Agent Rising

by Ethan Jones

  “No, Zlobin will go after her.”

  “If you tell us where he is, we can get to him—”

  “You can’t. Zlobin is too powerful for thugs like you…”

  Fyodor’s lips drew back. “Thugs like us? Why the insult? We’ve been very professional in everything we’ve done so far. We picked you up without any problems. You’ve disappeared for over four hours, and there are no police anywhere near here. Do you hear anything?” he asked Avros.

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t, and no one is coming to save him.”

  “Right. We’ve been clear in our demands, and we haven’t changed our minds, or our approach. It’s a combination of tactics to make you speak, combining the physical with the psychological…”

  “It’s not working.” The detainee grinned.

  “Oh, I think it is. I already see a crack in your determination.” Fyodor’s small black eyes gave the detainee a piercing gaze. “What I said earlier about you being tough and unbreakable … I didn’t really mean it. It was a ploy, to make you drop your guard.”

  The detainee’s frown creased his forehead, but only for a moment. He shook his head and said, “You’re the fool, if you think I fell for—”

  His words were cut off by loud banging on the door. “Police! This is the police. Open up!” a man’s strong voice said in Portuguese, then in English, and more banging followed.

  Fyodor pulled his compact MP7 submachine gun from his thigh holster. “Door,” he said to Avros. “I’m getting us out.”

  Fyodor flicked the fire selector lever to automatic and turned his body toward the window. He fired a few rounds, and, while the glass was still falling onto the carpet, he jumped through the window.

  Avros had also readied his MP7. He turned it toward the door, then aimed higher, at the ceiling, so that he would miss the police officers, before he let off a long burst.

  He stepped closer to the detainee. “They’re not going to save you. I will … if you tell me where he is…”

  Bullets pierced the door, sending slivers through the room, but Avros and the handcuffed man were not hit.

  The detainee began to shake his head. “No—”

  With a quick flick of his wrist, Avros sliced the handcuffed man’s throat. His head fell forward, and blood trickled onto the floor.

  As more bullets flew around the room, Avros jumped through the window. He landed harder than he had expected on the roof of their black van and felt a sharp pain cut through his right ankle. Fyodor had parked their vehicle underneath the hotel room window in case they needed to make a swift getaway like this.

  But the police were waiting for them.

  As he rolled onto the windshield, bullets thumped against the side of the windowless van. Fyodor was kneeling near the back and firing at unseen targets. A couple of white-and-blue BMW police sedans with flashing lights were near the parking lot entrance, maybe thirty yards away.

  Avros glanced at his ankle and winced in pain as he crouched near the front wheel of the van.

  Fyodor didn’t see it, so he said, “Get inside. I’ll cover.”

  Avros nodded. He opened the driver’s door, but before he could climb in, a burst of bullets shattered the windshield. A round whizzed so close to Avros’s head that he thought it grazed him. He slid back onto the street. “Can’t get in. Police firing from all directions.”

  Fyodor gestured with his hand behind them, toward the alley. “Run.”

  Avros leaned against the van to climb to his feet. He bit his lip to quench the pain shooting from the sprained ankle, then bolted as fast as he could through the parking lot. He used the other cars for cover and didn’t fire. That didn’t stop the police officers from taking aim at him. Some of their bullets struck a Jeep to Avros’s left. He ducked and slowed down, because of the excruciating agony.

  It was just for a moment, but a moment too long.

  A bullet caught him on the right side of his back. It felt like he was hit with a sledgehammer. The power of the bullet spun him around, but he didn’t fall right away. He was able to remain on his feet for a couple of seconds, long enough to see Fyodor rushing toward him.

  Other bullets struck the asphalt as Avros’s knees folded underneath his body weight. He groaned as he dropped down hard but managed to not bang his head. The fall made his wound worse, and he began to go into hemorrhagic shock, because of the blood loss. What did the bullet hit? One of the large arteries?

  Fyodor leaned over him for just an instant, then he turned his submachine gun and fired a long barrage. He then glanced at Avros, whose mouth was full of blood. Fyodor pulled Avros slowly in between two parked cars and placed his hand on Avros’s carotid artery on the side of his neck. Fyodor held his fingers there for about five seconds, then gave Avros a sad look. “You’re dying…”

  Avros took a couple of shallow breaths and began to shake his head. “No, no, I won’t … Help me, take me—”

  “I can’t. They’ll catch us both.”

  “Don’t leave me here.”

  Fyodor placed the MP7 in Avros’s right hand. “You fought well. Now, die well…”

  Avros returned a look of pain and disappointment. Blood came out of the corner of his lips as he said, “I will. Go, go, go.”

  Fyodor nodded, then gave his teammate a pat on the shoulder. “Sorry, buddy…”

  He slid between the vehicles and came to the side of the parking lot. He looked behind, but he saw no silhouettes positioned around or darting among the police cars or from the opposite direction. No muzzle flashes, although he heard a gun blast behind him. Avros’s last stand…

  Fyodor dashed along the sidewalk. If he made it around the corner, he could put enough distance between himself and the police officers. Then, he could steal a car, or enter one of the houses, or…

  The bullet that slammed into his lower back cut off his thoughts. The impact of the bullet pushed him forward. The submachine gun fell out of his hand as Fyodor leaned for balance against the wall. The corner was just four steps away. He took one step, slowly and painfully, then all power left his body, as if someone had completely drained it out. Fyodor folded against the wall and dropped onto the sidewalk.

  Rushed heavy footsteps came toward him, and Fyodor raised his head. It felt heavy, and the hard strain on his neck send jolts of pain throughout his shivering body. He groped for his weapon, but he couldn’t feel it or see it in the dark. So he let out a loud curse and heaved a deep sigh as he glanced at the silhouette of a police officer running toward him.

  The helmet-wearing officer raised his night-vision goggles and leaned over Fyodor. “Shhhhh, it’s all right. Breathe, just breathe…” He spoke in Portuguese in a loud voice, to make sure every one of the few men gathered across the street, about thirty yards away, could hear him.

  Fyodor’s weary face formed a tiny grin. “I … did nothing wrong. Arrest … arrest me,” he said in a weak voice between shallow breaths.

  The officer shook his head. “We’re way past that,” he whispered in Russian as he leaned over Fyodor. “Tell me who sent you, and you will live.”

  Fyodor’s eyes doubled in size in horror as he realized the gravity of his situation. “You’re not the Lisbon police?”

  The officer grinned. “And you’re not a genius. Last time I’m asking: Who is your boss?”

  Fyodor returned the grin. “You’re not going to kill me. You need me.”

  “Wrong answer. We don’t. We’ll extract the truth from your friend you left back there to die…”

  Fyodor gave the officer a confused look. “What? No, his wound was—”

  “Treatable, if he gets to a hospital in ten minutes, which he will.”

  Fyodor began to shake his head, but the pain was unbearable.

  The officer said, “He will tell us everything we need. We have convincing means, as you well know.” The officer put his hands around Fyodor’s neck. “This is from Zlobin. This will happen to anyone that comes for him.”

  “No,
no, don’t … I’ll talk … I’ll tell you—”

  “Too late.” He clamped his hands tighter around Fyodor’s throat.

  He tried to fight back, but there was no strength left in his body. He could barely lift his arms off the sidewalk.

  A couple of the men began to run toward the officer, but he shouted at them, “Stay back. I’ve got him. I’m trying to revive him. Call an ambulance.”

  Fyodor struggled for breath, feeling his lungs tightening. He could no longer control his arms, but his legs were twitching almost involuntarily. The world began to spin around and turn blurry and dark, and then Fyodor saw nothing at all.

  Chapter Two

  Victoria Tower Gardens

  London, United Kingdom

  FSB operative Maximillian Thornichinovich, or Max Thorne—as everyone had started to call him after the fateful detainee-transfer operation four weeks ago in the United States—glanced through his black aviator shades at the silver Range Rover SUV that parked slowly on the curve, a few feet away from the park’s black wrought-iron gate. He turned slightly to the side, so that he could hide the fact he was talking onto the mike clipped to the side of his collar, and said, “Ava, do you see this?”

  “Got visual,” she replied. “Looks like he’s here.”

  Ava was sitting on a bench thirty yards away from Max and closer to the gate. She was pretending to read on her phone, while keeping a close eye on their expected guest.

  Max drew in a deep breath, then turned his head toward the man sitting on another bench. This one was closer to the Thames River and the stone, square Victoria Tower. This was the tallest tower in the Palace of Westminster—stabbing at the sky at three hundred and twenty-five feet high—and was the namesake of the park. The man was an ex-KGB agent, stationed in East Berlin during the Cold War years. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the man worked for other Russian intelligence agencies, until he had retired. Then, he had decided to emigrate to the United States, and that’s when trouble had started. For him, as well as for Max, because they were connected. In fact, the ex-KGB agent was Valery Volkov, Max’s father, a fact he had only learned quite recently.

  Max felt the adrenaline pumping hard and fast through his body. His senses were on overdrive, and he had started to become more aware of his surroundings. He saw everything around him but paid particular attention to two young black men in their late twenties who had arrived about ten minutes ago and were kicking a soccer ball on the grass.

  Another suspect was a red-headed woman in her late thirties, with her hair in a pixie cut, sitting on a bench to his left, about fifty yards away. She was wearing earbuds and was typing on her phone. Max couldn’t help but connect the woman to the men, although he had nothing but a hunch. His three years in the FSB, or the Russian security intelligence agency, as a “transporter,” a transport and escort agent for high-risk operations, had taught Max that there were no coincidences.

  He had brought his suspicions to Ava, his associate, who had dismissed them. Max had felt uncomfortable but had accepted her decision. Ava had been working with Volkov for a long time and was more experienced than Max in covert operations.

  He turned around and looked at the man they had been expecting. He was Jeremy Taylor, a former operative with the SIS, or the British Secret Intelligence Service. Taylor was an old contact of Volkov, from the good old days when it was clear who the enemy was. Nowadays, in a world filled with shifting alliances, one went to bed with terrorists at night, only to wake up the next morning to be praised as a great peacemaker.

  Taylor was dressed in a long black wool coat that came down almost to his knees. He was wearing a black tweed cap and black-rimmed bifocals and had a newspaper in his left hand. A younger man, who was clearly his guard and probably his driver as well, followed a few steps behind. His head turned meticulously and almost mechanically, as if it were on a pivot, as he took in all the surroundings. When Taylor was about ten yards away from Max, the ex-SIS agent made a small hand gesture. The guard stopped and stood next to the nearest bench.

  Max made eye contact with Taylor and gave him an almost imperceptible head nod. It was the signal that all was clear, and he could proceed to meet with Volkov.

  Taylor moved the newspaper to his other hand. That was his signal that the Range Rover hadn’t been followed, and no one knew about their meeting.

  Max followed behind Taylor. Max didn’t like this old-school, smoke-and-mirrors tradecraft. But Volkov was old school, very old school. These tricks had kept him alive for so long, in the face of almost unbeatable odds and despite countless numbers of foes who wanted him dead. He had overcome his enemies, and he was going to do so again, this time with Max’s and Ava’s help.

  When Taylor came to the bench, he removed his cap and brushed back his wavy hair. He had something of a comb-over, but it didn’t look too bad. He sat next to Volkov, who turned slightly and offered Taylor his hand. “Good to see you, my friend. You look … fat.” Volkov grinned and wrinkles formed on his bony cheeks.

  Taylor shrugged and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his coat. “It’s all these clothes. You’ve gotten older. America didn’t treat you very well.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I heard about what happened in Washington, DC.”

  “A mistake, soon to be corrected. With your help, of course.”

  Volkov nodded at Max, who stood near the bench. “This is my son, Maximilian, but everyone calls him Max.”

  “Your son? I had no idea…”

  Neither did I. Max suppressed the thought.

  “You can talk freely in his presence,” Volkov said. “I trust him with my life.”

  Taylor nodded, but his face showed his slight displeasure with the unexpected development, while Max sat at the other side of Taylor.

  Volkov said, “So, what do you have?”

  “Can I see the transfer, first?”

  “When did you start distrusting me, Taylor?” Volkov’s voice turned cold, with a hint of sharpness.

  “If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t be here. But mistakes happen. People forget things and type the wrong numbers … Let’s just make sure that doesn’t happen…”

  Volkov reached into the inside pocket of his gray pinstriped suit and pulled out his phone. He typed into it, then swiped to the left, until he found what he was looking for. He showed Taylor his phone, and the man lowered his glasses to the tip of his long thin nose and glanced at it. Satisfied, he nodded and leaned back into the bench. “You haven’t changed, Volkov. Always a man of your word.”

  “Why, you were expecting me to deceive you?”

  “I wasn’t sure what to expect … It has been ten years since we last met, three since we last spoke on the phone. People change…”

  “Life changes people, if they allow it to change them. Now, what do you have?”

  Taylor glanced over Volkov’s broad shoulders, then across the river at the city skyline in the distance. It was a bright sunny day, a rare occasion in London in winter, with only a few fluffy white clouds floating across the blue sky. Taylor then returned his gaze to Volkov’s face and said, “Zlobin escaped in Lisbon by the skin of his teeth. You might know that his men caught someone, a man, who seemed to be looking for them…”

  Volkov’s face remained unmoved. “What happened?”

  Taylor shrugged. “Not sure how everything went down, but it’s easy to imagine what happened after the man was captured. His body was fished out of the Tagus River, just outside Lisbon. He had torture marks all over his body. He gave up whoever was paying him.”

  Max nodded, but his face was calm. The dead man had been working for a powerful man positioned high up in Russia’s political class. Max had nicknamed this man “the ghost,” since Volkov had refused to give Max the strongman’s name. He was assisting Volkov and Max in discovering Matvei Zlobin’s whereabouts. Zlobin was an ex-KGB operative, and, according to some preliminary intelligence, it was Zlobin who had tried to set up Volkov, and make
it appear as if he was a traitor.

  Taylor said, “Was this man working for you?”

  “No.” Volkov shook his head. “And Zlobin’s men will never be able to follow whatever pieces of intel they might have gathered. There are many layers, compartments. Impenetrable.”

  Taylor shrugged. “I hope that’s the case.”

  Max looked over Taylor’s shoulder, trying to find the two black men playing soccer, but they had disappeared. The red-headed woman also wasn’t there.

  Taylor sat back on the bench and sighed, “Now, on the CIA front, I was able to secure one of my agency’s, well, former agency’s, files. It’s about the CIA rogue agent.” Taylor reached for something in his coat’s inside pocket.

  Max had wanted to pat down Taylor, but Volkov didn’t want to hear it. He considered it an insult, and a sign of distrust toward Taylor. What if he’s trying to set us up? Max had asked. That’s why you and Ava are there, Volkov had replied. So, now, Max kept his right hand in his jacket pocket. His fingers were wrapped around the handle of his MP-443 Grach 9mm pistol, which was pointed at Taylor’s side. At a moment’s notice, Max could pull the trigger, and Taylor would be dead before he realized what hit him…

  The ex -SIS agent produced a harmless-looking black USB drive, which he handed to Volkov. “Everything we have since Robinson resurfaced in London three years ago. Our men picked him up at the Heathrow Airport. He said he was retired but had come to Britain for the funeral of a close friend. We checked, and it all matched up.”

  Volkov glanced at the USB. “But…”

  “Two days later, an ISIS terrorist cell was discovered in central London. We had been looking for them all over Europe, and here they were under our very noses. All five of the cell members were found beheaded.”

  “So Robinson hasn’t really retired?”

  “We don’t know. He disappeared before we could have a word. We tracked him to Panama, then Columbia, always beyond our reach. Everything is there.” He cocked his head toward the USB drive. “What business do you have with him?”