Stories from author Flavian

[Brainmetal]

Game Time

By Flavian ©

CHAPTER 1

"Mom's home."

No other two words in the English language--put together in such a simple sentence--could have carried as much weight, in my opinion, as those two words spoken to me by my son on that particular afternoon.

I had been checking the online weather forecast for the next few days, when Steven, my seven-year-old son, had come into the larger upstairs bedroom I had been using both for sleeping and as a home office in the temporary two-bedroom apartment in which we had been staying. His simple statement--given with no indication of any joy, excitement, or any other higher level of emotion than someone saying, "Hmm, whaddaya know, the mailman came already"--did not register with me for a few seconds.

When it finally clicked in my brain as to what Steven had just said, I stood quickly and forgot all about the online weather report. I hurried after his retreating little self, noting that this was the fourth day in a row that he had worn his "The Legend of Korra" t-shirt. He was still a bit young to get into that Nickelodeon cartoon series, in my opinion, but the shirt had been a gift from my mother, and Steven had thought it looked cool--"cool" being something an almost-eight-year-old could not truly understand; but he realized, through talking with his school friends, that "cool" was some special attribute about life that the older kids thought was important--thus...

As I came downstairs to the apartment's foyer, I saw Steven holding the door partway open. He was not saying anything and not moving; just standing there with one hand on the knob.

Through the opening, I could see that FBI Special Agent Gary Fife was at my door, so I opened it a bit farther.

Standing on the sidewalk about six feet behind Fife stood ... Lana ... my love ... my wife ... a very huge part of my life, until her sudden and mysterious disappearance just shy of three years before!

Lana was simply standing there with her head down. A female FBI Agent wearing an FBI windbreaker was with her, helping to hold onto Lana. Lana had an expression on her face that indicated she might be ready to flee at a moment's notice, but was determined to see this meeting through.

Another female--I could not tell if she was FBI or not--was holding a small toddler on her hip. It looked like a little girl; probably not yet two years old. I could not register anything about the child at that point, other than her presence. I was focused on the return of my wife, Lana--brought back to me as if from the dead.

Lana appeared to be slimmer in the face than I had remembered, and had a pasty-looking complexion. Her medium-dark blonde hair was cut shorter than she had worn it before her disappearance. Except for the fact that she had an overall gaunt appearance, and had lost weight, she looked the same as I had remembered her; except that she had a baby bump--Lana was pregnant!

I took in all of this within about five seconds after I had reached the bottom of the stairs and looked out the door that my son was holding open. I was considering an attempt to push past Fife and grab Lana in a huge hug, but my brain was short-circuiting at that moment. After all; it had been almost three years!

Lana did not brighten when she noticed my presence; in fact, she looked even more terrified as the seconds stretched out in silence. She was pregnant--and it was surely NOT my baby. And I simply could not find the words to say at that point in order to break the impasse at the doorway as we all stood there staring at each other.

****

Back to those words: 'Home' and 'Mom.'

'Home'

Until a few months ago, home had been Rosslyn, Virginia. I had finally come to the realization that hanging around the DC area, waiting for any more scraps of information from the FBI dealing with the circumstances surrounding my wife's disappearance was not just futile. The whole situation there was creating an unhealthy mix of emotions in me--pain, anger, frustration, a desire to lash out--that could eventually lead to physical maladies in me, and emotional and developmental difficulties in my son. My therapist had warned me about how my attitudes could influence Steven's development and well-being--most assuredly adversely, in that analyst's learned opinion--given the constant flow of negative vibes that I was giving off around my son in our house in Rosslyn.

So, I had figured out that I needed to get on with life, beginning with a change in location as well as in outlook. Thus, I had applied for an accounting job in the Metro Atlanta Area, at Jacobson Controls in the well-planned bedroom-community of Peachtree City; a town created out of the piney woods and built around four golf courses, and referred to by the former Navy and Air Force pilots who lived there as 'Base Housing for Delta Airlines.'

I had bought some land in an area a few miles west of there, called Thomas Crossroads, just outside of Newnan, Georgia, southwest of Atlanta and well outside the I-285 Perimeter--but still, unfortunately, within Atlanta's traffic pattern. While the builder as finalizing construction of our new house on that land, I had moved my son and me into an apartment in Newnan, about eight miles west of my newly-purchased property.

It was just my bad luck--or the cagey inside knowledge on the part of the good old local boy who had sold me the land at such a bargain price--to encounter the special limitation of geology that somewhat restricted the property on which I had decided to build. I discovered later, when doing some research, that this limitation manifested itself in an unusual manner for quite a bit of Northern Georgia.

Anyone who is familiar with the tourist sites around Atlanta knows about Stone Mountain--with its famous carvings of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis. What these folks may not realize is that Stone Mountain is a huge singular quartz monzonite dome, with subterraneous fingers of its enormous rock formation extending outward for many miles.

One of those fingers of stone extends through and under my property. Most notably--and irritating to me and my General Contractor--that stony finger lies but a scant few feet beneath the otherwise rich topsoil-and-clay mixture of my land--just wonderful. Thus, it caused a major delay in building, and an extra outlay of funds, for two reasons.

First, the GC had to hire someone bonded and licensed in explosive excavation--requiring all sorts of permits and delays (and costs, of course) just so that I could have a basement beneath my house; as well as a hole in the rock just below the soil layer behind the house for a septic tank. Second, it was all on me to figure out a way to get a septic system and leach field put it that would perk sufficiently to convince the county to allow us to live there in the first place; much less continue with construction that was already scheduled.

It took some online research, and a lot of convincing of the powers that be in Coweta County (NOT pronounced like COW-Eater, with a soft R at the end, as it looks to the casual observer; but Cuh-EE-tuh, by the locals, for some reason), along with an official technical research document from one of the professors at nearby Georgia Tech, in Atlanta, to let me continue. I had found a method for environmentally safe and scientifically sound disposal of septic waste, called the Presby Enviro-Septic System; and I had finally convinced the County Engineer of its viability in my situation.

The Presby System, popular in Vermont and other northern regions, involved burying a specially-designed-and-constructed set of parallel and connected 52-foot-long corrugated and treated and wrapped cylinders. These demanded a much smaller footprint than the traditional septic leach field; required no electricity or chemicals or mechanical action; did not have to be deep in the ground (a real benefit, since the solid stone layer was only about three or four feet beneath the spot where the Presby system would go in); and could even be built up into a mound (mine would actually cause a brief small terracing mound in the gentle slope leading down and away from my house in back, once it was complete); and it could be blended in with the lawn and the landscaping.

The only definite indicators that the whole system was there would be one simple upright breather vent tube over the cylinders and one upright observation tube over the tank. And the system would clear out the waste from my house to the point of having clear water running into the ground at the end of the three-cylinder system with as many as eight people living in the house. With only Steven and me living there, the guy who installed it could almost guarantee clear water going into the ground by the time it had just reached the end of the first of the three cylinders.

With all the other typical headaches involved in building a house, I had expected to have my Certificate of Occupancy in hand within three months of the night that Steven had made his all-important two-word announcement. Upon receipt of the CO, Steven and I could move in and establish that most wonderful of places in all the world--Home.

Now for that second word...

'Mom'

Svetlana Savin and I had met during our attendance at the University of Maryland, in College Park. She was the daughter of immigrants from Minsk, Belarus, and I was the scion of a family of Scottish heritage, whose presence in North America extended back to sometime around 1746.

My name is Maddux Brodie, by the way, with family roots in Maryland for many generations. Hell, two of my ancestors had even faced off against each other when the 15th U.S. Maryland Infantry had fought against the 15th Confederate Maryland Infantry at the Battle of Sharpsburg (as battles tended to be named in the South based on of the nearest town or rail head; rather than 'Antietam,' as those same battles tended to be called in the North because of the nearest body of water or major water feature--other famous examples being Manassas/Bull Run and Shiloh/Pittsburg Landing).

Lana and I had fallen in love almost from the moment we had met. And, while neither of us was a virgin when we met, we became lovers after our third date, and continued to learn all about pleasing each other--both in and out of the bedroom--as we deepened our relationship. We learned how to communicate on so many levels over the next year--and not just those involving physical activities. We discovered that we were truly soul mates.

In fact, Lana and I only had one major disagreement after becoming a couple. And this happened as I was recovering from a beating I had received for standing up for her one day. Hearing one of the Varsity Lacrosse players continuing, despite Lana's continued refusal, to try to hit on Lana in the Student Center as I approached where they were sitting, I had been overcome with a blind rage and had pulled him up to hit him--followed by a sound beating--of me. I had received a hairline crack in one cheekbone and required one dental implant later for a lost tooth for my troubles; he had only suffered a broken nose and a minor sore knee that would only sideline him for two games.

Lana was furious with me! She scolded me for what seemed like hours after my release from the hospital about her ability to look after herself. In my oxycontin-induced mellow haze, I just did not have the wherewithal to argue with her. But, when she seemed to wind down, I informed her that I would always feel the need to protect the ones I loved, especially the one I loved most of all--her. She relented a bit upon hearing me say that, but only slightly; and comforted me in my apartment over the next three days, during which I missed classes and recovered from my beating. She also assured me during that time, however, that she felt similarly to the way that I did; that she would always do whatever necessary to keep those whom she loved safe and protected from harm.

A few months preceding my graduation from Maryland, I attended a job fair and met the representative sent there by Holland-Sumner Corporation. These guys did contract work for the U.S. government, most notably the Department of Defense--"Beltway Bandits" is the term that most readily comes to mind to most folks when they think about this type of work. The recruiter with whom I spoke was as impressed by me as I was with the job opportunity and the benefits that HSC offered, and we struck a deal for my employment shortly after graduation.

At about the same time, a firm that had recognized Lana's academic credentials, as well as her selection as a member of an on-campus honor society for young women coming into the business world, was actively recruiting Lana. She joined Tamerlane Systems shortly after graduation. Tamerlane, it turned out, was a sub to a larger contract supporting the FBI in a massive multi-billion-dollar effort to overhaul its IT network, database management system, and the supporting servers and network tools; with Tamerlane supporting development of the forensic accounting investigative tools the Bureau needed in this age of electronic finance. While Lana was not very deep into the technology at the time of her hiring, she was very astute at handling the business practices that the IT system supported and rapidly picked up on the technology side of things as her job progressed.

Lana and I had married a month after graduation, with the blessings both families (her folks lived in Northern Virginia, and mine moved frequently between Alaska and California in their RV, now that Dad had retired). After a wonderful honeymoon in Galveston, Texas, we showed up for work with our respective employers with fresh tans and happy smiles.

Steven was born just two years after Lana and I had married. To facilitate the expansion of our family, I had pounced on the opportunity to buy a house that was being sold privately by an attorney for one member of a couple who were divorcing in Rosslyn, Virginia--an unincorporated area of Arlington, right there in the heart of the DC area. It was convenient for the amenities of the city, and for access to Lana's and my jobs, without the need to fight quite as much of the DC area commuter traffic daily.

Neither of our jobs was sufficiently demanding to require us to spend an inordinate amount of time at work daily. Late work and travel were minimal. Thus, Lana and I were able to spend time with Steven and each other in the evenings and on weekends; and the day care center was close enough to the house to be convenient for attendance to Steven's needs during the day while Lana and I were at work.

Yes, we were a young couple in love, with a wonderful son, and dreams of growing the family a bit larger. And, while both of us doted on Steven, the boy just seemed to develop a very special bond to Lana as soon as he was old enough to begin to speak. His first identifiable word as a baby was, 'Cook-cook,' which he used to ask for his favorite food at the time--baby teething cookies. But his second identifiable word was, 'Mama,' later shortened--about the time he turned four--to, 'Mom.'

For the past three years, that word, 'Mom,' had only been spoken in our household in the context of inquiry, sadness, anger, and desperation--never as a form of address. You see; a little over three years earlier, I had begun to suspect that my wife, Lana--Steven's mother--may have been asked to work on a project that placed her in danger--physically and morally. I was convinced, at that time, that her bosses were needlessly exposing her to possible criminal harm.

And one of Lana's bosses had evidently been turning on the charm to her. I was concerned at the time that Lana was either contemplating fucking around on me; or was being seduced into fucking around on me. And, just as I had gotten hold of the information necessary to get my payback on her scumbag boss that I had suspected of working his way through her moral defenses--although indirectly--and was about to confront both of them about it, the situation had changed in very dramatic fashion; and sufficiently to put my mind a rest somewhat.

But then, within a scant few days after that, Lana had simply ... vanished.

****

Just Over Three Years Ago

"Oh, Maddux; you worry too much!" my wife, Lana, said with a thin smile and a shake of her head.

"What do you mean I worry too much? You are my wife, and the mother of our son. I am supposed to worry about you," I said with mild emphasis, not wanting Lana to 'get her back up,' as my late grandma had used to say.

I could usually disagree nicely with Lana and hope for compromise or minor concession on her part if I did not get angry or try to push too hard. Otherwise, she would dig in and I would be lost in any further attempt to get her to see anything from my point of view. I had learned that hard lesson early on in our relationship.

"Sugar, I love you too much to want to see you doing anything even remotely dangerous," I continued, this time in a loving tone and manner with an affectionate smile on my face. "Anyway," I knew that I had to be careful here, "you also need to remember that the FBI has hundreds of badged Special Agents around, all with the special training and field experience necessary to handle any situations that may arise in a case such as this one."

Here is where I had unwittingly sealed my doom, now that I look back on it. "After all; you ARE just a contractor, remember."

Lana froze for a microsecond--just long enough for me to realize in that moment that I had probably said the wrong thing--and she slowly set down the handful of silverware with which she had been setting the table up to that point. She and I had had arguments about this before, since we were both contractors, but supporting different Federal government agencies.

I had always felt 'Anti-Contractor Bias' vibes coming off the Department of Defense Federal employees working as part of the Civil Service in my office in Crystal City that supported the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Cost and Economics (DASA-CE). Lana had always claimed there was no such bias in the offices where she was usually working in McLean, Virginia, just a few blocks away from Liberty Crossing and the National Counterterrorism Center offices. Lana's contract, while generally supporting the whole Bureau, specifically supported the FBI's Eurasian Criminal Enterprises program under the International Operations Division that reported through the Executive Assistant Director for Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch to the Director of the FBI himself.

"What do you mean ... JUST ... a contractor?" Lana asked, with a frown that indicated to me that her stubborn streak now had her firmly within its grasp. "I'll have you know that, when Tamerlane brought me on board, I had to go through a lot of the basics that the regular FBI Special Agents go through down at Quantico. And I have to take refresher training, including firearms familiarization," she said with special emphasis, "every year."

I knew about her company's training of the employees on Tamerlane's contract with the FBI--they did not have to be qualified to go out to do regular field duties, like the other Special Agents. But, in this day and age of potential terrorist attacks on facilities in the Homeland, quite a few of the Federal law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, wanted to ensure that their employees and contractors could manage themselves without panic if the unthinkable were to happen--an insurgent attack on one of the FBI's office facilities in the Capital Region or at one of the many field offices across the country (and even a few overseas).

Thus, the Bureau required some basic training, including response to 'Active Shooter' scenarios, as well as familiarization with firearms in some cases--although actual qualification was not required--along with annual refresher training certification in certain skills that might come in handy in a possible confrontation with bad guys.

"And I always get commendations on the way I handle the training, Andrew Maddux Brodie," a now very annoyed Lana said to me. I was not about to respond by calling her Svetlana Alexeevna Savina; THAT would definitely have put her over the edge into a full-blown shit-fit. I simply took a breath and paused to think for a second before continuing our conversation.

"Sugar," I said, now holding my hands out and up in a mild signal of body language that hinted that I was surrendering, while I continued to argue, although a bit less forcefully, "I know that you could take care of yourself in the case of a general self-defense scenario. But, these East European gangs that the Bureau has you tracking data on don't mess around. They are vicious and ruthless; and I simply believe that the FBI should be putting their own badged Special Agents on it, rather than asking someone who is doing contract support to do it. It's just not appropriate, in my opinion."

I was trying to be logical and reasonable; that's just the way us guys think; right? Well, women do not think that way; they include a lot of emotion into what they think, say, and do--as I was about to find out firsthand.

"Well, I will have you know that I am fully capable of handling the situation in this case," said Lana to me, as she resumed placing the utensils on the table, as if that settled it. Then she surprised me by trying to use logic and reason as part of her argument. "After all, I will only be doing office work on behalf of this investigation for the Bureau, and only with a company that is about two or three steps removed from any of the actual gang-related operations. I will be fine."

We had agreed that we would not talk about the details of what we did in our contracts, as they involved some things that carried a 'Classified' label--defense-related in my case; criminal-investigation-related in her case. But, we often talked in generalities about our efforts on behalf of our country's defense and Homeland protection missions. Lana knew about the general nature of the acquisition work that I was supporting, while I knew about her work for the Bureau in the area of the Russian and other East European criminal enterprises, but without any knowledge of specific names, crimes, or locations.

"Anyway," Lana continued, "Emmett needs my Russian language skills, and the cultural nuances with which I am familiar from my youth while growing up with immigrant parents. And he has constant electronic and general surveillance on our work sites, as well as on the offices in which we will be working.

"And," she dragged that 'And' out in a long syllable, "when and if he decides to pull the trigger on his big operation and begins to roll up the pieces of the gang that he is after, I will not be going to work that day in the usual offices. I will just let him descend on them with drawn weapons and crates of evidence bags, while I go about my business back at my old cubicle in McLean."

FBI Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn was the man in charge of all the efforts focused on taking down one particular segment of the Russian gangs that had, in recent years, displaced the Italian mob families all up and down the Eastern Seaboard, but gave the impression of being a legitimate business enterprise. Most of the effort of the Bureau in taking these gangsters down appeared to involve going after their money trail, a task to which Lana's contract efforts had been seconded.

I had not personally examined Lana's Program Work Statement, but somehow I got the impression that Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn was stretching the provisions of Lana's PWS somewhat by using her in the specific capacity in which she was now involved.

Lana and one or two other contractors, along with one or two undercover Special Agents, had been placed temporarily in the offices of a front company that the FBI had gained control of by leaning on its owner--a man well known to have distant links with the Russian mob, and who had come to the Bureau's attention--and under their thumb--because of questionable monetary transactions. The Bureau would use this front company's operations and connections to dig deeper into the Russian mob's financial dealings. That is about the extent of the details to which Lana had informed me; but, from that, I was able to surmise further and begin to worry--especially about the potential for danger in what she was doing.

The few times that I had met Emmett Van Horn were at those rare Bureau-hosted social gatherings, with spouses or significant others of the team under his supervision. During those events, I had developed an opinion of him as being an ambitious and arrogant prick from an affluent family background.

Van Horn, I had found out eventually, had attended the prestigious Ivy-League Brown University and had risen quickly within the Bureau; and he thought that everyone under his supervision should jump BEFORE he even spoke. This seemed to be true especially of some of the women in his office; almost all of whom appeared to be uncomfortable around him, to varying degrees, in those social settings that I had witnessed personally. Lana, though, had never had anything but praises for Emmett Van Horn and appeared to admire what he was doing on behalf of the Bureau--and truth, justice, and the American way--blah, blah, blah.

Back to our dinnertime disagreement--I let the danger-to-Lana aspect of our conversation die off now as we sat down to eat that night.

Steven was now at a stage of development that involved his talking quite a lot; and tonight he was telling us all about his daily activities in the K4 program in which we had him enrolled daily during the work week. Quite often, at the end of our busy and sometimes frustrating days, he was our primary bright spot in the world. I loved my son and, as I looked at the woman I loved sitting across from me at the table, I could not wait for this 'thing' she was involved in to get settled so that we could start to work on a brother or sister for Steven.

That night, after putting Steven down, Lana and I forgot our differences over what she was doing at work as she wore me out in bed. She and I kissed and licked each other all over, followed by a prolonged sixty-nine encounter. Lana then got on all fours for our first fuck and got off twice before I fired my load into her very tight wet pussy. After a short rest, she and I began to caress each other back into the 'go' mode and Lana rode me cowgirl until she came, leaning forward over me. I then rolled us both over and finished up by depositing another load into her missionary style. After cuddling for a while afterward, neither of us had any energy to hit the bathroom to clean up; so, we simply pulled the sheets up and went to sleep, still stinking of sex and sweat; it was glorious.

Things went to shit just a few weeks after that wonderful night.

****

CHAPTER 2

Early one morning, I was at my cubicle in the building in which I worked in Crystal City--the morning when my world began to fray at the edges--when my workstation 'pinged.' I saw the small translucent message shadow in the tray area of my workstation's desktop that showed me that I had a new email arriving in my Outlook client In-Box.

Pulling up Outlook, I examined the new email in the reading pane and saw that there was no text there. The header showed a series of about six attached Word, Excel, and PDF documents, but the originator of the email was indicated by an unknown Gmail account name.

Being very careful about taking prudent Information Assurance measures, as I was reminded each day when I logged onto my Department of Defense workstation, I did not automatically click on any of the attachments. Instead, I ran the anti-virus scan tool on the whole message before attempting to examine any of the attachments. I was already convinced that this was not really a message related to work, but by now I was curious.

As I opened the first PDF document attached to the email, it only took about thirty seconds to convince me that the message had come to me from someone who knew about Lana's Bureau boss, Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn; and had sent the attached data to me anonymously. While I could not tell if it was from Lana or not, that was not the big issue. The big issue, as I continued to open and examine the attached files, was how to answer the huge questions that popped up into my head at the moment:

1. Why was someone sending information about an FBI Supervisory Special Agent to a contractor for the Department of Defense? And, was it Lana, or someone else working on her contract with Tamerlane?

2. Why did the attachments to this email appear to point to Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn's having unusual sources of income--well above his pay level--that did not appear to be related to his job at the Bureau, his legitimate investment portfolio, or his family's trust fund accounts?

3. Why, also, did the attachments to this email appear to imply that Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn just might be working both sides of the fence with respect to that portion of the Russian mob being run by one Semyon Andropov and his subordinate gang leader, Vasily Radkevich, in the Baltimore area?

I forwarded the email to one of three personal email accounts that I controlled online and away from work and deleted it from my work account, emptying the 'Deleted Items' box in my Outlook email client. Then, I logged off my DoD work station, pulled my Common Access Card from the slot in the 'smart' keyboard, and told my Site Lead that I was taking the rest of the day as PTO, or 'personal time off.' No one objected, so I left the building and drove, taking the George Washington Memorial Parkway and Highway 123 out toward McLean, just after the end of morning rush hour.

Deep in my heart, I knew that Lana must have sent me the email containing those files, but I could not contact her, as she could not use a cell phone in the offices in which she was working as part of the FBI's distant sting. The Bureau, and specifically Supervisory Special Agent Van Horn, were concerned about the danger of accidental information leakage in phone conversations held within her work site--I did not even know if she actually was at her McLean office or working at the targeted Columbia, Maryland offices of the firm the FBI was using in its investigation.

I just knew now that I had to get to someone either at Tamerlane--Lana's company--or else within the Bureau itself, so that I could get to the bottom of what was going on. I also wanted someone in a position of authority within the Bureau to pull Lana formally from under the supervisory control of SSA Van Horn until my fears could be alleviated. But, I wanted to find out from her company what they knew about the situation first.

Tamerlane's main offices were in Patuxent, in Southern Maryland, and thus, were too far away to be effective in doing what I wanted with the speed I believed was necessary. So, I was now driving to Lana's primary office in McLean to speak to her Site Lead with Tamerlane. Together, we would find someone high enough in the food chain at the Bureau to whom I could get copies of the electronic documents now in my possession that appeared to shed light onto possible wrongdoing by one of their Supervisory Special Agents.

Like many other Americans my age, I could still remember hearing and reading about the case of Robert Philip Hanssen. Hanssen had spent years as an agent of the FBI--while at the same time selling secrets to first the Soviets and then the Russian Federation. In his arrogance, Hanssen had believed that he was too smart ever to face exposure and arrest. Had Van Horn succumbed to this state of hubris as well? And, if so, what sort of threat did this guy's actions pose for my wife?

****

Zach Taylor, Lana's Site Lead with Tamerlane, greeted me after I had passed through the security check point for the building out of which the Tamerlane team was basing its contract work for the Bureau there in McLean. I still had to wait in the lobby, as I was technically a 'Visitor.' Within a couple of minutes after the front security desk representative had called upstairs and informed him of my presence, Zach emerged, wearing his permanent access badge on a lanyard around his neck, from the middle of three elevator doors.

"Hey, there, Maddux," Zach said with a smile.

Zach and I had become reasonably well acquainted through our meeting not only at the Bureau-hosted social gatherings, but at various company events--like the going-away parties that were held at local watering holes when one of Tamerlane's employees found better opportunities and left the company, or the twice-a-year bashes that the company held for Fourth of July and the Christmas season.

"To what do I owe the honor of your presence here?"

"Well, Zach," I hedged, "it may be nothing; or else, it might be something that needs to be raised to another level."

Inwardly, I chafed. I knew that there were internet scams going on all the time. The materials that I had received via email this morning may have just been a hoax--like those email phishing attempts by so-called 'Nigerian princes.' Also, in this day and age of all sorts of cyber-attack and other cyber-intrusions into our country's internet grid, the materials I had received could also simply be a means by which our nation's enemies were attempting to ruin a good FBI Agent. Or, they could be designed simply to cause the Bureau to expend a lot of resources and energy following a phony rabbit trail, rather than expending their efforts in worthwhile pursuits.

"Do you have a quiet and secure spot where we could talk?" I asked, "You know, confidentially?"

Zach chuckled and said, "Dude, you are in a building run by the EFF ... BEE ... EYE!" He dragged out the letters in deep tones, in a comical emphasis on the exaggerated importance that the Bureau placed on its own image. "I'm sure that just about any of the rooms in this building are secure. But let me find a place where we can talk. From your expression, I can tell that this is something that has you a bit on edge."

After we had gone up to the fourth floor and Zach had closed the door to a small conference room he had chosen for us, I told him of the mysterious email that I had received that morning. Zach listened quietly until I had told him all I knew. Then he asked me a series of questions.

I only realized later that Zach had asked the same questions several times in different ways. After all, he had been a pretty highly-respected investigator with the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland before coming to work for Tamerlane. Thus, he knew how to get a clearer picture of things than would otherwise be apparent with the first telling of a story. Sometimes, nuances could emerge that could, in some cases, give a completely different story than that which had emerged upon the first telling.

"Wow! Maddux; at first blush, I really think that you are probably the victim of a hoax. And, while I don't want to say someone is playing you for a fool, I don't think that you have anything solid enough right now to take to the Bureau." His brows were furrowed while he was thinking as he talked. It was obvious that Zach was in the quandary of trying to decide which way was the right way to go.

In the first case, Zach could recommend that either he or I take what scant information I had to the Bureau officially. If it turned out to be a hoax, then I would be scandalizing a good Agent, and possibly tarnishing the image--if only indirectly--of Tamerlane, by means of an unfounded accusation coming from the spouse of one of Tamerlane's brightest contract stars; meaning Lana. Zach, I could tell, was also feeling the need to stand in solidarity with the unofficial Thin Blue Line--one cop standing firmly in defense of another cop whose reputation might be at stake.

In the second case, if it turned out that this guy, Van Horn, was actually in the pocket of one of the criminal organizations that the Bureau was investigating, then a couple of things were apparent. One of its own was very possibly compromising the Bureau. And Zach and the Tamerlane crew could either come out of this--if he were to broach the issue with his Contracting Officer--with commendations for revealing a traitor within the Bureau; OR, Tamerlane could end up shunned and on the shit-list for future contracts because they--or one of their own--had caused the Bureau embarrassment by these same revelations--regardless of the veracity.

I could tell in the brief period of silence that Zach was weighing his choices; so, I offered him an out. "What if I were the one to take this to the Bureau? Then, you and Tamerlane could be off the hook."

Zach smiled at me and said, "Yeah; maybe. But it would still reflect on the company any way you look at it. If it is me who brings it to their attention, that is one thing--a big thing. But, having the spouse of one of our employees bring it up formally, while not having quite the same impact, nevertheless, plays into the company's still possibly taking a bit of the heat down the road from the Bureau ... and its overseers." Saying that, he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder and out the window in the direction of the District.

Shit! I hated Washington politics--even coming from those not associated with elected office. The ingrained bureaucracies here within and close to the District absolutely did NOT like to have any scandals associated with them. And, they were just as likely to shoot the messenger with embarrassing information as they were to take appropriate action with that information--even if it were valid.

Also, when one DID consider the politics of elected office, this was the spring of a non-Presidential election year. Every member of the U.S. House of Representatives who served on any of the many oversight committees was up for re-election; and each one of them would simply love to bask in the free television time given to special hearings on ANY possible scandal within any of the Federal agencies--especially the FBI.

"Look," offered Zach as he looked at his watch. "I've got a two-hour conference call at ten-thirty. That's in about fifteen minutes. Why don't you sit on this and let's talk about it after we can confirm, first of all, who sent this stuff to you, and second--if it was Lana--just how she got it. Oh, and third, in the case of whoever sent it to you, just how authentic is it?"

"I guess," I said, not really wanting to wait, but not knowing just how I should handle it at that moment. I was simply worried about my wife, since she was involved in a special case for this guy, Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn--I could not help but cringe internally at just how pompous his title and name sounded to me at that moment.

Looking up at Zach, just as he had checked his watch once more, I suddenly made up my mind, got really determined, and said, "I can't wait, Zach. I need to get moving on this and get Lana away from anything remotely touching the dark side. At least until this thing with Van Horn can get resolved. Do you understand?"

Zach sighed, nodded, and said, "Okay, Maddux. But why not talk to her Contracting Officer's Representative? Since he is on the Federal side, and not a contractor, he is Lana's first link to the Bureau's internal investigative apparatus. He would be able to tell you if this should go to the FBI's Internal Investigations Section in the Inspection Division, under the Office of Professional Responsibility."

"Is he here in this building?" I asked.

"No, Lana's COR is Special Agent Gary Fife," Zach told me, "and he works in one of the Bureau's sites in Laurel, Maryland. It is not an FBI office, per se; just a spot they are using temporarily that is close enough to the Baltimore area, where the overall operation they are watching is based, and where they can stage response teams as necessary. It is also close to the Columbia, Maryland offices where Lana and one or two of our other contractors are working, along with a couple of Special Agents from the Bureau. You know enough not to spread that information around, right?" I nodded to assure him of my professional discretion.

"Can you give me the contact information for this Special Agent Fife?" I asked.

"Yeah," Zach grinned as he stood up and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. "Here; I am texting you with Barney's contact info now."

"Barney?" I asked.

"Yeah," Zach chuckled, "even the Bureau can have a sense of humor sometimes, regardless of what you may see on the outside or on television. Gary Fife picked up the nickname 'Barney Fife' way back in his initial training at Quantico. I know him from working with him on a joint task force case up in Montgomery County before I left the force there for greener pastures with the contract side of things. Barney's a damned good field agent."

I thanked Zach and he took me down in the elevator and walked me to the security station before bidding me a hasty farewell in order to get to his teleconference. I handed in my accompanied 'Visitor' pass and walked out through the turnstile into the building's foyer and on into the parking lot.

****

Special Agent Fife answered my text and agreed to meet me for lunch at Famous Dave's in Laurel, Maryland, one of the few places on the East Coast where one could find good, authentic Texas beef brisket. I did not want to object when he indicated in his text that a lot of his team ate there for lunch, as I did not want to alert him to the reason for my request at this early stage. I would just have to risk being able to speak to him about my concerns and simply risk that we could be able to converse without any of his colleagues present.

I arrived at Famous Dave's at about quarter to twelve and the parking lot was starting to fill up for the beginning of the lunch rush. Once inside, I asked the hostess if Special Agent Fife had arrived; I did not know what this guy looked like, and I hoped that, since he had seemed to indicate in his text response to my request for lunch that he was a regular here, the hostess would be acquainted with him.

"Oh, you mean Barney?" the twenty-something brunette said with a friendly grin. "Yeah, follow me, and I will take you back to where he is."

As a side note, my own sense of self-preservation and a need for accuracy later in recalling this meeting had kicked in as I had entered the restaurant. Thus, I had activated the voice recording app on my iPhone as the hostess had turned to take me back toward Fife's table.

We maneuvered our way through the growing number of already-filled tables to one in the back. As we approached, my throat tightened for a second and I almost turned around and left right then.

There, sitting with a man who I did not recognize--but assumed was Special Agent Fife--was another man who I readily recognized--none other than Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn; in the flesh.

I took a breath and put on what I hoped was an innocent smile as the hostess said in the direction of the two men at the table, "Hey, Barney, here's a guy who says he has a lunch date with you." And then she handed me a menu and turned to leave as I sat down.

I shook hands with Fife, and mumbled, "Maddux Brodie, Special Agent Fife." Then I turned and shook hands with the other man, who seemed put out that I did not offer my hand to him first, given his relative seniority. "Hello, SSA Van Horn; good to see you again."

I was very nervous as I sat down, especially since SSA Van Horn merely nodded and did not say anything. But he did give me a strange look--you know, as if I had a penis growing out of my forehead or something.

I did not know exactly how I was going to be able to speak to Fife about what I had received without giving the show away to Van Horn at the same time. So I decided to stall.

I had laid my iPhone, with its recording app running, down on the empty chair next to me, along with a leather portfolio that I had carried with me as a crutch--to show the world that I was on 'important' business, even at lunch. Then, I called a personal audible to give myself time to get my nerves under control and to concoct a story that would justify my being here to meet with Special Agent Fife. It had to be believable in order to pass muster, what with SSA Van Horn sitting there listening.

"I need to wash up before I do anything else. Would you please tell the server that I just want water when she comes by for the first time?" I asked as I stood, got a nod from Special Agent Fife, and headed off to the gents'.

I took a preemptive stop by the urinal and then washed my hands, and even my face. Thankfully, this place had hand towels as well as the high-speed wind machines for drying only hands. I looked in the mirror for a few seconds and then took another cleansing breath and practiced a grin for what I perceived as my 'Game Face' of deception.

I was just finishing up and about to leave the men's room when Fife came in and headed toward the urinal, nodding to me in passing. Since the men's room was not a place where I wanted to hold my discussion with Special Agent Fife, I simply nodded in return and walked back to our table, while trying to get my head around trying to speak about anything substantial in the presence of SSA Van Horn.

Van Horn was speaking softly into his cell phone as I approached, and concluded his call just at the moment he caught sight of me coming his way. As I sat down, I smiled. He gave me a slight nod with an expression that was not quite a smile and then drained his glass. He reached for a slim briefcase next to him as he turned to speak to me.

"I am afraid that I cannot stay around, Mr. Brodie; I have an appointment with my Assistant Director for lunch not far from here," said Van Horn, in a manner to show his importance and the prestige associated with dining with his superior.

"But, I did not want to leave the table with your phone and portfolio here, along with Special Agent Fife's raincoat." With that, he stood up and nodded, but did not extend a hand to shake mine. Well, it looked as if I would not need to concoct an excuse for Van Horn's benefit concerning just why I was meeting with Special Agent Fife over lunch.

"Have a nice day," Van Horn said to me as he turned away. I had to chuckle to myself as I could almost interpret from his comment and his tone that he intended to say, "Enjoy the freedom that those of us in the exalted Federal Bureau of Investigation secure for you through our diligent continuous efforts, Citizen."

"Hi-Yo, Silver," I said aloud softly to myself, once I saw that SSA Van Horn was out of earshot.

"What?" said the voice of Special Agent Fife, who had approached so silently that I had not realized he had returned to the table until he had spoken.

"Oh, nothing," I said, with a nervous chuckle. "What do you recommend to eat here other than brisket, since you come here more often than I do?" I asked. He laughed and told me that I simply could not go wrong with the brisket and that I should go with a sure thing, so that is what I ordered after all.

From that point on, we carried on a pleasant conversation, highlighted at first by my stated desire to meet the guy who was directly responsible on a daily basis for my wife's contract efforts on behalf of the Bureau--him. Fife told me a bit about what Lana's team was doing in general, but was vague enough not to give away any specifics of their ongoing investigation.

Special Agent Fife told me that he was very happy with the support that he and the Bureau were receiving from the contract professionals with Tamerlane. He was pleased especially with the diligence and zeal that Lana personally applied to fulfilling her duties.

Finally, after we had eaten and the server had cleared the table of all but our drink tumblers, Special Agent Fife leaned in and said, "Okay, from this point on, you can call me Barney. But, I want you to be honest about what you really needed to see me about. Clear?"

Fife did not say this in a threatening manner; he was just a no-nonsense guy with the nose of a trained and experienced FBI Agent. I knew at that moment that I really had very little choice but to trust Special Agent Fife with my story. He gave off a sort of aura that assured me that my trust in him would not be misplaced; that he was a very conscientious Agent.

He listened without interruption until I told him about the documents that had been forwarded to me electronically that morning and about my referral to him by Zach Taylor after my earlier face-to-face conversation with Zach. Fife nodded once in a while as he absorbed what I was saying, and he was patient with me as I told the story to completion.

Fife did not question me in varying ways to gain clarification, as Zach had done earlier in the day; he simply listened. Not knowing any more than I did up to now, I could almost infer from his attitude that Fife may have already been privy to some of what I was telling him. But his facial expressions and his words did nothing to verify my suspicion.

"So, what do you think? I mean about what I have and what I should do with it?" I asked Fife.

"Well," Fife said. "With what you claim that you have in your possession in the way of documentation, I would say that this is a matter that should be taken with the utmost of seriousness." He paused and puffed his cheeks as he exhaled once in a long 'whoosh.'

"But, having said that," Fife continued; "you realize that our experts will need to validate the authenticity of the electronic files that you have received; don't you? I mean, these are some serious allegations against a veteran and pretty senior Agent within the Bureau." Then Fife grinned at me and said, "Not to mention, my team chief at this time. And I can guarantee you that the walls of 'Fortress Bureau' will be well-manned by the image mongers once this thing breaks."

I did not even get to get the first word out of my mouth as I opened it to speak, when he held up a hand and continued. "But, don't you concern yourself with how all of that might go. Let me have the files, and I will get our folks started on it right away. Like Zach said to you, we have some pretty thorough investigators who check out allegations about possible improper or illegal activities that go on inside the Bureau."

I was not exactly sure why, but I found myself believing that I detected a moment of uncertainty or trepidation in Fife's facial expression. But he shook it off and took another sip of his drink.

Fife stood up to leave at that point and extended his hand. "Just leave it to me for now." He reached for his raincoat, in which he had his phone. Pulling the phone out--one of the Verizon Androids, I noticed--Fife looked briefly at the screen and touched a hotspot. It took all that I had within me not to show any recognition about what he had just done or any surprise--he had had his OWN voice recording feature going during our conversation, and had just closed it out!

"If you will give me your email address," I told him, "I can forward the email with those attached files to you now." He nodded as I reached below the table to hit the 'Home' button on my phone as I picked it up--so that he would not see that I also had been recording--and selected my email app on my iPhone. He read the address off to me as I typed it in--one character at a time with my index finger. I read it back to him, and had him confirm that I had typed it in correctly. Only a few seconds later--evidence that the five bars I was noting on my phone's reception icon was correct--his phone pinged softly and he nodded to confirm that he had received the email with the damning documents attached.

"Thanks, Maddux; I will be in touch as soon as we learn anything," Fife told me.

"I hope that you mean that in either case," I said. "After all, my wife is working for this guy; and I worry about her."

"You bet," Fife assured me.

"Thanks, Barney, I appreciate it," I said, and realized that I meant it. Fife seemed to be a solid kind of guy, regardless of his Bureau loyalty. We shook hands and I sat down to finish my water as he walked out of the restaurant.

"Now," I told myself, "I just need to deal with Lana this evening."

****

A few minutes later, as I sat in my car in the restaurant's parking lot, my mind was racing as I thought about what I had just heard coming from my iPhone.

Leaving the restaurant only a couple of minutes after Fife, I had climbed into my car and selected the file containing the recording that I had made during lunch. What I heard coming from the phone that reflected what the two agents had said while I had been in the gents' room was the most intriguing--as well as infuriating and worrisome.

Fife: "Look, Sir; you know that you need to tone down the 'Pussy Pursuit' in this day and age of Political Correctness."

Van Horn: "Oh, Barney, you worry too much. Anyway, I do not poach on any of the female Agents. I only deal with the female contractors in my little dalliances." The smugness and the assurance that he was just too smart to get caught at what he was attempting to do--and too privileged to have to pay any penalties if he were, by some chance, to be caught after all--just oozed from his Ivy-League-accented voice.

Fife: "But, Sir; what if they squawk about it?"

Van Horn: "They know that I can simply invoke the 'Loss of Confidence' catch-all clause in their contracts, and have them terminated from the contract immediately--putting them out of work in a less-than-stellar economy, and quite possibly causing them to lose their security clearances. As for any accusations of impropriety, I am pretty thorough at keeping things discreet, so that they cannot obtain any corroboration of their ... ahem ... 'absurd' ... charges about me."

Fife: "Well, what about me? Are you not concerned about what I might say if they ask me about it at OPR?"

Van Horn: "(Chuckle) Not since that Christmas party last year, when I saw you and the wife of that AD from Asian Crimes sneak off to knock off a piece in the pool house; all the while capturing a couple of choice shots of the action with my phone camera."

Fife: "Sir, that was a one-time indiscretion, and you know it. We both had had a quite a bit to drink when that happened."

(Silence for a moment)

Van Horn: "Before Brodie comes back to the table, I need for you to understand that I will want a complete debrief from you later concerning what he says. I would stay and listen, but I need to go here in a minute."

Fife: "So, you are going to continue to pursue Svetlana Brodie? Even though she is married to (pause) this guy?"

Van Horn: "Barney, you should know by now; the married ones are the safest, since they have to most to lose if they say anything afterward."

Fife: "Even still, Sir; you know that we are skating on thin ice by saying that the work she is doing in Vadim's offices in Columbia actually fits into her job description or her deliverables as defined in her contract's PWS. It really is a stretch, and it puts her at risk, even though Vadim is quite a bit removed from the primary target, Vasily Radkevich."

Van Horn: "I have already talked to Contracting, and they assure me that what Lana is doing does fit the spirit of the PWS, even if the exact wording is a bit open to interpretation. Anyway, her company--well, her Site Lead, anyway--that guy, Taylor--agreed with our use of her with the Vadim piece of the puzzle, since there was minimal danger to her and the other contractors working at Vadim's. And her skills are desperately needed there to help connect some of the dots on Vasily's money laundering. Also, she seems to be doing quite well and fitting in nicely in that office. And Lana responds quickly and thoroughly to requests from me as her handler in this case."

Fife: "Sir, it is pretty straightforward stuff, from what I am seeing here; what is there to do as her handler?"

Van Horn: "Why ... 'Handle her,' of course ..."

(Laughter from the two of them).

Fife: "Sir, I need to take a piss. Excuse me for a moment."

(Shuffle sounds ...)

(Followed by a moment of silence ...)

(Followed by a ring tone of a cell phone ...)

Van Horn: "SSA Van Horn ... Gennady, shit; you are putting me at a lot of risk by calling me at this number ... Yes ... Yes ... I understand ... Yes ... I will be sure to inform you and Vasily of when the operation will be going down so that you can clean house ... What ... a new shipment? ... Gennady, please; you are putting me in a bind by transporting them anywhere near the Capital District. Can't you and Vasily do this kind of thing somewhere a bit farther away--like Miami or Long Beach? ... Right ... (audible sigh) ... Right ... Okay; whoops; someone is approaching and I have to ring off ..."

I guess that was the conclusion of the phone call I had seen as I had returned to the table after using the gents' room.

I turned off my iPhone's recording app at that point and thought about what I had heard.

So; could I trust Fife to do the right thing after all?

****



Game Time Pt. 02

From the sound of things that I had heard in my phone recording of him and Special Agent Fife, Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn was a real pussy hound who expended his seductive efforts on female contract employees--like my wife, Lana. And she was definitely in his sights as a potential conquest. This had never been worrisome to me before, since Lana and I trusted each other pretty well. As good-looking as she was, Lana had been hit on often, and had shunned any unwanted advances successfully ever since before we had become exclusive back in school.

It also sounded as if Van Horn believed that he had Fife by the short-and-curlies over a one-time incident involving Fife's having fucked a fairly senior Bureau guy's wife at a party. Would this affect Fife's professional ethics in forwarding the information that I had given him today, I wondered?

What else could I do? Did I even have a choice?

I simply sighed, started the car to leave the restaurant where I had had lunch with Special Agent Fife, and told myself to wait it. Zach Taylor had vouched for Fife, so I decided that I would simply have to trust him; I had to trust someone, after all.

I had no clue as to the legality of my iPhone recording, but it sure did paint a picture of Fife as a potential victim of his superior's professional blackmail. It also portrayed Van Horn as someone with a superiority complex, perpetual horniness, and a carefree attitude about involvement in what sounded like criminal activity.

But what did I know? I was simply a husband who was both pissed off and a bit unnerved. Not only was I trying to do what was right in exposing potential criminal activity by someone highly placed in law enforcement. I was also trying to look out for my wife--physically, emotionally, and morally.

I sent the audio file of the recorded restaurant conversations to my personal electronic holding site in the cloud, using another built-in feature of my iPhone. Once I verified that it was stored there, I was confident that I could download it onto my desktop machine at home, my portable iPad, or any other of my compatible remote devices.

****

That evening, I made sure to pay special attention to Lana's expressions and body language as well as her words.

"Hey, Sweetie," Lana said with a kiss and a hug as I came in from the garage, and after putting Steven down. He had been in the kitchen and had made a dash and a leap into my arms when I came in the door.

"I hope that ham-and-potato casserole is okay for you tonight," Lana said, as she held me, but did not look directly in my face. I could not detect any expressions of guilt or evasion at this point. I told myself not to give away anything on my part until I could learn more about the dynamics of her work environment and any changes that might be transpiring--especially if this dick, Van Horn, was sexually harassing her.

"You know that I am always up for your ham-and-potato bake," I said.

"Look at this, Dad," Steven said, holding up a piece of paper with some of his K4-level artwork on it. Any conversation that I might want to have with Lana would have to wait until after supper and after Steven was down for the night.

Later, right after checking Steven's closet for monsters and tucking him into bed, I ensured that his nightlight was working and closed his door. I came back to the den to have a chance to speak to my wife about what I had experienced today, but Lana preempted me by parking her sweet ass in my lap and wrapping me up into a hug and very tongue-filled kiss.

"Maddux," Lana said to me when the kiss broke, "I need you tonight; RIGHT NOW!" She said this with such intensity that I knew that I had to postpone our conversation about her work with this turd, Van Horn. My wife, right then, was caught up in a heightened level of passion that I usually only detected in her about two or three times a year. And I was not about to waste the moment by spoiling the mood.

On, God, did we fuck that night! This was one of those rare three-timer nights for me, and I lost count of the number of times that Lana convulsed in orgasm. After almost three solid hours of active lust-filled fucking, involving my cock, her pussy, and our mouths, fingers, and tongues in contact with every erogenous zone on each of us, we lay in each other's arms, panting. We were both basking in the mutual glow of sexual satisfaction from our efforts afterward.

Lana raised her head and looked at me and said, "Maddux, I love you so much. Thank you for tonight, My Darling," and then she kissed me before reaching to turn out the bedside lamp.

"I love you too, Sweetie," I said, as I reached over to flick on the alarm switch of my bedside clock-radio. I held my tongue about the concerns I was having, since I could tell--from the sound of her voice, and based on memories of past experiences such as this--that she was fading fast.

The rush of our normal morning routine the next day did not allow for any intimate time of conversation either. Needless to say, I was mildly frustrated at not being to discuss my concerns about Lana's job and her ongoing contact with SSA Van Horn.

****

I went to work, as usual, and did my best for 'God and Country.' That night Lana, Steven, and I had a meeting over at his Kindergarten with all the other parents, students, and staff. It was a combined social event and parent-teacher conference. It lasted more than three hours, but only involved about twenty minutes of substantial conversation with Steven's K4 teacher and Lana and me.

Needless to say, I was a bit put out at all the effort and time, just to have such a short meeting with a teacher--just so that she could tell me that she was happy with the Steven's progress, and that, once he completed K5 the following year, she was sure that he would be acceptable at any of the finer schools in the DC area. I just shook my head upon hearing that comment about 'finer schools' in the area.

Hell, I just wanted Steven to be a well-adapted normal kid, ready for public school. Hell, he wasn't Al Gore, or Michelle Nunn, or Chelsea Clinton, or even Malia or Sasha Obama, for God's sake; he did not absolutely HAVE to go THE RIGHT DC-Area private academy or prep school, starting at age 6, in order to prepare him to face the adult world of the future. He was just a kid--so far!

We were all exhausted by the time we got to the house. Steven had fallen asleep in his car seat. Lana was tired was well. By the time I got Steven in the house and changed into his pajamas--while he flopped loosely in my arms, never waking up--and got him into bed, I was pretty tired as well.

Entering our bedroom, I noted that Lana was in bed and asleep already. I stripped and hung up my suit, tossing my other clothing into the hamper before brushing my teeth and slipping under the covers of our bed. I was asleep within seconds of my head's hitting the pillow.

I had not even have time to feel the frustration of not being able to talk to Lana about my fears before sleep had claimed me.

****

The next day, all worries I might have had about Supervisory Special Agent Van Horn's possibly succeeding in getting Lana alone and getting into her pants came to a rather surprising and abrupt end.

Lana had gotten off from work in the late afternoon and, after picking Steven up and arriving home, she had rushed getting supper together. As I had just walked in the door, she told me to get changed so that we could have supper without delay, and get Steven down for the night. She had some important news for me.

Lana, Steven, and I had a rather rushed evening and Steven seemed to try to resist all our efforts to get him down for bed early. But, eventually, we did get him to sleep, and then we retired to the den, where Lana had set out two large wine glasses filled with a dark, but sweet, red wine that was our favorite at the time.

"I have some rather exciting news to tell you, Maddux; but, it is disturbing as well ..." Lana abruptly cut off what she was going to say as the land line rang at that moment. Annoyed at the interruption--at a quarter to eight in the evening, no less--she took a sip of wine as I stood and walked to get the phone from the wall in the kitchen entryway where it was mounted.

"Hey! Maddux; are you and Lana watching Fox right now?" It was Zach Taylor's voice. "If not, you really need to turn it on and see what is going down!"

"Okay, Zach, hang on," I said, putting the phone on speaker mode and reaching for the remote. I had to turn the Comcast box on and then the TV. Once the picture came into view, I had to punch in the numbers to change the channel from PBS to Fox.

"... claim that the arrest comes on the heels of a months-long investigation," I heard coming from Sheperd Smith as I watched him point to a studio screen--almost the size of the wall in my den--at one side of his control deck in the Fox News Network's Breaking News Division. "One FBI spokesman says that, if proven, and if the suspect is convicted, then this is the most egregious example of lawlessness on the part of a senior Agent of the Bureau since the Robert Hanssen case, back in 2001.

"We will break in on tonight's programming as further news develops here on this story. Right now, we are waiting for the possible announcement of a press conference concerning this evening's arrest.

"Once again; earlier this evening, sources within the FBI tell us that the Bureau arrested one of its own," (dramatic pause), "in connection with allegations of ties to money laundering, prostitution, human sex trafficking, racketeering, and other activities related to the Agent's alleged personal ties to a Russian organized crime network based out of Baltimore." (touches his earpiece).

"The Agent's name we now know to be Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn." (touches his earpiece again and turns to his big display wall). "We can see, from the helicopter shot that you are seeing on your screens right now at home, the motorcade that is--at this moment, as we broadcast live--transporting the apprehended Special Agent to a Federal holding facility, where he will be detained and interrogated.

"Stay with Fox News this evening as we follow this incredible story. We now take you back to our regular evening programming with Greta Van Susteren."

I clicked the remote to mute the television and turned to look at Lana. She had a rather satisfied--and somewhat superior--expression on her face as she took another sip of wine.

"So," Lana said, "what do you think of what you see happening there on television?"

Before I could answer her, I heard Zach Taylor's voice again coming from my phone on the coffee table. "Hey! Did you see what your wife pulled off?"

I was a bit confused as I asked, "What do you mean?"

Lana put her wine glass down and, giggling like a school girl, rushed over and hugged me, as I heard Zach's voice continue.

"Maddux, Lana almost singlehandedly exposed one of the most corrupt Agents the Bureau has ever uncovered. She's a real hero. Oops! I've got a beep--another call coming in. Hey, I'll talk to you folks again once things have settled. Good job, Lana!" And then he clicked off.

Lana was smiling up into my face as she raised her arms up and around my neck.

"How do you like that? I seem to have kicked the hornet's nest here," Lana said to me.

"And just what did you do to bring this about?" I asked now, smiling down into my lovely bride's face.

"Let me refill our glasses first, and then I will tell you what I can, within the limits of the classification of the information and what is covered by my company's non-disclosure agreement."

Lana disengaged from my arms and picked up both our glasses as she moved over to the dining room, where she had left the wine bottle. Returning with the refilled glasses, she handed me mine, gave me a kiss, and the sat down on the sofa as I sat in my chair. I did not want to be distracted by the TV--even muted--so I clicked off the image of Greta Van Susteren interviewing some retired Army colonel about the situation in the Middle East.

"As you know, Honey, my particular duties as part of the contract with Tamerlane have been connected with forensic accounting support to Bureau activities. And, I have been performing those duties at offices in Columbia, Maryland for the past three months, as opposed to my main cubicle in McLean, Virginia." Lana looked at me to see that I was paying attention, and I nodded for her to continue.

According to Lana, Zach Taylor had approached her--accompanied by FBI Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn--over four months previously. They had asked if she would be willing to work temporarily out of an office in Columbia, Maryland. The office was part of a business run by one Vadim Lermontov; a brokerage firm.

Vadim Lermontov, it turns out, was actually 'brokering' deals connected with 'purifying' the funds that flowed through his business. In other words, he took the 'gray' money that came from several other firms. This money had only been partially purified by them, as they were only able to do so much with the 'black' money that they received from the criminal enterprises of one Vasily Radkevich. Thus Vadim's organization was the third and almost final step along the path in handling the money coming from Radkevich and cleaning up its provenance in the eyes of the law and the regulators.

Vadim's people pumped this river of Vasily's illegal cash that had been made semi-legal into legitimate investments, as well as into overseas financial institutions whose nations' banking and securities laws provided excellent privacy assurances to their customers. The investigatory powers of Interpol, the FBI, the U.S. Treasury Department, and many other financial regulatory and law-enforcement governmental agencies around the globe could only pound their respective desks in frustration. Vadim's expert accountants seemed to be able to perform electronic magic to transform the money into 'clean' resources; and then proceeded to park it in apparently untouchable holding sites and repositories around the world.

One of Vadim's accountants had not been quite so careful in his haste to finalize a transaction, and he had somehow allowed the Homeland Security Department's United States Secret Service--yes, even after moving in 2003 from Treasury to DHS, the USSS still performs its primary duties of ensuring the strength and viability of the nation's currency against counterfeiting and major fraud; and only secondarily provides armed protection to the President and others--to obtain evidence of his misdeeds. He had rolled quickly when the USSS and the FBI had pulled him in to question him. From what he had revealed during interrogation, the Bureau had been able to obtain--very quietly--warrants that allowed them to go after Vadim and his brokerage.

When shown the futility of fighting what the FBI had on him, Vadim had agreed--somewhat fearfully--to help the Bureau go after bigger fish in this criminal financial pond. It did, however, take quite a bit of convincing by the Bureau for Vadim to overcome his fear of possible retribution by the Russian mob. After all, this recent wave of criminals in the U.S. often took drastic reprisals against those who crossed them--killing not only the perpetrators, but their family members as well. And Vasily Radkevich was known to be particularly brutal in that respect.

In a manner similar to the Russian cultural aspect of a story within a story, and yet within another story--as typified by the Russian matryoshka (or nesting) dolls--the Bureau was also involved in another investigation closely tied to what they were asking of Tamerlane and, by extension, my wife, Lana. And Special Agent Fife was up to his eyeballs in it.

It appeared as if, over a year earlier, the Bureau's Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, had been concerned about the personal financial status of a very senior Agent within the Bureau. Thus, they had approached Special Agent Fife to serve as the central figure in the Bureau's internal investigation of Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn. The OPR investigators had uncovered what appeared to be financial links--although murky at best--between the financial institutions that assisted SSA Van Horn with his personal finances and those that serviced the interests of one Vasily Radkevich.

In a related matter, OPR had also been made aware indirectly about rumblings coming from the contractors associated with the FBI's activities in the D.C area, also involving SSA Van Horn. It would seem that SSA Van Horn was the central figure in one or two cases involving the divorces of female contractors, one of them being particularly nasty and casting a shadow over the professional status of a very senior Agent within the Bureau.

"I am sorry that I could not tell you anything while this was all going on, My Darling," Lana told me now, "but Barney and Zach asked me to keep things very close-hold while I assisted them with building the cases against Emmett and Vasily.

"You see, almost from the moment that I agreed to work on the Bureau's external investigation within the Columbia brokerage, Emmett began to work on ME," Lana told me. "He started with invitations to lunch early on, to 'discuss progress and key aspects of the investigation,' as he liked to call it.

"This had not been going on very long when Zach introduced me to Barney over lunch in McLean one day when Emmett was tied up in meetings in Downtown Washington." Lana took another sip of wine and continued.

"Barney told me an almost unbelievable tale about Emmett. It turns out that the Bureau had asked Barney, in his capacity as one of the Special Agents on Emmett's external investigation of Russian organized crime, to investigate Emmett internally. Barney told me that the internal affairs investigators within the Bureau had enough of a lead to allow them to launch an official probe on Emmett's possibly being on the payroll of one of the Bureau's largest targeted criminal enterprises. The Bureau's investigators believed that Emmett may have been warning the criminals just at the critical moments when cases might be coming to a peak--thus, frustrating the investigators. Files would vanish and accounts would close and witnesses would vanish at critical times that were just too coincidental and convenient."

"What about the payoffs that they were talking about on the news?" I asked.

"That was how I was supposed to help Barney and Zach--and the OPR investigators as well. While I was working on the electronic criminal money trails, ostensibly at Emmett Van Horn's behest, I was also able to discover and track the particular trails by which the Radkevich organization was paying off some of their paid agents deeply-placed within the Federal government." Now she brushed the fingernails of her right hand against her blouse in the manner of a braggadocio.

"And that is how I discovered the specific money trail leading directly to the complicity of Mr. Super-Duper Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn." She then gave a slight bow as I smiled at her. I had placed my wine glass down and was giving her quiet golf applause and a nod for her to continue.

"When I informed Barney about my discovery of proof of Emmett's possible criminal activity, as well as my recounting of Emmett's continued attempts to seduce me, he asked me to do two things for him and the Bureau.

"I was to continue to hold Van Horn off on my discoveries of the criminal evidence pointing to him. And I was to--I am sorry, My Darling--keep allowing Emmett to believe that he was succeeding in his efforts to get me into bed eventually." Lana looked down and blushed with the shame of what she was feeling as she told me this.

"Did..."

"NO!" I had only gotten the first word out when Lana had shouted her response to my question. "While I let him think he was succeeding, I never allowed him to get any farther along than holding my hand at the lunch table, putting his arm loosely around me as we went to and from parking lots of the restaurants, and ..." Here, Lana paused and took a nervous sip of wine.

"And...?" I prodded.

"Oh, Maddux," Lana paused and sighed before continuing, "on one occasion he gave me a light kiss on the lips after we got into the car after lunch, but I did not let him do that again. Also, he tried to put his hand on my thigh at the table and in the car, but," Lana was looking very sad and embarrassed now, "I assure you, My Darling, that I pushed his hand away every time." She now looked into my eyes to seek the assurance that I believed what she was telling me.

I smiled at her and said, "Lana, Sweetie, I believe you. But, I gotta admit that, back about the time this stuff with Van Horn started, I had noticed you speaking about working with him and you brought his name up more than once.

"Then, all of a sudden, there was no mention of him. And I noticed that you had stopped preparing your bag lunches to take in to work. Can you see how those things, in addition to your sudden overly secretive approach to your job, might have caused an otherwise trusting husband at least to begin to worry a bit about what might be transpiring with his wife?"

"Oh, my dear sweet darling," Lana said, now with a relieved smile, "I am so sorry that I caused you any worry about my faithfulness to you during that time. But things were coming at me quickly and intensely; and I had told myself that I would take whatever measures necessary for my own emotional self-defense--including a reduction in what I revealed to you--in order not to allow myself to give away what was happening in the investigations. You do understand now; don't you, My Love?"

Instead of answering verbally, I just smiled, stood, and went over to reach for her. Lana stood and rushed into my arms. We left the wine glasses on the table in the den as Lana began pulling me toward the stairs and our bedroom.

That night, we committed our love to each other again--three times--and finally got to sleep around two a.m.

The next morning--actually, only about four-and-a-half hours later--we were both pretty 'hairy around the edges' at breakfast. Her yawns were contagious, as were mine. But our smiles were as contagious as the yawns, as we transmitted our love wordlessly.

We got Steven fed and packed up for school, kissed, and hugged our goodbyes--I noted with a grin that Lana had packed a bag lunch for today--and headed off for our respective places of work.

I would only find out that evening, during the news, about troubling developments.

****

CHAPTER 4

Lana was late getting home and her cell phone was going to voicemail. I had received a call from Steven's Kindergarten, asking me who was coming to get him, as Lana had not showed at the school at her normal time; and it was now over half an hour after Steven was scheduled for his usual afternoon pick-up.

I retrieved Steven, which required my leaving the office a bit early, and we were both finishing a makeshift supper of hot dogs, potato chips, and sliced apples. I had tried for about the fifth time to get hold of Lana and was beginning to worry when it kept going to her voicemail.

I was watching Special Report with Bret Baer. The news coming out of Washington, concerning the FBI's big case against one of their own, had turned grim. Somehow, someone had gotten to the recently-arrested Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn while he was being detained at a Federal holding facility inside the District.

Fox News Reporter James Rosen was on the scene, reporting back to Bret with the news. "Van Horn evidently had been struck in the head and was declared dead at the scene by medical first responders, with unnamed sources indicating that Van Horn had died from blunt force trauma.

"The FBI is, of course, conducting a thorough internal investigation as to just how this type of thing could happen with such a high-visibility prisoner in their own custody. They are also scrambling to preserve the integrity and continuity of the case that they were building against Russian organized crime in the U.S. with the evidence and testimony that they were expecting to get out of the late Supervisory Special Agent Van Horn." (Rosen looks down and away as they cut to file footage of someone from the Bureau reiterating almost verbatim just what the reporter had presented; followed by transition back to the live shot of Rosen).

"Meanwhile, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are furious about all of this. Ranking Member, Senator..." and Rosen went on to indicate the ire that Senate and House oversight members were demonstrating; especially in this year of off-year elections. Rosen concluded with his wrap-up, and Baer took the flip.

"Our panel will take on these events in our discussion later. Meanwhile, we take a look at what some of our affiliates outside the Beltway are reporting today..."

This is where I normally tune out for a moment in the news, following the high drama that they always build into the 'A-Block' segment, or the opening news story each night. I was just about to mute it for a moment, when I heard something that caused my blood to freeze.

"From our affiliate WBFF, Fox 45, in Baltimore, Maryland, comes the story of a mysterious but deadly gas leak in an office complex in Columbia, Maryland. At least twenty people died, all working for a local stock brokerage, when they were overcome by deadly gas fumes that evidently caught them at their workstations before any of them realized what was happening. And from our affiliate KRIV, Fox 26, in Houston, Texas..."

At this point, I had stabbed my finger at the remote to try to tune in one of the DC-Area local stations. My brain was working frantically while my heart was slowly sinking. Unfortunately, by this point, most of the local stations were either on commercial break for mattress shops or local retirement centers or reverse mortgages, or were covering the late summer training camps for the Redskins or the Ravens. In frustration, I kept mashing buttons on the remote.

And then my phone rang. Caller ID showed a number I did not recognize, but I was too distracted by my overactive brain to think about letting the call simply go to the machine. I blindly answered it.

"Yes!"

"Mr. Brodie," said a voice that was vaguely familiar.

"Yes," I said curtly, ready to scream and hang up if it was someone from the Campaign for Life, or the Disabled American Veterans, or any of the robo-calling political campaigns that had already started with the primaries this past spring.

"This is FBI Special Agent Fife, Mr. Brodie," said the voice on the other end. "We ..." was as far as he got.

"That thing in Columbia; was that her place?" I interrupted frantically. "I mean was that where Lana was working for you people? Is she all right? Do you know anything at all about...?" Here Fife interrupted me.

"Mr. Brodie, if you will allow me," Fife said softly, "I wanted to get out to Rosslyn to see you personally on this, but things are going crazy around here with all that is happening today. I just wanted to call to tell you that Lana's..." and that is as far as he got before I began yelling into the phone.

"Is she all right? Has she been harmed? If you have allowed anything to happen to my wife, I swear that I will ..." I had to pause for a split second to stifle a sob that was working its way into my throat, and Fife took advantage of the pause.

"Hey, Maddux!" this was the first time that Fife had addressed me by my first name and it got my attention. "Listen; I don't have any information for you about Lana's condition. I am sorry. What I was trying to say was that Lana's supervisor at Tamerlane, Zach Taylor, is in the hospital, along with two other people, following their exposure to what we believe was a deliberate attempt at murder by asphyxiation."

"What are you talking about? Murder by...?" I stammered.

"If you have seen the news out of Columbia, then you know about the deaths at that office complex that the press is attributing to a gas leak. The Bureau's investigators--in consultation with the local law enforcement, survivors of the incident, and the medical professionals treating the folks there--believe that the place where your wife was working came under an attack by unknown assailants, using some sort of chemical agent that they introduced into the ventilation system."

"You mean like a poison gas?" I asked, as my brain started to function at a normal rate of speed, and my memory centers kicked in, horrified at the implications for my wife and the others working with her. Fife answered before I could say anything else.

"Yes. We know that twenty people died today in the attack, including two of our own undercover Special Agents, and at least one of our contractors working for Tamerlane. But, we do not have any information about the location or condition of your wife, Lana."

I leaped in at that point. "What do you mean ... you don't have any information ...?" I asked, now getting a bit frantic.

"That is exactly what I said; and what I mean." At this, FBI Special Agent Gary Fife--known as 'Barney' to his friends and fellow agents--actually let some of his stoic demeanor slip, when his voice came across to me as almost grief-stricken in the way it sounded.

"Maddux ... Lana has disappeared."

****

I had finally given up in frustration after speaking with Barney for over half an hour. Our call had concluded with his promises to keep me informed of any--and he emphasized the word 'any'--developments in the case.

After I hung up, I had to turn my attention to my son, Steven. I had all but ignored my son for almost an hour now. And, at that time of the evening, with food within reach, a mess was sure to ensue. And it did. He had gotten mustard and ketchup all over everything from his hair all the way down to the feet of two of the table's legs.

I hastily got all things spillable out of reach, and got a wet dish towel to deal with the rest. Steven fought my attempts to clean his person, but he sat and finished the last of his potato chips as I got down on my knees to clean up the mess under the table. He was asking me, "Where's Mom?" a couple of times. This question caused me to have to fight to keep the fear out of my voice or off my face when I told him that she was working late this evening.

I finally got the mess cleaned up and got Steven upstairs, bathed, read to, and bedded down for the night. And then I began my sleepless night of worry.

Special Agent Fife had said that I did not need to call the local police, either the Arlington County Police, who covered Rosslyn, or the Howard County Police in Columbia, Maryland, as the Feds had taken the lead on the case, since it involved elements of organized interstate--and maybe even international--crime, terrorism, and kidnapping.

I made a call to Zach Taylor's cell phone early the next morning, in hopes that he would be allowed to have his phone with him in the hospital where he was recovering. He had not been allowed a phone while in ICU. But on the ward where he was now resting he was allowed, as he informed me after he answered his phone immediately. He then began offering his supportive sentiments at my distress over Lana's disappearance. Zach told me that he and the rest of his team at Tamerlane were distressed as well at having lost one of their colleagues in the gas attack and at Lana's having gone missing under such mysterious circumstances.

Before we concluded the phone conversation, Zach assured me that he would check within the company, as well as with some of his law enforcement contacts at the Federal, state, and local levels routinely. They would try to get feelers out to their sources in the underground community in order to find out any information that might be available, until Lana had been found and--his words, designed to encourage me--brought back safely.

On the morning 'Fox and Friends' show, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Steve Doocy, and Brian Kilmeade were showing a helicopter view of a major crime scene. They said that there were reports of multiple deaths and hints from anonymous sources at the disruption of a major federal criminal investigation. The insert at the upper left corner of the screen read, '7:12 a.m., Columbia, Maryland.' There was nothing substantial in the report and I knew, from what Barney had told me, that the Feds would be very circumspect about the timing and quantity of information that they would release to the public.

I simply had to resign myself to the fact that all I could do was wait ... and wait ... and wait.

****

I had now already waited for a month. My heart had begun to change the nature of its ache--from the short-term ache of missing a loved one who was gone temporarily, to the long-term ache of missing a mate who may be gone forever.

Zach met with me for lunch about two weeks after he had been sprung from the hospital. He told me that the files I had received and then sent to him and Fife were what finally got Van Horn pulled in, since the case had been building for weeks prior to that. The Bureau had needed just one more piece of conclusive evidence in order to hit the 'go' button on Van Horn's arrest.

Lana had given me more than enough to pass on in order to initiate the shutdown of SSA Van Horn's little personal enterprise. Zach basically told me what Lana had told me before her disappearance. There had been some suspicion for some time about the fact that some of the cases that SSA Van Horn had been supervising, over a period of the previous two years, had seemed to come up short just before the bust had been about to go down.

Zach told me that the Feds had verified, through physical forensic testing, that the place that Lana had been working had been attacked with some sort of incapacitating agent similar to the gas that had been used in Russia against Chechen terrorists in a school auditorium. Russian Federation Alpha Group forces had used the unidentified chemical agent to try to incapacitate the bad guys--with the ghastly results of so many collateral civilian hostage casualties due to the effects of the chemical agent.

In this case, there were at least twenty dead at the Columbia facility, where there were usually thirty-eight employed on a regular basis. There was no news released to the public about the whereabouts of the others who worked there. The bodies of the two undercover FBI Special Agents and the Tamerlane contractor were confirmed as being among those found on the premises during the investigation so far.

Zach said that the Bureau was working with all of their legitimate law-enforcement contacts to locate Lana. He also said that he and his co-workers at Tamerlane were working their legitimate contacts as well; but he, along with a couple of others, were also still speaking with long-time informants who roamed around in the black and gray areas in which no one worried a lot about being law-abiding. If there was any news available from any of his sources about Lana's whereabouts, Zach would let me know.

Over the next six months, I received twice-weekly calls from the Bureau, usually from Barney Fife, and calls two or three times a week from Zach Taylor, trying to keep me up to speed on what they were learning and doing about Lana's disappearance.

Once, after four months, I'd had my hopes raised that they had found Lana. But those hopes were quickly dashed when I heard that they had discovered a group of eight women (teenage girls, actually) in a house in Ocean City, Maryland, where the women had quite simply been used as sex slaves by Russian mobsters. The 'alleged' criminals captured there had lawyered up quickly and said not a word--typical of Russian criminals who feared that their family members would die as well as they would if they broke their silence.

After six months, the calls dwindled to once a week; and, eventually, the only contact was an email from Zach once in a while with no indication of any real progress in the case, despite his best efforts to offer me encouragement.

I did not give up hope, but it was hard. I tried to explain to Steven why Mom was not home yet, after all this time. He did not forget her, and I kept her picture by his bed so that he would not. I know for a fact that he cried himself to sleep on his fifth birthday, when his mother was not there with him to celebrate.

After a year, my personal life remained on hold, except for being the best dad that I could for Steven. I did not date, and I just did not have the heart to seek legal action in order to have Lana declared dead or to divorce her on the grounds of abandonment. I was still pissed at the Bureau either for their lack of progress in the investigation or for keeping their information close-hold; and for having to rely on Zach Taylor, a contractor, for any real updates--the few that there were.

My mom and dad had called from Anchorage after I had left a voice mail message for them about what was going on. They had offered to come back to the Lower 48 to commiserate with me and to be nearby for me and Steven, but I told them that things were pretty steady-state by then and I did not want them to make that God-awful long trip back east.

Alexei and Sonja Savin were supportive of me, but distraught at the disappearance of their daughter. Alexei said more than once that he was not surprised. All his life, back in Belarus, people had simply disappeared--vanished overnight--quite often at the hands of the government, but sometimes at the hands of criminals. Alexei said that the people simply cried at their losses for a while and then moved on with life, realizing that they simply could do nothing about their missing loved ones.

It got so bad for me emotionally at one point that it began to affect my ability to pay attention to details at work. My Site Lead on my contract, a really nice lady who could get brusque when she needed to, virtually ordered me to get professional counseling.

Dr. Robert Hartley put me through the whole gamut of dealing with the disappearance of my wife in a similar manner as one would deal with the death of a loved one. He led me through all the phases of grief and tried to get me out of my funk.

Finally, after almost three years, I had had enough. I was back up to a sufficient level of emotional stability to be able to work, take care of Steven, and even socialize and laugh a bit with friends. But the memories of life with Lana and the darkness that had descended on our lives ever since she had disappeared seemed to be holding both Steven and me back from the rest of what life had to offer.

So, I decided to pull up stakes and move. I would maintain contact with Zach and other friends in the DC Area, and with Special Agent Fife, but I needed a fresh start somewhere else; thus, my move to the Metro Atlanta Area.

****

My arrival in town did not go unnoticed. In fact, within only two days of the time that Steven and I moved into the apartment we were using temporarily, I could tell that word had gotten around. Ladies in the apartment complex in which I lived very quickly approached me and introduced themselves and tried to get me interested in going out--or in. After being without female companionship--especially in my bed at night, I was just beginning to get to a point of showing interest, but not enough initially to do more than simply go out to supper--Sprayberry's Barbecue being close by and convenient.

Dealing with the purchase of land, along with the building difficulties because of the geology, distracted me enough to allow me to continue to postpone any romantic adventures. Additionally, I had to deal with getting records on file with the Coweta County school system so that I could get Steven enrolled in elementary school for the fall.

I also had Steven signed up for Coach-Pitch Baseball. Around where we were staying, the locals were upset at how 'Politically Correct' the organization known as Little League Baseball had become. Thus, they organized their baseball efforts within the guidelines of an organization known as Dixie Youth Baseball. The same applied to the girls who were playing fast-pitch softball for Dixie Softball--these girls gave up slow-pitch as soon as they were nine years old around here; and I discovered that a couple of local girls had rifle arms and explosive bats and had gotten full-ride softball scholarships to Florida State University and University of Louisiana-Monroe.

Meanwhile, apartment living, while only temporary, was beginning to cause me to feel the walls closing in on me. I tried to get out with Steven as often as possible; only being at home when we needed to detox from the day, eat, do the evening activities leading up to bedtime, and sleep. My son and I were partnering in this 'man's world' environment and helping each other endure the empty spots in our hearts at the absence of my wife and his mother in our lives.

And then, one evening when we had been living in the apartment for about four-and-a-half months, with about a month to go before we could move into our soon-to-be-newly-completed house, Steven made his profound two-word announcement.

"Mom's home."

Which brings us back to where this story began; with Steven and me standing in the doorway to our apartment, seeing my wife--and Steven's mother--for the first time in three years.

****

Steven finally moved out the door tentatively at first, and then scooting around Fife, and stopping in front of Lana. He did not reach for her at first, choosing simply to look up at her face. Then he smiled and his arms came up.

Lana dropped to her knees and hugged him to her. She began to cry as she held our son for the first time since her disappearance. I heard her sob out loud and begin to say through her tears, "Steven, my baby ... Steven, oh, my baby boy ... you have gotten so big ..."

Special Agent Fife looked at me and said, "Hello, Maddux." Then he looked sort of apologetic as he said, "As you can see, just as I promised you that we would; we found your wife." He was sort of tentative with me, since I had been rather angry during the last few times we had spoken; the last time having been over four months before. That was when I was reporting my move and letting Fife and the Bureau know how to get in touch with me after I had pulled out of Rosslyn and had moved down here.

"I just brought her by to see you and Steven for a little while," said Fife.

"What do you mean; 'a little while?'" I asked, now that I had found my tongue. I was beginning to get uncomfortable and a bit angry again.

"She has been through a lot, Mr. Brodie," said the female FBI Agent standing next to Lana. "She is not ready to come home to stay yet, as she will require therapy. Thankfully, we have a really good clinic available to her just up the road in Riverdale, near the Atlanta Airport, where she will receive the best of care. They will treat her physically and emotionally in order to prepare for her permanent return to society; and her family. We simply brought her by here today in order for you all to see each other and for her to make first contact with her son."

"Her son?" I asked; now I was getting a bit indignant. "You mean OUR son; and what about me--her husband? Don't I count?"

Fife had his hands up to placate me. "Hey, Maddux; look. She has had a rough time for the past few years. She was taken forcibly against her will from her work place during a raid by gangsters; she was transported to a place where they repeatedly raped and otherwise abused her; then she was kept in an environment where she was beaten and forced to perform sex acts on demand on a regular basis. And she even gave birth twice during her captivity."

I was now reeling at the onslaught of images of my lovely wife being abused at the hands of such ... animals. Fife lowered his voice in an attempt at letting me be the only one to hear what he said next. "Maddux; she was used as a breeder; they got her pregnant in order to produce children whom they could sell on the black market."

The horror of Lana's recent existence did not hit me fully until later, but I was stunned at these revelations nonetheless.

"She can have some negative reactions to the touch or even the close proximity of men right now. Ya know?" Fife looked at me as he said this. I truly believe that he would have used martial arts on me if I were to attempt to move toward Lana to get at least a hug after so long a separation.

I resisted temptation as my brain began to regain control of my emotions. Sure, I loved Lana, and I wanted her back, but I wanted her back whole; and without any fear of her own husband.

"Okay, Barney," I said, causing him to relax a bit. "Do you folks want to come in for a few minutes?"

They declined, simply choosing to wind up this initial conversation right there on the front stoop.

Lana appeared to be placating Steven, who was now smiling brightly at the prospect of having his mother back. I heard her tell my son ... our son ... that she was not back for good yet, but she would be staying nearby and would be back for good within a few weeks. Steven expressed his displeasure by hugging Lana's legs as if he would not let her go.

Lana stood there and looked at me with an expression of combined longing and fear. My heart was breaking as I resisted simply charging outside, taking her in my arms, and swinging her around. But, after hearing what Barney had said, I refrained from doing so.

We concluded the rest of our initial conversation there in front of my apartment as the light of the afternoon began to fade to the evening. Supper was forgotten in the raised anxiety and other emotions of the moment.

Fife reaffirmed that I had his cell number. He told me that I could call him at any time for assistance with getting through the red tape involved with seeing Lana once my visitation was approved within her treatment regimen.

When I asked about the cases she had working been on before her abduction and whether everything was over, Fife tightened his lips into a line.

"Maddux," Fife said, "I won't lie to you. The cases in Maryland that she was working on are definitely complete. But, we will periodically be checking with her on the cases arising from her being a victim of sex slavery and human trafficking by Russian-American organized crime groups."

"What do you mean, 'checking with?'" I asked.

"Well, as a result of the raids that served to free Lana from the hands of her abusers," Fife went on, "we have many new leads that can serve to free many hundreds more women, girls, and even children from the hands of those monsters. We may need information that she does not even realize that she has in order to confirm details about those leads."

"Will she be required to testify any?" I asked, suddenly apprehensive about the safety of all of us if we were potentially threatened into silence by criminal organizations.

Fife smiled grimly and said, "I don't think there is any threat involved, even if we do need her testimony. After all, the majority of the men involved with her incarceration at the location where she was rescued went down fighting instead of surrendering."

"You mean you killed them all?" I asked.

"Let's just say that none of them is expected to go to trial," Fife said with a satisfied smile on his face. But then his eyebrows came down a bit.

"We got almost all of Vasily's inner circle--either killed or captured," Fife went on. "We only missed one major player, a guy named Gennady Sokolski; the rest that we missed were just minor participants who did not know enough about the overall operation even to make an attempt at getting it back up and running for years; especially with the loss of the knowledge about overseas contacts and the locations of the funds. Those connections were broken with the deaths of Vasily and his three closest associates. His disparate criminal operational facilities are still out there, and we are tracking them down as we speak; but the leadership has been pretty much decimated."

"As far as you know," I said, trying to interject a little reality into this conversation. Fife had fallen prey to the temptation to talk to me in 'Bureau-Speak' and I wanted him to know that I wasn't buying the party line without question.

Fife paused and then nodded. "Yeah; I guess you are right. It IS as far as we know, after all." Then he grinned at me and said, "But a lot of those Russian sons-a-bitches went down permanently. And that is a good thing. Honest, Maddux; I truly do not believe that you, Lana, or any of your family need worry about any reprisals out of all of this. We are pretty sure that we have made enough of a dent in their operation to keep them busy in other endeavors far removed from thinking about any of you for the time being."

I nodded at him to make Fife believe that I had accepted his assurance, but secretly reminded myself mentally to be sure to keep my handgun close by and to practice regularly with it.

We said our goodbyes, and I only went so far as to hold out a hand in order to attempt to shake Lana's hand--I did not want to spook her. She looked at it, her eyes widened in brief apprehension, and then she looked into my face and saw my pain and longing, I guess. Because she extended both her dainty hands to touch mine tentatively. I felt a gentle squeeze and then she turned away, taking the small child from the other woman and moving to the black Suburban parked at the curb.

Fife, the female Special Agent, and the other woman nodded and turned to go as well. Steven moved to me with a confused look on his face as his mother got into the car to leave him again. But he did not cry; he simply leaned into me and held my legs.

I waited quietly and held my son to me as the Suburban made the turn out of the lot for the apartment complex and onto the highway. The tears I was shedding now were more those of relief at her being back rather than the pain of her having to continue to be apart from us for a while, even just briefly. But I knew intellectually that this would be a separation of relatively short duration, determined by how rapidly she could heal mentally and emotionally from all that had happened to her.

I thought about the baby bump that was showing at Lana's midsection. I knew that I would also have some personal emotional disruption as I learned to deal with the fact that my wife was carrying the child of another man; and, from what I had seen today, already had a child from the sexual union she'd had with someone else besides me, given the age of the child that I had seen with her. Could I deal with that?

I had not found a therapist here in the area to deal with any emotional issues that I might still have concerning her being missing, as I had believed when I had moved down here that my emotional state had stabilized. But, I would have to do a lot of self-examination, now that the picture had changed so drastically.

The first thing Monday, I told my new boss about the return of my wife and about our troubles up in Virginia before moving down here. He was naturally concerned about the disruption of his plans for the new working dynamics that had been put in place by hiring me at Jacobson Controls, but he was willing to try to help. He offered me liberal flexibility in my hours of work in order to look after Lana and Steven, giving me VPN access to his office server in order to do some of my work remotely from home or from wherever I might need to be during Lana's recovery.

I was still pissed that the Bureau had found Lana a couple of weeks before notifying me. But I calmed down a bit when they told me that Lana would not have been responsive to me at the time of her rescue from the abysmal conditions in which she had been living. What they had learned from her during the first few days after she was back from her ordeal had led the FBI to be able to rescue as many as a hundred and thirty other women, teenage girls, babies, and other small children from two different locations that were being operated by Russian human traffickers--one in Virginia and one in North Carolina.

****

CHAPTER 5

Surprisingly, it was only two weeks after Lana's placement in institutional care nearby that she was released to go home with us. She still had twice-a-week appointments with a therapist up in Riverdale who was on the list of those counselors and therapists approved by the Human Smuggling Trafficking Center (HSTC), an outfit created in July 2004 by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Attorney General.

Everyone involved in her treatment wanted to be assured that there were no lingering adverse 'ghost' effects in her psyche that could possibly lead to abnormal emotional responses or problems in her relationships with her family or friends following her ordeal. And they were finally assured; in fact, the reports indicated that Lana was surprisingly on the stronger side of their scale of measure, mentally and emotionally, compared to most of the victims they had treated.

Our family existed in a rather chaotic time for a while. I mean with Lana's eventual return, and with a toddler in tow. The FBI was remaining in contact with us through Special Agent Fife, since they needed to continue their debrief of Lana about things that they were uncovering through their methodical examination of all the evidence they had collected on Vasily Radkevich's operation.

We had seen the news, and learned from Special Agent Fife, that Vasily himself had indeed died shortly after the raid on the house where they were holding Lana that last time. Fife had given us the details of how Vasily was killed in a gunfight at New Castle Airport, just outside of Wilmington, Delaware, where he had been attempting to flee the country on a private jet, along with several of his principal lieutenants. Later, Special Agent Fife verified what he had told me earlier, that they had accounted for the death or capture of all the primary players in Vasily's organization except for the man who had evidently directed the child-breeding-and-selling and prostitution operations--Gennady Sokolski.

Alexei and Sonja Savin came down to Newnan to visit us, flying first to Atlanta and driving the relatively short distance out to us from there. They were overjoyed at the return of their daughter--from what they had been sure in their own minds was certain death at the time of her disappearance.

Alexei had been forced to return to Washington shortly after his arrival and a brief three-day visit, but Sonja remained with us for almost another two weeks in order to be with Lana while I was at work, so that Lana was not left alone, and so that Sonja could become acquainted with her new granddaughter. After that, Lana's therapist had said that she believed that it was okay for Lana to be at home alone for short periods (no longer than about 6 hours at first) for the following couple of weeks, and then okay for the whole day after that.

There was not a lot of room in the apartment while we awaited the move to the new house, but we made do. Then, after only a few more weeks, we were able to move into our new house. The GC satisfied me that the punch list items were finished, and Coweta County issued me a CO so that we could move in officially.

Contributing to the chaos of our lives now for a while were the details involved in the move from our apartment in Newnan to the newly-constructed house near Sharpsburg. We had arranged for the movers to deliver our furniture and that is when we realized that we were woefully short of furnishings to account for Lana's reunification with the family and the addition of a daughter. And now we also had to plan for the arrival of the baby that Lana was carrying.

When the level of activity finally began to subside to a manageable level, I was somewhat relieved. Lana and I were still getting used to the idea of being back together, although in separate bedrooms for a while. Steven was reestablishing his relationship with his mother. Steven and I BOTH were establishing our initial relationship with the new addition to our family, Lana's little daughter and Steven's new little sister, whose name was Angela. All the signs seemed to point to our being well on our way to better times together eventually.

Except that I would walk in at various times and find Lana crying quietly. When I asked her about it, she just kept saying that she would tell me later; just to hold her for a while. I eventually got Lana to tell me, when I went with her to her therapy appointment--the doctor had suggested that I come along for some of them--that she missed her son--OUR son; who had been taken from her--and us--the one I never knew about before her return and had never met.

You see, unbeknownst to either of us at the time Lana had been taken, she was pregnant with our second son. He had been born during Lana's captivity and had been taken from her--from us.

The Bureau had taken bodily samples from Lana and me, in order to put their huge computer database containing tons of DNA data on missing persons, especially children, to work in locating our missing son. After all, ever since the Lindbergh kidnapping way back in the last century, the FBI had been the pre-eminent law enforcement agency to handle kidnapping cases.

I got hold of Barney Fife and pleaded with him to use any and all reasonable and available means to locate Lana's and my missing son. He assured me that he already had that in motion--I mean, he already had the DNA data guys working on it as much as possible; but I had to understand that there were more than a hundred children that Federal assets were busily attempting to track down after review of documents they had collected in their investigation of Valisy's enterprise alone. And that was just a drop in the bucket with respect to the huge number of other unsolved kidnapping and child disappearance cases the Bureau had open.

Needless to say, Lana and I were not yet sexually intimate--nowhere near--but she was at least at a point where she would let me hug her for extended amounts of time, and we were kissing, at least.

We had gotten her lined up with a local OB/GYN and had advised that female doctor of the situation. Her doctor verified that Lana was approximately 4 months along in her current pregnancy; 18 weeks, according to some type of chart they go by. The primary focus, as far as the OB/GYN was concerned, was Lana's diet, prenatal vitamin supplements, and getting her own body into shape to ensure proper overall prenatal care for the unborn child.

****

Being included as an active part of the move of our family and our household goods into the new house had aided enormously in Lana's reintegration into 'civilization' and family life. She had gotten to be in on picking out the window treatments and all of the rugs to go on the hardwood floors that predominated in the house--except for the tile floors in the kitchen and bathrooms.

The sod for the front lawn and the areas next to the house arrived and the team from the nursery that delivered it got all of the pieces in place within two days. I had had irrigation lines buried for underground sprinklers in the front--but not too deep, thanks to that accursed underground rock formation--in order to make things easy for yard maintenance in the coming years.

When the well-drilling guy I had hired came out to drill through that damned rock layer to find water for a well for a potable water supply for my house, I had also had him drill another hole in the rock to provide for another well specifically for watering my yard, and possibly a garden or a vineyard--or both--out back of the house.

I had learned one of the hard lessons of life during our time in the DC area concerning the proximity of criminal activity throughout the country. I had joined a gun club in the area after our move to Georgia, and had purchased a Ruger Blackhawk .357 Magnum revolver. In back of the house, my land sloped gently to some woods, and then there was an earthen berm, where the builder had moved some of the rock and dirt from the construction. That was where I had established my make-shift personal firing range, where I plinked a couple of boxes of ammo every now and then to keep my hand in with the weapon.

I was not too worried about danger to the neighbors whenever I shot my revolver at my range out back, as there were none behind me for well over a mile. In addition to the earthen and rock berm, there also were woods and there was a creek, with its accompanying 'wetlands'--what we used to call 'swamps' before the crowd at the EPA began going to extreme lengths not only to correct our terminology, but also to correct our thinking about so-called private property ownership in America.

A good half acre of my six-acre land lot extended into the 'wetlands' and I could not do a damned thing with that land without having federal lawyers from the EPA going medieval on my ass. They were not too happy, as it was, about my slinging lead into the primitive region, but--thank God for the Second Amendment--the U.S. Constitution and the enlightened gun laws of the Great State of Georgia held sway on that aspect of my life and my land use, and I was allowed to shoot into the 'swamps' to my heart's content.

I kept the Ruger close by in the house, but out of Steven's reach. Lana did not object, since she was actually more familiar with handling handguns than I was, because of her previous training as a contractor for the Bureau.

Other aspects of the new place began to make themselves known to me in short order. We had Canada Geese landing in the wetlands behind the place--although a friend of mine, who was originally from Jasper, Alberta, had laughed and said those geese were not really from Canada. We also heard the screech of an owl in the pre-dawn mornings. And we saw signs of other wildlife that simply amazed us, since the encroachment of civilization--caused by the suburban sprawl supporting the rapid of the Atlanta region--would normally drive such wildlife away; but not here!

Shortly after purchasing my land, and my discovery of the abundance of wildlife in the area of where my new house would be--back well before construction had even begun, UPS had made a delivery that had left me with a big smile on my face. They had delivered a present that I had made to myself to celebrate the initial stage of clearing my land for what I hoped would be our dream house. That present had been my brand new Moultrie Panoramic 150 game camera that I had bought online from Amazon. It had a motion-sensor trigger to take pictures whenever anything moved within its field of view; and it was equipped with an infrared flash that allowed clear pictures at night, since many of the critters were nocturnal.

I had found a spot behind and below the site for the house, back when the only thing to indicate construction was the beginning stage of stakes in the ground to mark the limits of the foundation. The place I had selected for the gamecam was near what I suspected was an old deer trail leading to the creek. I had set up the gamecam, using small bungee cords to secure it to a tree, and soon I had begun to enjoy seeing pictures of birds, deer, raccoons, and even coyotes when I would periodically retrieve the gamecam and hook it up to my laptop back at the apartment via USB cable. I simply had to remember to retrieve it periodically so that I could dump or swap out the memory card, and keep track of the battery status.

I had shared the wildlife pictures with Steven, back before Lana's return, and he had been tickled to see animals that would be living just outside his own bedroom window once the house was completed and we moved it. With all the hubbub of Lana's return and Angela's entry into our family, along with the new schedule of seeing her doctors--both her therapist and the gynecologist--it simply slipped my mind to make Lana aware of the joy that Steven and I were experiencing with the gamecam. And I even overlooked the gamecam itself for a while, as it was attached to a tree down by the edge of my property, until well after we had move into the completed house.

****

Lana began to reconnect well now with Steven. We all would load up the car and go to the ball field to watch and cheer our son as he played Coach-Pitch baseball. Little Angela came along with us now, as she did everywhere. I had overcome my initial aversion to the idea of raising another man's baby. I mean that no one was going to take this child away from Lana, and that meant no one would ever separate her from me either (I had not said anything to Lana, but I had made a vow to myself that, when the time was right, I would legally adopt the little girl--and the baby still growing in Lana's belly as well).

One strange thing had happened the first time we went to one of Steven's ballgames. As we stood with Steven near the dugout, the coach had come out and announced, "It's game time!" to the kids and us parents.

Lana had gasped at hearing this, and had grabbed my arm. I had looked into her eyes and could see that 'Lana' had left the premises for a while, disappearing into another realm for a few seconds. I had just held her close and waited. Abruptly, Lana had sighed and pulled away from me and smiled at me with a hint of embarrassment.

"I--I am sorry, Maddux," Lana had said to me. "It--it is just something that Steven's coach said that caused me to return ... there ... in my mind." She had looked up at me and I had known immediately just where 'there' was.

"Maybe, one day, you will be able to tell me all about it," I had said with a reassuring smile and a kiss to her forehead.

"One day," Lana had replied, "maybe."

****

Lana and I finally got to the point of sexual intimacy about six weeks after we moved into the new house. She had allowed me to carry her over the threshold when we had finally moved in. Even being pregnant, she was not so heavy as to be a real burden for me to carry her into our new home. But that was the only close physical concession she would make to our being husband and wife in the early stages. But we progressed to hugs, kisses; then both; and--finally--to sex.

We were not nearly as adventurous initially as we had been in the days before Lana's abduction. We kept to simple missionary sex at first, and I did not broach the subject of oral sex for either of us. I also was concerned about harming the fetus, as this was the first time that I had been involved sexually with a pregnant partner since Lana had carried Steven. But we did take joy in the simple comforts of holding each other closely in bed, before and after our renewed sexual interactions.

I still wanted to learn some of the details about Lana's period of captivity, but her therapist had told me to let her tell me in her own time and not to rush her. So, I bided my time, and she let me know in subtle ways that she appreciated my patience.

Finally, over wine one night--only one glass for her--she began to tell me of her harrowing experience as a sex slave.

****

Lana's story

I won't bore you with a lot of details about my working in Vadim's brokerage, Maddux, since you have told me that you heard about it from Zach Taylor. Honestly, Honey, none of us who were working there would have ever believed what we encountered there; or what happened afterward to those of us who survived.

Anyway, as you know, I was working on two cases at once. First, I was working on the case of tracking the unusual money movements that Vadim's brokerage had been involved with. You know that Vadim's business was actually serving as a downstream clearing house for the illegal gains from Vasily Radkevich's criminal empire, but only after it had already been through at least one other layer of filtering by some firm in Baltimore.

You also know that I was working at the same time with Special Agent Fife to aid the Bureau in accumulating enough internal evidence to develop an administrative case against Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn for sexual harassment of some of the female employees of the contract companies supporting the Bureau; and I ... well, I guess you could say that I was ... bait, of sorts.

[I cringed as I heard this from my wife].

It did not take me but a few days to begin to detect some of the hints of the trails being left by the money laundering transactions. Within a couple of weeks, I had begun to develop a pretty thorough electronic map of where the money was being sourced, where it was being routed, and--eventually--where it was being deposited.

Believe me, Maddux; I was being very careful to ensure that I was not leaving any electronic 'fingerprints' or 'tracks' that could possibly indicate that I was even in the system and watching the flow. After all, I did not want anyone on Vasily's end of things even to be able to detect me or, if that was not possible, to identify me personally, or even to be able to determine that the probe was actually coming from within the network server of Vadim's business.

I guess that Vasily's network experts were better than I had anticipated--that is the only thing that I can believe, given the fact that they were able to target Vadim and the rest of us the way they did. Or, it could have been just a scorched earth policy implemented by Vasily to close down ALL possible points of electronic intrusion into his network, regardless of guilt. Vasily, as paranoid as he was reputed to be about security, would probably take just such a 'burn-everything-down' approach in order to remove any and all evidence against him.

As I said earlier, I had mapped out the flow of the money pretty well after just a few weeks. It was as I began to analyze the deposits a bit more closely that I discovered some disturbing indicators as to the identities of some of the recipients. Many must have been other criminals, both overseas and here in the States. I did not recognize their names, but Van Horn and Fife seemed to be excited about it.

Then I began to recognize some of the other account holders from their names that I had seen over the years in the newspapers and on television and the internet--they were politicians at the State and Federal level; the states involved mainly included North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.

SSA Van Horn suddenly began to get nervous and had me route any developments in that particular area to him exclusively. I believed at the time that he was simply being cautious because of the sensitivity of the information and its implications for a case of widespread political corruption with all the possible consequences for the Bureau, as the bearer of the bad news.

I soon discovered that SSA Emmett Van Horn was nervous for other reasons--and one reason in particular.

One of the deposit streams that I had discovered--but never reported to Van Horn--pointed to one person who I would never have believed could be involved in this criminal mess as deeply as he was--given who he was and where he worked.

That person was none other than Supervisory Special Agent Emmett Van Horn himself! He was actually on the payroll of Vasily Radkevich!

Naturally, I made electronic back-ups of files that I had found and sent them to someone else, so that I would not have the information simply 'disappear' conveniently. That is when I sent those files to you, Maddux. I am sorry that I had to use a phony email address source, but I was desperate to get the information out and still remain behind the scenes when this all broke--as it was sure to do very soon after that discovery. I waited for two days before I re-sent the same email with the electronic evidence against Emmett Van Horn to Zach Taylor at Tamerlane and to Special Agent Fife at the Bureau. I did not know that you had already passed the files on to Special Agent Fife.

At that point, I knew that I no longer had to worry about the sexual harassment case, as the Bureau now had a criminal case against Van Horn. But, I kept on working there at Vadim's place in order to keep up the appearances of normal operations.

I heard a few days later, after sending you that email with those files, about SSA Van Horn's being arrested. I thought that things were moving fast, and have now only found out since my rescue that Barney Fife was already on Van Horn's case and that my evidence was simply icing on the cake. We all had thought that everything was under control, as far as arresting Van Horn was concerned, and I did not fear for my own safety, as Vadim's operation was only a window into the periphery of what Vasily was doing; not--supposedly--a likely target for Vasily's wrath.

Two days after I had heard about his arrest, SSA Van Horn was killed in the Federal holding facility. While I was appalled at the violent death of someone whom I had known personally, even if he were a tainted Agent, I still had no worries for my own situation or personal safety.

On the morning of the third day after Van Horn's arrest, the day after his death, the two Special Agents and all of the contractors from Tamerlane received notification from Special Agent Fife that we are being pulled out of Vadim's facility for a while, until the Bureau could clear up some of the uncertainties concerning the depth of involvement of SSA Van Horn and possibly others at the Local, State, and Federal level.

We were closing out files and performing other actions in preparation for a return to the McLean offices on the morning that it happened. Suddenly, people throughout the offices began to show signs of dizziness, stagger, and lose their equilibrium. Soon, everything simply went dark.

I woke up with my hands and feet bound in a van, moving at a rapid speed somewhere. I could hear voices, but could not determine what was being said, as the road noise and the walls separating us from the speakers hindered clarity; only that they were speaking what sounded to my ears as if it were Russian.

When we finally reached wherever we were going, someone roughly removed me from the van and rushed me into a building where I heard women crying and screaming, and men laughing and shouting harshly.

My clothing was all cut off with what I took to be a sharp industrial knife, leaving me in harsh light, naked and afraid, along with about fifteen other women and teenage girls. Two men took my arms and led--actually, almost carried--me to a room down a hall. It contained a mattress on a rudimentary bed frame. One of the men held my arms while the other undressed.

Both men spent the next two hours raping my mouth and pussy. One fucked me in the ass finally. Then they simply left me alone for a short while. I was sore, bruised, covered in cum, and very, very afraid. I was crying as well in response to what was happening to me. I also still had a headache and mild nausea that I attributed at the time to the residual effects of whatever was used at Vadim's place to incapacitate us all.

I looked around my current surroundings. All I had in the room for a toilet was a bucket. There was also a plastic gallon jug of water on the floor by the bed. There were no towels and no bedding on the plain mattress on which they had left me. Thank goodness they had finally removed the bindings on my wrists during all of the sex; or else, my shoulders could very well have been dislocated with the roughness the men had displayed in their abuse of my body.

Over the next few days, men came in at random times; sometimes two or three at a time; and used me sexually. There was actually very little violence--just a slap now and then--whenever I would attempt to resist or speak out of turn.

One man, in particular--I found out later that his name was Gennady--took particular delight in taking me roughly. And, every time he came into the room where I was, he would begin to unbuckle his belt, and, without fail, would happily announce, "Game time, My Little Slut!" He would then take his pleasure from the sexual abuse of my mouth and my pussy. Only once did he try my ass; but he complained that it was too tight for his 'manly cock'--those were his words.

This went on for many days, until three men in expensive-looking suits came in and visited me. They looked me over and had another man display me and photograph me in various poses. After a while, the well-dressed men left and the man who had displayed and photographed me pushed me to my knees and made me give him a blow job.

I lost track of time, as the days seemed to merge together into a nightmare event. I realized, one day, that I must have been drugged through my food, as I seemed to lose track of a significant amount of time and I was a bit surprised when I went to sleep one night and woke up in a different facility in daylight. This place was much nicer. It had an actual bedroom and bed--complete with bed coverings and a pillow, and was lighted well, with a closet full of costly but slutty things for a woman to wear.

I now realized, at this point, that I has been relegated to the position of a sex slave for the sole purpose of servicing whoever I might be ordered to perform sexually in order to make money for my unseen and unknown masters--although I could guess that, ultimately, my actions were benefiting Vasily and his organization somehow.

I had also realized, at one point very shortly after my captivity had begun, that I was pregnant. Shortly after I had been taken by these people, I had begun to have an upset stomach and headaches when I woke each morning, that I had attributed initially to the after affects of the gas or whatever they had used on us at Vadim's. But I came to realize that these symptoms indicated that it was morning sickness. My symptoms got worse to the point of my throwing up very shortly after awakening each day; and sometimes again, shortly after they fed us what passed for a morning meal.

I only made one attempt at begging one of the customers who had paid to use me to help me escape--that I was actually being kept against my will, serving criminals. The man used soothing words, with promises that he would inform the authorities of my plight.

They must have been monitoring us all. For they came in and beat me about the soles of my feet, my legs, and my buttocks with an awful leather strap, telling me that I was to keep my mouth shut with customers. They also showed me the beaten body of the man to whom I had turned for aid. From that point on, I never again attempted to enlist aid from any of the 'customers.'

My pregnancy began to show at about the 12-week point. My masters did not seem to care. I was told to keep on fucking and sucking until about a week or two before delivery.

When my water broke, there was no feeling of desperation by my captors. They were obviously very experienced at handling this type of situation--after years of handling hundreds of unwilling women, many of whom got pregnant at some point due to all the sex.

One fear of the women, I found out from talking with them, was the possibility of being forced into aborting of their babies; but her masters gave no indication of any desire to abort. When I asked some of the women about this, I found out--to my horror--that these monsters were also in the baby-selling business.

****

"They took my baby; they sold my baby boy, Maddux," Lana broke down and cried at this point; "OUR son; yours and mine. They let me bear him; nurse him; and grow to love him for three weeks. Then they came for him and took him. But, during the short time that he was with me, I was secretly able to name him officially in my heart and perform an emergency baptism on him before they came for him." Lana still fell back into her Orthodox Church ways of viewing religious matters sometimes, even after having converted to become a Presbyterian when she had married me.

She really began to cry now, and I cried along with her at the idea of having had and lost our son--our own second child--during this nightmare; a son whom I now would very probably never get to see and know and love; a younger brother whom Steven would probably never get to enjoy. Lana told me that she had secretly named him--Nathan Andrew Brodie.

If he were still alive out there somewhere, he would be almost three now.

****



Game Time Pt. 03

CHAPTER 6

Lana continues her story.

One day, a large, bald, goateed man came to me and spoke in Russian to me. I tried to pretend that I did not understand, but he simply smiled cruelly.

"Oh, but you speak Russian very fluently, do you not--Svetlana Alexeevna Savina?"

I was shocked that he knew in such detail who I was. I was confused as to how he could know so much. Then he began to speak with a voice of authority, and I knew then that I was in the presence of one of the most horrible men on the face of the earth, Vasily Radkevich himself.

Suddenly, I was very angry; furious, in fact, at the man who was behind so much horror, pain, and suffering for so many people--the man who had stolen the child that I had conceived and borne from love with my husband before falling prey to these animals. I stood straight, as if I were a free person, and not a slave to this barbarian in the Armani suit. I adopted an expression that I hoped appeared to be a sneer, and said to him, "Da, Vasiliy Il'ich Radkevich; v samom dele, ya govoryu po-russki ochen' khorosho (Yes, Vasily Illich Radkevich; in fact, I speak Russian very well)."

He gave me no warning as he simply grinned evilly and backhanded me to the face, knocking me back.

"Impudent slut; where is my money?" he demanded of me.

I looked startled at Vasily and said, "What do you mean; what money?"

He simply laughed and grabbed me by the throat with his huge left hand and began slapping me with his right, as he spoke to me between slaps, "Where ... is ... my ... money ... Slut?"

I cried out as much as I could with my throat being constricted and being rhythmically slapped. "I ... do not ... know about ... your money."

After a few more minutes, Vasily simply let go of my throat and I dropped to the floor, sobbing and massaging my throat where he had held me. He nudged me with the toe of one of his mirror-finish handmade shoes.

"You will remain with my enterprise for the rest of your life, then, and work off what you owe me. For, you see; I know all about your accounting talents and how that greedy fool, Van Horn, used you to locate and loot my resources. When I learned of this, I had your efforts monitored. I know how you allowed Van Horn to get his greedy hands on my money, supposedly routing it to so-called official FBI accounts.

"Then, one day, my smart business and networking people, who are monitoring your efforts out of Vadim's offices, notice another thing. Not all the money that is supposedly being ..." finger quotes in the air, "... officially confiscated ... by this greedy man, Van Horn, is going to the accounts that he had directed you to use as part of his so-called investigation--now they are going elsewhere. He is having you ship MY money to Van Horn's own private retirement account."

Vasily calmly lit a very aromatic cigar; and he paused before continuing. "My people discovered several more accounts all over the world through which a goodly amount of the profits from my enterprises were moving ... and not simply to accounts belonging to this Van Horn."

Vasily scowled at me, at this point. "They were being used as waypoints in a vast scheme to shuffle money, supposedly at random times and in varying quantities, away from my own accounts--eventually winding up vanishing into the black hole of the Cayman Islands banking system. This was money that was going to someone other than that greedy and arrogant fool, Van Horn.

"Now," Vasily leaned toward me as he puffed on his cigar--which actually smelled very aromatic and almost sweet, differing considerably from what I had expected. "Since you were the one discovering the locations of my resources via your accounting skills; and you were also the one moving my money to Van Horn at his behest; it only stands to reason that you are the one who took the rest of my money and knows exactly where it went when it disappeared."

Vasily blew smoke in my face as he said, "You owe me three-point-six million dollars, My Dear; and I want it back."

I could not help myself as I smiled at Vasily. I replied, rasping through my bruised larynx, "You can demand all that you want, Vasily Illich, but I cannot give you what I do not have; nor what I have no way of knowing about." I rose to my feet slowly as he watched me.

"I do not even know how long I have been here, and I do not know exactly how long or where I was before this. Your people have had me drugged and ..." here I smirked a bit, "... busy fucking any and all who come into my cell or room." Here, I scowled with fury at the man behind my circumstances. "And I have delivered a son ... whom you have stolen from me."

Vasily only smirked at me. I swear, at that moment, if I could have reached anything that I could have used as a weapon, Vasily would have been dead long before his big shootout with Federal agents. I would have beaten his head in, even if it meant that the others in the room were to shoot me dead. But it was not to be; so, in frustration, I continued with what I had to say to him.

"And, before all of this, I will admit that I was working out of Vadim's offices--you already know that much. But I was doing what I thought was legitimate investigative work, seeking to discover business irregularities on behalf of the FBI." Then, I had to put on my best innocent expression as I flat-out lied my ass off.

"I have no idea about your accusations against Supervisory Special Agent Van Horn. To me, he was one of the bosses on the job where I worked; even though he was also somewhat of a flirt, as I found out personally. You say he was a thief, but I never knew this. I simply identified to him and his people what I found, where it was originating, and where it was moving and how frequently." Vasily was getting angrier as I spoke. When I paused, he spoke.

"And you honestly expect me to believe all this bullshit?" he exploded. He slapped me so that I fell to my knees again. This time, I felt it prudent to remain there on the floor at his feet.

Vasily then unzipped his fly and pulled out his cock and began to urinate on me as he spoke.

"Piss on you; and piss on your fabrications. Remember that I now own you. I have already taken one of your babies and made a handsome profit from selling him." When he finished urinating on my face and torso, he put away his cock, zipped his trousers, and straightened his clothing, and said, "I will ensure that you remain with us long enough to have many more babies that we may sell for a handsome profit." He then grinned as I looked up at him in humiliation from the urine all over me; and the horror at his intentions for me; and my offspring.

"Sons are nice; but, in your case, I hope you give us many blonde daughters. They sell for much more money to the special clientele to whom we cater in the Arab world." I am sure that he only said this to make it seem more horrible to me, but I was already aghast at the barbarism shown by this man.

He left me there and I remained on my knees for almost five minutes after he and his men left the room, alone in my thoughts, before I moved to the bathroom adjacent the bedroom in which they were keeping me. I did not even remove the clothing that I was wearing. I simply stood in the shower in an attempt to rinse off both Valisy's urine and the idea of my own degradation at his hands.

From that point on, I was fucked anywhere from one to six times a day; by men I assumed to be customers and by those I knew to be Vasily's henchmen. At intervals of about a month each, several of the women and I were taken to parties, where men of obvious power and wealth would use us for their private entertainment and sexual gratification.

Our 'hosts' for the evening were evidently warned not to harm us in any way. I only know of one girl--she cannot have been more than nineteen--who suffered cigar burns at the hands of one of the men on one of the occasions. When we were retrieved by Vasily's men at the end of the night, they saw what had happened to her. Three of the five men who had come in the van entered the house and we heard gunfire. None of us was ever harmed again; I guess Vasily must have ensured that word of his vengeance got around to his potential customers.

After about six months of this, it happened--I became pregnant again. This time, it seems that Vasily's men took great delight in having sex with a pregnant woman, as the number of times I was visited daily increased noticeably from I was used to; it went to between four and seven times daily for about three weeks.

Then, something changed; I did not know what it was at the time.

I, along with all the women in the house where they were keeping us, were awakened in the middle of the night and told to dress warmly. It was fall and the weather outside was very rainy and windy. They loaded us into the back of a van--it must have been what you call a one-ton van--and we were allowed only one bag each. They pulled the rolling door down on us, leaving us in darkness as the van began to move. Luckily, one of the women had packed a flashlight, so that we could see each other a bit to move about in order to gain some degree of comfort.

We discovered later that we had been moved farther inland from the coastal region in order to avoid a hurricane. There had been mandatory evacuation of the region were we had been--evidently near the coast--and they were concerned that law enforcement and public safety agencies would be checking that all residents of the area had evacuated and discover what was going on at the house where we had been.

We were taken from the van, when it stopped after a few hours, and herded through the darkness quickly into a large house at our new location. We had no idea where we were, but it really did not matter. We would continue to be used for sex in the manner we had been used for the many months previous at the old site.

My pregnancy was a much easier one this time, as I had already delivered two children in my life to that point. Nevertheless, they continued using me for sex right up to about three weeks before their own people--who examined those of us who were pregnant--said I was probably due.

When my contractions began in earnest and my water broke, they took me to a specially-prepared room in the basement of the house--a breeding house, they told me later--and I delivered my third child--my second while in captivity--a girl this time. I knew that they did not plan to allow me to keep it past the first several weeks, but I named and baptized her anyway--Angela Corinne Brodie--yes, I gave her your name as well, Maddux; OUR name; even though you were not her biological father. In that way, I could still retain hope that someone would somehow rescue me and reunite me with you--my one true love--someday.

I had recovered from the delivery within a week and my baby and I were together for just one more day. I was breastfeeding her when the door opened and one of Vasily's men came in and told me to get ready to go within the hour. I knew by then not to question; simply to comply.

I packed the minimal things I might need for myself in the small zippered soft case I had used before. I had to find a plastic grocery bag for diapers, 3 changes of clothing, and a hand towel to use as a changing pad for Baby Angela. I was using skin cream--from the cosmetics they insisted I use to look nice for customers--for use on the Baby Angela's bottom, in case she developed diaper rash.

Once again, the women--and this time several babies and toddlers--were loaded into a van without windows. We were transported to a different house over a period of time that I estimate was probably three hours' drive time away from where we had been staying before.

Our new location was not as nice a place as the one before. The rooms were smaller and the house was much older--one could tell by the smell and the look of the door and window molding strips--they were much older in style. We had windows that looked out over hills and valleys, so we knew that we were farther inland, and probably in the piedmont or mountainous region somewhere in the Eastern United States; other than that, we had no clue where we were.

For the next several months, the men had us set up shop in that house. We had some minor relief from our sexual duties for a couple of weeks when we first got there--a quick fuck or blowjob to the men overseeing us once in a while. But the business began again in earnest; too soon for us to believe that we could really relax.

We began to receive visits from men of all economic strata--businessmen, truckers, college students, and even farmers. After all the time we had been involved in the sex business by now, the other ladies and I could easily tell what these men and boys were from the way they dressed and the way they spoke and treated us.

And that bastard, Gennady Sokolski, returned to torment us all. He took great joy at simply walking into my room any time he felt like it, and announcing to me, "Game time, My Little Slut!" And then he would force me to blow him, if he was pressed for time. Then, on those occasions when he had more opportunity to dally, he would force his loathsome cock into my pussy.

And, thus, it went on for another year-and-a-half. For some reason, they had allowed Baby Angela to remain with me until she could walk. Then, one day, they devastated me by taking my daughter away. I did not have time to be miserable, as they increased the number of sexual events in my life from then on.

At some point, I became pregnant yet again--as you can see from the swell of my abdomen. But I had become something similar to a zombie at that point--complying without complaint, and simply going through the motions of life.

Until a few weeks ago...

There was a loud noise in the middle of the night, followed by shots and the sounds of many booted feet moving through the house. I sat upright in my bed--my last customer had left just two hours previously and I had been asleep when the noise broke out.

A man dressed in what appeared to be SWAT gear, with the letters HRT on the front of his vest, burst through my door, carrying an assault rifle with a light on the end. I did not even have the presence of mind to raise my hands--I just sat there. He did a quick search through my room, including my small closet, all the while telling me--in English AND in Russian, if you can believe that--to remain calm and to stay in my room until further notice.

After an hour or so, armed men escorted us all taken downstairs, and we assembled in the large front room. There were several more people--men and women both--all wearing windbreakers with different letters on them. The labels varied, including 'FBI,' 'DEA,' 'Sherriff,' 'ICE,' and 'Police.' I guess everyone in law enforcement had wanted to get in on the action at some point.

There were red and blue lights flashing outside. Looking through the lower floor front windows, I saw a couple of high-intensity white lights atop vans behind the police vehicles. I had to smile to myself as I thought--for some reason--that the presence of these vans probably meant the BATF was involved as well, since the press was obviously here so quickly.

Several people with medical bags in hand had come in and were in position to help the women. Two of the Russian gangsters were laid out on the floor, and one was receiving medical attention, while the other was obviously dead, lying in his own blood. I did not see any of the other gang members, assuming they were either dead outside or had been hauled away already.

At some point, while I was being treated, I saw officers bring several children up from the basement. I was overjoyed to see an older Hispanic-looking woman holding my toddler--Baby Angela--and one other toddler by the hand. I pushed the EMT away and rushed over to hug my baby girl. Bless her heart, somehow she had not forgotten me either; as she hugged me as well with her little girl arms.

They took all of us for immediate or continued medical and psychiatric care to various places. I was taken to Durham at first, to Duke University Hospital; and was there for two weeks before I saw anyone that I knew.

Then, Zach Taylor came in one day, along with Special Agent Fife. I cried on Zach's shoulder for almost fifteen minutes before I could say anything. Special Agent Fife simply sat and watched until I could get my emotions under control. But, by then, I was pushing Zach away, feeling an unnatural revulsion suddenly at the touch of any man, even one whom I knew quite well. Oddly enough, even with those feelings of revulsion in place, I still asked for you. Zach told me that you would be informed about my situation in due time; he said that I simply needed to rest and tell Special Agent Fife all about what had happened to me.

We all then had a lengthy discussion about what had been going on since Vadim's offices had been attacked and I had been taken. Special Agent Fife had a digital recording device with him and initiated the conversation by making some sort of official pronouncement into the device before he began to question me and before I began speaking.

I had known about SSA Emmett Van Horn's arrest for a couple of days before the assault on Vadim's offices. I had been quietly proud of having delivered the evidence that I had discovered about Emmett's activities to the Bureau through you, Maddox. Thank you for getting it to Zach and then to Barney; I knew that Van Horn would have discovered my actions if I had actually done it according to Bureau protocols and the rules that he had established.

Zach and Barney told me some of the details about Van Horn's death while in the Federal holding facility--several heads rolled over that breach of security, by the way. Many in the Bureau were quietly relieved at not having to endure the embarrassment of a trial that could tarnish the Bureau's image any more than it was already. There was already too much derogatory information coming out. Word of hearings coming down the pike from Congress emerged; all because of the Bureau's having allowed one of their own to be killed and silenced while in their custody--and a turncoat at that.

They then told me of the horror of the day when Vadim's offices had suddenly gone silent and inactive on their surveillance network. It had taken almost an hour before someone in a supervisory position within the Bureau had called out an emergency response team. By the time they had arrived at the Columbia campus of Vadim's operation, everyone still inside the facility was dead--to include two FBI Special Agents and one of my fellow contractors with Tamerlane. A few people, like Zach, had managed to make it outside, but were in no condition to do anything but try to remain awake and alive. I was simply gone, along with two of the other women who had originally worked in the brokerage for Vadim, and no one had any idea where we were.

It had taken the authorities more than a year to zero in on where the sex trade activities of Vasily's operations were probably happening. It was only through great fortune many months later that someone in law enforcement found some form of indicator in the house near the coast that we had evacuated during the hurricane warning. They had passed this evidence up the law-enforcement chain to the FBI, leading their investigators to more information about where we might be. They had barely missed us shortly after our second move. But they eventually had found us in the incident I just told you about.

Since that time--well; professionals associated with the FBI's Victim Assistance Program have been treating me. They even have Pediatric Specialists to assist with the children, like Angela.

I was at Duke University Hospital for several weeks. But they knew that I needed other, more specialized help--psychological help and counseling, as well as treatment by other specialists that have dealt with this type of case in the past. Unfortunately, there are thousands of women and children each year who need this type of specialized care, and the numbers seem to be increasing. After the doctors at Duke said that I was physically healthy enough to travel, Special Agent Fife and one of the Bureaus female Special Agents brought me here for my last stages of re-entry into society--and they brought me back to you at long last.

I held Lana and cried with her. Little Angela had not warmed up to me sufficiently to allow me to hold her yet, but she leaned into Lana's side opposite from where I stood and held her mother.

"Sweetie," I said to Lana, "we will get through all this. We will get well and continue our life together--the life that was interrupted by this unspeakable infamy." We just rocked together in each other's arms as we stood there, until Angela tugged on her mother's elbow and indicated through some hand signal that Lana recognized that she needed to have her diaper changed.

****

Later, I would look up information about human trafficking on my own. It was appalling the degree to which it had spread in the world, and especially galling that it was occurring right here in the so-called 'Land of the Free.' And the horror that was visited on the children by all of this unsavory business was even worse.

According to one Department of Justice web site, some 300,000 children may become victims of sex trafficking each year in the U.S., and the average age of entry into child prostitution is 13 to 14 years old. Pimps, who typically have 4 to 6 girls each, can make $150,000 to $200,000 per child each year. Human trafficking generates $9.5 billion each year in the United States, and the industry has been on the rise since the FBI's multi-year anti-trafficking special task force--called Operation Cross Country--was founded and began to keep track of the data. And that does not even take into account the many thousands of adult women involved.

****

Lana, Steven, Angela, and I were finally settling into a routine--if you could call it that--after living in our new home near Sharpsburg and Peachtree City within a few months of having moved in. We had gotten used to the feel of the new house and the area in which we lived.

We had accomplished all the necessary administrivia required to get Steven into the Coweta County School system. Lana did not really want to go back to work, and we really did not need for her to do that--my income was sufficient, and the cost of living in our area was reasonable, despite its overall affluence. And, with Lana choosing to stay at home, she was there for Angela--who was really starting to add to her almost two-year-old vocabulary almost daily--thus, we did not require the incursion of the cost of day care for the little one.

If there was one area--besides any residual issues associated with Lana's psychological reintegration--where Lana and I disagreed, it was concerning our spending habits. Seeing our situation now as one with a sole breadwinner for the family--me--I felt as if we should take a more frugal approach to the family spending. Lana seemed to approach our financial situation as one that posed no concern whatsoever. While I could not understand her seemingly nonchalant attitude about our finances, I at least got her to realize that I DID consider our finances as a matter of concern, especially with the lingering lethargy in the U.S. economy.

Lana and I came to an agreement that we would discuss any major purchases and do a thorough analysis of our finances before making any major purchases. She did convince me to allow her to purchase a high-end computer and multi-function printer-scanner-fax so that she could get back into practice using her computer skills that she felt may have atrophied somewhat. She also wanted to attempt to catch up with new technology that had emerged over the three years of her servitude. We agreed on this and, after a big shopping trip to Best Buy, we set up her computer system in the same bedroom that we had converted into a nursery for when the new baby finally arrived. That way, Lana could take care of the baby and keep her own mind occupied on her computer with something other than maternity, so that she would not get bored, frustrated, of simply burned out with perceived isolation from the rest of the world.

****

We celebrated Steven's eighth birthday in late July--just over five months after his mother's return and the immediate expansion of our family with the addition of Angela. Since we had not been in the Newnan-Sharpsburg-Peachtree City area for very long and did not know that many people yet, we only celebrated among ourselves. Steven's grandparents, Alexei and Sonja, and my mom and dad, had sent presents by mail, and I had purchased a couple of things to give Steven from Lana and me, since she was not quite up to dealing with major shopping venues yet--being prone to mild anxiety attacks among large crowds of people.

After the party, and after the cleanup following it, I found Lana in our basement, crying softly. When I asked her about it, she apologized. She was happy for Steven's joy at turning eight; it was just that she still harbored a mother's heart-felt longing for the return of our son, Nathan. If he were with us now, we would be preparing to celebrate his third birthday in the middle of September. And Angela would be turning two in early November, just before the arrival of the new baby. My head swam at the idea of going from being the single father of one child to prospect of now having my wife back and being the head of a three-or-four-child household; all within just a mere six-month period.

As I had mentioned earlier, Steven was into sports; and, eventually, I also found a Cub Scout pack for him--make that US; him and me both--to join ("Relax, Maddux," said the Cubmaster, "it's only an hour a week." Yeah; right). Luckily, the pack was sponsored by the Presbyterian Church that I believed would be a good fit for our whole family as a church home in the area--thankfully, it was part of the more conservative PCA, rather than the increasingly liberal PCUSA. We had already begun to attend worship services there, and Lana and I had enjoyed meeting other couples our age there. In fact, we had become comfortable to such a degree that we were about to consider joining one of what they called their Connect Groups that met in a member couples' homes during the week, so that church was not simply a matter of a Sunday-morning-only event.

Yes! The Brodie family was finally settling into suburban living. We were enjoying the simple pleasures of being a family and the activities associated with the community around us. There was only one thing that could have allowed the situation to give us a feeling of completion--the return of the missing member of our family; Nathan.

****

It was about the second week in August when Special Agent Barney Fife contacted us to say that he might have a development in the situation with Nathan, our missing son. I had to hold Lana physically as she shook and cried at the possibility of getting our son back. I, on the other hand, while still hoping for good news, believed that there was still some chance that this could be a false lead or misinformation. I did not want to allow my still-delicate wife to get her hopes up too high; only to be crushed by disappointment if things did not pan out.

Fortunately, I did not have to be quite so cautious for very long.

News broke during coverage of the upcoming election season about allegations that had been leveled against a one-term U.S Congressman in Pennsylvania. He was facing a tough opponent in the upcoming Democrat primary for his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. It seems that the Congressman and his wife had adopted a child just about two-and-a-half years earlier; but, somehow, the paperwork involved with the adoption was now coming under scrutiny. It was possible that the child's adoption was the result of improper dealings with an illegal adoption ring.

Special Agent Fife informed Lana and me that the DNA check on the Congressman's adopted son matched the DNA data that the Bureau had on file for Lana and me--within the ninety-ninth percentile probability of match. Lana and I held each other and cried with joy in our relief at this development.

The FBI had questioned Congressman McAllister with his attorney present. Under possible penalty of perjury, the Congressman confessed that he had made the deal to acquire our son from 'potentially-less-than-reputable sources,' as he called them--he would not admit to knowing of any direct criminality associated with this supposed 'adoption.'

Fife went on to tell us that the FBI and Pennsylvania's Bureau of Child Welfare Services were overseeing the removal of the child--our son--from the custody and premises of the wife of Congressman Donald McAllister. It seems that Congressman McAllister no longer resided there, and his wife, Connie, had filed for divorce while she had waited for the authorities to come and retrieve the child she had loved as her own for almost three years.

A little over a week later, our doorbell rang late in the day, after I had gotten home from work and just before we were about to sit down to supper. Glancing out through the etched-glass storm door, I saw Special Agent Barney Fife exiting a black Suburban, along with a woman in a business suit. Given that their sunglasses matched, I assumed that she was with the Bureau as well.

Lana sort of surprised me by touching me on the shoulder from behind when I was not expecting her. I flinched a bit and then smiled back at her and opened the storm door for us to go out to meet Barney and the lady with him as they came up our front walk.

After greeting us and shaking my hand, Fife introduced us to the lady with him, Special Agent Conway, and led us back to his Suburban where he showed us a small boy asleep in a car seat strapped to the middle bench seat of the SUV. Fife said that Congressman McAllister and his wife had named the boy James Alan McAllister.

I made up my mind right then and there that we would not confuse the child, but allow him to keep some piece of the name that he had by now surely become used to responding to, according to Fife--Jimmy. He would be Nathan James Brodie. Later, we would petition Arlington County, Virginia--with the help of the FBI--to record an official birth certificate for the boy to that effect. His first name would be 'Nathan' to make the point that he had truly been ours from the beginning, and his middle name would be 'James' in order not to confuse the boy as he became part of his new family. Lana concurred, reminding me of the need to have the child's formal baptism and name christening scheduled at the church, and thus it came to be. Nathan James Brodie was officially returned to his biological family.

****

CHAPTER 7

Our newly-returned son, Little Jimmy, upon his return to his biological family, did not take to us right away. He cried at night for a few weeks, sometimes calling out for his mommy--Mrs. Connie McAllister, the only one he had known in his short life. After Congressman McAllister's primary defeat to another Democrat candidate--mainly because of the exposure of his illegal adoption of the infant Jimmy from Russian gangsters, he also faced the very-much-publicized and ugly divorce proceedings from his wife.

Connie McAllister had not realized the illegal nature of her husband's actions with respect to their acquiring a son almost three years before from a source that had proved now to be definitely illegitimate. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia also had a formal criminal investigation under way on the soon-to-be former Congressman.

Crushed at losing the son she had thought would be hers, Connie Fletcher--her maiden name, to which she reverted following the divorce--had contacted us through her attorney and asked if she could somehow remain a part of Jimmy's life, even if it were only in some small way. Lana and I discussed this request and prayed about it.

Lana impressed on me the agony and heartbreak that she herself had experienced at having children ripped from her life, as had the other women with whom she had been in captivity. I finally caved and we said that Connie could indeed be a part of Jimmy's life in some fashion, but we would like to hold off on personal visits by her until the child psychologist--that we had engaged as part of the family therapy necessary to reintegrate the boy into his biological family--gave the okay. She agreed, and we set a tentative date of sometime in the coming New Year time frame.

****

Nadia Doreen Brodie joined our happy growing family just two weeks before Thanksgiving. She was a beautiful redhead, with a rich tuft of hair already showing when she was born, following a rather uneventful labor and delivery on Lana's part. Even with the previous addition of Angela and Jimmy to our household, we had plenty of room for this new little miracle.

Only once did Lana make a comment about wishing that her daughters had the DNA of both of us, but I squashed that conversation quickly. I informed my wife that, from that day forward, we would only refer to them as OUR daughters--never mind who the sperm donors were. We would reap the bounty of love that came from having, raising, and enjoying the loving family relationship with these two little darling girls.

And not only was I now an official member of the Mushy Pushover Club--being the father of daughters. I was actually already envisioning my future role as the father figure in their lives. I would help them learn how to play softball well so that no one could accuse either of them of 'throwing like a girl.' I would ensure that, when they became teenage girls, and began to date, I would meet their first dates while cleaning my shotgun. I looked forward to the day when I would walk each of them down the aisle, fulfilling my role of handing them off to the poor sons of bitches who might be brave enough to take on my sure-to-be-hardheaded little girls as life partners.

****

We had settled into what I felt now was somewhat of a routine as a family. Sure, there were visits to the child psychologist for Jimmy that would probably taper off to an eventual end sometime this summer. He had begun to accept being part of the family now, especially with all the love he found with his new siblings--especially his older brother, Steven.

Even though Nadia was being the typical new-baby-handful, she did not detract Lana or me from recognizing the need to offer all the love and parental attention necessary for all of our children--WOW; four now!

Even though there was a five-year age difference, Steven and Jimmy seemed to get along well enough to share a bedroom. They also did not appear to pick on poor little Angela in the manner to which older brothers seemed prone in other families.

They would still annoy her when they did 'boy' things, to the exclusion of Angela. She did not want to be left out of anything that was going on with the boys. Lana and I both made special efforts to comfort Angela when she went into a crying spell caused by Steven's and Jimmy's apparent ignoring of her.

****

Suddenly, one day in March of the following year, I noticed that Lana appeared to be especially tense for no apparent reason. I was at a loss to understand this sudden step back along the progress trail that we had been on since Lana's return; progress that had been reinforced positively by the return of her son and the arrival of a new daughter.

When I asked her about what was going on with her, Lana was vague, saying that it must be hormones. I advised her to see the doctor if this kept up; but she smiled and told me not to worry. Then she said something very strange.

"I will do whatever it takes to protect myself and my family from bad things, bad thoughts, and bad people." I had accepted her excuse of her being in a temporary hormonal funk--after all, women's physiology and psychology were still deep mysteries to a mere man, such as I. Thus, I simply attributed her strange comment to a passing phenomenon.

I also noted and mentally catalogued some of the details of that tension that I had detected in Lana--she was a bit jumpy at sudden noises and she seemed a bit reserved around me. She also seemed a bit overly protective of Steven, Jimmy, Angela, and Nadia all of a sudden.

Lana surprised me again when she asked me to allow her to practice her shooting again, now that we had some place in which to do this. When I asked her what had brought on this sudden interest in shooting again, she smiled at me innocently and said that it was nothing really; she simply wanted to get back into practice.

This conversation occurred during a week when things had picked up considerably at work, so I did not have the time or the mental focus to delve into the matter any further. I simply showed her the key to the gun cabinet, where I kept the Ruger Blackhawk, along with the ammunition, shooter's glasses, and acoustic hearing protectors.

One day later that week, as I was going to work, I noticed that Lana was very quiet and brooding; she was snappish with me and did not even acknowledge my attempt to give her a goodbye kiss, as she turned away to look out the back window of the kitchen when I tried. She did not even return my statement of, "I love you." I shrugged in my ignorance of what might be going on in her mind at that moment, as I was beginning to run behind schedule, but I would be sure to talk to her in more detail about what might be going on with her later tonight. I did not want her to begin to slip back into her psychological difficulties associated with her years of captivity.

As it turned out, I did not find a need to talk to Lana about her snappishness and contrary attitude.

That night, when I returned from work, Lana was a different person entirely. Even though I was later than usual getting in, due to a problem at work--one that I had alerted her about when I had called her and left a message on the machine that afternoon when she had not answered the phone--she seemed to be pleasant and relaxed. We greeted each other just inside the door with hugs and kisses and I was relieved to see some of the old Lana back again.

After the children were asleep that night, Lana almost killed me with her appetite for sex. Needless to say, I went to sleep a very happy man.

****

The following weekend, I had taken a 2-1/2-gallon pump tank of Roundup spray to the back area of my property. I wanted to kill off at least one of several patches of the poison ivy that I was determined to eradicate from my property--good luck with that, I know; but, shit; I had to try.

As I sprayed in an area down near the berm where I had established my shooting site, near what I had confirmed to be a deer trail, I noticed my gamecam. I mentally kicked myself as I removed the spring band that held it to the tree where I had left the gamecam weeks earlier; I just could not believe that I had forgotten and left it in place without checking on it for so long. Sticking it in my cargo pocket, I continued to spray the Roundup on the offending poison ivy vines near me, figuring in the back of my mind that Steven would probably enjoy seeing the wildlife shots snapped by the gamecam when we reviewed them together later.

As I continued spraying around the area behind my makeshift shooting range, I spotted what looked like the beginnings of a hole in the ground. I could tell that it had been made by a person with a shovel or spade, as the shape and configuration did not lend itself to one created by the fore paws of an animal. I noted, as I looked into the very shallow hole, that the rock layer was only about a foot down from the surface in this spot. Some ONE had begun to dig here, and had hit the rock layer, thus frustrating whatever purpose that person might have had for the hole.

I knew that I had not been the one to dig back here. And, with the ages of our children being such that they were too young to wield a shovel that big, the situation pointed to another adult. That led me to realize that either Lana had been doing something back here, or else some trespasser had paid us a visit, possibly looking for something buried back here--or doing something else back here that involved digging. Naturally, with all that we had been through over the past few years, I went into 'family protection' mode.

I could not help myself. All the while that I was spraying the poison ivy, my aim was not the best and I also ended up spraying some of the wild blackberry bushes that I had actually wanted to preserve. I guess that it was probably inevitable, since I was trying to look around me often as I sprayed; attempting to discern among the pine trees any sign of someone lurking nearby. Yeah; with the discovery of the past intrusion into my property, I was feeling a bit spooked.

Returning the sprayer to the garden shed that I had had delivered, assembled, and leveled by the delivery team from Home Depot on a spot that I had selected out back of the house, I took a deliberate look at my garden tool rack. It was an upright slotted ceramic-coated metal rack that allowed me to store several long-handled tools upright against the wall of the shed, leaving me plenty of room to park my beloved Manly Yard Tool--a 50-inch zero-turn Cub Cadet riding mower with lap bars instead of a steering wheel.

Within the rack, I had stored a yard rake, a garden cultivator, a garden rake, a spade (for breaking the clay soil as I dug), and a shovel (for moving the clay soil out of the way after it was broken). As a new homeowner, who had just moved to a more rural setting from a major city, I was still pretty fastidious with my tools--I am reasonably sure that this attitude would probably change as I got comfortable with living here, but I was trying to forestall my complacency at least until after my first three years or so of living here. Thus, I would clean my yard tools when I finished with them in the yard, washing them and then hand-rubbing in a light coat of utility oil on the metal surfaces to forestall the onset of rust or any other type of corrosion.

I noted that the spade and the shovel were the only tools that did not appear to be as clean as I had left them the last time that I had used them. There appeared to be a light coating of the red dirt streaks normally left behind by use in the soil around my house. I was pretty sure, at that point, that someone had gotten into the shed and used these implements in some endeavor in the soil of my property.

A rising and falling buzzing sound enticed me to raise my eyes toward the ceiling in order to discern the source of the noise. There--directly above the tool rack--was a clump of the clay that is indigenous to the property on which my house sits. It was red and caked into a shape that resembled either six red-colored link sausages that had become fused adjacent to each other or the beginning of a rack of pipe organ tubes made from clay. The shape was also canted at an angle that allowed the mud daubers that had built it to enter and exit the tube shapes of this obviously-growing clay clump. I could see two of the insects working on the nest and indications from the sounds that there were probably three or more within my hearing, flying around in or near the shed.

The nest was directly above the spot where the shovel and spade were stacked within the tool rack. Thus, there was the possibility that the streaks on the tools had been caused by the residue from the construction by the mud daubers--but somehow I doubted it. I was still pretty well convinced that someone had used my tools for some as-yet-to-be-determined purpose on my property without my knowledge.

I took the opportunity, since I was out there, to use some hornet spray to drive the insects out (what the heck--if it works on hornets and wasps, it would work on mud daubers). They were not pleased, but they vacated pretty quickly. Once they were clear, I took the shovel and scraped the nest off the ceiling where it also met the wall, thus clearing out the big chunks. Following up with a moist towel from my rag pile to clean the residue from the nest, thus leaving the inside surfaces of my shed clean once again, I turned to the tools. I did a once-over cleaning of the ones that had been tainted by the falling dirt from the nest, applied a light coat of oil from the nearby 3-In-One can, and re-racked them.

Locking up the shed, I reminded myself that the sod man's instructions had been for me to wait another week or so before I cut the new sod out back here. The front and side yards, along with the area around the back patio had already settled nicely. I had made the decision to sod back to a point about thirty yards back from the patio this growing season. The new sod covered all the way down the slope from the back of the house to where the lot leveled off leading back toward the woods and the wetlands area. This area included the ground over the slight rise created by my super-dyna-whopping-high-tech Presby Septic system leach mound.

Upon entering the house, I noted that Lana and the four young-uns (as the locals referred to small children around here in the Deep South) were not in the house. Looking out front, I noted that Lana's Honda Odyssey minivan was not in its usual place. I shook my head and smiled in silent admiration at the guts that Lana was displaying with this action.

NO!

Not the guts to go out in and among people, as she had avoided doing for the first few weeks after her discharge from therapy the previous year; but the guts to go out by herself with ALL FOUR KIDS! Wow! That really took guts!

Then I became mildly concerned; and I actually felt badly that I had not been here when she was loading up to leave. I could have at least offered to go with them in order to help with the kids while Lana ran whatever errands she had planned.

Oh, well; I would apologize for my non-availability to her after her return. Meanwhile, I remembered my gamecam that I could feel nudging my thigh from the cargo pocket of my trousers. I went to my home office and woke my laptop; then I plugged the USB connection between the gamecam and the computer and fired up the app that would allow me to view and edit the pictures from the gamecam.

I began to click through the pictures that the gamecam had taken. I reminded myself early on in the viewing that I needed to replace the batteries in the thing, as it had been out there for several months without my checking during this latest episode of use.

There were a few daytime shots of birds of reasonable size and a couple of does and bambis. In the IR shots taken at night, I got a few really good shots of a large raccoon whose presence in our area I had noted in previous outings to retrieve and review the shots on the gamecam.

I had to take a deep breath and grip the desk when the first of several totally unexpected photography subjects popped on the screen of my laptop. Concurrently, the anxiety that I had felt back among the trees and bushes earlier returned, but multiplied now so that it was full-blown fear for the safety of my family and me.

I was looking now at a really good night shot under the IR flash conditions of an adult male. The subject was slightly off-center within the frame of the shot, but he had moved to within the center by the time of the next shot, and had moved across to the other side by the third. He only appeared within those three frames--but that was enough!

Without any additional deep thinking--just by instinct inspired by my fear--I went to Lana's and my bedroom and retrieved my Ruger Blackhawk .357 magnum revolver before returning to review the rest of the pictures from my gamecam. There had been about thirty wildlife shots preceding those involving the shots of the man. There were four more after those shots; evidently, the battery had died shortly after that. The four final shots included two mystery shots--probably set off during the high winds associated with the thunderstorm we had had several nights before. They also included two that partially captured what looked like a person moving out of the lateral viewing range of the gamecam--with a spade over one shoulder.

Well, that was another mystery that I had to deal with--who was the person with my spade? And what was that person doing out there in the dark during the night some days or weeks earlier, way toward the back of my back yard, near the boundary of the wetlands area?

As I indicated, that was 'another' mystery. The first mystery was one that was connected to the case of Lana's years of captivity and her subsequent return.

Special Agent Fife, in his many discussions with me about the case, had confirmed many of the events that Lana had revealed to me. He had also helped me to put faces to some of the personalities involved with the criminal enterprise that had put my wife--and so many women and girls before her--through the hell of human trafficking, sex slavery, and forced prostitution and child-breeding. Despite the strange glare caused by the IR flash on the gamecam, I had recognized the face of the man captured in those night shots as one of the faces that Fife had shown me during and after Lana's return.

Gennady Sokolski!

Lana's voice returned to my head, as I remembered her recounting the horrors she had endured at Gennady's hands: "One man, in particular--I found out later that his name was Gennady--took particular delight in taking me roughly. And, every time he came into the room where I was, he would begin to unbuckle his belt, and, without fail, would happily announce, 'Game time, My Little Slut!' He would then take his pleasure from the sexual abuse of my mouth and my pussy. Only once did he try my ass; but he complained that it was too tight ..."

Gennady was the monster who had overseen the sex-and-breeding-for-profit operation for Vasily Radkevich's organization. He was also the only one of the major players to elude capture when the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies had closed in on the criminal enterprise and arrested or killed all the major participants. Thus, there was always the slim chance that he might surface somewhere to attempt to restart Vasily's style of operation again in another location--or attempt to take vengeance on any and all who had cut him off from his very lucrative lifestyle and leaving him without access to his stashed wealth.

What the hell was Gennady doing in my back yard at night in the recent past? Was Lana in danger--or were my children or I at risk? Then I noted, with a practiced eye, the freshly-cleaned revolver that I had placed on the desk by the laptop.

I remembered that I had left a thumbprint along the cylinder the last time I had been plinking out back at my makeshift range. I had planned to wipe it off before corrosion from the oil in my skin might start, but had been distracted as I had put the weapon away. Now, as I picked up the weapon and rotated the cylinder, I noted that it had been wiped clean--but not by me. The only other person in the house who might have handled the Ruger since I had last shot it was currently out shopping with the kids in the minivan--Lana. I would have to ask her when she returned about the pictures and the revolver.

****

It was about four in the afternoon when Lana and the kids returned to the house from their errands. I had been pacing in the front room, irritated that I could not contact Lana--she still had difficulty in remembering to take her cell phone with her every time she left the house, and this was one of those times when she had left it connected to the charger on the kitchen peninsula. I breathed a sigh of relief when they pulled up, but not until I actually saw them emerge from the vehicle. It was that very vehicle that had caused me to postpone my relief until I actually saw Lana and the older kids walking toward the house, with Baby Nadia on Lana's hip. You see, the vehicle from which they had emerged was NOT Lana's two-year-old Honda Odyssey minivan.

This was a brand new, shiny off-white Cadillac Escalade!

I did not have the opportunity to ask Lana anything before having to deal with two happy boys and a little girl toddler, all scrambling into the house and attempting to grab my legs. All the while, they were hollering, "Daddy," and attempting to say things to me all at once. I had ensured just seconds earlier that I had hidden the Ruger high on a book shelf out of sight and knelt to hug the three of my four children who were walking and yelling in their excitement. Lana was putting down the diaper bag and one other large shopping bag that she had brought in, all the while carrying Baby Nadia on her hip--well, I could not say that she was not regaining her strength.

Nadia was showing signs that she was either about to fall asleep or else she had just been awakened--she had that baby dazed look--as she leaned her head against Lana's shoulder as her mother held Nadia on her hip. My wife turned and gave me a giant smile of joy as she moved within reach in order to give me a hug with her now one free arm.

"A new vehicle?" was all I got out of my mouth before she kissed me long and hard on the lips.

"Yes, Sweetheart; isn't it beautiful? I got it at the car dealership right next door to the one where that country music star, Alan Jackson, used to work before he became famous. And it has so much more room for the kids and all their stuff, and ..." and I simply smiled and went into listen-without-speaking mode as I simply absorbed what she was saying and adored my wife simultaneously; all the while, I was looking into her eyes and seeing the excitement there--excitement that I did not want to diminish by intruding with a sense of fiscal reality. But, when Lana finally wound down enough to take a pause to get her breath and shift Nadia to her other hip, I just had to ask at least one question.

"Do you believe that we can afford that right now; I mean with everything associated with the new family, the new house, the new furniture, and all ...?" I asked looking at her while raising one eyebrow in an expression of genuine inquiry, rather than accusation.

Instead of a sheepish look that would indicate second thoughts on her part, Lana hit me with a confident smirk and said simply, "Oh, don't worry about that, Maddux." Then, as she turned to take Nadia upstairs, either to change her diaper, put her down for a nap, or both, she surprised me by saying, "We could afford a whole fleet of those."

The boys and Angela began pulling on me to go outside with them at that point. Otherwise, I would have followed Lana upstairs to ask her just what she had meant by that comment.

It wasn't until after nine-thirty, with Nadia in her crib and the other kids down for the night, that I had the opportunity to inquire of Lana just exactly what she had meant earlier by her cryptic comment about our being able to afford a fleet of Escalades. She and I were simply relaxing over glasses of Pinot Noir, when I opened my mouth to ask her. But Lana spoke before I could.

"Maddux," she began, placing her wine glass on a coaster on the coffee table that sat between us. "I need to explain something that I am afraid that I left out of my story last summer, when I explained what had happened to me during all of the ..." Here, she shivered and looked away for a second, with a momentary dark expression. "Well, during that time ..."

She looked at me for a second and I nodded for her to continue.

"Remember," she continued, "when I told you about tracking the movements of Vasily's money around the world, in order to pinpoint where it was going?" I nodded and she went on. "Well, when I realized that Emmett Van Horn was using that information to reposition those funds into accounts for himself and not just for the Bureau, I decided to do some--shall we say--creative, yet preventive, accounting and redirection in order to keep Emmett from being too successful." When I looked at her in obvious ignorance, she smiled at me and spoke again.

"I caused quite a bit of Emmett's money--stolen from Vasily; who originally stole it or earned it illicitly in all of his various criminal enterprises--to disappear from the financial radar." She picked up her glass and took a sip of her wine, this time not looking at me as she spoke. "But it did not disappear from my ability to go back to it and retrieve it whenever I felt like it." Here, she actually smirked at me and said, "And whenever I had the connectivity to reach out for it."

"You mean," I asked, starting to realize just what she was saying, "to tell me that you caused Vasily's criminal money to move into Van Horn's possession, supposedly on behalf of the FBI at the time. Then, you unknowingly, at first, moved some of the money into Van Horn's personal accounts. Now you are saying that you then deliberately moved a lot of THAT dirty money into accounts for which only YOU have access? Do I have that about right?"

I was more surprised and concerned at that point about the possibility that my wife was involved in illegality that could land her in Federal prison, than elated at her having access to resources that could make us financially independent for the rest of our lives. I had been without Lana for three excruciating years, and I did not want her involved in any activity that might cause her to be taken away from me again--this time by legal authorities--in order to serve prison time.

"Oh, Maddux," Lana said with a grin, "do not worry; Barney knows about my moving the money and about my shifting it away from Van Horn and into my own accounts. In fact," she set the now-empty wine glass down and moved over to put her sweet ass in my lap and her arm around my shoulders as she continued, "he said that, as long as I had paid the tax on it, there was some Bureau regulation associated with rewarding the one finding criminal money with a portion of that money. It is just like the confiscatory statutes in the law that legalize the DEA's being allowed to keep the high-priced vehicles, boats, and other equipment that had belonged to the drug dealers and distributors that they bust; as sort of a 'bounty' that accompanies the arrest and conviction."

She kissed me lightly once and went on before I could get my thoughts into words, "And this money is sort of like my 'bounty' for my efforts on behalf of the Bureau. And it is all ours now."

"So," I finally got in edgewise, "you have already paid the taxes on all of this money, so that we now have it free and clear?"

"Yes, My Darling," Lana said with a somewhat wise look, "we have it free and clear. And I have paid the taxes on all the funds that come under U.S. tax law." Here she paused and smiled strangely.

"You mean there is more?" I asked, now seeing the light in her eyes.

"Well, let us simply say that the banking and tax laws of other countries are not as--uhm; comprehensive--as they are here in the U.S." Now, Lana stood and retrieved her wine glass and went to refill it as I sat there and digested all that she had revealed to me this evening.

Finally, I sighed and asked her, "So, Vasily was correct in demanding that you tell him where you parked his--what was it--three-point-six million dollars?"

I was startled with Lana almost dropped her wine glass as she began to laugh; no--not simply laugh. She actually cackled!

"Oh, Maddux," Lana said between gulps to get her breath back, "he was nowhere near being correct. You see," she said, as she got her breathing back under control; but her smile was so big that it appeared that it was about to split her face, "I did not take three-point-six million dollars of Vasily's money."

I simply nodded and waited for Lana to continue. She put her wine glass down again and came to me, wrapping her arms around me and kissing me deeply before she continued; this time with a husky sound to her words.

"I took nine-point-two million dollars of Vasily's money."

I realized that my eyebrows must be reaching almost to the back of my head as a result of my surprise at hearing this astounding fact, as she went on, "but I paid the U.S. taxes on the three-point-six million dollars that the FBI knows about officially."

"What do you mean, 'officially'?" I asked.

"Oh, Barney--being the astute investigator that he is--most assuredly knows that I probably have more than the official amounts that I reported stashed away overseas," Lana said with a smile. "But, he got the collar, the credit, and even some of the money--well, the Bureau did--so he and the Bureau are content. And, even though he suspects--and rightly--that I have much more stashed in the Caymans and other monetary safe-havens; as far as he is concerned, as long as we are discreet and keep that knowledge to ourselves, he and the Bureau could not care less. In fact, I believe that Barney is sympathetic to what I went through and somehow sees all that additional money as a sort of compensation for what I--no, what WE--went through."

"So, we do not have to worry about the Feds when it comes to this money," I said, "but what about Vasily's people? Are there any of them who might still pose a threat to us over that money? Could any of them still come after you--after us?

"You know," I went on, considering the pictures I had seen this afternoon, "they never DID find that asshole, Gennady Sokolski." I was probing now, in order to find out if Lana had known about Gennady's presence around our house within the past few weeks; in fact, all evening long, I had tried to remain within a few seconds' access to the Ruger with my worries about the gangster's proximity to my family.

"Well," Lana answered me, "I was worried about that until recently. But, I believe now that none of Vasily's men--even that monster, Gennady--will ever bother us again." She said this with such assurance that I was sure that she knew something more about the Gennady situation. But, for her own reasons, Lana decided not say anything more about that subject.

I was quiet for about two whole minutes as I thought about what my wife had just revealed to me. Then, I sighed once, kissed her quickly on the lips, smiled, and said, "So; does that Escalade come with On-Star and satellite radio?"

Lana laughed out loud with her sparking burst of joy, hugged and kissed me, and then she led me upstairs for an evening of marvelous sex, interrupted only once for about twenty minutes by Nadia's insistence at being breast fed. Frankly, I needed the break at that point so that I could recharge a bit so that Little Maddux could do his job once Lana returned to bed.

****

The next afternoon, after we had gotten back from church and enjoyed Sunday lunch, I was pretty sure that any of my neighbors who might have been at home must have been slightly miffed at me. After all, cutting the grass on Sunday was just not the thing that Bible Belt Georgians would do. But, I had moved here from Virginia, where cutting the grass on Sunday afternoon almost seems to be an obligation on any Sunday on which the Redskins aren't playing.

The new grass sod in back was holding up well with my cutting and I was enjoying the beautiful weather as I cut. The slope away from my house in back was sufficiently gentle, even with the swell of the septic mound, for my riding mower to handle without worrying about tipping. I grinned as I thought about my two neighbors not being able to do that with their tipping-prone John Deere riding mowers.

Just below the septic mound, as I whipped the Cub Cadet around for a pass, I heard multiple thunk sounds under the cutting deck. Evidently these noises came from clods of the clay soil and loose sand that was my curse to have for ground cover between the underground rock layer and my sod, along with plinking sounds that could only be small rocks and gravel as well, being thrown about by my blades. Additionally, I was suddenly engulfed in a cloud of reddish-brown dust that had risen all around me.

Coughing heavily, I hit the button that turned the blades off, and turned the mower uphill slightly before turning off the engine, leaving the key in place. I set the brake and stepped off the main deck onto the mowing deck and then onto the ground. As I began to examine just what I might have hit that would cause so much dirt to be slung about by my mower, I was momentarily confused.

The slope and septic mound had hidden from normal viewing from the back windows of the house what I was seeing now. On the downhill edge of the slope, there, among the blades of grass of the new sod, was a thin layer of the red-brown clay dirt and sand and some clods that matched the soil beneath the new grass sod. It reminded me of how mining companies distribute tailings from their excavations from open mining or strip mining--in a thin layer all around.

'Why in the world is all this dirt spread out so thinly across the TOP of my sod below the septic leach mound?' I thought. Surely, the landscaper did not pull out a load of clay soil just so that he could spread it out on TOP of the new sod. So, who did; and why? I turned back toward the mower and then I saw the outline in the sod.

On the downhill side of the slight mound that covered my Presby Septic system--a spot where there would be more than four feet of soil between the surface and the underground rock layer because of the mound's artificial build-up of soil, was an oblong section of the recently-emplaced sod--measuring roughly three feet wide and six feet long--that did not seem to fit into the ground as neatly as the rest of the sod sections. As I approached it, I noticed that it bulged out slightly from the gentle mound as well. Then, after thinking about it for no more than about thirty seconds, I realized what I was seeing there in my back lawn.

I also realized, at that moment, why Lana had said what she had said to me months before: "I will do whatever it takes to protect myself and my family from bad things, bad thoughts, and bad people."

And I now knew why she had seemed more relieved and carefree when she had spoken to me about the money and the absence of any real threat from any of Vasily's people: "I was worried about that until recently. But, I believe now that none of Vasily's men--even that monster, Gennady--will ever bother us again."

I could not help but smile as I now understood that Gennady Sokolski would no longer, as part of a re-energized mob getting Vasily's operations back off the ground, or with any other criminal enterprise, be saying, "Game time, My Little Slut," to any other girl or woman--ever. Because I realized that the mineral components of what used to be 'that shit,' Gennady, were probably breaking down in the same manner as the other elements of 'that shit' from my house--right here in my septic system.

Well, what the hell; I knew that I would never reveal to Lana that I had figured out just exactly how she had gotten rid of the threat of Gennady. I would wonder, though, how she had found the strength to drag his body up here from the shooting spot about fifty yards farther back from the house--IF she had, that is; smirk-smirk--but I would never ask.

And, with the guarantees that came with the new high-tech Presby Septic system, I could feel confident that there would be no need to dig around that mound for at least thirty years. And I would do all that I could to keep the secret of that septic mound safely away from any inquiry.

After all, I wanted to be sure and maintain the ongoing truth of that simple two-word statement that my son, Steven, had made to me on the day that Lana had returned to us:

"Mom's home."

THE END