Extreme Faction (2 page)

He continued toward the hotel door.

It had been one of the most beautiful spring days the city had seen in years. The agricultural conference at the university had kept all the attendees inside, locked in meetings on how to reduce crop loss to insects, and how new strains of wheat were far more resistant to harsh winters. Luckily, Jake had avoided that.

Flashing a name tag at the two armed doormen, Jake wandered inside.

The first day of the three-day conference was over, and most in attendance had looked forward to a dinner party where much of the real business would take place. He knew the scientist he had met years ago would be there to give a speech, and he was looking forward to talking with the man again to see for himself the transformation he had heard about. Had the man really changed that much?

Hesitating in the entrance of the expansive ballroom, Jake scanned the room. The place was over a century old, with mirrors on both sides that reminded him of the Palace of Versailles, giving the room a false impression of great width. The domed ceiling was high, its carved white wood trimmed with gold.

Noticing his colleagues across the room at the bar, Jake smiled at MacCarty and Swanson as he approached them.

“I see you two have started without me,” Jake said, picking up a glass of champagne from a tray on the bar. Technically he was working, but one glass wouldn't hurt.

MacCarty and Swanson were from Bio-tech Chemical Company of Portland, Oregon. During the day they had split up into various lecture halls, pitching their most recent insecticides and fertilizers. Bio-tech president, Maxwell MacCarty, and his assistant, Bill Swanson, the vice president of research and development, had wanted for years to push for lucrative new markets in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet countries. They already had an extensive share of the U.S. market, had penetrated the tough Western European countries, and had started making a move in Southeast Asia. But the Ukraine, the bread basket of Eastern Europe, was a wide open market and MacCarty knew it.

And that was one reason MacCarty had hired Jake just a week prior to his departure for the agricultural conference in Odessa. Jake had built his security business in Portland into a respectable, exclusive entity of one. His reputation had grown significantly in the three short years since going private. Working alone had its advantages, not having to depend on someone else's mistakes, but he did miss the camaraderie of his past.

The dinner party was just beginning. Guests were still streaming in. There were company representatives from all the major industrialized nations: Germany, France, Italy, Japan, England, as well as from countries like Spain, Israel, Russia, Belarus. All of the companies had one thing in common. They wanted to sell their products to anyone who would buy them, and perhaps exchange ideas that could be useful in their home countries.

In his late thirties, Jake had already lived an interesting life. Had seen more of the world than a dozen others would ever see. He had a strong face that always needed a shave. His longer, dark hair, looked like it had come directly from a stiff breeze and he had combed it back hastily with his fingers, which was never far from the truth. Dressed as he was in leather and cotton, he looked more like a hunting guide than the company executive he was pretending to be.

His employers resembled the comedy duo Abbott and Costello. MacCarty was the tall, slim one with just enough brains to keep the short and socially inept Swanson from making a total ass of himself.

MacCarty, dressed impeccably in a three-piece Italian suit, set his glass on the bar. “Did you meet up with any old friends?”

Jake shook his head. “Afraid not. They've all been transferred.” Jake had told them that he had worked for a while at the Odessa consulate. He had actually passed through many times during the destruction and withdrawal of chemical and biological weapons from the Ukraine, after attending a quick course at the defense language school in Monterey. At the time, he was a captain with Air Force intelligence, and an expert in chemical and biological weapons. His degree in geopolitics and his master's in international relations had given him a broad picture of the world. That was one of the reasons the CIA had originally recruited him, and even a better reason to quit. He wasn't great at following orders blindly. Those were things for ignorant young soldiers to do. And God knew the world had always needed those.

Swanson was a short, balding man with a tubular midsection. His exercise regimen consisted of turning the steering wheel vigorously as he searched for the closest parking spot to a burger joint, while maintaining control of his jelly donut.

“You missed the last meeting today, Jake,” Swanson said. “It was an interesting talk by the former chief of the Agriculture Research Institute in Kiev. They've discovered a chemical that kills bugs on the spot and then infects the larvae as well. It makes them sterile.”

“Too bad we couldn't do that selectively for humans,” Jake said, smiling. He had come to a rather abrupt agreement with Swanson early on. They had agreed not to love each other.

Not answering, Swanson picked up another glass of champagne and sucked most of it down in one gulp. Then he raised his bushy brows as he noticed an attractive woman crossing the open dance floor.

Jake turned to see what was so interesting. The woman was tall and dark in a sleek, black dress cut low in the front and back. Her black hair, thick and curly, flowed over her shoulders with each step. When she reached a table of four men, they all rose to greet her, shaking her hand and then kissing the back of it.

“Now that's a woman,” Swanson declared.

“I agree,” MacCarty said.

Jake couldn't believe his eyes. He had met Chavva at a state function over a year ago in Istanbul. She was the arm ornament of an Israeli diplomat at the time. He remembered her mostly for her wide, exotic eyes, even though she had no real faults. She was almost too perfect. Jake had flown to Istanbul from Rome looking for the daughter of a wealthy Seattle businessman. An Italian playboy needed a toy for a few weeks, and the young American woman was like a Barbie Doll to him. Jake found the young woman at the party and dragged her kicking and screaming to the airport. He hated those jobs, but the businessman had paid him well and the girl had been only seventeen. Chavva, on the other hand, was all woman. They had met just before he found the girl, set a date, and then couldn't keep it. Damn babysitting.

Without explanation, Jake walked over to the woman. He stood off to her side as she talked with the men from an Israeli company. Her eyes were focused on an older man, an Omar Sharif in his later years. The man, like MacCarty, was dressed in a fine Italian suit that accentuated his broad shoulders and still-firm body. The Rolex watch and the four rings with multiple diamonds were nice touches.

Jake didn't understand everything being said, but pieced together the standard chit chat about the weather and Odessa landmarks. When Chavva was done speaking with the man, she turned and immediately recognized Jake. She excused herself and walked over to him.

The Israeli businessman watched her carefully over the top of a wine glass, like a father or lover would.

“Hello, Chavva,” Jake said. “It's nice to see a familiar face.”

She smiled. “I thought you said you'd give me a call.” Her English flowed with a sultry, thick accent.

“As you recall, I left in a hurry,” Jake explained.

She fixed her eyes on him, as if looking for a lie. “Do you always drag young girls off into the night screaming?”

“She was seventeen, the daughter of a friend who thought chastity was more than some cute preppie name.” He smiled at her and gazed into her wondrous eyes. He didn't remember them being so large and round. So intense. So dark.

“Do you work here?” she asked.

Jake took a sip of champagne and then shook his head. “No. I work for a company that produces fertilizer and pesticides.”

She glared at him with disbelief.

“They needed someone who knew the area,” he said. “They're thinking of opening a plant near Kiev.”

“I see. I'm certain you know a great deal about fertilizer.” She smiled and sipped her wine.

“Exactly.”

“Give me a call,” Chavva said. “I'm staying at
the
Odessa Hotel.”

She turned and walked back to the table of men.

Jake watched her smoothly swaying hips before returning to MacCarty and Swanson.

“Do you know her?” MacCarty asked.

Looking across the room at her, Jake said, “We've met.”

Everyone sat down for dinner. Jake was transfixed by Chavva the whole time. They exchanged glances and smiled. He thought back to his first meeting with her in Istanbul. There had been something strange about that. She had approached him as if she knew him, and he had to admit at the time that she did look familiar. But he had never figured it out.

After dinner, there were a number of speakers, with translators working overtime. Finally, the keynote speaker, Yuri Tvchenko, one of the foremost authorities on bio-chemical research in the world, came to the podium. Since the Soviet break-up, Tvchenko conducted research and lectured at Kiev University. He had only recently moved to Odessa, working for a private institute. Officially, he had become Ukraine's greatest opponent of chemical and biological weapons. When they had met years ago while Jake worked for Air Force intelligence on one of his trips to the Ukraine, the man had impressed Jake as someone who believed implicitly in the deterrent nature of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Jake wondered what had changed the man's mind.

After Tvchenko's talk, the crowd mixed together for more drinks, attempting to do business. MacCarty and Swanson drifted off to the bar, while Jake stood alone at the edge of the ballroom watching the social ballet.

Tvchenko made his way across the ballroom, speaking briefly to admirers, shaking hands, and then, recognizing Jake, he headed directly toward him. Tvchenko was a large man with gray hair and a red face that looked as if a chemical had burned his skin at one time. He wore a cheap wool suit, Bulgarian probably, that seemed to drape over his pendulous body.

When Tvchenko was in the center of the ballroom, he bumped into Chavva and she spilled her drink on his sleeve. He apologized to her, and she wiped his suit with a napkin.

Continuing on, Tvchenko stopped next to Jake, and they shook hands briefly. Something wasn't right with him. He was anxious or nervous or both. Tvchenko tried to open his mouth to speak, but his jaw clenched tightly. Beads of sweat poured from his forehead. He reached up desperately for his neck, where his blood vessels were bursting outward. He gasped for air, grasped his chest, and threw up all over the floor. Then he toppled down into his own vomit and twitched uncontrollably.

In a second he was dead, his eyes bulged open, looking up at Jake in horror. A woman screamed.

Jake quickly checked the man's pulse, but Tvchenko was gone. He backed away a few steps and suddenly felt a pain in his right hand. Rubbing away a tiny dot of blood near his life line, he wondered how it had gotten there.

The next few minutes were a chaotic mess.

JOHNSTON ATOLL, NORTH PACIFIC

The plane shook and rattled in turbulence, clouds swirling swiftly across the windscreen. The pilot tightened his grip on the controls and banked and dipped to the southwest.

Baskale had flown through tight mountain passes, across scorching deserts, but never over such a great body of water. And he had no intention of setting down in the ocean. He hated the water, where creatures lurked below, waiting to rip a leg from the helpless idiot who bobbed about. He preferred to face his enemies eye to eye.

Rocking and rolling, one engine sputtering, the old Navy C-1 transport, last used to deliver mail to aircraft carriers before being decommissioned, made more strange sounds than Baskale cared for. Sweat bubbled from his freshly-shaved face, where his thick beard had disguised his rough, jagged jaw just hours ago. His thick, dark hair stuck straight up through the head set, which he monitored constantly for any sign that they had been discovered.

In a moment, the plane broke from the clouds, and Baskale could make out the outline of the tiny island chain below. He had never been there, only studied the maps and charts. There was Johnston. His zealous eyes narrowed toward the barren set of rocky islands, desolate dots of nothingness that a brisk wind from Allah would bury in waves. He could finally see an airstrip. Searching the controls, which were not entirely familiar to him, he prepared himself for a tenuous landing. There would be a heavy cross wind.

All Baskale could smell was the ham. He was sick of it by now. From the moment they had stuffed the smoked ham in the back, hijacked the plane, and flown off in a hurry, he wondered how Americans could even eat the stuff. Give him a good leg of lamb any day. But the odor of pork also brought a pleasurable smile to his weathered face. It was a power he had never felt before.

He glanced over his shoulder at his three men. They all looked like airsick children in colorful costumes, traditional Hawaiian shirts. They had never worked together, but Baskale knew they were as dedicated as him. He could tell by their vigor on Hawaii last night. They had killed without question. They would do anything to make this work. Including die.

Over the radio, the air traffic controller cleared them for landing.

Baskale smiled and then dropped the landing gear and straightened the plane to the runway. The wings flipped up and down with gusts of wind. It took all the strength in both his arms to battle the controls.

●

Ten miles off the tiny island, the fishing trawler clicked along at five knots, rolling in the gradual swells. Wind whipped across the bow.

The captain of the boat, Atik Aziz, a short, dark man with intense eyes, lowered the binoculars to his chest and turned to his first mate at the wheel.