Day of Wrath

Thorn restrained his anger until they were outside the terminal and on their way to the embassy car waiting at the curb for them. Then he swung around on Wyatt. “What the hell is wrong with the Russians?

First, we’re almost aced by some of their frigging Mafiya types and then they throw us in the slammer!

Don’t they give a damn about why one of their best officers was murdered?”

The young embassy staffer spread his hands apart. “I’m afraid that’s out of my bailiwick, Colonel. My orders were to bail you out and get you back to the embassy — pronto. The Deputy Chief of Mission wants to see you in his office ASAP” Partly mollified, Thorn pulled open the rear door on the embassy car and held it for Helen. “Fine.” He slid in beside her and said, “Maybe the State Department can light a fire under those idiots in the Kremlin.”

Helen simply shook her head and stared out the window of the car as they sped out of the airport-heading southeast for MOSCOW.

U.S. Embassy, Moscow Randolph Clifford was the Deputy Chief of Mission, the number two man at the American embassy in Moscow. His office, richly furnished with carefully selected czarist-era and American colonial antiques, was meant to endorse his authority, to remind visitors of his position as a high-ranking representative of the U.S. government. It was not meant to serve as the setting for a shouting match.

Colonel Peter Thorn supposed that Clifford, a portly man with a thick mane of white hair, might be called distinguished under less stressful circumstances. Right now, though, the badtempered twist of the diplomat’s mouth and the vein throbbing dangerously on his temple ruined his image as an urbane shaper of American foreign policy.

“Look, Special Agent Gray,” Clifford said in exasperation. “As far as Washington is concerned, the only thing that happened aboard the Star of the White Sea is that two of our citizens stumbled onto a Russian Mafiya drug buy that went sour. It was just an unhappy coincidence that you, the colonel here, and Major Koniev went aboard the ship at that particular time and got caught in the crossfire.” His tone was final, almost dictatorial, but then he was used to having the authority to back up his dictates.

“Is that the story the MVD’s trying to peddle?” demanded Helen angrily, glaring back at the red-faced diplomat with unblinking eyes.

“If so, only a moron would even pretend to believe it!”

Thorn hurriedly tamped down a wry grin. He’d wondered what it would take to shake Helen out of her depression over Alexei Koniev’s death.

He should have guessed it would be contact with one of the State Department’s “best and brightest” at his most obnoxious. Now Thorn was just glad she didn’t still have the Tokarev automatic she’d picked up aboard the Russian freighter. If she’d been armed, he had the feeling Randolph Clifford might already have been on the receiving end of a full eightshot magazine.

Clifford bristled, and then visibly relaxed his facial muscles.

He adopted a more soothing, almost fatherly, tone. “I’ll overlook that unfortunate comment, Miss Gray. You’re overwrought. And I know you’ve been through hell—”

“Don’t patronize me, Mr. Clifford!” Helen interrupted. “What I’m overwrought about, if anything, is the way we, the U.S. government that is, seems to be papering this whole thing over.”

Evidently too mad to sit still, she got up and started pacing the room.

Thorn leaned forward. It was time to stick his own oar in.

“What happened in Pechenga wasn’t an accident, sir. It was a cold-blooded ambush. They were waiting for us.”

“Perhaps so,” the embassy official replied, and clearly glad to talk to him while Helen cooled off. “But the MVD claims that the ambush could have been set up in thirty seconds when one of the Mafiya lookouts spotted you coming down the pier.” He shook his head. “Given the odds against you, I’m still amazed you managed to escape at all.”

Helen snapped, “I’m sure that whoever planned all this is even more amazed!”

Clifford ignored her remark and went on. “You have to view this matter from the Russian perspective, Colonel. The evidence the MVD found aboard that tramp freighter seems quite clear.”

He tapped the bulky manila folder he’d told them contained the official Russian government crime scene report. “First they discover nearly fifty kilos of what looks like heroin in one of the ship’s storage lockers. Then they find out that these drugs are really just milk sugar laced with a small percentage of the real stuff. And finally, they stumble across all nineteen of her crew, including the real Captain Tumarev, gagged and bound with duct tape, shot in the back of the head execution-style, and then dumped in a cargo hold!”

The diplomat shuddered involuntarily, evidently remembering the photographs he’d said were included in the MVD report.

He was a bureaucrat, not a man of action.