by James Phelan
“You don’t think it’s bizarre to have these six murders within three months? That doesn’t set off any alarms bells for you?”
“There are plenty of people who die in Europe. These guys were old, and if the papers and police in their countries say they had heart attacks, what’s not to believe. Hell, I’m probably one shrimp cocktail away from a bypass myself.”
“It’s not that hard for an intelligence agency to stage a murder to look like a heart attack,” Fox said. He could see some of what he was saying was finally being absorbed by Cooper. “Perhaps I can talk to you some more back home, when I’ve chased up a few more threads.”
“Sure, come to me with something that does scan,” he said, smoke following the words out of his mouth. “But let’s be clear on something. You ever print anything I say—”
“We won’t—”
“You fuck’n’ say I met with you, that I spoke to you—”
“I’ve got it,” Fox said. “Loud and clear.”
Cooper settled back into his chair.
“Okay, I think we’ve said enough in a Russian palace. And you’re a journalist; they’re an endangered species in this country. Work out with Kate a time for a meeting in DC when we’re back. You show me some evidence of this hypothesis, whatever these strings are you’re grasping at, and I’ll see what I can do about steering you in the right direction.”
“The right direction?” Fox asked.
“The right person, someone who may be able to give you some answers. Ira Dunn, for a start,” Cooper said. “He’s more the guy you should talk to, but he’ll want damn more than a few loose ends.” Cooper stood up and offered his hand. Meeting’s over.
“Ira Dunn,” Fox repeated, shaking his hand. “At?”
“You’ll find him. That’s your job, isn’t it, investigating things?”
“Okay,” Fox said. “But what if time’s ticking?”
“What, my time?” Cooper saw the look in his eyes. “That army guy can babysit me. Back at DC both my office and home are guarded round the clock, I have a government driver service. Besides, considering the amount of money my office brings in, the shit-storm that would descend if I were killed…” Cooper looked into his empty glass. Fox could see his comment from before was ringing in Cooper’s ears: The other targets were better protected than you.
“Thanks for your time,” Fox said. “I’ll get in touch via Kate.”
“You do that,” Cooper said. “Send her in on your way out, will you?”
9
ST PETERSBURG
Secher’s aircraft touched down at St Petersburg’s airport and taxied down the tarmac to a row of private hangars. A dim light illuminated from within the giant rusty mouth of a curved corrugatediron hangar that the aircraft disappeared into, coming to an abrupt stop inside.
“Refuel and be ready to take off as soon as possible,” Secher ordered the pilot before walking down the fold-down stairs. He was greeted by a strong sea breeze blowing the summer winds down from the Arctic.
“Welcome to Russia, Major Secher,” the local DGSE agent said, handing over two sets of keys. “Your car and hotel.”
“Merci,” Secher said, walking to his BMW sedan.
He tossed his rucksack onto the passenger seat and took off in a squeal of rubber. He tossed the hotel key in the centre console, the rule of never staying in prearranged accommodation as fresh in his mind as it was when he learned the craft of being a field operative. Regardless, he wasn’t going to be here long enough to stay overnight.
Driving out of the airport, he got onto the highway heading south, and set the car on cruise control at 120 km per hour. He’d have gone faster if the condition of the road permitted it, but he didn’t need to attract unnecessary attention. He knew the quickest way to St Catherine’s Palace, and the time it would take to get there.
He pulled his SIG Pro 9 mm pistol from his bag and loaded a full mag of hollow point rounds. His hand gripped the pistol tight, the uncertainty running through his mind that he may already be too late.
10
ST CATHERINE’S PALACE, ST PETERSBURG
“Good meeting?” Kate asked.
“It’s a start,” Fox said as Gammaldi came up, the expression on his face unusually serious.
“This is my colleague, Al Gammaldi,” Fox said. He noticed the look on his friend’s face but couldn’t read it. “Al, this is Kate Matthews, and this guy here is a Bragg boy.”
“Hi Kate, BB.” Gammaldi shook hands with them both. “Lach, you gotta sec?”
With the vocal tone to back it up, now Fox knew the look in his friend’s eyes. News. Haste. Desperation.
“Kate, I’ll call your hotel tomorrow morning to organise a follow-up meeting with Cooper back home,” Fox said. “Oh, and he wants a word with you in the study.”
“No problem, lovely meeting you, Lachlan—you too, Al,” Kate said, turning towards the study.
“What’s up?” Fox asked as he and Gammaldi walked along the corridor and down a small service staircase.
“Something’s not right,” Gammaldi said. “I was looking for the kitchen—did you try those caviar boats, amazing, has to be Caspian—and I heard something coming from behind there.” He pointed to a side door that Fox had to duck to get through.
“You went through here?” Fox asked. The walkway was a damp stone hallway that curved around into darkness, a few greasy bulbs lighting the way. It was lucky if it were six feet tall and three feet wide. It looked and smelled ancient.
“I though it might be a cellar,” Gammaldi said. “But it’s a tunnel out of the palace.”
“So what’s the problem?” Fox said as he went to turn. Gammaldi caught his arm, his grip like a vice.
“I heard a scuffle, and a muffled scream, so I ran back out and waited behind some crates. A few minutes later two security guards came out.”
“Yeah, and?”
“Their uniforms didn’t fit right. They didn’t seem right.”
Fox looked from Gammaldi to where the passageway disappeared. Without word he walked forward, Gammaldi close behind. Fifty metres along, a dark off-shoot led away into nothingness. Fox paused there, squinting into the pitch black to wait for his eyes to adjust.
“See anything?” Gammaldi asked.
Fox took a few steps and looked down—feet, two pairs. Two corpses.
“Shit!”
Two men lay there, naked but for their underwear. Both tall, one a huge mountain of a man. It was the two guards from the entrance security. Both had been strangled, their bodies still warm.
11
ST PETERSBURG
Secher banged the steering wheel in frustration, nipping the car into the other lane to glance ahead of the truck convoy. He ducked the car back behind the truck as an oncoming van flashed past on the single-lane highway. He went out wide again and dropped the BMW down a gear, overtaking the first two ancient Russian-made trucks before having to slam on the brakes and drift into the small space between the enormous eighteen-wheelers as another with dim headlights came lumbering from the other direction and nearly wiped him off the road. He ducked back into the oncoming lane, setting the three-litre BMW into third and surged past the next truck, working up through the gears as he clicked over a hundred and sixty to make up time.
12
ST CATHERINE’S PALACE, ST PETERSBURG
Fox bounded up the stairs three at a time, Gammaldi behind, his shorter legs moving fast to keep up. They took a left down the hall, turned again and ran towards the study.
“Delta boy’s gone, they must have moved on,” Gammaldi called out to Fox as they reached the door.
It was locked.
Fox put his ear against it. THUMP.
“Break it down!” Fox called as he and Gammaldi shouldered the big door at the same time, the wood splintering in.
The Delta soldier was on the floor, dead. The garrotte burn around his neck mat
ched those on the two corpses in the tunnel.
Two men dressed as palace security were in the room. Assassins. Wearing dead-men’s clothing in the ultimate false-flag tactic.
One had his back to the open doorway, lying over Kate, one hand over her mouth and the other lifting her dress. Her bare legs writhed into the air.
The other assassin had a plastic cord wrapped around Cooper’s neck, intently watching his face redden and his eyes bulge.
Cooper’s hands gave up the futile effort of trying to loosen the constricting force around his neck.
The brutish figure of Gammaldi rushed headfirst into the room, doing a quick scan before charging the colossus lying on top of Kate.
Fox was a step behind coming through the door, his tall athletic frame straightening and charging shoulder first into Cooper’s attacker, crash-tackling him in a manoeuvre that would make the coach of any football code proud. The mayhem that followed in no way resembled a fight aired on the sports channel. In the savage rampage for life and death, there were no Queensbury Rules.
Gammaldi hit the hulk of a man off Kate with an elbow to the head. He went off to the side and Gammaldi followed through with a kick to the ribs, pulling Kate to her feet like a rag doll and pushing her clear of the brute.
On the other side of the room, Fox saw the motionless form of Cooper lying face down on the carpet but didn’t have the time to check for a pulse. His attacker kicked out at Fox, sending him smashing into Alexander’s desk. Fox grabbed a silver candelabrum in his fist and swung around, connecting with the assassin’s face, sending teeth and blood spraying through the air. Still he fought back, setting on Fox before he could swing the stick again, wrapping his hands around Fox’s throat.
The hulk got off the ground and Gammaldi stood in front of Kate, shielding her.
“Lachlan, little help over here!” he said as the man leapt at him, an up-swinging fist collecting Gammaldi on the chin. The pair swung limbs in a furious exchange of blows, Gammaldi the quick-hitting in-fighter versus the powerhouse out-fighter.
Having dropped the candelabrum to try and prise his attacker’s hands from his throat, Fox leaned into him, twisting himself as he did so in a move that dislodged the man’s hands and turned him around. Using that vital second of disorientation, Fox grabbed onto the assassin’s head and twisted it as quickly as he could, the life ending in an audible death knell of broken vertebra.
The body slipped to the floor, and Fox turned to help Gammaldi. As he walked over he picked up a heavy antique stool, and with an arcing swing through the air he smashed it against the back of the assassin’s meaty neck. The colossal man slumped to the ground with a grunt, Gammaldi just managing to avoid being crushed by the human avalanche.
Fox moved to Cooper, rolled him over and felt for a pulse. None. His neck was crushed to pulp and turning deep purple.
He turned and moved to Kate, an arm outstretched to deflect her gaze away from the lifeless form of Cooper.
“Let’s get you out of here.”
Secher pulled into the gated entrance of St Catherine’s Palace and roared up the drive, the big diesel engine and low-profile tyres throwing up the gravel as it fishtailed with the speed.
At the front of the palace he jumped out of the car and passed the keys to an attendant wrapped with a fifty Euro note.
“Keep it right here,” he said in perfect Russian.
“Yes, sir.”
Fox led Kate out of the east wing and around the rose fountain to the car park. Gammaldi, a few paces ahead, called up a taxi from the rank.
Fox opened the door and put Kate in the back seat. He turned to Gammaldi, and saw that he was still jacked full of adrenalin. When Fox spoke he was quiet, calm, clear, in charge.
“Al, I need you to head to the US Embassy in Moscow, go and see this guy,” Fox said, handing Gammaldi the business card McCorkell had given him in Dulles.
“Who is he?”
“He’ll be CIA,” Fox said. “Tell him he can verify us via McCorkell at the White House. Kate and I will need visas and help getting across the borders of Latvia and Lithuania, and a plane back into the US from Vilnius.”
Gammaldi nodded, staring wide-eyed at the blank look on Kate’s face as she peered up from the back seat of the cab.
“Al, you got that?” Fox said, shaking his mate’s shoulder.
“Yeah, sorry. See the CIA guy, get you two visas and a plane Stateside from Lithuania, got it.” Gammaldi looked again at Kate.
“You’ll be fine to leave via Moscow on a regular flight,” Fox said. “I want to get Kate out fast, below the radar.”
“I understand. How are you getting out?”
“We’ll get a train to the east, head for an airbase the CIA leases outside Vilnius,” Fox said to Gammaldi, his stocky friend standing diligently by his side, alert now and scanning for threats.
Fox climbed into the cab.
“You’ll be okay?” Gammaldi asked Fox quietly, standing by the open back door of the cab.
Fox looked at Kate. She was staring out the other door’s window in a daze, not moving at all.
“We’ll be fine, just get to Moscow as fast as you can.”
Secher walked up the grand staircase and towards the ballroom, scanning the faces as he went.
“Fucking Russians,” he muttered, straightening the cheap polyester tie the security guard had insisted he had to wear.
He smoothed his blond hair and took a breath to gain composure, as he received a drink from a waiter. Then he surveyed the scene around him. Hundreds of faces, some covered with masquerade masks. He moved slowly about the room, fitting in yet scanning each person top to bottom.
A woman’s scream echoed from upstairs, and he turned and bolted toward the sound.
A young woman was being comforted by a portly man as Secher arrived outside the study. His stomach turned as he went into the room. It looked like a bomb had gone off, bodies and furniture askew.
John Cooper was dead. His eyes were bulging, his face purple from the burst capillaries. Another dead American was splayed out on the floor, with an MP-7 submachine gun holstered under his jacket. The guy hadn’t even had the time to pull it out.
Two palace security guards lay motionless—and then one moved.
Secher leaned down next to him, rolled him over.
The man’s eyes went wide in recognition and he began to speak in French before Secher put a finger to his lips.
There was a commotion behind Secher as three uniformed palace guards arrived at the door, pistols drawn.
“Don’t move!” was yelled.
“Call an ambulance!” Secher ordered.
“Hands in the air!” shouted one of the guards, pointing his pistol at Secher.
The Frenchman stood and walked up to the guard.
“FSB!” Secher yelled at him, producing a false identity card. The Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, or Federal Security Service, was enough to strike compliance in any Russian. The ruse worked, the guard lowering the pistol and taking a step back out of the doorway.
“Call an ambulance, and keep this door shut,” Secher ordered. “No one in or out of the building!”
The guard nodded and his companions ushered people out of the hallway.
The door was hefted to as shut as it could be in its damaged state, and Secher was alone with the surviving assassin.
He knelt down next to him, and the man’s eyes widened on recognition.
“What happened here, soldier?” Secher said quietly.
“Monsieur—” Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth as he spoke.
“In Russian,” Secher said, looking about the room for a moment, sure there’d be bugs. “Whisper,” he said, putting his face close to the other man’s.
“Major Secher,” he said in Russian, accented with a gurgling dialect due to blood filling his lungs. “This was our last hit, and we … we were interrupted, I think they were American, or
English, two of them…”
Secher looked at the other DGSE operative, his lifeless neck twisted awkwardly.
“These two, they beat you unarmed?” Secher was a little surprised. He’d helped design the latest unarmed-combat training doctrine in the French intelligence service. It was the best such program outside an Asian country.
“Yes—they were … fast.”
“Where’s the girl?” Secher asked.
The agent was fading, not registering what Secher had said.
“The American woman.” Secher slapped his face to stop him from disappearing into unconsciousness. “Where is she?”
The agent was drifting; Secher shook him hard.
“What happened to the American woman?” Secher was angry this time. He watched as the expression on the man’s face changed.
“They—they must have taken her. Women…” he grinned through bloody teeth, “my weakness … I was going to have some fun with her, I—my—I had my back to the door…”
Before he could finish, Secher leaned on his windpipe in a swift, crushing blow.
13
WASHINGTON
“Mr McCorkell, you have a call from the Moscow Station Chief,” the White House operator said over his cell phone.
McCorkell looked across at his alarm clock, rubbing the sleep from his face.
“Put it through on my home line.” McCorkell hung up his cell and waited for his landline to ring. A call from the CIA Moscow Station Chief at this hour was something you wanted to keep secret. To that end, his apartment was swept for bugs each week, and his windows had been fitted with a version of the Tempest security system. An outer layer of reflective poly-carbonate, a pane of heavy lead-content glass with a vibrating current running through it, and an inner pane of regular laminated glass. Supposedly impenetrable to all foreign-signal intelligence tools. Even his encrypted cell phone had to have a long-range booster built into the apartment to get the minimal reception it received.