возврате

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I have mixed feelings as I climb the few steps, to the house in Belgrade where I lived for so many years. The people on the streets greeted me - some recognized me, even though I had been gone for months.
What did Belcheck tell them? That I was dead? Captured? Or on holidays? That I had moved to a different place?
I don't know. I've tried to keep my head down and get here unseen, but that didn't work. It's easier to fool the CIA and the Secret Service by cutting all electronic communication and avoiding all security cameras that it is to avoid the bunch of 75 year old Serbian women who're sitting in front of their houses every day and night.

At least I made it out of the US without any more troubles. Mark even gave me some money for the trip, since I had nothing on me but the clothes that I wore. I hated to take money from him. I swore to pay him back, firstly because he seems to need the money just as desperately as I do, secondly because the few rests of self-respect and pride that I still have are urging me to do it.
I didn't even tell Wilson about my routing. We split up in Alexandria, I took a Greyhound bus to Atlanta and a rental car from there, down to Key West again and I hope that he or the CIA or whoever he works with lost track of me. My plane tickets that Chloe got for me two weeks ago were still valid, I just had to re-schedule the flight. My fake Australian passport was still in a locker in Havana. I slept the whole flight, in the last row of the 747, until it landed in Budapest. It was only a five-hours drive from there down to Belgrade.

I'm ringing at my own doorbell now. Who's gonna open up? Chloe? Belcheck? I don't know. I hope it's one of them. I hope that this apartment is still my apartment. I hope that Chloe somehow managed to pay the rent to Igor. My instincts tell me she did.

It doesn't take long until she opens the door.

She's happy to see me, and so am I. It's been long since I got my last honest embrace from somebody. I can hardly remember how good this feels.

Surprisingly little changed here. Chloe didn't dare touch anything since she always knew I was still alive. There are a few computers in the living room, my few books about 'Serbian for beginners' lie on the kitchen desk. I smells like Belcheck was here not long ago - the smell of his cigarettes is here. She never smoked.

I head straight for the couch and lie down. It almost turns into a small fight because she insists on giving me my bedroom back, but I don't want that. She'll be here much longer than me. I have nine days from now on, and then I'll meet Wilson in Kazakhstan to complete our plans of getting through to Ili - to Audrey. I have nine days to recuperate from the exertions of the past weeks. That's not much time - nowhere even enough, but I'll manage to make the best out of it. If it'll need the help of amphetamines or even stronger stuff to be fit enough to go through with all this, I'm okay with it. I have nothing to lose.

Chloe is not happy with my plans. After I come to life again, twenty hours later, I tell her and Belcheck what Wilson, Mark and I are planning to do. Wilson and I will meet in Astana in nine days, and then we'll continue to the Chinese border. We'll have one full night to recon the military complex which we suspect to be the one where Audrey and I were held.
In the evening before that night, Mark will call the Secretary of State and threaten her to release the evidence on Audrey. We guess that the Secretary of State has some contacts to China. First of all she will put pressure on Mark - but she also has to clean up the mess and do something about it. Chloe has to send traces of the communication between Mark and the Secretary of State to a group of Chinese hackers, to make the Chinese nervous as well.
We hope they'll transfer her then. Then we could attack the convoy and get a chance to get her out. If the whole plan doesn't work out we'll have to go in. But I guess our chances on success are quite small in that case. We cannot storm a Chinese military complex. Not in one hundred years.

Belcheck is sitting across the table. As he listens to my plan he starts to shake his head, first slightly but at the end he openly tells me that I'm insane to do this.
He says I'm just gonna get myself killed.

I am aware of that. My chances on a success are little. I guess they are about 30 percent, Belcheck gives me 5. Fair enough.
I would even try if my chances were as little as one per cent.

Am I blinded by the idea of saving Audrey? Most likely, I am. I am making irrational decisions, based on the wish to save her. I know that I don't think clearly, but I don't want to think in any other way.
The whole week long Belcheck and even Chloe keep telling me that my plans are too risky. I should rely on a political solution, they tell me. But there is no possible political solution. If there was, the White House would have already chosen that option.

By the end of the week my only aim is to avoid Chloe and Belcheck - at least avoid talking to them for more than a few minutes, because I know where the conversation will lead. I can't listen to it. I shouldn't treat my only friends like that. They are all I have. But I'm still putting Audrey over them. She needs me. Chloe and Belcheck don't. If I die, their lives will just continue as they did in the past months. They shouldn't worry about me. Chloe already paid me back for going to Russia: she got me back out. We're even. We don't owe each other anything. Neither do I owe Belcheck.

I used the few days that I had to get my arms, which I had, hidden in various places all over Belgrade, ready and to talk to Igor. I have to use his old connections to get in and out of Kazakhstan unseen - armed and unseen. It's not cheap but I can afford it. When he asked me why I needed to go there I told him that this time, it's me who has to get a woman out of the claws of somebody else.
He doesn't know who I talked about, thank god. He only started to smile and wished me well. He's sure I'll die, I guess.

The week is is over now. I'm just about to get into my 'new' car and drive away for good when Chloe comes down to see me. Will she wish me well now, too, finally? Even though she still doesn't believe in my plans?

I wait by the car and watch her come over. The back is full with stuff I'm gonna need: weapons, two assault rifles, even hand grenades. Ammunition for a small war.

Have you come to wish me well?, I ask her.

She shakes her head, saying no. You shouldn't go at all.

I already start to think that this is one of her and Belcheck's usual pleadings not to leave - but then she hands me her tablet, telling me to read.
I do, and my heart sinks.

You can't go through with this, she adds, after a while.

After reading this I know she's right. If I go, I'm gonna run straight into death.

I don't have anything being worth called allies. I should have known.

Wilson is a puppet of the White House. They're playing this really well - making me believe that Wilson and I would have a chance, luring me out into danger, to let the CIA kill me there.
Nobody would care. I'd be no longer under the protection of my already half-revoked presidential pardon. I'd be killed in action - they could even come up with a great story why I was there - a story which wouldn't invoke Audrey. They're already planning that, according to their communication, which Chloe intercepted.

Mark is also in danger. I have to tell him somehow, but I haven't yet found a way. By telling Wilson that I'd rely on the help of Mark to contact the White House, I brought him into danger.
I haven't yet found a safe way to contact him, therefore I can only hope that the laws of the United States are strong enough to protect him for a few more days - maybe they are, since he's still inside the country. Outside of the home land, there is now law. No protection. Nothing that could save me from the CIA being released upon me on behalf of the White House.
I had always thought that contacting the agencies would make them search for Audrey - the opposite thing happened. They're haunting me, my friends and even Mark now, because they're in cahoots with the White House. The Advisor for National Security - Rayburn - has a strong position there. He is the ruler over the agencies. As long as Mark doesn't get through to somebody higher inside the White House, who could stop Rayburn, we're all doomed. We can't leak anything to the press. The Chinese would kill Audrey right away.

It's all a giant lose-lose situation.

But something had to happen. I couldn't just sit there and do nothing just because my initial plans won't work. That I could not rely on the help of Wilson or the CIA meant that I had to come up with a different plan.

I don't have anything being worth called allies - but I have friends. I should have treated them better. Especially Chloe and Belcheck. He always mistrusted the CIA- he was always right with that.

He still doesn't like my plans, but there is a point up to which he's willing to help me.

He came to Kazakhstan with me. I crossed the border to China alone, but Blecheck will wait for me on the other side when I come back - if I ever make it back to the other side. Chloe found a way to talk to Mark. He'll contact Rayburn directly, telling him that I contacted him and threatened him to kill him for his actions in London. Chloe will intercept and leak that conversation to the Chinese. They'll know then that I'm out of the hands of the Russians, and that the Americans already know I've been held in Ili. But no word of Audrey.

They will transfer her, I am sure. If Audrey is still alive, they will transfer her, to a place somewhere else, deeper inland. They can't afford to kill her until they hear that the Americans suspect she's still alive and they can't afford to keep her in Ili when I am no longer in a Russian prison.

There is only one main street from Ili to the inland. They have to take that one.

I'm sitting in my hideaway, watching the part of the street where I prepared the ambush. It's a v-shaped valley, a natural narrowing which is perfect.
I only have one satellite phone with me, which I haven't used yet. We're all too afraid of the conversation being intercepted. Chloe is going to send me an encrypted message, depending on what Mark reaches in Washington and depending on the satellite images of the camp. Either the word Dallas, meaning that we have a go and the convoy is on its way, the word Seattle for 'there are problems somewhere' or Houston, meaning that Mark reached nothing and the satellite images show no prisoner transport at all.

I don't know what I'm gonna do in case of reading one of the latter two options. I only planned for one option- the first one. What am I gonna do if she texts me that there were problems? Am I gonna drive down the fifteen miles to the camp and run berserk? Not a good idea, but it tempts me. I have to keep myself under control. Even if this all doesn't work out, I can't let the rage blind me and throw my own life away. It hurts to think like that. It hurts to make decisions that keep me safe and sound while I know that Audrey isn't. I just hope that I won't need to make such a decision.

I lie and wait for hours. Everything is set. Grenades, two assault rifles are positioned on the opposite hill side, aiming at the street. I have a remote trigger for them, an ammunition belt of two hundred bullets should be enough to make the Chinese guards believe that they are being ambushed by more than only one man. While they're gonna shoot and try to take out the two gunner positions, I'll be one hundred yards away with a silenced marksman's rifle. They won't even notice me first, while I'll take them out one by one.

I hope that the cars are armored somehow - that my curtain fire won't accidentally hurt Audrey - but I'm not sure about that. There are so many variables that I can't plan for.

I hope that the three grenades are gonna stop the convoy.

I hope the cars are not gonna crash in any way that would accidentally hurt Audrey.

Dallas.

Reading that word, I know that I have to put all the worries aside and concentrate. I've had enough bad luck in the past. This time, luck has to be on my side.

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