“You’re the mystery man tonight, with champagne and boats suddenly appearing out of nowhere,” she said, placing the phone on the table.
“I think you’ll like what I have to propose,” he said.
“Hold that thought.”
Jessica pressed her phone’s screen and raised the device to her ear. Daniel listened to the one-sided conversation, trying to piece it together from her responses. He didn’t have much success. Jessica’s side of the conversation remained mostly confined to one- or two-word questions. When? Where? How long? Threat assessment? A staccato series of questions rattled off without the slightest betrayal of emotion. When she placed the phone on the table, he truly had no idea what had transpired between Berg and his wife. He knew it hadn’t been good; the solemn look on her face reinforced that assessment.
“What’s going on?” he asked, placing his champagne glass on the table.
Jessica took her time answering, downing the glass of champagne in front of her first. Definitely not a good call.
“My mother is in a hospice,” she said, eyeing his glass of champagne.
Tonight is going to be rough, he thought, pushing his glass toward her.
She accepted the gesture, draining the bubbly spirit.
Very rough.
Vesna Erak was a delicate subject on a good day, a nervous-breakdown-provoking topic the remaining three hundred and sixty-four days of the year. Something told him today would not be the good day.
“Why?” he asked, mimicking the brief interrogation style she used on Berg.
It sounded like an impersonal question, but he knew from experience that this was the safest way to communicate with her when she was like this.
“I don’t know. Berg received a secure automated message alert linking to a local newspaper article.”
“Is it real?”
“The article?”
“All of it,” he stated. They could never be too careful.
“I’ll confirm it with the hospital,” she said, staring at the empty glass in her hand.
Her attention suddenly shifted to the water. A fiberglass-hulled, rigid inflatable boat plied through the smooth cove toward the beach in front of the restaurant. The two-person crew that had delivered La Ombra would pull the dinghy onto the sand, leaving it for Jessica and Daniel.
“You had something big planned for tonight,” she said sullenly.
“The boat is stocked for a long-distance voyage. I planned on sailing you out of here tonight to the destination of your choice.”
Jessica’s eyes glistened, her face remaining neutral. She looked at the boat for a few seconds, turning back with an uncertain look. He could tell that she wanted to say something but couldn’t form the words.
“Tonight’s proposal has no expiration date,” he said. “If you want to visit your mother—”
“I don’t want to visit her,” she blurted, grabbing the chilled champagne bottle.
He was convinced she intended to drink right from the bottle.
“But I owe it to her,” she whispered, setting the wet bottle on the table next to the glasses. “I can give her closure. At least let her die at peace with herself. I should have done this years ago.”
“You’ve done a lot for her over the years.”
“I made sure she lived a comfortable life,” said Jessica. “Anonymously.”
“She knows it’s you,” he said. “She has to know you’ve forgiven her.”
“I should have told her myself years ago. She deserved better from me.”
Daniel had to tread lightly here. Despite the fact that she had anonymously set up a trust to take care of her mother, Jessica harbored a deep, long-standing resentment against Vesna Erak for failing to protect her from the serial abuse suffered at the hands of her father. Unleashing that bitterness put her in a bad place.
“She understood,” he said, reaching across the table for her hand. When she let him take it, he knew she was still in control. “If you want to visit her, you should do it,” he added.
“I think I need to see her,” she said, taking a sip of champagne.
“I’ll make the arrangements and do a little digging. Just to be safe.”
She nodded. “Thank you, Danny. When I get back, we’ll sail out of here and never look back.”
“When we get back,” said Daniel, hoping she had misspoken.
“I need to do this alone.”
Daniel didn’t push the issue, but he had no intention of letting her travel to the United States, to open one of the darkest chapters of her life — alone.
Chapter 9
Alexei Kaparov laid the classified intelligence report on his desk, digesting the information. He’d skimmed through the bulk of the report, not wishing to rehash what was already known. Alpha Group, outfitted in protective biohazard gear, had swept the facility and the immediate grounds, finding no trace of Reznikov. Parts of the laboratory had been “rendered inaccessible” during the raid, a polite way of saying irresponsibly destroyed and burned to the ground. This precluded a full search of the buildings most likely to house Reznikov, leaving the strike force unable to confirm Reznikov’s death or escape.
Strong circumstantial evidence gathered before and after the ground assault suggested that Reznikov had escaped. A close review of the thermal imaging and night-vision video captured by one of the helicopter’s sensor pods suggested that the raid force had flown over a small boat on the final inbound leg of their attack. Faint thermal blooms, mostly obscured by jungle canopy, corresponded to the distinctively pointy shape of a boat’s bow. Even at this late hour, a fisherman or poacher on the river wouldn’t draw much suspicion, but the fact that the boat’s occupants had made a considerable effort to hide themselves from aerial detection suggested something different.
While the theory was far from conclusive, it led the three-man Service of Special Operations (Spetsgruppa C) team to an interesting discovery. Roughly a mile downriver from where the boat had been first detected, commandos discovered a motorized aluminum skiff pulled onto the southern riverbank and tied to a tree. Not far from the river, in the thick brush next to a barely used walking path, they discovered two bodies covered by a heavy thermal-protective blanket. Neither turned out to be Reznikov, and the corpses’ identities generated more questions than answers.
One of the men turned out to be an ex-GRU Spetsnaz sergeant named Gennady Ageykin. Outside of a spotty service record, not much was known about Ageykin beyond his suspected association with a mercenary outfit that routinely performed security duties for wealthy oligarch types based outside of Russia. The mercenary group also held a sinister reputation for accepting less than legitimate assignments. At face value, a dead ex-GRU mercenary found a few miles away from the laboratory wasn’t a significant discovery. However, discovering Valery Zuyev, one of the Solntsevskaya Bratva’s top crime lieutenants, with his throat slashed in the same location? What did the American commercial say? Priceless.
According to recently shared U.S. intelligence reports, Valery Zuyev had been involved tangentially and directly to the Reznikov fiasco from the beginning. He was first identified by U.S. forces in the spring of 2007, as “Viktor,” senior ranking Bratva member in Novosibirsk at the time of the Vektor Institute raid. Kaparov found it amusing that the report cleverly slid past the likely fact that the source of this information originated from the team that used Zuyev’s resources to destroy the Vektor bioweapons facility. Not to mention the trail of carnage left behind by the team during their escape to the Kazakhstan border. Several armored vehicles destroyed, two helicopters shot out of the sky, and a few dozen Russian Federation soldiers killed. Minor details when both sides had reasons to sweep the fallout from that day under the rug.