“My superiors,” Yuri said, “have been notified by your government that they shot down the missile. It was all a big joke to them. We make promise to cut our missiles with this new one, and they laugh at us. Spit in our face.” He took another hit on his cigarette, his eyes cutting deeply into Jake through the smoke.
“What do you mean they shot it down. With what?”
“They say it was laser. Zap! One shot. Star Wars shit.”
Jake had read about the Airborne Laser program, but he had no idea they had become operational. “But why?”
Yuri shrugged his shoulders. “Because they could. It’s one thing to test on your missiles, but to shoot down someone else’s missile-” His voice trailed off as he stamped out his cigarette on the sidewalk.
Jake imagined the Russian government was hot right now, with that American revelation. Damn. What balls that took.
“Our world is over, Jake. Passed us by. Shit. Laser beams shooting missiles out of the sky. What’s the use?”
He had a good point, and maybe that was it. Maybe the Americans had to do it this way.
“There was no other way,” Jake said. “You tell someone you can shoot down their nuclear missiles, maybe they believe you, maybe they don’t. But you shoot down the most sophisticated missile in their arsenal, and they gotta believe you can do it again and again. The race is over.”
“No shit.” Yuri thought for a moment, his eyes seemingly transfixed on something behind Jake, and then returning directly to peer at the brown in the American’s eyes. “I need to go. Your friends in the Air Force just made me a dinosaur.”
“What will you do, Yuri?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Siberia. Go fishing. You come back, Jake. I have a dacha on a lake near here. We go fishing together.” The Russian finally smiled. “Thank you for coming here.”
Jake helped him into a cab and patted the top as the car drove off. As he walked down the cobblestone in the cold darkness, he couldn’t help but think of the missile test earlier in the day. A laser. Man, the world was changing, he thought. Would it make the thousands of ICBMs in both the Russian and U.S. arsenals obsolete? More than likely. It was too much for him to think about with all the alcohol.
The dark Volkswagen sedan pulled away from the curb, its lights off, as it crept along the road a block and a half behind the man on the sidewalk.
In three blocks, the man stumbled up into the lobby of the Shevchenko Hotel, and the car pulled over to the side of the road.
Inside the car, the bald driver tapped his chopsticks lightly against the steering wheel. The Asian woman, her eyes having a hard time staying awake, tried her best to block out the tap tap tapping. If she could find a way out of this, away from this crazy man, she would. But was she really that different from him? Probably not. Not as annoying, she knew that much. Just finish the task at hand, she thought, and then back to America.
3
There was no way for Jake to tell how long he had been sleeping before it happened. In the darkness of the hotel room, the shades pulled tight against the city lights, his first recollection of anything out of the ordinary came in the form of a slight sound. A clicking noise. But strange hotels always had strange noises, so he closed his eyes again and tried his best to stop the pain in the back of his skull from the vodka.
Next came a struggle, and his spinning mind reeled about as he lashed against the arms and legs that enveloped him. What was that smell? He knew then that he was in trouble.
When he woke again, Jake was cold and shivering in only his underwear and a T-shirt, and obviously in a cramped space. His eyes tried to adjust to the darkness. No way, Jake knew. The odor was unmistakable. Rubber, dirt, oily rags. A car trunk. A car with bad shocks, he thought, as a sudden jerk bounced him up and then back onto the hard surface.
His arms were strapped to his back and something was stretched around his mouth to his neck.
He tried to shift and stretch his legs, but they had run a line from his neck to his hands and then on to his ankles, which were also lashed and wrapped back toward his bound wrists. Someone knew what they were doing, Jake thought. He had done the same to others in the past, and there was no escaping from that kind of binding.
The car turned, rolling him toward his back. A right turn. Then the shocks really started working overtime. A dirt road? A frozen road.
This was no good. What in the hell was going on?
Music and singing. Muffled. Coming from the front. Then the voice was louder. Screaming.
“Back in the U.S.S.R.,” the accented voice screeched above the car’s engine and the bouncing shocks.
The Beatles? Great. A sadistic Beatles fan.
Suddenly, the car came to a stop. Jake could hear two doors open and the mumbling. What language? Impossible to tell.
When the trunk opened, Jake expected to see light, but all he saw was a dark sky with the occasional star poking out from the swirling clouds.
Both of the dark figures that pulled him out of the trunk wore black ski masks and dark clothing. He noticed they weren’t that large, as they struggled to drag him across the snow and set him against the base of a large pine. Jake tried to see the make of car, but it was impossible in that lighting.
“You tell me about missile launch today.”
The language was broken and somewhat effeminate.
“You’ve got me mixed up with someone who gives a shit,” Jake said, shifting his body up against the sharp edges of the tree bark. He worked his fingers around the knot in the binding. It wasn’t rope. What was it?
The one who had spoken swiftly struck his right foot into Jake’s chest, nearly taking his breath away and knocking Jake against the tree.
As Jake recovered, he said, “What the hell was that for?”
“We have all night, Mister Adams. You don’t.”
Damn, they knew who he was.
“The missile launch. Tell me now.”
“Tell you what?” Jake said, shifting his body up again and trying to shove the material wrapped around his wrists against the sharp bark.
“Tell me about missile.”
The clouds spread out and Jake could finally see more stars and more of his two captors.
“What about it? You want a lesson in physics?”
The foot came again. This time from the other person. The boot made contact with his right shoulder, knocking him back against the tree again. An unexpected benefit was that the shot loosened the binding between his feet and hands. He rolled over and started sliding his hands up and down against the bark, trying to cut the line from his hands to his feet.
“We could use lesson in anatomy,” the man said, as he pulled out a butterfly knife and flipped it open.
“Hey,” Jake said. “Put away the cutlery. What exactly do you want to know about the missile?”
The man kept the knife pointed at Jake. “What happened to missile?”
“Listen. I was just a civilian observer.”
Both of them laughed, and Jake finally heard that the second one was more than likely a woman. With the dark bulky clothes, he had not noticed.
“Jake Adams. Air Force Intelligence. CIA. Opened security service in Portland, Oregon. Now operate out of Innsbruck, Austria. Major operations in Italy and Germany. Killed Hungarian agents. Stopped Kurdish plot. Helped Austrian company with new heart disease cure. Want me to tell more?”
“Yeah, you forgot to tell me the last time I got laid.”
“Toni Contardo. Six months ago. Just before she was called back into service with the Agency.” The man burst into a hearty guffaw.
Son of a bitch. They had done their homework. He had thought only the Agency knew about his relationship with Toni. He worked harder on his binding now, struggling cautiously.