“ Существует кто-то, кто хочет тебя видеть,” Ivan said in Russian.
Someone wants to see me. This should be interesting. Flynn moved slowly toward Ivan, hands raised in a surrendered position. By the time Flynn reached Ivan, two guards joined them and quickly patted down Flynn. Satisfied that he was weaponless, they ushered him down a long dark hallway and through a bevy of rooms. Unfinished concrete floors and cinder block walls formed the structure for the facility’s maze-like layout. Flynn tried to ascertain where he was in the building based on the blueprints the CIA gave him. The better bearings he possessed, the better chance he could escape alive — if ever given the chance.
What the building lacked in aesthetics, it made up for with its state-of-the-art security system. Each room required a retinal scan for entry as well as an alternating code displayed on a digital fob carried by each guard. Flynn noticed a digital clock on the wall. The bright red numbers reminded him he had barely an hour to secure the facility and call Osborne. Ushered deeper into the recesses of the building in silence, Flynn wondered if perhaps the blueprints were faulty or from an early phase of construction.
After nearly five minutes, they arrived at their destination: the control room for the facility’s missile silo.
Fluorescent lights flickered and hummed in one vacant corner of the room. At the far end of the room, a team of four men pushed glowing buttons and flicked switches, calling out commands in Russian. Flynn watched as the men wheeled across the stark white floor and ran through a checklist to apparently prepare a missile launch. He understood from their chatter that a launch was scheduled to occur in sixty minutes.
“ Вот он, ” Ivan announced as they entered the room.
Flynn froze and stared as the man sitting in the largest chair spun around. Wearing a long dark trench coat, the man stood up and walked toward Flynn. His dark skin bunched in wrinkles around his forehead and extended onto his baldhead. Using a black wooden cane, the man shuffled toward Flynn. His small brown eyes directed a piercing stare at his visitor. Once he arrived within three feet of Flynn, he stopped.
“Mr. Flynn,” the man said, speaking in a thick Russian accent. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you here on our terms. For your sake, I wish it could have been under different conditions, for this will not end well for you. You had your chance to ensure that it did, but you continued to meddle where you didn’t belong.”
Flynn furrowed his brow and stared at the man, wondering if he was supposed to know him.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Flynn? Do you not recognize me? Perhaps you might know who I was if I still had all my hair. But I lost that a long time ago — along with all my faith in humanity.”
“The red-haired negro,” Flynn muttered to himself. But it was loud enough that the man heard him.
“That’s probably my favorite alias, though a more formal introduction is required in this instance. My name is Marcos Buscape.”
Flynn stared, unaware that the name should mean anything. It certainly wasn’t a name he ever heard while working at the agency.
The man continued.
“I understand if you’ve never heard of me — most people haven’t. And quite frankly, I prefer to keep it that way. The less people of your ilk know about me, the better. I don’t even like it when our committed organization here gets mentioned in the press. We like to work behind the scenes. Our work isn’t about glory — it’s about an end game that will better this world, far more than I can say for your American imperialism.”
Flynn wanted to lash out at the man, dispute his claims. But he chose not to. The more his enemy talked, the more he would know how to defeat him.
“But you ruined all that for us when you went on television and alerted the world to our presence. The Kuklovod is a long-standing order that seeks to influence people and world events, not grandstand. Yet we can’t do anything now without people seeing us as an evil group. If your President Bush were still blathering on about terrorism, we’d be part of his axis of evil, I’m sure.”
Flynn, who bit his tongue while scanning the room, couldn’t resist the urge to stay silent any longer. He had a few questions of his own and needed to do some probing.
“So, now you’re just going to start a world war?” Flynn asked.
“Oh, we aren’t starting anything — we’re merely ensuring that it happens. For far too long, Russia and the United States have played nice, acting like two comrades instead of mortal enemies. Both countries have lacked the leadership with the fortitude to attack the other. And we didn’t mind since we have no interest in seeing your failed imperialistic ideas spread here and beyond. But as your weak-kneed government has dwindled its military, Russia has been advancing its technology and strengthening its army in ways you never dreamed possible. Now with the upper hand, Russia only needs an excuse to strike. Unlike you Americans, Russia would never strike first in an unprovoked act. But get the right American leader in power — and everything goes boom!”
Buscape stamped his cane on the floor for emphasis. He then leaked a wry smile, apparently proud of the plan he conceived to stoke the embers of war.
Seeking a deeper grasp of his enemy, Flynn went fishing with his next statement.
“You certainly don’t look like a Russian,” Flynn said.
Buscape glared at Flynn a moment before speaking.
“That is the problem with you Americans — it’s always about appearances. How one looks determines a person’s value. Are they beautiful? Successful? Rich? Powerful? And look where it’s gotten you — a depraved country lacking in discipline, leadership and compassion. The land of opportunity is now a cesspool of narcissism. If you think I’m doing this because I have ties to Russia, you are wrong. My passion is to see the world consumed by true communism — where we share what we have, despising those who clamor over others to get their way. It’s about seeing a collective good emerge from a world currently devoid of compassion.”
“So you kill millions of innocent people to achieve this brand of communism, forcing them into this ideal?”
Buscape looked at the floor, dragging his cane around in circles as he thought. He finally looked up at Flynn.
“Yes,” he said, nodding his head. “If I must, I will. Their lives are meaningless now anyway. Better that they die sooner than later to save them from a vacant existence. The result will be a better world — the kind of world my father dreamed of.”
“Your father?”
“Yes, my father — a real father. Father Buscape. You’ve likely never heard of him as he toiled away in Luanda, Angola, wasting away in the final years of his life without ever seeing his dream realized. He offered me up as a sacrifice to Ilya Makarova, the founder of the Kuklovod. In exchange for my service to Ilya, my father would receive all the funding he needed to help establish a Communist party in Angola. My father may have failed to see true communism spread like he hoped, but I won’t. Today will mark the dawn of a new day in the earth’s history.”
Flynn grew tired of the old man spouting his misguided idealism. Despite all of the awful things Flynn had to do in the name of protecting the freedom of the American people, he knew people don’t change by force. Strangely enough, he shared some of Buscape’s sentiments, but starting a war was no way to accomplish it — nor would it ever accomplish anything in the end other than more war. He wasn’t about to let the codger take millions of innocent lives.
With two guards watching Flynn’s every twitch, he needed a distraction. Flynn bent over and started coughing, catching the guards by surprise as they knelt down next to him to see what was wrong. Flynn then wrapped his leg around the neck of the guard on his left, forcing him to drop his assault weapon. At the same time, he kicked the knee of the guard on his right, sending him to the floor. Flynn snatched the weapon off the floor and jammed it up against Buscape’s neck, careful not to cut him.