The director nodded. “Stan has a valid point,” watching Grogan carefully for her reactions.
Grogan turned and fixed her operations counterpart with a raised brow.
“That’s right; for once I had someone at that desk who was capable of doing that particular job. Lynn dug her teeth into those two and hung on. They are wanted in this country for the murder of federal agents, including our own. Everywhere they went in Moscow, Minsk, Kiev, and even Kurdistan, she had our people watching them. She was making life miserable by letting their prospective clients and associates be aware their time was drawing to a close. Finally, and this is in my monthly departmental report, she was authorized by me to forward the file to Russian intelligence on their activities. That file included outlays for taking out certain Russian politico’s in Moscow who they deemed dangerous to their illegal operations. Evidently, the new Russian president moved on that evidence and sent them scurrying.”
“And now your girl wonder is in their hands. Does that make you feel better?” Rosen asked giving back the raised brow look.
“That’s uncalled for, Stan. I need you both to work together on this. The Canadian PM just threatened the president with public disclosure. We have to get this thing under some kind of control and get him answers. I want a full court press on this.”
“Even though I despise the way this came down, I have to tell you that I think the prime minister is bluffing. His people were there also; what can he say? He doesn’t know what his intelligence services are doing? Besides, he has separatist protests and outright riots in Montreal he has to deal with and something like this could only add to his French-speaking provincial problems.”
“How is their guy doing?” Easterbrook asked.
“John Alexander is one tough nut. As I told you in numerous reports, he’s one of the good guys and the bastard’s hard to kill. He’ll recover. He was wearing his vest. He’s a real pro.”
“Good, good. Now—”
“If I know him, he’ll want in on whatever it is we do about this. He and Simpson were close. They both spent time with MI-5 in Birmingham on the Al-Qaeda thing. Evidently, he’s a close friend of her family.”
“If he asks, we’ll allow it as a professional courtesy. That’s the least we can do,” Easterbrook said, nodding that their brief meeting was concluded.
Nancy Grogan cleared her throat. The director looked up and Rosen sat back in his chair.
“You have something else?”
“Lynn Simpson.”
“I want her back. If not, I want the men who killed her.”
“It’s not that, sir. There’s a reason why she is as good as she is. Why she’s pegged to be a company leader in the near future. It seems to run in her blood.”
“Get to the point,” Easterbrook ordered.
“Simpson is Lynn’s mother’s maiden name. Collins is her real name.”
Director Easterbrook bit his lower lip and then swiveled his chair to face his large window as he thought. Rosen for his part was lost as to what she was getting at.
“So?” Rosen finally asked.
Grogan shook her head and then turned and looked at the assistant director.
“She’s the sister of a very dangerous man, at least he used to be. This Colonel Collins and Punchy Alexander go way back. They were joint heads of a special operations action in Canada. I can’t get details on the mission, but it had something to do with recovering a project called Solar Flare. I couldn’t get any more details on—,”
“He still is a dangerous man, and there is no such thing as Solar Flare,” Easterbrook said, still looking out of his window away from his two assistants. “At least publicly there isn’t. It was a search and rescue operation twenty-five years after it was lost. It has no bearing on the action taken in Montreal.”
Nancy Grogan caught the drift and knew the subject of this Solar Flare was off limits.
“I thought the army buried Colonel Collins somewhere?” Grogan asked the back of the director’s chair.
Easterbrook finally and slowly turned his chair back to face the two. He ran a hand through his completely gray head of hair, and then fixed Nancy with his stern look.
“I hear rumors, and they all say that Colonel Jack Collins is still very much in the mix”—the director picked up the phone—“and if the rumors I hear are true, he won’t be very happy about us losing his little sister. Now, excuse me.”
“Lynn said she and her brother don’t speak that often, that they’re not that close,” Grogan said.
The director paused with phone in hand and looked at both of his people.
“Do you want to be the one to inform him, if we can even locate him, that is?”
Grogan lowered her eyes and then turned and started to leave.
“I don’t get it, who is this Collins, and what is the big deal?” Rosen asked. “He’s just a colonel for God’s sake.”
“From his reputation, he’s not only one of the best soldiers this country has ever produced, but also just about the most dangerous man alive—at least he once was,” Grogan said as she reached for the door handle.
“This stays in this office,” Easterbrook said as he started punching numbers, bypassing his assistant in the outer office, standard procedure when he called the president’s private line.
“I don’t see the concern here. I think we have bigger problems to deal with than some army colonel,” Rosen said as he looked from the director to Grogan. “Come on, he’s only one guy, right?”
Grogan turned and caught the attention of the director.
“Look, Collins is a legend, at least in the field.”
“I’ll bet he’s stuck behind a desk somewhere, out of the way, one of those break-glass-in-case-of-war guys; probably just a relic by now.”
2
MCLEAN, VIRGINIA
Lynn Simpson wasn’t bound or gagged, and had been treated well since the savagery of the early morning. She was now locked in a small room just off the basement of a house. She even knew where she was being held, having recognized the small airfield she had been brought to just outside of McLean, Virginia. She was mere miles away from her own office at Langley, and with the fact they weren’t trying to hide their safe house from her was worrisome, because they obviously had no intention of ransoming her back to the company.
Since her arrival, she had been offered lunch, which sat untouched on the small table in the corner. She had drunk the bottled water provided, simply to assist her in holding down the bile in her stomach that rose up every time she remembered the murder of her agents and those of the Canadian contingent right before her eyes.
She hadn’t seen the two Russians, Sagli and Deonovich, since she had been led into the room. There were, however, several other brutes that made their presence known. As for why she was here and not dead was something she had yet to figure out.
Lynn paced to the window and stood on her toes to look through the ground-level window. The glass was reinforced with wire, so smashing through it was out of the question—her guards would be on her long before she could push through the wire. She looked around, seeing only cinderblock and concrete. Again she turned to the window and the overcast day outside.
The door suddenly opened and a large man in a tan jacket and white shirt stood looking at her. The black beard hid the fierce features somewhat, but Lynn recognized the large brute as one of the helicopters gunners that had assisted in eliminating the Canadian ground team and her own men at the château. He glanced from Lynn’s pretty features to the window and then he smiled, as if saying, “Please try.”
The man stepped aside and Sagli stepped through the door alone; Deonovich was not with him. The ponytail was gone and the Russian’s dark hair hung free to fall around his shoulders. He carried a small box with him as he closed the door. The large guard took up station beside it and his eyes locked on Lynn. It was as if he really expected her to try something. The Russians must have believed CIA agents all to be James Bond types
.
“Ms. Simpson, we finally get a chance to chat. After so many encounters through second, third, and fourth parties, it is truly an honor to finally meet you in person.”
Lynn moved away from the wall that held the small window and looked from Sagli over to the guard. She was tempted to take a quick step toward the large man just to see if he would flinch, but decided he might not appreciate that too much. She turned and looked at Sagli, but remained silent. She needed all the information she could get before she did something as stupid as getting herself killed.
“Needless to say, you were an irritant with your constant feed of intelligence to the swine that now occupy the Kremlin. Not that it ever stopped us from conducting our business.”
“You’ll never leave this country alive,” Lynn said as a confident matter of fact as she paced to the only chair in the room and sat down. She picked a small corner of bread from the still full plate and forced herself to eat it.
Sagli saw through her forced bravado and smiled. “We managed rather nicely to come into your country, I think we can manage getting out when the time presents itself. In the meantime, may I show you something?”
Lynn swallowed the piece of bread with as much difficulty as she could ever remember any task. She then shrugged her shoulders.
Sagli opened the small box he was carrying and then looked inside, as if never tiring of gazing at the amazing object. He held it out for Lynn to see. She saw the gleaming diamond that was as big as the largest hen’s egg she had ever seen. The ten thousand cuts made on the diamond’s surface were as flawless as the stone itself. She forced herself not to react to the most amazing display of geology she would ever see.
“Beautiful, is it not?”
Still she didn’t say anything; instead she looked away and tore another piece of bread off and placed it in her mouth. While she did, her mind raced. If this venture into the United States was limited to diamonds, her line of investigation was so far off she almost vomited the bread she had just swallowed.
“It will be difficult to shove it up your ass when you go to prison, won’t it?” she said as she swallowed the bread and then reached for the water bottle in front of her.
The Russian reached out and slapped the bottle from her fingertips. His glare was murderous.
“May I remind you, you are not in a position for such false bravado? You will assist us in our quest, or you will die, just as your Canadian colleagues did this morning.”
“Just get on with it, you’re boring me.”
Again, Sagli smiled and then closed the lid to the small box. “The Twins—that is what this is about, Miss Simpson. As you see we have one, we want the other. The Twins of Peter the Great, once a myth and now proven to be a fact. You will assist us in discovering the whereabouts of this diamond’s equal.”
“I haven’t a clue as to what you’re talking about.”
Sagli held the small box out. The large man by the door took it and then returned to his position by the door.
“We could have taken any hostage we wanted here in the States. However, taking you was just too tempting. You have been what you Americans call a pain in the ass. We knew our picture would lead you right to where we wanted you to be. Now we will get the information we need in exchange for sparing your life.”
“Uh-huh, and I’ll run for president of the United States next year at this time. My bosses wouldn’t give you the time of day.”
“Indeed, they may not if they thought that we were not serious in our quest.” Sagli nodded over at the large man who nodded and placed the box holding the diamond on the floor. He quickly advanced toward the chair and he went behind Lynn and then without hesitation reached out and grabbed her right hand and slammed it on the table, knocking the now cold meal from its surface. Before Lynn knew exactly what was happening, the man produced a knife and quickly and expertly cut her right index finger off, slicing through skin and bone as effortlessly as a breadstick.
Lynn screamed and then closed her eyes against the pain. For some unknown reason her thoughts quickly turned to her brother, the protector she had known since the time she had been able to remember. She couldn’t help it; she let loose with his name in a moment of lost composure.
“Jack!” she cried.
The Russian smiled when the name of her brother was mentioned, and then just as quickly the grin vanished.
“There, now your employers will believe you are in dire peril,” Sagli said as he nodded for the man to leave the room with his new proof of life and of Lynn’s identity.
Lynn grasped her hand as Sagli reached out and quickly wrapped a handkerchief around the wound and then he ruthlessly bound it tightly. With tears of pain and frustration coursing down both cheeks, she became mad, not only at her complete failure at controlling the pain, but being weak enough to have called out for Jack.
“I’m going to kill that bastard for that,” Lynn said between clenched teeth. “Then I’m going to kill you and that worthless partner of yours,” she finished far more calmly than she felt.
“We will get what we want from your government, and then you will die, possibly not in that order, but die you will. Either way, the good guys will not win this round, dear Miss Simpson. There will be no one capable of stopping us from finding the other Twin, no American cowboy to come to your rescue.”
Lynn’s eyes narrowed, knowing that the only man who could come riding to her rescue knew only that she was working on a project that may or may not concern him; thus he was in the dark as to what peril his sister was in, and realizing this, an air of despair settled over her like a dark shroud.
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
Assistant Director of Intelligence Nancy Grogan had been at her desk going on fifteen hours. Stan Rosen, coming in from a stop at home, poked his head inside of her door after a brief knock. They were both under orders from the director to get a handle on the abduction of Agent Lynn Simpson.
“Anything since I’ve been out?” he asked, knowing from her tired expression there had been no developments.
“Stan, this makes no sense: Two of the most wanted criminals in the world abduct an American intelligence officer. Where is the plan? They know we won’t negotiate her release.”
Rosen took a step into the office and removed his horn-rimmed glasses. “You have been in your position, how long? Three months?”
“Four,” she said, not in the least bit anxious to be lectured.
“We negotiate with scum on a daily basis around here. The director and the president want your girl freed, and they will be willing to deal with those two pieces of shit to do it. Then we can sweep this thing back across the border where it damn well belongs.”
“We have to hear from them first.”
“Go home; those files will start blending into each other if you keep going. Get some rest; I’ll stay and keep the home fires burning here. The director will have some hard questions tomorrow, and you better be awake enough to have a few answers.”
“You’re right, at least a nap and a shower,” Grogan said as she tossed the thick file about Sagli onto her desk. Then she looked up. “Did the director say anything about contacting Lynn’s brother?”
Stan looked at his watch. “Not as of ten o’clock tonight. The president said he wants every piece of intelligence we can gather before addressing that problem.”
Nancy Grogan shook her head and stood.
“Call me if anything develops.”
“Oh, thank you for not bringing up the fact that it was me that passed on that airport picture of Sagli and Deonovich to you. There was no sense in getting both of us in Dutch with the director.”
Grogan stopped gathering her data to take home and looked at Rosen.
“I do have one question; maybe your answer will be payment enough for not mentioning to the director that it was you who gave me the photo.”
“Shoot,” Rosen said.
“The contact who passed it to you: How did you get someone on the Canadian s
ide to work for you with intelligence knowing? I mean, I should have gotten a report on anyone working with you across the border.”
Rosen smiled wide. “We all have our secrets.”
Grogan tilted her head and continued to look at her operations counterpart.
“The guy is so small in their government and we pay him so little that he just got lost in the reports, that’s all.” With a last smile and nod of his head, Stan Rosen left. “I’ll let you know if anything happens while you’re resting,” he called out over his shoulder.
Nancy sat back down in her chair. She looked at her empty doorway and wondered at the fact that Rosen still didn’t name his source.
Forty minutes later, Grogan pulled into her driveway at Fort Myer, Maryland. She paused in her car as she noticed that her security lights didn’t come on as usual. As she gathered her large bag she knew she had to call the security company first thing in the morning, another headache to deal with. As she took the fifteen steps up her walk to her front door, a voice came out of the darkness. She stopped and without turning, started to reach into her bag.
“Please do not attempt to reach for your weapon, I have instructions that say you are not valuable enough to leave unharmed if you make trouble. You will be quite dead before you turn around, Assistant Director Grogan. We would just choose to go through another spy to deliver our demands.”
“Who are you?” she asked as she slowly turned to face the darkness of her front yard. She could see a man, a rather large one, standing just outside of her night vision.
“That is not important. What is of the utmost importance is that you listen. As you know, we have your agent and she is in dire straits at the moment, and in very much discomfort. If you and your agency would like to relieve her of any more pain, and perhaps have her returned, we need one thing from you.”
Primeval: An Event Group Thriller Page 11