Free War Plan Red by Peter Sasgen

for this sort of thing.”
    “You have to be selective. The shops in Moscow sell a lot of junk to tourists, but if you shop around you can find exquisite things. Like a Chekhov first edition out of my price range.”
    “Mine too,” Scott said. “Stretzlof wants Drummond’s body shipped home as soon as possible. I got the impression it’s terribly inconvenient to have a senior military officer murdered in Russia.”
    “Stretzlof is the ambassador’s hatchet man. He fronts for the political section too. Did you meet the political affairs officer?”
    “No. Should I have?”
    “He’s Stretzlof’s handpicked man. He and Stretzlof have gone out of their way at times to anger the Russians. I don’t get it, because we need them as much as they need us. We want a free hand in the Middle East; they want the same in Chechnya. But hey, I try to mind my own business.”
    She sat, chin cupped in a fist and looked at Scott. “This is a close-knit community and it’s hard not to step on toes,” Alex said. “Be careful which ones you step on.”
    “I had a chat with Brigadier General Carroll,” he said.
    “The defense attaché.”
    “He offered to help expedite matters, but I told him we could handle things. I didn’t tell him that we were going to Murmansk.”
    “Maybe you should have. If Stretzlof finds out, he’ll have a fit. He’ll say you’ve overstepped your orders.”
    “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Scott said.
    She looked at him guardedly. He sensed a cool, analytical intelligence at work and knew that nothing would likely escape her notice.
    “It’s a long trip,” she added.
    “Only twelve hundred klicks. We’ll be back before dinner. Besides, it’s Abakov’s helicopter and gas, so it won’t cost Uncle Sam a penny.”
    “What do you hope to accomplish by going to Murmansk?” Alex said.
    Scott prowled the living room. He seemingly was bursting with energy, the room barely able to contain it. “I don’t know. But I want to find out what the hell happened. Somebody killed Frank and that sailor and I want to know why. Maybe there’s something Abakov’s men overlooked.”
    She threw him a questioning look. “Are you saying that the FSB is covering something up?”
    “You tell me. What were you two doing in Murmansk that would be so sensitive someone would kill Frank? Remember what Abakov said? He believes the U.S. is trying to conquer Mother Russia. If someone believes that and killed Frank, they could have killed you too.”
    Alex gnawed at a fingernail. “We don’t do classified inspections of nuclear weapons—don’t go anywhere near them. Abakov believes that nonsense because he can’t adjust to the new Russia. He wants things the way they were under Brezhnev, when the KGB ran the country. Then he got regular paychecks and could go around scaring the shit out of Russian citizens. Now he has to be nice to people, especially Americans. He’s a dinosaur who can’t adjust to a kinder, gentler Russia.”
    “Can you think of any reason someone would kill Frank and that boy?”
    “I told you, Jake, all we did was inspect and inventory reactors and their fuel, and monitor radiation levels at the sub bases. Sometimes it was pretty boring work. What kept it from being boring all the time was that Frank was fun to work with; plus, he kept scrupulous notes, which made the job of writing reports easier.”
    Scott slugged down his drink. “Then maybe that’s where we should start looking: at Frank’s notes.”

    Alex punched a code into a wall-mounted keypad and shut off the embassy’s nodal security system inside Drummond’s apartment. She and Scott stood in the foyer listening to a hum from the refrigerator and a ticking clock on a table in the tiny living room. Like Alex’s apartment, Drummond’s was spare, and he’d made no effort to personalize it. A few well-thumbed Russian language magazines and a National Geographic lay on a Scandinavian-style coffee table in the living room.