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“Yeah. I’m with you. We got less than thirty minutes. Start poking around.”
Four minutes later, a twist of a knob in a counterclockwise motion by Reggie made the entry code panel pop out. Shaw pulled a spray canister from his belt and shot it over the panel. Then he hit it with a blue light, which revealed fingerprints on certain numbe
r keys. “Got the four digits,” he said. He attached a small device to the panel’s wiring and turned it on. He looked up at Reggie. “Knowing which four digits are part of the code cuts the combination possibilities way down.”
“Yeah, that I know. Then you just have to find out the order of the numbers,” she said. “And you manage that with a full numbers assault.”
The numbers 4-6-9-7 froze on the screen and the wall cabinet clicked open, revealing a darkened space beyond.
“So let’s go see what Mr. Kuchin is hiding in here,” he said.
CHAPTER
87
KUCHIN WAS SITTING in a chair in his hotel room. His strategy had not worked. His men had searched the perimeter from the inside out and there was no trace of Katie James. They were all still posted at these positions, but Pascal’s last communication had been discouraging. They had simply run out of places to look. The woman had either gone underground in the city somewhere or else she had left. Nether possibility was palatable to the Ukrainian.
He took out a small kit, filled a syringe with his special concoction, and shot it into one of his veins. Normally this would give him at least a momentary rush of euphoria, of invincibility. He swore it made him think more clearly too, which he desperately needed at this moment.
Yet nothing happened. Well, something did occur. He felt even more depressed. He threw the empty syringe across the room, where it struck a wall and broke. The last time Fedir Kuchin had suffered defeat was back in the Ukraine, when he had been forced to fake his death and flee his homeland one step ahead of the masses that would take their revenge on his years of terror. At least they would call it terror. He would call it something else. His duty. His job. Perhaps his destiny.
Though he lived the good life of a successful westernized capitalist now, where personal liberties were highly prized, Kuchin, in his heart, would forever believe that only a select few should rule all others. And the way one accomplished that was with selectively and effectively used power. Most people were only capable of being followers. Even in the West only a few ever rose to riches and leadership positions. In his command back in Ukraine Kuchin could pick out, within five minutes of meeting them, those of his men who would forever be sheep and those few who would be the shepherds. And he had never been wrong.
Yes, the West was the part of the world where there was opportunity for all. Kuchin could only sneer at this. He had been a leader in his homeland and he had become a leader here. A follower over there would be merely a follower over here. Sheep didn’t change because they were given opportunities.
And yet will I now be defeated again?
He could not stay here indefinitely. He could not keep his men here much longer without arousing suspicion. Washington, D.C., was perhaps the world’s most closely guarded city. There were policemen, spies, federal agents—probing, peering eyes everywhere. If they were looking for Kuchin he might be playing right into their hands. And yet if he left this city without Katie James he had nothing. He would be beaten. It was a guaranteed fate.
He grabbed a remote and turned on the TV. The news was on. The lead story was trouble in Afghanistan for the Americans and their allies. This both made him smile and also conjured up bitter memories of his own country’s devastating defeat in that ancient land.
The woman reporting on this story, he noted, was around fifty. Not the young, long-legged, and often bottle blondes who typically read off the teleprompter and had never been near the war zones they were “reporting” on. Her statements were succinct, informed, and told Kuchin in a short few moments that she knew what she was talking about. He assumed that Katie James, though she was younger and prettier than this woman, had these same attributes. From what he’d read of her background she had certainly been to every global hot spot in the last fifteen years. No teleprompter for her.
He refocused on the TV. Kuchin was anxious to see in more detail what sort of trouble the Americans were in. At least it would take him away from his own problems for a few moments. He had no inkling it would lead to the solution of at least one of those problems.
“This is Roberta McCormick reporting live from Kabul,” said the woman on the screen as she closed out her segment.
The name froze for an instant in Kuchin’s mind.
Roberta McCormick?
He leapt from his chair and raced across the room to where his soft-sided briefcase lay on the desk. He flipped it open and found the list.
On here were the names and addresses of the people who lived in D.C. who were known colleagues of Katie James. Kuchin had his men covering two of the residences because their owners were out of the country. The other two were supposedly in town and thus Kuchin had not allocated any surveillance at those places. He ran his eye down to the last name.
Roberta McCormick. She was supposed to be home but she was in Kabul, thousands of miles away. He had just seen that for himself. She lived in Georgetown, up near R Street, which was just outside the perimeter that Kuchin had set for his men. Her husband had passed away, her children were grown. She lived alone.
But perhaps her home was not empty right now.
CHAPTER
88
MY GOD,” exclaimed Reggie as she and Shaw looked at the interior of the room.
Shaw said, “I feel like I just stepped back in time to the middle of the cold war.”
The lights had come on automatically when they walked into the room.
