Collateral (Tier One #6)

Filvarok Hotel

Odessa, Ukraine

1030 Local Time

Arkady stared into the middle distance, tapping his index finger on the modern wooden desk in the decadent hotel room that he—or, rather, Herr Hemmler—had rented. He’d gotten a few hours’ sleep, but not enough. Espionage and sleep were incompatible bedfellows. He sighed.

He felt vulnerable.

Tap, tap, tap . . .

And weak.

Tap, tap, tap . . .

No, not weak . . .

Tap, tap, tap . . .

Depleted. That was a better word . . . like a body after a prolonged period of exertion.

It was fascinating to contemplate. Take the world’s fastest man, set him in a race against his closest competition, and nine times out of ten he will prevail. But force this man to run the same race over and over again on a single day, each time pitting him against new runners, and eventually he will lose. When a champion has expended all of himself in the pursuit of victory, that is when he’s most vulnerable.

Is that the game Kelso Jarvis has been playing with me? he wondered. And Petrov, too?

Over the past year, his two greatest adversaries—one abroad and one at home—had been fatiguing his intellect and draining his will. Even the mightiest lion can be driven to exhaustion by a relentless pack of hounds . . .

He stopped tapping and his mind went to Catherine Morgan. He’d lost many Zetas in recent months to Ember—twenty-seven, if he included those slain in Vyborg—but her loss was the most devastating. He was not the type of man who took either his resources or good fortune for granted, but he had grown too comfortable and reliant on both her counsel and the intelligence she’d harvested. With her murder, he’d lost his only insight into DNI Jarvis’s mind and the movements and activities of Ember. Compounding the loss, they’d captured Bessonov—so while he’d lost his view inside Ember, Ember had gained insight into Zeta they’d not had before. He’d kept most of this from Petrov, projecting confidence and lying through omission to obscure the terrible truth—that Zeta was in its death throes.

I’ve been deluding myself, he thought, shaking his head. Like an old, desperate man in a casino, feeding one coin after another into the machine, hoping for a jackpot and not stopping until all the money is gone.

His satellite phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID, which appeared as all zeroes, and his stomach sank.

“Da,” he said, taking the call.

“Where the fuck are you?” Petrov shouted in his ear.

He hesitated a moment, debating whether to answer truthfully, before saying, “In Odessa.”

“Who told you you could go to Odessa, Arkady? Hmmm? I certainly did not. Do you not remember the last thing I instructed you to do?”

“Yes, I remember your words very distinctly, Mr. President. You said, ‘Get out of my sight,’ and then threatened to have me imprisoned in Lubyanka.”

“Before that, you insolent son of a bitch,” Petrov seethed.

“You tasked me to initiate an attack that would justify Russian military intervention, which is exactly what I’m attempting to do.”

“I did not tell you to go to Ukraine personally.”

“That is true, but at the same time, you did not prohibit it. To do this job properly, I need to be in Ukraine.”

“You better hurry; the Americans are deploying forces. And are you aware that Kelso Jarvis—a fucking Navy SEAL—is now the Vice President of the United States?”

“I am,” he said, letting out a long breath to calm his growing irritation. “This operation will not be affected by who sits second chair in the White House. But we must be careful and calculated with this attack. It’s not so easy. It has to look real, and it must never be traced to Russia. But I do have an update for you: The asset is in Odessa. We will be able to proceed on schedule.”

“Get it done and come back to Moscow. I need you here. I want to talk about deploying your operatives in a coordinated blitzkrieg-style covert offensive. I want to target top US and NATO commanders and deal a swift, simultaneous blow that creates massive chaos in the ranks while we escalate our efforts to reclaim Novorossiya.”

“Okay, I’ll be on the next flight out tonight,” he said.

“See that you are,” Petrov said and ended the call.

Arkady set the phone down on the desk.

The bastard finally called my bluff, he thought and began running scenarios in his head. Like a chessboard in his mind, he took turns playing both sides—white and black, his pieces and Petrov’s—and every time the outcome ended with him losing.

“Shit, I think he knows,” he murmured. “Which means I can’t win . . . not without help.”

He resumed tapping his index finger.

Tap, tap, tap . . .

Tap, tap, tap . . .

“Okay, fuck it,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief at what he was about to do. He picked up the encrypted sat phone and called his lone surviving Zeta in Washington, DC, with an intact NOC. Samantha Bryant was his newest and least experienced Zeta inside the Beltway and was already proving to be a disappointment. In two years, she’d failed to accomplish anything other than becoming a staffer on the Hill who’d bounced between two different Congressmen.

She answered her mobile phone on the seventh ring. “Hello,” she said.

Wherever Samantha was, it was noisy—a bar or crowded restaurant, he surmised. “Yes, hello,” he said, with a neutral American Midwestern accent. “I’m calling from Capital One on a secure line. May I speak with Ms. Samantha Bryant?”

“Speaking,” she said.

“Ms. Bryant, I’m calling to inform you that we have detected suspicious activity on your card and we are freezing your account. Can you please call our fraud department back at the number listed on the back of your card?”

“Yes, of course,” she said, her voice taking on a fresh and urgent tone.

“Thank you for using Capital One. Goodbye,” he said and severed the call.

Three minutes later, his other phone rang. “Authenticate,” he said, answering it.

“Morning glories bloom at night,” she said, calling him from a much quieter place now.

“And sunflowers follow the sun across the sky,” he said, completing the challenge protocol.

“I’m secure,” she said, unable to hide her nerves.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I mean, I think so . . . I’m in an alley behind the restaurant we’re at.”

“Why don’t you go for a walk, Samantha? Walk and talk, that’s the way we do it.”

“Okay, I’m moving. I’m walking . . .”

“Listen to me, Samantha, I need you to do something for me. Something that, depending on how you execute the tasking, will draw unwanted attention to you. Something that may result in you being taken into custody and questioned. But that is okay, because what I need you to do is more important than the work you’re doing in Congress.”

“You want me to burn my NOC, is that what you’re saying?”

“No,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I want you to execute the tasking as quickly and covertly as possible. Use whatever contacts or methods you deem fit. No one knows your network better than you. This is not an either-or scenario, Samantha. Complete the mission and attempt to preserve your NOC. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir,” she said. “What are my orders?”

He let the question hang on the air for a moment, testing his resolve more than hers. Finally, he said, “I need you to get a message to someone for me.”

“Who?” she said, her curiosity piqued.

He let out a heavy, depleted exhale. “The Vice President of the United States.”