by JC Ryan
She’d become a talented operative, and to the best of his knowledge, a very competent assassin. The best thing for him would be to stay out of her way and hope she died in the coming catastrophe. Afterward, if she survived, he’d have to do something about her. For now, it was best to lie low until the day of destruction. Both Tamara and her handsome escort, not to mention Dalir Jahandar, would like to get their hands on him. His intention was to stay invisible.
If this had happened a few years ago, he’d elect to take a train to Syria, but the trains no longer crossed the border. Syria’s civil war had been reduced to weak strikes between the government and the rebels. Nevertheless, the ban on trains crossing from Turkey hadn’t been lifted. He looked in a mirror. Before he went anywhere else, he’d need to change his appearance. A blonde Greek would be notable anywhere in the region, probably.
With his plan in place, Oleg sought a beauty salon where he could get a professional dye job to change his hair color and advice on what makeup to use for his skin. His host knew of a discreet one. The rest of the day would be devoted to transforming himself into a reasonable facsimile of an Arab. He’d need colored contact lenses as well. His eyes matched those of his niece, which wouldn’t do at all.
Late in the evening, Oleg strolled through the district where Jack and Tamara still sat, people-watching and changing restaurants now and then. Had Tamara not been deep in an argument with her stubborn American partner, she might have recognized the gait of the robed Bedouin that crossed her path. For his part, Oleg also missed seeing his niece, as Jack Johnson suddenly surged forward in his seat and, to her astonishment, kissed Tamara hard before sitting back down to stare a challenge at her.
~~~
July 6, 2020; D-day minus 23, Istanbul
Tamara was still shaken by the turn of events that started on the street-side patio of a bar outside their hotel. She had been fending off Jack’s questions about her relationship with her uncle, growing increasingly angry at his insistence on knowing. Despite her assurance that it had nothing to do with their current mission and that no, she would not hesitate to take Oleg into custody, Jack was adamant that he had to know the history or he’d contact Sam Lewis to complain that she was endangering the mission.
At last, exasperated by his persistence, she’d spat that her uncle had sexually abused her as a child and she hated him. She expected Jack to recoil, having had plenty of experience with men who didn’t know how to handle the revelation. Instead, a fierce look had flashed from his eyes and he’d leapt up and kissed her over the table. Then he sat down and waited for the consequences. She was so startled that she didn’t quite know what to do next. Certainly she hadn’t expected to dissolve in tears, or to allow him to lead her gently to her room, where he comforted her like a child before tucking her into bed fully dressed and then leaving.
Now Tamara had no idea how to react to Jack, and was therefore cowering in her room, trying to figure it out. She’d ordered room service rather than have breakfast with him. This was disastrous. He’d taken her edge and she wasn’t sure she could go through with her plans now. Something told her that Oleg had slipped through their fingers. Where would he go next?
A knock at the door signaled her breakfast arriving, and she threw open the door to find, not room service, but Jack standing there. Tamara froze.
“Tamara, I’m sorry. I need to apologize for pushing you last night. You were right, it was none of my business. Having said that, I want you to know that I’m ready to follow your lead now. When we catch him, I’d like to beat him senseless for what he did to you. No child deserves that.” He looked away, unable to bear the expression on her face. He’d abused her in a way, too, by prying. Now she had every right to hate him, and he wouldn’t blame her.
“Come in,” came the cool voice he was accustomed to. Jack looked back at Tamara, startled. She nodded. “Come on, breakfast will be here soon. Let’s sort this out.” He stepped into the room, half afraid she’d fly at him with her fists. He had no doubt she was at least a black belt. He could defend himself, but he wouldn’t be able to hurt her. He found a chair and sat, head down, waiting for her to begin.
“Jack, come on, you look like a whipped dog,” she said. “I’m not mad. I was last night, but it’s okay now. Apology accepted.” Tamara was picking up random items from the bureau that crowded the room with its size and eclectic collection of objets d’art. When he could bear to look at her, Jack noticed that she was almost as nervous as he was.
“God, Tamara, I would never… If I’d known…” He still didn’t know what to say to her. He had to admit to enough curiosity to want to know when it had ended, but he wouldn’t ask. As if she’d read his mind, Tamara volunteered the rest of the story.
“He told me he’d kill me and my parents if I tattled. It went on until I was eighteen, and only stopped when he was reported dead after the boating accident. Only then did I tell my parents. My mother never recovered from the shock, and died two years ago. My dad knows I’m hunting his brother and will kill him if I can. Now you know, too.”
“Tamara, I can’t let you kill him. Much as I’d like to, and maybe help you do it, we have to have the information he has about the network he put together. We have to dismantle it, or send it new instructions that will stop the bombings, and we only have a little over three weeks to do it.”
“I know. I’ll get all the information he has before I do it, but I will kill him. I won’t let you stop me. If I must, I’ll kill you, too.” The words, shocking as they were, were delivered in a soft voice devoid of the sense of command she’d used before.
“Can we put this aside until we catch him?” Jack pleaded. “Neither of us will complete our mission if we keep fighting like we have been.”
“What do you propose we do?” she asked.
“Let’s at least try to work together. Now that our cards are on the table, I’ll do my best to let you satisfy your requirements, if you’ll let me satisfy mine first.”
“That sounds strangely like a proposition,” she said, “and not a nice one, at that.” Jack had the grace to blush.
“No, when I’m ready to proposition you, I won’t need words,” was his retort. A long stare kept their eyes on each other until it was interrupted by another knock on the door. Room service was there at an inconvenient time, as far as Jack was concerned. But, it was just as well. They had work to do.
~~~
July 6, 2020; D-day minus 23, Istanbul
After sharing her breakfast with Jack, Tamara felt composed enough to let him stay while she explained why she thought Oleg was gone. Jack had to agree that what Tamara had been through probably gave her an inexplicable connection to the man they sought, and that if she felt he had been in Istanbul but now was gone, she was probably right. The only question he had was, did she also know where he’d gone? That they had no proof he was ever here was a nagging doubt in the back of his mind that he wouldn’t voice.
Tamara was thinking out loud. “Okay. We believe he knows what the leader of this Sword of Cyrus group is doing, yes? So he knows he’d better stay in a Middle Eastern country, or risk being killed, either in the attack or in the unrest that will inevitably follow. Let’s assume that we almost caught him in Greece. He was there the day we arrived, we know from the estate agent. He wouldn’t have gone to Paris, and probably not to Budapest, which is why we came here. Where would he go from here? Iran?”
Jack had already been in touch with Washington, DC, and ascertained that all cooperating airports, train depots and bus stations were on the lookout for Zlatovski. However, Turkey was not among the cooperating nations. It was entirely possible that Oleg had flown to Iran. However, he had a thought.
“What would a maniac like Dalir Jahandar do if someone he relied on to do a job failed to do it? Or got caught doing it?” He and Tamara had been fully briefed on the exploits of the elusive al Qaeda terrorist that was now believed to be the mastermind behind the coming attack. It stood to reason that someone
as ruthless as he’d been in the past would not take lightly a failure on the part of a contractor.
“Kill him, I wouldn’t doubt,” Tamara answered, beginning to catch the drift of Jack’s thoughts.
“So, wouldn’t he make himself scarce until everything settled out? Before he decided which way to jump?” Jack looked to Tamara for an answer based on what she knew of her uncle, rather than logic that may or may not apply.
“I’d think so. He’s gone to another city here in Turkey, or maybe to another Middle Eastern country,” she answered. Then she continued. “He’d stand out as a foreigner with his last known appearance.”
“So, we won’t find him by showing his picture around. How would he get there? Rent another car?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s make some inquiries.”
They left the hotel, and found a few street urchins who, for an American dollar each, promised to bring them news of the blonde man with ice blue eyes like the lady’s, shopping for hair dye or utilizing the services of a salon. They handed out copies of the identikit drawing made with Alica’s help, and sent the youngsters on their way. While their little assistants efficiently combed the city, they went first to the airport, inquiring about a man who looked just a little off as a Middle Easterner, but could have been a European posing as someone he wasn’t. They spoke to porters, snack bar operators and any airline employee who would talk to them. Around noon they went back to the hotel for lunch and a report from their young spies.
One lad told of a blonde man with eyes like the winter sky who had purchased much makeup at a salon after having his hair dyed black. When he mentioned an odd accent, they knew they had their man. Would the young man take them to the salon? There was another dollar in it for him. Questioning the hairdresser who’d performed the services for the stranger netted even more information. The customer had carelessly let it drop that he needed to blend in in Syria, where fighting was still taking place and a blonde man could be at risk. Jack and Tamara exchanged glances, tipped the hairdresser generously and went back to the airport with a new description and a question about how someone might get to Syria. To their surprise, the answer was, you can’t.
That is, unless you have the means to hire a private aircraft. The other question, which no one but Oleg could answer, was what would possess him to flee to a country where he could be killed just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time? And almost anywhere in Syria would be the wrong place. Tossing conjecture back and forth, Tamara and Jack decided that Oleg had probably made that remark to throw off pursuers, and was heading for somewhere else. The most likely safe haven was either Saudi Arabia or Egypt. They were going to need help in canvassing every place where he could have chartered a plane and everywhere it could have landed.
Jack made the call to Sam Lewis, while Tamara called Chustikov. Neither took the news well. Chustikov reminded Tamara that Zlatovski couldn’t be allowed to live. Lewis heard Jack’s report with disbelief.
“You need to find him before she does,” he said, upon hearing of Tamara’s relationship to their quarry, and her determination to kill him. “That damned Chustikov doesn’t know what he’s done, sending someone like her to kill the only lead we have to the leader’s whereabouts.”
“Don’t worry, boss. We have an understanding. We’ll question him thoroughly and then I’ll hold him while she guts him. She deserves the opportunity.”
Lewis slapped his forehead and rolled his eyes. “Johnson, you bring him back here alive or I’ll gut you!” he snapped.
Then he promised Jack that he’d request help from the Mossad and other European security agencies. They’d modify the identikit image to disseminate. It wouldn’t take long to determine where Zlatovski had gone. Meanwhile, he recommended that they return to their hotel, or somewhere else that would allow them access to the internet.
“Since she knows him so well,” Sam said, with a twisted expression of disgust, “let’s take advantage of it. I’ll have all the agencies start sending airport security footage to her. Maybe she can spot him through a disguise.”
~~~
July 7, 2020; D-day minus 22, Washington, DC
Strangely, the inexorable march of the days without appreciable progress had slowed the activity of the JOCC. There was an air of hushed anticipation, not unlike that of refugees from a hurricane waiting for the leading edge to strike at last. The situation room no longer resembled a beehive, but instead people spoke in hushed tones, walked more slowly from here to there rather than near-running as they had when the crisis started. Sam Lewis observed the room on this morning and knew that the difference was dangerous. He needed something to shake these people up again. There was no time to waste, didn’t they know that? Had they all given up? Or decided it wasn’t going to happen, despite all evidence to the contrary?
“Listen up, people,” he roared, causing several nearby individuals to jump nearly out of their skin. “If you don’t have something urgent to pursue, go over everything we’ve gotten in the last week. Make sure we haven’t missed anything. You saw the pictures - this room is at ground zero of one of the worst areas of destruction. Find something and find it now, or you’ve got just three weeks to live. No one leaves this facility until we’ve got the bastard.”
The resulting stir was sufficient to make Lewis smile. That shook them up. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to repeat the performance.
Minutes later, a nervous analyst approached him.
“Director Lewis, you’d better take a look at this. It looks like we missed something.” With a shaking hand, she handed him a printed slip of paper, the contents of an email that had been intercepted on its outbound journey on the previous day. Where the time of arrest should have been printed underneath, it was blank, as well as the place where the receiving IP address should have been recorded. Lewis frowned.
“What’s the meaning of this? Why isn’t there an arrest timestamp or IP?” he asked.
“I guess it slipped through the cracks,” she said, immediately regretting her flippancy when Lewis’s face changed. It now looked like a thundercloud, and the analyst was certain Lewis was about to rain all over her parade.
“Lefkowicz,” Lewis barked, summoning a uniformed MP to his side. “Pick up anyone you find at this address, and bring them here for questioning. Yesterday!” he barked. The MP scurried out of the room, tapping another to accompany him as he left.
Lewis whirled on the analyst. “I suggest you fish the location of this recipient out of ‘the cracks’ immediately,” he said. If his voice had been any colder, it would have frozen the unfortunate analyst on the spot. As she hurried away, Lewis looked again at the message.
‘Confirm will not stop will go-ahead; deploy on schedule. No further communication.” This had to be an acknowledgment of an order from Zlatovski. If they could trace the IP, they had him, or at least they’d know where he was yesterday. Damn it, why was this message the one that was overlooked? He paced rapidly as he waited for the location of the receiver of the message to be traced.
The suspect and the information about the receiver arrived at about the same time. The trace had taken longer than expected because several redirects through European black-hat proxy servers were employed. However, the suspect readily admitted with whom he’d corresponded, a man he only knew as Mr. D. He’d been receiving information about a massive practical joke involving a number of fake bombs disguised as discarded soda cans and a drone that was supposed to set off some firecrackers. When close questioning and threats of bodily harm failed to shake his story, they told and showed him the real one. That’s when he fainted.
As soon as he heard ‘Mr. D’, Lewis made the leap of logic to Zlatovski’s Greek cover name. That had to be Oleg Zlatovski, he reasoned. With no more evidence than that and the IP address location, he reached out to his Mossad contact.
“He’s in Dubai,” he said, with no introduction. Lewis had no doubt that the Mossad had operatives in Dubai, and that their quarry
would soon be in custody. He’d give the Israelis the chance to make the capture before trusting Jack Johnson to rein in his new partner’s murderous intent. When he was through with Oleg, though, he just might turn him over to her. It would serve the bastard right.
The Mossad in Dubai were very efficient. Before kidnapping the suspect, they got several good pictures with a long-range lens and sent them to Tamara. Taken as he was sunning himself on a five-star hotel’s balcony, it was unfortunate for Oleg that he’d taken out his contacts to soothe his eyes. Tamara would never forget those eyes, so much like her own, but containing such cruelty and evil!
“That’s him,” she snarled. Jack wasted no time in communicating to their counterparts: pick him up.
“I wanted to capture him,” Tamara said, when Jack had finished and sent his text message. Her expression was blank, but the pain in her voice led Jack to kneel at her side and put his arms around her.
“I know, Tama,” he said, coining a name of endearment on the spot. “Let’s fly to Washington. They may need you to persuade him to talk.”
She nodded. All fierceness had gone out of her, it seemed, and it was left to Jack to make the flight arrangements, help her to pack and get her to the airport for their flight. On the long flight, her head nestled on his shoulder as she slept, emotionally exhausted.
May I ask where you got those pictures?
July 9, 2020; D-day minus 20, Washington, DC
Oleg gradually regained consciousness, at first believing that he’d merely fallen asleep. However, the bed on which he rested was not what he’d expect in a five-star hotel. As he struggled to open eyes that seemed glued shut, his senses all began to come back to him. The sense of smell told him he wasn’t in Dubai anymore. At last, frightened, his eyes flew open. Around him stood several uniformed men, and, most alarming, a white-coated and masked person that looked like a doctor. The person held a syringe.