by Roger Weston
Chuck shook his head and squeezed his forehead.
Lawrence told his wife, “It’s just a spook who’s been shaking some trees.”
“You mean assassinating presidents. Don’t you think I watch the news? Brandt cannot call this house.”
“Please! He is our friend. I will talk to you in a minute.”
“No! This is my home. He’s the most wanted man in the world. He cannot call here. Oh, my God. Every cop in America is looking for him. They’ll be pounding on our door.”
“This is a secure phone.”
“I don’t care! Hang it up.”
“You gotta quit watching the news,” Lawrence said. “He had nothing to do with those assassinations. I’ll be right back.”
Chuck heard a door shut.
“Are you there?” Lawrence said. “Sorry about that. Bonnie had nothing but good things to say about you after we had dinner last month. It’s just all the news hype.”
“That wasn’t all on the news,” Chuck said in a hushed voice.
“Don’t worry, Chuck. I love that woman more than life itself. We’ll get through this. She’ll calm down.”
“What can you tell me?” Chuck whispered. The flashing lights of a police cruiser lit up the trees behind the building where he was hiding. He heard the cop car slowly cruise past just as the Mustang had. Chuck started picking the lock to the Fischer Meats store that he was hiding behind.
Lawrence said, “You really know how to pick enemies. I’ve been researching Maroz, but his past is about as murky as Alabama swamp water.”
Chuck put in an ear speaker, set his phone down, and worked his lock-pick tools.
“Do you have a minute?” Lawrence said.
“Sure.”
Chuck heard voices. A quick look around the corner of the building revealed two cops walking the street, looking for someone—probably him. He put away his lock-picking tool and opened the door of Fischer Meats. He slipped inside and closed the door behind him. The smell of raw meat filled his nostrils.
“This goes way back, Chuck. Maroz’s grandfather was a Nazi collaborator in Belarus. His name was Maxim Maroz.”
“You’ve got to be joking.” Chuck held the phone to his ear now.
“No, the younger Maroz’s right-hand man is descended from Gerhardt Kielce, a former Nazi, chief of Émigré Affairs for the SS, who was the elder Maroz’s handler in the 1940’s.”
“That’s the bastard who set me up.”
“Chuck, he’s been dead for thirty years.”
“What?”
“You’re talking about his grandson.”
“Oh, I see. Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You’re saying that back in World War Two, Maroz’s grandfather, Maxim Maroz, worked with a handler named Kielce. Now, today, the grandsons of these two Nazis are working together.”
“Exactly, except the elder Maroz was a not a Nazi. He was a Nazi collaborator.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like this. Hitler had carved out areas in Smolsk and turned them into ghettos for the Jews. The problem was that the Germans were shipping in tens of thousands of Jews from occupied territories. They had to make room for the new arrivals in the barrios. The only way to do that was to massacre thousands of Jews.
“As I said, Gerhardt Kielce was a chief of Émigré Affairs for the SS. Part of his duties included the formation and implementation of mobile killing units in Byelorussia. These killing units were called Einsatzgruppen. There were too many Jews to kill for the Germans to do it alone, so he organized native collaborators to shoulder much of the work.”
“You’re saying that the elder Maroz helped the Nazis exterminate Jews?”
“He was more than a helper. He was an independent contractor. In exchange for exterminating Jews, he was promised not only survival, but also an important role in a Belarus puppet government.”
Chuck shook his head in disgust.
“Are you there?” Lawrence said.
“Yeah, I’m listening. Hold on.” Chuck heard voices outside. The cops had walked around behind Fischer Meats. Chuck reached up and quietly locked the door. A moment later, the handle rattled.
“It’s locked,” a cop said. “Let’s check over there.”
“Can I talk now?” Lawrence said.
“Go ahead,” Chuck whispered. “I’m starting to see why Erica quit her job.”
“What?” Lawrence cleared his throat. “Never mind. Andrew Maroz, the grandson, is a media mogul. I already pointed out that his right-hand man Kielce was also descended from Nazis. They’re part of the Immortals secret society. Rumors in Washington say they’re twisting arms for a plan of one-world government.”
“Tell me they’re not fascists.”
“No, no they’re communists. The Germans were National Socialists. What’d you call me about, anyway, Chuck?”
“Have you heard of CERBERUS?”
“Vague rumors. Why?”
“I saw an insignia on a document—a horned, rearing horse with human hands and wielding chains. It was an insignia for an organization named CERBERUS. I think it’s some kind of secret militia.”
“Very unusual.”
“I saw the same insignia on the rings of two assassins. I think these are Maroz’s people.”
“And how did you happen to see these rings?”
“They were trying to kill me. They still are.”
“Man, you got problems. Andrew Maroz can afford to hire a private army. You’re in it up to your neck, pal. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”
“Maybe you could help me out.”
“I’ll do what I can, but around DC you’re hotter than plutonium. You’ve got to get me some hard evidence of your innocence. Then I go to work for you.”
“Thanks,” Chuck said. “I gotta go.”
Chuck put his phone away and looked outside. He stood there with the door cracked for a few minutes then moved out into the darkness.
CHAPTER 19
CIA special agent Kyle Cabral was the only rookie lucky enough to be part of a surveillance team tasked with bagging Chuck Brandt, often called the most hunted man alive. From what Kyle had heard, Brandt had a rocky relationship with the CIA and other secret services. He was extremely dependable, but unorthodox. His main weakness was that he was more concerned with doing what was right than what was expedient. In a way, Kyle thought the country would be a better place if there were more people like Brandt, but then again, he just had to follow orders and take down a legend. Kyle didn’t like it, but he would follow orders and keep his job.
At 3:00 p.m, a couple of street toughs arrived and met up with a couple of other henchmen. Standing beneath a streetlight on the shipyard, the CIA surveillance team, which was doing surveillance across the street from Chuck’s ship, verified that Brandt was not among these men.
Suddenly, a fight broke out. Shots were fired at a fleeing man. The team watched two thugs beat a second man. After a minute, it became clear that they were going to beat him to death. Morally, Kyle wanted to respond, but he could not without blowing their cover. Therefore, they called in the Seattle police. A quiet argument broke out among Kyle and the surveillance team over whether it was moral to passively watch a man get beaten to death and not come to his aid.
***
While all of this excitement was taking place, the surveillance team failed to notice when a wooden workboat that motored softly through the darkness of the shipping canal and aimed directly for Chuck Brandt’s cargo ship, the Nightingale. Using a super-quiet motor, staying away from lights and behind moored fishing boats, the old wood boat slipped up next to the Nightingale unnoticed.
***
In the building across the street, the surveillance team was still distracted by the activity down in the shipyard. It looked to Kyle like the two attackers had beaten the man to death and then left. The team was in conflict as Kyle rebuked the others, who had insisted they follow protocol. Kyle said they had blood on their hands throu
gh negligence. They cussed him out and called him a greenhorn followed by strings of expletives. As they argued, a van showed up. The team quieted down and watched as a white van pulled up and the body was put in the van. Now the surveillance team faced a mutiny as Kyle ran for the door. Two others intercepted him and wrestled him to the floor.
***
Meanwhile, with the old workboat hidden behind Brandt’s ship, the CERBERUS field agents onboard opened the sea cocks. As the boat filled with water, two men in wets suits pulled the duct tape off of ax gashes in the sides of two dozen barrels of oils. The result was that after the boat sunk, the barrels of oil would slowly leak oil into the shipping canal for weeks or until a coast guard cleanup team identified the source of the leak and dealt with the barrels. That would give the hit team more than enough time to assassinate Brandt if he foolishly returned amid the crisis to save his old ship, which would be blamed for the oil spill.
***
Dressed in his finest suit, Hurst dropped by the courthouse to make an appearance related to a case he was working. Hurst had dropped most of his other clients to work exclusively for Maroz, but he’d held onto a couple of cases that were guaranteed to have big paydays. This was for one of them. Still, given that he’d just blown away a man down in Burien, he was a bit edgy when he went through the security check inside the front door of the courthouse. For a moment, he thought he’d forgotten to remove his shoulder holster and his new .45 handgun. He reached for his chest and sighed with relief that he’d left his gun in his car. It was one thing to assassinate people in another country, but doing it half an hour away was always weird. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d planned for when he went to law school. At least one of his law professors, Jubal Jorgensen, would have probably admired his ability to get things done “at all costs.”
Hurst was relieved to get past the security check. Walking through the courthouse, he thought about Chuck Brandt, the man for whose death he was holding a million dollars in escrow. Whoever put a bullet in Chuck Brandt would rake in a fortune. Hurst wouldn’t mind doing the job himself. It would be a sad day if he had to pay off one of the CERBERUS snipers who, assuming their distract-and-deep-six mission was a success, were currently setting up to watch Brandt’s ship from sniper nests just two hundred yards away from the unsuspecting CIA surveillance team. The CERBERUS snipers were just waiting for him to return to deal with the oil slick and save his ship from the threat of Coast Guard inspection and seizure.
Hurst stood by the doors to one of the courtrooms and made a call.
“How’d the distraction go?”
“Smooth,” said a harsh, blunt voice. “The trap is set. The oil is leaking like a sieve.”
“Excellent,” Hurst said. “Make sure your watchers stay alert.”
Normally, Hurst wouldn’t expect a man like Brandt to take the bait given that he was the subject of a massive publicity campaign and CIA manhunt. However, he’d learned that Brandt was determined to make this ship rehab project work to provide jobs and shelter for his formerly-homeless crew. He might try to sneak onboard his ship at night the way he did his fishing boat over at Port Gamble. This time, however, he would fail, because Hurst’s sniper teams would be hiding on both sides of the canal. If he wouldn’t take that risk, he might still contact his crew by phone. Brandt’s purser, Paul Miller, was a disbarred lawyer who’d ended up on the streets. At one time, he had been really good. He’d beaten Hurst in a case that nobody could have won, but then, from what Hurst had heard, he’d been beaten by the bottle. Chuck had recruited him out of rehab and put him to work. A sad charity case, Hurst thought. Still, he seemed a likely person for Chuck to contact. When he did, CIA techies would tap and trace the call. They’d triangulate on Chuck’s location almost as fast as GPS would put a target on him.
CHAPTER 20
After prevailing on his summary judgment motion in court, Hurst went to a temporary office one of his Nevada corporations had leased out in downtown Seattle. Working all evening and late into the night, he dealt with some legal issues related to the Lancastria Industries seizure of oil fields and mines in Venezuela. He made phone calls, gave instructions to his paralegals, and negotiated contracts with bulk shippers, as well as owners of oil tankers to export oil. Maroz needed a massive influx of cash in a hurry to fund the Venezuelan government and deliver rations to the people. Given that he was reducing the people to helpless dependents, he would have to ensure that most of the people received at least four meals per week to avoid starvation. Once the big oil and mineral money started flowing in, he would boost the rations so that every citizen received five meals per week. He needed to keep the people alive, but weak, anemic, and defeated. A weak populace could not wage an effective revolt.
Hurst also drew up plans for mass arrests of political enemies—and basically any person who was well-educated in history about the horrors of socialism and communism. The flip side of that was that the ignorant had to be brainwashed with a massive television and radio campaign, which Maroz and his executives at Lancastria Media would oversee. Citizens would be constantly fed propaganda on how the United States was to blame for their suffering and how the United States was secretly planning an attack on Venezuela, which made rationing all the more important as they prepared for the invasion. Combined with a flood of anti-capitalist propaganda, the ignorant masses would fall in line so as to avoid being arrested and disappearing for good. Lies about an American attack would marry the people to their government out of fear. They would feel that the government was their only hope for protection from attack.
Beyond political planning and negotiating with oil shippers for cargoes, Hurst was overseeing the hiring of a team of Venezuelan attorneys to handle legal issues that arose in Venezuela surrounding all of Lancastria Industries’ new assets. In order to continue to expand their assets while calming the riots, they would take new softer tactics for seizing smaller mines and factories. Using the stick-and-carrot approach, they would file hundreds of frivolous lawsuits combined with blackmail and even subtle threats of violence, yet at the same time they would not add fuel to the fire to the point where they lose control of the populace.
Property owners would be given a choice. They could sell their assets for ten cents on the dollar—or they could be ruined and get nothing. They would find notices posted on their doors, ordering their factories to shut down due to environmental concerns or corruption fears. They would be smeared and slandered in the media to the point where nobody would be surprised when their mines and factories were seized. The people would already know from the news that these were corrupt and greedy business owners who were exploiting the land and the people. If the property owners resisted government takeovers, they would risk being arrested and severely beaten.
Another reason why Hurst was under pressure to produce oil money for Maroz was that they would have to build several new prisons to handle those who resisted the new order. They could make many of the people disappear, but not all of them, not all at once. Maroz was shrewd. He knew that the docile population would not revolt if he avoided the appearance of extreme and overt violence.
All of this planning and reviewing was done by 3:00 a.m. Then Hurst crashed on the couch for several hours.
At 9:00 a.m., he called up the Coast Guard. He said, “I need to report a serious oil leak in the shipping canal. Who would I need to talk to? Can you connect me? Thank you.”
He waited a minute then a man came on the line. “This is Lieutenant Commander Hernandez.”
“Sir, my name is Walter Hill. You probably already know about this, but there is a freezer tramper called the Nightingale down in the shipping canal that is leaking a ton of oil. Only reason I’m calling is because I don’t see anybody doing anything about it.”
“How big is the oil slick?”
“You mean you guys haven’t even heard about this yet? It’s all around the ship and clear across the canal. It’s also drifting about a quarter mile. I saw birds covered with oil a
long the canal. It’s a sad thing to see.”
“Where is it docked?”
Hurst gave him the exact location.
Hernandez said, “Thank you. Do you know whose ship is it?”
“How would I know? I was just walking my dog. If you guys don’t do something fast, I’ll call the EPA.”
“Thank you, sir. We will send people over there right away.”
After he hung up, Hurst gave his paralegal team final instructions for the day and then left the office. He was an important man who was being entrusted with massive responsibilities by Maroz because he was extremely intelligent and a natural leader of men.
Late in the afternoon, Hurst went to Ballard, where he’d already secured a fast lease for an office in a building with a view of Chuck Brandt’s freezer ship, the Nightingale. As usual, cash solved all problems. The old building was a boxy structure constructed with countless tons of stone blocks and cement. Its ground floor also featured a stout arch and large-windowed shops of shipping and fishing supplies. It had boxy windows on all three upper floors. Slender, five-foot high Corinthian columns bracketed the windows. That one of them was cracked open would have interested nobody, Hurst thought. Little did they know that a CERBERUS sniper team was set up behind that picturesque third-floor slab of glass.
Hurst checked in on the third-floor sniper team. They had Brandt’s freezer ship the Nightingale under surveillance from their nest two hundred yards away.
The sniper was a Ukrainian with a big round face, a deadpan expression, and a deer-in-the-headlights look, as if he was still pissed off about the Leningrad purge that happened long before he was even born. His glassy eyes followed Hurst as he drank from his clear water bottle. He watched the ship through his scope and the open window. He wore a dirty shirt, not tucked in, and he resembled a deadbeat with unfeeling, unimpressed eyes. It was like he was looking at Hurst through water. His gravedigger’s scowl masked his indifference. When Hurst spoke to him, it was like the words didn’t register in his brain. He pulled his Mouser out of his holster, set it aside, and focused his attention through his rifle’s scope.