by Andrew Watts
“Mr. Fend, you have a phone call. Your sister, sir.”
Dolores? At this hour? Perhaps she was calling about the news article.
His assistant walked over and handed Charles his phone.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Charles. It’s Dolores. I would like to visit Mom’s grave today. I was wondering if you would join me?”
It wasn’t Dolores. It wasn’t her voice. He overcame the urge to ask who it was, because he was pretty sure that he knew.
“Of course. What time shall I meet you?”
“How about half past three? Will that work?”
“Sure thing.”
“Wonderful. And, Charles, I would really like to spend the time together, just the two of us. Please be a dear and come by yourself.”
“Will do.”
He hung up the phone and called to his assistant to have his car ready in the driveway.
“Which car, sir?”
“I’ll take the Mercedes.”
“Very well, sir.”
Charles looked at his wristwatch and thought carefully about what to do next. He knew what he wanted to do, and what he had agreed to do.
Duty won out.
He dialed the number from memory. The voice on the other end answered immediately.
“It’s me,” Charles said.
“What is it?”
“You were right. He called.”
Max and Renee pulled into the empty parking lot of a small private school. The kids were out for the summer, so no one would see them walk through the property.
Max looked at Renee. “You stay here. If you don’t hear from me in twenty minutes, leave and go back to the hotel. I’ll call you tonight.”
“Be careful,” she told him, affection in her voice.
Max smiled. “I’m always careful. That being said, if I don’t call…”
“You don’t need to tell me what to do in that situation. I’ll know.”
Max squeezed her shoulder and turned, closing the car door behind him. He walked through the school playground, ducking under a bright blue-and-red jungle gym. Fresh mulch covered the ground.
He hopped the white picket fence to the rear of the playground and walked through a grove of trees until he came to a flat open field.
The graveyard. His mother’s graveyard.
Max visited it about once per year, although normally he entered through the main drive. The entire cemetery was the size of four football fields put together. A few trees provided occasional shade, but most of it was wide-open field.
Max’s mother had died when he was very young, but he tried to keep her memory a meaningful part of his life. The grave markers were all flush with the ground. Simple granite, mostly. Max walked towards hers. A location he knew well.
The blistering hot Florida sun beat down on him from above. Her grave was just to the east of a large oak tree. He could see a figure standing over the spot. His father’s black Mercedes-Benz sedan was parked nearby.
Max didn’t see anyone else.
The figure was a man. That much was for sure. But he was facing away from Max. Max reached into his fanny pack and gripped his pistol with both hands. His eyes scanned the Mercedes, and the trees. Still no sign of anyone else.
The man turned to face him when Max was about thirty feet away. Max smiled.
For a moment.
The door of the Mercedes opened, about twenty-five yards away.
“Dad?”
“It’s alright, Max.”
Max stood his ground, still holding his concealed weapon. He shook his head. “Dad. Who else is here?”
“Trust me, son. It will be alright.”
“Dad, I didn’t do what they say I did.”
“I know, son.”
A man got out of the rear of the Mercedes. Max knew the face. Where did he know him from? He searched his memory. At last it came to him.
He had met him down at the Farm once. He was a CIA agent—Caleb Wilkes.
Charles drove them back to his home in Ponte Vedra. He had called ahead and asked his staff to leave. They needed privacy for the evening.
Wilkes had assured Max that he would be free to go after their meeting. No one knew that the three of them were speaking. When they sat down at the house, Wilkes set a small device on the center of the table. It looked like an old walkie-talkie.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a device that’ll make it near impossible for someone to listen in on our conversation through one of our phones or some other electronics in the house,” Wilkes said.
“Does it work?”
“Oh, yes.”
Max said, “I assume you’ve told my father a little bit about my work in Europe?”
“I gave him a rundown, yes. But I think you’ll find that you both have a thing or two to learn about each other.”
Max looked at his dad inquisitively. Charles nodded. “It’s time we let you in on some family history.”
Max knew enough to stay quiet.
Charles turned to face him, leaning back in his swivel chair. “In the late 1970s, I met your mother while traveling through the UK. Her father, as you know, was from Poland. Her mother was English.” His father’s face looked strained.
“That’s where you were married,” Max said.
“Correct. We married near Cambridge. It was shortly after our wedding that a man named Hoopengardner approached me in London. Hoopengardner knew that Fend Aerospace was about to get contracts with the US government. Military contracts. This was a few years before you were born. Hoopengardner said it would be in my best interests if we could have a cup of tea. Somewhere secluded, where we could speak about a quiet business proposal.
“As it turned out, Hoopengardner’s business proposal was nothing short of extortion. He was a KGB agent. You know him by a different name—Pavel Morozov. His proposal was for me to provide him with information on the military aircraft we were developing. If I didn’t, he had access to your mother’s family in Poland. By that time, your grandmother had passed away, and your grandfather had moved back to Poland to live.”
Max looked at Wilkes, who stayed quiet. He thought about what type of man Morozov was. He could see where this was going. “What did you do?” Max asked his father.
“I’m a patriot, Max. And I wasn’t about to let some Soviet bastard blackmail me. When we got back to the States, I quietly contacted the FBI. I had thought they might be able to help me get your mother’s family out of Poland. I was naive.”
Now it was Max’s father who looked at Wilkes, anger in his eyes.
Charles said, “The FBI handed me over to the CIA. The CIA did not want me to break off contact with Morozov. To my surprise, they wanted me to give the KGB information on Fend Aerospace’s military contracts. But they wanted to control exactly what information was sent out. They turned me into a double agent.”
Max knew how it went. The counterintelligence types rarely wanted to just solve a problem and make it go away. They wanted to turn agents and provide corrupt data. To manipulate the other side’s network of spies.
“How long did you do it for?”
Now Wilkes spoke up. “Your father worked for us for over ten years, Max.”
Max looked at his father. “Why ten years?”
“Because after ten years of providing secrets to the KGB—secrets that the CIA was providing me—things began to change,” Charles said.
“How so?”
“For one, Morozov got suspicious. It was 1987 when it happened. Reagan was president. The Soviets were getting their asses handed to them by the CIA-armed Mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Morozov was growing desperate. Threatening me more and more every time I saw him.”
“Why?”
“He had other sources in the US who were providing him information that conflicted with mine. But my information had made Morozov a star in the KGB. When his star began to fall, he blamed me.”
“So what happened?”
�
�He approached your mother.”
Max felt a chill run through his body. His mother had died in a car accident when he was a boy. He had only vague memories of her, along with a few cherished home videos and pictures.
“Your mother came to me one night and said that Morozov had told her everything. That I’d been spying for the Russians. And that he wasn’t happy with the information I was providing. Morozov wanted her to put pressure on me to step up my contributions. Or else.”
“Or else what?”
“He threatened to harm you, Max. You were young—six years old at the time. Your mother became a wreck.”
“I see.” Max shifted his weight, suddenly uncomfortable.
“I went to the CIA. I told them that we needed protection. Your mother was brought in to meet my CIA handlers. She agreed to participate with me in the counterintelligence operation, despite the threat to her family. She said that her father hated the Soviets, and that he would never want to be used as leverage by them. She demanded one thing—protection for you. The CIA agreed and stationed a security detail at our home, around the clock. They were disguised as butlers. But I was to continue to play the game with Morozov for a little longer.”
Max shook his head. “Dad, I had no idea about any of this. What happened?”
“The next time I met with him, Morozov told me he wanted the raw data on the new stealth jets that Fend Aerospace was designing for the Air Force out in Nevada.”
“I didn’t know Fend Aerospace was involved in that type of work back then.”
“They weren’t,” Wilkes said. “It was part of a charade. A disinformation campaign.”
“This was all happening right around the time that Mom got into her car accident.”
His father had a grave look in his eye. “Yes. Exactly that time.”
“Dad…”
His father looked out over the water.
“Did my mother die in a car accident?”
Wilkes said nothing, just watching the exchange between father and son.
His father looked down at the table while he spoke. “No.”
“So then how did she die?”
“Morozov.”
Max clenched his fists. “How?”
His father was having trouble getting the story out. “The Cold War was ending. Everything was coming to a head. Morozov had finally had enough. The information I’d supplied him on the stealth jets was obviously false. He stopped taking my calls. That’s when we got scared. As it turned out, our fears were warranted. Your mother left you with the nanny and one of the security men that day. Then she drove to the store with the other security man to pick up some things. She was found dead in the vehicle. They made it look like the car ran off the road, but I knew the truth.”
“What do you mean?”
“The autopsy showed that your mother had died from the impact of the car driving off the cliff. But the security guard had been shot. That part was never reported to authorities. The CIA took care of that. Morozov contacted me the day of the funeral and asked how she was, delight in his voice.”
Max’s mouth was wide. “Why didn’t you…?”
“What? Seek revenge? He threatened to kill you if we went after him. And during the Cold War, the CIA and KGB would kill each other’s spies all the time. At the end of the Cold War, no one wanted any errant sparks to ignite a fire. Your mother’s death was covered up, just like many others. For the good of the nation, and for your safety.”
Max sat in silence for a few moments, taking it all in. Leaving a single family member alive was a sort of calling card.
“I’m sorry, Max,” his father said. “I should have told you that story a long time ago. It isn’t something I like to discuss. Not really something that I was allowed to discuss.”
Max spoke quietly. “What happened after that? With you and the CIA?”
“I told the CIA I was done.” Charles turned to face Wilkes. “But one is never truly done with them. I realize that now. When I told them that I was finished, the CIA was unhappy. But they didn’t push it. They gave me protection, and I’ve helped them from time to time.”
Wilkes said, “As far as we know, Morozov never told anyone else that your father was working with us.”
“He knew and he never told the Soviets about my father working for the CIA? Why not?”
Wilkes said, “In a word? Pride. And maybe fear. Morozov didn’t want to look bad. You have to remember the way the Soviets worked back then. Your father was feeding the KGB false information for years. Military secrets. Their government made major decisions to increase military spending based on the information that we provided. It was all part of a huge misinformation campaign. We wanted the USSR to spend itself into oblivion. We knew their economic engine couldn’t sustain it. It couldn’t keep up with the United States’ manufacturing power. But why stop there? Why have them think they needed to keep up with reality, when we could provide them an alternate reality that was even more grave?”
“What did you tell them?”
“We gave them information about a classified stealth aircraft program—claiming that they were in development out in the Nevada desert.”
“Didn’t we actually have something like that?” Max asked.
“Yes. Lockheed’s Skunkworks program was very similar. They developed the F-117, the B2, etc.…”
“So what did they think you were doing?”
“They thought Fend Aerospace was developing a set of supersonic stealth fighters. We made it look like we were decades ahead of where we really were. We even created cardboard cutouts and placed them in the desert. We had an entire base filled with fake aircraft. Hundreds of personnel were involved. Only a few knew that it was a deception, however.”
“But Morozov found out.”
“Yes.”
“And he never told anyone.”
“It would have ruined him. He might have even been executed, for not catching that it was all fake.”
Max was incredulous. “So he just let the Russians think that it was real?”
Charles shrugged. “Why not?”
“By the time he found out, it was 1989. The Soviet Union was in decline. The Red Army was getting slaughtered in Afghanistan. Bread lines in Moscow. He saw the writing on the wall. Why hurt his reputation? It was better for him if he kept the failure quiet. I have to admit, considering his position today, he was right about that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before? About my mother…”
“You were too young to understand. And much of it was classified at the highest levels.”
“Still is,” Wilkes said.
Max frowned. “Who cares, now?”
Charles looked at Wilkes.
“Because as you now know, Pavel Morozov still presents a threat to national security,” Wilkes said. “And the CIA wants to bring him down.”
They ordered an early dinner delivered from a local seafood restaurant. Max ate a grilled mahi-mahi sandwich while he filled them in on what he had witnessed over the past few days.
Wilkes had a lot of questions. “So you think it was MI-6 that helped you escape?”
“I do.”
“Why do you think it was them?”
“British accents, mainly.”
Wilkes said, “That’s great detective work.”
“Because they were good. And I recognized one of them, from an op a few years ago. I know that he was MI-6.”
“Fine. Tell me about your interactions with them again. MI-6 had you meet with their woman in Morozov’s outfit?”
“Yes. Down in Key West. Morozov had his yacht docked there until recently.”
“How’d you know Morozov was there?”
“The MI-6 woman told me to meet her there.”
Wilkes looked bothered. “Why didn’t they go through normal channels to resolve this?”
“They said they did,” Max said. “They said the CIA didn’t want to halt the Fend 100 passenger qualification flight.
They said you wanted to let Morozov keep going so that you could catch him red-handed or something like that. Is that true?”
Wilkes clenched his jaw. “Not entirely.”
“Now what the hell are you playing at, Caleb? If that Russian lunatic is putting people in danger, then we need to do something about it,” Charles said.
Wilkes didn’t answer. He was distracted, looking off into the distance. Like he was trying to sort something out in his head.
“You’re right about Morozov’s being a threat,” Max said. “He’s planning to steal all of your company’s data—he’s going to launch another cyberattack. He’ll have the technology for the Fend 100 and be able to sell it on the black market.”
Wilkes and Max’s father looked at each other. “We know,” Wilkes said. “I told your father about it last week. After you made your escape from D.C. What we don’t know is how he’s going to do it.”
“Well, I might be able to help with that part.”
“How?”
“The MI-6 woman I met—Charlotte Capri. She told me that Morozov’s hackers have a way to get access to the secure servers where the Fend 100’s data is stored.”
Max told them what he’d learned from Charlotte, and what Renee and he had figured out on their own. When he was finished, both Charles and Caleb Wilkes looked impressed.
“You were actually on his yacht?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re lucky to be alive.”
“Agreed.”
“She’s supposed to meet with me again. She says MI-6 is working on software that will be able to defend against Morozov’s hackers.”
“Where and when is she meeting you?” Wilkes said.
“Somewhere in Jacksonville, tonight. Morozov is sailing his yacht up the Florida coast today. Which continues to bother me. Morozov must know that we’re on to him. Especially now that I’ve gotten away. Why isn’t he more frightened of US law enforcement or counterintelligence taking him into custody?”
“He’s a pro,” Wilkes said.
“So what?”
“He’s been at this a long time, and he knows the rules. We can’t touch him right now. We don’t have evidence that he’s done anything wrong, other than your word. Which is tainted, at the moment—thanks to him. Like I said. A pro.”