Marc Cameron - Act of Terror

As a child in Havana she’d grown up immersed in a hodgepodge of cultures. Her father, a math professor from Smolensk, had known the importance of English and made certain his only daughter was fluent in that along with the tongues of her parents. Three languages, he said, gave her a good base from which to begin-

“Someone who speaks three languages, milaya,” he would coax, using her pet name, “is said to be trilingual. And what do you call someone who speaks only one language?”

“An American.” She would giggle at his little joke and he would tickle her as good fathers were supposed to do.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian support for Cuba had faded, pressing their family into near starvation. Her idealistic parents had been brokenhearted at governmental indifference toward those who had worked so hard to support the cause. They died within weeks of each other and she’d been sent to Miami to live with an aunt. She’d taken her mother’s maiden name because it fit the darkness of her looks-and made her less of a target in south Florida than Veronica Dombrovski.

When she was still in high school, she’d watched a plainclothes Metro Dade police officer arrest a couple of gangbangers at a shopping mall and decided that was something she could do. Later, a friend in college had suggested she look into the CIA because of her language skills and she thought, yes, that was definitely something she could do. The semester before she graduated with a degree in psychology Ronnie had gone to the Agency website and sent in an email stating her qualifications and interest in the Clandestine Service. By then, Arabic and Chinese had nudged Spanish and Russian off center stage as strategic languages. She received a polite but curt reply, suggesting she complete a master’s degree in economics or try the uniformed division and get her feet in the door. Her father had been right. Three languages were a good beginning. The uniformed security police weren’t the Clandestine Service-but she was still CIA.

Ronnie rubbed her eyes, picking up the stapled document of forty-one pages from her nightstand. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well make a plan. She looked around the cluttered bedroom, littered with laundry and dry-cleaning bags. Boxes from takeout pizza and Chinese restaurants perched on stacks of books and magazines. Housekeeping definitely wasn’t her strong suit, but she was a hell of a planner.

Palmer had set her priorities, beginning with the circle of employees closest to the president-and that put the United States Secret Service at the top of her list.

Ronnie was instructed to pay attention to key personnel, particularly the protective details of the president and vice president. Between the special agents and the Secret Service Uniformed Division, the lists contained over two hundred names. At first, she’d suggested it would take her a week per background. Palmer had countered, kindly but firmly, that she needed to review two per day, clearing these to assist her in her efforts. If she came across something out of the ordinary, she was to call him-and him only.

He stressed the fact, at least a half dozen times, that there were very few people she could trust.

The special agents in charge of each protective detail had been cleared already by Palmer himself. They would conduct personnel reviews of their own. Ronnie would provide an independent analysis as an extra precaution.

Scanning the entire document before she made a concrete plan, her eyes fell to a name at the bottom of the seventh page-Nadia Arbakova, a special agent in the Protective Intelligence Division at Secret Service Headquarters in D.C. Arbakova listed a Special Agent James Doyle as her emergency contact. Ronnie remembered the name and flipped back through the previous pages until she found it. Just as she suspected, Agent James Doyle was the whip on the vice presidential detail. An experienced agent, the whip wasn’t a supervisor but took charge when the shift leader wasn’t around. Doyle’s connection to Arbakova and his relatively powerful position made the two agents a natural place to begin. She could knock two investigations out in half the time and give herself a little breathing room.

“You just got yourself moved up to page one, Comrade Arbakova.” Ronnie did her best to imitate her father’s thick tones. A note beside Arbakova’s name indicated she was a second-generation American who spoke fluent Russian. Her home address was in Rockville. Ronnie would pass right by it on the way into the city.

With a more concrete plan, Garcia gave a shuddering stretch, raising both arms high above her head. Maybe sleep wouldn’t prove so elusive. She’d stop off tomorrow morning and chat with Nadia Arbakova, catch her while she was getting ready for work and wasn’t suspecting a visit. Maybe she could practice a little of her rusty Rusky. And, if everything in Arbakova’s background came back clear, maybe they could even become friends, even if she was in law enforcement.

Rockville, Maryland 0130 hours

A predatory expedition. Turcoman slavers-the bane of Central Asia in the 1800s-called it alaman. Russians had been their favorite prey. Mujaheed Beg took a comb from his shirt pocket and ran it through thick black hair, making certain the high, Elvis Presley pompadour was in place. He smiled at the notion that he was up to the same work as his Turcoman ancestors-on American soil. A heavy black brow over a hooked nose gave him the air of an extremely dangerous man. An American professor at Berkeley, where he’d received his undergraduate degree in marketing, had dubbed him Evil Elvis. Instead of taking it as an insult, Beg reveled in the reputation.

He had been born near the ancient Silk Road city of Merv, and Turcoman blood coursed through his veins. Predation came as naturally to him as it had to his merciless forbearers. He smiled when he thought of the old Silk Road axiom: If on your path you meet a deadly viper and a man from Merv-kill the Mervi first.

Beg drove his rented Saturn past the row of untrimmed shrubs and trees in front of Nadia Arbakova’s house for the third time. The whitewashed brick appeared to glow under the hazy sliver of a crescent moon. It was set well back from the road, providing the perfect cover. Had his attack been destined for a trained CIA operative, he would have been more careful. Counterintelligence agents were, as a rule, much more wary than law enforcement. Even the potbellied bureaucrat handcuffed and lolling in and out of unconsciousness in the seat beside him had installed CCTV cameras and a decent security system in his home. Spies, even the fat ones, took precautions against people like Mujaheed Beg-but they were never quite good enough.

Nadia Arbakova was no spy. What’s more, her personnel file ranked her as only a mediocre police officer. At heart, she was an analyst, much happier working puzzles than arresting criminals.

Her scant record showed she qualified twice a year with her handgun, but her shooting skills were average at best. She would be easy to kill.

Beg gave the unconscious boob in his passenger seat a lopsided smile. There was yet much to do before he killed anyone.

The cell phone in his jacket pocket began to buzz.

“It’s the boss,” Beg muttered to the drooling Arab beside him. “He always bothers me when I’m working.”

He answered curtly. “Yes?”

“Peace be unto you,” the voice said with the rapid click of Pakistani English. “I trust God has preserved you…”

“Peace be unto you as well, sir,” Beg said. He held the phone away from his ear and whispered to the unconscious man beside him, as if giving an explanation. “The boss always has to be so forward…”

There was a pause on the line. “Are you with someone?”