Red Dawn Rising (Red Returning Trilogy) (14 page)

“You belonged to the Israeli army. Special ops, remember? They trusted you.”

“They used me, that’s all.”

“It’s what you call service to your country. Only you don’t have a country anymore, do you?”

Jeremy didn’t respond.

Ben pulled onto a narrow, rutted lane that ran to the Chesapeake Bay and a sprawling, hilltop house of soaring glass walls. “It belongs to a friend,” Ben informed as he pulled into a private drive. “We’ve got it for the rest of the afternoon.”

Jeremy ogled the imposing house, reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright designs, blending with its habitat as if it had sprung naturally from the ground.

“It’s the spoils of that wretched establishment you hate, Jeremy. The guy who owns it started working in a sheet metal factory when he was sixteen. Lost a couple of fingers. Never went to Harvard like you did. Worked fourteen-hour shifts, and one day bought the company and gave most of it back to the employees. Feel like throwing a rock through his window?”

Jeremy’s response was to fling open the car door and stalk up the flagstone path to the front door of the house. There, he waited in a defiant sulk for Ben.

Once inside, Jeremy wandered across a sunlit room to a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the bay. He scanned the view, then the room, furnished with modern cubic furniture and hung with abstract
paintings
. “Your friend did well for himself,” he conceded, his tone noticeably disarmed. He was focused on a smaller framed print over a shiny black credenza. “Vincent van Gogh. I hear the Architect loves that guy’s stuff.” Jeremy glanced at Ben. “He’s the one who chopped off his ear, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, Jeremy. I’m wondering why you haven’t done the same to one of yours. Isn’t that the anarchist thing to do? Self-mutilation until you get what you want?”

“You’re crazy. I don’t know what my sister sees in you.” Jeremy’s attention wandered back to the print. “Anyway, the guy has this thing for van Gogh. Sometimes wears an ear-shaped tie tack. Freaky.”

Ben grew weary of the hostility. There were graver issues before them than their embattled relationship. “Sit down, Jeremy,” he said, gesturing toward a brown suede sofa. Ben removed his coat and settled onto a club chair opposite the sofa. “Tell me what I need to know.”

Jeremy shed his own coat and cap while studying Ben carefully. “First, are you with us?”

“Tell me why I should be.”

“You know why. Israel. It’s the only thing you would risk it all for.”

Ben brushed his hand along the cushioned arm of the chair. “Go on.”

“Noland doesn’t care about Israel. But he’s desperate to win over the Middle East and all its oil fields. With old hostile regimes falling away and new democracies—or so they call themselves—springing up with inexperienced leaders, your president can influence the paths they take and gain a stronger foothold in the region.
If
he can deliver Israel, or at least defuse her.” Jeremy leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “And you can’t let that happen, can you?”

There was no word from Ben, no involuntary twitch of the mouth, but he didn’t take his eyes off Jeremy, who now sat back to clearly savor the point he’d just scored.

“But there’s more, Ben,” Jeremy continued, raising his eyes toward the windows. “Something you can’t even imagine. Something underfoot in the deep-down of the Kremlin, right under President Gorev’s nose. That Maxum Morozov plot last year was just the beginning. Too bad
your
friend Liesl Bower had to interfere. Don’t think Pavel Andreyev and Vadim Fedorovsky have forgotten about that. And don’t think they aren’t continuing their underground revolt even from prison. They won’t be there long, though.” Jeremy fairly preened over the letting of privileged information.

“Let me guess,” Ben said flatly. “Someone’s going to bust them from prison and set them down on a two-seater throne, the Siamese kings of Russia. Right?” Ben felt his emotions slipping into overdrive.

Jeremy eyed him smugly. “Andreyev and Fedorovsky are subordinates.” He grinned. “The Architect will rule Russia … Europe … and Asia Minor.” He paused as if for effect. “And the Architect promises to protect Israel.”

Ben’s brow arched slightly. “Tell me more about this Architect.”

Jeremy’s dark eyes danced. “You had no idea such a person existed, did you? Bet your CIA hound dogs don’t either.” He fidgeted with the hem of his sweater and sighed deeply, his face clouding slightly. “Truth is, Ben, I don’t know who he is. Some billionaire who rules Russia in ways few others can see. At the appointed hour, he will remove President Gorev, whom he detests, and seize control of Russia. He will build a new empire and take down countries without so much as a single missile strike.” Jeremy grinned broadly. “Though, I understand he intends to perform a few acts of, uh,
persuasion
in the U.S., just to demonstrate his powers over you and warn you not to interfere with anything Russia wants to do in her sphere.” He paused. “In fact, Inauguration Day was the first salvo.”

There it was! Proof. It wasn’t Al-Qaeda or a rogue lone wolf. It was Russia! Ben tried not to react but failed. He felt himself tense.

“Well, what do you know,” Jeremy said. “I just caught you flat-footed.” He crossed his legs. “I am enjoying the upper hand over my sister’s big-deal husband.”

Ben abruptly leaned forward, his eyes drilling Jeremy. “Was Liesl the target?” he asked savagely.

This time, it was Jeremy who was caught off guard. He stared blankly at Ben as if considering that possibility for the first time. “Of course not,” he said, but there was no authority in his voice. “It was the president. That’s what we were told.”

“Who is
we
?”

Jeremy visibly relaxed, his cocky grin returning. “Besides you, you mean?”

“Answer me.”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Because you don’t know, right? What
do
you know, Jeremy?”

“I know you’d better end this uppity, down-your-nose grilling of me and start worrying about Israel and our families there.”

Ben tensed more, his mind spinning. “When are these other acts of persuasion supposed to take place?”

“Soon. That’s all I know.” He looked thoughtfully at Ben. “Think about it. The U.S. economy is in the tank. Foreign governments hold over a third of Treasury Department–issued securities. China and Japan account for half of that. Other countries are faltering, and Russia’s poised to move in and scoop them up.”

“But not Israel? Why does the Architect want to protect her?”

“To keep our new White House mole happy. Don’t you understand?”

Ben did, and the words repulsed him.

“Now, you’re as vital to Russia as Maxum Morozov was. Where the infamous mole inside Israel’s Defense Department failed, you will succeed. Your reward—and my reward for recruiting you—is the Architect’s promise that he will preserve our ancestral homeland.”

“And you believe that? You forget that the Morozov plot was to force Israel’s annihilation. What changed?”

“The Arab Spring made the Middle East more vulnerable to Russian influence, without having to touch Israel. But the biggest change was landing you as the mole with the most to offer.” Jeremy chuckled. “Too bad you wouldn’t come when you were first called.”

Ben remembered the voice on the phone, the insistent calls. The voice first dangled unlimited riches if Ben would spy for Russia. Then, when he angrily refused, the voice threatened his family. They would do it again, he was certain.

“But now, you’re the Russian eye on the White House. You’ll feed the Architect news of Noland’s foreign policy strategies. And once the
Architect
is officially in power, you’ll influence Noland to stay out of Russia’s way, so to speak.”

Light from the windows grew dim, and Ben noticed a line of clouds had moved in over the bay, snuffing out the sunlight. Such stealth. Was that the way phantom aggressors operated?

Jeremy watched him. “Things are going to happen soon, Ben. You should send Anna and the kids out of the country.”

Ben rounded on Jeremy as if he’d just announced a death sentence. But Jeremy persisted. “You don’t know what these people can do, Ben. Get my sister out of here.”

Chapter 16

E
arly Saturday morning, the nation’s capital stirred beneath the gray covers of low-slung clouds. The sun only threatened to make an appearance, though the few pedestrians on the streets went about their day undeterred. Some who carried newspapers rolled up under their arms appeared focused on the nearest coffee-shop doorway. A few runners, zipped up in NASA-grade spandex, passed Hans Kluen without the slightest glance. He envied the endorphin-induced runner’s high he saw on their faces. For them, too, the weather was irrelevant. It was all about the run.

So what was
this
all about? This compromised life he lived. Was it the money? Why not the money? When allegiance and patriotism meant nothing to him, why shouldn’t it be about the money? Had it not afforded him the woman he’d yearned for his whole life, alone at night in a cold-water flat in the Bronx? Had it not kept her in the velvety folds of privilege she expected from him?

But sometimes in the night, he would awake and, for a wretched instant, not know who or where he was. In the high bed piled with his grandmother’s quilts, next to the window that overlooked a vineyard on the Rhine River? Or was it the iron bed in the Bronx where he first tasted the bile of hatred for his immigrant father and the abuse he wrought on
Hans’s
mother on the other side of the wall? It was in the Bronx that a gang of Nazi haters bearing an American flag had routinely beat him and his little brother, who died at nine of one last blow to the head. Whatever allegiance Hans had tried to muster for his newly adopted country perished with his brother.

A young couple hunched against the cold passed Hans on the sidewalk, barely looking his way. In a drab-gray trench coat, dark muffler concealing the lower half of his face, a knit cap tight on his head, he was surely forgettable to those who glimpsed him, though they would come to remember the morning well.

Waiting on the corner ahead was a much leaner man in a camel-hair topcoat, black homburg hat, and a soft brown scarf pulled high around his chin. Cashmere, Hans guessed. The formal ensemble was out of step with this early weekend hour. But little about the man was compatible with the world he sought to rule.

When Hans approached, he asked the man, “Where now?”

“I will show you,” Ivan Volynski replied calmly, and the two men matched stride as they strolled off together down First Street, passing few other pedestrians.

Hans turned slightly to the man walking beside him.
He’s out here in the open with no security
, Hans groaned to himself.
Dressed as if he were already a head of state
. Hans looked away at the city center and the almost-mythical Capitol dome capping the world’s most powerful regime.
But no one in this town knows what the man beside me can bring down on their heads. Or who he is. The Architect himself
.

A block before they reached the Capitol, they looked toward another landmark, the neoclassical Supreme Court Building. Then kept walking.

Neither one spoke until they’d crossed First Street and entered the Capitol grounds, loosely inhabited by a few weather-brave tourists. The two men slowed their pace and angled toward a bench near the east side of the Capitol, a resting spot with a clear view of the temple of justice, as the Supreme Court Building was known.

“You will not be surprised to know that Sonya has unearthed nothing of consequence on your stepdaughter and her bumbling male companion,”
Volynski
said. “Nothing besides that unfortunate episode of the young woman’s suicide. It was Cassandra’s best friend, I believe.”

Hans had heard only his wife’s account of the story. He’d never felt entitled to probe the matter with his insular stepdaughter but was certain the tragedy had devastated her young life.

“I told you there was nothing to worry about,” Hans replied. “I’ve warned her about meddling in other people’s affairs. You won’t see her or Jordan Winslow again.” He attempted a bit of brevity. “Unless her mother gets it in her head that I’m still seeing another woman.” His weak smile was met by Volynski’s stone-eyed reproach.

“Enough about that foolish girl and her boyfriend.” Volynski opened a gloved hand and stole a glance at the pocket watch lying against his palm. Then he looked at Hans. “Because of them, I have had to leave my apartment for another dwelling until we are finished here. You will not find me. But I will find you, Hans. Do not ever doubt that.” He looked again at his watch.

Hans chose to ignore the laid-bare threat. “I have been in contact with my man in—”

Volynski lifted a hand. “Quiet,” he ordered.

The first two explosions occurred simultaneously, each one gouging a crater in the yards on either side of the grand stairway to the Supreme Court Building. It was a full fifteen seconds before the third explosion tore through the basement, creating a fireball that threatened the entire structure.

Unlike Hans, who’d suddenly leapt to his feet, Volynski remained seated. He hadn’t even flinched. With a stoic cool, he noted, “It is true what they say about the perpetrator often watching the aftermath of his handiwork from the crowd of onlookers.” He remained impassive. “I only wish I could see that one face when he hears the news.”