The Emperor's Revenge (Oregon Files 11)

“But . . . But . . .”

“Why don’t you call the admiral’s office?” Gretchen said. “I’m sure he will confirm our identities.”

Juan nodded. “Very well. Put him on speaker when you get him on the line.” Since Eddie and Linc didn’t speak Russian, he wanted to be sure Zakharin didn’t try to sneak a coded message through.

The sailor nodded and punched the buttons on the phone so hard that Juan thought he might break a finger.

“I need to speak to the admiral,” he said into the hand

set. “Yes, now! It’s urgent.” Then he nodded and pressed the SPEAKER button before hanging up the handset.

Zakharin answered in a distinctly gruff tone. “What is it?”

“Admiral, sir, I have two agents here who want access to the records vault, and I told them—”

“What? You know your orders! Who are they?”

“It’s me, Admiral Zakharin,” Juan said. “Agent Bukir. We spoke in your office just a few minutes ago.”

The phone was silent for a few seconds.

“Admiral, are you still feeling well?” Juan could picture Eddie threatening him with the vial.

“Oh . . . Oh, yes,” Zakharin said reluctantly. “Now I recall. Seaman, you are to give every courtesy to the agents.”

“Aye, sir,” he said smartly, but the admiral was already off the line. He stood and said, “Come this way.”

He walked over to a heavy steel door and fumbled around with a set of keys. He swung open the door and let them in.

“Do you need any assistance?” he said, groveling now that he’d been chastened.

“No, we can handle it from here,” Gretchen said.

“We’ll need some privacy,” Juan said, “so make sure no one else enters while we’re conducting our assessment.”

He snapped his heels. “Yes, sir.” The door closed quietly behind them. It was thick enough that there was no chance of being overheard.

Rows of old filing cabinets filled the musty room. It would have been easier to find what they were looking for if everything had been computerized, but infrastructure upgrades were a low priority for a base so far from Moscow.

“Where should we start searching?” Gretchen said.

“I’ll take the engineering files. You look through the finances.”

After a minute of scanning the cabinets, Juan found one marked Commercial Operations. He yanked it open and confirmed that the files contained information about all of the naval base’s extracurricular activities. No wonder the admiral kept access so tightly controlled. Unfortunately, the files were in chronological instead of alphabetical order, so he started with three years ago and worked forward.

Halfway through, Gretchen, who was two rows away, called out, “I found it!”

“The Achilles?”

She nodded, her face buried in a file. “It’s the official accounting ledger. Wow, Antonovich opened up his wallet on this job and made it rain. You would not believe how much money is flowing through this base.”

Juan thought back to how much it had cost to refit the Oregon and said, “Actually, I think I would.”

“Zakharin is raking in millions a year.”

“Why do you think he wanted the job badly enough to send Borodin to prison?”

“Well, I don’t think his bosses back at headquarters know it’s this much.”