She turned to him, her eyes casting up to his. Maya was concerned for the first time since the two of them had met. “I don’t know what’s going on, Karl.”
Suddenly, gunfire erupted somewhere outside on the streets, prompting Karl to gaze out the window. But he couldn’t really tell where the shots had come from.
“This is crazy,” he said. “Life was more certain in Russia.”
She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “All of this discontent has made me horny,” Maya said.
He was feeling the same way. With the sounds of street protests reaching a fever pitch, the two of them made passionate love on the king-sized bed. When they were both satisfied, Maya fell asleep almost immediately. Karl slipped on his underwear and quietly stepped into the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind him.
He looked at his secure SAT phone in his hand. He needed perspective, but wasn’t sure if he could get that from the Agency. Yet, he also wasn’t sure if he could get this clarity from the person he was about to call.
Screw it. He tapped in a number and sat on the toilet waiting for an answer.
“Somebody better be fucking dead,” came a groggy voice.
“Dad, it’s me.”
“No shit, kid,” Jake Adams said. “Do you know what time it is in the Azores?”
“Zero two hundred.”
“Close enough. What’s up?”
Karl gave his dad the rundown of his past couple of days, leading right up to their stay at this hotel. Since his dad already knew about the missile on the Russian ship, he mentioned that as well. He needed to know the full story to make an assessment.
“Venezuela is a tough nut to crack,” Jake said. “Your immediate concern is harm from amateurs. Street thugs don’t play by the same rules as intelligence agencies. SEBIN has a reputation of being a few bullets shy of a death squad. Watch out for them. The Russians play it pretty strait. Considering the missile, they could be either the GRU or the SVR.”
“What about that man who followed me to Iceland?”
“He was GRU. But it doesn’t matter. Based on everything going down worldwide, my guess is that they’re all involved in some way. You need to watch your back. When you get a group like SEBIN involved, they will want to prove themselves to the big brother, the Russians.”
Karl wished his father was here with him, mentoring him through this operation. Maybe he was too new to handle this on his own.
“You’re whispering,” Jake said. “Where is your Russian friend?”
“Maya? Sleeping.”
“Let me guess. You just gave her the full Adams.”
Karl smiled and shook his head. He was still trying to get used to this father and son relationship. “You could say that.”
“You don’t fully trust her,” Jake said.
“How… ”
“I wouldn’t. You have good instincts.”
“She’s an American, dad.”
“She grew up in Russia. It’s possible that either her mother or father were deep cover KGB back in the day. So, Maya could have been recruited as a sleeper.”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“How did the Agency recruit her?”
Karl had no idea. In fact, he wasn’t too sure about anything she had told him about her past. “I don’t know.”
“You know the old saying, Karl. Trust but verify.”
They both paused and said nothing for about thirty seconds. Finally, his father broke the silence, “Listen, this Maya might be perfectly legit. But the Agency is using her as an agent and not an officer. That means something. If she were more trusted, why not hire her as a full officer?”
Karl had already thought about this, but he had not asked her directly. Nor had he asked the Agency. That was his bad. “You have a point, dad.”
“Enough about her,” Jake said. “You have a major problem on your hands. What kind of assets do you have in country?”
“Our tour guide is a civilian with that oil company,” Karl said.
“He’s not an asset. He’s a liability.”
“He knows the country.”
“I know. But when the shooting starts, and it will, you need to have some help.”
“I’ve been instructed to stay away from the embassy and all Agency assets,” Karl said.
“That’s a good thing, Karl. My guess is that SEBIN and the SVR knows everyone who has ever stepped foot in the embassy, right down to shoe size or bra size. But you need to make damn sure they give you some backup when the time comes for help.”
His father knew his shit, and he had a damn good point. “I’ll check with our people. See what they have going.”
“What are your current orders?” Jake asked.
“Hang loose and wait for further instructions.”
Jake laughed. “That just means they don’t have a plan, Karl. You need to improvise.”
“How?”
“Quit playing defense and go on the offense.”
“And how in the hell do I do that?”
“Use your training. Turn the tables. Get on their ass. Bypass the SEBIN officers and go at the SVR. They’re the key. They want to put the missile in Venezuela. They’re on you because you caught their ass on video. This is a big test, son. You can do this. You have the training and the genetics. Bring the fight to them. They won’t expect that.”
Damn, he wished his father was here with him, mentoring him through this assignment. But it was time for him to man up and do his job.
They both hung up and Karl sat staring at his phone. His father was right. He couldn’t just sit by and wait. He needed to be proactive.
Quietly, he slipped back into bed with Maya.
23
The Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) headquarters was housed in a place called La Tumba, or The Tomb, in downtown Caracas, Venezuela. To the casual observer, the 16-story building could have simply been another office building in the sprawling capital district. But the five underground stories held deep secrets of torture and despair, especially in times of discontent. Now, the business of this government intelligence agency was squelching the protests of political protesters. And business was good. The six foot by nine foot cells were nearing capacity. Bright lights constantly confused prisoners, giving them no indication of the passage of time in their windowless cages as they tried to sleep on concrete beds, driving many to suicide to relive their isolation and torture. Waterboarding was only a baptismal leading to actual pain and suffering at the hands of sick bastards without souls.
All of this went through the mind of Sergei Zubov, the Russian SVR officer placed in charge of surveilling the man from Murmansk. A man they still could not properly identify. Sure, he had actually sat down to dinner with the man in Aruba, and gone on that fateful subterfuge of a boat ride through the warm evening.
Polina stood to Sergei’s right as the two of them observed the two SEBIN officers drag a man into the interrogation room roughly. There was a single metal chair in the center of the room bolted to the floor. Under the chair was a drain, and Sergei didn’t have to use his imagination to figure out what that was used for. It reminded him a little bit of one of their interrogation rooms in the lower levels of the old KGB prison, The Lubyanka in Moscow. Those were the good old days. This was before Sergei’s time, but he had toured the place as a young SVR officer. But in the case of The Lubyanka, the prisoners did not get a chair. They were hooked to a chain from the ceiling.
“Why are we here?” Polina whispered to Sergei.
Sergei tried to hold back a smile. He whispered back, “They want to show us how tough they are.”
The one with a constant vape stick in his mouth, the older of the two Venezuelan intel officers, came over and stood next to them. He let out a stream of flavored vapor and said, “Proceed, my friend.”