“Is there enough time for you to derail Khuddari?” Kerikov’s partner asked.
“No. And that’s what concerns me. I’ve pushed up our timetable by a full day, so there is nothing we can do about him. Rufti, I’m afraid, will be on his own until this is over.” Kerikov kept his anger hidden. In the old days, he could have simply dispatched an assassin to kill Khuddari and tie up that loose end, but he no longer had that sort of power.
“I’ve known Hasaan Rufti longer than you. I too was distracted by his weakness for food and thought it connoted a deeper weakness within the man. Khuddari may prove to be difficult, but Rufti is greedy enough, and crafty enough, to get rid of him. And he won’t care what it costs or who gets in the way. He has absolutely no morals. You’ve met his lackey, Abu Alam. Christ, Rufti is twice as sick as that lunatic and ten times as dangerous. However, I’ll be speaking with Rufti again tomorrow. I’ll make sure he understands your concern.”
“He doesn’t know that you and I are working together?” Kerikov nearly shouted, panic forcing blood to his face in an angry flush.
“Of course not,” the other man soothed quickly. “He’ll think that the concern is mine. Don’t worry, Ivan. He doesn’t know of our deal at all.”
“Don’t fuck this up, or so help me God, death would be a relief from what I’d do to you.” He angrily hung up the phone, the cavalier attitude of his partner threatening to send him into cardiac arrest.
He’d been this close to his goals before and had them stripped away by perfidious greed and the work of Philip Mercer.
He lit another cigarette to steady his fraying nerves. He had only a few minutes to meet Alam and his two men for the trip down to Homer. Once he’d laid the false trail for Mercer, he could again concentrate fully on all the other aspects of Charon’s Landing.
Before he left the suite, he had one more call to make. The connection took a few seconds longer than normal as the signal was bounced off an orbiting satellite and converted to a marine band frequency. A female answered.
“Is this Hope?” he asked.
“Yes, it is,” she chirped brightly.
“This is Ivan Kerikov. Tell your boss that we’re pushing up the strike by twenty-four hours. Make sure that you’re ready. I’ll be back in touch in the morning if there are any questions.”
The J. Edgar Hoover Building Washington, DC
The headquarters of the FBI was located in downtown Washington, a massive steel and glass building that more befitted a high-tech corporation than America’s premier law-enforcement agency. Behind the walls of the building named for the most vigilant American ever born, the FBI ran countless operations all over the nation, from the mundane to the most dangerous, each conducted with a thoroughness that many felt bordered on paranoia. Yet the tireless men and women of the Bureau knew that their work secured the nation as no other on earth.
Dick Henna had a suite of offices on the top floor. When it wasn’t necessary to impress guests and he needed privacy, he preferred one of the plain conference rooms several floors below. It was just one more way he tried to remain connected to his organization and not hide himself in the ivory tower of his position as had so many of his predecessors. Henna’s bulldog face was heavily jowled, with a sloped nose and small eyes. His body matched his face, wide shoulders and thick gut stacked on short legs. He looked like a Teamster enforcer from the union’s nefarious past. Despite his years spent steadily gaining positions in the agency and his year as the Director of the FBI, he’d never lost the look of an overworked street agent.
Across from him, Mercer slouched comfortably, none the worse after the attack and a night under FBI protective custody at the Willard Hotel, one of Washington’s finest. The bullet wound wasn’t deep, more of a nuisance than an injury, a weal that would mend in a few days. In deference to the meeting, he wore a suit, one that hung off of his long frame as easily as a favorite pair of jeans and rugby shirt. When the police had arrived at his brownstone the night before, with Henna and two cars of FBI special agents, they’d given him just enough time to pack an overnight bag before bundling him off to the Willard. Harry White was brought back to his own apartment for debriefing.
Until midnight, a tag team pair of investigators grilled Mercer over every element of the assault on his house, each retelling gleaning some other detail as he racked his brain for information. He was entirely honest and cooperative about the whole affair except that he maintained that he was alone when Harry had come over. Though he felt a tremendous sense of betrayal, he thought it best not to mention Aggie Johnston. As a favor to Mercer, Harry would verify that his friend was alone when he arrived.
Mercer hadn’t really had the time to analyze Aggie’s reaction. The FBI had kept him up so long that exhaustion had overwhelmed him even as he was retelling the events of the previous night. But he was disturbed by her sudden departure and what it could possibly mean.
Henna was uncharacteristically subdued. He’d spoken with Agent Peters’ widow the night before and was going to visit her later in the day. It was a duty he was not looking forward to but one that he wouldn’t allow anyone else to handle. Though he’d never met the young agent, he took Peters’ death as hard as if it were his best friend who would be buried the following day.
An aide stepped into the office with a tray of coffee. Mercer took his black and waited for Dick to dilute his with a heavy drop of milk and two spoons of sugar.
“Why is it you look worse than I do and I was the one who was attacked last night?” Mercer tried to put some levity in his question, but he couldn’t cut through Henna’s morose air.
“I don’t know what it is about you, but since last night, the shit’s really hit the fan.” Henna shook his head sadly. “After you were attacked, I called the President, woke him, actually. He gave me the authority to dig around in the archives of the CIA and the National Security Agency for anything pertaining to Alaska or you.” Henna pulled a tightly folded piece of paper from his pocket, easing out the creases as he spoke. “The NSA came up with this about two hours ago.”
Mercer scanned the page, ignoring the bureaucratic language and extraneous words that littered any government document. The meat of the letter was that a man named John Krugger had entered the country twelve days earlier. “So?”
“The NSA’s computers automatically flag passports with suspicious names. They process thousands of yellow flags per week, names and aliases that are the same or sound similar to those of terrorists or other undesirables. Naturally, most of these are meaningless coincidences. Yet the computer will red-flag certain ones depending on our interest in the person being sought. This name sent up a red flag immediately.”
“Means nothing to me.” Mercer was nonchalant, though the hairs on the back of his neck were beginning to bristle with premonition.
“John Krugger is an Anglicized version of Johann Kreiger,” Henna said flatly.
Mercer shrugged his shoulders, but unconsciously he braced his feet as if expecting a physical blow.
“Johann Kreiger was a favorite alias of Ivan Kerikov, and according to the KGB, who still wants him dead, he has an English passport under the name of John Krugger.”
“Kerikov’s in the country?” Mercer rasped.
A thousand emotions swirled through him, undirected and random. Through the chaos, a pattern formed and a dominant desire cut through the tempest. Mercer wanted revenge. Ivan Kerikov, the mastermind behind Vulcan’s Forge, had nearly killed Mercer a dozen times over when the Russian stole that former KGB plot. Mercer had wanted a chance to kill the Russian then, but Kerikov hadn’t been close enough. He had expertly manipulated others to do his bidding while remaining safely outside the country.
But now, Kerikov was here, in America, on Mercer’s home turf, and he wanted another chance to bring the Russian down. His stomach tightened with fury.
“I want him, Dick.”
“We’ll discuss that later. Right now, we have to figure out why he’s here.”
“You think it has something to do with me and Alaska?”
“Since you cost him a hundred million dollars in Hawaii, I’m sure it will involve you, and, given the mood of the country and the administration, I assume everything has to do with Alaska.”
