The Alpha Deception (16 page)

“Lucky this guy’s got a beard,” he said, rearranging his hair. “I really didn’t want to shave mine.” He looked to see Natalya gathering up her things. “Where you headed from here?”

“Bangkok,” she replied matter-of-factly, “to meet with an apparently desperate aide of Raskowski who seems eager to talk. I would have been there already, if not for the detour necessitated by your involvement.”

“Please accept my apologies.”

“Only if you’ll accept my hand in good luck. One of us has to succeed. Otherwise both our countries will pay.”

McCracken emerged from the run-down hotel dressed in baggy white trousers and a slightly soiled white, unstructured jacket. He had combed out his beard to give it an unkempt look and picked his wavy hair for the same effect. A series of makeup shades mixed together produced the necessary native flesh tone and hid his more noticeable scars nicely. He would have to be careful about smiling, though, for the man whose place he would be taking had a gold tooth in the front. Blaine had wedged a crinkled, floppy hat into his back pocket, ready for wear as the final element of his disguise. The real delivery man was not known to wear one but some improvisations were needed if he was to get close to Fass.

Natalya’s information had spotted Megilido Fass on a huge estate in the Khania section of the island of Crete, specifically in Sfakia. Every Thursday a man named Manolokis took a ferry from southern Greece across the Mediterranean to the port of Khania. He always drove a white van, the windows of which were darkened to keep the curious from observing the merchandise he was retained to deliver once a week. Blaine would be waiting for him to arrive in Khania after flying in from Athens. The switch would have to be made with a minimum of fuss and even then Blaine would still have his work cut out for him in gaining access to Fass.

His parting with Natalya had been stiff and wholly professional. He admired her ability to distance herself from her mission. She had come to Greece only to save Blaine’s life and set him straight on what they were facing. This done, she could leave knowing they would in all probability never meet again. Blaine couldn’t accept that, though he sorely wished he could. After the pain of finding T.C. in New York, he felt certain he would never be able to feel close to a woman again. And yet, strangely, Natalya reminded him of T.C. so much that he couldn’t help but be attracted to her. She was strong, independent, and mysterious in the same ways that Blaine had always thought of T.C. He tried to probe Natalya’s mystery by comparing her to himself. While he wore his emotions like an old suit, tattered but open to view, she held hers within, her stoic seriousness as much a survival mechanism as his often misplaced sense of humor. Blaine didn’t doubt she was hiding a hurt so deep that it powered her single-mindedness.

Blaine started down the street, doing his best to blend with the large number of people out on a beautiful Athens Thursday morning. He had plenty of time before catching his flight across the Mediterranean and figured his best use of it would be to phone Sundowner. The best means to do so was to make his way to a top-rated hotel with a smooth-working long-distance service. Twenty minutes later, he had checked into the Athens Hilton. It was another twenty minutes before a long-distance line was available.

“Good morning, Blaine,” Sundowner said cheerfully from halfway around the world.

“Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“The Toy Factory never sleeps. How goes your search for Atragon?”

“Not in hand yet, but drawing closer. Actually I’m calling about some complications I’ve encountered along a different line.”

“Such as?”

“Suffice it to say I’ve linked up with a foreign operative with as big a stake in this as ours. She told me an interesting story about a Farmer Boy the Soviets placed in America and have been running ever since.”

“A
child
spy?”

“Now all grown up with the ear of the President.”

“Christ… .”

“I think we can safely rule
him
out for the time being. But the existence of a mole would explain our problems in New York, Sundance. In fact, it would explain a hell of a lot. Go over the members of the crisis committee for me again.”

“William Wyler Stamp, CIA director. George Kappel, Secretary of Defense. And Edmund Mercheson, Secretary of State.”

“Eliminate Stamp. He fell into this position by accident and no one goes anywhere after running the Company these days. Tell me about Kappel.”

“Very hawkish. His philosophy’s a bit archaic in view of the proposed treaties, or maybe it isn’t since the whole peace process has fallen on its ass. In Washington they call Kappel a survivor. Administrations come and go, but he always manages to hang on.”

“And Mercheson?”

“A dove. Next to the President, he’s the most unpopular man in the country, according to polls, since the disarmament treaties collapsed. People feel he cheated them, made the country give up too much only to be taken in by the Soviets who didn’t want peace to begin with. I guess people look at him and expect him to work the same magic Kissinger did. No chance.”

“I assume Mercheson is career Washington as well.”

“Not as openly as Kappel but, yes, that would be an understatement. He’s been around forever and promises to be around a while longer. I’m pretty good with a computer, Blaine,” Sundowner added after a pause. “I can quietly go over their full files with the proverbial fine-tooth CRT screen.”

“Don’t bother. The truth’s been buried too deep for anyone to ever find. This is the Soviet version of the deep-cover plant. They wouldn’t have made any mistakes with their Farmer Boy.”

Something occurred to Sundowner.

“They may have made one,” he said. “Mercheson grew up on a farm in Michigan.”

Manolokis was sweating inside the steaming white van as the ferry rolled over the waves of the Mediterranean. The port of Khania had finally come into sharp view. Manolokis dreaded these Thursday voyages, but he kept making them because the pay was impossible to refuse. So much for so little work. Every week a new shipment and another cash payment. He sometimes wondered what happened to the previous week’s shipment, but he tried to think about it as little as possible. Part of his job was to ask no questions.

Manolokis gave in to temptation and rolled down the window on the driver’s side of the van.

“Stay silent,” he commanded the young passengers behind him, “or I’ll cut off your balls.”

He would round them up from various Mediterranean cities over the course of the week for delivery on Thursday. They were beggar boys willing to do anything for a decent meal and a few pennies. Manolokis promised them much more. A home. A life. For a time anyway, though he never elaborated on that. Four or five every week between the ages of eleven and fifteen. Since they were homeless or runaways, no one noticed when they disappeared.

Manolokis did his best never to consider the ramifications of what he had become involved in; it was too late to pull out in any event. His employer was not a man to cross, nor were the men Manolokis dealt with directly. Megilido Fass kept a tight net over the goings on in his Sfakia villa. News that came in never went out.

The same could be said for the merchandise Manolokis was charged with delivering.

He dozed briefly in the heat, until he was awakened by the bump of the ferry grazing the dock of the port.
At last,
he thought. Manolokis stretched, his sweat-soaked pants and white linen jacket clinging to the seat. He rolled up the window, turned on the engine, and switched the blessed air-conditioning back on.

There were never any questions when Manolokis drove off the ferry. The authorities who might have raised them were almost certainly on Fass’s payroll as well. This was Crete, after all. Fass owned it.

The van bucked slightly as it passed from dock to roadway. Manolokis would be in Khania proper only briefly, soon swinging east to Vryses and then toward the south coast to the region of Sfakia and Fass’s villa. At the end of the port district a shepherd was driving his goats across the road. Manolokis sat back to wait for the herd to pass.

A knocking came on the window. Manolokis turned to see a beggar wielding a tin cup. He shooed the man away without paying further heed. The knocking came again. Manolokis looked longer. The darkened windows made seeing out almost as difficult as seeing in and he decided it would be best to deal with the beggar through an open window anyway. Bastard deserved a good smack in the face for bothering him. He should report him to Fass’s people. Bastard would probably lose his hands for the effort.

“Look,” Manolokis started, “I don’t know who—”

And stopped, just like that. Because the man outside the van was no beggar. It was …
him,
could have been a twin. The same face he saw regularly in the mirror except when it smiled no gold tooth flashed. Manolokis saw the twin’s hand lash forward through the open window. He remembered trying to recoil and nothing else.

An instant later Blaine McCracken opened the door and climbed inside. Swiftly he pushed the unconscious Greek’s body from the seat and took his place behind the wheel.

Blaine checked the rearview mirror. Five frightened faces glared back at him, teenage boys cowering in their seats. A few began to spit words out quickly in Greek, too quick for Blaine to follow them.

“Sorry,” he shrugged, “don’t speak the language too well, but I do speak another.”

He pulled the van onto a side street and climbed out, beckoning the boys to follow him. They resisted for a moment, confused, even angry, but one by one they came forward. As they stepped toward Blaine, he handed each boy five worn American dollar bills, more money than any of them had ever seen before. The beggar boys gathered together to share their shock and then glee, jumping up and down and babbling away joyously, ultimately hugging McCracken with thanks all at once. He fought them off as best he could but they stubbornly clung to him. Blaine finally managed to force them off with instructions in decent Greek for them to be on their way. The boys resisted, then at last moved off together as McCracken climbed back into the van.

Five minutes later, the bound and gagged body of Manolokis abandoned in the nearby brush, Blaine headed south. The ride would be long and the roads unfamiliar, but the route to Fass’s villa outside of Sfakia was reasonably straight and Natalya’s directions were precise. His Heckler and Koch was history, lost the night before on some Athens street, and Natalya had done her best to fill the gap with a pair of Brin 10 semiautomatic pistols. The substitution was acceptable and Blaine had stowed both of his fresh pistols under the seat.

He knew little about the part of Crete he was heading toward. Natalya had mentioned only a countryside rich in history and containing a subterranean well of ancient caves. Of Fass’s villa little was known other than its hugeness. Fass himself was a mystery man, a smuggler of anything if the price was right. His perverted sexual leanings were the only thing known of him for sure and this the authorities did nothing about. Crete was his territory, its lavish beauty in direct contrast with the evil of a man who many believed to be a direct descendant of the devil.

It was two hours before McCracken found the private road that would take him to Fass’s villa. Video cameras rotating from their tree posts signaled its location even as they tracked his arrival. He guessed there would be plenty of guards lining the road as well, but they would be well hidden and would appear only if the vehicle seeking entry was deemed a threat.

Several miles back Blaine had stuffed the Brin 10s in his belt beneath his baggy linen jacket. His last touch was to put on the floppy, crinkled hat and tilt it just enough over his eyes to put them in shadows. He steadied himself with a deep breath as the entrance to Fass’s villa, a huge white stone gate, appeared before him. The guards on either side seemed to recognize the van and paid it little heed as he approached.

He cracked the window a few inches as he drew closer, braking the van to a walking clip. The guards never moved. The gate began to swing electronically open and they waved him through.

The courtyard is very large. A fountain, beautifully manicured lawns and shrubbery. Follow the driveway to the left where it winds in a semicircle before Fass’s mansion. The procedure is for the guards to meet the van and take delivery of the contents. From that point you’re on your own.

Natalya’s description of the villa was absolutely precise. She had left out only its true magnitude. It was certainly one of the largest houses Blaine had ever seen, built entirely of white stone.

McCracken speeded up the van as he headed toward the circular drive in the front of the mansion. At the same time, he lifted one hand from the steering wheel and pulled a razor blade from the dashboard where he had left it. For the rest of his plan to work, the mansion guards would have to be distracted enough not to notice he wasn’t the real Manolokis. Bringing the razor blade to his forehead, he made a quick slice in an old scar. Blood began pouring out instantly, dripping into his eyes. Perfect. Nothing beat blood for a distraction.

He was honking the horn when he screeched the van to a halt directly before the double entrance doors.

“Help! Help!” he called, throwing himself clumsily out of the van and making sure there was ample blood on his sleeves as well. The guards were running up. “They forced me off the road, took the boys!”

“Who?” the lead guard demanded in Greek.

“Fass! I must see Fass!”

McCracken was counting on the element of surprise once he was escorted into Fass’s chamber. A quick motion to draw his guns or knife and the Greek would be at his mercy. All the guards in the world would do him no good.

The guards were leading him into the mansion.

“He’ll be angry, I know,” McCracken continued, making no effort to clear away the blood from his face. “But it wasn’t my fault. He’ll have to understand that… .”

They had reached a huge circular stairwell and ascended it toward the mansion’s second floor. The hallway at the top was long and curving. Guards flanked him on either side as they led him down it. Blaine kept his breathing rapid in mock panic but inside he was calming himself to his task.