Bullseye (Michael Bennett 9)

“Well, we know through our sources that they’re already spooked by the increase in the military budget you made. And besides, we already have economic sanctions and help from our European friends to limit trade and especially credit to them. We have enough pressure already on them. It’s time to let it do its work.”

The president squinted pensively at Huxley-Laffer.

“So let this one go?” he said.

“Yes, sir. I think you should let this one go.”

The president smiled.

“Slow and steady wins the race?”

“That’s what they say,” Huxley-Laffer affirmed.

“On another topic, you think I should go to New York for this UN summit?”

“What does John say?”

The president rolled his eyes and smiled.

“The head of the Secret Service? What do you think?”

“They’re still looking for the shooter?”

The president nodded.

“What do you want to do?”

“Go, of course.”

“I agree,” Huxley-Laffer said.

“Show of strength, Ellen.”

“Yes,” Huxley-Laffer said with a smile. Then she lifted a finger.

“But remember. Not too much.”

Chapter 43

With its old gray prewar tenement buildings and rusting fire escapes and garbage bags piled high at the curbs, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, looked like a dilapidated chunk of inner-city blight plopped down beside the ocean.

Noon Tuesday, I was in a fed surveillance car in the heart of the heavily Russian neighborhood on Ocean View Avenue. In the car with me was Paul Ernenwein and two of his best guys from the FBI New York office’s Russian mob squad. A second car with two more agents sat around the block.

The object of our attention was the gaudy red-and-gold awning of a popular Russian restaurant called Sochi’s that was a block to the north.

We’d finally gotten a decent lead. The feds had scoured Pavel Levkov’s Riverdale place while he was still at the hospital. They’d found a cell phone in a false panel in the attic. And one of the numbers on it belonged to a well-known Russian mobster named Maxim Kuznetsov.

Kuznetsov, in addition to being a former professional heavyweight boxer, had been a suspect in over a dozen brutal murders of Russian nationals and Russian American immigrants in the last ten years. He had ties through his older brother to Russia’s military intelligence organization, the GRU. He was also one of Sochi’s owners.

As we sat there, staring at the restaurant, it started to lightly snow. You could see snow on the boardwalk down the side street and even a half-melted snowman on the beach, under the lead-colored sky.

“Call me crazy, but whenever I hear the word beach, it usually evokes images of sunshine and pastel-colored hotels and bikinis,” I said.

“Yeah, well, welcome to Siberia by the sea,” Paul mumbled as he looked through his binocs.

“Wait,” he said a moment later. “There’s a car slowing out in front. A BMW SUV.”

Paul’s radio crackled.