CHAPTER FOUR

CIA headquarters

Langley, Virginia


How many layers does an onion have? What had brought Storm to this moment?

Jedidiah Jones had called Storm back to Washington, D.C., two weeks earlier to help solve a “simple” kidnapping. But that crime had proven to be more than a kidnapping and not simple at all.

Matthew Dull, the stepson of Senator Windslow, had been abducted while he and his fiancée, Samantha Toppers, were walking near the Georgetown University campus. Four hooded men overpowered him, forced him into a van, and sped away, leaving a hysterical Toppers on the sidewalk.

When the FBI failed to find Dull, Windslow had asked Jones to bring in a “fixer” — someone who knew how to track missing persons and didn’t mind coloring outside the lines. Jones had reached out to Storm and had cashed in a favor. A big favor.

Storm had been fly-fishing in Montana when the helicopter arrived. He was a man seemingly without any cares. This was because he was dead — at least to the world. He had successfully faked his own death four years earlier and gone off the grid. He’d done it to escape from Jones and a clandestine world that had tried to kill him, not once, but several times.

There had been a time in his life — before he’d met Jones — when Storm had been just another down-on-his-luck private detective with too many bills and not enough clients. He’d spent his days and nights peeping through windows at no-tell motels photographing cheating spouses and spying on able-bodied men who’d filed false workman’s compensation claims citing “bad backs.” Storm had scraped by. Barely.

But then Clara Strike had entered his world and turned it upside down. The CIA field officer had enlisted Storm’s help in a covert operation being run on American soil. Technically, the CIA was forbidden to operate inside the U.S., so she’d needed Storm as a front man. She’d taken advantage of his expert tracking skills, his patriotic spirit, and his then-trusting nature. She’d introduced him to Jones, and it had been Jones who’d drawn him further and further into the CIA’s web. One of his assignments had gone terribly wrong. Tangiers! It had ended with Storm lying severely wounded on a cold floor in his own blood.

Jones had rescued him. Storm had survived, but Tangiers had changed him. After that, he’d decided that he wanted out. And the only way for him to quit was for Derrick Storm — the roguish private eye and conscripted CIA operative — to die. In poetic fashion, he’d gone out in much the same way that he’d come into Jones’s world. Storm had perished in the arms of Clara Strike. She’d watched in stunned disbelief as the light in his eyes dimmed. He’d reached out for her, and she had taken his hand, squeezing it for the very last time. His death had seemed legitimate because it had been as close to a real death as possible — thanks to the wizards inside the CIA’s Chief Directorate of Science and Technology. The CIA scientists had used their magic to stop his heart and show no discernible brain waves. Storm didn’t know how they’d done this. He hadn’t cared. Death had freed him.

Or so he’d thought.

Jones had brought him back by cashing in Tangiers. Storm owed his life to Jones, and so he’d returned, supposedly for one final mission.

He had now come full circle. He was sitting across from Jones in his Langley office the day after Senator Windslow’s assassination.

“I warned you this might get complicated,” Jones said.

“Yes, but you somehow forgot to mention the Russian element when we first talked,” Storm said.

Jones smiled slyly. “Must have slipped my mind.”

Storm knew better. Nothing slipped Jones’s mind.

“Since you seem to have overlooked that part,” Storm said, “why don’t you tell me about the Russians now?”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Jones said. “You tell me what you’ve learned about the kidnapping and the Russians.”

This is how Jones played the game. Ask him a question and he answered with two questions of his own. Ask him two questions and he responded with a dozen more.

“There were actually two groups of kidnappers,” Storm said. “The kidnappers who really abducted Matthew Dull were ex–KBG officers.”

“And the second ones?”

“They turned out to be Samantha Toppers and her brother.”

“She’s the short blonde with the big—” Jones started to say.

Storm interrupted. “Yes, Toppers is rather well endowed. She and her brother tried to profit from the kidnapping by sending Senator Windslow and his wife ransom notes even though they didn’t have Dull. It was a pretty clever scam.”

“That you figured out,” Jones said.

It was as close to a compliment as Jones ever gave.

Continuing, Jones said, “Sadly, you weren’t able to save Dull. The real kidnappers killed him and now someone has assassinated a U.S. senator.”

“Hey, I didn’t pull those triggers,” Storm protested.

“True, but you also don’t know why they were pulled.”

“The men who did the actual murders were professionals. My guess is they are hired guns. The real question is who paid them? There are two likely candidates: Ivan Petrov and Oleg Barkovsky.”

Storm suspected that Jones already knew about both men. Jones always knew more than he shared with Storm. He never revealed more than what was necessary. He listened and expected his operatives to do their own digging, to develop their own clues, to reach their own conclusions. He expected Storm to dig up his own answers. It was Jones’s way of insuring that no rock went unturned.

Continuing, Storm said, “FBI Special Agent April Showers believes Petrov paid Windslow a six-million-dollar bribe. But at some point, Windslow changed his mind and didn’t follow through. That’s when Petrov had him killed.”

“Do you agree?”

“I’m sure Windslow took a bribe, but I’m not sure it was Petrov who gave the order to have him and Dull killed. It could have just as likely been Barkovsky.”

“Why?”

“To stop Senator Windslow from helping Petrov. The problem is that I don’t know what either man wanted from Senator Windslow. There’s always a motive for murder. Until I figure out that motive, I can’t identify the killer.”

Jones leaned back in his office chair, which squeaked. It had needed oil for as long as Storm had known Jones. The CIA spymaster swept his right hand across his face as if he were trying to wipe away a problem. Built like a bulldog and in excellent physical shape, especially for a man in his early sixties, Jones was both Storm’s mentor and tormentor. He was the only man capable of bringing Storm back into the CIA’s world of smoke and mirrors.

“The sniper left his rifle on the roof of the Capitol Police headquarters building,” Jones said. He leaned forward, causing another squeak, and removed a photo from a desk drawer. He passed it to Storm.

Storm inspected it and said, “It’s a photograph of a Dragunov sniper rifle. Military issue, not one of the cheaper, knockoff versions manufactured in China and Iran for sale outside Russia.”

Jones smiled. “Go on.”

“Does the media know a Russian rifle was the murder weapon?” Storm asked.

“No, but it’s only a matter of time. You know how Washington is about leaks and secrets.”

Storm did. When it came to the nation’s capital, Benjamin Franklin had said it best more than two hundred years earlier: “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”

“Matthew Dull was shot with Russian-made bullets,” Storm continued. “Now a sniper shoots Windslow with a Russian military sniper rifle. The killers clearly aren’t worried about covering their tracks.”

“Which is why the White House is concerned,” Jones said. “The American public doesn’t give a damn about the private war Petrov and Barkovsky are waging against each other. Who cares if a billionaire oligarch and his former best friend kill each other? But if word leaks out that an American was kidnapped and murdered and a U.S. senator was assassinated by one of them, then we’ll be facing an international shit storm.”

“How can you hide that fact?” Storm asked.

“The President is holding a press conference later today. He’ll assure the American public that the attacks were not acts of terrorism. He’ll say the FBI suspects the kidnapping and murders were carried out by a ruthless gang of Eastern European criminals. But there will be no mention of Petrov and certainly no mention of Russian President Barkovsky.”

“Which man is worse?” Storm asked rhetorically. “Petrov is an egomaniac and Barkovsky is as flaky as Muammar Gaddafi without the high heels and rouge.”

“The White House is more worried about Barkovsky. We can’t sit still and allow a Russian president to assassinate a U.S. senator. That’s why we have to be discreet.”

“Discreet?” Storm repeated. “Congress already is scheduling hearings to investigate and the media is going wild.”

Jones let out a sigh. “Yes, it’s going to be tricky, but not impossible.”

“With you, nothing ever is,” Storm said. “But I’m curious. How long before someone gets interested in Steve Mason? How long before some pesky reporter asks why you inserted a private eye into the kidnapping? How long before someone discovers that Steve Mason doesn’t exist?”

“The smart thing,” Jones said, “would be for you to disappear — to go back to Wyoming.”

“Montana,” Storm said, correcting him.

Jones shrugged. “Wherever. But the truth is that I need you more now than ever before. I need someone whom I can trust to keep one step ahead of this investigation.”

“Do you need me because you want to find out the truth? Or do you need me to help you bury the truth?”

“Probably both.”

Jones looked exhausted. The pressures from his job were clearly taking a toll. His face was becoming a road map of worry lines. There was little doubt that Jones would have had pure white hair if he weren’t bald. By contrast, Storm was still ruggedly handsome, although his body also was showing the signs of his past. Five scars in his abdomen marked where he’d been shot. There was a knife wound on his back where he’d been slashed from behind. More recently, a bullet had ice-skated across his shoulder, leaving an ugly superficial scar. Of course, the worst wounds had been delivered in Tangiers — physically and mentally.

One reason why Storm had faked his own death was because he’d quietly begun to question his own abilities after Tangiers. The couple helping him had been shot to death in front of him. He had been left for dead. Doctors couldn’t believe he’d recovered. But with his recovery had come doubts. Had he missed something? Was he somehow to blame? It was only after he had “died” — while he was alone in Montana fishing — that he had considered another possibility. Someone had betrayed him. Someone inside the agency. He had gone over every minute detail of Tangiers, over and over, and he’d reached the same conclusion each time, no matter how he twisted it. He’d walked into a trap. Storm’s first reaction had been to contact Jones and seek vengeance. But he had no proof. In Montana, he had been out of the game. What was the cost of getting back in? Now the landscape had changed. Now they’d let the fox back into the henhouse. Now he could test his hunch and expose the traitor who was responsible for the scars — both physical and mental — that he carried. If there really was a traitor, then Storm needed to unmask him. And he could only find the truth by working from the inside out.

Jones interrupted his thoughts. “You really don’t have any idea what motive Petrov or Barkovsky might have for wanting Senator Windslow dead?”

“The senator’s final words were Jedidiah knows and Midas.”

Storm let his answer hang in the air, begging for an explanation.

But Jones didn’t immediately bite. Instead, he sat in his squeaky chair and stared blankly at his young protégé. And then, after several awkward seconds, he said: “OK, I agree. It’s time for me to tell you a bit more. Only a handful of government officials here in Washington are familiar with what I am about to say. Senator Windslow was one of them and it cost him his life. It can cost your life, too. Before I go any further, I need to ask: Do you want to take that risk?”

“You seem to forget,” Storm said. “I’m already dead.”

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