Endangered Species: PART 1 (14 page)

“
Yes, I am certain they do.
As you said, General, they are blinded by their greed and assume us
to be simple Slavic peasants playing in a game way beyond our
comprehension.”

At last, the president’s
face expressed some emotion. A smirk of satisfaction. “Good. There
is none so easy to destroy as a blind fool. In the chaos that will
engulf America at the end, its leadership will be easy to pick
off.”

“
When the head of the snake
has been severed,” Vasilyev said, “the body will soon
die.”

Federov was an intelligent and physically
powerful man. In almost any environment, he was the alpha male. He
was the one who was large and in charge. But not here in this room
with the diminutive president and the aging Vasilyev. He knew his
place. What he didn’t know, at the moment, was what his future
held. He bowed his head respectfully and said, “Mr. President,
General Vasilyev, may I inquire after the role I am to play going
forward?”

The room was quiet for several moments. The
only sounds were those emanating from other suites in this part of
the building. Dull noises; hard to identify. Probably clerks and
administrators going about their tasks, Vasilyev kept his gaze
fixed on the president. At last the man nodded slightly and
Vasilyev turned back to Federov.

“
I mentioned earlier,
Kirill, that you must bear some responsibility for what happened
regarding Laski and his operation.” He looked quickly at the
president then said, “You have been replaced as far as your former
role in the United States is concerned.” He paused and assessed
Federov’s reaction.

Federov sat back slowly in his chair, but
succeeded in keeping any emotion from showing on his face. “I
understand. Is there perhaps another role for me, one where I can
atone for my …failure?” It was the worst kind of F-word to him. He
almost couldn’t get it out.

“
Ah, well, you are a good
man, Kirill; a man of many talents and abilities. I would be
surprised if there was not some worthy service you could perform
for the glory of our cause.” Vasilyev held a finger up and said,
“But we are going to have to give some thought to what that role
might be. In the meantime, we have a task for you in Kiev. You will
be meeting with a colleague of yours from your experience with
Chaim Laski. Let’s hope, for both your sakes, it goes better this
time. Is that understood?”

“
Yes, sir,” Federov said.
He tried to sound respectful, yet unintimidated or disappointed.
But it was very nearly impossible.

Chapter 12—JFK Airport,
New York City

The JetBlue flight left
Albuquerque on time. It was a crowded flight, which mystified Mitch
Christie at first. Why were so many people flying from a Podunk
town like Albuquerque to the Big Apple on a midnight flight on a
Tuesday night in mid-April? Then he remembered. It was Economics
101. The Law of Supply and Demand. Basic Adam Smith stuff. The
airlines had stemmed their flow of blood by cutting back on the
number of flights. The same number of flyers, but fewer available
seats. This enabled the airlines to cram their passenger holds with
warm bodies. It also allowed them to raise ticket prices and tack
on charges for everything from checked baggage to carry-ons to
pillows to Cokes. The rash of mergers had eliminated much of the
competition in the industry and led to further price hikes.
I should have bought airline
stock
, Christie thought glumly.
For that matter
, he
mused,
I should have done a lot of things
differently; yet here I am on my way to a foreign country to kill
some sonofabitch I don’t really know. Hell of a way to end a
distinguished career in law enforcement.

The flight left Albuquerque at midnight and
arrived in New York’s JFK airport about 6 a.m. It sounded longer,
but it was only four hours of flying time, distorted by time zones.
The plane was packed. Christie didn’t like being confined in a
close space with other humans. He thought longingly of his previous
travels in First Class. The seats were large and almost
comfortable, separated by wide armrests. There was more legroom.
And you didn’t have to pay for pillows, blankets, food or drink. In
First Class there wasn’t a long line of passengers queued up to use
the lavatory. And that tiny closet-like space didn’t reek of human
excrement before the flight was even halfway to its destination. He
sighed and thought, but that was then. When he’d flown on Bureau
business, the taxpayers had treated him to First or Business Class.
Now, he was flying on his own dime, and he no longer had many of
those, thanks to the divorce.

To his increasing discomfort, he found
himself stuck in a middle seat. An obesely fat woman had the aisle
seat. Parts of her spilled over into his space repulsing him.
Worse, she was blocking his freedom of passage to the lavatory. For
whatever reason, maybe her girth, she refused to get up when he
tried to get to the aisle. He either had to sit in extreme
discomfort and try to ignore his bladder’s growing complaints, or
climb over the woman’s mountainous body. Eventually, he chose the
latter, nearly falling into the aisle in the process. Returning to
his seat was even more difficult. He wished she had been snarky
about it; it would have been easier to give her a long, dirty look.
Unfortunately, it was the opposite. She clearly was embarrassed and
apologized profusely. To his surprise, he found himself trying to
make her feel better about it.

The passenger in the window seat was no
prize either. He was a man in his early twenties with a face full
of scraggily hair and long, oily looking locks that hung below his
shoulders. He wore flip-flops, dirty jeans and a wrinkled and torn
flannel shirt that looked like it had missed several washings.
Christie suspected the man hadn’t bathed in quite awhile either. An
aura of body odor spread into Christie’s area. He couldn’t lean the
other way because the enormous woman in the aisle seat also was
occupying part of his seat. To compound his discomfort, the young
man was asleep. His head kept sliding over and coming to rest on
Christie’s shoulder. The infuriated FBI agent would lunge sideways,
throwing the man to the other side of the seat and against the
fuselage. The man would wake up briefly, look at Christie, and
whine something like, “Hey, man”. Within minutes, he would be
asleep again and trespassing on Christie’s space once more.
Christie’s cop’s eyes sized the young man up as a hippy and drug
user. He thought long and hard about flashing his Bureau
credentials, dragging the offensive man to the lavatory and
performing a strip search. He was sure he’d find some reason to
bust him and turn him over to local authorities in New York. He
just couldn’t figure out how to get himself and the prospective
perp over the mountainous mass in the aisle seat.

By the time the flight arrived at JFK,
Christie couldn’t wait to deplane. But he wasn’t having any luck
there either. It seemed an eternity before the door opened and
passengers began to inch forward. In this day of pricier flying, it
seemed like everyone brought carry-ons. One-by-one each passenger
squeezed into the aisle, wrestled their luggage from the overhead
bins, and slowly made room for the person behind them.

Christie’s row was near the rear of the
plane. He was almost claustrophobic by the time the person in front
of him began to move. To compound his phobic attack, it was the
obese woman. She was not only fat, but also a rule breaker. Instead
of the clearly limited two carry-on items per passenger, she had a
huge purse, a large cloth bag crammed to capacity with foodstuffs
she’d nibbled on throughout the flight, and an oversized carry-on
suitcase. Unencumbered, her sheer girth would have made it
difficult for her to navigate the narrow aisle. But with the extra
baggage, it was almost impossible. Christie caught himself thinking
that if he had access to a can of Crisco, he could grease her up
and slide her more easily out of the plane. He realized instantly
how ignoble the thought was and felt ashamed of himself for
thinking it.

Eventually, he was able to exit the plane,
but still couldn’t get around the woman and her burdens on the
gangway. Worse, the woman’s size made it difficult for her to walk.
It was a very slow proceeding. Finally, he realized how he could
speed it up. He volunteered to carry some of her items. That made
it marginally faster.

Christie wasn’t sure why he
was in a hurry. He had almost twelve hours to kill in the airport
before his connecting flight to Ireland departed. He had his Lee
Child novel. He had his
Wall Street
Journal
. He hadn’t been able to read either
one on the flight from Albuquerque because of the actions of his
seating partners. The
Journal
now was a day old. He’d pick up today’s edition in
one of the airport shops. With almost twelve hours to kill, he
suspected he’d see a lot of those airport shops. And food and
beverage outlets too. The only bright spot so far in the journey
was the airport terminal.

Both JetBlue, his arriving carrier, and Aer
Lingus, his connecting flight, used Terminal 5. The terminal itself
was fairly new, having been completed a few years earlier. He had
read that the gull winged building not only offered free Wi-Fi, but
also boasted twenty-seven retail shops and twenty-four food and
beverage outlets. One of them was a Dunkin’ Donuts. He zeroed in on
it for his breakfast. Coffee and glazed crullers. His stomach would
object violently, but he had stocked up on Rolaids. Given the
nature of his mission, he probably didn’t have many days left. He
doubted he would have to endure his stomach’s belligerence much
longer. He wasn’t sure what kind of situation he would encounter
when he killed Whelan. Irish authorities or Whelan’s kin might, in
turn, kill him. It wasn’t going to be like the US, where everything
possible was done to accommodate the perps. No wonder there were so
many criminals in America, he thought. Jail time was like boarding
at a country club. He paused at that thought, realizing for the
first time consciously, that Whelan and his renegade handlers at
the Society of Adam Smith probably were more patriotic than the
bastards he worked for in the government. It was a disturbing
thought.

* * *

Christie drank the last sip
of his coffee at the Dunkin’ Donuts shop in Terminal 5, ate the
remainder of his second cruller, and read the
Journal
cover to cover. Being a
fiscal conservative and a strong believer in the free enterprise
system, he enjoyed most of the paper’s editorials. Occasionally,
some leftwing lunatic from academia or politics ranted on
the
Journal’s
editorial pages. He assumed it was the paper’s effort to be
fair and balanced. But he considered it the kind of screed that
belonged in the
New York
Times
, a paper he wouldn’t even use to
start a fire. It was Wednesday, the day the
Journal’s
Personal section featured a
column or two on technology. Christie had always looked forward to
reading it when Walter Mossberg was writing on personal technology.
He had explained all things technological in laymen’s terms. He
knew he never would have a Gen Y member’s grasp of such things, but
Mossberg’s column always had made him feel less
benighted.

He glanced at his watch. It was barely eight
o’clock in the morning. He still had almost ten hours to kill
before his scheduled flight left for Ireland. He needed to make a
call to California, but it was just going on 5 a.m. out there. Too
early yet, he thought. Ten hours sounded like forever. He found a
shoeshine stand just past the point where the passengers clearing
security entered the terminal. His shoes already had a pretty good
shine, but he had time to kill so he climbed into the chair. The
shoeshine man was small, black, and old. Christie tipped him twenty
dollars. Given the mission he was on, a little charity might be a
good thing. He paused and looked down at his gleaming shoes. The
well-groomed killer, he thought.

He found a quiet area with mostly empty
seats near the Aer Lingus gates and sat down with his paperback. He
was several chapters into the book and it still was only ten
o’clock. He got up and walked around the terminal, wandering
through most of the retail shops. In one of them, a card shop, he
made a purchase. It was from the rack of cards labeled “SORRY”.
This one had a forlorn looking cartoon dog on the cover. It was
holding a wilted rose and had a sorrowful, downcast look on its
face. Inside the card read, “Doggone it. Could we try again?” He
addressed it to Ramirez, stamped it and dropped it in a mailbox. I
must be like most real estate investors, he thought; wildly
optimistic in the face of certain disaster. If he was successful in
his mission, managed to escape Ireland, and still had a job to come
home to, it would be nice to have someone in his life for a
change.

He still had some time to
kill before attempting the call to California. He took a couple of
Rolaids to combat the ever-present pain in his stomach. The
gull-winged roof of Terminal 5 was supported by a number of
pillars. He set his briefcase down next to one, leaned back against
it, and began watching the people wandering by.
Once a cop, always a cop,
he thought
as he viewed the passengers parading past his vantage point. It was
almost as if he was doing it on autopilot, scanning for the
telltale signs. Mostly, everyone looked normal. Scruffier, in his
mind, than air travelers should look, but normal. And then he
spotted the couple. They were young and casually dressed, but a few
steps up from the styles and grade of clothing worn by most of the
others in the terminal. What caught his attention was the fact that
they were standing facing each other, but neither one was looking
at the other. Instead, their eyes were wandering around the
terminal, looking at everyone else, but only occasionally and very
briefly glancing at each other.