Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction by Allen Guelzo (self help books to read TXT) 📕

even glance at the cottage. Daria stepped away from the curtain. She sat on her bed, pulled out her laptop from her backpack and began to search for short term home rentals.

Lost in Hassocks, a few miles away from Daria’s cottage, the driver of the Fiesta pulled into the curb to await instructions. He was one of four FSB drivers out that morning patrolling the roads leading into Ditchling. He had radioed in his sighting and then one of the other FSB drivers had picked Kirov up on the Hassocks to Ditchling road. Shadowed her, saw the bike slow down and was adroit enough to follow on foot to see Daria wheel the bike behind a cottage. The information had been relayed to the team and all but one began to program their GPS units for a return to London. One surveillance team would stay in the area. The Fiesta driver hit ‘home’ on his GPS and smiled to himself, “We got the bitch. Colonel Kamenev will be most pleased.” He put his car in gear and he too drove away.

Russian Embassy

Kamenev ended the call on his secure desk phone and smiled with self-satisfaction. So, after weeks of searching, his team had finally found the slippery Kirov woman. She was another traitor, no surprise as she wore a traitor’s name. Kamenev knew the story; Sergei Kirov, Stalin’s chosen man in Leningrad, was assassinated by a mysterious gunman. Although Stalin denied complicity, it was he who benefitted from his potential rival’s death, even using it to purge the party of those less than true believers. Kamenev smiled as his poured a cup of hot tea from the traditional samovar that graced his office credenza. He respected the work of Stalin and Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, a forerunner to his own organisation. The NKVD were devoted to the party, to the state, and especially to the man who ruled it and Kamenev felt a kindred spirit with them.

Kamenev was totally devoted to the former KGB man who now ruled from the Kremlin. Putin had returned a pride to the country and had won the country a new degree of international respect. Kamenev liked the feeling that Russia was once again a great power, one with influence, one to be feared and if the ephemeral trappings of democracy and a free press had been sacrificed to attain Russia’s rightful place in the world, then so be it. Russians liked to be ruled by a strong man who possessed an iron fist. Ms Kirov, who had been tireless in her opposition to the Kremlin, would soon be crushed by that iron fist of the Motherland. The prospect gave Kamenev a sense of joy. There was a knock on his door and a small, pretty, red-headed woman entered.

“Sit,” Kamenev said with a smile and motioned to the chair opposite across his desk. “I know you Irish are great lovers of tea, would you care for a cup?”

“Not if it is that Russian shite,” the unsmiling assassin replied in a broad working-class Dublin accent.

Kamenev’s smile slipped. He took the afront personally and wanted to slap the woman opposite him but instead took a deep breath, he needed this uncultured woman, she was one of the best.

“Okay,” he said through a rictus-like fake smile. “Let’s get down to business. The Kirov woman has been found and her literary agent may be interested in getting a meeting with you in your journalist guise. But, before that, I have another job for you.”

“Oh yes,” the assassin said with real interest.

“Yes, here in London. And I think you’re going to like it,” Kamenev said.

The assassin tuned her face slightly, “And why would that be?”

“Because one of the targets is a former British soldier.”

The assassin smiled, “I would like that. I’d almost say that I’d do that for free, but I won’t. I’m assuming this will be for my usual fee with the additional tariff for a quick job?”

Kamenev nodded. He watched a slight smile emerge at the sides of the assassin’s almost clenched lips. He was more than willing to employ her and to work with her, but he didn’t like her. He couldn’t help but wonder what had driven this hard and unpleasant young woman to become a ruthless killer.

***

Gagnon looked at his official phone’s screen after another incessant ‘ping’ of a text. It was his Ottawa office, Canadian Military Intelligence. He ignored the message, the latest in a number of texts and such emails demanding to know what he was doing and to get in contact with his home office or MI5. He buried the phone deep into a coat pocket and slipped out of the hotel’s hidden entrance, put up his heavy winter coat’s collar and eased his way through the small service alley. The FSB man who had observed Gagnon from the alley’s dark corner called in his observation into the embassy. “Yup,” he said to himself. “The Canadian’s not a field agent.”

Gagnon walked through some busy shopping streets, found a Costa Coffee, he avoided Starbucks when he could, entered and ordered a double espresso. He found a seat and called Tom to reaffirm their meeting time and place. Gagnon had been more perceptive than his tail imagined. With his coffee in front of him on the cafe’s small table he pretended to read the phone while surreptitiously observing the clientele in the busy cafe. Gagnon had thought he spotted a tail in one of the shop front’s reflection. His furtive assessment of his fellow coffee drinkers confirmed it.

The Russian’s field craft had been good, but Gagnon had spotted him. Most field agents maintained a tell. Gagnon spotted the Russian’s. There is something about operating in the world of secrets, lies and deception that changes a person. It’s like a weight or a worry or a nagging pain. People look different, their faces have expressions not in