Double Deception

by Merline Lovelace

  She used a thumb to scroll through the entries until she found an earlier message Tank had forwarded before all the nasty stuff started. Her heart thumping, she brought up the schematic of the entire Yantarny Mine system.

  Bless him! He’d come through for them! She didn’t have time for more than a skim of the drawing. She couldn’t risk Chernak getting a glimpse of it. Hitting a scramble key, she turned the schematic into indecipherable lines of code before angling the phone toward the Bulgarian.

  “Here they are.”

  He leaned forward eagerly but the anticipation sharpening his face morphed instantly into a scowl. “These are the specs you spoke of? I can’t read them.”

  “Neither can I,” Rebel replied with a touch of acid. “They’re in HTML. Hypertext Markup Language.”

  “I know what HTML is,” he fired back. “They use it on webpages.”

  “Exactly. So we’ll need a computer to translate the HTML and my friend in the other room to interpret the specs once they’re up.”

  “Interpret what?” Frustration and suspicion gave a sharp edge to the question. “What are these supposed specs for?”

  “The Yantarny Mine.”

  “Yantarny? Where is this Yantarny?”

  “Twenty five kilometers from Kaliningrad,” Hairy Harry interjected. “On the Baltic.” He scratched the matted black fur above his stained undershirt. “In the old days they brought raw amber from the mine to Königsberg Castle for sorting and grading.”

  “Brought it how?”

  “Ox carts, in the time of the Teutonic knights. Trains later. Then the tunnels collapsed and they used trucks up until the mine shut down.”

  Rebel saw when the light dawned. It was like a strobe flashing in Chernak’s eyes.

  “Tunnels,” he echoed, knifing her with a hard look. “These specs of yours. Do they show tunnels?”

  “I don’t know. We were on our way to an internet cafe when we were so rudely interrupted.”

  More or less. Rebel was giving herself high marks for inventiveness when Chernak sprang to his feet.

  “I know where there’s a laptop. You can transfer the file with a USB cord, can’t you?”

  She nodded, thrilled that he’d taken the bait.

  “Nikolai! Get the other American. We can use Anatoli’s car and…”

  Rebel whipped up a hand. “Hold on, pal. You’re forgetting your side of this deal. I’ve shown you what I bring to the table. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  He hesitated, and she could almost hear the wheels whirring again. Shaking her head, she jammed a spoke in the cogs.

  “It won’t do you any good to take the phone away from me and download the HTML file. You won’t be able to read the schematic. I told you, you need Clint Black for that.” When he still hesitated, she flapped an impatient hand. “Why the hell do you think I’ve nursed him along this far? Now pull your head out of your ass and show me what you’ve got.”

  He flushed but reached into his back pocket and produced a much creased document of some sort. Slapping it down on the table, he unfolded it to show what looked like an aerial map.

  “This was taken by Soviet reconnaissance planes two weeks before the Red Army reached the outskirts of Königsberg.” He gave her a smug smile. “A former counterpart of yours in the Russian air force found it buried in the WWII archives. Too bad you didn’t think to use those connections, Viktoria.”

  She was too revved up to respond to the dig. “This is good, Feodyr. Very good.”

  Angling the phone, she switched to camera and took a shot before Chernak slammed her arm away. Rebel barely refrained from taking him down right then and there.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she snarled. “The aerial map isn’t any good by itself. But we can overlay it atop the mine schematic. See where bombs caved in the tunnels…”

  “And where they didn’t,” Chernak finished on a rush. As excited now as she was, he refolded the map and stuffed it back in his pocket. “Anatoli! We will take your car. Nikolai, get the other American.”

  Rebel ignored Blade’s thunderous expression when Nikolai thumped him between the shoulders and shoved him toward the apartment’s door. She couldn’t risk so much as a wink or a blink. He had to trust her, had to prevent that double agent remark from propagating all kinds of insidious doubts.

  She draped her purse strap over her shoulder but kept her phone in hand. Before she followed Blade to the door, she took a last look at the kidnapped teenager. She hadn’t moved. Her shoulders still sagged, her eyes still registered nothing but emptiness.

  The girl’s bruised face made Rebel ache to spin around and deliver a swift knick to Anatoli’s nuts. She managed to constrain the impulse, but it gnawed at her insides as she trooped into the hall with Blade, Feodyr and Nikolai. They descended the stairs, then three of them hovered just inside the grimy door until Nikolai fetched Anatoli’s tin can of a car from wherever it had been parked. Chernak made sure the street was clear before he sent the still-cuffed Blade out the door. He had to fold almost double to squeeze into the Mini’s backseat.

  Rebel was ordered into the front passenger seat. So Chernak could keep his weapon trained on her, she knew. While the Bulgarian crawled in beside Blade, she kept her eyes on the road ahead. She didn’t give a clue to her intent as she thumbed her phone’s keypad and reversed the no-comm signal. Nikolai put the car in gear while she was keying in a follow-on message to OMEGA control. As soon as it was done, she slipped the phone in her purse.

  They turned a corner, traveled two blocks and took another turn before Rebel picked up the wail of sirens. The wail grew louder, shrieking with urgency. Beside her Nikolai cursed and aimed an instinctive glance at the speedometer. A swift check of the rearview mirror showed Chernak tensing, as well. Neither man relaxed until four police cars sped by in the other lane, lights flashing and sirens screaming.

  Rebel didn’t move a single facial muscle. Inside, though, she was wearing a big honkin’ grin. Tank had come through again. In a few minutes Hairy Harry would be on his way to a holding cell and the kidnapped girl would be wrapped in a blanket and on her way to safety.

  Rebel’s elation lasted until Nikolai pulled up outside a squat, featureless block of apartments on the outskirts of Kaliningrad. It was still warming her insides when he shoved the car into park, killed the ignition and disappeared inside one of the stairwells. He returned less than five minutes later with a laptop tucked under one arm. Sliding behind the wheel, he dumped the computer in Rebel’s lap and queried his partner.

  “Where do we go now?”

  Chernak didn’t hesitate. “Yantarny.”

  The teacup-size car rattled out of town and hit the wind-and sand-swept route to the coast a few minutes later. Without a storm or restless waves to churn up amber and lure day-trippers out from Kaliningrad, the two-lane road was pretty much deserted. They encountered exactly one car heading back into the city. None at all aiming for the sea.

  The closer they got to the Baltic, the uneasier Rebel grew. Chewing on the inside of her lip, she eyed the desolate salt marshes and gray-hued dunes. Dammit! She should have insisted Chernak take them to an internet café in the city. Someplace with other people around. The bastard would’ve had to remove Blade’s cuffs. Conceal his weapon. Act like they were just there to check email or the latest porn flicks. That would have given her five or ten seconds to maneuver. Now…

  “Turn here.”

  Chernak’s curt command had Nikolai swerving off the road and onto a rutted dirt track. When the track wound behind a sand dune, Rebel zinged a look in the rearview mirror. The tight cast to Chernak’s face told her it was showtime.

  Sure enough, Chernak ordered his pal to stop as soon as they were out of sight of the road. Her .38 appeared in the mirror a second later, the barrel leveled at the back of her head.

  “Out of the car, Viktoria. You, too, Amerikanski. We will transfer the files to the computer here.”

  After which he would hold the gun to
her head and force Blade to interpret the overlay. Or eliminate them both and take his chances on finding someone else who could do it for him. Rebel sincerely hoped it was the former but prepared for the latter.

  She had her game plan worked out before she un-screwed her legs from under the dash. She exited the Mini, the laptop in hand. Her feet sank in sand. Brackish air filled her lungs. Blade got out awkwardly, his face set in stone.

  Rebel made sure she maintained enough distance between them to keep Chernak focused primarily on her. At the same time, her now snapping senses registered Nikolai’s every move on the far side of the vehicle. She had to assume he was armed, but she’d deal with that after she neutralized the Bulgarian now aiming the .38 at her middle.

  “You’ve proved most useful, Viktoria.” Chernak opted for English, obviously intending Blade to understand and be intimidated by every word. “I’m almost sorry our partnership has to end.”

  Rebel smiled and had the laptop ready to hurl when violent movement erupted to her right. She jerked around just in time to see Blade lunge at the Bulgarian, a loose cuff dangling from one wrist. She didn’t wait for the results. Spinning the rest of the way around, she whipped the laptop across the top of the car and scored a direct hit on Nikolai’s forehead.

  Chapter 12

  Rebel saw the laptop connect, watched Nikolai go down like a felled ox and spun back around. Chernak lay facedown in the dirt, out cold. Judging by the skinned and bloody knuckles on Blade’s right hand, she guessed he would stay out for a while.

  Gulping, she forced her heart out of her throat and back down into her chest before turning to check on Nikolai. The laptop had knocked him six ways to sideways. He was sprawled in a crumpled heap at the rear end of the car.

  More shaken than she wanted to admit, Rebel turned back and watched Blade bend to retrieve her .38. The silver dangling from his wrist brought an involuntary exclamation.

  “How’d you get out of the cuffs?”

  “Escape and Evasion 101.” The look he sent her wasn’t friendly. “You miss that training session, Talbot?”

  “No,” she retorted, stung.

  OMEGA’s premier escape artist had taught operatives to pick any and every kind of lock with nothing more than a bobby pin. Rebel had been forced to point out that few females today stuck bobby pins in their hair. She’d also discovered that trick only worked if you had your hands in front of you and could use them to work the lock.

  “Your arms were behind you,” she said, still trying to figure out how he’d emulated Houdini. “And you didn’t have your knife to pry them with.”

  “Yeah, about that…”

  He rolled Chernak over and relieved him of the Marakov. Straightening, he tucked the second weapon in his waistband. He gave Nikolai a quick once-over before facing Rebel. His expression stony, he unbuckled his belt. Three seconds later the second cuff popped free.

  “Damn!” She moved in for a closer look. “That’s pretty slick. Maybe I should start wearing a belt when I’m in the field.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  Uh-oh. That flat, implacable tone told her she had to recover some serious ground. Essaying a smile, she held out a placating hand.

  “I know you’re pissed. Just give me a chance to…”

  It happened so fast she didn’t have time to jerk her hand back. In one blinding move, he snapped the cuff on her wrist, used her outstretched arm to twist her around, and shoved her against the car.

  “C’mon, Black! Don’t be an idiot!”

  When he dragged her other arm behind her back, her first instinct was to retaliate with a swift backward kick. She curbed the response just in time. Heeling the man in the groin wasn’t going to soothe his ruffled feathers. Hers, however, remained in full fluff while he went to relieve the still unconscious Nikolai of a small arsenal of weapons. Including, Rebel saw as she turned back around, his knife. The sharp, serrated bone blade gleamed a dull ivory when he walked back to her.

  She looked from the knife to his face and felt a ripple of real fear. Defiantly, she lifted her chin. “You need to let me explain.”

  “You’ll explain, all right. But first…”

  When he brought the knife up, she couldn’t help it. She flinched. And hated herself for it when he sliced through the shoulder strap of her purse.

  “Bastard,” she spit, as infuriated by her reaction as by his tight, mocking smile.

  She sagged against the car while he extracted her phone. Since her comm device recognized only her biometrics, he couldn’t key directly into a secure line. Instead, he had to manually dial a number and wait to be connected.

  The number was a blind. It got him a chirpy receptionist for a twenty-four-hour floral house. Rebel followed along as Blade ordered two dozen red dahlias, was told they weren’t in season, and placed a different order. Several oblique references later, he was patched through to OMEGA control. The comm techs on duty then performed a voice analysis to verify the caller before passing him on to the controller.

  The whole process took twenty or thirty seconds at most. They were the longest damned thirty seconds Rebel could remember. Skewered by Blade’s icy stare, she almost sighed in relief when he got through.

  “Tank. Blade. Take a GPS lock on our position and get the police out here ASAP.” He listened a moment. “That’s right. Feodyr Chernak and one of his pals who goes by the name of Nikolai. Tell them Chernak is suspected of murdering Vivian Bauer and a curator at the Catherine Palace.”

  “Kurov,” Rebel supplied, “Petr Kurov. And Chernak admitted both murders.”

  When Blade ignored her addendum, she sincerely regretted she hadn’t swung a heel. Fuming, she listened to the one-sided conversation.

  “They did?” He cocked a brow. “The girl’s okay?”

  The obvious reference to Anatoli’s teenage sex slave took some of Rebel’s heat. She had all of a moment or two of relief that the girl was safe before Blade’s next remark got her steamed all over again.

  “No, I can’t.” His flinty stare sliced into her. “I intend to find out, though. Yeah, we’ll stay on-scene. I’ll give you an update after we finish with the police.”

  He cut the connection and shoved the phone in his back pocket. With his arms crossed and those weapons tucked in his waistband, he looked like some gunslinging gangster from the thirties.

  “All right, Talbot. Talk.”

  Rebel had never believed that old cliché about seeing red. His arrogant stance and pigheaded demand made an instant believer out of her. Fury blazed hot, singed every part of her. He was her partner! Her lover! She’d broken every one of her self-imposed rules and tumbled into bed with him like some sex-starved nympho. True, that unexpected face-to-face with Chernak had left her scrambling. And yes, she’d fabricated layer upon layer of lies to find out what Feodyr knew. But she’d hissed at Blade to trust her. Was sure he would at least give her the benefit of the doubt.

  Refusing to admit how deep his suspicion cut, she tilted her chin another notch. “Screw you, Black.”

  “What?”

  His thundercloud of surprise afforded Rebel immense satisfaction. He hadn’t expected defiance. Probably thought she would shiver and shake and beg him to listen. Not in this lifetime.

  “You don’t trust me? That’s your problem, not mine.”

  “The hell it is.”

  She relaxed against the car, so angry and hurt she had to work to maintain her sneer. “I’ll wait till the cavalry arrives. We can sort things out then and…”

  A low groan cut her off. Muttering an oath, Blade stalked to the rear of the car and manhandled a dazed but recovering Nikolai over to join his still out partner. An egg-size lump was already forming on Nikolai’s forehead. Drawing up his knees, he cradled his head in both hands.

  Blade kept both men in view without letting Rebel out of his line of sight. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he snarled. “Clue me in, Talbot. What’s your game?”

  Stiff-necked p
ride brought her within a breath of telling him to go to hell again. Loyalty to OMEGA and a belated reminder of the importance of their mission made her grind out the truth.

  “My first and only previous contact with Feodyr Chernak was in Moscow. I can’t reveal the details but…”

  Blade gave a low growl, which might have been pretty intimidating if she wasn’t so angry herself. “That op is still classified! All you need to know is that it involved more than a million dollars worth of uncut heroin, not one ruble of which made it into the pockets of Chernak or of his bosses.”

  “Go on.”

  A stiff breeze gusted across the dunes, whipping her hair into a frenzy. She shook her head to get loose tendrils out of her eyes and forced herself to continue.

  “I didn’t know he was in Kaliningrad. And I had no idea he’d acquired a scar above his eyes. It’s new, Blade. Not fully healed. You can see that as well as I can.”

  He refused to concede the point. Just looked at her with such suspicion that her fists bunched.

  “I was as surprised as Feodyr was when we barreled into each other. I had to think fast. He and his bosses thought I’d used my military connections to help set up that heroin deal. So I had to convince Feodyr I’d left the military and gone rogue.”

  “Feodyr wasn’t the only one you convinced.”

  That hurt. More than Rebel would allow him to see. Her voice went flat and cold. “He believed me enough to negotiate a deal. We traded information. He showed me what brought him to Kaliningrad, I told him…”

  “You told him about Bauer’s mission behind enemy lines?” Blade’s face lit with fury. “Sicced that murdering bastard on the woman we talked to this afternoon?”

  “No! Christ, just look at the phone!”