Minotaur

1

The mansion on the South Fork of Long Island wasn’t the biggest Jim Chapel had ever seen—only three stories high, maybe twenty-five rooms total. On the other hand nobody had tried to make it discreet or tasteful: it boasted an Olympic-size swimming pool, two tennis courts and its own private helipad. It could be seen for miles from the main road, especially since floodlights on the lawn lit up the front side all night long. It was not the kind of house he expected a notorious Soviet double agent to live in.

Chapel pulled up at the front gate, suddenly very aware of the late-model Ford he was driving (government issue) and just how little he’d paid for the gray wool suit he was wearing. But the uniformed guard who came out to open the gate for him just waved Chapel through and went back to his gatehouse.

Heading up the drive to the main building, Chapel sighed under his breath.

“Anything the matter, sugar?”

The voice on the hands-free device in his ear belonged to a woman he’d never met, though she’d saved his life many times. He didn’t even know her name—he just called her his guardian angel. He relaxed instantly. Every time she spoke to him it felt like someone was pouring honey in his ear—if she’d worked for a phone chat line, she would have been running the place in a month.

He chuckled to himself as he watched a servant come running out of the main house, a valet come to take his car away so nobody would see it out front. “I’m just still wondering how the hell I got this job. There are other people more qualified.” This wasn’t some covert ops mission where he was expected to infiltrate a heavily armed facility or rescue hostages or take out an arms cache. Those kinds of operations he could handle. “There have to be a hundred guys more qualified than me. A diplomat, maybe—or a CIA flack trained in evaluating defectors.”

“You were picked for two reasons I can think of,” Angel said. “One, the man who owns this pile, Ygor Favorov, used to be in the GRU—Soviet military intelligence—so he’s more likely to trust a man in the same line of business.”

“Twenty-five years ago he and I would have spent every day trying to find new and creative ways to kill each other,” Chapel pointed out.

“True, but a quarter century changes a lot of things. Then there’s the second reason: Director Hollingshead trusts you. And not a lot of other people,” Angel told him.

Rupert Hollingshead was probably the most important man in American military intelligence that nobody had ever heard of. He was in charge of cleaning up all the old messes left behind by the Cold War. He’d turned Jim Chapel into his personal field agent. The trust ran both ways, and Chapel was sure that Hollingshead had a good reason to want him on this assignment. Still…

“Remind me which one is the salad fork,” Chapel said. He really didn’t want to embarrass himself tonight.

“Just start with the one on the outside, and work your way in,” Angel cooed.

The servant reached for the door handle of Chapel’s car. Chapel forced himself to remember he wasn’t being carjacked, that this was how rich people visited each other. He put a smile on his face and climbed out onto the gravel driveway.

A tour of duty in Afghanistan, ten years in field service in intelligence, and this was the mission that scared him the most: having dinner with a wealthy family.