The Export

  “I sent your driver back to the hotel to retrieve your things the minute I heard you had arrived. He’ll have them delivered to one of the guest rooms before you’ve finished lunch,” she added. “Russell always insists on lunch at high noon in his private dining room, one floor up, when he’s not running around Moscow doing who knows what. I’ll take you to meet Ray, he’s working in the communications office, and then we can all get together at noon.” With that, she smiled at both men and left the room as quickly as she had entered.

  “Is she with the CIA?” Matt asked, half-jokingly.

  “No,” Wilkerson laughed, “but she should be.”

  “I like her plan,” Matt stated. “I needed to meet with you before I got moving, and this has been a big help already. The only thing I still need to know is how much are you willing to spend. Seriously.”

  “I’ll match the CIA dollar for dollar up to a million to get this cleaned up. I assume you can work with that?”

  “Yep,” Matt said as he stood up. “Now, if you can have someone show me around, I guess I’ll see you for lunch in a bit – Russ.”

  The ambassador cringed. “Russell,” he responded and then led Matt through the door. He instructed an aide to have someone give Matt an informal, unrestricted tour of the facility, including answering any and all questions his friend asked. “He’s got clearance to see and do anything he wants.” Matt began to thank Wilkerson but was interrupted as a uniformed Marine rushed into the room.

  “Mr. Ambassador, we have a serious problem.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The news of the Marine’s arrest moved quickly through the embassy. The city police claimed that the Marine had entered a registered guest’s room and was caught by the maid stealing his belongings. She had dealt with the guest, someone who resembled an American movie star, earlier in the morning. He had requested more towels as he had been in some sort of accident the night before and his head was wounded. The police also claimed that when the maid had insisted Terry drop everything and leave the room, the Marine got rough with her. After nearly six hours of intense negotiation he was released from police custody and back within the safety of the Embassy. Of course, Terry had only been trying to retrieve Matt’s belongings on his behalf.

  To make matters worse, it had taken a phone call from the U.S. Secretary of State to Russia’s foreign minister, a difficult one at best, to get Terry released. In a subsequent call from the secretary to Wilkerson, he let the ambassador know in no uncertain terms that despite his personal ties to the White House, this latest incident would be one of the final nails in Wilkerson’s coffin. After meeting with Hadden, Terry, and the ambassador, Matt grew even more frustrated with the web he had been drawn into.

  “More signals. They’re sending more signals that we are up against a group bent on doing everything they can to embarrass the United States,” Matt concluded. “I need to get moving.”

  Matt needed to know all of the puzzle pieces and after a short time, he sat down with Raymond Wilkerson in a small office on the third floor of the Embassy and got down to it. Matt’s phone vibrated once more, and he apologized to the young man, saying he needed a moment to check it.

  Hey, George, I’m in Philly doing a shoot.

  I can catch a train down to DC tonight if you want some company?

  “Figures,” Matt said out loud. He quickly texted his response.

  Glad to see you’re not in jail. Sorry. Out of the country for a week or so.

  Will reconnect once I’m back in NA.

  After the introductions, and at the ambassador’s direction, the son was to cooperate fully and answer all questions with total honesty. As Matt read the young man’s file, Ray sat across from him, quietly playing with his iPhone.

  *

  Raymond Wilkerson had been a bad boy. Only 20-years-old, he had already lived a life full of drugs, been popped for petty theft, and pretty much anything else worth embarrassing his parents. There had been a competition between father and son that Mrs. Wilkerson was unaware of, or at least seemed to be. When they moved to Moscow, Ray came with his parents after they’d promised that if he didn’t like it, he could go home. They’d failed to inform him beforehand that he’d be cut out of their wills, there would not be a home to return to, and he’d have to beg, borrow, or steal to get a plane ticket out of Russia.

  In no time, Ray had started up his bad behavior again, only this time it wasn’t drugs – it was chasing the local women who worked at the Embassy. The father, always showing he was in command, always seeking to win at everything, totally demoralized his son by taking Ray’s 22-year-old girlfriend, Misha, from him. A twisted game evolved between the two Wilkerson men, competing to see who could conquer more women or lure a favorite away from the other. To their mutual surprise, the beautiful Misha, their favorite, turned up pregnant, quit the Embassy job, and ran to her family for guidance and to seek retribution. Matt read the dossier twice to be sure he didn’t miss a single fact, and then after reviewing it with Ray, he summed it up rather succinctly.

  “Looks like you and your Dad have screwed your way into the record books,” he stated. “I can honestly say I thought I’d only see a story like this on a damn soap opera back home.”

  “Nah,” Ray responded, putting down his phone and smiling for his guest. “This is live entertainment, much like a traveling circus.”

  “Agreed. I was trying to be nice,” Matt quipped and then asked Ray to tell him what Matt didn’t know.

  “So, you’re going to fix all this?”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  Ray told Matt that he and his father had agreed that Ray would take the fall. They’d tell Misha the baby couldn’t be the ambassador’s – that he’d had a vasectomy years before – and that she needed to take a cash payment and let this whole thing go away. But the “Old Goat” as they referred to the blackmailer – whoever was advising Misha – wasn’t buying it.

  A knock on the office door brought Matt the very late lunch of much-needed coffee and sandwiches he had hoped would turn up at some point. He was starving. Ray drank a Coke and picked at some chips while Matt inhaled everything on his plate and then reached over to Ray’s tray and took his dessert.

  “What?” Matt questioned with a laugh when the young man began to protest. “Snooze, you lose.”

  They hadn’t spent much time together, but Matt liked the kid. He had seen many other young men and women born into money and power. Some drank the Kool-Aid and enjoyed the easy life as a result of it. Others turned their backs on the chartered paths to Ivy League schools. Some chose to get into trouble. Ray, he thought, chose trouble like most kids. The more his parents said no and restricted him, the more he rebelled. Matt also appreciated Ray’s candor and honesty. He hadn’t displayed any behavior to indicate he was holding anything back.

  Matt told him so. “This is going well. I appreciate your being so open and forthcoming.”

  Ray nodded and then sat up in his seat. “Two things,” he stated as he looked straight into Matt’s eyes. “I’ll do whatever I can to get us out of this mess, but I want two things in return.”

  Matt nodded, raising his head slightly to encourage Ray to continue.

  “You have to take me back to the States with you when you go.”

  “And?”

  “You owe me a brownie.”

  Matt laughed. “Deal.”

  “Last three questions, and then you’re free to go,” Matt said. Ray looked as though he was ready to be back home with his friends in Texas.

  “First, does your mother know that both of you were having sex with Misha?”

  “No, sir,” Ray replied.

  “Second, do you know a girl named Anika?”

  “No, sir,” he responded. Ray’s breathing had changed, and his eye contact had wavered. It was an outright lie, but Matt didn’t let on he’d noticed.

  “Third, do you have any way of contacting Misha without her family knowing?”

  �
��Just her cellphone, that’s the only way we ever communicated. But she stopped answering my calls and my texts the day she left the Embassy.”

  “Give me her number just the same, and I’ll see what I can do.” Matt stood up, extended his hand for a quick fist-bump, and then thanked Ray for his time. “Let’s sit down again later tonight, maybe over a beer, and talk about Texas.”

  Matt left the room ahead of Ray to continue his tour of the facility. He’d caught the scent of game playing and lies between the young man and his powerful parents, but he knew he’d have to be patient and watch as the players responded to his moves.

  Lunch with the ambassador and his family had been canceled because of the incident with the Marine, so it was agreed they’d have dinner at Spaso at six o’clock instead. After finishing a slow and probing tour of the Embassy facility, and meeting many of the local Russian workers and transplanted American diplomatic staffers, Matt hitched a ride with Sarah Wilkerson to the ambassador’s residence.

  Spaso House had been built in the early 1900s by a wealthy Russian industrialist and it showed. As Sarah’s black SUV turned to pass through the fortified security gates, no doubt added when Spaso became the official residence of the U.S. Ambassador in 1933 or perhaps just after World War II, Matt sat back and felt as if he was arriving at Jefferson’s Monticello or perhaps FDR’s Hyde park in New York. Tall white columns, similar to the portico at the White House in Washington, made him feel as if he was back home rather than in this cold, hard place. Spaso was painted in a drab yellow, which made him warm to the place, but the massive satellite dish overhead on the roof reminded him again of where he was. Once inside, the atmosphere changed for him immediately. There was more red, white, and blue and a large amount of gold trim just about everywhere. All that was missing were fireworks, hot dogs and apple pie. Perhaps they’d come later.

  “Dinner’s at six on the dot, so don’t be late,” Sarah said and then handed him off to a domestic staffer who led Matt to his room on the second floor in the rear of the 100-year-old building.

  He’d have 30 minutes or so to unpack. Instead, he took the time to meticulously inspect every inch of the room and its contents. Russians were famous for bugging bedrooms. Whether they had done so, or perhaps his own government had, he wasn’t taking any chances. Once he felt sure the room was safe, he took a few minutes to throw his clothes in a drawer. He thought about Bella and how much he wished he was having a beer on her right now, or perhaps hiking in the foothills below the Matterhorn in Switzerland. A minute later, a knock at the door brought him back to reality.

  “Mr. Christopher, it’s Sergeant Hadden,” the familiar voice announced through the door. “I’ve brought you something.”

  Matt opened the door and gestured for the Marine, now dressed in civilian clothes, to come in. Hadden waited for the door to close all the way and then placed an olive-green plastic box on Matt’s bed. Opening the box, he removed a black 45-caliber Sig semi-automatic handgun, pushed the clip release, verified it was loaded, and then slid it back into the handle of the gun.

  “We thought it might be best for you to have this with you for the rest of your stay with us.” He handed it to Matt.

  Matt took it and repeated the clip move, but before reloading the gun, he dropped the full clip onto the bed and moved the slide back, locking it open. He checked to make sure there wasn’t a round already in place. Cleared, he released the slide and loaded the clip in one quick motion.

  “I figured you’d know what to do with it,” Hadden said with confidence.

  Matt laughed and walked to his bag, pulling a much smaller 9mm compact semi-automatic from inside a pair of hiking boots.

  “How’d you get th–?” Hadden asked.

  Matt interrupted with a smile. “Diplomatic pouch, untouchable by anyone but Embassy staff,” he explained. “You’ve never seen this done before? It flew over with me from D.C., and I left it in the room last night since I knew I’d be drinking.”

  That had been a very smart move. Had the Moscow Police, regardless of who had sent them to rough up the new arrival, found a loaded gun on Matt, especially if he was intoxicated, they would have put him in jail for a year, at least. There would have been nothing the American diplomatic corps could have done to save him.

  “Fixers, you guys know how to do it all, don’t you!” Hadden laughed, reaching for the gun and box he had just delivered. Matt waved an arm to stop him.

  “Oh no, leave that with me, please. It might come in handy at some point.”

  Another knock at the door announced the domestic who had shown Matt to his room. It was six o’clock, and the Wilkersons disapproved of tardiness. Matt replaced the compact and slid the gift box and its contents under his mattress, on the far side of the bed. He then thanked Hadden, and the two left his room, the Marine headed for chow in the kitchen, the export headed for dinner with the trio from Texas.

  Right after large portions of fried chicken, biscuits, coleslaw, baked beans, and grilled yellow corn on the cob were served, Wilkerson dismissed the kitchen staff so the four could speak freely. Matt hadn’t smelled southern cooking like this for years, but as he reached for a biscuit, Sarah quickly waved him off.

  “Not till we thank God, young man!” she admonished him.

  Wilkerson smiled and bowed his head, joining hands with Ray to his left and Sarah to his right. Matt bowed his head as well and reached for their other hands, Sarah grasping his firmly while Ray barely made contact.

  “Thank you, Lord, for this food, this house, these men,” she said in a very strong tone but as the prayer progressed her voice fell to almost a whisper, “and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

  “Amen,” all four said, each voice sounding its own tone. Matt took in every bit of it. Her mama didn’t raise no fool, he thought to himself. She knows. Quick to change the tone at the table, Wilkerson went straight to it.

  “What have you learned?” he asked, sounding serious but then almost laughed when he saw how quickly Matt was inhaling his food.

  “Slow down,” Sarah cautioned him, “nobody’s going to steal that plate.”

  Matt had bypassed breakfast and had inhaled the late lunch. Now he was downing the food in front of him like a pup afraid the rest of the litter would gobble up his share.

  “Nothing like southern food when you’re 5,000 miles from home,” he managed to say as he reached for more chicken.

  “Sarah Sinclair Wilkerson cooks the best fried chicken I’ve ever had,” the ambassador said proudly. Sinclair? Matt thought for a moment. Should he let it pass, or was there much more to his being here tonight than helping another bad boy get out of a political mess? Was someone toying with him?

  “Sinclair?” Matt asked. “Are you from the Texas Sinclairs – the oil Sinclairs?”

  “Matt, my dear, aren’t those synonymous?” she replied. “Yes, somewhere up the line of great-great-grandparents, one of them founded that oil company. They were based in Texas, of course, but reached as far west as Teapot Dome, Wyoming. You know about Teapot Dome, I am sure?” He did, of course.

  Way back during the Harding presidency, his Interior Secretary had leased oil reserves meant for the U.S. Navy in Wyoming and other locations in California to private oil companies in a private deal with very low rates and without running it all through a competitive bidding process. The secretary was later convicted of accepting bribes from those companies.

  Imagine that, Matt thought as he remembered his history lessons. Her family and a government official were involved in breaking the law even way back then.

  “Yes, I do,” Matt replied. “Wyoming’s beautiful, especially out around Jackson Hole.” Now he needed to think fast on his feet – or seat, in actuality.

  “My cousin, about five times removed, killed himself in London a week or so ago. They say he shot his nephew, a poor Royal Marine suffering from post-traumatic stress disord
er who had gone about town killing women, and then turned the gun on himself.” The four at the table sat quietly. Matt wasn’t sure what would come next. He was watching Sarah closely, very closely. Was this an incredible coincidence or had someone, an enemy in Washington, sent him into a trap far from home? To his relief, Russell Wilkerson didn’t care much for her cousin Sinclair and brought the table back to what mattered most to him.

  “Back to our dilemma, Matt, what have you found out so far?”

  “Well, Mr. Ambassador, I did make contact with Misha about an hour ago by text, and I used your private email account to communicate with the person calling themselves the “Old Goat.” Wilkerson was stunned, but Matt beat him to the punch.

  “You told me I’d have full access so…”

  The ambassador had nothing to say. He had given Matt clearance, and his password, to use the private Gmail account, but he had failed to realize, through all the confusion with Terry being arrested, that this would also give Matt access to all the sent and received emails as well as the file folders in the account.

  Before anyone had a chance to continue, two of the servers came into the room to replenish the serving dishes and see if any drinks needed freshening. Matt was dying for a beer to wash down all the good food, but he’d stick with Diet Cola for now. It was probably going to be a long night at Spaso House.

  “What did you find out?” Ray asked, his attention totally focused on Matt.

  “You can take this however you wish, good or bad, but Misha is no longer pregnant, and–”

  Wilkerson interrupted. “What’s the bad news, man, spit it out!”

  Sarah Wilkerson wasn’t smiling. She locked eyes with her husband, as if unsure of what Matt was going to say next but wanting to watch his reaction.