Mike made three cappuccinos and sprinkled cinnamon on top of Lisa’s frothed milk. His wife accepted the hot beverage with a smile. Zima, who was seated next to her on the love seat, nodded her thanks.
“Gratitude, honey,” Lisa said, taking the cup with her two hands. She took a careful sip and nodded appreciatively. “Perfect.”
Mike sat in front of them in one of the armchairs. The floor-to-ceiling windows afforded them a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline. Being on the top floor definitely had its advantages.
“I can’t stop thinking about Sam,” Lisa said, placing her cappuccino on the coffee table.
“Were you with him when he passed?” Zima asked.
Lisa shook her head and then said, “He was in so much pain.”
“You did what you could, baby,” Mike said. “You ran to him and pulled him to safety.”
“So did Charles.”
“Yeah, he did.”
Mike closed his eyes as he relived in his mind what had happened earlier in the day. The attempt on Charles Mapother’s life had been well-orchestrated, with many fail-safes. But they had failed, somehow. Or had they?
Once Mapother had walked out of the conference room, Jonathan Sanchez had continued with his briefing. Sam Turner’s killer was an ex-con named Louis Wall, a former soldier who’d spent the last twelve years behind bars. At first, the IMSI hadn’t found anything to link him to Mapother. Digging a little deeper, Sanchez, with the help of Anna Caprini, did manage to establish a possible motive. During his time in the FBI, Mapother had shot and killed Wall’s brother during a drug raid. So it was possible that Wall had taken upon himself to kill Mapother as retribution for his brother’s death. But this line of thought didn’t hold, not after Wall was finished off by another shooter who was then himself killed by a sniper. The IMSI was now operating under the assumption that the attack at the Grand Central Terminal had been planned and ordered by an outside organization with powerful means.
“Could it be the Sheik?” Mike asked out loud.
“I’m sure it crossed Mapother’s mind,” Zima replied.
“It’s the only thing that makes any sense,” Lisa said. “Who else would know about Mapother?”
“So this is revenge for the damage we’ve done to his organization?” Mike asked, convinced this was the case.
“I’m sure the fact that you guys killed the son of his trusted mole played a role too,” Zima added.
“So what’s next?” Lisa drank the last of her cappuccino. “Are we gonna go after this bastard or what?”
Mike appreciated his wife’s enthusiasm but he knew Mapother wouldn’t send them on a wild-goose chase. “I know we will, honey. Charles will let us know when.”
“I’m ready,” Lisa said. She stood and made a move toward the kitchen. “Anyone want something stronger than coffee?”
“Not for me,” Zima replied. “It’s been a long day and I’m dead tired. I’m heading home.”
Mike escorted Zima to the door. “Any news regarding your dad?” she asked.
“With everything that happened today, there was no time. Jonathan sent me an email, though. He said Mapother wants to meet with me tomorrow morning.”
“Okay, then,” Zima said. “Fingers crossed for good news.” She gave him a hug.
“See you in the morning,” Mike said.
“Yeah, see you.”
With Zima gone, Mike joined Lisa. She poured two glasses of Pinot Noir and offered one to Mike. “To what are we drinking?” he asked.
“Not to what, but to who,” his wife replied. “To Sam Turner.”
Yes, to Sam.
........
Lisa Walton emptied what was left of the bottle into Mike’s empty glass. It had been a while since she had drunk so much wine in so little time and she was feeling the buzz. A pleasant one. It reminded her of the long evenings she and Mike had passed together entangled in each other’s arms watching television or reading their favorite authors, while drinking a whole bottle of wine, sometimes two. She missed that time. A time before tragedy decimated her family, when all the dreams she shared with Mike were still alive. When everything was possible.
But that world, that bubble of theirs, had shattered when the Sheik had killed almost everyone she had ever loved. Only Mike remained.
She looked at him, lying in their bed, his shirt unbuttoned and out of his jeans. His eyes were on her. Devouring her. She became aware of how she looked in her nightgown. She felt her nipples grow harder against the soft satin fabric. Her heartbeat accelerated and she wondered what he was thinking. A quick look at the bulge in his shorts told her everything she needed to know. At thirty-nine, he was still hot, and she wanted him. Badly. Now. She desperately wanted to feel him against her bare skin. She slipped the strings of her gown off her shoulders, exposing herself to him.
He bit his lip.
........
His wife never ceased to amaze him. She was, at least to him, the most beautiful woman in the world. They had gone through so much together, shared experiences that had tested their relationship to its limit, but they had survived. Just when the elastic was about to snap, it had pulled them back together. Now they were one, at home and at work, the bond between them stronger than ever. Their common loss, and now their common objective, had transformed their love into a sanctuary that had grown into a sacred sense of intimate unity.
Aroused by the softness of her lips on his neck, he let himself relax as she freed him from his Andrew Christian underwear. A moment later, she was on top of him, her hair cascading around his face. She pressed her breast to his chest, her hips to his, and her lips to his ear.
“I want you,” she whispered, her voice dark and raspy.
He kissed his wife fiercely, his own desire taking over. He rolled Lisa onto her back. Passion filled her eyes. He sensed her hand behind his neck, pulling him closer. They kissed again, softly, then more ardently. He let his tongue run the contour of her neck. He felt her quiver. He gently turned her around so her back faced him. He kissed the back of her neck and made his way slowly—oh so slowly—down her spine to the hollow of her back. Lisa was shaking now. She gasped as he entered her. His hands reached for hers. Fingers entwined, they made love with total abandon.
CHAPTER 9
IMSI Headquarters, Brooklyn, NY.
Mike Walton entered Mapother’s office right on time at seven o’clock. Following the frolics of the previous night, he had slept like a baby. Well rested, Mike hoped Mapother had called him in to talk about his father. He was only half right.
“You look energized, Mike,” Mapother said for greeting.
“I am. Six hours of undisrupted sleep will do that to you, Charles. You should try it sometimes.”
“I will. One day.” Mapother walked to his percolator. “Coffee?”
“Please.” Mike looked around Mapother’s office. By no means large, Mapother’s work place felt comfortable. Mapother had recently had his office repainted and the previously light-gray walls were now navy blue. The furniture hadn’t changed and the one-way mirror showing the control room—the IMSI’s nerve center where the analysts worked—had now been covered by a privacy screen.
As usual, the coffee served in Mapother’s office was piping hot.
“Let’s start with your father,” Mapother said, sitting behind his desk.
Mike took a deep breath. Here we go.
“Richard Phillips confirmed the Syrian government has your father.”
“Where did he get the info this time?” Mike asked. Four months ago, the IMSI had received intelligence regarding his father’s whereabouts, but nothing had panned out. His father was nowhere to be found.
“From the Canadians,” Mapother replied. “They were contacted through some obscure back channels they’ve been keeping with the Syrians.”
It wasn’t easy
to understand the politics surrounding the Syrian conflict. Mike even wondered if the Syrian president knew if ISIS was on his side or not. It seemed that everyone with a stake in Middle Eastern geopolitics had declared that ISIS had to be defeated, but nobody agreed on the best way to achieve it. Saudi Arabia had made it clear that ISIS couldn’t be defeated unless the current Syrian president was removed from power. Israel, an ally of both the United States and Canada, saw only one way to defeat ISIS: through the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program. And Turkey swore that their Kurdish opponents needed to be neutralized first.
With all this shit going on, I’m not surprised the Canadians kept a back door open with the Syrians.
“And they’re ready to release him?”
Mapother shrugged. “You know as well as I do it’s impossible to understand the reasoning behind any decisions the Syrians make. But yes, at least for now, they seem to be willing to release him.”
“Any idea where they kept my father for the last month? Or why the exchange didn’t go as planned the last time around?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Mike.”
“When am I leaving?”
“You’re not going to Syria—”
“Why the hell not?” Mike asked. What was Mapother thinking?
“Zima’s going. You and Lisa are needed somewhere else.”
Mike took a deep breath and forced himself to control his anger. “She’s going to Syria by herself?”
Mapother nodded. “She left early this morning.”
Mike wondered if Zima had known she was about to be deployed to Syria when she was at their place yesterday night. He hoped not. Because if she did, that meant she had flat out lied to him and Lisa. And that wouldn’t pass. Mapother knew how important it was for him to go after his father. After the close call they’d had a few months back, this was the biggest lead they’d received about his father’s whereabouts. Still, without Mapother’s support, there wasn’t much he could do.
Mapother must have seen he was worried because he added, “The Canadians are in charge of the operation. Zima’s only objectives are to observe the exchange and try to collect as much intel as she can about your father’s captors.”
Mike shook his head. “I’m the one who should go. Not her.”
“As I said, you and Lisa are needed somewhere else.”
“What could be more important, Charles?”
“Russia.”
Russia?
“What does Russia have to do with my dad?”
“As far as we know, nothing at all,” Mapother replied.
“All right. Is that supposed to make any sense to me?” Mike asked.
“It will soon enough,” Mapother replied, before taking a sip from his cup. “Twenty-four hours ago, the FBI received a message from a long-forgotten source they had inside Russia in the eighties,” Mapother said.
The FBI wasn’t known to share its contacts or intelligence sources so Mike wondered how Mapother knew this.
“The source is a seventy-year-old Russian scientist named Dr. Yegor Galkin,” continued Mapother, reading from another file on his desk. “He started working for Biopreparat, the former Soviet Union’s biological warfare agency, in the mid seventies. Smart and ambitious, he quickly rose to the rank of major and was put in charge of a team of scientists tasked with weaponizing one of the most infectious diseases known to man, smallpox.”
“When was that exactly?” Mike asked.
“In the eighties.”
“Right after the World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated,” Mike said.
“Exactly,” Mapother said. “Although we knew Russia kept a small amount of the disease in the Ivanovsky Institute of Virology in Moscow to match our own legal repository of the strain here in the US, we had no idea that only a half-hour drive away from Moscow, in the famous Russian cathedral city of Zagorsk, they were cultivating tons of smallpox in a secret lab.”
Mike didn’t know much about this particular subject and he was fascinated. “I guess we did learn about it somehow.”
“Yes, we did,” answered Mapother. “By Dr. Yegor Galkin himself.”
“Really? How?”
“I turned him.”
“You what?”
“I recruited him during one of his visits to Berlin,” Mapother said.
Mike could see that Mapother was clearly enjoying himself as he remembered this particular story from his past.
“In the name of scientific research, trafficking in germs and viruses was legal then, as it is still today. Russia was known to send KGB agents to scientific fairs to purchase strains from universities laboratories and biotech firms.”
“Just like that? Russia bought viruses on the open market? That’s insane,” Mike said.
Mapother raised his hands. “Don’t be so naïve, Mike,” he said. “We were doing the same damn thing. Everybody was doing it. I’ll give you this, though: the Russians pushed it to another level. In fact, representatives of the Soviet scientific and trade organizations based in Africa, Asia and Europe were asked to look for new and unusual diseases.”
“It’s hard to believe they did so with such impunity,” Mike said.
Mapother shrugged and continued. “For example, it was actually from the United States that Russian agents picked up Machupo, the virus that causes Bolivian hemorrhagic fever. And it was in Germany that they got their hands on the Marburg virus—”
“I know about this one,” interrupted Mike. “A Ugandan health worked died of Marburg hemorrhagic fever in 2014.”
“Correct,” Mapother said.
“It’s also a category A bioterrorism agent,” Mike said, now on the edge of his seat. “And there’s no cure that we know of.”
“That’s one more reason why the Russians wanted to weaponize the virus,” Mapother said.
“Were they ever successful?”
“Yes, they were. Dr. Galkin’s team quietly added the Marburg virus to the Soviet arsenal in the mid eighties.”
“And how did we learn about it? From him directly?” Mike asked.
“You’ve heard about Chinese and Russian agents using honey traps to trick our diplomats or firm executives into working for them?”
“Of course, Charles,” Mike replied. “This technique is still being used, I believe.”
“You’re right, and we used it too,” Mapother said. “That’s how I caught Dr. Galkin in Berlin.”
Interesting, thought Mike. Everyone at the IMSI knows Charles Mapother was a former FBI agent but not much else. Am I about to discover what he really did with them?
“But that’s a story for another time,” Mapother said after a moment of silence.
I guess I won’t.
“What’s important for you to know is that a friend of mine at the FBI called me to let me know Dr. Galkin tried to contact me yesterday.”
“How?” Mike asked. “What did he want?”
“Patience, Mike,” replied Mapother, “I’ll get there in a minute.”
Mike waited while Mapother walked to his espresso machine. “You want one?” he offered.
“I’m good, thanks. Two cups are enough for me.” Like most mornings, he had stopped by a Starbucks drive-through on his way to the office and ordered a Venti vanilla latte which he drank in his car before arriving at IMSI headquarters. If Lisa were to ask, he’d say he had a tall skinny vanilla latte. She’d been giving him hell recently about his extra calorie intake.
I gained a kilo. That’s not the end of the world.
Even though they worked at the same place, Mike and Lisa did the twenty-minute drive from their Brooklyn penthouse to IMSI headquarters separately. They worked similar hours but they preferred using different cars in case one of them was deployed without warning.
Mike watched Mapother add two sugar packs i
nto his tiny espresso cup.
“Maybe I should tell my wife you’re a sugar addict, Charles,” Mike said. “See what she’ll have to say about that.”
“Is she on your case because you’ve gained weight?” Mapother countered, looking Mike directly in the eyes while stirring his espresso with a small silver spoon.
“Will you guys give me a break?” Mike said, his temper flaring. “I gained a kilo, Charles. One kilo!”
Mapother carefully wiped his spoon clean of any remnant of coffee before setting it next to his espresso. “When was the last time you went for a run, Mike?” he asked.
Caught by surprise, Mike had to think before replying. “It’s been a few days,” he admitted.
“More like a couple weeks, wouldn’t you say?” Mapother said.
“Did Lisa tell you this?” Mike asked. What the hell was she thinking?
“She had nothing to do with this,” Mapother replied in a severe tone. “It’s my job to know if my assets are deployment-ready or not.”
“I’m ready,” Mike said.
“Are you?”
“What the hell is going on here?” Mike asked. Whatever game Mapother was playing, he didn’t like it. “Have I done something wrong? Didn’t I prove myself yesterday?”
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Mike,” Mapother replied. “But you’re not the same since you came back from Spain four months ago. And I can’t stop wondering if I didn’t ask too much too soon from you.”
Mike sighed. A year and a half ago, his two-year-old daughter Melissa and his mother were murdered by a suicide bomber at the Ottawa train station. His wife Lisa had been spared but she’d lost the unborn child she was carrying. Her mom and dad had also been butchered in the same terrorist attack. Mike and his former RCMP partner Paul Robichaud had thwarted a simultaneous attack at the Ottawa international airport. Paul had lost his life while Mike, critically injured, had barely escaped with his. It was then that Charles Mapother had approached him, promising vengeance and justice. With Lisa already on board, Mike accepted Charles’s offer and joined the IMSI. Unconvinced that his wife was made for this line of work, Mike had fought both Lisa and Mapother against her becoming an asset, or field operator. In the end, conscious that the eight weeks of training ahead of them would most certainly temper her enthusiasm, he’d acquiesced.
A Red Dotted Line (Mike Walton Book 2) Page 4