The Korean Gambit Read online

  The Korean Gambit

  Charles DeMaris

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Also by Charles DeMaris

  About the Author

  1

  Lunch at Chez Ribe is delightful, or so Rachel Prescott had heard. The food was tasty enough, more than tasty, actually downright delicious, and the weather could not have been better. Paris in the summer and love was in the air, if the appreciative looks she was getting from two young men three tables away could be said to be the precursor to love. Well, Paris had that effect on people, but she had that effect on young men wherever she was. Rachel wasn’t unaware of her beauty, but she never placed an undue importance on it either. It was what it was.

  She was halfway through high school when she first became aware of the turning heads and admiring glances. By college she was accustomed to it but classwork and sports left her little time for dating. Now a year out of college, she still had her athletic build and striking good looks, and was still entirely unaffected by it. It wasn’t that she didn’t care; it just wasn’t important. Why people were so concerned with what they couldn’t control was beyond her. She could control the shape she kept herself in but her looks were something else. It wasn’t something she felt was within her control so she didn’t worry about it. The young men were still eyeing her and she had noticed other glances while she was eating. Paris could provide ample opportunity for a girl with romantic inclinations, she thought, but at the moment she was not so inclined.

  At least not today. She thought some time off in Europe would do her some good. Only three months ago her parents had been gunned down in her home while she was there. She had dispatched justice readily enough, killing both attackers within minutes, and had even taken care of the people who gave the order. There was a sense of satisfaction in that, and she was glad she had the opportunity, but she still felt empty. She knew her father would approve of what she was doing now, working with an intelligence group in the Midwest, helping to track down people who sought to do her country harm. She knew he would be proud of how she had helped stop a major attack on American soil.

  Her two potential suitors finished their meal and left, but not without stealing another glance her way. When she did not reciprocate, they went on their way. Not as pushy as other guys she had known. Maybe a French gentleman would be good for her. She picked at her food and scanned the other tables at the outdoor eating area. The couple sitting down where the other young men had been were obviously American, and very much in love. There were worse cities for a honeymoon. There was another young man sitting alone and looking her way, four businessmen talking shop while waiting for their food, and two men at another table who kept averting their eyes whenever she looked their way.

  Something was familiar about those two. She couldn’t place it, but she was sure she had seen them somewhere before. She tried to dismiss the feeling that was niggling at the back of her mind, but something wasn’t right about them. They stuck out like sore thumbs in a place like this. She studied them for a minute, which wasn’t hard the way they kept looking away whenever she looked that way. They tried to look casual as they sipped their wine, but after five minutes she was sure they were watching her, and probably had been for some time. They were also at the Louvre that morning and she wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t seen them at Notre Dame the day before.

  They had round heads, close cropped hair, and had the air of men who were not unaccustomed to physical violence. The one on the left had suffered a broken nose on more than one occasion from the look of it. She didn’t have to study them any further to surmise that they were probably packing. Hired muscle, but hired by whom? Also a bit unprofessional by the way they kept looking away. Why were they watching her and what was their objective? Their intentions couldn’t be good, that was for sure. She took a small compact mirror out of her purse and held it up, just one more pretty girl checking her makeup. A couple taps on the face of the mirror brought the two men into focus and a couple more taps took two high res photos. She put the mirror back in her purse and motioned for the waiter.

  A moment later she packed the remainder of her meal in a take home container, paid her bill, and left. She didn’t look behind, but she was sure the two men would be leaving and following her. Still, she forced herself to play the tourist, walking slowly and gawking at the sights. She walked east to the Eiffel Tower, taking a few photos and a couple selfies in front of the tower, before walking north across the Pont D’lena to the other side of the river. She walked west along Avenue de New York, paused to take another couple photos of the tower, turned up Rue Beethoven, east back along Avenue des Nations Unies, and stopped at the Trocadéro Gardens. Here she snapped more photos of the tower and of the fountains, and again of the two men from the restaurant, walking toward the gardens trying to look casual.

  That confirmed that. She was sure now they were following her. She sat down to look through the photos on her phone and noted that the men were milling about trying to look inconspicuous. She pulled up the photos from the restaurant and emailed them to Ahmed before putting her phone away and walking north. She took another circuitous route, ending up at the Arc de Triomphe, where she took more photos and once again noted her pursuers.

  Her room was at the Hotel Passy Eiffel and she thought of losing her pursuers on the way there, but thought better of it. She didn’t know how long they had been watching her and there was a chance they already knew which hotel she was at. If she lost them completely, that might also give away that she was onto them, and she didn’t want them to figure that out yet, either. She could lure them somewhere remote and take them out, but that was the last resort. She needed information and to get that she needed to take at least one of them alive. How she would go about that, she had no idea, but she needed to know who they worked for and why they were after her.

  She took more photos and started the walk back toward the hotel, stopping here and there to enter shops and make the occasional purchase. While she was doing this for the benefit of the men following her, this was her original plan for the afternoon anyway. Three hours later she arrived at her hotel room and quickly sorted out her purchases and packed her suitcase. She cleaned her pistol, put it back together, and waited for her pursuers.

  Ahmed sat down at his desk and scrolled through his emails, not expecting much at all. Things had been rather quiet since stopping the attack last month. Jenny had indeed hired his friends—Abdullah, Kalil, Mohammed, and Omar—and the four of them were currently in the conference room with Nathan learning the ins and outs of their system. Dr. Avi Zielinski was in his shop tinkering. He was always tinkering. What he was working on Ahmed had no idea, but after the rumors he had heard, nothing would surprise him. He had asked Avi about the rumors and the old man would only say that some things were best left alone. Jenny was little help either, but he suspected she knew as much as
he did.

  Jenny was as much an enigma as Dr. Zielinski. She was from London and had met her husband Earl in Virginia, had married him on extremely short notice, and had moved here and started Fox Security Consulting as a front company for an unparalleled private intelligence gathering operation set up in a basement with hidden entrances. She was the most skilled hacker he had ever seen and she had a custom- built computer system that could gather intelligence from any corner of the world without leaving a trace. The amount of information this system gathered and sorted through on a daily basis was downright mind boggling, not to mention a bit scary. A system like this in the wrong hands could be dangerous.

  “Would you like some tea?” Miriam Samara said, handing him a cup.

  “Thank you, Miriam. You’re a life saver.”

  “Anything going on this morning?”

  “Nothing that I can see…wait a minute…got an email from Rachel.”

  “I thought she was on vacation.”

  “Yeah, wonder what she could be sending us. Couple photos attached.”

  He opened the photos and displayed them on one of his screens.

  “Couple guys following her around Paris. Looks like something for facial recognition,” he said.

  “Should we let Jenny know?”

  “Let’s see if facial recognition brings up anything first. Could be a few minutes.”

  “It’s been a while since we’ve had any excitement around here.”

  “I don’t have a problem with that. Last month was exciting enough for a while.”

  “Are you still looking for that Russian guy?”

  “Trying to, but he’s been quiet. He can’t be happy about what happened with his pupils.”

  “Do you think he knows?”

  “He has to know something happened. People just don’t vanish off the face of the earth.”

  “Haven’t seen Casey around for a couple days.”

  “His friend in Alabama got injured. He went down there to hang out with him for a few days.”

  “I didn’t know he had a friend in Alabama.”

  “The player who injured him in the game. They keep in touch.”

  “Is the injury serious?”

  “Could be. They started practicing a few days ago and he got hurt the second day. Cracked a bone in his neck or something.”

  “That sounds bad. Will he recover?”

  “Too early to tell. He probably won’t play football again. Casey’s going to update me when they know something.”

  “That’s horrible. Doesn’t this facial recognition usually come up with something quicker than this?”

  “Usually, but we have nothing so far. Never seen that happen before.”

  Ahmed called Jenny and asked her to come to his desk.

  “What do you have here?” she asked.

  “Rachel said these two men are following her around Paris. Facial recognition has nothing. No records at all. It’s like they don’t exist.”

  “That’s certainly a bit odd. They don’t look French.”

  “Yeah, I was wondering about that. They don’t look like locals, and one of them looks like he’s been in a few fights. Look at his nose.”

  “Tell her to be careful and let us know if anything happens.”

  “Let us know if what happens?” Avi asked from behind them.

  “Good Lord, Professor, you have got to stop doing that,” Jenny said.

  “Sorry, maybe I should wear my shoes the next time so you can hear me coming. And Jenny, you need to stop calling me Professor. I’m…”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re retired. You’ve only reminded me a million times.”

  “And I’ve told you a billion times not to exaggerate.”

  “Maybe. Take a look at this photo Rachel sent. She was eating lunch a while ago and these two men were eyeing her. She’s walked all over Paris for a couple hours and they’re following her. She’s a little concerned. Ahmed ran the photo through facial recognition and came up with nothing. These men are completely off the grid, like ghosts.”

  “Well, that is certainly cause for concern. Tell her to watch her back. She has the name of an old friend of mine in Paris. She should contact him right away. I’ll give him a heads up.”

  2

  Rachel sat in her room listening for any strange sounds from outside her room. She knew she hadn’t lost her pursuers. She had been sure to keep well in sight and she had spotted them more than once, the last time only a block from the hotel. She was ready for them if they tried anything. Her pistol had a fresh magazine and there was a round in the chamber. Her bags were packed and at hand in case she needed to make a hasty exit. There was one bag with only the essentials and the other suitcase with items that she could replace later if she had to leave it behind.

  Who in the world could these people be? She tried to think who could be following her and her mind was drawing blanks. The people who had ordered her parents’ murder had been dealt with as had the people who carried out the killing. Anyone who had anything to do with the attempted attack on Miami was dead. Wait a minute. Ahmed had been responsible for getting all of the people to that yacht after the failed attack last month. How had he done that? He had found communications from another party and he had faked messages from that source to smoke out the moles. That had to be it. The two deep cover moles they had found had a handler, some Russian guy they didn’t have a last name for.

  Ahmed had mentioned a first name, but she couldn’t recall what it was at the moment. That had to be it. He would have no way of knowing what happened to his people, but he had to know they were dead, and if he had anything to do with the hit on her parents, he had to know about her. There was no way he could know anything about her role in anything, but he had to know she wasn’t killed when her parents were.

  So, was this purely personal? Was he just tying up loose ends out of fear that her father had shared intel with her, or did he suspect that she had a hand in the disappearance of his people? It could be both. She looked at the photos she had of the men who were following her. The more she looked at them, the more they looked Eastern European, possibly Russian. They certainly weren’t French, but foreigners were a dime a dozen in a city like Paris. Even then, they stuck out at a place like Chez Ribe, where the clientele was more often than not more refined.

  She remembered Avi giving her a name and address of someone in Paris, and old friend of his who might be of help if she ran into any trouble. That was Dr. Zielienski, always looking ahead and never missing anything. She took the piece of paper out of her pocket and looked at the name. Jean and Marie Delacroix. She looked up the address, south of town in some area called Ivry-Sur-Seine, a bit far to walk. She might have to walk it, though, unless she could lose them before hopping a train or bus. She would cross that bridge when she came to it. She was going to wait a bit longer to see if they made a move before contacting Jean.

  Yuriy Kazakov sat in his study, sipping a glass of Scotch and patting the arm of his chair in time with Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The study was his favorite room in the estate, a throwback to another century with built-in mahogany bookshelves and overstuffed leather furniture, the sound system being the only concession to modernity. One side of the room featured floor to ceiling windows and a sliding door that opened onto a deck and on the other side of the room was a small bar where he would pour his Scotch, or Vodka when he had guests and wanted to keep up appearances.

  He normally enjoyed the view from this room, overlooking an immaculately manicured lawn and the woods beyond, but he had drawn the curtains when the sun went down and he was only still in this room because he was waiting on news from Paris before retiring for the evening. Paris was nothing but a loose end that needed to be tied up, albeit a potentially troublesome one. Yuriy didn’t like loose ends. In his line of work, they could be fatal, and possibly had already been in this case.

  Like many Russians, Kazakov considered himself a master of the long game. He treated life lik
e chess and was often moves ahead of his opponents. This particular long game started in the mid- 80s when the USSR was still alive and well. He was in charge of overseeing a deep cover program at the KGB that had successfully placed several agents in different western nations. His most successful operators were Nina Yunevich and Leonid Kosomov. They were groomed from childhood to speak English with a midwestern American accent and were familiarized with American culture. By the time they were in their teens, they were sent to the United States, where they blended right in, excelling academically and eventually working their way up to positions of importance where they could be used. Nina had chosen a career in the CIA and Leonid the FBI. Both were deputy directors of their respective agencies, and Nina had become the CIA Director upon the death of Director Prescott.

  Yuriy originally thought he would use them to deal a devastating blow against the West, but the opportunity arose to do more than that. He had the perfect operation to kill two birds with one stone, punish America and help rid Russia of another problem, radical Islamic terrorism. The latter was a problem for the West as well, and since Beslan, had become a thorn in the side of Russia. If there were to be an attack on the United States, and if that attack were to appear to be the work of Muslims, then the Americans would do his dirty work for him. When the dust settled, they would pick themselves up and unleash hell on the Islamists, doing Russia a favor in the process. They had the terrorist and the attack, and a foolproof plan, but Doug Prescott had started to dig around where he shouldn’t have and Yuriy had him removed from the equation. That put Nina in charge at the CIA and she was able to run interference for the operation.