Seconds to Midnight

by Philip Donlay

  “No, just getting old. We’re being rude. Will you please introduce me to your daughter? I’ve heard so much about her.”

  “Of course.” Kristof held his hand out. “Kitten, this is Dmitri Sobolev, one of my oldest friends, and one of our long-time customers.”

  “So pleased to meet you,” Dmitri said with a small smile. “You’re just as brave as your father and infinitely more attractive.”

  “Thank you,” Marta said as she accepted the handshake. “I’m sorry about—”

  “No, don’t worry.” Dmitri massaged the skin on his face. “It was a very well-executed maneuver, timed perfectly. You caught me off guard and established your authority. Well done. Kristof, you should have seen her.”

  “I’m well aware of her ferocity,” Kristof said, turning toward Lauren. “Dmitri, this is Dr. Lauren McKenna.”

  “Doctor, your reputation precedes you.” Dmitri reached out and took Lauren’s hand in both of his. “Both you and your husband have been unwavering allies on behalf of Russia. I thank you.”

  “This is Trevor,” Kristof said, almost as an afterthought. “Now, back to business. Dmitri, what do you know about the men who attacked my chalet in Austria?”

  “Not much more than you,” Dmitri said, turning toward Tatiana. “From what I do know, she has the answers.”

  “Tatiana,” Kristof said, his voice firm and direct. “We’ve never actually met, and if you haven’t already surmised who I am, I’m Archangel. I’m going to give you this one opportunity to avoid a great deal of pain and suffering. I’m tired, angry, and impatient. If you make me interrogate you, I doubt you’ll live to see morning.”

  “I don’t know what it is you think I did.” Tatiana’s voice wavered with fear. “But I’m sure there’s been some sort of misunderstanding that we can discuss.”

  “Henryk!” Kristof called out without breaking eye contact with Tatiana.

  Lauren heard Henryk approach, and as she turned, she saw Viktor, their prisoner from the Wroclaw hospital, being pushed toward the helicopter.

  “Viktor,” Kristof said as he jerked the frightened man closer so that Tatiana could see his face. “Is this the woman you know as Tatiana Reznik?”

  “Yes, sir,” Viktor said.

  “Would you remind Ms. Reznik what she told you when you were in Wroclaw?”

  “That she’d make me rich if I killed you, that you were old and sick, and it would be easy.”

  Kristof pushed Viktor back into Henryk’s arms, and Lauren watched as Henryk shoved the broken man away from the helicopter, and fired his gun harmlessly into the ground as he took Viktor to a garage. At the sound of the gunshot, Tatiana flinched, her face went white with fear, and she began stammering, trying to talk.

  “Tatiana, you had your chance.” Kristof held his index finger to his lips for her to be quiet. “I’m afraid it’s going to be a very long night for you. When Henryk has finished with Viktor’s body, he’ll be back to take you to the shed.”

  “The house is this way.” Marta gathered everyone and pointed toward the path that led to the house, leaving Henryk to do his job.

  Lauren processed what she’d just seen, and understood that terror was a better inducement than pain. Tatiana now believed that Viktor was dead, killed by Archangel, and that she was being taken to a shed, which sounded menacing. Archangel’s reputation, coupled with Marta’s degree in psychology, was a father-daughter combination that Tatiana couldn’t hope to overcome.

  “Kristof, Tatiana is still useful to us,” Dmitri said as they walked. “What’s to become of her?”

  “Come inside,” Kristof replied. “We have much to discuss.”

  Lauren dropped back as they walked toward a quaint house with smoke drifting from the chimney and light spilling out from the windows of several rooms. The cottage was nestled amongst a cluster of large trees; all of the leaves that had fallen earlier in the season were still underfoot, making the footing spongy. Trevor held the door open as Dmitri and Kristof entered, followed by Marta and Lauren. She was pleasantly surprised by a fire burning in a cast-iron stove, bringing a great deal of warmth. Even better, Lauren smelled coffee. In the peaceful setting, she suddenly missed Abigail and Donovan terribly.

  The momentary tranquility was destroyed as Kristof abruptly turned to Dmitri and backhanded him hard across the face. Lauren zeroed in on the Russian. She could see that he was in pain, and his Adams apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed nervously. Marta pulled out a chair from the table, and Kristof shoved Dmitri backwards until he sat heavily, sputtering and confused.

  “Dmitri, you and I are beyond games,” Kristof said, and he peeled off his heavy coat as if he were about to engage in heavy labor. “We have done business together for years, but this is beyond commerce, this is personal. Start talking and save us both the indignity of more violence.”

  “Kristof,” Dmitri said, hesitating and wincing as Marta secured him to the chair with zip-ties pulled tightly around his wrists and ankles. “I summoned Tatiana to Berlin to ask her perhaps these very same questions. She has your answers. We need to be focused on her.”

  “We’ll know shortly, won’t we?” Kristof found some cups hanging on hooks beneath the cabinets and set four on the counter. He filled each cup from the pot before setting it back on the stove. “How is your daughter, Elena? Is she still studying at the University in Saint Petersburg?”

  “Leave my family out of this,” Dmitri growled.

  “Ah, an option I wish I could have requested.” Kristof raised the steaming cup to his lips, then with one quick snap of the wrist, sent the scalding coffee into Dmitri’s lap. As Dmitri shrieked and writhed against the pain, Kristof continued. “There is no way Tatiana has the authority to assemble an SVR hit team to assault my house. A six-year-old girl who calls me uncle, and whom I love dearly, was caught in that crossfire.”

  Marta used her knife to slice away the fabric of Dmitri’s coat and shirt, from the shoulder to his wrist, exposing the skin of his left arm. Marta slipped an object from her pocket, carefully unfolded the cloth covering the contents, and set everything on the table.

  Lauren had seen it before—the prototype drug cocktail from Israel. Marta had brought it from Wroclaw.

  Marta tied off Dmitri’s arm with a rubber tube. She slapped the veins on the soft underside of his forearm until a bluish vein began to bulge. She held the syringe up to the light, making sure that Dmitri could clearly see the needle. Dmitri started to stammer a protest as Marta slid the needle into his vein.

  “We’ll leave you to think.” Kristof poured himself another cup of coffee, blew on the contents, and then sipped. “Marta, shall we go look in on Tatiana?”

  Kristof grabbed his coat, and they all funneled out of the kitchen. He stopped halfway between the cottage and the shed to say, “Marta, nicely done, as always.”

  “I see now that all of this was carefully choreographed,” Lauren said. “Do you think Dmitri knows something? Is that why you gave him the serum?”

  “Dmitri is an old man who has seen it all,” Kristof said. “He’d take days to break. Tatiana is ruthless, but her weakness is holding on to what little vanity and stature she has left in the world.”

  “She’s sitting in the shed right now, her arm hurts where I shot her, and she’s staring at a stack of batteries and jumper cables coiled up to look like a snake,” Marta explained. “Henryk is with her, and he’s sharpening some gardening tools. His role is to ignore her, and he hasn’t so much as even looked at her. I can’t imagine what must be running through her head, especially with her thinking that Dmitri and Dad are in the house having drinks. Experience has shown that after sixty minutes, her fear will peak. She’ll be a complete mess after that and ready to talk.”

  “Since there’s an hour to kill,” Lauren said, “is there Internet available here?”

  “Not here,” Marta said. “But the closest town, Brody, has Internet. It’s only ten minutes away. I’ll take you.”

  “
I’m happy to drive,” Trevor added.

  “Trevor, why don’t you stay here with me,” Kristof said and then sipped again from his cup. “You and I should spend some time together.”

  Lauren and Marta headed toward the front of the cottage where the full-size Mercedes was parked. Lauren settled in the front passenger seat. When Marta started the car, she said, “How did you know everything was going down the way it did?”

  “The instant Dad called me ‘Kitten’, an endearment I’m not very fond of, I knew that we were about to go on the offensive.”

  “What will happen to Dmitri and Tatiana?” Lauren spoke as she checked her phone for a usable signal. There was none.

  “That depends on them,” Marta said. “As a rule, Dad doesn’t like to kill people. He’d rather send them back out into the world absolutely terrified of Archangel. He still calls it intimidation, but in reality, it’s a form of corporate branding.”

  Lauren felt a hint of a smile reach her lips—global arms dealers employing the same marketing terms as McDonald’s or Apple. “What about Trevor and your dad?”

  “Oh, that? I’m afraid that’s probably straight-up intimidation.”

  “I think Trevor can hold his own,” Lauren said, followed by, “This is so frustrating.” Lauren pocketed her useless phone. “I’m so used to having information at the push of a button. With everything so erratic, it could take days to reach someone. At least e-mails, once sent, keep trying to get through, and eventually they do. I’m hoping there are some messages waiting for us. It might help us with these interrogations.”

  “You don’t seem as bothered as I thought you might be with our tactics,” remarked Marta.

  “This became very personal when people shot at my daughter, and it became even more real when confronted with that bastard at Stephanie’s. No one was more surprised than I was when I lost my temper and took a knife to him. Torture, or the fear of being tortured, does have its place, like tossing a man from a helicopter to plunge three feet to his inevitable bloody nose.”

  “Exactly,” Marta said. “But Dmitri and Tatiana are professionals. They might be harder to break.”

  “These people, whoever they are, keep attacking us, and we have no real idea why. I don’t know exactly where my husband is—or my daughter. All I know is that I’ll keep doing whatever it takes to try to keep my loved ones safe.”

  “Just keep that thought in mind.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  DARKNESS FELL QUICKLY. Donovan was flying the helicopter using mostly the instruments. The broken clouds above them couldn’t filter out all of the light from the Northern Lights, so there was just enough illumination to discern between the lakes and trees that slipped past a thousand feet below them. Michael sat next to him, a chart open on his lap. The signal from the Churchill navigation station was just now showing signs of life.

  Michael glanced behind them in the passenger compartment. “I think Rick and Jesse are asleep,” he said. “Montero and Sofya are talking.”

  “Trust me, if they understood that I have to land this thing in the dark—at an actual airport—they’d be awake. Have you been able to determine if we have enough fuel to even make it to Churchill?”

  “We have enough.” Michael pointed at the fuel gauges, as well as the current fuel flows to both engines. “We also have a nice tail-wind. If you need a break, we can switch on the autopilot.”

  “The what?”

  “Right here.” Michael pressed two buttons. “There, it’s all coupled up. You can relax. If you want to turn, use the heading bug.”

  “That’s not funny,” Donovan said as he flexed his tortured hands. “When were you going to tell me?”

  “I’m as new to this as you are. I’m navigating and calculating fuel. Plus, you need the practice. You have to land at night, remember. Let’s assume for a minute we survive our arrival in Churchill. What then?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Donovan said. “While we’re assuming things, are we to assume that no one has tampered with the Galileo? For all we know, we may be grounded.”

  “What are you two talking about?” Montero stuck her head in the cockpit. “Oh, wow, look at that.”

  Donovan glanced to the north. Through an opening in the overcast, the Northern Lights were undulating and dancing in the clear sky above. The shifting shades of green, pink, and purple were mesmerizing.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them quite like this,” Montero said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “We were talking about landing in Churchill.” Donovan turned in his seat to face Montero.

  “Why isn’t anyone flying?” Montero asked in a calm voice, her eyes darting anxiously around the cockpit.

  “Turns out we have an autopilot,” Donovan said.

  “That’s nice,” Montero said with indifference, as if to say she was sorry she’d asked, and was now bored with the subject. “I thought you’d like to see the pictures we took today. We didn’t want to say anything in front of Sofya, but we found what we were looking for. Michael and I both agree that it’s hard to say if he jumped or was thrown from the Boeing, but the results are pretty much the same.”

  Donovan took the camera from Montero and focused on the first image. Despite the snow and the man’s abrasions, Donovan could see he was youngish-looking, maybe thirty, clean shaven, with curly brown hair. In the next image, Montero had zoomed in on his blistered fingers. The burns appeared more concentrated than the injuries on other passengers on the Boeing. The next picture was of his left forearm, and an ornate, full-color, fire-breathing dragon coiling around the shattered limb.

  “It’s possible we can trace him through the tattoo,” Montero said.

  Donovan punched through the rest of the images before returning to the one showing his fingers.

  “Yeah, that’s the one that caught my attention as well,” Montero said. “When I was still with the FBI in South Florida we’d see this from time to time when someone was tortured. They’d burn them, and if the subject lived, it would be a lasting reminder about failed loyalty.”

  “Why would anyone start a fire aboard an airplane in the first place?” Michael said. “That’s just crazy.”

  “When are you going to show these to Sofya?” Donovan handed the camera to Montero.

  “Based on my experience, it’s all about timing and environment,” she said.

  “What type of a setting are we talking about?” Donovan asked. “Like a medical facility?”

  “No, not at all,” Montero said. “We’re not going to know if we have a Gulfstream until we land, right?”

  Donovan was glad that Montero understood that the Gulfstream had been sitting in a hangar with no more than the airport manager’s word that it would be safe.

  “If the Galileo is good to go,” Montero continued. “How long does it take to fuel and file a flight plan for London?”

  “London?” Michael asked.

  “Everything we’ve seen in regard to the crashed Boeing points toward the Russians, including Sofya,” Montero said. “At some point, we need to show her all of the evidence we collected, including the pictures of the guy who was tossed from the 737. We stand back and see if anything registers. I’ve seen this before, women who were brutalized, and remembered nothing from the attack. Once we made sure these women were safe, and convinced them that the people around them were going to protect them, we showed them crime scene photographs.”

  “Sounds harsh,” Michael said. “What typically happens?”

  “Sometimes nothing. Other times, everything comes rushing back, and it’s very emotional. Usually, it’s something in the middle, but Sofya needs to see everything. We still have unanswered questions, including files from the Boeing, and she’s the only one among us who can translate Russian to English.”

  “You want to do this in the back of the Gulfstream on the way to connect with Lauren and Marta?”

  “Yes,” Montero said. “There’s no one
chasing us while we’re aloft. That’s the key element. Once we have her in safe surroundings, I think you and I can get through to her. Also, once we do this with Sofya, we’ll have a clearer picture to take to William. You’re meeting him at Stephanie’s for New Year’s, right? We collect as much data as we can and then give it to him in person.”

  “Wait, why do you think I can reach her?” Donovan asked.

  “She’s attached to you,” Montero said. “She told me about what happened at the lake, how she took your gun and then used it to save you from being killed.”

  “Wait, Jesse told me you dropped all of those guys with the AK-47 he floated up to you,” Michael said.

  “All but one. I never saw him coming. He was out of my line of sight while I was busy taking care of his friends. She saved my life, though she seemed to lose herself for a few seconds afterward, as if she was just as surprised at what she did as I was.”

  “That could very well be the case. Fractions of memories seeping through when needed to act. In my opinion, she’s attached to you, and sees you as a protector, or father figure. She trusts you, which is the first element in easing her back into her reality.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m not qualified to be helping people regain their mental health,” Donovan said. “Are you sure we’re not doing more harm than good?”

  “The memories are in there,” Montero said, “and it’s hard watching her struggle. I once had a psychiatrist explain it to me as pulling off a scab so the wound can heal properly. Sofya is already in pain—she’s a lost soul. She feels responsible for the deaths of multiple people, and she doesn’t know who they are, or why everything is happening. She’s the biggest part of this mystery. We help her find the truth and then go wherever it takes us.”

  “Did Sofya tell you what I asked her after she saved me?” Donovan asked. “I asked her if she could have taken out all of the men from the helicopter.”

  “What did she say?” Montero asked.

  “She said ‘maybe.’”