Bad Company

by P A Duncan

  The man’s eyes were covetous when he looked at the magazine in Alexei’s hands. Alexei returned to the classifieds and made more notes. That cued the man to action. He took the chair across the table from Alexei and said, “Uh, anything good in this issue? Any good security jobs?”

  Alexei looked up, making sure his expression was as badass as a fifty-one-year-old could be. He thickened his accent and replied, “Enough for us both.”

  “Hey, where you from, man?”

  “Russia. You have problem with that?”

  “No, man, no. You guys have a killer army. Wish we’d met on the battlefield. Where’d you serve?”

  “Afghanistan. Three tours. You?”

  “Panama, Grenada, The Gulf. Special Forces.”

  That didn’t seem likely. The man had too much naked emotion on his face.

  “I was Spetsnaz,” Alexei said.

  The man’s eyes widened but he grinned. He knew what that was.

  “Sergei,” Alexei said.

  “I’m Cutter, ‘cause I cut right through ‘em,” he said, making a slashing motion with his right hand. “Pleased to meet you, Sergei.”

  He held his hand out to Alexei. Alexei clasped it and made a fist, followed by an intricate pattern of movements Cutter echoed. A mercenary handshake.

  Alexei handed Cutter the magazine. “You can find jobs here?” Alexei asked.

  “Some good. Mostly straight rent-a-cop stuff, which pays shit.” Cutter lowered his voice. “Once in a while you can find a wet job. Those pay real good.”

  “Show me one.”

  “If I show you, you cut me in for some of the action.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re new here, right? You’re looking for work, but I know what’s what. I show you, and you pay, uh, a finder’s fee.”

  Alexei let his expression harden. “Maybe you are police. Maybe I agree to share action and you arrest me.”

  “Man, I’m no cop. I swear.”

  Alexei studied Cutter until he squirmed. With a shrug, Alexei said, “Nyet. I think you are not police.”

  “So, partners?”

  “What makes you think I get one of these good jobs?”

  “You got the look. I can’t afford to dress the part. You go into people’s houses or businesses looking like shit warmed over, no luck. You’re put together. You’ll impress. So, see, I tell you which ones, you get a job, and I get a finder’s fee. And…” He smiled and raised an eyebrow.

  “A little bit of action?” Alexei asked.

  “Yeah. I miss that.”

  Alexei pointed to the magazine. “Show me.”

  Cutter flipped through the classifieds and found something. “Here. This one.”

  Cutter showed Alexei an ad he’d already jotted down.

  Yahweh needs Aryan Christian men to train his soldiers. Help us take back our country and get your heavenly reward. Call (636) 555-7275. No resumes. Personal interviews only. References will be checked.

  “Who is Yahweh?” Alexei asked.

  “Another name for God.” Cutter tapped the ad with a forefinger. “These guys are badass motherfuckers.”

  “Explain.”

  “They’re radical Christians, white supremacist, anti-government. They got this prophet and everything. Elijah. They’re building an army at a place called Patriot City.”

  Boizhe moi, Alexei thought, where was this guy through all the futile months of searching?

  “How you know this?” he asked.

  “I did a stint there, training guys. They don’t trust U.S. vets. The military advisor there, Lewis, he thinks we’re part of the Jewish conspiracy. He prefers foreign soldiers. Germans, former SAS, guys like you.”

  “Like me?”

  “Aryan.”

  Alexei decided not to tell him he was a Slav, considered subhuman by so-called Aryans.

  “Ad says training. Nothing about wet job,” Alexei said.

  “They can’t be obvious about it. Once you get there and gain their trust, you get wet work. Jews, niggers, government workers.” Cutter looked around the room and lowered his voice again. “The rumor is they got some big thing planned.”

  “What thing?”

  “Against the feds. For Killeen.”

  “Heavenly reward does not sound like good pay.”

  “Man, I was only there a month and got five thousand. Cash. I met a guy there, Australian Army dude. He’s the lead instructor. Ten thou a month. So, what do you say? You contact ‘em and they take you on, you give me a month’s pay.”

  “Half month’s pay.”

  Cutter’s mouth twitched down. “Yeah, okay. That’s cool.”

  “When I call, I talk to this prophet, da?”

  “No. Lewis. He is one scary dude. He’s like eighty or something but still scares the crap outta ya. Got this wicked scar going from the top of his head, down the left side of his face. Must have been, like, in WW2.”

  Alexei calmed his breathing. That matched the description of a Waffen SS colonel wanted for war crimes rising from the Siege of Stalingrad. In the last half-century under different names, he’d stirred up trouble from Eastern Europe to South Africa. Back when The Directorate had allowed Alexei to hunt Nazis, Oberst Pinkus von Hollenbrand was on his list.

  “So, I call,” Alexei said to Cutter, his voice husky from adrenaline.

  “How will we stay in touch?”

  “You have email?”

  Cutter smiled and winked. “The librarian at the front desk gets off on pain. I do her twice a week, and she lets me use the computer here as much as I want.”

  The woman at the front desk was in her forties and fit the stereotype, but the public libraries with computers offered them free to the public. Cutter lived in a reality where was truth was fluid. This inroad to Patriot City could be bombast, but Alexei would follow up.

  He tore a blank sheet from the note pad and handed that and the pen to Cutter. “Give email address. When I get job, I will email. You tell me where to send money.”

  Cutter scribbled on the paper and handed it and the pen back. “Great, great,” Cutter said. “After you’re there a while, let me know how else I can help.”

  “Of course.”

  They exchanged another elaborate handshake, and Alexei left Cutter to his reading.

  19

  Rituals

  Mount Vernon, Virginia

  Alexei was glad for the empty house. He had phone calls to make without the possibility of interruption.

  The first was to a contact he maintained in the Russian military. He requested reactivation of the file for a former Red Army soldier, Sergei Nevansky. A casualty of the Soviet-Afghan War, Starshi Serzhant Nevansky had also been Alexei’s half-brother.

  The next calls went to individuals in the former Soviet Union who owed him favors and who would serve as references for Sergei Nevansky.

  Finally, he called Nelson to tell him what he’d learned and what he proposed to do.

  He didn’t tell Nelson about von Hollenbrand, if that’s who Lewis was.

  He didn’t call Mai in Las Vegas.

  “I may have to move quickly on this,” he’d told Nelson. “If I get an interview, I’ll have to travel, I’m sure. I won’t have time to contact Mai. I trust you’ll explain.”

  “Give me the thankless job, will you? Why do you want to go to this place alone?”

  “What little we’ve learned of Patriot City, if it does exist, is it’s a women-in-their-place compound. I wouldn’t ask Mai to subject herself to that. Also, they may believe in swapping partners among the residents, so if I brought a woman and didn’t share, I’d be suspect. Best to go alone and endure the consequences later.”

  “If you get in, how long will you stay inside?”

  “A couple of weeks should be plenty of time to get an idea of any intentions they have.”

  “Groups like this usually have an initiation ritual to prove your loyalty.”

  “Goes to form.”

  “They may h
and you a gun and give you a target with no opportunity to contact me.”

  “I’ll deal with it if that comes up.”

  “I’ll set up a way for you to report in.”

  “Slick, a couple of weeks, I said.”

  Nelson had stayed silent for a while. There may have been a sigh. “Okay. Your call.”

  They discussed what needed to be in place for Alexei to make his next call, and Alexei’s oldest surviving friend rang off with, “Watch your back, Old Man.”

  Before that next call, Alexei reached down inside himself and brought out a persona synthesized from his and Mai’s research. He brought up as well the long-buried Nazi hunter he’d been for more than half his career with The Directorate.

  To act the part, even on the phone, he needed to look the part.

  He went upstairs to the bedroom closet and selected black slacks, polo shirt, and jacket, changing into them. In the bathroom, he wet his hair, used some gel, and combed it back off his face. The haircut for the interlude in Colorado meant he couldn’t do the usual ponytail, but he looked sinister enough.

  Back at his desk in the office, he removed his Rolex, dropped it in a drawer, and donned a battered Soviet commando watch. From beneath his shirt he pulled a gold chain with two charms on it. One was a miniature of the highest medal of the former USSR, Hero of the Soviet Union, awarded posthumously to his father for his activities in Stalingrad. It was the only connection to the man he resembled but had never known. The other charm was of the Order of Lenin, given to the dead half-brother he was about to impersonate. The necklace was his only visible sentimental indulgence, and he never wore it on a mission.

  As a religious man might kiss a crucifix, Alexei brought the charms to his lips and closed his eyes, asking for a blessing from the father who’d died before Alexei was born and the brother who’d died in his arms.

  He placed the necklace in the drawer next to the Rolex.

  He removed his credit cards and driver’s license from his wallet and made certain he had plenty of cash. Into the wallet, he slipped a green card in Sergei’s name but with Alexei’s picture and thumbprint. From the office closet he took a pre-packed duffel with extra clothing. On the desk rested his gun in its custom holster. He likely wouldn’t be traveling in Mai’s plane—it was in Las Vegas anyway—if he got an interview.

  No gun. It went in the desk drawer, too.

  Alexei had a pre-mission ritual even Mai didn’t know about, though it sometimes was hard to hide it from her. He unlocked another drawer in his desk and took out a large lockbox. He unlocked that and removed a wooden box. That he opened, and he examined the things meaningful to him: a lock of his first wife’s hair, as wheat-yellow as it had been when she was alive; a picture of her with newborn Pyotor; his father’s pocket watch given to his father by Lenin himself; an earring of Mai’s, one she still lamented losing; the tiny plastic wristband placed on his and Mai’s son before the struggle to breathe became too much for the baby; a teething ring of Natalia’s. He touched each item, closed the box, and set it aside.

  From the lockbox he took a stack of files, some thick, some thin. All except one had a black slash of tape across the front. The unmarked file’s label read, “Полковник Пинкус Bон Холленбранд.” Colonel Pinkus von Hollenbrand. He opened the file and read through it, paying attention to the photos. One was authentic, a photo of when he became an Oberleutnant, or first lieutenant. Then, the face was unmarred but already the vacant eyes of a killer stared back at Alexei.

  The other photos were computer-aged images of what von Hollenbrand might have looked like over the years and with the long scar added. The scar was likely from shrapnel or a Soviet soldier’s bayonet. Alexei had always hoped his father, brother, or sister had gotten hold of a knife and done the damage. He memorized the oldest image there, what von Hollenbrand might look like in his sixties.

  He locked everything away and called the number from the ad. The call would go through a router Nelson had had set up.

  The phone on the other end rang eleven times before someone picked up. A man. “One moment please,” he said.

  Alexei picked up the slight German inflection and could almost see the trace underway. That would show the call came from a phone in a transient section of Arlington, Virginia.

  “Please hang up, and we will call you back. Answer after the third ring.”

  The line went dead, and Alexei hung up. Less than a minute later, the phone rang. “This is Sergei,” Alexei answered.

  “You called me, Sergei.”

  “I saw ad. Newest issue of Mercenary World, page 83, middle column, bottom of page.”

  “Where are you from, Sergei?”

  “With whom do I speak?”

  “Later, Sergei. Where are you from?”

  “I was born on collective outside Kiev.”

  “Did you serve in the Soviet Army?”

  “Da. Yes.”

  In good Russian, the man asked, “What division and regiment?”

  Alexei responded in the same language. More questions came: commanding officer, postings, campaigns, etc. Alexei’s clipped replies were like those a soldier would give. He suspected his responses were going through a voice stress analyzer on the other end, a favorite trick of Aryan Nation to catch spies, but Alexei was a practiced liar.

  In English again, the man said, “Very good, Sergei. I am Lewis. Are you available for an in-person interview?”

  “Where will interview be? I am new in country and have no job.”

  “Expenses paid by me, Sergei. Here and back.”

  “Then, I am available.”

  “What is your surname?”

  “Nevansky.”

  “Spell it.” After Alexei did, Lewis said, “Go to Washington National Airport to the TWA ticket counter. There will be a reservation in your name for a round-trip flight. You’ll learn the destination at the airport. The return date will be open. No luggage. Carryon only. Tell no one where you are going and make no calls. At the airport you’ll be watched. At your arrival gate, a woman will meet you. She will have a sign with your family name. Go with her to a car. Any questions?”

  “Nyet. I understand.”

  “Your flight leaves in three hours. Miss it and you’re out of luck. This number will be disconnected.”

  “I will be there,” Alexei said, but to dead air.

  He sent a short email to Mai, donned his jacket, and picked up his duffel. In the kitchen he left a note in Russian for Olga. He took a cab to a restaurant in Arlington and, a few blocks away, hailed a cab from there to the airport. Three hours after his brief talk with Pinkus von Hollenbrand, Alexei sat in first class with a good-looking flight attendant flirting with him.

  20

  Carefully Taught

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  When Mai and Carroll appeared with grocery bags, the six people at a table on the hotel’s picnic grounds looked them over: Duval and his fiancée and two older couples, presumably the about-to-be in-laws. A little girl of two sat on one grandmother’s lap, and the child was much cleaner than what Mai had observed the year before.

  Lamar rose and met Jay, taking a bag from him and shaking his hand before the two did a slap on the back hug. Duval’s fiancée gave Jay a kiss on the cheek. Duval wasn’t jumpy. Steering clear of meth for the wedding or the parents, Mai wondered.

  “Lamar,” Jay said, “remember Siobhan from Pensacola? Sharon, this is Siobhan.”

  “I remember,” Duval said, grinning. “Jay ditched me so he could take you shooting.”

  Sharon said, “You must be pretty special to get Jay away from a gun show. Nice to meet you.”

  Mai shook the woman’s hand, sensing a slight tremor. She must have given up the meth, too. “Nice to meet you, as well,” Mai said, the hard Belfast accent soft compared to the southwestern twangs. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

  “Of course not. It’s good to see this guy won’t be Dateless Jay again,” Sharon said.

/>   “Hey. Stop,” Carroll said, sharp and a bit demanding.

  Sharon cut him a nasty look.

  Lamar led the way to his and Sharon’s hotel room, with the kitchenette where Jay was going to cook dinner. They put the grocery bags on the small counter, and Mai backed out of the tiny kitchen. Duval unpacked the bags into the refrigerator and held a Coors light out to Carroll.

  “You want a beer, Siobhan?” Duval asked.

  Carroll winked at Mai and said, “The Irish don’t drink cold beer.”

  “Okay. Well, we got Coke and Diet Coke,” Lamar offered.

  “A Diet Coke is fine,” Mai replied.

  Duval popped open a can of soda and handed it to her. “Did you know Jay here is cooking tonight?”

  “I heard,” Mai said, smiling at Carroll. “A chef, are you?”

  “Not really. My dad and I learned how to cook after my mom left, but spaghetti is my specialty.”

  “Wait until you taste his homemade sauce,” Duval said. “Absolutely fucking amazing. What do you eat at Irish weddings?”

  “We don’t. We drink, but whiskey goes with most everything.”

  Duval gave Carroll’s upper arm a slight punch. “You shoulda said something. I’d have bought some.”

  “It’s not a problem, really,” Mai said.

  They finished putting the food away, and Duval grabbed a beer for himself and Sharon. He led the way back to the picnic table. As they walked, Mai felt a light touch of Carroll’s hand at the small of her back.

  Duval introduced his and Sharon’s parents, the Kirks. The inevitable remarks about her “cute” accent followed.

  “Jay, you doing good at your gun shows?” the elder Duval asked. He turned to Mr. Kirk. “Jay here was in Desert Storm.”

  “I’m doing okay,” Carroll said. “Taking a small break.”

  “Who’d you serve with?” Mr. Kirk asked Jay.

  “The Big Red One.”

  “Quite the historic unit.”

  “Yes, sir. It was an honor.”