Imminent Threat

by Jeff Gunhus

  Mara knew the name, a former FSB operative well known to the CIA. Belinski had freelanced for a while before ending up working intelligence for the Czech Republic. Mara noted her dad’s reaction. He straightened in his chair, his expression changing immediately. More interest. And something else.

  “You know Anna?” Mara asked.

  Scott, aware of his body language, slouched back into his chair, trying to recapture his practiced indifference. But it was too late, and he knew it. “We’ve met. A few times over the years.”

  Mara left it alone, but she was enjoying seeing him squirm. He never shared any details of his love life with her, except to insist he’d always been faithful to her mother while she’d been alive.

  A new photo flashed on the screen. A woman in an evening gown, off the shoulder, her blond hair up, showing her perfect tan and sculpted arms. Her full lips were parted in a sly grin as if she knew the person taking the photograph was about to send it to the opposing intelligence service, and she couldn’t care less.

  “Wow, she was beautiful back in the day,” Mara said.

  “That’s a recent photo,” Scott said. “She’s aged well.”

  Mara took a closer look at the screen. On closer inspection, they were a few wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, but they looked just part of her smile and not from time. She gave her dad a once-over. “You think she’d say the same of you?”

  “Shut up, you twerp,” he said.

  “Regardless,” Hawthorn said, “she’s listed currently as a contractor for the Czech Republic. She was an assistant to Belchik when the order came down to eliminate Scarvan, so she would have known about it.”

  “And not warned him,” Scott said. “So, he’ll be after her. Has she been informed?”

  Mara noted he hadn’t asked the same question about Nochek.

  “She and Nochek have been warned by FSB,” Hawthorn said. “Ms. Beliniski was last seen in Prague. After you finish at Mount Athos, you’re to find her and shadow her only. No contact. That will give you the best chance to catch Scarvan in the act.”

  Use her as bait, Mara thought. It was a practical plan, one she agreed with, but she watched her dad closely. He didn’t say anything, but if she were to take a gamble, there was no way he was going to do as Hawthorn asked.

  “Have the Russians given us anything new about Scarvan?” Scott asked. “They have to be actively looking for him, too, after what he’s been doing.”

  “I don’t think they are going to be in a sharing mood in the next hour or two after they find Belchik. His death complicates things. But then you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  “Speaking of moods, how did the president take it?” Mara asked.

  “Great,” Hawthorn said. “He was really excited. I think he’s been saving up all those cuss words for a special occasion and the two of you really delivered. He told me to say thank you.”

  “It that why we got this fancy jet?” Scott asked. “A sign of his appreciation?”

  “No, it’s the fastest plane I could get on short notice so your asses can get where you need to get to so we can clean this mess up. With more time, I would have made you hitchhike your way there.”

  Mara grinned. This was Hawthorn at his best. It was when he lost his edgy sarcasm that you had to worry.

  “What changes did Dreslan make after he heard the threat?” Mara asked.

  “The president has developed a case of the flu. Public appearances canceled for the next few days to set a good example for the nation on how to slow its spread,” Hawthorn said. “Rick Hallsey is back and Dreslan tasked him with running point on the Scarvan threat. He’s a good man.”

  Mara appreciated Hawthorn not making her ask. Of course, the old man knew about her relationship with the Secret Service agent and that she’d be curious where he was in all of this. There wasn’t much in DC that he didn’t know about.

  “I should probably call Agent Hallsey to brief him on the suspect,” she said.

  “Agreed,” he said. “As for Mount Athos, Scott, you have a meeting set with Father Gregorio, the head of the Athonite State. He wasn’t thrilled by the idea, tried to throw some roadblocks, but got onboard after a call from the Greek prime minister. Don’t expect the red carpet, though. There’s a reason these guys left the world to go live as monks. Not huge fans of outsiders banging on their door and asking questions.”

  “Got it. Any leads on someone that might know Scarvan?” Scott asked.

  “Father Gregorio said he had no knowledge of a man named Scarvan and that he knows every monk personally by name and history. There’s a printer on the plane. I’m sending you an image now for you to show him. I had our guys work it up based on the time passed and the description Belchik gave you.”

  Mara crossed to the back of the cabin as a paper scrolled out of the printer. It was a version of the image from the dossier she’d seen earlier, only this man had aged twenty years and now had a thick gray beard. The lines around his eyes were etched deep and the complexion was blotchy. A thick mane of curly gray hair framed his face. The man looked wild, more like a homeless man than a world-class assassin.

  She handed the paper to Scott. “Shouldn’t be hard to pick out in a crowd.” He spoke back into the phone. “Did they do the age but with the hair different? Clean shaven? All the variations?”

  “Already sent to your devices. You can print out the ones you think will be useful,” Hawthorn said. “These have gone out to every intelligence agency we cooperate with and a few we don’t. Everyone will be looking for him.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Mara said.

  “Not a chance,” Scott said. “This guy’s a ghost.”

  “He was. That was twenty years ago,” she said. “He’s bound to have lost more than a few steps over that time.”

  “Look at Jim,” Scott said. “He can barely do anything anymore.”

  “I’m still here, smart-ass,” Hawthorn’s voice came from the phone.

  Scott and Mara shared a laugh as Mara tossed him one of the bottles of water she’d discovered in the small fridge attached to her chair.

  “Think how boring your life would be without me,” Scott said.

  “I’d be fly-fishing in Montana,” he said. “Relaxing.”

  “Anything else, boss?” Mara asked.

  “No, get some rest,” he said. “I’ll communicate updates as they come in.”

  They ended the connection. Scott leaned back in his chair. “You heard the man. We have an hour at most. I’m going to grab some sleep. Suggest you do the same.”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m going to go over this briefing again on Mount Athos.”

  “Overachiever.” Scott sprawled out on the leather couch and closed his eyes.

  “Someone has to be,” she said.

  “I heard that.”

  “Surprising with those old ears,” she whispered.

  “Heard that, too.”

  Mara smiled and dug back into the briefing document, hoping to find something useful within its pages.

  CHAPTER 19

  “I must leave this place!” Scarvan roared, throwing his bowl across the skete, shattering it against the stone wall. Two months of recovery had mended his wounds enough for him to walk tenderly down to the water and back. He still did not have the strength to fight.

  His mind was another matter. That was ready to take the battle to his enemies.

  Father Spiros didn’t flinch. He gathered his hands together and closed his eyes in prayer.

  “No, stop it,” Scarvan said. “No more prayer. It does nothing. God is as useless as you are.”

  Father Spiros opened his eyes and Scarvan thought he saw a flash of anger in the old man. It was the first time he’d seen it, which was surprising. Scarvan had been less than an ideal patient.

  Only one other monk knew he was there: a younger man named Misha, who Father Spiros had fetched to help drag Scarvan up from the beach to his skete. That was no mean task given that th
e old man’s stone hut was perched some twenty feet up the face of a cliff.

  There was a thin path carved along the rock that provided access. Less steps than a series of questionable footholds, more built for a mountain goat than a man. Still, it was possible to use if the ladder became damaged. Or if some mischievous brother moved it in the middle of the night.

  Once he’d recovered enough to leave the bed, Scarvan had wondered how the two of them had hauled his bulk up the cliff. Brother Spiros had shown him the thick ropes and blocks of wood they used as pulleys to haul heavier items up. They’d wrapped him in a blanket, trussed him like a bird for the oven, and pulled him up.

  That explained the how. Scarvan found getting the why out of the old man much more difficult.

  He spent the first days of semiconsciousness certain that the door would be hammered in at any time, special operators with night-vision goggles and guns with laser sights spilling into the small space. He dreamed of it. Sometimes it was faceless tactical soldiers. Other times it was the faces of men he’d killed.

  Many times, he’d opened his eyes to find Scott Roberts standing over his bed. Behind him, cast in shadow, watching in silence, were Jim Hawthorn and Viktor Belchik. Roberts raised his hand and pointed a Glock with a suppressor at his face. Scarvan cowered and whimpered, begging for his life the way so many weak fools had done in front of him over the years. Groveling in a way he’d sworn he never would. Then Belchik stepped forward, lips curled back in disgust. “Kill him,” he said. Roberts pulled the trigger and Scarvan bolted awake in his bed. Drenched in sweat from fever. His wounds blazing with pain.

  Each time it happened, the old monk had been at his bedside, reading from his Bible, ready to dab his patient’s brow with a cool washcloth.

  Once Scarvan was well enough to move, he knew he had to kill the men who’d saved him. Both the old man and the younger one who’d helped pull him up into the skete. If it was true that no one else knew he was there, then the two of them had to die. To ensure his presence remained a secret.

  He waited until Misha arrived with new supplies. Just bread, vegetables, penicillin for the angry infections in Scarvan’s wounds. While the two of them busied themselves in the cramped quarters storing away the supplies, speaking of the gossip of their brother monks, Scarvan pulled himself out of bed on unsteady legs, gripping the knife he’d taken from his meal earlier in the day. It was not very sharp, but he’d killed with much less of a weapon before.

  He staggered forward, fighting the dizziness. Focused on the younger monk’s back.

  But after only a few steps, he heard the old monk calmly say, “Misha, take the knife from our friend. I believe he means to kill us.”

  Misha turned, not in fear or shock, but with a look of annoyance and pity.

  Scarvan gritted his teeth and tried to lunge forward, intending to permanently remove the man’s expression from his face.

  Instead, Misha easily sidestepped his advance, wrested the knife from his hand, and slapped him on the back of the head.

  “Misha,” Father Spiros chided, “unnecessary.”

  “Sorry, Father Spiros. Habit.”

  Father Spiros stepped forward and took Scarvan’s forearm, guiding him back to his bed. “Like you, Misha has training. Served in the Greek army before finding his way back to God.” He helped Scarvan lay down. “Just as you will do. In time. After you heal. After His plan for you has been revealed.”

  “And me,” Misha added. “I’ve seen it, too.”

  Father Spiros reached out and patted the younger man on the arm. “Christ our Father came to Misha and showed him the same vision he showed me. A true miracle.”

  “Your asshole God better stay out of my head,” Scarvan said. “I don’t want him there.”

  Father Spiros didn’t look offended or surprised. “In time, you will see. And then you will welcome Him in and wonder how you ever lived outside the warmth of his love.”

  “Not a fucking chance, old man,” Scarvan said.

  “In time,” Father Spiros said.

  Scarvan laid back into the bed, giving into the wave of fatigue from the short excursion across the room. He stared at the ceiling, not wanting to slip back into sleep, not wanting the nightmares to return.

  But his body rebelled, and sleep did come.

  As did the nightmares.

  But something different came as well.

  It wasn’t complete the first time, only glimpses. Flashes of color. Howling wind. The smell of burning flesh. And there was a presence, something that towered over him, wrapped around him like darkness, but a physical thing.

  There was a message in all the confusion. He could feel it and he fought to understand.

  It wasn’t until much later, with the help of Father Spiros, that he understood it was the first time he was exposed to the vision.

  The first time he’d been before the power of God.

  When he finally did understand, when he finally accepted the truth of it and surrendered himself to the path ahead, he thought back to that first night. How little he’d understood. How much he had yet to learn.

  And that both he and the world would never be the same again.

  CHAPTER 20

  The ferry cut easily through the two-foot swell coming out of the southeast, its diesel engine leaving a thin line of smoke in the air behind them. The other passengers on the rectangular craft were a combination of religious men and workers. All men. The rules forbidding women on the isthmus were serious and strictly adhered to. When they’d been at the docks, Scott had seen women getting on a tour boat for Mt. Athos, but these cruised up and down the coast, never daring to dock lest they lose their license.

  The monks on the ferry kept to themselves, casting suspicious looks in his direction. The workers, burly men in overalls and thick forearms, paid him no mind. They chain-smoked and snuck sips from flasks, lost in their own conversation that Scott’s minimal Greek told him was about some soccer game on TV the night before.

  The mountain loomed to Scott’s left, its peak hidden by wisps of white cloud. The sight reminded him of the stories he’d learned as a child about the Greek Gods. He’d always wondered why the ancient Greeks chose a mountaintop as the location for their gods to congregate. But looking at it now, cloaked in mystery and beauty, he understood. And he imagined the actual Mt. Olympus was even more impressive.

  He supposed it was fitting that the mountain overlooked an isthmus entirely given over to monasteries and hermitages, a land filled with nearly two thousand souls who committed themselves to nearly constant prayer and reflection. Facts from the briefing book stayed with him about the particularities of Mt. Athos.

  It wasn’t unusual in the great religions of the world for men to segment themselves from society in an attempt to better understand and reach their god. But the extent of the rules forbidding any female presence seemed extreme by any measure. The monks did not raise livestock because of the necessity of having female animals. Even chickens were not allowed to be raised for eggs.

  Mara had chafed at all these things, challenging the idea of a god or religion that pushed aside women in such a way. But she’d let it go quickly enough. They were here for a job and that job didn’t include changing centuries of tradition.

  Besides, she had plenty to keep her occupied. Once they landed in Thessaloniki, word from Hawthorn was that Nochek had turned up in Paris at the side of Oleg Manisky, an oligarch who’d made his billions through lucrative contracts bestowed on him by the Putin regime. She and Scott had said their goodbyes and she’d turned the plane around to pick up Nochek’s trail.

  He worried about her. Even though her training and her skill set made her one of the most lethal weapons in America’s arsenal, she was still his daughter. It was his fatherly prerogative to worry. And it wasn’t like she was heading off on a date or a cross-country ski trip like she had when she was in college. She was off to chase one of the greatest assassins in history. A little worry was justified.


  As he watched the rocky shores of Mt. Athos rise in front of him, gulls circling overhead, the smell of the ocean air filling his lungs, he realized he was eager to get through this part of the mission as quickly as possible. He was hopeful that someone here could cast some light on the last twenty years of Scarvan’s life.

  Why had he stayed here for so long?

  What worldview was coloring his actions?

  How had Orthodox Christianity turned him into an end-of-the-world nutjob?

  What was his plan to strike at the world’s leaders?

  Scott understood the man’s quest for revenge. He didn’t condone it, especially the deaths of his targets’ family members that he used as punishments. But it was in character for what he knew about Scarvan.

  Even his stated goal of assassinating heads of state could have made for some grotesque type of logic, a strike at the system that had aligned itself to try and kill him.

  But his talk of the Second Coming and end of times was entirely different.

  Something happened to Scarvan in his twenty years on Mt. Athos and discovering what it was might be the key to unlocking the man’s next move.

  There was a stirring among the other men on the ferry. Scott followed their gaze to the dock just ahead of them. On it was a cluster of monks or priests; even with the thorough brief he’d read he was unsure what to properly call them. They stood at the end of the dock, black cossacks whipping in the ocean breeze. An older man stood among them, clearly the center of gravity within the group. Next to him was a man in a black business suit.

  “The protos and the governor here to meet us,” one of the monks behind Scott whispered to his friends in Greek. “I told you to stay in your rooms. What did you fools do last night?”

  Scott turned away to hide his grin. While he couldn’t speak Greek except to order off a menu, he understood it well enough. They thought the reception party was for them. He decided not to say anything. Let the monks think through what they’d done during their visit to the mainland. Maybe eaten a lamb souvlaki, had too much wine, or maybe held hands with a girl. Or more. The presence of both the leader of the monastic state and its civil governor would be enough to test whether there were any guilty consciences on board.