Divide & Conquer (11 page)

Borodin made his way to the desk and noted the flashing cursor on the screen. He typed in the reference and after a second was rewarded with an index page. The index alone blew his mind, the list of names read like a who’s who. The first name on the list caught his eye. There had been no reference to it in his paper file but it explained why the front cover contained a description in German. The more he read, the more he wondered at what had been conceived all those years ago. His file had only hinted at the scale of the project, as had his predecessor.

He wished he could print the screen but that was obviously not an option and he could see why. The information before him was dynamite and could spark a whole new cold war. He clicked back to the main index and selected Sean Fox’s name from the list. He read page after page of information, pretty much the whole of Sean Fox’s life was detailed before him, pages upon pages, details of every single event that marked the young man’s life. His parents’ death, his college and courses, his girlfriends, his army career, his entry to the CIA, after which details became less detailed and spaces began to appear, until finally leaving the CIA and his death three months earlier.

It was only as he realized what he had just read that the importance of it hit home. His death three months earlier. Three months ago. The project had been shut down over twenty years ago.

Borodin closed down the system and rushed back to the vault door. Vasiliy stood patiently waiting for the General and matched his pace as they almost ran back to the elevator.

“Do you have a cell phone?”

“Of course, General.”

“Good, get me Pyotr Travkin on the phone!”

Vasiliy dialed the number and as the cell began to ring handed the handset to the General.

“Travkin?” asked Borodin as confirmation. Receiving an affirmative, he continued. “You’re off the hook, head back to Washington. GRU will take it from here.”

Borodin heard the sigh of relief from Travkin as he hit the end button.

“I hope you’ve not got any plans this evening?” Borodin asked Vasiliy. The message was clear enough. Whatever they were, they had just been cancelled. “Because we are going on a little trip.”

“Of course, General. Will I get the plane prepped?”

“That won’t be necessary, it’s not that far. Have you ever heard of a place called Grebnevo?”

Chapter 21

“You’ve lost so much weight!” exclaimed Katie as she brushed past Sean at the top of the stairs. “He’s a lovely man!” she added seeing the photo Sean was looking at.

“You know him well?” asked Sean.

“Just met him the once, just after news of your…” She caught herself. “ Just after you went missing.”

“He loved James, he said he reminded him of you when you were a boy.”

“Did he,” thought Sean. Vincent had failed to mention his visit when they talked earlier.

“He brought your life assurance payout and details of my widow’s pension.”

Sean’s eyes left the photo and moved directly to Katie’s. “He what?” he asked angrily.

Katie stepped back, realizing she had said something wrong, she was still under the impression Sean was just suffering post traumatic stress. Perhaps she shouldn’t have mentioned 'life’ or 'widow’. She’d have to be more careful she thought. There were probably lots of words that were danger words. She’d have to look into it more.

What in the hell was Vincent up to, thought Sean. He hadn’t been an employee for over a year when the other Sean had died. No payouts should have been made from the CIA. Unless… “Son of a Bitch!” shouted Sean aloud.

Katie stepped back further, fear in her eyes.

Sean saw her move and couldn’t help but throw out his arm and pull Katie towards him. She was so petite and vulnerable with the largest, pleading brown eyes he had ever seen. “Not you, Vincent Black!” he comforted. “Son of a bitch has been playing me for eighteen months!” he added, looking at Vincent’s photo.

That information changed Sean’s outlook on many things and most importantly, picking up the phone to get some much needed help.

Sean reached for his cell. “Just out of interest, did he go to the funeral?”

“Who’s?” asked Katie, not wanting to talk about Sean’s own funeral.

“Sean’s,” replied Sean without any hint of anguish.

“No, I wanted a very private affair, just very close family,” she replied nervously, unable to look him in the eye and ignoring his use of the third person for his own name.

That basically meant her and James. Sean’s close family was Vincent but he wasn’t there and beyond that, his ex-military colleagues. Brothers for life or so they promised each re-union they had. Every one of them a hypocritical bastard. Not one of them had gone to his funeral. Not one. Sean was genuinely upset. Technically, of course, it wasn’t his funeral but nevertheless. What if he had become a drug pedaling scumbag, he was still their brother and pseudo son and as far as they were concerned, it was him.

“Bastards!” he blurted aloud.

Sean gently pushed Katie aside as he dialed Vincent’s number. He opened the nearest door and walked into a room fit for a four-year-old boy. Sean’s photos lined the wall and had pride of place next to the small single bed. James hero-worshipped the dead Sean. Most of the photos were of Sean in his military uniforms, adding to the bizarreness of the situation.

With his focus firmly back on the task at hand, he hit the dial button.

“Err, hello?” came a sleepy voice on the other end of the call.

“You didn’t go to my funeral, you prick!” blurted Sean. He had promised himself he wouldn’t say anything but hearing Vincent’s voice stirred up too many emotions. Sean really did look on him as a father and finding out that he had abandoned him was not easy. Particularly when he was sat on the bed of a young boy who hero-worshipped pictures of him.

“Sean, is that you?”

“Who the fuck else do you know whose funeral you didn’t go to?” replied Sean, barely containing his anger.

“But it wasn’t you!”

“You thought it was!”

“Well…”

“Don’t even try and suggest otherwise, you paid her my pension!”

Game, set and match.

“I’m sorry,” said Vincent, any hint of fight had gone from his voice. “I have regretted that decision, every second for the last three months.” He answered with all his heart.

Although Sean was furious, he could tell that Vincent was being sincere. “Don’t think I’ll be going to yours!” threatened Sean, half-heartedly.

“At least that’s how it should be. You should bury me, not the other way around.”

Sean realized then, from the sincerity and truthfulness in Vincent’s voice, just how hard it had been for him over the previous three months. The anger faded and with it any doubt as to what he needed to do. All thoughts of the beach were shelved. There was a young boy in danger.

“Truce?” offered Sean.

“Absolutely!” replied Vincent, a bounce back in his voice. Sean was alive and well and being his usual pain in the ass self.

“I’m not forgiving you about the pension, though! Don’t think I don’t know what that means,” threatened Sean. Vincent had not terminated Sean’s contract with the CIA, eighteen months earlier.

Vincent mumbled something inaudibly in response which Sean ignored; it would have been some bullshit lie about a clerical error.

“I need some help.”

“Just say the word and you’re back on the payroll!” offered Vincent cheerily. “I’ll have a team with you in four hours.”

“I’m fine on my own, thanks. Anyway, I thought I still was on the team,” replied Sean sarcastically.

“Right up until we thought you were dead! Payroll are a little pedantic about things like that.”

“I need to know where a call came from.”

“You know I can’t…”

“Seriously, don’t even think about it, I’m this close to disowning you!”

“Give me the number, I’ll see what I can do.”

“I don’t have the number, just the IMEI number of the phone and the serial number of the SIM card that received the call.”

“Jesus, you never did make things easy. Give them to me and I’ll see what I can do.”

Sean repeated both numbers twice to ensure Vincent had written them down correctly.

“Oh, one last thing,” asked Sean as they were about to end the call. “Any idea what the Russians are doing involved in this?”

“Did you say the Russians?” replied Vincent quizzically and with some confusion.

“Yep, two Russians came in here, guns blazing. I’d swear a hit team saw me and bugged out. Suggested I get the wife and kid and disappear.”

“Russians?! What the…” contemplated Vincent. “I have no idea. So what are you doing with the wife and son?”

Sean realized then that Vincent didn’t know about the kidnap. So much had happened in such a short space of time.

“The wife’s here and thinks I’m suffering from Post Traumatic Stress and the son has been kidnapped by the Mexicans.”

“Jesus, are the FBI on it?”

“It happened in front of me. I chased the kidnappers to the border. I phoned the FBI but wasn’t sure if they’d be a help or a hindrance. I’ve a feeling there’s an awful lot of dirty money flowing around down here. I decided to keep it to myself.”

“The local police?”

“Nope, just me!”

“I’ll be with you in four hours!” replied Vincent firmly.

“No,” Sean almost shouted. “I’m better on my own. If I need bodies, I’ll give you a shout. In the meantime, I need to know where that call came from and everything about the Mexicans and who the other Sean worked for, particularly any American contacts, it seems that’s what the Mexicans are after.”

“I’m on it…but Russians?” he pondered again as he ended the call. Their involvement had obviously fazed him more than the kidnapping of young James Fox.

As Sean stood up, a burgundy baseball cap hanging on the far wall of the bedroom caught his eye, the Native American image proudly adorning its brow, one he was all too familiar with - The Washington Redskins, Sean’s team. A number of other Washington Redskin paraphernalia adorned the desk below the cap that was proudly displayed on the wall. Why, of all teams, would the boy support the Redskins? The team Sean had spent his childhood watching with his father. Sean began to wonder if he really was suffering from post-traumatic stress. The boy looked like him, the dead Sean was his double and he had to admit if he were ever going to settle down and get married, Katie Fox pretty much fit the bill. Perhaps he really had lost his mind.

“Sean!”

Sean heard Katie’s desperate shout and snapped back to reality. There had been another Sean Fox. He wasn’t going mad and hadn’t lost his mind but it did mean there was one more action point beyond getting the boy - finding out just who the other Sean Fox had been.

Sean got up and joined Katie in the hallway, extremely agitated and gesticulating wildly towards the front of the house. “The Mexicans,” she struggled to get the words out, tears were flowing again. “A truck just pulled up outside!”

As the front door crashed open, Sean grabbed his Glock only to realize he’d left it downstairs.

“Shit!”

Chapter 22

As Vincent relayed the IMEI and SIM numbers to one of his duty managers, he couldn’t stop thinking about Sean’s last words.

Vincent had looked into every detail of Sean’s Fox life from the day he had walked out on the NCS. Rumors were abound that he was working in Afghanistan, he was in Iraq, he was body-guarding a Saudi Prince. Only after his death did they find the truth, or at least what they thought was the truth. He was working as a gun for hire for one of America’s largest drug smugglers.

A number of pieces, of course, had not fit: the marriage, the birth of a son, all of it kept hidden, nobody knew anything of the wife Katie or son James. Vincent Black was the closest thing to family that Sean Fox had had and yet had been unaware of Sean’s marriage or son. It had been the most bizarre of findings but everything fit. Katie’s story fitted with Sean’s pattern of work, times and dates. When he was in country coincided pretty much with her memories of him being at home. His rehabilitation period, everything fit.

The move to Laredo and job with Fat Jake coincided with Sean’s resignation. Sean Fox, one of the CIA’s most decorated spies had led a double life. It was of course exactly as he had been trained, he just wasn’t supposed to play that trick on his master and certainly not on the man who looked on him as his own, Vincent Black. The deceit had hit as hard as the death had and had left Vincent with a very tainted memory of a man he had treated as a son. Vincent knew it was the deceit that kept him from the funeral and nothing at all to do with the drugs. Nothing would have kept him from Sean’s funeral but it seemed, at the time, Vincent didn’t know who was being buried; it certainly hadn’t been the Sean he had known and loved, not the Sean he had held as a baby, less than a day old under the watchful gaze of his best friend and proud father, James Fox.

Vincent and James had met at WestPoint and although they were rivals for just about every competition the Officer Training Academy had on offer, James was always victorious. James Fox was a star amongst stars. Nobody doubted that he would, one day, become the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief military officer in the United States; it was just that nobody predicted he would do it so young. Certainly it was inconceivable that anyone in their forties could rise so high so fast but James Fox proved them wrong. Being 'the youngest’ could just about be tagged to everything he had ever achieved: youngest Major, youngest Colonel, youngest General. Had it not been for the year of his birth coinciding with James Fox, Vincent Black would have graduated top of his class with the highest scores in the history of WestPoint. Instead, he was destined to be the graduate who finished just behind James Fox, the institution’s most outstanding cadet ever.

However, such was the bond the two had created, Vincent did not grudge James one ounce of his success or achievements. In fact, thanks to James, Vincent found his niche and moved, rather than into the army itself, straight into the intelligence business where he raced through the ranks, almost as fast as James had in the army. It was there, within the Central Intelligence Agency, that Vincent had found his calling and rose to the rank of Director of Clandestine Services.