by Sadie Jacks
Thumbing off the ringer in my phone, I made sure to check the hallways for any prying eyes or eavesdropping ears. After I double checked it was clear, I leaned against the far wall and connected the call. I held it to my ear as I waited for the other person to speak.
“Rainbows are pretty in the spring,” an automated voice said.
I rolled my eyes. “Which is why I like winter.”
“Voice print recognized. Please hold.”
The call was immediately picked up. “Ark, what the fuck is going on over there?”
I snarled low in my throat. “Are you seriously calling me right now for a status report?”
The person made a noise low in their throat. “When five of our main targets head in your direction, yes, I fucking call for a status report. We haven’t seen them in at least six months. Now they show up. Give me the details.”
I ground my teeth together. “Yes, they’re here. You need to wait for my regular contact. You’re putting me in jeopardy.” I disconnected the call. Shut it off. Stuffed it down my pants.
How could I have been this stupid? Like a rookie on the first day of the job…I’m just glad I didn’t get shot. Forgetting things like that would get me killed. Tortured for a very long time and then killed once I had nothing else to give.
But the message that the bosses were coming down…it had shaken me. They shouldn’t have been here. I’d had to get Talia out of the bathroom. Out of sight. Too freaking fast.
It hadn’t worked. But at least my history was holding. My fealty and loyalty unquestioned.
Now to keep it that way.
No matter the cost.
Chapter 14 – Foster
I pushed through the door of the safe house I’d set up almost ten years ago. One of my mentors had told me to make sure I always had bolt holes. Even when I left the Agency. Damned if she hadn’t been right.
Checking the low tech security system, I finally let out a breath when I saw that it was unchanged from the last time I was here. I threw my shit on the table, sat down on one of the dusty chairs.
Twenty-four hours behind her. The knowledge sliced through me again.
I knew the longer it took to find her, the less likely I’d find her in one piece. Thankful I’d slept on the plane, I started pulling stuff from my bag. My laptop set up and my phone acting as a hot spot, I was on the line with Nik and Turo as soon as the call connected.
“I’m picking up a couple of burners. Once I have the numbers, I’ll make sure you get them. Please tell me we have at least cursory information on the group Papa mentioned.”
“Good afternoon to you, too, Foster,” Nik said.
“Can the shit, Nik. I need to find her.” For more than just the family. I needed to find her for me. I’d gotten her into this mess. Once I left the Agency, I’d sworn that no one else would ever be sucked into this life because of me. That it was Talia…filled me with an almost incandescent rage.
“Watch your mouth, Foster,” Turo said in a low gravelly voice.
I bit back the retort. He was right. “And it’s evening here. Not afternoon. I’m eight hours ahead of you.”
“Duly noted. Good evening,” Nik said, her voice sugar sweet. “Okay, I did some deep sea diving on the Night Terrors. I’m not even going to try to pronounce their name in Russian. According to what data I could find, they’ve been operational since the 1950s when Khrushchev first started closing down the gulags. Their leaders are ghosts though. No solid information on any of them. Just the name and some of the actions they claimed responsibility for.”
“Which were?” I dug through my bag, got out a new set of clothes. I needed to be ready to leave as soon as I had a direction. Walking around looking like an American wasn’t going to cut it.
“They bombed three local libraries where state officials were holding public meetings. Kinda like townhalls, I guess.”
I pulled the shirt on, stuffed my legs into the pants. “That’s it?”
Nik snorted. “Not even close. They make Al Qaeda look like the Salvation Army, but on a much smaller, more intense scale. They earned their name, Night Terrors, legitimately. It was actually given to them by the media, not one they created.”
I blew out a low whistle. “Fuck.”
“Indeed. Since then, they’ve been pretty anti-government. But they don’t poke their heads out of their dens too often. They rule from the shadows and they rule with sheer brutality.”
“I need a name. A location. Hell, a bar they go to. Something. Anything.” I pulled out the last set of boxes for my transformation. Winced at the idea of the process. Oh well. Talia was worth it. My honor was worth it.
“We’ve got nothing. Papa claims he forgot the names of the men in Sweden.”
A lightbulb went off. “Check to see if any of the Swedish newspapers ran the Russians’ names.”
“Already tried that. Thanks for insulting my intelligence,” Nik said, her voice as dry as the Sahara. “The names were the Russian equivalent of John Smith.”
“Fuck.” I went to the sink, started mixing tube A with the solution of bottle B. It burned like a motherfucker, but I couldn’t go around with stark white hair. I just hoped I’d be able to get it all out in a short amount of time. “Any police documents with a common last name?”
I heard Nik ticking away at the keys on her end of the line.
Shaking the bottle containing the hair dye, I started applying it to my scalp. I hissed at the cold feeling as a low burn started in the thin skin on my head. This stuff was awful. But I gritted my teeth and finished applying it. If my scalp was the only sacrifice on this trip, I would consider it a win.
“I’ve got too many police documents with common last names. Do you have anything you can think of to narrow it down?” Nik called.
Thumbing through my mental files, I paced the small space of the safe house. “Okay, let’s go over what Papa told us. They went to Sweden for a cultural tour.”
“Papa had his brothers with him,” Turo added.
“Right. What was the main area of Amatucci control in 1968?” I asked.
“Central and northern Italy. Small parts of France. We’d begun working northwesterly to expand the holdings,” Turo said.
Pulling up a mental map in my head, I nodded. “What families were in control of the northwestern sections of the USSR around that time, Nik?”
“Checking. Hold on.”
Waiting for more information, I fought not to scratch at my scalp. “What part of Sweden did they go to? Does anyone know specifically?”
“I’ll ask Momma,” Turo said. His voice sounded far away as I heard him say, “Momma, I need information.”
“We’ve got a few bratva that had started taking notice and an interest in setting up shop near Leningrad,” Nik said.
“So today’s Saint Petersburg. Good. Who were they?”
“We’ve got origin factors of Gavrila, Saveliy, Timurovich, Vasilievich. A few others. Those are the ones that managed to hold onto their territories.”
“Any of the original bosses do time in gulags? Or have family who survived the gulags?”
“Checking.”
I did another loop around the room, wracked my brain for anything I might have heard over the years. The Night Terrors must be very dark not to have even blipped on my screen while I was stationed here.
Old memories shot from the shadows of my mind. The blood. The sex. The drugs. The lies. No one to trust. No one to count on. No one but myself and my handler—who’d turned out to be one of the worst bad guys out there.
I shoved the thoughts away. That mental path held nothing but old wounds and older guilt. I had to focus on finding Talia. She was the only thing that was important right now.
“Two families, according to the collective,” Nik announced. “Gavrila and Vasilievich. From those, we have the current Vasili family and the Gavrilavich family.”
“Founding members. Is there any information on either of the patriarchs? Or male family m
embers?”
I spun another turn, the sound of my footsteps counting down the time when I could take this poison off my head. It couldn’t come soon enough.
“Vasilievich was started by the Vasili family,” she said.
I chuckled. “As the name literally announces. I need an actual first and surname, not the patronymic name.”
“Hey, don’t get sassy with me, asshole. Let me check. Hang on.”
I winced at the bite in her voice. Wasn’t her fault she wasn’t up to par on Russian naming conventions. I just prayed the information I was looking for was there to be found. It would piss me off to no end if I had to go running around to my old contacts just to put feelers out. In the world of digital instancy, the idea that I might have to go old school was going to put me in a foul mood. Not to mention how much time it would eat up.
I doubted Talia had that much time left. Twenty-four hours was almost too much time for her to still be alive. If this whole thing was a bl—
“Blood debt,” I said out loud. Rushing back to the phone, I leaned down. “We need to think of this as a blood debt.”
“We are, idiot,” Nik snapped back.
“Right. But if the Night Terrors put out the word that they wanted an Amatucci child, why wait for Talia? Isn’t Massimo dipping and darting around the fucking world right now? He would be the logical grab. He’s not in constant communication. He checks in when he wants to. Not even his closest lieutenants and captains know where he is at any given time. Why steal Talia?”
The answer was there. I could almost feel it. Just out of reach.
“Pull up the information you found for me,” I said.
“I told you not to mention that.” Nik’s voice was hushed and tight.
“Pull it up, Nik. Talia’s life could well depend on it.”
“Talia’s life could depend on what?” Turo asked, his voice louder and clearer again.
“I asked Nik to do some digging on a possible contact. I wanted to check it out before I brought it to the family.”
“Foster, you asshole,” Nik said.
“Nik, you can kill me later. Just fucking share it. I don’t have it on me, since you threatened to skin me if it ended up in a digital lockbox. I’ve only got it on a partitioned drive at my home computer. Zero access from the outside.”
“What’s going on, Cricket?” Turo asked.
“What I just said. I’ll take her lashes, Turo. There, Nik, you’re in the clear.” I wanted to beat my fists against the table, but that could bring unwanted attention. Even in this shitty neighborhood.
“Foster thinks he might have found one of Papa’s lost brothers,” Nik said softly. “I did a deep run on a few men who fit the parameters he’d set.”
“I need you to cross reference any of those names with the Vasili and Gavriliavich files. Hurry.” I could feel it. This was the way we needed to go.
Fucking finally.
“Why do you think Papa still has a brother out there? Why only one and not two?” Turo asked as I heard Nik stabbing keys in the background.
“There’s no way two Amatucci family members die and the Amatucci family doesn’t take revenge. Especially in that era. It would have been easy. But it would have been carnage. Someone would have noticed. Even if just in oral histories. But bratva love their histories to be detailed. One of them would have crowed about it. Blasted it all over Russia. But nothing. Just as the two men who died were never mentioned again, which is also aberrant, the Amatucci brothers just disappeared.” I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see me.
“So you took it upon yourself to start digging into family history.”
He made it a clear statement. I heard the warning in the tone. “Yes. I like your sister. She’s a good girl. I like your family. Even Rafe, with his twisted sense of pleasure. None of you bullshit your way to the top. You use truth and you use it ruthlessly. You make sure your ethics are upheld in almost every action. If we had more people in government who were so clear in their motives and methods, we wouldn’t need an intelligence community. Certainly not clandestine operations.”
“You were looking out for us.” Another statement. At least it wasn’t buried in glacier ice this time.
“I wanted to make sure they weren’t out there looking to cause harm. Part of counterintelligence is to know what the enemy is planning so we can be prepared. If the brothers were content to live their lives separate from the family, then I would have left it, and them, alone. But if they had something planned…” I trailed off.
“We’ll be discussing this further. I believe Nik has something to tell you.”
I nodded. “Set the time, I’ll be there.”
“I’ve got a possible match, but data records are showing that the guy is dead. And has been for a long time. One Kuznetsov.” Nik sighed. “I probably bungled that pronunciation, but that’s the only name that came up in all three searches.”
“What do you have on him?”
The timer finally dinged. “Hold that thought. I need to rinse my hair.”
Nik snorted. “You’re seriously worried about your hair right now?”
I ignored her. Walking to the sink, I dipped my head under the faucet and turned the water on. Shaking and shivering under the frigid stream, I rinsed as thoroughly and quickly as I possibly could. Once the water ran clean, I applied the conditioner.
At least the burning had stopped. Getting the temporary color out shouldn’t be nearly as hard. Provided I didn’t have to reapply the color.
Please, whatever god is out there listening, don’t let me have to reapply the color.
Wrapping a plastic bag over the conditioning treatment, I walked back to the table. “Okay. Go.”
“I’ve got a family of four Kuznetsov men leaving one of the prison camps. They were there for not taking a pledge of some kind?”
I snorted. “More like they weren’t Stalin fans. Probably said the wrong thing to the wrong person. But go on.”
“Four men. Roughly twelve to seventeen in age. Was that a fairly common thing? To put the kids in prison camps?”
“Thank the gods it’s not anymore, but yes. Stalin liked to make an example of the entire family. If that included children, he didn’t care.”
“Monster.”
“He and Hitler made a great team, that’s for damn sure. Go on.”
“I’ve got an official death certificate, or what passed for them, on Kuznetsov, V. I don’t have any other first name on that one. Died in 1958.”
“Not him, then. Next.”
“Let me check the dates. See if we can narrow this down.”
I tapped my foot while I waited. Since we were actually getting somewhere that felt useful, I was willing to keep my silence so I could get good intel. It was rare to feel this sure of the information I was receiving.
When I’d been stationed here while I was with the Agency, the intelligence had been a mixed bag of Who Knows. But I trusted Nik like I trusted Ryker—without reservation. Not only was she amazingly skilled with her computers, she worked to make sure she provided quality information, not just the first thing that popped up that supported her claim.
“Okay, I’ve got one left of the original four.”
“Hit me with it. Everything you’ve got.” I took a seat, pulled a notepad from the depths of the laptop bag I had with me. Yanking a pen from somewhere, I got ready to take notes. I wouldn’t be trusting my memory on anything that had to do with retrieving Talia.
“One Gustav Kuznetsov. Born in the mid-1930s, he was sent to the gulag with his brothers. He is the only one to have made it beyond a full year on the other side. There’s no official information on him other than he entered and exited the gulag.”
I gritted my teeth. “So why do you think he’s involved in any of this?”
“For the reasons I’m about to tell you, asshole.”
My smile was wide. Nik didn’t put up with shit. I liked that about her. “I’m listening.”
“Good.
Kuznetsov disappeared. But his brothers ended up with death certificates, or what passes for them in Russia. Now, his family was pretty rich and popular in the Leningrad/Saint Petersburg area. Had massive holdings. Under Stalin’s reign, they lost everything. Assuming Gustav was the twelve year old when he entered the gulag, he would have memories of his home before. Maybe even used those memories as the fodder to keep himself alive.”
“Great. I need a connection, Nik. Not just sob stories from the gulag.”
“Remind me to kick your ass the next time I see you. Do you want to keep interrupting me or do you want to shut your hole and listen to what I have to say?”
I bit back the words.
“Good.”
Turo snorted.
I rolled my eyes.
“Kuznetsov would have been in his early thirties, thirty-three to be exact, in 1968. A robust young man.”
“I’ll remember you said that, Cricket.” Turo said in a low voice.
“Keep your sexy times to yourself. Talia is still in danger,” I bit out.
“Now, assuming his family all died off pretty quickly, what’s the sole survivor of a once powerful family going to do once he leaves the gulag? Especially in a corrupt system that emerged from the fall of the USSR?”
“He’d make a new family,” I said immediately. Just like most places, Russians were very concerned with family lines.
“Right. He’d go back home. Try to see if any of the guys were still around. He’d make his own family. That’s the only way to survive on the streets.”
Nik would definitely know that. “Okay. So you think he made his new family. Where does that leave us now?” I asked.
“While the Kuznetsov name isn’t nearly as prolific in number as it was before the fall of the USSR, there are still some family members around. Either by birth or marriage. There are even a few in the Moscow region.”
My belly tingled. “Where are they?”
“I’m sending you their files. If Gustav created his own family, gave them his patriarchal name, then they would owe allegiance to the man himself. Any children Gustav may have had could see him as the beginning of the family line. Or at least the current iteration of it.”