Table of Contents
Laynie Portland, Spy Resurrected
Part 1: The Grave
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part 2: Sheol, the Realm of the Dead
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part 3: I Am Not Ashamed
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Part 4: Lazarus, Come Forth
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Postscript
Books by Vikki Kestell
Nanostealth
A Prairie Heritage
Girls from the Mountain
About the Author
Laynie Portland,
Spy Resurrected
©2020 Vikki Kestell
All Rights Reserved
Faith-Filled Fiction™
http://www.faith-filledfiction.com/
http://www.vikkikestell.com/
Laynie Portland,
Spy Resurrected
by Vikki Kestell
Available in Print and eBook Format
How strong are the cords of love?
Can they reach into hell and back?
LAYNIE, TOBIN, AND Jaz narrowly escape the hit squad sent by the Ukrainian mob—the third attempt to kill members of Director Wolfe’s staff. Whatever the task force does and wherever its people go, the enemy is right there, always one step ahead.
Wolfe admits that his organization has been compromised—that a mole within his staff is feeding information to the Chechen separatist group All Glorious for Allah. Before their enemy can strike again, Wolfe orders the task force members to immediately abandon their homes and the team’s headquarters for safer grounds.
The task force, with Laynie leading it, has just reestablished itself within the protective walls of Broadsword when Wolfe receives a coded letter from Cossack, his deep-cover asset in Chechnya. In the letter, Cossack reveals that he has knowledge of a large and significant terror attack scheduled for New Year’s Eve. He also alludes to the leak in Wolfe’s organization and his fear that passing details of the attack through normal channels will blow his precarious cover.
Cossack insists on passing intel on the impending attack to the one person he feels he can trust, the operative who foiled the assassination attempt on Vassili Aleksandrovich Petroff, Russian envoy to the UN.
Cossack’s demand sends Laynie halfway around the world to a covert meeting in the city of Tbilisi, Georgia. It sends her to her death.
Laynie Portland
THEY RECRUITED AND trained her for their purposes. She turned out better than they expected.
Book 1: Laynie Portland, Spy Rising—The Prequel
Book 2: Laynie Portland, Retired Spy
Book 3: Laynie Portland, Renegade Spy
Book 4: Laynie Portland, Spy Resurrected
Dedicated to
TobyMac and all his family.
Thank you for your commitment
to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ
year after year and season after season
and for your steadfast testimony
as you walk through the agony
of losing your son, Truett.
Truett died by accidental overdose
after taking amphetamines
cut with fentanyl.
The danger is real.
Acknowledgements
Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him!
How I’ve proved Him o’er and o’er;
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus!
Oh, for grace to trust Him more!
THANK YOU AS ALWAYS
to my wonderful team,
Cheryl Adkins and Greg McCann,
for their loving hearts and
unfailing dedication to this work.
SPECIAL THANKS TO
Lora Doncea
for coaching my writing style into
this century’s fiction standards!
Scripture Quotations
THE HOLY BIBLE,
NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV®
Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.®
Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Cover Design
Vikki Kestell
Hymns
Amazing Grace
Lyrics, John Newton, 1772
Public Domain
Away in a Manger
Attribution Unknown
Public Domain
Blessed Assurance
Lyrics, Frances J. Crosby, 1873
Public Domain
Jesus Paid It All
Lyrics, Elvina M. Hall, 1865
Public Domain
’Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus
Lyrics, Louisa M. R. Stead, 1885
Public Domain
What Child Is This
Lyrics, William Chatterton Dix, 1865
Public Domain
To My Readers
This book is a work of fiction,
what I term Faith-Filled Fiction™.
While the characters and events are fiction,
they are situated within the historical record.
To God be the glory.
Part 1:
The Grave
Author’s Note
Some of you, my dear readers, expressed disappointment when Renegade Spy ended on a “cliff-hanger.” If this was you, I offer a small consolation: I had originally thought to end Renegade Spy with what is now Chapter 1 of Spy Resurrected.
When you’ve finished Chapter 1, I think it very possible that you will thank me for not leaving it as the conclusion of Renegade Spy.
Big hugs,
—Vikki
Chapter 1
November 29, 2001
Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia
LAYNIE FOLLOWED THE river north from Holy Trinity Cathedral, walking steadily toward Tbilisi’s Dezerter Bazaar. She was in no hurry and paused several times, staring into shop windows at colorful wares, using the windows’ reflections to surveil her surroundings.
To check for a tail.
Seraphim had said she and Wolfe would arrange for a man from the US embassy to observe her during her stay. She’d spotted him when she landed at the airport. She’d even caught a glimpse of him on her way to the cathedral.
But not afterward.
I lost him when I left the cathedral. If I was able to “make” him, surely any too-interested party would have, too.
She pursed her lips. Can’t have someone tagging along when I meet up with Cossack.
A gust of wind buffeted her. Glancing at her own image in the window, she was grateful for the faded caftan and headscarf of a Muslim woman with contact-lens-brown eyes staring back at her. Her clothing’s thick fabric was a welcome barrier between her and the icy breeze.
Still, she shivered. From the cold? Or from some sixth sense, a premoni
tion warning her of danger? Carefully scanning her surroundings again, she spotted nothing of concern, no one who triggered an alarm.
Dressed as I am, I’m as nameless and unknown as anyone can hope to be in this city.
Laynie’s fingers strayed toward the hard outline of the mobile phone tucked into her bra. The phone rested in the hollow below her breastbone.
Jaz will be monitoring my phone’s signal in real time. So long as my phone has a cellular connection, she will be tracing my progress.
Laynie visualized Tobin’s worried eyes peering over Jaz’s shoulder and drew comfort from the image. I’ll be back soon, Quincy. We’ll have plenty of time to “figure things out.”
At Queen Tamar Avenue, she turned right. If the glut of pedestrian traffic converging at that intersection and moving in a common direction was any indication, the bazaar was not far ahead.
She rehearsed her instructions. I am to find the fish market on the edge of the bazaar and look for a sign indicating fresh-caught Black Sea and Caspian seafood. At noon, I am to ask for beluga caviar.
It would be up to Cossack to initiate contact with her after that.
THE MAN CODE-NAMED Cossack ran his gaze around the stuffy tea room. Cossack occupied a table just inside the tea shop’s entrance. The shabby, hole-in-the-wall shop was situated diagonally across the road from the city’s famed Dezerter Bazaar. His table afforded him a clear line of sight to the fish market on the corner. Cossack kept his back against a plastered pillar and his chair angled so he could monitor the tea room’s occupants while he kept watch on the seafood stalls without appearing to do so.
The angle of his chair would also allow him to spring to his feet and flee through the rear of the tea room should circumstances warrant a hasty escape. A reliable motorbike waited for him out back, ensuring his quick departure.
Cossack’s clothing—the apparel of a man from the steppes of eastern Ukraine or perhaps the Caucasus Mountains to the north—were not in keeping with the dress of westernized Georgians, but they were not all that uncommon a sight in the city either. He wore a turban, tunic, and vest over loose-fitting pants stuffed into stout boots. A thick wool cloak over his shoulder prepared him for the impending winter nights.
The tail of his turban hung down the right side of his face and looped about his neck. The skin around his gleaming amber eyes was creased and burned to bronze from a lifetime in the sun. His thick brows and beard, once glossy black, were shot with silver, but his beard had more to say about the man. While it sprung thick and wiry along his left jaw, little facial hair sprouted on the opposite side where, years before, the fiery shards of an exploding mortar round had struck him. Seared him. Instead of bushy whiskers, yellowed scar tissue mottled his cheek and jawline.
The innocuous scarf trailing from his turban did its job veiling the scars. Cossack fingered the scarf out of habit. It would not do for the fabric to shift—for it disguised a man whose features were too remarkable to go unnoticed. A man upon whose head the Russian Federation had placed a sizable reward.
The Russian “wanted” posters referred to him as Arzu Labazanov, the name he had taken years ago. However, from Ukraine across southern Russia to the Caspian Sea, Cossack’s exploits as a smart, ruthless fighter and strategist, a general in the cause of Chechen independence, had earned him the designation “Dark Destroyer”—Temnyy Razrushitel in Russian. He and his militia had been a bloody thorn in the side of the Russian Federation for more than two decades. And those who hunted him for his role in the ongoing war against Russian domination? They knew him by his scars as well as his reputation.
Cossack was a man, too, whose alliance with the Chechen-Islamist militia All Glorious for Allah must never be questioned by its leaders—and yet the tea house in which Cossack waited this day was nearly three hundred miles from his militia’s stronghold in the Caucasus Mountains. His presence in Tbilisi, should he be seen and recognized, would raise questions and unwanted scrutiny.
Because his face could so easily betray him, Cossack rarely left his stronghold in the Caucasus Mountains. On the odd occasion that he did so, he hid his scars and arrayed loyal followers around him. While he observed from the shadows, his proxies did his bidding.
As they would today.
However, the men he depended on today were not drawn from the ranks of his Chechen militia. Over the past six years, Cossack had recruited a number of Chechen refugees, those who had fled their war-torn country to live in Tbilisi. Cossack had chosen only men who were Christian by heritage. Cossack knew that Christian refugees were unlikely to be known by the Islamist radicals of his own militia or AGFA.
When the tea room’s owner set a fresh glass of steaming tea before him, Cossack placed a sugar cube between his front teeth, lifted the glass of hot tea to his lips, and sucked the fragrant brew into his mouth. Closing his eyes momentarily, he savored the sweetness that joined the tea as the sugar melted.
Cossack raised the steaming glass of tea to his lips again, employing the motion to casually sweep his eyes across the fish market. Deshi and Chovka, two of his men, loitered out of sight in the nearby bazaar. Bulat, another man loyal to Cossack, worked with his father and brothers behind the counters of the Dezerter fish market. Cossack’s gaze noted but did not linger on the bright blue shirt Bulat wore or the counters where Bulat oversaw his family’s selection of seafood.
Cossack set the glass of tea on the table, dropping his eyes at the same time. It was nearly noon. Midday. He and his people were ready, waiting for Director Wolfe’s operative to appear. He would surely show himself. Soon.
In the coded message he had sent to the director, Cossack had instructed the director’s operative to peruse the stalls of the fish market. He was to look for a sign advertising “fresh-caught Black Sea and Caspian seafood” and ask for beluga caviar. When the director’s operative did so, Bulat would signal Cossack’s men loitering in the bazaar. As the director’s operative moved back into the flow of the pedestrians, Cossack’s men would flank him, identify themselves, and escort him to a vehicle waiting in sight of the tea room.
Cossack would pay for his tea, mount his motorbike, and rendezvous with them at a predetermined meeting place.
These carefully scripted moves were necessary to protect Cossack’s deep cover within his Chechen militia. The men of his Chechen militia were faithful, both to him and to the cause of Islam, the holy struggle. They would die as willingly for him as they would for Allah—but they only thought they knew their leader. Cossack had been embedded in Chechnya for so many years, had lived as one of them for so long, that his identity and his allegiance to the twin causes of Chechen separatism and the ascension of Islam were indisputable—so much so, that Cossack himself sometimes forgot that his role was an alias, a means of gathering and conveying intelligence to his western handlers.
Unfortunately, his own agency had been infiltrated by those who hated America and sought her downfall. For months now, Cossack had maintained operational silence, afraid to pass intel up the chain of command, worried that the moles within the agency would intercept the intel and trace it back to him. When the intelligence he had painstakingly gathered reached a point worth the risk, Cossack had been forced to employ unorthodox and unapproved means of communication to bypass the moles and reach the director.
Now, with vital details in his hands but uncertain of whom he could trust, Cossack had requested a face-to-face meeting with the agency operative who had stymied AGFA’s plot to assassinate a highly placed Russian dignitary. Why? Because no agent loyal to AGFA would have saved the Russian. Cossack felt certain the operative could be trusted.
Soon, with the help of his secret Tbilisi cell, Cossack would meet the director’s operative and hand off the intelligence he had collected. He would, at the same time, institute new communication protocols with this man, again ensuring the smooth flow of intelligence from Cossack to the director.
Cossack set his tea down and picked up his newspaper with both hands. He u
sed its open pages like a shield while he kept one eye on the fish market. Cossack tracked Bulat’s bright blue shirt as he haggled with customers over the price of the day’s catch. So far, the director’s operative had not shown himself.
A Muslim woman approached the stalls and began to peruse the selection of fish. Cossack’s gaze passed over her. Stopped. Returned to her. The woman sauntered along the fish market stalls as though looking for a particular item.
Cossack’s eyes narrowed. What is it? What did I see?
Muslims bought their meat only from halal butchers who would slaughter the animals as dictated by the Quran. Although the Quran did not require a halal butcher for fish, Muslims still tended to buy all their foods from fellow Muslims. Yes, it might be unusual for a Muslim woman to shop the public fish market . . . but it was not completely out of the question.
That’s not it. Something else.
He picked up his tea, brought it to his mouth, and skimmed his eyes over the woman, taking inventory. He used the edge of his scarf to dab at his mouth and assure himself that it covered his scars. Just then, two women and a man shouldered their way past the Muslim woman.
What is it?
Ah. All three were shorter than the Muslim woman.
Is that it?
Yes. The Muslim woman was tall, taller than most Georgian women, Muslim or not. She retraced her steps, paused, leaned across the stall toward Bulat’s blue shirt. She must have spoken, because Cossack saw Bulat’s head jerk incrementally.
Why?
Cossack thought the woman spoke again, perhaps repeated herself. After a moment’s hesitation, Bulat nodded. He reached behind him and retrieved something that he handed to the woman. A small red bag. The woman slung the bag over her forearm and moved away.
Bulat had marked the Muslim woman as the director’s operative.
Cossack sat back and exhaled. The director’s agent, the one who had saved Vassili Aleksandrovich Petroff from a terrorist chemical attack not many weeks back? That operative was a woman?
I have been too long in this part of the world. I presumed the director would send a man.