Chapter 19
19
Without Alex there to hover over her and insist she stay on the couch, Katie paced the living room nervously. It felt like some sort of terrible net was closing in around her and Alex and Dawn. She couldn’t see it, but the trap was about to spring. She knew it deep down in her gut.
Her head spun with the events of the past week. From the moment they’d left that tent in Zaghastan, somebody had been dogging their steps. What was so danged special about the Karshan Valley?
Or was it Dawn? Did this have to do with her mysterious, unidentified father? Katie picked up the list of names again. She crossed Ian off the list as a possible suspect in the mayhem.
Not only was he the kind of man who would own up to fathering a child and would do right by the mother, he’d also been stabbed and badly injured for the past week. He wasn’t responsible for the car chases or assault on her.
Reluctantly, she thought back to the attack in the parking garage. It had been so dark, and the guy had come at her so fast. She’d barely had time to defend herself, let alone register details. The man had been taller than her. Heavier in build than Alex. Strong. She would never forget the feel of that rock hard fist slamming into her face. He’d been brutal and efficient. A professional thug, then.
FSB? CIA? Or…she glanced down at the list and the cluster of Slavic names Alex had determined were all associated with one another and had likely traveled to Zaghastan as a single group…maybe her attacker this morning was in the Chechen mob?
That girl…Dawn’s mother…had denied being raped. Which meant she’d been seduced. The father had to have been in the valley for a while to pull that off. She called Uncle Charlie’s phone number.
“Hey, Katie-kins,” he answered jovially. “Have you got good news for me?”
“Working on it. You know that list of names you sent me?”
“The guest list for the party? Of course.”
What? Oh. Crap . This wasn’t a secure line. “Exactly,” she replied cheerfully. “Can you get me arrival and departure dates to go with it so I can make sure everyone’s got rides?”
“Of course.”
“Like…now?”
“No problem. I’ll have my secretary send them over, kiddo.”
She severely doubted Uncle Charlie was ever that perky for real at work. He must think her cell phone was not only unsecure but being monitored by someone unfriendly. And he was CIA. What enemy of the CIA had the power, the reach, to tap her phone?—
--The question had only to enter her mind for her to know the answer. The FSB. More specifically, Roman Koronov. Alex was convinced his father would come after her and Dawn to force Alex to work for him. And hey, it had worked. Alex was prepared to steal sensitive information from his own employer for Roman.
She commenced pacing again, but after about three laps of the spacious condo, her phone beeped an incoming e-mail. The days and months in the list Charlie had forwarded her were all followed by this year’s date. But she got the point. She ignored the year and focused on the days and months instead.
Only the four Chechen names on her list and Ian had been in the Karshan Valley for more than a few days last year. In fact, the four Chechens had been there for the entire four-month window of time in question.
Alex thought Shishani was the leader of the bunch and the other three were probably his bodyguard flunkies. Doubtful a flunkie would get enough time off to romance a local girl. More likely, Shishani had been the seducer.
Call her selfish, but she wasn’t about to contact a mob boss to ask him if he’d like to take custody of his baby daughter. What the guy didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. She would ask Alex to help her do whatever it took to adopt Dawn, and she’d raise the child, herself.
Her nervousness transformed into impatience for Alex to get home so she could tell him what she’d decided and enlist his legal help. Her cell phone rang and she snatched it up eagerly, hopeful that it was him.
“Hello?” she said quickly.
“Katie? Is that you?”
Sister Mary Harris . “Yes, Sister, it’s me. Is everything okay with Dawn?”
“She’s perfectly fine, dear. But there’s been a break-in at the orphanage. It appears the thief got scared away when the alarms went off. I thought you and Alex ought to know.”
Katie’s blood literally ran cold. “Uhh, thanks. I’ll be right over.”
“That’s not necessary. The police are here and the thief didn’t get anything. He just broke a window.”
“Nonetheless. I’m on my way.”
Katie ended the call, grabbed her car keys and screeched to a stop at Alex’s front door. Crap. Would she get shot or electrocuted or something if she tried to leave? She threw the door open, ducking as she did so. Nada. Cautiously, she stepped out into the hall. So far so good. Worried about just how far Alex’s paranoia might extend, she bypassed the elevator and raced down the stairs, instead.
Dusk was falling as she climbed into her rental car and headed into the mess that was rush hour in D.C. She had no idea whether or not she was followed. There was no way to navigate the traffic chaos, and watch her rearview mirror, and actually spot anyone in the tangle of vehicles around her.
If Dawn was being targeted, was Roman Koronov behind it? Except Alex was cooperating with his father. Why attack Dawn and risk making Alex so mad he quit playing ball? Also, Roman was the person who’d had the security system at the orphanage installed in the first place. Wouldn’t his guy know that it existed and, furthermore, know how to get around it? Or had the later upgrades to the system taken Roman’s man by surprise?
Fury erupted in her gut that an innocent baby would be pulled into Roman’s power struggle with his son. If that bastard did anything to hurt Dawn, he’d have her to deal with.
Two police cars were parked prominently in front of the convent, but she was appalled to walk inside the facility without a soul challenging her. Thankfully, a cop was stationed at the door to the cloistered section of the building. He spoke into the radio at his collar, relaying news of her arrival to Sister Mary Harris.
In a few minutes, the elderly nun appeared at the door, and actually invited her in. Katie was under the impression the public was not generally let into this area. This exception to the rules alarmed her almost more than anything else, tonight. The nun looked exhausted and was showing every one of her eighty years this evening.
“How are you doing, Sister?” Katie asked gently. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I think we’ve got things under control. Thankfully, that security system Roman Koronov installed did its job. All the doors locked when someone without a security badge tried to gain entrance to the orphanage. Fellow had to break a beautiful stained glass window to get out. Threw a chair through it. That window was nearly a hundred years old. Terrible loss…”
Katie was not particularly interested in the window. “How’s Dawn?”
“A little fussy with all the activity.”
“But she’s safe?”
“Yes, of course, dear. A thief wouldn’t bother the babies.”
Hah . Any self-respecting thief wouldn’t break into a freaking convent in the first place. “I’d like to see her, Sister.”
“I understand. A little cuddle would calm both of you. Wait here.”
Katie sank into a lovely bentwood rocking chair in a small alcove. The window overlooked a cheerful garden.
In a few minutes, Sister Mary Harris returned with a blanket-wrapped bundle. “She’s wide awake, the little rascal. I think she’s interested in all the noise and movement.”
“That’s my girl,” Katie cooed softly. “Smart and beautiful.” She inhaled the sweet baby smell of Dawn, and all was right with the world. Nobody was hurting her baby girl while she drew breath. But she also couldn’t leave the baby here. Whoever had broken in had been surprised by the alarms, but the intruder would be prepared next time. Dawn mustn’t be here when the next time came.
“How about I rock her to sleep, Sister? I’d like a little time alone with her if that would be okay.”
“Actually, that would be helpful. All the children are upset, and my sisters could use some help getting everyone to bed tonight.”
“Go on, then. Dawn and I will be fine.”
Katie waited until the nun’s habit disappeared around the corner and then hurried to the exit. As she approached the door, she tucked Dawn inside her coat, laying the baby flat across her stomach. “Just like old times, eh, sweetie?” she murmured.
Thankfully, like old times, the sound of her heartbeat calmed and quieted the infant. She stepped out, nodding a greeting at the police officer. It was all she could do not to break into a mad dash for her car, but she forced herself to walk across the parking lot.
She didn’t breathe properly until the convent disappeared behind her car. Now what? Her car was known, and she knew the convent was being watched. She had to assume she was being tailed. And then there was her cell phone. Uncle Charlie seemed convinced it was being monitored. And if the FSB could hear her calls, they could also use its GPS function to track her.
What would Alex do in this situation? He would do the unexpected. Okay, so what was “expected” of her? She’d just taken Dawn. The logical thing would be for her to head home. To Pennsylvania.
She spied a homeless guy lounging in front of a closed store ahead and inspiration struck. She had a couple hundred bucks in her wallet. Hopefully, it would be enough.
She pulled into the alley about a half-block beyond the guy and pulled out her cell phone. She turned it off and stuffed it deep into the seat cushions before scooping up Dawn and hurrying back to the panhandler.
She asked him, “Do you know how to drive a car?”
“Yeah. But what I need is a buck for a cup of coffee.”
Right. Coffee. The guy stunk of drunk vomit. “I’ll do you one better than that. I’ll give you…” she opened her wallet to check the contents… “two-hundred-sixty dollars if you’ll take my car and drive it to Pittsburgh.”
The guy’s jaw dropped. “Pittsburgh?” he said blankly.
“Just head out of D.C. toward Pennsylvania. You have to leave right now, though. Here are the keys.”
“Are you crazy?”
“As a jaybird. You want the cash or not?”
“Hell, yeah.”
“Take the Beltway to Highway 270 northwest out of town. It merges into Highway 70. Follow the signs to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It’ll take you straight into Pittsburgh.”
“What am I supposed to do when I get there?”
“Ditch the car and get drunk off your ass. You might want to save enough money for a bus ticket back to D.C., though. I expect panhandlers do better here than in Pittsburgh.”
The guy snatched the keys out of her hand. Whether he would actually head for Pennsylvania or merely drive to the nearest liquor store, she had no idea. But it was worth a try.
The guy did get into the rental car and head in the direction of the Beltway, at least. She cringed back in the shadows of the store building as the traffic lights changed and a stream of cars rolled past. Good lord willing, one of those was whoever’d tailed her from the convent.
She waited until the street was deserted to hurry down it toward the nearest Metro stop with Dawn. She used spared change from her wallet to buy a one-way Metro ticket, and headed for Union Station.
She wrote a check that emptied her bank account at the currency exchange window in the train station on the assumption that it would take whoever was tracking her a while to look for and pick up a money trail on her. Long enough for her to be gone from here. She bought a hat and a new coat, stuffing her old coat in a trashcan in a ladies’ restroom.
She bought a cheap duffel bag and ducked into a drug store in the Union Station Mall to pick up rudimentary baby supplies for Dawn. She stuffed them in the bag. Fleeing with a baby certainly complicated matters.
She paid cash for a ticket on the next train out of the station, which turned out to be a local headed up the east coast, through New York City, to Boston. She had to hustle to make the train, and didn’t spot anyone racing after her.
Had she done it? Had she ditched whoever was after her and Dawn?
She fell into a seat as the train crept out of the station. A few people jumped on at the last second, but none of them looked like FSB operatives to her. Not that she would be able to tell one from a harassed businessman, she supposed.
Dawn declared her opinion of the last few minutes’ worth of racing around and started to fuss. Katie pulled out a bottle and mixed bottled water and formula for the baby before she could start screaming. Last thing she needed was to have everyone on the train notice and remember her. Katie won the race against baby-meltdown and got a bottle into Dawn’s mouth before the screaming commenced. Whew .
The rhythmic noise and swaying of the train seemed to lull Dawn to sleep. The baby slept through a brief stop in Baltimore, and Katie sighed in relief as the train pulled out of the station without Dawn waking up.
Now what? Unpredictable . What would be unpredictable?
Alex looked into Chester Morton’s office grimly. His lawyer’s body had been removed, but an obscene tape outline remained on the blood-coated desk, and a crime-scene team was hard at work collecting samples. He wasn’t allowed into the room, of course, but he’d seen enough. Chester had been shot at his desk, and the man’s computer was turned on, a dancing screen-saver still going strong. Which meant the killer had been able to access the lawyer’s files.
“Time of death?” he asked Chester’s secretary tersely.
“This morning, sometime. The firm was closed for Good Friday.”
Alex blinked. This was Easter weekend? The woman continued tearfully, “Mr. Morton must have come in to catch up on some work. The police think he surprised an intruder.”
Or maybe the intruder followed Morton here and forced him to log in to his computer before killing him. Chester was far too security conscious not to have encrypted the hell out of his computer.
“Who knew Chester’s passwords?” Alex asked grimly.
“Nobody—“ the secretary broke off as the significance of the question dawned on her.
He was right, then. The intruder had been after files. Alex turned to Chester’s paralegal who’d just walked up to them. “My files were copied, weren’t they? All of them.”
The young man frowned. “That’s correct. How did you know?”
“Call it a hunch,” Alex replied dryly.
The paralegal continued, “Just the recent ones were copied. The custody paperwork and the trust fund documents.”
“Anything else?”
“All of Mr. Morton’s recently opened documents were copied from the cache in his computer. We’ve notified the other clients affected, but…” the guy hesitated, and then added in an apologetic rush, “…but he said if anything bad ever happened to him, it would be because of you.”
Alex’s jaw tightened. Chester had been no dummy. He knew the ilk of Alex’s enemies, perhaps better than anyone. Morton had been his father’s attorney, too.
Why in the hell did someone go after legal documents pertaining to Dawn ? Only his father would be interested in the infant like this. But his father surely knew where the baby was already. What did the child’s legal status or trust fund have to do with anything or anyone else?
Frowning, he pulled his vibrating cell phone out of his pocket. He didn’t recognize the number. “Yes?” he said brusquely.
“Thank God you answered, Alex. It’s Sister Mary Harris. We have a problem.”
His heart skipped a beat. “Is Dawn all right?” he demanded urgently.
“Well, that’s the thing. Katie came to see her a little while ago, but now they’re both gone.”
“ What? ”
He took off running down the hall, phone plastered to his ear as he sprinted for his car. He listened in dismay to the details. A break-in. Katie showed up at the convent— Dammit. Any idiot could figure out a threat to the baby would draw her out of his place —Sister Mary Harris had brought Dawn to see her. Katie volunteered to rock her to sleep…
He leaped into his car and tore out of the parking lot. He dialed Katie’s phone, but got sent immediately to voice mail. Why in the hell would she turn off her phone? His alarm turned into panic as he headed for home.
He tore into his condo, shouting, “Katie? Where are you?”
Only silence answered him. His panic became infused with helplessness. Where had she and Dawn gone? Had someone snatched them? Or had Katie fled on her own?
He got onto the Internet fast and looked up her father’s cell phone number.
“Hello, Mr. McCloud. My name is Alex Peters, and I’m a friend of Katie’s.”
“You’re the guy who stabbed my boy, aren’t you?”
“Yes sir, I am,” he answered impatiently. “Have you heard from Katie, tonight?”
“No, and she was supposed to meet us at the hospital and go to dinner with us but never showed up. Is something wrong?” The cop in the man obviously smelled a problem.
“She’s disappeared. If she contacts you, please have her call me immediately.”
“Likewise, Peters. Have her call us.”
“Will do.”
“Can I help?” her father bit out.
“If you can, you’ll be the first to know.” Alex disconnected the call and stared at nothing. Katie knew her parents were in D.C. with Ian. Would she still head home to Pittsburgh with Dawn if they were all down here? His gut said she wouldn’t. Who else would she turn to for help?
He called André Fortinay’s emergency cell number.
“Good evening Alex? What’s up?”
“Have you heard from Katie McCloud tonight, sir?”
“No. Is something amiss?”
“She’s disappeared with the infant we brought back from Zaghastan.”
“What do you mean, disappeared?”
“She’s dropped off the grid. Completely. I’m worried something might have happened to her.”
“Did you two have some kind of falling out?”
Alex rolled his eyes at the ceiling of his office. “No. We didn’t. Look this is totally unlike Katie. Something’s wrong. Please have her call me if you hear from her.”
“I will. Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” the Frenchman said.
“Will do.”
Now what? He was out of ideas. He called Sister Mary Harris back. “I need more information,” he said without preamble. “Is Katie’s car still in your parking lot?”
“I don’t know. Let me check.”
He waited in an agony of impatience while the elderly nun made her way to a window in the front of the convent. “What does it look like?” she finally asked.
“Cobalt blue mini-sedan.”
“No blue cars, here. She must have driven somewhere with the baby. I expect she’s bringing Dawn to see you. I wish she’d told me she was going to take Dawn out, though. I’ve been so worried?— “
He hung up on the nun’s nattering. He had no time for that. If Katie was in her car, then she was traceable. He considered his options fast and headed for his car once more.
A half-hour later found him barging past the receptionist at Walter Reed Hospital with a terse explanation there he was a doctor and there was a crisis with a patient. The woman subsided as he leaped into an elevator.
He slowed only when he hit the doorway of Ian McCloud’s room. If he didn’t miss his guess, Katie’s brother had the contacts and resources to track his little sister right now and not wait the twenty-four hours the police required before they would take action.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Ian growled.
McCloud was alone in his room Good. This needed to be a private conversation, and he doubted the family would voluntarily leave Ian alone with the man who’d stabbed him. “Katie’s in trouble.”
Ian’s truculent expression evaporated in an instant. “What’s wrong?”
“My lawyer was murdered today and the files pertaining to Dawn, that’s the baby we brought back from Zaghastan, were copied off my lawyer’s computer. Katie and Dawn disappeared a little over an hour ago. Her phone’s turned off. I think she’s in her car. No idea if she’s alone or with a captor. I need to find the vehicle, ASAP. It’s a rental, so it should have a tracking chip in it.”
Alex held out his cell phone to Ian, and Katie’s brother snatched it and punched in a number.
“It’s Candy Man. Emergency authentication Charlie Whiskey Three One Tango Tango.”
Alex scribbled down the make and model of the car, its license plate and the rental company on the napkin beside Ian’s dinner tray while they waited for the authentication to be verified.
Abruptly, Ian started talking. He relayed the information on Katie’s car with a request to initiate immediate tracking due to a possible hostage situation.
That ought to get folks on the other end of the line hopping.
The person at the other end of the phone said something that made Ian swear violently, though. The he said, “Fine. I’ll pull my own damned strings.”
He disconnected the call and started dialing another number.
“Problem?” Alex asked.
“My people have no authority to request the trace.” He added grimly, “But there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
Alex grinned darkly. He liked the way this guy rolled.
“Uncle Charlie? It’s Ian. Katie’s not picking up her phone.” A pause. “No, he’s here with me right now. She’s late for our date.”
Realizing belatedly that Ian was trying to talk around the real issue on the assumption that the phone might be bugged, Alex said quickly, “My cell phone has 256-bit encryption. It’s secure.”
“Bless you,” Ian muttered. “Charlie, this line’s secure. We think she’s in a rental car and have reason to suspect hostile action against her and the baby. Can you have your people track the car?” He relayed the vehicle’s data to his uncle quickly.
Ian ended the call and passed the phone back to Alex. “That’s more like it,” he growled. “Now we’ll get some action. And in the meantime, what the hell’s going on? Tell me everything.”
Alex was glad to have a trained operative to dump everything on. Maybe Ian would see some connection he’d missed. “After I stabbed you, Katie and I caught a plane hop to Osh. From there we headed for Tashkent. We were followed in both towns. Had a little trouble with my old man. He’s?—“
Ian interrupted. “I know who your father is.”
Alex nodded tersely. “I took Katie to my place in D.C. It’s a fortress. But we got picked up on the street and tailed. We hid the baby in an orphanage with an old friend of mine for safety. Katie was attacked on her way to visit you this afternoon, and my lawyer was killed soon after that.”
“Christ, man. Who’d you piss off?”
Alex shrugged. “Wish I knew. I was at my lawyer’s office when I got the call that Katie and the baby had disappeared from the orphanage.”
“Any guesses as to who’s tailing you?” Mike demanded.
“Pros for sure. Maybe FSB. Maybe CIA.”
“What do they want?”
Alex snorted. “They want me to work for them.”
“You think they’re making a run at Katie and the kid to twist your arm?”
“Possibly.” He corrected angrily, “Hell, Probably.”
“Any other possible players?”
He frowned thoughtfully. “It’s a long shot, but Katie’s been poking around trying to find out who Dawn’s birth father is.”
“Wouldn’t that be a local from Karshan?” Ian asked in surprise.
“Dawn’s blond-haired and blue-eyed. Birth father’s Caucasian.”
“Sonofabitch,” Ian breathed. “So Katie’s turning over rocks. Who’d she expose?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. What were you doing in Zaghastan?”
“Dude, you know the drill. I can’t answer that.”
“Just listen, then. Someone’s been chasing Katie and me pretty much continuously since the Karshan Valley, starting with you. I thought it was all about me. God knows, I’ve got plenty of enemies and they all have the manpower to follow me and hassle me.”
“But?”
“Katie got this idea in her head that we should find Dawn’s birth father and let him know he had a kid. She asked for a list of names from your uncle of all the Caucasian men in the Karshan Valley nine months ago. A guy named Yevgeny Shishani was on it.”
Mike shook his head. He obviously hadn’t heard of the guy.
“Chechen mafia. Arms dealer, drug lord. Smuggler.”
“And?”
“Tell me something. Did you find any poppy fields in that area? Any evidence to indicate that opium production or smuggling was going on?”
“No. Nothing like that,” Mike said firmly. The guy was telling him the truth. Alex saw no tells of deception at all.
“How about weapons dealing? Any arms runners passing through there?”
“Negative.”
“Then why would a guy like Shishani end up in a godforsaken place like the Karshan Valley?”
“I got nothin’. You got a theory?”
“Yes, in fact. I do.” He exhaled hard. “This is a little crazy, McCloud, but go with me on it.” He described the cave with its bore holes and deep shaft. He then described the chronic cough the locals all seemed to have, and the weird smell in the valley.
“Yeah, I noticed that stench,” Mike piped up. “I tracked it to those big communal ovens they used.”
“I don’t think those were ovens. I think they were smelters.” That sent Ian’s eyebrows up, but he listened in silence as Alex continued. “I took a close look at this Shishani character. No political ties. Purely a businessman. Seems to me he wouldn’t go to the Karshan Valley unless there was money in it for him. With me so far?”
Ian nodded, watching him intently. Alex saw where Katie got her smarts from. It was a family trait.
He continued, “I did a little research on what Shishani could do there to turn a profit. Like you, I saw no evidence of drug production or arms trade through the valley. Ever heard of samarium?”
Mike frowned. “Sounds like something from my chemistry class.”
“Correct. It’s a rare earth element. It’s used in control rods for nuclear reactors. It’s also used in lasers and as a hardening agent in missile casings. It’s highly heat resistant. It’s always found in conjunction with other minerals. The ore has to be melted down and the samarium separated from the nuisance minerals it’s found with. That smelting process stinks to high heaven.”
“Let me guess,” Ian commented. “There’s samarium in the Karshan Valley.”
“Give the man a gold star.”
“Was Shishani getting this stuff for the Chechens?”
Alex shook his head. “The guy hates the current regime. Unless you saw heavy transport trucks or cargo planes coming into the Karshan Valley routinely, we’re looking at a local buyer.”
“Holy shit” Ian burst out. “Iran’s a stone’s throw from the Karshan valley and they’d have all kinds of military uses for it. Do you think this Shishani guy was getting samarium from the locals and selling it to the Iranians?”
“Did you ever see locals hauling baskets down out of the hills? They’d be heavy. Carrying rocks. Maybe an occasional truck coming and going like it picked up a heavy cargo and hauled it out?”
Mike nodded once, very slowly. Alex understood. The guy couldn’t say anything to him, but if Alex guessed correctly, he could nod.
“If the locals were smelting it in those ovens in the middle of their village, they would ingest a crap-ton of the fumes,” Alex pointed out.
He didn’t like having to reveal the next bit to an employee of the U.S. government, but he needed this man’s help. Ian had been on the ground in Zaghastan for months more than him and Katie. He was the single most likely person to know who they’d pissed off in Zaghastan, and who might have kidnapped Katie.
“And?” Ian prompted warily.
“Katie and I saw the rebels who attacked the village that last night. We both thought they moved like soldiers. Spec Ops types. Those weren’t locals at all. I’m hoping you saw them, too.”
Ian nodded firmly.
Jesus H. Christ. It was one thing to suspect sinister layers to an event. It was another to have it confirmed for him. Alex’s pulse sped up. He only hoped he wasn’t on the right track all the way to the horrible, logical conclusion.
“Go on,” Ian urged.
“For argument’s sake, let’s assume Charlie gave Katie the complete list of visitors to the valley and didn’t omit any of his own people. Your name was the only obviously American one on the list, from which I’m going to assume you were working solo out there.”
Ian nodded infinitesimally.
Alex finished heavily, “Which means that Spec Ops squad wasn’t American.”
Ian nodded more obviously.
“That team, posing as rebels, slaughtered everyone in Karshan village that night. They’re probably the same team that took out Ghun village in the next valley over.”
“Logical,” Ian commented cautiously.
“The team we saw had attack drones. RPG’s. A helicopter. That was no Chechen mob job. That was a full-blown, state-sponsored military attack.”
Ian’s eyes opened wide as he saw where Alex was going.
“Yeah,” Alex muttered. “The Russians.”
“Why?” Ian breathed. “This samarium stuff?”
“There’s plenty of it in the Caucasus Mountains. They don’t need it.”
“Then what are we looking at—" Ian started. He broke off as the hallway door opened. Alex spun, his hands going up defensively.
* * *
Katie waited until the last minute before the train pulled out of the station to jump off. She raced for the exit and didn’t see anyone hurrying after her. As far as her limited spy craft could tell, she hadn’t been followed.
She’d jumped off the train on impulse. An advertising poster mounted near the train’s ceiling had touted the new and improved Atlantic City, and it made her recall Alex’s reference once o a hooker there he’d particularly liked.
What was her name? Natasha Gudenov. Surely, the name was fake. For a hooker name, though, it wasn’t as obnoxious as it could have been. Not like some of the Bond girl names, for example.
“Cab, lady?”
Katie started. “Umm. Yes.” She named the casino Alex said Natasha had operated out of. The first casino he’d ripped off for a lot of money before it kicked him out. Natasha had saved his hide. Maybe she would do the same for Katie and Dawn.
Atlantic City at night reminded her of a miniature Las Vegas. Which was the point, she supposed. The cab deposited her in front of a big, flashy hotel and casino. She paid the guy cash and headed inside. So. How did a girl go about finding a hooker in a big hotel?
She headed for the casino and spotted a guy with a prominent earpiece soon enough. Hotel security. He was big and beefy but looked friendly enough.
“Excuse me,” she said politely, “I have a stupid question for you.”
“No question is stupid, ma’am,” the guy responded.
“I’m looking for someone who might be in the hotel, but I don’t know exactly how to find her. I was hoping you could help me.”
“”Your best bet would be to have the concierge look up the guest’s room number or have the front desk page your party.”
“You don’t understand. I’m not looking for just any guest. I’m looking for Natasha Gudenov.”
The guy’s eyes opened wide and his gaze involuntarily skimmed down her body. Checking to see if she was the new talent, was he? Based on that reaction, she was sure the guy knew Natasha.
“I don’t work with her. I just need a favor from her. She’s a friend of a friend.”
The guy frowned dubiously.
“Thing is, I’ve never met her and I don’t know what she looks like. If she’s here, could you maybe point her out to me? Or at least tell me what she looks like?”
“She looks like, umm, a movie star.”
Guys . What kind of description was that? “What color is her hair?”
“Blonde.”
“Light or dark? How long is it straight or curly?”
“Light. Umm. Bleached blonde. And it goes to her shoulder blades. She curls it if it’s not pulled back in a high ponytail.”
Kaite gathered from the move star description and the job description that the woman must have a great body and be pretty. “How tall is she? Does she wear a lot of make-up? Distinctive jewelry?”
“She’s real tall. Rumor has it she was a showgirl in Las Vegas before she got into…her current line of work. She wears dark eye-make-up. Lots of it. And she wears a lot of diamonds.”
“Where can I find her?” Katie prompted.
“She usually doesn’t come in till around midnight. Usually gets a martini and heads for the high roller’s area.”
It was nearly midnight, now. “Where’s this high roller’s area?”
“Children aren’t allowed on the casino floor, ma’am.”
Katie glanced down at the infant sleeping in her shoulder sling. “Good. Because this isn’t a child. It’s a sleeping baby. And I’ll leave as soon as I talk with Natasha. Scout’s honor.”
The guy frowned but pointed over his shoulder. “You’ll need a gold chip to get in.” He fished in his jacket pocket and held his hand out. A gold plastic poker chip lay in his palm. “Make it quick, okay?”
“You got it. And thank you. You’re a lifesaver.” Katie gave him her best smile before heading for the high roller’s area.
The room was paneled in black velvet, with dark lighting. Cool air wafted over her skin from vents sucking the smoke out of the air with shocking efficiency, given that a poker table with eight men, all smoking cigars, was just inside the door. Tiny halogen bulbs in the ceiling cast pools of bright light on the plush black carpet, but outside of those, it was twilight dark in here.
She moved deeper into the mini-casino within a casino. A craps table had drawn a crowd, and a shouted groan went up as she moved past it.
Tall, brassy, blond with dark eye make-up . How hard could Natasha be to spot among all these disheveled business men? Nearly topless waitresses with big chests and perfect legs reaching practically to their armpits moved around the room, handing out free whiskey. No surprise. A drunk gambler was a stupid gambler, and a stupid gambler was a profitable customer for a casino.
There. In the booth along the far wall. A gorgeous blonde displaying the best that modern plastic surgery had to offer. It had to be Natasha. She and Alex were friends? Well, friends with benefits. Huh. The woman looked somewhere over forty and less than seventy years old, but that was about all Katie could tell in this dim light. He went for older women, did he? Kinky.
Katie moved toward the table where Natasha appeared to be holding court. Several stunningly beautiful young women sat with her along with two huge men who couldn’t possibly be mistaken for anything but hired muscle. At the back of the booth in the position of honor was Natasha. Was she some sort of madam, then? She sure acted like the boss lady.
Katie approached cautiously, and the nearest hovering man threw her a look that would warn off most people. She ignored the scowl and approached the table anyway.
The guy muttered in a heavy Slavic accent, “Sorry, honey. What you’re looking for is only available by special appointment.”
She ignored him and spoke directly to the blonde. “Ms. Gudenov?”
“Who’s asking?” The blonde was polite enough, but an undercurrent of toughness was unmistakable in the woman’s voice.
“I’m a friend of Alexei Koronov’s.”
Not only did Natasha lurch, but both men sat up straight and looked past her aggressively. Checking to see if Alex was with her, no doubt.
Natasha stirred the ice cubes in her drink with a long, French-manicured fingernail. “He dares to show his face around here? Brave boy. Or foolish.”
“Although he is unquestionably brave,” Katie said softly, “we both know he’s not foolish, don’t we?”
Natasha glanced down at the baby sling. “That his?”
Katie threw the woman an ‘are you kidding?’ look. “He’s not stupid, either. No. He and I rescued this baby, but she’s not his.”
“How is young Alex? I heard he spent the last few years in Washington.”
Katie sensed a test. “The last few years he spent in jail.”
“Sit. Tell me your name.”
“I’m Katie McCloud. I met Alex on a humanitarian mission overseas. He got out of jail and works for a group that sends doctors around the world to provide free health care to people in need.”
“Alex? A humanitarian?” That sent Natasha into gales of laughter. Katie wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the reaction. Was his new lifestyle really that big a departure for him?
“Why do you come to me, Katie McCloud?”
“Is there somewhere private we could talk?”
* * *
“Good evening, Mr. McCloud,” a male voice said from the doorway.
“Hey, Doc Kowalski,” Ian said.
Alex relaxed fractionally. If McCloud knew the guy, he wasn’t a threat. Except something wasn’t right about the set of the doctor’s shoulders. They were hunched too high. The guy was wicked tense. Alex slid quietly to the side, slightly behind the doctor. Ian noted the movement and arched a questioning brow.
“We got some interesting lab results back on you, just now, Mr. McCloud,” the doctor said. He glanced over his shoulder at Alex. “If your guest would step out into the hallway for a minute, I’d like to go over them with you.”
“He stays,” McCloud bit out.
Interesting. Katie’s brother must sense the doctor’s abnormal tension, too. Or maybe he trusted Alex’s instincts. Operators tended to listen to their guts more than the average bear.
“It turns out you test positive for exposure to radioactive isotopes. Have you been inside a nuclear power plant recently, or had a large ionic dose x-ray in the past few weeks?”
“No. And no.”
Alex piped up. “What specific isotopes did the chromatograph spike on?”
The doctor frowned. “The spike was consistent with unrefined uranium.”
Alex’s jaw dropped, but not nearly as far as Ian’s. “Uranium?” McCloud demanded. “There must be some mistake.”
“No mistake. The techs ran the tests twice. They were startled by the first results and verified them for me.”
“Health ramifications?” Alex bit out. He’d studied radiation poisoning superficially in his medical training but was no expert.
“The levels aren’t life threatening, but do bear watching. You’ll have a slightly increased cancer risk. And you should probably avoid x-rays as much as possible for the remainder of your life. We can discuss chelation to remove some of the isotopes from your liver and kidneys.”
“That I’ve ingested ?” McCloud asked incredulously.
“Most likely way for radioactive cells to show up in your liver and kidneys is to swallow them. A recheck of your CT scan revealed trace amounts of uranium in your lungs, as well. We initially thought the specks were an anomaly in the scan itself.” He added, “You inhaled dust containing trace amounts of the isotope for it to end up in your lungs.”
Alex’s mind raced, and he really, really hated the direction it was going. He asked reluctantly, “Excuse me, Doctor. Did Mr. McCloud test positive for any rare earth metals, or just the uranium?”
“We picked up trace amounts of thorium, samarite, and iron dust in his lung tissue.”
Ho. Lee. Cow . The implications of that all but paralyzed his brain. He caught Ian’s gaze behind the doctor’s back and jerked his head toward the door.
Ian caught his meaning and said, “Thanks for the heads up, Doc. I’ll try to remember where I might have gotten exposed to something like that and let you know. Right now, I’m tired. I’d like to rest if you don’t mind.”
The doctor nodded and left. Alex tucked a chair under the doorknob behind the guy and then turned to Ian. They traded grim looks. Uranium in the Karshan Valley was a game changer.
“Russia has its own internal sources of uranium. I can’t imagine they’d send a mobster after new sources of it.”
“So Shishani was out there for himself. A business deal.”
“With whom?” Alex muttered aloud.
“I didn’t see any long distance trucks or cargo planes come through there. The buyer had to be local. Who—” McCloud broke off and looked faintly ill.
Alex closed his eyes in chagrin. Iran. He looked up at Katie’s brother, and the same realization was clear in his appalled stare.
“So. Those guys were Spetznatz, after all,” Ian breathed.
Alex nodded. He’d suspected the Spec Ops team he and Katie had seen was the elite Russian Special Forces unit, but he’d never dared put it into words.
Mike continued, “The Russians weren’t there to hide samarium mining. They were there to stop the Iranians from getting uranium. Hell, if our side had known what the locals were mining, we would’ve wiped out the village.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“Explain,” Ian bit out.
Alex forged on grimly. “My father is intimately familiar with the interior workings of the Russian government.”
Ian snorted at that bit of understatement.
“It’s far from a homogenous beast. There are factions within it and factions within factions.”
“Sounds like the U.S. government,” Ian commented wryly.
Alex snorted in turn. “I don’t think the intent of that Spetnatz team was to stop uranium from being smuggled to Iran. I think the intent was to protect it.”
“How does wiping out two villages do that?”
“The arrival of an American doctor in the area had to freak out whoever was sponsoring the uranium smuggling. I might’ve spotted the signs of uranium toxicity in the locals. Katie and I were moving fast, going from village to village and laying low. Local pregnant women and their husbands were hiding our tracks, which would have made us hard to locate.”
“I can vouch for that. My own bro—my own people had a hell of a time keeping tabs on you.”
Alex continued. “For all the Russians knew, I already was onto them. I might already have reported back to Doctors Unlimited that I was seeing uranium poisoning among the locals. They had no choice but to wipe out the physical evidence.”
“By killing all the locals?”
Alex nodded. “If D.U. is highly connected. If it filed a formal report, the International Atomic Energy Agency and/or the United Nations would’ve immediately sent a team out to test the blood and tissue of the locals for evidence of illegal uranium mining.”
Both of them knew that, in the game of global nuclear brinksmanship, the lives of a few hundred natives in a place no one had ever heard of were meaningless. Governments wouldn’t hesitate to slaughter local villagers to protect a secret this big.
“Why haven’t they killed you?” Ian demanded.
“Oh, they’ve been trying. But I’m a slippery bastard.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Ian replied dryly.
Alex grinned briefly and shrugged. He wouldn’t apologize for stabbing the guy. McCloud been following them and pulled a knife when jumped.
Ian said soberly, “The Russians need to kill my sister, too, don’t they?”
“She’s a nurse. She, too, might spot uranium poisoning—” He sucked in a sharp breath as his mind made the next leap.
“What?” McCloud demanded sharply.
“Not only do the Russians have to kill the two of us, but they also have to kill Dawn. And furthermore, they have to dispose of her body.”
“Why the kid?” Mike asked.
“She’s the only survivor from the Karshan Valley massacre. If her mother was exposed to uranium, she absorbed it across her mother’s placenta.”
“Sonofabitch,” Ian breathed.
“She’s the only remaining evidence of illegal uranium mining and smuggling.”
“So you’re telling me the whole fucking Russian government is out to kill one baby?”
“At least a powerful faction within it. A faction that would like to see Iran become a nuclear power. If Tehran nuked Israel, the U.S. would have a gigantic mess on its hands for decades to come.”
Ian added, “And the price of oil would go sky high. Russia would make a fortune.”
“Not to mention, this faction would love to see the U.S. quaking in its boots over the possibility of Iran lobbing a nuke at Washington.”
“Jesus,” Ian breathed.
“It’s possible I’m wrong,” Alex said.
“You’re not.”
The two men traded worried looks. Where was Katie? She had no idea the danger she and Dawn were in.