The Perfect Candidate: A Lance Priest / Preacher Thriller (No. 1) (14 page)

This operation took only 17 days, instead of 11 weeks.

Marta pulled the trigger of her Glock and the man’s right foot exploded. He collapsed to the ground screaming and moaning. Still trying to catch his breath.

She and Nir, her closest confidant in this new life as a rogue KGB operative, had chased the man across a bridge, through four apartment buildings and into this alcove next to the Sava River in Belgrade. It was 3:14 a.m. Their chase lasted a half hour and covered some very picturesque properties. But none of them had stopped to take in the beauty.

His name was Jordan Ostrovic and he had run from Marta because she knew what he’d done. He’d sold Soviet secrets to the west. Ostrovic knew his jig was up the instant Marta, instead of his contact, showed up at the designated location. He didn’t know, couldn’t know because it had just happened, his contact would never meet anyone ever again. His head now had a couple of extra holes.

Upon seeing her, Ostrovic took off into the dark. Marta and Nir expected this and had worked out their plan to split up in advance. Marta tracked Jordan from the west side of Branko’s Bridge south along the banks of the Sava. Nir took a route up above them on the street to cut off the KGB double agent.

A Belgrade native, Ostrovic knew his way along the trail and into a series of low buildings nearby. He crossed a dimly lit street just ahead of Nir with Marta trailing. She motioned for Nir to stay to the right as they approached an intersection. She veered left to stay with Ostrovic. The KGB mole turned a corner 50 feet ahead of Marta. She could see him slow too much for the turn so she took a wide berth that brought her into the middle of the street as she reached a point where she could see around the corner. She dove to the pavement and rolled just as he fired four shots at her. Still rolling, she returned fire. With neither of their guns silenced, the quiet calm of the early morning was shattered.

Ostrovic was up and running a second later. She took off after him. His route took him into an apartment commons with four buildings stacked next to each other in the finest 1960s Soviet architectural style. Ostrovic ran into one and considered hitting the stairs, but Nir entered from another direction forcing him back out into the night. Marta came upon him then and was taking aim when he fired three shots at her, barely missing. He was a good, capable agent, at least in a firefight.

He took advantage of her dive behind a short wall to turn back into the darkness near the river. Nir was now closest to him as they left streetlights behind. Nir hung back on purpose. Ostrovic had already proven his ability to fire his weapon. Nir wondered whether the KGB turncoat had a spare clip with him or if he was down to just a few bullets?

Marta gambled that Ostrovic would turn south again when he reached the river so she broke off in that direction which put Nir and the man he was chasing hundreds of yards away. She was nearing the riverbank when she heard three more shots fired. They weren’t far away, maybe 150 yards to the north. She turned in that direction and took a few steps before plastering herself to a wall, blending her dark coat and pants with the shadow.

In the darkness, her mind wandered for a few moments. She thought about love for some reason. At 26, Marta still had her virginity intact. Not because she despised the act or even the thought of sex, no, she had refused to give anyone, any man, a semblance of power over her life.

She enjoyed the company of men and certainly thought she would have found a good partner to share her love with by now, but had been disappointed every single time she laid down her rules to those she was close to accepting.

Every time, every single time, she had gotten the same response. The look of fear in their eyes was unmistakable and all too predictable as she let them know any betrayal afterward would be met, not merely with death, but slow, painful agony followed by slow but certain loss of life. The first time she asked this of a man was at the age of 17 while at school in a Moscow suburb. The 19-year-old boy didn’t even try to hide his fear. He ran from the room and let it be known throughout the university that Marta was unhinged, dangerous even. She had embraced this reputation and found the respite from boys’ advances quite peaceful. It wasn’t long afterward that she earned the same reputation from the girls at the school after setting one of them straight on her relational needs. She had let the girl kiss her and then taken a small bite of the young lesbian’s ear along with a stud earring for payment.

Her values had not changed over the years. Love was something she had yet to experience. In its place she had drive, persistence, creativity. She believed she had done so well in her profession precisely because she did not have the encumbrances of relationships weighing her down. What she lacked in love and empathy she made up for in ingenuity.

Her gamble paid off. Ostrovic came running toward her on the path beside the river. She could easily put a bullet in his head as he ran under a lone streetlight. But she needed him alive, at least for a few minutes. When he was within a few paces, Marta stepped out while crouching and simply stuck her leg into his path. He tripped over her and hit the ground hard. Before he could recover, she was on him kicking him viciously in the gut and putting her boot onto his neck with gun aimed at his head. She could see him think about pointing his gun up at her, but she would surely drill him with a bullet clean through his forehead before he could get his gun in position.

“Drop it.” She said it in Russian, knowing full well this Serbian spoke the language. He complied. A few moments later, Nir rolled up on them. For good measure, he kicked Ostrovic in the mouth, obviously not happy about being shot at earlier.

Nir grabbed the double agent’s gun and pointed it at him as Ostrovic got to his feet holding a hand over his bleeding mouth. He struggled to pull oxygen into his lungs.

“Where is it?” Marta didn’t go into details with her question.

Between breaths, Ostrovic replied, “I threw it in the river back on the bridge when I saw you.”

She laughed at him. “So funny. You just threw away your only bargaining chip. Not likely Jordan.”

“I did. I tossed it in the water.”

“You’re wasting our time. Do you just want me to shoot you and get this over with?” Marta stepped closer, the gun just a foot away from the man’s face.

“No, wait. Please, I have children.” Ostrovic went all soft, like most men do.

“You should have thought of them before you passed secrets to the French and long before you started dealing with the Americans. You sentenced your offspring to a life without a father, at least until your beautiful widow marries another man to provide for her children and warm her bed.” Marta was cruel and direct as usual. She had never met Ostrovic before tonight, but had done her research on his personal, as well as professional life.

“No please, I have it.” He pleaded.

“Then hand it over. I may find some mercy for you if you don’t waste all my patience.” She replied.

He reached into a pocket. Nir stepped forward and jammed his gun into Ostrovic’s side. He pulled out an envelope and held it out to Marta. She let Nir reach for it. Nir stepped back and opened the envelope while Marta kept her eyes locked on Ostrovic. The mole looked from her to Nir and back.

“It is the disk and three photos of the schematics.” Nir spoke, also in his native Russian.

“Excellent.” Marta smiled and lowered her weapon to take aim at Ostrovic’s foot. The shot rang out across the Sava River. As Ostrovic knelt and wrapped his bloody hands around his shoe, Marta leaned down over him. “It would be so easy to finish you right now. You are disgusting, a rat. But I’m not going to.”

Ostrovic heard the words and became silent. He did not expect this. Did not expect mercy.

“Yes Jordan, you get to go home to your kids and beautiful wife. You get to wake up in the morning and thank your God that you are alive. But you will also know when the morning sun lights your house that you are now a slave. You are property, my property.” The words cut him.

“Okay, anything.” He actually smiled through the pain.

“Don’t start begging yet,” Marta bent down on a knee. She was not doing this for mercy’s sake. She had no benevolence in her DNA. The former KGB agent was letting this individual live so he could serve her, help her. Nothing more. “You work for me now. Your life is mine and you may wish for death before long. You will continue to deal your secrets to the West. You will simply provide copies of everything to me. In turn, you will be given the opportunity to live a long and tortured life always looking over your shoulder, wondering when death will save you.”

Her harsh words were delivered in such a pleasant tone that Ostrovic was mesmerized. Nir stood a few feet away. He smiled at her impeccable performance. She was a master at molding the human psyche. “You will work through others we send to you. You will never see me again while you are alive. If you ever see my face again, it will be the last image you witness before you open your eyes and feel the flames of hell flicking your skin.”

She stood, turned and walked away. Ostrovic was about to call out and thank her when Nir kicked him in the temple. He was out cold. The Russian reached in to take Ostrovic’s wallet to make it easier to tell the police and his wife that he was mugged. Explaining why he was down here beside the river at 3 in the morning was his problem.

1,057 miles to the east and north, Smelinski waited. Like his American counterpart Seibel, he had an array of resources in the field feeding him information. Those tasked with monitoring Marta and her activities did so under the auspices of keeping tabs on former KGB agents who were soon to be eliminated. Smelinski let it be widely circulated that anyone who stepped too far out of line after leaving the agency would be made to suffer.

Some of his underlings had begun to talk under their breath, but always out of his earshot. Maybe, just maybe, the old man was beginning to lose his iron grip. If he let Marta and her growing band of misfits run wild through Europe, how much control did the old man truly have?

He liked that people were talking. It provided additional cover and obfuscation for his secret. Marta was indeed overstepping boundaries, but she was also tying up loose ends with every assignment.

Marta was closing networks and eliminating unsanctioned operations without anyone suspecting it was all being done under his direction. She did it with such flourish, such chaos, such flare for the dramatic, that it could not possibly be coordinated.

This early morning, Smelinski waited to hear if she was successful in shutting down a leak that fed both organized crime and the West far too much top-secret information. The fact that she could eliminate problems like this under the guise of taking them over for her own profit was truly genius. Gregor the Terrible anxiously awaited word from Belgrade.