The Roswell Conspiracy (2 page)

“Fay Turia. Born Fay Allen. Raised on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, until the age of ten when her father’s cousin got him a job as a foreman at a sheep station in New Zealand. The whole family moved down here, and she hasn’t lived in the US since.”

“You checked her out?”

“As much as I could,” Tyler said. “She emailed me a copy of her birth certificate to prove she was born in Roswell. It was legit.”

“So she lived there. Why does she want to hire us?”

“She called Gordian the foremost airplane accident investigation firm in the world.”

“Well, that’s true. At least she’s perceptive in that respect.”

Gordian Engineering was the company Tyler had founded. With a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and a PhD from Stanford, he’d since happily stepped down from his role as president of the firm and now served as its chief of special operations, which meant he could pick and choose the projects he wanted to pursue. Grant was his best friend and the company’s top electrical engineer. Their complementary skills let them oversee a wide range of projects, including forensic accident analysis, demolition, loss prevention, and automotive testing.

But this request was not in the normal line of inquiry. Most of their jobs were for large multinationals that could afford the rates they charged. An individual asking for their assistance was highly unusual.

“Did she ever say why she waited sixty-five years to come out to the world?” Grant asked.

“She said she’s been doing her own investigation on the down low because she heard too many stories about what the government did to the other people who came forward about the crash. But now she’s stuck and wants to see if we can help her out.”

“And you agreed to this out of the goodness of your heart?”

“She sweet-talked me into it. Of course, I wasn’t going to take on the job officially.”

“Probably not something we want to add to our website.”

Tyler laughed. “Right. I told her if she could wait three months, we’d be in her neck of the woods for another job and would stop by to see what she had. So here we are.”

“She’s a kook.”

“Likely, although she sounded remarkably with-it on the phone. I’m sure whatever the object is, we’ll turn it over, frown at it with concern, take a sample and some photos, and then tell her that its origin is indeterminate. We won’t give her a conclusive answer, but we won’t dash her hopes for an alien artifact, either. After that we can head into Queenstown.”

“I hear they’ve got a good pizza place there called The Cow,” Grant said. “Then we can figure out what to do for fun. You know, I do have the parachutes in the trunk.”

Tyler smirked at him. “You don’t give up, do you? I told you. Bungee jumping, yes. Skydiving, no. At least with the bungee you’re already tied to the bridge.”

For the next thirty minutes, Grant steered them down a twisty cliff-hugging road called the Crown Range, where the drop-offs were so steep and Grant’s driving was so suspect that Tyler started to wonder just how much more adventure he could stand during the trip.

Once they got below three thousand feet, the snow cleared and Grant upped the speed. They made up so much time that Tyler texted Fay that they’d be twenty minutes early.

Tyler guided Grant through green pastures and farmland dotted by quaint bed-and-breakfasts. When they turned onto Fay’s road along a deep ravine carved by the Shotover River, Grant sighed as it climbed back above the snow line. In another few minutes they saw a sign for the Turia Remarkables Sheep Station, named for the jagged Remarkables mountain range looming over Queenstown’s Lake Wakatipu. Fresh tire tracks split the driveway’s snow.

“Maybe this means she left,” Grant said hopefully. “I’m starving.”

Tyler looked at his watch: 9:40 a.m. Twenty minutes early for their appointment. “That would explain why she hasn’t texted back.”

They followed the tracks for half a mile until they reached a stately white clapboard home with an attached garage. Behind it was a large red barn. Except for a few evergreens surrounding the house, the countryside was bare of trees. A fence disappeared into the hills on either side.

The snow tracks separated into a pair that led to the garage and a second set leading to a Toyota sedan parked in the circular driveway in front of the house. Grant pulled up next to it.

Tyler got out and laid his hand on the Toyota’s hood. Still warm, just like he expected. No rancher would drive a sedan. Two pairs of footprints wound to the door. Fay must have visitors.

No sheep or ranch hands were visible, probably out working somewhere on the station’s two thousand acres.

“Nice place,” Grant said.

“Looks like ranching has been good to her. Shall we say howdy?”

Grant nodded, and they crunched through the snow. When they were within ten feet of the front door, two shotgun blasts erupted from inside the house.

Their Army training kicking in, Tyler and Grant both dived to their bellies without hesitation. Grant gave him a look and silently mouthed, “What the hell?”

Tyler was about to suggest they make a hasty retreat to the Audi when he was stopped by a woman’s shout, followed by a third shotgun blast closer to the right side of the home. Tyler turned his head and saw a man skid around the corner of the house.

He raised a pistol, but before Tyler could yell, “Don’t shoot,” the stranger fired wildly in their direction, bullet impacts kicking up snow all around them.

That was all the prodding they needed to find cover. Grant scrambled toward the house and rammed the front door open like a charging rhino. Tyler was hot on his heels and slammed it closed once he crossed the threshold.

The hallway seemed shrouded in darkness until Tyler realized he was still wearing his sunglasses. When he doffed them, he saw that shards of a broken lamp littered the floor and buckshot holes peppered the wall.

From his right came the unmistakable sound of a pump-action shotgun chambering a new round. Tyler looked up to see a striking woman who had to be seventy-five-year-old Fay Turia, though she didn’t look a day over sixty. In her white hair cropped just below the ears, slim sporty figure, and bright green eyes, Tyler perceived the echo of the stunning beauty she must have been fifty years ago. Only the wrinkles around her eyes and neck and several liver spots on her hands betrayed her true age. She held the shotgun firm to her shoulder, as if she were not merely comfortable with the weapon but adept at handling it.

“Who are you?” she growled. The yawning barrel was the size of a manhole at this distance. Smoke wafted from it.

Tyler put up his hands. “I’m Tyler Locke. You must be Fay. I believe you invited me and my friend, Grant Westfield, for a friendly visit.”

Recognition dawned on her face, and the scowl melted away, replaced by a toothsome smile.

“Welcome to my home, Dr. Locke,” she said cheerfully, as if she were about to serve tea and crumpets instead of hot lead. “Would you mind terribly calling the police?”

TWO

Nadia Bedova stared at the water glass, hoping that Vladimir Colchev would not show up. Nestled next to her feet was the package that he’d requested.

Her seat at the outdoor café afforded a spectacular view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, clusters of tourists visible along its spine partaking in the Bridge Climb. A cruise ship docked across Circular Quay provided the backdrop for ferries, catamarans, and jet boats motoring past the ivory shells of the famed opera house.

Despite her calm expression, Bedova’s stomach churned as she waited. Four of her fellow operatives from Russia’s foreign intelligence service—the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki or SVR for short—were stationed at key locations nearby: two in the crowded walkway between the café and water, one at another table outside, and a fourth inside the restaurant housed under a five-story apartment tower. In addition to the mass of tourists strolling along, bikers and skateboarders occasionally rolled through. None of them would escape the operatives’ notice. They were here to apprehend Colchev or, if necessary, to kill him.

His actions had driven her reluctantly to this point. If he had just disappeared, he might have been left alone. But his last contact with her made it obvious that the SVR would have to bring him in or get rid of him once and for all.

A voice issued from the tiny microphone in her ear. One of the men in the walkway.

“I see him. One hundred meters behind you and coming this way.”

Bedova didn’t turn. “Is he alone?”

“Yes.”

The agents had already checked everyone else in the vicinity, and nobody seemed suspicious or put in place to help Colchev. He really was on his own, just as he’d said on the phone this morning.

She felt him touch her shoulder and didn’t flinch. She looked up and saw him smiling back at her. He was as fit as she’d ever seen him—broad shoulders, slim hips, steely gray hair—and she suddenly experienced a rush of memories of when they’d been together.

He bent down and lightly kissed her cheek. Then he came around the café’s front railing and took a seat opposite her. Now that he was in the shade, he removed his sunglasses and the intense eyes she remembered drilled into her.

“You look lovely, Nadia,” he said in a silky bass, using his native Russian.

She responded in kind. “I miss you, Vladimir. Why don’t you come home?”

“You know I can’t do that. At least not yet.”

“When then?”

“I have something to do first.”

“Is that why you needed this?” Bedova handed the bag over to him. He unzipped it, confirmed that the contents were complete and intact, and then closed it back up.

“Thank you, Nadia. I know procuring this must have been difficult.” He withdrew an envelope from his jacket and slid it across the table to her.

“I can’t take that,” she said.

“You deserve it. For everything you’ve done.”

She ignored the bulging envelope and leaned forward, taking his hands. “You must tell me what you’re doing. I want to help you.” She knew all four operatives, as well as her superiors back in Moscow, were hanging on every word.

Up to this point, the only intel they’d had to go on was courtesy of a single encrypted communication intercepted from one of Colchev’s known associates that referred to “Wisconsin Ave.” and an event taking place on July twenty-fifth, less than a week away. The belief within the organization was that he was planning a rogue op using former SVR operatives turned mercenaries and that the target was somewhere in America.

“I wish you could come with me,” Colchev said, “but the risk is too great.”

“When I volunteered for the SVR, I knew the risks.”

“I meant the risk to my mission.”

“You don’t trust me?”

Colchev turned to watch a passing ferry. “What I’m planning takes a special conviction. Honestly, I don’t think you would have the stomach to follow through.”

“Why?”

“It’s better that you don’t know.”

She let go of his hands and sat back. “Did you know I have spoken to the head of the SVR?”

Colchev’s head snapped around. “Why?”

“I didn’t tell him about our meeting. I wanted to know what he had planned for you if you returned.”

“A sham trial followed by a swift execution, I expect.”

“No, he said that he understands that the situation wasn’t your fault. And he knows that you have another operation in motion. He wants to know if there is any way he can help you.”

Colchev was silent as he examined her for deceit. Like him, she was an expert at lying, which she was doing now. Her objective was to find out about Colchev’s current plan. The director was hoping that Colchev would bring her onto his team or at least give her some hint of his mission. Barring that, the four operatives were instructed to move in and take him as soon as he walked out of the café with the bag. Bedova couldn’t have asked for a more wrenching assignment: to bring in the man she had once loved to be executed just as he’d theorized.

Colchev had created the spy ring that included Anna Chapman and nine other spies who were exposed by the US counterintelligence agencies in 2010. To prevent divulgence of their intelligence-gathering methods, the Russians retrieved them by swapping four imprisoned Russian intel officers who had been moles for the Americans. Nobody had been happy about the deal, but the SVR couldn’t allow the spies in America to reveal any more than they already had.

Someone had to be blamed for the debacle, and the obvious choice had been Colonel Alexander Poteyev, the SVR agent who’d sold the spies’ identities to the Americans for thirty thousand dollars. But internally, the fault rested with Colchev, the man responsible for setting up the entire operation in the first place. If he wasn’t incompetent for letting the Americans discover the spies, then he was complicit. Either way, he had to be dealt with. Permanently.

“Nadia,” Colchev finally said, “they have already tried Poteyev in absentia and found him guilty of treason. He’s now a non-person in Russia. If it weren’t for the CIA’s protection, he’d be dead by now.”

“Why didn’t you go into protective custody like Poteyev?”

Colchev’s jaw worked back and forth, and then he spoke in a hush. “Because I’m not a traitor. I didn’t sell out my country. I hate America for everything they’ve done to Russia. I’m a patriot.”

“Then prove it. Come back with me and tell them the truth.”

“They aren’t interested in the truth. They want a show trial to save face. It will accomplish nothing.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“I have assets in the US that I never revealed because I feared Poteyev’s treachery myself. Because they weren’t compromised, I saw my opportunity to act independently, and I’m taking it. I’m going to prove my allegiance to Russia and the SVR. And when I do, my men and I will be welcomed back to our homeland as heroes.”

“But what can you possibly do that we can’t?” Bedova asked.

“Something that takes will. Now that I’m a non-person, whatever I do can be blamed on a rogue spy. I didn’t ask for this status, but since I have it, I will take advantage of it and do what Russia never could without fearing retaliation. Once they see the results, they will do everything they can to reward me.”