Limbo Man (37 page)

Cade dropped back, allowing room to gather momentum. The driver behind shot by on the right, horn blaring. Her old partner had the training, Vee knew, but only car to car. Not Suburban versus delivery truck.

Collateral damage
. They were willingly risking their necks to stop a damned nuke, but how many innocent people would they take with them? Better than the thousands who would die if they didn’t wreck the truck before Mikoyan armed the bomb.

Cade floored it, shooting forward, the SUV’s front bumper connecting hard with just the right spot on the truck. The delivery truck fish-tailed, shot across the median. Navid overcorrected. The truck jerked, did a three-sixty through four lanes of eastbound traffic to the tune of squealing brakes, blaring horns, terrified screams, and the resounding crunch of metal on metal.

One of the crashes was the Suburban being rear-ended by a pick-up truck. Vee caught a glimpse of the delivery truck on its side in the drainage ditch, wheels slowly spinning in the air, before her world went black.

She was beginning to hate hospitals, Vee thought, as she opened her eyes to find Cade sitting by her bed. Bad things happened here.

Like where was Seryozha?

On second thought, the hospital still existed. All was quiet, humming along at a hospital’s steady pace. So the bomb hadn’t gone off.
Thank You, thank You!

But what about Seryozha?

“Everything’s okay,” Cade assured her. “You’ve got a couple of broken ribs, a hard knock on the head, but that’s it. Massoud and the professor didn’t fare so well. The bomb may not have gone off, but it made a hell of a flying missile. Got both of them. Mikoyan’s in bad shape, but he’s a tough old bird. He may make it. Navid’s going to live to go to trial.” Cade gave her a broad atta-girl smile. “
We got ’
em all. The truck, the men at the warehouse. We’re heros,
chère
.”

“Seryozha?” Vee demanded. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Cade made a face, squirmed in his chair, enough to send her heart plunging to her toes.

Seryozha, if you
’re dead
, I’m never going to forgive you.

“Three goons died in the warehouse, the SWAT team took casualties, but no deaths.”

Relief, raw and searing. “And?” Vee demanded.

“He’s not dead, Vee. The last time I saw him, he was limping, a bit bloody, maybe had a dislocated shoulder—but for him, what’s another knock or two?”

“The last time you saw him?” Vee’s blue eyes pinned Cade to the chair.

“Yeah, well . . .” He made a face. “Misha went all Russian, produced some major tough guys at the crash only five minutes after the first ambulance. There was a hell of a lot of confusion and, well . . . they took him.”

Vee gaped. “Took him?”

Cade looked as apologetic as she’d ever seen him. “He’s gone, Vee. On his way back to Russia. The Zhukov family looks after its own.”

Gone
. She’d been prepared for dead. Well, almost. But
gone
. With nothing more than a whispered, “Remember I love you.”

If he’d meant it, he’d be sitting where Cade was sitting. Or he’d be in the hospital, flat on his back, waiting for her to come to him.

“You’re sure?” Vee breathed.

“I’m sure. An EMT was checking me out, but I saw the whole thing go down. Misha pulling Sergei out of the truck, the Russian goombahs moving in—could have been Petrovski’s guys. Into a limo and off they went, straight to OIA.”

“How do you know?”

Cade sighed. “Because I called the office and had them check on it. Charter flight, Orlando to Moscow. Took off shortly after seven.”

Vee lay back and closed her eyes. It wasn’t as if she’d actually believed he’d choose Valentina Frost over his damned bombs.

Yes, she had. She’d thought the chance pretty slim that they’d have a choice at all, but if they did . . .

He could have waited to kiss her good-bye. Said he was sorry for leaving her.

Guess not.

“Hey,” Vee said softly, “guess what?”

Cade looked up, struggling for a smile. “What?”

“We’re only two hours from home.”

Chapter 27

It was closer to two days than two hours before they made it back to Sarasota. Homeland Security swooped into the hospital, parking the two of them with interrogators and megasecurity in adjoining rooms in one of the hotels along International Drive.

Was this how Seryozha felt, Vee wondered, when snatched by the GRU? Or had he gone willingly? Mission accomplished, back to the hunt. Well good riddance, damn him. If he hadn’t cared enough to want to know what happened to her . . .

Debriefing was a bitch. Her head hurt, her ribs hurt. Her heart hurt. During their short days together, she’d refused to look past the take-down, to wonder what happened next. Maybe because she sensed just how gut-wrenchingly bad it was going to be.

Seryozha . . .

Local television and newspapers described nothing more exciting than a multi-car pile-up on I-4.
Wow!
Someone swung a lot of weight on that one, producing a blanket of censorship that masked sighs of relief echoing along the East Coast from New York City to Miami. The magic wand of Homeland Security. One of the privileges of power.

Stop the questions, I want to get off.

On the third day, Vee and Cade went home. With orders to take a week off.

And that was worse. After two days at home, Vee begged to be put back to work. A desk job, answering phones, busy work. Anything not to be alone in her apartment, thinking. Remembering.

Maybe Seryozha had been too shaken up to resist his abduction.

Maybe he just didn’t like good-byes.

Maybe Misha had planned it all because he didn’t approve of Sergei’s attraction to an American, even if he’d acted as if he liked her.

And maybe Seryozha was going to recuperate at a resort on the Black Sea, with his choice of delectable Russian females, all anxious to kiss his scars, cater to his ego, and push all thoughts of Valentina Frost to the farthest reaches of his convoluted Russian mind.

Well, hell . .

And maybe, if he’d stayed, Seryozha would have been in considerable hot water, trying to explain himself to a hierarchy of Homeland Security that thought Jack Frost tended to play too much outside the box. Men who preferred to jail the arms dealer, Sergei Tokarev, rather than thank super bomb sleuth, Sergei Zhukov. And Misha, playing it safe, had made sure baby brother escaped the hole he had dug for himself.

The latter scenario was at least palatable, and made Vee feel not quite so ruthlessly abandoned.

Over the next month Vee elaborated on her list of speculations. Seryozha hadn’t really meant to leave her without a word. When he recovered, he’d call. Maybe an e-mail . . .

The phone rang, but it was never the voice she longed to hear. Her e-mail continued to offer sexual enhancements of the wrong gender. Cade kept trying to jolly her out of her misery, backing off only when she snapped at him.

After five weeks Vee pasted her best professional face over her anguish and went back on active duty. Sergei could hunt his damn bombs into the next millennium. There were enough bad guys on the Florida Gulf Coast to keep her occupied, thank you very much.

On a day in early December, with Christmas decorations along Sarasota’s Main Street sparkling under a sun that pushed the temperature to seventy-seven degrees, Richard Everett once again called Vee into his office.

“How goes it, Vee? Ribs holding up?”

“An occasional twinge, but they’ll do. I’m glad to be in the field again. Thank you, sir.”

“Well . . .” Special Agent in Charge Everett played with his pen, tapping it on his desk while gazing out his office window, seemingly lost in thought.

“Sir?”

“I’ve had an odd request,” he told her. “From Homeland Security. I was just wondering if you were up for it.”

Vee’s breath hitched. He was playing a game with her, she was almost certain of it. Her boss’s version of a friendly tease. She gulped, managed to get out an incredulous, “Again?” She’d swear there was a twinkle, and maybe just a hint of concern, behind his
I’m-the-boss
façade.

“It’s a short assignment, Vee. And shouldn’t be dangerous. Seems there’s some kind of a problem with a foreign agent, someone DHS would like to recruit. I’m told you’re the only one who has a chance of pulling it off.”

Instantly aware of what wasn’t being said, Vee nearly lost it. Mist filmed her eyes. Her jaw quivered, her hands white-knuckled in her lap.

And then the sun broke through. She lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders. “Where and when, sir?”

It was all a ruse, she knew it. The Powers That Be had arranged a reward—a golden beach, tropical waves, luxury accommodations, endless rounds of room service . . . and her own personal foreign agent to keep her company.

From the moment Vee first walked into Wade Tingley’s office, nothing had gone the way she expected. Why should this time be any different?

When she got to Washington, the still sullen Tingley threw her a curve almost as surprising as turning her into a whore. She was headed for Moscow. In the dead of winter.

Well, hell, it was still a government-approved assignation. Wasn’t it?

Maybe not. Moscow in December made Bratsk in early October seem like a walk through a spring garden. Vee didn’t think she’d ever been so cold. Her reception at the incredibly ugly GRU headquarters nicely matched the air temperature.

A grim-faced uniformed female officer escorted Vee down what seemed like an endless series of corridors before ushering her into a surprisingly well-appointed office and leaving her to the mercy of a female colonel whose attitude was only slightly warmer than the drifts of snow outside. Colonel Andropova asked her to sit.

“Ms Frost,” she said, “I understand you speak excellent Russian, but if you do not mind, we will speak in English.” The colonel was pushing sixty, with good bone structure and remnants of what had likely been considerable beauty. Her strength of character was unfaded by her years, even though Vee suspected her shining blond hair likely required chemical assistance. Her eyes . . .

Vee blinked, realized she hadn’t answered the colonel’s rhetorical question. “As you wish,” she murmured.

The older woman took her time looking Vee over. Finally, she nodded. Approval? Vee wondered.

“I understand you are acquainted with Sergei Ivanovich Zhukov,” she said. “And his brother Mikhail.”

“Yes, ma’am—colonel.” Vee wanted to add words of praise for them both, but she was on slippery ground here, with no idea which way this conversation was going to go. Or even why she’d been met at the airport by the GRU. She would wait, feel the colonel out . . .

“You are aware Zhukov is an arms dealer, smuggling weapons on a massive scale.”

“I am aware that he mascaraded as an arms dealer in order to track missing Soviet nuclear bombs,” Vee replied steadily. “I am aware that he has just saved the world from what could easily have escalated into World War III.”

“He is in jail.”

“I beg your pardon!”

The colonel closed her green eyes and sighed. “Not in a cell, Ms Frost. His accommodations are even better than what you call a Club Fed. He needed medical care, and it seemed the best place for him at the time. We didn’t want him slipping away again, chasing phantoms.”

“His phantom-chasing saved the lives of thousands.”

The colonel ignored her. “If we could de-program him, we would,” she stated with ill-concealed exasperation. “But he is stubborn, like his father. Blind to any way but his own. Which is why”—she paused, her stern features dissolving into what appeared to be chagrin. “Which is why I wished to meet you, talk with you. To see for myself the woman powerful enough to turn Sergei Zhukov from his purpose.” The green eyes softened to a look Vee had seen a time a two before. In an occasional mellow moment when Sergei forgot himself.

“I wasn’t aware that I had.”

“Remarkable.” Colonel Andropova shook her head. “So much power and you did not even know.” She drummed her long, perfectly manicured fingers on the desk, suddenly looking ill at ease. “Before I can enumerate the conditions of Sergei’s release,” she said, “I am charged with telling you a story, because my children would rather cut their tongues out before admitting it.”

Ah!
She’d guessed correctly. The colonel was Nataliya Andropova, the woman who had volunteered to become a spy in American suburbia. Vee had suspected it ever since she saw the eyes, but her intuition was out of whack these days, not as reliable as she’d once thought.

“My husband was General Ivan Zhukov,” the colonel said, “a man from a long line of military officers. A hero of the Soviet Union, a man of unimpeachable honor and devotion to duty.” For a moment Colonel Andropova closed her eyes. “He was, however, unprepared to see everything he’d lived and breathed his entire life crumble into dust. When the Soviet Union fell, for the first time my husband panicked. He wanted to make certain his family had enough to survive, even if he was pushed aside to make room for the new regime. As it turned out . . .we adapted, the children and myself. Ivan Sergeievich did not.”