Double-Cross

by Meredith Fletcher

  “Yes.”

  “I apologize.”

  Ivanovitch shrugged and smiled. “As if you had a choice in your own mugging.”

  “You could have kept the appointment.”

  Ivanovitch sipped his drink and frowned. He adjusted his twin shoulder holsters. “Not without you. I’ve told you before, the man we’re dealing with here is very dangerous. He’s killed a great number of men in his time.” He looked at her. “And women.”

  A thousand questions slammed into Sam’s mind, but she knew that the real Elle wouldn’t have asked any of them. She hoped that Riley and the SEAL team were hearing everything that was being said.

  She asked the only question that she could. “When is the new appointment?”

  “In an hour.”

  “Perhaps we should go.”

  “We have time. I will attend to your lip, then we will go. The Cipher will keep until we are there.”

  Sam’s breath caught in her throat. She struggled to show no reaction. Rainy’s killer was there. And he was part of the Russian operation. But where did he fit in?

  Her train of thought was interrupted by a knock at the door.

  Riley met Elle Petrenko’s gaze evenly. She looked totally cold, totally in control. He didn’t blame her.

  He made no move for his other pistol, knowing she would put a bullet through his heart if he made the effort. No one else was in the room. He cursed his own reluctance to take one of the SEALs away from a support position to watch over the woman full-time. With Thomsen out because of injury and himself recognizable to Ivanovitch and potentially all of the Russian SVR team, he’d undertaken the duty himself. Only, he hadn’t been as attentive as he should have, and he’d underestimated the woman’s abilities.

  The pistol in her hands never wavered, locked on target with the center of his chest.

  “Sir,” Riley said calmly to the phone he held against his ear, “something’s come up. I’ll have to let you go. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.” He broke the connection while Mitchell was asking questions he knew he couldn’t answer.

  “You know he will call your team immediately,” Elle said. “He will have someone check on you.”

  “Probably.”

  “Then we’ll need to move quickly. Turn around.”

  Riley stood his ground. “If you’re going to shoot me, get it done.”

  “I will.”

  “Fine by me,” Riley said. “That pistol isn’t silenced. The men in the next room will at least be warned. I owe them that for not paying closer attention to you.” As tight as his throat was, he hoped he sounded normal. Even if he didn’t sound normal, he knew he meant what he said.

  “You’re a fool,” she said.

  “Earlier,” Riley agreed. “For underestimating you. But not now. I’m not going to die with someone else’s blood on my hands.”

  Elle’s eyes narrowed. “Where did you find her? The woman that looks like me?”

  “She’s a CIA agent,” Riley said. “Like me. Her name is Samantha St. John.”

  Elle paused. “I have never heard of her.”

  “She’s never heard of you.”

  “Impossible,” Elle snapped. “With all the plastic surgery she’s had done, she must have at least known who she was being made to look like.”

  “No,” Riley said. “I didn’t know about you until a few days ago. Everyone thought you were Samantha St. John. She’s been locked up for the last two months for an arms deal that you did a few months ago. MI-6 got video of that encounter.”

  She remained silent.

  “Look,” Riley said reasonably, “I wouldn’t mind the opportunity to stand here and talk you through this thing, but I know we don’t have the time. I’m sure my director has already notified the SEAL team commander I’m here with.” He raised his voice. “Are you out there, Chief Marshall?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve got her in my sights.” The SEAL sounded totally relaxed.

  Elle started to look over her shoulder at the darkened doorway, then caught herself and didn’t.

  “I apologize, Chief,” Riley said. “This is my fault.”

  “Yes, sir,” the SEAL said. “I didn’t think she’d come out of that trank so quick myself. I should have checked on her, too. Water under the bridge, sir. We’re in the soup now, so we’ll just see which way it goes.”

  Riley looked at the woman before him. “What do you think? Maybe you’ll kill me and maybe you won’t, but I can testify that Chief Marshall won’t stop shooting until he knows for sure you’re dead.”

  “That would be correct, sir.”

  “If it was left up to me,” Riley said, “I’d rather see both of us live.”

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, not giving an inch.

  “I’m trying to find out who’s setting up my government regarding the arms shipments the Kemenis are receiving,” Riley said.

  “I was assigned to find proof that the Americans were supplying those weapons.”

  “I know.”

  Elle sipped a breath. “I also know that the CIA is not responsible for those shipments.”

  Riley waited.

  “There is a man,” Elle said, “a very dangerous man named Lee Craig who is involved in those shipments.”

  “I don’t know who he is,” Riley admitted.

  “Tch.” Elle shook her head slightly. “Then there is much you don’t know.” She ejected the pistol’s magazine, popped the round in the chamber out, and left the slide open. “You have put my double in with Ivanovitch?”

  Riley took the pistol. “Yes.”

  “Then she is in much danger,” Elle said. “If Ivanovitch does not find out that she isn’t who she says she is, then Lee Craig will kill her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Lee Craig knows that I am not what I seem,” Elle said. “I was undercover with Ivanovitch. He represents the interests of certain crime families in Russia—the Mafiya—and is here dealing with Lee Craig and his associates on their behalf. The Mafiya and the concerns Lee Craig represents are trying to go into business together.”

  “If you’re telling the truth,” Riley said, “then I’ve really underestimated you.”

  “When you intercepted me, I had found out from my control that Lee Craig had penetrated my cover story. Perhaps he has even told Ivanovitch. One of my contacts was killed. He didn’t die quickly or peacefully. I was warned only minutes before you tried to take me down in the alley. I thought you were Lee Craig’s people.”

  Riley cursed. “Sam’s with Ivanovitch now.”

  “If she is not already dead,” Elle said, “then Ivanovitch will kill her when he finds out I have betrayed him. Perhaps he will save her for Lee Craig. Lee Craig lives to murder people.”

  “Who is he? The way you talk about him, I feel like we should know him.”

  “Perhaps you know him by his other name. He’s also called the Cipher. He’s an assassin.”

  Riley felt as if the floor had opened up beneath him. If Sam wasn’t already dead, then she might as well have been. And it was his fault.

  “Are you doing all right?”

  Seated in a chair in the kitchen area, Sam stared into Ivanovitch’s dark eyes. “Yeth,” she said, because it was hard to talk with her lip numb and him holding on to it while he stitched the cut closed. He was on the fourth stitch, taking time to make them small and neat. The anesthetic took away all the pain but she felt the pulling and the pressure.

  “One more stitch and I’ll be finished.” Ivanovitch was as good as his word. He finished the final stitch, gazed at her lip to admire his handiwork, and released her. “There. Good as new.” He grinned. “Are you surprised?”

  Sam tentatively touched her lip. “Yeth.” Having her lip released didn’t completely fix the speech impediment. With the anesthetic in her lip, the flesh was even more puffy and unwieldy than before.

  “You shouldn’t be surprised.” Ivanovitch picked up his glass and drained his drink. “I’m a
man of many talents.”

  Sam glanced at the watch on her wrist. “We’re running out of time.”

  Ivanovitch nodded. “Yes. We are. But I have a feeling the people we’re meeting are going to be willing to be patient a little longer. I think they’re going to be surprised to see you.” He put his empty glass to one side. “Get your things and we’ll go.”

  Sam walked to the bedroom and got her bag. She didn’t know if the SEAL team had heard the conversation. Returning to the kitchen area, she asked, “Has the meeting place been changed?”

  “Yes,” Ivanovitch told her. He adjusted his jacket, hiding the twin pistols once more.

  Just yes? Sam felt frustrated. She knew better than to ask a question that could be answered so conveniently.

  “Let’s go,” Ivanovitch said, opening the door.

  Sam stepped out into the hallway. Two men stood there waiting on her and Ivanovitch. The SVR colonel took the lead, walking toward the bank of elevators down the hall. He took out a satellite phone and had a quick conversation that she couldn’t hear. When he finished, he was smiling.

  “It appears the American CIA is foolishly trying to follow us around again,” he said. “Perhaps even more, they may be trying to intercept us. Like the agent we encountered a few days ago, remember?”

  Sam thought furiously, remembering that Riley had told her how Ivanovitch had gotten the upper hand on him while he’d been looking for her double. She nodded and regretted the action immediately.

  “I remember,” she said.

  “Your head pains you?”

  “Very much.”

  “Only a little longer.” Ivanovitch pressed the elevator buttons. “Then you’ll be able to rest all you want.”

  Sam stood as the elevator dropped smoothly. Evidently Ivanovitch had a specially coded keycard because the elevator cage dropped without interruption, not stopping till it reached the basement. The doors opened and revealed the underground parking garage.

  “I thought you had a car out front,” Sam said.

  “I do. But that car is merely bait. The CIA agents were spotted before my arrival.”

  Sam didn’t think that was true. She’d seen Commander Novak’s men in action; they didn’t make mistakes. Of course, Riley had insisted on deep security for her. It was possible they had been seen.

  Ivanovitch led the way to a Russian sedan. Situated as close to Russia as the country was, Berzhaan had a number of Russian vehicles. The sedan would be almost invisible out on the streets of Suwan.

  When Ivanovitch opened the door to the rear seat, she hesitated. She was about to disappear off the SEALs’ radar and she knew it. No one was stationed down in the underground parking garage, and the heavily tinted windows and the lateness of the hour would guarantee that no one would see her inside.

  “Elle,” Ivanovitch prompted. He gazed at her, one hand idly touching his shirt front.

  “A moment of dizziness, that’s all,” Sam said. She climbed inside the sedan and slid across the seat.

  Ivanovitch got in after her and closed the door. The driver put the vehicle into motion at once and they slid through the electric dawn of the underground parking garage and out onto the dimly lighted streets.

  Riley stood watching the computer monitor over Chief Marshall’s shoulder. Elle Petrenko stood at his side. Despite her obvious injuries and the fact that she’d been heavily drugged, she was surprisingly alert and capable.

  On the monitor, Commander Novak led his team through the switchback stairs that made up the hotel’s emergency escape routes. Every man of the team had a small video camera built into the baseball caps they wore. The caps not only served to carry the video equipment, but also to provide instant identification for the team. The video units connected to belt battery packs and sending units.

  All of the SEALs carried pistols and knives. Assault rifles inside the hotel hadn’t been possible.

  “St. John’s first language was Russian?” Elle asked quietly.

  “Yes,” Riley replied. He knew the woman was struggling with the information they had received from Mitchell.

  “Do you think she is my sister?”

  Despite the tension of the moment, Riley looked over his shoulder at the woman. Even though she projected a tough exterior, he knew she was hurting and confused inside. How the hell do you react to something like this? he wondered. Then he realized that Sam didn’t yet know.

  “I don’t know,” Riley answered. “But I know there’s no way the two of you can look so much alike without some kind of family connection. You’d have to get DNA testing to confirm it.”

  On the monitor, Novak and his team had reached the floor Sam’s borrowed room was on. They paused at the door, then Novak waved his point man through.

  “I was told she was dead,” Elle said. “My adoptive parents told me all of my family was dead. I had pictures of them, but that was all. Not even memories.” She paused. “At least, I didn’t have memories until I saw St. John.”

  “That triggered memories?” Riley asked.

  “I don’t know. Not at the moment. But later, when I was drugged, I dreamed of playing with a little girl who looked exactly like me. That was before I knew that no cosmetic surgery was involved in St. John’s features. I thought she was just a double the CIA had created, though why they would go to such lengths, I had no idea.”

  “She doesn’t remember you, either,” Riley said. “But seeing you troubled her.”

  “If I had known that my parents’ attempt to get us out of the country had worked, at least halfway, I would have gone to her,” Elle said. “I believed her to be dead. All my life I have felt that half of me was missing. Did St. John ever mention anything like that?”

  “No.”

  A vague look of disappointment touched Elle’s face but it quickly vanished.

  “You knew you were a twin,” Riley said. “Sam didn’t. She still doesn’t. Seeing you has raised some questions for her, but she’s a professional.” He knew that was true now because he’d seen her in action. Maybe she was still green in some areas, but she was learning quickly. “Once we closed out this mission, I’ve no doubt that she would have investigated you.”

  “Does she have a family?”

  Riley watched as the SEALs closed on the hotel room. Thankfully, no other guests or hotel staff were out. “Sam was raised in foster care.”

  “She was never adopted?”

  “No. She never had a family.”

  Elle was quiet for a moment. “That is sad.”

  “Yeah,” Riley agreed, thinking about his own large family.

  On the monitor one of the SEALs shoved a silenced pistol at the lock. No one had seen Ivanovitch or Sam or one of his men come through the lobby. If the Russians were still inside the room, things were going to get bloody. Riley only hoped the SEALs had arrived in time.

  The SEAL squeezed the trigger. The pistol jumped in his fist. Sparks left from the metal plate as the lock disintegrated under the assault of two more shots. The audio dampened the dulled thumps of the silenced pistol, the shattering metal and the splintering wood.

  Then the SEALs kicked the door open wide and barreled through. They went left and right, splitting up into designated groups. Their voices came clear and quick as they secured each room in the suite.

  Novak came on the line less than twenty seconds later. “They’re gone. She’s not here.” He ordered his team out of the suite.

  A cold chill seized Riley’s heart as the statement sank in. We’ve lost her.

  Chapter 16

  S am stared out at the rolling black expanse of the Caspian Sea east of Berzhaan. White curlers rode the tide into the expanse of sand and rock that barely supported the gnarled trees and scrub bushes along the coastline. Suwan butted up against the sea, spilling old and new docks and pilings out into the water.

  A number of fishing boats sat at anchor with their sails furled. Powerboats and a few pleasure craft, mostly belonging to business executives and succe
ssful entrepreneurs, shared harbor space with freighters carrying oil, industrial goods and cargoes of food.

  From her previous missions into Berzhaan, Sam knew that the Caspian Sea was misnamed. The body of water was actually the world’s largest lake. The surface was ninety feet below sea level, and was reportedly shrinking every year. Much of the water was dependent on the flow from the Volga River, which accounted for three-fourths of the water supply, but the many dams built of late along the Volga had been steadily shutting the water flow down. The Caspian was literally drying out.

  The driver turned and followed the gradual descent of the street from Suwan’s downtown district to the docks. Suwan was constructed on a large, rolling hill.

  Sam felt certain that none of the SEALs had followed them from the hotel. She’d tried to be circumspect in her interest, and felt certain she’d succeeded but she’d seen no sign of Novak’s team. Also, she didn’t know if the transmitter concealed in the bag worked clearly enough to record her voice and send it.

  “What’s wrong?” Ivanovitch asked.

  “Headache,” Sam answered. “Changing from the darkness to the lights out here isn’t a pleasant experience. Also, some of the feeling is returning to my lip.” That was true enough, as well. Her eyes ached with the intensity of the lights, and her lip felt like a bee had stung it. When her tongue explored the stitches, they felt rough and alien.

  “I thought, just for a moment, that you looked…nervous.”

  Sam studied the SVR colonel in the corner of the back seat. Ivanovitch sat like a pampered cat, content and full of himself.

  “We’re doing this now,” she said, “when I’m not at my best. I know I’m not at my best.”

  “I have every confidence.”

  That’s not what you said earlier, Sam thought. But she sat quietly.

  The driver evidently knew where he was going. Once he arrived at the docks, he wound through the shipping-and-receiving warehouses and parked at a dock where a sleek motor sailer was tied up. Sam didn’t miss the six men stationed around the dock area in obvious security positions.