“My God.” The Ambassador fell silent, obviously thinking through what she’d told him. Static hissed across the line, and she prayed they wouldn’t get disconnected.
“We’ll alert our Consulate in St. Pete,” he decided. “See if they can send someone out to get you, even if it’s only the local militsia. And you’re not going to like this, Alexis. But I think Geoff had better get on the next flight out, and meet you in St. Pete.”
“That won’t be necessary, sir.” She scanned the screen of snow and bristly branches and wondered where Victor had gone. Frankly, she’d almost rather deal with the thugs chasing them than her ex-husband. Inevitably, Geoff would act as though she were a rank amateur who’d landed in hot water, and he alone could save the day.
“I’m afraid it’s very necessary,” Stu said grimly. He hesitated, and a prickle of apprehension skittered across her skin.
“Alexis.” He cleared his throat, and her apprehension doubled. “Candace went into your office this morning to deliver your mail. She…found something on your desk. I was in a meeting, so she brought it straight to your immediate supervisor—Geoff.”
She’d been straining to hear over the mounting buzz of static, trying to minimize her own noise footprint, worrying where the hell Victor was. Now her attention zoomed in on Stu’s uncomfortable tone.
“What did she find?” Alexis asked carefully.
“She found a file of rather explicit black-and-white photographs. Of you and—well—it looks like Captain Kostenko.”
“Shit!” The expletive burst out before Alexis could catch it. She closed her eyes, her heart sinking to her boots. There it was again, the sucking sound of her career being flushed down the toilet.
No need to ask for details because she already knew, didn’t she? They’d be pictures of her and Victor lying naked on a bearskin rug. Pictures of her getting off, in the arms of a Russian intelligence operative.
“Alexis? Hello?” Stu’s voice broke through the static—or maybe it was just the buzz of panic in her brain. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah.” She had to clear her throat twice before she could speak. “No doubt I’m about to be contacted by our friends at Lubyanka, wanting me to come in for a meeting. So they can tell me what I’d need to do to keep the scandal quiet.”
“That seems likely,” he agreed. “And if you refuse to cooperate, as I have no doubt you will, they’ll threaten to leak the photos and the story to the press. Two weeks before the presidential visit, I don’t have to tell you how bad this is, Alexis.”
“I know.” God, she was furious with herself for getting in this mess. She’d walked straight into it, with her eyes wide open. And Victor—damn it—he’d betrayed her in every possible way. Then told her that bullshit story about blowing his own cover to escape the SVR, just to throw her off the scent.
“This is tricky, Alexis,” Stu repeated, and she tried to focus on what he was saying. “It harkens straight back to the Cold War and all those shenanigans. If it leaks out that the Russians are still playing these games with our people, given your rank and his, it could derail President Cartwright’s visit altogether.”
“I know,” she said miserably. “It’s going to be difficult enough for her, given the current freeze in our bilateral relations, not to mention the Ukraine crisis.”
“You’ve got it. If it now becomes apparent the Russians have resumed full-scale intelligence operations against us, she’ll have to send a strong message.” Stu paused. “If she doesn’t, she’ll be portrayed as weak, a pushover trying to appease Moscow.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Alexis said firmly, gripping the phone so hard her hand hurt. “I’ll resign from my position first. Take a desk job back in Washington…or wherever they’re willing to post me.”
“I’d like to avoid that outcome, if that’s all right with you,” the Ambassador said dryly. “Since you’re closer now to St. Pete than here, Geoff will fly out to talk damage control—”
His voice cut off abruptly, blotted out by the ugly whine of the dial tone. Alexis cursed and redialed, but no good. She’d lost the signal.
Her head pounded as she slipped the phone in her coat pocket. Could she have screwed herself any more royally?
Startled, she glanced up to find Victor crouched in the undergrowth beside her, sky-blue eyes locked on her like a homing beacon. Suddenly she wondered how long he’d been there, and exactly how much he’d heard.
“We need to move,” he whispered, words frosting white on the frigid air. “Two of them are close. I haven’t locked down the others.”
Numbly she clambered to her feet, veering away from his offered hand like he had the plague. Because she wasn’t sure yet how to react, she followed him downhill, keeping to the tree cover whenever possible. Fighting to stave off panic, not to gulp down mouthfuls of air like a heart attack victim.
Now she didn’t have a clue whether the goons chasing her and the covert intelligence operative beside her were on the same side. Maybe she was nothing but a lab rat, scurrying through the maze with the illusion of freedom, running right where they wanted her to go.
“Wait, damn it!” Alexis dug in her feet. She was getting pretty sick of running blind, while her brain simmered with unanswered questions. Instead she looked straight into Victor’s startled face. “I’m not going to keep running like this.”
“No.” He nodded tersely, hard eyes scanning the slope they’d just scrambled down. “We can’t maintain this pace all the way to Kholodnogorsk. We’re looking for a place to arrange an ambush.”
Alexis didn’t like the sound of that either, considering how far they were from help if someone got hurt. If he got hurt defending her… Yet she could see the sense in choosing their terrain, deciding where and when the confrontation would occur. Better at least than running until the goons caught them.
“OK.” She slid after him into a narrow ravine, their path hemmed by tall trees on both sides.
“Let’s do it here,” she panted. But her fragile veneer of bravado splintered when Victor extended the lethal-looking pistol, its muzzle pointed down. Slivers of fear knifed through her, and she barely swallowed a gasp. Hunted by old demons, she edged away.
“Take it. Then I’m going to boost you up,” he said curtly. “Into that tree, where you won’t be easily seen.”
“And while I’m up there, what will you be doing?” She fought to keep the panic from her voice and clasped her hands behind her back—as far away as possible from the terrifying weapon she didn’t know how to use.
If only she knew she could trust him.
Instead, she knew she couldn’t.
“I’m taking them out,” he said brusquely. “If one of them gets past me, use both hands to steady the gun and aim for the chest. It’s the broadest target.”
He paused to shoot her a sardonic look. “Try not to shoot me, if you can avoid it.”
“I don’t think that’s a well-thought plan,” she whispered. Guns had scared the hell out of her since she was twelve years old, but apparently that little nightmare-come-true wasn’t in her MFA dossier. And she was leery of letting Victor out of her sight.
“I’ve never fired a gun,” she managed, working to keep her cool. “But you have. I’m better armed with my hands free. I think you should take the gun, and I should help you with the ambush. The odds are better that way.”
“So.” The furrow between his brows deepened, and his mouth hitched down. “Evidently, Ms. Castle, we’ve reverted to a familiar scenario. You still don’t trust me.”
“Jesus, Victor, you can’t expect—”
They both froze as a branch snapped behind them. No more time to argue, or decide how much she trusted him. Shortly, he gestured her toward the trees and slipped into cover, still gripping the pistol. As she concealed herself behind a thick trunk, careful not to step on a branch herself, she couldn’t decide whether leaving Victor with the gun was a smart idea or lunacy.
Hard and heavy, her hear
t soldiered in her chest, pumping oxygen-rich blood and adrenaline through her system, fueling her to fight. Silently she shrugged out of her bulky coat. Though the cold bit deep as knitting needles through her sweater, she’d be better off with an unrestricted range of movement. Those guys on the train had looked pretty husky, and speed might be the only slim advantage she had.
A tension-charged silence fell over the path. Thick white flakes tumbled down from the iron-gray heavens, sticking in her eyelashes.
A man in a black ski parka lumbered into view, moving fast, following the clear path she’d made with Victor floundering through the drifts. She couldn’t see much with his fur-lined hood up, but she thought he might be the guy from the nightclub. The one Victor had identified as an off-duty U.S. Embassy guard…unless he’d been lying about that too.
She edged around the tree to keep him in sight, her fists clenching in fight stance near her head. When the guy was right in front of her, she struck low and fast. Leaped out with a jumping front kick that closed the distance between them. The heel of her foot slammed against his chest, right on target.
The guy yelled as the blow connected, and staggered back. Seeing his big hands come up—not knowing whether he too had a gun—she knocked his right hand wide with a sweeping crescent kick. Then followed with a flurry of punches to the head, the impacts slamming through her arms.
Someone shouted in Russian behind her—probably one of the Chechens. She cut a quick look back as Victor exploded into view in a lethal flurry of targeted blows, taking the second guy down hard.
“Alexis Castle!” The guy in front of her shouted—in a perfect Midwest twang. “Wait a minute, will you?”
“No, you wait.” Why the hell was an American working with the Chechens against her? An American paid by Uncle Sam to protect her, damn it? And the guy was still trying to close on her, too.
Anger spurted through her as she landed another solid kick. And had the satisfaction of seeing him keel over, groaning.
A short distance away, Victor was straddling his opponent, who sprawled unmoving in the snow. Rifling the guy’s pockets, the captain flipped open a wallet bulging with cash.
“Good idea,” Alexis murmured, and knelt to search her own semi-conscious goon. Gave her a nasty shock to see the guy’s bloodshot green eyes, open and watching her.
He tried to say something, then grimaced and coughed out a bloody tooth.
“Bastard never said you knew karate,” he muttered.
“Who never said it?” She knelt on one arm and pinned the other, still wary that he might be armed. “Who sent you after me? Tell me!”
And got the shock of her life when the guy threw her a look filled with accusation and betrayal.
“You did.”
“What the hell?” She stared in helpless frustration as his eyes rolled back, and he passed out cold. She fumbled against his sweaty jowls and found a pulse. For better or worse, at least she hadn’t killed him.
Victor was still crouched over the guy he’d downed—staring down on the guy with eyes remote as the arctic tundra, and every bit as frigid. He wore the face of a ruthless hunter who’d commanded Russia’s deadliest weapon in solitude and stealth beneath the waves. A man whose killing skills the SVR must have honed to a deadly edge.
And the Walther PPK was in his hand.
“Victor,” she whispered. A violent shiver tore through her as she crouched in the snow. “He’s one of your own people.”
“Is he?” he growled. “He’s been hunting you like an animal, and I bloody well didn’t authorize it. Christ, Alexis, he could have killed you.”
“But he didn’t,” she breathed. “He’s not even armed. And I’m fine, Victor.”
For a lifetime, his remorseless expression didn’t flicker. Then he blinked, and his head swiveled toward her. Awareness fractured that frightening façade, revealing the man she knew.
“Put your coat on, Alexis,” he sighed, scrubbing his face with a rough hand. “You don’t want to freeze.”
When he tucked the gun away, she did as he suggested. In the Chechen’s breast pocket, they found a Russian civilian passport. Standard issue domestic document, the kind they used for internal purposes but couldn’t travel abroad on.
“Just a common street thug,” Victor murmured, after a narrow look at the passport. She guessed an MFA diplomat…even if that was only his cover…could probably spot a fake. “They were hired to do a job—and, apparently, the job was you.”
“Apparently so, since they knew my name. But what exactly were they supposed to do?”
Neither one of the toughs they’d incapacitated was in any position to answer questions. Unless Alexis and Victor waited around for them to regain consciousness, which wasn’t a good idea. But, in the American’s wallet, she found a U.S. Embassy badge. Not a Washington type, just your average Joe, the kind of locally-based American the Embassy hired by the dozen to support the Marines in less sensitive positions.
Victor found the guard’s mobile phone and thumbed through his recent calls, while Alexis watched over his shoulder. A chill knifed through her when she spotted the last three calls, all directed to the same familiar number she dialed herself several times a day.
It was the mobile phone number for Geoff Chase.
_____________________________________
The rusted blue hatchback wheezed as Victor ground through the gears. Beneath them, the bald tires spun for purchase on the icy highway to St. Petersburg. Already the gray concrete village of Kholodnogorsk was falling behind—and wasn’t that a shame.
Eyeing the few vehicles that puttered along in a cloud of noxious fumes, Alexis figured they’d been lucky to persuade the hatchback’s owner to rent it. Though the rattletrap vehicle was a far cry from Victor’s custom-made sports car.
“It doesn’t look like we’re being followed,” she murmured, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror. “Two of those goons are still unaccounted for, but maybe they never left the train.”
“We wasted considerable time and money,” Victor said curtly, “bribing the militsia to go back for the pair we immobilized. They’re lucky we didn’t leave them to freeze.”
Privately Alexis didn’t think his money had bought them out of this one. While she was on the phone in the next room with the Consulate, trying to clear things up, she’d seen Victor flash the local heat some sort of identification. And the bureaucrats had buttoned right up.
She’d give real money to sneak a peek at that get-out-of-jail-free card. Was he carrying a diplomatic card from MFA, maybe his old navy I.D…or some sort of intelligence credential from the SVR? The same SVR he claimed to have left? It wasn’t likely they’d been so thrilled after the D.C. fiasco that they left him the card as a Christmas gift.
She’d fallen too quiet, she realized, when he shot her one of his penetrating looks. Thinking back to his last remark, she forced a casual shrug.
“You said it yourself. They were just guys hired to do a job,” she pointed out, “and neither of them was armed. Plus, one is a U.S. citizen, whose status with the Embassy still needs to be clarified. We’d have been in hot water ourselves if we’d left them there.”
“And your charming ex-husband would have been cooking in the same pot,” he said pointedly.
“Geoff has a lot to answer for.” She’d tried reaching his mobile several times, but he wasn’t picking up. And now their cheap phone had lost signal. Again. “He’s made it pretty clear he disapproves of my, ah, contact with you. Maybe this is his way of protecting me.”
“How tolerant of you, Counselor.” Victor snorted. “Another, less benevolent explanation would be that he’s threatened by your success. You’re the U.S. Embassy’s number three, the rising star who threatens to eclipse him, and you’ve already rejected him sexually. Perhaps he’d prefer to see you disgraced and sidelined before your president’s visit.”
“He wouldn’t sink that low.” Yet her heart sank as she admitted to herself that he just might. Behind
his perennial self-control, Geoff had been wound pretty tight last weekend. They were all damn lucky no one had ended up disgraced or worse. Although, with those incriminating photos, which Victor had to know about—
“If your ex-husband sinks any lower,” he said curtly, “he’s going to need a depth gauge and a titanium hull. I confess to being mystified…this is the word, yes?...about why you married the man.”
Though his eyes were nailed to the pothole-riddled road, she read him well enough to pick up the keen edge of curiosity. Of course she didn’t owe him any explanations, about her ex or anything else. But it was the normal sort of question a lover…because he was her lover…would ask.
“My father wanted it like crazy,” she sighed, sliding down in her seat. “Geoff was my father’s protégé, so he’d been a family friend for years. By the time Geoff proposed, Dad was really sick, undergoing a hellish course of chemo for his cancer. At first, I went along with it to give my dad some peace of mind in his last months. But then…”
Her voice clogged up, memories crowding her head. The despair and helplessness she’d struggled with during Wayne Castle’s agonizing decline. As she blinked back tears, Victor’s big hand closed gently over her knee.
Alexis snuck a look at his stern profile, while he frowned at the bumpy road like it was a sub-par seaman. No doubt about it, his stamina and resourcefulness had gotten them through so far. Whether she liked to admit it or not, he’d been the one to pilot them out of that mess.
She thought about his lethal precision taking out their pursuers. The way he’d tried to protect her by giving her the pistol, though it would’ve left him unarmed. The way his powerful body had sheltered her when she’d been shivering with cold.
My God, I’m falling for him. The realization broke through her muddled thoughts with the impact of a ballistic missile. Jesus Christ, how the hell had this happened? How could she even think she was falling in love with Victor Kostenko?
The Russian Seduction Page 17