Black Flagged Redux

Chapter 62





10:18 PM

Falls Church, Virginia





Karl Berg started to fade away into a long overdue slumber. He'd finally been ordered by Audra to catch a few hours of uninterrupted sleep before Europe awoke. His alarm was set for 1:00 AM, which gave him a few hours to enter a deep restful sleep. Petrovich's team would still be on the road, which was the only reason he had been allowed to leave. A few of the offices adjacent to the Operations Center had been converted to sleeping quarters for duty personnel. He needed more than a few broken hours of institutional sleep on a thin mattress more suitable for a state penitentiary inmate.

His cell phone rang, lifting the heavy blanket of unconsciousness and jarring him back into the world of the living. The phone continued to ring, and he slowly moved his hand over to the night stand, homing in on the light from his BlackBerry screen. He lifted the phone above his face, still lying flat on his back, and read the caller ID. He didn't recognize the number, but knew who it might be based on the foreign prefix.

"Karl Berg," he whispered.

"You sound like shit, my friend," a deep voice said in Russian.

"I'm trying to catch a few hours of sleep, no thanks to you."

"I don't sleep very well anymore. Old age, they say."

"Are you sure it's not the nicotine coursing through your veins all day and night? What time is it there? Four in the morning? I thought old people slept in," Berg said.

"I decided to take an early morning walk. You know…to make sure I don't have a fan club. I'm at a pay phone halfway across the city. I haven't used one of these in years. Kind of reminds me of the old days."

"In the old days, all of the public phones were bugged," Berg said.

"They haven't monitored these phones like that in years. Cell phones ruined it for them. Still, they electronically troll the lines for certain phrases. I hear they even do that in your country now."

"I wouldn't be surprised. So, how did it all play out on your end? Will you be taking a trip down the lovely Moscow River?"

"I don't think so. Our insider removed any possible trace of her work. There will be a witch hunt soon enough, but we've been careful. Oddly enough, they think our Russian friend was responsible for his own abduction. They're convinced that he defected with the help of your Special Forces team. Your team left quite a mess on the streets, which was impressive given what they were up against. We have twelve bodies to recover."

"Two of them are ours," Berg said.

"Interesting. I don't think anyone here knows that. Twelve is the number I'm hearing. And how is the grand prize holding up? I assume he'll be given political asylum and a nice townhouse in the Midwest?"

"He didn't survive the interrogation, but we managed to make a few connections with the information he provided. We're working on them right now."

This wasn't true, but the less Kaparov knew about the fate of Anatoly Reznikov the better. Less than a dozen people knew that Reznikov had survived the brutal interrogation outside of Stockholm. Petrovich and Farrington understood the implications of an active Russian bioweapons program and did their best to keep him alive while producing immediately actionable intelligence. Technically, they had killed him four times in thirteen minutes during the course of their interrogation, but the high tech equipment and medical staff somehow kept him alive. In this case, the ends justified the means.

"I assume that my office will be the first to hear of any impending biological threats to the Russian Federation?"

"Of course, though I didn't realize your career needed a boost."

"It didn't, but I can't be outdone by one of my old adversaries. Congratulations, Deputy Assistant Director."

"I'm not even going to speculate on how you garnered that information. Thank you, Alexei, for everything. We're on the right path to stopping this threat. Give me a call if you need to make a quick getaway."

"I appreciate the offer, but I have a hefty pension coming my way and I plan on collecting it in rubles. Plus, I hear that smokers are discriminated against in your country."

"They most certainly are, though I'm sure we can find you a nice spot down south, where you can smoke all you want."

"I'll keep it in mind. Well, I don't want to steal away any more of your beauty sleep. I have a feeling the upcoming days are going to take a toll on your good looks."

"You aren't kidding. Stay safe, my friend. I'll be in touch," he said and hung up on Kaparov.

Berg was the only person who knew that Kaparov had provided the CIA with Reznikov's address and he had no intention of ever exposing the Russian's name or position. Berg had made this clear to Bauer and Manning from the start. He had made some questionable calls in the past, but he could never intentionally give up a fellow field agent. There were still a few rules he held inviolate. He placed the phone back on the nightstand and started to consider what Kaparov had said about the days ahead. Mercifully, he drifted off before any concrete thoughts formed, or he would have found himself staring at the barely visible ceiling for the next three hours.