by David Archer
“Okay, boys,” she said cheerfully. “All done, let’s go back to the house.”
* * * * *
Donald Jefferson walked into Allison’s office and flopped into his usual chair. “I just got the word that six of the Ministers are confirmed dead. Three others seem to have gone into hiding, and the prime minister, Petrov, has resigned his position and is currently in protective custody of the SVR. The NSA says the Committee is almost certainly out of business, but they would like to see a few more of the members eliminated from time to time over the coming months. I think that’s just to remind the remaining ones that there are those of us out here who are not going to put up with a return to those days.”
“We’ve got a couple of the new teams that need some practice on real missions. Some of the members aren’t going to be that hard to get to, so those would be good missions to let them get a grip on what they’re doing. Tell NSA to send the proper request through the proper channels and I’ll review them the way I always do.”
“Already did,” Jefferson said. “They always try to get me to run around obstacles for them, but I never do. You’d think they’d have learned, wouldn’t you?”
“It’s the fact that they are political animals,” Allison said. “They’re just too damned stupid.”
CHAPTER NINTEEN
It was almost nine o’clock that evening by the time Jenny and her team were all back at the house, and Noah was standing on the porch waiting for them. When Jenny stepped out of the car, she snapped off a parade-ground-perfect salute and smiled up at him. “All missions accomplished, sir,” she said. “It felt good to be back in action, at last.”
Noah nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’m calling it in.”
He took out his phone as they entered the house and pressed the icon to dial headquarters.
“Brigadoon Investments, how may I direct your call?”
“Camelot calling for Allison Peterson.”
“One moment, please.”
The music played for roughly four and a half seconds, and then Allison came on the phone. “Camelot, report.”
“All six targets were acquired and eliminated,” Noah said. “No difficulties on our end. We are awaiting orders.”
“You can’t imagine how glad I am to hear from you,” Allison said. “The word of your activities has spread all over the world, and our propaganda divisions are working ridiculous amounts of overtime, which is a euphemism for having an absolute field day spreading out pure bullshit! I understand the Russian president is being extremely cooperative with our ambassador on this matter, and the prime minister has been removed from office and is currently in what they are calling protective custody. He’s probably on his way to Siberia as we speak, which would suit me just fine. Now, where do we stand on getting you out of Russia?”
“We have clean IDs and passports and Monica has offered to take us all back on her charter. At the moment, that seems the best option, but I wanted to get your input on it.”
“That plane is sitting at Sheremetyevo, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The problem with that is the fact that all of you were photographed when you are arrested. There’s very little doubt in my mind that the FSB has people all over every airport holding those pictures like a hand of playing cards. You try getting to the charter gate, you might end up shot dead.” She cursed under her breath. “Can you think of any way you can get onto that plane without being seen?”
“I don’t think it would be easy. The chances we would have of getting through the terminal building and out to that aircraft are probably pretty slim. The only ones who can certainly make it are Monica, Sarah and Neil. If we decide to go that route, I want to send them ahead. Let them get into the plane and be ready to take off if things go wrong.”
“Noah, I’m afraid it wouldn’t matter. If you and the rest are captured or killed while trying to get to that plane, it would probably be shot out of the air. The only hope you’ve got of catching that charter out is if you can get onto it without the FSB spotting you.”
“The issue there is the fact that the IDs we have all use our real photos, and we know that the SVR has some fairly sophisticated facial recognition software. Pretty good chance they’d spot us even with disguises. The only possible way I can think of to get us onto that plane would be in boxes, something that would prevent anyone, including computers, from seeing our faces.”
“Yes, but unfortunately that isn’t a cargo flight. We had several plans ready, but your sensational escape has made them worthless, I’m afraid. Let me talk to the brains and see what they can come up with. I’ll call you back as soon as I know something.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Noah said, but the line was dead before he even got it out.
Sarah had walked over to stand beside him while he spoke to Allison and heard most of what Allison had to say. Monica looked up at them.
“I take it she wasn’t fond of the idea?”
“It’s the photos they took when we were arrested,” Noah said. “Between facial recognition and SVR and FSB holding our pictures and looking for us, we don’t think there’s a terrific chance that we’d be able to make it onto the plane. I’m trying to think of something that would make it feasible to get us on without us being seen, but I don’t have a clue what it would be at this point.”
Neil was sitting at the table with his computer. “I heard you mention disguise,” he said. “I could do an overprint on our photos, on the IDs of passports, I mean. I can change hair color, eye color, add whiskers or whatever, but it probably still wouldn’t fool facial recognition.”
“No, I’m sure it wouldn’t. The Dragon Lady is going to talk to the brains, which means Molly and Wally, I’m sure, and see what they can come up with. She will call us back when she has something to tell us, so all we can do is wait until then.”
“I know something else we could do,” Neil said. “We could get something to eat around here. I don’t know if anybody else has noticed, but when you have eleven people in one little bitty house, the groceries go pretty fast. I’m hungry, and there’s nothing here to eat.”
“I’ll fetch,” Catherine said. “There’s really not much for me to do at any road, at the moment. Anybody want to give me a list?”
Everybody had a suggestion or two, so it was almost 20 minutes later when Catherine left to go and find a grocery store. Noah suggested she pick up something ready-to-eat on the way back.
Sarah took hold of Noah’s hand and pulled him toward the bedroom they shared, and they lay down on the bed together. “I heard what you said about me and Neil getting on the plane ahead of you,” Sarah said. “I would think you’d know by now that’s not going to happen. I’m not leaving without you, Noah. If it means we have to live the rest of our lives right here in Moscow, I’m not leaving without you.”
“Unfortunately, the rest of our lives wouldn’t be very long if we don’t get out of here sometime soon. Sooner or later, one of us is going to run into some situation that’s going to get FSB on us, and we won’t be able to bluff our way out of it. Somehow, I don’t think they’re going to risk trying to lock us up again. We would probably end up against a wall somewhere in the middle of nowhere.”
Sarah was quiet for several seconds, then looked at him with eyes that were almost moist enough for tears. “At least we’d be together,” she said.
“That’s not an option,” Noah said. “Just be patient, let’s wait for Molly and Wally. With any luck, they’ll come up with an idea that can work. Until then, we can just stay here and play house for a while.”
* * * * *
“What happened to the Cessna?” Molly asked. “I thought that was the plan all along.”
“Not after a number of high-profile assassinations,” Jefferson said. “The Russian Air Force will be patrolling the borders, looking for low-flying aircraft and anything else that’s out of place. There’s just not much hope that Noah could fly it out without being spotted, not when
the whole country is on high alert.”
“Monica’s Gulfstream IV is sitting at Sheremetyevo,” Allison said, “but we need to figure out how to get them on it. There’s going to be security all over that airport and they’ll be looking for our people. Disguises aren’t going to help, their facial recognition is just too good. They’d be spotted by the distance between the pupils in their eyes, other little crap like that. The only hope we’ve got for getting them onto that plane is to find a way to make them completely unrecognizable, and even then we’ll have to have a reason that makes sense for them to be getting on the plane. Monica came in alone with just a flight crew. They’re going to be wondering why she’s taking a bunch of other people out with her.”
“That’s a good point,” Molly said. “Since she’s not a Russian, anybody she takes out of the country is going to have to go through extra scrutiny, I’m sure. Has anyone talked to Wally?”
“I have,” Allison said, “but he’s coming up empty on this one. If they were here, we could probably find some way to disguise them enough that the computers couldn’t spot them, but there’s just no way to do it over there.”
“Damn,” Molly said. “There’s got to be something we can do. What about getting them out of Moscow, to some other part of the country where they might not be recognized?”
Jefferson shook his head. “Facial recognition systems work off of the central database, and their photos are in it. With time, some of our best hackers might be able to get in there and get them out, but not when security levels are so high. We’ve got to figure something else out, because we are simply not going to give up Camelot and Cinderella. That’s not going to happen.”
“What about—no, that wouldn’t work,” Molly said. “Hey, they’ve got a British agent working with them, right? What about getting them out on a British diplomatic flight?”
“Same problem,” Allison said. “How to get them onto the plane without being seen. You weren’t with us the last time we had this problem, but there were SVR agents actually shooting at them as they boarded a diplomatic flight. Neil was wounded that time, shot through the leg. Ever since that happened, you can bet they’ve got cameras and armed security watching the charter and diplomatic tarmac areas. If they were spotted, they’d never make it onto the plane either way.”
Molly shook her head. “There has to be an answer,” she said. “There simply has to be.”
* * * * *
Catherine returned with the food, and they gathered around the living room area to chow down on pizza. Noah chose that time to explain to everyone that the experts back home were working on a way to get them out of the country, which led to some humorous, if impractical, suggestions. Tony VanHorn, who had been terribly quiet since they arrived at the house, came up with the idea of putting them all into coffins and trying to ship them out as dead bodies, while Catherine herself suggested that they take all of the pizza boxes they had and glue them together into a big one, then ship them out as the world’s largest pepperoni and cheese.
“I actually toyed with the idea,” Monica said, “of trying to pack you all into boxes from my beauty product line, but it would look awfully unusual for me to be taking cases and cases of it home by air. Besides, the biggest boxes we’ve got would be too small even for me, let alone one of you.”
“Okay, that won’t work,” Neil said, “but what about packing us into a shipping container? I’m sure we could manage to survive a few days, maybe the couple of weeks it would take to ship us back to the states.”
“No, sorry,” Monica said. “Customs and export regulations require every shipping container to be opened and thoroughly searched before it leaves port. They find us, and we’d all be dead.”
“Well, I’m trying,” Neil said.
“Could it be,” Catherine asked, “that you’re looking at this from the wrong direction? What about taking it from the angle of what kind of things are allowed to leave the country? I mean, surely there are certain things that can be sent out without too much bother.”
“I’m not sure what they would be,” Monica said. “Neil? Any ideas?”
“I’m looking,” Neil said. “There are certain things that can be classified as noninterference, meaning they don’t get searched or hassled in any way. Unfortunately, those only include shipments from the Russian government, humanitarian flights carrying terminally or seriously ill or wounded patients to doctors in other parts of the world, diplomatic flights or vessels… Yeah, that’s about it. Any of that sound like an idea that might work?”
“Nothing I heard,” Jenny said. She reached out and rubbed Neil’s back. “Don’t worry, baby,” she said, “I’ve got confidence in you. You’ll figure it out, you always do.”
Neil shook his head. “I’m trying,” he said. “I really don’t think there’s much chance of convincing the government to ship us home, and none of us could pass for someone who was dying or so sick they had to leave the country to survive. We can’t make it to a diplomatic flight, we already established that. I just…”
“Wait a minute,” Monica said. “You mentioned two things that caught my attention. The first is getting the government to ship you home. It’s actually possible that I might be able to make that happen. Barring that, I was thinking about what you said about humanitarian flights. What if I, a wealthy American businessperson, were to offer to take several sick or injured people back to the States for medical treatment? We could put all of you on stretchers and have you carried right onto the plane. If you’re all wrapped up in blankets and so sick you can’t even talk, we might just get away with that.”
“You know,” Neil said, “that just might actually be possible. What I want to hear about, though, is what you meant about getting the Russian government to send us home. Are you talking about in body bags, or what?”
“No,” Monica said, “no. I’m actually thinking of a way for President Feodor to maybe avoid an extremely embarrassing situation.” She checked her phone and saw the time, then mumbled about time zones. “I can’t even attempt it till morning, but if we haven’t come up with something by then, I think it’s worth a shot.”
Noah looked at her. “Explain it to me in detail,” he said, “before you try it. I want to run it past Allison first.”
Monica grinned at him. “Okay, look at it like this,” she said. “If you get arrested trying to leave the country, especially at a very visible place like Sheremetyevo Airport, the news services are going to be all over you. While the Russian government does have some censorship powers, they’ve also got a population with cell phones and Facebook accounts. No matter how they may bully the news services, the story is going to make it onto the Internet, and then some of the news organizations would run it anyway. You guys are the famous sleeper agents; the president would find it extremely embarrassing if you suddenly turned up dead, simply because it was because of you that the government found out about the whole Committee for restoring the Soviet whatever. Right?”
“I’m not sure he’d find it all that embarrassing,” Noah said. “To be honest, I’d think he’d find it a relief if we suddenly died. There’d be no one to answer the questions that are bound to be asked, whether they get us or not.”
“Okay, maybe if you want to look at it from a cynical point of view, that makes sense. But how about this: what if we could change the story again? You know, there’s a story floating around now that you were rescued from that place by Russian military, right? What if the story got out that those soldiers were ordered there by the president himself, because the truth of the matter is that you were all double agents who were actually working for the president in order to expose this conspiracy?”
“All he’d have to do is deny it,” Sarah said. “I can’t imagine he’d want to go along with it.”
“He would if it makes him a hero. What if we got the story out that President Feodor actually learned from some high-placed aide to the prime minister about the conspiracy, and about the plan to assassinate
what’s-his-name, the one that you were charged with killing? What if we said that you were really supposed to kill him, the president, but instead, you went after that minister because he was part of the whole conspiracy? If you did that to protect the president, and then helped him expose what was really going on, you’d be heroes, and then if you got killed, it would be a serious embarrassment.”
“I could do it,” Neil said suddenly. “Same way I put out the story about you in the prison. Inside of three hours, I could have that story screaming around the world.”
“Okay, I can see where that could change a few things,” Noah said. “The problem then would be that, if we were supposed to be heroes, wouldn’t the president want to keep us close? Maybe parade us in front of the TV cameras? That’s the last thing we would want.”
“On the contrary,” Monica said. “I know how the Russian mind thinks. I can get a message to him that would convince him the best possible situation would be to claim that those agents were sent back into deep cover, not in America, but somewhere else. That way, he can justify calling off the search for all of you. If he does that, all I’ve got to do is walk you right on that airplane and we are out of here!”
Noah thought through the idea and slowly nodded his head. “You’re thinking of Boris, right? The guy who worked for the prime minister?”
“Yes. I’ll guarantee you, he’ll do whatever I tell him to do. If I tell him to go to the president and say that the only way he can avoid a scandal over having you all killed secretly is by declaring you all to be heroes of the Russian Federation and issuing a statement that you are continuing to serve good old Mother Russia, he’s going to deliver that message. Feodor is no fool; since we already know that the U.S. ambassador has been crawling up his ass, this gives him a believable backstory on how he learned about the conspiracy and brought it to its knees. I’m telling you, the Russian people would hail him as a hero and the border states would probably join right in. The same ones that are arming their borders right now would be begging for a peaceful partnership with Russia within days, and that would probably save this whole country from falling completely apart right now.”