THAWED! (Cole Sudden C.I.A. Thrillers Book 3), page 1
THAWED!
(A Cole Sudden CIA Thriller)
A Novel By
Lawrence De Maria
Copyright © Lawrence De Maria 2016
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, transmitted, reverse engineered, decompiled or stored in or introduced into any storage or retrieval system in any form or by any means, whether electric or mechanical, without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading or distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
Visit the author’s website: www.lawrencedemaria.com
Published by St. Austin’s Press
Dedicated to my wife, Patti, whose love, support and faith made this book – and others – possible. And to my two sons,
Lawrence and Christopher, good men, both.
CHAPTER 1 - THE MINX
Sibirskaya Arkticheskaya
Tundra Stantsiya 4
(Siberian Arctic Tundra Station 4)
Grigor Rusayev woke with a splitting headache. His mouth felt like it contained a dead yak.
It never failed. Whenever a helicopter landed with provisions, the first thing anyone asked the pilot was how much vodka he brought. And, of course, he always brought a lot, despite the fact that vodka was low on the list of necessities provided by the Russian Academy of Sciences.
After all, the Kamov-Ka-60 helicopter had limited cargo space. But the low-paid airman knew an opportunity when it presented itself. Instead of the 12 bottles of Stolichnaya normally allotted the research facility’s staff — one for every person, which was supposed to last two weeks! — the pilot brought in three cases. He sold the extra 24 bottles for five times their market value. No one on the staff, starved as they were for any diversion, complained about the highway, or helicopter, robbery.
Of course, that meant that other supplies had to be left off the chopper. Now, with his bowels rumbling ominously, Rusayev hoped that the pilot, who naturally “confiscated” whatever had been dumped in favor of the vodka, had not stolen the facility’s allotment of toilet paper, as he had the last time. Running out of toilet paper, even the coarse variety common to Russia, was disastrous on the Siberian tundra.
One could not wipe one’s ass with lichens, after all.
Rusayev hauled himself out of his bunk in the cramped room he occupied in the facility’s dormitory. The space was just big enough for the bed, a dresser and a small table and chair. But at least it was warm. He was dressed only in shorts and a T-shirt. As a senior academician, he rated an interior room. It was a bit tighter than the rooms on the other side of the hallway whose walls faced the tundra. The people who slept in those rooms always complained about the cold seeping through the corrugation.
Although it was March 21st, which normally signaled spring in most climates, there was no warmth to be had outside the building. This early in the day, it was probably -30 degrees Celsius, with a biting wind near 60 kilometers-an-hour that made it feel like -50. The tundra climate has two seasons – winter and summer — with the transition between them so short they did not rate a name like spring or fall. The “summer” lasted two months, and temperatures might reach a balmy 10 degrees Celsius, and there would be some groundwater melt, even shallow lakes. But the tundra was no place for sissies, even in the summer. The temporary water was a decidedly mixed blessing, since it was an ideal breeding ground for clouds of mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds. The larval-form of the voracious insects survived the cold tundra winters by converting the water in their bodies to glycerol, a chemical that acts like antifreeze.
The permafrost, below a thin layer of spoil, is almost 2,000 feet deep and remains frozen solid all year.
Rusayev put on another layer of clothing, grabbed his toiletry bag, slipped his feet into his boots and went out into the hallway. As usual, it was freezing. He headed down the hallway to one of the communal bathrooms, where it was marginally warmer. When he got there, he was heartened to see that there was, indeed, toilet paper. He also managed to fit in a quick shower — the only kind anyone was allowed to take at Tundra Stantsiya 4, which was always short of hot water. A half hour later, now really bundled up, he went outside and trudged the 100 meters to the facility’s main laboratory, where, despite his lingering headache, he was anxious to see the latest samples the team had uncovered from drilling into the permafrost.
When he entered the lab, he was chagrined to see that Katarina Kirisov, the cute little red-headed botanist from Leningrad, had beaten him in. Not that he minded looking at her. Even when garbed in her drab green lab clothes it was obvious Kirisov had a great body. In fact, Rusayev knew that she had once been an accomplished gymnast. That knowledge drove him and all the other males at the research outpost crazy. As he pulled off his outerwear and put on a lab smock, he greeted her warmly, hoping that he hadn’t made too much of an ass the night before at the impromptu vodka-laced party in the mess hall.
Her curt reply suggested that he probably had.
“How about some coffee?” he said, tentatively.
She did not even look up from her work. Embarrassed, Rusayev went to the coffee urn in the corner of the lab. It was always on. The coffee might be a day old and was often atrocious, but it was also always hot. There was a plate of leftover sushki next to the urn. He felt his gorge rising at the sight of the tea bread, which resembled bagels, but were sweeter and crunchier. They were probably stale and hard as a kopeck. But even had they been fresh, Rusayev could not even think of eating. He was hoping the coffee wouldn’t kill him. He poured two mugs, added plenty of sugar, the Russian way, and walked back to Kirisov.
“What are you doing here so early, Kat,” he asked, putting a mug down next to her, hoping to thaw her out a bit.
“I’m bored,” she replied. She picked up the coffee. “Not bad.” Then, she relented. “Thank you. What about you? What got you out of bed?”
“New samples,” he said.
She went back to whatever she was doing with a bunch of scraggly-looking plants that looked half dead. Which, indeed they might be, Rusayev knew. In the coldest season of the tundra year, plants went into a kind of suspended animation.
Of course she’s bored, he thought. She was the only botanist on a research station’s staff dominated by biologists. Not surprising, really, when one considered that hardly any plant life grew in the tundra, which, in addition to being extremely cold and desert-like, was almost always battered by high winds. The new facility director, under pressure to save money, had even considered eliminating her position, but faced a revolt from the male scientists. They would sooner have done without food. He quickly reversed his decision. Rusayev suspected that Kirisov herself also played a part in changing the director’s mind. It was widely known that as the only woman at Stantsiya 4, Katarina used sex as both a release and for job security.
Rusayev winced as a memory from the previous night swam into his consciousness. No wonder she had reacted coolly when he arrived.
But was it really too much to ask her for one of her famous blow jobs? Yes, perhaps he could have been a bit more discreet. He had probably been too loud. Rusayev seemed to recall some heads turning their way when he made his suggestion. He sighed, loudly.
“What’s the matter, Grigor?”
He turned to her.
“Oh, nothing.”
“You were too drunk,” she said, not unkindly. “I did you a favor. Remember Zhrinovsky.”
Everyone else who rotated through the facility knew the story of what happened to Pavel Zhrinovsky. The poor fool had rotated through Stantsiya 4 with another team that included a woman named Galenka, who was reputed to have a mouth like the Lefortovo Tunnel in Moscow. She serviced Zhrinovsky in a Hägglund tracked vehicle outside the mess hall. He didn’t bother to button up his fly while enjoying a celebratory smoke after she left. He also didn’t bother to close the window, which he opened after their steamy encounter. That would have been fine for a brief cigarette break, but the sexually-relaxed Zhrinovsky dozed off.
The Swedish-made Hägglund was a fine vehicle, but smallish, and did not hold heat very long with an open window. Zhrinovsky’s organ, left dangling in air that was -40 degrees Celsius and made even colder by the constant gale, soon hardened again. But not from sexual excitement. His resulting frostbite was so bad that he had to be evacuated to a hospital in Omsk.
Rusayev was surprised to learn that it was not the first case of “Tundra Dick” the doctors had treated. (The Americans had another name for it, as one visiting scientist from the States told him: “cocksicle”.) The doctors saved the lab technician’s penis, although they needed some skin grafted from his forearm, which, unfortunately, was very hairy. And the hairs grew back.
“Zhrinovsky quit,” the pilot who evacuated him told Rusayev. “He couldn’t stand the ridicule. Everyone called him ‘Hairy Cock’, among other things. He’s a day trader in Moscow, making so much money the girls aren’t scared away by his f
Now, Katarina actually smiled.
“There will be other nights, Grigor,” she said, giving him a look. His heart lurched in his chest, and it wasn’t from the caffeine in the nuclear coffee. “I hope you are not one of those fellows who is easily discouraged.”
Smiling, she moved to another table, carrying a small tray of plants with her. Grigor, now himself grinning like a schoolboy, his headache gone, went to the freezer to pull out the new samples. The little minx liked him! His stomach growled. He was surprised to realize he was suddenly hungry.
At her new workplace, the young botanist was also smiling. They were all the same. The poor buggers were putty in her hands. Grigor wasn’t bad looking. He had good teeth. And the word was that he was on the fast track at the science academy. And if all that wasn’t enough, the big lug had a nice, warm, interior bedroom!
Katarina Kirisov was sick and tired of the endless cold.
CHAPTER 2 - LITERARY BLACKMAIL
Philadelphia Naval Business Center
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
“They want your what! Where?”
“A photo. On the back flap of the book.” Cole Sudden smiled. He knew what was coming. His boss was hard to rouse, but when he exploded it was always entertaining. “Probably on the back cover, too. And they are very insistent.”
“Tell them to go to hell,” Nigel Buss shouted. He slapped his hand on his metal desk, which like most of the furniture in the unit’s offices was Navy gray and second-hand. “To hell in a hand basket!” In the process he upended his government-issue “in-and-out” tray, which clattered loudly to the floor. “Oh, crap!”
Rita Carman, Buss’s silver-haired personal assistant, who could empty a Glock’s clip almost as fast as she typed, stuck her head in the door.
“What now?” she said.
“Nothing,” Buss replied sheepishly, as Rita efficiently picked up the tray, sorted its contents and replaced it on the desk.
She looked at Sudden.
“Please don’t upset him any more than usual, Cole. He just got back from Langley.”
She winked at Sudden and left, shutting the door behind her.
“Tough day at the farm, Nige?”
“You might say that. I spent most of the morning trying to save your hide. Yunner had a lot of friends, and some of them don’t buy your version of his demise. They wanted a Court of Inquiry.”
“Kangaroo court, you mean.”
Brin Yunner was an agent in another C.I.A. unit who was killed at the Hadron Collider in Europe while spying on Sudden and his colleague, Rebecca Soul, during their last mission together. Sudden, who “moonlighted” as an increasingly successful thriller writer named “Cole Swift”, had — to Buss’s consternation — fictionalized that adventure onto several best-seller lists. The hero of the Swift novels, “Jake Harms”, was a globe-hopping freelance soldier of fortune who worked for the U.S. Government. He had not yet achieved James Bond name recognition, but did score a recent mention on Oprah.
“Apparently Yunner made several reports to the effect that you had it in for him,” Buss continued. “They also know what you did to him in the bathroom that day we all met at Langley.”
“For God’s sake, Nige. The jerk waterboarded me once. He got off easy. I only stuck his head in a damn toilet. He would have gladly shot us at the Collider if he had the chance.”
“They hate you over at Langley, Cole. Yunner was one of their top boys.”
“Yunner was an idiot, and got himself killed. I told him not to go into the tunnel. Besides, I made him look like a hero in my book.”
“For God’s sake, Cole. He was torn limb from limb.”
Sudden examined his nails.
“Actually, I toned that down a bit. It was more like he was painted on the walls.”
“Oh, Sweet Jesus,” Buss said, sighing. “The point is, your novel writing is not something I want advertised. And to put your photo on your books? They will go bat shit over at Langley. We have to be careful. They think we’re elitist as it is.”
“Well, how else would you describe your merry little band? We are the best at what we do. We’re so good that when I write about some of our experiences, people assume it’s all made up.”
“But if they put your photo on a cover, it will blow your cover.” Buss shook his head. “I can’t believe I just said that. But you know what I mean.”
Sudden laughed.
“Look, Nigel. The publishing industry is in a dither, with all the competition from Amazon and other e-book publishers. They need bestsellers, but they are also deathly afraid of alienating what readers they still have by perpetrating a fraud. The scandal over that author who was murdered and replaced by an actress who sold alleged sequels to her famous book scared the hell out of them.”
“You mean the woman who wrote To Slay a Turtledove?”
“Why, Nigel. I thought you only read expense reports.”
“I read other fiction as well,” Buss said archly.
“Touché. The point is, up till now I’ve gotten away with not putting my photo on the dust jackets of my books, but now that I’ve written a bestseller, the publisher wants one.”
“So stop writing the goddamn books. I still can’t believe that a story about what happened at the Hadron Collider could turn into a bestseller!”
“Thanks a bunch.”
“Cut it out. I know you are a good writer, but it isn’t Gone With the Wind, or even a Turtledove. I only gave you permission to write about it because, as you pointed out, no one would believe it, for Christ’s sake.”
Sudden did not remind Buss that he had not even asked permission to write his last novel. As perhaps the Central Intelligence Agency’s premier assassin, Sudden not only took his writing seriously, he was something of a lone wolf whose relationship to authority was tenuous, at best. He liked Buss, but decided to remind him of just who was holding the high hand.
“Well, while we are on the subject, Nige, I’ve been thinking about writing full time. I can put in my papers with the Agency at any time. My agent is working on a multi-book deal with some of the bigger houses. She says the Hadron book is a game changer, career-wise. I could sell my apartment in Philly and basically retire to my house in Southport and live the life of a rural author, like Updike.”
Sudden, recipient of both an inheritance and an insurance settlement when his parents and sister were killed in a plane crash while he was in college, owned both a small spread in Connecticut and the apartment on Rittenhouse Square in downtown Philadelphia.
“This is blackmail.”
“Look, I got lucky. Mixing Jake Harms with science-fiction was risky. Even my agent said so. She had a hell of a time selling it to my publisher. But then that movie about Mars came out, with Matt Damon, and it caught the wave. Cristina Parker, that’s my agent, thinks there may be a movie deal for me in the future.”
Buss looked stricken. The small department that he ran was his own brainchild, and was perhaps the C.I.A.’s most-clandestine operation. It was based in the Philadelphia Naval Business Center, formerly known as the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, and shared facilities with the Naval Surface Warfare Ship Systems Engineering Station (NSWSSES), the Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NFED), the Mid-Atlantic Public Works Department Pennsylvania (MAPPA) and the Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility (NISMF).
Buss’s unit was humorously and aptly named the Base Unified Resource Yard (BURY), and was lost among all the other initials. BURY was located in Philadelphia because it was assumed no one would ever suspect that the C.I.A.’s top assassins worked there. And no one at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Virginia, wanted to acknowledge that BURY even existed, let alone that it provided the Agency with millions of dollars Congress did not know about.
The C.I.A.’s crack computer whizzes had long since hacked the computers of the nation’s law enforcement agencies and copied their witness protection lists. The typical C.I.A. bureaucrats did not know what to do with the lists, but Nigel Buss, a rising Agency star and a non-typical spook, did. A Rhodes Scholar as well as a field agent, he knew that various American mobs — Italian, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Native American, Irish, Hispanic, African-American, to name a few — would pay huge sums to settle accounts with their respective turncoats. In return, the gangsters were expected to provide domestic intelligence on possible terrorists, as well as leads on corrupt politicians the C.I.A. could blackmail when crucial votes on Agency appropriations were imminent.
