The Orchestration

By Steve Burkart

When covert ops director John Darque receives a mysterious package from a former adversary, he suspects the worst, but the box contains items more dangerous than even he could have imagined ... they indicate that the President-Elect of the United States, Thomas Jefferson Davis, is a mole whose rise to power has been carefully nurtured for more than 30 years as part of a Russian plot to overthrow the US government. Darque's organization must first determine if Davis is a threat to the US, and, if so, are others also involved in the plan. The greatest challenge, however, still lies ahead: once a conspiracy is uncovered, Darque must formulate a scheme to thwart the Russian coup, but in a way that costs no suspicion on Davis in order to protect the American people. If the conspiracy evolves undeterred. World War Ill is imminent. Eliminating the threat will require all of Darque's ingenuity and expertise to prevent the overthrow of America from within. The Orchestration is a gripping thriller in the tradition of great espionage novels.

Steve Burkart spent the majority of his 22-year military career in Europe as a counterintelligence agent, during and immediately following the Cold War. He has in-depth personal experience of intelligence work during the 1980s. often referred to as "the decade of the spies". He now lives in Ohio. The Orchestration is his first novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Proisle Publishing Services
• Release date: Feb 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781960224484

Book preview

Chapter One

Cancer.

It has no boundaries, favors no ethnic group, and is a terrible way for a soldier to die.

Even before he swallowed the two pain pills, he knew this bout was going to be a bad one.

Flashing lights seemed to explode in his head as waves of nausea ebbed and flowed throughout his body, and the anguish became almost unbearable. Only one thought kept him going: after that night, the pain would be gone.

It's time to go, he said to his wife as he put on his jacket. Cool weather had returned to Moscow, and winter could not be too far away.

She didn't say anything as he picked up a box from the kitchen table and tucked it under his arm.

He looked at her and tried to smile through his agony, but she knew even that was painful for him, and fought to keep back her tears; what he was going through was hard enough, and she was careful not to do anything that would add to his misery. She would have plenty of time for tears when it was over.

Once outside the house, he checked his watch and began to walk a preplanned route that would eventually take him to his destination. His goal was a crowded train station where he would deliver his parcel to a waiting courier, but he had to do it without raising anyone's suspicion.

As he passed a small cafe, he glanced at one of the patrons who began to drink coffee from a white mug. It was the signal he hoped for: he was not being followed.

The man continued along his route, and thought once again about the ongoing events that had brought him to this point. While outwardly the world seemed to be in a period of relative calm, behind-the-scenes actions were moving it toward a confrontation of nations that would bring about the demise of the West if left unchallenged: another cold war was acceptable to him, but another shooting war wasn't.

Because of his position within the government, he knew two things: first, his country was the instigator behind the impending cataclysm; and second, he was the only person who would do anything to try to change the outcome. In order to accomplish his self-imposed mission, it was imperative that the package he carried get into the hands of its intended recipient in the United States.

It had taken time for him to establish a way to get the package out of the country, but he did it in a manner that made the courier believe he was delivering it at the behest of the KGB, an organization most Russian citizens did not turn down or acknowledge working for.

The box would be taken to an accommodation address where it would be readdressed and resent to other addresses until it reached its final destination; a man named John Darque. He had known Darque for only a short period of time, and that was after the American had him arrested for conducting espionage in Germany. He didn't know if Darque was in a position to do anything about the impending situation, but for some reason he felt he could trust the man with the information in the box. Besides, he didn't know anyone else he could turn to.

As he entered the congested train terminal, he spotted the man he had seen earlier at the cafe, and watched as the man folded a newspaper and tucked it under his left arm: he had so far avoided attracting the attention of any surveillance.

He smiled through his pain.

On a normal day, he would have chastised the people he knew were out there to identify people like him: a danger to the Russian Government. He didn't know all of them by face or name but he had trained many of them, and even though he had done nothing to attract any interest to himself, he expected them to somehow be able to determine who was or was not a threat. In their defense, he knew this was an impossible task, and he counted on that fact to help him complete his mission unhindered.

The courier was sitting where he was supposed to be, and he had a package in his lap that was quite similar in appearance to the one carried by the man who approached him. He noticed the look of pain in the standing man's face, but said nothing as he quickly switched the packages and continued walking at a leisurely pace.

The seated man waited for almost 15 minutes after the other man disappeared in the crowded station, and then boarded the train that would be the first leg of his journey to the United States. He wondered momentarily who the man with the painful expression on his face was, and why the KGB had picked him to deliver the package to the United States, but then thought it was best not to worry about such things, and settled into his seat.

The man with the pained expression on his face, KGB Colonel Nikolai Rolnikov, watched as the courier got on the train, and then headed back to his residence for what he knew would be the last time.

After entering the apartment he shared with his wife, Freya, he removed his jacket, took a bottle of vodka from a cabinet, and sat at the kitchen table. He appeared to be staring at a picture of Stalin hanging on the wall, but was actually recalling fond memories of the times he had spent with Freya and their daughter Heidi, who was now out on her own.

He picked up the bottle of pills on the table and read the label he had memorized long ago: take two tablets when needed for pain, but no more than six in a 24-hour period.

Smiling through his pain, he dumped the remaining 52 pills in the bottle into his hand and swallowed a few at a time with long drinks from a bottle of vodka. No one would ever know his death was for any reason other than to overcome his unremitting pain, and his treachery, or heroism, depending on how one looked at the situation, would never be known. His last conscious thought was to wonder if he had done the right thing with the box; his last sensation was to feel the pain ebbing from his body, and the last thing he heard was Freya's gentle sobbing coming from another room.

Chapter Two

Darque slowed the pickup truck as he approached the driveway to his cabin, and the hairs on the back of his neck raised in alarm when he spotted a package leaning against the base of the wooden mailbox post. Since he wasn’t expecting a package, the arrival of one aroused his suspicion. He knew some people might interpret his reaction as paranoia, but he didn’t care what anyone else might think. He had reasons to be cautious.

He leaned across the cab of the vehicle and opened the door on the passenger side.

Bill, he said to his companion, a large German shepherd, check the box.

The dog leapt from the truck, and cautiously approached the package. He kept his nose close to the ground, and advanced one paw at a time, just as he had been trained to do when locating explosives.

While the dog investigated the parcel, Darque peered into the trees and bushes on both sides of the cracked asphalt scar of a road. As he shifted his weight inside the truck, Darque felt the pistol concealed at the small of his back, but he made no attempt to reach for it. He knew that carrying a weapon was a lot like a child carrying a teddy bear: it helped to provide a certain amount of security, but it wasn’t necessarily the right tool for every situation. If the purpose of the package was to get him to stop so he could be ambushed, he’d already be dead. The fact that he was armed wouldn’t have made a bit of difference.

Darque climbed out of the truck and walked over to where the dog now treated the parcel with indifference. Bill had turned his back on the object and slowly walked away, then rolled around in the fringe of high grass and weeds beside the road.

So, you figure it’s safe to pick up? Darque asked.

Bill yawned, and Darque, who took the response to mean ‘yes’, bent down and picked up the package. It was addressed to John Darque, but he didn't recognize the name of the sender: Mr. James K. Johnson, Salem, Oregon. He had reasons to remember such things.

Darque placed the box in the bed of the truck as Bill returned to his place on the front seat, and then he shut the passenger door and walked around the truck. Over time, his body had become so conditioned to stress that the adrenalin rush he once felt in tense situations was a thing of the past.

Let’s go home and see what the mailman brought us, Darque said as he drove the pickup onto the dirt driveway marked by the mailbox.

A meandering dirt lane led through the trees to the log cabin he and Bill shared. The driveway was in terrible condition with potholes nearly the size of bomb craters, but the unkempt look was intentional: it discouraged unwanted visitors, alerted Bill to the approach of vehicles, and added a layer of security to the cabin.

When they climbed out of the truck at the cabin, Darque watched closely as Bill ran crisscrossing patterns throughout the clearing, stopping occasionally to scrutinize an unfamiliar odor. After determining that no danger existed, the dog returned to Darque’s side.

The driver lifted the package from the bed of the truck, tucked it under his arm, and led the way into the cabin. He placed the container on a small table beside his recliner, and listened as Bill’s clicking toenails on the wooden floor announced the dog’s movements through the structure. Darque rubbed his hands together to fend off the chill, and then started a fire in the stone fireplace. As the flames climbed higher, invisible tentacles of heat began to attack the cold inside the structure. Once the temperature moderated, Darque removed his coat and weapon, and sat down in the recliner. It was time to focus his attention on the newly arrived parcel.

Although Bill had not alerted on the package, Darque carefully slit the box open with his pocketknife, and used the point of the blade to lift the flaps. As he peered into the container, an envelope with his name on it stared back.

He set the envelope aside and removed several crumpled sheets of newsprint covered with Cyrillic writing, but unless analysis proved otherwise, Darque thought the wadded up Russian newspaper was used as cushioning material, as well as being a thinly disguised clue about the package’s origin.

He removed the padding and smiled as he saw two green bottles with red and white labels. Darque knew without even reading the product name that they contained Budweiser beer; not the copy made in the U.S., but the original one brewed in the Czech Republic. He put the beer aside and picked up a small, liquid-filled, glass vial that contained a misshapen chunk of metal decorated with brown flecks.

The only other things he saw in the box were a manila envelope and a thumb drive.

He picked up the envelope addressed to him, slit it open with his knife, and removed a single sheet of typewritten paper. For some reason, the impressions of the metal keys made the letter seem more personal than if it had been compiled on a computer. He settled back in the chair and began to read the message:

"Mister Darque,

I don’t often get an opportunity to use the English I had to work so hard to learn, but since I know you never learned Russian, I felt this way was best.

You may be asking yourself how I got your address, especially after I tell you that there is no new information in your file following your retirement as a Counterintelligence Agent for your government. I often wondered if we were wise to drop all interest in you after that, but apparently, none of my superiors believed, as I did, that you continued to be a threat against our activities.

Since I could find no address for you in our files, I had someone enter a request for it on several military related sites that offer to help former members reestablish contact, and eventually I received a response that contained the information I sought. Many of your countrymen continue to be very naive concerning intelligence matters, but since it was to my benefit on this occasion, I will not admonish you for an oversight I imagine you’re already aware of. The person who submitted the request poses no threat to you, and is untraceable.

You may not remember me, but we met once in Germany in 1984, when you had me arrested for spying. I didn’t know who you were then, but I learned about you later from our files.

I was wrong to have my wife and daughter with me on that mission, but it was part of my cover story and it gave them a chance to travel. You were kind to my family then, and helped them leave the country without problems. They think you are a good person and I think so too; that’s why you now have the box where you found this letter. I will have died of cancer by the time you receive it, so don’t waste your time trying to get in touch with me for additional information. As a matter of possible concern, I can tell you that my wife and daughter will be OK, so don’t worry about their futures. I sent the beer as a sign of friendship, even though we’re on opposite sides of the same coin; I read in your file that you like it. If you remember me, and I’m sure you have ways of finding out if you don’t, I was only in prison two years instead of ten as part of a prisoner exchange. I was very happy to walk across the Glienicke Brücke in Berlin and return to my family in so short a time.

After my return, I was put behind a desk and not back on the street to work; probably too much exposure, or maybe my superiors just wanted to keep me nearby so they could watch me more closely. Like all true agents, I hated being in an office, but I learned a lot about many things, and I was trusted with several important assignments. When ordered to do so, I destroyed a lot of files, but managed to keep part of one I smuggled out of headquarters; what I kept is now in your possession. I felt someone on your side had to be made aware of the threat that is developing to plunge the world into a war that may be impossible to stop, and I chose you to be the recipient.

I hope you enjoy the beer; it would have been nice if we could have shared one together.

Nikolai Rolnikov"

There was a P.S. at the bottom of the letter, written in what he suspected was a woman’s handwriting: Thank you always. Heidi thanks you for her ugly pig; she still has it. Freya

Darque digested what he had read, then picked up one of the bottles of beer. He rested the serrated lip of the crimped cap on the edge of the table, and snapped it off with a downward thrust of his other hand. A long drink of the brew reinforced his contention that it was still the best beer he ever tasted even when it was warm.

The postscript convinced him, as it was meant to, that the letter was authentic. No one but the Rolnikovs would have known about ‘the ugly pig’. Actually, it was a small, stuffed, purple hippopotamus. He had given it to Heidi just before he put her and her mother on a train out of Germany, but the little girl had renamed it.

Darque pulled a laptop from beneath his chair, and plugged in the thumb drive. The picture that appeared on the monitor was not of the best quality, but the subject matter could not be mistaken. It showed a man naked in bed with a series of naked females, and although the room remained the same, sudden scene changes indicated that several different incidents had been combined to make one tape.

After the bedroom shots, the scene changed completely. Three men sat around a table in a small room. Their voices were barely audible, but the gist of the conversation was that the male in the video informed the other two that he would be happy to spy for them. He said the main reason he had come to the Soviet Union was to offer his services in that capacity, even though he didn’t know if he could do much good. One of the other two said they would wait. Maybe sometime in the future, the younger man would be in a position to do more for them. The younger man then signed some papers, and the two men gave him $5000 as a sign of their faith in his future assistance. The video ended with the exchange of money.

Darque removed the portable storage device from the computer and put it next to the vial. He then pulled the manila envelope out of the box, revealing another envelope beneath it.

He opened the envelope and found a number of papers written in Russian. He’d have to wait for them to be translated before he could determine why they had been included in the box. He returned the documents to the envelope, laid it aside, then removed the last envelope from the box and opened it. Inside it and then found two pieces of paper, one printed in Russian and the other in English. Darque read the English version of the document, and was certain the Russian document contained the same information.

The form was used as a work agreement by intelligence agencies to acquire a source’s signature, and could be produced if it ever became necessary to blackmail or coerce the signatory to continue working for his/her handlers. The signature at the bottom of both documents was identical: Thomas J. Davis.

Darque knew of only one person named Thomas J. Davis. He was the U.S. Senator who was the current front-runner, and probable winner, of the upcoming election for President of the United States.

If Senator Davis was the man in the video and the signer of the two documents, the next President of the United States was also a traitor.

Chapter Three

Darque watched silently as sunlight passed through a stained-glass panel creating colorful patterns that slowly crept across the floor like spiders in search of prey.

It appeared that the FSB, still better known as the KGB even after its evolution, had an interest in Davis becoming the next U.S. President, and Darque knew he had to determine what the Russian security agency was up to before he could allow Davis to become the next leader of the free world.

As head of the covert agency responsible for detecting and eliminating threats to the U.S. that were beyond the scope of known agencies, it was his responsibility to ensure Davis' motives for becoming President were in the best interest of the American people. If an ulterior motive existed that would endanger the country, Davis would have to be eliminated before he could achieve the Presidency.

Darque realized he would have to move cautiously. If his assessment of the situation was correct, there would be forces in place to ensure Davis’s ascension to power happened without interference: no one could carry out a plan of this magnitude alone. Davis as President might be a foregone conclusion, but he would not gain any real power until after his inauguration, and that was all the time Darque had to come up with a solution for the problem if one existed. With that thought in mind, he picked up his secure phone and called the Cave (the organization’s nickname for its headquarters) to notify the duty officer that he would be there shortly, and to have his staff assembled in his office.

Penny Miller, the Duty Officer and one of the team leaders at Olympus, was also his confidante and lover, and his face softened when he heard her voice.

I thought you and your creature were enjoying your time away from here, she said.

We were, but something has come up that cut our vacation short.

He told her about the contents of the package, and voiced his concern about how the man who would probably be the next President fit into the picture. He was rewarded with silence as he pictured her mulling over what he’d said.

Are you sure about this? she asked incredulously.

As sure as I can be without having researched any of it.

This could be a bad one if you’re right, she said apprehensively. What do you want me to do?

Let Doc know I’ll be bringing in some stuff for the lab’s immediate attention. If Davis is a mole, his handlers wouldn’t have wanted him to do anything that would attract attention. Have the Research Department start checking him out, and let the people there know I want anything and everything they can find out about him. I’ll leave here shortly, and we can discuss the situation further at your place tonight.

It’ll be nice to have you home again, she said softly before breaking the connection.

As he hung up the phone, he thought about Penny and wondered how they had ever been able to establish a close relationship. Both of them were loners and suspicious of others, and an abusive marriage was reason enough for Penny to avoid any intimate contact with males. Somehow, they clicked. Maybe it had something to do with two negatives equaling a positive. She was almost 10 years younger and 50 pounds lighter, and she was also the prettiest, blue-eyed blond he had ever seen. Bill just yawned and returned to his nap.

The fire was dying in the fireplace, but a loud popping noise coming from the ashes was enough to interrupt Darque’s reverie.

With the sun well below its zenith, he decided to pack some things and get on the road if he wanted to reach Penny’s by midnight. He took the last sip of beer, walked to the bookcase, and placed the empty bottle on one of the shelves … a commemorative souvenir of an unpublished international incident.

Darque completed his packing, and returned the items he had received in the mail to their carton … except for the other bottle of beer which now rested in the refrigerator.

He used the fireplace poker to stir up the remaining embers, and created a shower of sparks inside the hearth.

With the clothing bag dangling from his hand, and the box under his arm, he turned to Bill.

Let’s go to Penny’s, Darque said as he grabbed his jacket and pistol.

Bill was already tugging on the handle to open the door and get outside, and Darque followed closely behind.

The dog sniffed the air and looked around the area before walking across the yard to the pickup. Nothing had changed that caused him any concern.

After Darque opened the truck door, Bill jumped in and curled up on the passenger’s seat as Darque climbed behind the steering wheel.

It was a long drive to Penny’s, and Darque’s thoughts kept returning to Davis. The problems he thought he might encounter to resolve the situation were numerous, but he was sure of one thing: if Davis was a traitor, failure was not an option.

Chapter Four

T

he trip to Penny’s didn’t take as long as Darque had anticipated, but it was still close to midnight when they arrived. Bill displayed more excitement as they got closer to their other home. Penny was the only person in whose presence Bill wagged his tail.

Darque parked the truck in the driveway and carried the bag and cardboard box into the house. Although they hadn’t gotten married, he and Penny had exchanged house keys in a ceremony they decided meant the same thing.

Darque entered the house and found Penny asleep in an overstuffed recliner buried beneath a fake polar bear hide she called ‘Mr. Bear’.

The glowing embers of a recent fire were dying in the fireplace, and a sip of wine remained in a glass that rested on the table next to her chair.

He didn’t know how long she had been asleep, but he had learned not to awaken her by touching her if they hadn’t been together before she fell asleep. Because of her abusive marriage, she never went to sleep when she was alone without a readily accessible straight razor. When they were together the razor disappeared, and he never questioned her decision to keep the weapon nearby. It was one of her ghosts, and she dealt with it the best way she could.

As was their usual pattern if they arrived at the house while she slept, Darque went into the kitchen and made some noise, and Bill sat near Penny so she could see him when she awakened.

It took a while before Darque finally heard her moving around, and he went in to check on her.

How long have you been sleeping? he asked as he leaned down to kiss her.

A couple of hours, she said. Give me a minute to figure out where I am, and I’ll fix you something to eat.

Sounds good, he said.

Bill frantically wagged his tail as he tried to get her attention, and she finally scratched him behind the ears as an acknowledgment of his presence. She actually liked the dog, but this was a game she played to, as she put it, keep Bill in his place. It didn’t work.

Darque saw that she wore a pair of house slippers