No one replied. She took the laser pointer and underlined the letters S, I, and A, printed in large, bold font on the section of the Asian continent that had been caught in the printed map section. “Russia! This is Russia, people, right here! Just a couple of hundred miles from this plane’s flight path! In 747 flight time, that’s nothing!”
They all stared at her quietly. No one followed her chain of thought yet.
“I’m adding a third scenario, guys, I have to,” she said, then went to the whiteboard, and wrote the letter V under the two other scenarios.
“Alex,” Tom said, “are you sure? I know you’re—”
“Obsessed?” Alex fired right back. “Is this the word you’re looking for, Tom?”
“N — no, I wanted to say, umm… motivated,” Tom replied hesitantly.
“What am I missing?” Blake asked.
“V is a Russian terrorist, the leader of the network you helped me track down. But him? We never caught him.” Alex said, turning her attention to Blake. “He’s a brilliant mastermind, and his plans are not the ordinary terrorist agenda; they are majestic somehow. It’s as if the entire world is that bastard’s playground. I’ve been trying to nail him for a long time, but I don’t even know his name, just his initial, V.”
“Alex, we talked about this,” Steve intervened. “You can’t make all your cases about V. You will screw up. It clouds your judgment.”
“But what if it’s a viable scenario?” Blake pushed back. “I, for one, trust her judgment, clouded or not. That’s why I’m here.”
“Blake, you don’t understand,” Steve continued. “She’s completely—”
“Obsessed,” Alex cut him off, laughing bitterly. “OK, yes, maybe I am. I don’t think any of us are safe until that son of a bitch is dead and buried, maybe not even then. But I also know I can’t ignore a plausible scenario, no matter how much I would just love for Tom and Steve to not think me obsessed.”
Silence fell heavy among them. Steve broke it first, saying in an apologizing tone, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
She turned to Tom and said, “Tom, I need Sam to join us.”
“Boss?” Lou said, lifting his eyes from the computer screen for the first time in minutes. “Look!” He turned his screen toward her and highlighted a name with his mouse.
“Oh, crap,” she reacted. “Here’s the opportunity. One of the XA233 pilots has a Russian name.”
…20
They had set up a room just for Myatlev and Dimitrov. The two massage beds were placed closely together and covered with sparkling white sheets. As such, the two men could have quiet, exclusive conversations during their massage sessions, in the complete privacy of their dedicated spa room.
Two bodyguards secured the door on the outside, and Ivan and two more men were on the inside. Those guarding it on the inside had gotten a better deal, being able to let their eyes wander on the naked bodies of the two young masseuses. It was quite the view, especially if they managed to keep their eyes off the nakedness of the two chubby, hairy, older men lying on their beds.
That’s the way Myatlev liked his full-body massages: delivered in privacy, by completely naked young women, not a day older than eighteen, with their pussies completely waxed. He didn’t touch them; well, not that often, anyway. And not when he had guests, like today. He just took in the sensation and the view, reflected by wall-sized mirrors in the warm, relaxing light of the spa.
“This goddamned music makes me want to take a piss,” Dimitrov said grumpily.
Myatlev gestured to the bodyguards, running the edge of his palm against his throat. Ivan obliged immediately, and the tropical forest sounds that had played in the background left the room in complete silence.
“Better?” Myatlev asked.
“Yeah… it’s heaven, my friend. And this devushka is giving me a hard-on, and she only just worked on my neck so far,” Dimitrov laughed.
“Speaking of hard-ons, I just heard a joke from one of my men,” Myatlev said. “It goes like this: Can you fuck at a distance?”
“Huh?” Dimitrov turned his head toward Myatlev, intrigued.
“Yes, if your cock is at least five inches longer than the distance,” Myatlev said, and they both burst into laughter.
“Five inches is all you need, huh?” Dimitrov quipped.
“These days?”
Both men started laughing hard. Myatlev signaled Ivan, who brought them shot glasses with chilled vodka.
“Ura!” the two men cheered as they clinked their glasses together, still lying on their bellies, just extending their arms toward each other enough to make their glasses come together.
“OK, here’s one,” Dimitrov said, after gulping down his vodka. “There was a destroyer sailing in the Barents Sea, north of the polar circle, and the XO got sick and died. The captain said he was only going to promote someone in his place if they were a real man, proving they could get an erection in the Arctic cold.”
“Brr…” Myatlev laughed.
“All candidates were there, on deck, with their pants down in the icy blizzard, masturbating furiously, hoping to get a boner stiff enough to please the captain and get the XO’s job. Nothing… they tried, and they tried, and nothing, one by one they gave up and went back below deck, defeated and impotent. Just when the captain was about to give up, a lowly sailor steps forward and asks if the job was still open for the man with the strongest erection onboard. The captain says, ‘Yes, it is.’ Then the sailor drops his pants and there it was, a strong, erect organ, standing proud, oblivious to the ice storm. The captain gives him the XO stripes and congratulates him, then asks, ‘Son, how did you manage to get that erection in such cold weather?’ The sailor replies, ‘Easy, sir, that’s the way it froze back in Murmansk!’”
They roared with laughter, then gulped down some more chilled vodka. Their masseuses moved to their lumbar section, working thoroughly on their contracted muscles.
“Vitya,” Dimitrov asked in a serious tone of voice, “are you going to tell me what you’re doing with all that lab equipment you took from VECTOR?”
Myatlev repressed a frown and turned slightly to his left, to see the expressions on Dimitrov’s face as he was sharing his plan.
“I’ve built a lab, a research facility buried deep in the far eastern territories. I’m building a new weapon.”
“Are we finally going to war? What are you building?” Dimitrov asked, his interest piqued.
“Not in the traditional way, but, yes, we are going to war. Just imagine one day, all the police force in one city becoming a little more aggressive, enough to beat and kill people in the streets and wreak havoc, enough to become a menace.”
Dimitrov frowned.
“What are you trying to do, Vitya?”
“Keep our enemy busy from within. I want to ignite deep dissent in the ranks of the American people. It will be as if a cancer they can’t control is attacking them from within. They can’t control the attack, but we can. I want them killing one another in the streets. I have the best researchers in the world working on this.”
“Bozhe moi!” Dimitrov replied. “Oh, my God! Another one of your genius ideas… Abramovich might like it. Does he know?”
Myatlev cleared his throat before replying.
“No, not yet. His mind is set on a traditional war. He wants us to drop a few nukes, attack frontally. But I think this is better, more prudent. Radiation is tricky once it’s released into the atmosphere. It can go anywhere; it can come here. I don’t want my dick to fall off.”