Finding Lies

by Rachel Lovise

  He answered with a terse, “Haugen.” He listened intently to the caller and then glanced over, and she knew immediately the call was about her. “Interesting. Good work, Dag.”

  When he hung up she said, “Dag?”

  “I sent him to D.C. to search through your and Sokolov’s apartments. I also asked him to take a look into your finances.”

  She frowned. “You should have asked me first. That’s private information. I don’t even know how that’s legal.”

  He sent her a bland look. “It’s not. Sokolov’s apartment was cleaned out top to bottom and wiped of fingerprints.”

  Her irritation at his invasion of her privacy took a back burner to this news. “He couldn’t have done it; he’s been overseas this whole time.”

  Ian nodded. “Right, which means someone cleaned it for him. The attention to wiping the prints suggests it was a professional. Now that you know about his Russian identity, his cover in the U.S. is effectively blown.”

  “I don’t understand what he was doing in America in the first place,” she said. It had been hard enough learning she’d dated the monster who’d betrayed Ian’s friends in Kabul, and now she had to deal with the fact that she’d also been dating a Russian spy—someone who was, in some capacity, actively working against the government she believed so faithfully in upholding.

  Ian shook his head. “We’re missing information here, and Sokolov’s mission in America is one of them. I have a feeling it will only take one piece to fall in place for the rest to follow.”

  Was she keeper to one of those pieces? What was her role in all of this? How could her position as a lowly paralegal have been a coveted cover for a GRU agent? Well, she’d been second choice, she reminded herself. If Amanda hadn’t rejected him, Sokolov could be her problem right now.

  Except . . . she looked over at Ian as he sat deep in thought behind the wheel of the truck. She loved how his eyes were the color of the sunstruck fjord and how they creased when he laughed—however rare that was. She loved how big he was both in body and presence. But more than the superficialities, she loved the fierce loyalty that burned at his core. She loved the strong code of ethics that he lived by and that he was willing to die by. She loved him.

  Maybe she owed Amanda’s attitude a little gratitude.

  Her thoughts returning to the topic at hand she asked, “Did Dag find anything in my apartment?”

  “Some TD Bank statements.”

  She furrowed her brow and was aware that Ian was watching her reaction closely. “I don’t have an account with TD Bank. Are you sure they were mine? Maybe the mailman mixed up apartments.”

  “They were hidden in a ceiling panel in your bedroom and the account holder’s name is Leah Hannah Parker. The statements show six months of deposits from an account in the Caymans.”

  “What? Ian, I didn’t even know the panels in my bedroom ceiling came out! I didn’t, I don’t—” Panic rose at the back of her throat. My God, did he now think she was colluding with Sokolov? She’d never opened an account at TD Bank and had certainly never seen a dime of extra money. Hell, she could barely make her rent half the time.

  Ian’s hand came down on her thigh, heavy and warm. “Relax. Obviously Sokolov is setting you up to take the fall for something. I just don’t know what it is yet.”

  He believed her, steadily and without question. The relief was so tangible she could almost taste it on her tongue. She covered his hand with hers and exhaled shakily. “I’m really scared, Ian. I don’t know what’s going on. Things just keep getting bigger and bigger and I don’t understand what I’m caught up in.”

  He made a sympathetic noise. “I know sweetheart.”

  “Did Dag find anything else in my apartment?”

  “No, he—” Ian slammed on the brakes, propelling her against the seatbelt so hard that her head snapped forward. The tires laid rubber in a smoking squeal and she braced herself for impact, but none came. When she opened her eyes she saw a massive moose standing in the center of the road.

  Cripes, if it wasn’t Sokolov who killed them it might be the giant wildlife.

  Ian had managed to brake the truck ten feet from the moose, but it was still far too close for Leah’s comfort. Ten feet was about one and a half of Ian’s length—close enough that Leah could pick out the individual strands of hair on the moose’s body.

  The moose stared at them, its head lowered and its ears flat. Ian flipped off the headlights and waited calmly. Leah glanced in the side view mirror, thankful tSvein had been travelling far enough back that he’d managed to avoid rear-ending them.

  She returned her attention to the moose and prayed it didn’t charge them. She was feeling emotionally wrung out and didn’t have it in her to deal with one more stressful incident.

  “Should we back up?”

  “Only if we have to.”

  “Is it a female?” she asked. Her eyes darted to the window, searching for a calf hidden in the brush to explain why the moose was acting so aggressively.

  “No, it’s a bull. See the antlers?”

  “Think his family is around?”

  Ian smiled. “Moose aren’t monogamous. Actually, the tundra moose practices polygyny.” At her narrowed look he said, “It mates with a lot of different cows.”

  Leah glared at the moose, her ire for it irrational and potent. “You pig,” she said. “You good for nothing—”

  Suddenly she stopped and sucked in air as a deeply buried memory hurtled to the forefront of her consciousness. She and Sokolov at the National Mall, her admiration of the great men and women who’d built America, and the offhand comment he’d made that had stuck like a burr in the back of her subconscious all this time.

  “Ian.” She turned and gripped his forearm, her eyes bright. “I think I know why Sokolov wants me dead.”

  Chapter 40

  Sokolov kicked a copper clock across the safe house kitchen where it crashed into the stove and left a dent that far from satisfied him. He’d arrived in Korgen expecting to burst in on an unsuspecting Haugen and Leah, only to discover the place empty and the obvious signs of an altercation: a broken coffee table, shattered glass, and blood—lots of blood. He knew they’d been there recently because the towel in the bathroom was still damp and he could just make out the lingering scent of Leah’s perfume.

  When he’d called his handler to report what he’d found, the jackass had said he’d get right back to him and then hung up before Sokolov could say another word. Sokolov had waited impatiently for twenty-five minutes while Leah and Haugen traveled farther out of his reach and his handler did God knows what, probably sat around with his thumb up his ass. Finally his phone rang. The news wasn’t good.

  “It was the SVR,” his handler said.

  Rage narrowed Sokolov’s vision and he looked around for something to destroy.

  The SVR, an arm of Russia’s foreign intelligence service—and a far inferior one in his opinion—had a difficult time communicating with its much larger sister organization, the GRU. The two agencies worked independently of one another and reported to different superiors, which created a competitive and secretive work relationship instead of a cooperative one. It had become a running joke that for every successful mission the GRU pulled off, the SVR flubbed two others. It was funny until it was his operation they fucked up.

  Sokolov was only partially listening to his handler while he worked on tamping down his fury. When the blackness had receded from his vision and he was able to refocus, his handler was saying, “They contracted the hit to an American named Jeremy Walker.”

  Shit, the lazy dicks hadn’t even had the balls to do the work themselves. Sokolov didn’t know Walker personally but he knew of his work. Walker was a good choice for fast, straightforward hits that sent a message, but he lacked the skills to think on his feet or plan for various outcomes. That was the difference between a mercenary and an agent.

  Sokolov, on the other hand, had been working the case for ten goddamn year
s. He’d laid countless trails, spun numerous webs, and spent years laying the groundwork necessary to keep this mission going. He’d been single-handedly responsible for securing intelligence Russia had used to plan dozens of other operations. And the SVR had just waltzed in like the assholes they were and screwed everything up. Jeremy Walker was a good, but he wasn’t good enough for Haugen, and if the SVR had known anything at all about the mission they were sticking their noses in, they’d have at least known that. Sokolov had no doubt Walker had failed, and now Haugen was on the run again with one more piece of information he hadn’t had before.

  Sokolov ground his molars together. “How did they even know about Parker?”

  His handler hesitated and then said, “It’s the new director’s initiative to share information—”

  Sokolov didn’t need to hear the rest. There was always some idiot to whom the Kremlin owed a favor, who was promoted to run an agency he knew nothing about. Puffed with power, said idiot would go off changing things without any inkling of the consequences, turning entire organizations upside down and getting people killed. It was how the Russian government had always worked and always would work. It was one of the reasons he couldn’t wait to get out.

  “They didn’t think you were handling it.”

  Sokolov was unleashing his thoughts on that when his handler interrupted his tirade to tell him he was getting a communication from their tech team. When he came back on the line his voice was graver than before. “We have a major problem.”

  “Worse than the SVR botching the hit on Haugen and the bitch?”

  “I’d say so. Parker just boarded a private jet.”

  Sokolov stilled. “What airport?”

  “Orland.”

  “And Haugen?”

  “He’s on the manifest too, but they’re under assumed names.”

  Sokolov was silent for a moment. If Leah and Haugen were headed back to D.C. it could mean only one thing: they’d figured out what he was after. During their time together Leah had annoyed him with her averageness, but apparently she was smarter than he’d given her credit for.

  “Shit,” Sokolov hissed.

  His handler’s voice remained impassive. “This situation isn’t turning out so well for you, Alexei. If you’re unable to take care of this—”

  “I can take care of it,” Sokolov interrupted, deciding that when he retired his handler would retire too—only Sokolov would be on a tropical island somewhere and his handler would be worm food.

  “Get me a private flight to D.C.,” he snarled into the phone. “If she’s going to be there in ten hours, I want to land in eight.”

  Chapter 41

  Ian pulled to the side of the road and threw the truck in park before turning razor-sharp eyes on Leah. Apparently the moose felt the truck’s maneuver meant he’d won the standoff, because he gave a parting snort and shuffled into the forest.

  “What do you know?”

  Leah turned toward him, practically vibrating with energy. “Remember when we were playing that association game at the campground and I told you Sokolov was boring? And I said how one time he and I went to the National Mall and we were looking into the Reflecting Pool and I was talking about all the great men and women who’d built our country and all he could think about was spaghetti?”

  Ian gave a terse, impatient nod but he didn’t interrupt.

  “Well, before the spaghetti comment he said something else that kind of stuck in the back of my mind at the time because it was so incongruous with his personality. He’d always been mild-mannered, kind, and optimistic, but that day when I commented on how honorable the people were who represented our American ideals and dreams, he said with a sneer in his voice, ‘Yes, how noble these men are who talk about freedom and then beat their wives and visit brothels.’ I remember being taken aback by his pessimism because it was so unlike him, but then he quickly asked me about spaghetti and I forgot all about it until that philandering moose jogged my memory.”

  “Okay.” After a beat of silence Ian said, “You’re going to have to explain a bit more.”

  Leah propped one knee on the seat, her body tingling with excitement. “Remember how I told you the DA’s office is handling a domestic violence case against Senator Roth?”

  “Right, and we determined that it was unlikely to be related.”

  “Yes, well, Senator Roth is kind of a big deal where I live because he heads the Congressional Intelligence Committee, so the media has been all over the domestic assault case. Because of the pressure, the DA’s Office was instructed to be particularly thorough and by-the-book in its investigation. As part of that thorough piece, I was assigned to search through the senator’s receipts, purchases, and phone records. Did he buy another woman gifts? Did he send threatening texts to his wife as she claims? Did he hire a PI to trail her? Do any calls in his log match the times his wife claimed he called and promised to strangle her? I’ve been combing through his phone records for months, and it’s no small feat. Who knew how much senators are on their phones?

  “Anyway, about a week ago I ran across an international number in his call log. That’s not unusual considering Roth is head of the Intelligence Committee, but for the sake of covering my ass I checked farther back in his logs to see if it was a recurring number. It was. In fact, he’d called that same number in consistent intervals—about every two months—for over a year. Instead of passing the information to my superior and hearing her bitch that I didn’t vet it first, I called the number. Apparently the good senator of family values and God had been repeatedly calling a brothel in Kazakhstan.”

  Ian’s eyebrows lifted as he swiftly made the connection to Sokolov’s comment. “Roth, a senator preaching American values, both beats his wife and visits brothels. Did you ever tell Sokolov about your investigation into the senator?”

  “No! Well, I mean he must have known the DA’s office was handling it but I never told him about my part in it. I’d practically pledged my soul to confidentiality and wasn’t allowed to so much as breathe a word about it. But he did have my phone tapped, if you’ll remember. He must have been listening in because he wanted to know what I knew about Roth. In fact,” she sat up straighter, another link forging in her mind, “that must be why he originally hit on my boss, Amanda. She’s the lead prosecutor in the case, and the D.C. Children’s Benefit Gala took place right after she’d been assigned the case. After Amanda shot Sokolov down, he turned his sights to me. I work closely with Amanda day in and day out, so I was the next logical choice.”

  “You didn’t tell me he hit on your boss first.”

  “I wasn’t exactly flattered to find out I was second string.”

  Ian’s gaze ran over her in a way that had her skin heating even in the air-conditioned cab. “He only made a move on her first because of her position. A man would have to be batshit crazy to pass you up.” Before she could reply he asked, “Did you check Roth’s travels against the time frame of the calls to the brothel?”

  “That’s the first thing I did. Roth had scheduled trips a week after each call, but all of them were to China.”

  “China is on the border of Kazakhstan.”

  “I realized that. So I was thinking, well, maybe he visits the brothel whenever he has business in China. But then why travel to another country for sex? There must be a boatload of brothels in China.”

  “There are,” Ian said. When she gave him a slanted look and he added, “Don’t worry; I’ve never been a fan of taking advantage of destitute women.”

  She should have known as much. “That was about as far as I got when Sokolov convinced me to take a trip to Scotland.”

  Ian looked out the windshield as he thought. “Kazakhstan has close relations with Russia, which might explain Sokolov’s involvement. Do you remember the address of the brothel?”

  “I only know the city. Once the brothel realized I wasn’t calling to order a girl the woman hung up pretty quickly.” Leah’s brow furrowed as she forced th
e foreign name to the tip of her tongue. “I think it was Balkhash.”

  Ian exhaled slowly, and she realized instantly the name meant something to him. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “Son of a bitch.”

  “What?”

  “The brothel isn’t the only thing in Balkhash. The Russian Aerospace Defense Forces runs a facility there called The Balkhash Radar Station. It’s used to monitor satellites and it functions as part of the Russian missile warning network. On the other side of Balkhash Lake is Sary Shagan, a Russian anti-ballistic missile testing range and experimental facility.”

  “Oh.” Leah’s mind sizzled as connections snapped into place. She said slowly, “So you think the senator wasn’t actually visiting China, he was visiting The Balkhash Radar Station, either that or Sary Shagan, or maybe both. And while he was there he liked to take advantage of the nearby brothel and would call ahead to have a certain type of woman waiting for him.” She chewed on her lip for a moment. “But why not fly directly to Kazakhstan if he was on official business? Why keep it a secret?”

  Ian gave her a pointed look. Her lips parted in dismay when she realized the answer to her question. “Because he wasn’t supposed to be there. It was off the books.”

  “That’s my guess. Did you find any other calls to Kazakhstan?”

  She shook her head no.

  “So he was smart enough not to leave a record linking him directly to the Russian military. Too bad he wasn’t smart enough to call the brothel from a different line as well.”

  Until that moment Leah had suspected the reason for the senator’s secrecy was that he was running illegal black ops. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might be betraying his own country. “Are you saying Roth is working for the Russians?”

  “I’m saying it’s a possibility. It fits with everything we’ve learned so far. If Roth was feeding information to the Russians they would want to keep a close eye on his activities. Until now he’s been flying under the radar, an upstanding man with rigid family values and honor to country and all that, so there was no need for anyone to look twice at him. But then he went and beat up his wife.”