This made no sense to George. He should be taking our money by now. Not flying us to another place. Mohsen waved them in. George reluctantly climbed aboard. One of the two men opened the hangar, while the other shut the plane’s door and took the pilot’s seat.
The ancient engines had a few problems starting but finally caught fire and began to warm. The inside had been converted to somewhat of a luxury carrier. The passenger seats were few and far apart. A small bed was stationed aft, and a wet bar stood forward. A toilet was also aft. It only sported a wraparound curtain instead of a door. George decided to wait until they were airborne.
The plane creaked its way onto a short runway, and the pilot throttled her all the way up for a quick takeoff. Mohsen hung on for his life until they were sufficiently off the ground. Stemovich never broke a sweat. It had George worried. The farther they traveled, the more complex the operation would become. The more it began to feel like Stemovich might have been serious when he agreed to help Mohsen and Kuwait. That would be very bad. George knew that back in Virginia, Levi had not even begun to prepare for this contingency. That meant it would be up to him to stop it if it went too far. How to do that was a mystery.
“I brought several changes of clothes for you.” Andri pulled a suitcase from the seat in front of him and handed it to Mohsen. “Since there are two now, you’ll have to share, but there is enough. It is cold where we will be going. I do not think your current garments will be much protection.”
“Thank you,” said Mohsen. “Please, Mohammed. You choose first.”
George opened the suitcase in the back. It had several woolen turtleneck sweaters with heavy cotton trousers. Fishermen’s clothes. He had seen pictures of men wearing clothes similar to this as they sat aboard crab boats waiting to fish their way around Alaska. It sent George spiraling to a state of despair. Stemovich was giving them clothes to protect them from the elements of the cold ocean. That meant he was taking them to a sub.
He quickly changed, letting the money off his wrist for only a moment as he pulled one of the sweaters over his head. The garments felt good and boosted George’s spirits a little. He returned to his seat to catch Mohsen and Stemovich talking about the next phase.
“Where do we go from here?” Mohsen tried to act like he was in a position of authority.
Andri had lightened considerably and shot George an almost friendly glance as he returned. “We will fly to a port city, Archangel. It is in the White Sea, west of Finland. There we will board a ship, and several hours after that, we will have our sub. It is all arranged.”
“You have a crew for our submarine?”
Andri confirmed with a nod.
“How did you persuade them to join you in this little adventure?” Mohsen wanted to know as much as he could.
“Money.”
Mohsen smiled. “Anything for money.”
This irritated Andri. “These are men who have been duped by the Russian government. They are trying to make a living. Of course, you don’t know what it is like to go hungry. You can’t blame them for that.”
Mohsen wisely retreated. “I apologize.”
Just how far had he planned this? The statement and the reference to the Russian government made George curious. “Does our sub have a name?”
Andri perked up. “It was never commissioned in the navy, so it was never recognized other than by its register numbers. But I called her the Saratov when I built her.” Andri loved to talk about the Saratov, and for so long, he had to be silent. He was ready to let it all loose now.
“It’s one you actually worked on?” George was mildly impressed.
“I designed it. I built it,” insisted Andri. “It was my masterpiece. It was revolutionary.” His complexion grew dark. “It was the last.”
Mohsen was as excited as a child with a new toy. “Will it satisfy our requirements?”
“It is the best for your needs. It is large, automated in design. Other countries would sacrifice much to have her.”
“It sounds like it was something you have been waiting to do for a long time.” George grew cautious.
Andri’s eyes narrowed, and his voice went deep with a sinister smile. “I have waited a long time for my friend Mohsen. If I told you how long, you probably wouldn’t believe it.”
The mood became rather uneasy for George. Andri didn’t speak like a crook. He spoke like a man with a plan.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Pack the Bags
He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was looking straight up Sharon’s dress without her permission. Beth Rudnick. Dan felt especially bad about investigating his secretary’s lover. He had done the regular computer search and found that she wasn’t any type of international criminal. That was good. He hoped that the search would turn up nothing. It gave him a kind of Peeping Tom complex. He tried to treat it like any other investigation, but it was different with someone he knew.
Tapping away on his computer, he decided to do a five-state search in the surrounding area. He tied into the local police network and let it go to work. It took about a minute before a crib sheet with a digital picture of Beth appeared before him.
There was nothing on it to cause him any real concern. She had been arrested several times in gay protest marches in front of the White House. A few traffic violations and a DUI. He skimmed down the specifics and found that she was divorced. That was something he wasn’t expecting to find on a confessed lesbian.
After opening several different databases, he found that her ex-husband was a bank manager named Scott Rudnick. He was an alcoholic who had acquired several traffic violations involving booze. There were various police reports. Most had been calls to the Rudnick house on domestic violence charges. Three times ambulances had to take Beth to the hospital to be treated for minor injuries.
One report went into detail on how her husband bit, kicked, and punched her until she was black and blue. Finally, a neighbor couldn’t stand hearing the abuse and called the police. When the law arrived, they found Scott holding Beth, naked, facedown on the carpet while he vomited in her hair. After that, she divorced him. No wonder she doesn’t trust men. Dan felt great sympathy for the woman.
On a hunch, he went further into several other databases, looking for anything more on Scott. He was able to find only one more police report and a death certificate. Scott had diedin his own apartment six months after his divorce. He was found sitting naked on the couch with a bottle of gin in his hand. One single bullet had been fired between his eyes, blowing out the back of his head. There was no sign of forced entry, and an incredible lack of evidence of any kind. The case was closed a day later after the police made the determination that it was suicide.
Suicide my ass. Naked on the couch? That was someone trying to humiliate him. Dan had seen a lot of cover-ups, and this one was done so poorly that a junior field op could see right through it. He read the report twice and came to the same conclusion. If he were to assign a prime suspect to the murder, it would have to be Beth. She could get in without force. Most likely she could get Scott to remove his clothes with a promise of sex. If he wasn’t drunk, she might have brought the bottle along to get him that way. When he was ready, she put the gun between his eyes and fired.