Extreme Faction Page 9

  “But you will,” Sinclair said. “And I’d appreciate any help you could give me. Back me up, if I need it.”

  It wasn’t a question Jake found difficult to answer. They had history, and that meant more in this business than nationality. They had gone through so much in the past. The aftermath at Halabja. The refugees at the enclaves in Turkey following the Gulf War. It seemed somewhat strange that many of the times their paths had crossed the Kurds had been involved. And now even here, in Odessa, the Kurds had brought the two of them together.

  “You know you can count on me, Tuck,” Jake said, patting his old friend on the shoulder.

  ●

  Jake made it to Tully O’Neill’s office at the consulate by nine-thirty. Jake had been to the office before when the old station chief had occupied the place. Things had changed a great deal since the height of the Cold War, he could see. There used to be large plants everywhere. Beautiful leather furniture. Nice paintings. But now, as if some bad joke had been played on the office, all that was fine was gone. Tully’s desk was an old chunk of wood, worn down by time like a rock in a raging river. The walls were a drab Earth tone and needed paint. Tully had tried to cover bad spots with certificates and photographs of him in various cities. The carpeting had been ripped up, exposing an oak floor that needed a good sanding and coat of lacquer. Only the Persian rug looked somewhat new.

  Tully was standing before the window overlooking a back courtyard that consulate employees used for breaks and to eat lunch on nice days. He was wearing a tweed suit, the best that Jake could remember him looking since they met a few days ago. In Tully’s right hand was a copy of a message he had just finished reading.

  Jake took a seat out from Tully’s desk in the center of the room.

  For a moment, neither of them said a word.

  Finally, Tully moved away from the window and took a seat behind his desk in a high-back chair that squeaked with his weight. He lit a cigarette and let out a deep breath of smoke.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Jake asked. “It’s like a damn morgue in here.”

  Tully shuffled the papers he had set on his desk. “This classified message came in thirty minutes ago,” he said, taking another puff on his cigarette. “From our CIA director. It seems he wants you to lead this investigation.”

  Jake shifted up in his chair. “What? I’m not one of you anymore.”

  “He’s aware of that.”

  “Besides,” Jake said. “How in the hell does he even know I’m here?”

  Tully smiled. “I’m afraid that’s my fault. I had to mention you in my report on Tvchenko’s death. The Director mentioned you to the president, and he insisted on asking you to work this for us.”

  “The president?” Jake said. “He doesn’t know me.”

  “Afraid so,” Tully said. “He heard about something you did a few years back. Something dealing with computer chips and Germany and Hungary.”

  Jake thought that case had gone unnoticed. “So, what do they want from me?”

  “Like I said. Lead.”

  Jake looked shocked. He thought he’d help out a little if he could. But lead? “Why?”

  “Let’s face it, Jake. You’re an expert in chemical and biological weapons. You know Odessa better than any of us. And you even have first-hand knowledge of the Kurds. You should lead. Besides, as you know, the station chief can’t afford too much exposure. It looks bad if we’re ejected from the country for spying.”

  This was true, Jake knew, but it was still shocking. What about Quinn Armstrong? It should have been his case.

  “You can handle it, Jake,” Tully said.

  “Thanks for your confidence, Tully, but I didn’t seem to do things right last night. I’ve got the bruises to prove it.”

  “You’re still alive. That’s something.”

  Jake thought about being in charge. In charge of what? He had no idea what Tvchenko had been up to. He barely knew the man, yet Tvchenko had walked directly to him, planted the note with Halabja scribbled on it into his hand, and then collapsed with his version of a break dance. Someone had either jumped the gun or was now trying to cover their tracks. Jake suspected the former. Maybe Tvchenko’s buyers had slipped and told him what they planned on doing with his newest nerve agent. Tvchenko suddenly realizes he cannot follow through with the deal. He panics. The other side panics. And now there’s some terrorist group out there looking for what they had been promised. That was a helluva lot to place on any one man, and Jake was that man.

  “What kind of assets do you have here?” Jake asked.

  Tully lit a cigarette from his first, and savored the first inhale. He blew out the smoke. “Pretty green, I’m afraid. Other than Quinn. And you’ve met him.” He smiled.

  “Great.” Jake knew he could at least count on Sinclair Tucker. Then he remembered that he had come to Odessa to protect and help MacCarty and Swanson. He had no idea where his investigation may lead. Would he still be able to help those two? “What in the hell was Tvchenko up to?”

  Tully propped his cigarette to the side of his mouth. “We need to pull in the source that worked with Tvchenko.”

  “Petra Kovarik? Has Quinn found her yet?”

  “No. He’s making a few phone calls right now in the communications room,” Tully said. “He’s a good man, Jake. Use him. He knows more about Yuri Tvchenko than anyone else in our office.”

  “Why didn’t they give him the lead on this one?”

  “He was working Petra Kovarik,” Tully said. “She was getting nervous. We had to back him off for a while.”

  “You think Quinn’s agent was feeding him garbage?”

  Tully swished his head and cigarette smoke rose up into his eyes. “We don’t know. Quinn was playing with her, ready to set the hook, when Tvchenko gets killed.”

  “So, you think she might have told Tvchenko she was leading on some American?”

  “Right,” Tully said. “In fact, we speculated that she was romantically involved with Tvchenko, but we weren’t certain. Quinn told me she wasn’t much to look at, but she had a body that would stiffen a blind monk.”

  Jake thought for a moment. He needed to talk with this source. If she was as close as Tully said, she would have known what Tvchenko was up to. Someone had to know where she was. He checked his watch. It was close to ten o’clock. “We’ve got to find Petra Kovarik.”

  Tully leaned back in his chair. “What do you make of this woman disappearing?”

  Jake rose from the chair and paced across the Persian rug. “Truthfully,” he said, swinging around toward Tully. “I’m not certain. But I’d guess she might work for the GRU. She could have been doubling you. When you got a little too close, she, or some of her buddies, decide it’s time to kill the scientist.”

  Tully exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “Orrrr...” Jake took a seat. “She could have been legitimate. She and Tvchenko were lovers, let’s say. The GRU figures she knows everything Tvchenko knows. So they nab her for insurance. Maybe she breaks, tells the GRU Tvchenko is selling his newest chemical agent to another source. The GRU gets pissed and has the scientist killed.”

  “It’s possible,” Tully admitted. “But wouldn’t the GRU still need Tvchenko?”

  He had a valid point, Jake thought. You don’t want to kill your main source without some assurance that you no longer need him. “That would mean that the GRU has everything they need from Tvchenko. But I don’t think they did. Why trash Tvchenko’s apartment? And Petra’s? We probably won’t know for sure until we talk to her. Does she have any relatives?”

  “Quinn’s checking that as we speak,” Tully said. He had just finished his cigarette and was staring at the pack on his desk, wondering if he should light another.

  There was a knock on the door. “Come on in, Quinn,” Tully yelled.

  Quinn Armstrong strolled in carrying a small bag and took a seat in a wooden chair against one wall. He gave Jake a sullen glar
e. The bruise on his left jaw was black and blue and still raised somewhat. He was wearing khaki pants and a dull brown shirt under a black, unzipped mariner coat. If he were walking down Deribasovskaya Street in Odessa, one would surely take him for a local. He crossed his legs, exposing black work boots. He groomed his little goatee between his fingers.

  “What’d you find out?” Tully asked Quinn.

  Hesitating for a moment, Quinn shifted in his chair. “She has no relatives. It’s one of the reasons I recruited her. Our Kiev office checked with a few of her friends there, but none of them have seen her in nearly a month. Not since she came here to work with Tvchenko. We know she had been spending more and more time at his apartment.”

  The way Quinn said it, Jake thought there might have been more to their relationship. He knew that often happened when officers ran agents of the opposite sex.

  “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

  Quinn wouldn’t look at him. “Possibly. I just remembered this morning about a friend Petra spoke about here in Odessa.”

  “Great,” Tully said. “Let’s check the place out.”

  Just then the phone rang and Tully picked up. “Yeah.” His faced became serious and he shook his head. “Thanks,” he said, and slowly hung up. He sat for a moment with his hands folded across his lap.

  “What is it?” Jake asked.

  “Bad news.” He was looking for the right words. “The two you came here with. Maxwell MacCarty and Bill Swanson. They’ve been poisoned.”

  “What.” Jake rose quickly. “Are they all right?”

  “Uncertain. They’re at the Polyklinik.”

  “That’s a butcher shop,” Jake protested. “They’ve got a better chance with a veterinarian.”

  Quinn rose and faced Jake. “It’s not that bad.”

  “I wouldn’t trust them to cut my nails,” Jake said. “Remember, Quinn, I used to work here.”

  Tully came around his desk. “Come on guys. I won’t have any fucking turf battles. Quinn, you either work with Jake on this one, or I’ll have you transferred. I hear Grozny is looking for someone. Jake. I can’t tell you anything. The director has put you in charge. But if you want total cooperation, and I think you know what I mean, then I suggest you get along with Quinn.”

  Jake was thinking it over. He had nothing against the guy. Quinn was the one who had come in with an attitude. But Jake never took shit from anyone. Respect was gained through personal experience, not hearsay.

  Jake loosened up a bit and let out a deep breath. “Fine. Quinn what do you say we take a quick run to the wonderful Polyklinik to see the great job they’re doing on our poisoned Americans. Then perhaps we could check out the friend of your agent.”

  Tully shook his head. “Get the hell out of here.”

  When Jake and Quinn were gone, Tully lit another cigarette. “Fucking testosterone.”

  15

  Neither Jake nor Quinn said much on the ride to the Odessa Polyklinik on Sudostroitelnaya Street. Quinn Armstrong was driving Tully’s gray Volga sedan, a car that had seen one too many potholes, and looked like it had been parked by a blind man, with dents on the bumpers and quarter panels. They had set aside their differences, whatever they might be. At least verbally.

  In fact, Quinn had given Jake a brand new Glock 19, fully loaded, with two extra magazines with hollow points, and a new leather holster. On the drive Jake had put on the holster, and he was now checking over the gun. It felt good in his hand. He loved the Glock.

  Jake guessed the silent treatment had something to do with the CIA director putting him in charge of the investigation. The problem was, Jake hadn’t really agreed to head up the investigation. While he had been contemplating it, he had heard about MacCarty and Swanson. Now Jake had this tight feeling deep in his gut that said he had screwed up royally not sticking closer to his employers. He knew that he couldn’t have avoided what happened to them, but he still felt responsible. He had been hired to protect. Another part of him realized that he too could have been poisoned if he had been with them.

  Quinn pulled up to the curb and parked across the street from the Polyklinik. Jake shoved the new Glock into its holster and zipped up his jacket.

  The outside of the hospital hadn’t changed much since the last time Jake had seen it. While in the Air Force there, he was forced to go to the Polyklinik for stitches to his scalp following a bruising game of ‘touch’ football. The consular general had sent over a syringe, needle and thread, and even bandages, because he knew those at the clinic would not be sterile. The hospital was one of those communist-built structures of steel and glass, slapped up in the fifties, that could have been designed by a four-year-old. The workmanship was so shoddy that the cement abutments and window ledges were already crumbling. Probably not enough rock in the mixture, Jake thought.

  “It’s not that bad,” Quinn said. “In fact, maybe they should look at your ribs.” He smiled with his hairy chin protruding out comically.

  “Yeah,” Jake said, “that’s gonna happen today. Let’s go.”

  They locked up the car and skirted across the street between traffic.

  Inside, there was a waiting area with dirty cloth chairs, worn and tattered at the edges, and high ceilings that lead nowhere. A skylight would have been nice.

  When they reached the information desk on the first floor, they glared at each other to determine who would ask the questions. Quinn deferred.

  “I would like to see two Americans who are being treated here,” Jake said in his best Ukrainian. He smiled at the older woman behind the counter.

  She returned his smile. “Names please,” she said, her English strained.

  My god, how many Americans did they have there, Jake wondered. “Maxwell MacCarty and Bill Swanson.”

  She checked a paper chart on a clipboard. “Room 306. Down the hall. Take the elevator to the third floor. You can talk to the nurse there.”

  “Thank you,” Jake said, and started to leave.

  “You might want to take the stairs,” she said. “The elevator is slow and breaks down periodically.”

  Jake nodded and smiled at Quinn as they strolled down the corridor, as if to say, ‘see I told you the place sucked.’ They took the stairs.

  The third floor was even less impressive than the first. The linoleum floors were an off white, and scared and scuffed with black marks. Probably from gurney wheels that didn’t work.

  They immediately went to the nurses’ station. Jake asked a young nurse in a bright white uniform, cap and all, the status of the Americans. She was reluctant to give any medical details. Only that there was no change. They would have to wait and see. The doctor would be by in thirty minutes, if they wanted to talk with him, they could wait down the hall in the waiting room. They couldn’t see the Americans without the doctor’s approval.

  After waiting fifteen minutes in a small room down the hall, finally an older man in a white doctor’s smock came around the corner. He was a slight man, completely gray, with a sunken face, as if he hadn’t eaten in months.

  “How may I help you?” he asked in Ukrainian.

  Jake rose to greet him. “I’m Jake Adams. I work with Mr. MacCarty and Mr. Swanson. This is Quinn Armstrong with the U.S. consulate here in Odessa. How are they doing?”

  The doctor looked at the two of them skeptically. “Mr. MacCarty is able to talk,” he started in broken English. “However, Mr. Swanson is worse off.”

  “What exactly did they ingest?” Quinn demanded.

  The doctor backed away somewhat. “The results are not back from toxicology. It was something they both ate. Perhaps the pork. We’re really not sure yet. The police have taken samples from the restaurant and talked with the staff.” He hesitated for a second. “You’ll have to talk with them for those results.”

  “May we see them?” Jake asked.

  “For a moment.” The doctor stepped off down the hall, and Jake and Quinn were right at his heels.

  The h
ospital room was something that might have been around in America at the turn of the century. There were six beds, four on one side of the room and two cramped in a small corner as an afterthought. The lighting was poor. A few of the long florescent bulbs were dark on both ends, burned out and forgotten. The tile floor might have been white at one time, but was now a harsh gray. On the wall next to MacCarty’s bed was an ancient black phone with a frayed cord. There was one window with wire mesh across it in a diamond pattern. Jake wondered why the mesh was needed on the third floor. Perhaps the gloom had prompted patients to jump.

  All the beds were occupied.

  Bill Swanson was in the far corner. Tubes ran from nearly every opening in his body. But there was little electronic monitoring equipment like that found in American Intensive Care Units. Only one machine, an older contraption with red dialogue numbers, checked his heart rate.

  Maxwell MacCarty lay in the other corner bed next to Swanson. He did appear in better shape than his colleague. He had more color in his face. Less tubes.

  Jake stepped alongside MacCarty’s bed. “How you feeling, Max?”

  “Just fucking great,” he whispered. He was barely audible.

  ●

  In the basement, in a small room adjacent to the boiler room, two men sat in wooden chairs with headsets on. The wall was a large mass of telephone wires. They had tapped into the phone on the wall of room 306. The recorder was sound activated. They could hear and record anything that went on in the room.

  “Sound familiar?” one of the men asked the other.

  The other smiled and nodded. “Yes. That’s Jake Adams.” He picked up a phone and dialed quickly. In a moment he said, “Adams is here with another man. Yes, we’re recording it. I understand.” He hung up.

  “What did she say?” the first man asked.

  “Keep recording. Call her when they leave. She’ll follow them from here. She wants us to meet later with the tape.”

  The tape recorder whirred.

  ●

  Jake introduced Quinn Armstrong to MacCarty. “What happened?” Quinn asked.