Rasputin's Shadow

75

By the time I caught up with Aparo and Larisa at the French bistro in Chelsea, it was almost noon and they looked wrecked.

Which was the idea.

We’d be showing up at Federal Plaza sometime soon, looking like someone had slipped us some serious mickeys. Which is what we needed everyone to believe. After all, we would have allowed one of the government’s most wanted prizes to slip through our fingers, and if we were going to hang on to our careers and avoid prosecution, we needed to have a solid story. One that we all agreed upon and would be able to give individually without being caught out.

It wouldn’t be too difficult. It was an easy tale to tell. After all, Sokolov had done it before. And there was no reason for us to know about it.

Predictably, the debriefs took a while, but it was all handled without too much aggravation. Sure, they were pissed off that he’d gotten away. FBI, CIA, you name it. But then again, the president was alive and well, and he wanted to meet us personally to thank us for what we’d done, which helped. A lot.

I managed to extricate myself from that first session at around seven and was home in Mamaroneck about an hour later. It felt great to be back and even greater to have Tess in my arms.

I polished off the leftover roasted chicken she’d made for dinner and we both had a laugh watching Alex and Kim taking Super Mario through space on the Wii, then we all hit the sack. I was exhausted and couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a solid stretch of sleep. My body demanded a respite, and it was finally going to get it.

I showered and was on the bed putting my phone on its charger when I remembered something. I’d never gotten around to reading the third Corrigan file that Kirby had sent me. The JPEGs were still sitting in my message inbox.

The lure was stronger than my exhaustion. I couldn’t resist a peek.

I padded into the study, downloaded the files, and pulled up the first image.

The file was massively redacted. There were more lines blacked-out than there were unmarked. It was about an assignment code named Operation Cold Burn and was marked SCI-Sensitive Compartmented Information. It involved something called Project Azorian. In my tired state, I just skimmed past it and cast a weary glance on the page before clicking on to the next page, also heavily redacted, then the next one that was just as mutilated.

I was about to switch it off and head back to bed when two unredacted letters on the page caught my eye. CR. Something inside me flinched, something at the very edge of my consciousness, a minute stab of recognition.

CR .

Could be anything, normally. Except that in this case, the two anodyne letters weren’t just anything. And it was because of the context. It was because of the word I’d passed over lethargically only moments earlier. Azorian.

It was a word I’d seen before. And in that instant, prompted by the two letters, I remembered where I’d seen it. And heard it. And asked about it.

It was a long time ago. Back when I was ten years old.

I’d seen it on CR’s desk. Heard him say it. And when I’d asked about it, he’d said it was someone he worked with who had a silly name, a name they’d laughed about at work. The Mighty Azorian. We’d joked about it before he brushed it away and we moved on to something else.

CR was Colin Reilly.

My dad.

The dad I had walked in on all those years ago, when I was ten, to find him at his desk, slumped in his chair, with a gun on the floor by his side and a wall of blood spatter behind his head.

Sitting there on the edge of my bed, exhausted beyond reason, I found myself frozen, my mind focused on two questions:

Did Corrigan know my dad?

And given all the mind-control mumbo-jumbo Corrigan was involved with… had my dad really killed himself?