The Great Game

by D. R. Bell

“We found some older Schulmann files. We’ve been trying to feed them some information to make them think we work with Julius.”

  “We?”

  “James and Frank. Frank is a friend of James’s who worked at SEC and knew Schulmann. We are going to his house now.”

  “What about Megrano?”

  “Megrano and Chander are dead. They tried to storm the house in Malibu where they thought you were being held.”

  Maggie swallowed hard and said in a strained voice, “I was in Malibu for two nights. Yesterday morning they dragged me out of the room I was in, threw me on the floor of a car—one of the men was on top of me—and we drove away. Then they changed cars in a big parking structure and brought me to a different house. How did they die?”

  “We don’t know the details, but I think the house was booby-trapped, and they were killed in the explosion.”

  “What about Andrei?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t gone back. I’ve heard from Oleg a couple of times, but that’s it.”

  “So who was shooting in the park?”

  “I’m trying to figure it out myself.”

  “What?” Maggie’s voice rose a couple of octaves. “You mean you went there alone?”

  “Yes. I thought I could bluff them. Obviously, not too well.”

  Maggie said, “You are crazy. Completely crazy. How could you go there by yourself?” She shook her head, then added, “Thank you. When they didn’t kill me on Sunday, I figured someone must be doing something to make them keep me alive. Turns out it was you. But to go like this against five armed men, that is insane. Do you at least have a gun on you?”

  David smiled. “No, I would probably just injure myself with a weapon.”

  Maggie laughed and repeated, “You are crazy.” Then she started crying. David was uncomfortable around crying women, so he just looked ahead and focused on driving.

  They got off 405 Freeway at Sunset and drove west to Brooktree Avenue. David turned left and made his way to Frank’s house.

  Frank practically jumped for joy at seeing them. “Oh my God, you made it! You made it! And you must be Maggie. It’s so great to meet you! Please come in, come in.”

  They went to the living room. David and Maggie sat down. Frank brought them some water and asked what happened. David started telling the story when there was a knock on the door.

  Frank jumped up. “It must be James. He’ll be so happy to see you!”

  He left the room to get the door. There was a muffled scream, noise of a falling body, and Petr walked into the room pointing a gun at David and Maggie.

  Wednesday, 4/27/2022, 11:32 a.m. PDT

  Petr smiled delightedly. “Well, it’s been a while. How are you?” Getting no response from stunned David and Maggie, he made himself comfortable in the chair that Frank was sitting in just a few seconds before, spreading his legs in front. A man with a shaved head walked into the room. Petr told him, “Prover ves dom!” The man turned around and left. Petr commented to David and Maggie, “I don’t think there is anybody else in the house, but it doesn’t hurt to check.”

  “Someone will come soon to get us, and they’ll call the police.” David tried to sound convincing.

  Petr smiled again. “If you are counting on her friend James Bowen, I am afraid he suffered what will be classified as a heart attack.”

  Maggie screamed, “No!”

  Petr continued. “And your detective friends are dead. So you are on your own.” He shook his head. “You thought you were so clever, investigating, researching, plotting. Regular Double O Seven. Meanwhile, we’ve been watching your each and every move. But I do have one question: Who helped you at the lake? Tell me and I’ll let the two of you go.”

  Maggie spat out, “Tell him nothing; he is going to kill us anyway!”

  Petr raised an eyebrow. He had small eyes, something that David had not noticed earlier. “Smart girl, but only half right. Unfortunately, Mr. Ferguson here is out of luck. I do have to tie all the loose ends.” He looked at David. “But if you tell us, I’ll take Ms. Sappin back to Kiev, she’ll be debriefed, and we may yet make a patriot out of her. Since you put so much effort into rescuing her from Hsu, you must have a soft spot for our little Maggie.”

  “Rescuing her from who?” asked David.

  “Fai Hsu, colonel of MSS,” Petr answered. “What did he say his name was?”

  “Mr. Chao.”

  “Mr. Chao?” Petr laughed. “That’s funny!” He was obviously having a good time.

  David thought Petr sounded like a typical sociopath. He vaguely remembered from his freshman psychology class that sociopaths liked to boast about their achievements. “How did you know to be at Balboa Lake?”

  “Buying time?” Petr smirked. “I would do the same if I were you. Well, you did us a huge favor, so I don’t mind giving you a few minutes. Then you tell me the name and we’ll move on.”

  “I did you a favor?”

  “And a big one at that. Unintentionally, of course. You see, we were after Julius for a long time. By the way, his real name was John Trimble.”

  “Was?”

  “Yes, was—thanks to you. John used to be a head of security detail for Mitchell Williams. Former Green Beret, Blackwater—a well-trained man. Everyone thought he died in the blast that killed Williams, although the body was never found. It must have taken him a bit of time to get ready, but a few months back he appeared, shopping the information that Schulmann gathered.”

  “And you wanted it?”

  “No, we didn’t want others to get it. We tried to make contact, but he never trusted us. (I wonder why, David thought.) He was trying to sell the file to MSS. To show that he had a sense of humor, he asked for $79MM.”

  “Why 79?” asked Maggie.

  “It’s the periodic table number for gold. Trimble arranged a meeting in Seattle. We had a way of feeding information to MSS, so we influenced them into trying to capture Trimble. But MSS fumbled the ball, Trimble escaped, and that’s when you”—Petr pointed at David—“came into the picture.”

  “Do you know why he chose me?” David asked. He did not really care about the answer, it was an easy question to ask while his mind was feverishly grasping for options. Petr’s hand on the gun, the gun is resting in his lap, casually pointing at them. Nothing close enough to throw at Petr. Too far away to reach. Keep talking.

  “I guess you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had two MSS agents on his tail. He had to separate them, and he needed a healthy-looking male. Obviously the agents bit. One followed you to LA and tried to grab you. But once again they fumbled, and you got away. Now, by some totally blind luck for us, you had to come across our friend Maggie here.” Petr grinned. “Otherwise, we would have had to look for you and who knows how that would have worked out. But Maggie delivered you on a plate. Of course, one has to be prepared when fortune smiles.”

  Maggie asked, “Was Andrei in on that?”

  “No, Andrei was just a convenient cover for us. He thought he was a big cheese, when in reality we’ve been running his business for years. He was becoming a bit of a problem, hiding money, trying to do things on the side, planning to escape. So I’m afraid he, Tamara, and Oleg became just a few more loose ends to be tied earlier today. Andrei actually wanted to send you away, but I convinced him otherwise. We needed to feed MSS information that would keep them trusting us. Giving them Mr. Ferguson here would have been a nice little bonus showing how much we knew. You”—he nodded to David—“were supposed to be there on Saturday. But you did not cooperate.”

  “Why didn’t you call it off, then?” asked Maggie.

  “It was not that simple. Things had been set into motion. It’s not like I could just call Beijing out of the blue to cancel. They didn’t know who was feeding them information. All they knew was they paid good money and were getting good intelligence. Besides, it was still possible that David here would come back in time. Now, Alex staying behind was unplanned. I think he just had
a crush on you. In any case, it did not work out too badly for us. It was clear to MSS that the intelligence was good and that the target was indeed staying there, just the timing was wrong. And we lucked out again, because David here proved to be unexpectedly resourceful and started uncovering some pretty interesting information. We got particularly excited when he made contact with Trimble. By the way, how did you get his contact?”

  “From the man who was wounded at Green Lake,” David said. “But wait, how did you know I made contact with Julius … I mean Trimble?”

  “Ah, the man at the UW Hospital. He died from his wounds by the way. As to how we knew? You grabbed Maggie’s computer before you left. On Saturday night the two of you were out, and I installed a program that copied all the computer communications to us. Just in case. As I said, one has to be prepared to take advantage of a lucky break. By the way,” he told Maggie, “we took your computer from Bowen’s house. No loose ends. You can have it back later.”

  “So how was it helpful to you?”

  Petr must have been getting excited, because blotches of red appeared on his otherwise colorless face. “We needed to find Trimble. We had a dossier on him and knew which anonymizing application he was using with his e-mail. What he did not know was that our computer specialists—we have excellent programmers, by the way—partially broke the anonymizer and figured out that it was not entirely random. A flaw in the algorithm. It was kind of like location triangulation: one message did not do us any good, multiple messages spread over a period of time did not do us any good, but three to four messages close together allowed us to narrow IP addresses down to a metropolitan area. And we got lucky twice: first, Trimble responded to you, second, he was staying in Vail, Colorado. He must have flown from Seattle to Denver and then drove a couple of hours to Vail. If it were New York or Chicago, the area would have been too big. But Vail is a small place. By 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday we had a dozen agents there casing all the top restaurants. We knew Trimble’s taste. At 7:30 he showed up at Le Tour with a young woman. They enjoyed a good dinner. The big news in Vail this morning is a double murder and robbery at Ritz-Carlton Residences. We actually wish we could have taken him alive, but he grabbed his gun.”

  “Who was the woman?” asked Maggie.

  “Just some poor girl that agreed to go on a date with a wrong guy. And now to your original question—we obviously knew about your communication with Hsu since you were using Maggie’s computer. We fed MSS information that Julius, aka Trimble, was dead. We went to Balboa Lake to make sure they took care of you, and then we were going to follow Hsu and his team and take care of them.”

  “Why were you going to take care of Hsu?” questioned David. I am going to rush him. Perhaps he’ll miss.

  “Because you were telling him things and he possibly knew more than he should have. In a sense, you killed him. But once again, you managed to get away and ruin a perfect plan. So now that you know the story, tell me…who else was at Balboa Lake? Because I still have to drive back to San Fernando Valley to deal with Hsu.”

  David said, “I don’t know.”

  It was Petr’s turn to be surprised. “You don’t know? You mean to tell me that someone protected you, killed people to help you escape, and you don’t know who it was?”

  “That’s right,” David said. Get ready.

  Petr looked from him to Maggie and back. “I don’t believe you. Under different circumstances, we would beat you until you piss blood and tell us everything we want to know, but we have no time for such luxury. So, I will count to three and then I will shoot Ms. Sappin here. One …”

  As the gun moved slightly in Maggie’s direction, David pressed on the balls of his feet, preparing to push himself off the couch. There was a noise outside the room. Without taking his eyes off David and Maggie, Petr called out, “Hey, what’s going on there?”

  In rushed Oleg with a gun trained on Petr. “Polozhi pistolet na pol!”

  David looked at Maggie, who helpfully translated: “Put the gun down on the floor.”

  Petr hesitated, fingers tightening on his gun. Oleg switched to English. “I will shoot you like a dog if you don’t put the gun down now!” Petr complied. Oleg barked out another command. “Push it toward me with your foot.” Petr did as ordered.

  A second man walked in the room saying, “There were only two of them besides Petr.” He looked around the room. “My name is Alejandro, or Sasha. You must be Maggie and David, right?”

  They nodded. David had lost his ability to be surprised, his mind a blank computer screen.

  Petr stammered out, “How … how …”

  Oleg completed the sentence. “How come I am alive after you left one of your goons to take care of me back at the house, the way you took care of Andrei and Tamara?”

  Petr swallowed hard instead of answering.

  “When Sasha and I got back from Balboa Lake, the Bentley was left in the driveway. Andrei would’ve never left his Bentley in the driveway. It was his baby. He always put it in the garage. So I knew to come in through the back door. I caught your henchman looking the wrong way.”

  David asked, “So it was you at the lake?”

  Oleg nodded. “Yes, it was us. You told me last night you arranged to meet Maggie’s kidnappers there. The traitor here”—he pointed at Petr—“did not realize or forgot that I gave you a disposable cell phone, so he didn’t know we were talking. I left supposedly for breakfast that morning, but Sasha and I got there pretty early with two sniper rifles, set up, and waited. Two of them showed up at about 9:30 to comb the immediate vicinity, but we were already there and hidden. They were the same people that killed Alex. We got three of them, the other two got away.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to do this?”

  “You would not hear of it; you wanted to be a hero. Besides, it was much better this way. If you knew we were there, you would have looked around, given us away.”

  “But how did you know to come here?”

  “Megrano gave me two GPS trackers that I attached to the Audi and to the Mercedes SUV. He also showed me how to track them. I didn’t know whether the traitor was him”—he pointed at Petr—“or Tamara. It became pretty clear this morning when I came back to the house. Then we followed the signal.”

  Petr said, “Look, Oleg, we are on the same side. You are a patriot; you fought in Tajikistan. I am sorry about Alex, but this was a big and important operation. Unfortunately, sometimes we have to sacrifice lives for a greater good. Come back to Russia with me. We will be heroes. You can contact GRU General Nemzhov. He will confirm how big this was.”

  Oleg got interested. “General Nemzhov?”

  Petr responded hopefully. “Yes, he’s the one directing the operation. And he is important. Get him what he needs and you’ll be set for life.”

  “Set for life, eh?” Oleg shot Petr twice and said, “For Alex. The way you set him.”

  “For Alex,” echoed Alejandro.

  Oleg looked at David and Maggie. “We have to go.” David stepped around Petr. Maggie hesitated for a moment, kicked the body, and walked out of the room.

  There were two other bodies in the entrance. David kneeled in front of Frank’s and touched his neck for a pulse. There was none. David said, “Good-bye, friend.” His voice choked.

  Oleg tugged him. “Please, we do have to get out of here.” There was another body on the side of the gate. Oleg did not want David to drive, so he got into the Accord’s driver seat and Alejandro took the black BMW SUV. David saw the A11 parked at the gate.

  Maggie asked if they could drive by Bowen’s house. Oleg did not seem happy about it, but complied. There was an ambulance in front of the house. A body covered by a sheet was being rolled out, with the neighboring onlookers sadly shaking their heads. Maggie again broke down crying. “James, James, I am so sorry I brought you into this.”

  In silence, Oleg drove down the 405 Freeway, switched to 110 south, exited and drove up the winding roads. David saw a “
Welcome to Rancho Palos Verdes” sign. They pulled into a circular driveway in front of a large ranch-style house. The black BMW SUV was there already. There were other people in the house, but Alejandro blocked them off, showed David and Maggie to their rooms, and told them to take an hour to relax, take a shower, whatever. Maggie walked gingerly, almost hesitantly, as if unsure she was on solid ground. Overcome with a need to shield her from further harm, David offered his hand for support, and she took it, leaning on him.

  PART 3: NEW LIFE

  “Hell isn't merely paved with good intentions;

  it’s walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too.”

  — Aldous Huxley

  Wednesday, 4/27/2022, 3:51 p.m. PDT

  David was lying on the bed with his eyes closed. What happened today did not lend itself to his usual ways of coping. It was something of entirely different order. Out of habit, he took a shower in order to clear his head, to no avail. Someone thoughtfully left a change of clothes for him, but David kept his own.

  A scene from his childhood came to him. He was seven and a kind female therapist was asking, “Can you describe for me the emotion you are feeling now?” What was he feeling? Grief, guilt, gratitude … why did all these different emotions start with the same letter? It was gratitude most of all. Rightfully, he should have died twice today, but at no point did he feel he was going to. He thought he was invincible. Only now the full measure of his luck hit him. Perhaps I am un-killable, he thought. Perhaps I’m being spared for some purpose. David opened his eyes, brought his hands to his face. He was indeed alive.

  He thought of Megrano, and James, and Frank. Just a couple of days ago he was in the same room with them making plans, and now all of them were gone. David’s life had been mostly peaceful. Except for his dog Oscar, he’d never had to deal with death. That actually was one of the reasons he’d disappointed his parents by not wanting to go into medicine: he didn’t like to think about dying. The “forever-ness” of it made him uneasy. And now he moved into a different world with different rules. David clenched his fists until it hurt. Somehow he had to make it up to his fallen friends. But how?