by Chad Zunker
The skin of his five-foot-ten, 160-pound slender body was quite tan. He wore a blue short-sleeve shirt, white shorts, flip-flops, and aviator shades. His gun was at the back of his shorts. It was never too far away from his reach. He sipped from a cold bottle of Blanche de Namur, a refreshing Belgian beer, and watched the sun begin its slow descent over the tranquil water. He’d spent the past month at the bungalow, flying different girlfriends in and out, going out on his boat every day, fishing, drinking, sunbathing, and basically living it up.
He was not eager to take on another job, but he could not turn down this requested meeting. He watched the front of the open-air café from behind his aviator shades. The man was right on time. He looked the part of a tourist—flowery shirt, straw hat, sunglasses, long yellow swim trunks, and sandals. Only he carried a stupid black briefcase. A waitress near the front pointed toward Gerlach’s table. Gerlach shifted his weight, making sure his gun felt right at his back. These were always anxious moments for him, meeting a client. He never knew when someone would infiltrate his network and use a job as a way of taking out the Gray Wolf, the greatest assassin on the planet. Understandably, he had more enemies than friends.
Gerlach didn’t even acknowledge the man as he sat in a chair on the opposite side of the table, setting his briefcase at his sandaled feet. He was in his midforties with a goofy thin mustache. The pretty waitress came by, and the American ordered a fruity cocktail. She returned from the bar with it a minute later.
“Quite the view,” the man said, sipping, gazing out toward the water.
Gerlach didn’t say anything, just sipped his cold Belgian beer.
“Thanks for taking this meeting,” the man continued.
“As if I had a choice,” Gerlach finally replied, his German accent prevalent. Although he could speak a dozen languages fluently, in every known tone and accent, he always went back to his natural tongue between jobs. He had to have some sense of normalcy in life.
“Just the same,” the man countered. “We appreciate it.”
The man opened his briefcase, took out a manila envelope, dropped it on the table next to Gerlach’s beer bottle. “Everything’s in the envelope. My number is on the back. Call if you need anything.”
Gerlach didn’t touch it. “What if I say no this time?”
The tourist actually grinned, which nearly set Gerlach off. He had half a mind to whip his gun out right there and put two bullets through the man’s forehead.
“My number is on the back,” the man repeated.
With that, the mustached man left some cash on the table, grabbed his briefcase, and walked out of the café. Gerlach eyeballed the envelope, still seething at the exchange. He finished off his beer, flagged the waitress for another, then opened the manila envelope. Three eight-by-ten color photos slid out. He examined them one at a time. The first photo was a midthirties black-haired woman. He flipped the photo over to find a name written on the back: Clarice Nelson. Below the name, a last-known location: Le Tréport. The second photo was a man in his fifties with a thick mustache and balding on top: Rod Luger. Milan. The third photo made Gerlach sit up straight in his seat. A very familiar man, one who’d haunted Gerlach’s dreams every night for the past month. A job left unfinished.
The only unfinished job of his legendary career.
Dean Alexander, also known as Sam Callahan. Salzburg.
Gerlach smiled, thrilled he hadn’t said no to the tourist.
TWENTY-SIX
Sam paced in an even tighter circle inside Tommy’s apartment.
“I don’t get it!” he exclaimed. “Why was Pelini entering the property?”
“I take it that wasn’t part of the plan?” Tommy asked.
Sam adamantly shook his head. “Not even close.”
“Could Pelini have sensed trouble?”
Sam stopped pacing, looked over at Tommy. “What was the time stamp again?”
“Two fifty-seven.”
Running the scene back through his brain, Sam tried to place his exact location inside the building. It was easy to recall, since his every move had been clocked by the second. “This took place a few minutes after I’d just discovered that the kids’ bedrooms and Zolotov’s office were on opposite floors. That was unexpected and troubling but not a rescue situation. Nothing had tripped the alarm. So I highly doubt Pelini was coming to get me, especially without a single word of it to anyone else.”
“Could he have somehow gotten into the server room before you?”
Sam peered over at Tommy with a furrowed brow.
Tommy shrugged. “Your guy may have downloaded an empty file.”
Sam pondered the thought. “I don’t see how he would’ve gotten there before me. Hell, I had to scale the outside of the building and then drop in from the top while hanging from a damn wire. Something we had to practice for a month. And somehow Pelini walked right in and grabbed the file off the server?”
“I’m not saying it adds up. Just looking for answers.”
“If that was even possible, why would Pelini do it?”
Tommy cursed suddenly, his eyes locked in on a computer screen.
“What?” asked Sam.
“We have uninvited guests at my door right now.”
Rushing around to view the computer screen, Sam spotted two men standing right outside—Tommy had installed a hidden security camera above the door. The door was also miked. Tommy punched a button on his keypad and increased the volume. The men were whispering to each other as if they didn’t want anyone inside the apartment to hear them. They weren’t speaking German or English, either. They were speaking in Russian. That’s when Sam suddenly put it together. One of the men was the Russian assassin who had chased him out of Red Square and onto the bridge in Moscow.
“You recognize them?” Tommy whispered.
“They’re here for me,” Sam announced, feeling a chill run up his back.
Tommy looked nervous. “What do we do?”
A second chill knocked Sam sideways when both men withdrew guns from their jackets and pointed them at the door. They weren’t even going to knock—they were just going to shoot their way inside. As a string of muffled bullets hit the apartment door, blasting apart the locks, Sam grabbed Tommy, flung him to the floor, and shielded him with his body. There was no way in hell he was going to get Tommy killed because he’d unwittingly brought these assassins along with him.
Tommy let loose a string of frightened expletives, his face completely pale. Sam was trying to get his attention, but panic had set in as the two men outside were working their way toward busting the door open. Even with the four different heavy-duty locks, it wouldn’t hold for long.
Grabbing Tommy by the shirtsleeve, Sam dragged him toward the small balcony opening. Sam peered down, looking for a quick escape route. Like a video game in his head, his mind quickly diagrammed his options. A drop to the stone walkway of the market below would definitely break a bone or two—hell, it might break all of Tommy’s bones, since he had no extra muscle to cushion the blow. Sam turned when he heard a loud bang on the apartment door behind him. It was coming down within seconds.
Scooting to the edge of the balcony, Sam peered up, knowing they were on the top level of the old building. He noticed the wrought-iron trim on top of the building. A bracket hung down low enough where he might be able to get them both up onto the flat roof. According to his mind mapping, it was their only chance. He spun around, grabbed Tommy, shoved him toward the balcony wall.
“We’re going to the roof.”
Tommy kept cursing but did as Sam said. Sam helped him up on the balcony ledge. Tommy leaned over, looked up, then stared back over at Sam.
“Seriously?” he asked.
“Go!”
There was no time to question the decision. The door to the apartment broke open. Turning, Tommy reached up, grabbed the bracket, began pulling his skinny body up. Below him, Sam helped shove the kid up as fast as possible while trying not to fall four storie
s and splatter on the stone below. He heard the Russians inside the apartment, one yelling. Balcony!
Hopping up on the balcony wall, Sam nearly climbed over Tommy as they both reached the flat rooftop simultaneously. Sam could already hear one of the Russians climbing up the bracket after them. He helped Tommy to his feet, and they raced over to the opposite edge of the building. Sam calculated about a ten-foot gap between Tommy’s building and the four-story building next to it. He cursed. There had to be an easier way. Sam searched all sides for any emergency stairs that might lead them down to safety but found nothing.
“What do we do?” Tommy asked him.
Sam turned. The Russians were almost on the rooftop. He could see a head pop up. Turning back to Tommy, Sam said, “We jump. I’ll go first to catch you.”
Not even waiting for a response, Sam sprinted toward the edge of the building. When he got there, he leaped, his arms and legs spinning furiously in the air. Reaching out, he was able to grab the stone edge of the flat rooftop next door with both hands as his body slammed hard against the side of the building. He quickly pulled himself up and over, spun around, and begged Tommy to get moving.
Shaking his head, the kid did as he said and ran as fast as he could before jumping for it. Sam could immediately tell that his weaker friend wasn’t going to clear the full distance. Leaning over as far as he could, Sam reached out with both hands to try to cover the gap. Tommy’s hands slapped against his, and Sam did everything he could to grab hold of him. One hand slipped out, but Sam’s right hand held on to Tommy’s wrist like a vise as his friend dangled. Fortunately, Tommy was a lightweight. Sam was able to hold him steady with one hand while reaching down with his other and grabbing his shirtsleeve. He quickly yanked his skinny friend up over the stone railing and onto the rooftop with him—just before a spray of bullets came at them from the other side.
On hands and knees, hidden behind the short roof wall, Sam and Tommy skirted the edge of the rooftop until they reached an inner door leading back inside the building. The gunfire had ceased. Sam wondered if one of the men would try to make the jump. He poked his head up, glared in the bright sunlight over at the other rooftop. Neither man was still standing there. They’d clearly decided not to jump; they were most likely racing down the stairs inside Tommy’s building to intercept them from the ground.
“Come on!” Sam yelled, pulling Tommy inside the rooftop door behind him.
They took the stairs down two and three steps at a time, passing a bewildered older woman carrying groceries on the way up. They were racing the clock. Which group could descend the stairs the fastest? Although Tommy was slowing him down, Sam would never leave the guy. He’d take a bullet himself before allowing something to happen to him. Reaching the ground level, Sam searched for a back door to the building instead of the front, where the Russians likely would be. They burst into a rear alley without pausing. Sam’s head whipped left, right, trying to figure out which way to flee while also anticipating the Russians’ next move.
“My moped!” Tommy yelled, gasping for breath.
Sam turned to him. “Where?”
“A block over from here.”
They hustled down the alley, circled the building, and raced out into the open air of the busy marketplace. They both stood out because they were the only two guys in a full-on panicked sprint among the shoppers and café patrons. Until seconds later, when Sam spotted the two Russians also race into the marketplace behind them.
“Where, Tommy?”
Tommy pointed. “There!”
A hundred feet in front of them sat a row of mopeds. Sam and Tommy splintered the crowd in the marketplace and made a beeline straight toward them. Tommy kept yelling that the blue one belonged to him. When they got to it, Sam tossed another look over his shoulder while Tommy scrambled to get his keys out of his pocket. The Russians were closing in on them. Would they shoot at them in the middle of everyone? Sam didn’t care to find out.
When Tommy pulled out his keys, Sam snatched them from his shaky hands, jumped onto the moped, and started it. Tommy had barely boarded behind him when Sam revved the small engine, jerked into the street, and nearly took out a guy walking two dogs. Zipping around them, Sam put it full throttle and listened to the small moped engine whine. He watched his mirror, noticed the two men in black jackets stumble into the street behind them. Sam had quickly put distance between them.
Turning another street corner, Sam again revved the moped engine, Tommy clutching both hands tightly around his waist like a scared child.
Hell, they were both scared.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Using her new alias, Natalie spent the night at the Sofitel hotel, a few blocks north of the White House, thinking it might make her feel safer to be in close proximity to a building under such tight security. But it didn’t work—she hardly slept. It was impossible to drift off with visions of a man with a gun chasing after her through the Metro, or of him crashing his speeding Suburban directly into her Jeep, battering her body, and putting Michelle in the ICU. Every time she closed her eyes, she relived the glass shattering, heard the metal crunching, smelled the gas and smoke, and she could see Michelle lying motionless in the seat next to her. As if that wasn’t enough, Natalie’s mind kept spinning out of control about her discovery inside the warehouse, where Sam had likely been the past month, secretly preparing for his trip to Russia.
She spent most of her night searching Google on her phone for everything she could possibly find on Vladimir Zolotov, the man in the photo from the back of Sam’s Russian-language binder. There was plenty of online info out there on Zolotov. The successful Russian businessman was incredibly wealthy and seemed to know prominent political figures from all over the world. There were dozens of online pictures of Zolotov with Russian leaders, where he seemed to have measurable influence, as well as many American leaders. Natalie found pictures of Zolotov standing with a host of congresspeople—he seemed to visit the United States regularly on business. There were also conspiracy theories galore about Zolotov’s connection to funding different rebel and terrorist groups.
Natalie was stunned most by her discovery of Zolotov’s recent purchase of a seven-story town house in the heart of Moscow for nearly $100 million. There were different pictures posted of the outside of the compound property, as well as several taken by a Russian magazine from the inside of the town house during the time of the sale. Natalie was mesmerized. The pictures of the interior of the town house nearly matched what she’d found in the warehouse—six different elaborate sets, labeled floors one through six. And the four-story climbing apparatus resembled the outside of the ornate Moroccan-style architecture of Zolotov’s building. Everything matched up. Which blew her mind. Someone had clearly trained Sam to go to Moscow and get inside Zolotov’s town house. Why?
She flashed on the scene of Sam standing inside the room with dead bodies. Had that been taken from inside Zolotov’s town house? She didn’t think so—the room was simple and small. So what happened? Who were those people? Furthermore, who was trying to cover this thing up? Considering the multiple attempts on her life during the past twelve hours, Natalie felt certain someone wanted to eliminate any ties with whoever could possibly know what Sam was doing. Was it the CIA?
She gritted her teeth, her anger with Sam growing. Why hadn’t he said a word to her about any of this? At first, she thought Sam must’ve been blackmailed into engaging in something like this and concealing it all from her. Running with that initial theory had made her less pissed at him. But the letter he’d left for her in his London hotel room, and all her discovery in the aftermath, now made her feel otherwise—it looked like he’d signed up on his own. She didn’t need any protection. She’d rather just have the truth from the man she was supposed to lock arms with for the rest of her life. Would she ever feel safe with a guy like Sam?
She walked over to the window, peered down on quiet H Street below. The sun had just started to rise on DC. She’d at least made
it through the night without an unwelcome guest knocking on her hotel room door. That was her first order of business. Walking back over to her phone, she again dialed into her office voice mail. She’d been checking it regularly, just in case Sam had used it to try to get in touch with her. As pissed as she was at him right now, she so desperately longed to hear his voice and know he was okay.
There was no message from Sam; however, there was a new message from David Benoltz in London. David said he’d been trying to get in touch with her, but her cell phone was off. He told her he’d still heard nothing from Sam and wanted to know if she’d found out anything more on her end. Then he’d said something interesting. The client they’d flown to meet with in London, Liz Fields from Caldwell & Meyer, had also seemed to disappear. They were scheduled to meet for brunch, but he’d heard nothing from her all day. She was not answering her cell phone. She had not checked out of the hotel. Hotel security found her luggage and personal items still inside her hotel room. David wondered if it could somehow be connected to Sam. David urged her to call him back ASAP.
Natalie decided she’d call David back using another phone. She didn’t want to do anything right now that might somehow expose her. Using Google on her phone again, Natalie immediately searched for Caldwell & Meyer, discovering it to be one of the UK’s bigger financial firms. She added Liz Fields’s name to her search and found a few mentions of a female partner by that same name, along with a photo from the company’s online profiles. A heavyset red-haired woman in her fifties. She dialed the main number listed on the firm’s website, paced, listened to the phone ring. When an administrator answered, she asked to speak with Liz Fields. Three rings later a strong female voice picked up.