Imminent Threat

by Jeff Gunhus

  Scott shoved the table away and ran toward the room. As he did, he heard the first shot fired. Then another. The unmistakable hiss of a suppressor.

  When he got to the door, Mara was locked in a grappling hold with a large man. He had her by the lower arm and one hand on her neck. She looked small next to the man’s hulking frame, but Scott relaxed. Neither hand held a gun. Even with his size, he posed little threat to Mara.

  “Need help?” he said, needling her.

  The big man turned his head just a fraction on seeing Scott enter the room.

  It was all Mara needed.

  She shifted her weight and ducked down, at the same time landing a bone-crunching kick to the man’s knee. He bent over in pain. But on the way down, there was more pain waiting for him. Mara’s knee slammed into the bodyguard’s face, shattering his nose and signaling to his brain that it was time to take a little break from the world. He fell back, out cold.

  “No,” Mara deadpanned. “I’ve got it.”

  They gagged and cuffed the man and cleared the rest of the downstairs.

  “I saw Belchik on the monitor,” he told her. “We’re in good shape.”

  “Great,” she said. “Let’s go see what was so important that he couldn’t just tell Hawthorn in a letter like a normal person.”

  They worked their way upstairs, opening windows as they did to dispel the gas. The bodyguards would be out for at least an hour, but they cuffed and gagged each of them as a precaution.

  Once on the upper floor, they entered Belchik’s room. Even through their masks, the smell of the room was pungent. It reminded Scott of walking into a public restroom that’d been recently doused with antiseptic cleaning fluids. Even the chemicals couldn’t mask the smell of death and decay.

  Belchik was in a hospital bed, inclined at a forty-five-degree angle. Monitors flanked each side, giving real-time readouts of his heart functions and respiration. Wires snaked from the machines, disappearing under the thin sheets to different parts of his body. Most importantly, as hoped, an oxygen mask was strapped to his face, covering both his nose and mouth.

  Mara opened the windows in the room and shut the door behind them. The canisters on the roof were long finished dispensing the GX, so it wouldn’t be long before the room was clear.

  As Scott walked closer to the bed, he was struck by how old and frail Belchik looked. He remembered him clearly from the ship on the Aegean, the night he’d shot Scarvan, thinking him dead and buried in the sea. He’d been old even then, toward the end of his career. But he’d been sharp, calculating. A wolf walking in a world of lambs. Beyond that one meeting, he was a student of Belchik’s operations, of his ruthless control of power inside first the USSR and then the Russian Federation. Even under the cult of personality of Vladimir Putin, Belchik had thrived.

  But now he wasn’t much more than a corpse. Without the monitor showing a weak heartbeat, Scott would have bet good money he was looking at a dead man.

  In photos as recent as a year ago, Belchik had the puffy look of a man swollen from too much good food and wine. All that was gone now. His cheeks were sunk in, his blotched skin stretched tight against bone. His eyes, even closed, were dark pits. Almost glistening purple like a nasty bruise. His sheets had a spattering of blood on them and, on closer inspection, so did the inside of his oxygen mask. His hair was gone completely, revealing inky marks and sores that would never heal. His arms rested on top of the sheet. They looked like sticks wrapped in pale parchment paper, torn in places, bandaged with gauze wraps stained with yellow pus.

  Mara pulled a gauge from her pocket, another nice present from the folks in the CIA labs, and measured the air. She nodded at Scott and pulled off her mask.

  As was protocol, Scott waited as Mara breathed the air. If they’d miscalculated and she felt the effects of the GX, she would put her mask back on. If they’d really gotten it wrong and she passed out, he’d be able to carry her out.

  After a full minute of deep breathing, Mara flashed the okay sign and he removed his own mask. He gave Mara a second to set up the small video camera to capture the interview with Belchik and then he gently shook the old man’s bony shoulder.

  “Belchik,” he said, whispering into the man’s ear. “Wake up, sir. Jim Hawthorn sent us to talk to you. Sir, can you hear me?”

  The old man’s eyes fluttered open. Scott winced at the sight of them. It was troubling enough the way they rolled in their sockets, unfocused and afraid. But it was the man’s sclera that caught him off guard. Instead of being white, they had hemorrhaged and filled with blood, giving him a demonic look.

  But Belchik’s eyes settled and then turned toward Scott and focused. In the moment, Scott saw the same intensity and intelligence that had been there years before. Despite the man’s ravaged body, he was still in there.

  “Too late,” Belchik said, his voice muffled by the oxygen mask. “To save the world, I’m afraid you have come too late.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Belchik motioned weakly with a frail hand for Scott to remove his oxygen mask. He did so, glancing at the heart monitor to find where the pulse ox value was indicated. It was in the mid-90s with the mask. If it dropped too low without it, the resulting hypox-emia would render Belchik useless.

  “What day is it?” Belchik said, his once powerful and commanding voice now thin and quavering.

  “Thursday,” Mara said.

  “Thursday . . . Thursday . . .” Belchik mumbled, closing his eyes and groaning. “Why did it take you so long, Jim?”

  Scott and Mara exchanged glances, both worried that after all their efforts, they were going to be speaking to a man without his full faculties.

  “Jim Hawthorn’s not here,” Scott said. “This is Scott Roberts. Jim sent me to speak to you.”

  Belchik’s eyes shot open. He slowly turned his head, lasered in on Scott, and said in a perfect, deadpan voice, “No shit.”

  Mara let out a laugh. Scott was relieved. Seemed the old spymaster still had some fight in him.

  “Sir, you said in your letter to Director Hawthorn that you had information about Jacobslav Scarvan. Can you tell––”

  Belchik held up a hand. “Wait . . . wait . . .” he said. “There had to be news yesterday. Where are my guards?” He shot a look at Mara. “You didn’t kill them, did you? They are good men.”

  “No one was hurt,” Mara said. “But they’re out until morning. They might be good men, but they aren’t very adept at their jobs.”

  Belchik grunted. “Guarding a corpse. Who can blame them?”

  “The polonium,” Scott said. “That was Scarvan?”

  Belchik laughed. It created a deep, phlegmy sound and made the old man wince in pain. “The bastard always had a cruel streak in him. But this”—he made a motion toward his decaying body—“this was only part of his plan for me.”

  “What do you mean?” Mara asked.

  Belchik pointed to a table against the wall. On it were framed photos of family members. Some old, a brother or sister perhaps. Others just youngsters, likely grandchildren. “After I was poisoned, my brother was in a terrible traffic accident in Saint Petersburg. Died instantly. Because of my . . . condition . . . I couldn’t even go to his funeral. Two days later, my niece Liliya was alone in her apartment in Moscow where she choked on some food and died.” Belchik paused, his lower lip trembling. “Two days after, it was my youngest grandchild. A drowning accident was the report this time. That boy was a fine swimmer. Strong. Healthy. How could he drown like that?”

  “Scarvan?” Mara asked.

  “Two days later, another. And another,” Belchik said, the tremble in his voice still there, but now edged with incredible anger. “Another member of my family. Another so-called accident.”

  Scott looked at the full table with a rising sense of horror. There had to be over a dozen photos on the table. He looked back at Belchik’s wrapped wrists, understanding the significance now. “You tried to end it,” he said. “Thinking it’ll stop
when you’re dead.”

  The old spymaster nodded. “My guards will not allow it. Some misguided sense of duty. Or orders from on high that the Kremlin does not want the story of Viktor Belchik taking his own life. That’s why it was so important that you come.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mara said.

  “I have information about Jacobslav Scarvan and in exchange”—he took a deep shuddering breath—“you must agree to kill me.”

  Scott and Mara exchanged a look. This wasn’t part of their mission or anywhere on the table. Certainly, Moscow would piece together who had broken into the apartment for a clandestine meeting with their old spymaster. Maybe not them specifically, but that it was the United States would be their first guess. They wouldn’t like it, but what would they be able to do about it?

  But if they left Belchik dead, that would turn the tremors from Moscow into an earthquake.

  Still, they needed to get the information from the old man.

  “I’m not going to promise something I can’t deliver,” Scott said. “Tell me what you know, and then we will discuss it.”

  Belchik closed his eyes. “I understand this puts you in a terrible position. One Hawthorn would never have put you in if I’d indicated this was my purpose in the letter I sent.”

  “It can’t be done,” Mara said.

  He opened his eyes and stared her down, fixating on the camera she held. “Then I will do it. You can film my last words as a record, removing all doubt that this was my own act. All I ask is that you leave me with the tools to finish what I started. Only then will Scarvan stop killing my family members. Don’t you see? I have to do this. Look at them. Look at the photos.”

  Scott eyed the monitors next to Belchik’s bed. The man’s heart rate was pounding and erratic. His oxygen level down to eighty-two percent.

  He placed a hand on the old man’s forearm. It felt dry and scaly, like a reptile.

  “Tell us about Scarvan and we will help you end this nightmare you’re in,” Scott said. “I swear it.”

  Belchik relaxed. He waved for Scott to put his oxygen mask back on. Once in place, he took long, phlegmy breaths and his oxygen level on the monitor slowly rose.

  “Hawthorn always told me your word was one of the few things in the world he trusted absolutely,” Belchik said. “I hope he was correct.”

  “He was,” Scott said. “Now, tell us what you learned about Scarvan that had you so concerned.”

  Mara stepped closer, making sure the audio was captured.

  “I went to hospital for a scan. The kind where you drink barium fluids to coat your organs so the cancer flashes bright. Before he did this to me, I thought managing cancer was a terrible thing.” He let out a derisive laugh. “It is nothing compared to this. Nothing.”

  “Is that where Scarvan came to you?” Mara said, trying to keep the old man on track.

  “Yes, when I came out of the machine, the technician was gone. In front of me stood a ghost. He’s an old man now, like I am, but worse. He wears a long beard, curly and wild. His face is like that of a farmer, beaten by decades in the sun. So wrinkled and creased that the younger man he once was is almost impossible to see. But his eyes, they are the same. Intelligent, cruel, burning with hate.

  “He asked me if I knew who he was. His voice chilled me. But then, it always did. I called him by name, asking how in God’s name he had survived. He smiled at the question, pointing upward. ‘Yes, it was in God’s name that I survived. And it is in God’s name that I now live out my purpose.’ ”

  Scott shifted uncomfortably. Nothing in Scarvan’s dossier suggested the man was religious. If anything, he was the opposite. This reference to religion was troubling. Belchik must have picked up on Scott’s expression.

  “My face must have looked much like yours now,” he said. “I’ve dealt with zealots before, we all have in our business. There’s something in the eyes, like a fever, that burns inside the true believer. I saw this in Scarvan’s eyes. And it scared me.”

  “He was there to kill you,” Mara said.

  “Yes, of that much I was certain,” Belchik said. “But I’m an old man, already sick. That did not scare me. To be honest, I actually felt some relief at the idea. Before I knew how he would do it, of course.”

  “We need to know what he told you,” Scott said. The longer they were in the apartment, the greater the likelihood something could go wrong. Another shift could arrive. There could be a check-in call they weren’t aware existed that was missed. They needed to move things along.

  “I will tell you,” he said. “But first, I’ll tell you that seeing him also gave me something I’d craved for twenty years. The chance to say I was sorry.” He arched an eyebrow at Scott. “Like you, I’ve seen terrible things in the world. Done terrible things. But this . . . this betrayal, it never sat right with me. Has it with you?”

  Scott swallowed hard, a dozen or more horrific images jumping to the front of his mind with terrifying intensity. The simple suggestion that he and Belchik were cut from the same cloth and carried the same skeletons was enough to dredge them up. He pushed them all away, a skill honed over a lifetime of practice. Operatives who never mastered the art ended up going crazy or ending it all once the burden became too heavy.

  But he allowed the feeling about Scarvan to remain. He turned over the guilt he’d felt back then over participating in the man’s execution. The conversation before the mission with Jim Hawthorn about whether he was confusing justice with revenge. How it felt to pull the trigger and watch the man stumble and then jump to his death over the railing of the ship.

  Only not to his death. That part needed to be recalibrated in his mind. He had in fact not killed Jacobslav Scarvan in cold blood. Only wounded him.

  Something told him that before it was all said and done, he would have another chance to finish the job. Unless Scarvan was still as good as he once was, and then the killing might go the other way.

  “No,” Scott lied. “I never felt guilt about what we did that night. What he did to that family was unacceptable. He deserved what he got.”

  Belchik looked him over, as if evaluating why Scott told the lie he had. Something told him the old spymaster could see right through him, better than any polygraph ever could.

  “Then you are a stronger man than I,” Belchik said. “I lived the with guilt for these last twenty years. I could have warned him off somehow. Could have appeased Hawthorn and my bosses above in some other way. Seeing him allowed me to say all this to him.”

  “Did he believe you?” Mara asked.

  Belchik shrugged. “I don’t know. Is that necessary?”

  “I think it helps,” she said. “If your goal is forgiveness.”

  “Forgiveness,” Belchik whispered. “The thought hadn’t crossed my mind.”

  Scott checked his watch. This was taking too long. “Sir, I appreciate this has to be very hard for you, but you understand more than most the position we’re in right now. If you could just—”

  “Of course,” he said. “My apologies. You’ve been very patient with me. Scarvan’s plan is to kill everyone involved with his betrayal. I’m certain your own intelligence services have already found links between Scarvan and recent deaths around the world.” He glanced at Mara, reading her face. “Yes, of course they have. For some it was a fast death. For others, it’s a deeper punishment.” He raised a trembling hand at Scott. “I don’t know what he plans for you and Hawthorn, but it will not be quick, I can assure you.”

  “I’ll worry about that,” Scott said. “But you said we were too late for the world. What did you mean by that?”

  “His revenge is only a sideshow,” Belchik said. “A personal battle while he prepares for war.”

  “What kind of war?” Mara asked.

  “A holy war. Nothing less than the destruction of civilization, the decapitation of the world’s power.”

  “He plans to assassinate the president?” Mara said.

  “You American
s are always the same,” Belchik said. “Always making yourselves the sun around which the rest of us spin.” With great effort, he leaned up in bed, stabbing the air with his finger to make his point. “He means to assassinate all of them. Every president. Every prime minister. Every king. And he won’t stop until he does so.”

  “Why?” Scott said. “Has he gone mad?”

  Belchik fell back into the bed. “I asked him the same thing, and his response left me no closer to the answer.”

  “What did he say?” Mara asked.

  “That God willed it,” Belchik said. “And that he was no longer just a man, but an instrument of God, fulfilling His promise as shown to the Prophet Spiros.”

  “I’d say that answers the question as to whether he’s gone off the deep end or not,” Mara said.

  Scott seized on the new name. “The Prophet Spiros? Does that mean anything to you?”

  Belchik gave him a look of approval, as if impressed he’d grasped the one salient fact. “Not then, but now, yes. There was a monk, a hermit really, named Father Spiros. He died recently. He had a reputation for curious visions and apocryphal writing.”

  “Where did he live?” Mara asked.

  “Mount Athos,” Belchik said. “Do you know it?”

  Mara shook her head no, but Scott just stared at the old man. “We were at least twenty miles off the coast that night,” Scott said. “He was shot four times. How could he have possibly survived long enough in the open ocean to make it there?”

  “If you asked the old Scarvan, it’s because he’s the toughest son of a bitch to walk the planet. He’s indestructible.”

  “And what did the new Scarvan say?” Mara asked.

  Belkin pulled back his lips from yellow, stained teeth as if the next word were a curse. “God,” he said. “He was saved for a divine purpose. And now he’s the vehicle for that purpose.”

  “How could killing heads of state be part of a divine purpose?” Scott asked. “Toward what goal?”

  Again, Belchik looked like he approved. “I would have liked to have you under my command back in the old days,” he said.