Hendrick took the opportunity to grab Maggie’s arm with his left hand and run back through the entrance to the temple. He shoved her around the corner then looked up to see Loshak break free from Lindsey. The Russian agent steadied himself and aimed the gun at Lindsey point blank. In a panic Hendrick brought his weapon up to get off a quick shot at Loshak. The muffled thump from the muzzle of Loshak’s gun told him he was a fraction of a second too late. Lindsey gasped and fell over onto the asphalt.
Hendrick fired twice and put both rounds into Loshak’s chest, flinging the agent backwards and sending him to the ground. Hendrick turned to Maggie and saw that she was aiming a handgun toward the small building in the center of the courtyard. He crouched next to her.
“I’m going to try to get to Lindsey,” said Hendrick. He was out of breath. “Every few seconds fire a shot toward the building to keep the Russian’s head down.”
Maggie eyed him with outright fear on her face. “Be careful,” she said in a wavering voice. Hendrick squeezed her arm then jumped into the entrance and ran toward Lindsey. Maggie’s weapon cracked behind him, sending a bullet into the decorated edge of the building. Hendrick gave a worried glance toward the building then toward Loshak who lay perfectly still on the ground.
Hendrick quickly got to Lindsey’s side and looked closely at the old man. He was still alive, but Hendrick judged not for long. Hendrick heard something slap into the ground to his right then winced at the shower of particles sent in all directions.
Gunfire! Hendrick got to a crouch and grabbed the lapels of Lindsey’s coat. He began to drag him toward Maggie in a feverish attempt to regain cover. A bullet whizzed past Hendrick’s ear just as Maggie put another round into the kiosk.
“Let’s get to the car!” shouted Hendrick. Maggie got off a few more shots then followed Hendrick who hoisted Lindsey onto his shoulders. Lindsey gave a sudden violent twitch. Hendrick knew Lindsey had stopped another bullet. They got behind Maggie’s car, and Hendrick slowly eased Lindsey to the ground. A bullet slammed into the car windshield, blowing a hole in the glass, sending tiny pieces of glass flying into the front seat.
Hendrick examined him with concern. Lindsey had taken Loshak’s bullet in the side and a second bullet in the back. Lindsey grabbed the front of Hendrick’s shirt and pulled him closer with surprising strength. The dying agent was trying to say something to him. Hendrick put his ear next to Lindsey’s lips in an effort to hear him between the cracking of Maggie’s weapon.
“Picture -” gasped Lindsey.
Hendrick looked around quickly. They would have to get him into the car as soon as possible. There was no telling how many agents were in the temple with Drukarev.
With shaking hands Lindsey withdrew a thin envelope from his pocket and pressed it into Hendrick’s hand. The envelope had a bullet hole in it from Loshak and was stained with Lindsey’s blood. The wounded agent tried to say something else but couldn’t find the strength. The periodic slap of bullets into the car suddenly increased to a frantic roar, sending pieces of glass showering over the three of them. Maggie ducked behind the car and gave Hendrick a frantic look.
“Steve, we can’t stay here!” she shouted over the hysterical shredding of the car next to them. Two tires exploded under the gunfire, and Hendrick began to smell leaking gasoline. The gunfire seemed unnatural with only the impact of the bullets heard, not the actual gunshots themselves. Their assailant was using a silenced weapon.
He looked around to determine any possible escape route. The car he had used was at the bottom of the hill but still in full view of the temple and in Drukarev’s field of fire. They would get cut to pieces before they got halfway there.
Hendrick looked back at Lindsey. His head was turned to one side, his eyes were closed, and he was lying very still. Lindsey was dead.
Georgi Bakhtin looked over the battle from his spot on the temple roof with supreme interest. He pulled out a small set of binoculars and gazed through it at the action below. Who were these strangers who were being attacked by Loshak and Drukarev? He hadn’t gotten a good look at them. One had been shot by Loshak, but clearly the other two weren’t going to just give up and die. Loshak’s death at the hands of one of them was even more interesting.
Bakhtin clucked his tongue, a bad habit for a sniper, and brought his rifle up to his shoulder. An opportunity like this doesn’t come along very often, he thought as he rested the barrel on a convenient dragon. One clear shot is all I need.
Five seconds, thought Hendrick. Five seconds before one of Drukarev’s bullets hits us. He wrapped Maggie in his arms and awaited the inevitable. Drukarev ripped the car in front of them to pieces one section at a time.
Hendrick cringed, pulling Maggie close to him and expecting the car to be ripped apart in seconds, causing the detonation of the remaining gasoline. Suddenly the long bursts from Drukarev’s automatic weapon stopped, giving a strange expectancy to the night air. The constant shower of glass stopped, and Hendrick cautiously looked about to see what had given them a reprieve from quick death. Maybe Drukarev was reloading, he thought desperately.
“Time to leave!” he said and leaped to his feet. He didn’t have to exert any force on Maggie’s arm to keep her near him. She was in step with him all the way. They ran down the hill as a small fire broke out underneath Maggie’s shattered car. The fire beneath the car spread quickly, its flames licking greedily at the leaking gasoline from the fuel tank.
The car exploded, sending a fireball thirty feet into the air and a wave of ear shattering sound into the night.
I don’t like this business, thought Bakhtin as he winced at the flare of green light in his scope from the car explosion. The light gradually tapered off until he could see once again the glowing outline of a man in his infrared sight. This sniping business is truly distasteful, he complained to himself. But he knew if he held back, he would be turned over to those animals of the FSB, Federal’nyi Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, Russia’s internal security agency, which had a specific mandate to attack organized crime and government corruption. Whatever rights the Russian people had with their new democracy disappeared in the arms of the FSB. A lot of his old cronies, who were out of a job when the former KGB was disbanded and made into five separate agencies, got new jobs, once again doing the same things they had been doing in the past. Bakhtin was glad he was in the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency. He never liked internal security work, nor the people who did it.
He thought of the information he had received about Loshak and Drukarev from another intelligence agency and how that information confirmed what he and his organization already suspected. Loshak and Drukarev were traitors to Russia.
Bakhtin centered the scope on the green outline of a man and slowly squeezed off a shot. The silenced rifle made a muffled thump and jumped in his hands. The glowing solid figure, twitched, gave a half turn and fell to the ground. Bakhtin worked the bolt, shoving another round into the chamber. He centered the crosshairs on the round appendage at one end of the prostrate form and put the second bullet into the man’s head. Bakhtin stared through the scope, noting the small glowing object that lay near what was left of the man’s head. He was sure of one thing - he didn’t want to see what it was.
A cold feeling came over Bakhtin as he lay on the roof waiting for his heart to calm down. This man will never trouble the SVR again, he thought. After a few moments he stood up straight, silhouetting himself against the twilight sky. He half turned, then looked back. He thought of the man who had completed half of Bakhtin’s mission, the man who had shot Loshak. He waved at the car fleeing into the night.
“Dasvedanya, tovarisch,” he said softly.
CHAPTER 35
Betrayal
Steve Hendrick stared at Maggie for a brief moment, but she avoided him with her eyes. They had spent the ride back to Loh’s house with a definite chill between them.
There were problems. It was only a matter of time before they traced the destroyed car to him. As
a precaution he would report the car stolen. Lindsey’s body had been immolated by the car fire, and it would take authorities some time to identify him. Then there was the matter of his and Maggie’s spent shell casings all over the temple grounds. And God forbid that there might be an eyewitness. Also Hendrick had thought he had seen Drukarev fall to the ground as they had pulled away from the temple. Did someone kill him? Who would that be?
Hendrick sat on the sofa in front of the fireplace, trying to regain control of his thoughts. He had confronted Maggie, and she had avoided his questions.
He turned his attention to the envelope Lindsey had given him. Inside was a photograph. The photo was old by the look of it, but it had been well preserved. Hendrick looked it over quickly. It showed two large bombs with several men standing around them. The bullet hole from Drukarev was between the two bombs.
“The bombs in Stalin’s letter,” said Maggie with awe in her voice.
Hendrick began to study the photo in detail. Two Caucasian men were standing in front of two large bombs that were supported by heavy trailers. Three other men were also seen, and they had distinctly Oriental features. None of them were posing for the picture, and Hendrick suddenly realized that the angle from which the picture was taken was wrong for a good shot of the bombs. He pointed it out to Maggie.
“So, an admitted CIA agent leads us to a photo taken long ago, and the people in the picture don’t seem to know they were being photographed,” said Maggie. “What does that tell you?”
“An intelligence agent took the picture and sent it to the CIA,” said Hendrick. “But where was this picture taken?” He turned the photo over and glanced at a piece of tape on the back with some sort of file number written on it. Bureaucrats have to number everything, thought Hendrick. He looked the photograph over again carefully, and in handling it he felt the tape on the back of the photo slide a little. He pulled on the tape. It had dried out over the years and flaked off easily, revealing some Japanese, or perhaps Chinese characters, written in blue ink and the year 1953 written in black ink. Someone had written the year after the Asian characters were written.
“Nineteen fifty-three,” mused Hendrick to himself. “The year Stalin died.”
Hendrick handed the photo over so that Maggie could see the back. “You know Japanese and Chinese. Any idea what this means?” He pointed to the Oriental characters written on the back of the photo. The characters were written neatly with what he thought to be a fountain pen.
Maggie looked at the characters then shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Hendrick gave her a long look which conveyed disbelief.
“Do you have any idea how many Japanese characters there are?” asked Maggie in an annoyed tone. “Thousands!”
Hendrick shook his head in frustration.
“How do we know that they’re atomic bombs?” asked Maggie to change the subject.
“They’re atomic bombs. They have to be. Conventional bombs weren’t that big,” muttered Hendrick as he picked up the photo to examine it once again. “There’s some Cyrillic lettering on one of the bombs, so they’re Russian all right.” He lapsed into silence for a moment.
“I think this picture was taken in Japan in 1953,” he said slowly. His mind formed a stunning conclusion, one that was so shocking that he hesitated to give voice to it. He looked at Maggie, his mouth hanging open in amazement. “I think the Soviet Union actually did deliver two atomic bombs to the Japanese!”
Maggie looked at him in amazement. “They’ve had them all these years?”
“Stalin was known in his last days to be tired, very old, and even more paranoid than he had ever been previously,” said Hendrick. “So he took a chance to get some of his old enemies at war with one another again. World War Two was a very recent memory in 1953. Japan was still devastated by American bombs, and Stalin thought that the Japanese hated Americans for what we had done to their country. So he gave them the means to get even.”
“But the Japanese never dropped them on us,” said Maggie.
“No, they never did,” answered Hendrick. “That shows what a colossal blunder this was for Stalin in his final days. The Russians view the Japanese as their historical enemies, and they could never have been sure that the Japanese wouldn’t use the bombs against the Russians themselves. The Russian people would be horrified to learn of this scheme. Should the Japanese have used the bombs on the U.S., and the Americans find out the origin of the bombs, then the U.S. would have attacked the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons. The Russians were trying to avoid a war with the United States at that time, not start one.”
“One of Konaka’s men was surprised by the contents of Stalin’s letter,” said Maggie. “It seemed that he knew what Hidden Sun was all about.”
“Konaka had said ‘You have given me Japan.’ What do you think he meant?” asked Hendrick.
Maggie shrugged then sat down in a chair across from Hendrick. She lapsed into thought for a long moment. “This is all pretty heavy duty stuff. It’s going to take some time to absorb it all.” She smiled thinly. “Is there anything we can eat? I’m hungry.”
Hendrick got to his feet. “Okay, I’ll see what left in the kitchen.” He walked down the hall toward the kitchen, had another thought and went back to the living room.
“You know, I just -” He stopped abruptly when he saw Maggie with her coat on. She was stuffing the photo of the bombs into her handbag.
She looked up at him and a flash of guilt ran across her face. It was replaced an instant later with defiance.
Now I know, he thought savagely. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his handgun, quickly lining up the sights on Maggie. She pulled her weapon out at the same time and pointed it at his head. Her aim wavered for a moment, then steadied. The lines in her face grew taut with determination.
“Don’t try to stop me, Hendrick,” she growled at him. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but I made a commitment years ago, and I’m going to honor it. You were right. The Japanese have two Russian atomic bombs in their possession. The Japanese characters on the back of Lindsey’s photo were the location where it was taken. Yokosuka, Japan, 1953. The Japanese government doesn’t want this to go public. They want Stalin’s letter and this photo. And I’m going to give it to them.”
They both stood immobile for what seemed like an eternity. Hendrick slowly lowered his weapon. He knew that whatever Maggie would do, he could never pull the trigger.
“Give me the letter,” she ordered.
Since the confrontation with Loshak and Drukarev, he had taken it everywhere he went. Hendrick slowly pulled the envelope containing the letter from his attaché case. He held it for a second, then dropped it on the floor.
Maggie picked up the envelope, slid the letter halfway out to confirm that it was indeed Stalin’s letter, then carefully placed it in her pocketbook. She lowered her weapon and walked over to the front door poised for her exit into the night.
“I owe them, Hendrick,” she said in a low voice. “I owe them.”
“Who? The SVR, or Konaka?” Hendrick spat out.
Maggie’s normally controlled expression began to break into emotion. “Two of them died for me,” she said in a wavering voice.
Hendrick gave her a hard look, refusing to understand. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Chang and his men! They rescued me from Chang!” said Maggie.
“Chang? What does he have to do with this?” demanded Hendrick.
“Did you believe that bullshit I told you about getting the warlord who bought me drunk, then escaping from all of them?” cried Maggie.
Hendrick’s mouth slowly opened in dismay.
“They came on in a rush, dressed like ninjas, and they were the most beautiful sight I had ever seen in my life,” sobbed Maggie. “They rescued me, and now I’m going to pay them back. Two of them died, Hendrick. Two of them died for me.” She turned to go.
“Who are they? Who do you work for?” asked He
ndrick in a hoarse voice.
Maggie stopped and half turned, looking at him with glistening eyes.
“The Naicho,” she said, pronouncing the word for “inside agency” perfectly. “Japanese Foreign Intelligence.”
The swirling of events and morbid thoughts continued long into the night as Hendrick sat, sipping some of Loh’s Napoleon brandy in front of the fireplace.
The woman he loved had suddenly betrayed him at the basest level. Maybe he had seen it coming with her secret phone call and her clandestine meeting with Lindsey.
But it was the deception that hurt him the most. She had never seen fit to tell him whom she was working for. What a fool he had been. He should have known that the Japanese had wanted to find out what he had found on the Awa Maru. They had a secret on board just as much as the Russians. What would the world think if it knew that the Japanese actually were in possession of two Russian atomic bombs? That would be very embarrassing indeed.
It was clear that Maggie had told the Japanese of Stalin’s letter, and she had received orders to steal it. She also knew that they would want the photo of the bombs as well. The Japanese, as well as the Russians, would want to suppress the letter and the picture. The Japanese government had engendered sympathy as the only nation who had suffered a nuclear attack, and they would not want that sympathy lessened in any way.
So that was it then. But how many people had died, all just to keep a six decade old secret from becoming known?
Hendrick shook his head and took a large gulp of the brandy, feeling it attack his throat in a coarse, stinging manner, then warm his insides as it trickled down to his stomach. The fire in front of him blurred a bit then went back into focus as he blinked his eyes quickly to clear them. He was exhausted after the battles of the last few days.
His eyelids grew heavy as he felt the warmth of the fire seep into him. He had all the lights turned off, and the living room was lit by the flickering glow from the fireplace. Hendrick’s eyes closed as weariness swept over him.
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