by C. G. Cooper
“The hell you didn’t,” Fog interrupted.
Rex ignored him.
“Julian got creative and got the information that even my boss at the Bureau couldn’t get. This Varushkin guy could be a goldmine of intel for the good guys. The question is whether he’ll cooperate or not.”
“He will,” I said without thinking.
“You sure?” Fog asked.
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you go see if he’ll talk to us now?” Rex said. “No time like the present to get started.”
I nodded and went for the door. Rex and the spook could get whatever they wanted from the old man. The only things I wanted to know from him were a) how to find his daughter, and b) how to get my hands around her pretty little neck.
+++
Georgy Varushkin was just getting settled when Daniel came in through the door. Anna’s friend and savior was a fascinating confluence of traits to Georgy’s practiced eye. There was real pain there, as well as compassion and love, as evidenced by his attachment to Anna. And then there was his physical body, obviously trained and tested at the highest levels. He would undoubtedly pounce on the nearest threat with little thought to his own life. Georgy found himself wanting to know more, wanting to look inside Daniel’s mind and tinker with its parts.
The young man nodded to the two guards, and approached the leather recliner where Vasily had propped his weary bones.
“Mr. Varushkin, I was wondering if we could speak to you,” Daniel said.
Georgy was tired, exhausted really, but he’d learned to push past that. Prison had shown him that even physical limits could be stretched beyond what the brightest minds would think possible.
Anna and her father were in one of the bedrooms. He’d instructed them to get what sleep they could. He had the time to talk.
“Here?”
“In the next apartment, if that’s okay,” Daniel answered. His blond savior looked tired as well, but there was a fire there, like glowing coals just waiting to flare to life.
Georgy nodded to Vasily, who picked him up without question, the act now beyond routine.
They followed Daniel next door. Georgy took it all in, the men hunched over computers or discussing something over large mugs of coffee. Some of them looked up as he passed. Surely he must look quite the sight.
The next room they entered was occupied by two men. One he recognized from their arrival, and the other stared at him with obvious curiosity. The thinner man offered him a chair. Vasily sat him down and took up his customary position next to his patron.
“Mr. Varushkin, my name is Julian Fog,” the thin man said. “I was hoping you could spare us a few minutes to chat.”
Georgy smiled. “Of course. Anything for what you’ve already done for my family.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Fog, pulling up a chair to sit across from him.
“May I asked who you work for, Mr. Fog?”
“Please, call me Julian, Mr. Varushkin.”
“Then you must call me Georgy.”
The two men smiled at one another. Georgy liked this Julian Fog immediately. Despite his small stature, the man exuded confidence and professionalism, like an experienced non-commissioned officer.
“I work for the Central Intelligence Agency,” Julian said.
Georgy’s heart fluttered, causing his breath to catch. Could it be? Could that blond savior standing in the corner have brought them years ahead of their projections? For a moment, he couldn’t find the words to respond.
Julian looked on with concern and asked, “Are you well, Georgy?” It took a good ten seconds for the Russian to realize the question had been asked in Russian.
Now there were tears flooding his eyes, the first dropping to his lap like a lazy bomblet. Georgy shook his head, trying to regain his composure.
“I am sorry,” he said. “It is only…I have been in prison, you see. For five years they tortured me, threatened my family, took me to the edge of my life.” The tears were flowing freely now, a luxury he’d never once shown during his imprisonment. Like a broken dam, the emotions flowed, the relief cloaking him, the memories of the last five years suddenly pushed away in a flood of elation.
No one said a word as he choked back his words, unable to pinpoint the exact place to start. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Vasily, his ever-loyal Vasily, the unwavering steward and friend. Vasily nodded, understanding completely what his master was thinking.
“Tell them,” Vasily said, his stoic face now flushed with emotion. He felt it too.
Georgy nodded and turned back to the others. There was a new energy in his chest, like a wellspring of life force urging him to tell his tale. The next time he opened his mouth, the words were crystal clear, like in the old days.
“It all started without my knowledge. I was a very young man, a boy really, when I was chosen. I was trained and mentored by a group of men who saw what would become of the Soviet Union. They had the foresight to see what our failed economic system would result in, what the military race against your country would lead to. They saw the collapse before it happened. I was one of the lucky few to be privy to this secret, to be allowed to prepare for what would eventually happen. So as I climbed the ranks of the Soviet Navy, we strengthened our secret bonds and carefully expanded our reach. By the time the Soviet Union came crashing down, we were ready.
“With our military contacts, we secured surplus material and land that the government could no longer support. The money we’d accrued over the previous decades grew from millions to billions. Not overnight, mind you, but as the Russian economy opened to the world, we broadened our own network, capitalizing on our purchases and leveraging them for more overseas.
“Slowly, we shifted our reserves to international banking institutions. From Japan to the Bahamas we stashed our hard-earned savings. As more and more of the new Russian government came under the old system of bribes and cronyism, we sped up our plans. I was tasked with making a move to the United States. It would be our first foothold in the outside world. We saw the United States as the safest bet, the country most likely to weather future storms. It was the right choice.
“For years I saw to the re-shuffling of money and assets. With our money we bought businesses, real estate, stocks, anything a normal successful American businessman would invest in. It was deemed necessary, in the beginning, to take over a small Russian racket that specialized in smuggling Russian goods into America. We took over their operation after a minor scuffle, and successfully tripled our imports. Unfortunately, some of the old business survives today, despite my orders to the contrary.”
Georgy paused as his last conversation with Natasha replayed in his mind. He winced at the memory.
“It was not my intention for that part of our organization to continue, but it seems that during my internment, certain other individuals saw our situation differently. And before you ask, yes, I am speaking of my own daughter, Natasha. It saddens me to say this. I have tried to be a good father, to raise her without a mother, but I have failed. My sweet Natasha is no more.”
He paused again, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.
“I tell you that I love my country, gentlemen. For all its flaws, for all the men who have tried to turn it into their own evil likeness, underneath there will always be Mother Russia. Tyrants come and go. Time does its best to outlast us, but the heart of a Russian is always faithful, always strong. I will always be Russian. It is my dream, it is the dream of the men and women who comprise this organization that we named The Pension, to return to Russia one day and reclaim and rebuild what has been broken.
“It was our plan to reach out to the American government one day, once we’d established our community here on your soil. We would be prepared to share our combined knowledge, to utilize our contacts inside Russia to provide you with the intelligence and data we would need to facilitate a peaceful coup. We had to be careful. Before, we were not careful enough. That was how I was kid
napped and thrown in jail. There were few we could trust. Fewer now.”
Georgy thought of his friends whom he’d only recently discovered were now dead. He tried not to think about how his own words, words torn from his soul by his captors, had been used to find and snuff those old friends from being.
“I will never again see my beloved Russia, gentlemen. I know that. But because God sent your friend Daniel to my Anna, maybe we can help one another. I do not believe in coincidences. I believe in doing what is right for my people, for our people. So tell me, Julian, would it be possible for you to keep my secret, to help me do what I have only dreamed?”
Silence in the room. Georgy half-expected someone to laugh, or maybe for a team of black clad men to rush the room and drag him off to a secret detention facility. Neither happened.
Instead, Julian Fog leaned forward and held out his hand, “I think you’ve landed in the right place, Georgy.”
Chapter 29
Her eyes darted. Her hands trembled. Her breath came in labored gasps.
Anna looked up at the Pepto-Bismol colored sky, a screeching calling to her as she scanned. She’d been running. For how long? Anna had no idea. Sluggish, like her feet were pressed into six inches of sticky mud, she trudged on, willing her legs to move faster. They would not heed her call.
She was so focused on the screeches from overhead that she barely noticed as the skyline turned violet and then evergreen. Her heart pounded as she searched the sky and the hard packed ground below. What was she looking for? What was following her? Where was she going?
A black shadow passed overhead. Anna ducked, but the flying thing was too high to touch her. It did let out an ear-splitting screech as it soared by. A warning maybe?
Her instincts told Anna to protect herself. Other than her bare hands there was nothing in sight that she could use. Even when she bent down to touch a clump of lazy grass, the feel was foreign and incorporeal, like a ghost.
A dream, she muttered, her own voice sounding muffled and strange.
She’d always heard that it was possible to control dreams, and she’d even done a fair amount of research into doing just that. But no matter how hard she tried, the control was always just out of reach.
Once she understood that nothing was real, even though her body was telling her differently, she stopped moving. The shadow returned. Anna waited. The bird thing came closer, calling angrily from fifty, then twenty feet in the air. Anna stood her ground, squinting against the glare of the fake sun, trying to get a glimpse of the creature.
A cloud must have appeared overhead, because a larger shadow enveloped the flying beast, and Anna bit her lip. Whatever the thing was, it had an enormous wingspan. When it was ten feet away, the animal reared back, its wings spread wide, buffeting Anna with a gust of dream wind.
The thing’s face was obscured like things tend to be in dreams, but Anna saw the rest of the animal in dark clarity. Wings covered in shimmering obsidian feathers. A chest of blazing red like a suit of armor.
“Anna,” the thing said.
Anna’s head shot up, willing the haze surrounding the beast’s face to melt away.
“Who are you?” Anna asked, brave enough to take step closer.
“You know who I am,” the animal said, its voice garbled like it was using one of those voice modulators. It didn’t sound male or female.
“I don’t know who you are,” Anna replied, more confused than scared.
The winged creature chuckled and said, “Ah, but you know who this is.”
Anna almost asked what the thing was talking about, but noticed the twitching of the beast’s muscular leg, like it was shifting its weight from one side to the other.
She looked to the ground and clamped a hand over her mouth.
There, clasped in one of the massive red talons of the beast, was the bloody body of her father. His face was upturned and staring into nothingness. He was dead. Anna bit back her scream, reminded her brain that it was all just a dream. Just a dream.
Then she heard another sound, like scraping claws. Anna looked to her right and saw a figure on the ground, maybe twenty feet away. The blue eyes she recognized immediately. It was her grandfather. He was crawling toward her, his face contorted in pain, his cheeks covered with dirt. He was saying something she couldn’t quite hear. She moved closer. Her grandfather stopped moving. That’s when she noticed his legs, or where his legs were supposed to be. There was nothing below his waist, nothing except some bubbling ooze that trailed back the way he’d come.
He looked up at her with pitiful eyes, and then his head slumped to the ground.
What did it all mean?
Anna turned back to the beast. It still held her father’s body, perched on it actually. As Anna’s eyes drifted back up the body, the thing’s shape changed. It became more feminine, with slight curves that resembled a woman’s body under a layer of feathers.
When her gaze reached the top, where an oversized beak should have been, Anna’s eyes bulged at the beast’s visage. It was her mother: beautiful, elegant Natasha.
“Come with me, Anna. It’s time to go home,” her mother-beast said in a soothing purr.
Anna backpedaled. She needed to get away. She needed to wake up. But no matter how hard she tried, the dream kept playing. On and on it went, her mother still calling to her, the ooze from her grandfather spreading until it covered Anna’s feet and slowed her progress further. The panic filled her chest and threatened to collapse her knees to the ground.
One thought came to mind as the death scene continued, Anna’s heart racing to find a way out.
Where is Daniel?
+++
Three hours of sleep was all I was going to get. Rex and Fog’s boys were all working when I got up just after four in the morning. There were two coffee pots simmering in the kitchen, and I helped myself to a mug of it, black.
No one looked up. No one engaged me. Had Rex spread the word that I was to be left alone? It wouldn’t have surprised me. He’d always had a way of clearing my path and letting me stay on task.
I watched the others working as I sipped at the coffee. The cobwebs were long gone when the apartment door opened and Anna stepped inside with a short stocky guy who’d been guarding the extra apartment. The guard pointed at me and Anna nodded.
Her eyes were swollen yet clear. I gestured to the coffee when she’d made her way across the room.
“Yes, please,” she said, grabbing a mug from the stack and watching as I poured from the pot.
“Want anything in it?”
She shook her head and sipped from the steaming cup.
We stood there for a minute, not saying anything, just two people sharing a quiet coffee before sunrise.
“Where’s your dad?” I asked, growing uncomfortable with her silence.
“He was sleeping when I left.”
I nodded. Anna sipped her coffee.
“Are you okay?” Anna asked.
“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that question?” This girl was full of surprises.
“I’m fine,” she said.
I didn’t press. We stood in silence for another couple minutes.
“What are you going to do now?” Anna asked.
My insides froze, but I took a sip of coffee anyway.
“I don’t think you want to know,” I answered.
“You’re going after my mom, aren’t you?”
I didn’t want to talk about that with Anna. My plans were my plans. A little girl shouldn’t have to hear about it. I didn’t answer. She got the point.
“What makes people bad?” she asked.
Where is she going with this?
“In what sense?”
“You know, in your opinion, what makes someone go from good to bad?”
Where did she come up with this stuff?
I’d seen plenty of bad things in my life. Hell, I’d killed plenty of bad people. But I’d never thought about what led them to my crosshairs.
“I don’t know. Circumstances. Family. Mental health?” I said.
“Did you feel bad after killing those men?”
“No,” I answered without hesitation.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“So when you have bad dreams, it’s not about the people you’ve killed?”
I hesitated answering. I’d never told anyone about what happened in my sleep.
I stared at Anna and tried to understand what made some kids more resilient than others. Was it bred or was it given by some power we couldn’t see? Why was Anna, only hours after almost getting killed, able to talk about my deep dark secrets in the nonplussed manner of a supervising physician? The kid had a strength that I admired, that I found myself wishing for. What gave an innocent like Anna the key to unlocking my inner sanctum, a place that I’d padlocked, boarded and cemented shut? My own private torture chamber.
Whatever it was, Anna’s words cracked the code. Words spilled out of my mouth. All I could do was listen along with her.
“No, it’s never about the people I’ve killed,” my voice said.
“Then what is it? What are your nightmares about?”
I wanted to walk out the door and keep walking. My inner beast begged me to. It growled in frustration and moaned when my mouth opened again.
“I dream about the people I couldn’t save, the friends I couldn’t protect. I see their faces and know I could have done more.”
I felt numb. The voices in my head went mute. I waited for her reply.
She was staring at me again. I couldn’t read her expression. It was like my senses had dulled, leaving me plain and average. I felt naked.
Anna grinned. My eyes narrowed. Her grin turned into a smile. My eyes softened.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said, her eyes sparkling.
I didn’t get it. She was supposed to be repulsed. Even the therapist the Corps made me see looked at me like I should be locked up. Why was this fifteen-year-old girl looking at me like I was something special?