Vlad exhaled and stood once he heard a car rumble out of the parking lot. He took several more pictures of the dead body. While Vlad had no problem taking credit for other people’s work, he refused to this time. Someone had beaten Vlad to the target and escaped with all the valuable information.
Vlad poked at the deceased agent with his toe before searching the body. Perhaps the killer and the visitor both missed something. It wasn’t likely, but Vlad was thorough and figured it was the least he could do since he didn’t actually get to kill the man.
Taking off the man’s shoes, Vlad pulled out a knife and hacked away at the soles. His left shoe was clean, but his right shoe felt different. Vlad lightly tapped it against the concrete floor. He then pulled out a knife and cut through the sole to find a compartment hiding a flash drive. Vlad held it up and grinned.
Better than a kill.
Vlad knew what his employer—and everyone else—would think once existence of the device surfaced: Did anyone else receive a copy of its contents? The answer to that would be the key.
Yet Vlad was far from reaching any definitive conclusions. His pursuit of this target only stirred up more questions. And it was destined to make everyone with a vested interest in keeping the information secret quite uncomfortable.
Chapter 25
ROUSED FROM HIS SLEEP by the tapping at his door, Cal sat up quickly. Blood rushed to his head as he tried to regain his bearings. His first thought was that he was thankful he wasn’t sitting at a desk and lying facedown on it. His next thought was how familiar his surroundings looked.
My hotel room?
Less than twenty-four hours ago, he was getting abducted just outside this same room. Now it was nearly noon, and he struggled to walk across the floor due to a throbbing headache.
“Housekeeping,” a voice on the other side called.
Cal had almost forgotten about the reason he woke up. He staggered toward the door and let the woman in.
“I’m going to go get lunch.”
She smiled then nodded.
Cal doubted the cleaning lady understood a single word he’d just spoken. He grabbed his laptop and left the room.
On his way down to the lobby to eat, Cal decided to call Kelly. As traumatic as the ordeal was for him, he imagined it was much worse for his wife and daughter.
“Kelly, I wanted to let you know that I’m okay,” he said after she answered.
“Thank God, Cal. I was so scared,” she said. “It’s bad enough when this happens and you’re here, but in Russia? I didn’t know what I could do.”
“I’m sure you did enough worrying for the both of us.”
“Enough for both of us for several lifetimes.”
“How’d Maddie do with everything?”
“She’s fine. That girl is oblivious to my frantic behavior. She takes after you in that respect.”
“Good. I’m just glad the two of you are okay. I’m guessing the men down the street are gone?”
“Yeah, they left several hours ago. I’m about to try and get some sleep now that they are. But we’re still staying in the panic room.”
“Not a bad idea.”
“Cal, who were those people?”
Cal sighed. “I’m still not sure. I thought they were FSB, but now I’m starting to think they could represent someone else.”
“But why you?”
“It’s a long story, and I’m still not comfortable talking about it on the phone. You’re just going to have to trust me on this one.”
“So you don’t think these men are coming back?”
“I think they just wanted to scare me. Consider me sufficiently frightened. But we’ll talk more when I get back.”
“Fine, but just promise me you’ll be safe.”
“I will, Kelly.”
“And promise that you’ll only write about sports.”
“Unless Buckman assigns me something else, I’ll do my best to only focus on sports.”
“Gotta promise me, Cal. That was a very evasive response, leaving you with plenty of wriggle room.”
He chuckled. “What can I say? I hate to have my own words used against me.”
Cal arrived downstairs at the hotel restaurant and requested a booth in the corner. He made a quick phone call to Buckman and apologized profusely. Cal explained the situation quickly, which turned what could have been a verbal beating from Buckman into a pleasant and sympathetic conversation. Buckman even asked Cal if he wanted to come home. Cal, of course, refused. He wanted to see this story through, even though Buckman vowed never to run it.
“There’s more to this,” Cal said, “but I can’t get into it right now. Not on the phone.”
“Then when?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll find a way to contact you about it. Just hang tight.”
Cal hung up and ordered when the waiter finally sauntered over to the table. A half hour later, Cal returned to his room and started to go through his belongings.
Even though the cleaning ladies had paid him a visit, he could tell someone else had been through his stuff, most likely the men who’d kidnapped him. Cal checked his suitcase, the contents of which had been strewn across the floor prior to the maids tidying up the room. They’d pushed all of Cal’s clothes into a corner. He stared at the wrinkled shirts and stewed over the idea that the thugs were not only responsible for making him miss a deadline but also for forcing him to iron all of his clothes for the duration of his trip.
Those bastards are gonna pay.
Cal huffed a soft laugh through his nose at the thought of the men tossing his room. He was grateful ironing was the only fallout of any consequence given how dreadful the situation could have been.
Flipping his suitcase upside down, Cal grabbed a paperclip off the desk and untwisted it so it was a thin piece of metal. He shoved one of the ends into a tiny hole located just above the wheels until he heard a click and a small compartment slid out.
“There you are,” Cal said as he studied the device. He pulled it out and examined it quickly, satisfied that it had remained untouched and unexamined by the intruders the night before.
Cal slid the drive into a USB port on his computer and waited. After a few seconds, a file folder opened on the desktop with a list of documents. He’d seen all of them before, and nothing jumped out at him.
“What did he say again? Look into it?” Cal muttered to himself.
He scrolled the files again and came across several images. Then one name caught his eye: it.jpg. Cal clicked on the image, and a picture of the Kremlin appeared on his screen.
Bringing the screen closer, Cal studied it for a minute. His gaze drifted across the image as he searched for something that would give him a clue about the photo. Nothing. He closed the picture and stared at the screen.
What am I missing?
Cal raised his right index finger and prepared to exit out of the folder and eject the flash drive when he looked at the file size.
“Whoa! That’s not normal,” he said.
The it.jpg file was eight times the size of all the other photos on the device, but Cal almost missed that detail.
Ten minutes later, he walked down to a coffee shop that had several desktop computers lined along the back wall for customers to use. He tapped on the mouse of one of the machines, and it awoke from sleep mode in a slow manner Cal hadn’t experienced on a personal computer since he was a young child.
Impatiently, Cal hammered on the mouse with his finger repeatedly.
“Calm down,” an old man sitting next to Cal said. “This is Russia. It takes a long time for anything to happen here, especially on these computers.”
Cal forced a smile at the elderly gentleman yet ignored his comment.
“It won’t go any faster,” the man said again. “You’re in Russia now.”
Cal sighed as it dawned on him that the man’s comment was a literal one regarding computing speed of the device in front of him.
“Don’t worry,” t
he old man added. “The internet speed is lightning fast.”
Cal leaned back in his chair and waited for the computer to fully come to life. Once it did, he logged into his personal web-based email account and sent the file to Kelly’s account. He logged off and called his wife from his cell phone.
“Think you can do me a favor?” he asked.
“As long as it doesn’t include wiring money to the Russian mafia,” she quipped.
“Glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
“You can’t see my face. I’m not joking.”
“Okay, I can’t really talk about this because I’m in a hurry and various other reasons, but do you remember how you helped me with that story down in Louisiana?”
“How could I forget? You were almost eaten by a gator on that trip.”
“I’m still trying to forget, but you know what to do then. It’s similar but not exactly the same. Sorry I’m being so cryptic, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“I’m sure I will.”
Cal hung up and returned to his hotel. He didn’t want to risk talking about the email and the more implicit instructions for several reasons. For starters, he was confident the FSB or some Russian agency was listening to his conversations. And if they were, Cal feared that they either had a copy of the files or could gain access to his email folder to retrieve the image. And while he had no idea what was contained on that file, Cal suspected that something in it was the reason why there was something far more nefarious at play. He still had to take a chance by sending it to Kelly, a move he hoped would eventually pay off.
Chapter 26
NATALYA LISTYEV IGNORED her late father’s advice when it came to her dating life, though time and again his sage wisdom proved to be right. When she first started dating Maksim, her father warned her about the man she described as “the one she’d been waiting for.” But over time, Maksim simply became the man Natalya settled for and was comfortable with. She hated the fact that her father could see right through the men she brought home, so much so that she vowed to make it work with Maksim even when it was apparent it never would.
After her father died, Natalya contemplated ending her relationship with Maksim, but she needed someone to comfort her. She determined to honor her father by seeking a more respectable man in the future, one who Yuri would’ve been proud of. But it would have to wait. She was too fragile at first, desperately in need of some emotional support without any family left. Then fear set in the more she ruminated over how and why her father was murdered.
One morning, Natalya’s anxiety escalated when she overheard Maksim talking softly on the phone with one of his colleagues. A few days earlier, she had eavesdropped on a discussion he had with another friend that involved explosive devices. However, this latest conversation seemed more immediate, more detailed, whereas before sounded more hypothetical. Maksim discussed device placement and impact radiuses. She didn’t have the specifics she really wanted to know, but it was clear they weren’t talking about some mythical attack. This was a bona fide plot.
Unsure of who to tell, she decided to reach out to Cal again. She called him and requested that they meet.
“What’s this all about?” Cal asked.
“I can’t talk about it now,” she said. “But this really can’t wait. I need to see you today.”
“I’ll be free after noon. Want to meet me in the lobby of my hotel?”
“See you then.”
She hung up and left the apartment. With the day off from work, she needed to go for a walk and clear her head. More than anything, she wanted to clear out of Maksim’s life, but was that the best move? She wondered how he might react, what he would do. She’d already seen him in action plenty of times when he beat down several men who looked leeringly at her. The first instance he behaved in such a manner, she thought it was chivalrous. However, over time she grew to see that he was a violent man, a painful fact she also learned a handful of times when she was on the receiving end of one of Maksim’s outbursts. If he was truly involved in such a plot, Natalya saw outing him to the police as a safe way out. But she wanted to speak with Cal before she took any action.
When she entered the hotel lobby, she nodded discreetly to him. After living in Russia long enough, she’d grown accustomed to the constant spying, the watchful eye that felt oppressive even when she was walking down the street alone. She looked up and saw the cameras. She knew they were always observing.
Cal stood and walked straight into the hotel’s restaurant, stopping at the hostess station to make a request. Natalya watched him take a seat at a table in the back of the room far enough away that it’d be easy to tell if they were being followed. She smiled at the hostess and joined Cal at the table.
“It’s good to see your friendly face again,” Natalya said as she sat. “I’m hoping what I gave you hasn’t brought you any trouble.”
Cal, who was studying the menu, didn’t look up as he spoke. “The drive was more like an invitation to trouble—and I have stepped right into it.”
“I’m sorry,” Natalya said. “I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case, but I had to follow through on my promise to my father. It’s just that—”
“No need to apologize,” he said, finally looking up at her. “I made a choice regarding what to do with the information you handed me. And I still think it was the best decision, though it wasn’t without consequences. There could still be more to come, but I’m not going to worry about that at the moment. So, why did you want to meet so urgently?”
She was about to answer his question when a waiter appeared and asked if they were prepared to order. Cal and Natalya both nodded and proceeded to rattle off their lunch preferences. The waiter left promptly, vowing to put their order in as soon as possible. When he was out of earshot, the conversation resumed.
“I’m not sure what’s going on, but I heard my boyfriend Maksim speaking on the phone with a friend about explosive devices and where they were going to place them to cause the maximum number of casualties. And I’m afraid it’s going to happen very soon.”
“Tomorrow,” Cal said, taking a sip of his coffee.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s happening tomorrow,” Cal said. “At the new Cosmos Arena. They’re attempting to detonate the stadium.”
“What? How do you know this?”
“That’s what was on the flash drive you gave me. That’s what your father was trying to stop—at least, that’s what I think at this point. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“I knew, but I didn’t think there was anything I could do about it. I was hoping you’d know how to stop it.”
“Why didn’t you take this to the police?”
Natalya laughed. “For all I know, they might be the ones behind it given how my father was savagely murdered.”
“I won’t argue with you there. It’s the same reason I haven’t spoken with any law enforcement officer about it either.”
“Then how are we going to stop it? We have to do something.”
Cal’s eyes widened as the waiter arrived at the table with their food. He stopped talking until the plates were set in front of them before continuing.
“Who does your boyfriend work for?”
“He works at a repair shop.”
“No. Which mafia boss does he work for?”
“How did you . . . ?”
“I might be a sports journalist, but I’m still a journalist. I doubt a mechanic is talking secretively with his friend on the phone about explosives.”
She sighed. “Grigori Zima—but I’m not supposed to know that.”
“How did you find out?”
She looked down at her plate and paused. “I followed him one day after work. I thought he was cheating on me, but instead he was trying to become a part of Zima’s organization. That was over a year ago.”
“Well, that’s interesting,” Cal said. “From all the information I combed through on the flash dri
ve, it appears Sergei Bazarov is the one who’s organizing this attack. I’ve never even heard of a Grigori Zima.”
“You wouldn’t. He’s a small-time drug dealer here in Samara, but he’s crossed paths with Bazarov plenty of times, and it always ends up in a bloody mess.”
Cal smiled. “Why are you in the catering business again?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It seems like you’re more like you’re father than perhaps you’d like to admit.”
Natalya bit her lip and scanned the room. “That’s very flattering, but that still leaves us nowhere. We still have no way to stop the attack.”
Cal glanced around the restaurant and then stared off, pensive for a quiet moment before speaking. “Maybe your boyfriend can help us.”
“How?”
“Do you think it’s possible there are two competing plots to attack Cosmos Arena on the same day? I couldn’t imagine that being a likely scenario.”
“It does sound a bit farfetched, but we don’t even know if the target is the same.”
“True, but how many high-casualty targets could there possibly be in Samara over the next few weeks? The answer is not that many—and they’re all at one location.”
“Even if that were true, why would he do something to stop it? From the way things sounded this morning, he’s helping orchestrate the attack.”
“Favor with the new boss? To impress his girlfriend? To remain a little more human? You know what will sway him the most. Go pay him a visit.”
They finished eating, and Natalya dropped some money down on the table. Cal waved her off.
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