Peter Kirsanow - Second Strike

“Did the president thank you?” Garin asked.

“He was very nice.”

“Without your analysis, we’d be in the middle of a catastrophe.”

Olivia blushed again. A compliment from a killer. She shouldn’t have anything to do with someone like him, she thought. She was a Stanford PhD—a rising policy star. She should be seeing Senator What’s His Name. Insufferable, but safe and predictable. Garin, on the other hand, was all chaos and almost certain heartbreak. Yet she savored the sound of his voice.

“So, it’s a date, Mr. Garin?”

“I believe it is, Ms. Perry.”

She released his hand. “Call me when you return from seeing Clint Laws. Dan can give you the number.”

“It may be a few days after I get back,” Garin said. A chilling look came over his face. “I have to tend to some unfinished business first.”

Then Garin turned abruptly and left without another word. Olivia gazed at the broad shoulders tapering to the narrow waist as he disappeared around the corner. Moments later the nature of his unfinished business began to dawn upon her. And it occurred to her it was possible, quite likely even, that she would never see Mike Garin again.

Ruth Ponder was sitting in her living room watching the news when the phone rang. Most of the folks who had been with her from the outset were sitting with her. A talking head was describing the events that had occurred in Washington, D.C. Her daughter Barbara answered the wall phone in the kitchen. After a long pause Barbara called Ruth with a tone somewhere between anxiety and awe.

“Mom. Telephone. Come quick.”

Ruth rose and was followed by Rev. Broussard and several of her neighbors, concerned about the sound of Barbara’s voice. Barbara, wide-eyed, handed Ruth the phone.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Ponder. Please hold for the president of the United States.”

“Pardon?”

A second later: “Hello, Mrs. Ponder, this is John Marshall.”

“Goodness. Are you sure? I mean, I’m sorry, I don’t know how I’m supposed to address you, sir.”

“John will do just fine, ma’am.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that, sir. Would you mind terribly if I just called you Mr. President?”

“You can call me whatever you like, Mrs. Ponder.”

“Oh my goodness. Oh my. Mr. President, you should know I voted for you last fall, as did my late husband, Amos. He said he didn’t always agree with you but he could tell you loved America.”

“That I do, ma’am.”

Ruth Ponder’s family and friends were gathered around her with expressions of amazement.

“Matt Colton tells me he promised to call you back, but I asked him if I might have that privilege. Matt informed my staff that the information you provided was critical to our ability to protect the country. In a true sense, without your husband and you, this nation would have suffered an attack far more devastating than the one it has.”

“Oh, Mr. President, thank you very much, but I just gave Matt a tiny bit of information in the hope that Amos’s killer would be found.”

“Mrs. Ponder, your information saved untold lives. I cannot express my appreciation deeply enough. You are a patriot, ma’am. On behalf of the United States of America, thank you.”

Ruth Ponder clutched her chest. “Oh my. Oh my goodness. On behalf of Amos and my family who are here with me right now, as are Reverend Broussard and some of our friends, thank you, Mr. President.”

“If we can be of any assistance, Mrs. Ponder, just let me know.”

Ruth Ponder paused. “Mr. President, did they by any chance get the man who shot my Amos?”

“I’m sorry to say we did not, ma’am.”

“Oh. Yes.” Ruth’s voice became a whisper. “Well, I do understand, Mr. President. I understand how difficult these things can be. Matt said as much.”

“Mrs. Ponder?”

“Yes, Mr. President?”

“It’s true we did not capture your husband’s killer. Yet. But I know a man who I suspect is doing something about it as we speak. I’m sure Amos would’ve liked him a lot. I feel sorry for anyone who is in his sights.”

BETHANY BEACH, DELAWARE,

AUGUST 29, 8:14 P.M. EDT

Acooling breeze lilted off the ocean as the eastern horizon shaded midnight blue and threads of yellow and orange rays played across the ocean as the sun set to the west. The heat from the blistering day radiating from the white sands of the beach below belied the fact that fall would soon be approaching.

The lone figure standing on the second-floor balcony of the sprawling beach house on the northern end of Bethany stood tall, drawing from a Winston and savoring the calming sounds of the crashing waves.

They’d been thwarted. The meticulous planning, the Machiavellian maneuvering, had all come to nothing. Worse. After the finger-pointing and recriminations were complete, heads would roll. Almost literally. In fact, several had already been executed and more would follow in the immediate future.

He would be safe. He had performed all of his tasks flawlessly. Besides, other than the assassin, he was Mikhailov’s most valuable aide. And Mikhailov, despite the debacle, remained secure, in large part because he’d eliminated almost anyone who could mount an opposition. The ruthless typically survive.

He was still trying to determine why the event had failed. The consensus among the forensics examiners was that it must have been due to an extraordinarily sophisticated worm of some sort, but thus far not a trace of such a worm had been found. The most accomplished cybersleuths in Russia remained stumped, and it was whispered that only one person in the country, perhaps in all the world, could’ve designed such a thing, and that person was dead—found murdered in the famed Tatiana Palinieva’s luxury apartment.

Perhaps even more extraordinary was the failure of the secondary plan. The assassin had, as usual, performed with nearly supernatural efficiency. Yet the American operator, the one the assassin adamantly insisted be eliminated, had intervened. The assassin had been proven right. The entire operation should have been placed on hold pending the death of the former leader of Omega. But for the American, the world today would be a vastly different one. For all intents and purposes, a Russian one.

Now they were checkmated. By idiot Americans, no less. Marshall had convinced NATO that the troop buildup along the Baltics, the incursions into eastern Ukraine, and the movements toward Iran merited a response almost akin to Article 5. Even the weaker sisters in the EU reluctantly concurred. As a consequence, several divisions of NATO troops were deployed in the Baltics and Poland, and an armada of naval vessels supplemented the US Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf.

Several Western European nations, sufficiently alarmed by the Russian aggression, began to shift to more US-produced oil and gas, something that would pose a threat to the Russian economy and, unless he found other means to float such economy, to Mikhailov himself. Marshall was shrewd enough to employ that as a lever against Mikhailov, gaining concessions and keeping him in check. The patrician was sure Marshall would do just that.

The debacle, however, could have been worse. There was no evidence of Russian involvement in either the suicide bombings in Washington or the planned hijackings. All evidence pointed to jihadists as the culprits. The captured volunteers believed they were discharging their missions on behalf of ISIS. They had no inkling whatsoever who their real leader was. The assassin had shrewdly altered his appearance sufficiently to frustrate facial-recognition software. Any surveillance cameras that captured his image—whether at the airport or elsewhere—would be unable to identify him as a Russian operator. And the Zaslon operators the American had killed were all functional cleanskins—utterly untraceable. Even Stepulev couldn’t be linked. The volunteers too. All of their flights had been grounded, all had been seized by the American authorities, and all believed they had been prospective martyrs for ISIS. The only evidence of Russian involvement was the Butcher, of whom the DIA had long been aware—but only by reputation, not by identity. Regardless, that piece of evidence had been eliminated when a potential crime scene in Lorton, Virginia, had been reduced to rubble due to an inexplicable gas-line explosion.