Fang stared at him. “Lead in the pencil?”

  Morrison regained control. “Anyway, I haven’t spoken to him since that day, but the mere fact he was there, and seemed to know what was going on, suggests he knows far more than I do.”

  Sherrie nodded. “Sounds like a good place to start.”

  Kane lifted a finger. “Umm, second question. Start what? Why are we having this conversation over thirty years after the fact? What’s changed?”

  Morrison frowned. “My Soviet partner, and his daughter, were poisoned in Salisbury today, and he had a note in his wallet with my home phone number on it and my old callsign for the mission.”

  Kane cursed. “Poisoned? How?”

  “Details are sketchy. They’re thinking it was a nerve agent. Possibly Novichok related.”

  Leroux’s eyebrows shot up. “Holy crap! That’s serious stuff. State level stuff. You can’t just cook this stuff up in your basement.”

  Kane grunted in agreement. “Not to mention the fact it’s a Russian concoction.”

  “Exactly,” said Morrison. “If that was indeed the nerve agent used, you can bet this was state sanctioned.”

  A blast of air escaped Sherrie’s lips. “That takes some serious brass balls to assassinate a former Russian agent on foreign soil. British soil.”

  “Agreed.”

  Leroux shook his head. “This makes no sense. Why would you use a nerve agent directly traceable back to the source? If this is confirmed, there will be zero doubt that the Russians are behind it. It’s idiocy!”

  Morrison regarded his prize analyst. His gut instinct on things was legendary, and it was why he had been given a team of his own to facilitate the beautiful mind trapped behind too many insecurities. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. What does your famous gut tell you?”

  Leroux paused, an idle finger tapping rapidly on his knee as everyone remained silent, staring at him. “I think we’re dealing with one of two things. Well, three things, but I think we can exclude sheer idiocy.”

  Kane grunted. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

  Leroux continued. “First, it is the Russians, as in the Kremlin, and they’re sending a message. If the guy just turned up dead with a bullet to the head, then it would be chalked up as murder and it wouldn’t even make the news. Poison him like this, it makes international news, and everyone they want to send a message to receives it.”

  “You certainly did, sir.”

  Morrison nodded at Kane. “I certainly did.” He turned back to Leroux. “And second?”

  “That someone is trying to make it look like the Russian government is involved, and they aren’t at all.”

  Morrison sighed, his underling coming to the same conclusions he had. “So, where do we start? If we ask the Russian government, they’ll just deny it either way. There’s no way they’ll admit that a nerve agent that lethal was stolen, and they’ll never admit they used it.”

  Kane shook his head. “Either way, a message was being sent. We need to find out who to, and the only way we’re going to be able to do that is to find out who might want to send a message. We’re assuming that this has something to do with 1988. We don’t know that. The only reason we’re thinking that is because you happened to know the victim, and he happened to have your number in his wallet.” His eyes narrowed. “Why was that, do you think?”

  Morrison frowned. “There’s one tidbit I forgot to mention.”

  “Which is?”

  “The exact text of that note.” He pulled out his notes from the phone call. “It said, and I quote, ‘If something odd should happen, call this number, and tell him Whiskey-Alpha-Four-One needs help from Whiskey-Alpha-Four-Two.’”

  Kane leaned back. “And you’re Whiskey-Alpha-Four-Two?”

  “Yes.”

  Sherrie shook her head. “But how could he know in advance to reach out to you?”

  “And how did he have your home number?” added Fang.

  Leroux’s face had the distant stare that so often meant he was figuring something out. He smiled slightly to himself, then returned his attention to Morrison. “Because there was only ever one thing in his life that he thought he might be killed for.”

  Morrison’s head bobbed, as did everyone else’s. It was so simple, it had to be true. He had looked up Kulick when he was granted clearance, and couldn’t find him. He wasn’t in the files about the operation, so his name had either been scrubbed, or the false identity provided for him had been untraceable. A junior agent like that would never have such a clean identity wasted on him, which likely meant there was nothing to find after the fact.

  His career had either ended that day, or he had been quickly sidelined, and in the chaos of the collapse of the Soviet Union, he had been lost, eventually ending up in England with his family.

  Leroux had to be right.

  Morrison summarized. “So, we have a junior agent who did nothing remarkable in his career, and knows it. The only thing he was ever exposed to was the assassination plot, so he knows that if anything ever happens to him, it has to be related to that. The only person he knows from that incident that he can trust is me, since I tried to stop it. I become a public figure with my position, he recognizes me at some point in time, then uses his connections to get my home number. He puts it in his wallet for someone to find, just in case.” He cursed. “If only we could talk to him.”

  Kane’s eyes narrowed. “He’s not dead?”

  Morrison shook his head. “No. They’re both in comas, apparently.”

  “Then with him out of the picture, and you with nothing beyond what you saw as a junior agent, I see no other choice. We have to talk to West, and find out what he knows.”

  Morrison nodded. “Agreed. But I can’t exactly send an agent to Germany without a paper trail.”

  Kane grinned. “Oh, I have my ways, sir.”

  Morrison chuckled. “You wouldn’t be much of an agent if you didn’t. Do I want to know?”

  “Nope.”

  “Very well. Get your ass to Germany and meet with West. Find out what he knows.”

  Sherrie leaned forward, eagerness on her face. “What about the UK? You’ll need someone there you can trust in case they regain consciousness. Maybe to look into things quietly?”

  Morrison agreed, but Sherrie was about to be disappointed with his idea. “We need someone we can trust in the UK, someone on the outside.”

  Kane appeared to catch on immediately. “Someone with connections, who could poke around without raising any questions, but that we could trust implicitly?”

  “Exactly.”

  Leroux’s jaw dropped. “You’re not thinking about who I think you’re thinking about.”

  Morrison nodded. “I think we’re all thinking the same thing.”

  Sherrie glanced at Fang. “Umm, I don’t think we’re all thinking the same thing.”

  Fang agreed. “I haven’t the foggiest.”

  Kane didn’t help. “But that’s a big ask. Do you think he’d say yes?”

  Morrison shrugged. “I think he would if it came from the right person. Also, we can’t risk any contact with him tracing back to us.”

  Kane pursed his lips, a burst of air escaping. “Well, I know him to a point, but that’s always been when dealing with his best friend. To ask him to help, well, frankly, sir, you, is a really big ask. It could be dangerous, and it could affect his career.”

  Morrison had to agree with everything Kane was saying, though his agent was missing one critical element. “You’re forgetting one thing.”

  “What?”

  “That’s he’s a cop, and he’s always been a cop. Just the fact this happened in his country will make him want to get involved.”

  Kane sighed, leaning back on the couch. “I don’t know, though I think you’re right about our best chances. I can ask, I guess. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  Sherrie threw her hands up. “Who the hell are you two talking about? Agent Reading?”

  Kane tapped his nose.

  “And this other person?”

  “An old friend. I’ll drop by on the way to Germany and ask him to reach out.”

  “Do that.” Morrison turned to Leroux. “We have another problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re going to need intel, and we can’t use CIA resources for that, or your team.”

  Leroux stared at his laptop sitting nearby. “Umm, I don’t think Google is going to cut it.”

  Kane held up a hand. “I think I can help there.”

  Morrison shook his head. “I don’t want to know.”

  Leroux looked at Kane. “We’ll talk offline.” He turned back to Morrison. “But I think I’m going to need help.”

  Morrison chewed his cheek for a moment. “Who’d you have in mind?”

  “Sonya. I trust her implicitly. I’ll read her in only on what she needs to know, leaving your name out of it for as long as I can.”

  “What about Randy?” asked Sherrie. “He seems to be a sharp cookie.”

  Leroux shook his head. “With no brain-mouth filter. He’s liable to let the whole thing slip one day while he’s spinning in his chair.” He shook his head again. “No, this needs someone calmer, more experienced, and that’s Sonya.”

  Kane winked. “You two, working alone in cramped quarters. Do you think she can handle it?”

  Morrison suppressed a chuckle, well aware that the attractive yet awkward Sonya Tong had a crush on her supervisor. He wondered if Sherrie knew.

  She frowned, apparently in the loop. “Maybe I should chaperone.”

  8 |

  Boykov Residence Moscow, Russia

  Vasily Boykov cursed at the bottom of yet another bottle of vodka. There was a time when he celebrated the occurrence, but now it was just another disappointment in his miserable life. When he was young, vodka was the reward for the end of a hard day’s work, the elixir that took the edge off a cold morning, or the tonic that cured all that ailed the hardworking man.

  But now, it was just another indicator of how miserable his day-to-day existence was, for all the wonders that was the drink of vodka years ago, what was truly special about it was the fact it was almost always done with friends.

  Something he had few of anymore.

  In fact, he could think of none.

  For he was on the losing side.

  He had been committed to the cause, committed to the preservation of the Soviet way of life, and had failed. Not only had he failed in his task to assassinate the traitor Gorbachev, but he had been shot twice in the back and left for dead by some American scumbag who was supposed to be on his side. Why the man had betrayed him in the final moments was something he had been asking for over thirty years, yet the motivation was as irrelevant now as it was then.

  He had betrayed him, and that was all that mattered.

  If I ever see the bastard again, I’ll kill him.

  Yet the likelihood of that was zero or worse.

  He had been found by his own men and his life saved, and ironically it was the collapse of the Soviet Union that ultimately saved his life. If the USSR had survived, he would have been executed by his own people, or sent to a gulag to toil the remainder of his days.

  But instead, he was simply forgotten. Forgotten by the few involved in the conspiracy. And forgotten by the government that replaced the one he had served loyally for so many years.

  He had a small pension given to all men his age, nothing to show for his years of service and loyalty, a dearth of friends, and no family. He had nothing but an apartment in a building that should have been condemned a decade ago, and yet another empty bottle of vodka.

  And even it had little effect on him now, beyond giving him the shakes should he not acquire a new one.

  His life wasn’t worth living.

  He stared at the old television, Soviet-era engineering, and frowned at the barely visible hockey game. The speaker still worked, at least as well as it ever had, and it was his only company, though a radio would be as effective. It was the warm glow it gave at night, the talking box the best friend he had, and when it finally died, he had no money to replace it.

  When it dies, I die.

  It would be easy enough. He had his old Makarov pistol in his nightstand drawer. He kept it clean. And loaded. At first, it was for security. He feared someone someday might come knocking, cleaning up a decades-old mess, then it was for the thieves after the near collapse of law and order when the Soviet Empire dissolved. But even thieves need a payoff, and he had nothing to steal, so they had left him alone for years.

  Now it was his escape hatch should he decide enough was enough.

  His phone rang, startling him. He couldn’t recall the last time it had actually made a sound, and had forgotten he had it. He pushed from his threadbare chair and winced at the pain left behind by two bullets in the back and seventy years of hard living. He lifted the receiver from the wall by the small kitchenette.

  “Da?”

  “Is this Vasily Boykov?”

  His eyes narrowed at the woman’s voice, a voice mentioning a name he hadn’t heard spoken in a very long time. The hair on the back of his neck stood. “You should know, you called me. What do you want?”

  “I just wanted to make sure you were home.”

  There was a click and the line went dead.

  And he cursed, dropping the handset as he rushed toward his nightstand and the Makarov he had never thought he’d use for its true purpose again. He had known he would likely soon die, though he had assumed by a bullet to the head, a bullet he’d deliver himself.

  This was a welcome if unexpected change to his future plans.

  But to give him a warning?

  That was just sporting.

  And made little sense in today’s Russia.

  He would be dead in the next few minutes, a team of four likely on its way up the stairs as he double-checked his weapon. If he were lucky, he’d get one, maybe two, though not all of them.

  But at least he’d go out fighting.

  It was just unfortunate that his exit wasn’t under his control, as he had wanted. He had been looking forward to putting his own bullet in his head, and had come close on several drunken occasions, but something had always kept him going. Some memory, something on the television, some upcoming hockey game he wanted to see. The reasons were sometimes trivial, sometimes noble, sometimes nostalgic.

  Yet despite the fact he wanted to die, his training from all those years ago demanded he make a fight of it.

  For Yury Minkin couldn’t win.

  The bastard deserves to die.

  They had all been called into a room with no windows, a room with dim lights, a room guaranteed to have no listening devices, a room they were to never speak of having been in after the briefing was concluded.

  A room with no names spoken.

  Yet faces had been seen.

  Including the traitor who had shot him in the back.

  He would recognize them all today if they were paraded in front of him, yet he had never seen any of them again.

  Except Minkin.

  On the television, that wretched lone friend that had once again given him a reason to live after a news report aired about another oligarch arrested for fraud by the testosterone-fueled leader of their great nation. He had heard the name many times, the uber-rich a fascination among the public and its news outlets, but in a room with no names, it had meant nothing to him.

  Until that night several weeks ago, when he finally had a face to put with the name, a face he’d recognize even thirty years later.

  He had put down the gun.

  And the vodka.

  He needed to remember clearly.

  But there was little to remember, beyond the fact that Minkin was the man giving the briefing to the half-dozen in the room.

  Half a dozen men determined to preserve a way of life.

  Half a dozen Soviets and Americans, who wanted nothing to do with Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika.

  There was a loud bang below him followed by a rumbling.

  What the hell is this?

  The single room that had been his life for too long shook, the already crumbling plaster cracking, dust filling the air in the dim light cast by his lone lamp and the television, when suddenly he was thrust into darkness, the power failing.

  They weren’t going to shoot him after all.

  He leaped for the bed, the adrenaline-fueled move surprising even himself, and grabbed one edge of the thin mattress, rolling it over him as the entire floor fell out from under him. He cursed then reached out for the nightstand, falling with his bed, and grasped inside the partially open drawer, gripping the cold steel of his trusted Makarov.

  Then he abruptly came to a halt, the bed frame creaking in protest as the weight of his body pressed against it then sprung back up.

  But it wasn’t over.

  The roof hadn’t arrived yet.

  He braced as the din of collapsing concrete and twisting steel overwhelmed his senses, the air thick with pulverized stone making his breathing more labored than it normally was.

  Then there was silence, nothing moving for several seconds before a creaking sound directly above his mattress betrayed what was about to come. He released his grip on the mattress and it flopped aside, the debris it had protected him from nothing compared to what was only inches from his face.

  A steel beam supporting what appeared to be a significant portion of the roof, starlight visible in some sections that had completely collapsed.

  Along with the still standing walls of the two apartment blocks that had bookended his own.

  The creak sounded again and the mass above him moved slightly.

  Shit!

  He rolled out of the bed, now at a precarious angle, and cursed as he lost his footing, sliding down what was once the floor of his apartment and into a mass of debris before coming to an abrupt, painful halt.

  Then he heard the moans and cries of the denizens he had ignored for years, the victims of a plot to kill him.

  But why? Why was it necessary to kill so many just to get him? There were ways to kill people that were far less messy.

 

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