The Girl Who Wrote The New York Times Bestseller: A Novel (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thrillers Book 8)

by John Ellsworth

  "My GPS is confirming that."

  Too close not to hear, the journalism graduate chimed in.

  "OMG! My first real story!"

  Thaddeus ignored her. Until she punched him in the ribs with her elbow.

  "We're in Russia!" she cried. "Let me do a one-on-one with you," she said excitedly to Thaddeus.

  He turned to look at her.

  "What?"

  "You know," she said. "I want to do a piece describing what the hijacking means to one passenger. A biopic."

  "Can't help you there. Find someone else. And sit back and try to relax, please. You're going to hyperventilate."

  Christine looked across Thaddeus at Angelina.

  "Seriously, slow your breathing, girl. Put your head back, close your mouth, and breathe through your nose. There you go."

  Angelina did as instructed. The pretty young woman turned her head to the side and watched the flight of the Russian fighter out her window.

  "OMG, we're in Russia. We've been hijacked."

  Ayub then entered the passenger cabin and picked up the yellow phone used by the attendants for in-flight announcements. He punched the button on the handpiece and blew into the mouthpiece. "Testing," he said softly, then heard his voice reverberate through the passenger compartment. His dark eyes narrowed.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "may I have your attention? First, let me reassure you. My friends and I have borrowed your aircraft for a few hours. Our country needs us in Moscow and you're along for the ride. No harm will come to you, as long as you do exactly as you're told. We will be landing in Moscow and we will remain on the aircraft until the Russian President meets certain demands. My friends and I are Chechen. The Russians are holding captive certain comrades. They must be released and in turn you will be released. You will then continue your journey. Thank you."

  He abruptly slammed the phone into its wall mount and disappeared back inside the cockpit.

  All was quiet for several seconds, and then everyone tried talking at once.

  "What is your name, sir?" Angelina asked Thaddeus. She held her phone as one would hold a mike, waiting to record his words.

  "No names, no interview. Please. Sit back and try to relax, miss."

  "Angelina."

  "Angelina. You're excited and not thinking clearly. You won't be doing a story about me. Try to think bigger, in terms of the overall skyjacking. There's your story."

  "No can do. I need to personalize the experience. Now, what's your occupation?"

  Thaddeus turned away. He looked into Christine's eyes and rolled his own.

  "Miss," said Christine in her command voice, "Put that thing away. And leave this man alone."

  Ignoring the order, Angelina passed the phone/recorder nearer to Christine.

  "What is this man's occupation? Names, please."

  Thaddeus relented. "Look, miss. My name is Thaddeus Murfee. I'm an American lawyer out of Chicago. I'm as upset as anyone on this plane. Now remove your phone and do something constructive for yourself."

  "Mr. Murfee, are you married? How will your wife react to the news? Any kids—children? Ages?"

  Thaddeus pushed the phone away. He twisted in his seat until he was facing the ambitious reporter.

  "Now look. You know everything about me you're going to know. You're going to have to back off now and find someone else to interview."

  "You're beside me. I can't very easily find someone else. Besides, everyone's trying to talk at once. You and your friend are the only ones not exploding. You would be doing me a huge favor if you would help me with a story. Didn't anyone ever give you a hand up when you were young and starving? Didn't you get help along the line? Please think about how that happened and how it changed your life. That's all I'm asking."

  Thaddeus turned forward. She had struck a chord. He had received help not five years ago. A young woman had come into his office with a terrible disfigurement. Christine and the District Attorney had really helped him make the case. The young reporter had him there. Maybe he owed. Maybe it was his turn to lighten up and give back a little bit. Whatever.

  He said softly. "My name is Thaddeus Murfee. I live and practice in Chicago. I'm trying to get to Zurich, where I have business. The young woman seated next to me is my paralegal. Her name is—"

  He broke off. Christine was traveling as Ama Gloq. He couldn't very well give out her true identity. He was immediately sorry he had mentioned her.

  "Yes? Her name is what?"

  "She'll have to self-identify if she wants. I'll leave that up to her. She doesn't owe anyone."

  "How are you feeling about now? What's your reaction to being hijacked?"

  "Like everyone else onboard, I'm greatly concerned."

  "No, everyone else on board is terrified. You seem to be somewhat cool about the situation."

  "Look. People react differently to different things. Right now, I'm trying to keep my head and see if I can help the situation somehow. Help get us out of this mess."

  "And how do you see yourself helping?"

  He sighed. "Who knows? But if I fly off and start running around like a chicken with its head chopped off, I'm useless to anyone. Call it my training. Keep your head while others are losing theirs. That's all. No biggie."

  "What kind of business were you going to transact in Zurich?"

  "Law business. As I said, I'm a lawyer. That's all I can say. Attorney-client confidentiality."

  "Why have we been hijacked? Did you understand the man who talked?"

  "He said he wants to trade passengers on this plane for inmates in Russian jails. Same old story, Angelina."

  "How does he plan to do that? Speak slowly, please."

  "He is going to threaten our lives—let the Russians know he'll kill some of us if the trades aren't made. Same old story, again.”

  "Do you think he will kill anyone?"

  "These situations are never good. Most often, hijackers take over planes with the mindset they're not going to escape alive. Like the 9/11 attacks. Those hijackers knew they were going to die. But it was okay with them because they believed in their cause. It's that simple."

  "Do you have any plans for taking back the plane?"

  He blinked hard. "Me? Are you talking to me? Did you see the gun the guy was holding? Very hard to imagine me going up against that."

  "So you're just going to wait and see?"

  "Like everyone else, yes. I mean they could crash the plane right now if that were their plan, pure terrorism. But these guys have an agenda. We'll see if the Russians do business with them."

  "And if they don't?"

  "I hate to think of that."

  "What are you feeling right about now?"

  "Scared to death. Don't make me out to be a hero. I'm not. I'm just like everyone else. Scared and bewildered."

  "Is there anything you'd like to say to your wife? What's her name?"

  "Her name is Katy. No, I don't want to say anything right now. This has gone on long enough. I'm done answering questions. Turn that damn thing off, please."

  Angelina moved the phone away from his face and touched the screen.

  "Good," she said. "That's in the can, as they say. Hey, you know what? I think this story fits a novel format better than a news story. It's going to go on longer than a pure news story. I'm going to write a New York Times bestseller."

  "Rock on," said Christine, her voice angry. "You go, girl."

  "Yes, I do. One best seller, coming up."

  10

  Three Chechen radicals were aboard the plane. They were Ayub, Maritan, and Aniji.

  Ayub was the youngest, at twenty-six the leader and formulator of the plot to disrupt Russian imprisonment of key Chechen dissidents and freedom fighters. Ayub was six-two, swarthy, blue-eyed, and was always at least three days away from a razor blade. His chin was strong and his carriage was erect and proud. He was a graduate of Chechen State University with a degree in philosophy and a minor in government, odd areas of study in
what was known predominantly as a technical university. He smoked French cigarettes and drank thick Turkish coffee and spoke four languages, English being his second. He prided himself on his dedication to his religious beliefs, intellectually considered himself a socialist, and fully supported Chechen separatism. A natural leader, Ayub had carefully selected the two men who would accompany him on the death mission the hijacking represented, for none of the three expected to get out of Russia alive.

  Maritan was the surgeon, a graduate of Donetsk National Medical University when it was still located in Donetsk, before being moved in 2014 due to the war in Donbass. He was light complected, a youthful thirty-eight, and had been radicalized by what he had seen in the Russian-Chechen War in 1995. The war had left over 100,000 Chechens dead, and another 200,000 seriously wounded. Maritan, then eighteen, had served as a private in the Chechen army and was witness to thousands of civilians and soldiers who had been tortured and brutally murdered by Russian Federation troops. While financially independent and a green card holder in the United States, the physician's bank account was directly linked to Chechen radical groups, which he only too gladly supported in their continuing war with Russia. He was acquainted with three of the Chechens then imprisoned by Russia whom the hijacking meant to set free. Mrs. Evans—the wife of Royal Evans, the pilot—had immediately fallen in love with Maritan when he made overtures to her in the hospital where she worked as a scrub nurse. She had been flattered and hungered for the body and services of a younger man. She had quickly arrived at the point in the relationship where she was willing to tell the pilot she wanted a divorce and fifty percent of his assets. She had surprised even herself with her willingness to fall madly in love even in her fifties. Truth be told, unbeknownst to her, she had been waiting for just such a love and Maritan had agreeably provided the opportunity in her otherwise dull life. Being married to an airline pilot who was always away had left her miserably lonely. Maritan, with his love of opera and French cuisine, had simply swept her away. His desire was obsessive, and hers immediately became its equal.

  The third hijacker was a brutalizer of men. His name was Aniji and he was a martial arts specialist in three fighting regimens. He was expert in all makes and calibers of small arms, automatic weapons, and even heavier military weapons both U.S. and Russian. Aniji taught bomb-making to other radicals and was relentlessly pursued by the Russian GRU for terrorist crimes against the motherland. Aniji was medium height and heavily muscled, moving catlike on the balls of his feet and capable of cold, unforgiving stalking of Russian agents unlucky enough to be targeted by him. Aniji could always be found wearing black leather jackets, even in the mild summers of Chechnya. Sometimes he wore no shirt while preferring the jackets that just barely hid the guns tucked in the waistband of his black denim trousers. "The Man in Black," his comrades called him; and he made every effort not to disappoint. "I am a warrior," he once told a newcomer to the cell controlled by Ayub. "My job is to ensure you never leave."

  The newcomer stayed.

  The threesome entered the passenger cabin full of bluster and threat.

  Aniji—as one might expect—was the keeper of the pistol; and he waved it around, pointing it at this passenger and that. He finally settled on an Iowa grain farmer and pointed the muzzle of the gun at man's aisle-side ear. He held it against the man's head while he addressed the passengers.

  "This man has been selected to die. His death will show the Russian authorities that we are here to free our Chechen brothers and nothing less will do!"

  The grain farmer winced and shrugged his head away from the gun. At which point the terrorist Aniji squeezed the trigger and the gun blasted away the quiet of the cabin. The man's distal skull broke into pieces and spattered against the neck and face of the elderly woman sitting beside him, who all guessed was the dead man's wife. She cried, "Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh!" as she plucked bits and pieces of skull and brain matter and tried to put them back into place on her dead husband, pressing bone into the gaping wound. "Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh!" the old woman moaned and cried, her bloody fingers flying up and back like a potter's hand at the clay, trying to create reason from chaos.

  Not a sound, not a movement, among all the passengers. Then it broke loose, and some began quietly sobbing, heads down, crying into their hands and pillows. Others simply sat and stared, ashen-faced, disbelieving. The first man had promised, hadn't he—the first man who made the announcement—hadn't he said all would be well, and they would all continue their journey? Slowly, shock at the ease with which the Chechen had snuffed out another's life began to loosen its hold on some of the witnesses. Moans were heard, and there were whispering and terrified looks directed at the Chechens.

  "That being said," said Ayub, the hijacker who had first spoken to them, "we sincerely hope it won't be necessary to take more lives. But know this: we won't hesitate to do so. The Russians must accede to our demands, or more of you will die here. Now put your heads back, close your eyes, and think good thoughts."

  11

  Karli Guryshenko hated three a.m. postings. The landline had rung, something about an inbound hijacking, report immediately to Sheremetyevo Airport. He dressed in the same gray flannel suit he'd already worn two days in a row and slipped his pistol into its shoulder harness. He leaned to his left and checked his image in the small bathroom mirror as he stood urinating in the cramped bathroom. Crewcut, gray hair, long face, boxer's flattened nose, physique of an Olympic weightlifter, and tired, very tired facial muscles. He sighed and returned to the bedroom, where he tucked his GRU identification into a side pocket.

  He locked up and then rode the elevator down to the lobby of the apartment house where he and 650 other souls made their nests. The apartments were tiny, cramped, dimly lit, and always reeked of the neighbors' dinner smells. Those odor seeped around walls unfinished with quarter-round. Moscow was like that: heavy on the price, light on the amenities.

  “What amenities?” he thought, as he started up the Volga and pulled into traffic on Dimitri Street. As usual, he was amazed at the heavy traffic flow in the middle of the night. Didn't these fools ever sleep?

  Waiting at a red light, Karli drummed his fingers on the freezing steering wheel. His fleece-lined gloves muted the sound, of course, as winter wear in Moscow muted everything. Everything, that is, except traffic sounds and those horrendous rap music machines on wheels with the ear-bursting speaker systems that rocked your car when they pulled alongside. How he wanted to take out his pistol and blow those speakers into the driver's lap, just one time. Karli's life wouldn't be complete without a quadrophonic speaker slaying.

  Coming up to Wavinchi Street, he absently slapped his shirt pocket for a cigarette. Then he remembered for the ten-thousandth time that Dr. Andreza had finally won out: Karli had been tobacco-free all of six weeks now and seemed to miss the little papery cylinders and their smoke more than ever. The urge was increasing when it should have been going the other way. Or so Karli had thought. He continued motoring another two miles on secondary roads.

  At last he jumped on the expressway and began the ten-minute commute to Sheremetyevo Airport. Cars passed him at high speeds on both sides as he tried to maintain a consistent 90 KPH in the center lane. Government vehicles sported speed governors meant to reduce speeds and impose fuel economies, a puzzling goal for most Russians, given their country's enormous business in oil exports. Karli was fond of telling the other agents the Russians had petroleum to burn. Literally. The entire sub-strata of Russia was awash in easily-mined oil. Oil fields ten thousand kilometers long. Enough to supply Eastern Europe for a hundred years at peak usage. So why the governors on the government cars, especially the GRU-issue vehicles, where speed just might be a deciding factor if pursuit were undertaken? Why that? He slapped the steering wheel with his gloved hand and noticed it was so cold he felt nothing. He slapped it again. What, his flesh had frozen? He looked at the dashboard temperature: -30 C. Not bad, for Moscow in January.

  Just then his cell phone e
rupted into the William Tell Overture. He flicked its face and pressed the appliance to his left ear.

  "Karli."

  "Yuri. What's your ETA?"

  Yuri was second-in-command at GRU, Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate. He was also Karli's best friend and a go-to asset whenever Karli found himself frozen atop some bureaucratic land mine. He wanted to know how soon Karli would arrive at GRU Sheremetyevo Airport.

  "Ten minutes, maybe less. Everyone's passing, no one’s holding me up this time of day."

  "Everyone's here."

  "The Intercept Team?"

  "Yes. Malinda is wondering where the hell you are. I hate that woman," this last part being said in a low tone, almost a whisper. Obviously Yuri was somewhere in the supervisor's general area at Sheremetyevo Security.

  "What are we looking at?" Karli asked. He pulled the phone briefly from his ear, making sure it wasn't frozen to the side of his face. It had been known to happen.

  "Flight from Chicago. Hijack, perps being Chechen. That's about all we know."

  "Body for body."

  "Right. ‘You give us one, we give you one,’ kind of thing."

  "Has Malinda said anything?"

  "Only to remind us the GRU doesn't make deals with terrorists."

  "So it's a terrorism posting."

  "Exactly."

  "Which means a high body count."

  "Probably. We won't know until they start shooting passengers and tossing them onto the tarmac. But knowing the Chechens, I have no doubt there will be blood. Lots of blood."

  "Is our assault group assembled?"

  "All but one or two stragglers."

  "God."

  "I know. Try to explain this mess to the American president."

  "Bad press all around."

  "See you in ten."

  "I'm at kilometer post 345.2. See you in five."

  "There's night construction at the off-ramp. Take care there."

  "Roger that. And out."

  Karli slipped the phone into his suit coat. He felt the warmth from his phone briefly warm the skin on his chest. Madness. It was all madness. You kill one, we refuse to negotiate, so you kill another. Lives would be snuffed out tonight, Karli had no doubt.