With the U.S. Army Central Command tied down in the Middle East, a new command headquarters would be opened at the Northwood facilities in Eastbury, Hertfordshire. The major problem as seen by both Washington and London was that there would be inevitable friction between the United States military establishment, NATO and the civilian governments of non-members Finland and Sweden. An overall commander with great experience and a diplomatic touch was needed, and it should not be an American.
While he slept peacefully beside Arial Printas in her hotel suite after enjoying the best sex he had had in ten years, General Sir Frederick Ravensdale, GCB, GBE, DSO, the deputy supreme allied commander of NATO in Europe, was promoted to lead the new military force being created to counter the threatening Russian moves in the Arctic.
27
Election day was on Sunday, April 17, and it was more like a fair than a civic crisis in the troubled border city. Despite pittering rain in the early morning, the weather quickly warmed to pleasant temperatures. The old cobblestones rang with traffic, business was brisk and kids capered among the banners and streamers that urged voters to favor specific candidates. Turnout was high to decide the makeup of the new council and elect a new mayor. Everyone was aware that the election was really about much more than that.
Not so long ago, the charismatic lawyer Brokk Mihailovich and his nationalist followers had been favored to win it all. Then he had vanished, and his fragile coalition of supporters who also wanted Narva to distance itself from Russia collapsed into their own feuding camps. Old Guard politicians who wanted even stronger ties with Moscow were confident.
CIA special agent Janice Hollings watched the vote unfold from a table at a street-side café. Another woman, a legitimate supplier of material for Hollings’s cover business in Tallinn, was chatting away and paging through sample books of colored cloth. Calico listened with appropriate interest, although her thoughts were elsewhere. The election was on her mind, as was the death of Anneli.
She was absolutely going to kill Kyle Swanson when she got back! Ruin him! Hurt him! She had never been as furious with a single human being as she was with that damned unfeeling robot sniper. He had no emotion, no decency, no sense of right and wrong. He had killed Anneli Kallasti as surely as if he had put a knife to her throat. When this voting was done, she would deal with him face-to-face and crush him beneath the wrath of the CIA. Put the bastard in prison and throw away the key!
Calico had embraced Anneli, whom she saw as a refugee child in dire need of help, love and guidance. She saw her as well as a potential valuable asset for the Company in this strange land. Her language skills, daring and eagerness were a perfect blend for a CIA recruit.
Without even the courtesy of informing Janice in advance of what was going on, Swanson had taken he girl on a secret mission. Now she was dead. Jan had gotten the news directly from Marty Atkins, her big boss at Langley, who told her to quiet down. They could straighten things out when the election was over. Calico was ordered to keep her head in the damned game. As a seasoned professional, she had only been able to speak obliquely about the situation when she had called her husband last night. Tom said he missed her. She missed him. After being on the road all across Estonia for the past few days, she wanted to go home. And then she wanted to kill Kyle Swanson, damn his eyes.
The other woman at the table displayed some printed cotton designs, and Janice ran her fingers over the soft fabric to maintain her cover story, the reason for a blond American woman being in Narva at such a time. They talked for some time about the colorfast Turkey Reds, and the patterns drawn from native costumes in the region. It was good material, and the product always sold fast, so Jan would place an order after some obligatory bargaining.
The electioneering was in full swing all around them. The carnival atmosphere only intensified as the day wore on. She did not like the way it seemed to be going, for the former communists who anchored the status quo seemed too happy instead of being their usual gruff selves. The younger crowd was somber. Beer and wine started to flow early in the afternoon, and although there was little violence, mostly bar fights, it became obvious that the hardliners and ethnic Russians would win. In the afternoon, she toured a few more voting areas, listened to the gossip, and knew it was over except for the victory celebrations.
The count was quick and by eight o’clock on Sunday night, it was all done. Calico drove to the edge of the city in search of a quiet spot from which she could report her conclusions: Narva had chosen to move closer to Russia, just across the river, than it was to the rest of bustling Estonia. Langley was awaiting her analysis. Then she could go home.
It was time to go home. The three exhausted snipers slept through most of Saturday as the gleaming yacht moved with the rhythm of the easternmost sector of the Mediterranean. Sir Jeff and Trevor Dash, the captain of the boat, were both former special-operator types and they threw a protective web of quiet around those three cabins. The death of young Anneli Kallasti had saddened everyone on board.
The SAS men Baldwin and Perry left just before dark after a final round of fist bumps, the understated equivalent of a bear hug for snipers, who did not like big shows of emotion about anything. See you around, buddy. Right you are, mate.
Swanson saw them off, had something to eat, talked awhile with Sir Jeff and went back to bed to get back on a normal day-night schedule. He was surprised at how easily he fell asleep on Saturday night, but the pressure was off him and that felt good. By Sunday morning, after a good breakfast of eggs and bacon and strong coffee, he felt almost human again.
Sir Jeff was also at the table, watching the seagulls scour the shipping lanes of the Med for discarded garbage or pouncing on a hapless fish too close to the surface. Kyle was in baggy Boston Celtics basketball shorts and a T-shirt, having discarded all bandages except a three-inch-square pad taped over the nick in his leg and a Band-Aid on the arm. The mood was good.
“Here’s a piece of news,” Jeff said. “Our good friend Freddie Ravensdale got a nice promotion. He is to command a new Anglo-American-NATO task force that will counter the Russians up in the north. Farewell, Brussels; hello, London.”
Kyle poured some more coffee from a warmer. “I thought he was getting ready to retire.”
“So did I, but I never thought of Freddie as someone who would drift off into obscurity after his service years. This new post will provide him public visibility, and perhaps he will pursue politics. I shall ask him out for another dinner with us before he heads to his new headquarters.”
“Fine. Whatever,” Swanson said. He had read the morning traffic on the secure computer. “His new outfit, this Joint Task Force Ten, is going to suck up a lot of resources.”
“Admittedly it will thin the wall elsewhere, particularly in the Baltic region until all of the shifts can be made. NATO members will have to man the borders on their own for a little while. Quite a capable bunch, from what I have seen.”
He pushed aside the breakfast plates. “It has been thrown together too fast, Jeff. That asshole Ivan Strakov is playing us for suckers. We can’t trust him.”