Pepper stopped talking for a moment, allowing anyone who didn’t understand what he had just explained to ask questions. No one did, so he continued.
“The content of the e-mail we received this morning from Kornev was an invitation to meet with Tonya Merkalov, or Ms. Kara Ramey.”
“Can you read it to us?” Kara requested.
Pepper looked at a paper in front of him and read from it.
“This is the exact message,” Pepper said.
Dear Tonya: I can’t stop thinking about you and the time we spent at the Volna Hotel. I have some free time from work. When you left Nizhny, you left me a note saying that if I wasn’t working and wanted to have some fun, to drop you a line. Well, I’m not working and want to have some fun. Yours, Victor
Over the sharp video connection, he looked at Kara and expected her to say something.
“Where is he?” Kara asked.
Pepper had anticipated the question and responded, “He is in the small town of Termez situated in the southern tip of Uzbekistan. We have tracked him to a specific house in that city, and we currently have it under surveillance.”
Marshall Hail offered, “I don’t know about you guys, but I think this is a great opportunity to kill that son of a bitch, and I would like to offer my services.”
There was a brief hesitation and Pepper said, “We have a different agenda, Mr. Hail. We would like you and Ms. Ramey to turn Victor Kornev for us.”
“Turn?” Hail asked. “I could turn him into hamburger for you, if that’s what you are requesting. Or I could turn him into a groveling prisoner who is in a great deal of pain and begging for his life, if that works for you.”
The president and general smiled. Pepper looked frustrated, the way he typically looked when he was going back-and-forth with Hail.
“We want you to turn him into a spy for the United States.”
Hail laughed, but Kara remained stone-faced.
“You’ve got to be kidding me? How the hell do you expect us to do that?” Hail asked.
Pepper smiled, as if he finally had the upper hand. “That’s why you have a highly trained CIA agent on your team,” he said.
Hail acted as if Pepper was off his rocker.
“There is no way that someone like Kornev just gives up his profession and decides to work as a spy,” Hail protested.
“Sure, there is,” Pepper told him. “You just have to get creative. Ramey is creative. She can put a plan together.”
Kara was just as shocked as Hail as to the mission her boss had suggested, but she was playing it cool.
Kara said, “Well, it will take some discussion, but men like Kornev are not multifaceted. There are a few base emotions that drive them. And once those passions have been compromised, they have little enthusiasm for continuing with their current profession.”
“And what is one of those passions you are referring to?” Hail asked, turning to address the woman sitting next to him.
“Breathing is one that comes to mind,” Kara told him. “If you take away his breathing privileges, he won’t have the passions to continue on with arms dealing.”
Hail looked serious, and Kara gave him a noncommittal shrug.
“I just don’t get it,” Hail questioned. “You want to turn this scumbag into a spy, but still allow him to sell weapons to foreign governments and terrorist groups? How is that helping anyone?”
Spearman, normally quiet and reserved, fielded the question.
“It’s the big stuff, Mr. Hail, that we want to know about. Anyone can sell small arms to governments, and that is next to impossible for us to curtail. We need to know about the sales and purchases of weapons of mass destruction and those that can bring down commercial aircraft.”
Hail still looked confused and tried to clarify what Spearman had told him. “So, you will still allow Kornev to sell these advanced weapons to terrorists, but he will simply be doing it as a United States’ spy?”
General Ford answered, “Marshall, we will have to determine those parameters and our response to those situations on a case-by-case sale. But knowing what radical group wants to buy these weapons gives us a tremendous advantage in anticipating future attacks. Believe it or not, having Kornev alive and working for us, is far better than his death.”
“Why?” Hail asked.
The president fielded the question, “Because, Marshall, if he is dead then we don’t know who will take his place. It could take us years to discover who the next kingpin in arms sales is and, during that time, dozens of terrorist attacks could take place, and we would have very little warning about any of them. Even if Kornev consummates the sale of major weapons, and then in turn informs his customers, we’ll still have ample warning to stop the terrorists before they get to use those weapons. And Kornev still gets paid.”
Hail looked at Kara as if he expected her to protest as well. Instead, she said, “We can figure something out. Kornev is not a complicated person.”
Pepper appeared pleased with Kara’s response and thrilled that Hail hadn’t thrown a fit over the assignment.
Then Hail spoke up, defiant and somewhat contentious.
“That doesn’t get me any closer to my goals and objectives, and you all know what those are.”
It wasn’t a secret that Hail was hellbent on killing every person on the FBI’s Top Ten Terrorists list, because at every opportunity, he reminded the Washington collective about his mission.
Pepper said, “If you agree to turn Victor Kornev, we will provide you the name and location of someone who would not be missed by anyone in this hemisphere.”
“Who and where?” Hail asked bluntly.
Pepper picked up another piece of paper off the table.
“Do we have an agreement then?” Pepper asked Hail.
“Yes,” Hail said. But he said yes like it was a filthy word that was being tortured from him.
Pepper looked at the paper he had picked up from the table. He spoke clearly, so he could be understood over the video stream.
“Your target is the new leader of the Boko Haram in Nigeria — Afua Diambu.
Two Years Ago
Caribbean Sea — Aboard the Nigerian Princess
It had all been planned down to the minute, or to be accurate, down to five minutes. Two days from now, between 10:00 and 10:05 a.m., Afua would fire the missile at any aircraft unfortunate enough to be departing from the Simón Bolívar International Airport, approximately 21 kilometers from downtown Caracas.
Currently, the missile was resting on the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. It had been just over twelve hours since the Nigerian Princess had been boarded and searched. That meant that the automated program that was running on the tiny computer inside the hermetically sealed case, should be activating at that exact moment. It would release a valve that would blow the water ballast. Being lighter than the water surrounding it, the case would slowly rise to the surface. A tracker beacon would start silently sending out pulses that could be detected and displayed on a screen in the wheelhouse. The case that held the missile and launcher did not have lights or any other method of locating it in the darkness. Victor Kornev had told Afua that if the case surfaced, and there were other boats in the vicinity, they did not want to give away the case’s location with lights or sound. It could only be found with the tracking device that had been given to Afua, which was now plugged into a screen using a DC outlet located in the Nigerian Princess’ wheelhouse.