The Prague Plot: The Cold War Meets the Jihad (Jeannine Ryan Series Book 3) (8 page)

“Yes, but I don’t know if Peter did or not. I don’t trust the old goat. He was all over me! He told me that he could see why his son liked me. I shoved him away and he started talking drivel about greedy capitalists and keeping up the ‘People’s’ struggle, whoever the ‘People’ are, surely not me and you.”

Aileen folded her arms and grimaced.

“What’s more, I don’t believe he knows where Peter is.”

At that point there was knock on the door. It was a UPS delivery for “Doctor Peter Zeleny” care of Ryan Associates.

No sender was indicated.

Jeannine Ryan studied the package.

“Strange, why us? But Peter’s missing, I’m opening this now.”

She tore open the wrapping.

“There’s nothing here but packing, crumpled newspapers.”

Aileen took several papers and flattened them on the desk.

“These papers are not the same. This one must be Russian, it’s Cyrillic. And these are Czech, at least the alphabet is Latin. Wait, here’s one in English, ‘The Prague Post.’”

Jeannine pointed at a small crumpled mass.

“That’s not a newspaper.”

Aileen smoothed the wrinkles flat. It was a memo on Hus-Kinetika Letterhead from a “Vaclav Pokorny.” She started. Peter’s father had asked about “Pokorny.” The text was in Czech, but the subject clearly was Xolak. The memo featured a table of numbers.

Jeannine looked at the numbers and turned to Aileen.

“Clearly ‘Rok’ means ‘year,’ so ‘Průměr’ must mean average.”

She did some quick calculations.

“Aileen, these are the real 3-point averages for Xolak. From 2003 on if I divide them by three, I get the fake values in the report. The increase in allergic reactions to Xolak is large and real!”

She grinned.

“And look. ‘Vaclav Pokorny’ is cited in the Appendix of the report. This memo is the proof we need for Larry Hodges and the FDA.”

She pumped her fist.

“This is proof that Hus-Kinetika faked the data!”

In Nags Head, the gray Ford Excursion had been parked on a street behind the Patek Realty all morning. Both the driver and his passenger wore earphones. The driver stopped listening and lifted the headset from his ears. He turned to his partner.

“I told you that local cop Harrigan wouldn’t know to check for bugs. What do you think of Mila spilling her guts like that?”

“Why don’t we kill Gustav and grab Pokorny’s carryon for Karel? Then we can go to Bethesda and visit these ‘Ryan Associates’ or whoever and find that damn package.”

“Sounds right.”

“What about the Simek woman and meeting her at Whalebone Junction?”

“Forget Simek. She knows nothing. We know that now. It’s the Patek woman who knows more than she lets on. She’s clever. She tells only what she has to.”

“Pokorny is dead anyway. What do we do with his body? It can’t stay in the trunk.”

“Hell, we’ll dump him in Currituck Sound. The idiot never should have betrayed Karel.”

“He may have been an idiot, but he got the papers out of the country and into the USA and we don’t have them yet.”

The driver fell silent for a moment. The passenger picked up his cell phone.

“I must text Karel right away. He needs to know that Ivana is betraying him.”

“Don’t be stupid. Karel won’t believe you. He’ll believe her before you. You accuse her and one of you will be in trouble, and it won’t be Ivana!”

“You mean wait?”

“No choice. She’ll slip up soon enough.”

In Nags Head, Jim Harrigan looked down from the window of Mila’s house. The Ford Excursion on the roadway behind Mila’s realty had not moved.

“Mila, that car is still there. Where are your binoculars?”

Every Nags Head home had binoculars to watch birds and boats offshore.

She pointed to an overturned end table.

“They were in the drawer. There they are, on the floor.”

Jim took them and focused on the Excursion. He turned back to Mila, a finger on his lips for silence. He penciled a note and held it before her.

The guy in the passenger seat has earphones.

He’s listening to us.

Mila stood quietly while Jim scanned the room. Only one end table was upright. He ran his fingers under it.

When he stood erect, he held a small circular device between thumb and forefinger. He went to the window and put the device on the floor. He focused the binoculars on the Ford Excursion and smashed the listening device with his heel.

“Crache!”

The passenger in the Ford Excursion tore his earphones off and threw them against the windshield.

Moments later, the Ford Excursion drove away.

Jim turned to Mila.

“They must have planted that bug when they trashed your house.”

“Aren’t you worried there might be another bug, that they’re still listening to us?”

“I don’t think so. They didn’t have a lot of time, and most of it was for searching. Besides they took off. One of them has a headache right now. His ears are ringing.”

He added.

“But, you’re right. We should check for more bugs. I have a tech friend who will sweep your place after we clean up, and that will take a while.”

He frowned and took her hand.

“Mila, the damage is done. They know about your Gustav character as well as Vaclav’s package and those Ryan Associates, whoever they are.”

The passenger in the Ford Excursion held his hand over his ear.

“That guy broke my ear drum. How did he find the bug? You told me he was a dumb local.”

The driver replied without taking his eyes off the road.

“That’s what I thought. I’d better check on him. His name is Harrigan.”

Keeping one hand on the wheel, the driver deftly thumbed a message on his phone. In seconds, the text was on its way.

They drove north towards Kitty Hawk. Minutes later, as the massive Nags Head dunes came into view on the left, the phone vibrated with a reply.

With one eye on the road, he scrolled the text and read. He hit the brakes and pulled onto the shoulder.

“Damn!”

“What?”

“Harrigan isn’t a yokel after all. He was four years as a homicide detective upstate in Raleigh, North Carolina. He semi-retired to come to the Outer Banks.”

“So what?”

“So before that, until his thirties he was with the CIA, and he wasn’t a paper pusher. He was in covert ops in Austria, in Vienna.”

“He can’t know about Karel.”

“The hell he can’t. You heard what Mila told him. And he’ll have contacts at the Agency. He can get information, and help too.

“What do we do?”

“For now, we dump Vaclav’s body. Then we think.”

He started the engine.

“Damn it, first Gustav, and now this Harrigan guy! We may have to kill them both, but we’ll need help. I’ll call Karel.”

They continued north, the Nags Heads dunes disappeared. Some minutes later, the Wright Brothers’ Memorial came into view.

In Nags Head, Jim Harrigan and Mila finished straightening the wreckage of her rooms. Now it was noon and they were hungry. They opted to eat out at the Tortugas’ Lie Restaurant.

Mila ordered for Jim, a grilled yellowfin tuna sandwich with Teriyaki glaze, Swiss Cheese, and Portabella relish. Jim left it largely uneaten.
I wonder if she likes doughnuts?

Still he smiled.

“It’s been a while since I had lunch with an appealing woman.”

Mila’s lips thinned.

“Thanks a lot. You just ate with me at the Blue Point yesterday, remember?”

“I didn’t eat, I only had coffee, and you boxed your catfish to take with you.”

He smiled again.

“Besides, Mila, you
are
attractive. Trust me.”

Mila cringed at the word “Trust,” but touched his arm.

“Jim, don’t you like the sandwich?”

He shrugged and reverted to ‘cop’ mode.

“Mila, if Gustav didn’t wreck your house, then who did? Who were those guys in the Ford Excursion. I couldn’t see the license plate. Damn it, who are these people?”

She looked away. He added.

“Mila, let me help you.”

“Jim, try to understand. When I was little we could never trust the police. My mother was Catholic and people knew it. We were on a list. The
Pražské jaro
, the Prague Spring, was in 1968, before I was born. After it was crushed, Husak took over. His Communist thugs had a free hand to enforce their holy Marxism on everyone, especially my mother, but my father too, and he wasn’t even religious.”

“I was born in 1974. My mother died in 1979. Ten years later we had the
sametová revoluce
, the ‘Velvet Revolution.’ Everything changed, but hard-liners still hate that.”

She swallowed.

“I do want your help. I liked you right away, but I was afraid too. Not just for Anne, but for myself. You carried a gun, and when I grew up, men with guns were
the
policie
, never our friends. I know that may not make sense. Anyway, now that I know you, I see my fear wasn’t justified. Forgive me.”

Her eyes moistened. She looked into his.

“There
is
something I wanted to tell you before, but couldn’t.”

Jim winced.
Not again.

She noticed but kept on.

“At the airport, when I picked up Vaclav, he made a phone call. I don’t know to whom, but he spoke Russian. My Russian is weak, I read better than I speak, but he repeated one word several times.”

She paused and wrote on a napkin, first in Cyrillic and then in the Latin alphabet.

новичок novichok

Jim gaped. Mila explained.

“‘Novichok’ means ‘newcomer’ or ‘new guy’ in English. In Czech we say ‘nováček,’ it’s close to the Russian.”

“Mila, I know the word. What else did you hear.”

“I recognized a man’s name, ‘Mirzayanov.”’

She looked down and separated the grains of rice on her plate with her fork while she resumed.

“I asked Vaclav about ‘Mirzayanov.’ Vaclav wouldn’t talk about him. Instead Vaclav told me he had evidence that Hus-Kinetika was involved in a horrible plan, something bigger than Pharmaceuticals. That’s why he came to America. He could prove it.”

She looked up. Jim had half-risen in his seat. The intensity of his stare frightened her. She drew back.

Jim’s shoulders slumped. He lowered himself down onto his chair. His knuckles paled as he gripped the table.

“Mila, in 1992, three years after the Berlin Wall came down, a former Soviet chemist, Vil Mirzayanov, revealed that the Russians had developed a new chemical weapon, a Weapon of Mass Destruction. It was a new class of nerve agents, said to be the deadliest yet. It’s public knowledge. You can read about it in Mirzayanov’s book,
State Secrets
.”

He set his teeth.

“They had a name for the new agents. You just wrote it on that napkin.”

“It’s ‘Novichok.’ It’s the ‘newcomer agent,’ the ‘new guy’ on the block.”

“Mila, Vaclav must know that Hus-Kinetika is producing chemical weapons.”

She gasped. Her eyes moistened.

“My God, Jim. Vaclav must have found out that Hus-Kinetika was involved with these nerve agents, That means the men who wrecked my house are Hus-Kinetika’s goons, descendants of Husak’s communist thugs. They will stop at nothing to destroy Vaclav and his evidence. They are killers.”

She picked up the napkin and wiped her eyes.

“Damn it, Jim. They heard you in my house. You’re in danger too!”

In the early afternoon, Anne Simek returned to the Comfort Inn in Nags Head. She left Peter Zeleny at the door to his room, and went down the hall to hers.

She slid the key card into the slot, but her hand faltered and the indicator light stayed red. She pushed again. The LED shone a faint green and the lock gave a welcome click. She stepped in, paused to throw the deadbolt, and fastened the chain.

For a moment she stood motionless. Then the sobs started, long and deep with shallow, intermittent breaths that could not furnish sufficient oxygen to her lungs. She threw herself on the bed, gasping and sighing out of control. By the time her breathing returned to normal, her pillowcase was wet with tears.

I did what they said. I was there at the Junction. Why didn’t they call?”
At those thoughts, she knew.

He’s dead!

She rolled on her back and focused through wet eyes on the ceiling. In the shadows on the textured paint she imagined Vaclav’s face.

Why did I leave you alone? But you told me to go
.
I had too. You insisted. I should have said “No!” I should have stayed.

Anne had arranged to meet Peter Zeleny in Elizabeth City when she and Vaclav were near the hospital there. But he had refused to go, so she had taken him to the Bordens’ near Wanchese, far in the opposite direction. Now she regretted not changing the meeting with Peter to some place closer to the bed and breakfast.

Vaclav, I’m sorry, for everything.

Through the door she heard a voice.

“Anne, it’s me, Peter. Open up.”

“What do you want?”

“We need to talk. Open the door, please.”

Anne arose, twisted the dead bolt and released the chain.

“Peter, they didn’t come.”

Her red eyes, swollen cheeks, and disheveled hair softened him.

“Anne, you did everything that they asked. You waited over an hour, alone, no cops.”

She grabbed his arm.

“Don’t you see. That means Vaclav is dead!”

As a physician, Peter had often borne bad news He did not believe in dissimulation.

“Anne, it’s not good, but it’s not your fault.”

“How would you know? I’m the one who left him alone.”

“If you’d been there when they took him, you’d be dead too. Hus-Kinetika’s enforcers used to be Communist thugs from the
Státní bezpečnost
. That means ‘State Security.’”

“I know what it means. I’m not stupid. I studied in Prague, remember. In the same hospital as you. Or didn’t you notice?”

Peter may not have noticed Anne at the Motol Hospital, but here, in Nags Head he “noticed” her a lot.

“Sorry, that was dumb, forgive me.”

She blinked.
An apology from a ‘Zeleny?’

“Peter, I left Vaclav alone. I have to live with that.”