“I lied. And I’m going to need lots of cash to cover the losses from my mother’s bank accounts. It was obviously your people who wiped out most of my family’s assets.”
Popov grinned slightly. The thug who had previously left returned with a chair, and Popov sat down, showing no sign of discomfort from the cold air. “So, now that your mother has died, you are for sale?”
If Kit hadn’t been restrained, he would have killed Popov with his bare hands on the spot. Instead, he ignored the remark and spoke without emotion. “Like you said at breakfast yesterday, everyone has their price.”
“Yes, and you said that even one hundred million was not enough to engage your services.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Who wouldn’t sell out for a hundred million?” asked Kit. He was very smoothly trying to suggest the very opposite of the truth: that he was ready and willing to deal. “You said your offer to me of two hundred thousand for the fake marriage was a fair price, but I don’t agree. I could lose my military pension for marrying your niece, and that’s worth a lot more than a lousy two hundred grand. And since relations between our two countries are in the toilet after what your government has done in Crimea and elsewhere, do you think I’d be allowed to keep my security clearance if I married a Russian?”
Popov shrugged, as if the conversation had started to bore him.
“You mentioned the figure of one million American dollars delivered in cash. Make it two million and you have a deal,” said Bennings, salting a little desperation into the tone of his voice.
“This line of conversation leads me to ask you something. Perhaps one-tenth of one percent of Americans understand what perestroika was. Do you?”
Popov was a master of manipulation, including of conversations. Kit badly wanted to maintain some control of the dialogue, believing that his sister’s safety hung in the balance.
“We should be talking money now, not political history,” said Kit.
“Trust me, we are talking money. So what was perestroika?”
Since refusing to answer would only anger the general, Kit played along. “It was the program under your President Gorbachev that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a restructuring of the whole system.”
“And do you know why the nomenklatura—the government and economic and military elites of the Communist Party—went along with it?”
“Sure I do. They saw the opportunity to steal everything, not just the chunks they were already getting, but everything.”
“Yes!” exclaimed Popov. “The entire government morphed into one big criminal outfit. It was complete and utter corruption of the state. The KGB ran out of people to control the stolen wealth. There was so much, they had to turn to the mob for help. Money—perestroika was all about vast sums of money, money, money.” Popov let out a long exhale.
“And you didn’t get much, did you? What was it, twenty million, maybe thirty? So many of your peers, people not as smart as you, became just filthy rich, didn’t they? That must be galling.”
“I’m still young enough to put billions to good use. Some of us just have to wait longer in life for our true destiny to unfold. But life is so… tricky. That’s why people have insurance. To make sure they will be kept whole.”
“Insurance is a scam, a legal scam,” said Bennings.
“That, my friend, is cynical. Insurance can be very effective. When one of my mob associates accepts protection money from say, a restaurant, you can be certain that no other bad guys will disturb that place. It’s a certainty. And since I believe that money, money, money does not really work as a motivational tool with you, Major Bennings, I need some insurance.”
Uh-oh. Kit had a bad feeling about where this was going. “I’m happy to take your money, but now I’m wondering if you can afford to pay me two million. No offense.”
“No offense taken. Don’t worry, I’ll give you some money, but you see, like you, I am a spy, too. And just as you knew my twin daughters were murdered, I know something about you. I’ve known from the beginning that just giving you money is not enough. I need some certainty that you will do exactly as I ask and won’t make trouble for me.”
Damn, he’s talking about Staci; we’ve come all the way back to Staci.
The man at the laptop looked up at Popov. “It just came in.”
Popov gestured, and the thug took the laptop over to Bennings and held it in front of him.
“Play the home movie for him.”
The thug clicked on PLAY.
Bennings steeled himself and looked at the screen with dread. Shaky camcorder footage showed the aftermath of the gun battle in Chino Hills. Kit sucked in air audibly as he watched footage showing the bullet-riddled bodies of Maria Carrillo and her husband, Rick. Then the screen went black, and new footage showed Staci being held by a man. Her face was bruised and she looked drugged. The man nudged her and she looked into the camera.
“Kit, they killed Mom and Rick and Maria. But don’t you dare do a damn thing for them!”
A blond woman then entered the shot, grabbed Staci’s wrist, and wrenched it; the sound of bones breaking rang distinct. Staci screamed in utter pain. As the man held her fast, the blonde delivered a crunching kick to Staci’s knee and then threw her to the floor, where she screamed and writhed in agony.
The thug turned off the video.
Bennings silently seethed with rage inside his shackled body. Popov was a dead man walking. He didn’t know how, when, or where, but he would kill the Russian bastard. But he had to be smart; he had to protect Staci; he had to make sure they didn’t hurt her again; he had to set her free. He decided then and there he would do whatever it took, regardless of the consequences to himself. Starting right now, Kit Bennings held no doubt that the course of his life had just been irrevocably altered.
His mother was dead and his sister kidnapped all because he was sent to Moscow on a mission he didn’t particularly want to be part of. The whole scenario made him unbelievably angry. And anger, not money, worked much better as a motivational tool for Bennings.
Popov nodded to a thug, who then stepped forward and administered a shot into Bennings’s arm with a syringe.
“A sedative that will wear off in an hour,” said Popov.
Bennings almost immediately felt deeply relaxed—too relaxed to move. The thug then cut loose the restraints, and two men lifted him to his feet.
“I’m told your sister is your last living relative. Call me at exactly ten o’clock tonight—not before, not after—and let me know if you want to keep her that way.”
CHAPTER 10
“I can have six men at your mom’s house in ninety minutes,” said Buzz Van Wyke emphatically. A slender man of medium height in his fifties, Van Wyke stood on a café patio talking into his cell phone on a breezy morning, just after 9:00 A.M. in California, with the blue Pacific Ocean just behind him.
“Buzz, I appreciate your willingness to help, but don’t BS me,” said Bennings over his encrypted sat phone in his safe room at his apartment. It was just after 8:00 P.M. in Moscow, and he was putting on his army mess dress uniform that was worn at more-formal social occasions. He washed down four aspirin with hot matcha Japanese green tea with a high caffeine content to shake off the grogginess from the sedative and tend to the throbbing pain from getting slugged with a blackjack. Bennings needed to be sharp, considering what he hoped to do at the ambassador’s ball in honor of Secretary of State Padilla.
“I’m in San Diego,” said Buzz. “Angel Perez came here with me—he’s inside finishing breakfast. We’re visiting my son, Randy, who, if you’ll remember, is on SEAL Team Three down here in Coronado. So it’ll be me, Angel, Randy, and some of his SEAL buddies.”