A Bloody Storm Read online

“Thank you, Ms. Smythe,” Showers told the matron. “I’m okay to speak to these two gentlemen.”

  “I’ll be sending the doctor around dear,” Smythe said, “after these two officials are done. If you need anything, just push the remote buzzer.” She and the nurse exited.

  “Glad you’re awake,” Cumerford said. “We need to brief you before the Oxford police and Scotland Yard take your official statement. Obviously, Ivan Petrov’s murder is making international headlines, and the shooting at the university rally is all over the BBC.”

  “You’ve spoken to Washington about this?” Showers asked.

  “I’ve been on the phone with the director numerous times since you were brought into the hospital,” Cumerford said. “He sends his best wishes for a speedy recovery.”

  Gordon removed an envelope from his navy blazer. “This is what we would like you to say in your official statement.” He handed it to her.

  “The director approved this?” she asked.

  Cumerford said, “He did. In fact, he said that you are not to deviate from the text. Say exactly what is written and offer nothing more. I’m going to be with you during all questioning, as your attorney.”

  Gordon said, “We can’t stress how important it is for you to say only what has been written for you.”

  Showers said, “And if I slip?”

  “Don’t,” Cumerford replied. “The British media have been busy interviewing witnesses from the rally. They’ve told reporters three men started shooting at Petrov and his bodyguards. Two of the attackers had submachine guns. They killed Petrov’s two bodyguards, while the third gunman tried to assassinate Petrov, who’d just started his speech at the protest rally.”

  Showers said, “That’s exactly what happened.”

  Cumerford continued, “The witnesses told reporters that you drew your handgun and fatally shot the assailant nearest you. Meanwhile, an unidentified man tackled the attacker who was firing at Petrov and killed him. He then used that man’s pistol to shoot the third assailant, but not before that gunman fired his machine gun and wounded you.”

  “That’s accurate, too,” Showers said, “except it wasn’t an unidentified man. It was Steve Mason. We’re working together. He’s got credentials issued by the State Department.”

  Gordon replied, “Ms. Showers, there’s a bit of a problem when it comes to Mr. Mason.”

  Cumerford jumped in. “It would be in the best interest of the Bureau and our country if the unidentified man who helped you yesterday remained exactly that. An unidentified man. The director would prefer that you not mention the name Steve Mason to anyone, including the Oxford police and the Scotland Yard detective who will be questioning you.”

  “Read the statement,” Gordon said. “Stick to it.”

  Cumerford added, “The media knows this unidentified man helped you into the Mercedes that was being driven by Georgi Lebedev and that Petrov was put into the backseat. Witnesses also described on the BBC how this mystery man and Petrov’s chief of security followed the Mercedes in a Vauxhall. That car was later found outside of town, where it had crashed. The bodies of Petrov, Lebedev, and Antonija Nad were found nearby. The Mercedes was later recovered in a parking garage at a local shopping mall. Hospital officials also have told the press that an unidentified man brought you into the hospital. The tabloids are calling him a Good Samaritan.”

  “Steve Mason, Good Samaritan,” she said. “He’ll love that tag.”

  Gordon said, “Let’s keep him faceless.”

  Showers scanned the statement that Gordon had handed her. “You want me to tell the police that I blacked out while I was riding in the Mercedes and that I have no recollection of anything that happened from the moment that I left the rally until today when I woke up after surgery.”

  “That’s right,” Cumerford said.

  Showers said, “You’re telling me not to tell investigators what I observed inside the Mercedes. You don’t want me to describe how both Petrov and Lebedev ended up dead.”

  In a stern voice, Gordon said, “You can’t comment because you were unconscious. Say that, and life will be easier for everyone.”

  Showers asked, “Then how are you explaining the deaths of Petrov and Lebedev?”

  “We’re not,” Gordon said.

  “We don’t have to solve this case, Agent Showers,” Cumerford added. “These deaths are not an FBI problem. Just give the local authorities your statement. Our priority is to get you out of England as soon as you do that.”

  “Before the police can blow holes in my story. Scotland Yard isn’t stupid,” she said. “When they identify the Vauxhall, they’ll know Steve Mason rented it.”

  “Did he?” Gordon asked her. “Were you there with him?”

  Showers realized that she hadn’t been at the airport when the car was rented.

  “But there must be photographs of him somewhere,” she said. “This is Jolly Old England, home of cameras on every street corner. The emergency room here—surely, they have a picture of him bringing me in.”

  Gordon smirked. “I believe the camera here and the ones outside the shopping mall all malfunctioned yesterday. It happens.”

  Showers understood. Jedidiah Jones had worked his magic.

  During the entire time that Storm and Showers had been in England, they had only been seen twice together. Once when they visited the Duke of Madison residence to interview Petrov and Lebedev, both of whom were now dead, and another when they got drunk at a local London pub. If their fellow pub revelers recognized Showers from the BBC and called the police, all they would be able to tell them was that she was drinking with a handsome Yank with brown hair and brown eyes who was in his thirties. That could describe anyone. Besides, by the time they called, she would be back in the USA.

  Gordon said, “Let the British press and local cops come up with a plausible story.”

  Cumerford said, “There’s speculation that Russian president Barkovsky is behind Petrov’s murder. He’s denied it, of course. But he’s the media’s main target. Not the FBI or any other U.S. agency. That’s why the less said by you, the better. Save your explanations for when you are debriefed back in Washington.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “There’s a local detective and a Scotland Yard investigator waiting downstairs to question you,” Cumerford said. “We will let them in. You will give them your statement. As soon as they hear it and the doctor gives his okay, we will take you in an ambulance to a special flight home. I have been assigned to accompany you.”

  “I’ll need a moment to use the bathroom,” she said. “Then I’ll lie to the investigators.”

  Cumerford and Gordon exchanged nervous glances.

  They expected her to take part in a cover-up. She knew when she began at the FBI that these things happened in government, and that she might be called on to lie someday. She hoped she’d never need to. Showers had run her own background investigation on the mysterious “Steve Mason” when they first met and he claimed to be a private detective. There were no records about him anywhere—no legitimate driver’s license, no private detective credentials. She had always known Steve Mason was not his actual name. It was a CIA legend. And Steve Mason had been careful not to give her any clues that might have helped her identify him. Until after they arrived in London. Until the night when they had gone on a long walk and ended up in a pub where they’d downed shots of whiskey and beers. She had told him about her father, a Virginia State Trooper who had been killed in the line of duty after stopping and fatally shooting two drugged-up predators who had kidnapped and raped a ten-year-old girl. Her father had saved that girl’s life. Her father was Showers’s hero, and when she asked Storm about his own father, he dropped his guard.

  “My father was an FBI agent,” he’d said.

  If that was true, it was start. She would begin investigating as soon as got back to Washington. It wasn’t much, but it was an opening. Jedidiah Jones had forced Steve Mason into her life. Judging
from her loose tongue while under sedation, he had invaded her subconscious, too.

  It was time for her to find out who this mystery man really was.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Clara Strike was smiling. They were eating breakfast at an outdoor café in New York City on a beautiful summer morning. Storm was a down-on-his-luck private eye trying to stay one step ahead of bill collectors. The night before he’d nearly been killed. He’d been peeking through a window in a seedy trailer park, secretly recording a cheating husband in a compromising position. It had taken Storm four months to track down Jefferson Grout, but Storm was tenacious, although he didn’t take much satisfaction in it. He’d longed for a better class of clientele—and better paying ones than cuckolded spouses. Two redneck neighbors in the trailer park had spotted him and emerged with guns blasting. An angry Grout had fired two rounds, too. But Storm had escaped. Clara Strike had entered his life the next morning, appearing in his office with a sexy smile and a seductive invitation. Over breakfast, she’d explained that Grout was actually a CIA operative gone rogue. The agency had been searching for him for a year. The fact that Storm had found Grout when the agency couldn’t impressed her. Grout had been trained, as she put it, to “dance between raindrops.” She’d asked for Storm’s help and slipped him an unmarked envelope filled with hundreds. He’d been naïve that morning. He’d taken her money and jokingly asked her for a poison pill, a spy camera, a pen that was a gun, and an invisible jet. She’d laughed. It was her smile that still haunted him. He could still smell her perfume. He was looking into her face right now. A morning breeze tousled her hair. She was blushing. He rose from the café table and walked to her. He bent down and kissed her hard. When he looked up, he looked into her eyes—only it wasn’t Clara Strike looking back. It was Agent April Showers.

  The military transport’s tires struck the runway, jarring Storm awake. He’d been dreaming. Clara Strike. April Showers.

  He rubbed his tired eyes and felt the stubble on his chin.

  It was Clara Strike who had introduced him to Jedidiah Jones, and it was Jones who had made him more than a private eye. Jones had recruited him as a contract operative. A tracker of men. It was Jones who’d sent him to Tangiers, where he’d ended up wounded, lying on a cold tile floor in his own blood. Tangiers had been a trap. Someone inside the agency had betrayed the operation.

  A black Lincoln Town Car waiting on the tarmac whisked him to CIA headquarters.

  “You look like shit.” Jones said when Storm plopped into a familiar seat across from the spymaster’s desk.

  “Nice to see you, too,” Storm said.

  Jones closed a bright red file with the title “PROJECT MIDAS” emblazoned on it. “Things got a bit ugly in London, but you accomplished your assignment. You found the gold.”

  “Actually, it was April Showers who got you those coordinates,” Storm reminded him. “And it almost cost her her life.”

  “It’s all part of the game,” Jones said. “She’s a big girl.”

  “Easy to say when your butt is safe behind a desk.”

  Jones snickered. “You think I got this pretty face working as a desk jockey?”

  It was true. Jones’s nose had been broken so many times that even the best plastic surgeon couldn’t have fixed it.

  “Let’s get to it,” Jones said. “Before you left for London, I told you there were others like you who were living off the grid. The agency helped a few of them ‘die.” Others simply disappeared into our version of a witness protection program.”

  Jones tapped his finger against the “PROJECT MIDAS” file. “I’ve found it useful periodically to call on our ‘D or D’ operatives to perform missions that must be completely untraceable to this agency and our government.”

  “D or D?”

  “Disappeared or Dead.”

  “Who comes up with this stuff?” Storm asked.

  Ignoring him, Jones said, “Trying to recover sixty billion in gold bullion and other precious commodities that once belonged to the Communist Party is definitely not something we want traced back to the agency or to the White House.”

  “I understand,” Storm said. “We discussed it before I left for London. Technically, the gold belongs to the Commies who are still running around Russia, and anyone who goes hunting for it would be operating as pirates according to international law.”

  “That would be a position the international court might take,” Jones said, “but I think a good lawyer could argue that the KGB leadership stole the gold when they had soldiers sneak it out of Moscow in the dead of night just before the entire country imploded. When the Soviet Union ceased to exist as a legal entity in 1991, so did the Soviet Communist Party, and since the KGB stole the gold, it really belongs to no one at this point.”

  “I don’t think the Kremlin believes in finders keepers, losers weepers. Especially when you’re discussing sixty billion.”

  “Especially when the country is being run by President Barkovsky,” Jones added. “And he has access to nukes and is itching for a fight. That’s why the U.S. government and this agency are going to walk away from all of this. We are not going to go after the gold, even though Agent Showers has discovered where it is hidden.”

  Storm looked at Jones’s eyes and said, “You’re talking officially, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right. Officially, we’re not interested. But I’m sending you and three other D or D operatives after it.”

  “And if I say no?”

  “You can do that,” he said. “You can go back to Montana. You can go back to being a faceless nobody who spends his days fly-fishing and remembering past adventures while he’s letting his talents and his life go to waste.”

  “You make that sound appealing,” Storm said.

  “C’mon, Storm, isn’t it time for you to face reality? To face the fact that you aren’t someone who can live off the grid. You need the action, the excitement, the adrenaline rush. Besides, in your heart, you’re someone who cares—not only about helping people but about your country. You can put on that tough guy mask for the likes of Agent April Showers, but you don’t fool me. Clara Strike saw through it, too. That’s why I had her recruit you to work for us. It’s why I need you now.”

  Storm thought about what Jones had said. It was true.

  “Can I assume the coordinates that I sent you from Lebedev’s cell phone checked out?” Storm asked.

  Jones spread an enlarged satellite photograph across his desk. “We won’t know if the gold is there until we have eyes on the ground,” he said. “But the pieces seem to fit.” He pointed to a tiny circle that he’d drawn on the photograph. “The longitude and latitude coordinates from Lebedev’s cell phone pinpoint a location here, about fifteen miles from the Valley of Five Caves in Uzbekistan. It’s part of the Molguzar mountain range south of the Jizzakh region.”

  “Not a frequent flyer hot spot,” Storm said.

  “Uzbekistan caves are famous in Eurasian countries. The Great Silk Route that linked Europe and China used to pass through Uzbekistan, and there’s a legend that Alexander the Great hid huge amounts of gold and treasure in a cave in the mountains.”

  “Their version of El Dorado?” Storm said.

  “Right. Maybe the KGB decided that if treasure hunters since 323 B.C. hadn’t been able to find any gold, it was a safe spot for the Soviet Socialist Republic’s treasure.”

  Jones pointed to a jagged line on the recognizance map. “This is an old, long-abandoned logging road. We think the soldiers used trucks to bring the gold up into the mountains.”

  “And you expect me and a handful of other D or D operatives to carry out sixty billion worth of gold?”

  “Don’t be stupid. We have contacts in Kazakhstan with a fleet of Russian-made Halo helicopters, the most powerful in the world, but how we get the gold out is not your concern,” Jones said. “All I need you and your team to do is locate the cave, see if the gold is hidden inside it, and then get out.”

 
“Mind if we pocket a few kilobars as mementos?” Storm said. “Remember, finders keepers.”

  “Ivan Petrov told me the gold was hidden inside cargo containers that were transported out of Moscow. The containers are marked ‘Toxic Waste’ to keep anyone from looking inside. When you find the cave, you look in the containers and then come back home—with empty pockets. Simple as that.”

  Jones removed a men’s wristwatch from his desk drawer and tossed it to Storm. “A present.”

  “Let me guess,” Storm said. “It’s a gold detector.”

  “No.”

  “A laser beam that can cut through locks on the containers when we find the gold.”

  “No.”

  “A secret gun that—”

  “It’s a wristwatch,” said Jones.

  Storm raised an eyebrow.

  “Okay,” said Jones. “It’s also a worldwide tracker. I can find you no matter where you are.”

  “I’m not sure I want you keeping track of me twenty-four hours a day,” Storm said.

  “If you pull the stem to set the watch, it sets off an emergency rescue signal that means you are in trouble and need help. Immediately.”

  “No poison pill?” Storm said. He slipped it on his wrist and asked, “What if I actually need to set the time?”

  “You never will. It automatically corrects itself no matter where you are.”

  “A watch that works and a tracker. What will they think of next?”

  “For you, a poison pill.”

  “Who else from your D or D file have you chosen for this operation? And are you giving them watches, too?”

  “You’ll meet them later today, and no, you’ve got the only watch,” Jones said. He opened the “PROJECT MIDAS” file and removed three photographs, which he handed to Storm.

  “The first team member,” Jones said, “will be using the name Dilya. She is a native of Uzbekistan. After it broke free from the old Soviet Union, Islamic jihadists moved in. Dilya worked undercover for us. In return, we helped her vanish. She’ll serve as your guide and interpreter.”