Marked Man II - 02 (23 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Detective Bollier missed the funeral. She had never gotten on with Shannon’s family, who disapproved of their shared lifestyle. Facing them would have meant making a wretched scene at the grave. There was nothing Bollier despised more than people who thought their morals superior to her own. For that reason and because she could not bear to see Shannon still and pale she did not attend.

Instead Bollier drank herself into an oblivion for eight consecutive days. At the end of the bender, when she could no longer pull herself together for another run to the liquor store, Bollier waved the white flag.

She checked herself into a rehab clinic on Long Island. One of the best in the state, according to the police union rep she’d asked.

Agent Clemons and Jordan Ross came to visit a month after she was admitted. They found Bollier alone in her room, wearing a white gown as she stared out at the clinic’s grounds. Yellows and browns and reds were beginning to make their way into the leaves. A few at a time they fell from the branches.

The window was open and a brisk wind was billowing in. Bollier did not say a word to them except when Jordan made a move to close it.

“No.”

Jordan nodded and backed away from the window. Agent Clemons was on his knees, holding onto her hand. He begged her to say something. She refused. After trying for the better part of an hour Agent Clemons finally gave up. Bollier had shut herself away, closed off from the pain. Their time was almost up when Clemons told her what had transpired.

Anton Askokov was dead. Luka Gusin was dead. Josef Dhokorin was dead. Shirokov, through some miracle had escaped at the airport and could be anywhere. The bureau was working on tracking him but they were not confident, if he had any brains at all Shiorkov would never surface again.

None of this news brought any change in Bollier’s expression. She just stared at the changing of the leaves. Like this was the only phenomenon left in the world that she cared to observe.

“Alright. Well I’ll be checking in again. I’m off suspension. I finally bit the bullet and went to work in counter terrorism. But once you’re back on your feet look me up. If you ever need intel or someone to talk too.”

Agent Clemons waited, hoping Bollier would say something. When she did not he finished up.

“For now Jordan will be unavailable. He’s going underground. Until we can say for sure where the leaks were coming from it’s safer if we don’t have any contact with him. If something comes up he’ll get in touch with me, or, if you’re feeling up for it, when you get back to work I mean, he’ll reach out to you. Okay?”

A nurse working at the clinic came by to tell them the hour was over. She stayed in the doorway, waiting for them to leave.

“Guess we have to go now. You take care of yourself, alright? We love you Les.”

Although her expression did not change and she did not speak a word, Agent Clemons felt Bollier squeeze his hand.

…

In Cold Blood did not disappoint. Shirokov read it all the way through until the Cessna pilot dropped him at a small airfield outside of Havana. There, Shirokov boarded a larger plane there bound for a layover in Hamburg, then it was a straight shot to Saint Petersburg. He was so engrossed in the book that he stayed awake the whole flight and forgot to use the washroom. By the time he touched down in Germany it was an epic bathroom emergency. Shirokov left the men’s room feeling like lighter than a feather. While he was waiting to board the connecting flight he finished the book.

“Marvelous,” Shirokov exclaimed as he snapped the back cover shut.

It took some time for Shirokov to think about it, but when his mind was made up he decided that it was the best book that he’d ever read. Shirokov’s good luck was uncanny.

The plane landed without incident at Pulkovo. Shirokov waited in line with the other passengers for his bag. When it came around the baggage carousel, Shirokov picked it up and turned around to receive a shock.

A tall man in a long blue navy coat and sunglasses was holding a sign that read his name in his native tongue. Shirokov looked left and then looked right. He wondered. No. His name was very common in Russia, it had to be another passenger that the tall stranger with the sign was waiting for. It had to be.

Shirokov tried to walk the long way around him towards the doors but the man started calling his name.

“Vladimir. It is me. It is Oleg. Vladimir? Where are you going?”

He made a break for the doors. Outside it was raining. He slipped on the sidewalk, then got up and started to run but two men caught him by the elbows.

“Let go of me. Do you not know who I am? Let go!”

Shirokov wrestled with the men but they were by far larger and more powerful physical specimens. A long black limousine with tinted windows rolled to a stop at the bubbling curb and the back seat opened. With a rough shove, they forced him inside.

The interior of the limousine was dark and it smelled foul. Like something chemical gone bad. Shirokov heard the voice.

“I have flight to LaGuardia to catch so I will be brief.”

So it was not a trick of the phone after all. Shirokov had never laid eyes on the man before, and he was struck by how pedestrian he looked. He had a smoothly shaven head, no facial hair, and cool blue eyes like Putin’s. At his neck was a machine, the kind that former smokers use once their lungs and throat have been burned away and they can no longer talk of their own power.

Another man was in the limo with them but he remained back in the shadows. He appeared to have a slim build, and Shirokov guessed that this was the source of the noxious odor.

The man with the mechanical voice was speaking again.

“You told me you would wait. Everything was proceeding according to plan. And yet you defied me. You got poor Leonid and Ruslan and Yakov killed.”

Shirokov tried to say something in his defense. He tried to say anything at all but the words caught in his throat.

“I asked you if you were aware what happens to them that disobey me. Do you recall this?”

“I. I. I.”

The best that Shirokov could do was bow his head in supplication and nod. He missed painting in the studio of his gothic mansion. He missed Winston’s wry wit.

“You defied me Vladimir. This makes me very sad.”

With a flick of his gloved fingers the man with the voice machine gestured to the shadow sitting beside him. The figure moved forward into the light and Shirokov let out an involuntary shudder. One half of the face belonged to a beautiful youth, a boy with bright inquisitive green eyes and spiked golden blonde hair. But on the other side the flesh starting at the lips had rotted all the way back to the jawbone. His guess was right; the boy’s decaying flesh was the fountainhead of the stink.

He had a gun pointed at Shirokov. The make and model appeared to be a Hauser; an ancient weapon most commonly used in the First World War

A second before the darkness came Shirokov thought that the boy might have smiled, but owing to the deformity he could not say for sure.

From the Author

Thank you for reading my book “Marked Man
II”. Please leave a review
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and let me know what you thought about the book.

OTHER BOOKS BY JARED PAUL

Marked Man

Marked Man II

Marked Man III

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Copyrighted Material

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons is coincidental.

Copyright © 2014
by JacobsIM LLC

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