Origin - Season One (44 page)

He followed her inside the generator building and down a short flight of steps to where a large diesel generator sat mounted on two steel beams. The control panel had been unscrewed and several of the wires inside cut. She led them around the generator to a thick steel plate that had been pushed aside to reveal a flight of narrow steps.

“I’m going down,” Francis said. “I need you to cover this end. Push the cover back and take up position behind the door. If anyone comes in let them get to the bottom of the steps before you open fire.”

“Who
are
these people?” Richelle asked.

“Russians,” Francis said.

He was gone before she could reply.

He covered the distance in a series of sprints, cupping the small flashlight in his palm so that it illuminated only a few feet of the floor ahead of him and stopping every twenty yards or so to listen. There was a steel ladder at the end of the tunnel leading up about fifteen feet to a manhole cover. He reached the top, listened for a moment, then pushed it aside and emerged into a small clearing. Through the trees he could see the moon reflected off the surface of the sea in the distance.

On the simple reasoning that the men he shot had come from the east, Francis moved west on a course parallel to the shore. He had gone about three hundred yards when another burst of machine gun fire erupted from somewhere near the house. Spurred on by the sudden fear that he was too late, he broke into a sprint.

Francis saw them first but lost the advantage when his shoulder hit a tree and he dropped the rifle. He counted four men spaced several yards apart on the edge of the lawn. One of them shouted something in Russian. Francis turned back, intending to pick up the rifle, but had to sidestep it to avoid a hail of bullets that peppered the ground at his feet.

Francis changed course, nearly ran face-first into a tree and lost his balance as he swerved to avoid it. He risked a quick look back and saw they had spread out and were quickly catching up. One of them fired an unsteady three-round burst and almost got lucky. Francis heard one of the bullets hit a tree not three feet from him.

There was a time in his life when Francis might have been able to keep up the pace almost indefinitely, and it was squarely in the past. Already his legs were beginning to feel heavy and his lungs had started to protest at the lack of oxygen in his blood. His eyes, never great at the best of times – if Francis had a superpower it had always been his hearing – began to blur in and out of focus.

But with no other option available he had no choice but to keep running, first parallel to the shore, then toward the water. He ran until the muscles in his legs felt as if they were slowly petrifying and his throat burned.

Francis barely saw the man he ran into. Only to his ebbing consciousness it wasn’t a man at all, but a troll. One moment he was moving forward, the next he was falling back onto the ground. A lively exchange of shouts gave way to an even livelier exchange of gunfire. Francis found himself crawling forward, muzzle flashes exploding all around him. He felt a sharp sting in his right calf and then another in his buttock. A moment later a hand gripped each of his ankles and he was being first dragged, then turned onto his back.

Francis opened his eyes, closed them in defiance of what he saw and tried again. The man standing over him was huge, and nothing in his face or body language suggested he was going to let Francis live much longer.

“Who are you?” the man asked in a heavy Russian accent.

By the time the answer reached Francis’s tongue the man had been joined by another. Neither of them took their eyes off him.

“Is he one of them?” the giant said.

The man next to him shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Who are you?” the giant repeated.

But Francis was no longer conscious.

Zurich, Switzerland

Tuesday 25 July 2006

0405 EDT

Jack Fielding stepped off the plane just after four in the morning and joined the other passengers as they made their way to Immigration. He tried his best to look casual as two armed policemen passed him on the stairs. Neither of them so much as looked at him, but it did little to steady his nerves, which felt like they were now wired to a high-voltage battery.

By the time he reached the back of the line in front of passport control he had started to sweat. The woman in front of him was doing her best to keep her two young children from running off in different directions. She offered him a sympathetic smile.

As the line grew shorter he was relieved to see the Immigration officer in their booth was a woman. She was smiling openly at the passengers as they filtered through and appeared not to be checking anyone’s passport. When it was his turn Jack stepped forward, put his bag down beside him and handed her his passport. She opened it and looked up at him.

“Not a fan of flying, I see, Mr. Klein,” she said.

He thought she was commenting on the lack of stamps in his passport then realized what she meant. “No. I’m not much better in a car, I’m afraid.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Romanshorn. I’m attending a conference.”

“Perhaps you should take the train,” she said.

“I intend to.”

She passed the passport beneath the scanner on the counter, looked at him again and handed it back. “Have a pleasant stay.”

“Thank you.”

Jack was too intent on getting out of there to notice that she didn’t call the next person forward. When he was gone she took a sheet of paper from beneath the counter with six faces printed on it in color and looked up at Jack’s face on the monitor. When she raised her hand the officer in the booth next door stood and came over. He took one look at the screen and left. When he returned to his own booth, he asked the young man waiting there to step back into the line and picked up the phone. “We have a match on the wanted list for Jack Fielding. The name on the passport is Klein.”

Utska, Poland

Tuesday 25 July 2006

0430 CEST

Francis opened his eyes and tried to raise his head. He was lying in an enormous four-poster bed. Something about the room was familiar but it took him a moment to put his finger on it. It was the room he had taken the towels from. That made him think of Mike. He turned to the open door and saw the large bloodstain on the carpet. When he tried to sit up a bolt of pain ran from his ankle and up the back of his leg to his right buttock. The events of the night before began coming back in patches: the attack, moving through the tunnel, running.

“Good morning.”

Francis turned to see Richelle standing in the doorway. She had changed into jeans and a chambray work shirt and looked as if she was preparing to go on a hike.

“Good morning to you, too.”

“Titov says you ran into some trouble in the woods. You’re lucky he found you.”

“Would Titov be a troll by any chance?”

She laughed. “Oh, I think that’s a bit harsh. He’s more like a giant teddy bear once you get to know him.”

“He’s your man?”

She nodded. “We lost contact with them shortly after you arrived. They came ashore and were on their way up to the house when you ran into them. Literally, from what I’m told.”

“What happened?”

“They killed the men who were chasing you. We lost all twelve of our guards and both pilots.”

Francis gritted his teeth in anticipation of the pain and twisted his legs out of the bed. His calf had been crudely bandaged and someone had put a towel under him to stop the bleeding in his buttock.

“Titov says you’ll be fine,” Richelle said. “No bullets to take out.”

“Where’s Mike?” Francis asked.

She looked down at the floor. “He’s in bad shape. We’ve taken him to the hospital at Slupsk. Caroline is with him.”

“Will he make it?”

“We don’t know yet.”

Francis stood up and winced at the pain in his ankle. “You know the people who attacked this place were Russian, don’t you?”

Richelle nodded. “If you can walk, there is something I’d like you to see.”

Francis tried a step, moved his right ankle to see if it was going to cooperate and took another. He followed her at a hobble out the door and down what remained of the stairs.

“I closed the hatch after you left and moved to the stairs,” Richelle said. “He came in a couple of minutes after you left. I was going to kill him but he put his weapon down to move the hatch and I settled for shooting him in the leg.”

“Who are we talking about exactly?” Francis asked.

She opened the door. “Him.”

The man was sitting on a chair in the middle of the kitchen. His hands were bound behind his back and someone had wrapped a towel around his bleeding leg. Titov was standing behind him with a rolling pin in one hand. The other man Francis had seen in the woods was standing by the counter inspecting a mobile phone.

“This is Titov Kargin,” Richelle said. “And David Williams.”

Both men nodded at him and Francis returned the gesture.

“And this,” Richelle said pointing at the man in the chair, “is Captain Salnikov.”

Salnikov raised his head and Francis could see that the man hadn’t exactly volunteered his name. His lip was split in two places and one of his eyes was swollen shut.

“Who is he?” Francis asked.

“A retired captain in the tenth Independent Spetsnaz Brigade of the Russian Southern Military District,” Titov said. “Now working for a man named Victor Manin.”

“
General
Manin?” Francis asked.

Titov raised his eyebrows. “You know him?”

“Sure. He retired after the Soviets threw in the towel and set up a security firm in Moscow. He was sued by the Russian government for recruiting directly from the army. Does this guy know who hired him?”

“Carl Bosch,” Richelle said. “Jack was right. Bosch was trying to kill us both.”

“Why?” Francis asked.

“We don’t know.”

Francis studied Salnikov for a moment and said, “How did he know the name of the client?”

“He met Carl in New York a week ago,” Titov said. “He says he was sent there to collect something, but that Carl didn’t have it.”

“The drive?” Francis asked.

“He doesn’t know,” Titov said.

“Have you got a picture of him?” Francis asked. “A picture of Carl Bosch or one with him in it?”

Richelle thought about it. “Perhaps. Why?”

“Bring it here.”

Richelle looked at Titov. When he nodded, she shrugged and left the room. She returned a minute later with a picture in a silver frame. In the shot at least a dozen men and women were standing on the front lawn of a house, all of them smiling. Francis recognized both sisters and Titov.

“Ask him to point out Carl,” Francis said.

Titov showed the picture to Salnikov and said something in Russian. Salnikov studied the picture for a moment and pointed.

Titov frowned. “Him?”

“No,” Salnikov said. “The one in the white jacket at the end. He’s the man I met.”

“You’re sure?” Titov asked.

“Why would I lie?” Salnikov said. “I met him at a construction site in Queens. He said he didn’t have the package. That he would give it to Manin himself when he arrived in Zurich.”

Titov handed the picture back to Richelle, “That’s Jack,” he said.

Before Richelle could respond, Francis approached Salnikov and said, “Does Manin know you failed?”

Salnikov shook his head. “He’ll figure it out. I was supposed to call.”

Williams held up the phone in his hand. “This is his.”

“You’re going to call him now,” Francis said. “Tell him the operation was successful, but you’ve been compromised and can’t return to the beach. Tell him you’ve decided to bury your equipment and split up.”

“He’ll know something is wrong,” Salnikov said. “I’m supposed to send him a picture.”

“A picture of what?” Richelle said.

“You,” Salnikov said. “Dead.”

Both Francis and Titov turned to look at Richelle.

“You guys are sick,” she said. “I won’t do it.”

But she did.

Aurora

Tuesday 25 July 2006

0500 EEST

Mitch sat up when he heard footsteps approaching the door. It swung open and the chief stepped inside.

“Look,” Mitch said, “There’s been some kind of mix-up. I –”

But the chief was in no mood to talk. He crossed the room in three long strides and had a hand around his neck before Mitch could say anything else. “Who sent you here?”

Mitch tried to say something but all that escaped his throat was a dry croak. He found himself hanging on with both hands to one heavily muscled forearm as the chief lifted him off the couch.

“You’re going to tell me why you disabled the comm link.”

One of the guards in the doorway stepped inside and held up his radio. “Sir, it’s Heinz. He says the comm link is back up.”

The chief let go of Mitch who fell back onto the couch holding his throat.

“You better pray that everything is all right,” the chief said. “In the meantime, I suggest you consider how you want this to go. Just know that I’ll find out what I want one way or the other.”

Utska, Poland

Tuesday 25 July 2006

0700 CEST

Francis ended the call and turned to Titov. “You said Jack was recruited in Germany?”

Titov nodded. “Yes. In ‘93. We had him change his name before he was moved to New York.”

“Why?” Francis said.

“He was our informant inside the German Federal Police for several years,” Richelle said. “We thought it was best.”

“And he reports to Carl Bosch?” Francis said.

“No,” Titov said. “He reports to me. As the CEO of Skyline, Bosch is his nominal superior, but most of what Jack does is coordinated directly through our offices in Zurich.”

“And you’ve never had reason to suspect him?”

They both shook their heads.

“Jack has been one of our most reliable people,” Titov said. “He ran the security detail here for a while before we moved him to Skyline.”