The Contact (A Lance Spector Thriller Book 7) by Saul Herzog

Author:Saul Herzog
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781990251146
Publisher: AuthorContact
Published: 2023-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

16

Tatyana wasn’t sure how much longer she could sit watching the screen. “It’s like he’s completely taken over,” she said to Laurel. “Even the president won’t interrupt him.” Laurel said nothing. She was standing facing the window now, her back to Tatyana, and it was hard to tell what she was thinking. “Are you all right?” Tatyana said.

“I’m worried,” Laurel said, turning around.

“About Lance?”

Laurel shrugged. “About all of us, I suppose.”

Tatyana looked at the screen. Roth was still standing at the head of the conference table, pontificating like a preacher at the height of a fiery sermon. Around the table, his congregation, the most powerful men and women in the country, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Navy Chief of Operations, the National Security Advisor, even the president himself were looking up at him reverently from their seats. Roth was telling them that Lance was no longer a threat to Osip, but he stopped talking suddenly.

Something was happening off-screen. There was a second camera in the room, and Tatyana switched to it. One of the White House technicians entered the frame, made adjustments to the enormous high-resolution display on the wall, then stepped back from it as if he thought the picture might jump out at him.

“What’s going on?” the president demanded, but before he got an answer, the screen flickered, and the image switched from an overhead satellite view of the Kremlin to what looked like some sort of homemade film set.

“What’s this?” Roth said, turning to the screen. He looked like he was about to say something else, but the image stopped him in his tracks. He stared up at it a second, his mouth literally agape, then turned to the president.

“What in the world?” the president said quietly, rising instinctively to his feet to get a closer look. “What in the world?” he said again, echoing his own words.

It took Tatyana a moment to process too, and it wasn’t until she tapped a few keys on the computer and the footage came up on her own monitor that the reality of it struck her. “Laurel,” she said slowly, “this is something you need to see.”

On the screen, Tatyana stared at what could only be described as the most surreal footage she’d ever seen in her life. President Molotov—it had to be him—on his knees, his hands bound in front of him like a supplicant in prayer, his mouth gagged. He was blubbering, squirming like a tied hog, squinting toward the camera as the full glare of several high-powered spotlights shone back at him mercilessly. On the wall behind him, someone had draped the presidential flag, spattered with blood-red paint, and there was more paint on the ground in front of him.

“That’s an execution scene,” Tatyana said.

Laurel, who was standing next to her now, leaning over her shoulder close enough that Tatyana could feel her breath, said nothing.

Back in the White House, the president stammered, his voice as brittle as glass, “Is that… real?”

Roth cleared his throat,

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