Moscow Mule (A Thom Hodges Romantic Thriller Book 1)

by Owen Chance

  “Grant?” President Myers asked. Adams realized his mind had wandered and he hadn’t heard a word the president had spoken for the last several minutes. “I’m sorry, Meredith,” he said, “This is all just so much to take in. Do you think we would be wise to gather the team first thing tomorrow morning and hash out a plan to…”

  “Grant,” the president interrupted him, “I think you either misunderstand or didn’t hear me clearly. I want you to take the lead in Madrid next week, but I will be joining you at the end of the summit. President Vasily and I will speak together. We will call for a total end to NATO and all regional alliances in favor of a stronger United Nations.”

  5.

  Ambassador Anderson and Thom laid bare everything that had happened, and everything they had kept from each other, over the past month.

  “I’m sorry you and Jason are getting a divorce,” Anderson said, “But you should know: I’ve always thought you were too good for him.” They laughed, despite the circumstances. The end of a relationship, at best, and at worst, a steady march toward global Armageddon. “Thom, just before you came in, the president called to say she’d be appearing alongside Vasily to back his peace plan next week in Madrid. You and I know now this isn’t the plan Myers thinks it is, or she would never agree to it. We have to find a way to stop it. And like you, I don’t know who we can trust.”

  As they reached a tired, worried lull in the conversation, Natalie brought in a tray. “A nightcap, gentlemen?” she asked, and they nodded. They each took a scotch and soda from the tray and lifted their glasses in salute to one another. The three were headed to Madrid together, and had only each other to rely upon.

  PART THREE

  Chapter Twenty-two

  1.

  “R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me,” Thom belted in the shower at the Metropol Hotel. The situation was bleak, but perhaps the NATO Summit would give him and Anderson the chance to blow apart the Russian plan and to confront the situation with the American Vice President Grant Adams head-on. It struck him, too, that the summit was in Madrid, one of his favorite cities in the world.

  When Thom and Jason had honeymooned there, Thom had met a world-renowned dealer of antique crystal gas lamps. He would have to call on the man now that he had an apartment to furnish in Washington, though an apartment he’d had little time to dream about, much less find. As Thom thought about the honeymoon in Madrid, he remembered, too, a bathhouse he and Jason had visited there. They’d met a Moroccan model who was in Madrid to shoot a new campaign for Calvin Klein underwear. Suffice it to say that that night had been the best threesome Thom had ever participated in, even if Jason was expendable in hindsight, just as he had been as Thom bent over in front of the model whose name escaped him. As Thom thought about that night, he began to get hard, but ignored his dick. He had to meet the ambassador downstairs in ten minutes. They were headed to the airport, where they’d fly to Madrid.

  “Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me,” Thom sang as he walked into the bedroom, his dick still half-hard as he dried his hair.

  “I’m sorry to surprise you, Thom,” Ambassador Anderson said suddenly from the couch beside the great window overlooking Revolution Square. Agent McKesson coughed, turning his gaze away from the naked Thom, who gasped and dropped his towel, quickly picking it up and tying it around his waist. “No, no, sir. Now I’m embarrassed. But I thought we were meeting downstairs?” Thom asked.

  Anderson looked at his own lap, avoiding Thom’s eyes. “Son, you need to sit down, I think.” Thom sat. “We just received word that Petrov was found at the bathhouse where you were kidnapped. They’re saying he murdered three men there, Thom. And then killed himself.”

  2.

  “A closet full of clothes, and not a stitch to wear,” Foreign Minister Plankov laughed to himself, sitting on the floor of his personal closet surrounded by row after row of smartly tailored suits all bought not in Moscow, but secretly on London’s Seville Row. He’d been invited to the NATO Summit as an official guest of the Czech delegation, who wanted him on hand to address any questions of their proposal to repeal Article 5 of the organization’s charter. But as he sat down to pack, Plankov found himself overwhelmed with the speed at which their plan was advancing.

  His friend and leader, President Nicholai Vasily, had been elected three years prior on a campaign comprised of pure Russian nostalgia. No, not for the good old days of the Soviet Union, which both Plankov and Vasily knew were not that good at all. But rather, a campaign that conjured up Old Russia, the Russia of Czars and Czarinas, Imperialist Mother Russia, the Russia of Ever-Expanding Empire. More than a president, more than a comrade, Vasily viewed himself as a direct descendent of the Russian monarchs. Entitled, powerful, a king by brain, brawn, and blood. Depending on the day, and sometimes even the hour, Plankov viewed himself as either Vasily’s duke or his court jester, a joke kept around to do the king’s bidding. And as the summit approached, Plankov knew he should be excited. The Americans were ready to partner with the Russians in toppling NATO under false pretenses. Russia would soon be able to expand its reach into Europe, taking in countries that had once been theirs. But he wondered, too, if he’d be pushed out of the king’s good graces, and fall from the empire just as it came to be reborn.

  Plankov was tired of the suits he wore every day. He reached into a trifling chest beside him on the floor and pulled out a small photo album. He turned to the first picture. He had been three when it was taken, and his beloved older sister, five. They were outside the train station, where his sister would be taken to summer camp, he was told then. But he knew now this wasn’t true. His sister entered training and became a spy for Mother Russia, planted in the United States and adopting to life as a child of the Hungry Beast of the West, where she would simply live until called upon. How Plankov wished he could call upon her now.

  3.

  Maxwell Myers’ funeral had been a small graveside service in Arlington National Cemetery at the president’s request. Grant and Abigail Adams had attended, and Adams, also at the president’s request, had said a few words about Maxwell’s long career in public service. From being drafted into the war in Vietnam, to serving as his wife’s ambassador to the United Nations, Maxwell Myers had been long been an anti-war diplomat committed to recovering the United States’ image as a bearer of peace.

  From Arlington, the Adams had been driven straight to Andrews Air Force Base and boarded Air Force Two. They were now bound for Madrid. Abigail slept in the bedroom at the back of the plane. Grant and Sullivan Andrews sat in the vice president’s mobile office, reading over the summit’s schedule. Adams buzzed his attendant for another whiskey, which he downed in a single gulp.

  “I know you don’t think so now, sir, but you’re making the right decision,” Sullivan told him. The vice president sighed, “I hope you’re right, Sully. I pray you’re right.”

  4.

  “Damn you,” Thom muttered under his breath, “Damn you, Petrov.” He had not cried when the ambassador told him the man he was quickly falling in love with, however improbable that love was, was dead at the hands of his own government. He had not cried as he got dressed and rode to the airport in the back of a Range Rover next to the ambassador, or when they bordered the private Learjet bound for Madrid. He had not cried until the ambassador and Natalie were asleep, and the jet was safely over the dark of sleeping Slovenia below. But in that moment, he laid his head against the thick glass of the jet’s window and muttered, “Damn you. Damn you, Petrov,” and cried quietly until he’d fallen asleep, feeling more alone than he could remember ever feeling.

  5.

  Petrov navigated the small fishing boat due west across an especially bright and blue expanse of the Baltic Sea. He was still a hundred miles from the coast of Denmark, and he was tired of eating stale crackers and beef jerky, as he’d done for every meal over the past week as he made his way towards the Atlantic. />
  From the farm outside Moscow, Petrov had driven west towards Latvia, whose border with Russia had always been especially porous, letting people in all sorts of exile come and go with just a little know how. He snuck across the border through a forest on foot in the middle of the night, stealing himself to another farm gone mostly to dust and lifting another truck. This truck, another Soviet model but one outfitted with Latvian plates, he drove to the coast, where he knew an ex-G.R.U. officer outside of Riga. This old friend, who had left Moscow under a cloud of suspicion for being gay himself, didn’t ask why when Petrov asked him to help find a sound fishing boat and enough food to sail to Spain.

  Petrov checked his compass, then took a drink from one of the jugs of water his friend had provided, pushing him off of a dock in the middle of another night and wishing him “Safe passage, Petrov, always.” He tuned the small ship’s radio to a static-filled BBC broadcast. They reported from Madrid, where preparations were underway for the annual NATO Summit. After the reporter spoke of heightened security measures in the wake of the attack in Washington, the broadcast popped, then went dead. This far out in the middle of the Baltic Sea, such radio failures weren’t uncommon. Petrov turned the radio off, and whistled an old sailing song he remembered from the musical South Pacific. He could almost hear the Moscow cast of the show he’d seen as a boy struggle through the number “There is Nothing Like a Dame,” a call and response of “What don’t we feel? We don’t feel good.”

  Petrov didn’t hear that the American president would appear with the leader of the Russian Federation at the summit’s close to make a historic announcement. Nor did he hear what followed the report from Madrid: that a mid-level Russian G.R.U. analyst had been found dead following a triple homicide at an illegal gay bathhouse in Moscow, and that his name was Petrov Lubyanka.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  1.

  What the hell was I dreaming about? Thom wondered as the Learjet touched down roughly in Madrid. What the hell had he been dreaming about, indeed. Thom was simultaneously half-hard and felt like he might throw up. But as he jolted awake when the plane’s wheels hit the runway, his body gave in to neither desire, thankfully. Instead he let out a quick, high-pitched screech, followed by a quick, nervous hiccup. “I’m sorry,” he said to Ambassador Anderson and Natalie, who were going over the summit’s schedule in a nearby pair of captain’s chairs.

  They laughed at Thom, the man they’d both known for years, since Thom was a newbie at the C.I.A. They laughed because Thom was the man who had it so together professionally, and yet would always succumb to nervous tics in high stress situations. Thankfully Thom knew they laughed out of love, and he joined them as the jet taxied towards the terminal at Madrid’s executive airfield. Through the window beside his seat, Thom watched the stairs descend from another jet. Russian Foreign Minister Plankov walked down them, followed closely by a twink carrying two suitcases, one under each arm. Plankov’s boy toys were Moscow’s worst-kept secret. Thom laughed to himself again, but was struck by the thought: though he could only see the boy’s body in a general sense — the boy was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and big aviator glasses — he looked oddly familiar. But the boy and his keeper were far away, so Thom dismissed the thought as a bit of déjà vu. “Did you think I'd crumble? Did you think I'd lay down and die?” Thom hummed to himself quietly, “Oh no not I, I will survive.”

  2.

  The balcony of their room at the Hotel Palacio Del Retiro overlooked a tree-filled park and the Prado Museum. Plankov hoped to take in a recently restored fifteenth century Messina painting, “The Dead Christ Supported by an Angel,” though as he opened the doors leading out onto the balcony from their room on the hotel’s top floor, Plankov doubted he’d get much pleasure on this trip outside of his hotel room.

  Trey came up behind Plankov, reaching around to slip his hand up the foreign minister’s chest. Plankov sighed in lust, and Trey nibbled on his ear, “No, no, not yet, Admiral. You have a dinner meeting with my vice president.” In truth, Trey was an anomaly when it came to Plankov’s boys. He wasn’t a Russian farm boy come to the crowning jewel of Moscow. He was a graduate student in aerospace engineering at the Russian Academy of Sciences. And most oddly, Trey was an American. “I’ll be waiting for you, naked and ready in our bed,” Trey said, and Plankov turned to kiss him, less worried, perhaps too unconcerned, to kiss his newest lover on a hotel balcony overlooking a public park.

  Plankov dressed, but Trey remained in his briefs, sprawled out on the bed reading a thick paperback novel. After the foreign minister kissed Trey on the forehead and left him alone in the hotel suite, Trey went to the bathroom, threw up in the gleaming toilet, and then washed his mouth out three times with the strongest mint mouthwash he’d ever tasted.

  3.

  A siren sounded to Petrov’s starboard side. And though it was far off at first, it grew increasingly closer until Petrov could hear a voice through a loudspeaker coming from the approaching ship, “Turn off your engine and come to your deck with your hands clearly in the air, please.” Petrov had sailed from Latvia, by the coasts of Lithuania and Poland, along the southern edge of Sweden and through the straights of Denmark until he hit the open North Sea well above Germany. But as soon as he crossed into the English Channel due east of Brighton, he was being stopped by the British Coast Guard.

  Petrov shut off his borrowed engine and walked to the boat’s deck, the path of least resistance, the only path that would get him out of this situation alive. Of course, he’d worried this might happen ever since leaving Riga earlier that week. And in this worry, he’d come up with a plan.

  With his hands raised and the British boat now within shouting distance, Petrov yelled, “My name is Petrov Lubyanka. I am a Russian intelligence officer and I seek political asylum because my government poses an immediate threat to my life.”

  4.

  Air Force Two landed in Madrid at 11:27 p.m. local time. The vice president walked to the back of the plane, where his wife slept through the rough landing. He was drunk. She was passed out on Ambien. In short: their relationship was going great.

  “Abi, Abigail,” Adams shook his wife’s shoulder until she opened her eyes, “We’re here. The team will take us straight to the hotel.” He smiled, and Abi cocked her head looking up at him. “What?” she asked, taken by his sudden and palpable, even if slurred, warmth. “I asked them to put us at the Barceló Emperatriz,” he said.

  The last time the Adams had been in Madrid, Grant had been the junior senator from North Carolina. Abigail’s parents had chosen the city to renew their vows, and for five stressful days, Grant and Abigail traveled the countryside with her parents and two brothers’ families in a bus with less-than-reliable air conditioning, stopping at every shrine and every plaza in every small town. Abigail’s relationship was always vexed with her parents, conservatives with old money who never approved of her liberal upstart of a husband, even if he was a United States Senator. So at the end of the trip, Grant rearranged their travel plans home and booked them two nights at the five-star Barceló Emperatriz. They slept straight through the first night and didn’t leave the hotel pool the following day. On the second night, before their flight back to Washington, the Adams’ first child was conceived in a room overlooking the lush gardens of the Lázaro Galdiano Museum.

  5.

  Three British sailors boarded the deck of Petrov’s ship. They patted him down and then handcuffed him. “That’s absolutely unnecessary,” Petrov told them, but they just shrugged and led him aboard the boat bearing the seal of the British Coast Guard. When they reached a cabin just below the ship’s deck, Petrov was led into a room with just a table and two chairs. The sailors removed his handcuffs, turned and left, closing the door through which they’d entered behind them.

  The room was without a porthole and smelled of disinfectant. As Petrov glanced around himself, a man in a tailored suit walked in a door opposite the one through which Petrov had been just led. “Please
, sit down, Mr. Lubyanka.”

  Petrov remained standing, “My name is Petrov Lubyanka. I am a Russian intelligence officer and I seek political asylum because my government poses an immediate threat to my life.” The British man laughed, “Yes, yes Petrov. We know quite a bit about you. And don’t worry. We don’t plan to send you back to Moscow, where you’re supposedly dead at a sex club. Please,” the man pointed to the chair, “sit.”

  Petrov sat, and the man sat across the table from him. “You don’t recognize me, do you Petrov? Well, I guess you wouldn’t. My name is Agent Brockton, and like you, I’m an intelligence officer. Just under a week ago, I placed a global GPS tracker just behind your right ear.” Petrov reached up and rubbed the tiny spot he and Thom had found what seemed like ages ago. Brockton continued, “Sorry about that. But I’m sure you’ll be glad we were tracking you. Did you think you could get into Madrid without some help? Please. We’ve been working with the Americans, Petrov. We will get you back to your boyfriend, but for the present, he must continue to think you are dead.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  1.

  After a long swim in the pool, Thom lingered over his egg whites with spinach, drinking coffee and reading The New York Times in the hotel’s quiet, sun-filled courtyard. He was determined, after the dissolution of a relationship and the literal death of another, to be the most ripped bitch he could be come Memorial Day on Fire Island. No bread and no pasta for the next few weeks until the onset of summer seemed a small sacrifice as he found himself, for the first time in a long time, completely single.