Long Shot

27

Election day was on Sunday, April 17, and it was more like a fair than a civic crisis in the troubled border city. Despite pittering rain in the early morning, the weather quickly warmed to pleasant temperatures. The old cobblestones rang with traffic, business was brisk and kids capered among the banners and streamers that urged voters to favor specific candidates. Turnout was high to decide the makeup of the new council and elect a new mayor. Everyone was aware that the election was really about much more than that.

Not so long ago, the charismatic lawyer Brokk Mihailovich and his nationalist followers had been favored to win it all. Then he had vanished, and his fragile coalition of supporters who also wanted Narva to distance itself from Russia collapsed into their own feuding camps. Old Guard politicians who wanted even stronger ties with Moscow were confident.

CIA special agent Janice Hollings watched the vote unfold from a table at a street-side café. Another woman, a legitimate supplier of material for Hollings’s cover business in Tallinn, was chatting away and paging through sample books of colored cloth. Calico listened with appropriate interest, although her thoughts were elsewhere. The election was on her mind, as was the death of Anneli.

She was absolutely going to kill Kyle Swanson when she got back! Ruin him! Hurt him! She had never been as furious with a single human being as she was with that damned unfeeling robot sniper. He had no emotion, no decency, no sense of right and wrong. He had killed Anneli Kallasti as surely as if he had put a knife to her throat. When this voting was done, she would deal with him face-to-face and crush him beneath the wrath of the CIA. Put the bastard in prison and throw away the key!

Calico had embraced Anneli, whom she saw as a refugee child in dire need of help, love and guidance. She saw her as well as a potential valuable asset for the Company in this strange land. Her language skills, daring and eagerness were a perfect blend for a CIA recruit.

Without even the courtesy of informing Janice in advance of what was going on, Swanson had taken he girl on a secret mission. Now she was dead. Jan had gotten the news directly from Marty Atkins, her big boss at Langley, who told her to quiet down. They could straighten things out when the election was over. Calico was ordered to keep her head in the damned game. As a seasoned professional, she had only been able to speak obliquely about the situation when she had called her husband last night. Tom said he missed her. She missed him. After being on the road all across Estonia for the past few days, she wanted to go home. And then she wanted to kill Kyle Swanson, damn his eyes.

The other woman at the table displayed some printed cotton designs, and Janice ran her fingers over the soft fabric to maintain her cover story, the reason for a blond American woman being in Narva at such a time. They talked for some time about the colorfast Turkey Reds, and the patterns drawn from native costumes in the region. It was good material, and the product always sold fast, so Jan would place an order after some obligatory bargaining.

The electioneering was in full swing all around them. The carnival atmosphere only intensified as the day wore on. She did not like the way it seemed to be going, for the former communists who anchored the status quo seemed too happy instead of being their usual gruff selves. The younger crowd was somber. Beer and wine started to flow early in the afternoon, and although there was little violence, mostly bar fights, it became obvious that the hardliners and ethnic Russians would win. In the afternoon, she toured a few more voting areas, listened to the gossip, and knew it was over except for the victory celebrations.

The count was quick and by eight o’clock on Sunday night, it was all done. Calico drove to the edge of the city in search of a quiet spot from which she could report her conclusions: Narva had chosen to move closer to Russia, just across the river, than it was to the rest of bustling Estonia. Langley was awaiting her analysis. Then she could go home.

It was time to go home. The three exhausted snipers slept through most of Saturday as the gleaming yacht moved with the rhythm of the easternmost sector of the Mediterranean. Sir Jeff and Trevor Dash, the captain of the boat, were both former special-operator types and they threw a protective web of quiet around those three cabins. The death of young Anneli Kallasti had saddened everyone on board.

The SAS men Baldwin and Perry left just before dark after a final round of fist bumps, the understated equivalent of a bear hug for snipers, who did not like big shows of emotion about anything. See you around, buddy. Right you are, mate.

Swanson saw them off, had something to eat, talked awhile with Sir Jeff and went back to bed to get back on a normal day-night schedule. He was surprised at how easily he fell asleep on Saturday night, but the pressure was off him and that felt good. By Sunday morning, after a good breakfast of eggs and bacon and strong coffee, he felt almost human again.

Sir Jeff was also at the table, watching the seagulls scour the shipping lanes of the Med for discarded garbage or pouncing on a hapless fish too close to the surface. Kyle was in baggy Boston Celtics basketball shorts and a T-shirt, having discarded all bandages except a three-inch-square pad taped over the nick in his leg and a Band-Aid on the arm. The mood was good.

“Here’s a piece of news,” Jeff said. “Our good friend Freddie Ravensdale got a nice promotion. He is to command a new Anglo-American-NATO task force that will counter the Russians up in the north. Farewell, Brussels; hello, London.”

Kyle poured some more coffee from a warmer. “I thought he was getting ready to retire.”

“So did I, but I never thought of Freddie as someone who would drift off into obscurity after his service years. This new post will provide him public visibility, and perhaps he will pursue politics. I shall ask him out for another dinner with us before he heads to his new headquarters.”

“Fine. Whatever,” Swanson said. He had read the morning traffic on the secure computer. “His new outfit, this Joint Task Force Ten, is going to suck up a lot of resources.”

“Admittedly it will thin the wall elsewhere, particularly in the Baltic region until all of the shifts can be made. NATO members will have to man the borders on their own for a little while. Quite a capable bunch, from what I have seen.”

He pushed aside the breakfast plates. “It has been thrown together too fast, Jeff. That asshole Ivan Strakov is playing us for suckers. We can’t trust him.”

“Don’t forget that he gave up the Armata systems, Kyle,” Jeff reminded. “This new computer technology he unveiled sounds rather fascinating, too. Maybe Excalibur Enterprises needs to look into it.”

Swanson glanced at Cornwell and saw that the bushy gray brows were drawn together, the expression he usually wore when making Kyle go deeper into available information. “Just because he was right about the new tanks does not mean he won’t lie about something else. He was a top Russian intelligence agent. His job is to tell and sell lies.”

Cornwell leaned back in the comfortable deck chair, feeling the sun bright on his face. “I agree. There has been too much reaction, and much too fast. You don’t trust Strakov and I don’t trust President Pushkin. That evil man is up to something.”

Kyle agreed. “Not our problem, Jeff. You and I have to get off this boat and back to work. Some routine in our lives would be good about now. Let the guys with the big paychecks solve the world’s problems.”

The older man laughed. “You have a big paycheck yourself.”

“So I need to get back to earning my keep.”

The rest of Sunday was uneventful at sea. By dinner, they had learned that arrangements had been made to give Anneli an honored final resting place, in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery. The girl who had never been to the United States would be treated as a fallen hero. True to the promise made to Kyle, the Nightstalkers had made her one of their own. Kyle would be able to visit her often.

When the sun set in a glorious blaze on Sunday night, Swanson stared into the golden glow in the west and had a feeling of inner peace that he had not known for some time. Things had a way of working out.

It was time to go home. Colonel Ivan Strakov of the FSB waited for his big wristwatch to show midnight, and as the second hand swept across the “12,” the day changed from Sunday to Monday in the tiny window. He rolled from the soft bed in the CIA apartment and cleaned up.

If Arial Printas had Ravensdale under control, and Valery Levchenko over in St. Petersburg had played his role properly, and the Narva election had gotten the desired result, his task was complete. The president of Russia, Valery Pushkin, would soon add Estonia — perhaps the entire Balkan region — to his bag of puppet countries. The starting point, Narva, will fall in a masterful “soft grab,” with hardly a shot being fired.

Threats, manipulations, dodges and misdirection, lies stirred with drops of truth, and the fear of a looming war in the north had been his tools. Pushkin would get Estonia, Valery would take command of the army in a bloodless coup over that senile old coward Pavel Sergeyev, and Arial would get even wealthier. And as if in a fairy tale, Ivan Strakov would get anything he wanted. He smiled into the mirror, saluted his image and quietly said, “Well played, sir.”

Strakov ambled over to the door. He was in no hurry because this was going to take some time. He knocked once, and waited. A CIA guard was always awake near the door. The swipe of an electronic card unlocked it, and Strakov took a few steps back and folded his hands on his head.

“Yes, Colonel?” asked the guard. Strakov knew his first name was Chester, but his friends called him Chet. Strakov had become friendly with the man over the past week and never had given him a moment of trouble. Chet was from Little Rock, Arkansas. “Do you need something?”

“Indeed, if you please, Chet, you fucking moron. Go wake up somebody important and tell them that I have decided not to defect after all.”

Swanson was asleep again as Sunday night gave way to Monday morning. Lulled by the rocking of the yacht, he tried to ignore the persistent knocking on his cabin door. The pounding increased in tempo and volume, a big hand making a lot of noise and a voice yelling, “Kyle! Wake up!”

He awoke, staring at the ceiling in the dark. “What?” he called out.

“Urgent call in the comm center. Washington.”

A pause while he collected his wits. Now what? “Be right there.”

Swanson kicked off the sheets, rolled from the bed, flipped on a light and slid into the underwear, baggy shorts and T-shirt he had discarded only a few hours earlier. A fresh set of clothing, from shoes and slacks to a tailored wool sports coat had been laid out for his scheduled ten o’clock departure in the morning and he saw no reason to wrinkle them unnecessarily. He went out on deck barefoot. Stars shone overhead around a crescent moon, and the briny smell of the Med was carried by a light wind.

The communication center hatch was open, and a deckhand waved him in. “CIA from Langley. Deputy Director Atkins.” The man closed the hatch and Kyle engaged a security-jamming device to cloak the conversation. Atkins was on the screen. “Marty? What’s up? Sorry for the wait, but I was asleep.”

“When was your last contact with Jan Hollings?”

That’s what this was about? “Before the mission. I guess she’s pretty angry, huh? I expected her to call you and holler for a while. Losing the girl was tough for everybody.”

“Nothing all day Sunday? You sure?”

“Absolutely,” Swanson replied. “Wasn’t she on that election thing over in Narva?”

There was an uncomfortable silence as Atkins stared into the camera. “Calico is missing, Kyle. She has missed two mandatory check-ins and does not respond to our prompts. Colonel Markey hasn’t seen her either, and he expected her home in Tallinn by midnight at the latest. She didn’t show. He’s worried.”

“How about the cops?”

“They report no major road accident between Narva and Tallinn in the past twenty-four hours.”

Swanson was wide awake now. Despite their differences, he admired Jan Hollings as a bright intelligence agent who had entrenched herself into the country that was her responsibility. “Quick question, Marty. How did those elections turn out?”

“It was a clean sweep for the pro-Russians, the Workers’ Party. Narva might as well be a Moscow neighborhood. Jan was supposed to give us a full analysis, but her call never came through.” Atkins cleared his throat. “When a CIA agent goes missing, we pull out all the stops, Kyle. Consider yourself back on duty.”

“Yeah. Okay. What’s my assignment?”

“Go find her,” said the clandestine operations boss. “Go find Calico.”