The Perfect Candidate: A Lance Priest / Preacher Thriller (No. 1) (4 page)

He fell. And kept falling, rolling, tumbling, crashing and didn’t stop until he struck the bottom of the hill. Hell, it was a mountain really. The ravine at the foot of the hill would be his grave as he lay bleeding, broken.

He had outrun them, escaped. Breathlessly, he’d run through day and night, never stopping. Their bullets had whizzed by overhead and smashed into walls and rocks. He’d made it out into the open, into an arid desert climate with clear skies and billions of stars shining. But he’d chosen the wrong route somewhere along the way and had to make a deadly choice minutes earlier.

Turn and fight, face an onslaught of bullets. Or step off the edge and see where gravity took him. He chose to fight gravity.

He lost. Every bone felt broken, shattered. The pain well beyond excruciating. Those stars in the night sky above would be the only witnesses to his lonely death.

His eyes opened. He was alone in the dark, but not the desert. He was in the hotel room. Alive, for now.

Chapter 4

5,496 miles east and north.

She pushed it a little further than planned. But not too far. She had him.

It took 11 weeks to get to this point, to his multi-million dollar apartment in Vienna. They were alone, which was a tragic mistake on his part. His two bodyguards were outside in the hall instead of in another room where they would usually be. The couple sat across from each other at a table on his balcony overlooking Stadtpark and its exquisite statues below. It was a beautiful chilly November evening and should have been a very romantic pre-seduction moment between an attractive young blond woman and an older man, a business tycoon.

But instead of a confident look of impending conquest, Herman Briouk looked scared to death, or worse, scared he was about to lose it all. And he was.

The young woman across from him with a pleasant demeanor about her and a glass of chardonnay in her hand smiled and continued. Her eyes though, were anything but pleasant. They were cold, icy, deadly. “So the choice is yours Herman. Do you want a bullet between your eyes or a blade across your throat? Either way, you are already dead. You were, the moment you welcomed me into your beautiful home.”

In the preceding minutes, the young woman had told Briouk, not his Russian birth name of course, a short tale of oil and gas and pipelines and Soviet government contracts. Her knowledge of Briouk’s vast energy empire was deeper than his own. She commended him on winning a recent government contract for oil fields along the Caspian Sea. She was especially impressed with his ability to bribe local officials while blackmailing others. “Impressive work by your people,” she had said.

She finished her tale by telling the billionaire about a new corporation established under his umbrella holding company. The new firm had been commissioned by Briouk’s chief financial officer and his vice president of Asian operations and was ready to take ownership of several Briouk corporations. Only his signature was required to complete the transaction. She had the papers with her now, in her purse.

Audacity of this nature was nothing new for Briouk. He built an empire by doing the same. The tycoon wanted to laugh this amateur stuff off. But the young woman’s eyes, along with the photos she had just laid on the table, altered his bearing. Pictured in each photo were the aforementioned CFO and vice president. The thing was though, in these photos taken just hours earlier, each of the men had an extra hole in his head. Actually two holes; one where the bullet entered and a larger one where it exited the skull.

“You are a murdering wench,” Briouk said in German as he disgustedly threw the photos back on the table and reached for his wine glass.

“We are both business people Herman. I have merely had the benefit of following men like you. Your examples, your practices have been enlightening. I thought you would consider this scenario a compliment.”

“A compliment? You killed two men. They have families, children.”

“And of course you thought of families and children every time you ordered the murder of government officials because they stood in the way of one of your acquisitions. I could list at least 14 deaths in which you and your people were involved. Please don’t insult me.” She shook her head.

“You have no proof.” He fumed.

“I’m not here to put you on trial Herman. I am simply here for your signature or your life.” She stopped and leaned toward him, “And before you think of screaming out for your guards, I would caution you that mine is not the only gun on you at present.” She pulled her left hand from under the table and showed her small firearm. “Others have your forehead in their sites. And the moment your guards open the door they will be annihilated. Nothing personal. They appear to be good men, but good men die all the time.”

“So you think I’m just going to sign over my companies to you without a fight. You think I will simply give you all that I have fought and bled for?” Briouk began to rage.

“Of course not Herman. We are not taking all your companies. In fact, we are only taking four. You keep the rest and go on about your business as usual. You will continue to receive significant compensation from their value, but we are acquiring ownership.” She was professional, very mature.

“This is ridiculous, insulting. Why did they send a girl to do their job? What are you 25, 26? You are just a child, barely out of school. Why don’t they show me their faces so I can tell them to go screw themselves in person.” Briouk’s anger caused him to switch to his native Russian for this last part.

He wasn’t far off. She was 24, a mere child in most circles. But in a world of abandonment, life or death, of cruelty and deception and winning at all and every cost, she was anything but a child. Marta Illena Sidorova was ruthless and calculating. She was in control. And she was deadly to anyone standing, or even sitting, in her way.

He had it wrong. There was no one above her, especially since she went rogue from the KGB three months prior. And in this moment, she was actually being generous. She didn’t really need Briouk’s signature. His now deceased underlings prepared the transaction in such a manner that it was essentially completed. She merely wanted Briouk to know he was beaten. Marta thought again how quickly this operation had progressed. Eleven weeks from planning to implementation and now consummation. She was too professional to gloat or even smile.

She reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a stack of legal papers and a pen. “Herman, I need to leave now. Another appointment. Would you like to sign these papers or should I splatter your blood on them to seal the deal?”

She pushed the papers toward him with the barrel of her gun. “Now. Please.”

He shook his head but still picked up the pen. Her gun helped convince him. After he signed away several corporations valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, Briouk spat on the documents. “You are nothing, you have nothing.” He spoke in Russian.

Marta answered him in her native Russian, “We are all nothing; just dust and smoke my friend. We live then die.” She leaned in close to whisper in his ear. Her voice was silk. “You were dead the moment you met me Herman, actually the moment I set my sites on you. Consider the rest of your days a blessing and live them to the fullest. Kiss your wife. Hug your children and grandchildren. Make love to your mistress. If we ever meet again, if you ever see my face, it will be your last vision until you open your eyes in hell.”

As she stood up, a metal clang behind her allowed Marta to continue the showmanship of this little performance. She put the papers in her purse, the purse on her shoulder and pivoted to leap over the balcony railing. The clang was a hook attached to a rope anchored by a man dressed in black on the sidewalk three stories below. Because Marta wore leather gloves, she easily grasped the rope and descended to the street. As her high heels hit the pavement, she looked back up and smiled, smirked really, at Briouk leaning over his balcony.

And in the next moment she and the other individual were gone. Like dust and smoke.

Three hundred yards to the east, a man watched through binoculars. From the fifth floor of a building with a nice view of Stadtpark and Briouk’s apartment, he had watched Marta and the tycoon on the balcony. He witnessed the older man begin to twitch, to shudder. She had done it.

Gregor Smelinski smiled to himself as Marta descended the rope to the street below Briouk’s apartment and then disappeared into the dark of night. He looked back up at the Russian mogul reduced to a quivering idiot.

Smelinski witnessed his plan, his most secret mission take wings and now take flight. He had overseen Marta’s training, her development and now her departure from his beloved KGB. She was now a weapon for him to wield. Marta would be his finest weapon, his greatest secret. He could change the playing field with her working outside the system. It was brilliant.

Marta’s ascent into infamy was nothing short of spectacular. She had joined the agency only five years earlier, fresh out of university. In the ensuing half decade, Marta Illena Sidorova had proven to be extra capable, extra proficient at her duties. From a safe, yet voyeuristic distance, Smelinski had kept tabs on her development from the very beginning. He’d recognized her potential within moments of meeting her during her initial language instruction in Moscow.

He had spoken to a new class of recruits and been drawn to her in the crowd. She wasn’t particularly beautiful, but her intellect and ability to attract and incite others was obvious. It was in her eyes; that something, whatever it is.

She’d quickly moved from an assistant to an under secretary in Minsk to a perfect cover as a translator in Vienna and then right to the big leagues in Paris, where her position in the Soviet embassy put her in touch with agents and operatives and enemies at every level. That she’d done all this in a matter of five years was an amazing achievement for anyone, let along a young woman. But alas, her aspirations far exceeded even those of Smelinski and others supposedly guiding her career. She had been building a network along the way that allowed her to virtually disappear this past April. After going off the radar for a couple of months, she emerged in September in Vienna and worked Briouk in less than three months. Spectacular.

He said a silent prayer thanking whoever brought Marta to him. She had followed her orders to the letter and built a façade as a rogue agent, a wild card, a lethal loose cannon. She was his secret alone. Or so he thought.

Her success was amazing. Even more so when one considered her upbringing. Smelinski knew some of the sordid details. At least the pieces he could dig up. Her backstory out of abject poverty, abuse and basic torture at the hands of her father and family in Novosibirsk was the stuff of which survivors of Nazi concentration camps would empathize and maybe even shudder. She was strong in a way a tree that had been chopped but refuses to die only knows. Those tiny, scraggly branches grow out of the torn stump in multiple directions and then become strong trunks supporting other branches. She found a way to survive hell in childhood and then state foster homes. Her strength was adaptability. She was a chameleon on par with the greatest actors of any generation. She was a method actor who took abuse and turned it into laughter, somehow turned heartbreak into joy. She was never the same person any of the times Smelinski had encountered her.

A childhood on the outskirts of Novosibirsk under the iron thumb of a frustrated and fiendish factory worker father with absolutely no morals and a mother willing to turn her back on any semblance of reality, forced a young Marta to fend off all males in her life. And fend for herself.

She knew in the moments after killing her 13-year-old brother after he tried for a second time to take her virginity before her 12
^th
birthday, she had what it takes to provide for her meager needs. She rid the world of her parents’ stain and left the next day to make her way as an orphan. Tough times for an 11-year-old.

Marta still sees her parents’ faces when she closes her eyes. It was horror, but it was also something else. They had just lost a son and their only daughter was now dead to them, but the look in their eyes was not sadness. It was acceptance. They knew they deserved to suffer for what they had done and what they had allowed themselves to become.

Marta could see her parents’ eyes so clearly because she had seen them time and again on the faces of others she’d faced down or those she was about to dispatch unto the great beyond. People were really all the same. Most lived unrealized, unhappy and unrelentingly wasted lives. When faced with their demise, they all realized this. The look was always the same.