A Better Spy, page 1
A BETTER SPY
AN E.M.P. TECHNOTHRILLER
BOOK 2
RICHARD DEGRANDPRE
Copyright © 2024 by Richard DeGrandpre
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
A Better Spy by Richard DeGrandpre published by Sad Story Press Ltd, 434 New North Road, Auckland, New Zealand 1021
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
More information about the author can be found at: degrandpre.substack.com
Cover by Rick Ochet
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
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About the Author
Artificial intelligence is the future—not just for Russia, but for all humankind. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.
Vladimir Putin
CHAPTER
ONE
Braving a Moscow thunderstorm, a young mother holding a toddler bundled in a blanket emerged from the apartment lobby. She used her shoulder to push the broken automatic door against the unrelenting headwind. A man in workwear hurried forward to seize the door, opening it fully to give them more room. "Dobroe utro," she said to him, her head down and her umbrella coming up. She carried on past him into the morning bluster.
Once inside, the man bypassed the elevator, taking the stairs two at a time despite the drenched work pants he wore along with his leather jacket. At the fourth-floor landing, he paused a moment to grab an aluminum stepladder he had stowed in the stairwell a few days earlier. "Sobstvennost' upravlyayushchego zdaniem” was stenciled on its side in black paint: “Property of the building manager.”
With the paint-spattered prop in hand, he continued up several more flights, his mind clear and his blood pumping as he opened the fire door to enter the hallway. It was just after 9:30 p.m. Nobody was about.
He rested the ladder against the wall opposite door 902, ensuring it was clearly visible from the peephole. Instead of knocking, the man put his back up against the wall beside the door and kicked the bottom of the door with the heel of his boot. He turned on a voice recording he had saved on his phone, the voice of the half-deaf woman living next door. The sound filled the hallway, a snippet from their recent chat about her leaky plumbing that needed fixing.
He moved the phone’s speaker closer to the doorjamb, waiting for Matt Hendrix to appear. He knew the CIA operative was at home, as the BMW he drove was still sitting in the lot where it had been parked the previous afternoon.
A thump on the door came from inside the apartment a few seconds later. The door swung open.
Hendrix stepped out in boxers, a wife beater, and black socks. The American was unshaven and looked hung-over. He also looked angry and suspicious. “Chyo za khren-ah-ten?” he said, meaning: "What’s all this fucking noise?" He looked past the man, searching the hallway for the neighbor. Not seeing her, he took a harder look at the rain-soaked worker standing there with the ladder. The confusion on Hendrix’s face turned to concern for a split second, then there was a flash of stunned realization:
“Pavlovich!”
CHAPTER
TWO
“Tell me he’s on the move,” said CIA officer Bill Estes as he answered the call from his long-time Russian colleague, Nadya Samutsevich.
“We don’t know, but you better get over there, now,” said Nadya.
Ten months had passed since she and her Moscow security firm had been contracted by the CIA to help hunt down some stolen nuclear material, and those who had stolen it. She had subsequently helped diffuse an unfolding nuclear situation that had started with Konstantin Pavlovich in Kazakhstan and had ended with him in D.C. Now her firm was at it again, back in Russia, also at the request of Estes and the CIA.
There was a pause as Nadya could hear Estes hollering on a busy Moscow street, “taksi!”
“Okay, I’m on my way,” said Estes, fighting the wind to get the door shut. “My guess is about twenty minutes. What’s happening?”
“Pavlovich slipped out early this morning, undetected. My team is on the way, but the rain has them stuck in rush hour traffic. So probably arriving sometime after you. Sorry, Bill.”
“What was his last reported sighting?”
As Estes waited for a reply, he leaned forward to instruct the driver to speed up. “Bystree, bystree,” he said.
“He arrived where he is staying around midnight last night,” said Nadya. “Surveillance cameras were all fully operational, which suggests he must have climbed out a window and gone up and over the roof before daybreak.”
“Oh, Christ,” said Estes, “in this weather? And Hendrix, what do we know there?”
“No change. He’s been back in the capital now eight days—still on, how do you say… a bender. Far as we can tell, he’s spending nights alone at his flat.”
“Any idea when Pavlovich made your surveillance team?”
“No. He’d given no sign of suspecting anything, but then he wouldn’t would he?”
“Alas, he would not,” said Estes. “If we miss the party we’re still going to have to clean up the mess.”
“They’re standing by.”
“And we still have no intel on what Pavlovich is planning for after,” said Estes.
“He didn’t bring much with him, so perhaps he’ll retreat back to the country house. Worst-case scenario, Mossad reaches out and he disappears again.”
“Okay, let’s get a team back to that house, just in case we’re not that unlucky.”
“I’ll call in a favor from an old colleague in the menty if need be, Bill, as this is my bad. We can resume contact if we locate him on CCTV.”
“This is the end of a long road for him,” said Estes.
“It is. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking he knows we’ve been on him, but he can’t be sure why.”
“And…?”
“And who knows, Pavlovich is a not like anyone else, we can’t generalize.”
“So…?”
“I don’t know. I just have this feeling he’ll want to know why—to know what’s going on.”
“Okay, that would be weird, but if you think so, then it’s possible.”
“Well, I was wrong about him last time, when it mattered most. But hopefully this is all academic and we’ll be on that train sometime later this morning.”
“Yes, at least the waiting is over,” said Nadya.
“True. A few days more and we would have had to call it off. Okay, Nadya, the driver has earned his extra thousand rubles, so I’m almost there. See you on the other side.”
Estes disconnected.
CHAPTER
THREE
As the name “Pavlovich” left his mouth, Hendrix turned and bolted back into his apartment, undoubtedly in pursuit of the pistol he now regretted leaving behind.
Pavlovich watched this act of desperation as he reached into his jacket. Out came a silenced Makarov PM. Small caliber, low velocity, and quiet; well suited to the task of inflicting bodily harm without risking immediate incapacitation or death. He extended his arm slowly and fired off a round, hitting Hendrix in the back of the left knee. The American went down hard, collapsing face-first onto the Persian rug that lay over the hardwood floor. Pavlovich stepped forward, holstering his pistol with the practiced ease of a professional assassin he certainly was not. Hendrix was futilely reaching now for the handgun he had left sitting on the white leather ottoman.
Pavlovich seized the ankle of the injured leg and dragged him off the rug, leaving a long streak of blood behind, like a fresh brushstroke of paint across the floor. He hauled him to the center of the room and swung him around to face the door—but he under
Both men were down.
Aware he was facing certain death, Hendrix scrambled frantically to get to Pavlovich and subdue him. Growling like an injured soldier on a blood-soaked battlefield, he closed the distance quickly but froze when he found himself face to face with the same pistol. He hesitated just long enough for Pavlovich to draw it back and strike him across the head. Knocked back onto his side, Hendrix was out.
Pavlovich got up and closed the door. Taking a closer look around the open-plan apartment, he could see that no one else was there. The bright but sparse unit had few personal effects. In the lounge, where Hendrix now lay, was an empty bottle of scotch and a few takeout containers. In one was a pair of black lacquer chopsticks.
The SIG Sauer P229 remained well out of reach.
Pavlovich waited and watched as Hendrix slowly come to, wondering if shooting him in the other knee was going to be necessary.
“Sergei Glinka,” said Pavlovich, presenting Hendrix with the name of someone dear to him who was killed recently because he knew too much.
“The prison guard?” said Hendrix after a minute, in Russian, not bothering to look up as he tried to get on top of the pain. “What’s he got to do with anything?”
“You’re going to tell me why he was killed.”
“How should I know? Moscow station helped field an operation last year and he was taken out. Professional work. I wasn’t there and it wasn’t us who killed him. It doesn’t work that way.”
Pavlovich pressed his foot against Hendrix’s knee, causing the American to cried in pain. "Why not do yourself a favor and tell me the truth?"
Hendrix shook his head. “The report I saw was all dead ends.”
Squatting down, Pavlovich reached his left hand around Hendrix’s face, covering the agent’s mouth securely by pulling him back against himself. Hendrix resisted furiously but Pavlovich applied more pressure as he reached over and shot Hendrix point-blank in the other knee. Hendrix screamed wildly, his cries muffled by Pavlovich’s firm hand.
After a minute, alternating between more muted cries and angry growls, Hendrix surrendered to his situation and began sobbing.
“Don’t worry,” said Pavlovich. “I promise you the same mercy you showed me all those years ago.”
He let go of Hendrix and the man slumped over onto the wooden floor, whimpering.
“And I don’t want to hear about any report,” Pavlovich said as he got up. “The dead ends were because you were behind it. You were the dead end.”
After a minute, Hendrix had said nothing more.
“I came early so we would have all day,” added Pavlovich.
“It was Mossad, okay?” said Hendrix in a barely audible voice, breathing erratically. “They’re the ones who set it up. They shot him.”
“Perhaps,” said Pavlovich. “But it was you who tipped them off, or have you forgotten? You told Mossad that Glinka was a loose end—that he knew about my rendition. All lies—he knew nothing.”
“What does it matter? It was forever ago.”
“Thanks to you, I have a leg that won’t let me forget.”
“You’re a deadman, anyway,” said Hendrix.
“Oh, is that right?” said Pavlovich.
“I got a call early this morning, said you were coming and to give you a message.”
“And still you opened the door.”
“I fell back asleep and forgot all about it. Until I saw you.”
“You drink too much. What was the message?”
“As I said; you’re a deadman. Somebody knew you were coming. So I recommend you stop worrying about ancient history and start worrying about them.”
“Maybe they expected you to do the killing, but you screwed it up. Did you think of that?”
Hendrix was having trouble staying focused. “I have nothing more to say except that I need a drink and you’re making a big mistake.”
Pavlovich stood, drawing his pistol. "It’s a real disappointment," he said, "coming all this way to kill a man, only to find he’s already dead."
“Drop it, Pavlovich,” came a voice in Russian from behind, from the direction of the door.
Pavlovich spun around to fire at the voice but saw it was Estes, the CIA officer, hands down and unarmed. The pressure on the trigger was the tiniest fraction of an ounce from firing. Pavlovich turned back to Hendrix and shot him twice, once in the chest and once in the head.
“Are you done?” said Estes, this time in English.
Pavlovich turned and glared at Estes, trembling with an excess of adrenaline. Getting ahold of himself, he bent over and sat the pistol on Hendrix’s chest.
“Come on,” said Estes. “We’ve got a train to catch.”
“What about him?” said Pavlovich.
“He looks dead to me.”
“Yeah, but…”
“But nothing. Room service has been called. Come on!”
CHAPTER
FOUR
“Aiyee!” said FBI agent Michelle Marsh, waking to a piercing alarm in her ears. An emergency mobile alert had just been sent to her phone, relayed to the augmented reality headset she was wearing.
The text of the alert appeared immediately before her:
Emergency Alert: Tsunami Warning for the East Coast of New Zealand (Aotearoa), including Gisborne and Hawke's Bay.
This is an urgent tsunami warning. A powerful earthquake has occurred in the South Pacific. A tsunami is expected to impact the eastern coastlines of the NZ North Island. You must take immediate action.
Despite the rude awakening, Marsh felt groggy and disoriented. The confusion was not just from nodding off in the middle of the fight, or from the extra benzodiazepine she had taken with a second glass of wine. It was the alert. After all, she was not in New Zealand. She was not even on terra firma.
Inbound to New York, it was only her second time using one of the AR headsets, a perk of flying business class—something Marsh had earned by cashing in all her Airpoints from bureau flights. The movie she had been streaming continued to play, but the tsunami alert covered up both the image and the sound. She reached to remove the headset, but a new notification flashed before her. She froze, the name grabbing her attention. It was an email from her father. The subject line read:
Great news!
“What the hell?” said Marsh aloud. Her father had been dead for over two years. Before she could remove the device to get to the bottom of the nonsense, more email notifications started appearing, one after another, at dizzying speed. She tried to focus on any one of them, to see what they were about—then the screen went blank, throwing her into darkness. When the lights came back on, what Marsh saw and heard was total panic. Looking around, everyone in the cabin was screaming and scrambling as if the plane were on fire.
Marsh tore off the headset, practically removing an ear, ready to aid in the crisis. Immediately she realized her rookie mistake: none of it was real.
Having dropped back into the unplugged world, all the simulated sights and sounds of the malfunctioning headset were swept away. A blanket of white noise still hummed faintly in the background, but everything else was dark and eerily quiet. The other passengers remained seated—long haul zombies either asleep or plugged into their own AR—leaving Marsh feeling unexpectedly alone and embarrassed by her confusion.
Discombobulated, she reached in her front pocket to remove her phone. Maybe she had been dreaming all along, she told herself. Of course she had, the world was not coming apart. It had probably been all the interagency briefings she had been reading. They dealt with domestic and foreign cybersecurity threats. That stuff always left her feeling vulnerable.
Marsh took a sip of water and told herself to sit back and relax—to try and get some rest. No more of the AR headset, that was for sure. After a few restorative breaths, she heard a strange buzzing sound in the cabin, like something she had never heard before. Then a shimmer seemed to vibrate its way down the fuselage. The few cabin lights that were on went out, plunging her back into darkness, this time for real. Even the electronically dimmable windows lost their tinting. Looking out hers, to check on the engine, a nervous Marsh could just make out the outline of a wing. With nothing outside to illuminate the plane, it was as if she were aboard a ghost ship that had crossed into another dimension.
