Absolute Treason (A Jake Mercer Political Thriller—Book 5) by Jack Mars

Author:Jack Mars [Mars, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2024-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Oh, is this Special Agent Mercer? Not his secretary with the CIA? I am surprised. I thought we were no longer on speaking terms.”

“Can it, Kaspov. I need your help.”

“You must really need my help if you’re calling me. Can your friends with the CIA not use their vast knowledge of Russia to help you?”

Jake suppressed an urge to reach through the phone and strangle Kaspov. “The President’s daughter has been kidnapped. There was an attempt on his life this morning. The President happened to be downstairs getting a drink, or he’d be dead right now. Since he wasn’t there, the killer took his daughter instead.”

Kaspov sighed, and the sarcasm disappeared behind true irritation. “This is why I wanted you and I to work together, Special Agent. You are not in your country; you are in mine. Had you not cut me off from the beginning out of superstitious fear that I would try to assassinate him myself, I would have had resources present to address this situation before it got out of hand.”

“Yes,” Jake agreed. “I made a mistake. I will point out, though, that you entered this arrangement intent on demonstrating how much smarter and more capable you were than us. You hacked into my partner’s computer and stole my private phone number. I made a choice to protect the President because you acted disingenuously. In hindsight, that was the wrong choice, but put yourself in my shoes. If the CIA did the same thing to your President, how would you react?”

Kaspov was silent for a moment. Then he said, a little grudgingly. “Fair enough. I am used to playing a different game than you. My reaction would have been entirely appropriate were you CIA, and for the record, any member of a Russian agency would have done the same. I suppose the differences between American agencies are more sharply defined than those between Russian agencies. I can commit to transparency going forward if you can commit to the same.”

“I can.”

“All right, then. Do you have any information on the kidnappers? Anything at all? Age, gender, vehicles, weapons? Even the smallest detail could be important.”

“I have a name.”

“You have a name?”

“Yes. He called me a few minutes ago.”

“Who called you?”

“Nikolai Ivanovich.”

Kaspov remained silent for so long that Jake thought he had hung up. “Kaspov?”

“I’m here.”

Kaspov’s voice was toneless. Nikolai was right. Kaspov knew him.

“Who is he?” Jake asked.

“He is former KGB, like me. He was renowned in the agency for his brilliance and manipulative ability. He could anticipate the moves of his opponents before they knew those moves themselves, and he could create circumstances that forced those moves to work for Russia’s benefit. I won’t share the operations he was involved in, but I will say that if you think of a Soviet success in the latter half of the 1980s, Nikolai probably had a hand in them.”

“What does he do now?”

“He has a security consultant firm, but I don’t know how involved he is with it. He took the dismantling of the Communist Party hard.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.