Chapter Fifteen #2
“You know who I answer to,” Sasha said. “If I help you, I’m as good as dead.”
“You’re dead if you don’t help,” I said. “From one dead man walking to another, trust me.”
“What do mean?” Sasha asked.
“You were tipped off about the painting, weren’t you?”
Sasha nodded. “I was sent an email from an anonymous account warning me about the painting. I probably wouldn’t have known otherwise.
The email also warned me that Elenor wasn’t who she claimed to be.
I was ready to kill you both, but then you told me you were working for Mr. B, and I thought that’s what the person who sent the email must have meant. ”
“What did the sender say he wanted in return?”
“Nothing,” Sasha said. “It was just a warning.”
“A setup is what it was,” I said.
“We’ve got to get back home,” Tess said.
“How are you planning on getting out of here?” Sasha asked, smiling.
“You’re going to personally escort us out,” I replied.
“And why would I do that?”
“Because your boss is about to go down and you with him. I’ve figured out what’s going on here and believe me, coming with us and cooperating is your only option. A shit storm is imminent, and it’s headed straight for St. Petersburg.”
* * *
We arrived back at Pulkova airport just before three o’clock in the morning and loaded our two new assets into the jet.
Sasha Fedya and ‘Headwound Harry,’ as we’d come to nickname his bodyguard, Vova.
He’d spent most of the night keeping pressure on the nasty gash in his scalp I’d given him earlier.
Once we were in the air, Tess found the first aid kit and stitched him up. She did a pretty damned good job too.
I made my way to the back of the plane where Darwood was sitting alone.
“This seat taken?” I asked.
“Be my guest,” Darwood replied.
“Ya know, you kinda made me shit my pants in there with Sasha tonight,” I said.
He cocked his head. “Oh, yeah?”
“I don’t mean to offend you, but I wasn’t exactly expecting that guy to come out of the guy I met earlier today.”
“What? The Buckeye lovechild of Danny DeVito and Joe Pesci didn’t intimidate you?”
I laughed, shaking my head. “No, it’s not even that. Short guys can be tough. Every guy learns that lesson in life. Usually the hard way, too. I just mean, your whole personality changed.”
“Hey, kid. I don’t wantchoo ta think what happened back der to Skinny didn’t freak me da fuck out.
I knew that guy. I didn’t want to see him end up like that.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m a fuckin’ arch criminal, alright.
I’ve hurt people. It’s what it is, but I never did nothin’ like dat to a guy. Ya know?”
“You had me fooled,” I said. “I still don’t know how you became that other guy.”
“You like oranges?” he asked.
I laughed, caught off-guard by his question.
“Me?” he continued. “I love ’em. My favorite fruit, hands down.
Growing up in Wooster, Ohio as a kid, we couldn’t get fresh oranges.
The winters are just too damned brutal. But my grandparents were snowbirds and they’d come back up with these huge sacks of oranges.
Each one, the size of a goddamned softball.
I swear to you, the only thing I ever had in my mouth that was sweeter was Becky Halback’s pussy.
Then again, my grandparents never brought me Becky Halback’s pussy in a sack twice a year, but I’m sure you get my point. ”
“You’re a big fan of oranges and watermelon,” I said. “Got it.”
“You’re quick, kid,” Darwood said with a chuckle.
“Anyway, this is how I see it. People are like oranges. They’re naturally segmented on the inside, but present as one whole thing on the outside.
You know, if you think of each segment as a part of what makes up a person’s personality, that is.
However, unlike an orange, a person’s segments aren’t all the same size.
Maybe one guy’s aggression segment is big, and his fatherhood segment is fuckin’ tiny toons.
So, he makes a good leg breaker but is probably a shit dad.
What are you gonna do? Then, some other guy’s intelligence segment is huge, but his confidence segment is so low he couldn’t get laid in a whorehouse in T.J.
on free fuckin’ taco night. You catch my drift? ”
I nodded. “This is much better than Shrek’s ‘People are like onions,’ speech. I don’t recall his having any parts about Mexican whores. Please, go on.”
“One of my segments, probably the biggest one, is the one labeled ‘Average schmuck from Wooster.’ That part of my personality talks the way my family and neighbors do, feeds any duck that waddles into his yard, and truly thinks the Browns are gonna have a terrific season this year, ya know?”
I nodded.
“I try to bite into that segment of the orange as much as I can, because a lot of the time I have to be the guy you saw back in Sasha’s gallery and that takes its toll on a guy.”
“I look forward to the day you can take that piece of jewelry off your ankle and be Ohio’s favorite son, Krist Darwood, full-time.”
“You and me both, kid,” he replied.
“Hey, Clark Kent,” Officer Hart said, breaking up our little twosome. “You stole my line back there.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“You know. Back in the car, I said I wouldn’t mind putting two in Sasha’s chest and you scoffed. Then, low and behold. What do you say to Fedya as soon as you put a gun on him?”
“I don’t know. You have the right to remain silent? To be honest, I don’t really remember.”
“Bullshit. You said, ‘Hands on the desk or I’ll put two in your chest.’”
“I don’t think I said anything about his chest,” I said.
“See, so you do remember. I—”
“Hey, Hart,” I said, stopping him. “In all seriousness, I think you need some extensive counseling. I really do. Maybe there’s some unresolved stuff with your family or something. But also, thanks for having my back in there. That was a slick move with that plastic gun.”
Agent Hart smiled. “That was pretty fucking cool, right?”
“Real old school kind of spy stuff,” I replied. “George is gonna love hearing all about it. You did him proud, Hart.”
“Thanks, Kent,” he replied.
“Hey, that’s Superman to you, asshole.”
* * *
Two days later, Tess and I walked through Frank Graves’s office door.
“Wallace? What the hell are you doing here?” Frank asked, getting up from behind his desk.
“Sit down, Frank. We need to have a talk.”
“Who the hell do you think you are, barging into my office and telling me what to do?” he bellowed.
“Do what he says, Frank,” Deputy Director Forrester said, coming in right behind us.
“Chuck, what the hell is this?”
“It’s the day of reckoning,” I said. “You lied to your superiors for financial gain.”
“You knew Deputy Director Forrester’s main directive was to break up the Oligarchy and you used that directive to sneak your agenda in under the wire,” Tess said.
“You knew Ilya Petrakov and Sasha Fedya weren’t dealing in stolen World War II art, but if you could convince the brass they were, then you could operate in Russia with full war-time immunity, especially after the killings of two young field officers.”
“What are you talking about?” Frank asked.
“You gave false intel to the Deputy Director, convincing him to send Officer St. Marks to work undercover in Russia, where you planned to expose her, setting in motion her execution. You thought you were sending a lamb directly into the slaughterhouse. That she’d last a few weeks, Fedya would make her, and you’d have your martyr.
But you underestimated our girl, Tess. Even though she didn’t find Fedya’s so called ‘connection’ to the Nazi plunder, because it didn’t exist, she found favor with Sasha and was successfully making her way deeper into the Petrakov organization than any operative before her. ”
“So what do you do next?” Tess asked. “You send in an even greener greenhorn, thinking he’d surely screw the pooch.
And just to make sure, you tipped off Sasha about the forged Matisse painting.
Soon, you’d have the flags of two dead officers to wave around.
But just like before, you underestimated your agent. ”
Frank scoffed, but Tess raised her hand to shut him up.
“You could then use our deaths as fuel to wage a full-on attack on the Petrakovs. Keeping the Deputy Director busy while you appropriated Sasha Fedya’s private collection,” Tess said.
“This was never about stolen World War II artwork or even taking down the Petrakovs. For you, this was all about taking ownership of that collection, before the US government could take inventory of its contents. And you could only do that if the artwork was seized in a covert military action,” I said.
“Then,” Tess said. “Once you had the collection all to yourself, you could cherry pick some of the most valuable pieces and sell them via the very channels Sasha Fedya set up.”
“This is preposterous. You couldn’t possibly have any proof of any of this,” Frank growled.
“I recorded every conversation we had, Frank,” Deputy Director Forrester said. “You lied to me. A DOJ investigation has already been launched, and your own words will damn you. Plus, we have the testimony of Sasha Fedya himself.”
Two soldiers then entered the room, seized Frank Graves and placed him in handcuffs.
The investigation that followed uncovered three more financial scams being run by Frank Graves under the guise of official CIA operations.
One of them going back as far as twelve years ago.
Sasha Fedya was read in as an official CIA asset and was invaluable in the covert war Deputy Director Forrester launched against the Petrakovs.
Within two years, their criminal empire was in tatters, Zivon Petrakov was in our custody, and a large portion of the artwork in Sasha’s private collection had been returned to their rightful owners.
Both Tess and I received commendations, and Tess was awarded her second Intelligence Commendation Medal.
I got one too, but of course Tess liked to remind me that she had two.
Officer James Hart was also given the honor, as was Ambassador George Korman, who received a civilian certificate of merit, but according to him, the whole thing made him feel like an operative all over again.
I was more than proud of our rag-tag team and look back at the time with a strange fondness.
For Tess and I, however, our biggest feat of bravery was still yet to come.