Then his booming Russian laugh filled the room. “Started young,” he repeated, laughing harder. “Indeed!”
Sam and Brock laughed, uneasily at first, then with more vigor, far more out of relief than mirth.
Alexandrov’s laughter diminished to a lingering smile, and he took another healthy swallow of vodka. He returned his gaze to Sam. His eyes still blazed a stellar blue, but the venom was now gone from them, replaced with something Sam thought might be kinship, maybe even reluctant admiration. “I’m listening,” he finally said.
They sat at the Aeroflot terminal at Moscow’s Sheremtyevo Airport. Despite Alexandrov’s assurances, Sam and Brock were still on edge.
The old Cold Warrior had accepted their terms, no questions asked. That either meant that the terms were agreeable, or that he was about to have their throats slit. Only time would tell, but Sam saw nobody who aroused her suspicion as they waited for their direct flight back to Washington, DC.
“Alexandrov was right, you know,” Brock said, breaking the tense silence.
Sam looked at him quizzically.
Brock smiled. “You do have brass balls.”
She shook her head, chuckling. “Lubyanka was a slightly outrageous gamble,” she admitted. “But in retrospect, I think Alexandrov is in a tough spot. If he balks, we roll up his entire operation. If he’s bluffing… we roll up his entire operation.”
Brock shook his head. “No way. We couldn’t find a dozen cops on the job right now to go arrest them.”
“Probably true,” Sam said. “But Alexandrov doesn’t necessarily know that.”
“So you trust him? That horse shit about some deep roller on a yacht in the Adriatic, and Mondragon in the jungle in Honduras?”
Sam sighed. “Of course not. But my calendar is suddenly pretty open, and I have nothing better to do than give him the benefit of the doubt. And his clock is ticking.” Two days, they’d given him. It would be plenty of time to hold up his end of the bargain.
The loudspeaker announced the flight, and the passengers arose and got in line. “Besides,” Sam said. “I’ve been hearing rumors about some ultra-deep power player for years now. It would be interesting to see if there’s anything to them.”
21
Captain Maurizio Turcoe bowed deeply, extending his hand. “Welcome back to the Anzio,” he said.
The Facilitator grunted his reply and strode past. He barely noticed that there was a new security guy in place of the dour-faced Serb who’d pulled guard duty during his last visit, just three days earlier.
That particular meeting had gone extremely well, and the Facilitator had spent the intervening time in the French Riviera, planning ways to consolidate his fortune and restore his organization to its former glory.
Turcoe led the Facilitator to his quarters. If the ship’s captain had any inkling of what was about to happen, he didn’t let on.
The Facilitator strode through the door that Captain Turcoe held open for him. Shock registered on the old man’s face. He had expected a follow-up strategy meeting with Johann Froehlich, the head of the European Central Bank.
Fyodor Alexandrov was the last person he expected to find on his yacht.
The Facilitator recovered his composure. “Fyodor,” he said, taking the seat adjacent to Alexandrov’s. “Have we left an open matter that I’m not aware of?”
Alexandrov smiled. “Old friend. Must every visit have a reason?”
The color drained from the Facilitator’s face.
“Yes, comrade, I’m afraid you’re right,” Alexandrov said, noting the change in the Facilitator’s visage. “There will be unpleasantness.”
Alexandrov rose. “You were a worthy friend, mentor, and confidant, and this is not an easy thing.” He produced a silenced pistol.
The Facilitator shook his head. He felt weight, sadness, the sting of unrealized ambition. He hadn’t expected the end to come this way. But enemies rarely killed powerful men. Usually, it was a friend. Just as it would be for him.
Alexandrov set his jaw, his face grim. “It is time,” he said. He pointed the gun at the Facilitator’s chest. “Goodbye, old friend.”
He pulled the trigger.
22
Three days had passed since their return from Moscow. Sam and Brock had slept in their own bed for two nights in a row, something that hadn’t happened since Brock was kidnapped from their home two weekends earlier.
Homeland had indeed been breached. But it didn’t appear to be an inside job. Alexandrov’s Russians, partially in response to the Facilitator’s wishes as Alexandrov’s client and partially due to their own entrepreneurial brand of trade craft, had pulled a page from the NSA’s playbook. One of the hackers had revealed — bragged, really, while Dan and Sam questioned him in an unofficial capacity, so as not to violate their agreement with Alexandrov — that they had strapped an inductive shunt onto the data cable leaving Homeland’s building. The upshot was that the computer whiz kids hired by the Facilitator to take over the Bitcoin theft operation after Domingo Mondragon’s hasty departure had been reading Homeland’s email and listening to phone conversations for nearly the entirety of Sam’s investigation.
It was a lot of data to sift through, but they were smart guys, and they built automatic filters to help them keep tabs on Sam’s investigation. Those filters instantly showed them everything that had anything to do with Special Agent Sam Jameson. The whole thing creeped her out, but she was thankful to be at the bottom of the mystery surrounding how Alexandrov’s men had deployed a team of heavies to Reagan International so soon after she and Brock had made their travel reservations to Rome. It was a damn good thing she’d gotten off the grid when she did. There was no telling when her luck would have run out.
Fyodor Alexandrov, by all indications, was a man of his word. He faxed a photo of a dead man, someone whom Sam didn’t recognize, but whose death had caused hushed whispers all the way up to the Office of the President. If the rumors were to be believed, the balance of power — the real power — had just undergone a monumental shift. At the bottom of the photo, in bold Slavic scrawl, Alexandrov had written the words RIP Facilitator.
Sam’s interest in the man Alexandrov had called the Facilitator extended only to his role in the redistribution of roughly a quarter of the world’s crypto currency wealth, and in any role he might have played in the civil destabilization operation on American soil. However, now that the Facilitator’s final photo had been circulated through the corridors of power, there was prevalent talk that the ugly old bastard had been involved in much, much more.
Was it bullshit? Sam had no idea. There was no shortage of conspiracy theories in DC, and, in Sam’s experience, there was also no shortage of conspiracies. She wasn’t inclined to believe the rumors that this particular conspiracy was all that important.
On the other hand, perhaps it was. She wouldn’t be all that surprised if it turned out to be true. Either way, though, she was pretty sure she’d never know for certain.
She also had mixed feelings about her deal with Alexandrov. The deal had undoubtedly kept her and Brock alive, and, judging by the dispersal of the Russian hacker operation and the end of the agitation caused by Russians posing as US soldiers, it had also put a stop to a significant threat to US national security.
For the moment, anyway. She’d been forced to leave the organization intact, which certainly meant that they’d cause further trouble at some point down the line.
The deal had also cost a man his life. And it had made Sam a partner with one of the most evil men on the planet.
She shook her head. Truth was a damn sight stranger than fiction, and nothing ever really ended cleanly.
And now, Belize. There was a gigantic loose end remaining. The money was still missing. Trojan’s virus had evidently succeeded in breaking into the electronic equivalent of an empty vault. The theft operation had ceased to be an operation, but the digital money was nowhere to be found.
Sabot, you crafty little b
astard.
The flight to Belize had been smooth. She had taken the Homeland jet, and had even consented to having it filled with Homeland field agents. The coordination with the authorities in Belize had been remarkably painless, and McClane, to his credit, had cleared away mountains of red tape on the American side.
It was time to bring in Sabot Mondragon.
“Alpha ready,” Sam’s radio earpiece crackled. She gripped her pistol, thumbed the safety to the off position, and nervously felt her ballistic vest with her left hand. It was getting close to show time.
A few seconds passed. The top floor hallway in the luxury beachside hotel was completely silent. The hotel was almost entirely deserted. It hadn’t been terribly difficult to find the one guy with cash to burn after the global economic meltdown. Mondragon hadn’t left the hotel in days, apparently, but he wasn’t exactly laying low.
She heard “Bravo ready” in her earpiece. Then, “Charlie Team is all set.”
She took a deep breath, clicked the transmit button, and whispered “go.”
It was over in an instant. Mondragon and his girlfriend were taking a siesta, and had no stomach for a struggle.
The girl’s mother was sunbathing down at the pool. The arresting officer said she actually looked relieved to have been arrested by an American agent.
Forty-five minutes later, the Homeland VIP transport plane nosed skyward. Sam unbuckled and walked back to Mondragon’s seat.
He was strapped in and handcuffed, and he looked tired and strung out. “You’ve had one hell of a week,” Sam said.
“I was coerced,” he said.
Sam nodded. “I know.” She looked at him and felt pity. He was a convicted felon, but he had been on the straight-and-narrow until a little over a week ago. Hell, he was even working for the Bureau. He couldn’t have gone crooked if he tried, at least until that phone call.
She suspected that Sabot was the Facilitator’s Plan A — if, as Alexandrov had intimated, the Facilitator was behind Mondragon’s recruitment into the Bitcoin theft operation — but that Mondragon had worn out his utility when he started skimming.
Sam shook her head. “You had to put your hand in the cookie jar, didn’t you?”
Sabot snorted. “What would you have done?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. It turned into a lot of money, and fast, didn’t it?”
Sabot nodded, sadness in his eyes. “I didn’t know how else to get out of the situation. Guys like that don’t exactly offer a 401k.”
Sam smiled. “Guys like that don’t usually leave guys like you alive to talk about it. You were lucky.”
“The feds will say I violated my parole,” Sabot said. “They’re going to throw away the key. Sometimes I wish those Honduran bastards had killed me.”
Sam shook her head. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. I think sending you back to prison would be a tragic waste of talent.”
Sabot looked confused.
“I’ve talked this over with the US Attorney at length,” Sam said. “He agrees that if you and I can come to an agreement, that’s good enough for him.”
Sabot looked incredulous. “What?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “You’re a regular hero. You shut down the biggest theft operation in human history. At least, that’s what the story will be.” She looked pointedly at Sabot. “After you give back every last nickel you stole.”
Sabot took a deep breath, exhaled, and nodded. There was a part of him that hadn’t really expected to ever live long enough to spend that money. And if he did happen to survive the adventure, keeping the money had always felt like a long shot.
“Why are you doing this for me?” he asked.
Sam smiled. “I’m doing it for me,” she said. “I think you did what most people would have done in your situation, which was a shitty situation, so I’m not anxious to ruin your life.” She smiled. “And as my new Russian friend pointed out just a few days ago, the world has changed quite a bit in the past few years.”
“I don’t understand,” Sabot said.
Sam chuckled. “I want a guy like you to owe me a favor so big that it can never be repaid.” She patted him on the shoulder, turned, and walked back toward her seat.
Halfway there, she stopped and wheeled back around. “Almost forgot to mention,” she said, leaning conspiratorially close to Sabot’s ear, “that a very bad person has just died. He was also a very rich person. So rich, in fact, that it will take an extremely long time for the federal government to inventory his assets, much less seize them.”
Sabot looked confused again.
“I’m saying that there’s a large pile of uncounted assets. If the ownership of some of those assets was to change hands before we got around to accounting for it, that would probably fall in the moral category of a victimless crime, and in the practical category of a non-event. A tree falling in the forest, as they say.”
She winked and returned to her seat. She felt good about helping Mondragon out. He seemed like a good kid at heart.
She sighed heavily. Her next task was going to suck.
Sam lifted the receiver of the in-flight telephone next to her seat, typed in her Homeland badge number to access the satellite phone system, and dialed a number she had copied down in the BWI airport concourse several days earlier.
Trojan answered. “Thanks for all of your work on that virus,” Sam said. “But I think we finally have the Bitcoin issue wrapped up.”
“You got the thief?”
“We did.”
She asked to talk to Archive.
Moments later, she heard the jovial voice of the wizened old mastermind behind the conspiracy that had thrown the entire globe into fiscal chaos. “How is everyone at the ranch?” Sam asked.
“Fine, fine, thank you very much for asking,” came Archive’s reply.
“Are the federal officers still protecting you?”
Archive answered in the affirmative.
“Is there any sign that you’re about to be attacked by anyone?”
“There’s no one within fifty miles,” Archive said. “It’s gotten cold up here, and people are afraid to come up to the mountains now.”
“Good,” Sam said. “Who appears to be in charge of the federal contingent?”
“A young man called Captain Gilmore,” Archive said. “Would you like to speak with him?”
“I would.”
Sam heard the rustle of the phone changing hands, then Gilmore announced himself.
Sam identified herself as the agent in charge of the investigation into the suspicious failure of the US dollar and the collapse of US banking system.
She hesitated, momentarily uncertain of her decision, but decided to carry on. It had to be done.
“Captain Gilmore,” she said, “I would like you to please arrest every last person at the ranch. Take them to the Denver office of the Department of Homeland Security. I’ll meet you there tomorrow morning.”
She hung up, feeling the pang of sadness that she had fully expected to feel. She had grown fond of the old man, the skinny hacker, even the cocky young executive they called Protégé.
She even figured that, once the dust had settled, the world would be a better place. What the old man and his menagerie of exceptional malcontents had accomplished wasn’t, at the end of the day, all that bad an idea. In fact, it had probably saved countless thousands of lives, at least compared to what might have happened if the runaway economic inequality had been allowed to grow unabated until the masses revolted of their own accord. The French Revolution would have looked like a game of patty-cake by comparison, Sam figured.
But you don’t get to make up the rules for everybody else, she had ultimately concluded. Even if you’re right.
She shook her head. There was no telling how the judicial system would handle them. She suspected it would be anything but pleasant.
Assuming a functioning judicial system still existed, she thought.
She flipped
on the television in front of her and tuned it to a news station. Time to figure out what the hell was going on in the world. The unrest had died down somewhat, but it still seemed like it could go either way. Could be an interesting week. Again.
She grabbed Brock’s hand and brought it to her lips for a kiss. He smiled at her, that boyish twinkle in his eyes. It made her heart beat faster, just like always.
Sam exhaled and closed her eyes. A smile settled on her face. An unprovoked sense of wellbeing filled her mind. In that tiny moment, on the razor’s edge of now, unencumbered by fabricated notions of future or past, life was pretty damn good.
Epilogue
A shadow fell over the small, slight man with ghost-white hair. A large shadow. It blocked his sunlight, which annoyed him. He was sunning himself the late afternoon glow. It bathed the pristine Croatian beach in a gorgeous, golden warmth.
He looked up. In front of him stood a very large figure. A monstrosity, really, a travesty in a bathing suit. With the world’s most ridiculous comb-over.
“Terencio Manuel Zelaya,” the fat man said, extending a drink. “You are one magnificent bastard.”
Zelaya smiled. “Señor Fredericks,” he said, his words slurred after a long session of day-drinking that had begun with breakfast, “I am one magnificent retired bastard.”
Bill Fredericks smiled. “I’ll drink to that,” he said, his finger idly fondling the key to his sprawling new villa, tangible evidence that, at least as far as Sabot Mondragon was concerned, honor still mattered among thieves.
A smug smile settled on Fredericks’ face. Matter of fact, he decided, I’m going to drink to that for a very, very long time.
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