I Minus 72 (28 page)

The man hesitated for a minute, looked at
Garcia, then at Thurmond, then shouted in Russian to someone down
the hall. A man came out from one of the rooms and joined the first
one. He was just as big as, maybe bigger, than the first guy. The
body odor was almost overwhelming.

“Stay here,” the first man said to Thurmond
and Garcia. The second man then crossed his arms and blocked their
path as the first man went down the hallway.

This is going to be easier than I figured,
thought Thurmond. Maybe too easy. He looked at Garcia and nodded
slightly. They both put their hands into their coat pockets.

After about a minute, the first man came
back and motioned for Thurmond and Garcia to follow him. The second
man followed them down the hall. With the first guy in front and
the second guy in back, they were sandwiched in . . . not a good
place to be if something went down. Thurmond was sure both men were
armed to the hilt, but, so far, no guns were showing.

They went quite a ways down the hall before
the first man stood aside and motioned them into a large room. They
entered and saw a man with long, dark straggly hair sitting behind
an old metal desk. There was only one small window high up on the
left wall which was so grimy it let in little light. The semi-dark
room was filled with boxes and the only place to sit was occupied
by the guy behind the desk. Once Thurmond and Garcia were inside,
the original two men were joined by two others standing by the
door.

Five to one odds weren’t great, but it could
be worse, thought Garcia. Thurmond was having similar thoughts. As
he looked around, he saw that they were in a room with only one
exit. And that exit was guarded by four thugs. If this thing went
south, they were going to have to go through a lot of muscle to
escape. Both Thurmond and Garcia kept their right hands inside
their coat pockets.

As their eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness
inside the room, they could see that the man at the desk had an
AK47 fully automatic rifle lying on the desk in front of him. They
were one hundred percent certain it was loaded and that he wouldn’t
hesitate to use it if he felt threatened. It was going to take all
their negotiating skills to get out of here alive.

Since the guy was just sitting there staring
at them, Thurmond said, “We need information about one of your
customers.”

“You have US dollars?” the man asked.

“Yes.”

“Show me.”

“Answer some questions first,” Thurmond
said.

“No. I see my money first,” the man shot
back.

Thurmond nodded to Garcia who brought his
left hand out of his coat pocket holding the cash.

“Give it to me,” the man said, reaching
across the desk.

Garcia pulled his hand holding the money
back. “Not so fast. Are you Kozlov?”

“Yes. Now give me my money.”

“I need to know you have information worth
paying for before I give you the money.” Thurmond said.

“Or, I will just shoot you and take the
money,” The man said, smiling and showing yellow teeth. As he was
talking, he reached his right hand up and rested it on the
automatic rifle.

Thurmond said with a shrug, “Then this will
be all you get. Cooperate with us and there’ll be more. Consider
this just the down payment.” Thurmond nodded to Garcia who threw
the banded stack of bills onto the desk.

Kozlov grabbed the bundle, leaned back in
his chair and made a show of slowly flipping the bills with his
finger. After about a minute, without looking up he said, “What do
you want to know?”

“You were hired to kill a man and a woman
two days ago on the way into Moscow from the airport. The attempt
failed. You then tried to kidnap the woman, but that also failed.
We captured one of your men alive and he told us you were the boss
and he just followed orders. He had no knowledge of who hired you.”
Thurmond explained and then asked, “The man who hired you, what was
his name and how do you contact him?”

The man opened a desk drawer and put the
money into it before answering.

“This will be a short meeting. First of all,
I did not try to kidnap anyone. Secondly, I cannot give you his
name and I cannot contact him. He contacts me. End of story. Now
get out of here, I am losing patience with this game.”

“You haven’t answered any of our questions.
You haven’t earned any of the money. If you don’t give us the
information, we’ll take our money back,” Thurmond said forcefully,
putting his finger on the trigger of the gun in his pocket.

In the instant it took for the man to lean
forward and pick up the rifle, both Thurmond and Garcia had their
guns out and opened fire—Thurmond first took out the guy behind the
desk and then spun around to help Garcia with the four guys at the
door. The goons were down in less than four seconds. It happened so
fast, none of them had even drawn their guns. Garcia reached around
behind the desk and retrieved the money and as they fled towards
the door, they could hear shouting and feet running on the wood
flooring. It sounded like at least a dozen men were closing in on
their location in the office. At that moment, the door jamb was
splintered by automatic weapon fire. Thurmond looked around the
doorway to see several men down the hall.

The one with the automatic weapon was
kneeling in the center of the hallway. Thurmond took him out with
two shots, one to the throat and one to the chest. Garcia joined
him at the doorway, kneeling and shooting next to Thurmond who was
standing, the standard high-low position they had both been trained
for. The thugs weren’t very smart fighters. One by one they came
into the hallway to try to get a clear shot, and one by one,
Thurmond and Garcia took them down. Finally there was silence. The
hallway was choked with smoke and the smell of cordite was a
visible haze in the air. They had each gone through three
thirteen-round magazines. They quickly left the room and were out
the front door in a few seconds without any further gunfire. As
they ran down the street, a car screeched to a stop at the curb.
They saw one of the CIA backup team at the wheel so they jumped in
and the car immediately shot forward taking them out of harm’s
way.

“Just like old times, heh?” Garcia chuckled
as they sped away.

“Yeah, the bad old times,” Thurmond
responded. “But, we still don’t have a clue who this Vladimir
is.”

“Well, at least I don’t have to explain
where the money went. I’ll just return it to the station chief.”
Garcia actually sounded cheery.

I minus 18

“What now, coach?” Sam asked. They were back
in the safe house having an early breakfast of toast, eggs and
coffee.

“Damned if I know. Seems to be standard
answer number one these days,” Grant responded, taking a big bite
of toast.

Sam put down her fork and turned to face
Grant. “Grant, yesterday was pretty scary for me. I could picture
you not coming back. It wasn’t good and I barely slept last night.
Kept having nightmares. There would be a big hole in my life if
something happened to you,” she said.

“Sam, you know I’ve grown very close to you,
but I can’t talk about that right now. It’s dangerous for us to be
distracted. When I think about you I can’t seem to concentrate on
anything else. And I need to focus all my attention on this
problem. Can we put this conversation on the back burner for the
next couple of weeks, just till this is over?” Grant replied
earnestly.

“Of course we can—if you promise to bring it
up again later.” Sam smiled.

“I promise.” And with that, Grant reached
over and pulled Sam close. They held each other for several
minutes. “I’ll look forward to it,” he finally whispered, his lips
close to her ear.

They spent the next several hours talking
about what they knew about Vladimir and complaining about how much
they didn’t know.

At around 10:30, Garcia showed up and they
ran through everything one more time, hoping he’d pick up on
something. When they concluded, Garcia said, “I’m sorry, Thurmond,
but I just don’t see anything to go on. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll
try to get one of our friendlies in Russian intel to do some
checking. Maybe he can find something in the files to point us
somewhere. It’s a long shot, but it’s all we got.”

“Is he SVR?” Thurmond said, using the
abbreviation for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.

“Yeah.”

“Thanks,” Thurmond replied. “We can only
hang around for another couple of days or so. Can you get right on
it and urge your informant to hurry?”

Garcia shrugged. “I’ll do what I can. I have
to go through the station chief—it’s not my informant. I’ll tell
him it’s a priority. My boss’ll back me up if needed.”

With nothing to do until they heard back
from the CIA informant, Grant and Sam spent time at the central
library pouring through the Moscow and the many surrounding suburb
and town telephone directories looking for the only name they had
connected with Vladimir: Sergey Baskov. They weren’t even sure he
was their guy. It turned out that it was a popular name, with
hundreds of entries. They copied the information for all of them,
but knew there was no chance they could follow up with that many.
It was a frustrating drill and they emerged each day with cramped
hands from writing so much.

During this period, Grant tried several
times to reach Garcia, but he didn’t answer his phone. The Cultural
Attaché said he hadn’t seen him for a couple of days and had no
idea where he was. Grant thought that was odd, but there was
nothing he could do about it—Garcia didn’t report to him.

Finally, after three days, Garcia called
Thurmond.

“Thurmond, it’s Garcia.”

“Where’ve you been, man? Did your guy find
out anything?” Grant asked, frustrated.

“Been busy on other matters. The guys
couldn’t find a single mention of anyone code-named Vladimir, nor
any more than you already have on Baskov. The address they found
was the same fictional one that you had. But they did confirm that
Baskov was on their payroll for many years. He’s got to be your
guy.”

“Did he tell you if this Baskov was still on
their payroll?” Grant asked.

“He said, no, that they had cut him off
several years ago and, as far as he knew, the guy just disappeared.
He also said that if they found him he was facing some sort of
internal indictment. He didn’t know or, at least wouldn’t tell me,
any details.”

“Well, it’s good to get that confirmed, but
it doesn’t really help us. Sam and I’ve been copying down the
addresses of everyone in all the phonebooks we could find named
Sergey Baskov. There are hundreds,” Grant said.

“Too many to run down. It would take us
months to interview all of them. At some point, one of them would
call the police who would then start checking us out. That wouldn’t
be a good thing,” Garcia replied.

Grant made his decision. “Well, I’m not
going to sit around Moscow wasting any more time. Sam and I are
heading back to the States tomorrow. I’ll go to the Embassy later
this afternoon and update General Wheeler on the secure phone.
Shit. We’ve only about two weeks to solve this and we’re nowhere.”
And the DNI’s gonna be pissed, Grant thought.

“You guys go ahead back; I’m going to hang
around here for another day or so finishing up some other business.
See ya.” With that, Garcia hung up and headed out for his meeting.
Have to make sure I’m not followed, he thought, looking around.

Grant turned to Sam and said, “I’m going to
head to the Embassy to call General Wheeler on the secure phone.
Want to come along?”

She looked up from the paper she’d been
studying. “No, don’t think so. I’ll stay here and make our
reservations home. Any preferences?”

“Nope. But, if possible, just get us back by
tomorrow night. Oh yes I do have a preference. Book us in Business
Class,” he said heading towards the door.

“You got it. See you later,” Sam replied as
Grant walked out the door.

I minus 15

“General Wheeler, please. This is Colonel
Thurmond.” It sounded strange for Grant to say his rank again after
all this time. Not bad, just strange.

“I’m sorry; the General is on leave this
week. He’ll be back Monday,” the voice said on the other end of the
secure line. “Would you like to leave a message or call back
then?”

“I’ll call back, thanks,” Grant replied.
Wheeler on leave? He never went on leave.

He decided to call the DNI directly. Time
was running out and he’d better let him know about his lack of
success in Moscow. He dialed his direct number.

When Barry answered, Grant said, “Sir, this
is Colonel Thurmond. Just wanted to update you on where we are.”
Grant gave the DNI, who was in his car on his way to an early
morning meeting, a thorough analysis of the situation. “And, sir,
we just don’t have any further leads,” he concluded
apologetically.

Barry sighed audibly. “What’s your next
move?” the DNI asked.

“Well, right now we’re planning to return to
Washington tomorrow. Widen the search. At some point we know he’s
gonna to be there. My guess is he’ll have to get there soon in
order to get everything planned. We don’t even know what he’s gonna
to do or where he’s gonna to do it. We only have a date. I know
we’re concentrating on the inauguration ceremony, but it could be
any time during that day. The President’s whereabouts are usually
pretty widely known, aren’t they?”

“Inauguration day is long for the
President-elect. He starts early and ends late. He’s in a dozen
locations where he might be vulnerable. Get back here as soon as
you can. I want you to lead a coordinated task force to try to stop
this maniac. I’ll alert CIA, DIA, NSA, the FBI and the Secret
Service that you’ll be contacting them for support. I want every
agency involved with all of them supplying you team members.” The
DNI was emphatic.