“Nyet, Vitaliy Kirillovich, you can count on me,” he replied, addressing his boss with the utmost deference, by his given name and patronymic
“I will give you the combination to my safe and trust you to bring everything in it to me, right away.”
“Your safe, boss?” Ivan looked confused, almost scared. The man, an ex-Spetsnaz, who didn’t hesitate to kill with his bare hands, seemed flustered at the thought of opening his boss’s safe.
“Yes, Ivan, I trust you,” Myatlev said. “Am I wrong to trust you?”
“N — no, sir, nyet.”
Myatlev stopped for a second, thinking of the best way to do this. If he was right in his worst fears, Ivan was never to be heard from again. He hesitated a little, thinking whether to send Ivan on his personal jet, the Citation X. If worst came to worst the twenty-million dollar plane would be gone, confiscated by the FSB immediately after its wheels touched down on Russian soil. On the other hand, if he sent Ivan on a commercial flight he could be caught leaving the country with his documents, and those were enough to compromise him and start a shit storm, even if one hadn’t already started yet. Ivan’s life and the plane were the risk he had to take to ensure he could return safely to Moscow.
“I’m going to send you on my plane, and you can leave as soon as possible.”
“Thank you, boss, consider it done.”
“Bring me everything you find in my safe. Don’t read anything, don’t open anything, just grab it all, and bring it to me, understood?”
“Yes, sir. I will leave now.”
Myatlev told Ivan how to access the safe and gave him the code, making him repeat the information. He tapped his empty glass with his index finger, and Ivan replenished his Stolichnaya dutifully before leaving the room.
He leaned back in his chair, feeling some relief. Soon he would know. But he wasn’t safe here either, not entirely, although he was in a different country. Ukraine had been an independent country for many years, but the Russian president had armies of separatists operating within the Ukrainian border, a border that was becoming more irrelevant, especially after Crimea.
“Who am I kidding?” he muttered between two rounds of cursing that would have made career sailors jealous.
He got up from his desk and went to the safe in the corner of the room. He opened it and took all the papers out, sorting through them. A small pile went back into the safe. A larger pile accompanied him to the terrace, where Myatlev personally held each piece of paper as it burned, ashes blown by the wind staining the spotless white of the fresh-fallen snow.
…9
Jeremy Weber sat in front of the TV, pretending to watch the Orioles clenched in a death match against the LA Dodgers. His mind wasn’t in the game though; every minute or so he checked the time on his watch, wondering when his son would come home.
Michael, his sixteen-year-old son, had been pretty good about respecting the rules for being out on a school night. Never after eight; that was the rule. Two long hours after that 8.00PM had come and gone, Jeremy was trying to remain calm and think positive. He could be making out with some girl and forgot the time. He could be hanging out with friends and didn’t care to come home.
Jeremy found it hard to think positive though. In his experience as an FBI agent, he had noticed that all family member accounts in cases of missing persons, homicides, kidnappings, or other tragedies started with the simple statement “he didn’t come home last night.” In this case, he was the family, the only family his son had.
He checked the time once more, then speed-dialed his son’s cell. Again, it went straight to voicemail. He stood up, grabbed the untouched glass of scotch from the coffee table, and poured it in the sink. Then he grabbed his work laptop and powered it up.
He watched the Data Integration and Visualization System login screen load. His special-agent status gave him unrestricted access to the most powerful search tools available to the FBI. The DIVS compiled and cross-referenced data from the most used databases, allowing him a single-point access for any search.
He set the parameters of the search, but DIVS returned zero results. Michael wasn’t in the system, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was OK. It was time for some legwork, time to hit the streets.
He put his weapon holster on, checked the ammo in his gun, then put on a down jacket and packed its pockets with two spare clips for his Sig.
Noises came from the hallway as he opened his front door. Two uniformed officers were dragging his son out of the elevator, kicking and screaming. He stepped back and allowed them to enter, speechless. His son, his Michael, was high as a kite, his glazed-over eyes throwing fiery glares while drool was dripping out of the corners of his contorted mouth.
“Hey, Weber,” one of the uniforms said, a guy looking vaguely familiar, “thought I’d do you a solid and bring him here instead of lockup.”
“Yeah, yeah, much appreciated,” Jeremy managed to say, shaking the officer’s hand.
“Will you be OK from here?”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll handle it.”
Jeremy closed the door behind the two officers and turned to look at his son.
“Michael—”
“I hate you,” his son yelled, then pounced and hit him in the chest with both fists. “I hate everything about you!”
Jeremy held his son tight against his chest, ignoring the punches and the muffled screams.
“I wish you were dead, you hear me? Dead! Why aren’t you one of those feds who get killed on duty, huh?”
“It’s OK, son, calm down, it’s OK. It’s the drugs. What did you—”
“Ha! I know! ‘Cause only the good guys die… Assholes like you stay here fo’ever, makin’ my life hell!”
“Tell me what you took, Michael.”
He screamed from the top of his lungs, an unnatural sound resembling the shriek of a dying animal.
“Ev’ything! Ev’ything I could get my hands on, that’s wha’ I took!”
He was starting to slur, and that made Jeremy worry. He looked at his pupils again, dilated to the size of his green irises, glossy and fixated. They looked like they were made of glass, unnatural. He could feel his son’s rapid heartbeat get even faster and saw sweat beads form on his forehead.
“We need to get you some help,” Jeremy said, putting Michael gently on the sofa.
“We need you to die!” Michael wiped the drool of his mouth with his sleeve. “Should have been you who died, not Mom!”
He stopped, frozen in place, the pain hitting him in the gut. Almost seven years after his wife’s death, the pain felt just as real and intense as if it were yesterday. Maybe his son was right. He had thought the same thing many times, but he couldn’t dwell on it now. There wasn’t any time.
He pulled out his phone and flipped through some contacts, finding the one he needed. It was almost midnight, but the man was a doctor; he’d understand.
The conversation took less than a minute. Jeremy sat on the sofa, next to his son, now curled up in the fetal position and breathing heavily.
“Listen, Michael, you need medical attention. There’s an ambulance on its way that will take you to a rehab cen—”
“Go to fuckin’ hell, and never come back!”
Maybe I’m already there, Jeremy thought bitterly.
“You’ll stay there until you recover and I gain the confidence you’ll never do this to yourself again. I’ll come visit.”
“Fuck yourself…” Michael mumbled, exhausted, his face buried in the sofa pillow.