The Man in the Barretina Hat, page 25
Perhaps the years spent resetting the same rock blocks with fresh grout and handfuls of gravel had shown him the secret to lasting strength. Each scar on his hands—and there were many—told its own tale. Every rock played a crucial role. Continual maintenance was critical. No exceptions, from the bottom row to the top rim. Beyond a few heavy blocks inserted to support artillery, the structure was strong because it was lean. A top-heavy tower would topple. It took standards and dedication.
The world today was not so straightforward. People believed what they saw and saw an interpretation of what they believed. Unlike Svaneti’s towers, humanity’s reality could be poked and shaped. Focus readjusted. Change manufactured. Like a fly’s eye with thousands of lenses, each seeing a slightly different angle of the bigger picture, but as a whole it still couldn’t find its way outside through an open window. Direction. Misdirection.
Aram understood this concept. Inspired to do more than simply maintain, he wanted to make waves. He imagined knocking out a few stone pieces near the peak and watching as the sanctimonious superpowers crashed down. Let a set of fresh-eyed leaders start anew, without the baggage of past relationships. This was the gift he longed to leave for his grandchildren. By now, his own life had turned stale. He could land in prison or die in the process. He didn’t care. Such incidental damage would only add to his battle scars. No longer would he sit on the sidelines, moulded into the safe by-product of inaction too common among his generation. No more.
He breathed in the dusty air of the dungeon and savoured a moment of calm. It reminded him of dawn, that brief lull before the sun shattered the silence with its clarity. Normally, he loved the silence. Today, he anticipated the clarity, a new vision their team was about to show to the world.
The team held their positions. Juris had been clear in his instructions. Leave nothing unchecked.
***
While Aram covered the underground situation, Davit was driving on the far side of the island. He pressed his foot hard on the accelerator and his pickup’s engine revved, gaining speed along the empty roads. Today marked the pinnacle of a plan he had been working towards with a group of his most trusted friends for the past two years. Today, he would seal his legacy.
Davit walked around the final archeological site. He wanted to check—one last time—to be sure the incisions and cut marks he and Aram had so carefully made looked natural. He would not allow any error. After retrieving a fallen drill from the dust, he tightened a tarp that had blown loose.
He gave silent thanks to his sailing buddies who had agreed to bring a number of heavy suitcases to Malta for him. While they thought the bags contained simply personal goods for his second home, Davit was actually smuggling artifacts in the folds of sweaters and hidden between book covers. Thankfully, his friends were frequent visitors and given a less-than-thorough inspection upon entering Maltese waters.
Once satisfied with the site, Davit returned to his truck and scrolled through his messages looking for any last-minute requests from Juris. Nothing. Perfect.
Then he typed the three-letter message to his broker to solidify his future. Years earlier, he had gifted almost all of his savings to his grandchildren. The funds were held in a trust. The kids did not know it existed. Only one other person did, a dear friend who managed the trust. They had agreed on the details of the transaction months ago. Today, he only needed to confirm it. BUY.
Within minutes, his three grandchildren would unwittingly be shareholders in two weaponry companies. The companies were not listed on any stock exchange. Between the two entities, they held contracts with China, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom for some of the most advanced drone devices and precision artillery ever developed. Davit felt certain their value would skyrocket alongside security fears after his team’s little ruse.
His trust manager planned to cash in after six months, presumably at a hefty gain. His grandchildren would never know how they’d made the money. Their innocence would remain pure. After all, Davit’s father had taught him long ago to always have a safety net.
He then thought about Lennart. That man had more to lose than Davit. He was the executive of a growing bank, owned multiple houses and a yacht. Lennart’s father had passed on a different nugget of wisdom: fight for what you believe in with everything you’ve got. Lennart would never forgive the Soviets for taking his parents’ lives, and time had only cemented that belief.
When their old university friend, Juris, came up with this grand plan to throw a cloud over religious dogma and shake up global leaderships, Lennart had jumped in with both feet. One evening Lennart confided in Davit. Over the years, he had gathered damaging intel on a handful of very senior people involved in Baltic politics.
Davit understood these individuals were connected to the old Soviet regime, explaining Lennart’s personal vendetta. They were trying to hide corrupt money using Lennart’s bank. He did not approve their accounts, citing some mundane policy breach so as not to alarm those involved. But he held on to the evidence. Evidence that he planned to feed to their political base when the time was right.
Davit assumed that time was quickly approaching.
He looked down at his phone one last time to check for any messages from Juris. Nothing.
54
Takedown
A notification blinked on Cristabel’s laptop. Gerardo had sent a secure email to the entire team, including Carlos, Myriam, Peter and Cristabel’s father: Called in a favour. Thought you all might want the inside view. An encrypted link followed.
Cristabel moved the laptop over to the coffee table so both she and her father could watch from the couch. She clicked on the link. The single screen broke apart into four quadrants. Shaky video recordings started to play in each of the four views. Orange digits blinked the time and date on the bottom corner of each recording. They were livestreaming. She turned up the brightness to maximum, yet the pictures remained dim. Then she realized what they were watching.
She and her father both leaned in closer.
Cristabel pointed to the top left corner of the screen. “Here, they’re in the tunnels under the church. That’s where Peter was held. I bet each view is from a different police officer’s bodycam.”
The first feed in the upper left showed the tunnels. The second video, in the upper right corner of the screen, captured a row of chiselled stone pillars leading to the marbled foyer of one of the fastest growing banks in Malta. In the lower left corner, the third screen, showed low ditches dug around a myriad of grooves etched into rocky land. The corner of a blue tarp occasionally blew into frame. The fourth video captured massive rounded wooden doors carved with saints, crosses and kneeling devotees.
The team may have had to stand down, but their exclusive vantage gave them a clear view of the multi-location police raid about to go down. The officers must be waiting for instructions to move as there was not much going on. Minutes after Cristabel connected, all four videos rushed ahead. The raids had started. Her eyes darted from one screen to the next, trying to take it all in.
A blitz of explosions lit up the first screen. Straightaway, a rush of shoulders crashed into the tunnel door, breaking through. A single light bulb lit up a small room plastered in posters and maps filled the view. The posters were covered in red circles, connected by arrows that ran all over the walls. A dark object filled the far end of the cell. This was the chamber Peter had described.
Cristabel’s father groaned out loud.
An officer was photographing the scene. The officer wearing the camera turned away to investigate the outer tunnel. He bent down. Wire cutters clipped a thin wire just outside the entrance. The officer had clearly been briefed in advance.
Cristabel held her breath without realizing it until she gasped out loud.
A fury of movement jerked the camera as a dark bulk lunged at the officer. A hand swung past. Bodies collided. Moments later, a man lay face down with his hands pinned behind his back. The camera picked up the attacker’s profile. His hooked nose and the scar on his left cheek matched the photos Ana had found of Man C, Aram Chikadze—caught in the very dungeon he had constructed.
“Did you see that?” Cristabel shook her finger furiously at the video feed.
Her father nodded his head rapidly, shifting his eyes from one corner of the screen around to the next.
In the second video, higher up, people turned and stared in shock as police officers rushed into the main lobby of the bank. Two teams spread out, covering both the stairs and the elevators. The officer with the bodycam ran up four flights of stairs. Cristabel was sure if the stream had audio, they would have heard a breathless voice as the officer approached the executive secretary. The woman’s face remained stoic, but her eyes were wide with alarm.
Lennart Ast was speaking on the phone when the officers entered. He quickly hung up and slammed his palms flat on the desk. Although his words were lost, Cristabel was certain he levied some hard-hitting assaults and warned the policemen that his lawyer would handle the situation.
“I can’t believe Gerardo was able to loop us in on this.” Her father leaned closer as if hoping he would be able to hear what was being said on the videos.
The officers closed in on him. One grabbed his arm, spun him around and slapped on a pair of cuffs. They led him out of the office.
The third video showed a team of police cordoning off the entire dig site.
“I think I can see an array of stone ruts fanning out from the centre. Look there!” Cristabel motioned to a dim part of the screen.
“Yeah, you could be right.” Her father nodded slowly, still staring at the video.
The bodycam officer approached a truck parked off to the side. The man in the driver’s seat looked up from his phone as the officer yanked open his door. One hand tensed on the gear shift, as if the phone call was a warning to leave. Unfortunately for him, it arrived too late.
The officer dragged him out of the vehicle. The man sprawled on the ground and the officer bent to cuff him. As he stood up, the camera showed another officer rummaging through the truck bed. Before he fell out of view, Cristabel saw him hold up what looked like an ancient Persian statue and piece of Maya pottery. The driver must be the infamous Davit Baboumian.
In the fourth video, the tactical team stormed the cathedral doors. A solitary man stood at the pulpit while a slideshow played overhead on massive screens. The Big Reveal heading was plastered across the current slide, so the man was presumably practicing his speech for the next night’s scheduled event.
The pews sat empty. The nave looked ominous, half-lit by candlelight and the glow from the presentation’s screen. Cristabel recognized some of the slides from the files she had seen on the website’s administrative portal. So this was the mastermind, Juris Stokmane.
The video feed vibrated as the police officer ran inside. The left shoulder of another agent blocked a section of the screen.
“Move over Shoulder Officer!” Cristabel yelled at the screen.
It seemed to take Juris ages to react. The tactical team must have been quiet, or the man was so engrossed he tuned everything else out. Just then, the officer in front on their camera view rushed towards Juris. A third agent came into view from across the room, running towards the pulpit.
Juris darted to the back of the room, apparently aiming for a set of stairs that led up and out of the main hall. The agents must have been screaming at him to stop because as Juris reached the top of the stairwell he paused. From the way his elbow bent, Cristabel knew he was reaching for something inside his jacket or a pocket.
The officers recognized the move as well. Before Juris could pull his arm back out, his chest arched at an odd angle. Then his arms jerked up as if trying to fly away with only one beat before his shoulder blades buckled backwards. Seconds later, he lay on the ground. Two officers ran up the stairs and surrounded his corpse.
Before falling asleep the night before, Cristabel had become engrossed in the character profile Ana had compiled on the man. She almost felt sad to see him fall when he thought he was so close to achieving greatness. Almost, but not quite.
Cristabel’s phone vibrated. It was a message from Gerardo: Turn on TVM2 at noon.
An hour later, Cristabel turned on the TV. Malta’s national news station would start its midday report in three minutes. As they waited, Cristabel tried to access the Big Reveal’s website. A 404 Page Not Found error message landed on her screen instead. Clearly, the authorities were on top of that as well.
She turned her attention back to the television as the news anchor began passively reading the top story. “We have breaking news. Earlier this morning, Malta’s police force took down a well-known executive for criminal activity and attempts to spread false and misleading information. Three other men have also been taken into custody, and one man was found dead. All are believed to be linked to the case. More details will be shared once we receive them. For today’s weather, expect a cloudy afternoon and rain showers by this evening.”
Cristabel slouched back on the couch, unable to control the flood of emotions rushing to the surface. So much had come to a head after so many long hours of work. On top of that, her father, who she thought was gone, was sitting beside her. It all seemed too hard to believe.
One question, though, remained unanswered. “I wonder what ever happened with James—or Yakov?”
Her father turned to face her, “Well, I can add some colour to that one. We passed along his details to the Russian authorities. They prefer to handle their problems in-house.”
“What do you mean?” asked Cristabel.
“He was involved in some side dealings of his own. That business in Canada was a front to give tactical intel to a group of defected KGB agents. Yakov knew these men from his childhood. Over the years, they had all grown disillusioned with the traditionally slow and top-heavy style of Russia’s intelligence service. From what I hear, a special Russian team found Yakov on a little fishing boat not far offshore a secluded inlet. They’ll take him back to Moscow and deal with him there. I don’t suspect he will be returning to Canada any time soon.”
About an hour later, Cristabel’s father’s phone buzzed. His eyes widened as he read the message. “Unbelievable.”
He looked at his daughter, glancing at his phone again before relaying the latest message to Cristabel. “So Juris’ plot thickens. The police found an email on his computer scheduled to be sent tomorrow at midnight. That would have put it just a few hours after the Big Reveal event was meant to take place. The message included a number of attachments—documents from James’ Canadian company. It seems James’ surveillance technology wasn’t monitoring just insects, but military pests as well. Somehow, he tracked covert Russian operatives near the disputed Arctic border between Canada and Russia.”
“Wow. You mean he had the option to double-cross Russia or Canada, and he chose Russia?! They don’t handle personal grudges politely.” Cristabel raised her eyebrows and slowly shook her head, disbelieving his judgement.
“And listen to this, Cristabel, there’s more. The email was addressed to a group of investigative journalists in Canada—who would certainly follow up and share the information with the military as well as the public. If Juris wanted to ignite another fire in global tensions, this move would do it. He must have intended a secondary uprising, one that taunted sovereignty and aimed its arrow at the strategic heart of two government treasures: shipping rights and oil reserves. A dangerous dance, especially if NATO got pulled in.”
Cristabel’s mind whirled. She realized Juris was a grand manipulator, but this latest news exposed the extent of his reach. It also explained why James seemed so cagey. James obviously knew how cunning Juris could be, so he’d played both sides, leaping from Russian insider to Russian infiltrator and then back again. James probably thought he was protecting himself. In reality, it was these supposed safeguards that ultimately pulled him down.
While she gained some comfort knowing the authorities would pass any valid information on to the Canadian military to handle, she knew its fallout would take a long time to fully clean up.
55
Homeward Bound
“I would have liked working on a live mission with you—if I had known about it.” Carlos put his arm across Peter’s shoulders.
“Still,” Carlos said, “these past few years at the university, thinking you were simply an innocent, yet brilliant, professor have been some of the best years of my life. We should start an archeology group back in Havana. You never know what we might dig up!” Carlos beamed from the back seat of the minivan where he sat between Peter and Myriam. His old barretina hat sagged on his head, a little more ragged and a little more slouched, but he couldn’t help feeling it perfectly suited his traditional yet tenacious ways.
Myriam grinned. “You two are on your own. History can stay in the past. I prefer to look forward. Biotechnology and medicine are evolving before our eyes. I want to be part of it—real science advancement without these conspiracies or subplots that you two seem to find.”
Carlos felt a sense of relief knowing he was finally going home. He looked through the tinted glass as the vehicle drove past the main entrance to the airport. They were headed for a lesser-known runway. Parallel to the international airport but beyond the industrial canopies and cargo facilities sat another landing strip. It was reserved for private jets and military attachés.
After they cleared security, their van pulled alongside a similar navy shuttle. Its rear window rolled down. Carlos recognized Cristabel’s curly hair even before her face came into view.
“I’ve come to say goodbye to all of you …” Cristabel paused and turned inside the vehicle to look at a man sitting next to her. She turned back to Myriam, Carlos and Peter. “… and to my father. Maybe next time, we’ll meet on Cuban soil.”
