by Cap Daniels
I quickly grabbed three heavy glass tumblers and returned to the table. I placed a tumbler over each of the three close-up frontal shots of Suslik and stood over them, staring through the bottoms of the tumblers. The thick, heavy bottoms of each glass made excellent magnifying glasses and offered me a look into the soul of the man I had sent to the afterlife.
I remembered his sunken, dark eyes. I remembered how they peered at me with disdain and emptiness that night in the tropics. I would never forget them. In the first two pictures, the eyes peering back at me through the tumblers were clearly those of the man I’d faced and killed. But there was something about the third picture that wasn’t right. The eyes were the same, but the left eye was cast ever so slightly inward. I compared the three photographs in excruciating detail, but I couldn’t convince myself that the difference was real.
Finally, I grabbed the three pictures and slammed them against the westward-facing wall of windows of the conference room. The afternoon sun was beating through the glass with brilliance and made a perfect light table. I overlaid one picture atop another and carefully aligned the eyes. They were identical. The size and shape of the pupils were the same. When I placed the third photograph atop the others, the inward gaze of that left eye became a beacon.
Bingo!
I knew Suslik had been spotted over a thousand miles apart, with less than an hour between sightings, long after I’d killed him in Havana. This bastard wasn’t a ghost; there were three of him.
Suslik number one was shark food. Number two was hanging out in Zurich. And number three had been in Gibraltar. I’d already killed one, so I only had two to go.
32
Russian Grammar Lessons
When I finished poring over the file and committing every detail to memory, I tucked the pictures back into the envelope and closed the thick, worn file just as it had been when Pennant dropped it in my lap. Satisfied with what I’d learned, and even more satisfied with how I’d muscled my way into the DDO’s office and gotten exactly what I wanted, I headed for the door back into Pennant’s office, but it was gone. The door had vanished.
That doesn’t make sense.
I’d been patting myself on the back and celebrating my skill and brilliance, when I should’ve been smart enough to realize that, of course, there would be no doorknob on this side. It wasn’t meant to be an access to Pennant’s office. It was meant only as an entrance to the conference room.
I banged on the wall where the door should’ve been, but no one answered. I yelled for Pennant. No response. I considered putting my foot through the wall when the door at the opposite end of the conference room swung slowly inward. Through the now open doorway came a young lady of perhaps twenty-five, in a navy blue dress that fit her exactly as it should have. Her long, well-sculpted legs extended from the hem of the dress and were punctuated with a pair of black heels that could make a dominatrix blush. In her arms was a stack of files that must’ve weighed thirty pounds. She was managing the load with practiced skill and impressive balance.
“Hello,” I said, as she approached the conference table.
The elegant beauty immediately turned into a baby giraffe trying to take her first steps. Files were airborne, one heel broke off with a loud snap, and she let out a squeal that probably deafened most dogs within a mile. Her reaction to her terror as she saw me for the first time, while unexpected, was quite impressive. She swiftly pulled a high-backed chair in front of her for cover, lifted the hem of her dress, and pulled a Walther PPK from a well-concealed holster on the inside of her left thigh.
I’d been taught to defend myself in almost every imaginable scenario, but I must’ve skipped class the day they taught self-defense against a gun-wielding CIA secretary. In what I perceived to be my best shot at survival, I immediately knelt, placed my hands with fingers interlocked on top of my head, and calmly but firmly declared, or perhaps begged, “Don’t shoot. I’m unarmed, and I’m on your side!”
In the confident tone of a highly trained intelligence officer, she said, “Who are you and what are you doing in here?”
“My name is Chase Fulton. I’m a guest of Director Pennant. He put me in this conference room about an hour ago.”
“Don’t move while I check out your story.”
I did exactly as she directed. While never taking her eyes, or her gunsight off me, she lifted the handset from a telephone on the table, and with her shoulder pressing it to her face, dialed a series of numbers. “There’s a white male, age twenty-five to thirty, over six feet, approximately two hundred pounds in the DDO conference room. He claims to be Chase Fulton, unarmed, and a guest of the DDO. No one is scheduled in this room for another hour. Confirm ID and dispatch security. I’m in position two. Subject is in nine.”
With her composure fully recovered, she didn’t wait for a response, and she replaced the handset in the cradle. She continued covering me and sidestepped to her left, putting more of the conference table between herself and me. “Lie down with your arms and legs spread wide,” she ordered.
I obeyed. I had no doubt that she would pull the trigger if I gave her any excuse. I hated to admit it, even to myself, but I was both embarrassed and impressed. I’d killed one of the world’s deadliest and most feared assassins on a mission that should have never succeeded, yet there I was, pinned down by a secretary.
I considered talking her into believing my story, but that would’ve been an utter waste of words, so I just lay there, embarrassed, and praying that it wouldn’t be Officer Pierce who came bursting through the door. He owed me a bloody nose, at least.
Thankfully, it wasn’t Pierce who came to my rescue. I heard the invisible door open behind me, but I didn’t dare risk turning my head to see who was there.
“It’s okay, Grace. He’s with me.”
Those were the best possible words I could’ve heard coming out of Pennant’s mouth. I watched Grace, name apropos, reholster the Walther and collect the folders that had taken flight when I startled her moments before.
I leapt to my feet and tried to regain some semblance of dignity, but I certainly didn’t feel like James Bond at that moment. I nodded a silent expression of appreciation when I met Pennant’s gaze. Then I turned to apologize to Grace. I cautiously approached her and offered my hand. “I really am Chase Fulton, and I’m very sorry for startling you.”
She planted her shooting hand firmly in mine and looked me squarely in the eye. “I almost killed you, Chase Fulton.”
I smiled. She did not.
Pennant led the way back into his office. “Chase, what are you going to do with this information?”
Instead of an answer, I said, “Thanks for not letting your secretary shoot me in the face.”
The look on his face made it clear that he was in no mood to play games. “She’s no secretary. She’s a quite competent field agent who came to us very much the same way you did. Honestly, I’m surprised she didn’t shoot you in the face. Believe it or not, she’s one of the few people in this building more dangerous than you.”
I was intrigued. I wanted to know more about Grace, the competent field agent. Not being the most dangerous human in a building didn’t sit well with me, but if I had to be outgunned, it might as well be by someone who looked like her.
“I’m serious, Chase. I want to know what you’re going to do with this information now that you have it.”
I faced Pennant as if he were my enemy. “Mr. Pennant, you and I both know that I can’t tell you what I’m going to do next. You not only don’t want to know, but you can’t know. You need to have that plausible deniability that people like you love so much. I’m going to take some time off and maybe do some traveling. That’s all you need or want to know. Thanks for letting me stop by. I’ll be in touch . . . or maybe not.” I turned to leave his office.
“Chase, stop!”
I stopped just as Pennant ordered. When I turned to face him again, he was laughing.
“You can’t just walk around
in CIA headquarters without an escort. This isn’t Walmart, you know. Just wait here, and I’ll get someone to walk you out.”
I still had a lot to learn about what I considered to be the corporate intelligence business. The experience I had was in the real world with real bullets and real bad guys. It had been my experience that there were no escorts or visitor’s badges in a gunfight.
I looked at my watch to express that I had more important things to do than wait for Pennant’s escort, but in the end, I had no choice but to wait. I had no interest in risking another encounter with Officer Pierce.
“Have a seat. It’ll only be a moment,” Pennant said, pointing to his sofa.
I settled onto his sofa somewhat impatiently, but I didn’t wait long.
Pennant pressed a button on his desk phone. “Will you escort Mr. Fulton out, please?”
A pleasant voice responded, “Of course, sir. I’ll be right there.”
Grace strolled through the door. I quickly rose to join her. I’d spent the last minute I ever wanted to spend inside that building. Grace led the way through the maze of corridors, and we finally arrived back at Officer Pierce’s station. We’d made the entire trek without speaking a word, so I expected her to discard me at the door and disappear back into the hall of spies while leaving me to my own devices.
She followed me through the door and to the street, walking in lockstep with my every stride. I turned and offered a look, making it clear I wanted to know what she was doing. She grabbed my arm, and insistently encouraged me to keep walking.
When we were finally clear of the building, she said, “Listen, and do not react. Do you understand?”
I continued walking and acting like I hadn’t heard hear say a word.
“Excellent,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what to think when you cowered like a scared little girl when I drew on you in the conference room. It’s nice to know you can actually follow instructions.”
Ouch.
Again, I didn’t react. I kept walking.
“I know who and what you are. We all know who you are, Chase, but not everyone knows what you’re about to do. Before you do anything else, though, you need to know a few things about what just happened in there. You think you made a bunch of demands and got everything you wanted, but nothing could be further from the truth. You were played. Director Pennant wants nothing more than for you to go chasing Suslik all over the world and kill him—all of them.”
My ability to not react had reached its bitter end. I gritted my teeth, trying to control my anger. “What the hell are you talking about? Pennant didn’t even know I was coming here.”
“Oh, come on. You can’t be that naïve. Do you really think you can do anything without us knowing?” She stopped and placed her hands firmly on my forearms. “Open your eyes. You know Director Pennant can’t send an agent to hunt down Suslik, but what he can do is open a few gates, drop a few hints, then watch you go bounding through that open gate, guns blazing.”
How could I be so arrogant to think I could bully my way into CIA headquarters, get exactly what I want, and think I wasn’t being played?
“Why are you telling me this, Grace?”
She turned nervously and glanced back at CIA headquarters. “Where’s your car?”
Reflexively, I also looked back at the building. “My car is a thousand miles from here at the Miami airport. Why do you care?”
She threw her hand into the air and hailed a cab. When it stopped in front of us, she yanked the door open, shoved me in the back seat, and quickly slid in beside me. She slammed the door. “Driver, take us to Dulles, and don’t hurry. We have some things to discuss.”
The cabbie mumbled something about Dulles, but nothing else that came out of his mouth was remotely understandable. I was glad his English probably wasn’t strong enough to understand what was about to be discussed in the back seat of his car.
Grace stared out the rear window of the taxi, presumably in search of someone following us. I couldn’t imagine why any living soul would be following us, but I chose not to interrupt her little cloak-and-dagger, grown-up spy routine.
“Okay, listen. It’s far simpler and so much more complex than you know, but what’s important right now is that you trust me.”
People who can be trusted rarely say, “Trust me.” Even though I wasn’t willing to trust her yet, I was willing to listen to what she had to say.
“You walked into a perfectly crafted trap,” she said. “You talked yourself into doing exactly what Director Pennant wants you to do. He can’t launch a worldwide manhunt for the Susliks. He knew that once you figured out that Suslik was more than just the one man you killed in Cuba, you wouldn’t be able to stop until you found and killed all of them, or until one of them killed you.”
“Susliki,” I said.
“What?”
I said, “Adding an s to Suslik doesn’t make it plural in Russian. Adding an i does. Susliki.”
She was obviously in no mood for sarcasm or a Russian grammar lesson, so she grabbed my shirt with both hands and pulled me to within an inch of her face. She was one of those rare women who was more beautiful the closer you got to her. That she had a Walther strapped to the inside of her left thigh, and knew how to use it, made her even sexier.
With our noses almost touching, she said, “If you go off on your own, without support, all you’re going to get is dead. You may get lucky and find him, or one of them, but you can’t just stumble all over Europe by yourself and expect to survive an encounter with people like Suslik. Think about it. How many people and how much planning went into the Cuban mission? You would’ve never been able to pull that off without massive support and a huge budget. Your success down there made it clear that you’re very good in the field, but no one is good enough to do what you’re planning by himself—not even you, Chase Fulton.”
What she said was important, but what she didn’t say was even more meaningful. She warned me against chasing Suslik through Europe all by myself. She didn’t offer up a support staff and massive budget. It was clear she was just trying to talk me out of going after Suslik.
“Okay,” I said. “I won’t go alone. I’ll find another operator to come with me. I’ll convince someone who’s just as insane as me to come along for the ride. Would that make you happy?”
She looked through the back window again and finally released my shirt. “No. That doesn’t make me happy. I’m going with you.”
“Ha!” I laughed with exaggerated disgust. “So, you’re going to tuck your CIA credentials into your bra and hop on a plane with me to go chasing the deadliest assassin on the planet across Europe. Is that what this is?”
“No, that’s not what this is. I spent over three hundred days in the field last year, survived seven gunfights, caught a mole, and for all that, I made just over seventy thousand dollars. You went on one mission and made just over eight million in two days. You can afford to double my salary when I resign, but what you can’t afford is to go without me.”
Does she really think I’m going to take a CIA agent with me on an illegal, international manhunt?
Before I could put up a reasonable argument against her tagging along, she said, “I’m coming with you, Chase. It’s that simple. To stop me, you’ll have to shoot me, and I’m the only one in this car with a gun.”
33
Our Boat
I called David Shepherd as soon as we landed in Miami.
“Whose fingerprints were on that bill, David?” I said as soon as his voice came on the line.
“Chase! How are you?” He sounded cheerful.
“I don’t have time for small talk, David. Tell me whose fingerprints were on that bill.”
My patience was growing thinner by the moment. I don’t know what bothered me more: the fact that I’d been blindly suckered in by Michael Pennant, or the fact that there were two Russians running around the Florida Keys, looking for a woman on the orders of Dmitri Barkov.
He must’v
e sensed my impatience. “The prints belong to Boris Novikoff, a mid-level bounty hunter type for the Russian mafia. He’s dangerous, crafty, and fearless. He’s a freelancer, but rumor has it he’s been working for Dmitri Barkov lately. If you lifted that bill from him and he’s in the States, there’s a better than good chance that he’s looking for you. Take my advice, Chase—”
I hung up before he could offer his advice. I knew exactly why Boris Novikoff was in Key Largo. He was looking for Anya, and by extension, for me. The thought of Anya possibly being in the Keys made it impossible to focus on anything other than seeing her again.
We found my car, and Grace immediately wanted to know what I’d learned from Shepherd. “What did he say?” Her impatience seemed to be running a close second to my own.
Trying in vain to get Anya out of my mind, I forced myself to focus on Grace. “He said the prints on the bill belong to a bounty hunter named Boris Novikoff. Does that name ring any agency bells for you?”
She tilted her head, obviously thumbing through her mental Rolodex. “No, I don’t think so. Should it?”
“No, probably not. He’s here looking for an SVR agent who works for Dmitri Barkov.”
“What’s his name?”
“What’s whose name?”
“Damn it, Chase, focus. What’s the name of the SVR agent Novikoff is chasing?”
“The agent’s name is Anastasia, and she’s a very long story. I’ll explain later. What you need to know is that we can’t let Novikoff find her before we do. Actually, we aren’t going to find her. She’ll find us. That’s sort of her thing.”
Grace sat in the passenger seat of my BMW, watching the mangroves pass by at sixty miles per hour. I had to tell her about Anya, but I wasn’t looking forward to confessing how I’d fallen in love with a Russian assassin. If there was a rule that came before rule number one in the spy handbook, it would be to never fall in love with the enemy. Perhaps I wasn’t suffering from a lack of judgment. Perhaps I had a perception problem. I just couldn’t let myself see Anya as my enemy. I was going to need a drink before opening that can of worms with my new partner.