When Toni had left him in Austria, she had done so with great hesitation, knowing she would be working undercover in the Middle East. Her Italian looks could have passed for Arab with a little work, and her language skills were impeccable.
“Understand,” Jake said. “What I don’t understand, though, is how you found me.”
The car started to reach the outskirts of Khabarovsk, but the traffic was nearly non-existent at that early hour.
“When you told the Agency you were asked to observe the launch, I was sent from our consulate in Vladivostok to keep an eye on you. We had rumblings about a possible disruption from a few other countries in the area.”
“Like?”
“I’m not—”
“At liberty. I know, but I just had an encounter with a few pissed-off Chinese.”
Turner thought for a moment. “You sure they weren’t North Korean?”
“It was dark. Could have been. I got a pretty good look at the woman, though.”
That revelation made Turner twist his head toward Jake and then slowly turn back to the road. “Woman?”
“Yeah, and movie-star gorgeous.”
“Shit!”
“What?”
“Can’t be sure. I saw the two of them head into your hotel. But, like you said, it was dark. She looked familiar from a distance. If it was the agent we’ve been briefed on, you’re lucky to be alive.”
“Thanks for the confidence boost.”
“No offense, but you’ve been out of the game for a while. A little too long.”
“Any reason they wanted to pick me up?”
“What’d they say?”
Jake shrugged. “Just wanted to know about the missile launch.”
“That’s it?”
“I left in a hurry. They might have wanted to know about the gross national product of Finland.”
“Okay, but they probably know that’s a hundred and thirty billion.”
Jake stared at the guy.
“Economics major.”
“Ah. So, back to the two Chinese who interrupted my sleep. You just let them take me?”
The Agency officer thought for a long while as he stopped the car at a red light on the outskirts of the city. As he pulled away, he said, “I called it in. They wanted me to hold back. See what they wanted with you.”
“And if they had killed me?”
“They didn’t. And we had no reason to think they would. Besides, I was right behind you all the way.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“True. Anyway, they wanted to know about the missile. What’d you tell them.”
“The truth.”
“What?”
“That the missile malfunctioned. What else is there?”
“Right.”
This was not going well. The Agency officer was giving him nothing. “Listen. If you want my help, you better start telling the truth.”
Turner lifted his hands from the steering wheel in protest. “What?”
“Like how the U.S. shot the missile down with its new Airborne Laser.”
The officer’s face twisted somewhat, and Turner tried to recover before he said, “Who told you that?”
Not exactly a denial. “Colonel Pushkina.”
“Shit!”
“You think the government would keep it from him?”
“That’s not it. Pushkina is missing.”
“Taken like me?”
“Don’t know.”
Without saying another word, Turner pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number. He waited and then said, “Boone, One Seven Three Four.” Listening for a few seconds, Turner finally said, “Got him here.”
Two minutes passed as they traveled along the road that finally became familiar to Jake. They stopped and pulled over to the curb a half a block down from the Shevchenko Hotel.
Turner said into his phone, “Yes, sir,” and then he flipped the phone shut and returned it to his jacket pocket.
“Well?”
“I was told to get you out of Russia.”
“Just like that.”
“Just like that,” Turner repeated. “We’re only twenty-five kilometers from China.”
“China? Why the hell would I go there?”
Turner, more serious than ever, said, “Because your country needs you.”
Jake had heard that before more than he would have liked to admit. How the hell had it come to this? Fly to Russia, Yuri had said. Watch the missile and drink some vodka. B.S. about the old days. Great. Now they were asking him to go to China. Just like the Air Force and the old CIA, this was obviously government voluntary. Do it or something nefarious will happen. It was always something, Jake knew.
Huddled in the Volkswagen Santana, the heater working overtime, Li felt the cold reality of failure for the first time in years. Part of her wanted to rush back to Khabarovsk, find that bastard American, and the person who had picked him up on the road half naked, and do to him like she did to the man in San Francisco two months ago. The other part of her, the part that had been sexually excited by his skill at escaping, wanted to do things to him that was illegal in most countries.
Laughing Dragon put the car in gear and pulled away into the night. He pushed a tape into the player on the dash and The Beatles “The Fool on the Hill” broke the silence.
“That me,” he said. “Just a Fool on the Hill.” He laughed uncontrollably.
When he was done, she thought about their instructions, wondering if they could continue. “We have failed,” she said softly, her eyes diverting toward the few stars she could see as the clouds parted.
He reached across her to the glove box and pulled out a silenced automatic pistol. Pointing it at her head, he said, “Then I shoot you. Send you to Hell.”
She closed her eyes. Part of her wanted him to pull the trigger. She heard the hammer click back. Then her family would be free. They would no longer have this man and others hanging over them, waiting for failure like this, waiting for leverage to force her to do what she knew in her mind had to be done.
The hammer clicked loudly.
Opening her eyes, she turned to see the barrel a few inches from her face. “You sick bastard.”
He lowered the gun and giggled like a little girl. “You get like me you play this game long enough.”
Maybe so, she thought. Maybe she was already there and didn’t know it. “We failed,” she said again.
“No, no, no,” Laughing Dragon said. “Everything happen for reason.”
She was confused. “We didn’t get the information from Adams. We should have killed him.”
The car came to a stop at the end of the frozen road, and the driver paused there for a moment.
He shook his head as he said, “You don’t know everything, Li. That always on purpose. In case you get caught.”
“Are you saying we didn’t need anything from Jake Adams?”
He smiled. “I bet he pissed off now.” He hesitated, as if trying to search his brain to see how much he could tell her. “We know what happen to missile. American laser shoot it down.”
With that revelation, her brows rose. “The laser from San Francisco?”
“That’s why you go there now,” he said. “We need the software.”
She thought about the man she was running there. How she wasn’t sure if he would deliver. Glancing at the gun, she knew what she had to do. The laser worked. “I understand,” she finally said.
“Good. Now, about that Beatles album. You find first edition Abby Road, perfect condition… I’m very happy.”
He cackled as he turned the car left toward Khabarovsk and slowly pulled out onto the roughly paved road.
5
Wind whipped across the frozen Earth and stirred up clouds of snow on the remote island at the western edge of the Aleutian Islands. Visibility at the nearby airport was at zero, which matched the temperature before the wind chill. Adding the thirty mile an hour gusts, it felt like closer to thirty below zero.