Brian Drake - The Glinkov Extraction

Clothes missing.

Stiletto’s wallet and cell phone on the bedside nightstand. The wallet contained his driver’s license and credit cards, the usual items. There was no cash. The cell phone had been turned off.

McNeil walked around the back yard, noticing a stray bucket in the middle of the grass right away. He went over to the bucket and examined the burned mess at the bottom. He found an unburned piece and read the words on it, which confirmed what they figured, but at least they knew for sure.

McNeil reset the alarm and left the house.

FLEMING entered his outer office where McNeil sat. The two men acknowledged each other and McNeil followed Fleming into the inner office. While the General hung up his coat beside the door, McNeil started his report.

“I found a bucket in the back yard with the burned remains of a map,” McNeil said.

Fleming moved behind his desk and told McNeil to sit as well. McNeil did.

“Do I need to guess?”

“Moscow, sir.”

“Go on.”

“Wallet and cell phone remained on his dresser.”

“He won’t be traveling under his own name.” Fleming recounted what Devlin had discovered at the bank.

“How are we supposed to track him then?” McNeil said. “There’s been nothing from the facial recognition equipment at the airports so we have to assume he’s on the road. He’s been gone for hours. That means he could be anywhere.”

Fleming nodded.

“And he’ll have changed cars. Tracking his license plate won’t help.”

“We need to do that anyway, just because.”

“Who can he reach out to?” McNeil said.

“He won’t use anybody obvious or connected to us. Here’s what we do. Send word to every nook and cranny, every two-bit shady operative, friend and foe, that there’s a one million dollar reward out for information leading to Scott’s location.”

McNeil stared.

“I’m not kidding, David. If that’s what it takes to find him, I’ll take the money from our operating budget and deal with the consequences later. What we can’t have are the consequences of Stiletto causing trouble in Russia.”

“Okay, sir.”

“This isn’t the usual routine, David, I realize that. We have to be flexible.”

“You’ve said it before, sir. It’s the spy business.” McNeil rose from his chair. “I’ll get back with you if something comes in.”

Fleming nodded and sat back in his chair. McNeil pulled the door shut behind him. The General sat still and thought about the phone call he’d made from the park. There had been no other choice. Scott was too good an operative to not have a plan for avoiding detection. They needed help that was as off-the-grid as he now was. Fleming hoped Scott would recognize the help when it arrived. Because one way or another, Stiletto’s life was going to change over the next few days.

Fleming didn’t consider himself reversing from what he had told Scott. The Agency could not in any way, shape, or form take part in getting Glinkov and his family out of Russia.

But that didn’t mean a separate group, made up of intelligence professionals acting on their own, couldn’t help.

Fleming belonged to such a group. On the side, of course.

A group that called itself The Cabal. And he had to make sure they found Scott before the C.I.A. did.

New York City

F.B.I. SPECIAL Agent Susan Larochelle wasn’t feeling very special as she locked the door of her apartment.

It was almost ten p.m. and another day of fruitless interviews from Russians who refused to talk, especially after news of the murders of Mr. and Mrs. Igorevich started filtering through the news. Two other agents had been assigned to look into the murders while she and Ray continued with their interviews. The people were scared. They did not want to talk no matter what verbal persuasions she and Ray tried.

Somebody wanted the investigation stopped and were going about it perfectly.

She set her purse down on the kitchen counter and went into the bedroom to change from suit to sweats. She was in no mood to cook so she made a sandwich and ate in the kitchen. Then she poured a glass of red wine and dropped onto the couch with the T.V. on low.

A channel had Law & Order on; she considered that a comedy. She ignored the news. Finally, she settled on a Match Game ’73 rerun on the Game Show Network. Seventies-era outfits and jokes were a lot more palatable than the other dreck.

She finished the glass of wine and poured another, opening the drapes which revealed her balcony. She opened the sliding glass door a crack to let some air in.

And then the glass shattered.

As the pieces pooled around her feet and the wine stained the rug, the bullet that crashed through reached the opposite end of the room and shredded the door of a cabinet. Susan dropped and hurriedly crawled around the side of the couch. Cold air rushed in. Some remaining pieces of glass in the door frame dropped onto the carpet. She glanced down at her feet. Small cuts on both. Nothing terrible. Her heart pounding, she waited. And waited some more.

The phone rang.

She looked over her shoulder at the wall-mounted land line. She hardly knew it existed sometimes. But there it was, ringing and ringing. She crawled around the dining table behind her, rose as high as she dared, and reached the phone, taking the handset to her low position on the carpet.

“Hello?” she said. The instinct that made her answer was confirmed when the person on the other end, a female, spoke.

“Stop your meddling or the next one goes through your head.”

The caller hung up.

Pounding on the door.

“Susan! Susan, it’s Ray! Open up!”

She ran to the door, yanked it open. “Oh my God, Ray!”

A trickle of blood was working its way down Ray’s face and neck but he otherwise appeared unharmed. Susan pulled him in and shut the door.

“What happened?”

“Shooter on the roof near my place. Got me as I was climbing the steps.”

“Look over there.”

“I wondered why it was so cold in here.”

“The shooter called. Told us to knock it off or she won’t miss next time.”

Ray Elston took a deep breath. His eyes widened and his stance wavered. He leaned against the wall. “I think I need to lay down somewhere.”

Susan grabbed flip-flops from the bedroom and her purse from the kitchen. “Not here. Let’s get you to a hospital.”

It was a long wait in the emergency room but presently Ray was led into a room for stitches while Susan remained in the waiting room. The chairs had thin cushions and made her butt sore. She paced a lot, sitting for short spells, ignoring the wide-screen T.V. on the wall, and the late night talk shows on display. A perusal of the usual magazines also couldn’t calm her nerves.

Around one a.m. her boss finally returned the two frantic calls she’d made to him.

“Where are you?” Jim Brody said

“E.R.,” she said. “Ray got a graze.” She told him what happened at her apartment.

“Russian caller, you say?”

“Female. The bullet parted my hair, Jim.”

“I’ll send a team to your place. Ray’s too. Get them secured and your window fixed. You two need to hole up for a bit.”

The F.B.I. maintained a pair of hotel rooms downtown for agents, witnesses, and special guests to use. The rooms were currently empty. Brody told Susan to go there.

“That treats the symptoms,” Susan said, “but doesn’t solve the problem.”

“We’ll work on the problem. Right now I need you two safe. Get some rest and don’t come in till late afternoon.”

When Ray exited the examining room with the side of his face appropriately stitched and bandaged, she drove them to the hotel. Neither had a change of clothes. They gathered other necessities at the hotel gift shop. They’d deal with the other problem later.