Cameron Poe: Red Agenda

Levi held it close to his lamp. “Arabic?”

“A menu for a Kuwaiti navy captain. Captain Mohsen.”

“Am I supposed to know him?”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

“Then why…?”

“This inquiry comes from a Russian. One Andri Stemovich.”

Levi raised an eyebrow but kept his attention on the paper. “Forty years ago this would have sent my Cold War meter into the red zone. Now, I don’t know what to think.”

“Ever heard of Stemovich?” asked Dan.

“The name sounds familiar.” Levi sneaked the lie through his teeth. “If memory serves me right, he was a big mucky-muck in the Soviet Navy. I’d have to pull my file to be sure. He’s not at the top of the list, though. I know that for certain. What about this Mohsen?”

Dan shifted in his chair. “Kuwaiti navy, for what that’s worth, but he’s got connections. Mostly family influence, which reaches straight to the emir. Not that it means anything considering it’s the Kuwaiti navy.”

“Is that so? Perhaps freelance work for our Russian? Mohsen wants to get Stemovich’s expertise on how to make his boats go faster? Can’t say that I blame him with those bastards in Iran sitting across the water. Those fucking Persians hate the Arabs, and I thank God for that, but I don’t see anything here to get us into a Chinese fire drill.”

Dan didn’t like Levi’s opinions or the way he began to dismiss the case. “Well, I’d like to make sure it’s that simple—”

“I’ve seen it a million times since 1992. Third-world countries paying Russian experts to improve their technology because we won’t do it for them. We can’t stop it, even if they’re supposed allies in the Gulf. Fuck, we wouldn’t even get our hands dirty in Egypt or Libya or Syria. I would have loved it if the bullet that shot Gaddafi was painted with the stars and stripes.”

Dan had no sympathy for corrupt dictators and extremists, but he preferred a more intellectual approach to work. He ignored the comment. “Still, I ordered the file on Stemovich. Since the Russians are more your area than mine, I thought I’d make sure I was the one to tell you.”

“No problem. You know these Russian as well as me, Dan. You’ve worked with them and against them. I think it’s nothing, but who knows? You do have to watch out for these ‘ex’ Soviet military men. They were fathered by the Soviet Union and treated rather well. When it went to hell, they all became bastards.” Levi chuckled at the analogy and slumped back in his chair. “Who found this tidbit, anyway?”

“Bluebird.”

“Bluebird! I’d thought he’d have given up going through the trash by now.”

“No, he hasn’t.”

Levi continued. “If it looks to be something other than a social gathering, inform me immediately. Okay?”

“You’ll be the first,” Dan assured Levi as he left.

After twenty minutes of walking around the building to get the chill out of his bones, Dan stomped to his office. Speaking with Levi always left him enraged. He found himself boiling on the inside and defrosting on the out. To put it plainly, he hated the man.

Dan Archer was the antithesis of Levi Carp; he was a golden boy. Like Levi, Dan had his own legend. By working with several Middle Eastern countries, Dan was instrumental in the release of Terry Anderson, who was taken hostage seven years prior to 1991. For this, he was quietly praised by the Bush administration. Of what he was most proud, though, was a picture hanging on his office wall. It was taken from a news report in Russia a year later, when Boris Yeltsin was pleading to the people of Russia to battle the old Soviet government, as hardline communists tried to reinstate themselves by using the military in a coup against the Kremlin. The picture showed Yeltsin being surrounded by the mass of independent faithful, shielding him from any assassin. Within that group stood a very young Dan Archer.

It was a credit to him that the KGB was too busy shredding documents to even realize that the rebellion might have been CIA backed. If that had been known, the outcome could have been different— drastically different .

Doing his job delivered great satisfaction. Almost all his ops went smoothly, and his standing with other foreign services was high. Yet, like every department head, Dan did have his failures, and lives had been lost under his direct supervision. He never dealt with those tragic circumstances well.

His secretary, Sharon Dailey, was waiting for him at the door when he reached his office. “You always look like shit after a meeting with that man,” she commented.

Dan shook his head. “I’ve never liked that guy.”

“I don’t blame you,” she replied, throwing her arms in the air.

“How can you trust anyone who uses people the way he does? That man would sell his own mother if there were any gain in it. You need to be careful.”

She handed him a sealed envelope. “This came for you. Clearance Four.”

“You didn’t read it,” he said, smiling.

“You know I can’t. Clearance Three, remember?” she said, pointing at her badge.

“If it’s anything interesting, I’ll let you know.”

“Very funny,” she replied, closing the door behind her.

On his badge Dan was listed as a Clearance Level Six. That could get him access to about anything. He could never understand why they had assigned him a secretary with Clearance Three. The notes she cataloged were at least a four if not higher, and she probably knew more delicate information than most agents with that clearance.

Sharon had always worked well for him, and he trusted her completely. He even had a small schoolboy crush for her, but she never gave any signals.

Slender and shapely, Sharon was an attractive redhead with a professional attitude. All the men had hit on her, but she was very good at putting them off. Some even thought her frigid, yet still envied Dan for having her as his secretary. Beautiful , he thought about her. No, she was a bit more than that .

The envelope was the standard personnel request size.

“When I’m done with this, you can scan it to a thumb drive, Sharon,” he said through the phone.

“You’ll have it tomorrow, logged and ready,” she replied.

He ripped it open to see the eyes of Andri Stemovich staring back. He had received the file quickly, which meant one of three things. First, Andri wasn’t considered big game. Second, there wasn’t that much information about him. Or third, he was the new player in the spook world, and they were only recently finding out about him. Whatever he was, he was not on anyone’s hot list.

The picture was a twenty-two-year-old black-and-white military ID. It had him in a captain’s uniform, looking very smart. It also showed a man whose young appearance betrayed his real age. At the time, the thirty-three-year-old man didn’t look a day past eighteen. His biography raised Dan’s eyebrow more than once as he read it.

Andri’s life was anything but typical for a Soviet military man. He grew up on the island of Vozrozhdeniya that sits in the Aral Sea, west of the Caspian. It was a landlocked body of water between the borders of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Andri spent his early years on the shores of the island with his parents. His father was a craftsman and ran a small shop that repaired the dory boats used for fishing. His father’s work was well known, and Andri fully intended to follow in his footsteps until he became obsessed with building racing boats. In his youth, he began to construct small, fast crafts that skipped across the waves. These skiffs had no practical application other than to emphasize brilliant engineering for speed.