by C. G. Cooper
But President Yegorovich’s revelation that Colonel Stokes had spent time as a spy, in Germany of all places. News to Cal. Would it be news to his mother, God rest her soul?
“Excuse me, sir, may we join your pity party?”
Top grinned down at him and Cal was immediately on his feet gratefully receiving a crushing hug.
“I’ve missed you guys.”
Cal clasped hands with Gaucho next, and the shake turned into a hug.
“Took us long enough to get here,” said Gaucho. “Ain’t easy finding a way home when our usual mode of transport is otherwise unavailable.”
Cal slapped Gaucho on the back. “We’ll have the jet back in no time.”
“You promise?”
“You have Wilcox?”
Gaucho gave him a thumbs up. “Safe and secure.”
That meant Wilcox was not only secured hand and foot, but that there were men guarding the wily assassin, too.
“I’m starving,” Top said, rubbing his stomach, clueless of the coeds gawking at his enormity. “You want something?” he asked Gaucho.
“You kidding?” Then, to Cal, “Hey, what is it you got there?”
“Egg and ham on a toasted cinnamon raisin bagel.”
“That’s disgusting.”
Cal shrugged. No need telling Gaucho that it wasn’t. The Mexicans had perfected the art of sweet paired with savory.
“How you doing, Cal?” Top asked.
“I’m good,” he said with a sigh of relief. The boys were slowly getting back together. Next would be Neil, then Dr. Higgins, if needed. Jonas was in Asia for business, and Daniel was still on his secret trip. No word from him in weeks.
And now they had Wilcox in hand. A big step. But the questions hanging in the wind were still far from being answered, the most important being: Who were the mysterious players on the sidelines and when would they make their definitive play?
Chapter Sixty-Two
LENA — LOCATION: UNKNOWN — PRESENT DAY
“Who was the man I shot?” The question had long been on her lips.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Lena didn’t like it when her father got like this. Displaced. Detached.
But she was no longer a child. She’d killed a man. “I want to know.”
He turned to her, his face softening. At least the side of his face he could calm. “You did what was needed, Little Rabbit. Isn’t that enough?”
“No.”
“Not even for me?”
“No. Not even for you.”
He nodded, approving. “You have your mother’s fire in you.”
It was the first time he’d mentioned her mother. Even as a child there were only the faintest whispers of the woman who’d brought her into the world.
“Did you teach my mother to shoot, too?”
At this he laughed.
“What?”
“It was the other way around.” He reached over and caressed her cheek. “She was very much like you. I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but sometimes it pains me to look at you because you look so much like her.”
“I’m sorry.”
His smile was tender. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. You’re my reminder of what I had. Your mother would be proud of you.”
“Do you think she can see me?”
His eyes went blank. “No. She’s dead.”
A pain stabbed in Lena’s stomach. She whispered, “Did you love her?”
Her father’s eyes misted over. “More than you know.”
She’d have to cling to that answer until the next time she mustered the courage to further prod. She decided to return to her main concern. “Tell me about the man, Daddy. Who was he?”
He seemed relieved at the returned topic. “He wanted something that we need.”
Then it all clicked in Lena’s mind. Two men on a trail. One, her target. The other…
“The other man. He was going to kill the other man.”
She remembered it clearly like she remembered every shot. A perfect window through the canopy. It’d taken two days to find it. An impossible coincidence coupled with an extraordinary shot. Thanks to the intelligence provided by her father, the man in the black and white picture had finally arrived, holding a strange looking weapon out to the other man. Too far to hear the back and forth.
Once the ID was made, she took the shot. One and done.
“He wasn’t going to kill the other man,” her father corrected. “He wanted to take him. I couldn’t let that happen. We need him.”
While that didn’t make much sense, Lena didn’t press. She had to trust her father.
“Who is he?”
“You ask too many questions, Little Rabbit.”
“Why do we need him?”
Lena thought she caught a flash of anger in his eyes. Then it was gone.
“If you really want to know,” he said, “his name is Stokes, and we need him because his father took something from me long ago.”
Chapter Sixty-Three
VOLKOV — MOSCOW — 1979
Moscow was a wonderland for the young Belarusian. He’d spent most of his childhood dreaming of the Soviet capital, and now he’d made it. They’d treated him like royalty. Food and drink and rooms fit for a tsar. At least for the first week. Then came the training.
They left Moscow behind. This was where Young Alek got a true taste of his heritage. Gone was the hero thrown into the Soviet sphere. Being squished into a cramped seat between two of his teammates should’ve been the first indication. But even then he’d been too excited to care. This was an adventure! He would make his family proud. Even his mother. He’d win a gold medal and show her that he was something special, something to be cherished instead of admonished and sneered at.
The excitement waned the first time he was vomited on by the boy sitting to his left. The retching for four straight hours numbed him to the smell and sound. Maybe that was for the best. It was an eighteen-hour ride.
When they finally arrived, exhausted, smelling like they’d lived in their clothes for a month, they were greeted by a trio of teenagers, one of whom looked like his entire face would explode by the sheer volume of ripe pimples. He was the first to speak.
“Get your bags, and hurry.” He held a ski pole like it was a mage’s staff.
Some of the other boys stood around looking dazed. In Moscow, their bags had been gathered and stowed by porters in tails and tassels. Aleksandr was no idiot. He knew the look those boys had. He’d seen it many times from his father. His bag was in hand as the beatings began, the teenagers huffing in the frigid cold as they kicked and screamed at those boys too slow to move. The unlucky ones got the pole, and oh, how the loud pop sounded when it hit a boy just so.
“Get your bags!” they screamed. “Hurry!”
Alek kept to the outskirts of the skirmish, noting those with tears in their eyes, the ones who stood frozen as the ground they stood on, and those who seemed as numb to the situation as Alek was trying to look. Snow all around. A white too powerful to penetrate. He thought he’d seen snow, but this was SNOW. A wind kicked up and almost sent him to his knees. One boy moaned and was immediately set upon by the teens.
“What? Is it too cold for you, little lamb? Would you like a hug, little pisser?”
They kicked this one, too. At least the latest target had enough sense to take the drumming. One of the first was still lying on the ground unmoving. It was the last they’d see of that one. Maybe it had something to do with the pool of blood forming under his head.
Once all the bags were taken from the bus, the smoke-sputtering puke wagon rumbled off and the pimple-plastered boy shouted for them to follow. They walked through snow coming down in billowing blankets. It was all Alek could do to see four feet in front of him. His toes went numb quickly. What he would not have given to stop and put on some ski boots.
But there was no time to stop. They trudged on. Anyone who fell behind was kicked until they moved at a
speed deemed suitable to their new masters. Alek sensed rather than saw the gentle descent of the path they were on. The boy right behind him slipped and almost took Alek over with him. Somehow, they steadied themselves without losing more than a step. More barks from behind and they kept marching.
He had on too many layers. Sweat began to soak the inside of his clothes. He knew from painful experience that being wet meant nothing good in this weather. He thought about taking the bag from his shoulder and getting rid of his coat, but that would take too much coordination. The last thing he wanted to do was be the first domino that toppled the rest down the ever-increasing decline.
Alek wasn’t sure if he was getting used to the whiteout, or that the snow was slowing, but he was sure he could now make out a structure up ahead. Smoke curled from a stone chimney. The sight made him think of home. Where had his father gone after he’d left? Where was his mother? Did she know that he was gone?
He could see windows now. Then round shapes that might have been human. Yes, they were faces in the windows, looking out at the approaching troop. He felt himself relax. He was not tired, at least not physically so, but the long bus ride had taken its toll. His stomach grumbled and he knew the signs of early dehydration. He wondered how the king of vomit was feeling. He hoped they wouldn’t be roommates.
The head of the line hit the recently cleared path that led to the front door of the oversized shack. He could feel the collective sigh of relief from the hand-selected boys. That feeling soon turned to disbelief as Mr. Pus Face kept walking. Alek saw him chuckle.
A handful of boys fell to their knees, too tired to go on.
“Leave them,” Mr. Pus Face said, taking it all in stride like he was out for a stroll in the middle of summer.
Alek fully expected a longer walk, possibly up another hill and down a few more. But their path cut back the way they’d come and then back toward a shack that jutted out of the side of the snow-topped hill. “Go inside. Six to a room,” Mr. Pus Face said.
The boys on the ground shot to their feet, their relief palpable.
“Not you.” The pus-face grin turned into a sadistic leer. “Back home for you, babies. The Motherland has no use for you.”
And that was where Alek learned his first lesson, and possibly the most important lesson of his life: Never show weakness to a Russian.
Chapter Sixty-Four
STOKES — JEFFERSON GROUP HQ, CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA — PRESENT DAY
Where had all this crap come from?
He shoved a dusty box aside with his foot. They hadn’t lived like royalty in the mini-mansion, but at least things were clean and picked up. It looked like a family of six had moved out of an apartment complex and deposited their belongings here.
“What the hell happened here?” Gaucho asked, a sandwich in one hand and a soda in his other.
“I was about to ask you the same question,” Cal said, rolling his chair back and bumping into another stack of cardboard boxes.
“Tiiiiimber,” Gaucho said as the top box toppled and spread its paper contents all in a cascading pile.
“Where do I even begin?” He looked at his friend. “Have you stopped eating since we got here?”
Gaucho smiled around a mouthful of chicken salad. “I love college towns.”
“This place is a real shithole, you know that, Stokes?” said Wilcox. He’d been shackled by the hands and feet and dragged into the room by Top. “I would’ve thought with all your connections you’d have some pimped-out pad on one of Jefferson’s old plantations. Hey, you think you could introduce me to one of his great-great-great-great grandchildren? I hear half of Virginia is related to the guy.”
“When was the last time he shut up?” Cal asked.
Top shrugged and then deposited Wilcox in the chair across from Cal.
“Haven’t heard a thing he’s said since we hit the city limits.”
Wilcox squirmed against his restraints. “Hey, that’s not fair. I told you a couple of zingers. I saw you laugh, too.”
“I laughed at your pathetic attempts. You good here, Cal? I thought I’d get a little shut eye until my next babysitting shift.”
“I take great offense to that comment,” Wilcox said, mock-pouting. “Now gimme. Baby want his whiskey and Pedialyte.”
Cal shook his head. That was Wilcox. If he wasn’t trying to make you laugh, he was trying to get you killed. He waved to Top. “We’re good here.”
Top yawned and left, leaving Cal, Gaucho, and Wilcox for the next of their chats. They’d had half a dozen since regrouping, and not a one had produced anything that came close to new information. Not that Cal cared, but Brandon wanted Wilcox’s head. They had another 24 hours before they had to make the drive to D.C. and turn him in.
“Wilcox,” he said with a nod.
“Stokes,” the man mimicked.
This was how they always started.
“Where did we leave off?” Cal asked.
“You were trying to pin the death of that megalomaniacal Russian ambassador on me and I had to tell you that it wasn’t me.”
“Right.”
Of course it was him, wearing the digitally altered face of Cal Stokes, and both men knew it. It was time to take a new tack before they ran out of time. Cal’s biggest fear wasn’t that Wilcox would end up in a federal hole so dark the devil might run from it. No, he wanted answers and he figured that as soon as Wilcox was out of his hands the ability to get answers would be gone.
So again, time for another tack.
“I need your help,” Cal said, watching as Wilcox gazed around the room, seemingly uncaring of the comment.
“Oh?”
“Will you look at me, please?”
Wilcox turned. “Sorry. I get so distracted surrounded by all this crap. You really should get someone in here to clean this joint up. An upstanding American like yourself ought not to be living like a hoarder.”
“Would you shut up and be serious for once?”
Wilcox shrugged. “Who would I be if I didn’t try and stall?”
“Stall for what? Reinforcements?”
There’d been no indication that they’d been followed, spied on, listened to, or tracked.
“I didn’t say reinforcements. But you know how time works. The more you have, the more opportunities present themselves. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Cal exhaled. Maybe this was a waste of time.
“Look. We’ve got less than 24 hours.”
“I know. Your buddy Zimmer wants his pound of flesh. Let him take it. I don’t care.”
It was time to show at least one of the cards in his hand.
“What if I told you there’s a chance you might not have to go.”
“I’d say you were lying.”
“You’re the liar, not me.”
“I’m an actor, Cal. I can’t help it. I’m sure in another life I could’ve been a big deal. Oscar material. Shoot, you think Zimmer might give me a pardon and let me work out my days alongside George Clooney and his good buddy Brad?”
Cal just stared at the man.
Wilcox rolled his eyes. “Fine. You said you needed help. With what?”
“What do you think of the Russians?”
“Great dancers, lousy cooks.”
Silence.
“Fine. You want the truth?”
“The truth.”
Wilcox leaned forward, straining against his bonds, a fire lit suddenly in his eyes.
“Ok, my opinion of the Russkies. Truth is, if you have to ask, then you don’t know me very well.”
“You’re saying you don’t like them?”
“I’m saying I hate their kvass-drinkin’ guts.”
Cal couldn’t help but smirk. “Good. Then maybe you’ll be some use to us after all.”
Chapter Sixty-Five
ZIMMER — AIR FORCE ONE, SOMEWHERE OVER THE AMERICAN MIDWEST — PRESENT DAY
“Do you have any nails left?” Marge Haines asked idly, twirling a pen between h
er fingers as she perused another deep pile of reports.
The president looked down at the nail he’d just been chewing. Disgusting habit. One he thought he’d kicked in college. “We should be on the ground.”
“Where we need to be is in this fine airplane flying to the next stop on the grand fundraising tour of your re-election campaign.”
“Can’t we put this off until the Wilcox thing is over?”
Haines looked up from the report. “If we took a break from fundraising every time there was a crisis, we’d never raise a penny.”
Zimmer wanted to grumble something about accepting payments online, but he knew she was right. Haines was always right.
“You think FDR had to put up with this crap? What about Lincoln?” Zimmer asked.
“I think they had to put up with problems unique to the time they were in office.”
“I know. I’m just feeling sorry for myself.”
Now Haines put down the report for good and gave him a give-it-to-me motion. “You’ve got my attention.”
Zimmer didn’t know where to start. He’d already complained enough to this saint of a woman. She put up with his lousy moods, of which there’d been plenty in recent months. But still, she was one of the only people he could talk to like a normal person without the requisite ass-kissing coming back his way.
He lobbed a question that he figured she wasn’t expecting.
“Do you think I should run for re-election?”
“I do.”
He lowered his gaze at her. “That’s it?”
“You asked.”
“No barrage of questions aimed at gauging my sanity or anything?”
“Not at all. I think it’d be a great idea. For you, for the country...”
The president leaned back and took a breath. “I’m not so sure. I mean, if any of this mess with Cal and Wilcox gets out—”
“It won’t. And if it does, we’ll deal with it.” She got up from her seat, walked to his desk, and sat on the edge. Like a friend would do. A good friend. A trusted friend. A friend with wafts of something floral and a little bit spicy coming off her neck. A friend whose close presence seemed to unsettle him the more he found himself within caressing distance of her.