Spy Catcher: The J.J. McCall Novels (Books 1-3) (The FBI Espionage Series) (90 page)

Nothing appeared out of the norm at first. FD-302s. Operations reports outlining her activities. Very little suspicious activity, but it was clear in Jack Sabinski’s reports that he hated her father, Max McCall, with a fervent passion. The visceral nature of his reporting bled through the page like Sharpie ink. At last, she reached it. The report filed on the day of her mother’s shooting. J.J. read every word with microscopic focus and two familiar names were all over it—Jack Sabinski and John Nixon, the agent who drafted the report.

It was 1989. The FBI had received reports that members of the Nation of Islam had broken off to create the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense. One of Nixon’s CIs told him the group had collected an arms cache in a Dallas warehouse containing armor piercing bullets that could cut through bullet proof vests. The CI reported that the cache would be used to target local law enforcement officers accused of brutality against the black community. The allegations indicated Max McCall set up a meeting between the arms supplier and the group; Naomi’s supervisor sent her in to investigate. When the FBI and ATF raided the warehouse, her father pulled out a gun to fire on the agents, and the gun went off. In his attempt to kill the agents, the bullet severed Naomi in a major artery which eventually killed Agent Jones.

J.J. struggled to take in air.

My father … killed my mother?

Her stomach hardened, and she felt lightheaded as tears rushed down her face. Her entire body shook with confusion and shock.

It’s not true. It’s not true. My father would never…he would never,
she repeated over and again in her mind. She lost her breath and carved her hands through her hair. Her heart thumped in her chest as her mind roiled. It didn’t make sense.

Why had the Bureau never pressed charges? He never missed a day at home. It didn’t make sense. She collapsed backward into her seat, her doubts about the veracity of the report growing by the second. It was clear why they didn’t want her to view this file. Every word was bullshit. Somebody had something to hide, and J.J. made it her life’s mission to expose the truth and bring down anyone and everyone involved in a coverup.

She wiped the tears from her eyes and returned the file to the locked space in her drawer. She looked down at her watch, and the entire day had flown by. Night fell, and the office was almost empty. At that moment, like never before, she wanted Tony. She needed Tony.

Chapter 53

Friday — FBI Headquarters

It was Russell Freeman’s first day back to work after his “episode.” He’d promised to take it easy, but today was a special day. He’d scheduled a meeting with Andrei Komarov. From Slayton McCarthy’s brutal near-arrest and detainment (at least that’s how it appeared in the photos with his face pressed against the asphalt) and the arrests of FBI and Secret Service agents, the Russians were reaping a mighty bitter harvest, especially with the President’s announcement earlier that day. The Secret Service, in coordination with the FBI, had located a listening device inside the walls of the White House Situation Room, planted by an agent of the Russian intelligence services, found just one week after signing an agreement with the United States in which they promised to cease intelligence activity in exchange for counterterrorism cooperation.

The President couldn’t have made the disclosure with more perfect timing, which is explains why he agreed to the stand-down in the first place—all along he knew he had the leverage to break the agreement…but not before getting the intelligence he needed to track the terrorist cell. While the outcome was a major public relations win for the U.S. government and would give the FBI and CIA the leverage they needed to resume offensive operations, he needed to receive one more concession from the Russians. One that would protect J.J.’s source, Aleksey Dmitriyev, from further scrutiny and pressure while he supported FBI ops.

Freeman fixed his tie as his secretary announced that his visitor had arrived. Andrei Komarov, destined for foreign service from birth it seemed, had a highly Westernized speech and dress. He could pull off an almost undetectable American accent, and his suits were a cut above Brooks Brothers, even on a public servant’s salary. As Komarov entered the office, he flashed a half-friendly smile and Freeman greeted him likewise, with a handshake and then offered him a seat.

“I’ll stand, thank you.”

“Ohhh-kay,” Freeman replied. “I’m going to have a seat if you don’t mind. My wife will kill me if I die.” Nothing from Komarov. He didn’t even crack a smile. He intended to put on his hard ass mask so as not to appear that he was in a position of weakness. Freeman shrugged his shoulders inside. He would oblige given what he was about to request.

“If we could dispense with the pleasantries,” Komarov growled. “I know what you believe we’re here to do. And I will just warn you that Minister Lobanov is prepared to empty Moscow Station if you even attempt to take unfair advantage of what you perceive as our moment of weakness.”

Freeman’s neck warmed under his collar. He loosened his tie from his neck and rolled back his sleeves. Komarov had come to the wrong barnyard to shovel bullshit.

“Sounds like a threat to me. So, I’ll feel free to inform you that the Secretary of State has authorized us to expel two of your people for every one of ours. And that’s only the beginning. Let’s not forget the world is watching your every move. You implanted a bug in the SitRoom after denying to an FBI Assistant Director of Counterintelligence that officers of your intelligence services engaged in any intel activity…after claiming we’re now friends.

“Not to mention the fact that your security services arrested the U.S. Ambassador and the fact that we have hard evidence tying your intelligence services to organized crime and narcotics trafficking. Now, if we let this slip to the press, how do you think the story will play in the court of public opinion? Putin may not give a shit, but you’re on the ground. You have to work and make friends in places he doesn’t have to.”

Komarov let out a long breath and took the seat Freeman originally offered.

Director Freeman continued. “You will you lose your residencies in the United States. And how many of our allies do you think we can persuade to follow our lead?”

Komarov swallowed hard and choked out a gruff, “What do you want?”

Freeman reached into a file on his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper.

“This is a list of people we want you to send home by week’s end,” he began, “if you agree, the State Department will allow you to refill those slots in a year. We’ll put the entirety of the incidents to rest and get on with the important business of ensuring continued relations…however, tenuous they may be at the moment.”

Komarov scanned the list. “Boris Gusin, Yuriy Filchenko, Igor Sonin and Vasiliy Turov. Interesting.”

Freeman’s eyebrow raised. “Igor and Vasiliy were already scheduled to depart. Our surveillance operations suggest Filchenko and Gusin directly supported the SitRoom operation.”

Komarov pinched his lips together and said, “Okay. We will agree to the names on this list…with one exception. We keep Igor Sonin…and send Aleksey Dmitriyev home.”

Freeman held his poker face despite the shock. Expelling Dmitriyev would defeat the entire purpose of the move, but any reaction on Freeman’s part might tip off Komarov, so he rubbed his chin as if he was considering the option and held his real reaction tight to the vest.

“Listen, I don’t care who you select…as long as he’s counterintelligence.”

Komarov stood up and offered a handshake. “Fine. We have an agreement. Now, if you will excuse me, I must return to the Embassy.”

“Glad we could reach a mutual understanding,” Freeman said. “I’m certain both of our governments will be pleased. I’ll expect to see the departures within the week. My secretary will escort you out.”

After Komarov had left, Freeman collapsed into his desk and rubbed his temples. The move intended to remove any danger surrounding J.J.’s source may have resulted in his departure. He hoped Komarov was bluffing…but he’d never bluffed before. Freeman shook his head and fell back into his seat in frustration. His stress level went through the roof, but he didn’t have to worry about his wife killing him…not if J.J. got to him first.

Chapter 54

Friday Morning — New York City

Tony cracked open his eyes and looked at the clock. It was
Seven P.M.
and already dark outside. His head felt like lead bricks, and he sucked his tongue, smacking to remove the cotton mouth. His first thought was J.J. and why he hadn’t heard from her. He picked up his cell phone and looked—five text messages in the past half hour. All from J.J., all unreturned. He was in trouble. As he pulled the sheets back to swing his feet over the edge of the bed, he felt movement on the other side.

He looked over his shoulder hoping it was J.J., praying it was J.J. but knowing inside that it wasn’t. His memory of opening the door and allowing Gia inside came rushing back in the surge of a broken damn. His heart thumped when he saw just how naked she was.

He’d messed up in the worst way.

Although the sheet covered her midriff, her pertly formed, taut breasts and firm dark nipples were shielded only by her long flowing hair. Not an ounce of fat where it shouldn’t be. Any other man would go for broke, slip his hardness inside her, so they could both walk away with an orgasm if not their lives. But at that moment he knew, like no other time—he was in love with J.J. All he wanted from Gia was her absence.

“What the hell?” he said, bolting upright. He held his head as if to keep his brain from exploding. “What happened?”

He scanned the room and noticed that the empty bottles of Jack and Vodka lay empty. “Shit! You gotta get outta here,” he said, shaking her awake. Then he jumped out of bed and dressed at top speed. “I don’t care what happened here. It doesn’t mean anything. I’m in love with J.J.”

Groggy, Gia pulled herself up and covered herself with a sheet as if he’d made her feel more naked than she already was. “Nothing happened,” she said as he scrambled to put his socks and shoes on. “I wanted you…but you passed out.”

Gia’s words were still hanging in the air when the door flung open, and J.J. stormed in. With her mouth gaping open, she shook her head no, her eyes shifting back and forth between a not yet dressed Tony and a half-naked Gia. J.J.’s face crumbled, and Tony witnessed a heartbreaking for the first time in his life. His broke too.

He started toward her, saying, “J.J. it’s not what you—”

She cut him off and growled through clenched teeth. “You lying son of a bitch! Stay the fuck out of my life. I never want to see your face again!” Then she charged down the hall toward her room.

Tony made sure Gia cleared out, and he finished getting dressed. He grabbed his badge and keys, holstered his gun, and slipped into his jacket. J.J. would run, and he had to stop her. Whatever drama they were going through right now, she had enemies out there, people who might still want her dead.

As he opened the door, he saw her fleeing down the hall with one suitcase in hand. She stepped onto the elevator before he could catch her, so he took the stairwell down to the garage level and listened for a car to start. The ex-agent and now Plaza security chief who got them the room rates had also managed to get them premium parking near the valet stand, so she didn’t have far to run. The moment he turned the corner, he saw her taillights glow as she sped up the ramp.

He jumped in his car and followed her, trying to call her on the cell, but it went straight to voicemail; she’d turned off her phone. They sped down West 58th Avenue, blowing through light after light. His heart pounded through his chest as he feared she might be killed in an accident before he ever reached her.

At once, he heard the vroom of a black Range Rover with tinted glass zoom past him at twice his speed at least. It slowed as it reached J.J.’s car, and an arm emerged from the window wielding a gun.

He heard five pops before the truck disappeared, and J.J.’s car careened into a light pole.

“J.J.!” he yelled, screaming in a register he didn’t know he could reach. “Nooooooooo!” he cried out. He couldn’t see through his tears, nor catch his breath. His body went into autopilot as he stopped, jumped out of his car and ran to hers, which was now a mass of mangled steel and broken glass.

Bystanders helped him pull the jammed door open as he caught himself saying over and again. “Please don’t be dead. Don’t you goddamned die on me, J.J.!”

He flung the door open and yelled. “Somebody call an ambulance,” as he eyed her motionless body slumped over the wheel. His stomach jerked as the tears began to flow. Her seatbelt was unsecured. Her head was bloody, and her windshield shattered. He lifted her from the driver’s seat, carried her to safety, and laid her on the ground. He checked her breathing; it was faint. She clung to life by a thread. He examined her body for gunshot wounds—one in the arm another in the thigh.

He wrapped her in his arms and held her limp hand in his as the siren, which sounded from a distance, grew closer. “Stay with me, babe. Don’t you leave me, dammit. Don’t leave me. I can’t lose you…not this way.”

Chapter 55

“
Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.
”
Corrie Ten Boom

Monday Afternoon — New York City

The droning tone of ceaseless beeps snatched J.J. from her slumber. She emerged from her fog and strained to force her eyes open as the sun glared through the picturesque window. At the foot of her bed, her father and brother stood with their mouths dropping open as she struggled to move.

“J.J.?” her father said, tears of joy falling from his eyes. “You’re awake?”

She groaned and blinked through her half-open eyes until the haze cleared from her vision, and her view sharpened. Her eyes scrolled up to the ceiling flinching at the glare from the fluorescent lights then shifted to the television perched on the wall mount in front her bed. Her eyes were sensitive to the light, and her head felt as if her brain had been squeezed in a vise grip. To her right, a blue and white checkered curtain hung between the divider.

“You’ve been in an accident, baby,” her father said, grabbing her hand. “You’re in the hospital. How do you fe—.” He interrupted himself as he turned toward the footsteps approaching the door.

J.J.’s eyebrows scrunched in confusion when Tony burst past the curtain, his eyes wide and expression urgent. He rushed to her side, with heavy breaths. His cracked red eyes divulged his sleeplessness.

He snuggled her other hand against his cheek and pressed her fingers between his. In a loud whisper said, “You’re awake! Those baby browns sure are a sight for my sore eyes. How you feelin’?”

J.J. was baffled beyond comprehension.
Why is Tony here?
she thought.
And why is he touching me?

She tightened her lips, looked at her father and brother with a curious expression, and shifted her glance back to Tony. She pulled her hand from his and touched her head which was bandaged. “Tired. Confused,” she said, attempting to sit up straight. “Where am I? What happened?”

Tony’s eyes searched until they locked on the remote control for the bed; he handed it to her.

She pressed the button, and the head of the bed moved upright. Then she inspected the bandages on her arm and felt another tight one around her thigh. “Wha— I don’t understand what’s going on. How’d I get here?”

“You don’t remember anything?” Tony asked.

J.J. stared off into the distance and sunk into her thoughts, searching her mind for any memory of what happened. The only thing she remembered would have landed her in church, perhaps, not the hospital. He reached up to touch her head; she pulled back.

“You were in an accident,” Malcolm said. “Three days ago.”

“Three days?” J.J. said, checking her wrist for her watch. Instead, she found the hospital bracelet with her name spelled across it. “Oh my God, was anybody hurt? Was it my fault?”

“Just you,” her father said. “And a light pole. You were shot…in your arm and thigh. Flesh wounds. You’ll be okay.”

“Shot? Me? My god…what? I don’t understand.”

“No, see—,” Tony began when the doctor interrupted him.

A white-coated gentleman strode in with a stethoscope dangling from his neck. "Ahhh, I see our patient's awake," he said as he scanned her chart.

Everyone eyed the doctor with awkward expressions.

He scanned each machine wired to J.J. and asked everyone to move aside so he could check her vitals. He pulled a skinny flashlight from his front pocket and shined it in both eyes; they watered from the glare.

J.J. examined his expression, looking for good news or bad, but she couldn’t discern which.

“You took quite a blow to the head, young lady. How are you feeling?”

“Ugh, I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve got a killer headache. My back is killing me. Every muscle in my body aches like someone pulled them out of a blender.”

The doctor looked around the room. “You had a pretty nasty accident. Your seatbelt wasn’t secured, so you’ve sustained some pretty significant trauma to your head and chest.”

“She suffered some memory loss…at least about what happened,” Max McCall said.

The doctor slowly unloaded a barrage of questions, asking J.J. her name, birthdate, address, age, etc. She considered each one and answered those involving her past with accuracy. Still something was missing.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m an FBI agent,” she said.

“Do you know the gentlemen standing in this room?” he asked.

She nodded, yes. “That’s my father, Max McCall and my brother Malcolm.”

“And?”

“Oh, That’s—,” she started, as a tall, hunk of chocolate entered the room bringing a bright smile to her face. “Six! Baby, I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, her voice full of joy. A far cry from the flat greeting she gave Tony. She reached out her arms to receive him, stoking Tony’s ire. His expression soured. “Did you hear? I’ve been in an accident.”

“I know,” Six replied. He looked at her in complete and utter confusion, shrugging at Tony. But he returned her smile and entered her welcoming arms. “Uhhh, that’s why I’m here.”

Tony jumped to her side. “What’s going on? I mean, I’m sorry about what happened, but—for chrissakes, J.J. You can’t do this.”

She shook her head. “What are you talking about, Tony? I don’t understand,” she said, increasing in agitation. “In my last memory…I was with Six. I’m not…why are you here?”

Moments later, a beautiful Italian-looking woman poked her head in the door. “Tony? Is everything okay?”

J.J.’s eyebrow crinkled in even more confusion. She volleyed her glance between Tony and the woman. “Wow, she’s pretty. Don’t I feel inadequate. This must be your girlfriend, Tony. Introduce us.”

“You...you don't remember her? She's on the task force,” he said. “Uhh…Gia, this is J.J. But Gia’s
not
my girlfriend. We only work together.”

Gia scrunched her eyebrows. “Pleasure…to, uhh…meet you?”

J.J. started to offer her hand when an itching sensation shot through her fingers. Her eyes began to water. “What task force?”

She turned toward the doctor who appeared to be alarmed but blew off his expression; it was the itching that bothered her most. She didn’t know what brought it on all of a sudden. “Please, come in, Gia. Nice to meet you. I apologize but I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on here.”

“Uhhh, I’m just going to wait outside. Glad to see you’re okay,” Gia said.

A crawling sensation started from J.J.’s fingertips and up through her arms. She dug her fingernails into her skin and began to scratch until whelps rose like swelled track lines across her arm.

“God, my skin is itching me like crazy, doc,” she said. “Do you think I could get some lotion… calamine lotion?”

“Uhhh, J.J. I think we need to—,” Tony began.

“Oh. Forgive my manners. Six, have you met Tony?” J.J. asked. “Tony and I have been working together for a couple of months.”

J.J. glanced down at her finger and scanned the room. "Umm, where’s my purse? I need my engagement ring. I didn’t lose it in the accident, did I?"

A collective “Huh?” emanated from every mouth in the room.

“I didn’t tell you guys?” J.J. said, beaming from ear to ear. “Six proposed to me, and I said yes,” she squealed. “I’m getting married!"