From a Position of Strength

Sean Heary

Description

Lying by the pool under a clear Tuscan sky, LORENZO ROSSI, the former head of the Vatican police, receives a surprise visit from his ex-fiancee, CIA Agent, CATHY DOHERTY. Cathy is concerned about Rossi's safety. Three nights ago, a Russian GRU agent, ELENA TRUSOVA, was critically injured when her car left a remote road leading to Rossi's family olive farm in Siena, Italy.Rossi ensures Cathy the proximity of the accident is pure coincidence, but agrees to investigate after Cathy revealed Trusova was a double agent working for the CIA and on her way to see him. For what purpose, she can only speculate. But one thing was for sure: his life was in danger.With the help of Trusova's friends and lovers, Rossi and Cathy piece together a gold mine of intelligence that, if authentic, points to another right-wing Conspiracy. One that Rossi is reluctant to involve himself, but has no choice.As dead bodies pile up around them, Rossi and Cathy couldn't help but wonder why they were still alive. They concluded the CIA or other state actors were using them to hunt down a piece of red-hot evidence that, if made public, would bring down the US President and perhaps prevent nuclear Armageddon.

Sujets

• Gran Londres
• Russia
• Italy
• Greater London
• My Last Duchess
• China
• Grand Londres
• London
• Russie

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 septembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800466623
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2021 Sean Heary

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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For Gwendoleen Joan


Contents
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
Epilogue


Prologue
The late autumn sun sank behind the rolling Tuscan hills. Elena Trusova, a serious-faced thirty-six-year-old with short straight blonde hair, removed her dark glasses and squinted into the rear-view mirror. It could have been her imagination, but she’d convinced herself that an SUV had been tailing her for the last hour.
Ahead, a roadside sign: Petrol Food 2km. Foot hard on the accelerator, Trusova caught a convoy of slow-moving lorries. Waiting in the outside lane until the last moment, she cut in front of the leading vehicle and darted into the transport café. Screeching to a halt behind a Fiat motorhome that was parked off to the side, she stayed hidden until the SUV had passed.
Trusova blew out a heavy breath. She had reason to be on edge. A week ago, when her boss – GRU Colonel Anatoly Frolov, Moscow Centre’s Rome rezident – was at lunch with his mistress, Trusova had photographed half a dozen classified diplomatic cables lying in Frolov’s in-tray for passing on to her CIA case officer. It was not for love or money. And she wasn’t being blackmailed. Rather, her motivation was ideological. Or at least, that’s how it started. Now, if she was honest with herself, it was also the rush of deceiving those closest to her. Knowing something no one else knew.
Trusova’s life of double-dealing had started four years before, when she cornered a CIA legal at an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs bash in Rome. Feigning intoxication, she voiced her dissatisfaction with the state of play in Moscow. A clear signal to any spook worth their salt that she was ripe for recruitment.
After a healthy bout of scepticism, the CIA warmed to the idea. A prize asset inside the Russian Embassy in Rome. Who could ask for anything more? A background check, a meeting at an out-of-favour café, and Langley signed on Elena Trusova as their newest star recruit.
Yesterday, the day after passing her latest harvest on to her handler, Trusova sensed she was being watched. All the telltale signs were there. Was Moscow onto her, or did the Americans not like what was being played back to them? She couldn’t be sure. Either way, she felt her life was in danger.
Returning to her apartment from the Embassy five hours ago, Trusova checked the door for the speck of putty she routinely placed inside the lock cylinder. Gone. A sure sign that someone had broken in. Were they inside, waiting to thrash a confession out of her, or did they already know everything there was to know and had booby-trapped the entrance? She wasn’t about to find out.
As a trained agent, Trusova had an escape plan ready. One that didn’t pick sides. She would flee to neutral ground to someone she trusted, although they’d never met.
Trusova scribbled a brief note on a scrap of paper, folded it round her mobile and dropped it into her letterbox. But not before she’d taken a ride on the Metro and powered it down: concealing the phone’s last known location from Big Brother and his ubiquitous surveillance technology. Which Big Brother? Russian or American, it didn’t matter.
Job done: Trusova hurried off. By foot, taxi and bus, she cruised Rome for two hours checking for watchers, then made her way to Termini Station, before taking the Leonardo Express to Roma-Fiumicino Airport. There, she picked up a small, inconspicuous rental that looked like any other car on the road and drove north on the E35 towards Siena, all the time with an eye in the rear-view mirror.
Taking no chances and assuming the worst as the GRU had taught her, Trusova varied her speed and lane to determine whether she was being followed. Passing the Nazzano nature reserve wetlands, the first sign of trouble emerged. A brown-coloured SUV was maintaining a distance of about three hundred metres, no matter her speed.
Now, obscured from the highway, Trusova sat in her rental, smoking a cigarette, waiting to see if the SUV doubled back. “A coincidence?” she asked herself, as she climbed out. Not likely .
Trusova glanced about as she ground out her cigarette under her block-heeled sandals, then entered the café. Ordering a panino con porchetta and a red wine, she sat at a table by the window, staring out at the driveway and the road beyond. Nothing.
Dusk had turned to night by the time Trusova pulled back onto the highway. A check in the rear-view mirror as she sped west. Headlights from the transport café driveway. A vehicle that had been filling up? No way of knowing if it was for her.
Five kilometres from the Siena city limits, Trusova exited the highway onto a steep, dark road, which was lined on both sides by forty-foot cypress trees. As she approached the apex, without warning, a tractor pulling a trailer packed with men appeared from over the rise. Trusova hit the brakes, sending up a cloud of dust as she skidded on the loose gravel. Fearful of an ambush, she grabbed her pistol from her handbag and flashed a look back over her shoulder for the SUV. Not there. “Calm down,” she told herself, exhaling a deep breath.
Dust poured in as she wound down the window, ready for a squabble. But when Trusova saw the kind face of the seventy-year-old driver looking down from on top of his tractor, her demeanour changed.
“ Buonasera, signora ,” the old man said in sing-song Italian. “Are you hurt?”
“Other than my pride, I’m fine.”
“And the car?”
Trusova pulled over onto the grass verge, climbed out and checked the paintwork. “The car’s good,” she said, hugging herself for warmth. Wearing nothing but a sleeveless cotton shift dress, Trusova had not expected she’d be standing on a cool Siena hilltop so late in the evening when leaving for the Embassy that morning.
“Then we’ll be on our way. Arrivederci, signora,” the old man said, tipping his wide-brimmed straw hat.
“Perhaps, first switch on your headlights, signore,” Trusova said, turning her big sooty eyes towards the front of the tractor.
“Oh dear! Sometimes I forget. There’s not much traffic on this road after sunset.” The old man turned on his lights, lifted his foot off the clutch and lurched forward, shaking the sleep from his weary-faced passengers as he chugged off.
Trusova stood in the middle of the road smoking a cigarette as she watched the farm workers fade into the distance. A glance at her watch. It was getting late. As Trusova turned towards the car, she did a double take. Down the hill, a vehicle had turned on its headlights. A vehicle that wasn’t there ten minutes ago. The brown-coloured SUV sprang to mind. Butting her cigarette out on the road, Trusova jumped into the car and slammed her foot on the accelerator.
By the time she reached the crest of the hill and started down the other side, the approaching vehicle was upon her. Lacking the horsepower to outrun it, Trusova bumped along the pitted verge to allow it to pass, hoping the driver was simply late for dinner.
A glance right as the vehicle drew alongside. “What the fuck are you up to?” Trusova snarled, her gaze alternating between thick tree trunks and the tinted windows of the SUV as it inched closer. A high-speed game of chicken she knew she couldn’t win.
Ahead, Trusova spotted a gap between cypresses. Two options flashed to mind. Stop and negotiate with her pursuer, who probably wanted her dead. Or thread the small rental at speed between two large stationary trees and bounce down the hill through the field of budding sunflower plants.
With no time to think it through, Trusova stole back a bit of the road and swung a hard left. But it was never going to work. At that speed, the gap was too small. Like a game of pinball, the Peugeot clipped the first tree and bounced off the second, sending her cartwheeling down the hill, cutting a hundred-metre-long swath through the tall, dense crop.
The SUV stopped and backed up. The driver wound down the window and studied the scene below. Trusova’s car lay on its crumpled roof with four wheels in the air, looking like a squashed beetle.
Across the valley, outside lights of a farmhouse came on and faint voices floated in on the wind. Unsure how long it would take for the neighbours to respond, the SUV driver executed a three-point turn and sped off back towards the main road.