Oath of Office

One could read only so much news. Most of it was lies anyway, even from his own country. He laughed at that — especially from his own country. What little truth got out was incredibly depressing. As if there was not already enough to worry about in Russia, Cherenko was assaulted daily with stories of missing children, brutalized women, and all manner of plague from every corner of the world. This deadly strain of flu in North America was particularly chilling — if the stories about it were true. Perhaps an island off the coast of Oman was not such a bad place to be after all.

The most eventful portion of the mission had so far been the midair ballet south of Moscow. After that, it was just a series of stops and starts to disrupt any trail. They spent one night in Erbil, Iraq, offloading a couple of crates to establish a reason for their flight and give American intelligence an opportunity to take a few photographs of the airplane while it sat on the tarmac. Russia sold many weapons, including T-90 battle tanks, to Iraq, so the presence of a large transport aircraft was hardly noteworthy. The tail numbers had been changed to those of 2967 when they put down in Saratov for “systems check.” They’d also used the opportunity to pass Mikhailov’s body to a waiting GRU cleanup man while still inside Russia for later transfer to an area of the mountains nearer the presumed crash site. They could have dumped him out at altitude, but it would have been problematic if some hiker, or even a military patrol, found the body of a Russian Air Force colonel a thousand kilometers from where his aircraft was supposed to have gone down. Conspiracy theories abounded around vanished aircraft, especially those thought to be carrying nuclear material. There was no point in pouring petrol on the flames.

Landing at the island airbase of Masirah hadn’t been too much of a problem, considering the Antonov’s established record of recent electrical problems. There were few airports in the world that would not allow an aircraft to land with a declared emergency. Oman and Russia were not exactly friends, but they were not enemies, either. One million dollars in medium-denomination bills weighed approximately fifteen pounds. The largesse of a twenty-pound briefcase along with some whispered words about rare antiquities bought a blind eye from even a neutral acquaintance. What did the Omani base commander care if the Russians smuggled a little statuary and art out of Iraq? Cherenko had half hoped the Omani colonel would tell them to move on, or, at the very least, become nosy so they would be forced to fly somewhere else. At least then he’d be in the air instead of loitering on some shithole of an island waiting for further instructions. But the greedy old fool was too busy counting his money.

Cherenko grunted to himself, struck with a sudden idea. He rolled half over in his bed, the oval armed forces ID tags he wore around his neck falling to the side as he reached for his black leather briefcase. He pulled out the small tablet computer and stuffed the ID tags back inside his T-shirt before situating himself against the grimy pillows. Checking his personal bank account would help to pass the time. If converted into cash, it would weigh considerably more than fifteen pounds.

* * *

Dmitry Leskov picked a bread crumb off his longish upper lip and stared up at the headliner of the rented Toyota sedan, happy to be out of the fishy-smelling restaurant. A major in the 45th Guards Independent Reconnaissance, an elite Spetsnaz brigade of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate, he’d never been fond of seafood. Give him a good borscht and maybe a few buckwheat blini with smetana and onion any day. He cared for none of this stuff you had to pry out of its shell to get in your mouth. He and Captain Osin had served together in Chechnya and Ossetia. Disguised as civilians, they’d distinguished themselves during the intervention in Ukraine, earning the trust of their GRU commanders for exceedingly delicate missions on behalf of the motherland.

“This da Rocha character is certainly pompous enough for our purposes,” Osin said, pushing blond bangs to the side of his face before starting the car. He was a capable soldier, Captain Osin, his penchant for farm-boy haircuts notwithstanding.

“Maybe.” Leskov gave a noncommittal shrug. “But I don’t like him. We still need to talk with Don Felipe. He’s no smarter, but certainly more trustworthy. We should mark the Spaniard off our list before we take a gamble on this one.”

“And we will,” Osin said. “You do have a nose for these things. Perhaps da Rocha is CIA, or American military.”

“Perhaps,” Leskov said. “But I doubt even the Americans would stoop to killing Gaspard. Yuri said he was indeed murdered by a woman while sunbathing on the beach. Odd that they would assassinate him so publicly.”