I could feel my throat tighten. I drank more water. “Is she really saying that Zeke is guilty of being in cahoots with Udovenko and his drug cartel?”
“You’re jumping to conclusions. She’s still typing.”
I could feel my armpits get sticky. I flapped my arms a couple of times, and Nick gave me a strange look. “I feel like I just ate ten jalapenos.”
“My face lights up like Rudolph’s nose. I’m a wimp when it comes to hot spices. And Antonio gets pissed.”
“Who’s Antonio?”
He pressed his lips shut, then looked off. His phone buzzed, so I turned my attention to more relevant matters than the fact that I’d just learned Nick was gay.
“What did she say?”
He pushed a breath out through his nose, then tilted the phone upward. “It’s a long one.”
“Go ahead. I can handle compound sentences.”
He gave me the eye, then said, “She said the two memos were between INTERPOL and the Ukrainian security service, something called the SBU. Apparently, so much of the memos were redacted…” He looked up. “That means—”
“I’m not FBI, but I’m not an idiot. They marked out a lot of the words in the memo.”
“Right. Anyway, even with an interpreter, it was difficult for Alex to understand the purpose of the memos. And she’s yet to get a straight answer on why Zeke’s name is in them.”
I didn’t move. I was stuck in neutral, unsure what my opinion should be.
“I know it’s confusing,” Nick said.
“Do you think it has to do with the language barrier?”
He lifted one shoulder. “That would be the easy answer, yes. But sometimes, I think officials try to hide behind the language issue just so they don’t have to explain how their country does business, which we might find…uh, troubling.”
“In what way?”
“Every country is set up differently, even if they are purported to be a democratic society. In some instances, different intelligence or police agencies might not like to share how much power they actually wield.”
“It could be embarrassing?”
“It could take the focus off the main point of the investigation. So, some things are left unsaid by all parties. But if there’s anyone who will ask the question no one wants to ask, it’s Alex. She’s got a pair on her that…”
“Is that locker-room talk, Nick?”
“Sorry.”
I winked. “No worries. This Alex person sounds pretty cool.” A sudden urge to pee came over me. I asked Nick to try to get some idea from Alex on when we could expect an update, and then I ran off to the restroom as he warned me that the wheels of international diplomacy rarely moved at a quick pace.
26
During my few moments alone, I further considered what we’d just learned. And a growing unease washed over me. As I walked back to the front of the office, I said from a distance, “Thing is, Nick, we’ve learned that the possibility of a connection between Zeke and Udovenko is—” I broke off when I saw Cristina next to him with a phone in her hands, which wasn’t surprising really, except that it was Nick’s phone. Her thumbs moved at breakneck speed.
Nick looked up. “She just walked in and saw me struggling, then asked if she could help. At this point, why not?”
I patted Cristina on the shoulder as I made my way around my desk.
“You were saying?” Nick said, then chugged more water.
I glanced at Cristina and then back to Nick. “I’m surprised you’re letting her on your phone. But I guess she told you that she’s now in the loop.”
“She is standing right here,” Cristina said, her eyes still on the tiny phone screen as she typed away. “Just because I’m typing doesn’t mean I can’t hear.”
“Teenagers. They take multitasking to a completely different level,” I said.
She finished, then set his phone on the table with a thud.
“Careful,” I said. “It’s not a brick.”
“Feels like one.” She set her backpack against my desk, glanced at Nick. “You might want to think about an upgrade, dude.”
Dude. Nice.
He splayed his arms. “It’s government issued. What can I do?”
“So, back to the matter at hand,” I said, resting my elbows on my desk. “As I was saying, Nick… Oh, Cristina, to catch you up, Alex, Nick’s partner, who is working with INTERPOL in France found—”
“I know. Two redacted memos connecting Zeke’s name with that Russian drug lord, Petro Udo-whatever.”
I stared at her for a moment, then continued. “Okayyy. As I was saying, we can’t ignore the one piece of evidence that is now clear: Zeke and Udovenko are connected. Armand’s inside guy was right.”
“You going to call Armand and tell him?” Cristina asked.
I pressed my lips together. “Not yet. We don’t know how Zeke is connected. In his line of work, he could be working some other angle, trying to find ties to Udovenko himself. But I don’t want to wait long to tell Armand.” I raised my phone and looked at Cristina. “I’m really struggling with not reaching out to Zahera. She could think I was prying, and maybe even get suspicious of what we’re doing. Then she might even relay everything to Zeke. And if he is involved in something bad, that might force his hand to…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Are you suggesting he’d hurt Zahera?” Cristina said, two hands on the desk.
“I can’t imagine it, no. He worships that girl. But it’s hard for me to completely trust anyone with the people I care about. For now, I think we need to get more information before we reach out to Z.”
She lifted her mane of hair and fanned her neck. “Damn, we’ve got so much shit to tell Z. I mean, even if Zeke’s in the clear, she’s going to lose it on us once we have to fess up and let her know what we’ve been doing.”
“I know, I know.” I put my head on the desk for a second. “Is there more to this story that I’m not aware of?” Nick shifted his sights from Cristina to me.
“It’s, uh, well…” Cristina spread her arms.
I pressed my fingers against the bridge of my nose. “We accidentally snooped while we were at Zahera’s yesterday evening.”
“Hmmm.” He tapped his hairless chin. “Accidentally snooped. I recall an investigation from years ago where we had this whistleblower who worked for one of the big New York hedge funds. He said something similar. It actually paid off—for him and for us—and we convicted three executives of insider trading. What did the two of you learn?”
I let my arms drop to the table, but said nothing.
“Look, I’m not Zahera’s father. I work for the FBI. If you think it’s pertinent to our investigation, we need to know. The friendship stuff will work out, believe me.” He flipped his fingers, a sign for me to give up the information. I wasn’t used to being pushed—I was more comfortable in his role.
“It’s…” Cristina started to say.
“Complicated.” I smirked.
A single nod. “Sounds like something Alex would say. Okay, I get it.”
“I would ask you to keep this to yourself, but I guess that’s the business you’re in.”
Now he smirked, but refrained from speaking. He was waiting on me. I finally unloaded everything we learned from the private correspondence between Zahera’s parents, including my uncertainty as to whether to believe what we’d read in the letters. When I finished, he was sitting back, his arms folded, his beady eyes staring at the blank wall over my shoulder.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
He tapped his chin.
“He’s shocked, just like we were last night,” Cristina said.
I ignored her comment. “Nick?”
He finally sat up, laid both hands on the desk. “This changes things.”
“How?” Cristina moved over to my side of the table.
“We’re talking about an allegiance to our country. This has national security implications.”
&nbs
p; “Yeah, but we know, or at least we think he beat the crap out of that Soviet spy,” Cristina said, apparently not seeing the greater picture.
I jumped in. “You’re wondering if he might have turned over confidential information to the Soviets without telling about it in the letters.”
“Exactly. And if so,” Nick said, “what type of intel did he give up? Or worse, did it lead to Americans or our allies getting killed? This could blow up to be something that is huge.” He paused, took in a breath, and then lowered his volume. “For now, let me work my side and figure out how to proceed.”
“We need information fast, Nick. I care about what happened in the past, but I’m a lot more concerned about the present.”
“I hear ya.”
27
Gripping the metal cage that separated him from four grizzly bears in the middle of the Toronto Zoo, Zeke watched the alpha of the group stand on its hind legs and let out a roar that he could feel in his chest.
“Mommy, Mommy, the bear’s going to eat us up.”
He turned to see a toddler barreling into the legs of his mother. She scooped him up, and he buried his head in the nape of her neck. The bond of a mother and child, a nearly unbreakable connection.
Just last year, he’d spent countless days spoon-feeding his own father, Harold, after he’d suffered a massive stroke. Day and night, Zeke stayed by his father’s side, shirking his duties both professional and personal to take care of the man who’d raised him and his little sister with an iron fist and ostensibly on his own—his mother had run off with another man when Zeke was just four years old.
Discipline, and the highest form of it, was mandatory in the Moffett house, a symmetrical one-story just outside of Vancouver, with a view of the North Shore Mountains from their backyard. On countless occasions, his father, nicknamed Dirty Harry by his comrades in the Canadian Army, had used the enormity of the mountains to convey analogous messages of perseverance, overcoming adversity, and all sorts of life’s lessons. Usually, it was quickly followed by a mandatory jog up and down the surrounding hills while wearing a twenty-pound backpack.
Zeke had always said boot camp was just like a normal day in the Moffett house—when he was only twelve years old.
He cracked a smile, thinking about how many times he’d silently cussed out Dirty Harry. His dad’s tough-love approach had helped shape the man he’d become, something he didn’t begin to recognize until later in his teens. Giving up, to him, was never an option. And while he’d learned to exercise caution in the face of danger, his well-developed skills of negotiation had proven quite useful in his current line of work—don’t offer any deal you can’t walk away from, and never let them sense desperation. In his business, one slip-up could impact his health in a very permanent manner.
He checked his digital watch and casually rotated his body, searching through the maze of humanity, both young and old, for a man with a slight limp. The man may or may not be using a cane, from what he’d been told, although he’d done his own research to confirm the same. The man was in his sixties, but his physique was as powerful as his aura—again, he’d found that information through his own channels.
The sun had just dipped below the trees surrounding the bear cage and temperatures had fallen into the fifties. He shifted his arms and raised the collar on his sport coat, giving him the opportunity to feel the weight of his Glock against the inside of his arm. The last thing he wanted to do was use the firearm in a crowded public place, but it did give him an extra sense of security. He couldn’t help that feeling, even if it was misguided. The Glock, along with his quick instinctive responses, had saved his ass on more than one occasion. Lives had been lost, but not his, and not anyone he cared about either. Most times, in fact, it had made the world a better place—that much he couldn’t deny.
“Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?”
A cluster of people cleared out of the way, and he saw a girl with curly hair and two missing front teeth standing next to the cage, her hands at her waist. He knew she was quoting the lines of a popular children’s book—one he’d read dozens, if not hundreds of times.
“Mommy, how come the brown bear isn’t answering me?”
He followed her gaze to the same motherly woman from earlier. She was a bit harried. An open purse swung from a long strap cinched in the crook of her elbow while she tried to corral her son, who was now bucking like a wild horse. The boy arched his back and lunged to the side—for a second Zeke thought the mother wouldn’t be quick enough to recover. But just as she grabbed the boy’s shirt and regained control, the boy yanked her scarf off her neck. Somehow, like all task-juggling parents, she was still able to respond to her daughter. “I’m not sure, Olivia. Maybe you should ask again and see if he’s in a talking mood.”
The little girl turned and put her nose up to the cage, uttering the same phrase. Zeke brought a hand to his mouth, covering his smile.
“You must have kids.”
The woman had noticed his gaze.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your family moment.” He pulled out his phone, looking for a quick distraction.
“Are you not a father?”
She’d moved closer, so close that the little boy was waving her orange scarf in his face. He kept his focus on the boy and playfully plucked the scarf out of the boy’s hand, stuffing it into the palm of his own, then closing his fist.
“Where did the scarf go?” Zeke asked him.
The little boy’s eyes got wide. He hesitated for a second, then pointed at Zeke’s fist. “That one.”
“Good guess,” the mom said.
Zeke ran his opposite hand over his curled up fist as if he were casting a spell, and then he moved it off to the side. “Are you sure?”
“Yep,” the boy said, biting down on his lower lip.
Zeke popped open his hand. It was empty.
“What?” the boy exclaimed. He jerked his head to the right to look at his mom, then back to the man who’d pulled the most amazing trick in the history of mankind. “Where did it go?”
Zeke moved his opposite fist up next to the boy’s ear. “Look what I just found behind your ear.” He brought his hand around and opened it to show the orange scarf. The boy’s jaw dropped open. “You’re a magician. Wow!”
Everyone laughed, and then the mother said, “Are you a professional?”
“Ha. I have more than a few tricks up my sleeve.” He began to slowly inch up his coat sleeve.
“Mom, I gotta pee.” The little girl tugged at her mom’s arm.
“Okay, okay.” She held her gaze on Zeke as if she had more questions.
“Mom. I gotta pee bad. Real bad.”
“Gotta run,” the mom said. “Say thank you to the nice man.”
“Thank you,” the kids said in unison as the family scampered into the crowd of people in search of a restroom.
The cycle of life. It never ceased to amaze him. He’d cared for his father up until the very end, when the once-resilient man had shriveled into a ninety-pound skeleton. If he hadn’t been there for every step of his father’s demise, he would have never believed it. He had grown accustomed to it, though: the irreversible process of death.
Painful memories of his father’s last days quickly flipped to the opposite end of life’s spectrum—his two little rugrats. Images flashed across his mind, happy times filled with Saturday morning pillow fights, soccer games played on a muddy pitch, and countless times reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear while rocking in the creaky chair in his kids’ bedrooms.
In his son’s room he could recall the glow of green planets affixed to the ceiling as he rocked his son while feeding him his bottle at two in the morning. It was really quite surreal. Even with so little sleep, he had treasured those moments to the end. It was a ritual he could never get enough of.
A tinge of emotion crept up to the back of his throat, and with that, a flurry of questions swept through his mind, most of which started with the word w
hy.
In Zeke’s peripheral vision, something caught his attention. Was that man limping? Zeke narrowed his eyes as he gazed through a sea of people. As the man came into full focus, Zeke quickly realized it was a false alarm. This man was under thirty years of age with a head full of dark curls. He was hopping on one foot while entertaining a little boy.
Zeke turned back to the bear display and immediately sensed his personal space being invaded.
28
“Good evening, Zeke. Just keep looking at the bears.”
The man to his left had an accent, but his English was much better than Zeke had expected. Zeke kept facing forward, but saw the man’s hand reaching out to the cage. His arms were oddly short. A dark patch of hair, which looked like burrowing beetles, covered the top of his hand.
“Are you Petro?” Zeke’s head still faced a bear who had grabbed a piece of fish with its massive paws. Between his extended side vision and the trajectory of the man’s voice, he could determine the man was no more than five-six.
“He couldn’t make it. I’m his proxy.”
That confirmed what he’d been thinking. Now he turned his thoughts to why this man had shown up instead of Petro Udovenko. Had they decided to dispense with Zeke? Would he soon feel a searing pain in his side as the man pumped him full of lead? At this point, Zeke’s patience was thin, and he decided to take the risk. He slowly spun toward the man, taking in a full view, and then continued until his back was against the bear cage.
“Be careful, Zeke. For a moment there, I thought you were going to attack me.” The man had a bald spot on top of his head, a surprising contrast to his gorilla hand.
“Come on, man. I don’t even know your name. Why would I harm you anyway? I thought we—at least Petro and I—were to do business together. That’s not how business associates treat each other.”
“My name is Sergey. I am his proxy. I speak for him.”
“So, Sergey, why are we meeting at the Toronto Zoo? After all, Petro called this urgent meeting, saying only I could help him meet his goals.”
The Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 4-6: Redemption Thriller Series 10-12 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set) Page 37