“Robert Miller had a Tommy Dorsey tune playing in his condo.”
“Yes. From what we know, the Venona Project indicated that a lot of the big fish got away. Names we couldn’t decipher. We do know considerable damage was done to our security, especially in the atomic arena.”
“And much of that courtesy of one Robert Miller.”
Dave nodded. “One of the ones that got away.”
“Not completely. So, in his final years in the FBI, a rooky agent, Mike Gates receives training from Miller.”
Dave nodded. “Miller taught Gates fieldwork operations because Gates was being assigned to our embassy in Moscow.”
“Where he was recruited by Boris Borshnik, the single child of the only Russian ever tried by a U.S. military tribunal and executed. Wonder if Miller has spoken to Gates?”
“You mean since he retired?” Dave removed his glasses and rubbed his temples with the palms of his hands.
“I mean today, after I left him.”
“I don’t know how we’d find out.”
“I do.”
“How?” Dave asked.
“You’re supposed to bring me to the command center at eight in the morning. That’s when we’ll know.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
With Max half asleep in his arms, it was five minutes after midnight when O’Brien unlocked the salon doors on Jupiter. He ate a banana and called Lauren Miles. “We got Miller, and more importantly, we’ve got Mike Gates. He’s your double agent. In the pockets of the Russian Volkow, a.k.a. Borshnik, and Mohammed Sharif.”
“My God … are you sure, Sean?” she said.
O’Brien told her the story. “I’ve got the flash drive with his confession. I’m coming in tomorrow morning to hang Gates. I’ll try to get from him the location where Borshnik is hiding.”
“What can I do?”
“If I can’t get him to admit it, do what you have to do.”
Lauren was quiet a beat. “I hope you can get a few hours sleep.”
O’Brien pulled his last Corona from the refrigerator and took it in the bathroom with him. He set the Glock on the back of the toilet seat, turned on the shower, climbed in and closed his eyes as the hot water pelted his shoulders and the back of his neck. Exhaustion pooled around him like dark clouds. He braced his hands against the walls of the stall, his thoughts focused on Robert Miller’s face.
He stepped quietly into the master stateroom. Max was sleeping in the center of the bed. She barely opened her eyes as O’Brien slipped from the room into the salon. He saw a blur, a quick flash of muted color through the starboard porthole. A large cat jumped from a fish cleaning station, its mouth clamped on a discarded fish head.
Lying on his back, he could see clouds through the skylight. He watched them ride the wind like ghosts performing a nocturnal ballet against an inky backdrop.
Then O’Brien dreamed he heard a noise.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Max uttered a low growl. “Shhh,” whispered O’Brien. He sat up, reaching for the Glock on his nightstand. He stood, the glow from the moon falling softly through the Plexiglas skylight. Max growled again. “Don’t bark,” O’Brien whispered.
O’Brien held the Glock up and stepped into the short passageway from the stateroom to the salon. He could see a silhouette on the other side of the blinds in front of the salon door. He walked back in the stateroom, closed the door, stood on his bed, and slowly opened the skylight. Max whined. “Shhh … I’ll be right back.”
He quietly pulled himself straight up and through the open skylight. He could hear the breakers across the road and the rumble of a storm somewhere over the Atlantic. O’Brien held the Glock and stepped in his bare feet down the center of the bow, and inched his way around the catwalk beam until he was almost to the cockpit. He heard the man picking the lock. Just as O’Brien cleared the exterior of the salon, the man opened the lock and entered.
Max.
It would be a matter of a few seconds before she barked. O’Brien slipped down from the beam and silently followed the intruder. The man slowed. He stepped without a sound through the salon. A moving shadow. O’Brien saw the pistol in the man’s hand.
Max scratched the closed stateroom door.
The man extended his pistol arm and stood ready to kick open the door.
“Another step and you’re dead,” O’Brien said, touching the Glock’s barrel to the back of the man’s neck. “Drop the gun! Slowly raise your arms.” The man released the gun and started to raise his hands.
“Can I turn around?”
O’Brien recognized the voice.
Eric Hunter turned around and half smiled. “Nice job, O’Brien. Surprised you heard me. Must have been the dog.”
O’Brien was silent. He suppressed the urge to slam the pistol grip in Hunter’s teeth. “I should put one between your eyes.”
“I have no doubt you could, considering your background. Was it Afghanistan, that where they got to you? Selling your conscience, your soul.”
“Conscience? You break into my boat. Gun in hand, and you want to analyze me? Fuck you, Hunter, or do I call you Wes Rendel?” O’Brien shoved the Glock under Hunter’s chin. “You enjoy lying to Maggie Canfield and Jason?”
“I’ve never lied to them. Frank didn’t die immediately in the bombing. He died in my arms. I promised him I’d keep an eye on his family.”
O’Brien pressed the gun barrel deeper into Hunter’s skin. “Who’re you working for? Tell me!”
“The U.S. government. Who’re you working for?”
“An eighty-eight-year-old lady and her granddaughter. On top of that, I’m trying to keep Jason Canfield alive, and I never met his dad, but I care about his mother.”
“How much did Mohammed Sharif pay you?”
“What?”
“Money, O’Brien. Sharif says you’re the mole.”
“And you’re incompetent!”
“I spent two years infiltrating them. He says you sold out to him, gave him the location of the U-boat before you had to retrieve the goods. He said I’d have to go through the gates of hell to make you admit it. And that’s what will happen. You’ve been classified as an extreme enemy combatant. They’ll use a blowtorch on your back to convince you to talk. When did they recruit you, O’Brien? Was it when you were in Pakistan?”
O’Brien shoved Hunter across the salon and into the couch. “Sit down! I’m not your double agent. It’s Mike Gates!”
“What?”
“Mike Gates. Sharif played one on you. Gates of hell. He was talking about Mike Gates.”
“You’re out of your mind!”
“Am I? Here’s a quick history lesson for you, Hunter. Mike Gates trained under an agent named Robert Miller. Miller was directly responsible for the death of Ivan Borshnik during the cold war. Ivan was Yuri Volkow’s father. Volkow’s real name is Boris Borshnik, and he’s here to avenge his country and his father’s death by execution in America. Mike Gates was recruited by Boris Borshnik because Borshnik knew of Gate’s tie to Miller.”
“Miller probably trained a lot of agents through the years.”
“But not any as money hungry as Gates. He looked for the chink in Miller’s armor and found it-the cover up of Billy Lawson’s murder, the covert corruption during the Manhattan Project, culminating in the selling of secrets to the Russians and sending Ivan Borshnik to the electric chair. Miller’s the oldest living double agent in America. It was Miller who met the Germans that night when they were burying the HEU. He had already sold the Russians the “how to” and now he had cut a deal to sell the stuff to Ivan Borshnik. But he kept the money instead while he pushed to have charges brought against Borshnik in front of a military tribunal.”
“If this is true, why’d Volkow or Borshnik, if that’s his name, wait until now to avenge his father’s death or retaliate for his country being ripped off?”