Ghosts: A Blackthorn Thriller (The Blackthorn Thrillers Book 4) by R.A. McGee

Author:R.A. McGee [McGee, R.A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Darewood Press
Published: 2022-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

Thirty-One

David Taktarov was already hurting. His day had scarcely begun, and all of him—or at least all the parts of him he could still feel— ached. He’d slept in a different place the night before, not in his familiar home with all the trappings he needed to stay comfortable.

There was the elevator, for instance, large enough to easily get him up and down to his palatial bedroom. These temporary quarters had no elevator. He’d had to rely on his men to carry his chair up the stairs to the owner’s suite.

At his home, the bathroom had a lift near the tub. He could get in it and raise and lower himself into his bath, negating the need for anyone else to be involved. The safehouse had no such accommodation.

Taktarov had skipped his usual nightly bath. He wouldn’t have his men put him in the tub. There were lines that shouldn’t be crossed.

David Taktarov ached, and in his mind he’d cursed Ivan Petrovsky a thousand times. He and Petrovsky had a falling out almost forty years ago, and it had left Taktarov missing ten feet of large and small intestine as well as a kidney, and gaining a severed spinal cord.

A bad day in a bad place.

Taktarov had wondered thousands of times what he could have done to prevent the KGB thug from gutting him like a fish. Paid better attention? Thought the plan through more thoroughly? Maybe watched Petrovsky and been more aware of body language and pre-assault indicators?

In the end, it mattered very little. Because although Taktarov was stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, Petrovsky was confined to a coffin. And Taktarov thought that was a fair trade.

Even though he ached everywhere.

The drive out to the Kaluga International Airport had taken nearly three hours. It resided to the south of Moscow and a bit west. A relic of days gone by, the airport’s design looked like the poster child for old world communism.

The two-story building was badly in need of a paint job, the gray of the sixties peeking through a blue-and-white update from the nineties. It wasn’t the biggest or best airport, but it was the one Taktarov favored. Sure, he could use Sheremetyevo, the closest and largest airport in Moscow. But Kaluga was quiet. People asked fewer questions. And when he wanted his private plane to land, it was no problem to change flight logs or doctor’s records.

That kind of flexibility came in handy to a man like David Taktarov.

The van he was in pulled around the gates that surrounded Kaluga and right onto the tarmac. His plane was already waiting for him. The Gulfstream G550 was a good fit. Big and roomy, but with plenty of speed, and the range to get him where he wanted to go.

And today, he was going to St. Petersburg. There was a doctor there doing interesting things with stem cells and regeneration of the spinal cord. Taktarov had flown the man to Moscow to meet with him several weeks earlier.

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