DEADMAN SWITCH (Joe Brennan Trilogy Book 2)

by Sam Powers

  We are all so very dirty, he thought. We are all victims of our own selfishness.

  Khalidi cleared his throat. “Perhaps Japan can enlighten us with respect to preparations for Russia’s speech later this month in Moscow.”

  “Of course, chairman,” Funomora said. “As requested, we have liaised with the Moscow policy and military intelligence. They’re extremely confident that the decision to move it indoors to the auditorium will afford much stronger security and screening capabilities. They’ll have the place locked down.”

  “They had better,” Miskin said. “We have political support and relations riding on this. The reaction to the lecture series and discussion papers on the ACF has been overwhelmingly positive, and there seems to no longer be discussion among global intelligence sources about prolonged investigations.”

  Funomora tried to seem gracious in pointing out the obvious: “Of course, I’m sure none of us has overlooked the fact that since Tilo Bustamante’s death, there have been no more shootings.” He wanted to hear what they really thought, but doubted that would happen.

  Fung had been quiet throughout but raised his voice. “So you think Wilhelm’s death was the accident it appeared to be?”

  “Officially so, vice-chairman,” the Japanese delegate said. “Beyond that…”

  “What about the reporter?” Khalidi asked from the chair. “Why have we not managed to deal with her?”

  “She seems to have gone to ground professionally,” Funomora said. “I believe she is receiving help from people in the intelligence community. Still, she has not published anything in nearly two months, and her visit to Russia’s house was the last time she has been seen since our agent’s death in Washington.”

  “Your agent,” Fung corrected. “He was former Japanese secret service, was he not?”

  “He was.”

  Fung harrumphed. “Hmmm…. I suppose we should not be surprised then that he failed. Have any of our intelligence assets offered any direction?”

  “They are still hunting for her, vice-chairman,” Funomora said. “But I have no doubt that they will eventually get the job done.”

  “Let us hope so,” Khalidi said. “Your recent track record of failure does not engender confidence.”

  May 12, 2016, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The phone rang at three o’clock in the morning, which for most people would probably have been an invitation to ignore it, let the machine take it, and go back to bed.

  But Myrna had been waiting to hear from Brennan for more than a month. They’d made progress; that hadn’t prevented Alex’s frustration at being practically confined to Myrna’s tiny apartment; and Myrna’s online sources were giving her the impression the agency was losing interest in the sniper case, more firmly convinced the shooter had been operating under the orders of the late Tilo Bustamante.

  “Hi,” Brennan said.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Myrna hissed. Alex was still asleep and she knew Brennan wouldn’t want to stay on the line long enough to talk to both of them. Plus, if anyone was listening in, keeping her clear of details also meant keeping her safe. “We’ve been worried as hell.”

  “I got held up. Long story.”

  “Can you talk location?”

  “No. Don’t know who has ears over there. We have to keep this simple.”

  Myrna told him they’d been hard at work via online contacts and research. “Our group’s pedigree is somewhat as advertised. And the deal for the item you’ve been inquiring about was brokered by a long-time competitor of another Russian friend you recently visited, initials DK.”

  Dmitri Konyakovich, a well-known Russian arms dealer. She’d avoided saying the name; public monitoring by the agency and NSA via co-operative telecom companies could be automatically triggered by certain keywords.

  Knowing who brokered the nuke deal gave Brennan leverage to approach Miskin and bluff him, let him know the Khalidi’s money was involved, that the rest of the ACF would be tarred by association and he’d be helping a rival.

  “What happened to our other friend?”

  He was asking about Walter. Myrna hadn’t thought about her old friend in several days as her mind adjusted to the idea of living without him. “I expect we’ll never know. It’s entirely possible the same folks you ran into earlier were looking for him, as well. I haven’t heard from the local boys in a while; I’m not sure they consider it a priority anymore.”

  “Well… I can’t say I’m surprised.” Myrna could hear the disappointment in Joe’s voice. “I’m going to check in with the right people and see what they want me to do in the morning, but I’ll be recommending our Russian friend for the obvious reasons.”

  “Keep your head down.”

  “I will; in the meantime, the two of you can work on tying down any more links between the group we’ve discussed in the past and other actions outside its mandate.”

  They’d managed to get everything they needed into the conversation without revealing much. Without an encrypted line, it was the best they could do, although Myrna knew there was probably nothing Joe wanted more than to have a real conversation. “You take care, okay?” she said, which was about the most she could offer.

  “Yeah. Let the other half know I’m good, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said, before hanging up.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  David Fenton-Wright was less forgiving regarding Brennan’s troubles. His private line had rung and Brennan had said “deputy director?”, and DFW had bitten his head off.

  “I told you to stay in Europe and the next thing I’m hearing, our embassy man in Angola is bailing you out. Angola?!? What the hell are you doing?”

  For a brief moment, Brennan wished he could punch the man through an encrypted phone line. “I’m heading for Moscow. Miskin is giving a public address in a couple of days, a distinguished alumni speech at the university. He’ll be a potential target and besides, I need to talk to him about a few things. I thought that was what you wanted.”

  “Why were you in Angola?”

  “A lead, that’s all,” Brennan lied. If David knew he’d been pursuing Bustamante’s nuclear angle, he’d have gone ballistic himself. “Nothing major.”

  “You were out of touch for six weeks.”

  “I didn’t say it was an easy nothing.”

  “And If I didn’t know better,” Fenton-Wright said, “if I didn’t know how aware you are of the consequences of crossing me, I’d almost think you were lying to me so you could chase after a phantom bomb.”

  “David, would I…”

  “Don’t even pretend you respect my authority, Brennan,” Fenton-Wright said, more than a hint of bitterness in his voice. “You field agents are all the same, more testosterone than intelligence, and no appreciation for the hard work that goes into running this agency.”

  When something is threatening the very future of mankind, that’s what you want to hear from your boss, Brennan thought: a rant about how the world is out to get him.

  May 18, 2016, MOSCOW, RUSSIA

  The early morning red-eye from Heathrow bounced once as it touched down at Domodedovo International Airport, making a few people nervous in the two-thirds full passenger cabin.

  It taxied to a gate and the tired masses piled out, Brennan joining the other business travelers as they tromped down a long corridor with glass walls that gave them a view of the runway, until they reached the terminal, its broad expanses of booths, seating areas and monitors already busy at eight o’clock in the morning. The Russian airport had been refurbished since his last visit, gleaming masses of glass and steel replacing 1960s concrete bunker-style Cold War pragmatism, favored for so many decades.

  Security was tight and he was patted down several times, as well as having his bags searched, a hedge against terrorism after a suicide bomb attack a few years earlier. Inside, the airport itself looked like a hundred others from the west, with no hint of its a
ustere earlier nature, the years spent as a concrete monument to the proletariat, most of who weren’t really allowed to use it. There were coffee booths, and a McDonald’s, and a Starbucks with oversized muffins, and something that looked like Sunglass Hut, but in Russian.

  Once through the sliding glass doors, he hailed a cab and asked the driver to take him to the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski, where he had a room reserved for Peter Taylor, a clothing company representative trying to find new markets for his company’s products. He immediately regretted the choice of transportation when the cabbie informed him, politely, that traffic was so bad it would take nearly two hours to cover the forty kilometers to the hotel, and that he’d have been better off taking the train.

  It was a drab and unenviable drive up until they reached their destination. The hotel was a classic building, eight stories of white plaster and a corner tower that reached above the grey slate roof, stretching into the Moscow sky like half of a child’s toy rocket, its perspective idyllically trained upon the Kremlin and other iconic structures.

  His room was luxurious, a far cry above most in which he’d stayed, with bright tones and light-colored wood furniture, a sitting room with a fashionably striped tan-and-green sofa set. In Russia, he was less likely to attract attention if he hung out with some of the business heavy hitters who used the Hotel Baltschug regularly, among a trio of hotels that had become hubs of the international corporate world, even at an exorbitant seven hundred dollars a night. It was also only ten minutes from the university, where Miskin would address students the following day on the need for government austerity in increasingly competitive marketplaces.

  It was all a bit of a joke really, Brennan thought. He’d read Miskin’s file; he was no entrepreneur, just another robber baron with the right number of soldiers and firepower at the time that the Soviet Union fell to make himself one of the top dogs. After establishing a vast petrochemical empire from communist assets bought at pennies on the dollar, he’d become ambassador to the U.S. for a decade, before fading into private life; he’d joined several large company boards, taken an official title as a cultural attaché, and spent his time looking utterly unlike the good party member he’d once been.

  Brennan called down to room service for a twenty-dollar burger, before unscrewing the back of the phone and its cradle, checking inside both for listening devices. Then he went through the unit one item at a time, methodically looking for more bugs. It wasn’t that he necessarily expected to find them; back in the Soviet days, the unit would have been rife with fiber optic imaging and good old fashioned audio pickups. These days, Russia was supposed to be more open and respectful of its visitors. But Brennan knew their intelligence guys were just as well trained, just as good as they’d ever been. There was a chance his passport had been made as a forgery at the airport; but in Russia, that didn’t mean they’d automatically arrest him. They’d be interested, instead, to find out why he was there. And if they had identified him, the room would be tapped.

  He swept the room twice, checking for loose furniture buttons, under the edges of furniture, under the desk and table tops, inside the lamps and the overhead fixture. But he found nothing. That didn’t mean there was nothing there, just potentially that whoever hid it did a good job. It was largely irrelevant, as he had no plans to discuss anything sensitive out loud. He didn’t do that in America, and he wasn’t going to start in Moscow.

  The phone rang.

  “Good, you’re there.” It was Fenton-Wright.

  “As advertised.”

  “Yes… well, I’m calling you off. Head back to D.C.”

  “What? Why? I’m already here. I just got here. What harm can there be in…”

  “We’ll discuss this later. Right now, I’m of the opinion that you’re wasting time and resources with Miskin. There have been a dozen other opportunities in recent months for someone to take him out if they so wished, and yet nothing.”

  “But today is the first time he’s spoken on his home turf,” Brennan argued. “I thought we’d agreed these were statement killings. It’s the first opportunity…”

  “Look, this isn’t a debate or a discussion,” Fenton-Wright said. “Come home.” The ACF was convinced Bustamante had been behind the attacks. The last thing Fenton-Wright needed was someone pestering Miskin on his own turf, where he had domestic political considerations to take into account. The ACF members expected him to keep that kind of heat off of their backs. “That’s an order. Get out of there, now.”

  Click.

  Brennan stared at the phone. When David hung up on someone, it meant the conversation wasn’t just over, but that it was never supposed to be a discussion to begin with. Any chance Brennan had of extricating himself from the agency’s blacklist would go right out of the window if he disobeyed.

  He walked over to the window and looked out. He could see the university, across the adjacent river. Miskin was slated to speak in just over an hour. Brennan wasn’t as worried about the sniper – who seemed to have gone to ground for months – as he was about the intended use of the South African nuclear device. And if an associate of Miskin’s had brokered that deal, Brennan needed to talk to him, regardless of what David said.

  Ignoring Fenton-Wright was becoming a bit of a hobby.

  The auditorium was in an uncharacteristically new building, a brownstone-and-glass addition to the university’s aging character. The property was littered with police and security when the asset arrived; he covered the short distance from the train station on foot, guitar case in hand, non-descript once again in dark jeans, casual dress shoes and a blue winter coat. He took the broad stone stairs up to the main doors, passing among the heavy campus foot traffic, students and professors and visitors alike. Then he stopped before entering and surveyed the area.

  The asset knew where he would set up. The original speech location, outside the students’ services building, had clearer lines of sight and would have made egress much easier. The auditorium only had a back balcony, above the entryway, as a possible hiding place for a shooter. He ignored it. When the time came and he squeezed the trigger, the investigation would be immediate and would start there. Instead, he’d traced the angles of the side windows to the podium then drawn an imaginary line back from them. One went directly to a two-story sciences building some two hundred yards away. The windows were open perhaps two inches, a difficult shot at the best of times, due to wind shear.

  Difficult, but doable.

  He crossed the two hundred yards and checked around to ensure no one was watching as he walked behind the building. On the back wall, the asset found a black metal ladder that went up to the roof. He climbed it quickly, hard-sided case in one hand, and when he reached the top he stayed low, out of sight, moving quickly to the wall where the angle to the target intersected its ledge.

  He knelt and undid the case’s fasteners, then withdrew the components and assembled the weapon. He placed the sight, then used it to locate nearby trees, watching the branch movement so that he could properly gauge wind speed and direction. Then he swung the sight back to the window, through the tiny gap between it and the window frame, the crosshairs coming to rest just above the podium. Once he’d focused in, he lay the rifle down against the edge of the rooftop in the precise position. Then he backtracked across the roof, staying low. He climbed down the ladder and surveyed the area. There was a parking lot across the road that ran behind the sciences building and he crossed to it casually, hands in pockets, just another Muscovite out for a walk.

  The lot was full of cars, empty of drivers; the asset moved from vehicle to vehicle. At each, he quickly knelt and looked underneath. Moscow is enshrouded in winter for seven months of the year and the asset knew from his intel that people sometimes used magnetic key boxes to store a spare under their car, in case they got locked out in dangerously cold weather. He would have simply hotwired a car, but most were new and built with engine arrest to defeat just such a theft.

  It took twenty-three ca
rs before his search bore fruit. He checked the parking slip; the person had paid for a full day and it was still morning. That meant it would still be there in two hours, more than likely, and would be his first exit choice.

  He had plenty of time. An alternative would present itself, he decided, if he searched the area properly. And then he would be ready.

  Brennan was waiting at the auditorium when people began to arrive, getting through the doors to the free event early so that he could look them over as they entered. He was standing to one side of the stage, a policeman eyeing him suspiciously, when Miskin was ushered in by handlers. The Russian’s eyes widened when he saw him. Miskin looked across the room briefly to see if anyone was paying attention as they seated him behind the front table.

  When he was comfortable that his handlers had left for a few moments, he got up and walked over to Brennan’s seat in the second row, taking the empty perch next to him at the end of the row.

  “To say it is a surprise to see you here, my friend, would be a large understatement.”

  Brennan extended a hand and Miskin shook it warily. “My apologies, Boris Mikhailovich, for the nature of our last meeting. It was rude of me to drop in unannounced.”

  Miskin looked at his bandaged fingers. “You have accident with stove, perhaps?”

  “Not my own, unfortunately.”

  “And today? Though my ego could use the stroking, I suspect you did not fly all the way from Washington to Moscow on a whim.”

  “No, no I didn’t,” Brennan said. “I need to talk to you about a certain missing South African package.”

  Miskin’s face drained of color. “How do you …”

  “It is a long story. But I believe that package still exists.”

  “Impossible. It was lost a long time ago.”

  “No. Those interested were duped by Borz Abubakar.”