Bad Company Read online

  A PERFECT HATRED: BAD COMPANY

  BOOK TWO

  P. A. Duncan

  Unexpected Paths

  Copyright © 2018 by P. A. Duncan (Phyllis A. Duncan, Phyllis Anne Duncan)

  www.unexpectedpaths.com

  Library of Congress No. TXu002104237

  ISBN: 978-1728911243

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form, with the exception of brief excerpts for the purpose of review. To use excerpts for purposes other than review, please contact the author at [email protected]

  to obtain written permission.

  Thank you for respecting author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, and some locations and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons, public figures notwithstanding, is coincidence.

  Cover Design: SelfPubBookCovers.com/PatriciaKellerPKA

  Edited by Sylvan Echo Editing www.sylvanechoedits.com

  Created with Vellum

  Praise for P. A. Duncan

  For the debut novel, A War of Deception:

  “Twisty, steamy, and overflowing with spy games and fascinating historical detail, A War of Deception kept me frantically turning pages, way past bedtime. P. A. Duncan shines a brilliant light on post-Cold War politics, a subject you need to know about more than ever. A terrific read.”

  Laura Benedict, Edgar-nominated author

  of Bliss House and The Abandoned Heart

  For A Perfect Hatred: End Times (Book One)

  “Spies Mai and Alexei are back in action! Mai’s mindful strength interacts with Alexei’s heavy-duty support, making for an enjoyable and intelligent read.”

  J. Russ Briley, Author of

  One Man, Two Votes and Two Dirty for D.C.

  For A Perfect Hatred: Bad Company (Book Two)

  Alexei and Mai are at it again! Two cold war spies married and helping the FBI—without its knowing it. Sounds like a hard relationship to manage, and it is. Imagine if your spouse really could kill you with one thumb. Imagine…then enjoy reading how they manage.”

  J. Russ Briley, Author of One Man, Two Votes and Two Dirty for D.C.

  “Bad Company is a page-turner that I couldn’t stop reading! I loved getting a bird’s-eye view into the lives of undercover spies. The book felt well-researched and very authentic. I can’t wait for book three.”

  Allison Kathryn Garcia, author of Vivir el Dream

  and Finding Amor

  Dedication

  To the memory of those who gathered at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, on Shabbat, as they had always done, but who were murdered by hate:

  Joyce Fienberg, 75

  Richard Gottfried, 65

  Rose Mallinger, 97

  Jerry Rabinowitz, 66

  Brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal, 59 and 54

  Mrs. Bernice and Mr. Sylvan Simon, 84 and 86

  Daniel Stein, 71

  Melvin Wax, 88

  Irving Younger, 69

  To the memory of those who went to the grocery store in Jeffersonton, Kentucky, a common, everyday excursion, but who were murdered by hate:

  Vickie Jones, 67

  Maurice Stallard, 69

  Never again.

  Epigraph

  “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying the cross.”

  Attributed incorrectly to Sinclair Lewis

  “I was born, six gun in my hand.

  “Behind a gun I’ll make my final stand.”

  “Bad Company” by Bad Company

  Author’s Note

  A Perfect Hatred: Bad Company is book two of a four-book series. A Perfect Hatred is a serial series, meaning none of the books stand alone and should be read in sequence. However, the “Prologue” herein contains a brief summary of what happened in book one, End Times, and will help to refresh a reader, but not fully explain, what happened in that book.

  Certain troubling events included herein I've derived from my research. In light of recent, real occurrences in October 2018, you may wonder why I included them at all. These fictional events are, unfortunately, authentic, the attitudes real, but we need to accept they continue to exist. They in no way represent my personal beliefs. I present them to show the danger facing our country. Again. Still.

  Bad Company takes place entirely in the year 1994.

  Thank you, and I hope A Perfect Hatred makes you think.

  Contents

  Prologue

  I. This Isn’t a Bond Movie

  1. Epiphanies

  2. Making an Acquaintance

  3. Arbitrary and Capricious

  4. Deep-Seated Insecurities

  5. Over Lunch

  6. Careful Planning

  7. The Devil in the Details

  8. Moving Trains

  9. Dangerous Thinking

  10. Indulgence

  11. Mission Accomplished

  12. Simple Kindness

  13. History

  14. Lovesick Claptrap

  15. Facades and Disguises

  16. Scars and Tattoos

  17. Vegas Redux

  18. Mercenaries

  19. Rituals

  20. Carefully Taught

  21. Introductions

  22. True Love

  II. One Bomb Too Many

  23. In a Strange Land

  24. Promises

  25. Double Standards

  26. Unaccustomed Emotions

  27. Patience

  28. Yahweh's Voice

  29. Dependency

  30. The Approaching Thunder

  31. Hidden Agendas

  32. Tests

  33. Ice

  34. Holy Cause

  35. Revelations

  36. Frustrations

  37. Responsibilities

  38. Family Values

  39. Down on the Farm

  40. Good Spy

  41. Ultimatums

  42. Sanctified

  43. Traitors

  44. What You Have to Do

  Acknowledgements

  Reviews

  About the Author

  Author’s Social Media

  Also by P. A. Duncan

  Prologue

  Mount Vernon, Virginia

  January 1994

  From the doorway to their home office, Alexei Bukharin paused and watched his wife, Mai Fisher, at work. It was a new year, a time to reflect, right? The previous year had started without drama, but that had changed less than a third of the way into it. An attempted car-jacking by a local skinhead had sent Mai down a research path leading to a dark side of America: militias, paramilitary compounds, and racist religion.

  Then came Killeen.

  What should have been a routine guns bust led to a standoff and to more than eighty people—men, women, and children—burned to death. In a church.

  More importantly, Mai had spotted a young man there among the demonstrators supporting the People of the Eternal Light during the standoff. That Irish intuition of hers flared, and she decided he was a man to watch. And they had—only after painstaking research and intelligence gathering.

  “Don’t head off unprepared,” Nelson, head of the United Nations Intelligence Directorate, and their boss, had told them. “You have to learn everything about them. Explore every avenue. Read and study every bit of intelligence you can find. Don’t take anything for granted with these guys, and don’t ever, ever, be complacent when you encounter them.”

  And his meticulous partner—his wife—had followed those instructions to the letter, but “over-prepared” was good in their business. You never knew what tiny tidbit of information might save your life, mon
ths or years later.

  All that preparation had led to Mai’s brief, first encounter with their subject, but other things had intervened: an unexpected encounter with an IRA terrorist, who didn’t survive, and a follow-up mission in the disintegrating Yugoslavia.

  They’d barely had a chance to repack from that mission in Sarajevo before they left for their holiday trip to Hawai’i. Upon their return this afternoon, Alexei found the laundry done and put away, the refrigerator stocked, and the house free of the mustiness of an almost two-month absence. A service took care of that. Mai accepted it easily, but he had a proletariat’s guilt about such a bourgeois indulgence.

  Mai had walked into the house, shed her coat, and headed for the home office to attack the reports from Analysis, which had accumulated during their time away.

  “You know,” he said to her from the doorway, “we have two more days of leave left.”

  She looked up at him as if he’d grown a second head. “My initial contact with John Carroll was close to three months ago,” Mai said.

  He couldn’t argue with her logic or her work ethic. “You’re right. We need to find him again.” Great, he thought, another round of gun shows. He took a seat at his desk. “Since you were eager to get started, fill me on what you’ve learned so far.”

  A gust of wind pushed sleet against the windows, and Alexei longed for the beach on the Kohala Coast, Hawai’i. Though the visit had begun with civility and bonding, the bickering emerged too soon, among him, Mai, his son, and his granddaughter. But Hawai’i had been sunny. Home was gray and cold, much as Yugoslavia had been.

  “I’ll uncork some wine,” Mai said, “and you can get a fire going. We might as well do this in some comfort.”

  He smiled at her. “Get a fire going? You make it sound as though I have to cut down trees. How difficult is it to flip a switch?”

  “And here I was being all cozy and romantic, and your Russian cynicism invades.”

  “Sorry. I’d love some wine, and I’ll get to work making fire.”

  A few minutes later, they settled on the sofa before the fireplace, glasses of wine in hand.

  “Carroll’s not living in the trailer I broke into last summer and hasn’t for several months—I think we discussed that. Anyway, I thought perhaps he’d seen some sign I was there, but I’m certain I left no trace,” Mai said.

  “A better job somewhere?”

  “His Social Security account shows only minimum-wage construction work in several states, sometimes only for a week or so at a time.”

  “Any new address?”

  “A post office box in Kingman.”

  “Any details about the job-hopping?”

  She related what Analysis had discovered: how many jobs, how long he worked each.

  “Seems as if he’s working long enough to get a paycheck. Money to get back on the road,” Alexei said. “A red flag.”

  “How so?”

  “Let’s say his intent is to be some sort of avenging angel for Killeen. Let’s further say he’ll use a bomb, for example. He can learn about explosives working construction. He’s worked at a hardware store, a good place for procuring some bomb-making supplies.”

  She thought about it, and to his surprise, she conceded he was right with a nod. “He also hasn’t filed a tax return since 1991,” she said.

  “Yet he’s risking taking jobs where he’d have to supply his Social Security Number. Is he using his real one?”

  “He is. I found that odd, too. Maybe he’s counting on the time it takes for the IRS and the Social Security Administration to communicate.”

  “And the post office box means any letters from the IRS can sit unopened while he moves about the country. Not paying taxes is a definite anti-government practice.”

  “Yes, but Analysis extrapolated it was unlikely he owed money, given his paltry income. However, he may be working mostly for cash and not reporting it.”

  “Another anti-government trait.”

  “Maybe he’s unemployable. There’s no data on why he left the jobs. Perhaps he was fired.”

  “Good point.”

  “So, more gun shows.”

  He swallowed some wine to cover his grimace. “I was afraid you’d say that. Let’s think about how to track him down if we don’t find him at a gun show.”

  “Tap his parents’ and his friends’ phones. Put some surveillance on their houses, but I’d rather find him the hard way. I can get into his head better.”

  “But this can wait two more days, can’t it?”

  Her romantic inclination was all too brief. “The patriot movement gets off on significant anniversaries. The first anniversary of the ATF raid on Calvary Locus is seven weeks away and…” Her voice trailed off, her eyes focusing on nothing somewhere beyond the windows.

  “Mai?”

  She shook her head and looked into her glass of wine. “Sorry. I was remembering…” Her eyes were more vacant this time.

  “Mai? Remembering what?”

  “Inside the IRA,” she murmured, though she wasn’t in the here and now.

  It had been a long time since she’d had a bout of PTSD, and Alexei couldn’t imagine what triggered this one. That was the problem with post-traumatic stress; its effects lingered. He shifted closer to her. “What is it?”

  “Cluster your acts of terror too close and the public gets pissed,” she said, her voice taking on the sounds of Belfast. “You lose support. Wait too long though and any point you’ve made is forgotten. Two to three years between bombings…”

  “That means finding John Carroll soon is critical,” he said.

  She blinked, looked at him, eyes focusing. He put a hand on her knee to ground her.

  “There’s no mission until we find him,” she said.

  He smiled. “Well, there’ll always be a mission somewhere.” But wouldn’t it be grand if there weren’t, he thought.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, fully back in the moment. “There’s always a mission.”

  I

  This Isn’t a Bond Movie

  1

  Epiphanies

  Pensacola, Florida

  February 1994

  Mai Fisher paid her entry fee and strolled among the vendors at the Dixie Gun and Knife show. People descended on her to shove pamphlets into her hands, screeds about black helicopters, the evils of the new world order, how to protect yourself from U.N. spies. Well, that one might be interesting reading, as well as giving her presence here a certain, anonymous irony.

  She looked over the map of the convention center space with its list of exhibitors. Since there was no official record of Carroll’s business, she had no idea what he called it, but one vendor listed as “Surplus Military Supplies” caught her eye. Best not to rush over, though. She bided her time by going from table to table, listening to sales spiels for everything from freeze-dried foods to devices “guaranteed to identify wired informers.” That she examined.

  A common stud-finder, available at any hardware store, but here repackaged as an anti-surveillance device. Right-wingers could be creative.

  At last she turned down the final aisle. The cheaper vendors were here, far from the entrance, their tables not as slick and packaged as those in the premium locations. To her expert eye, the wares here were no more than junk. Two tables away from her objective, she looked over some rusted bayonets from World War II and glanced to her left.

  She looked first at the table. Plain with no cover and only the small, stenciled sign provided by the convention center. She took a deep breath and let her eyes drift toward the man standing behind the table.

  She so loved being right.

  John Carroll, with a fresh brush-cut enhancing his severity, stood at parade rest. He wore a clean, pressed set of BDU pants in desert camo and a black, button-down shirt. He seemed little changed from their meeting in Vegas, though, if possible, perhaps a bit thinner.

  A man in jeans, a plaid flannel shirt, flamboyant cowboys boots, and a Stetson stood acro
ss from Carroll, pointing to something on the table. A standard flare gun from an emergency kit. Flare guns, multi-use knives, surplus ammo boxes, olive drab tee shirts, canteens, camo duffel bags, and military-surplus sleeping bags took up two-thirds of the ten-foot table. The other third held books and pamphlets.

  Hoping Carroll would remember her, Mai stepped over to his table and picked up one of the pamphlets, the product of several generations of Xeroxing.