Moscow USA

Moscow USA
Gordon Stevens

A major international thriller now available as an ebook for the first time.A superbly plotted novel flowing from Moscow to London and New York, the definitive thriller about the explosion of greed that is the new Russia, the murky forces operating within and behind it, and our involvement with them.A love story, a thriller, a mystery. It begins with the failure of a CIA agent to prevent the assassination of a Russian double-agent trying to tip him off about the coup to topple Gorbachev in 1991.It continues with Alina, the daughter of the murdered man, running a business in Moscow and coming up against two men investigating a big theft from an insurance company. The two men are themselves unaware of their connection – one was the assassin, one the CIA man – and so the scene is set for a game of plot and counter plot involving love, revenge and millions of dollars culminating in the tiny town of Moscow, Idaho, USA.Moscow USA has all of Stevens’s trademark elements – double-shock suspense, a great sense of humanity, topicality, inside knowledge and intelligence.

GORDON STEVENS

MOSCOW USA

A great many people in London, Washington, New York and Moscow helped with this book. Because of their pasts, and in some cases their futures, few of them would wish to be identified. They know who they are.

The company Omega is based on an actual organization. Its name and certain of its details have been changed to protect it, its founders and its personnel.

Gordon Stevens

Moscow

Contents

Cover (#u46f4a073-06bf-5f5b-b445-bc0ee31cbcdb)

Title Page (#ud64461f4-0f45-5197-8198-707f6dd1fbf5)

Epigraph (#uc7a5b216-b8d4-5d46-9907-a4801cc43c09)

ALPHA the beginning

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

OMEGA the ending

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About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

ALPHA

The beginning. The first letter of the Greek alphabet.

Until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the Special Forces unit of the KGB.

OMEGA

The ending. The last letter of the Greek alphabet.

An investigation/security firm comprising mainly ex-Alpha members in the new Moscow.

ALPHA/OMEGA

The first and the last.

The basic reason for being, the most important part.

ALPHA the beginning (#ufb43b5a6-d377-55e9-8f28-54b6955e0eee)

The weather that morning was hot, which was one of the things those questioned later would remember. In addition to the personal things, and the fact that Hurricane Bob was beating a circle off Florida and threatening to wreak havoc up the East Coast. Items of no consequence to the Dark Suits. And even then the woman with the child and the salesman and the Mormon preacher would never know the real reason for the visit. There were others, of course, a total of 184 passengers on the two flights, plus air crew and staff at the relevant airports, but the woman and the salesman and the preacher were those in whom the investigators had a special interest, because they had not only caught flight 2171 but had made phone calls at the same places and the same times as the man called Joshua.

The airport, four miles west of town, was modern but small. Rolling Idaho wheatfields around it, the occasional poplar tree, and two low hangars. The terminal itself was single-storey and glass-fronted, one room serving both arrivals and departures. The check-in desk was to the left, the baggage X-ray machine was in the centre, opposite the entrance, and the coffee and candy machines, the pay phones and the mail box, were against the wall to the right. Flights in and out every hour, but only to a handful of destinations; the parking lot never full and the drop-offs and pick-ups quick and easy.

The Shermans arrived fifty minutes before departure, the three of them crammed into the front seat of the Chevy pick-up. Annie Sherman was thirty-two years old, her face and hands tanned with the seasons, though the first tell-tale crow’s-feet of worry were wrinkled at the sides of her eyes. Her husband Ted was two years older, tall, with cornflower-blue eyes. The suit he wore uncomfortably that morning was dark navy, and the neck of the shirt was slightly too tight. Ted and Annie Sherman had been married eight years and struggled against the odds, plus the occasional flood and the interest on a bank loan, to run 300 acres east of town, on the road to Genesee. Their daughter Mary was six, the Chevy was second-hand, and a year from today the bank would foreclose and the three would stand silent as their home and their worldly goods, for which they had fought and sweated and bled, were auctioned in front of them. Today, however, the mood was lighter: Annie taking Mary to visit the girl’s grandmother on the occasion of her seventieth birthday.

As they arrived a Toyota Landcruiser pulled away.

Ted hauled their bags from the back, waited as they stood in the queue and glanced at his watch. The meeting with the bank was at nine thirty.

‘You go,’ Annie told him. ‘We’re okay.’

‘Better call Mom.’ The concern furrowed his brow. ‘Let her know that the flight’s on time.’

… What did she do then? the Dark Suits would ask. FBI, the Dark Suits had said. Investigating someone running a scam and the person might have been on the flight.

Ted left, she would tell them; she and Mary checked in, then they went for a coffee. From the machines by the far wall, she would explain, even though they hadn’t asked, because that was the way they were, expecting the detail and wanting you to give them more than you thought you knew.