So it was with a satisfying sense of revenge that Konstantin Pran stepped up to take his oath of office at one o’clock in the afternoon on Monday, April 18. He was a common workingman who had earned success in business, unpolished but smart, and considered himself totally unlike that elitist lawyer Brokk Mihailovich, who wanted to turn Estonia into California. Pran was not sad that Mihailovich had vanished, for he always thought the man to be weak and untested on the battlefield, and a quitter. Pran had a different dream.
The citizens had turned out for his speech, and he made it short. He announced that Narva would adhere to the traditions that had made Estonia great, and that this victory would lead to new success for the Workers’ Party across the country — in Tartu, Viljandi, Pärnu and even in the capital, Tallinn. Estonia would remain beneath the protective wing of Mother Russia while meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century.
NATO, he promised, would eventually be forced to leave the country on the path chosen by its residents. NATO had to go! He offered as proof that the organization of Western nations was duplicitous and dangerous as shown by the fact that the United States Central Intelligence Agency had attempted to interfere with the city’s free and open elections. He let that charge linger for a moment. The mayor slowly announced this was not just political bombast: A CIA spy named Janice Hollings had been arrested by Narva police while she was trying to escape, as per an instruction from Russian intelligence officers. She was in custody at this very moment at the Town Hall and would be turned over to appropriate authorities, but not to the Americans or the nationalist Estonians. No, he said, the spy would be surrendered only to representatives who would arrive from Moscow tomorrow.
Kyle Swanson was by now familiar with the road to Narva and he charged over it aboard a matte-black Kawasaki KX450F, a mean little rice-burner of a dirt bike. Not much to look at, but with its 449cc four-stroke engine, the damned thing could climb a wall. He had paid $8,700 cash at a dealer in Tallinn and drove it off the showroom floor and onto the highway, and not long thereafter, rolled into Narva with a backpack full of tricks and the deadeyed look of someone who is beyond caring about what he does, as if life itself was a fuzzy and meaningless mirage. By the time he reached the traffic circle, a plan had formed.
The last time he was in the city, he had the luxury of Anneli as a guide and translator. Since he still had no idea of what the people were saying, he needed language help but did not want to be obvious about getting it. With the Kawasaki parked and locked, he drifted into St. Peter’s Square, where a big political rally was under way. He looked around, saw the TV cameras, and made his way to the press area. Flashing his false press pass as freelancer Simon Brown from Toronto, he was allowed into the cordoned-off media section.
Four cameras were on tripods and pointing at a fat little old man with white hair up on a stage.
“Excuse me,” he said to a woman writing in a notebook. “I’m Simon Brown, Canada, and I just got here. Who’s that?” He smiled at her, but she was concentrating. The credentials around her neck stated in bold letters that she was with Sky News. Obviously an English-speaker.
“That’s the mayor,” she said, somewhat waspishly, not really wanting to share information with a competitor. “Konstantin Pran.”
Then she looked up and saw a rugged, handsome guy with gray-green eyes smiling at her. Obviously a print guy, so no real competition. “I’m Marian Mansfield, Sky.”
“Mind if I hang out with you guys for a little while? This guy saying anything interesting?”
“Damned if I know. Who understands this language?” She pointed to a young man nearby. “That’s our translator. He feeds me tidbits while making a transcript that I can review later.”
“Maybe you can do your review over a drink at the German Pub?”
Marian unconsciously brushed at her dark hair. She was interested. “Sure.” The press liked to huddle together in foreign lands, particularly when they flew in for a single story like this border town voting in a bunch of antiquated hard-line old commies. Simon Brown looked more interesting than the mayor.
“Oh, shit!” The translator burst out, “Marian! He says they caught a CIA spy who was messing with the elections! She’s being held in a cell at the Town Hall.”
The reporter’s eyes lit up as if jolted by a burst of electricity, and she drew her telephone from her pocket like a six-shooter. “Well, that changed things in a hurry,” she said. “I’ll go on the air with this as soon as they can set it up. Raincheck on that beer? Simon, is it?”
“Yeah, you gotta work. The pub is on Malmi Street if you get a chance later on. Good luck.” Around them, the other camera crews had also sprung to alert. Kyle backed away and was immediately dismissed from the thoughts of Marian Mansfield. He went back to his motorcycle and threaded carefully to a new vantage point. He had gotten what he needed.
29
Jan Hollings squinted up at the single bare bulb that had burned all night long. It was annoying. Putting her palm across her eyes did little to ease the glare, for when she took her hand away, the bright light was still there, staring at her. During her training to become a CIA agent, she had gone through a program of what to do in the unlikely event that she was ever captured, so this was not startling. Bright lights were a painless torture, for it robbed a prisoner of sleep and left them weary and with lowered defenses and ruined the sense of time. Soon, they could not remember if it was day or night.
Her capture had happened so quickly that she barely remembered it. She had been ready to leave Narva, and was walking to her car, her mind not tuned to her surroundings while she mentally composed her report. Then there was a sudden large shadow and a small popping sound, followed by a pinprick on her left arm and a paralyzing electrical shock. Taser, she eventually decided. Little prongs had delivered a charge that knocked her on her butt. Calico was thankful that she did not remember the severe neuro-muscular contractions that would have left her writhing on the dirt like a broken puppet.
She had awakened in captivity. Searching her memory, she was positive that she had not made some grievous tradecraft error on Sunday, for she was an established professional with an iron-clad cover; a well-known fashion dealer throughout Estonia. But Calico, well, Calico was a very different person, and her captors had known exactly who she was. They took her because she was an agent, for capturing a rag merchant made absolutely no sense. She rolled to her side to avoid some of the light, remembering Swanson’s suspicion that there was a mole, a leak, somewhere in the system. He was right, but he was still a bastard. Poor Anneli.
She counted it a small blessing that she was not in the Middle East, where fanatics cut off heads and/or inflicted other medieval tortures. Here, wherever here was, meant at worst that she faced spending the rest of her life in some rotten prison. That was unlikely. There was more of a purpose in play.
Jan got off the cot and walked the room, measuring it. About twelve feet by twelve, and maybe ten high, with rough and unfinished concrete walls. That one damned bare bulb, a hundred watts at least, hung in the middle, caged to protect the bulb and too high to reach. A small utilitarian bathroom to one side contained a metal toilet and a sink. No windows. She tried the door. Metal. Locked. She pounded. No response. It was a basement, chill and damp. On a little table was a pitcher of water and fruit, bread and cheese. A small kindness that indicated she was in a special category of imprisonment. Her captors had something specific in mind. The “something” she did not know. It would all be revealed in time.