with us for those. But Moscow, Minsk, and Vladivostok were about Boyd as well. I never had to work at keeping our efforts close to your operations. There were too many options, too many rabbit trails to chase.” He finished the water in his glass and filled it halfway with the remainder from the bottle. “Eddie hasn’t nailed down the architecture yet, but it’s clear Boyd has his fingers in criminal operations in every major city, from London pickpockets to human traffickers in Rangoon to forgers in Volgograd.”

  Talia dropped her half-empty ginger ale into a cupholder. “And that brings us to Oleg.”

  “One of his Dark Web posts had a digital marker matching Boyd’s network, so when you were assigned to his case, Eddie placed a RAT on Oleg’s home computer—a remote access tool that gives us screen and keylogging access, among other things.”

  “I know what a RAT is.”

  “Sure you do. Sorry.” Tyler grew deadly serious. “A data packet came in unsolicited from the network. When Oleg opened it up, there were three simple words. ‘Vera Novak. CIA.’”

  “You think the tip-off came from your mystery spy, routed through Boyd’s network?”

  He touched his nose.

  The story had merit. Talia had learned to trust Tyler, but she had been placing her trust in Eddie far longer. Not even Mary Jordan, chief of REED, fully appreciated the hacker asset the CIA had gained when Eddie signed up. She looked down at her hands, searching for a handle on the implications.

  “The data packet came from Boyd’s network,” Tyler said. “But the information had to come from the Agency.”

  She shook her head. “You’re making a leap. Most covers are throwaways. They’re only the first curtain.”

  “Throwaway covers leave a black hole. They don’t point the mark to the CIA.”

  “Yes, but—” Motion in the panoramic window caught Talia’s eye. The stars remained still, but the cloud layer was rising. Or rather, the Gulfstream was descending. “Is Mac landing the jet?”

  “Nothing gets past you. Sorry, Talia. A quick ride home might tip off our traitor to my involvement. We got you out of Volg
ograd, but you’ll have to find your own way out of Russia.”

  THEY LEFT HER STANDING in a dark hangar on the outskirts of Kursk. No passport. No luggage. Just her Glock and a wad of rubles. Darcy offered a finger-wiggling wave from the lighted cabin. Talia didn’t wave back. She watched the Gulfstream take the runway, then trudged off across an empty field toward the highway.

  “Thieves.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  WASHINGTON, DC

  POTOMAC RIVER

  TALIA AND HER FOSTER SISTER, Jenni Lewis, walked a racing shell out to the Georgetown dock on the Potomac. They worked by the orange glow from the boathouse and the small lights clipped to their caps. The sun had not yet risen.

  “Way enough,” Talia said in an even voice—the halt call. In the US rowing dialect, it sounded like wane-off. “Roll to the waist.”

  The girls rolled the boat from their shoulders to their hips, and Talia winced against the soreness from her Volgograd bruises. A long-sleeve shirt and windbreaker hid the marks. She didn’t need any uncomfortable questions from her sister.

  Talia gritted her teeth, trying not to let the pain show. “And . . . down.” They bent at the knees and set the shell in the water.

  Without a word, Jenni threaded the first of her two oars through an oarlock. Talia did the same. They had chosen a double for the morning, a two-person sculling shell requiring two oars for each rower. For months, even as the weather grew colder, the sisters had rowed together on Tuesday and Thursday mornings before sunup. To make up for lost time, they also rowed the day after either of them returned from a trip, like that morning—a Friday.

  They settled into their rolling seats with their backs to the bow and locked their feet into the shoes fixed to the push-boards, known as stretchers.

  Talia laid a hand on the dock’s edge. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Push away.”

  Jenni had taken the stern seat, leaving the bow seat—and all the steering—to Talia. “How about a balance exercise?”

  “I’m game if you are. In three, two, one, go.”

  Both girls raised their oars from the water and used their cores to keep the boat upright. No easy task. They held it steady for a few seconds, aided by the river’s momentum, until the shell wobbled and dipped.

  “Hold steady,” Talia said.

  Jenni let out a laughing yelp. Her left oar slammed into the water.

  Talia got a face full of ice-cold Potomac. “Thanks,” she said, sputtering.

  “Sorry. But you know you’ll be getting a lot wetter on Sunday. You’re going through with it, aren’t you?”

  Talia had made a profession of faith a few weeks after the incident with Ivanov, when Tyler had helped her let go of a lifetime of anger. She was ready to tell the world through baptism, but Jordan’s constant assignments and Tyler’s side jobs had forced her to reschedule on three occasions—a strange conflict between the yearning of her spirit and the world’s practicality. “Nothing will stop me this time. I promise.”

  “Good. Let’s get moving upstream.”

  Jenni went silent until Talia got the boat turned against the current. A false move would dump them both into the freezing drink. Talia worked the bow straight upriver and made the starting call.

  “At the catch.” She compressed her body against her knees, ready for the first drive. “Row!”

  Together, Talia and Jenni pushed with their legs, drawing the oar handles back and the paddles forward, willing the shell into motion. “One . . .Two . . . Three . . . Four . . .” Talia set a sharp pace in the hope of keeping Jenni’s lungs well-occupied. But in the quiet of her mind, she was thinking, Here it comes. Silence had never been Jenni’s strong suit.

  “So? How was your trip? Did you see anything interesting? Meet anyone new?”

  Annnd . . . there it goes.

  “Yes . . . I did.” Talia let her answers out with the strained exhalation of each drive. The bruising on her ribs screamed.

  “And?”

  “Turns out . . . he wasn’t . . . my favorite person.” She never lied to Jenni. Would she offer vague and evasive answers? Yes. Lie? No.

  Neither the recovery phase nor the drive phase of each stroke—the breathing in and the breathing out—affected Jenni’s ability to converse. “Sorry to hear it. But, you know, that happens to you a lot.”

  “People are people . . . What can you do?”

  It had become a common problem following every trip. Jenni’s genuine concern and inquisitiveness made her an asset to the State Department’s public relations branch and a good foster sister. It also made Talia’s life challenging. She tried to get her talking about her own life. “What . . . about you? Anything come up . . . while I was gone?”

  “Actually yes, and it’s weighing me down. Can we talk about it?”

  “Yes.” Talia tried not to sound too relieved. “Yes we can.”

  Jenni let up on the pace, forcing Talia to compensate to keep from rocking the boat. That was new. Jenni rarely slacked off during a workout. “It’s not fair, Talia.”

  “What’s not fair?”

  “Life. Everything. I mean, I know God has a plan, but . . .” She lifted her oars out of the water and rested them on the surface to hold the balance of the boat.

  “But what?”

  “It’s the refugee crisis.”

  “Oh.” Talia wanted to be sympathetic, but sometimes Jenni needed a push toward reality. There were millions of refugees. Precious few ever made it to the US. Two weeks earlier, Talia had interviewed a married couple arriving from Ukraine, ferreting out intelligence on Russian border incursions. The couple had waited five years for resettlement after separatists drove them from their home. “Jenni, I know it’s sad, but there’s always a refugee crisis.”

  “I know. I know. But it’s all over the news right now. Especially Myanmar. Tens of thousands displaced in religious purges. State PR is getting hundreds of calls a day.”

  “And you’re fielding a lot of those calls.” Only a year and a half out of college, Jenni was at the bottom of the State Department food chain. That meant answering phones.

  “So many. People want us to do something. I have to regurgitate the same old lines. ‘We’re doing all we can. We’re working through the proper channels. It’s a delicate situation.’” She spoke each phrase as if it were poison. “And then there are the children.”

  “The children?” Talia’s own strokes stopped. Her oars skimmed the water’s surface. “What children?”

  “Children in the camps are going missing. Myanmar won’t acknowledge they were ever born. The host countries, Bangladesh and Thailand, won’t register them. There’s no paper trail.” She glanced back at Talia, wobbling the boat. “How do you find a child that doesn’t officially exist?”

  “That must be hard to deal with.”

  “Day in and day out, Talia. The calls never stop. Don’t they know I want to fly a jumbo jet over there and grab as many as I can?”

  Talia balanced her oars with one hand and looked back. “I know it’s hard to see, but you said it yourself. God has a plan.” She set her oars in the water again. “Come on. One more mile.”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  LOBÉKÉ NATIONAL PARK

  SOUTHERN CAMEROON

  ANTON GOREV SCANNED the forest preserve through the scope of his Fabrique Nationale Ballista rifle. He’d broken visual contact and advanced ahead of his targets to take up a position on a rocky perch.

  He’d lost sight of them for an hour, but it mattered little. In another life, a Spetsnaz drillmaster had taught him that the hunter who understands his quarry’s mind is never far off the trail. Gorev had taken on a new name since then, and a new face, but the old lessons still applied.

  A gap in the trees revealed a family of elephants—a bull, two females, and three calves. The bull’s tusks were clean and white from a recent dip in the river. They stood out well against the deep green of the foliage, makin
g him tempting prey for Kweku Okoro and his men. The poachers would come. Gorev would wait.

  He traced his scope along three potential avenues of approach before he acquired his targets, crouching in high grass five hundred meters from the elephants. Okoro and his men would take their time, avoid spooking their prize. They had no concerns about interruptions from the preserve’s rangers, because Okoro kept the local commander in his pocket with bribes. That sin also granted Gorev the freedom to stalk him.

  With a gloved hand, the Russian brushed gravel and grit away from a broad stone and stretched his body out flat. He settled the Ballista on its forward bipod, pressed his shoulder to the stock, and put his eye to the scope. A minor adjustment brought Okoro under the crosshairs. But Gorev didn’t pull the trigger.

  He watched.

  Two of the poachers carried Chinese AK-47 knockoffs. Okoro, however, carried a bolt-action Holland & Holland Nitro Express elephant gun. A traditionalist. Gorev respected that.

  The old English big-game hunters had walked this same African forest with the same weapon, but they’d trekked with local carriers who bore the weight of the gun until the hunters were ready to shoot. Not Okoro. In nearly forty-eight hours, Gorev had seen him set the weapon down only to eat and sleep. He carried it like a scepter. Gorev respected that too.

  The Russian brought his eye back from the scope and frowned. Boyd was making a mistake. He dialed his smartphone using his trigger hand, with the tip of the thumb and forefinger cut away from the glove. A live video feed opened on the screen.

  Livingston Boyd scowled at the camera from a white shag rug in the great room of his London penthouse. “Anton. You’re calling sooner than expected. Is the job done?”

  Is the job done? Another Englishman too high and mighty to carry his own gun. Gorev took a moment to consider his answer. His own bearish visage would look enormous on the eighty-five-inch LCD monitor above Boyd’s fireplace. That always annoyed his young boss. Did Gorev dare annoy him further? “Eh . . . Not yet, boss. I have . . . question.”