The Joe Brennan Spy Thrillers

by Sam Powers

  ‘That’s awesome!’

  ‘He wanted his daddy at his first game...’

  ‘Carolyn...’

  ‘But I think he’d settle for a game. Any game, pretty much.’

  Brennan frowned and checked his watch. ‘It’s... nearly nine. Where are the kids?’

  ‘They’re sleeping over at friends. You’re not the only one working extra shifts because of this North Korean thing.’

  ‘I have to leave again right away.’

  She didn’t say anything immediately, and her eyes drifted down to her shoes.

  ‘Carolyn....’

  ‘I knew what I was in for when I married you. I try to hang onto that, you know?’

  She never made it easy. He’d long accepted that. He tried to see it from her perspective. ‘You know I’m trying to get out,’ he said.

  ‘Try harder.’ She realized as soon as it came out of her mouth that it was unfair. ‘Joe... hon, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, Jonah’s new assistant deputy seems to want you off this thing.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She invited me to lunch and was asking about whether you were still suitable for field work.’

  ‘This would be Adrianne Hayes, I take it.’

  ‘One and the same. She’s actually pretty nice when you get to know her.’

  ‘Trustworthy?’

  She gave him a sly look, like he was talking crazy. ‘Please... in this business?’

  They both knew better. ‘I guess not,’ he said. ‘Do me a favor: keep an eye on her, okay? The ones you start to like are the ones you have to watch out for; it’s never been about making friends.’

  She smiled gamely at that. ‘Sure, uh huh. It would be easier if my best friend was home sometimes.’

  He wasn’t sure he believed her; and he knew that was the surest sign that they were in trouble. Brennan wondered when one of them would start fighting, trying to keep things together. But he wasn’t sure that was what either of them wanted.

  She nodded down the hallway toward the offices. ‘Look, I have to go...’

  ‘Next time, I’ll call you as soon as wheels touch the ground,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

  She knew he meant it.

  But Carolyn wasn’t sure that was enough anymore, either.

  DETROIT, MICHIGAN

  The alcohol hung upon the frontal lobe of Paul Gessler’s brain like a wet sweater, every thought and action weighing more than it should, a general haze that kept things simple but made walking hard. Or, harder than it should have been.

  He cursed them for taking his keys at the bar, making him stagger home. He swayed and shimmied his way along the sidewalk toward his neighborhood, the world around him moving indiscriminately, streetlights blurred streaks of white, the buildings on a slight angle.

  Up ahead, a man came out of a restaurant. Gessler’s enfeebled brain didn’t immediately make the connection. Then he realized it was the little foreign man from next door. He felt a surly anger building again and clenched both his fists. He picked up his pace as best he could, given his balance problems. ‘Hey!’ he yelled from twenty yards behind. ‘Hey! You!’

  The man looked over his shoulder then frowned, doubtless put off by the loud and obviously drunken man stumbling toward him. He turned back to the sidewalk and kept walking.

  ‘Hey! Don’t you go anywhere!’ Gessler yelled. ‘You... you and me got to talk.’

  The man looked back again before picking up the pace, his stride lengthening. Gessler wasn’t having any of that and tried to match him, equilibrium his biggest challenge. ‘I told you to fucking stop!’ he yelled.

  He staggered onward. After about a half block, the small man stopped and looked back. ‘Leave me alone, sir, you’ve had too much to drink!’ he yelled. He picked up his pace again.

  ‘Fuck... fucking raghead,’ Gessler muttered to no one in particular. The streetlights kept the midnight sidewalk just dim enough to dissuade too much traffic. ‘Fucking talk back to me...’

  He stumbled but managed to right himself. Then he picked up speed, half-staggering into a jog, like a zombie trying to make time, his vision blurred and bouncing with each stride. The man was closer, he could tell, looking over his shoulder as he began to run himself.

  ‘You... you stop right there,’ Gessler managed as they reached the turn to the crescent where they both lived. ‘You... you better tell me what you got planned, Mr. Islamist...’

  ‘Leave me alone, you foolish man!’ the neighbor demanded. ‘You don’t think I see you, spying on me every time I leave my house? I am not even Muslim. I am Hindu. I am not even Arabic.’ The smaller man turned to face him. ‘I warn you, I will defend myself and I know how to do so!’

  Gessler wasn’t sure what to make of all that. His brain wasn’t functioning at anything close to normal levels. ‘You’re fuckin’ lying,’ he snarled.

  His phone began to ring.

  Both men stood there in the dark, saying nothing, anticipating violence, the phone ringing in the background to interrupt at the most awkward time.

  ‘Are you going to answer that?’ the East Indian man said.

  Gessler frowned again but somewhere inside it occurred that the idea was solid. He reached into his pocket and answer the phone. ‘Yeah?’

  He stood there with the phone to his ear, swaying in place for about ten seconds. Then he put the phone in his pocket and began to stride toward the East Indian man.

  ‘Hey! I told you sir, I will call the...’

  Gessler tried to walk right by him, but their shoulders collided, spinning each man a half-turn.

  ‘Yídòng pàng lǘ!’ Gessler yelled.

  He kept walking, the East Indian Man standing on the sidewalk stunned, unsure of what he’d just witnessed.

  Gessler reached his front door and opened it. He hung up his coat and emptied his pockets into the large ashtray on the telephone table, pausing for just long enough to fight off the brain fog of alcohol. Wallet, keys, coins, cigarettes, lighter. He took the first door to his right, into the living room, then the stairs up to the bedrooms.

  His wife was sound asleep, although the radio was on, a rebroadcast of an old Paul Harvey episode. ‘His name was Claude Dunkenfield,’ Harvey intoned, voice caramel-thick, ‘the boy who popped Pop on the noggin…’

  Gessler didn’t worry about waking her. It wasn’t going to matter. He went to the closet and reached up to the attic hatch. He thought about the man on the street. Had he said something to him, unaware in the haze from the liquor that his ‘cover’ had consumed? He moved the hatch aside and reached up into the opening, feeling around until he felt the handle of the small suitcase. He pulled it down into the closet, then walked back out into the bedroom.

  His wife Mary woke when he threw the case onto the end of the bed. ‘Paul... what are you doing?’

  He opened the case and withdrew the silenced pistol, then levelled it at her. She had just enough time to raise her hands to try to cover her face and to yell, ‘Don’t...!’ before he shot her through the head, the gun’s pop quiet, but far from the silenced air compression of movie silencers; instead it was more like a large balloon pricked with a needle, her body thrown back against her pillow. He strode around the bed, covered her face with half the pillow and shot her twice more, then went back to the suitcase and began to methodically double-check its contents.

  The code words had been ingrained into him years earlier, the message easily decrypted on the fly: Fire is lit.

  He needed to get going; he had a long drive ahead of him. On the bookshelf, the radio program was just ending, the famous announcer’s voice echoing out like a ghost from radio’s huckster past. ‘And now...’ Harvey intoned, ‘...you know the rest of the story.’

  24/

  DAY 11

  LOS ANGELES

  Zoey no longer looked forward to her short meetings with Detective Drabek. It had been two days since he’d been a
ble to tell her anything important and she was starting to lose hope of ever getting answers. And life was complicated now: she’d had to move her few possessions in with Valentyna, because police had evicted her from their apartment, which was now a frozen asset.

  She sat and stirred her coffee absently, beams of light crossing the vinyl cafe booth table from the large windows out onto the sidewalk. The homicide detectives had been particularly hard on her, grilling her for hours about Ben, their life together, the night he left, the case full of money... They’d spent almost as much time accusing her of being involved somehow, dragging up her prior arrests. In the end, they’d simply told her she could go, but they’d left her without dignity or information, or confidence.

  The door to the cafe opened and Drabek walked in. He made his way to the booth. ‘Sorry I’m late.’ He hadn’t sat down for more than five seconds before the waitress was by with the coffee pot. She poured him a cup and Drabek tried to smile pleasantly.

  When she’d gone, Zoey slumped back against the booth’s high back and tossed the spoon onto the table next to her cup. ‘Yeah, well, that’s about what I expected, I guess.’

  ‘You’re bitter about homicide taking over.’

  ‘You told me it was going to happen. I guess I should have expected it.’ Then she leaned forward on the table and eyed him seriously. ‘Where were you yesterday? I called your phone three times.’

  ‘I caught up to Ben,’ he said.

  She took a sharp intake of breath.

  ‘It wasn’t good,’ he said, not wanting to get her hopes up. ‘I spotted the car he was driving at a fleabag motel. When I came out, he was standing on the road with some grocery bags. He dropped them and took off on me, and then lost me in the neighborhood before I could get air support in.’

  ‘How was he?’ she asked. ‘Did he look okay?’ Then she realized what she was asking. She bit her lip for a moment and Drabek stayed silent. ‘What am I saying? Did he... I’m sorry, Norm. That’s pretty stupid at this point, isn’t it?’

  ‘Nobody’s going to begrudge how you feel about all this right now,’ he suggested. ‘Anytime someone commits a crime, he or she victimizes the people they profess to care for, as well as the actual subject. Just keep this in mind: none of this is your fault.’

  She knew it was true, but inside she still felt as if Ben had rejected her. It was foolish, and immature, but it was there. ‘I shouldn’t care about him still, I know. But none of this makes sense. It’s hard for me to blame him when I don’t recognize the man involved.’

  That part got to Drabek. He’d spent a week talking to this woman, and she hadn’t struck him once as a dumb bunny. This was a bright, caring individual. And there was just enough off about the guy -- from the missing parents to the gunshot in the condo -- that he didn’t think she was imagining it. ‘I think you have to consider that he might have developed mental health issues -- borderline personality disorder or worse, complete schizophrenia. Either way, he’s a danger to anyone who crosses his path right now.’

  ‘I have dreams about him,’ she said, her eyes lowered to the table and distant. ‘I have dreams of him shooting at me, and then it morphs, and it’s you, and I can’t get away and you shoot me down.’ She frowned and looked up at him. ‘I’m sorry. That’s a terrible thing to tell someone.’

  Drabek sipped his coffee. ‘You need to stop worrying about how I feel, Zoey. I’m doing a job; this is your life, not mine. You need to look out for yourself; and don’t worry about some dumb dream. If I had to spend a week dealing with serving members, I’d be upset too. Anyone would. Just realize, I’m not going to give up on helping you out with this, whatever the outcome is. I’m there for you kid, okay?’

  He’d hoped that might comfort her, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. She awkwardly turned away slightly and rubbed the top of her head with her fingertips, as if struck by sudden embarrassment at the offer. ‘You don’t have to...’

  ‘Sure, I do, and I’ve got my own reasons. You stop worrying so much and leave that to me. Try to find something to keep your mind off this stuff.’

  That seemed to work a little. She smiled gamely. ‘Valentyna has a cousin with a flower shop just off Crenshaw. She thinks I should go work there and just let the detectives handle this.’

  ‘She might be right.’

  ‘It sure doesn’t feel right. I still need to know, Norm. I need the ‘why’.’

  DETROIT, MICHIGAN

  Day 11

  The homicide scene had been busy all morning. The yellow police tape around the small home’s front porch had already begun to sag a little, and neighbors around the small crescent continued to gather with family and friends at the end of nearby driveways and in front windows.

  Det. Ed Kinnear lifted the tape and ducked under it before taking the wooden steps to the porch and the open front door. His partner, Det. David Underheath, was standing just inside the door talking to a tech.

  ‘... basically within a few minutes, depending on heat loss,’ the tech said.

  Kinnear nodded to both and Underheath acknowledged him, then turned to the rest of the room, where another pair of techs were taking digital photos of footprints. ‘Everyone, our problems are solved. Detective Kinnear has decided to start work for the day. A half hour after the rest of us, to be sure, but certainly, with his brilliance on scene...’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, knock it off,’ Kinnear said. ‘Your legendary sense of humor can grate at seven-thirty in the morning when I haven’t even had breakfast yet. What have we got?’

  ‘Forty-year-old female; multiple documents identify her as Mary Elizabeth Alison Gessler, married, no kids. Shot once at short range, probably from the end of her bed, with a .40 calibre-ish slug, then twice more at much closer range through a pillow. A paperback was beside the bed, as if she dropped it.’

  ‘Double-tap? A pro?’

  ‘More or less. Can’t see an amateur thinking to reduce spatter and sound with the pillow. The techs say the powder residue is cordite, so it’s an older weapon, and there wasn’t much of it. No reports from the neighbors canvassed so far of any noise.’

  Kinnear peered at his partner. ‘So who is this broad? She sure doesn’t look like the type who makes bad guys with money angry.’ And then the obvious second question caught up to him, as he looked around the room and remembered she wasn’t single. ‘Where was the husband when all this was going on?’

  ‘No sign of him so far,’ Underheath said. ‘His vehicle’s gone, and we found an open attic hatch in their closet. So maybe he grabbed something stored up there before taking a powder.’

  ‘So he’s our guy?’ Kinnear suggested.

  ‘Yeah... that bit is weird. The guy has a carry permit but it’s because he hunts deer and target shoots. There’s a rifle hanging on one of the kitchen walls and an empty gun rack in the garage. And everything we’ve found said he worked demolitions for a local construction company. We’re not talking ‘slightly off’ the profile of a pro hitter, we’re in a whole other ballpark. I mean, he has an expired membership card for a local militia, so we’re not talking squeaky clean, necessarily. But nothing that explains what’s in there...’ Underheath nodded over his shoulder toward the bedroom door.

  Kinnear walked by him and peeked around the doorjamb. The body was still reclined in bed, a pillow over her face. The techs were measuring the distance from positions along the edge of the bed to the victim’s head. Kinnear tried to put himself in the shooter’s shoes, see what he’d seen. ‘She’s reading, he comes in with the gun, she freaks and tries to cover up or shield herself. Pop, he shoots her once and the book falls to the floor. He walks around the bed, folds the pillow over her face....’

  So it was planned and deliberate. That meant immediate passion was out of the question; this was no heated argument, no case of spousal battery gone wrong. The veteran detective walked back out to the hallway.

  ‘Have we talked to the neighbors yet?’

  ‘We’ve got a couple of pa
trolmen making sure no one goes anywhere, and so far there’s only one who saw Gessler today, an East Indian gentleman named...’ he flicked open his notepad, ‘... Pradesh Patel.’

  It was a start, Kinnear knew, albeit not much of one. ‘Perhaps we should go find out what Mr. Patel has to say, and whether he knows where we might find Paul Gessler.’

  25/

  BLAGOVESHCHENSK, Far Eastern Russia

  The night train from Ignatyevo Airport rolled into the aging station just before ten o’clock, its last stop. The old locomotive’s steel wheels screeched under their load as it slowed to a halt. Its front lights shone through the darkness across the tracks and bolstered the muted glare over the platform. A handful of locals waited for colleagues, friends and family to debark.

  The city lay in the heart of the Amur Oblast, a vast and verdant river valley that divided the southeastern portion of Russia from China, and its sister community, Heihe. In late summer it was warm, even at ten. Brennan looked out the carriage window as the car came to a halt, trying to spot his contact. Yuri Koskov was from Moscow originally and, at five feet ten and nearly three hundred pounds, stuck out somewhat among the smaller, Asian locals.

  He walked over to greet Brennan as he got off the train, a nicotine-stained smile emerging from behind his full beard and moustache, his clip-on sunglasses flipped up to deal with the end of the day. He had a denim jacket on with a grubby sheep’s wool collar, and a cap with the earflaps down, despite the warmth. ‘It’s a great time of year for a visit,’ he suggested in Russian, before switching to Standard Mandarin. ‘If you need a tour guide, my brother is capable.’

  ‘I’m familiar with the terrain,’ Brennan said. ‘I carry a map with me everywhere.’ He took the old Washington, D.C. road map from his pocket.

  Yuri reached into his back pocket and took out a folded-up chart of his own, a road map of Vladivostok. ‘That won’t help you much around here,’ he said in English.