Overture to Disaster (Post Cold War Political Thriller Trilogy Book 3)

by Chester D. Campbell

  "Sure, Adam. Be happy to. Are you going to Colorado?"

  "No, I have too much to do here. What about you?"

  "I'll be there unless the Attorney General orders otherwise."

  Stern gave a dismissive grunt. "He wouldn't dare."

  Evelyn Tilson stuck her head in Burke's door shortly before five, squinched up her eyes and shook her head. "My headache's got a headache. I think I'll cut out."

  "Why didn't you say something earlier?"

  "I had lunch with Toni. She has the same problem but said she couldn't leave with the Chief buzzing around in New York. I didn't want to look like a malingerer."

  "You women. That sounds like one-downmanship."

  "One-downpersonship, please."

  "Go home, Evelyn. Hope you feel better in the morning."

  "Are you camping out here tonight?"

  "No. I'll be leaving pretty soon. I didn't get much sleep last night."

  "I thought you said the twins were better."

  He smiled. "They are. A little personal project kept me up. See you tomorrow."

  After she had left, Burke leaned back in his chair, propped a foot on his desk and opened a report from Berlin that had come in during the afternoon. It dealt with the situation in the Commonwealth of Independent States. He wanted to read it before he went home.

  An account executive who had just returned from a business trip to Minsk reported a contact, high in the ranks of the Minsk militia, confided that there was growing concern among the Belarus leadership about the possibility of some sort of disturbance during the CIS summit starting on the fifth. He questioned the loyalty of a faction of the military and said there was growing animosity between the government and the Commonwealth Coordinating Committee.

  Burke had made it halfway through the lengthy report when his eyes began to drift shut. The loss of sleep had finally caught up with him. As he attempted to fight off the drowsiness by stretching his arms, the phone rang.

  "This is Brittany," said a soft, pleasant voice. "I'm surprised you're still there."

  "I didn't expect you to be working this late, either."

  "You know me. When I get absorbed in something, time completely escapes me. Want me to come up and give you a report, or shall I hold it until morning?"

  "My door's open. Come on up."

  A few minutes later, Brittany walked in with a yellow legal pad and a large brown envelope. She pulled a photograph from the envelope and laid it on his desk.

  "Adam Stern is the one on the left," she said.

  The picture showed a rather ordinary-looking man with a stocky build, dark hair, his jaw slightly off-color as if he needed a shave. He was holding a cocktail glass and had a one-sided grin on his face. Dressed in a dark suit, he stood talking with a tall, nattily-attired, white-haired man.

  "That's Bernard Whitehurst, isn't it?"

  Brittany nodded. "International banker, Foreign Affairs Roundtable chairman. It was shot by a news photographer at a reception last year. You can see Stern wasn't looking directly at the camera. When he realized his picture had been snapped, he cornered the photographer and demanded that his face not appear in the newspaper. They didn't have room to run it anyway. But they filed it for future reference."

  "How did you get it?"

  She smiled. "It cost me an arm and a leg. Well, more like a full body. I had to agree to a dinner date. It's a cute guy, though. I met him at the paper recently while looking up info on some other people for a PR campaign."

  "Fantastic, Brittany. What else do you have?"

  She sat down and propped the yellow pad in her lap. "There's a real dearth of information about the Roundtable, as well as your Mr. Stern. From open sources, I didn't get much more than he's in his mid-forties, unmarried, has worked for the Roundtable for about four years. But I learned from an ex-CIA friend that he came to the Agency right out of Amherst. He served as a case officer in Eastern Europe for ten years, then became a covert operations specialist. He was involved in Nicaragua and Afghanistan, among other hot spots. His title at the FAR is executive assistant to the president. But he's known variously as a 'facilitator' and as 'the enforcer.'"

  Burke shook his head and grinned. "You're a jewel, Brittany. I'd probably have spent a week coming up with that."

  She gave him an embarrassed smile. "I don't believe that, Mr. Hill. You're a flatterer." She turned a page in her pad. "I also checked at the Federal Club and learned the hotel Mr. Coyne uses when he comes to town. I called and found that Stern stays there as well. When I learned the date of Lt. Col. Juan Bolivar's death, I called a friend at the hotel and asked him to check the records and see if Stern was registered then. I should hear from him in the morning."

  "How do you acquire all these friends?" Burke asked.

  "Probably the same way you cultivated informants as an FBI agent. I do a lot of nosing around, contacting people with their fingers on the pulse of the business community. A PR researcher deals in facts and figures. I get to know a lot of people who run the computers at various locations. Those things can give you just about any information you want."

  "Well, you certainly did a bang-up job on this one, Brittany. Let me know what you come up with in the morning."

  Not far from downtown San Antonio was a neglected section of small, rundown frame houses on a street whose most notable feature was a large vacant lot where scrubby trees grew among a cluster of rusting junked cars. The street ran along a low hill, making the vacant lot an excellent vantage point for observation of the commercial area beyond.

  Roddy Rodman and Yuri Shumakov had scouted out the area earlier, after tracking down the location of Kreuger Produce Company. The narrow street intersected at the bottom of the hill with the access road to the produce firm's fenced enclosure. The melons aboard the Carga la Plata trailer would be unloaded at the long dock behind the company's large, concrete block warehouse building.

  Standing beneath a stunted oak tree beside the remains of a Ford pickup truck as rusty as a sunken battleship, the pair of trackers, armed with high-resolution binoculars, scanned the area as they waited. The slanting rays of the late-afternoon sun gradually encroached on their small oasis of shade, adding to the discomfort of the stakeout. The temperature had been in the mid-nineties most of the afternoon, and the humidity seemed to lag not far behind.

  As his gaze swung around the compound, Roddy suddenly spotted a silver tractor-trailer rig approaching from the access road. "Hey, look." He pointed excitedly. "Silver truck and trailer. Has 'Carga la Plata' painted on the side."

  Shumakov swung his binoculars in the direction Roddy was pointing. "Yes, and look behind it. A gray van pulling a...a what do you call it?"

  "A U-Haul trailer," said Roddy, noting the white rectangular box on wheels with the big orange stripe around it. It would easily hold the weapons. He speculated that it would contain some sort of shock absorbing material, sand or poly foam .

  As they watched, the truck moved around behind the building and backed up to the dock. The van pulled over to the side of the lot.

  Shortly after the melon unloading process began, the Mexican driver strolled over to the van. As Roddy and Yuri focused in with their binoculars, they saw Nikolai Romashchuk step out onto the asphalt.

  "There's our man," said Rodman. And as he recalled what had happened in Guadalajara, he added, "The bastard who killed Elena."

  "And one of those responsible for my brother's death," Shumakov said.

  When the Kreuger crew had finished unloading the produce, the driver pulled his trailer over to Romashchuk's van. The Major climbed in, followed by four Peruvians. A few minutes later, they reappeared and gently lowered two crates into the U-Haul trailer.

  As Romashchuk handed a handful of bills to the Mexican, Roddy turned to his partner. "We'd better get back to the car."

  With Yuri at the wheel of the blue Ford Taurus, they paused on the hill until the van pulled into the intersection. Then Yuri launched their pursuit. Where would it end,
he wondered? Would he get his chance to confront Nikolai Romashchuk and learn who had killed Vadim Trishin? That was the tenuous thread of possibility that had allowed him to fight his way this far in the face of all kinds of negative odds. How much longer could he hang on, and if he were successful, what would he find back home when he got there? For the first time in several days, he thought about General Borovsky and the troubling investigation that had started it all. Surely someone had taken over after his disappearance. He wondered what they had been able to ferret out? Had General Zakharov resurfaced? Then he remembered Latishev's concern about interference with the CIS meeting on July fifth. That was only six days off.

  Alexandria, Virginia

  58

  Lila Rodman was a young woman with a zest for life and a penchant for making friends. She had quickly thrown herself headlong into activities of her new community. She had a passion for music, and being the granddaughter of a Methodist minister, she promptly joined the choir at a nearby United Methodist Church. At one of her first rehearsals, she was introduced to a guest soloist, a young Air Force sergeant named Ian McGregor. After the service that Sunday, he had taken Lila and her mother out to eat. She had dated him several times since then.

  McGregor was a natural musician. He played trumpet and French horn with a flair and could hold his own on half a dozen other instruments, including guitar. In addition, he had a rich baritone voice. He had polished his innate talents through professional studies during two years of college. Then his parents had gone through a nasty divorce. To avoid the crossfire, he had dropped out of school and joined the Air Force. Now a member of the U.S. Air Force Band, stationed at Bolling Air Force Base just across the Potomac from Alexandria, he had been chosen for a new band offshoot called The ThunderBards. They performed a variety of folk music. Ian's father was a native of Edinburgh. With that heritage, he was given the lead on Scottish airs, perfecting a Gaelic accent for songs by Robert Burns.

  Ian brought Lila home early that evening because of a meeting at the base.

  "Have you heard from Daddy?" was her first question to her mother.

  Karen shook her head. "Not yet. I expect he'll call later this evening."

  "He didn't say when he was going to be back?"

  "No. He just said he would try to get back as soon as he could." She had promised Roddy not to worry Lila by mentioning the difficulties he faced.

  "Let me talk to him when he calls. They've made some changes in the program for that July Fourth concert at the Capitol. The ThunderBards are going to be featured in a medley of folk songs. I want all of us there to cheer Ian when he performs. Most of the congressional leadership will be there in the VIP seats."

  Karen smiled. "That's great, Lila. I know Roddy wants to meet him."

  But after her daughter had gone to her room, Karen Rodman dropped the smile. She had a gnawing fear that something would happen to thwart this budding reunion with her husband. For a long time she had tried to convince herself that it was all over between them. Roddy was in Mexico. Another country, another world. The crash and the court-martial had left him a physical and mental cripple. He no longer had any room in his life for her. She had built a life without him and now was on the brink of fulfilling her entrepreneurial dream with the dress shop.

  But when he had suddenly reappeared, he seemed virtually the same Roddy she had known and loved for years. Those defenses she had erected, the barriers she had built, had dissolved like a sand fortress washed by the surf. She'd had to restrain herself to keep from throwing her arms around him as Lila had done. But she had to be sure, to be certain she wasn't building up hopes that would be dashed again.

  When they had parted after dinner last night, Roddy had held her hand for a moment and said he hoped to see her again today. She was reminded of the nervous young cadet she had first dated some twenty-five years ago. And then came that late evening call, explaining why he would not be around today. He had promised to phone, for her own good he wouldn't say from where, and gave her Burke Hill's number to call in case of an emergency.

  She didn't like the idea of his following a man like this Major Romashchuk, but she accepted that it was probably Roddy's only chance to clear his name and his reputation. She could only pray that everything would work out as he hoped.

  It was around 9:30 p.m. when Burke answered the phone in the family room.

  "This is Roddy."

  With no background noise, Burke assumed it was not a cellular call. "Where are you?"

  "Austin, Texas."

  "Did our friends pick up their goodies?" By habit, Burke spoke cryptically even when there was little chance of being overheard. He had brought home a device to check for hidden transmitters and phone taps. Everything checked out clear.

  "Got them in a U-Haul behind a gray Chevy van."

  "Are you holed up for the night?"

  "Roger. After they checked into this motel, I asked for a room on the side where they parked the van. Yuri and I are planning to sleep in shifts. As soon as they show up, we'll be ready to hit the road behind them."

  "I don't suppose you have any indication where they're headed?"

  "Negative. We may get some better idea tomorrow."

  "Well, keep your eyes open and be careful."

  Then Roddy asked the question that had been uppermost in his mind. "Anybody looking for us yet?"

  "So far haven't heard a thing."

  Roddy called Karen and assured her he was fine and in no danger, at the moment. She told him to hold on for Lila.

  "Hey, young lady." He greeted his daughter. "How's my girl?"

  "I'm fine. Just a bit concerned that you dashed off before you'd hardly gotten settled down. Mom said it was business. Are you still licensed to fly in the States?"

  "I'm not flying. Driving. I hope to be back in a couple of days."

  "You'd better. I told Ian you would be here for the July Fourth concert at the Capitol. His group, The ThunderBards, will be featured on the program."

  "Sounds great, Lila. Shouldn't be any problem."

  Brave words, he thought as he hung up. No problem at all. Just hope to hell Yuri could keep Romashchuk from realizing he was being followed. If they were spotted, a call to the Major's friend Adam Stern would probably result in a hasty summons of reinforcements. He would have to talk to Yuri about keeping an eye on the traffic behind them. In combat flying, you never left your rear unprotected.

  Washington , D.C.

  59

  It was the last day of June and Burke Hill began gathering figures for a comprehensive analysis of Worldwide Communications Consultants' current financial condition. It would take several days to get final reports from all of the outlying offices, but the computer here in Washington would reveal most of the details. As he looked over some of the preliminary data, he made notes on particular items for further review. On encountering a category entitled "Office of the President," his thoughts inevitably wandered in another direction.

  He didn't see how he could avoid a showdown with Highsmith much longer. If Nate did not offer some rational explanation for the presence of Major Romashchuk and his guerrilla force, and at the moment such a possibility lay beyond his imagination, Burke knew his only option would be to resign from the company. He would also report everything he knew to the FBI, to Dr. Geoffrey Wharton, the President's National Security Adviser, and, just to be safe, to an editor he had met from The Washington Post.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a call from a ruffled Fred Birnbaum.

  "Have you tried to contact Yuri Shumakov in Minsk?" the FBI agent asked.

  "Yeah," Burke lied, not wanting to rouse any suspicions. "I wasn't able to reach him."

  "Well, I thought I'd better warn you. I don't know what's happened. It doesn't make sense."

  "What doesn't?"

  "He's on the Interpol wanted list. Seems he's been on it for a couple of weeks but I just became aware of it. They accused him of a homicide in Minsk."

  "That's strange
," Burke said. "Do you think he could do something like that?"

  "I wouldn't have thought so. I recall him telling me there was a lot of jealousy among people in the prosecutor's office. Particularly toward anybody with a high degree of conscientiousness. I guess it's a holdover from the old communist system."

  "Are you implying somebody could have framed him?"

  "It's possible. I really can't say. I found out about it when Interpol put out a new bulletin saying he had been reported in Mexico using the alias 'Ivan Netto.'"

  They were getting damned close, Burke thought. No doubt that would stimulate the Mexicans to increase their efforts. The next development would be to place Shumakov on the Worldwide Communications Consultants' aircraft departing the country. Then an FBI agent would soon be knocking on his door.

  The board of directors of the Robert and Amanda Highsmith Foundation, the think tank Nate Highsmith had named to honor the memory of his parents, held its quarterly meeting in Philadelphia that morning. As chairman, Nate presided over the session. Among invited guests from the professional staff was Dr. Jared Ketterhagen, one of two senior fellows who had been studying developments among the former Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union. They would soon outline their findings in a heavily footnoted article for one of the foreign policy journals.

  "Do you have any insights on how those republics will react at the Commonwealth of Independent States' meeting in Minsk next week, Dr. Ketterhagen?" Highsmith asked.

  The former political science professor was a tall, gaunt figure with a long, wrinkled face that disappeared into the hairless expanse that covered the top of his head. He had a low and ominous voice.

  "The Commonwealth Coordinating Committees have been working diligently in Central Asia. They want the governments to agree on measures that would appear to subordinate their sovereignty to that of the Commonwealth. However, most heads of state have resisted, desirous of not giving up their present control."