Red Dawn Rising (Red Returning Trilogy) (33 page)

“What do you mean?” He knew exactly what was on her mind.

“Do you know of any other connections this man has to the U.S.? Any other lead at all?”

He eyed her carefully. “You mean, have I reached the end of my service to you?”

“I didn’t say that. You have been—”

“Save your words. It is time to go.”

Back on the sidewalk in front of the building, Ava took off in the direction of the van, parked around the corner. Evgeny kept pace with her at first, then stopped before reaching the corner. She turned quickly back to him. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

Another time and he might have toyed with her and the alarm he saw in her face. But this wasn’t the time. “I know what is waiting for me around the corner. The same spooks you have had following us ever since you got into the van at the church. Did you think I had lost all my skills? That I did not see them shadowing our every move?”

She stared straight up into his face but didn’t answer.

“They were there all the time, even when we boarded the trawler,” he said. “If I had not handled the situation to your satisfaction, you would have called them in, no doubt.”

“You’ve lived up to your reputation, Evgeny,” Ava said, her voice tight, unsure.

He watched her eyes dart about, appraising her situation. Her safety. Why now? After all her time alone with him—her protectors just out of reach—why was she suddenly on guard with him?

“I am not going to hurt you, Ava. I have grown rather fond of you, in fact. But I will not go with you. Surely you know that.”

“And surely you know we couldn’t let you just walk away. Murder one. Attempted kidnapping. Assault with a deadly weapon. Espionage.”

He smiled resolutely. “It is what I do.”

She nodded acknowledgment. “And what I’d like to do is bring you into the fold, to work for us.”

He reached for her hand and held it lightly, surprised that she let him. “I belong to no one,” he assured her. “Not anymore.” He released her hand, then turned and walked away.

Ava watched him go, unable to summon those who, indeed, waited around the corner to apprehend Evgeny Kozlov. When she couldn’t see him anymore, she returned to the van.

Chapter 36

T
he Oval Office is the loneliest place on earth, Travis Noland and presidents before him had declared. The chilling truth of the statement ran like ice water over Noland’s aching bones this predawn Monday. The leader of the free world sat alone at his desk, hours before the West Wing would surge to life. Spread before him were intelligence reports gathered by those in climate-controlled CIA offices with their earpieces tuned to the back-alley chattering in places like Tehran, Kabul, Istanbul, and Moscow. And by those agents in the field who played catch-as-catch-can, snaring whatever shreds of intelligence they could uncover through their global scavenging. It was no way to protect 313 million Americans, yet sometimes it was the only way. What lay before the president this morning was like a parachute shot full of tiny holes, just a semblance of solid information, but you couldn’t risk a test jump. You couldn’t accuse Russia of the inauguration attack or the Supreme Court bombing or plotting more acts of terror—not with intelligence as riddled as this.

From the consolidated, up-to-the-minute reports—compiled and analyzed by the pros at Langley, Quantico, and the Pentagon—Noland knew a ring of proficient subversives was in place in the U.S., that a massive terrorist plot was on countdown toward the destruction of key infrastructure
and
national monuments across the nation. The whispering shadows had signaled that the plot was a warning to leave Moscow alone.

The president agonized.
What does that mean? Alone to do what? Who is this person—this Architect?

This wasn’t a front-room Kremlin conspiracy, the president believed. Relations with President Dimitri Gorev, though tenuous, had been progressive and mostly respectful. No, this didn’t carry his signature.

A light knock came at the door. The president’s secretary, Rona Arant, had reported to the West Wing simultaneously with the president at four this morning, awaiting the visitor who’d just arrived. “Sir,” Rona announced, “the director is here.”

“Show him in, please … and Rona, thank you for losing a night’s sleep over this.”

“As did you, sir.” She stepped aside and ushered Rick Salabane into the office.

The president rose and came around his desk, extending his hand to the FBI director and gesturing toward the twin yellow damask sofas. “What happened last night?” Noland asked, taking a seat opposite Salabane and wasting no time with perfunctory greetings.

“We followed the boat to a small industrial slip upriver. My men were watching it, but Ava Mullins and Evgeny Kozlov boarded and surprised the only guy on board, the captain. Now we have the crew of three. We’ve been interrogating them all night. So far, the only useful thing we’ve gotten is a description of their boss and the false name he uses with them. It’s the same description Jordan Winslow gave us of the man he saw in the UN apartment. Again, though, we don’t know if he’s the man we’re after or not. But we got a rather crude rendering based on those descriptions. We’re running it through our database for a matchup. If this guy’s never blipped the radar, though, we won’t get a hit. And we can’t broadcast the rendering and send him deeper undercover.”

The president nodded, his mind surveying the treacherous terrain of this crisis, landing on another old nemesis. “Kozlov, huh? What a preposterous ally that is.”

“But if intuition is worth anything, sir, I trust Ava’s and my own. I
think
this guy might very well be one of our greatest assets right now. Ava and Liesl Bower are convinced Kozlov is as driven to stop this thing as we are. And he did go to heroic efforts to save Miss Bower’s life on Saturday.”

“We can’t trust his motives to align with ours, though. We don’t know his, not really. Now, what about Ava? You feel good about bringing her back in?”

“The CIA sure does. Director Bragg hasn’t forgotten the job she did, finding the code and keeping Liesl Bower alive at the same time. She can run the off-radar op we need better than most. You see, sir, we can’t ramrod our way through this. Capturing this person, if it is just one, has to happen without forewarning. His finger is on the switch.”

The president looked back at the files on his desk. “And where is Liesl?”

“We took her, her fiancé, and his grandfather to a safe house last night.”

The president nodded. “Very good. But keep her away from Hans Kluen’s stepdaughter and her boyfriend. I’ve read the reports on them. Innocuous enough, but we can’t be sure. We don’t know what allegiance she might have to Kluen. And where is she?”

“Searching through Kluen’s files at the Southampton house, for whatever else they turn up. Jordan Winslow and the mother are with her. We’ve got plenty of protection around them, and one of my agents is supervising their search.”

“And if Hans Kluen shows up there?”

“We’re prepared to deal with that, sir.”

Noland shook his head and stood up. “You never know what’s ticking inside the guy next door, do you?” He walked to one of the windows and looked into the darkness, punctuated by spotlights trained on the grounds. “Our country is under attack. The people are afraid. And the media has gone crazy. Who rigged the explosives at the Capitol and why can’t anybody find them? Our people need answers. The Supreme Court is bombed, and nobody is even a suspect. Heaven help us if this new plot twist leaks to the press and we’re still flat-footed.” Noland paced back and forth in front of the window. “Washington is on lockdown. New York is fast behind. And we still don’t know whom or what we’re dealing with!” He made a fist and pounded it into his other palm. “That’s got to change!”

Salabane rose to face the president. “One thing we do know, sir. Either the bomber or the person who slipped him in and out of the Capitol security grid … is one of ours.”

Noland’s eyes almost squinted shut. “Secret Service?”

“We’re digging deep, sir. We should know soon.”

“Not soon enough. Now, Bragg will be here in a few minutes, and I’ll ask this question of him. But I want your gut reaction. What are the chances that Pavel Andreyev and Vadim Fedorovsky are behind this?”

“Excellent chances, sir. Those two are still running their underground network even from prison. President Gorev knows it, too. There’s a reason why he hasn’t already executed them for plotting his assassination. I believe Gorev knows the Architect and is scared to death of him. Do Andreyev and Fedorovsky know who the Architect is? Absolutely. Do they answer to that person? Absolutely. That’s what I think, sir.”

After Salabane left the Oval Office, the president returned to his desk and continued his study of the files. He had half an hour before Bragg and the Homeland Security chief arrived.

He lifted one folder and removed a handful of reports, his eyes scanning swiftly through the first one. He had almost finished when he landed on one small paragraph, just one incidental fragment of information that snagged a trip line in his memory. He gripped the page with both hands and brought it closer, his eyes boring into just two sentences. “It seems that the man known as the Architect is also an art collector. He has a particular fondness for Vincent van Gogh and has been known to wear a tie tack in the shape of an ear.”

That’s all it was. That’s all the president needed. He knew who the Architect was.

Noland jumped from his seat and called through the closed door for his secretary, bypassing the intercom system. She came right away. “Rona, call the State Department and get Shelton Myers over here. Tell him it’s urgent!” His mind was sorting furiously through another era of his life.

“It’s very early, sir. Shall I try his home first?”

“Yes, please. And hold off my next appointments.”

When she closed the door, Noland sank to the nearest chair and raked
through
memories of a time nearly thirty-five years earlier. He’d been recruited straight from Yale to the U.S. diplomatic corps, assigned to London. He hadn’t fooled himself into believing it was his scholarly and student-leader achievements that had earned him such a soft yet prestigious post. Though convinced it was his father’s long and luminous tenure with the U.S. State Department that steered the assignment his way, young Travis eagerly accepted it. To follow in his father’s footsteps wasn’t at all distasteful. Though the man was regarded as overbearing and ruthless by those who’d found themselves across the world’s treaty tables from him, he was a patriot. An absent father, too, spending weeks at a time in hot spots across the world.

Just a year after his relocation to London, Travis Noland joined a trade delegation to Moscow, billed as on-the-job training. There he met a young Soviet Army officer who’d risen quickly through the ranks and now held a position of influence inside the Kremlin. Though Noland was in the company of more senior U.S. and British diplomats during that short stay in Russia, the young Soviet had shown particular interest in Noland. In a group, the Russian repeatedly singled out Noland to discuss the most sensitive issues, then took obvious delight when the neophyte diplomat stumbled in his answers. Humiliated, Noland returned to London with misgivings about his future with the corps and bitterness over his mistreatment at the hands of Ivan Volynski.

Noland’s intercom buzzed. “Sir, Mr. Myers says he’ll be here as quickly as possible.”

“Thank you, Rona. When he arrives, bring him right in. And get Salabane to send me the rendering he just told me about. Quickly, please. Thank you.”

Shelton Myers was ready to retire. He’d served the State Department his whole adult life, often rejecting a higher-profile post, preferring the backstage, in-the-trenches negotiations for which he was considered brilliant. After that first inglorious trip to the Kremlin, Noland had returned twice more over the years, each time in Shelton’s company. In time, Noland, too, had reached veteran status with the department before entering Congress, then the White House. But Shelton Myers had remained
Noland’s
most trusted adviser and confidant. Just two days ago, Noland had confided in Shelton the threat of imminent terrorist acts orchestrated by a billionaire Russian revolutionist known as the Architect.

When Rona finally ushered Shelton into the Oval Office, the dark still clung opaquely to the windows. “Shelton, I’m sorry to call you out so early. Please sit and help yourself.” The president gestured toward a tray of coffee and danish on a nearby sideboard.

Shelton waved it away, dropped his briefcase and jacket onto a sofa, and remained standing. He was fit and energetic for his sixty-plus years, a few inches below Noland’s six feet, and immaculately dressed for one summoned on such short notice. But he had a Basset hound droop to his face, which had always fooled adversaries into thinking he would be a pushover in negotiations, just plodding and compliant. They didn’t know a pit bull lurked beneath the surface.

“What’s up, Travis?” Alone, they were just two old friends who’d fought Capitol Hill battles together too many years for formalities.

“Let’s sit down. This might take awhile.” Noland poured coffee for them both and took the cups to the table between the matching sofas. Handing one to his guest and taking a seat opposite, he dove straight to the issue. “Do you remember Ivan Volynski?”