Enemy Agents
Authors: Shaun Tennant
ENEMY AGENTS
By
Shaun Tennant
Enemy Agents © 2013 by Shaun Tennant
ISBN: 978-0-9918799-4-6
Cover Design © 2015 by Shaun Tennant
Photos used in cover:
Di Studio/Bigstock.com
mikeaubry/Bigstock.com
OSTILL /Bigstock.com
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Description:
After a secret branch of the CIA is compromised by someone leaking dangerous information, young agent Chris Quarrel is brought in to root out the traitor. The job is even harder than it seems, because the only people who could be the mole are also the greatest spies in the world:
A master thief. A nameless assassin. A reformed criminal. An amnesiac. A Cold War spymaster. A woman of action. An American patriot. A suave British legend.
One—or more—is a traitor. However, the only agents capable of hunting such dangerous prey are also the very same suspects on his list. So Quarrel does the only thing he can: he sends the world’s most dangerous spies to chase each other down.
May the best spy win.
Length:
113,000 words, or approximately 376 pages.
Part One: This Time, It’s Personal
Part Two: The Secretive Agents
Part Three: I Don’t Approve of Your Methods
Part Four: We Have Ways of Making You Talk
Part Five: I Expect You to Die
PART ONE:
THIS TIME, IT’S PERSONAL
A man in a custom-tailored grey silk suit walked alone into the Russian embassy in London. The perfectly tailored silvery fabric had been sewn in Italy only three days before. The suit rested gently on his massive shoulders, making a large man even more imposing, and some expert tailoring minimized hissizablesizeable
belly. A uniformed English valet announced him as Vladimir Plunov (the notorious Russian billionaire) as he entered the gala. With a quick and careful scan of the room, the man in the grey suit noted which dignitaries turned to face him—and which ones didn’t pay him any attention. He would remember both.
When he descended the three red-carpeted steps to the ballroom, there was already a salt-and-pepper haired English butler waiting with a tray of champagne in crystal flutes.
‘
Nothing like an English butle
r
,’ thought the man in the grey suit, as he took a flute and nodded a polite, wordless thanks to the servant.
He made his way through the middle of the crowd, steering clear of the dance floor. A Frenchman and his trophy wife greeted him warmly, but the man in the grey suit wasn’t interested in these charming yet meaningless people. A delegate from Kazakhstan gave him the stink-eye but held his tongue; no doubt bothered by some old slight Plunov had done to his country in the name of expanding his petroleum empire. The man in the suit even paused a few feet from the Kazakhstani, just to see if he’d dare to say something. Satisfied that this low-level functionary would never provoke the mighty Vladimir Plunov, the man in the suit walked away, gulping down most of his champagne.
The embassy was expansive, built decades earlier to display the wealth of Russia to the western world, and although governments and economic systems had changed in the Mother Country, it was maintained in pristine condition for much the same reason. There were four-hundred guests at the party, each of them a politician, government employee, or a millionaire. The man in the suit hated these events, but he was here with a purpose. In a manner that was hopefully less direct than a heat-seeking missile, the man in the suit searched the party for Plunov’s partner. Alex Maslov was in here somewhere. The man in the suit knew this for a fact because the tracking tag in the seam of Maslov’s jacket was transmitting from within twenty metres.
The man in the suit expected it would prove tricky to get Maslov alone, but held onto the hope that surprise and fear could make Maslov come quietly. There was just one problem—Maslov was the one person in the room who knew that Vladimir Plunov had been dead for almost a week. The sight of his old partner sipping champagne might make him skittish instead of pliable.
The man in suit carried himself like a heavy man, although he was only one-hundred and seventy pounds. His shoes provided an extra five inches of height without looking like lifts. The shoulders of the fatsuit were built up to provide the illusion of Plunov’s impressive frame. And then there was the face.
The man in the suit wore a false chin and nose, crafted out of various latex and silicone prosthetics. The appliances covered his cheeks, but in a very thin layer. The colour in the prosthetics faded to clear just before the incredibly thin edges of the latex, allowing the man’s real skin to blend seamlessly into the false face. His eyebrows were glued on with spirit gum, his hair dyed with a grey colour that would withstand a soaking of water o
r
sweat, but would wash out instantly with a specific shampoo.
The man in the grey suit had sculpted the face himself, by hand, based on 3D models produced in a computer by comparing hundreds of recent photos of Plunov. His fingerprints were Plunov’s, his voice was a flawless recreation of not only Plunov’s specific hometown dialect, but also of the speaking patterns and vocabulary that Plunov frequently used. The man in the suit had been Plunov once before—three weeks earlier when he stole some documents—but he had been studying his mark for two months. Maslov’s assassination of his old partner was unfortunate, but it had been quiet. Since nobody knew Plunov was dead, the man in the suit was able to slip into Plunov’s life with little effort.
“Vlad, you old dog!” called an Englishman. “I thought you were off yachting with what’s-her-name. The Wimbledon girl.”
“Chris-to-pher,” said the man in the suit, recalling Plunov’s traditional greeting for the English music producer. “I thought I’d come here and find out what fine piece of musical talent you have squeezed into a bikini for me this week,” he said with a hearty chuckle.
“Oh no, not just one girl, I’ve got a girl group now,” said the music producer. “And they’re all mine!”
“Very good! Tennis players are more flexible anyway.” With that, the man in the suit carried on, smiling at some of Plunov’s associates and keeping an eye out for his target. He spotted Maslov on the dance floor, doing a tango with his latest secretary/mistress. Out in the open, Maslov would be forced to speak with Plunov or risk making a scene.
The man in the suit slipped out of the crowd, pausing to allow the tangoing couples to pass before walking angrily up to Maslov. Thankfully, Maslov’s back was turned. His secretary spun, then snapped back to Maslov with her mouth open, leaning in to bite the rose from Maslov’s mouth. When her eyes focused on Plunov standing only a few feet away, she let out a brief, involuntary yelp before cutting herself off. The dancers jolted to a stop and turned to look. The woman blushed.
Maslov turned to see what startled her. His face went white.
“Alex,” said the man in Plunov’s suit. “We need to talk.”
Upstairs, in a quiet room on the fourth and highest floor, Alex Maslov stood by the window, surely hoping that if people could see him from the street, he couldn’t be hurt. They were alone now. Maslov and the man who looked like Plunov were granted access to a private meeting room with the security cameras off, thanks to their considerable clout with the Russian ambassador. The room was simple: a large table with eight chairs, two windows, and a small side table set up with vodka and glasses.
“You’re dead,” said Maslov. “I saw you die.”
“What did you really see?” asked not-Plunov. “You saw your man poison my drink. You saw me clutch my chest and collapse. You saw a body thrown overboard. But did you feel my pulse yourself? What did you really see?”
“You couldn’t have known, you couldn’t have known,” Alex was starting to babble. “My people are untouchable.”
“And just who are your people? Who is it you really work for, Alex? Was my handing you a half a billion dollars not enough?” The man in the suit wanted to play with Maslov’s emotions, get him off-guard, and then get him to talk.
Alex Maslov looked out the window. He smiled to himself, and spoke to the window, rather than face the man he had betrayed. “You could not comprehend who my people are,” he said bitterly.
“Are they yours? Or are you theirs? Or are you their dog?” The man in the suit knew that Maslov was a cocky, arrogant man, and a challenge to his manhood might provoke him to brag about his position within the cell. But instead, he stayed calm.
“I have my place. Other people have theirs.” Alex suppressed his smile as he stared out the window to watch the assassin scaling the outside wall. He flipped open the lock on the window and started to roam around the room as he spoke. “But you will not learn anything from me, old friend.”
“Alex. The game is over. I am alive because I am always ahead of you. And soon, you will be handed over to the people who helped secure my empire long before you came along. The people I never told you about.”
“No, the game is not over. You are still playing,” said Maslov, pouring himself a drink from a bottle of vodka. He drank it in one long gulp, and slammed the glass against the table. “…and you are bluffing.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because you are not Vladimir Plunov…” Alex relished his moment as he slowly let the next word slip over his tongue: “American.”
The man in the suit felt a cold rock drop inside his stomach. His cover was blown. He had walked into foreign soil, confidently removed himself from the crowd, and set up his own ambush.
Alex grinned, and poured himself a new shot of vodka. The American reached up the back of his suit, and drew a black air-powered ceramic handgun from the small of his back. Alex hadn’t expected a gun inside the embassy. He set his drink down.
“Tell me who you work for or I shoot you right here,” said the American, now in his native accent.
Alex looked to the window behind the American, the one he had just unlocked. “Help me,” he said. The American felt a cool breeze as the window opened behind him.
The American fired a single, quiet shot and the non-metallic bullet left a small entry wound in Maslov’s forehead. Before Maslov hit the floor, the American was diving to his right, rolling as he did, to face the window. It was open, but there was nobody there. The American regained his feet, and scanned the room from a crouch. There was no sign of the assassin. Behind him, there was a footstep. The American turned and fired. Again, there was nothing. The ceramic gun was only worth two shots, so he dropped it. Hooking the middle fingers of his right hand through holes in his belt buckle, the American drew the two-inch-long dagger that was hidden inside. He rose to his feet, in a fighting stance. If the assassin had a gun, he would have used it by now. They would have to fight it out. The American was unhappy about fighting in the Plunov fatsuit, where the padding restricted his movement, but he had no choice. He kicked off the heavy shoes, preferring to fight in socks rather than lifts.
The assassin appeared behind the American, grabbing for his head in an attempt to break his neck. The American used his left hand to block the assassin’s arm from moving, and used the blade in his right to stab the assassin’s leg. The assassin howled and released his grip. When the American turned to face his attacker, the assassin caught him with a haymaker to the jaw. The false chin was pounded out of place, tearing the glued-down latex from the American’s cheeks. He stumbled, but stayed on his feet. The assassin went for a front kick, but the American deflected it and punched the base of his palm into the side of the man’s knee. The assassin hurled himself forward with his one good leg, sending his large body into the American’s chest. The American stumbled over Maslov’s body, sprawling onto the boardroom table, still dizzy from the punch.
As the American rolled to his right to get off the table, the assassin picked up Maslov’s bottle of vodka and splashed the American across the eyes with it. The man in the suit was blind, dizzy, hindered by the cumbersome costume. He swung the blade twice in front of him before the vodka bottle hammered into the side of his head. The bottle did not break, but his skull might have. The American collapsed backward against a wall, and slowly slid to the floor. He rubbed his eyes, regaining some of his vision. The assassin stood over him, taking the cap off a syringe. It was the first time the American got a good look at his attacker’s face.
“My god,” he said. “You?”
The assassin stayed stone-faced. “Me.”
The assassin leaned in and placed his thumb on the plunger.
Ten minutes later, Russian officials discovered the body of Alex Maslov, along with that of an unidentifiable stranger in a fatsuit. The stranger’s fatsuit and clothing were intact, but his head was gone. The killer, it seems, had taken his head when he escaped out the window.
And there was a symbol finger-painted on the wall, written in blood:
Chris Quarrel threw himself forward at a full sprint, stretched out in the air and hit the ground hard with his knees and chest. His face splashed with the thin, watery mud from one of the ubiquitous puddles that dotted the landscape. The cold water soaked into his shirt—chest and sleeves alike—but Quarrel didn’t move to get out of the puddle; he was already soaking wet anyway. All that mattered was that he had kept his unwieldy rifle out of the water, and that he was still warm enough to keep his hands from shaking.
Two quie
t
twip-twip
s
from his four o’clock made Quarrel forget about his discomfort. One shot impacted in a tree root two feet beside Quarrel’s head. The other shot hit the ground a foot before the root. Quarrel needed to face the oncoming shooter to his right, so he rolled onto his left side, swinging his gun with both hands. He tapped at the trigger at practiced, metronome intervals—tapping at exactly the right pace to avoid a jam yet without wasting a moment.