Private Rogue

Chapter 85

I drove past the old factories, their broken windows framed by rusting steel. Towering chimneys reached toward the sky. No longer grand monuments to industry, instead they looked like the fingers of a dead and buried giant trying to claw its way out of the ground.

Andreyev had insisted on meeting somewhere isolated and remote, which was my first red flag. His requirement that I come alone was the second. I knew he had every intention of killing me, but this meeting was the only way we’d have any chance of saving Beth, Maria and Danny.

I’d chosen the old Baekeland Chemical Plant in Jersey, about forty minutes’ drive from Manhattan, and had agreed a time of 11 a.m. Andreyev was told we’d found Floyd and discovered he’d gone to retrieve the bronze bull. That made the deal very simple: Beth and the children were to be exchanged for it.

The Toyota Sequoia bounced along a neglected concrete service road. A thick covering of snow made it impossible to see the deep potholes, so I bumped and crunched my way toward three SUVs that were parked in the yard between three decaying chemical processing plants. The vehicles were surrounded by a complex network of pipes, tanks, gantries, and metal-and-concrete buildings. The dark gray clouds that brooded above the broken roofs and corroded pipes served to make the setting even more ominous.

Justine had been dead against my plan, and had taken me aside to plead with me not to go. It was a trap, a suicide mission. Why did I have to do the exchange? Could Floyd not go instead? With tears in her eyes, she’d told me she couldn’t bear to lose me again. I’d tried to soothe her fears, but didn’t think I was successful. I couldn’t even convince myself. What I was about to do was dangerous, and the thought of all the things that could go wrong set my heart racing. It was pounding furiously as I parked twenty yards from the other vehicles.

I reminded myself bravery wasn’t the absence of fear; it was action taken in the face of it. I grabbed my coat and stepped into the mid-morning chill. The rear doors of all three SUVs opened and two masked men stepped out of each vehicle. Victor Andreyev emerged from the front passenger seat of the center vehicle. He sauntered toward me with the confidence of a feudal king.

“Where is the Bull?” he asked.

“Where are Beth and the children?” I countered.

“Here.” He nodded toward the vehicle on my left. “Give me what I want and this problem will be over for both of us.”

I studied the man. He was a proven liar and a spy. There wasn’t a single reason I should trust him. He sneered at me as if challenging me to disprove how powerless I was. Beth and the children gave him a clear advantage over me, and he knew it.

“Why me?” I asked. “Why did you hire me?”

He smiled. “We needed to find the woman and you are an adequate investigator,” he replied, lingering on the word “adequate.” “Get the Bull and I will tell you where our interests aligned.”

I glowered at him before returning to the Toyota. I opened the driver’s door, leaned inside and grabbed the bronze from under the front seat. I left the door open and returned to Andreyev, who eyed the figure greedily.

“Tell me,” I pressed. “Why me?”

“There was a certain degree of opportunism involved,” Andreyev replied as he took the heavy bronze object. “‘Two birds with one stone,’ to use one of your American expressions. You see, Mr. Morgan, you made some powerful enemies in Moscow, and for a while they had to play nice, but when this chance came along, well, it was only ever going to end one way. The order for your engagement came directly from the Kremlin. As did this.”

He turned abruptly and yelled a command in Russian. As he hurried toward his car, his masked subordinates drew their weapons and stepped forward. I look around fearfully. This ruinous, rusting industrial wasteland was where I was destined to die.