Final Target
Authors: Steven Gore
Tags: #Securities Fraud, #Private Investigators, #Action & Adventure, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Suspense Fiction., #Suspense Fiction, #Thrillers, #San Francisco (Calif.), #Fiction, #Gsafd
Final Target
For Liz,
the love of my life and gentle critic
who taught me the craft of storytelling,
one question mark at a time
More surprising than spinning out of control, than smashing through…
Come on buddy, don’t die on me. Don’t you dare…
The city began to emerge as Gage drove down the…
Stuart Matson, president of SatTek Incorporated, faced Assistant U.S. Attorney William Peterson…
We heard it on the news, boss.”
Let’s start with Edward Granger,” Assistant U.S. Attorney William Peterson said, beginning…
At seven on the morning following Burch’s shooting, Gage displayed…
Assistant U.S. Attorney William Peterson opened an FBI evidence envelope and…
At 9:30 A.M. Gage pulled into a parking space behind…
You ain’t paying me enough to become a floater in…
It never crossed my mind that your two bookends would…
Mr. Hackett, there’s a Mr. Peterson on line one.”
Gage and Spike were working the Take Back the Streets…
That wasn’t so bad, was it, Scoob?” Zink asked as…
Hey, Graham. There’s a rumor going around that the attorney…
Was Fitzhugh a competent guy?” Zink asked Matson as he…
I thought your pal in Washington told you to fold…
Zink looked over his notes from the previous day, wondering…
How’s Matson doing?” Peterson asked, walking into the SatTek room…
Zink telephoned Matson, directing him to an FBI safe house…
Whoever dumped Fitzhugh’s body into the Thames on the day…
When Gage arrived at his office after a futile morning…
Oceanside’s Pleasant Acres wasn’t near the ocean, wasn’t pleasant, and…
Is this how they pumped it up?” Gage asked Alex…
The train is leaving the station,” William Peterson told defense attorney…
Viz was just finishing a large pepperoni and anchovy pizza…
Don’t panic,” Gage said when he dropped his business card…
Mr. Gage, this is Robert Milsberg.”
Twenty-four hours later, Gage was standing in the economy line…
Hixon One, parked down the block from Matson’s flat, gave…
Plump little Totie Fitzhugh had spent the week after her husband’s…
Allo,” the heavy voice spoke into the phone.
They only had eyes for each other,” Mickey told Gage…
Faith was waiting curbside when Gage walked out of the…
Peterson and Zink arrived ten minutes early for their meeting…
The middle-aged foreperson seated at a semicircular raised judge’s bench…
Edward Granger arrived at the driving range of his country club…
A voice mail from Peterson was waiting for Gage when…
You’re right,” Gage said, “the beef chow fun isn’t bad.”
When Gage walked into his office the next morning carrying…
When Gage and his interpreter, Pavel, were invited into the…
Let me get this straight,” Peterson said, his sarcasm reverberating…
Burch was sitting in a reclining chair when Gage and…
Derrell Williams, an ex–FBI special agent who’d worked with Gage for…
Franklin Braunegg was just biting into a BLT when Gage pulled…
I think we’ve got a leak from the grand jury…
Why is somebody keeping Matson alive?” Gage wondered aloud when…
Mickey took it. He just lay there and took it.
Hixon Two called back early the next morning, catching Gage…
Gage called Alex Z into his office after driving in…
Mr. Gage, you’ve got to stop him.”
The ranch-style house on Grizzly Peak Road, high in the…
I’m sorry I sounded so panicky on the phone,” Milsberg…
Westbrae Ventures Executive VP Herb Smothers was wiping his mouth…
Can you come to the lab?”
Alex Z designed business cards for Gage and Blanchard and…
We’ve done everything we can,” Peterson said when he stopped…
Matson arrived for his dinner meeting with Mr. Green and Mr. Black,…
Gage rolled out of bed at 6 A.M. and called…
Mr. Green returned Matson’s calls when he arrived back from Switzerland.
Are you ready for a little work?” Gage began his…
Gage’s flight landed at Borispol Airport fifty kilometers west of…
When Gage walked into Kiev’s Pechersk Restaurant, he found that…
At 9 A.M. Gage and Ninchenko entered a battered Volkswagen…
Lovers’ quarrel,” Ninchenko said after he disconnected his cell phone.
Ninchenko bumped Gage with his elbow as they drove toward…
I think they finally made up,” Gage said to Ninchenko,…
Ninchenko and Gage drove back toward the apartment, leaving Ninchenko’s…
Midnight shadows dominated the wide boulevard sweeping through the heart…
Low clouds hanging over Dnepropetrovsk muted the daylight that met…
At 7:15 P.M. Gravilov’s car reappeared at the hotel. Gravilov,…
The sun broke through the previous day’s cloudy remnants as…
In the early evening, Hixon One was reclining in his…
A white-coated doctor waited in the darkness just off the…
Gage and Alla returned to the hospital in early afternoon.
Mr. Green? This is Mr. Black.”
Special Agent Zink was waiting near the customs scanners when…
Peterson called seconds after Gage sat down in his office…
Alex Z was sitting cross-legged on the landing in front…
At 3 P.M. Gage turned off the main highway onto…
I’ve got him stashed,” Gage told Peterson across the conference…
Burch and Gage stared at the flames consuming oak logs…
Just after sunrise Gage returned from the FBI’s Northern California…
Eighteen Months Earlier
M
ore surprising than spinning out of control, than smashing through the railing, than tumbling trunk-over-hood down the hillside; more surprising even than the sheet metal buckling around her, was that she was dying in English. The woman tried to die in Russian, then in Ukrainian, but the words had forsaken her. Even her given name had fled into the swirling dust at the bottom of the ravine. She remembered only what others called her: Katie.
Katie grieved the loss of the inner voice of her childhood, as she knew would her parents, then comforted herself with the knowledge that they’d never find out.
The police officers standing with an interpreter at their apartment door would say she died instantly, sparing them the horror that their only child suffered any final thoughts at all.
In truth, she felt no horror. Nor panic. Nor dread.
There was just the rush of wind in the eucalyptus, as if an overture to the passing of her life before her eyes.
But her mind drifted not into the past, but to another place in her present: her SatTek coworkers gathering a mile away, under coastal redwoods surrounded by acres of spring grass. She wondered whether they would miss her, backtrack along the twisting road when she didn’t answer her cell phone, or notice the broken railing as they drove home sunburned and bleary-eyed, then scramble down the hillside to find her body. She wished she could freshen her makeup and comb her hair, just in case.
Katie inspected the red soil blanketing the gray vinyl interior, then looked through her burst side window at dust dancing and gliding in a beam of morning sunlight. She heard the rustling of tiny feet in dry leaves. Perhaps a rabbit, a gray squirrel, or a finch returning to its work, pecking at wildflower seeds scattered by the three thousand pounds of steel and glass that had thrashed the hillside.
A warm gust churned the air. She smelled her mother’s kitchen in the bay leaves sweating in the overhanging branches and in the sage and fennel crushed by her car. She then saw herself at the dining table a month earlier, hunched over her laptop, heart pounding, typing a San Francisco address, and then later, hands shaking as she slid a letter into the corner mailbox.
Dear Mr. Special Agent in Charge:
The president of Surveillance and Targeting Technologies of San Jose, California, is engaged in a massive—
Which of them knew? Which of those she saw in her mind’s eye just a mile away, starting charcoal, setting up
volleyball nets, pinning down the corners of tablecloths with ketchup and mustard bottles. Those men tossing footballs and glancing over at the women in little outfits they’d never worn to the office. The women trying not to giggle at white nerd-legs stuck into brown socks and clearance-rack Nikes or stare too long at the Cancún-bronzed chests of the men from the loading dock.
Which of them knew?
A chill vibrated through her body.
Which of them knew that she knew?
The lenses of her eyes changed focus from the thistles and nettles beyond the fractured windshield to the pale green Tupperware lying upside-down on the dashboard, her potato salad still sealed inside. Wasted. Even back home in Lugansk among the collapsed coal mines, even in the worst of times, no one wiped off blood to eat the food of the dead. It would be—
What did Father Roman say?
It would be like eating the bread of the Eucharist without the sacrament.
Katie closed her eyes, her shallow breath once again infused with bay and sage and fennel—then a wrenching vertigo, as if she’d been tossed from a sailboat twisting in a hurricane.
My name…I need…to know…my name.
She wanted to smile when it finally reached out to her from the whirlwind…
Ekaterina.
But there wasn’t time.
