by Al Ruksenas
Other traffic was slowly maneuvering around them, drivers aware that getting involved in a fender bender with a diplomat’s car was useless.
“What the hell?” Caine exclaimed just as the driver was raising his hood. “You had no intention of stopping!”
“I am sorry, Colonel. Truly.”
Caine stopped short when the man addressed him by rank.
“You are a difficult man to contact. I tried several times, but it is dangerous.”
“What the hell are you talking about? And what the hell are you going to do about my car?”
“I am Oleg Alekseev of the Russian Embassy. This is the most innocent way we can meet.”
“Why the hell should you want to contact me?” Caine demanded as he looked back to the rear of his roadster. “Do you realize what it costs to fix a car like this?”
“I envy your ability to be concerned about such things,” the Russian diplomat and spymaster said. “It is a luxury most of my own people can only pine about.”
“So, what the hell do you want to prove?”
“I always thought you to be more a reserved man,” Alekseev said as he walked to the rear of Caine’s Viper. “Not fazed by small irritants.” He leaned over and looked at the buckled bumper and cracked trunk area.
Colonel Caine watched him. His anger turning to curiosity about this distinguished looking, slightly overweight stranger with gray hair, who seemed to express more than casual familiarity with him.
“There is not much time,” Alekseev said as he straightened himself to face Caine. “This is the only way someone like me can meet someone like you without suspicion.”
He bent down again and animatedly looked at the rear of the Viper. Caine slowly bent down next to him and ran his fingers along the damaged trunk area.
“Your people found a helicopter in the desert near Aswan,” Alekseev said to allay any doubts of his credibility.
Caine straightened to look at Alekseev who slowly stood full length and strode to the front of the sedan to assess the damage. Caine followed. The raised hood covered them from oncoming traffic.
“Your inquiries are unsuccessful in identifying the flyers. The flight was a deep held secret among a cultist group in the secret police.”
Colonel Caine stared at him with steely eyes.
“But, I know who they were.”
Caine stared at him unflinchingly. He could not reveal who he was, even though it appeared Alekseev knew about him, nor could he seem interested in the story of the helicopter, let alone the names of the flyers. But he dare not dismiss the man either.
“Your discovery has helped me solve a lifelong puzzle.” Alekseev looked around to see if the accident had not stopped traffic. Vehicles seemed to be moving by at a tolerable pace. He continued: “My loving wife is Natasha, formerly Rudenko.”
Caine started rolling his eyes. He was familiar from Russian literature with obtuse storytelling.
“She had an older brother, Yuri Rudenko, who was sent on a secret mission more than fifty years ago from which he never returned.”
Caine was interested.
“I suspected over the years that he was betrayed by his own comrades.”
“So, what else is new?” Caine thought to himself.
“They were NKVD, but that’s another story.”
“Weren’t they all,” Caine kept thinking, his thoughts beginning to drift to the damage done to his roadster.
“Now, with your discovery of the helicopter, I know he was betrayed. My beloved wife has never forgotten, never forgiven. And she has never been the same.”
Caine’s look indicated some bewilderment.
“Let me quickly say that there are patriots among us who are struggling against great odds to avoid retrenchment to an evil system.”
“From idealism or from revenge?” Caine said facetiously.
“The motive does not matter, Colonel. Do not be so patronizing. You are in danger of falling under such a system yourself!”
Colonel Caine could not let on that he understood what Alekseev was saying. “And just how is that?” he challenged.
Alekseev pulled a vest pocket calendar from his jacket and began scribbling something on a piece of notepaper. “We are exchanging insurance information,” he said as an aside.
“The quest for answers to the fate of my wife’s brother has led to our meeting, Colonel,” Oleg Alekseev said somberly. “I—and some others not as fortunate, who met mysterious ends—have trailed rumors for years. Rumors of a worldwide cult of forces ascending through evil.”
“And you expect me to believe this?” Caine asked to assure that he continue.
Alekseev took a deep breath in frustration. “That is a pillar of their success. Nobody believes it! That is why, I’m afraid, they will succeed in collapsing your government!”
“You are nuts! You know that!” Caine goaded.
“Let me assure you, that no matter what positive developments have come between our two countries, there is a powerful cabal within the former Soviet secret police that will never relent. This circle is exclusive and unknown even to high ranking progressive ranks within the former KGB itself—now the FSB.”
“A lot of arm chair conspiracy buffs figure that. What else is new?”
“No, my friend. They are not nostalgic for Stalin. Their leader is not in the Kremlin. This cabal pays homage to the devil. And he may have followers in your own government!”
Caine was riveted, but could not let on. He feigned polite, but frustrated interest, staring at the damage to his roadster.
“The key, Colonel Caine, is the helicopter.”
Caine glanced sideways when his name was mentioned, then returned his stare to his car.
“I appreciate and admire your discipline, Colonel. You don’t have to acknowledge anything of who you are or what I say. But listen, please!”
“I’m listening,” he replied by indirect means of acknowledgment and appreciation.
“I learned over a lifetime of secret and dangerous inquiry that three agents were sent to the Middle East in Nineteen‐fifty‐eight on an ultra‐secret mission. They brought back someone from a secret place in the desert to Aswan. They never returned.”
“And from Aswan to America,” Caine thought. He was seeing a juncture between Alekseev’s narrative and his own discoveries.
“Now that you have found the helicopter, I know Yuri Rudenko was betrayed. He was left behind at whatever secret place they were bound for.”
Caine imagined the poor wretch on the sacrificial altar in the cavern. A bloody bond for some hideous plan.
“The flyers you are trying to identify are General Anatoli Lysenko and Colonel Nicholai Kuznetsov. Together with the two pilots, they were the only men found aboard. Yuri Rudenko should have been with them.”
Colonel Caine’s features froze at the name Nicholai Kuznetsov. Warlock! Dead in the desert for over half a century; dead in every instance that Senator Everett Dunne quoted him. Dunne the exclusive conduit for Warlock’s information. Dunne the disinformer. Dunne the traitor!
Caine’s mind raced over everything connected to Jeannie McConnell’s disappearance while the Russian spoke. Everything was suddenly clear.
“My wife will rest easier, knowing what fate befell her brother. She can now pray for him in peace,” Alekseev said. “Because, now she believes in God. She promised me.”
He closed the hood and hurried to climb into his sedan. “I’m sorry about your car. I will make arrangements for repairs. Privately.”
Alekseev started the engine. “You must know one thing, Colonel. You are dealing with forces beyond physical science.”
Caine nodded slightly. He had heard that before.
“Do something…For all our sake.”
Colonel Caine’s curious look prompted Alekseev to add: “If you cannot. No one else can.”
“Now, why would that be?” Caine probed.
“You are a member of an official secret group are you not
? No holds barred? Omega?”
Oleg Alekseev backed up his car, made a quick maneuver around Caine’s roadster and merged into the flow of traffic.
Chapter 48
Caine cursed under his breath as he climbed into his roadster. He groped behind the seat for his blue flasher, put it on the dashboard and peeled away. He watched the sedan turn onto the Anacostia Freeway as he sped by. Getting to the hospital seemed more urgent than ever.
He was perturbed that the Russian knew so much secret information, but his anger was mixed with grudging professional admiration. Oleg Alekseev’s concern was about Yuri Rudenko. Colonel Caine’s became the revelation about Nicholai Kuznetsov.
There was only one way Senator Dunne could know about Nicholai Kuznetsov. Someone had told him. Someone who had been on the helicopter. Someone—whoever he was—before he became Victor Sherwyck!
A chill ran down Colonel Caine’s spine.
Senator Dunne for many years had filtered information through Warlock, the code name, he claimed, Kuznetsov insisted upon. “A sinister running joke,” Caine thought. Certainly propounded by the mastermind. ”Warlock—an in‐your‐face reference to a sorcerer. Warlock—someone in league with the devil,” Caine thought with a sheepish smirk.
But, Nicholai Kuznetsov, betrayed, had the last macabre laugh, Caine mused. A warning etched on the bulkhead of his tomb.
Senator Everett Dunne betrayed the rendezvous in the Mediterranean, so that he and Colonel Jones would not meet Mustafa Ali Hammad, the mercenary contact arranged by the Omega Group. The entire mission was based on Warlock’s lead as reported by Senator Dunne. Dunne knew that any response by Hammad—who flowed freely in lawless circles—would raise doubts about Middle East terrorists involved in Jeannie McConnell’s disappearance.
“Wild goose chase!” thought Caine. Just as he had speculated to General Bradley earlier. While the Omega Group chased the usual terrorist suspects, critical links in the chain of nuclear command fell by the wayside. Freak, but innocent accidents. Coincidental events. But not so innocent with an overlay of the occult, which Colonel Caine and others had now witnessed with their own eyes.
All that the perpetrators needed was time. Time for the final and supreme accident, when their man took sudden control of the nuclear arsenal.
Another sacrifice was necessary to topple the President. A high value sacrifice for the ultimate target.
***
Weaving in traffic as his mind raced, he almost missed the left turn onto I Street. With tires squealing, he turned and sped ahead, then screeched right onto 23rd Street, stopping at the emergency entrance of George Washington University Hospital. He left the flasher on and hurried inside.
Caine bounded up stairs to the second floor and turned a corner into the Intensive Care Unit. No one said anything to the imposing, athletic man in the tan slacks and matching pleated shirt with epaulettes. He walked into a quiet, sterile room with an empty bed. He stood there reverently, staring at the taut sheet of linen over the bed. The woman from family counseling walked in.
“Where’s Jonas Mitchell?” Caine demanded.
“I’m sorry, he’s gone,” replied the woman.
“Gone where?” he pressed, hoping not to hear expected words.
“I’m sorry, sir. He expired.”
“You mean, he’s dead,” Caine declared with rage welling in his chest.
“I’m sorry.”
“What about his niece, Laura?”
“She said she had an appointment?”
“Where.”
“She said a museum,” the woman replied with a quizzical tone.
Caine pulled out his cell phone. The woman gave him a stern look and pointed to a picture on the wall with a red stripe across a cell phone.
Ignoring her he dialed Alvin Carruthers. The curator answered on the first ring.
“Get to the Natural History Museum as fast as you can!”
“I’m already here,” Carruthers answered. “I’m glad you called.” His voice sounded concerned. “Laura said to meet her here. She’s not here, but her car is.”
“Stay where you are!”
“Is something wrong?”
“I’ll be right there.” Caine ended the call.
“Sorry,” he said to the woman as he hurriedly brushed past her. “And thanks.”
In the parking lot, he jerked open the damaged trunk of his Viper and reached unerringly for a slim, black, rectangular case holding his Beretta. He removed the pistol and a tubular cylinder, then quickly threaded the silencer onto the barrel.
Street lights around the periphery of the hospital were beginning to shine in the growing dusk.
He jumped into his roadster, placed his pistol on the passenger seat, looked around for entering ambulances, and sped out of the Emergency lot.
***
Within ten minutes Alvin Carruthers could hear his roadster careening onto 12th Street from Constitution Avenue and saw him turn into the maintenance area of the museum.
“She said her uncle died and to meet her here!” Carruthers said urgently as he ran up to the roadster.
“He was murdered!” Caine replied emphatically and climbed out with his pistol in hand.
“Murdered?” Carruthers exclaimed staring at the elongated pistol. “What’s this?”
“Where’s Laura?”
“Maybe someone let her in.”
Caine looked around and saw several vehicles parked near Laura’s. One of them backed up near the door was a dark green van that Caine was sure had his bullet hole in it.
“Her uncle? Murdered?” Carruthers repeated incredulously.
“Sorcery!”
“What?”
“She’s in danger. And no one inside now is a friend.”
“What do you mean?”
“What did you say at that reception about the unions and the night crews and the contracts and Victor Sherwyck interceding to let them supervise everything after hours. Job security, seniority and all that crap!”
“Yes. It’s frustrating. I’m a curator and blind to what goes on for nine hours every night.”
“Let’s get inside before it’s too dark.”
Carruthers hesitated for a thoughtful moment. “I see what you’re saying, Chris. I don’t have a key.”
“The hoodlum guards will be showing up,” Caine said and started for the delivery door.
“Is that who you fought with that night?”
“I’m sure.”
At the door, Colonel Caine motioned his friend to stand behind him. Carruthers stepped back and adjusted the jacket of his tailored blue suit. Caine put his pistol to the lock and pulled the trigger. A sharp sound of metal against metal was all that resounded from the suppressed barrel. Caine tried the door. It jiggled, but did not open. He pointed the pistol between the edge of the door and the frame and fired again. This time the latch gave and Caine pulled the door open.
They slinked past the kitchen of the cafeteria and hurried to a curved stairway leading to the main floor of the rotunda. They climbed the stairs, along the wall, looking upward for any guards or workers.
They reached the top and hid behind a marble support for one of the portals into the main hall. There they faced the bull elephant in its perpetual stately pose on the African savannah.
“Do you think they have Laura?” Carruthers whispered, surprised how his voice carried in the empty hall.
Caine nodded and indicated silence. But, too late. A uniformed guard, unseen on the opposite side of the raised diorama, looked towards them. A pistol was in his hand. The guard took aim in their direction.
Caine swung his Beretta upwards and holding it with both hands fired two muffled shots in quick succession under the elephant’s belly. The guard fell behind the diorama.
Caine and Carruthers bent low and rushed around the diorama. The guard lay motionless.
“Behind that desk!” Carruthers urged. He grabbed the body by the jacket collar and started dragging him. Caine joine
d in. The information desk was at a portal entrance into an exhibit hall radiating from the circular rotunda.
“Normal guards don’t shoot at visitors,” Caine observed as they shoved the body into the desk well.
“This uniform ‘s not the museum’s,” Carruthers panted.
“Take his pistol.”
Carruthers looked at this friend.