Gambit by David Hagberg (manga ereader .txt) 📗

“The name?” Bender asked.

“Thomas Hammond.”

FIFTY-FIVE

Hammond and Susan were just walking out of the Piaget Boutique jewelry store on Geneva’s ultraglamorous Rue du Rhône shortly after six in the evening when his Russian phone burred. It was Tarasov.

“You will have your team in place within forty-eight hours, but it’s going to cost you plenty.”

“How much is plenty?” Hammond asked.

“I want you to start the pipeline deal immediately.”

“Not until it’s done.”

“I’m not going to fuck around with you, Thomas,” Tarasov said. He was angry. “I’m out on a limb now, and if you don’t deliver what you promised, I’ll make sure that you regret it.”

Susan was only hearing one side of the conversation, but she clutched his free arm with some urgency.

“And don’t you fuck with me, Mikhail. We have a deal, and I’ll stick to my part of it, if and when you finish up. I have friends, too, who could easily shift the blame for everything onto the Kremlin, just like the election hacking shit not so long ago. I’m sure that your pal Putin could just as easily cut you loose, as he has others in your sort of position.”

The connection was silent for several beats, until Tarasov came back. “Are you someplace where you can talk?”

“On the Rue du Rhône, and the street is crowded, but no one is paying any attention to us.”

“I don’t need any money from you; I’ve taken care of it. I just want performance when it’s done.”

“Agreed. So who are you sending this time?”

“A team of ex-Spetsnaz operators. They’ll make a parachute drop over Serifos tomorrow night.”

“Why not tonight?” Hammond demanded. “Get it over with ASAP.”

“Because the McGarveys won’t be in place until that afternoon. They’re aboard an overnight Emirates flight, which is scheduled to reach Athens in the morning. From there, they’ll have to take a ferry out to the island and get up to the lighthouse. By the middle of the night, they’ll be dead tired.”

“Dead is the only word I want to hear.”

“And that you’re working the pipeline deal is all I want to hear.”

“Then let’s see what turns out in the next forty-eight hours,” Hammond said. He broke the connection and pocketed the phone.

“Trouble?” Susan asked.

“The McGarveys are on the way to their island, and Mikhail is sending a team of six Russian special ops people to take them out. No screwing around this time.”

“Jesus, if this doesn’t work, are you going to have the Russians on our asses?”

Hammond looked at her. It was the first time in their relationship she had used the word our. “No, they need me just as much as we need them.”

Lieutenant Colonel Nyunin arrived by helicopter at his father-in-law’s dacha a couple of minutes after eight in a light but steady rain. He was a short man, athletically built with a pleasantly round face and a direct manner. Some said that he looked and acted like a young Putin, which wasn’t a bad comparison.

He was in uniform because he was on his way back to the base by military transport. One of the general’s aides met him at the helipad and drove him up to the dacha, where Kanayev was waiting. And they embraced warmly.

“It’s good to see you, Viktor,” Kanayev said.

“And you, Nana.” Papa.

“Let’s take a walk,” Kanayev said.

Nyunin understood perfectly why his father-in-law wanted to go out even though it was raining. In Russia, even for a general, one had to assume that the walls had ears. And he was curious what the old man wanted.

Nyunin took an umbrella from the stand at the back door, but Kanayev only put on an old cap. The days had been warm for Moscow, and the rain had cooled things down and cleared the air of Moscow’s smog that oftentimes reached this far out.

They didn’t speak until they were on the path down toward the lake. Kanayev went first. “I have an urgent project for you that has to be put in place within twenty-four hours and completed within forty-eight.”

“Yes, sir,” Nyunin said. He was one of the youngest lieutenant colonels in the Russian army, but he was wise beyond his years and was well respected because he not only knew how to take orders but how to carry them out.

“An American couple who will be holed up at their home in a converted lighthouse on a Greek island in the Aegean have to be eliminated. But the operation must never be traced back as an official action by any unit of the Russian government, including mine.”

“Who are these people?”

“Kirk McGarvey and his wife.”

“Yeb vas,” Nyunin said softly.

“Indeed,” Kanayev said. “I’ll give you the number for a man who has the operational details. He is to be completely trusted. And he will provide you the necessary untraceable funds in euros for you to run the operation up to ten million. If there is a surplus, which I’m almost sure there’ll be, it will be yours.”

They stopped. “If something like this had come from anyone else—any officer other than you—I would have immediately said no, even if he and I were related,” Nyunin said. “And it would be the very first order in my entire career that I’ve ever refused.”

“This is important.”

“But the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency?”

“An enemy of Russia, but that’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“It needs to be done.”

“How?”

“Pick six of your best men, ask them if they would like to be rich, and offer them five million euros each in cash plus a dishonorable discharge.”

“Those who survived, you mean.”

“Da.”

“They could never come home.”

“Nyet.”

“How do they get to this island?”

“The operational details would be theirs to make, but your contact will provide everything they need—civilian clothes and documents, off-the-shelf non-Russian weapons, plus an aircraft capable of flight above ten thousand meters.”

“You’re talking about a nighttime HALO operation?”

“That’s one way, but that would be up to the team,” Kanayev said, and he left it there for several long moments as he watched his son-in-law work it