The Russian Page 4

  It all appeared to be an accident.

  But the woman’s arm found its way surgically down between the waiter and O’Flaherty. In the scrum, she found O’Flaherty’s elbow and jammed the needle hard, for a brief moment, then removed it, all as the scene devolved into the three of them, food all over the place, and the realization by everyone that the beautiful woman had slipped and caused it all.

  Silent shock cut across the restaurant. All eyes were on O’Flaherty, a moment in which the establishment was looking to him for a reaction. He suddenly lifted his wineglass and smiled.

  “Cheers!” he said loudly.

  As laughter and clapping came from patrons seated at the surrounding tables, several Sparks staff members and even a few customers came rushing over to help the woman and the waiter back up.

  She apologized profusely as she climbed back to her feet. The senator was a gentleman throughout, telling her that it was the most excitement he’d had in months, even as he unconsciously rubbed his elbow.

  She walked slowly back through the restaurant as people looked at her sympathetically, a few saying things like, “Are you all right?”

  She held her head down and a hand across her face, masking it from view.

  She exited through the front door of the restaurant. To her left, at the curb, sat an idling black Ferrari 458. The throaty growl of the Michael Schumacher–designed engine mingled with taxis rushing down the street and a sidewalk dotted with people. She walked to the vehicle and opened the door, then climbed in. She looked at the driver. He returned her glance and then hit the paddle, putting the car in gear and cutting into a break in traffic. The roar of the Ferrari momentarily ripped above all other noise, across the Manhattan evening.

  * * *

  Inside Sparks, Senator O’Flaherty was several bites into his steak, which the manager of the restaurant told him was on the house because of the accident a few minutes before, an offer O’Flaherty told him was appreciated but that he would not accept. O’Flaherty began to feel warmth growing from somewhere inside his chest, and then it was as if his whole body was hot, even feverish.

  A memory flashed. It was the face of the woman who’d slipped and pushed the waiter, and herself, into the booth on top of him. The memory was from a moment earlier in the night, as he’d been reading, when he had inadvertently looked across the restaurant to the bar and caught her looking back at him.

  O’Flaherty reached for his water glass, but his hand stopped in midair. O’Flaherty caught sight of his fingers as he felt a strange rubbery sensation in his knees. His fingers had become, in just minutes, thick and bloated, too thick to pick up the glass of water. A sharp jolt of pain stabbed him in the stomach, then in his head, as the poison took permanent hold of his seventy-six-year-old frame. His heart stopped beating in the same instant his eyes rolled up back into his head. He slumped listlessly to the side as his body slackened. His last breath occurred as he slithered limply from the leather booth down, knocking over glasses, his chin slamming into the side of the table, then sliding to the floor, where his lifeless corpse crumpled beneath the table.

  CHAPTER 5

  Marriott Hotel

  Des Moines, Iowa

  The white Chevy Suburban looked just like every other vehicle parked on the street—dark and lifeless, its owners inside the hotel, at the political rally.

  The windows of the white Suburban were tinted dark.

  Inside, a man sat in the back seat, passenger side. He wore a plain, light-green T-shirt and a pair of black jeans. His hair was dirty blond, close-cropped. He was a big man with an odd face, ugly and hard to look at; his eyes somehow not aligned, almost like a monster. In front of him, stabilized by a complex series of braces, was a weapon: a CheyTac M200 Intervention, a long-range, high-powered sniper rifle; this one dark green, with a Picatinny rail and thermal laser optic. Bought less than an hour ago. Screwed into the gun’s muzzle was a long, cylindrical, black alloy flash suppressor. The somewhat heavy weapon was trained across the seat in a diagonal direction and was aimed at the driver’s window.

  The man wore black, tight-fitting cashmere gloves.

  Beyond the window was the Marriott Hotel.

  In the man’s ear was a communications device. He was absentmindedly listening to Governor Nick Blake of Florida as he stared through the firearm’s advanced thermal sight. At this moment, the weapon was aimed through the lobby window and at the entrance doors to the ballroom. All he could see was the steel of the door.

  Then, the door opened and the sniper was suddenly looking through the scope at Governor Nick Blake, at least two thousand feet away.

  The sniper didn’t move. Instead, he studied a complex array of indices in the optic, checking and rechecking his calibrations, making sure he’d properly accounted for distance, temperature, wind, and for the thick—though not bulletproof—panel of glass at the Marriott that the cartridge would have to travel through on its way to its destination.

  “So let me ask you, my friends from Iowa,” came the words in his ear. “Do you believe there’s room for a new way to govern our country? Where we can take care of those less fortunate by cracking down on those who are destroying our cities, our towns, and our neighborhoods?”

  The gunman lowered the front window, just a few inches. The entire weapon and the suppressor remained inside the Suburban, but he didn’t want to break the glass, which would only draw attention.

  “Being tough on crime isn’t about punishment. It’s about compassion. In Miami, we targeted the Russian mafia and we have virtually dismembered it.”

  He felt his finger on the steel trigger. He waited an extra moment, then pulled back on the trigger. A low, metallic thwack was followed by momentary silence as the bullet ripped through the large plate-glass window of the Marriott, then came the sound of shattering glass and the bullet found Blake’s forehead, kicking Blake backward in a horrible wash of blood and brains.

  Then came the screams.

  CHAPTER 6

  Private Terminal

  Dulles International Airport

  Dulles, Virginia

  Tacoma watched through the window as the Gulfstream made its final blistering push toward Dulles Airport. In the main part of the sprawling airport he could see dozens of flashing blue and red lights.

  As the jet taxied to the private terminal, Tacoma got up, walked to the cockpit, and leaned in.

  “I’ll get the door,” said Tacoma. “Can you shut everything down?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a few hours of after-flight shit I need to do,” said RISCON’s executive pilot, Stephen Owen. “I’ll turn out the lights.”

  “You think you can handle that?” said Tacoma, smiling.

  “Possibly,” said Owen.

  “Try not to wrap this thing around a tree,” said Tacoma.

  “I’ll try but you know how much I like trees.”

  They both started laughing.

  Tacoma climbed down to the tarmac, still dressed in the same T-shirt and blazer. He walked across a wide, empty tarmac reserved for certain entities, of which the firm Tacoma worked for and owned half of, RISCON, was one. The hangar was large, angular, black, sleek, and dark. This was RISCON’s hangar, large enough to hold two airplanes and a variety of other things such as automobiles, motorcycles, weapons, gold, golf clubs, a pool table, a waterbed, cash, and years’ worth of food. There was enough ammo inside the hangar to fight a war, or at least start one. Beneath the concrete floor, sixty-seven feet down a winding stairwell, was a nuclear bomb shelter. When RISCON bought the hangar, the bomb shelter was already there. Rather than get rid of it, Tacoma and Katie Foxx, Tacoma’s partner, decided to modernize it, a small expense compared to the actual construction cost; why not, they thought? There probably wouldn’t ever be a nuclear war, and if there were they would most likely be blown up, but what if they knew it was coming and could get to the shelter in time? The new shelter had the capability of sustaining four lives for a decade, and included black-band access to a piece of the military power grid beneath Dulles that would survive any nuclear blast and keep the shelter online to any parts of the internet still intact after a catastrophic war.

  The hangar was one of four such buildings across the globe that RISCON owned. The others were in Amsterdam, Tokyo, and Johannesburg. They looked like any other hangar, but they were not like other hangars. Each was a veritable fortress. They were high tech, highly weaponized, a sanctum, designed for the ultimate crisis, designed to sustain an EMP or other sort of combat scenario, above all else, survival.

  RISCON was the last resort for billionaires and governments throughout the West. RISCON’s fees were exorbitant. Retainers started at $10 million a month and actions were billed per diem: $2 million a day. But the results were indisputable.

  Tacoma came to the door of the hangar as, in the near distance, Owen taxied the shiny black jet. Tacoma put his thumb against a small glass aperture next to the door, then looked straight ahead as a camera the size of a pinhead scanned the irises of his eyes. A moment later, the lock clicked and Tacoma turned the knob.

  Inside, it was dark. Tacoma went to his left, not even attempting to see. Rather, he shut his eyes and walked gingerly, feeling with all four limbs as he crossed a section of the pitch-black hangar. His left foot hit wall first, then his hands found the board. He flipped a row of switches and the hangar was abruptly illuminated in bright yellow. He found a red plastic cover and lifted it. Beneath was a switch. Tacoma flipped it and the gargantuan door to the hangar began a loud, hydraulic whistle as it lifted into the air.

  Tacoma reached into his pocket and took out a phone. He opened the camera and moved beneath another plane, a King Air 6500, a pressurized turboprop designed to withstand the harshest of elements. After the lights came ful
ly on, he looked up at the shiny, green-winged, yellow-fuselaged King Air. He loved the plane, if only for its toughness under pressure. Tacoma took a pic. He looked back as Owen steered the Gulfstream into the hangar and the $35 million jet purred its final throaty meow of the night.

  He exited at the far end of the hangar, stepping into the parking lot, which was half-filled. He came to a red McLaren 600LT, approaching from the rear, leaning down and feeling along the top of the back left tire, where, less than twenty-four hours before, he’d left the key. But there was nothing there. Tacoma felt again and then got down on his hands and knees and felt all along the ground near the tire, where perhaps it had fallen in a strong wind. But there was nothing.

  He stood and scanned the parking lot. He swept his eyes twice and in the second pass saw movement. He focused in on a minivan three rows away. It was dark and still, yet he found the light again, just a glimmer. There was someone there, and whoever it was had established strategic advantage before Tacoma had even landed.

  You fucked up—but if they wanted you dead, you’d be dead.

  Tacoma moved away from the McLaren and crossed several rows of cars, stepping toward the dark minivan. He looked in through the windshield as he approached, recognizing the outline of the face of the individual seated in the driver’s seat. He came to the window and looked in at a gorgeous blond-haired woman in a white tank top. She sat in the driver’s seat with a blank stare, looking straight ahead. Tacoma knocked on the window. A few seconds later, the woman inside reached her hand up and lowered the window.

  “Can I have my key?” said Tacoma.

  Katie Foxx turned her head in a precise, sharp way.

  “Took you a while,” she said.

  “Not that long.”

  “I could’ve killed you,” said Katie.

  “Okay, tough guy,” said Tacoma, smiling.

  “How’d it go?” said Katie.

  “Good. I think the boyfriend is going to be leaving England soon, just my gut. By the way, what’s with the minivan?” said Tacoma. “You getting married? Who’s the lucky fella?”

  Katie opened the door and climbed out.

  “I just wanted to remind you that if someone wanted to kill you, you’d be dead,” said Katie. “You walked out here like a deer in the headlights.”

  Tacoma stared at Katie.

  “I’m tired,” said Tacoma.

  “We need to debrief.”

  Tacoma’s face was expressionless.

  “Can it wait?” he said. “I just want to go to bed, Kate.”

  Katie Foxx was like the sister he’d never had, and when he called her Kate, it meant he was tired.

  Katie put her hand up to Tacoma’s cheek.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I was being helpful by making you aware of a vulnerability in your routine.”

  “You did,” said Tacoma. “I’d be dead. But I admit I lost and now I’m just plain tired.”

  Katie grinned and handed Tacoma a small envelope.

  “Payday.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Can you give me a ride?” she said.

  “Yeah, sure. By the way, what’s with all the police cars?”

  Katie looked at him with disbelief.

  “You didn’t hear?”

  “No, what?”

  “All outbound flights in the country are temporarily grounded,” she said. “Remember John Patrick O’Flaherty?”

  “Senator O’Flaherty?”

  “He and Nick Blake, the governor of Florida, were assassinated tonight.”

  “How?”

  “O’Flaherty was poisoned, Blake got shot in the forehead by a sniper.”

  “Who did it?” said Tacoma.

  “It seems obvious,” said Katie. “It was the Russian mob.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Oval Office

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  President J. P. Dellenbaugh still had his coat and tie on, despite the fact that it was 10:46 P.M. He was seated behind the big desk with a phone against his ear. When he did speak during the call, it was in a soft, hushed tone. Mostly he was listening. A solemn expression was on his face.

  A set of bookshelves along the wall was opened up and pulled back, like a secret door. Behind the bookshelves were TV screens: Fox News, ABC, and CNN were all on, the volume low. All three channels showed different variations of the same story, the deaths of Senator John Patrick O’Flaherty, Republican of New York State, and Governor Nick Blake, Democrat of Florida. A fourth screen was a web page. The Drudge Report had two photos, O’Flaherty on the left, Blake on the right, with the letters R.I.P. emblazoned in red between them.

  Below were the headlines with links to stories:

  SPECIAL REPORT: FL GOV. NICK BLAKE SHOT DEAD IN DES MOINES;

  SEN. JOHN PATRICK O’FLAHERTY, “LION” OF THE SENATE, COLLAPSES AND DIES IN NEW YORK CITY

  TIME OF DEATH: SEN. O’FLAHERTY 9:56 P.M. EST

  TIME OF DEATH: GOV. BLAKE 9:58 P.M. EST

  “Yes, I know,” said the president into the phone. “It’s times like these that make us question everything. Please know that Amy and I are here for you, Charlotte. If there is anything we can do, call me.”

  Dellenbaugh finally hung up the phone. He shut his eyes and reached to the bridge of his nose, rubbing it for a time.

  Standing before the wall of TVs were Adrian King, the White House chief of staff; Bo Lovvorn, the new FBI director; Hector Calibrisi, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Josh Brubaker, the president’s national security adviser; and a half dozen other senior staff members.

  When Dellenbaugh stood up from the desk, all eyes cut to him. He walked to the screens and stood with the others.

  “Who was that, Mr. President?” said King.

  “That was Senator O’Flaherty’s daughter,” said Dellenbaugh quietly.

  “How’s she doing?”

  Dellenbaugh didn’t answer. Instead he stared at the screens for a few moments, focusing in on Drudge.

  BOTH DEATHS OCCUR WITHIN MINUTES OF EACH OTHER;

  ONE DEMOCRAT, ONE REPUBLICAN: BOTH RESPECTED;

  LEADING ARCHITECTS OF WAR ON RUSSIAN MAFIA

  “They’re implying the deaths are connected,” said Dellenbaugh.

  “And they aren’t?” said King sarcastically.

  “I’m just surprised they went there this quickly. Where’s John?” said the president, referring to his Press Secretary, John Schmidt. “I need to make a statement tonight.”

  “It’s the optics,” said Calibrisi. “Two minutes apart? Even an idiot would suspect something. And as we know, the media by and large are a bunch of idiots. This was a military-style operation. The killers wanted what’s about to happen to happen, namely chaos. Now that the media believes there’s smoke, they’re going to start looking for fire. That complicates our efforts to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Get to the bottom of it?” said King incredulously. “Isn’t it obvious? The Russian mob killed these guys! Wake the fuck up! O’Flaherty was the architect of every piece of anti–Russian mafia legislation in the last twenty years. Blake? It’s his main issue. How he cleaned up fucking Florida and now is gonna ‘clean up America.’ Let’s call a spade a spade. Be honest with the American people. The Russian mafia killed two American heroes.”

  “It’s a lot more complicated than that,” said Calibrisi. “Yes, it seems clear the Russians did it, but there are several families who control the Russian mafia. Who do we accuse? The Malnikovs? The Odessa Mob? And which family in the Odessa mafia? The Bergens? The Rostivs? One of the others? They hate each other and compete against each other and try to kill each other. Sure, one of them probably did it, but they could be framing one of the other families. Don’t forget it was the Bergens who tipped off the FBI about Yuri Malnikov being in that boat off the coast of Florida. He spent a year inside Supermax.”

  “What’s your point, Hector?” said Dellenbaugh. “This doesn’t look like someone was setting someone else up. It looks like they were removing their two biggest enemies in the United States government.”