Russian Law (Law Series ) (Volume 1) (5 page)

He
watched as her eyes widened, surprise again on her face and wondered if he
would ever stop surprising her. Not likely, he thought. Their techniques would
be too different, too varied. He saw the question forming on her lips and he
shook his head.

“No,
the only other language I speak is body language.”

“Oh,”
she nodded. “Well your spot on, the agent is telling his men about his
informant that advised him that the mafiya has a shipment coming in on Tuesday.
He wants to set up a perimeter around the dock with,” she paused listening intently
to the man speak for a second before they were out of earshot. “Roughly fifty
agents,” she continued as they turned a corner.

Lucas
gave off a quiet whistle. “Must be some shipment.”

“It
always is with the brotherhood.”

She
opened an office door and waited until he entered before closing it behind him.
She walked around the side of her desk and sat down in her chair. He took the
one reserved for visitors.

“Director
Mishkin didn’t give me many details as to why you’re here, Special Agent Gates,
only that I was to accommodate you in any way possible and should give you access
to anything you want.”

A
non work related thought popped into his head before he could stop it. He
wasn’t usually one to think of sex during an investigation especially with a
fellow agent. Lucas was very goal orientated and he believed that an agent was
agent no matter the sex. They were all trained for the same thing and knew
their jobs. Each had their own specialty – they’re own worth. He wasn’t a man
with a big ego that needed to be stroked. He was also a team player and the “no
I in team” rule had been drilled into him from the moment he had joined the
CIA. He wasn’t one to cause problems because his boss was a woman. He actually
had a high esteem of women in elevated positions, admiring them greatly. He
knew they had to bust their balls and be better than everybody else to get
where they are and that kind of agent had his support one hundred percent.
Which was why he didn’t understand this reaction he had to Elena Ivanova.

Sure
she was beautiful and attractive but she wasn’t the only woman in the world. He
liked to kept things on a professional level always. His break up must have been
affecting him more than he’d like to admit. Maybe it was his body or minds way
of telling him he was ready to settle down. God, he hoped not. He loved his
life just as it was.

Lucas
nodded. “Good to hear.” He settled himself more comfortably in his chair. “Two
days ago there was a murder – professional hit, the man’s name was Igor
Zimtovich.”

Elena
frowned. “A Russian citizen?”

Again
Lucas nodded. “That’s not all, found on his remains was this.”

He
pulled out Igor’s credentials and passed them to her, her eyes widened when she
opened it up to see the SVR ID and badge. She looked up at him, her mouth
opened slightly.

“An
SVR agent?”

“It
gets worse. We uncovered some partial fingerprints that we were able to match
to a Michael Ducane. An American terrorist, his specialty is bomb making.”

Elena
frowned. “Michael Ducane?”

“A
seasoned terrorist, not to be taken lightly. We believe he’s currently in
Russia.”

 “And
I take it you have no idea why?” she asked.

“Michael
goes were the money is. He’s only part of the problem. I’m here to bring him in
before he can do any damage and while I’m at that, find out who it was that
hired him.”

“That’s
an awful lot to ask of one agent,” she commented.

He
grinned and her heart sped up, just as she assumed he meant it to.

“I
enjoy a challenge.”

“Most
men do,” she replied. “I’ll see what I can do help.”

She
jerked the mouse of her computer until the SVR seal and log in boxes appeared
on screen. Deftly she entered her username and password into fields and pressed
enter. SVR’s computer database came up on screen and she clicked on an icon and
flicked through multiple screens before she had the one she wanted.

Lucas
looked at the screen and at the Russian letters and sank back in his chair
waiting for her to tell him what they had on Ducane. Elena typed in a set of
commands and Michael’s passport photo appeared on screen. She leaned back in
her chair and read the information displayed.

“No
one by the name of Michael Ducane has been registered at any Russian airport
but I assume known terrorists don’t travel on their own passports,” she said
dryly. “However we do have Ducane leaving a Moscow hotel at ten fifty last
night. The Marriot Hotel security caught him on tape meeting with Alvin
Pochenchov.” She looked over at Lucas’s puzzled look and elaborated. “One of
our most elusive weapons dealers. He works freelance and plays at being
entrepreneur at his many nightclubs. SVR arrived a few minutes later but neither
Ducane nor Pochenchov were found.”

The
slimy bastard slipped through the cracks, damn it. He couldn’t believe it they
might as well give him a police escort to wherever he wanted to go. Wasn’t this
once a communist country where their citizens had no rights at all? How can one
man keep evading them? He wanted to hit something.

“No
offence. But you have a known terrorist enter your country and no red flags go
up?”

Elena
frowned. “Are you joking? We have a summit coming up in St Petersburg this
month. It may as well be Grand Central Station. So many internationals coming
and going – we don’t have the resources to do background checks on all.”

Lucas
nodded, understanding. They were fighting an uphill battle and the bad guys outnumbered
them ten to one easy and the moment they took one out another rose in his
place.

“Forgive
me, I’m just frustrated and -”

“I’m
the nearest person,” she said, finishing his sentence. “It’s alright I
understand the pressure you’re under. It can’t be easy being in your shoes.”

“Thank
you. I appreciate all your help.”

She
smiled and stood. “I haven’t helped you yet. Coffee?”

Chapter 5

There
was something
about Lucas Gates that caught Elena’s eye and had her thinking of candles and
satin sheets. She had caught herself staring at his large hands more than once,
at the long fingers with clean short nails. Embarrassed she felt herself blush,
blood heating her cheeks until they were a rosy red.

She
had only just met the man, which to her, made everything she was feeling so
much worse. It had been a long time since any man had brought this particular
response to her body, which was what had surprised her the most and made her
pay attention. She had noticed men of course in the past, even after Nikolai’s
death, she wasn’t dead, her pulse still throbbed and her blood still ran hot
but not one pair of startling beautiful eyes, strong broad shoulders or even
one extremely tight bottom had caused every nerve ending in her body to sit up
and take notice.

Over
the past few months her friends had tried to get her to start dating again, but
she knew she wasn’t ready and wondered if she ever would be. Elena had loved
with all her heart, and now that Nikolai was dead she was sure her heart had
followed him. Had she had her one chance at love and now that it was gone would
she be lonely for the rest of her life? she wondered.

Her
eyes flicked over the form of Lucas Gates once again, at his ruffled hair and
creased clothes. What was it with that man that had her so out of sorts? What
was he doing to her that made her so crazy and so warm?

He
caught her eyes and her stomach did a somersault and she quickly looked away.
He didn’t appear to notice the electric charge that vibrated between them and
she worried about what the hell was happening to her. She swallowed, her mouth
dry and prayed her hormone surge would soon pass.

As
much as she would like to get to know Lucas more she knew she couldn’t. She was
in a bad place with her emotions as it was, adding a relationship – any type of
relationship - into the mix would prove volatile. Besides he had a job to do
and soon he would return to the United States and she would never see him
again. It would be best if she stopped thinking about him altogether. Now all
she had to do was get her brain to cooperate.

“What
do you have on this Pochenchov?” Lucas asked, and she was glad for the
interruption in her thoughts.

Elena
took the last sip of coffee from her cup.

“Alvin
Pochenchov was born here in Moscow in the early seventies and has sold over a
million dollars worth of weapons to a variety of criminal organizations and
terrorist groups. So far he has eluded arrest. He is known as the go to person
for high end military grade weapons.”

“That’s
quite a bio. How is it he is still a free man?”

Elena
looked affronted. “He’s good at not being seen – much like your Ducane I’d
say.”

“Ouch,”
he said, feeling the sting she had intended. He smiled. Elena Ivanova was one
hell of a woman. She was also right. He certainly shouldn’t be lecturing her on
something that he had yet to accomplish. “Touché.”

“I’m
sure even in your country there are men who pay their way out of trouble, that
or threaten and kill to stay out of jail. He has no qualms about doing whatever
he has to, to remain a free man. It‘s always about what we can prove and not
what we think or know.”

“Same
shit, different country. I know that all too well,” he admitted. “Where does he
get his weapons from?”

“Mercenaries,
dirty soldiers, small militia’s. You name it, he gets it and sells it to you at
the double the price he paid.”

“Talk
about inflation,” Lucas commented.

Elena
nodded. “What kind of supplies will Ducane be requiring? It may give us an
estimate of time. The harder to acquire the more time we might have.”

He
liked the way she thought. She had brains and beauty. A great combination in
his opinion.

“Unfortunately
his shopping list is pretty easy to come by, if you have the contacts – which he
clearly has,” Lucas stated. “Do you have a list of Pochenchov’s clients, maybe
we can cross reference the names to those connected with Ducane.”

“How
would that help?” she enquired.

“I
don’t know. I’m grasping at straws. Ducane has never worked in Russia before and
I want to know who put him in contact with Pochenchov, maybe we can squeeze him
for information.”

Elena
nodded, following his line of reasoning. “I wish that could help you but all of
Pochenchov’s known contacts and clients are currently serving multiple life
sentences in maximum security prisons and prisons here in Russia have very
little perks which don’t include phone calls or internet. They have no contact
with the outside world. So setting up a meeting between a supplier and a buyer
would be out of the question.”

Lucas
huffed out a deep breath.

“So
we have an arms dealer in Russia, a dead SVR agent and a known terrorist. I
don’t think it could get any worse than that. I guess Zimtovich could’ve been
the connection between Ducane and Pochenchov,” he wondered aloud.

Elena
typed in Igor Zimtovich into her search engine. “You’re assuming that Agent
Zimtovich wasn’t there on a sanctioned mission. Perhaps he was merely following
Ducane and was caught.”

Lucas
rose an eyebrow. “Is that what your computer is telling you?”

Elena
looked back down at her computer screen and read for a few moments. She looked
back at him with a look of bafflement on her face. Poker player she was not.

“What?”

“I
don’t understand. Agent Zimtovich was working as a liaison between the SVR and
the FSB - another one of our agencies,” she elaborated. “There is no reason at
all he should have left Russia and it isn’t the place of a liaison officer to
go flitting about the world. We are always to remain in-house so to speak.”

Lucas
thought about that. He didn’t want to think that maybe she was lying, covering
up for her fellow comrade. But he had to admit the possibility. He didn’t know
her well enough to determine her code of ethics. Would she do as she was told
if that meant lying to an American Special Agent? Were the Russian’s hiding the
fact that one of their agents went AWOL when he should have remained in Russia?

God
this was turning out to be more complicated than he had expected.

“Tell
me, who was the agent assigned to the Pochenchov case? Assuming you have agents
monitoring him and building cases against him,” he added.

“This
maybe Russia Special Agent Gates but we do try to put away the bad guy. Of
course our resources are very limited and have a budget nowhere in the range of
the CIA but we do our best.”

He
grimaced. “I’ve offended you again. I apologize, and its Lucas remember?”

She
gave a sharp nod. “We don’t have twenty-four hour surveillance but an Agent
will be assigned, it’s his or her job to gather Intel and bring him down.”