Kilo Option, page 46
“Soon,” Lane said, but riding over to his apartment with Hughes he wondered if this business would ever truly be over, because it would live with him and Frances for the rest of their lives. Lewis had assured them that they had done what had to be done. But somehow Lane wasn’t quite sure.
He took a shower, shaved, and put on a pair of slacks, a cashmere turtle neck, and a hand-tailored blazer. When he came out Hughes poured him a small cognac neat.
“Did you make the two calls?”
“Roswell and Murphy will meet you at the White House,” Hughes said.
“Did they ask why?”
Hughes shook his head. “And neither will I. I’m not even going to ask if you’re sure, because it would be redundant.” Hughes studied his friend’s haggard expression. “What about afterward?”
“I’ll be with Frances at the hospital,” Lane said.
THE WHITE HOUSE
Hughes dropped Lane off at the west gate and he walked up to the White House where he was taken to the Oval Office. The president was waiting for him with Townsend, Rosewell, and Murphy.
“Welcome home, Bill,” the president said. “You’ve done a hell of a job for us. Once again your country owes you its gratitude.”
“Saddam Hussein is dead, Mr. President,” Lane said curtly, in no mood for platitudes. He felt betrayed. The entire nation had been deceived by one man who thought he knew better than everyone else what was right. Because of him a lot of people were dead for no reason at all, other than ego.
Townsend walked over to the door and closed it.
“Did you kill him?” President Reasoner asked, a strained look of awe on his face.
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re not a nation of assassins.” Townsend spat the words in disgust.
“I didn’t assassinate him,” Lane said. “At that point the camp was under attack, and Hussein was pointing a rifle at me. I just shot first, that’s all.”
“You were there with him, in his camp?” Roswell asked. “You actually got that far?”
“Yes, sir. I waited in the desert for him to take his walk. And when he came by I killed his two bodyguards and took him captive. I was there to trade his life for Frances Shipley’s, not assassinate him.”
“We’ll never know, will we,” Townsend said, his face a mask of loathing. “There are no witnesses. No one who knows.”
“There’s one man who knows, sir,” Lane said. “Hussein called him Red Baron.”
“What’s this all about—” Townsend blurted, but the president waved him off.
“What are you talking about?” Reasoner demanded.
None of them was seated. There didn’t seem to be the time for it.
“Hussein said that a man code-named Red Baron, who was highly placed in our government, had fed him intelligence information. It was one of the reasons his army managed to elude direct confrontation with the forces out of Baghdad for so long.”
“Preposterous,” Townsend said.
“Do you think it’s one of us?” Murphy asked.
“Walt Zimmerman told you about my last-minute change of plans. Did you report that to anyone here?” Lane asked.
“There wasn’t enough time,” Murphy answered darkly.
“Ben Lewis called me,” Roswell said. “But we were already tracking the Iranian sweep across the border. We had our hands full.”
“The Iranians rescued me and Commander Shipley. Their commander admitted he was involved with General Sultaneh’s assassination because it was time for the moderates to take over and Sultaneh was anything but moderate. They want to avoid war with Saudi Arabia.”
“They’re a nation of terrorists,” Townsend all but screamed. “Rabid dogs …”
“General Sultaneh was also receiving intelligence information from Red Baron,” Lane said.
Townsend stepped back, his face screwed up in a grimace of fear. He raised a hand in appeal to the president.
“Why?” Reasoner asked, and the question hung in the air because no one was sure who it was directed to.
“Because he didn’t agree with your policies, Mr. President,” Lane said. “With the entire Middle East in turmoil, and with the Ukrainian government implicated in a terrible scheme to help Hussein, the United States would have been forced into picking up the pieces and managing the entire region over the foreseeable future.”
“Over the dead bodies of how many?” Reasoner asked, again directing his question to no one in particular.
“Terrorists,” Townsend repeated himself. His face was beginning to fall apart.
The president looked at him. “You?” he asked.
Townsend turned to Lane, a last spark of hate curling his lips, narrowing his eyes. “How could you have been so sure? I made no mistakes.”
Lane managed a weary grin. “Sorry, Mr. Townsend. But to tell the truth, I wasn’t sure, until this moment.”
70
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
Moira Hughes always came as a surprise to anyone who’d met her husband first. Half expected her to be a diffident, mousy woman with averted eyes, overawed by her husband’s superior intelligence. The other half, learning that the Hugheses had six children, expected a short, matronly, gray-haired woman dressed in a soiled apron over a flower print housedress.
The woman who opened the door of the huge three-story brick house that had once been a Civil War–era tobacco farmer’s mansion for Lane and Frances was anything but. She was nearly as tall as her husband, with medium-length auburn hair, a statuesque physique, a milky complexion, a lovely face filled with good humor, and deep green, sparkling eyes that lit up like Fourth of July fireworks and then almost immediately glistened with tears.
“Oh, William,” she said softly, her voice gentle and mellifluous. “We were so relieved when Thomas said you’d come safely home.”
Mindful of his wounds, she took him in her arms and held him tenderly for several moments.
“I missed you,” Lane said.
“She’s going to make the perfect wife for you,” Moira whispered in his ear.
He stepped back as if he’d been slapped. “That, you wicked woman, was a dirty, deceitful trick to pull on a battle-scarred man.”
She laughed brightly. “Piffle,” she said, and she took Frances by the arm and led her inside to the vast stair hall. “You’re even more lovely than Thomas told us.”
“You’re exactly as I pictured you’d be,” Frances replied, her eyes filling. The two woman embraced warmly, leaving Lane standing alone on the threshold.
A second later utter bedlam engulfed the entire house as girls came running from seemingly all directions, shouting and screaming: “Uncle Bill! It’s Uncle Bill!”
A large black Lab careened around the corner from the back hall, barking and baying wildly, as two huge cats streaked down the stairs, hissing as if they were jungle animals on the attack.
The dog stopped long enough to sniff cautiously at Frances, then, with the cats and the girls, raced around the stair hall completely out of control.
Frances laughed so hard her knees became weak, and Lane was dragged the rest of the way into the house and completely mobbed.
“Ladies, mind your decorum, if you please,” Tom Hughes called mildly as he came nonchalantly down the stairs in his slippers and smoking jacket.
The noise stopped instantly. The girls lined up by ages, the dog and cats came to heel beside the oldest, and Moira looked up warmly at her husband, who came to her side and pecked her on the cheek.
“We have company, darling, you should have worn your blue smoking jacket.”
“I’ll get it,” three of the six girls shouted in unison.
Hughes glanced their way, and they stopped. He smiled. “It’s not back from the cleaners.”
“He beats them with a willow stick every night before bed,” Lane told Frances.
“Piffle,” she said, kissing Hughes on the check. “Thank you both for inviting me to your home.”
“Something like this will be yours once you and William are married.”
“Thomas,” Moira said, shooting her husband a warning glance.
Hughes grinned innocently. “You’ve met Moira; let me introduce my daughters.” He turned to his girls. “Susan is seventeen, our oldest.”
The young woman was tall, with a perfectly oval face and her mother’s eyes and good looks. She curtsied the old-fashioned way.
“Deborah is sixteen, and her twin sister, Kathleen, is thirty-eight seconds younger.”
“Oh, Father,” the younger twin said.
“Winifred, named after one of my aunts, is fourteen. Beth Ann, named after Moira’s cousin, is nine. And Proxaida, little Proxie, named after my grandmother, will be three next week.”
The little one had been shivering with anticipation, and she couldn’t hold it any longer. “Uncle Bill!” she cried, and she raced past her father and mother. Lane scooped her up.
Hughes shook his head. “That one hasn’t quite got the idea yet, but we’re working on it,” he said, smiling broadly. “The three incorrigibles on the end are Bo Jo, a miserable excuse for a dog, and the two real rulers of this madhouse, Scott and Zelda the cats.”
Again pandemonium broke out, the younger girls mobbing Lane and the three older ones speculatively eyeing Frances, who was loving every minute of it.
“William is godfather to the girls,” Moira told Frances as they went into the living room. “I don’t think this family would be the same without him.”
“A lot of us wouldn’t be,” Frances said.
A fire burned on the hearth, and something classical played on a stereo. The large room was pleasantly furnished and was crammed with books. There wasn’t a television in sight.
The girls served Frances a glass of white wine, Lane a cognac, and then brought wine for their parents. When they were settled, Susan looked sweetly at Frances.
“Tell us all about it, would you please, Ms. Shipley?” Susan said, smiling. Frances was nonplussed for a moment, and she glanced at Lane. “I don’t know if I can. I suspect much of it is classified.”
The girls tittered.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that dreadful operation with the Kilo submarine, and the SS-N-sixteen nuclear missiles, or Saddam Hussein and the war that almost happened between Saudi Arabia and Iran. I meant about how you and Uncle Bill first met.”
Frances opened her mouth but nothing came out.
“I hoped you warned the poor girl about the grilling she would be subjected to,” Hughes said to Lane.
“Nope. I figured I’d let her learn the hard way. Same way I did,” Lane said. “At least Bo Jo didn’t bite her like he did me the first time I came over.”
“He didn’t bite you,” Moira corrected. “I remember the incident clearly. He piddled on your leg.”
The girls howled in delight, and Frances basked in a warmer family glow than she’d ever know in her upper-class reserved English household.
“It was three years ago, when your Uncle Bill was stationed in London,” Frances said.
“I told you,” Kathleen whispered, poking her twin in the ribs.
“He was on temporary assignment, and the first time I laid eyes on him I thought he was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in my life.”
Susan smiled. “I’m jealous, of course. I wanted him to wait until I got a little older and then I was going to run away with him to some deserted island.”
“You’re talking about your uncle,” Hughes cautioned his daughter.
“Piffle,” she said seriously, and they all broke up laughing again.
KIEV
It was 3:00 A.M. when Maslennikov’s bedside telephone rang. He’d not been sleeping well lately because of the aftermath of the failed operation. Despite Grechkov’s assurances that nothing had changed in their struggle for political power, he had his doubts. He expected to be arrested at any moment, and he had salted away enough money in two Channel Island accounts to ease his way into a new life in the West should his escape become necessary.
He turned on a light and picked up the phone on the second ring. “Da?”
“It’s me,” the caller said.
The connection was poor, and in the background Maslennikov could hear traffic noises, but he recognized the voice. Was it possible?
“Where are you?” he asked.
“That doesn’t matter,” Valeri Yernin said. “By now you know that I failed, and you know why I failed.”
“I can help. It’s not over yet.”
“Fuck your mother, you’re right, it’s not over. It won’t be over until I kill him.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Maslennikov shouted. “There are other considerations now. Other projects. We need you.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Yernin said. “When I’ve done that, I’ll return. But not until then.”
“You stupid fool!”
“This time I won’t fail, because I know his Achilles’ heel!” Yernin said. “Do you hear me? I know his Achilles’ heel.”
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY INTERCEPT CENTER
“That’s it,” communications specialist Art Shannon said, thickly padded earphones on his head, his fingers playing rapidly over a keyboard.
His supervisor, Dale Delmonico, came over from his console. “Is that Bill Lane’s voice search and recognition program?”
Shannon nodded, hit the Play button, and looked up. “The voice print is a ninety-eight percent match. The call originated in Karachi.”
Valeri Yernin’s voice came up on the loudspeaker.
“This time I won’t fail, because I know his Achilles’ heel! Do you hear me? I know his Achilles’ heel.”
TO BE CONTINUED …
NOVELS BY SEAN FLANNERY
The Kremlin Conspiracy
Eagles Fly
The Trinity Factor
The Hollow Men
Broken Idols
False Prophets
Gulag
Moscow Crossing
The Zebra Network
Crossed Swords
Counterstrike
Moving Targets
Winner Take All
Kilo Option
WRITING AS DAVID HAGBERG
Twister
The Capsule
Last Come the Children
Heartland
Without Honor
Countdown
Cross Fire
Critical Mass
Desert Fire
High Flight
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
KILO OPTION
Copyright © 1996 by David Hagberg
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Forge@ is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
Design by Brian Mulligan
eISBN 9781466813298
First eBook Edition : February 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Flannery, Sean.
Kilo option / by Sean Flannery.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 0-312-85256-8
I. Title.
PS3556.L37K55 1996
813’.54—dc20 96-8486
CIP
First Edition: September 1996
Sean Flannery, Kilo Option
