Extreme Faction (20 page)

There was also no time after Petra's murder to call Tully and Quinn to tell them what had happened. Part of him didn't want to call. It would have been like an admission of failure, and he had experienced far too much of that in the past few days. He began questioning his own competence. Yet, deep down, he knew that it would have been nearly impossible to totally protect MacCarty and Swanson. He knew also that if an assassin or group of assassins wanted someone dead, they'd find a way to make it happen. All he needed to know was, why? Why were these people being killed?

He was feeling pretty rotten about Petra, especially. After all, she had died right in front of him. He had reacted too slowly. From now on he would trust only himself, regardless of personal sensibilities and Agency priorities. If the Agency wanted his help, it would have to put up with his rules.

Helena was resting against his shoulder in the front passenger seat of the cab. She had been incomprehensible the entire trip, mumbling in Ukrainian and Russian. Even in her great distress, Jake noticed she was beautiful. She was a lost little girl without her pacifying violin, which had been left behind at the last apartment as they left rather abruptly.

The cab wound through the country road to the northeast, and the lights of Odessa were only a glow behind them now in the rearview mirror.

●

In a few hours they reached the outskirts of Nikolaev. Jake found the train station and parked the cab a few blocks away, wiped his prints from anything he had touched, and got Helena out from the curb side.

She was leaning against him as they walked toward the station. At the window, he bought her a ticket to Yalta. She had no idea why, but also had no strength to protest.

The train would leave in fifteen minutes. Jake escorted her to a private compartment, sat her against a window seat, drew the curtains closed, and took a seat next to her.

“Listen, Helena,” Jake whispered. “You're going to Yalta. Here's your ticket.” He stuffed the yellow stub into her coat pocket.

“I don't know anyone in Yalta,” she cried. She looked like a little girl who had lost her parents at a shopping mall.

“Good. That's perfect. No one would guess you'd go there. I want you to go to the Summit Hotel. It's just four blocks from the train station. Pay cash for four days.” Jake slipped her a wad of cash. “I want you to stay there, eat there, sleep there, and don't leave. If anyone questions why you are traveling alone, simply tell them you are waiting for your husband to return from sea. He's a merchant marine. I'll come there to pick you up.”

She gazed up to him. “You won't leave me there?”

“Of course not. I'll be there in four days. That should give me enough time to find out who did this to Petra and what they want.”

She tried to smile, but her lower lip trembled.

Jake thought about Petra and Helena being alone for all those hours before he and Quinn had found them. Had Petra confided in her? “I have to ask you something. Did Petra ever talk about her work?”

She swished her head no.

“What about Tvchenko. Did she talk about him?”

She thought for a moment. “Only about how he made love to her. You knew they were lovers.”

“I suspected it. So, Petra probably did know what Tvchenko was up to?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Yuri was very secretive. He was a good man. I'm sure of that. I don't see how he could have been involved with making bad weapons.”

Jake stared at her. If circumstances were different, perhaps they could get to know each other better. He found himself extremely attracted to her, both mentally and physically. She was a delicate flower without any thorns.

“Are you sure there's nothing you can tell me to help me find out what in the hell's going on. Think. It's important.”

Helena shrugged. “I don't know anything. I'm a musician.”

There was a last call for the train to Yalta over the speakers. Jake kissed Helena on both cheeks and started off. She pulled him by the collar and kissed him passionately on the lips.

“Jake, please don't leave me.”

“I have to go.” He didn't want to, though. It would have been so much easier to simply take the train to Yalta with her, spend a few days making love to Helena in the hotel, and then.... “I'll meet you in Yalta. I promise.”

He pulled away from her, and she slumped back to her chair.

Out on the loading gate, Jake was walking away but felt as though something was penetrating the back of his head. He turned to watch the train pull away. Helena's face peered around the curtains, a desperate glare, as if her soul was reaching out for him. In a moment the train was out of sight picking up speed.

Jake went back to a different window and bought himself a ticket to Odessa. He had an hour to waste, and he felt like a stiff drink of whiskey, even though he couldn't stomach hard liquor. Besides, he needed a clear head. He was confused. In the last few days a prominent scientist had died in his arms, he had nearly been killed by an explosion in that man's apartment, he had been kidnapped, shot at, and been forced to steal a cab. He had killed a man only hours ago, yet he felt nothing for the dead man. He was nothing. Nothing more than flesh and blood without a soul. Jake was protecting a woman he barely knew, and he was still no closer to finding out what in the hell was going on. His boss had been poisoned, and he had no real reason to stay behind and continue investigating. No reason but pride. He would never run away from a fight, like some whimpering dog that had been bit on the butt.

Somehow his position at the apartment had been compromised. Someone had given him up for dead, and only Quinn Armstrong, Helena, or Petra knew where they were. And, of course, Sinclair Tucker. Jake hadn't been careless enough to let someone follow him there, but it was possible. Especially if Tully's Volga had been tracked somehow. It was more likely that someone had sold him out. His jaw clamped his teeth tight with that thought.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Kurt Jenkins, the CIA Director of Operations, ushered his assistant into the study of his Georgetown home and quietly shut the French doors behind them. Jenkins' wife had answered the door, and when she saw that it was work, had stormed off to the dining room to feed her two young children, while she screamed for her husband up the banister. It was another meal her husband would have to re-heat in the microwave.

Jenkins tried to keep his home life and Agency duties separate, but sometimes that was impossible. When he had shuffled down the stairs, he understood why his wife was so disturbed. With just the sight of his assistant, Bradley Stevens, in the foyer, he knew something was up. And it was probably not good news.

“What do you have, Brad?” Jenkins asked, pouring two glasses of whiskey straight up.

Stevens was a tall, slim man who walked like a stork. His thin face and crooked, long nose, were accented by tiny circular spectacles, identical to the ones his boss, Jenkins, wore. Stevens was a Princeton honors graduate in political science who had decided on law school at age ten, but had put it off to serve his country for a few years. A few years had turned into ten, with Stevens hopping from Defense to the State Department, and now the Agency. He was in his early thirties now with no intention of going back to school. He liked what he did. It was important work. And besides, he too had a wife and two children to support. He was Jenkins' right hand man. His eyes and ears in an organization where paranoia was endemic.

Bradley Stevens took off his glasses, breathed on them, and then started wiping them clean with a special cloth he always carried in his pocket. “Not good, boss,” Stevens said, settling into a hard leather chair. He put his glasses back on, accepted the glass of whiskey, and held it in his unsteady hand.

“Don't spill that, Brad. It's older than your children.” Jenkins took a sip of whiskey. “Well?”

“Odessa. Tully O'Neill, the station chief, called secure about an hour ago. The woman who worked with Tvchenko, Petra Kovarik, has been murdered.”

“How? Did we get anything from her?”

Stevens shook his head. “We're not a hundred percent certain. She was being watched by Jake Adams when at least two gunmen smashed through the safe house door and started firing.”

“Jake Adams?”

“Yes. He used to work for the old agency, and was a captain in Air Force intelligence before going private a few years back. He's the one who saved Tully's ass a few days ago. The director put him to work for us.”

“Yeah, yeah, go on.”

“Adams and Quinn Armstrong were watching the two women. Armstrong stepped out for a minute when the shooting took place. It appears that Adams escaped with the other woman, a friend of the scientist's assistant.”

Jenkins took another drink of whiskey. “Where are they now?”

“Uncertain. The only blood in the room was from Petra Kovarik. Adams shot one of the shooters, but that guy's not talking.”

“Who is it?”

“No name, no I.D., but Tully seems to think he's either a Turk or a Kurd, maybe both.”

“Shit. Have we come up with a tie with the nerve gas theft from Johnston Atoll? What in the hell is going on in Texas?”

Stevens shifted in his chair and took his first drink of whiskey, nearly choking.

“Well?”

“I'm not sure. But Steve Nelsen has his theory.”

“President Bush. I know, I already heard that one. If he's right, he's a hero. If he's wrong, then he's pissed off a whole bunch of people.”

“It makes some sense.”

“That's a hell of a memory on the part of the Kurds,” Jenkins said. “Why wait so long? It's been years since the Gulf War.”

“The Kurds are a patient bunch, sir,” Stevens said. “They've been pushed and shoved for a long time. Maybe they're sick of being bullied. But that's not all. There was a businessman killed in Berlin a few days ago. Gerhard Kreuzberg.”

Jenkins' eyes shot up. “Kreuzberg? The German foreign minister a few years back?”

“Yes, sir. Under Kohl. In fact, he was the foreign minister during the Gulf War.”

“And you think—”

“It's too much of a coincidence not to think it.”

“What would they gain by killing Kreuzberg?”

“Legitimacy. Revenge. Kreuzberg wouldn't allow Germany to get involved any more than they did.”

“But he had German law on his side,” Jenkins assured his assistant.

“True. But that's never stopped the Germans before. It wasn't only that. He stood by when Germans started killing Turks in Bonn, and Cologne, and Frankfurt. Many of those were Kurds. They set themselves on fire on the autobahns in protest, and Kreuzberg did nothing. He couldn't. The average German was backing him, because Germans had lost their jobs to Turks, jobs they didn't want to do until there were no others to be found. The country was combining with East Germany, with more labor problems. Kreuzberg had to make a strong stand. The Kurds felt betrayed.”

“So they kill him years later?” Jenkins asked.

“Maybe they're finally unifying like the Palestinians did under Arafat.”

“That's three operations in two weeks. That's some great unity.” Jenkins paused to finish his whiskey and think. “This is all just a theory.”

“A pretty good one.”

“What do you recommend?”

Stevens straightened the tiny glasses on his nose. “Our German contacts say Kreuzberg was killed by a poisoned pellet. Probably Ricin.”

“Ricin? Who still uses that?”

Stevens shrugged. “I don't know. But it's interesting. All those people on Johnston were poisoned. Tvchenko was probably killed by a Sarin-based formula, and now the German. Tvchenko developed some of the most deadly Sarin weapons, and then went far beyond that stage. Tully O'Neill said that Tvchenko was working on a new pesticide. Sarin is similar to commercial insecticides and pesticides. Maybe Tvchenko was trying to double dip. Make one version of the formula for commercial use, and the other for military use as a nerve gas.”

“Is that another theory?”

“Perhaps more than a theory,” Stevens said. “Tully said Tvchenko's apartment smelled of isopropyl alcohol, a precursor for Sarin.”

“Isopropyl alcohol is used all the time by chemists.”

“True. But not in great quantities.”

Jenkins was thinking it over. There was still no logical reason the Kurds had started on this road of terrorism, but it was becoming clearer that they had. Stranger still is that the Kurds had not claimed responsibility for any of the acts. It was more or less an unwritten law that the guilty bastards with blood on their hands would be proud to extol praise on themselves to anyone who would listen, that it was they who had brought terror to the super countries. Yet, they had remained silent. “So, what will the Kurds do next?”

“We'll have to research who's pissed them off.”

Jenkins rubbed his temples. What was going on? He would have to trust his field officers, Nelsen and O'Neill. If Nelsen thought Bush was in danger, they'd better do everything within their power to safeguard him. And this Adams in Odessa. What was he up to? The Kurds were a problem that would not go away easily this time. Who had pissed them off? That was the problem. The list would be long.

“Fire off a call to Nelsen pronto,” Jenkins finally said. “Tell him I want a plan to keep Bush safe on my desk in the morning. He can use whatever means possible. Extreme prejudice.” Jenkins pointed his finger directly toward his assistant's skinny nose. “Also...I want O'Neill to brief me on Adams. I want to know if Tvchenko's assistant told him anything before she was killed. Brief O'Neill on the German and Nelsen's theory in Texas.”

Stevens rose from his chair and started toward the door.

“Just a minute,” Jenkins muttered. “Talk with our people in Berlin. Brief them on what's going on in Odessa and Texas. Explain what we think is a tie to Johnston Atoll.”