Burgess Whitcomb was annoyed when he noticed he didn't have the access card to unlock his own office. He couldn't remember taking it out of his coat and he patted down all his pockets.
Burgess went to the Building Manager's Office and ordered a new lock. A security guard accompanied him back to his office and opened the door.
Burgess noticed the lights were on. He did not notice the form attached to the front desk in the outer office immediately, as the man was small and very still, obviously asleep, with his chin resting on his chest, in quite an obscene and vulnerably spread position.
Burgess read the note from across the room. He turned and roughly pushed the security guard standing behind him out of the office, slamming the door in the man's astonished face.
He tried to remove the note without touching it with his own fingers, or waking Willard Modert, but Modert did awaken and started whimpering and struggling. He wasn't very loud, because of the adhesive tape over his mouth, or very forceful because he was tightly bound to the desk, but Burgess told him to shut the hell up. When he got the note off of Modert, Burgess held it daintily by his fingernails and put it in the top desk drawer in his own office. Then he untaped the man's mouth and eyes.
Willard's eyes were rolling and his mouth twitched spasmodically, dripping spittle. He cleared his throat several times.
"What in hell happened to you?" Burgess asked, as he started cutting Modert's arms and legs free.
"Someone came in here last night. Practically killed me. Then he tied me to the desk. He was enormously strong. After that I heard him going into the files. He used my key."
"Did he say anything?" Burgess asked, watching the small man flexing his arms and trying to get the cramps out of his legs.
Modert shook his head. "I put up quite a fight. He might be hurt."
Burgess helped Willard to his feet and steadied him when he almost collapsed.
"Oh, God. He used the shredder," Modert said urgently. "We have to check the files!"
"I'll take care of it. You go home and get some rest."
Modert protested, but Burgess was his boss and he had to leave without finding out what Burgess learned in the next few minutes. Everything was gone. Even the pictures and tapes, both audio and visual. Burgess checked the safe for the duplicate files and found it empty. He was furious. Modert had given the combination to the thief.
He had the office dusted for the prints he knew would not be there. Then he frantically called the hospital where Sergi Malcovich was still residing. He was too late. Sergi had undergone plastic surgery early that morning. All physical proof that one of the Miller women had bitten Sergi was gone. The precise pictures of the bite that matched Sabrina's dental records were part of what the thief had taken. As all the information was top secret, everything from the lab had been sent back to Whitcomb's office.
Burgess had the telephone records for his office faxed to his him, but could find nothing incriminating. He talked to the telephone company and found that the office telephones had a call-transfer service. Modert attended to all such mundane details.
Burgess soon found that there were calls placed at his own office that had been transferred to a phone at a flea-bag hotel room not far from the office. The hotel room was checked and it was vacant. Paid for in advance with cash. From those phone records there were calls to Moscow, Leningrad, Washington and Japan. There were also local calls. Secret calls. When Burgess traced the numbers they proved to be those of his own investigators, Sergi Malcovich and Ivar Cousin.
Burgess went to the hospital, the solicitous boss checking on one of his trusted employees. He found Sergi, recovering from surgery, watching television in a room with two other men. He pulled the curtains around the bed so the two would have some privacy and told Sergi that he would be required to press legal charges against the woman who had bitten him.
Then Burgess talked to the surgeon who had performed the plastic surgery. He wondered if the doctor had a picture of Sergi's wound before the surgery was performed. He did. It had become infected, so the injury showed discolored puffed skin around the actual hole. The wound was too infected to show individual tooth marks.
Burgess had to listen at length to how the surgeon had cut away the contaminated tissue and taken skin from the man's left buttock for the graft. There were many disgusting pictures of both neck and buttock that Whitcomb politely perused, but none that would incriminate Sabrina or Eve Miller.
Sergi Malcovich had another visitor a couple of hours after Burgess Whitcomb left him. Ivar Cousin found Sergi sleeping and closed the curtains around the bed. Ivar felt a unique type of loathing for the man lying helplessly on his back, snoring out of a wide open mouth. Sergi reminded him of a bovine swine, and not because of unusual girth, but due to the smug, arrogant expression he held even in sleep. Ivar identified in Sergi a person who took pleasure in causing others pain and suffering.
Ivar took hold of Sergi's shoulder and shook it to wake him, knowing that the proximity of his neck surgery to where he was shaking would be painful.
Sergi screamed, but Ivar had prepared for that by placing his large hand over the man's mouth.
"I want you to listen to me, and listen well," Ivar said, speaking very softly in Russian. "I know who you are, where you come from, and who you really work for. And I'm going to tell the American authorities. You will be imprisoned here in the United States. You will never see Russia again. Your family will be disgraced. Unless you do one easy thing."
"I'll kill you," Sergi said furiously.
"Shut up and listen." He shook Sergi's shoulder again and the man winced but did not utter a sound. "I want your silence about how you got that bite. This is what really happened. You will remember now...you heard a dog growling...and then you turned around and were attacked. It was a boxer dog. Large and tan colored. Do you understand?"
"What the hell kind of stupid game are you playing, Ivar? When I get out of this damn place I am going to hunt you down and kill you. For shooting me."
Ivar shook his head.
Sergi looked at him sullenly, "I was bitten by a dark haired woman of approximately six feet in height, weighing almost nothing at all, with an angel face. She attacked without warning, as I was innocently talking to her."
Ivar knew Sergi would try to hit him so he leaned over the bed and grabbed his other arm, pinning him to the bed. He put his face so close it repulsed him; the man had the terrible breath that comes from a combination of rotting teeth and poor digestion. Ivar knew he had to appear very threatening or he would be forced to hurt Sergi. Impotent men, weak in the brain and easy to rage, respected nothing but brute force.
"Listen," Ivar said softly and slowly, so Sergi would understand the gravity of his situation. "Modert is blown. He was your operative. Now Burgess Whitcomb knows Modert is KGB. Burgess is inches away from finding out about the whole operation. There is nothing and nobody to protect you. Nothing but me. If you tell anyone that you were bitten by a woman, I promise I will tell the American authorities about you."
"You wouldn't," Sergi insisted.
"I did. Modert is a lot higher in the hierarchy than an underling like you, who can't even speak English without a Russian accent. You better believe I'll cut you loose. You're in serious trouble, Sergi. You will rot in jail forever."
"I can't do anything without an operative," Sergi whined.
"I am your operative. All you have to remember is that you were attacked by a dog."
"There wasn't any dog."
Ivar sighed deeply. He would have to torture the man. Despite the fact that he felt no warmth for this Neanderthal, he did not relish the thought of violence and only wanted to scare Sergi so he wouldn't accuse Eve of attacking him.
"I'll pull off that patch of skin on your neck."
"Don't you dare," Sergi said frantically.
"You're a disgrace to your country. I personally despise anyone who would shoot a man sitting in a wheel chair. I didn't hesitate to shoot you then, and you better believe I will hurt you now. Now let’s go over the scenario again."
"Burgess was here an hour ago and said I would have to press charges against the woman."
"The dog."
"Ivar, you are a fellow Russian with the proud knowledge that you are the elite. The KGB. Why are you doing this?"
"I am no longer Russian," Ivar said, feeling suddenly very sad. "So I feel nothing when I turn you over to the Americans."
"You are now American?" Sergi asked contemptuously.
"What I am is not American, no," Ivar said, taking his hand off of Sergi's shoulder and reaching in his pocket for his knife. "I don't enjoy hurting you, but I will blow your cover if you don't obey me. I will also use this." Ivar put the knife to Sergi's neck. It was a switchblade Ivar had bought when he first came to the United States, believing everyone in America was a gangster and used knives or guns.
Ivar began poking under the dressing on Sergi's neck very delicately.
"Oh, all right. I was bit by a dog."
Ivar put a little pressure on the blade so that it just pierced the skin. "You will remember?"
"Yes. Yes!" He whined. "A boxer. I was bit by a dog."
"Fine. One other thing. If you do not obey me, I will make sure that you will be branded a traitor and end up in the KGB's private prison."
Ivar watched Sergi's face and struck home with the name that produced instant fear in anyone from the Soviet Union. "Lubyanka. Do you understand?"
"Modert said you knew nothing about the plan to abduct the women."
"I knew all about it. Modert had to go. He was a triple agent, leaking information back to the Americans." Ivar really didn't know anything of the sort, but he thought Modert must have sold information to the Japanese. Those Japanese were very wealthy and Modert was very clever.
Sergi sighed and nodded.
"Burgess told you to rewrite your reports?"
Sergi nodded
"We will write them together. We don't want the Americans to know anything about the two women."