Puppet Master Page 35

  “Where are you from, comrade?” The tone was suddenly suspicious.

  “Kiev,” Tolevi said proudly. “We got out after the traitors took over. My brother is still there, in jail. Since then, Donetsk. But someday, I will be back. Someday.”

  The man nodded. He leaned to his left, glancing around the trunk—it was empty—then waved Tolevi away.

  “Go. Good luck with your task. She looks pretty, at least. Maybe you will get lucky later.”

  95

  The box—Boston, a short time later

  “ISIS is taking credit for the attack on the Russian ship,” Johansen told Massina. He’d just sent the order. “A bit of misdirection.”

  “Will the Russians believe it?”

  “Probably just enough to prevent them from looking too thoroughly for our friends,” said the CIA officer. “In the meantime, we’ll continue looking for the butcher. They can’t have taken him far.”

  “They could have flown him back to Russia,” said Massina. “What then?”

  “I can’t rule it out,” admitted Johansen. “If that’s what happened, then we pull the plug. We get everyone across the border to Kiev, as planned, and they come home. I doubt that’s the story, though. More than likely he is in Donetsk somewhere. Just a question of finding him. These sorts of things are to be expected. They happen. No covert operation ever goes the way you plan. It’s not a computer program.”

  “Those don’t always go the way you plan either,” said Massina. “How long do we wait?”

  “A few days. There’s no rush that we know of.”

  “The fact that they moved the prisoner doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  “There’s nothing we can do about it at this point. We just keep plugging away. Don’t worry, Dan’s one of the best.”

  “And Tolevi?”

  “He’s very good at what he does,” allowed Johansen. “As long as his own agenda isn’t in conflict with ours, things should go well.”

  96

  South of Donetsk—twelve hours later

  Tolevi sat in a small café and sipped his coffee. This was the worst cup yet.

  You can make a fortune here! And you don’t even have to smuggle it in. Import from Indonesia through Brunei, roast it in one of those empty warehouses down in Berdyans’k.

  Cha-ching, cha-ching. Let the cash registers flow.

  The bell at the door rang, nearly in time with Tolevi’s mental notes. He looked up and saw Dan entering with the butcher’s brother. Both looked glum.

  They glanced around the place for a moment, then came over to the table and sat.

  “So?” asked Tolevi.

  The butcher’s brother shook his head. “They don’t know.”

  “We have to check the main municipal prison in the city,” Dan said. “They reopened it last month. It’s the logical place.”

  “How do we do that?” asked Tolevi.

  “I have friends,” said the brother. “I’ll know by the end of the week.”

  “That’s too long,” said Tolevi. “We’re taking too much risk as it is.”

  “It can’t go any faster.”

  Tolevi glanced up at the waitress, who was coming over with menus. Dan waved her off, but the brother ordered ryba, fried fish.

  “How do we speed it up?” Tolevi asked.

  “Any other way is going to be too risky,” said Dan, shaking his head. “This guy isn’t worth it.”

  “If he’s not worth it, then why are we here?” Tolevi answered.

  He glanced at the brother. He was grimacing.

  “I’m not saying we don’t get him out.” Dan backtracked. “I’m just saying we take our time. We have to get him out in one piece. If we rush, they’ll kill him.”

  “And if we wait here too long, we get killed.”

  Tolevi thought about Dan’s reaction as he drove back to the house where Chelsea and Bozzone were holed up. Dan had marked out the boundaries of the risks he was willing to take and trusted the brother more than Tolevi thought warranted. Risk assessment was a matter of perspective: Dan spent a lot of time in the country and could easily fit in, so he didn’t see waiting around as dangerous. Whereas Tolevi, who knew that the people he was with stood out like sore thumbs, saw far more danger in waiting.

  Whose perspective was right?

  Mine.

  The whole mission was risky. That’s why they were willing to pay so much.

  Too much?

  The CIA had put an awful lot of energy into getting a rebel out of jail. Maybe he did have information on the Russian “volunteers,” but so what? Everybody in the world knew that the Russians were running things; why go to such lengths to prove it?

  Of the five CIA officers who’d come with them, four were paramilitary people, covert agents trained in special operations. From what Tolevi gathered of their backgrounds, all but one were military, the one SEAL and two Rangers. The fourth spoke Russian as well as he did.

  White was older than the others, by ten years. He hadn’t shared his background with Tolevi—he was way too gruff for that—but it was obvious from the way he carried himself that he was used to being in charge, and Johansen had been noticeably respectful. So figure him for a very senior guy.

  It really doesn’t matter, does it? Just figure out where the hell he is . . .

  Damn!

  “I know where he is,” said Tolevi out loud. He reached for the GPS and zoomed out the map to get his bearings.

  The house Chelsea and Bozzone were staying in was an old farmhouse, abandoned for some time. The floors were covered with dust. The few pieces of furniture in the front room—a pair of wooden kitchen tables and three chairs, one of them broken—were well worn and looked as if they dated from the early twentieth century. The mattresses upstairs were new, but they were the exceptions. There was no electricity, and the toilets had to be flushed with water from the jugs stacked along the walls.

  Bored, Chelsea reached into her bag and pulled out the paperback of Sudoku puzzles, flipping to the back section where the hardest puzzles were. She’d done most of them on the plane, saving the last two.

  They weren’t math problems per se, though there were mathematical equations you could use to describe the puzzle and its possible solutions:

  “Still doing your puzzles?” asked Bozzone.

  “I’d love to take a walk.”

  “Too dangerous. We don’t want to be seen.”

  “The nearest house is a mile away. No one can see us from the road.”

  “Didn’t you have enough excitement on the water?”

  “I sure puked enough.” Chelsea went back to the puzzle.

  Tolevi recognized the road even before he saw the Russian military vehicle parked along the side.

  There was no question of going inside—the Russian colonel would surely imprison him. But it was the most logical place for them to have brought the butcher.

  The question was how to find out if he was there.

  Has to be there. The brother would know if he was anywhere else.

  Two Russian commandos were standing by the truck. Tolevi drove past, eyes on the road.

  Has to be there, he thought. Now, how do I prove it?

  97

  Outside Boston—around the same time

  Jenkins took a deep breath, then pushed into the jail’s interrogation room. Stratowich sat at the table, stoically erect and staring straight ahead. The room was bare, except for the table, two chairs, and a pair of surveillance cameras in each corner.

  “You have a shiner,” said Jenkins, sitting across from him. “I heard you were in a fight.”

  Stratowich didn’t acknowledge him.

  “There’s some pretty serious charges against you,” said Jenkins. “Attempted murder. Kidnapping.”

  “I didn’t kidnap anyone.”

  “I guess the court will decide that.” Jenkins reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a bag of M&Ms. He tossed it across the table. “I heard you had a sweet tooth.”r />
  Stratowich continued staring straight ahead.

  “Your friends haven’t lifted a finger to help you,” said Jenkins. “They want you to take the rap for everything.”

  No answer.

  “You know they were Russian agents, right? Spies. Working with them makes you a traitor. You’re an American citizen. How does it feel to betray your country?”

  Nothing.

  “The thugs you were with, they’re talking a lot,” continued Jenkins. “Now, it would seem to me, well, you could be in a position to help yourself. And your family. You have two kids, don’t you? You’d probably like to see them at some point. Make sure they’re OK. I could arrange that.”

  Stratowich reached for the candy. Jenkins watched as he opened the package, tearing it neatly along the top. He made a very small hole, popping out a candy onto the table. He picked it up deliberately and put it into his mouth, not chewing, letting it melt.

  “There are a lot of things you could help with. And if you did, we have a program to protect you. If you help us. Whole new identity, new start on life. People have been placed around the world. It’s surprising what they’ve accomplished as free men.”

  Another candy, but no words.

  He’s trying to show me he’s disciplined, thought Jenkins. Well, I’m not impressed.

  “One of the things I’m interested in has to do with the murder of a federal agent,” he told the prisoner. “Funny thing is, he has the same last name as I do. In fact, he was my brother. If someone helped me figure out who that was, I would be very grateful. Extremely grateful.”

  Stratowich raised his eyes to look at him. Jenkins barely managed to duck before a half-melted M&M shot from Stratowich’s mouth.

  “Think about it,” Jenkins told him, getting up. “You can keep the candy.”

  98

  Near Donetsk—an hour later

  “The only way we can find out is to go in there.” Tolevi folded his arms. With all but two of the team inside—the others were standing watch on the road—the tiny front room of the farmhouse felt almost claustrophobic. He could smell Dan’s sweat. White paced behind Chelsea, who was sitting in one of the chairs. The rest of the chairs were empty; none of the others wanted to admit they were tired.

  “Huge risk,” said White. “You go in, there’s no guarantee we can get you out.”

  “We run the same play we were going to run on the prison,” said Tolevi. He’d thought about it the entire ride back, pluses and minuses, every contingency. “I spot him, you come in and get us out.”

  “The robot can only carry one person,” said Chelsea. “And it’s not armed.”

  “We don’t need the robot,” argued Tolevi. “I only need a diversion. You have your little airplane things tell us where people are. We wait until they’ve gone out on their mission—they go every afternoon and they’re away for most of the night?”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” said Dan.

  “I do,” said Tolevi. “They have a dozen people. Just about everyone goes on a mission—there’s only a skeleton crew there. Blow up the front of the building, start a fire. I go out the back with the butcher, grab a vehicle, and we’re out.”

  “Pretty chancy,” said White. “I don’t like it.”

  “Then come up with a better plan. Because we can’t stay here forever. We don’t even have enough food in the house for the rest of the week.”

  Chelsea listened as the debate continued. It reminded her of the single college debate she had witnessed, where both sides made arguments but neither could really make a convincing case. Tolevi said it was their only choice; White said it was too risky. Dan wasn’t sure.

  Who was right? Impossible to say.

  “We could do some reconnaissance,” she suggested finally. “Fly one of the drones overhead, see how many people are inside with the infrared. Maybe we can figure out where he is.”

  “The building is two stories,” said White.

  “It should be able to pick up heat signatures. It’s an old building, right? Minimal insulation. It’s worth a try.”

  “Can it see into the basement?” asked White. “That’s where they’re likely to be held.”

  “If the sensors were good enough to see inside the prison building,” said Tolevi, “it’ll see inside this. It’s an old building. Impressive from the outside, but once you look closely you see everything’s thin and falling apart. Besides, what’s our other option?”

  “You’re awful damn gung-ho,” said White.

  “You’re awful damn cautious.”

  “The first goal of any mission is to survive it,” said White. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Let’s try the recon then,” said Tolevi. “The alternative is packing it in. Because we’re not going to pick up anything on the street. We’d know already. So it’s this or we go home.”

  “When do you check in with the butcher’s brother?” asked White.

  “An hour. But he would have called if he had something.”

  “Let’s try the drone,” said White.

  An hour later, Chelsea entered the barn where they’d stashed the robots. The two vans were parked in the middle of the open space; the gear boxes were arranged along the side.

  The place smelled like cows. Her nose began to itch, and her stomach—still slightly queasy from the night before—growled.

  Work to do.

  She had the case open before Bozzone and the others were even inside.

  “We’ll launch from the field at the back,” she announced. “You better make sure it’s clear.”

  It’d seemed so easy when she’d said it back at the house. Now she only saw problems: What if she couldn’t launch it? What if someone saw them from one of the fields down the road? What if the UAV was spotted? It was black, designed to fly at night. During the day, with the sun fairly bright, it would be a lot more obvious.

  Just do it.

  “Help me with the wings,” she asked Bozzone.

  Tolevi paced around the barn, waiting as Chelsea got the UAV ready.

  He thought of Borya, back home.

  Not good—concentrate.

  One million bucks. The solution to a lot of problems.

  And if this didn’t work, then damn it, Johansen was going to pay him something. Half at least. Three-quarters.

  I risked my life. You owe me.

  Owe you what? Johansen would say.

  Hardass.

  That was the only way you survived in that job. Tolevi had to admire that; he was a hardass himself.

  “Ready to launch,” said Chelsea. She looked at him. “Coming?”

  The Russian building was some ten miles to the north. Besides the main house and the barnlike garage at the rear Tolevi had seen when he was their prisoner, there were two small sheds on the other side of the copse to the south. There was only one vehicle outside; the unit was obviously out on a mission.

  “Let’s look inside the house,” Tolevi told Chelsea. “Put on the infrared.”

  “I have to fly right overhead and fly a circuit,” she told him. “Those men at the road may be able to see the Nighthawk.”

  “Chance we take.”

  Chelsea decided to take the UAV low, hoping that the trees at the front of the property would shield it from view. They would probably hear it, though.

  Three passes, she decided. Three passes and we should have enough.

  She thought of plotting the course and letting the controller fly the aircraft but decided against it. If someone came out of the house, it would be faster to abort if she was at the controls.

  Her hand started to tremble as she tucked toward the house on the first pass.

  I can do this. Just like dancing.

  Not really. But I can do it.

  The small aircraft came across the back of the building faster than she thought it would. By the time she had it turning, it was nearly at the tree line. She tightened the turn and banked over the building. The controller was recording t
he infrared feed; they’d look at it when she was done. She needed her full attention on the ground.

  Banking again, she spotted a figure walking near the barn.

  Concentrate. One more pass.

  Chelsea took the UAV so close to the roof that she nearly hit it.

  Three turns, done.

  She jammed the throttle. The nose of the aircraft pitched up suddenly, starting to stall. Gently she backed off power, managed to catch it, and sailed back over the open field.

  “They saw something,” said White, who was standing behind her. “I saw the guy at the back look up.”

  “Did he raise his gun?” asked Dan.

  “No.”

  “Whatever,” said Tolevi. “What do we got?”

  Chelsea set the plane on a slow course south, then activated the autopilot. She pulled up the infrared screen and reviewed the video over the house.

  It was shorter than she’d thought—barely forty-five seconds.

  “Two guys there, one there,” said White. “That’s it?”

  Tolevi leaned over the screen. “This is where I was. This looks like a kitchen. Maybe it’s the command room or team room. That’s why there’s two guys there.”

  “How do you know that’s the kitchen?” asked White.

  “Look. You can see this is a sink, right? The heat outline? And a stove.”

  “OK.”

  “This guy is by himself,” said Tolevi, pointing to the other side of the house.

  “Prisoner?” asked White. “Or just someone taking a nap?”

  Chelsea zeroed in on him, enlarging the image. His hands were together. Possibly tied, maybe not.

  “Is that the basement?” White asked.

  “It looks like it,” said Chelsea. “That’s how the computer is interpreting it.”

  The program wasn’t sophisticated enough to make a full 3-D image, but the different angles indicated that the third person was below the others. Which did mean the basement.