Vidich The Poet's Game

The brand new spy thriller perfect for fans of David McCloskey (Alex Matthews 1)
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-915798-47-3
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

'Tense' and 'fast-moving'Kirkus on Beirut Station 'Confirms Vidich's status in the front rank of spy writers' Tim Shipman in The Sunday Times on Beirut Station 'We all have dreams and then we wake up.' Alex Matthews thought he had left it all behind. His CIA career, the viper's den of bureaucracy at headquarters and the lies and stress of the cat and mouse game of double agents. But then the Director came asking for a favour. Alex is a different man from when he had run Moscow station, where he recruited a network of 'poet spies' including the one he names BYRON. He has pieced his life back together after a tragic boating accident killed his wife and daughter but the scars remain. But Alex remains, in his mind, a patriot, and so he begrudgingly accepts the Director's request. Something, though, is off about the whole operation from the start. The Russians seem one step ahead and the CIA suspects there is a traitor in the agency. Alex realizes that by getting back into the game he has risked everything he has worked for: his new marriage, his family's safety, his firm. As the noose tightens around Alex, and the FSB closes in, the operation becomes a hall of mirrors with no exits. To find redemption, Alex must uncover the secrets behind BYRON or lose everything.

Paul Vidich has had a distinguished career in music and media. Most recently, he served as Special Advisor to AOL and was Executive Vice President at the Warner Music Group, in charge of technology and global strategy. He serves on the Board of Directors of Poets & Writers and The New School for Social Research. A founder and publisher of the Storyville App, Vidich is also an award-winning author of short fiction. His novels, An Honorable Man, The Good Assassin, The Coldest Warrior and The Mercenary,are available from No Exit Press.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Vidich, Paul

Leseproben

1

Moscow

August 2018

Alex Matthews glanced at his wristwatch, impatient for the tedious speaker to finish so he could make his way out of the crowded room and get on with some difficult business. He was on the third floor of the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski in a large soulless room facing a distant podium where a Russian speaking passable English was coming to the excruciating end of the conference’s last speech. Matthews sat in the back, conscious of the short time before he was to meet an old adversary. The prospect of the six p.m. farewell cocktail hour brought a parched restlessness to the room, and a few attendees escaped to the bar.

The fierce heat of the day had begun to temper and the late afternoon sun cast long shadows on Red Square, visible to anyone in the room who preferred the view across Moscow River. Matthews had delivered the keynote speech to the Moscow trade organization, offering wisdom on how to invest without breaking securities laws. Later speakers gave advice on VAT strategies and risk management of tax loopholes, but the highlight, and the best attended talk, after his own, had been on business ethics: ‘Gogol’s Dilemma: When a Nose Is Not a Nose.’

Matthews was dressed casually in the crowd of young, impeccably attired British, French, and German attendees, having nothing to prove at his age and no one he needed to impress. He was an ordinary middle-aged man who’d left behind the vanity of youth and was comfortable being a slightly older, slightly grayer, slightly heavier version of his younger self. His hair had thinned and his waist had thickened from rich dinners with investors on his demanding travel schedule between Washington, DC, and Moscow. He preferred that age made him invisible to younger attendees, and he owed his talent for going unnoticed to his previous career in the CIA, which had trained him to slip into a restaurant without catching the waiter’s eye.

Matthews took the handwritten note passed to him by his colleague. Mikhail Sorkin was his Russian lawyer and an old high school friend. He wore a bespoke Savile Row suit with a silk tie and his long silver hair was swept back on his head like an orchestra conductor. They had forged a teenage friendship during the Soviet Union’s last days, drinking vodka, smoking Marlboro Reds, and reading Romantic poetry out loud as their rowboat drifted on the Moscow River. Sorkin led the Moscow practice of the London firm of Hammett & Hammett PC. His tie matched a crisp yellow pocket square, the splash of color accenting his charcoal suit. He had the firm, respectable manner of a lawyer cautioning his client.

Sorkin had written two words in bold block letters on the back of the day’s program, copying them from a cell phone text: Tax Audit. ‘Trinity Capital is in full compliance,’ Sorkin said, dismissing the concern. ‘We haven’t bribed anyone and no one has asked for a bribe.’

Sorkin said that it was a routine matter and there was no reason to be concerned, but Matthews had succeeded with his Russian investments because he was always concerned. The two men had a brief whispered conversation on how to address the matter, and then light clapping signaled the end of the speaker’s remarks, and the end of the conference.

‘Handle it,’ Matthews said. ‘I’ll meet you in the bar in an hour. I have an errand to run.’

He pushed his way through the thick exodus and escaped to a hallway decorated with plush carpets, gold mirrors, and ponderous Baroque furniture. The hall was lined with exhibitors’ tables displaying colorful sales brochures and standard corporate swag. He strode purposefully past the inviting smiles of hard-eyed women whose only job was to attract questions that would be answered by older ambassadors standing just behind ready to pounce.

Matthews moved quickly down the crowded hall, but in the corner of his eye, approaching like a bullet, he saw the Russian journalist he’d avoided three hours earlier. Then she was in front of him, a tall woman blocking his way with a bright smile. She lifted her plastic conference keeper: Olga Luchaninova, Novaya Gazeta.

Her voice had the brisk politeness of someone about to make a rude request. When he stepped to one side, opening a way past her, she moved with him like a dance partner. She had intense eyes, flaming red hair, and an urgent expression. Her pen, he saw, was poised above a notepad like a dagger.

‘A minute of your time,’ she said. ‘One question.’

He knew that a minute in Russia was a notoriously inaccurate measure of time and the promise of brevity would be breached as one question begat another and another until a brusque departure ended the conversation.

‘I’m sorry. I’m late. I don’t have time for a question.’

‘Are you staying in the hotel? Perhaps drinks?’ She thrust a business card. Her name in Cyrillic on one side, Roman on the other, cell phone on both. ‘Which room? We can meet privately later.’

‘Yes, later.’ He pointed to Sorkin, who’d come along side like a pilot fish. ‘Talk to him. He knows everything I said in my speech. And more.’

Having offered Sorkin as his interview substitute, he made a cowardly lunge for the elevator, opening the closing doors with a quick hand.

He turned and saw Olga address Sorkin with a sour expression of distinct disinterest. Moscow was much changed from Soviet times, and different too from the early years of the Russian Federation when he’d been Moscow station chief, but kompromat endured. He was trained to be numb to the sad pleas of distraught women in bars and attractive reporters who offered favorable press coverage, knowing that these women were probably agents of Russia’s Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti.

He was alone on the short elevator ride to the lobby. He considered the possibility that the Federal Security Service was targeting him. On a different day, in a different hotel, he might have dismissed his concern as idle speculation, but that evening in the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski, he was on his way to meet a Russian asset, and whether Olga Luchaninova had targeted him was a matter of great personal concern. A man’s life was at risk.

Matthews stepped into the hotel’s garish lobby, furnished to appeal to Muscovites’ vulgar taste for red velvet furniture and polished Italian marble. The sense of almost being in a grand hotel in Paris or Berlin was all around. He ignored the eyes of a man on the sofa who had been in the same position reading the same paper when he’d returned from a conference break earlier. The desk clerk nodded at Matthews as he passed, and the doorman in a red waistcoat and white gloves set the revolving exit door in motion so it spun slowly and deposited him outside, where another doorman offered to call him a taxi, which he declined.

He paused, looked around, and to anyone who happened to see him, Matthews would appear to be a foreign businessman enjoying the late afternoon’s waning warmth near the Moscow River, watching streetlights blink on one by one. His casual appearance belied the alert eye of a man trained to spot danger. He took a measure of his surroundings, smiling at the doorman, and glanced at the river’s esplanade. The ground floor patio restaurant was on his right and in front of him was a stone staircase that rose to Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge, where a lively throng of tourists crossed the river to view the honor guard that goose-stepped out of the medieval fortress for its rotation at Lenin’s tomb. Lights illuminated the enormous clock on Spasskaya Tower inside the Kremlin’s walls.

Matthews spotted the red Toyota where he’d been told to expect it. It was ordinary and unremarkable in every respect except for its diplomatic plates. It was parked between two cars in a coveted spot, near an alley used for hotel deliveries. An old energy came back as he looked on – the nondescript car concerned him. He paused for a moment – a caution. The air was crisp with a hint of weather, and farther back toward the river it condensed into a mournful gloom that brooded over his decision. His long absence from covert work made him self-conscious and he wore caution with the calm of a man who was acutely aware of the risk he was taking. He heaved courage into his heart and stepped away from the hotel’s sheltering canopy – a businessman obscure in his dark suit, his eyes checking guests by the entrance for a sign of the opposition. He was surprised how feelings from his previous career came alive, as...