Three Jack McClure Missions Box Set (70 page)

A certain silence made it clear that Kirilenko’s assistant had finished his oral report. Nodding, Batchuk ordered him to make copies of the photos. He took them without comment and, turning on his heel, left.

He was already on his cell phone as he descended in the elevator and exited the huge, intimidating lobby of the FSB building, striding through the slush of Red Square.

General Brandt, seated next to President Carson and across a gleaming marble table from President Yukin, received Batchuk’s call at a most inconvenient time. Nevertheless, seeing who was calling, he excused himself, went out of the room and partway down the corridor, out of earshot of the various Secret Service personnel from both sides who were flanking the door like sphinxes.

“There’s been a new development,” Batchuk said without preamble. “Annika Dementieva isn’t moving on her own. I’m looking at a photo of her from one of the closed-circuit cameras at Zhulyany Airport. She’s with two other people, one of whom is the American Jack McClure.”

“President Carson’s Jack McClure?” the General said, and almost immediately regretted the stupidity of the question. Of course it was Edward’s Jack McClure. “I don’t understand.”

“Carson is playing you,” Batchuk said tersely. “He’s got an agenda he’s keeping from you, which means he no longer trusts you.”

The General gave an involuntary glance over his shoulder, toward the silent bodyguards and closed door that led to the negotiating room, where Carson was even now locking horns with Yukin. “But that’s impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible,” Batchuk said with unconcealed fury. “Clearly. This is on you, General. McClure is your mess, I suggest you clean it up with all the haste you can muster.”

“I can’t imagine what Carson is playing at, putting McClure into the field, and with Annika Dementieva, no less.”

“It doesn’t matter what either of them are up to. McClure needs to be extinguished, expunged, immolated. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly.” The General was too taken aback to be offended by
Batchuk’s taking control. They were facing a mess, he’d trusted Carson, and in doing so had allowed matters to get out of control. They were all finished if McClure remained alive, of that he was absolutely certain.

“Don’t worry,” he said, gathering himself. “McClure won’t live to see another sunrise, that I promise you.”

18

“Who’s hungry?” Jack said as they entered the echoing Arrivals hall at Simferopol North Airport.

“I am,” Alli said immediately. “I’m starved.”

“Good, so am I.” Jack led them over to a crowded cafeteria-style coffee shop with food that looked as if it had been prepared last week. Nevertheless, they loaded up their plates, paid for the food and drinks, and took their trays to the lone empty table near the checkout, a location lousy for a peaceful meal but ideal for watching passengers as they stumbled off their flights.

They dug into leathery pirogi, cabbage rolls, and pungent
kovbasa,
washed down with glasses of cherry-red Crimean wine. While he ate Jack kept one eye on the waxing and waning stream of humanity. From the other side of the table Annika watched him. He knew what she was thinking: If they were hungry why not just go into Alushta, where they’d have their choice of restaurants with food
better than what they were eating now? She said nothing, however, doubtless waiting for him to provide an explanation.

“Karl Rochev, the last person Berns visited before he left Kiev for Capri, was tortured and killed on the grounds of Magnussen’s estate,” Jack said.

Annika shrugged. “The evidence seems straightforward. Both Rochev and his mistress were killed with
sulitsa,
the antique Cossack splitting weapon. Magnussen is a collector of antique Russian weaponry, including
sulitsa.
Magnussen just ordered replacements for his
sulitsa.
Ergo, he killed Rochev and his mistress. It couldn’t be simpler.”

“It isn’t simple at all,” Jack corrected her. “Did whoever killed Rochev and his mistress also kill Senator Berns in Capri, or order his death? If so, then we’re dealing with a conspiracy of international proportions and unknown dimensions. Some of what we know is fact and some of it is supposition or deduction, however you want to look at it. Either way, at this point, before our investigation goes any further, we have to ascertain what is fact and what could turn out to not be supposition at all, but rather the product of imagination and invention and, therefore, a dead end or, worse, an erroneous conclusion.”

Annika stared at him with a baleful look. “And how do you propose to find out? Ask Magnussen himself?” She gave a short, derogatory laugh.

It was now just over an hour after they had sat down, and the next flight from Kiev had arrived, spilling its passengers out onto the concourse. Jack’s eye was drawn to a well-built man with reddened hands who had stopped to light a cigarette with the haste of an addict. He wore his hair in the same rumpled way he wore his cheap, shiny suit. Everything about him shouted Russian bureaucracy, but without the accompanying dullness. Instead, he emanated something
toxic—the odors of fear and death congealed into a gluey substance that lodged in the folds of his neck and made his cheeks shiny as a wax effigy.

Jack, who absorbed and analyzed all these intangibles in less than a second, answered her in what at first appeared to be an enigmatic manner: “Who do you think that is?”

Annika shifted her gaze while she admonished Alli. “Don’t stare, for the love of God.”

Alli obeyed, albeit with a pout.

“There’s a man who just came in from Kiev,” Jack explained in a low voice. “It looks as if he’s trying to find someone by showing what might be photos or sketches to airport personnel.”

“Christ, I know him.” Annika, worrying her lower lip, had turned back. “That’s Rhon Fyodovich Kirilenko. He’s an FSB homicide detective. The man’s a fucking bloodhound. What’s he doing here?”

“I think he’s after us,” Jack said.

“But how? It’s the Izmaylovskaya who is after us. We killed Ivan Gurov and Milan Spiakov, two members of the
grupperovka
family.”

“Unless Kirilenko is
Trinadtsat.”
Jack turned to her. “You told me
Trinadtsat
was composed of members of the Izmaylovskaya and the FSB.”

“Not FSB, per se,” Annika corrected. “Batchuk’s people, who could be FSB, but are also likely to be Kremlin apparatchiks, interior ministers, secret services, who the hell knows who he’s recruited.”

“That certainly doesn’t rule out your friend Kirilenko.”

“He’s not my friend,” Annika said sharply. “I hate his guts.”

“Part of a long line, I gather.” Jack nodded. “Look, he’s heading toward the airport facilities.”

“I wonder what he’s up to?” Annika said.

“Let’s find out.”

Jack rose, and the others with him. Staying within the clots of
people, they followed Kirilenko as he entered a corridor with doors on either side. Hanging back, they saw him open a door on the left, halfway down the corridor, and as he went inside, they hurried along toward it.

“He’s gone into the CCTV control room,” Annika said.

“What does that mean?” Alli asked.

“He’s going to look at the closed-circuit video tapes of arrivals and departures,” Annika said.

“I’m willing to bet he has photos of us.” Jack rubbed his jaw meditatively. “We must have been picked up on the cameras at Zhulyany Airport in Kiev.”

Annika took an involuntary step back. “Which means he’s recognized me and has photos of the two of you.”

“Alli’s disguised,” Jack said, “but do you think he knows who I am?”

“Doubtful,” Annika said. “But even so it won’t take long for him to discover who you are.”

Jack eyed the closed door. “Then we’ll have to stop him from finding out.”

Dennis Paull had been staring at his computer for nine hours straight, scrolling through one restricted database after another in search of a chink in the cabinet members’ red, white, and blue armor. His bladder was full and he felt as if all the low-grade mozzarella he’d consumed had congealed in the pit of his stomach like a bocce ball. Pushing himself away from the screen, he rose and stumbled into the bathroom to relieve himself.

When he returned to his battle station he saw that a new piece of information had popped onto his screen. He’d just used his cursor to copy it when it vanished. Switching windows, he brought up a new Word document into which he deposited—he hoped, he prayed— what he’d snagged off the database. An instant later two lines of
enciphered words appeared on a field of pristine white, followed by an echelon code Paull knew belonged to General Atcheson Brandt.

For a moment he stared at the gibberish, trying to place the cipher pattern, which seemed familiar to him. Then he had it: It was a particular NSA cipher used exclusively for Eyes-Only interdepartmental communications on its cell phones.

Switching to another Firefox tab, he logged on to the Department of Homeland Security site, then, using his proprietary ID code, accessed his department’s algorithm database. Once there, he fed the two lines of enciphered text into the algorithm engine, hit the Enter key, and sat back, waiting for the database to find the algorithm that would decipher the message Brandt had just sent.

While he waited he thought about the choices he’d made in his life, the people he had had to befriend, rely on, depend on, even though he knew that at some point, if the opportunity arose, they would betray him or denounce him in order to advance their own career path. With the possible exception of Edward Carson he was surrounded by a pack of sharks all too eager to take a chunk out of him the moment they smelled blood in the water, or even before, in some cases. And yet he’d gone ahead and forged these alliances, even, when the occasion demanded it, putting himself in these people’s debt. He forced himself not to see what he didn’t want to see, what would otherwise stop him from doing what had to be done in order to rise to his position of power within the current administration.

Was there nothing people like General Brandt wouldn’t do to gain power, he asked himself rhetorically. Was there really no line that these people—he among them—wouldn’t cross to keep accumulating power?

A moment later he had his answer. The two lines of gibberish were replaced by the deciphered text:
XEX ANNIKA DEMENTIEVA AND JACK MCCLURE
.

Jesus,
he thought as he ran a trembling hand through his hair.
Jesus Christ.
At first he thought it must be a mistake, perhaps he inputted the encrypted text incorrectly, so he sent it back through the department’s algorithm engine, careful to get each letter right. The same message came back at him like a punch in the solar plexus.

It couldn’t be, but there it was in front of him in black and white. “EX” meant that General Brandt had put out a sanction—an immediate death sentence—on the subjects. The “X” prefix meant “use all available methods at your disposal.”

“Kirilenko must have been with the team that surrounded us at Rochev’s dacha,” Annika said.

“What a joke,” Alli said. “He must think we killed Rochev’s mistress. That’s why he’s coming after us.”

Jack and Annika stared at her. “It’s no joke,” they both said, more or less at once.

They were still in the mouth of the corridor leading to Airport Services. Jack was looking around for security personnel who were sure to be patrolling the area, while Annika kept an eye on the door to the CCTV control room through which Kirilenko had disappeared not five minutes ago.

“There’s no doubt he’s looking for us,” Annika said. “And, as Alli pointed out, now we’re suspects in three murders.” She shook her head. “There’s no help for it, we’re going to have to terminate him.”

“What?” Jack spun around. “Are you crazy? We can’t attack an FSB officer.”

“I didn’t say attack.” Annika’s carnelian eyes never looked harder. “I said terminate.”

“As in kill?” Alli said.

“Yes, dear. We have to kill him in order to save ourselves.”

“I won’t hear of it,” Jack said.

“Then we’re doomed.” Annika indicated the door with her chin.
“Unless we put him six feet under, I promise you this sonuvabitch won’t stop until he’s either killed us or dragged us back to Moscow in manacles.”

A look of pure terror distorted Alli’s face. “Jack—”

“If not for us, then for the safety of the girl,” Annika pressed her point. “For so many reasons, we can’t allow anything to happen to her.”

Jack shook his head. He knew she was right, but he wasn’t willing to give in just yet. “There’s got to be another way.”

“I’m telling you there isn’t, we’ve got to do it now while we have the chance,” Annika said urgently.

As if to underscore her anxiety, the door to the CCTV control room opened. They shrank back into the shadows as Kirilenko emerged, his face marred by a smug look that told Annika everything she needed to know.

Without another word to either of her companions, she sprinted from the shadows and, while he drew out his cell phone, she delivered a vicious blow to his kidneys, wrapped her crooked arm across his throat, and with astonishing power, jerked him backward off his feet.

General Atcheson Brandt was the last person Dennis Paull had suspected of treachery—so much so, in fact, that in nine hours of eye-watering work he hadn’t yet gotten around to shining his investigatory spotlight on Brandt or his life.

Paull had finally quit his room, reeking of human sweat and the peculiar odor of heated electronics. It was two thirty in the morning and he was walking down the hallway of the Residence Inn, looking for the cigarette vending machine he’d noticed when he’d checked in. In these days of universal smoking bans, cigarettes were hard to find, never mind an old-fashioned vending machine that sold them. Nevertheless,
there was one here, crouching on a brown carpet whose pattern failed to hide stains even steam cleaning couldn’t get out.

He hadn’t smoked in twenty years, but the pressurized developments of the last half hour had caused his old craving to reassert itself. He’d tried to fight it, but it was no use. Like most vices, once it lodged in your mind it couldn’t be denied.