by Tim Tigner
“And Barsukov knows that Daniels is using,” Katya said. “Which means so does President Korovin. Which means the Kremlin has leverage over the White House. That’s what all this is about. That’s what the suits were sent here to protect. It’s not about billions in drug sales. It’s about the global balance of power.”
“Precisely,” Casey said, sounding very lawyerly. “I knew about the Russians, of course. But I had no clue about the dementia. Not until your revelation. But the second you mentioned it, everything fell into place. A benefit of Brillyanc itself, ironically.”
Casey drained his glass and set it down with a bit of flair. “I always thought this was about money. It is potentially worth billions, and that’s the way Silicon Valley guys think. But as Katya noted, this is really about power, power at the geopolitical level. We’re talking influence worth trillions. The chance to change history, move armies, and relocate borders.”
“That was the plan all along,” I said, speaking to myself as much as the others as the big picture gained resolution in my head. “I wondered why they’d gone with Washington, rather than New York City. I had assumed they wanted to learn from a smaller market before going for the Big Apple, but now I know better.” I felt my heart skip a beat as the next shoe dropped. “Wait a minute. If there are nine members of Congress coming to Vaughn’s parties, how many more have been snared by the Washington office?”
“I don’t know,” Casey said. “But if you don’t kill Grigori, I’m afraid the whole world is going to find out.”
Chapter 98
Deadly Habit
CASEY AND MELANIE agreed to maintain the impression that the great Vaughn Vondreesen was still alive. I had no doubt that they’d work tirelessly and attentively. Both their lives were on the line.
With Vondreesen’s iPad and her long familiarity with his style, Melanie would be an effective impersonator in the electronic world. Casey, as Vondreesen’s lawyer and consigliere, would handle his phone.
They only had to sustain the illusion for a week.
My trial was set to start next Monday, and I planned to have Grigori Barsukov buried by then. How, I hadn’t a clue.
To do our part to maintain the illusion, Katya and I spent the rest of the night in our assigned pods, draining our Brillyanc into the toilet rather than our veins.
I spent much of it on Vaughn’s tablet, studying his email. I found one that had been trashed but not emptied during the automatic daily purge. It was from someone named Archangel at a popular Russian provider. It had arrived just hours before, and said simply, “Let me know how the recruitment goes.” I replied for Vaughn with, “Achilles is aboard, but we lost Boris and Ivan.” Hopefully, that would buy us time. Assuming Archangel was Grigori. If not, Archangel would assume Vaughn was confused.
There were no calls from Russian numbers in the log on Vondreesen’s phone. That was disappointing, but given Grigori’s ex-KGB status, I knew he’d likely use a masking relay, so I wasn’t discouraged.
In the morning, we left the party as numbers 204 and 205, returning to SFO using the same limo in which we’d come. We retrieved our documents and cell phones from storage, and took a cab into the city.
Now we were holed up in a suite at a large hotel, planning my attack on Grigori Barsukov. It wasn’t going as expected.
Try to focus as I might, I was preoccupied with thoughts of Katya.
She’d kissed me just before our final meeting with Vaughn, and despite being a man, I could tell there was something in it. Then we’d spent the night in pods, and slept for the whole limo ride. Tonight, however, was going to be very different. We were looking at a big fat fork in the road. Either we’d sleep together, or we’d drift apart.
I’d punted on the decision, to the extent that it was mine to make, by getting us a two-bedroom suite. We had momentum in that regard from our stay in Washington, so the choice had not been overly awkward. I hoped. I might have detected a flinch.
“There’s quite a bit about him online, both traditional press coverage and blogs.” Katya was studying the man, while I was learning what I could about his GasEx office. “So far, I’ve only found one reference to his habits. It’s in an article about a trendy club called, get this, Angels on Fire. It’s a strip club on the Garden Ring. They’re writing about him because apparently he flies in for it every week by helicopter. Come look at this.” Katya pointed to her screen.
I walked around to her side of the table. We’d picked up a couple of MacBooks to make our round-the-clock research easier, and we had them opened back-to-back, as if we were playing Battleship.
Casey had wired a quarter-million dollars into my account to give the hunting expedition virtually unlimited resources. He’d also chartered us a jet, more for the trip out of Russia than the trip in. If I wasn’t in the Santa Barbara County Courtroom at nine the following Monday morning, I’d be forfeiting my ten-million-dollar bail. With a mission as tight as this one was going to be, the hours saved by flying private might make all the difference.
The relaxed security that came with flying private would be a blessing too.
If it got to the point where I had to decide between completing the mission or making it to court, I wasn’t sure which way I’d go. I was resolved not to let it come to that. Therefore Grigori had at most one week to live. His next trip to Angels on Fire was going to be his last.
Chapter 99
Gusts and Thermals
THE DRAMATIC PICTURE displayed on Katya’s screen captured a wiry man in formal dress stepping from a helicopter beneath a red neon Angels on Fire sign. The caption beneath the photo read, “Pouring Gas on the Flames. GasEx Chairman Grigori Barsukov’s secret indulgence.”
Katya summarized the story. “Every Saturday, Angels on Fire has an auction in their Rainbow Room. Apparently it’s become quite famous. A hot ticket. Seven women are selected to participate each week, and the club’s owner swears none of them are professionals. Thus the excitement.”
“Kind of an American Idol, but for strippers rather than singers,” I said.
“There’s more.” Katya scrolled down. “Audience members bid while contestants dance. The winner gets a date for that evening, while the student — apparently that’s what most dancers claim to be — gets the proceeds to help finance her education.”
“We do that here too. At charity events. To my knowledge, the auctionees are high-society members rather than students, but what do I know?”
Katya clicked a link that brought up an arousing image. “Do high-society members perform the Dance of the Seven Veils? Because apparently that’s what they’re doing during the auction process. It says each contestant is assigned one of the colors of the rainbow, and is given a costume comprised of veils of that color with a matching G-string. Looks like the bidding goes on until only the G-string is left. I suppose the winner gets to remove that. If the date goes as planned.”
I returned to my chair. “I’m pretty sure that here in the US, the participants don’t do anything they don’t want pictured on the society page.”
“It says that no names are used, just colors, but the auctioneer reads a biography for each in order to flesh out the fantasy. Whoa, look at this! It costs the ruble equivalent of a thousand dollars for bidders to register. That’s on top of the club’s hundred-dollar entrance fee.”
“Smart marketing. That’s how they add cachet. They make it prestigious to hold a bidder’s paddle. And you can bet the women who go to the club are all clued into that. Most won’t see if you arrive in a Ferrari, but a paddle says the same thing, and it’s on display all night. Tells you a lot about Grigori.”
“Do you think it’s a good place to get to him?”
I shrugged and drained my third cup of coffee. “First reaction? It might be. I’m not happy with the helicopter. That severely limits our options. I’m sure the club itself has security out the wazoo, on top of Grigori’s personal bodyguard contingent, so taking him out inside the club would be risky for us
and for bystanders. Special Operations Command would never green-light a mission with that profile. And we’re not going to be equipped for an air assault. So that only leaves landing and takeoff. That might work if we could study it for a few weeks and identify a security gap. But we’ll be doing this cold.” The more I spoke, the less encouraged I became.
“On top of that, I’ve got to be in Santa Barbara Superior Court by nine Monday morning. Even with the ten-hour time change, a Saturday night operation would be cutting it close. So I’m thinking that Angels on Fire should be an option of last resort.”
I was surprised to find myself feeling natural using we to discuss an assault operation with Katya.
She seemed to embrace it.
“Do you have an alternative? A first resort?” she asked.
“I’m thinking I’ll need to treat it like a sniper mission.”
“What’s that mean? Are you going to shoot him from a mile away with a rifle?”
“Shoot him? Yes. With a rifle? Maybe. From a mile away? No. What I meant was that I’d lie in wait in a location that he frequents, and then take him out when he shows up.”
“At Angels on Fire?”
“No. The architecture isn’t suitable.” I whirled my laptop around and pointed to a Google Earth image. “The distance between the helipad and door is less than ten meters, so I’d only get a few seconds, during which the helicopter’s rotor wash would blow the bullet all over the place. And that’s in addition to the gusts and thermals that are going to surround any building in the heart of a major city. Plus, there’s no decent vantage point above the club, other than the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I can’t hole up there with a sniper rifle.”
“So where, then?”
“At his office.”
Katya tilted her head and narrowed her gaze as though studying a calculus problem on a blackboard. She moved the mouse from Angels on Fire to the GasEx complex. “I’m confused. Maybe I don’t get the whole sniper thing, but his building is the tallest for miles around. How do you make the trigonometry work? How can you shoot him up there? Are you just going to hope he comes out to walk around the edge, like he did with Casey and Vondreesen?”
“No, I couldn’t count on that happening, and again the thermals would make it an impossible shot. I’m going to climb the building and wait for him up top.”
Chapter 100
Disproportionate Response
KATYA GLANCED DOWN at me with incredulity in her eye and a question on her lips. “Even after everything I’ve witnessed, I still don’t see how you could possibly hope to climb GasEx. I understand climbing a house with windowsills and drainpipes, but this is a skyscraper.”
I was lying on swatch of spandex like it was a bed sheet, while Katya traced my silhouette with a fabric marker. To avoid staining it with blood from my shrapnel wounds, I had thirty-one Band-Aids on my back, complete with thirty-one dabs of antiseptic. Bless her heart. The fabric resembled the blue glass of the GasEx building. We also had a swatch that matched the building’s stonework, and a sewing machine.
The plan was to sew front and back sides together to create a formfitting jumpsuit. A bottom half that would fit like overalls, and a top half that would fit like a hoodie. Only my hands, feet, and face would be uncovered. The ghillie suit didn’t need to be pretty. It just needed to fit without restriction through a wide range of motion. Since neither of us was an accomplished seamstress, we’d bought enough material to accommodate multiple attempts.
“Technically, the climb isn’t going to be challenging,” I replied. “There are corners running all the way to the top. Beyond basic skills, all that’s required to conquer GasEx is physical endurance, and psychological control.”
“What do you mean by psychological control?” Katya asked, as she started in with the scissors.
“Basically, that amounts to ignoring irrational emotions. In this case, the fear of falling.”
“You think the fear of falling is irrational?”
“If you’re not drunk or running on ice, falling is highly improbable. When’s the last time you fell?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Exactly. But if we were walking near the edge of a cliff, you’d become very concerned about it. For millennia, only the wary lived long enough to reproduce, so now extreme caution is built into our DNA. This creates what military minds would call a disproportionate response. For example, say you were taking a bath and somehow a mouse fell in the tub. How would you react?”
Katya’s face scrunched back and her lips thinned. “I’d scream and splash, then scramble from the tub and run from the room.”
“Exactly. But there’s no real threat posed, except to the mouse. Rodents and bugs rarely harm anyone in the civilized world, but we still react to them as if they’re hand grenades.”
Katya’s expression told me I hadn’t sold her.
“Working for the CIA, I frequently faced choices between tactics that all offered odds of survival much worse than rodent encounters. Over time, I conditioned myself to calibrate my psychological response to dangers based on their probability. I learned to evaluate before I react.”
I’d anticipated the math bringing Katya around, but the downward tilt of her chin told me I needed to work harder. “Now I draw the line using a simple formula. If the odds of mortal harm are less than one percent, then a situation no longer triggers anxiety. And the odds that a critter will kill me, or a distant handgun can hit me, or that I’ll randomly slip or trip while walking, or running, or climbing are all effectively zero.”
Katya’s expression told me I still wasn’t there. I decided to move on.
“As for the physical endurance part, that’s a combination of attitude and repetition. Can you ignore the pain? Can your muscles keep contracting? Climbing a hundred meters to the top of the GasEx building is going to be the rough equivalent of two hundred chin-ups. In prison, I was cranking out a thousand a day. So I know I won’t fatigue. And I know from experience that I won’t fall. Thus I can focus on the real threat, which is being seen.”
Katya looked relieved, although her voice was still tentative. “Thus the camouflage suits. But they won’t make you invisible.”
“Right. They’ll just help me blend in. So I’ll still have to avoid attracting eyeballs. That means minimizing movement, sound, and length of exposure. I’m not too worried about movement or sound, since I’ll be climbing at night. But speed is an issue. I’m sure there will be patrolling guards, and it could take a long time to free solo a hundred meters up a smooth corner, so I’m going to use a tool that should cut the ascent to under fifteen minutes.”
Katya gestured for me to continue. Progress.
When the possibility of climbing the GasEx building first arose, I emailed an inventive climbing buddy. The latest tool he’d showcased on Facebook wouldn’t arrive until morning, so I explained it to Katya along with the rest of my plan.
When I was done, Katya sat quietly for moment, reflecting. “So your plan is to hide on the rooftop, wait for Grigori to appear, and then shoot him?”
“That’s the way snipers work.”
“But how will you get away?”
“That will depend on the circumstances. Probably either in the helicopter, or by climbing back down, or with a parachute.”
“Will a parachute work from that height?” Katya asked with the skepticism of someone who could do terminal-velocity calculations in her head, even without Brillyanc.
“I’ll pre-inflate it. There will likely be an updraft on the windward side of the building.”
Katya pulled her first attempt at overalls off of the sewing machine.
I tried it on. “It’s not pretty, but then, with luck nobody will ever see it.”
“I hope you’re not counting on luck. This hasn’t been your lucky year.”
Chapter 101
The Ghost
OVER THE NEXT couple of hours, we cranked out a matching pair of coveralls in the stone-colored span
dex, and tops in both patterns. Then we sewed matching camouflage packs for my guns and gear. Between the two suits, I would be able to blend in anywhere on the GasEx building.
I checked the results in the hotel mirror. “I wonder if this is how Peter Parker felt after his first attempt at Spiderman?”
“More like Bruce Wayne,” Katya replied. “Batman was the one with all the gear.”
“How did you–” I didn’t finish the question. I knew the answer. Colin was a big Marvel Comics fan. I’d invited a ghost into our hotel room.
Katya met my eyes.
She saw the ghost too.
“We both loved him,” she said. “You, for your whole life. Me, with my whole heart. We’ll never forget him. But we are forgetting something, perhaps the most important thing. Now that he’s gone.”
I took a step closer, catching my own reflection in the mirror. I looked like a creature from the movie Avatar, minus the big yellow eyes and prehensile tail. “What are we forgetting?”
“We’re forgetting that Colin loved us too. He’d want us to be happy.”
Katya’s words reminded me of the first time Dix let loose on me during combat training. I never saw the blow coming. He hit me out of nowhere with a lightning combination that left me breathless and dizzy and disoriented and flat on my back. I felt like that now. Without thinking, I asked Katya, “Do you think I could make you happy?”
“You make me feel safe. And you make me feel loved. And I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
I found myself holding my breath. I exhaled, knowing from her tone that a but was coming.
“But I haven’t put Colin behind me yet. And I can’t move on until I have. I want to, but I can’t. I need time. I’ve never gone through this before, so it’s hard for me to estimate how long it will take.”