Page 57 of Gryphon

Chief K didn’t need any artifice, like guest chairs with shortened legs, to loom.

The blocky triangular three-story building that was GIS headquarters squatted behind its towering protective wall. Only this one office and a deluxe conference room jutting above them all saw over the wall. The chief’s office had floor-to-ceiling glass that looked out over the Tbilisi Sea as the nine-kilometer-long reservoir was known—he sat with his back to the only view, a backlit shadow of doom.

No taller than Pavle himself, he still loomed. Chief K went all the way back. Since the time of the breakaway from the collapsing Soviet Union over thirty years ago, Kancheli had adapted to the changing intelligence service until he had risen to the top fifteen years ago. Through it all—poverty, political chaos, the Rose Revolution, and Georgia’s long hard climb into the top third of the world’s Human Development Index—the wily bastard had been the lone survivor within the intelligence community.

Not that anyone would dare bring their tongue against him. Rumor said speaking ill of Chief K, even softly atop a distant mountaintop, was an assured death sentence. Perhaps even God himself might strike you down; someone definitely watched over the chief.

Kancheli had even managed to survive the brutal Russian war of 2008 in South Ossetia. The Russians had infiltrated massive troops through the Roki Tunnel, one of the few passages under the Caucasus Mountains to the north, then instigated the locals to draw the Georgian military into battle with random attacks leveling whole villages. When Georgia attempted to rout the rebels, the Russians had dropped the hammer.

Word was, if Chief Kancheli hadn’t spotted the ploy when he did, the whole of Georgia might now be Russian. He’d escaped the Russians’ ethnic cleansing of Georgians from South Ossetia with a withering scar all down the right side of his face and a limp that didn’t stop him slipping unnoticed into your office and scaring the shit out of you with a snapped question.

Pavle met Kancheli’s gaze as well as he could. “It’s difficult to estimate. We know that they’re still chasing cause and effect, though they’re doing it awfully fast. Some sort of a civilian team—we think. We only had the two agents there in position to give us any form of a report. One is still returning from his putative holiday to Estonia and the other was the driver of this car.”

Pavle held up a tablet computer and played the online video he’d spotted. Some Swede had posted it minutes ago on social media. It showed a phalanx of security around a shattered blue van, and a badly mangled red VW Passat. A lovely blonde and an equally handsome guy huddled nearby.

“The man in the van was a fanatic. We convinced him that this was Allah’s work and he is no great loss. The driver of the VW was our deep-cover man. Also, rumor has it that they dropped a Quick Reaction Force on the Hungarian Air Base where our fanatic liberated the Stingers.”

“Exposure?”

“Our inside man in Hungary knows nothing beyond the money in his account. We’re safe there. Still, I’d give NATO only hours before they start tracing the other missing armament.”

“Then we should act quickly. There are other assets. Proceed.”

Dismissed, Pavle felt the noose tighten about his neck with each step down to his office.

43

“I know where we need to go. Georgia. That one,” Holly held up her snow-caked right boot and pointed at it. “The one under the little toe.”

His face must have reflected his inner Huh?

“Picture my foot on a map of Europe. Come on.”

And she’d raced away. Mike hustled after her for the two kilometers from the destroyed van to Storuman Air Base through the growing storm.

The little toe? Really? Mike tried to picture it. Should it bother him that he could?

If a map of Europe with the width of a person’s foot were laid out, Scandinavia would be the nail of the big toe. Twisting the foot at a slight outward angle placed France and Spain under the ball of the foot with the UK running close alongside. The Mediterranean as the arch. The big countries running down the toes: Germany, Poland, Ukraine. Then well to the right side of the foot, a small country beneath the little toe, Georgia.

He wished it didn’t fit…but it did.

“Get NATO…and Russia’s attention…to Sweden and Finland,” Holly huffed out between blasts of ice-laden wind. “Georgia…keeps ticking away. Safe off…to the side.”

Mike kept his breath for himself and stayed tight on her heels.

Once again, he was following along in Holly’s wake. No consultation. No pause for calm consideration. Or for a deep breath.

Here’s the answer. Go! Like she’d been fired out of a gun at birth and still showed no signs of slowing down.

Georgia? He wasn’t even that clear on where the country Georgia was. Under the little toe, that much he understood. South of Turkey on the Mediterranean? No, that was Syria, Lebanon, and Israel all backed by Jordan. On the Black Sea? Ukraine and Russia across the top, Turkey across the bottom, oh, and Georgia to the east side of the sea.

Where were they going?

Again, obvious answer. Holly always jumped into the middle of the fray. Georgia.

“Hey! Whoa!”

Holly kept hustling ahead along the narrow road that served as a taxiway connecting the E12 highway to the military airfield back in the trees. With the wind mostly blocked—back here the approaching storm made pretty flurries—she had to have heard him.

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