The Backup Asset Read online

  He gestured the bartender who executed promptly, placing new drinks in front of them.

  They clinked their glasses and laughed quietly, in an unspoken greeting.

  She looked at his left hand holding his glass.

  “I see you’re married,” she probed, pointing at his wedding band.

  “Yes, I am,” Vernon said.

  “Will your wife be joining you later?”

  He almost groaned loudly. He didn’t need any of this shit.

  “Listen,” he said in a rigid tone of voice, “I’m not exactly asking you what you’re going back home to, all right? I’m actually not asking you anything whatsoever.”

  “Fair enough,” she replied unfazed, touching his thigh. She squeezed it gently, a couple of inches above his knee, in an unmistakable invite.

  He looked her straight in the eyes, searching for a confirmation. She didn’t blink, didn’t avert her eyes. He waved at the bartender, gave him a twenty to pay for the drinks, and grabbed Michelle’s hand. She followed him without hesitation as he took her behind his SUV, parked on the darkest side of the parking lot. He slammed Michelle against the wall, hidden from view by the Jeep, and searched her eyes again. She smiled.

  He kissed her passionately, almost angrily, holding her with one arm and gently caressing her breast, almost in contradiction with the strength of his kisses. She replied, searching for his belt buckle with probing fingers. He pulled her skirt up and lifted her on his hips, pushing her against the wall, and she responded, clasping her hands behind his neck to hold on. Then he ripped her panties and penetrated her with an urgency he hadn’t expected to feel for a complete stranger.

  A few minutes later, Vernon set her down and zipped up his pants. He avoided her eyes, focusing on his boots instead.

  “I’m sorry…” he mumbled. “You probably deserve much better than this.”

  “Vernon,” she said, reaching out to touch his face.

  He turned and left, ignoring her call. He hopped in his Jeep and drove away, managing to avoid any eye contact with Michelle.

  “Damn fool,” he admonished himself bitterly as he took the highway to Chesapeake to go home.

  ...8

  ...Wednesday, March 9, 12:10PM Local Time (UTC+2:00 hours)

  ...Vitaliy Myatlev’s Residence

  ...Kiev, Ukraine

  Vitaliy Myatlev sat in front of his computer, in the comfort of his home office housed in the Kiev villa. Almost two weeks had passed since Piotr Abramovich had called and invited him for a visit to the Kremlin. Almost two weeks of anguish, of sleepless nights, and careful planning.

  Abramovich was famous for throwing people in the depths of Siberia for lesser shortcomings. Myatlev knew he couldn’t hide forever in his Kiev fortress, and there was nowhere else he could go. Abramovich had already run out of patience and had called him again, reminding him in a firmer tone of voice of his standing invitation. He had continued to sound friendly on the phone, but that friendliness could change on a dime. The Russian president was notoriously unpredictable and easily offended.

  Myatlev had spent the past weeks moving assets, waiting for bank transfers to complete, organizing his vast operations to be led from outside Russia, and preparing for the worst-case scenario. He hoped Abramovich hadn’t learned of his activities, but Myatlev was no fool. Abramovich’s internal state security, the all-feared FSB, was everywhere, and even Myatlev’s Kiev residence was not as secure as he liked to believe.

  Myatlev had a long history of facing terrible odds fearlessly and coming out of dire situations unscathed. The KGB in his earlier career, followed by his years of service as an intelligence officer, had taught him how to sense danger and prepare for it. Then he had applied all he had learned in the emerging post-glasnost capitalist economy, building his fortune. Business had proven to be just as treacherous to navigate as foreign intelligence had been. That’s why he always had a back-door exit built into his plans. He always prepared for the worst-case scenarios, and he always survived.

  This time he wasn’t so sure. He was missing critical information. What if Abramovich had his home in Moscow under surveillance, waiting for him to show up? The FSB could arrest him the moment he’d walk through that door. What if the FSB had already raided the place, opening his safe and turning his secrets into incriminating evidence, enough to put him away for the rest of his life? There was only one way to find out.

  “Ivan?” Myatlev called his bodyguard and assistant, who came promptly.

  “Boss?”

  “I need you to help me with something.” He paused, thinking what amount of information would be safe to share with Ivan at this point. The less he knew, the better off he’d be.

  “Yes, sir,” Ivan acknowledged.

  “I need you to go to the house in Moscow and bring me some documents.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m going to trust you with some very critical information, Ivan, I hope you will not disappoint me.”

  “Nyet, Vitaliy Kirillovich, you can count on me,” he replied, addressing his boss with the utmost deference, by his given name and patronymic

  “I will give you the combination to my safe and trust you to bring everything in it to me, right away.”

  “Your safe, boss?” Ivan looked confused, almost scared. The man, an ex-Spetsnaz, who didn’t hesitate to kill with his bare hands, seemed flustered at the thought of opening his boss’s safe.

  “Yes, Ivan, I trust you,” Myatlev said. “Am I wrong to trust you?”

  “N–no, sir, nyet.”

  Myatlev stopped for a second, thinking of the best way to do this. If he was right in his worst fears, Ivan was never to be heard from again. He hesitated a little, thinking whether to send Ivan on his personal jet, the Citation X. If worst came to worst the twenty-million dollar plane would be gone, confiscated by the FSB immediately after its wheels touched down on Russian soil. On the other hand, if he sent Ivan on a commercial flight he could be caught leaving the country with his documents, and those were enough to compromise him and start a shit storm, even if one hadn’t already started yet. Ivan’s life and the plane were the risk he had to take to ensure he could return safely to Moscow.

  “I’m going to send you on my plane, and you can leave as soon as possible.”

  “Thank you, boss, consider it done.”

  “Bring me everything you find in my safe. Don’t read anything, don’t open anything, just grab it all, and bring it to me, understood?”

  “Yes, sir. I will leave now.”

  Myatlev told Ivan how to access the safe and gave him the code, making him repeat the information. He tapped his empty glass with his index finger, and Ivan replenished his Stolichnaya dutifully before leaving the room.

  He leaned back in his chair, feeling some relief. Soon he would know. But he wasn’t safe here either, not entirely, although he was in a different country. Ukraine had been an independent country for many years, but the Russian president had armies of separatists operating within the Ukrainian border, a border that was becoming more irrelevant, especially after Crimea.

  “Who am I kidding?” he muttered between two rounds of cursing that would have made career sailors jealous.

  He got up from his desk and went to the safe in the corner of the room. He opened it and took all the papers out, sorting through them. A small pile went back into the safe. A larger pile accompanied him to the terrace, where Myatlev personally held each piece of paper as it burned, ashes blown by the wind staining the spotless white of the fresh-fallen snow.

  ...9

  ...Wednesday, March 9, 10:17PM EST (UTC-5:00 hours)

  ...Jeremy Weber’s Residence

  ...Suffolk, Virginia

  Jeremy Weber sat in front of the TV, pretending to watch the Orioles clenched in a death match against the LA Dodgers. His mind wasn’t in the game though; every minute or so he checked the time on his watch, wondering when his son would come home.

  Michael, his sixteen-year-old son, ha
d been pretty good about respecting the rules for being out on a school night. Never after eight; that was the rule. Two long hours after that 8.00PM had come and gone, Jeremy was trying to remain calm and think positive. He could be making out with some girl and forgot the time. He could be hanging out with friends and didn’t care to come home.

  Jeremy found it hard to think positive though. In his experience as an FBI agent, he had noticed that all family member accounts in cases of missing persons, homicides, kidnappings, or other tragedies started with the simple statement “he didn’t come home last night.” In this case, he was the family, the only family his son had.

  He checked the time once more, then speed-dialed his son’s cell. Again, it went straight to voicemail. He stood up, grabbed the untouched glass of scotch from the coffee table, and poured it in the sink. Then he grabbed his work laptop and powered it up.

  He watched the Data Integration and Visualization System login screen load. His special-agent status gave him unrestricted access to the most powerful search tools available to the FBI. The DIVS compiled and cross-referenced data from the most used databases, allowing him a single-point access for any search.

  He set the parameters of the search, but DIVS returned zero results. Michael wasn’t in the system, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was OK. It was time for some legwork, time to hit the streets.

  He put his weapon holster on, checked the ammo in his gun, then put on a down jacket and packed its pockets with two spare clips for his Sig.

  Noises came from the hallway as he opened his front door. Two uniformed officers were dragging his son out of the elevator, kicking and screaming. He stepped back and allowed them to enter, speechless. His son, his Michael, was high as a kite, his glazed-over eyes throwing fiery glares while drool was dripping out of the corners of his contorted mouth.

  “Hey, Weber,” one of the uniforms said, a guy looking vaguely familiar, “thought I’d do you a solid and bring him here instead of lockup.”

  “Yeah, yeah, much appreciated,” Jeremy managed to say, shaking the officer’s hand.

  “Will you be OK from here?”

  “Yeah, sure, I’ll handle it.”

  Jeremy closed the door behind the two officers and turned to look at his son.

  “Michael—”

  “I hate you,” his son yelled, then pounced and hit him in the chest with both fists. “I hate everything about you!”

  Jeremy held his son tight against his chest, ignoring the punches and the muffled screams.

  “I wish you were dead, you hear me? Dead! Why aren’t you one of those feds who get killed on duty, huh?”

  “It’s OK, son, calm down, it’s OK. It’s the drugs. What did you—”

  “Ha! I know! ‘Cause only the good guys die . . . Assholes like you stay here fo’ever, makin’ my life hell!”

  “Tell me what you took, Michael.”

  He screamed from the top of his lungs, an unnatural sound resembling the shriek of a dying animal.

  “Ev’ything! Ev’ything I could get my hands on, that’s wha’ I took!”

  He was starting to slur, and that made Jeremy worry. He looked at his pupils again, dilated to the size of his green irises, glossy and fixated. They looked like they were made of glass, unnatural. He could feel his son’s rapid heartbeat get even faster and saw sweat beads form on his forehead.

  “We need to get you some help,” Jeremy said, putting Michael gently on the sofa.

  “We need you to die!” Michael wiped the drool of his mouth with his sleeve. “Should have been you who died, not Mom!”

  He stopped, frozen in place, the pain hitting him in the gut. Almost seven years after his wife’s death, the pain felt just as real and intense as if it were yesterday. Maybe his son was right. He had thought the same thing many times, but he couldn’t dwell on it now. There wasn’t any time.

  He pulled out his phone and flipped through some contacts, finding the one he needed. It was almost midnight, but the man was a doctor; he’d understand.

  The conversation took less than a minute. Jeremy sat on the sofa, next to his son, now curled up in the fetal position and breathing heavily.

  “Listen, Michael, you need medical attention. There’s an ambulance on its way that will take you to a rehab cen—”

  “Go to fuckin’ hell, and never come back!”

  Maybe I’m already there, Jeremy thought bitterly.

  “You’ll stay there until you recover and I gain the confidence you’ll never do this to yourself again. I’ll come visit.”

  “Fuck yourself…” Michael mumbled, exhausted, his face buried in the sofa pillow.

  It was almost 2.00AM when the ambulance finally left, taking Michael to the ER for stabilization, then to rehab. The EMS crew members sounded reassuring, saying they didn’t think the episode would lead to any permanent brain damage.

  Jeremy watched the ambulance turn the corner and disappear. Then he curled up on the sofa and sobbed, long, breathless sobs stifled in the pillow that still carried his son’s scent. After a few moments, he slowly rose. Grabbing his keys, he headed out the door to the hospital. It was going to be a long night.

  ...10

  ...Thursday, March 10, 10:05AM Local Time (UTC+3:00 hours)

  ...SVR HQ, Yasenevo

  ...Moscow, Russia

  Major Evgheni Aleksandrovich Smolin hung up his office phone and started arranging his tie, getting ready to meet with his boss. The meeting was unscheduled; Colonel Markov had just called to invite him over for a quick chat.

  Smolin straightened his tie and buttoned his uniform jacket, watching his reflection in the window overlooking Yasenevo District. He loved the elevated view of the district and, as he had climbed through the ranks of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation or SVR, his view had improved through the years, serving as a constant reminder of where he’d been and where he wanted to be. At forty-eight, he was just as ambitious as he’d been at twenty-three.

  His career as an intelligence officer had started with a serious roadblock. Just when young Smolin was graduating from the university with a four-year degree in economics, recently turned twenty-three and dreaming of nothing else but to join the KGB, things were changing dramatically in Russia and the KGB was being dismantled. Smolin still recalled how he had learned the news on the radio and had rushed to Lubyanka Square, pleading with every man or woman exiting the building that day.

  “Please help me,” he had said to every KGB officer leaving the agency’s headquarters that cold November morning in 1991, “I always wanted to join the KGB, could you please tell me where to go?”

  “Go home, kid, it’s over,” some people answered. Others just ignored him.

  He somehow managed to go against the flow and enter the building. He found the personnel office and asked for employment application forms. The personnel officer laughed in his face.

  “Haven’t you seen the news on TV? KGB is being dismantled, it’s over. Done. Finished. Go home.”

  “Yeah, I know, but somebody will still have to do this work, right? A country can’t function without security services, without intelligence officers. Dismantling or not, I want to apply for a job here.”

  The personnel officer stared at him as if he was some sort of a nut case. Smolin stood his ground.

  “Please, sir, I’ve always wanted to work in intelligence. Please help me.”

  “All right, whatever; you’re going to be Russia’s own James Bond, I can see that,” he said, offering him the employment forms bearing the KGB logo. “Fill these out, and if there’s any recruiting happening in the next months I’ll keep you in mind.”

  He went home happy and hopeful that day and didn’t budge from the phone, waiting for the interview call. No call came for many weeks, and he soon lost hope. Every couple of weeks or so he’d try to reach that personnel officer, but he couldn’t get him on the phone. He even went back to Lubyanka Square a few times, but he wasn’t allowed inside the buil
ding.

  Then one day the call finally came, taking him by surprise. A few weeks later, he entered formal training as an intelligence officer, after having persuaded the hiring manager that he could recruit anyone to do anything. He had made a powerful impression on his future leaders, his self-confidence and commitment opening the door for him to start in Directorate S—Illegal Intelligence.

  His first assignment was to recruit a foreign national traveling on a short business trip. His mark was British, a corporate employee working in the research department for one of the major digital imaging companies in the West. She was scheduled to be in Moscow for twelve days, attending a series of conferences. By the sixth day she was turned, spending her nights in bed with Evgheni Smolin and her days gathering useful information that helped him promote his career. For years to come she had continued to send him passionate love letters and valuable information in the field of digital imaging, from medical applications to imaging data compression, satellite-image processing and mapping, encryption algorithms, and high-volume data storage solutions. She traveled to Moscow to see Smolin every few months or so, couriering the intel herself and making his job and his advancement really easy. Smolin did his part, keeping their flame alive, and his source of intel motivated and satisfied.

  A tall, well-built man with blond hair and charming blue eyes, Smolin was a talented actor who could play any part. He could tell any lie without blinking and be very convincing at it. He was a natural.

  His favorite story, the one he used on numerous traveling foreigners with access to useful intel, was that he had to get some valuable intelligence back to his bosses or suffer unspeakable cruelties at their hands. Either he brought good quality information, or he risked dying in some god-forsaken corner of Siberia, freezing to death in a nameless labor camp, just like his father had died. Nope, glasnost and perestroika hadn’t changed the core issues of Russia, he was telling his marks. The same people held the power and influence, and Siberia was still there, waiting for him to fail.