by Seeley James
I looked at Emily. She looked at me.
“My editor doesn’t think it’ll sell.” She snapped her ring box shut and popped it open again. “He wants me to put a paragraph on the website, see if it gets any hits.”
Chasing a Cold War legend back to his sanctuary would be an international incident. My only hope for getting my dog back was to hand over the Pozdeeva drive. I was too tired to think straight. Viktor would come out of his safe space eventually. Tackling the problem after a good night’s sleep sounded like the best plan.
I left Emily in the kitchen madly thumbing a blog post on her phone and staggered back to my bedroom. I hit the sack dejected.
Mercury leaned over the lamp as I switched it off. Bro, you gonna sleep after Viktor gave you that big fat clue? Cannot believe you.
I said, I can’t believe you. What kind of a god lets his chosen one get robbed by the Russians?
Chosen one? You? Aw, homie, I got better worshippers than you, believe me. Big time people. Important people. Powerful people.
Powerful, huh? I said, If you care about those ‘important’ people, tell them they can get a free meal and a warm bed at the Salvation Army. Goodnight.
Three seconds later, I was dead to the world. I dreamed about a lady on a bicycle riding away with Anoshni in a basket. The scene morphed into the face of Pia Sabel asking me why I slept with Emily. I pleaded my case, over and over, to a shifting sea of faces that turned into a crowd who picked up fist-sized rocks. Before they stoned me, I was late for someone’s wedding. Running somewhere. Running in knee-deep mud until a bomb went off.
“Old school!” Covered in sweat, I sat bolt upright and shouted into the dark. “Microdots.”
I grabbed my phone off the bedside table and texted Bianca my instructions. Then I looked at Anoshni’s empty doggy bed. “No way that’s gonna stand.”
Throwing back the covers, I jumped out and grabbed my gear.
Twenty-seven minutes later, alarms were ringing, and soldiers were shouting on the far side of the compound as I secured Viktor Popov’s mouth with duct tape. I waved Anoshni in front of his plasticuffed hands. I propped the pillows under his head so he could see better and aimed my pistol.
He grimaced in anticipation.
I fired a silenced 9mm into his right tibia. “You ever touch my dog again—you’re a dead man.”
CHAPTER 8
Yuri leaned over his hacker’s shoulder in the darkened room and watched the center of three screens. The Russian heavy metal pouring from the man’s headphones almost drowned out Yuri’s jazz. Yuri was streaming the Mambo Kings’ Latin-influenced version of the 1950s classic Blue Rondo a la Turk. There was the one thing he missed about living in America: live jazz. They invented the music and evolved its many forms from ragtime to big bands to modern. Going to a trendy club with a live quartet gave him tremendous joy. Moscow’s jazz clubs were nothing by comparison.
One day he would return to the clubs in Chicago, New York, New Orleans. He would arrive in style with the Cirkus manager’s daughter on his arm. He savored a few more notes of the pounding piano melody, then paused his music and tapped the programmer’s shoulder. “Status?”
“The first was underbooked.” He dropped his headphones to his neck and faced his boss. “They changed equipment. Nothing I could do.”
“Monitor that one and keep looking.”
“There will be one that is perfect. Give it time.”
“We don’t have time. We have an hour. Maybe.” Yuri glared at the man. “Keep looking.”
The programmer shrugged and returned to his screens.
Yuri stood in the center of the room and surveyed the round wall of computer screens. There had to be a perfect pair somewhere.
Roman looked up and pointed to his screen. Yuri crossed to him.
“There is a message in the database they sent us yesterday.” Roman tapped a screen full of social media data about Americans. “Someone named Brad wants you to call him about hackers without borders.”
“What is wrong with you?” Yuri’s blood rose with his voice. “Everyone is working on the assignment. The social media projects are on hold.”
“It’s worth checking out because the guy seems to know—”
“Most likely, this ‘Brad’ guy is FSB. He’s testing for spies. Answer him, and you’re a dead man. Now get to work.”
Yuri pushed his hand into his pocket to stop himself from decking the young man. With all the western influence in the room, an officer couldn’t hit a man anymore. He calmed himself and returned to the center of the room. He checked off each of the monitors to see if anyone else had strayed from his assignment.
One of Lieutenant Vasili’s displays looked promising. He resumed the Mambo Kings and watched the numbers scrolling by. Vasili sensed his stare and glanced over his shoulder. Yuri raised his brows. Vasili shook his head and turned back to his monitors.
Strangelove sent Yuri a text via the GRU’s homegrown version of Snapchat that deleted everything after being read. “Are you working on my project? Expected results by now.”
Yuri bit the inside of his cheek to prevent writing back something snarky about the banda’s growing workload. He texted back “soon”.
There was something impersonal in Strangelove’s orders lately. As if he no longer cared about Yuri’s banda. Strangelove’s previous direction was chilling. Don’t get caught. If you do, do not worry. I’ll handle everything.
Strangelove knew nothing about Americans. They were fierce individualists until someone attacked their country. Strangelove might think he could handle things, but he was no match for them. More troubling was the fact that Strangelove was a seasoned veteran who came up during the Cold War. He would know that. So. Why no written orders? Did Popov really approve this assignment? Was Strangelove playing some game in which Yuri and his banda were pawns? Yuri scratched his beard.
Whatever the cagey old general was up to, Yuri would have to untangle it after the fact. For now, he would rely on Russian Avos’. His nation’s reliance on fate. Hope. Destiny. For a people ruled by autocrats for a thousand years, Avos’ was a reasonable way to deal with impossible situations. Great writers from Cantemir to Solzhenitsyn had championed the mindset as the heart of Russian character. They soldiered on in the face of overwhelming odds. It was their Avos’. He sighed.
He straightened up and took a deep breath. Failures do not get promoted to colonel or general.
Minutes ticked by as his playlist cranked up the next song, Hurricane Season by Trombone Shorty. He snapped his fingers to the beat.
He turned his attention to Igor, who drummed his fingers on the desk. “You have something?”
Igor looked over his shoulder. “No. It’s just that … I’d rather be at the trial.”
“Do your job!” Yuri clenched his fists. “Whether or not those damned addicts are convicted, Alexi will still be dead.”
“I want to look them in the eye.”
“Watch the displays.” Yuri ripped his earbuds out and leaned into Igor’s face. “Filthy street musicians are not your problem.”
Igor turned red and clenched his teeth. His lips formed words that he bit back after glancing in Vasili’s direction. He inhaled and held his breath for a second. “Yes, sir.”
With an impudent flourish, he turned back.
Yuri leaned over him. “What about that one?”
“It’s the right path,” Igor squinted and looked up the tables on his right-hand monitor. “Schedule looks good.”
“Keep watching it. If it stays on time, shout.”
Igor nodded. Yuri resumed his watch and put his earbuds back in. The trial for Alexi’s murderers couldn’t have come at a worse time. His plan could unravel at any minute, and Igor wasn’t the only one losing focus. Everyone had a news feed open on their desktops. He had cut their bereavement short to get on with the mission. Maybe he should’ve given them more time to grieve.
Then he stopped thinking. Major Yuri Belenov never
second-guessed his decisions.
The mission was in motion. Nothing could stop him now. The window of opportunity was short. Their man had inserted the code in the Cleveland ARTCC system an hour earlier. It had gone undetected. Sixteen possible scenarios had been studied and modeled. So far, eight had been eliminated. The timing would have to be perfect. Sending the revised code would have to be timed to the second. If the Americans discovered their connection, it would take months to get back inside.
Les McCann’s pounding piano on Compared to What danced in his ears.
“I’ve got it.” Roman snapped his fingers and pointed at his monitor. “These two.”
Yuri ran to him and followed his finger on the first screen, then looked at the second. “Definitely. They will work.” He shouted over his shoulder, “Vasili! We have them. They’ve already received instructions from TRACON.”
“What are the numbers?” Vasili shouted.
Roman called them out, and Vasili repeated them.
Yuri listened intently and confirmed. “Go! Go!”
Igor ran the math through the simulator. “It will work. They’ll hand off to ARTCC in five minutes.”
“Quickly, quickly.” Yuri felt his voice rising with his excitement. “Get it loaded now.”
Vasili pounded his keyboard, sending the revised math to their Trojan subroutine. His fingers clicked like an orchestra of crickets, then stopped. Everything in the room went quiet.
“Check your work. Confirm everything.” Yuri shouted. “We only get one chance at this.”
Vasili called out the numbers. Roman repeated them, pressing a finger to his screen as he read them off. After he confirmed each set, he called out, “Correct.”
When his men finished, all eyes in the room turned to Yuri. “Proceed.”
The lieutenant dramatically pressed the enter key with the index finger on his outstretched arm. Then he stared at his monitor for a long, agonizing moment. He jumped up and shoved his fists in the air. “Upload confirmed!”
The entire group shouted for joy.
“Not yet!” Yuri held up a hand, stop.
They ran to Roman’s display and watched as two dots blinked and moved and blinked again. They crowded in for a closer look. The dots moved ever closer to each other on a triangular path. Five minutes inched along like as many hours. No one spoke, no one moved. The whir of the computer fans the only sound in the room.
Everyone’s eyes remained glued to Flight 1028, New York to Chicago, and Flight 31 from Boston. The first carried 212 people, the other 153.
For what seemed like an eternity, the two dots remained side-by-side. Blinking. Blinking. Blinking. Then they disappeared.
Everyone in the banda shouted and gave high-fives. Even Yuri smiled. Mission accomplished. He pulled his phone and sent a text to Strangelove: “It is done.”
Strangelove texted back: “Reported in the news?”
Yuri’s fist tightened around his phone. Of course, the media hadn’t picked it up yet. The mid-air collision had just occurred. It would take an hour for a major news organization to confirm the story and post it online. He watched his team celebrating. They had worked hard for weeks to reach this point. They had lost a brother. They had executed an impossible string of math in seconds. They were careful and diligent in their work. They deserved a moment to revel in their accomplishment.
Vasili noticed him staring and tapped one of the others. Roman looked up next. The voices died down. They faced Yuri. “Well done. Now the next step.”
The men nodded and returned to their workstations. They brought up the social media accounts they’d created in the general vicinity of the crash. They posted online about a loud noise. They posted about seeing airplanes falling from the sky. They posted about President Hunter’s failure to upgrade the FAA. They posted about how obviously avoidable this horrific accident was. They posted about how no one in the media was publishing the true story. They posted that there were no news reports because lamestream media were covering up for their favorite establishment candidate, Veronica Hunter. They posted that President Hunter should be called “the Murderer of Flight 1028.” They posted that Chuck Roche had blasted President Hunter for failing to fix the outdated FAA. They posted that Chuck Roche would never have let this happen.
Roman started a meme: #HuntersFail.
Yuri liked it and had everyone copy it.
All the social media accounts had been set up in advance. All the fake-accounts had friended or followed someone connected to a major media outlet—but not reporters. The reporters would hear the Russians’ spin from friends and thereby find it trustworthy.
Everyone in the banda waited with twenty news browsers open.
The first mention was a banner on a major website: Mid-Air Collision, 365 Lives Feared Lost. Then another and another. A specialty news site took the bait: Hunter’s Failure Costs Hundreds of Lives. Then another and another. CNN was the first to pick up Roman’s meme, #HuntersFail. Then Fox, and moments later, the rest followed.
Yuri walked behind his men and watched over their shoulders. He sent the confirmation text to Strangelove.
An odd quiet fell over the room. Only the computers hummed.
Igor groaned loudly. He turned his chair around, his back to his screens, and held his head in his hands. “What have we done?”
CHAPTER 9
Pia and Tania sipped coffees while waiting for an overdue limo. They sat in a booth at the otherwise empty Finnegan’s Pub a block north of Rossiya Bank in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The proprietor wiped tables and swept floors in preparation for the evening crowd.
“What a-a-are you reading?” Tania asked.
Pia looked up. “Roche called the press the ‘enemy of the people’. A term used by Stalin and Hitler.”
“His s-s-supporters called th-th-them the lügenpresse.” Tania stirred her cup and savored the aroma. “Lügen means l-l-lying in German. If I remember m-m-my West Point studies correctly, th-th-the Nazis used the phrase it b-b-before they closed the newspapers.”
Pia checked her watch. “I have a feeling the limo isn’t coming.”
“That guy f-f-from the bank is still w-w-watching us.”
“Does he know how obvious he is?”
“He was rushed i-i-into this.” Tania took a casual look out the window, her gaze rolling by the man in the gray coat. “He’s a local guy. Someone called him and told him to w-w-watch the meeting, s-s-see what we do afterward. Or else he’s with the mob—but, s-s-same result in the end.”
Pia texted the limo driver one last time.
“D-d-did that piss you off when the banker asked if y-y-your dad was coming?” Tania asked.
“He built Sabel Industries. It’s natural for everyone to think he owns the company.”
“So, why did he p-p-put nearly all the stock in your n-n-name?”
Pia took a long, slow sip of coffee. “Guilt.”
“N-n-nah, that’s OK.” Tania raised her brows and flopped her hands out. “Don’t tell m-m-me anything. Just because I’m your best f-f-friend doesn’t mean you owe me any explanations.”
“All right, but this is not a story I want talked about—ever.” Pia caught Tania’s gaze and drilled into it. “Dad lived next door to my bio-parents and me. A couple guys came to him, told him they were CIA investigating my parents. Asked him to track their comings and goings.”
“And they were a-a-actually the guys who m-m-murdered your parents? He b-b-became their lookout before the killings? Holy shit.” She held her cup to her lips. “Wait. He’s not really c-c-complicit if they fooled him. Oh. Yeah. I get it. Even then, that’s g-gotta weigh on a person’s mind.” Tania rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “That’s why he a-a-adopted you?”
“He couldn’t let me fall into the foster care system.”
Tania dropped back in her seat. “That’s h-heavy.”
They sat in silence, contemplating Alan Sabel’s act of atonement twenty-two years earlier.
Tania put her
cup down and leaned forward. “Is that why w-w-we came here? You’re trying to help y-y-your dad pin something on Roche?”
Pia tilted her head. “No. Pozdeeva gave us those files. I wanted to know more about the bank statement.” She looked out the window. “They sure tightened up when I put that out there. I think there’s something to it.”
“Don’t g-g-give me that.” Tania touched her friend’s wrist. “You could’ve c-c-called or sent s-s-someone. You came here because your d-d-dad brought you here when y-y-you were little. You’re trying t-t-to connect with him.”
Pia pursed her lips and sipped her coffee and looked out the window at the man across the street.
“Are you going to t-t-take the Russian’s deal?” Tania asked.
Grateful for a new topic, Pia turned back. “Expand Sabel Security into Moscow with a zero-interest loan? Hard to resist, isn’t it?”
“What about the p-p-part where they pay ten times the going rate for services, and you give them a r-rebate in Euros?”
“What’s the matter, Tania? You don’t think we should get involved in money laundering?” Pia smiled.
“N-n-n… N-n-n.” Tania looked out the window at the blue sky and frowned. “S-s-so frustrating. Words in my head. Not in m-mouth.”
“All wounds heal.” Pia reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “Afterwards, you should keep the beret. It looks … jaunty. Perfect for you.”
Tania turned her watery gaze outside.
Pia’s phone buzzed with a text from Bianca telling her to check the news feed: Hundreds Feared Dead in Disaster over Ohio. She showed the headline on her phone to Tania, #HuntersFail.
Bianca called a second later. Pia put her on speaker.
“We have something related to this morning’s crash, flaca.” Bianca took a deep breath. “Jacob was right—the inside of the USB drive was sprinkled with both new and old microdots. Old microdots are tiny photographs. New microdots have a hundred megabytes on a disk the size of the dot in the letter i. We’ve found ten images so far. Some we think are Latin but in a code or something. They make no sense at all. There are hundreds more. The one we just translated is scary. Check your email.”