But she knew Semion Davydenko too well. He would insist that she pitch the scheme to his pakhans. They, most certainly, would talk the idea to death and then slow-walk it to its grave.
Oh, the things I’d do if Papa’s approval weren’t needed.
Svitlanya mulled over the idea of sending Wolfe a second email. She stilled, barely breathing, as she considered how she might approach him. She even opened a file and slowly typed the initial gambit, the language she might use to put forward the suggestion.
Dear Director Wolfe,
Thank you for reaching out to us on a matter of grave concern on both sides—the safety and security of America from terrorism. I am glad we could come to a mutually beneficial resolution, now that you have received the requested shipping information.
Svitlanya thought through the next paragraph, then typed it out.
We also spoke of our other security needs, you of your agent’s safe return, us of our data, presently held in other hands. How simply could both problems be solved if we were to, again, cooperate.
I propose we think on how to achieve such a solution. I await your timely reply.
Cordially,
S.D.
With the boldness she would need when her father passed, Svitlanya copied the text, pasted it into an email, and sent it to the address Wolfe had provided.
As the message flew away, she did not allow herself to fear the repercussions.
If I wait until Papa is gone to be bold, it will be too late. I must be the leader now that we will need then.
Svitlanya returned to the couch, crawled under the covers, and slept at last.
JAZ SIGHED AND TURNED over again. It wasn’t that she didn’t need the rest. Plainly, she was exhausted. She couldn’t sleep because she couldn’t shut her brain off.
When she closed her eyes, her thoughts turned to finding wherever AGFA had stashed Bella and how Wolfe, with his many resources, would mount a rescue. The only things able to turn her thoughts in another direction were the problems assigned to the task force to solve.
Jaz was never far from her laptop, her ears attuned to its every sound. Even now, with the volume turned down low, the soft ping of an incoming email roused her.
She lifted the lid on her laptop and opened her email account. Nothing. She switched to the account she’d set up for communications between Wolfe and the Ukrainian mob.
Another email from Svitlanya Davydenko?
She read Svitlanya’s email. Read it again.
“If the Lord moves in that situation, Jaz, we’ll know it.”
“If the Lord ‘moves’? What’s he gonna do? Wave a red flag? Send up a flare?”
“However he chooses to act, it will be unmistakable. Until then? Keep your hands off.”
Jaz shivered. “Yah, this is pretty unmistakable.”
Okay, I did what you asked, Tobin. I kept my hands off—until I got the unmistakable nod from your god.
SVITLANYA WAS TIRED when she crawled from the couch to start her day. She had back-to-back meetings with her father and several pakhans all afternoon and would need her wits about her.
She showered, dressed, and called downstairs for the kitchen staff to bring her a breakfast tray. While she waited, she opened her laptop to review notes on the meetings. On a whim, she checked the email account she used to communicate with Wolfe.
Svitlanya was surprised to see an immediate response to her message of a few hours ago. Her surprise grew when she realized who had sent the response. Not Wolfe.
She read the message’s content . . . and read it again. A viable path opened before her, the means to a successful transition as head of her father’s organization.
If she dared to step onto the path.
She chewed her bottom lip, gathering her courage. Then she replied to the email.
I accept. However, time is short. In a show of good faith, I will hasten to do my part. I expect you to complete your part of the exchange within the week following.
She set her laptop aside and thought through her next steps. The adrenaline racing through her blood had wiped out all traces of fatigue.
I can rest later. Now I must prepare myself to act decisively.
USAMA INTERRUPTED COSSACK’S conversation with the men in the cavern. “General Sayed wishes to see you.” Something about Usama’s demeanor and the tense set of his shoulders gave Cossack pause. As did the two flint-faced men who accompanied him.
“Of course.” He murmured to the soldiers he had been sharing his lunch with, “Please excuse me.” He tried to follow Usama, but the man insisted he go first.
“You know the way.”
Not “You know the way, General Labazanov.”
I am in trouble, and I don’t know why or how. But after being found “wandering” around the coal-fired furnace in the cavern three nights past, he already knew he was walking on thin ice. He had explained that when he couldn’t sleep, he had gone into the cavern to warm himself by the furnace, and had become interested in its workings.
“We need a dependable heat source in our stronghold, and I have been pondering how we might utilize such a device. I went behind it merely to explore and find where the ductwork came out of it.”
“You weren’t hiding from my men?”
Cossack had allowed his response burn hot. “Why would I need to hide myself, General Sayed?”
Sayed hadn’t replied. He had flicked his fingers at Usama, dismissing them both.
Cossack arrived at the entrance to Sayed’s rooms and waited for Usama. At Usama’s signal, the guard pulled back the curtain and let them in.
Then Cossack saw the woman standing respectfully behind Sayed’s seat. Even veiled, the intensity of her hatred reached out to him—as did the jangling alarms telling him that he should know her.
“Arzu, Arzu, Arzu. Halima bint Abra has the most incredible tale to relate. Honestly, I cannot give it credence . . . but she is quite persuasive. So, shall I let her tell the story?”
“As you wish, Sayed. I do not know the woman.”
Sayed crooked a finger at her, and she spoke. In English.
At the sound of her voice, Cossack started to sweat.
“I was a medical doctor, a gynecologist, when I first laid eyes on you. And you? You were but a lowly trainee.”
She removed her veils, and Cossack studied the woman’s sallow skin, the pouches hanging below her dark eyes, trying to place her.
“You and she were quite close.”
“I do not speak English as well as General Sayed. Please use Chechen or Russian.”
“But you do know English—it is your first language. And I think you begin to remember me now? From Marstead’s training camp? Yes. You knew me as Dr. Gupta back then, Black. You and Miss Green—or should I call her Magda?”
It took only seconds for Cossack’s carefully crafted cover to come undone.
Sayed chuckled. “Oh, Halima! Yes, I see his guilt. It is written across his face. No wonder I have been suspicious of him all these years. You say he and the woman trained together to become spies?”
Gupta smiled her triumph. “That is precisely what I am saying. It was at least twenty-five years ago. I went on to other things later.”
“What are you talking about?” Cossack roared, switching back to Russian. “I do not know this—this liar, this deceiver!”
“Oh, I believe it is you who is the liar and deceiver, Arzu—if that is your name. But no mind. We shall get the truth from you soon enough. I must know how many lies you have told and to whom you have whispered our secrets.”
To Usama he said, “Give me his mobile phone then put him in a secure cell. I will use my own hand to pry the truth from him.”
Usama shoved a gun into Cossack’s side and pulled the phone from his pocket. “Do not resist me, General.”
With Usama and his men following close behind, Cossack found himself being prodded down a tunnel, past the side tunnel where the kafir women were kept, to a cell carved into the si
de of the tunnel.
Usama stared at the peg pounded into the tunnel wall. “Where is the key?” he demanded of his men.
They looked at each other. One of them said, “I will fetch another key, Usama.”
Minutes later, Cossack was alone in the cold cell, locked behind its barred gate.
THE HOUSE WAS QUIET. The kitchen servants were out doing the day’s shopping. It was a good time to approach her father with a sensitive request. Svitlanya knocked on her father’s door. Semion’s office on the main floor of their family’s home was spacious and grandiose—as befitting an American oligarch.
“Papa. I wish to speak to you.”
“Come in, Svittie. Come in.”
It struck Svitlanya almost daily how much bone and muscle mass her father was losing. He was, quite literally, shrinking before her eyes. In her mind’s eye, Svitlanya could see her mother wringing her hands and hear her bemoaning her husband’s fickle appetite—exactly as she would have done had she still been alive.
Her beloved mother had passed during the night six years ago, and Svitlanya could honestly say she was glad her mother had been spared her eldest son’s death, her second son’s trial and incarceration, and her husband’s physical and mental decline.
“What is it, Svittie?”
Svitlanya sat before her father’s desk like one of his pakhans. “I have received an email, Papa, from the hacker who stole our data, the woman called Vyper.” She left the statement hanging in the air for her father to contemplate, for him to believe that the initial move had come from the other side.
“Is it a trick?”
“I cannot believe it is. The message came through the email account Director Wolfe provided. I think this Vyper must be under the director’s personal supervision.”
“And what does this woman want?”
“She wishes to make an exchange.” Svitlanya laid out the offer. It wasn’t long or complicated, but Svitlanya used simple, concise phrases. Her father’s mind wasn’t as agile as it had been in years past—and she wasn’t the only one to have noticed.
As Semion Davydenko’s mental acuity had slackened, the atmosphere in this room when his pakhans and their brigadiers were gathered, while calm on the surface, was often tense below, the cunning jockeying for position. And whenever Svitlanya joined them, the tension became a sticky, sucking quicksand, a subtle but ongoing group effort to run her down. Wear her down. Intimidate and repudiate.
But never directly. Never enough to catch her father’s notice.
He sighed. “This woman. She has done us a great wrong, eh? But now she wishes us to trust her? And to set such a short deadline without allowing us proper consideration first? I don’t know, Svittie.” He shook his head wearily. “I don’t know.”
“Perhaps we could consider the benefit versus the cost. The benefit? Our data could never be used against us. We would be safe from FBI prosecution. And the cost? It is little to us.”
“Tell her I will think on it. Perhaps I will talk it over with Gregor. Yes, I will ask Gregor.”
“Of course, Papa. Gregor is wise.”
Gregor is a snake coiled in the grass, waiting for his moment to strike. But your eyes cannot see the danger, can they, Papa?
Svitlanya nodded to herself. She already knew the outcome of such a conversation. Gregor would pretend to ruminate on the situation, give it the serious consideration it deserved. Then he would denounce the suggestion—because it had come through Svitlanya to Semion.
But the window was too small to wait. Mere days. She would never have an opportunity like this one. Not before it was too late.
“Would you like a cup of tea, Papa?”
“Hmm?”
“Tea, Papa?”
“Oh. Oh, yes. Please.”
In the kitchen, Svitlanya filled the kettle with fresh, cold water, and put it on to boil. While the water heated, she set a tray on the counter. Took down her father’s favorite cup and saucer and carefully wiped them. Folded a snowy-white napkin and set it on the tray beside the cup.
She measured the loose tea blend he loved into a strainer. The tea filled her nostrils with the familiar mingled scents of orange, clove, white tea leaves, and nostalgia. Days long gone by, never to return.
She poured the boiling water into her father’s cup and rearranged the napkin. Every little task an honor, each movement of her hands a loving tribute. When tears stung her eyes, she sniffed them back.
From her pocket, she withdrew a candy-like tab. She tore the wrapper’s end and, taking care not to touch the tab, she squeezed it into the strainer then closed the strainer and placed it in his cup. She hummed a distracting tune to herself as the tea steeped exactly four minutes.
When she lifted the strainer from the cup, she dumped its contents into the garbage disposal, added the tab’s wrapper, and flipped the switch that turned the disposal on. She ran water down the sink as the disposal worked, until nothing remained except the sweet scent of orange peel and cloves.
She poured a full tablespoon of honey into the cup and stirred.
Oh, Papa. The life you were born into didn’t make you a good father, but you did love me . . . and I am grateful.
She carried the tray to his office and set the cup in front of him.
“Thank you, Svittie.”
“I love you, Papa.”
She kissed him on the forehead, picked up the tray, and closed his office door behind her.
Chapter 35
TOBIN WAS PICKING THROUGH the bagels in the bullpen when Brian sauntered in.
Brian yawned and bellied up to his desk. Plunked his coffee down, sloshing it a little. Used a tissue to wipe the spill. Picked up the morning newspaper. Flipped it open.
“What the devil?”
Tobin turned, bagel in hand. “What’s up, Brian?”
“Uh . . . that Svitlanya Davydenko chick you and Jaz were, um, discussing the other day? Part of the, um, you know, Ukrainian organized crime syndicate?”
“Yes, I know who she is. What about her?”
“Says here that her dad died.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Article reads, ‘Semion Davydenko, alleged head of the Ukrainian organized crime syndicate headquartered in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, passed away suddenly yesterday morning.’”
Tobin was reaching for Brian’s paper when his cell phone rang. “Hang on, Brian. Need to take this.” He picked up.
“Marshal Tobin.”
“Yes, Director?”
Wolfe’s words were restrained but a hint of giddiness bled through his reserve. “Marshal, I just spoke with Svitlanya Davydenko. She has had a change of heart—and is going to call AGFA’s headquarters later this morning, appropriating her father’s death as the reason for the call and introducing herself to AGFA’s leader.
“We’re coordinating with the FBI, and they are taking lead on tracking the location of AGFA’s satphone for us. I want you and Miss Jessup in DC for the call, so leave ASAP. Dress appropriately for high-level meetings.”
Wolfe took a breath. “Marshal Tobin, this is what we’ve been hoping for. A real shot at pinpointing AGFA’s headquarters.”
Tobin hung up, a stunned expression on his face. “Lord. You did it. You changed her mind.”
WORD OF SEMION DAVYDENKO’S passing had spread quickly, and the Davydenko’s home was already burgeoning with flowers. Oversized wreaths with condolences spelled out on wide ribbons—Forever in Our Hearts, Resting in God’s Arms, and other gratuitous sentiments. Great, impressive floral arrangements heavy with the cloying fragrances of lilies and roses.
Svitlanya, dressed in elegant black from head to toe, sat behind her father’s imposing desk—her desk—receiving visitors. Overnight, she had cleared out the furnishings and bric-a-brac specific to Semion or too masculine for her tastes. She’d replaced the two chairs facing the desk with four from her previous office. The chairs were feminine, upholstered in bold, bohemian tapestry and intentionally an inch o
r two shorter than the ones they had replaced. The seats were presently occupied by old family friends, an elderly couple her father and mother had known all their married lives and their two daughters-in law. The couple’s two sons, who had grown up with Svitlanya, stood behind their wives.
The sons had taken in the changes to Semion’s office, Svitlanya’s de facto assumption of power. They hadn’t missed the large man serving as Svitlanya’s aide standing respectfully inside her office doors. Behind them.
“I want to thank you for coming in person to offer your condolences at this difficult time,” Svitlanya murmured at the conclusion of the visit. “I treasure the friendship our family shares with yours. Going forward, I won’t forget your kindness.”
Both sons understood her perfectly.
“You have our unconditional love . . . and support,” one carefully answered.
The other nodded and said, “Yes. Unconditional.”
“Thank you.”
She arose from her chair and walked around the desk to receive their embraces. When she lifted a finger, her aide stepped forward to usher the visitors from the room and bring in the next group.
The aide, Nico, was armed and sworn to Svitlanya, one of four such allies, Svitlanya’s newly chosen pakhans. He was, however, the only one of Svitlanya’s pakhans visible to her guests. The other three captains were in the house, armed and discreetly out of view, but never far from Svitlanya’s office and person.
Svitlanya had called the four men to her early yesterday afternoon . . . after the servants had found her father slumped over his desk, after the coroner and the police had come and eventually taken Semion’s body away. She had called these four men and requested their immediate presence.
She had selected the men because they were steady, loyal members of the organization, but a tier below her father’s pakhans. They had come to her, their eyes wary, well aware that her first moves would be swift and decisive—or they would be her last. They had come to take her measure, to judge whether she had the intelligence and brass to undercut and defeat her father’s old guard.
Laynie Portland, Spy Resurrected Page 39