FALLOUT ZONE (Joe Brennan Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  Instead, she reached behind it with her left hand, feeling with her index finger, as he’d suggested, until she found what felt like a USB slot. She tried the memory stick one way, then the reverse.

  It slid into place.

  3./

  June 26, 2016, RICHMOND, B.C., CANADA

  Brennan had been able to see the snow-capped mountains as they’d approached the city, but now it was gloomy and grey, rain coming down in firm droplets at the lower altitude as the plane descended to land.

  As it touched down the urban skyline of Vancouver was barely visible through low lying fog in the early morning. Brennan didn’t rush to rise, like a commercial passenger. They’d be taxing directly to a private hanger owned by Eddie’s benefactor, where Ed had already arranged for a ride downtown. Neither man had said much for the rest of the flight, following the news about Myrna; Brennan felt mournful and slightly lost as he peered out the jet’s small window at the quiet airstrip.

  He shook it off. He didn’t have time for sentiment; that could wait until later, until he was home and life seemed normal again.

  Myrna’s file said Konyakovich was in Vancouver to receive an award from the Russian Canadian Benevolence Association, for his financial contributions to helping orphaned children find homes in North America. They were holding the ceremony in a park on the south side of downtown, in the shadow of the Granville Bridge, the proceedings back-dropped by the city’s mass of gleaming glass-and-steel towers. Brennan had the driver drop him off a few blocks away and hiked over. The ceremony wasn’t for four hours, but a crew was already busy setting up a stage and seating.

  He took out his phone and brought up a browser window then searched for information on Vancouver hotels. Once he had the half-dozen most expensive, he cross-referenced their locations with that of the park until he found the two closest. Konyakovich would probably move to the park as close to the event time as possible, but he would still leave thirty minutes or so for error; generous benefactor that he may have been, he was also a sociopathic arms dealer, Brennan knew, and that suggested his ego would not allow him to risk missing such a big occasion.

  The two hotels were polar opposites despite similarly stratospheric price tags for a room; one was modern, tinted glass and sleek art deco décor, a high-end haven for the jet-set; the other was a grand old hotel from the railway era, concrete and gargoyles, with high tea and a formal dining room that required equally formal dress at all times.

  The jet-set place might have seemed a better fit for a player like Konyakovich, Brennan thought. But he was Russian, and formal wealth, old money, held a certain allure there culturally – particularly to someone with new money. Konyakovich wouldn’t want to impress spoiled rich kids and Hollywood types; he’d head to the grand old hotel, just for the extra odd whiff of power.

  It was a half-dozen blocks away and Brennan walked it in the early sunshine; he stopped and got a paper and a coffee at a convenience store, eventually taking up a position across the street from the hotel, where he could watch the doors for a few minutes while he checked the news.

  There was nothing of note from Europe or on the sniper investigation; Myrna’s death was doubtless being treated as a local homicide, and no one in Vancouver had a reason to care. He flipped to the international page, and there was a story on the gathering race for the presidency. The Republican hopeful, Sen. Addison March, had just had his second hit speech in a row, getting high marks from pundits despite the ongoing slurs from some about his past associations with Middle Eastern money. His challenger, Sen. John Younger, had taken a rare break from campaigning on the weekend prior, and was beginning to show cracks in his cool exterior from the length of the race, the press said, with many months still to go.

  Neither man struck Brennan as leader material. But it wasn’t like people were taking his advice on the matter.

  FAYETTEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

  Sen. John Younger’s “rest break” was a chance for him to go fishing with his eldest boy, he told the press, a weekend away from the dirty game of politics to get back to what was really important: family.

  He chose a lodge in North Carolina because Fayetteville is in North Carolina, and Fayetteville – or more specifically Fort Bragg – is the largest Army community in the United States. His ‘vacation’ was timed to coincide with a return of several thousand troops from duty overseas and, like most moments in the scheduled life of a man running for president, was really just another photo op.

  He’d spent the first day fishing with Toby, his second day making hot dogs for military families and kids alongside his son at a base event. Local TV, lacking a decent big local story, was lapping it up, and national in turn was making him look like America’s best dad. He stood behind a big table with tray after tray of steamed wieners in front of him and bags of buns, using tongs to prepare the dog, then handing it, with napkin to each serviceman or his family member with his left hand, and shaking with his right. “Thank you for your service,” he repeated ad nausea. “Thank you ma’am, thank you son.” His pearly white teeth fairly glowed in the afternoon sun.

  After they were done and he’d taken some softball questions from the press, his phone rang. “Senator, it’s Mark.”

  “Mark! How’s Washington, my friend?”

  “Couldn’t tell you, sir. I’m in your limo out in the parking lot.”

  Younger looked concerned. “Something big?”

  “No sir, not at all; just a bunch of things upon which I can update you.”

  “I’ll be there in a matter of moments, my boy,” he said.

  Fitzpatrick was sipping a whisky and ice when Younger joined him. “Good to see you’re not riding on the bus,” he told the candidate. “You need to relax.”

  “Don’t believe what you hear,” the veteran politician said. “There were several advantages to coming down here now, both on the fundraising and optic sides of the equation.”

  “I thought as much. Look, we’ve had a pretty huge development in the ACF matter.”

  “Okay.”

  “It looks like Fenton-Wright has stuck his foot in it. He may have been involved in some dirty business with respect to his asset, including a pair of deaths.”

  “You don’t say…”

  “I have a media contact who can apparently attest to seeing him leave the scene of a double homicide, and who has some interesting audio of him on the phone with a member of the ACF. And I’ve been poking around; one of the bodies appears to be a missing signals intelligence analyst who spoke with DFW a few days ago about something.”

  “Gracious,” Younger said. “What’s your handle on it, son?”

  Fitzpatrick looked almost wistful. He took a sip of the scotch. “Oh, he’ll have to be brought in. It’s a shame, really, sir; he was useful at times. But the agencies all agree, he’s deep into something.”

  “Well, let’s stay away from that ‘something’, at least publicly, okay my boy?”

  “Yes sir. Where to next?”

  “We’ve got Michigan in a little over a week. And so it goes…”

  “Just think, senator: this time a year from now, I’ll be referring to you as Mr. President.”

  Younger smiled at the thought. “That has a nice ring to it, Mark. Or should I say, Director Fitzpatrick.”

  “Now you’re talking, sir. Now you’re talking.”

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  Kane had been fiddling with Malone’s laptop for several minutes and she was starting to get nervous.

  They’d dropped her off at her hotel after their spate of industrial espionage, and she’d had a few hours of sleep before getting up at noon and booting up her computer. But she’d been unable to get the program Joe sent her running. Kane had called about an hour in to see if she’d made any progress with his information, and she’d explained her problem.

  He’d arrived twenty-five minutes later with a four-man entourage, all of them reeking of weed. She wondered what they must have looked like heading through t
he lobby as a posse, frightening the business locals.

  Then he’d set to work.

  “So how come you know about computers?” she’d asked.

  “Got a B.Sc from UNLV in programming,” the oversized gangster said.

  She couldn’t help herself; it was reporter instinct to ask. “So how come…”

  “How come I’m a criminal? That what you want to know, Ms. Morgan?”

  “Sure.”

  “Like they say in the movies, it’s complicated. But then, I guess shit always is.”

  “Let me guess: your family was poor, drugs offered a way out…”

  He sneered a little at that. “Man, don’t treat me like some fucking cliché. I make my own fucking decisions, okay? Now let me work.” He hated that she was so dead on.

  He went back to tapping away at the keyboard. She paced for a few seconds, hands in pockets.

  “So, you just liked the money?”

  He shrugged. “Sure, I mean, I couldn’t have paid for college without it. Job security’s nice too, you know?”

  “You think being a drug dealer is secure?”

  “In this economy? Beats working. I mean, it’s not like you have to sell the shit. ‘Course, the insurance premiums are a little higher.” He pushed the chair back slightly. “There: you’re in.”

  She looked at the screen. “I don’t see anything. It’s just a desktop.”

  “It’s the desktop of that secretary. That’s what your friend’s nasty-ass little piece of government software does. Lucky for him I took out the hidden toolkit that would’ve sent everything you gathered back to someone with an Arlington, Virginia IP.”

  “Thank you. That’s pretty amazing.” Malone felt slightly guilty at having such a typecast, stereotypical image of Kane.

  Then again, he was a drug-dealing thief. “So I can just go into their system whenever I want? Won’t that set off alarms?”

  “Not at all. Their system just sees it as an extension of her desktop. Here’s the best part: when they leave the computer in sleep mode, you can still access it. Won’t turn on the monitor on the other end, won’t alert anybody. We’re going to have some fun tonight, girl.”

  VANCOUVER, CANADA

  Konyakovich felt awash in power, extending his empire before the world. He strode through the expansive lobby of his two-thousand-dollar-per-night hotel in a green silk custom-tailored suit, a bodyguard on each elbow, one more walking ten feet behind them. His goatee and moustache were neatly trimmed, just dappled with grey at the top, and his eyes shone with the confidence of a man who gets what he wants.

  He knew the weeks ahead might actually prove trying. He had already considered the moral implications and come to terms with his role; the end, as far as he could see, certainly justified the means. Once again, his diligence and concern from his end of the operation were bound to be appreciated by his new clients.

  But it was hard for him to be humble; his rival, Miskin, was dead. That snake Abubakar had finally paid for breaking their agreement with regard to his ‘device.’ And now he was gaining a level of respectability in an important market.

  He passed through the sliding front doors of the hotel to the car pickup area outside. The limousine pulled up and one of his men opened the door for him. He stepped inside … and before he could even close the door, the driver gunned the engine and floored the car out of the hotel driveway, leaving all three bodyguards standing on the sidewalk. The limo was cutting in and out of traffic at about fifty miles per hour, and Konyakovich reached over frantically to slam the side door shut. He hammered on the intercom. “What the hell?!? Stop this vehicle, right now! Do you know who I am? Do you know who the fuck I am?”

  Brennan had kept the partition up deliberately on the stolen stretch. He keyed the intercom. “Is sir feeling comfortable back there? Would sir kindly shut the fuck up for a moment while I ask a question: where’s the device?”

  “So this is some sort of shakedown, is that it?” Dmitri asked, his English perfect-but-accented.

  Brennan locked the rear doors. Dmitri tried them but they wouldn’t budge. “Safety locks for kids,” Brennan said. “We’re in for a long ride if you start squirming.”

  “And which agency do ‘we’ represent?” Konyakovich asked, calming down somewhat. “Who do I mail the lawsuit?”

  “Cut the shit, Dmitri,” Brennan said, keeping his eyes on traffic. “You brokered the sale of a weapon a few years ago, one that has found its way into potentially unfriendly hands. My job is to find it and stop it.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about, my friend. Would I be right in thinking you’re the ‘rogue American agent’ I keep hearing so much about? You are Joseph Brennan, are you not?”

  “For the sake of argument…”

  “Good. Then I know I am safe and do not have to tell you anything. You won’t harm me.”

  “Tilo Bustamente thought the same,” Brennan said. “Look at how that turned out.”

  From the backseat, Konyakovich let out a belly laugh. “This is not the cops you’re talking to, Mr. Brennan. I know full well that you did not shoot Bustamente; in fact, my sources say it was his own men which, if you knew him, you would understand.”

  “Sure, but he talked plenty to me before they tagged him. If I could get the information out of him…”

  “You’ll what? Drive me to some seedy motel room and shoot me full of sodium pentothal? Unreliable, at best. Then what? Say you get nothing? My men will be combing the city for you. Every road in and out, the airports, the train station, the ferry… No. You have no trump cards, Mr. Brennan. So I will tell you nothing and we shall see where it goes from here.”

  Brennan was irritated. Konyakovich had guts; he didn’t doubt that. But without his information, they had no way of knowing where the nuke was headed or when it might arrive. “Look, millions of people could die…”

  Konyakovich shrugged. “Millions of people die every year. What does it matter to you or me how they go about it?”

  “But how well do you trust your partners, Dmitri? They seem fairly happy with the idea of getting rid of anyone standing in their way. That could include you, eventually.”

  “Like, I said, I am careful man. I take precautions. Those who might have a motive, they know my character and would not dare.”

  He had a dangerously high opinion of himself, Brennan decided. “What are you going to do when your involvement in this eventually gets out to the various intelligence agencies? Even if they can’t prove it publicly, they’ll demonize you privately, get your companies cut off, blacklisted.”

  But the Russian seemed to have become disinterested in both the conversation and the ride. “What time is it?” he said, checking his watch. He was supposed to speak in ten minutes. “If I don’t arrive soon, they are going to … how you say… round out the cavalry. I have GPS locator on my phone.”

  “Roll out. Or send out. But not round out.”

  “Your Russian any good?”

  “I get by,” Brennan replied in the language, perfectly.

  “Good. Take me to the park, driver,” Konyakovich said contemptuously. “But I wouldn’t get out of the car, if I were you. My men will shoot you on sight.” Konyakovich’s cell phone began to buzz. “If I don’t answer that, they will begin scouring the city…”

  Brennan turned a corner sharply. If he couldn’t get intel out of Konyakovich directly, he could leave him at his speech and perhaps get into his hotel room, tap his laptop. The park was coming up on their right, the band shell up and the seats filled. He pulled over quickly and tapped the intercom as they pulled over. “Get out.”

  “Perhaps you should stay for my speech, Mr. Brennan. It’s very flowery and moving. Something for the little people.”

  “I’ll pass. Get out.”

  Brennan’s mind was ticking over, thinking of alternatives in case he couldn’t get into the Russian’s room. One immediately occurred: the same two bodyguards accompanied the Russian everywhere. If he
wouldn’t talk and wasn’t frightened of the potential consequences, perhaps one of them would. It was just a matter of figuring out the right one. And if that didn’t work, he decided, he would have to pay a late-night visit to Konyakovich and see just how well he stood up to the interrogation cocktail – assuming he could get to him again. He could have just taken off with Russian, but the last thing he needed was every Canadian cop for six hundred miles on his tail.

  So first things first, he thought. Once the Russian had climbed out of the limo, Brennan sped away, then left the vehicle a couple of blocks from the park and went back on foot, covering the mile quickly. Konyakovich had not seen his face, and Brennan looked nondescript. If nothing else, catching the first few minutes of his speech would let Brennan figure out the rest of his security detail, and just how many men the Russian had brought with him to Vancouver.

  The park was busy, a banner near the entry declaring Russia-Canada Friendship Day; there were free hot dogs and soft drinks for kids, which had brought out families, and Brennan figured there had to be at least a hundred people in the temporary seating ahead of the stage. The deputy mayor looked sharp in a dark blue suit with a red club tie. He was talking about how important it was for businessmen like Dimtri Konyakovich to support the youth of the city, occasionally greeted with polite applause as the speech wound on. Konyakovich was seated in the first of the row of temporary chairs next to the podium, his arms folded, looking bored. One guard was seated next to him, two more were at the corners of the stage and two more were at the back of the stage, in the shadows.