Imminent Threat

by Jeff Gunhus

  “You are a good man. But your country. My country. They are run by idiots. You know this is true,” Scarvan said.

  “Not sure I’m with you on this one. I’ll agree they are mostly idiots,” Hawthorn said. “But some of them are just assholes.”

  Scarvan let out a deep-throated laugh that echoed in the low-ceilinged bar. Only the die-hard drinkers remained, and they didn’t even bother looking over.

  “True, true,” Scarvan said. He grew quiet and then turned serious. “Tomorrow we return to being adversaries. Carrying out the orders of idiots and assholes.”

  Normally, Hawthorn would have used the moment to try to turn an asset, to offer a deal, use the man’s dissatisfaction with his government as a wedge to break him free. It was something Hawthorn was exceptionally good at doing. Maybe even the best there’d ever been.

  And that’s why he knew it was pointless to try.

  Hawthorn raised his glass and met Scarvan’s eyes. “To a respected adversary and now friend.”

  Scarvan straightened his posture and raised his glass to meet Hawthorn’s. “To a respected adversary and friend. May we never again meet on the field. If we do, let each not expect mercy from the other.”

  A chill passed through Hawthorn. It was not only the words, but the distant look in Scarvan’s eyes that did it.

  “No mercy,” Hawthorn agreed.

  And they both drank.

  CHAPTER 7

  Mara was no stranger to the Oval Office, having joined Jim Hawthorn on several of the briefings to the president regarding Alpha Team. Still, walking into the room filled her with a sense of awe. The room gave off an energy of its own, a mix of history and power and solemnity. It was as if the great weight of decisions that had been made in the room over the years had left behind a residual gravity that pulled on its occupants, forcing them to recognize the great responsibility imparted to them.

  She felt that weight on her. Every part of her career had been in service to the higher cause that was America. Not some blind patriotism, but open-eyed knowledge that even with her country’s terrible past mistakes and her current contradictions, she remained fundamentally the world’s great hope for stability and peace. Knowing the weight of that burden for just her tiny bit of responsibility made her wonder at the stress the occupant of the office must feel.

  To add to it, while presidents redecorated the Oval to their liking, they all kept the portrait of George Washington looking down from above the fireplace. She imagined Washington’s slightly disapproving look had caused more than one president to feel they were letting the great Founding Father down. She liked the thought of that. Washington was a pretty damn good example to try to emulate.

  Hawthorn walked up and stood next to her in front of the portrait.

  “Lost nearly every battle,” he said. “And yet won the war.”

  “He was exactly the man his country needed,” she said, noticing her father take a seat on the couch to her right.

  Hawthorn placed a hand on her forearm. “I’m very glad you’re here, Mara. I wouldn’t have asked unless it was important.”

  “It’s always important,” she said. Not angry, just stating the truth.

  “Late-night meeting in the Oval, it better be important,” President Kyle Patterson said as he walked in. Mara noticed the president appeared thinner than she remembered, his face gaunt. The office exacted its toll.

  “Good evening, Mr. President,” Hawthorn said. “Thank you for seeing us.”

  “It’s never good news at this hour,” the president said. “But you didn’t give me much of a choice. You don’t rattle very easily, so your phone call left me worried. Sit, everyone. Please.”

  They all took their seats, Scott and Mara on one couch and Hawthorn on the other. The president sat in a chair between them and accepted a thin briefing folder from Hawthorn. Each of them had a copy.

  “At least Townsend isn’t here,” the president said, opening the binder. His predecessor to the office, a man who’d left the office in disgrace, had become an ad hoc member of Alpha Team since he’d been there at its inception. He’d helped periodically but was more interested in making money on the lecture circuit again since his newfound popularity after being kidnapped. In a way, he had Scott and Mara to thank for that. After all, they’d been the ones who kidnapped him. Not only that, but each had contributed a right hook to create his battered and bruised face that the TV audience had loved so much.

  “I will need to brief President Townsend later, sir. He will also be on Scarvan’s list. It’s difficult to bring the ex-president on short notice. Especially since . . . well . . .”

  “Since we don’t like each other?” the president finished. He closed the folder. “Let’s get on the same page here, Jim. Lay it out for me.”

  Mara liked Patterson. He was no-nonsense and appreciated that trait in others. Also, if he liked you, he trusted the briefing would get to the salient points in good order. Some people wanted to ask questions right from the get-go, forcing the briefer to jog around instead of laying out a case. Then again, if Patterson thought you were dragging things out, he’d pounce. More than one briefer had had both their first and last presidential briefing happen on the same day.

  “Jacobslav Scarvan. If there’s a single man most feared by intelligence agencies around the world, it’s him. Ex-Russian Special Forces, then KGB, then FSB after the fall of the Soviet Union. He’s a one-man army. He can infiltrate anywhere and kill anyone, regardless of the protection they have.”

  “I’m sure Mitch Dreslan would have an opinion about that,” the president said, shifting in his chair uncomfortably. Dreslan was the head of the Secret Service Presidential Protective Detail.

  “Sir, Mitch Dreslan is a good man. Once he fully understands the threat, he’s going to want to put you on lockdown in the bunker.”

  The president laughed. “He’d prefer that every day. Wrap me in bubble wrap, too.” No one else in the room laughed along with him. Mara considered how rarely that likely happened.

  “Okay, so he was a very bad guy,” the president said. “And he’s supposed to be dead, right? How did we get that wrong?”

  “That’s on me, Mr. President,” Scott said. “I filed the report that he was dead.”

  “On what evidence?”

  “That I shot him,” Scott said. “Four times. And then watched him fall over the side of a ship in middle of a monster storm in the Aegean Sea.”

  “Is that in the record?” the president asked.

  “No,” Hawthorn said. “Neither is the fact that I was on the ship with him. I saw Scott shoot him. Saw him go over. There was no way he could have survived.”

  “And yet here we are.”

  “Yes sir,” Hawthorn said. “A little over twenty-four hours ago I received a letter from an old adversary, Viktor Belchik. I believe you are familiar?”

  Unlike his predecessor, who had charged into the presidency on a wave of family money, ego, and backroom deals while managing to avoid ever becoming a student of anything, President Patterson had an inquisitive mind. In fact, he had done his dissertation on espionage during the Cold War while earning a master’s in International Relations from Georgetown University. Belchik factored prominently into any such discussion. “I know about Viktor Belchik’s role in Russian history. Learned a great more about it after taking this office and having better access to the files. Nearly as impressive as your role for us, Jim.”

  Hawthorn kept a poker face, not showing any reaction to the compliment.

  “The letter he sent was very disturbing.”

  “Why a letter? Seems quaint, doesn’t it?”

  Mara spoke up. “You’d be surprised how well the simplest methods to avoid detection work. A letter given to a trusted person to be dropped off in the mail with no return address is far less trackable than email or a phone call.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I want to circumvent the national security apparatus. How can you be sure it’s
Belchik?”

  “He used an old cipher,” Hawthorn said. “Something only the two of us knew from the old days when we were a back channel. It’s him.”

  “And he says Scarvan is back.”

  “Yes sir,” Hawthorn said. “He says the first hints came a month ago. Five different members of the old guard at the FSB met grisly ends. All made to look like accidents.” He spread out photos across the coffee table in front of the president. They showed mutilated and burned bodies. “This one fell in front of a subway in Rome. This one was in a car accident with a propane truck. And so on.”

  “All these men were connected to the order to take out Scarvan,” Scott said. “They were either in the chain of command or foot soldiers along the way. They are being eliminated one by one.”

  “Couldn’t it be coincidence? Belchik is still alive,” the president said. “Seems like he would be high on the list.”

  “He is alive and he was high on the list,” Hawthorn said. “Belchik was in Spain under an alias, enjoying a retirement among the orange trees and good food of Seville, far away from the miserable winters of Moscow. Scarvan found him two weeks ago. Belchik says he spoke to Scarvan for some time before he left.”

  “It makes no sense,” the president said. “If the working theory is that Scarvan has come back to kill those responsible, then why would he leave Belchik alive?”

  “A man like Scarvan doesn’t just want to kill those responsible,” Mara said. “He wants to punish them.”

  “Mara is correct,” Hawthorn said. “Not soon after he left, Belchik fell ill. Nausea, vomiting, tremors. The doctors missed the cause at first, but once Belchik told them what to look for it was clear. Polonium-210. Radiation poisoning. The same type used by Russian operatives a few years ago in the botched attempt in England. He’s still in Spain, dying a slow, painful death.”

  President Patterson shut the briefing book. “So, we have a dangerous assassin out for revenge. I get it. But—don’t take this the wrong way, Jim, because I know the two of you are contemporaries—wouldn’t he be a decrepit old man now? In a world where entire nation-states pledge to bring down the great Satan of America and well-funded terrorist groups target me and my family daily, why all the fuss over this one man? Certainly, you and Scott can protect yourselves? Ramp up your personal security?”

  Hawthorn took a second to answer. Mara had seen him use the technique several times before and had adopted it herself. The pause gave weight to the words that followed. Everyone, including herself, had chills from what he said.

  “Jacobslav Scarvan is the most proficient killer in the world. Belchik says that he’s aged, of course, but that he’s in excellent physical condition. Lethal as ever. This isn’t about him coming after Scott and me. Belchik’s warning was that punishing those responsible for trying to kill him is only the opening salvo. After that, Scarvan plans nothing less than to make the world burn.”

  The president squirmed in his chair uncomfortably.

  “The good news is that Belchik says he knows what Scarvan is planning, but he will only tell us in person.”

  “It could be a trap,” the president said.

  Scott grinned. He pointed to Mara and said, “And that’s why they’re sending us.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Belchik’s three-story townhome apartment was on Paseo de Cristóbal Colón directly across from the Guadalquivir River in the center of Seville’s historic district. The Plaza de Toros, the bullfighting ring, was only two hundred meters to the north and the iconic Torre del Oro, the thirteenth-century military watchtower standing guard over the river, was a hundred meters to the south.

  Mara thought the location was fitting, symbolic of Belchik’s life. He’d stood guard over his country, from his perspective, fighting the good fight against her enemies, foreign and domestic. An enemy that included on many occasions the United States. But he was in the bullring as well. Part of a rough and brutal world of danger, violence, and blood. For decades, he’d been the matador in the center of the ring, waving his capote de brega at the fearsome men charging at him, deftly stepping aside at the last moment, relying on confusion and misdirection to keep his opponents off-balance.

  But in the end, one of the bulls had hit his mark.

  That was the other reason for the townhome’s location. Attached to the same building was the Centro Médico Avanzado, a convenience for his medical needs.

  “How many times have you met Belchik?” Mara asked.

  “Only once in person,” Scott said. They were standing opposite the apartment, their backs to the river. They’d been there for thirty minutes, watching.

  “On the boat the night with Scarvan?”

  “Even then, we didn’t speak to one another directly,” Scott said. “It was all Hawthorn. He had the relationship.”

  She felt the twinge again that perhaps it ought to have been Hawthorn to come make this contact. It’d been discussed in the Oval Office, but they’d decided against it. If Scarvan wanted Hawthorn dead, then what better trap to set than to bait him with the promise of information? If it was a trap, then whoever was there needed to be able to react and adjust tactically to any situation. Hawthorn chafed under the implication he wasn’t up to the challenge, but he hadn’t fought it. He was all too aware of his physical limitations.

  The problem was that if it was a trap, it could just as well have been set for Scott as for Hawthorn. Scarvan had reason to kill them both.

  “What kind of security detail do you think we’re up against?” she said.

  “The secrets in Belchik’s head could rewrite history books, and not in a way that any nation would come out looking good. I’m certain our Russian friends have him on lockdown. For his own protection, of course.”

  “Not that it helped,” Mara said.

  A black SUV rolled to a stop in front of Belchik’s apartment. Two men in suits climbed out of the backseats and surveyed the street. Scott held up the tourist map and Mara pointed blindly at it. They were both looking up through their dark sunglasses at the men. “Shift change,” she said.

  The two men rang the door and a few seconds later it opened, and they disappeared inside. Two minutes after, the door opened again, and two different men came out. They were having an animated conversation and let the door close behind them as they walked to the SUV, barely looking around them as they did.

  “Sloppy,” Mara said.

  “They’re guarding a dying man with a week or two to live,” he said. “It shows.”

  “Don’t suppose we can just walk up and ring the doorbell,” Mara said.

  “Hi, just your friendly CIA operatives, wondering if Mr. Belchik has some state secrets he’d like to share on the way out.”

  “Yeah, probably not the move.”

  Scott nodded back toward the building. “Just got more complicated.”

  Two women, one gray-haired and stooped over, the other middle-aged, holding the older woman’s arms in support, had walked out of the medical center connected to the townhouse building and were now buzzing into Belchik’s apartment.

  “Wife and daughter?” Mara asked.

  “Looks that way. Shit.”

  Mara felt the same way. Even though they weren’t planning a full assault with guns blazing to overpower Belchik’s guards, things sometimes went wrong. If and when they did, there was a good chance some level of violence was going to prove necessary to get an unmonitored audience with the old man.

  Having civilians in the house wasn’t part of the plan.

  “Thoughts?” Scott asked.

  Mara scanned the townhomes. There were eight units in a row, all three stories high, all facing the river. Each had a covered patio on the second floor. Where most units had the windows and doors open to capture that day’s gentle breeze, Belchik’s balcony had metal screens pulled down over all openings.

  “How’s your Russian?” she asked.

  “Passable, but with a terrible accent,” he said. “How’s yours?”


  “Strong accent. No way we’re getting past as official visitors from Moscow.”

  They strolled upriver, taking stock of the building as they passed.

  “We don’t even know what floor he’s on.”

  “We can rule out the first floor,” Scott said. “Not defensible enough. Leaves second and third. Metal covers on those nice big balcony windows says security protocol to me. You saw his protective detail. They’re phoning it in. Why be on the river unless. . .”

  “. . . you wanted to die with a nice view.”

  Mara glanced up at the two windows on the third floor. One was shuttered, but the other had curtains pushed to either side. The glass had a semi-reflective coating on it so it was hard to see anything else inside.

  Scott continued, “I’d say most of the protection team, two or three men max, on the second floor. Maybe one guy on duty on the street level.”

  “Wife and daughter either in his room or the room next to him.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  They turned the corner and walked down the side street to get a look at the back of the building. There was a narrow alley behind the building, but it wasn’t private. There was no back door or access point on the ground floor. The windows on the rear of the building were shuttered.

  “We access the roof via one of the other units and traverse across to his unit,” Mara said. “Wait until late so the guards are asleep or watching TV downstairs. Circle-cut the window, climb in, have our little chitchat, climb out, off we go.”

  Scott nodded. “I like it. Direct, simple. What could go wrong?”

  Mara hated when he did this. They both knew there were a dozen things that could and probably would go wrong. “They might have the roof rigged with laser tripwires and pressure pads. The window might be bulletproof, which makes it impossible to cut. His room might have motion sensors tied into an overall alarm system. The wife might be in the room and raise the alarm. Belchik isn’t expecting us, he might raise the alarm. Once the alarm is raised . . .”