by Mark Terry
THE
SINS
OF THE
FATHER
A Derek Stillwater Novel
Mark Terry
OROX
Books
The Sins of the Father
Copyright ©2012 by Mark Terry
OROX Books 2012
NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
Cover art: Judy Bullard, Jaebee Creations
Book Design: Natasha Fondren, the eBook Artisans
Also by Mark Terry
Derek Stillwater
The Devil’s Pitchfork
The Serpent’s Kiss
The Fallen
The Valley of Shadows
Dire Straits
Austin Davis
Hot Money
Standalone Novels
Edge
Dirty Deeds
For Kids
Monster Seeker
The Battle For Atlantis
The Fortress of Diamonds
Collections
Deadly By The Dozen
Catfish Guru
Nonfiction
Freelance Writing For A Living
31-1/2 Essentials For Running Your Medical Practice
For Ian, Sean & Leanne
“The Kremlin is the dwelling of phantoms.”
—Marquis de Custine
“You can’t put a shovel in the soil of Russia without hitting bone.”
—Daniel Silva, “The Defector”
1
Novosibirsk, Russia
The Russian agent, Grigori Sidorov, was dying and he knew it. He barely made it back to one of the UAZ Patriots his team had come in, stumbling in the dark over uneven, potholed concrete. Should have brought a fucking Vodnik, he thought through his pain, referring to the Russian Army’s assault vehicle. He flung open the driver-side door with the last of his strength and tumbled behind the wheel.
Behind him the warehouse burned. All dead, he thought, and fumbled with the keys to the Patriot. Glancing down in the gloom, he saw that the hand clenched against his gut was scarlet with blood. The pain was immense, unlike anything he had experienced. It seemed to stretch into infinity, some bizarre, unending sensation that took away all other sensations. How did I make it this far?
His breathing was ragged; each lungful felt like daggers slicing through his chest. Each heartbeat pumped out more blood, pulsing against his hand. Glancing up, he saw three shadowy figures advancing on his location. He couldn’t make out their faces, but the AK47s were clear enough, backlit by the fire.
Grigori’s blood-soaked fingers twisted at the ignition, but he couldn’t get a grip. No time.
He twisted, nearly screaming, hands reaching for his satellite phone. This op had gone tits-up and he needed to… needed to…
Grigori got hold of the phone and jabbed the button that would send a scrambled, blast message back to Lubyanka in Moscow, headquarters of the Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti—the Federal Security Service, or FSB.
The old KGB joke popped into his head, inappropriate: The Lubyanka had a great view—all the way to Siberia.
All the way to Novosibirsk, he thought. All the way to hell.
“Morozko,” he gasped, identifying himself by his code word, the folk tale of Old Man Winter. “Operation … ambush …” He could feel his life seeping away. The pain from the gunshots to his gut, the shrapnel in his back, was fading, replaced by a cold numbness. “Morozko,” he muttered, no longer finding the codename amusing. “…all dead.”
The men surrounded the Patriot, AK47s raised, aimed through the windshield.
Grigori raised his fist, thumb tucked between his first and second fingers in the Russian version of “flipping the bird.”
Grigori’s dying words were, “Po’shyol ‘na hui, mu’dak.” Fuck you, asshole!
The three men emptied their guns.
Moscow, Russia
Pavel Botkin’s heart raced. He hated this part of the job. In truth, he was terrified. He was a chubby man with a round face and red hair. His ears stuck out like handles on a pot. Broken veins in his cheeks and nose indicated a fondness for vodka, although he was rarely out-and-out drunk. With his job, blind drunk could be lethal.
There were ten canisters. Each was round, about the size of a grapefruit. They were refrigerated.
The boss, Yakov Shos, stalked into the part of the building where Pavel was preparing the weapon. Shos was almost as frightening as the canisters, Pavel thought. Yakov Shos was a brutal man and looked it. Appearances were not deceiving. He looked like the sort of man who could gut you with a knife and not feel a bit of remorse as you lay bleeding on the floor. Shos was built like a blade. His head was shaved and his face was all planes and angles. His dark eyes snapped out from beneath a ledge of brow. He had been an operative with the FSB for years before making his fortune with the Bratva, the brotherhood, what some called the Mafiya.
Shos headed the Red Hand, something a little different, something darker, more grand and glorious, far more ambitious.
Pavel knew that Shos was a killer, that the man had taken the lives of dozens, maybe hundreds of people.
But what really frightened Pavel right now was that Shos did not seem afraid of the canisters.
“When will this be ready?”
Pavel swallowed. Pavel was a bomb maker. This corner of the building was his work area. In his fifties, Pavel had been well trained by the Russian Army. He had served in the hellhole of Afghanistan as a young man and was delighted to see the Americans mired in that most miserable of places on the planet.
“It’s not the kind of thing you rush.”
“Our people are here. Make it ready.”
Shos turned and strode back to the far end of the building, what had originally been a garage for school buses, to discuss matters with two men who had come in with a truck. Pavel did not know where this was destined to go. He was a bomb maker, a technician. He was not a strategist. Shos told him what to do and he did it. He was well paid and he was a devout follower of the Red Hand, believing that Russia could be returned to the glory and power of the days of the Soviet Union. He longed for the days when the world media stopped saying there was only one superpower in the world.
Pavel reached into the special refrigeration unit and withdrew the canister. It was cold and slippery in his hands. It was lighter than expected, made of some sort of acrylic. Crossing to his bench, he studied the device. It was a special bomb, one that was designed in such a way that the canister would explode without incinerating the contents. The contents would be dispersed into the air, where it would spread.
He was reaching toward the device when one of the goddamned crazy men honked the truck’s horn, loud and long. “C’mon! We’ve got to get going!”
Startled, Pavel dropped the canister on his workbench. It hit with a crunch and he slammed his hands down on it to keep it from bouncing or rolling onto the floor where it would undoubtedly shatter. Sweat broke out on his forehead and his breath caught in his chest. Were they insane?
He slowly inserted the canister into the device, securing it in its cradle. With great care he sealed the weapon. On cursory inspection it looked a little bit like a small microwave oven. The keypad on the front would allow a timer to be set. A hit of the ON button would arm the device.
Pavel wiped his hands on his pants. It would be good to get this over with. Turning, he whistled the men over. “All yours!”
Baltimore, Maryland
Derek Stillwater was on his hands and knees sanding down the trim on the deck of his cabin cruiser, The Salacious Sally, when the delivery came. It was a glorious April day on the Chesapeake Bay, the sun was blazing down on his bare back from a cloudless azure sky and he was even debating taking the train up to D.C. to push through the tourists and check out the cherry blossoms.
The biggest problem with living on a boat, he thought, working hard on the teak, was the upkeep. Ocean air was hell on wood, hell on metal…
The Federal Express truck stopped near his dock and it was unusual enough that Derek looked up from his work to watch the driver climb out, stare at the package, stare around at the marina, then walk hesitantly toward his dock. Derek stood up, knees creaking, back complaining.
The Federal Express driver looked about eighteen, had sandy brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses. “You Dr. Derek Stillwater?”
Derek jumped down onto the dock and nodded. Despite the scar tissue, and there was a lot of scar tissue, he was moving fairly well. The last bit of surgery was nine months ago and he’d been working hard at his physical therapy to try and get his body back to where it was prior to getting shot.
“Gotta sign for this.”
Derek took it, saw it was international and noted further that the sender was Irina Khournikova and the address was in Moscow. Huh. It had been a long time. He signed it, made a trip through the salon to grab a Sam Adams Cherry Wheat, and took the package up to the bridge. He sat down in a captain’s chair he kept up there, took a sip of his beer and opened the package.
Dear Derek,
If you are reading this I am dead…
2
Secretary of State Robert Mandalevo’s Chief of Staff eyed Derek and said, “Most people can’t get ten minutes with the Secretary on short notice.”
“I appreciate it,” Derek said.
Derek had immediately placed three phone calls after reading the letter. One was to his boss, Tom Ross, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, to tell him that he had an emergency and would be on indefinite leave. Derek’s job title was troubleshooter. His expertise was biological and chemical terrorism. Officially he was assigned to DHS’s Office of Operations Coordination, but in reality he answered to the Secretary. The problem was that Tom Ross was the new Secretary and he didn’t think much of Derek.
Ross believed Derek was a political liability.
Derek knew that, yes, as a matter of fact, he was a political liability. His job wasn’t politics. His job was preventing and investigating terrorist attacks. Period. Since Ross didn’t trust Derek to behave, Derek had been pushing a lot of paper under the new Secretary and not much else.
His second phone call had been to a travel agent to get the ball rolling.
His final phone call had been to Joseph Moore, Mandalevo’s Chief of Staff. He had requested ten minutes of the Secretary’s time. Moore wanted to know why, but he also knew Mandalevo and Derek’s history. So when Derek said, “It’s personal,” Moore had grumbled, checked his boss’s calendar and told Derek if he could get there in two hours he could have ten minutes.
Derek was out the door, headed for the State Department offices on C Street in Foggy Bottom just as soon as he pulled on appropriate clothes.
Robert Mandalevo reminded Derek of a scalpel. It wasn’t just that the man stood six-two and seemed to have no body fat. It wasn’t just his shaved skull or his bony, almost skeletal appearance. There was something edgy and blade-sharp about the man, his intellect, his wit.
But he was a politician. That made Derek immediately suspicious. But he also knew that Mandalevo had guts, even that old-fashioned word, courage.
The secretary ushered him into Mandalevo’s office. Mandalevo sat behind his desk, backlit by curtained windows. His suit was black, his shirt white, his tie a subdued, muted red so dark it was almost the color of dried blood. Reading glasses perched on his long thin nose. He finished scribbling his signature on a document and pushed it aside.
“Everything okay, Derek?”
“No, sir.” He took out the letter and passed it to the Secretary of State.
Mandalevo read it carefully and leaned back in his high-backed leather chair. “You had no idea?”
Derek shook his head.
Mandalevo sighed. “Well, I’m sorry. A complicated situation, to be sure. But why come to me?”
“I’m leaving for Moscow just as soon as my travel agent pulls things together. But I need a favor.”
Mandalevo seemed to weigh those words—“I need a favor”—the silence growing heavy. In many ways Mandalevo owed Derek his life. But Derek knew you didn’t ask someone this high in government a favor without the real likelihood of eventual payback.
Finally Mandalevo said, “What is it?”
“Contact whoever you can in the FSB and get me as much information about her death as you can. Email it to me ASAP. I’ll be in the air, most likely, but once I hit Moscow…”
“You’ll what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you ask Tom Ross?”
“I think you know why.”
Mandalevo steepled his long, thin fingers in front of him. “I’ve asked you before and I’ll ask you again. Would you come to work here at State for me? Your skills are wasted under Ross.”
“I’m not a diplomat.”
“That’s for damned sure. But I don’t have in mind your being a diplomat. Terrorism is a major concern of State. Your skills and experience would—”
“Mr. Secretary—”
Mandalevo held up his hand. “Fine. I understand. Yes. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Derek stood up. They shook hands. He turned to leave, but Mandalevo said, “Derek.”
“Yes?”
“The Russians won’t look kindly on an American government agent poking into the death of one of their FSB agents.”
“I’m not going to do that. I’m just going over…” He trailed off, unsure what to say.
Mandalevo nodded. “Right. Be careful.”
Derek’s British Airlines flight from Dulles to Moscow had a three-hour layover in London’s Heathrow. He was traveling light—he always did—with a frame backpack that he used as carry-on luggage. Normally, on the job, he had two go-packs, the backpack and a duffel bag that held a variety of clothes, supplies, weapons, and first aid for dealing with unexpected trouble while investigating terrorist activity.
With the single backpack, no gun, and limited supplies, he felt almost naked. He had spent the majority of the trip reading, listening to music, and sleeping. He couldn’t get his mind off Irina Khournikova.
Irina Khournikova had been a counterterrorism expert in Russia’s FSB, the rough equivalent to the U.S.’s FBI, if you could discount that the FSB had originated as the KGB. Derek didn’t. The FSB had a reputation as being brutal and Derek’s experiences confirmed it, although Irina was an exception. They had run into each other several years before while investigating a series of terror attacks in the U.S. by a Russian-based group calling itself The Fallen Angels. Later they had come into contact once again during a G8 Summit held in Colorado. After the summit they hooked up for two weeks, sailing around the Gulf of Mexico on the Sally.
Derek strode through Heathrow, getting the kinks out of his back and legs. He planned to find a decent restaurant, but first he wanted to go online and see if Mandalevo had downloaded the files.
Hooking into the airport’s wi-fi, he saw with some satisfaction that Mandalevo had.
He downloaded it to read later, emailed his thanks and went looking for some decent food. He didn’t know if he’d find it on the entire island of Great Britain, and he doubted he’d find it at the airport, but he had time to kill and it had to be better than the food he’d eaten on the plane. The flight time from Washington D.C. to Moscow was fourteen hours and he needed desperately to stretch his legs.
As he walked, draggi
ng the backpack with him, he thought of the letter, which he had left back in Baltimore.
Dear Derek,
If you are reading this I am dead. This letter is strictly a contingency plan. I don’t know if I would have told you what I have to tell you otherwise. Perhaps some day. Perhaps not. Although I think you are a fine man, a wonderful man in many ways, you and I are too different, from different worlds, really, to try and make this work.
A month after our time together I discovered I was pregnant. I gave birth to Lev Arkady Khournikova—your son—that April.
If you are reading this, Lev is being raised by my sister, Yekaterina, and her husband, Eduard Belov. Since you are reading this, I am dead and they have custody of Lev. They will be good parents for our son and I ask you to not try to gain custody of him. It would not be good for him and it would not be good for them. Trust me when I tell you that Yekaterina and Eduard will be good parents for Lev.
A part of me, though, wishes that you would in some small way become part of his life. My own feelings on that are confused, as are most of my feelings about you, but I think Lev would benefit from knowing you.
I hope that you will continue to think of me kindly. In my own way I loved you very much, despite our short time together. And I hope that life will bring you peace and happiness.
Love,
Irina
There had been a note attached to the letter from Yekaterina that briefly told Derek the letter had been left in her possession by Irina to be sent to Derek in case of her death. An address had been supplied as well as a photograph of Lev. It looked like a studio photograph, like the ones millions of Americans had taken of their babies at Kmart or Sears.
Lev Arkady Khournikova had blue eyes like his father and a head of fly-away red hair that he probably got from his mother. Chubby cheeks, fair skin and a bright baby smile. Eager to take on the world, Derek thought.
Derek didn’t know how he felt when he stared at the photograph. He carried it in his wallet. During the flight he kept taking it out and staring at it.