AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Alekseyev looked sheepish and nodded.
Erin glanced from me to him and back again. She finally settled on me.
“Can I speak to you for a moment?”
I nodded and followed her, while Feo, Dinara, and West gathered around Alekseyev menacingly.
Erin and I stopped near the open door to the old kitchen.
“Are you seriously suggesting we abduct Valery Alekseyev?”
“Not abduct. Assist him to defect,” I replied.
Her skeptical look would have withered most people.
“He knows the alternative is death if he stays here.” I wasn’t exaggerating. Private’s Moscow staff was made up of former police officers, Special Forces, and intelligence operatives. Some of them would be far less forgiving than I was. “And he gets prison in the States if he refuses to cooperate and I manage to get him in front of a judge. Defection is the least bad option.”
“So you’re giving us the director of the SVR?” Erin asked.
I nodded.
“And you’re happy with him being allowed to live?”
I hesitated. “I’ll be honest—a large part of me wanted to kill him, but that wouldn’t have brought anyone back. And a man like this doesn’t fear death. But treachery, to be known as Russia’s most infamous traitor, to go from patriot to villain … that will make him suffer for the rest of his life.”
Erin gazed at Alekseyev whose eyes betrayed his fear and distress.
“Alright, Mr. Morgan,” she said. “We just need to get him out of Moscow before the Kremlin shuts down Russia to find him.”
CHAPTER 102
ERIN WENT INTO what must once have been the manager’s office and shut the door to give herself privacy as she made some calls.
West and I returned Alekseyev to the back of the Transporter and he looked at me with defiance as I set him down on his side.
“Keep looking at me like that and I’ll get Feodor in here. He took an armful of lead from your goons. I’m sure he’d like to share his pain with you.”
Alekseyev turned away. I checked his gag wouldn’t stop him breathing, climbed out of the truck, and slammed the doors shut.
“It’s a bold move,” West remarked as we walked round to the front of the Transporter. “Kidnapping the director of the SVR.”
“Helping him defect,” I countered.
“Yeah,” West scoffed. “He’s defecting.”
Feo and Dinara were chatting quietly in Russian when we joined them.
“I heard what you said to him,” Feo told me. “And I would very much like some time alone with the director.”
“Not going to happen,” I replied. “You need to go to hospital. Get yourself some proper medical attention. Promise me you’ll take him,” I said to Dinara.
“I promise. We would have left already if he wasn’t so stubborn,” she replied.
“I don’t trust these American Marines if there’s trouble,” rumbled Feo. “They don’t look very robust.” He stared at West, who wasn’t amused. “No offence meant.”
“Plenty taken,” West said. “But I’m going to let it slide because I’m sure it’s just the morphine talking. I’m feeling quite hazy myself.”
“You had morphine? Huh. I had no painkillers, American,” Feo responded. “Just antiseptic. I wanted to be sharp.”
