by Tim Tigner
Ivan eventually broke the silence. “We will be parting company in Sydney. Where you go is entirely up to you, but I suggest you lose yourselves exploring the continent. Australia is the size of the United States, but its population is a mere 24 million. It’s beautiful, modern, friendly and oh so easy to get lost in. There are beaches and rainforests and beachfront rainforests. There are mountains and deserts and lush green valleys. They’ve got cities big and small, and villages of every size. You name it, you got it, all first class.” He raised his glass.
Michael and Boris raised theirs, but Pavel kept his vodka on the table. “If we split up, I don’t see how your twelve billion helps us.” Pavel held out his hands to simulate the scales, but after a bit of waggling, ended with them leaning left.
“Ah, yes. Thank you for reminding me. Your bonuses will be paid as if the executions went through. In fact, I’ve already made the transfers. In Bitcoin. Completely untraceable.” Ivan pulled three slips of paper from his pocket, studied them for a second, and handed one to each man. “These are the numbers of accounts with the nine-figure balances promised. You need to switch the 1s and 7s, and the 0s and 8s—I didn’t want to risk writing the real numbers down. I suggest you memorize them immediately. The passwords are your three initials in uppercase followed by your birthdays written DDMMMYY, like 11JAN77.”
Boris raised his glass. The others immediately followed. “Thank you. Here’s to your health, Ivan.”
Everyone drained their glasses.
Ivan refilled them. “Any more questions? We’ve still got time.”
“I have one,” Michael said. “When are you going to call Achilles?”
“I’m sure you know the answer to that?”
“I have my suspicion.”
Boris and Pavel looked on with mild curiosity. Visions of their new Australian lifestyles were sucking up the bulk of their attention, and the vodka was also taking effect.
Ivan leaned back and took another sip of his drink. “I’m not going to call Achilles. I want him spending the next few weeks looking for Katya, not us.”
109
Leapfrog
French Riviera
ACHILLES PULLED the listening device from his ear. He’d heard everything he needed to hear. His suspicion had been confirmed.
He slipped off the twin bunk of the Bright Horizon’s smaller guest stateroom, grabbed a Glock 19 with his right hand and a H&K MP7A1 with his left, and began climbing toward the third deck.
He moved as slowly and silently as a spider in sneakers until he reached the base of the second staircase. Then he paused to listen. The four were discussing plans for exploring Australia in style without attracting attention.
He cleared his mind the way he did before a complicated sequence on a climb, rehearsing each move. He’d pictured this exact scene while planning for tonight. Of course he’d pictured a dozen other scenes as well. As Ivan had taught him, he had prepared for them all, planting listening devices everywhere and practicing multiple moves.
He hadn’t known that Ivan had captured Katya—and he still had no idea how Ivan had managed it—but he had known that Ivan would go into tonight with a trump card up his sleeve. So Achilles had come up with a blanket plan, a coverall ruse to put himself one step ahead.
Jo had been in on it, but Rip had been clueless. That was important for selling the scam to Ivan and company. He wasn’t surprised by Rip’s apparent heartlessness. It happened all the time. Commanders often knew there would be casualties when they ordered an operation, but they ordered it anyway. They told themselves they were serving the greater good. They told themselves the victims knew the rules when they signed up to serve. They’d say the same about Katya. “She knew what she was getting into when she got engaged to Achilles.”
He finished his final visualization, opened his eyes, and charged. He took the stairs in three quick springs, landing in a shooters stance facing the table. Then he crouched and fired. Three bullets, three calves. Pop! Pop! Pop! Ivan. Pavel. Boris.
As they screamed and grabbed their legs, he holstered the Glock, swapped the H&K to his right hand, and leveled it on Michael. Holding the machine pistol rock steady, he pulled a pack of heavy duty zip ties from a cargo pocket and tossed it to Ivan’s right-hand man. “Bind the uninjured ankles to the table leg, and wrists to wrists. Anything I don’t find acceptably tight gets a bullet. We clear?”
The air was full of invectives, but Michael’s affirmative came through clearly enough. He went to work.
When Michael finished with the zip ties, Achilles tossed him another pack. “Another round, just as tight. I want fingers and toes tingling.”
Michael complied.
“Now the duct tape. You know the drill.”
Michael ripped off six-inch strips and slapped them over his friends’ mouths.
“Eyes too.”
Michael gave him a nasty look, but obeyed. When he finished, he turned to face Achilles, with shoulders squared and head held high. He thought he knew what was coming, and apparently he was prepared to face it like a man.
Achilles pointed the machine pistol at Michael’s center mass. “You shot Jo Monfort. You shot her in the chest and left her for dead.”
Michael said nothing.
Achilles ejected the magazine. He put it in his pocket and tossed the H&K downstairs. Then he did the same with the Glock. Then he launched himself at Michael like a demon from Hell’s door.
110
Shoulder to Shoulder
French Riviera
ACHILLES CLOSED THE GAP to Michael in two quick bounds and ducked at the last second to come in low with a gut punch. Typically this would bend his opponent over, setting up a knee to the nose. Given Achilles’ cross-country skier legs, that was usually the last blow required. Oomph! Crunch! Game over.
Achilles was counting on that quick and clean takedown. The kind he’d dealt to Vazov’s bodyguards. Revenge delivered, swift and sweet.
But history didn’t repeat itself.
His punch did not connect with his opponent’s gut.
Michael dodged like a professional boxer, then launched into a seven-punch combination, pummeling Achilles’ head and torso with powerful blows. As Michael danced back and rolled his shoulders, Achilles found himself feeling dazed and experiencing blurred vision in his left eye. Although disoriented, he wasn’t too confused to realize that he was likely to lose a punching match with this pro.
He couldn’t let that happen.
He couldn’t forfeit everything to one stupid move.
More importantly, he couldn’t let Katya down.
Achilles, quite simply, refused to lose.
So, as Michael swooped in to deliver his next combination, Achilles dropped and swept his legs.
Michael fell, then both men began scrambling to gain a dominant position. They threw fists and elbows, pushed palms and jerked knees. Neither was doing decisive damage or making sustainable progress as they tumbled and rolled like wildcats in a cage.
Achilles punched and pulled, blocked and absorbed, grappled and strained.
Michael punched and pulled, blocked and absorbed, grappled and strained.
Neither could achieve a dominant position long enough to do anything decisive.
Achilles pictured Katya and punched harder. He pictured her in her cell, and clenched firmer. He heard her calling out to him, and he roared in response.
None of it moved the needle.
Was he destined to be the final falling star?
Michael had compelling motivations of his own. He’d just become rich beyond most people’s wildest dreams, but had yet to spend a penny. And his team was right there, only inches away. Sending energy in his direction.
Achilles had known that the smart move was to treat Michael like the others. A shot to the calf, followed by zip ties and duct tape. But sometimes the shortcut was the wrong road to take. Sometimes you have to savor the moment, even if doing so might be a mistake.
He had been
fantasizing about beating Michael to a pulp ever since the bastard shot Jo in the chest and pushed her from his moving car—while she was under Achilles’ command. Looking down at her broken, comatose body in that Monaco hospital room, he had vowed that some day he would settle that score.
Today was that day.
On the surface, his decision didn’t appear to be reckless. Achilles was younger and stronger than Michael. Unfortunately, as circumstances were now reminding him, luck could toss victory either way. In situations like this, you just never knew.
Achilles stopped second-guessing himself and began thinking like Ivan. One step ahead. What would victory look like? How could he achieve it? He pondered that picture as they punched and jabbed and grabbed and rolled.
At last, an image appeared in Achilles’ mind. A wrestling move. It wasn’t the flashiest, or the most complicated, but it was unparalleled for its efficacy and ability to inflict pain. The problem was the setup. It required a gamble. A gambit that could cost him his life.
Achilles went for it.
He flipped around, sacrificing his dominant position in a move that landed him on his back with his opponent positioned directly above, perfectly poised to slug or choke.
Michael gleefully recognized the slip-up he’d been waiting for. He finally had room to move and options to exercise. He could punch Achilles into oblivion or choke him to death. In his excitement, Michael failed to notice that both of Achilles’ legs were now locked around his waist.
Achilles brought his arms and elbows up like a face guard to block the blows he knew Michael was dying to deliver. In doing so, he exposed his neck.
Michael went for it.
As he reached out with both hands open and murder in his eyes, Achilles squeezed his legs and put his arms and shoulders into action. He twisted up to the right, wrapping his right arm all the way around Michael’s upper left arm, while his left hand shot out and secured Michael’s left wrist. Then Achilles slapped his right hand over his own left wrist, trapping Michael’s entire left arm. He applied pressure, pushing the shoulder and elbow in unnatural ways. Painful ways. Debilitating ways. It was a Kimura lock, and it was one of the most dreaded in the mixed martial arts.
Michael flopped forward to ease the pain.
Achilles clenched and stretched his legs, then lifted his left arm higher, forcing Michael’s face to the ground beside his own and leaving Michael completely helpless. Any move Michael made would put pressure on his shoulder and elbow joints, increasing the already considerable pain and threatening a crippling snap.
Achilles twisted his own neck and shoulders to look at Michael’s head. It was awkward and painful, but important. “Look at me!”
“I can’t,” Michael grunted.
Achilles pressed his left arm a little higher, putting more pressure on Michael’s locked joints. “Look at me!”
Michael groaned and bucked and twisted and strained until he could meet Achilles’ eye. Sweat poured off his face and his jaw looked like it was trying to crush his teeth, but he didn’t whimper or wail.
Achilles stared into Michael’s eyes and began wriggling his wrist a little, increasing sensation without adding pressure. Priming his opponent’s joints for things to come. When Achilles saw that Michael couldn’t take any more pain, he asked the first question. “How did Ivan find Katya.”
Michael blinked and exhaled. He was waging a mighty war in his own head—but in his heart, he knew that he’d been beaten.
Achilles pressed a little harder.
“He did what he always does. He planned ahead.” Michael’s words were labored and faint.
Achilles let a little pressure off. “What does that mean?”
“Before Ivan flew to the U.S. to frame you for killing Rider, he sent me to Moscow to plant tracking devices. I put them in her shoes. I put them in her purses. You called Katya within hours of Rider’s death, as Ivan knew you would. When she fled to Lake Gryadetskoe, we still had twelve days of battery to spare—and a bulletproof insurance policy.”
Achilles cursed himself. He’d been so focused on playing Ivan’s game forward that he had neglected to play it backward.
Enough for the warmup.
Time for the big question.
Achilles waggled his wrist, priming Michael with even more pain. “Where is Katya?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
Achilles pictured Katya chained to a wall without food, without water, breathing air that wreaked of feces and cursing the day she’d met him. He popped Michael’s shoulder out of its socket.
Michael screamed and bucked, but Achilles didn’t yield. He held fast. He held firm. All while Michael wriggled like a stuck worm. “Where is Katya?”
“I—don’t—know.” He was hyperventilating.
Achilles kept his eyes locked on Michael’s and began grinding the arm in its socket. “Do I need to take your elbow?”
“I don’t know where she is. I swear. I swear.”
Achilles believed him.
111
The Choice
French Riviera
IVAN AWOKE to the scent of ammonia and the sight of a familiar setting. It took him a moment to place it, unexpected as it was. Pleasantly unexpected. He was back at Silicon Hill, seated in one of the glass conference rooms.
His left leg was screaming as if it had just been shot, which of course it had. Twice.
The last thing he remembered was listening—bound, gagged and blindfolded—to Achilles interrogate Michael. The prior fight had been both maddening and mesmerizing. Definitely the ten most anxious minutes of Ivan’s life. He’d been confident in his boxing champ, and his hopes had surged as he heard the smacks of bone on flesh from what could only be Michael’s signature seven-punch combination. But then the fight had gone to the floor where they’d flopped around like bobcats in a bag until the fight ended with the words, “Look at me!” spoken by Achilles.
The interrogation had been heart-wrenching, but ultimately fruitless, of course. The last thing Ivan heard was the pop of an air gun. It sounded three times, then he felt the fourth. This time in the thigh rather than the calf. A tranquilizer dart.
Ivan coughed from the smelling salts, but couldn’t bring a hand to his face. They were cuffed behind his back.
Kyle Achilles and Jo Monfort were seated before him. Coughs made him aware that his team was seated behind him, but Ivan didn’t look. His gaze was drawn to the table. It displayed his laptop. Retrieved from the jet. Jo was browsing files. She must have unlocked it with his fingerprint.
“You know the question,” Achilles said. “Where’s Katya?”
“You were on the yacht the whole time. Hidden not just from my team, but from your own.” Ivan couldn’t believe it. Achilles had anticipated his trump move, and he’d positioned himself one step ahead. One step ahead of Ivan the Ghost. That had never happened before.
Achilles was staring at him. Through him. He spoke to his soul. “You lost it all on the last roll.”
“You going to break my arm now?”
Achilles tilted his head to the left.
Ivan looked left. The opaque floral design on the glass prevented casual glances into the neighboring conference room, but Ivan adjusted his focus and his mind filled in the unseen bits. Ripley Zonder was standing there, arms folded in front of his chest, grin plastered across his face. “So you’re going to turn me over to the CIA? Let them try to pry the information from me in one of their infamous interrogation rooms? It won’t work.”
“Why not? What makes you so special?”
“I’ve already begun erasing the memory. Writing over it. You can do that, you know. Go over an alternative scenario enough times in your mind and you’ll come to believe it. That’s how most people manage to live with themselves after mistakes or drastic actions. It’s routine really. A defense mechanism. Of course, I won’t stop with one alternative scenario. I’ll layer them on, one after the other. I’ll create so many viable options that the o
riginal will become hopelessly lost.”
“Your brain’s going to be a bit too busy to imprint alternative images.”
“I know how the CIA works, Achilles. And so do you. There are limits. Boundaries. If the bozos from al-Qaeda could beat Guantanamo’s best, what do you think I can do? I might not last forever, but I can outlast Katya. Unless we make a deal.”
Achilles held up two fingers.
“You offering a peace accord?”
“That’s twice.”
“Twice what?” Ivan did not like the look on Achilles’ face.
“Two times I’ve been one step ahead.”
“What are you talking about?”
Achilles tilted his head to the right.
Ivan turned to look into the other neighboring conference room. After adjusting his focus, he saw four men. Three were standing in similar poses, with arms clasped across chests, as if holding in aggression eager to escape. The fourth was swinging a polo mallet. The Vazovs and Victor’s enforcers.
“We made a deal, Victor and I. He gets Katya’s location out of you within 24 hours, and he gets to keep you and your boys for as long as he likes.”
Ivan felt his hopes start circling the drain. The swirling sensation was making him dizzy. Winning was no longer an option. No matter what he did or threatened to do, no matter what story he spun or what scenario he invented, Victor wouldn’t let him walk.
Ivan held his head high. “I’ve still got it, you know.”
“Got what?” Achilles asked.
“The one thing that matters most.”
“Something that matters more to you than your life?” Achilles nodded over Ivan’s shoulder. “And the lives of your friends?”
“Reputation. I may not leave this world having won every round, but I can still go out never having lost.” As Ivan spoke the words, the anguished look on Achilles’ face told him he’d made the right move. The pained expression would feed him in the hours ahead. Ivan knew he would suffer, and suffer mightily, but Achilles would be tortured forever. “I choose the Vazovs.”