The Riddle (A James Acton Thriller, Book #11)

by J. Robert Kennedy

  “Of course. And since Russia has due process, where someone is innocent until proven guilty, I would have to assume that Agent Green would be given the same consideration.”

  Good one, Madame Secretary!

  Yashkin’s fake smile eased slightly. “We are interested in the truth, of course. But—”

  “Excellent!” interrupted Atwater, motioning toward a nearby chair as she sat down. “Since we are both interested in the truth, I suggest you rein in your Vietnamese allies. Clearly they do not have due process like our two democracies have, and they don’t seem interested in the truth.”

  Yashkin was about to say something when Atwater held up a finger, cutting him off again.

  “Our Agent is innocent. We intend to prove that. In order to diffuse the situation, my head of security ordered him to leave the premises and make his way to our embassy. I’m sure he will be there shortly if he is not already. In the meantime, as our Vietnamese hosts clearly have terminated the approved schedule for our visit, we will be departing immediately. You are welcome to visually ID each of our personnel as we leave to confirm that Agent Green is not among them.” Atwater leaned forward. “Now, since we’re both agreed we all want the truth and that both our countries believe in due process and the concept of innocent until proven guilty, and since no demands have been made for access to any of our other personnel, I assume you will be encouraging your Vietnamese allies to obey international law and let us leave freely, immediately.”

  Yashkin smiled, opening his clasped fingers in a dismissive manner. “Unfortunately the Vietnamese are beyond my control in these matters. While I agree with you on every point you mentioned, my government seems to have little influence with the Vietnamese anymore, at least where today’s events are concerned.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice slightly. “I’m afraid they are very embarrassed at the lapse in security, and perhaps fear retaliation on my country’s part.” He sat back upright, smiling. “Of course retaliation is something from our past. A democracy never attacks its neighbors.”

  Dawson had to hold back his laugh.

  Umm, Georgia? Ukraine?

  But he was right. A democracy never attacks its neighbors. And a democracy never attacks another democracy, no matter where it is. Which was just further evidence Russia wasn’t a democracy.

  Atwater held her tongue, something Dawson might not have been able to do if he were in her position.

  Further evidence I’m no diplomat.

  “I’m certain your neighbors would be happy to hear that.” Atwater rose, signaling the end of the conversation. “Embarrassment or not, the Vietnamese government must respect international law. We are a diplomatic mission and are entitled to leave freely. I expect you to deliver that message to our hosts.”

  “Of course,” said Yashkin as he rose, extending a hand. “I am pleased we had this discussion.”

  Atwater shook the man’s hand, looking up at him. “As am I.” She nodded to Dawson. “Please show our guest to the elevator.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Dawson held his hand out as Spock opened the door to the hallway. Yashkin walked toward the elevator, it already opened by one of the DSS agents. Yashkin stepped aboard and turned back toward Dawson.

  “Until we meet again,” he said, his smile suddenly disappearing. “Sergeant Major.”

  The doors closed, Dawson saying nothing, careful not to reveal any emotions. He felt no surprise, he had no doubt the Russians had a pretty good file on him. And he was also quite sure they now knew exactly who Niner was.

  And he was also positive this had nothing to do with justice, and everything to do with the Vietnamese saving face, and the Russians taking advantage of the situation.

  He walked toward Atwater’s suite as the lights went out.

  “Détente didn’t last very long,” observed Spock.

  “Nope. I don’t think they have any intention of letting us leave.”

  They entered the suite and found Atwater sitting again, sipping from a bottle of water. “Recommendations?” she asked the room.

  Nobody wanted to say the obvious.

  They were screwed.

  Especially if they did nothing.

  Her eyes rested on Dawson. “You look like you want to say something.”

  “Ma’am, there’s no way we’re fighting our way out of here, and we can only hold off so many assaults. If they really want to take us, there’s no stopping them, just delaying them. Diplomacy just failed, but may eventually succeed. It all depends on whose will wins out—the Russians or the Vietnamese.” He nodded toward a battery powered television showing CNN. “Right now they’re controlling the message. Beyond our denials, we are the guilty party. They have a copy of Agent Green’s photo ID, bullshit eyewitnesses and a dead Russian Prime Minister who was speaking to you at the moment of the assassination. We look bad. We need to make them look bad.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Take back control of the message. Set up a direct feed with CNN and talk live to them. The Vietnamese wouldn’t dare risk killing you on live television for the world to see. As long as you are on the air, we are all safe.”

  An explosion rocked the room, the windows rattling.

  “They just breached the eighth floor!” came Jimmy’s voice over the comm. “Probably cord explosives on the seventh floor ceiling!”

  “This is White. Reinforcements to the eighth floor. Shoot anything that shows itself, conserve your ammo. Use the grenades we confiscated if necessary, over.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Atwater, fear showing itself as she jumped to her feet.

  “They just blasted through the ceiling on the seventh. They now have access to the eighth. We don’t have enough personnel to hold them back, ma’am. If they take the eighth floor, they can put explosives directly below us and take this entire room out.”

  Atwater snapped her fingers. “Set up the camera, get me CNN now!”

  Dawson left the room, her entourage, desperate for something to do other than worry, bursting into a flurry of activity.

  Now let’s just hope CNN takes her call.

  Dong Mac Ward, Hanoi, Vietnam

  James Acton sat on a none-too-comfortable chair, Laura beside him at a table on one side of the rather smallish “gang” hangout belonging to Mai’s brother, Cadeo. Mai sat across from them, as did a reluctant Cadeo. CNN International was playing on the television nearby, it having been turned so everyone at the table could see it.

  He pulled the phone out of his pocket and pressed the button out of habit.

  His eyes narrowed.

  He held his finger on the sensor and brought up the text message.

  this is niner. contact me asap.

  He showed the message to Laura and her eyebrows jumped. “How old is that?”

  Acton looked. “Almost fifteen minutes.” He typed a message.

  This is jim. We r safe. R u?

  They waited, Mai rising and rounding the table, curious.

  Cadeo simply glared.

  The phone vibrated.

  Confirm identity. How did we meet?

  Acton winked at Laura.

  You tried to kill me.

  LOL. Good thing I failed. Are you secure?

  For now.

  Give me location, I will try to make it to you.

  Acton texted him the GPS coordinates, Mai supplying the address.

  They waited.

  ETA one hour.

  Acton sighed. “If he can make it here then he should be safe.”

  “I don’t want any more Americans here.”

  They all turned to Cadeo. “I’m British,” said Laura with a smile.

  “It all same.”

  Acton was about to make a quick quip but decided against it, Cadeo’s Beretta sitting on the table.

  Mai spoke instead. “They are my friends and they need help. If they are not welcome here, then neither am I.”

  Cadeo growled and jumped from his chair, kicking it to
the floor with the back of his knees. He spat something in Vietnamese and walked away, disappearing through a door to the outside.

  “I must apologize for my brother.”

  “No need. He’s just scared,” replied Laura. “We all are.”

  “And he’s right to be,” added Acton. “We’re all wanted fugitives and now he is too for rescuing you. He has the advantage for the moment of not being known to the authorities.”

  “They will figure it out. They know he’s my brother.”

  “But they don’t know he’s the one who rescued you. At least not yet.”

  Mai shook her head. “It won’t matter. They will just assume because they know he is a criminal.” She dropped back into her chair. “At least for now they don’t know where he is. But from now on he’ll always be connected to the murder.”

  Laura leaned forward, reaching out to Mai with a hand. “Unless we can get the truth out.”

  “But what is the truth?” asked Acton. And that was the most important question. They had no proof of their side of the story, just their word, which meant little to nothing here in Vietnam. “It’s too bad you weren’t able to get that footage.”

  Mai’s jaw dropped. “Oh my God, I forgot!” She reached into her shirt, fishing in her bra for a few seconds, then smiled triumphantly as she produced a memory stick. “I made a second copy, just in case!”

  Acton wanted to kiss her. “Good thinking!”

  Mai grinned. “They did not search me. They took my purse but that was all. I guess they were going to search me at the police station.”

  “Have you seen it?” asked Laura.

  Mai shook her head. “No, there was no time. I just copied the files. They could be blank for all I know.”

  Acton frowned. “Let’s hope not.” He looked around. “Do you have a computer we can watch them on?”

  Mai asked one of Cadeo’s men who pointed to a metal cabinet. She rose and opened a drawer, pulling out an old Lenovo laptop. She turned it on and once booted, inserted the memory stick. A directory listing popped up showing only the catalog.

  “There’s nothing on it!” cried Acton in dismay. Mai smiled and changed the folder settings, a list of files appearing. Acton chuckled. “Never mind. Premature panic.”

  “You’ve never suffered from that before,” grinned Laura.

  Acton shot a shocked look at his wife then laughed.

  Mai looked at them having no clue as to what they were talking about.

  Good thing.

  “Mai!”

  They all looked at the shout, one of Cadeo’s men pointing at the forgotten television.

  “—true, Wolf, the entire American delegation is under attack by Vietnamese authorities as we speak. I’m not sure if you can hear the gunfire, but I can. A desperate battle is being fought one floor below us right now, our brave men and women of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, hopelessly outnumbered, are trying to delay our capture, and perhaps death, at the hands of those who would claim to be our hosts.”

  “You are in danger now.”

  “Absolutely, Wolf, we have wounded and at least two dead already. Unless this unwarranted, and may I say unprecedented attack is halted immediately, I’m afraid many more will die.”

  “Why not surrender? Isn’t it true that the Vietnamese have accused one of your security team members of the assassination of Russian Prime Minister Anatoly Petrov? Why not hand him over and end this?”

  “That isn’t an option, Wolf. Even if I was willing to ignore all of the principles we believe in such as due process and innocence until proven guilty, the Vietnamese have proven with this brazen, brutal attack that justice is not their goal. Our man is not guilty, he was here at the hotel during the time of the attack, and other than a photocopy of a stolen identification card, the Vietnamese authorities have provided no actual proof our agent was involved.

  “We have eyewitnesses to the attack that have sworn it was a Vietnamese national, at least twenty years older than our agent, who was the assassin, and that the shooter was known to Prime Minister Petrov. I won’t say on the air what the Prime Minister admitted to before he was shot, as I’m sure the Russian government will want to confirm these stories before they are made public, however should it look like we may lose this battle, I will of course provide you with the full details of the accusations, as I would hate to see it lost with our deaths.”

  “Are these eyewitnesses the two archeology professors, Professor James Acton and his wife Professor Laura Palmer?”

  “Yes, among others from my security detail and a Vietnamese national, all of whom were in the room when the shooting began.”

  Acton and Laura stood in front of the television, even Cadeo having returned after one of his men called. The fear in Atwater’s voice was plain, though she was doing an admirable job of trying to hide it.

  But no one could.

  The gunfire was plain to hear, and Acton was certain he had heard at least two explosions, Atwater wincing both times. What they were, he couldn’t be sure, but he had to assume grenades.

  Which meant this was either an all-out attack, or an all-out defense.

  Either way it would mean a lot of deaths.

  He felt Laura’s hand grip his as his thoughts immediately went to Dawson and the others. He knew Spock was there with him and Niner had escaped, but he had no idea who else was there that they might know. It could be the entire team for all he knew.

  If it’s all of them, they’ll hold out until the last man.

  Suddenly Atwater turned her head as shouting was heard off camera. Dawson’s face appeared momentarily as he came into view, grabbing Atwater from the stool she was sitting on, lifting her as he yelled, “Get to the tenth floor, now!”

  He disappeared off camera as screams and shouts could be heard, then a terrific explosion tossed the camera off its tripod, it bouncing off the floor, then seeming to freefall as the CNN announcer was left dumbfounded.

  And Acton was left with all hope cleaved from his stomach.

  Just then the channel went blank and a message appeared that looked like a Windows error message.

  “What happened?” asked Laura.

  Rapid fire Vietnamese was shot back and forth as Cadeo hammered at a keyboard sitting on a nearby table. Mai turned to them. “He said they were streaming that over the Internet. It looks like they’ve shut it down.”

  “What, the Internet?” asked Acton. “How?”

  “It’s very easy to do here. All providers are controlled by the government. They simply need to make some phone calls. Anyone who disobeys is thrown in prison.”

  Acton checked his phone. “Cellular network is down too.”

  As if on cue the rest of the room checked their phones, grumbling and cursing following.

  Laura pulled her satellite phone out of her purse. “This may be our only lifeline.”

  Acton pointed at the laptop. “We need to get proof that Niner wasn’t the shooter.”

  Daewoo Hanoi Hotel, Hanoi, Vietnam

  Igor Sarkov knocked on the door to the security office, not waiting for a response, instead opening the door and stepping inside. The room was cramped, as most were, one side filled with banks of monitors and computers, still functioning as the main floor had power. Two men watching the monitors as if tuned to an American movie network ignored him.

  Sarkov glanced at what they were looking at and frowned.

  The Vietnamese appeared to be positioning themselves for an assault from the seventh floor, if his reading of the security feeds was correct. He could see the American positions on the eighth floor, the ninth dark.

  They must have used the elevator shafts to get to the seventh floor.

  He had to admit the tactic surprised him. He had never been overly impressed with the Vietnamese government or its adjuncts. They were competent but lacked creativity, their thinking trapped in the past, hindered by a communist mindset that hadn’t evolved like China’s had. Though he had no love for the Chinese
government, and they were clearly still a brutal regime, they at least were moving forward with economic reforms, if not political. And if there was something he was certain of it was that a healthy middle-class, which in today’s China was growing rapidly—from only 4% of urban dwellers in 2000, to 68% in 2012—was something a communist government was ill-equipped to deal with. People with stable, comfortable incomes had time to think about politics and democracy when they weren’t obsessed with how they were going to put food on the table the next day.

  China’s economic growth would be its political undoing.

  But Vietnam was far behind, though he imagined the Chinese would have reacted much the same way. The difference though was again economic. The Chinese would weigh the economic benefits of pissing off the United States versus pissing off Russia. And they would most likely side with the United States in the immediate aftermath. About the only thing Russia could offer was oil, natural gas and military hardware, and those deals took time.

  Vietnam’s economy was far less dependent on the Americans with less than 20% of their exports going to the United States and less than 5% of their imports coming from them. Russia was even more insignificant, however China wasn’t.

  But economics didn’t enter the mindset of a communist when there was an opportunity for political embarrassment or gain. He had no doubt that the Vietnamese government was not only trying to avoid embarrassment, they were trying to curry favor with his own country to get a cut rate deal on military hardware, about the only thing the American’s weren’t willing to offer.

  But if they killed the Secretary or a significant portion of her entourage, even the Russian government, he would hope, would distance itself.

  Part of him, most of him, wanted to warn the Americans of what was coming, but that would certainly earn him a quick trip back to Moscow. He watched helplessly for a moment as the camera showed a security detail monitoring one of the eighth floor stairwells.

  When he sucked in a breath of realization.

  Eighth floor!

  “The cameras on the eighth floor are working?”

  “Yes,” answered one of the men in English.