Against the Dusk: A Novel

By Brett Andrew Strange

It was a cold night when Paul Drake, an Iraqi War veteran, wandered into the Zephyr Gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea district. Little did Paul realize then that his chance encounter with Katerina Volkova would spark an unlikely but fated romance. An ongoing government investigation soon thrusts them both into a treacherous world of Russian power plays, double agents, and illicit chemical weapons sales. The stakes quickly escalate to a wider geopolitical stage as Paul aligns with unlikely allies. A lethal network of war profiteers working in the shadows aim to prolong the chaos—no matter what the human cost.
Against the Dusk is a fast-paced, thought-provoking contemporary thriller that engages the reader on multiple levels. The story careens from the canyons of Manhattan to the dusty villages of the Euphrates valley, capturing elusive elements of our era’s troubled zeitgeist. The author’s keen ability to call forth fresh insider detail from his own experience, anchors the prose in a domain of the relevant and real. A memorable cast of heroes and villains springs to life well beyond the page. The multi-faceted narrative also explores themes of radical free will and the nature of art.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Nov 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665712767

Brett Andrew Strange

Brett Andrew Strange started his career as a CIA intelligence officer based in Langley, Virginia. Brett worked more than a decade overseas in Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. This is his first novel exploring themes related to his prior intelligence work and the men and women he encountered. For more information on available fictions please visit www.brettandrewstrange.com

Book preview

AGAINST

the

DUSK

A NOVEL

BRETT ANDREW STRANGE

58705.png

Copyright © 2021 Brett Andrew Strange.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by

any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system

without the written permission of the author except in the case

of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents,

organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products

of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or

links contained in this book may have changed since publication and

may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those

of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher,

and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-1277-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-1275-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-1276-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021919652

Archway Publishing rev. date: 03/03/2022

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

—Dylan Thomas

CONTENTS

Prologue

Part 1 Discovery

Part 2 Choice and Opportunity

Part 3 Clash

Part 4 A Shadow

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

All yours, the Chase bank officer says without smiling as he leaves safety deposit box 4756 on the shiny white tabletop. I nod, pull the black curtain over the alcove entrance, and sit down at the table. The vault’s dry air pumps in through the ceiling ducts, smelling vaguely of lemon-scented cleaning fluid. The stark fluorescent light gives everything a hard, artificial sheen.

I lift the deposit box’s steel top. Nothing much there: birth certificate; army dog tags; Dad’s last letter before he died; Julie’s two-carat diamond engagement ring she returned to me at the courthouse in Boston. Fragments, now distant and immaterial. Flotsam of a past life.

I pull the handwritten letter from my pocket. Every sentence I scribbled last night had been a struggle. I was never good at sharing, but my own family had a right to know. I should leave something in my own words, a little insurance in case it all turns horribly wrong in the not too distant future. Truth can twist and curl when you are no longer present to tell your own story. Letting others control the narrative is never good. They confuse, distort, or simply ignore what actually happened. The living have their unknown motives; the dead are mute.

September 16, 2016

Max,

You hold this letter because my lawyer sent instructions. There was no chance to say goodbye. For this, I’m sorry.

I wish I could have shared more with you. Instead, I held secrets for my own selfish reasons and to keep you safe. Don’t believe the lies. Even the people you think you should trust because they have positions of authority will not tell you the truth—they don’t know it. Others may try to convince you I committed crimes, betrayed my country, sold out. Not true. I didn’t go down that path. I’m not a traitor.

Everything I did was of my own free will, for the right purpose. I can’t yet know if we will succeed, but what I’ve helped put into motion might save millions of lives, maybe make right what we all ruined in Iraq and Syria and never fixed. I took this path against a cruel enemy. Human beings deserve more than this.

The woman in the photo—don’t look for her. She will find you when she knows it is safe. She will answer your questions. You can trust her, but only her. Give her this hard drive. Protect it for her.

Life is fleeting. I wish we could have had more time together, just the two of us the way it used to be. In a different world, I could have told you so much more about what has happened and, more importantly, why. I’m sorry for this pain that I have caused you and Mom. Don’t ask about the cash. Just accept it.

Your brother, Paul

Good enough. He’ll get it. What more can I say?

I reach into my shoulder bag and neatly place fifty packs of $10,000 bundles into the back of the deposit box. Max might need this later. I lock the letter, the computer hard drive, and her photo in the box with a turn of the small key. Enough intrigue for one day.

The bank officer gives me a slight nod as he buzzes open the vault door leading out of the basement. Within minutes, I am outside again, downtown on Maiden Lane and Pearl. Manhattan teems with droves of people crawling in and out of buildings like bees in a hive. A cool breeze mixes the ocean’s smell with exhaust fumes and stale, underground subway air.

I walk uptown to slow my mind.

Today is so different from that first cold winter evening nearly two years ago. Winter in this massive city is weather for detached thoughts and new encounters. Alone, you can just decide to leave the street and pause a moment in a place set outside the constant flow. Stopping at a museum or gallery is one way to regain a sense of balance and perspective. In the presence of a great work of art, you step out of your own tiny bubble and into the imaginative, wordless creation of another human being. You don’t personally know any of these artists. Their identities are irrelevant, living or dead. Only their artwork remains to speak to you in a visual language of clear lines, color, composition, light and dark.

There are certain paintings that communicate across a vast gulf of space and time. A work of art reveals the invisible, what is hidden from sight. Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth. She first showed me this.

That was how it all began. That is, when I first saw the painting.

PART I

DISCOVERY

833410_01_final.jpg

1

P AUL DRAKE stopped in front of the large canvas. He stared at the two blue silhouettes embracing in the foreground of a blood-orange sunset. The fierce, imaginative vision inside the white beechwood frame gripped him. The bold lines and masterful details expressed a freedom and creative energy he longed to bring to his own smudged, charcoal-gray life. There was something disturbingly intimate connecting the two outlined forms. The faces were indiscernible, but the imagined forms seemed more authentic than what constantly flickered by in his own daily experience.

Paul had passed the oversized pane glass windows of the Zephyr Gallery in New York City’s Chelsea district many times before without looking in. Tonight, he entered because of the bracing January cold and because he could think of nowhere else to go. There was at least an hour to kill between the end of densely bundled work meetings and the start of yet another cycle of Friday-night drinks. He had just left the bank’s office in Midtown and felt himself released now from the minutiae of interest rates and collateralized debt pools.

Are you familiar with this artist’s work? a female voice asked him from behind. The voice had a slight foreign accent, deep and rich.

No, I’m afraid not, he replied, still stuck to the spot.

The painter is Swiss. This is his last major work.

I can’t say I’ve seen anything like this, Paul mused. The figures embracing in the forefront tell a story, but I’m not sure I understand that story. Somehow, it is harmonious.

Maybe there is no stable meaning, the voice conjectured.

Against the Dusk, Oil on Canvas, 72 x 60—Paul read on the small tile next to the picture.

Whatever it is called, it is new and different, Paul said. It’s a win for any painter to create something truly memorable today, not just some blob of paint or a silly shock piece.

He heard the woman release a small sigh.

Yes, the history of art is long, with few truly great masters. This artist obsessed about how to link his ideas to Plato’s theory of forms and the golden ratio. He was searching how to build a new vision out of what he believed are universal principles.

He succeeded with something, Paul said, although his mind went blank on the relevance of Plato. He turned around and saw the owner of the voice. She was exquisite in an elegant white linen suit, with her long, honey-colored hair loosely tied up. Her slender neck led up to a delicate, pale face with two striking light blue-green eyes. It was odd how he had not even registered her obvious living beauty when he first walked in. The canvases had displaced her; his recent divorce had dulled his faculties of observation.

Would you care for an espresso? the woman asked.

I would like that, Paul replied.

Paul crossed the floor and sat across from her at a frosted glass table. The espresso machine made a slight buzz while the thick black coffee poured out into two tiny white cups. He took a bitter first sip.

Is it always this quiet? It seems like Twenty-Sixth Street should be a good location, near enough to the High Line, Paul said.

I show mostly by appointment, she replied. Normally, walk-ins do not purchase our kind of art. They are just causal observers. But occasionally, yes, someone looks at a picture and just falls in love, perhaps because of a connection. The art must engage you, or it is nothing. Are you a painter?

No. Do I seem like one? Paul said, deeply flattered at the question. He thought it a curious observation.

The way you talked about this painting seems like you have struggled, she explained. I hear the passion in your voice.

I have struggled, yes, but not with painting, Paul replied. I am just envious. Those of us without artistic talents can’t communicate this deeply. It is not easy to find new ways to truly reach people.

Picasso said it took him four years to paint like Raphael and a lifetime to paint like a child. Most painters let themselves slip into conformity. That is just another type of fear.

Refocused by the espresso’s caffeine, Paul observed her more closely. Her face was well proportioned, accented by sharp eyebrows and smooth, full lips. Tastefully applied mascara surrounded those blue-green eyes that anchored a symmetrical calm for her expressions. Her accent, her features, and her slightly distant demeanor suggested she had escaped from somewhere cold, corrupt, and tragic. Somewhere in the East. Someplace where the rules governing life were very different.

She spoke of other dead painters—Kandinsky, Beckmann, Braque, El Greco—with a kind of spiritual reverence. Paul said he admired David Hockney’s colors, knowing just enough to describe the painter’s vivid style without betraying his paper-thin knowledge. She replied that her gallery had recently purchased some of Hockney’s early work.

When she smiled and spoke so oddly, Paul felt a strange connection. He also knew that it was her job to weave a spell on a potential buyer. You didn’t spend this kind of money without also buying into the whole universe of trends, countertrends, leading theories, and the big, bold personas that these artists created.

The door to the gallery opened, and a couple entered, breaking the seance of their conversation.

Thank you for the coffee, Paul said. He smiled and rose to leave.

Do you have a pen? she asked.

He fished out his Mont Blanc and handed it to her. She took a card from a platinum case in her jacket pocket and scribbled rapidly.

That’s my number on the back. If you want to learn more about our monthly shows or just talk about the artists we represent, call me and we can meet again. I always like to speak to a thoughtful connoisseur. She smiled. And my name is Katya.

Thank you, Katya. That is very kind. I’m Paul. It is a pleasure to meet you, he replied, the oppressively polite words tumbling out of his mouth despite himself. Thank you for the insights and the lovely espresso.

Paul walked out into the vulgar Manhattan evening again, into the blaring of honking taxis, the smell of dirty steam coming up from the subway, and the tangle of his own constantly shifting thoughts.

The rest of his evening proceeded in a dull, meaningless fashion: drinks with two friends at an overpriced, pretentious bar, followed by greasy street food in the early morning at Washington Square, crowded with college students stumbling through nocturnal pleasures.

After he returned to his apartment, Paul glanced again at Katya’s number. She was the most interesting moment of his otherwise long, tedious day. Was she a new possibility, a small window connecting his wandering present to a new path? Or was she another emotional dead end? He recalled the blue silhouettes and the blood-orange sunset. Such a strange and powerful painting. And such a woman.

He should have told her the truth about himself, though she probably suspected his charade after just a few minutes. He was no art connoisseur by any stretch. He knew nothing about Plato’s theory of the forms. His knowledge of art history was superficial at best. He reacted to art like a child reacts to new experiences, without any doctrine, philosophy, or heavy expectation. A painting was simply an encounter. His eyes saw what they saw. Maybe they didn’t see enough. Maybe there was more.

Paul Drake turned off the lights. His mind churned for another hour in the silent darkness before restless sleep enveloped him.

58151.png

The couple lingered until the gallery’s closing time and bought a small acrylic by a new California artist. When they left, Katerina Sergeevna Volkova gathered her belongings into her black Prada purse, turned off the gallery lights, and punched the six-digit security code on the electronic alarm.

Tonight was busy enough for a cold Friday; she had managed through the lulls by catching up on correspondences with some of her more important buyers. Katya had enjoyed the brief conversation with Paul. His face was handsome enough and curiously sensitive. Dark brown hair, clean cut, medium height, athletic. Katya didn’t have a set type of preferences in men, but she found his look attractive. Perhaps he would call her. Perhaps not. No wedding ring but likely unavailable given the probabilities in this city.

The winter night had turned very cold as she left the gallery through the back door behind Twenty-Sixth Street. Katya hailed a cab, gave the taxi driver her address uptown on the Upper West Side, and then sank into the taxi’s cracked vinyl back seat. The driver turned the meter on before speeding into the night’s traffic. He took a left on Forty-Second, then a right on the West Side Highway, running north along the Hudson River.

With the city lights whisking by her, Katya reflected about her life in this foreign city. This island was a smoky New World cauldron of commuting office workers, global tourists, ethnic restaurants, college students, fast-walking executives in suits, and, everywhere in the shadows, the homeless, heads bowed, hidden in alleyways and on the fringes of the urban parks. Strange that Manhattan still felt so hard for her, even though it had been four years since Paris and ten years since she had left that more austere St. Petersburg.

Katya was constantly on the move, organizing and thinking, yet she had made few true friends among the many millions packed in around her now. There was only Chloe, a French artist whom she had hired late last year to help with the gallery. She never spoke of her past with Chloe; friends shouldn’t be expected to carry old burdens. It was dangerous to reveal too much to anyone.

Katya’s survival method was always to conserve energy. Every single action needed to have a purpose within her master plan. If at each step she conserved energy—she believed—then slowly, she would steadily progress, reach a higher, enlightened goal. The gallery helped her focus. While not an artist herself, Katya enjoyed the business surrounding it. The industry fascinated her, how dealers connected painters with their clients and how tastes and spiritual insights evolved over decades and centuries and across so many otherwise divided languages and geographies. Art crossed many barriers and touched the universal.

Despite herself and her business goals, Katya had dreamed up a few children’s names already, a sign perhaps that one day it might happen. But she wasn’t ready to seriously think about children yet. She had only recently become healthy again after those dark years of struggle, and the gallery took time and energy. She pressed her hand to the cold window. Is it not said that the future is for those who know how to wait?

The taxi came to dead stop on the corner of West End and Ninety-Fifth Street. Katya saw the lights turned on in the top floor of