The apartment was silent when Cal woke the next morning, Lilith probably on the couch as she'd insisted, and Frank still hiding in his room. Before everyone had said their goodnights the night before, the two spooks had concocted a plan that involved Cal plying Eeva for information without tipping their hand. Eeva didn't know that Cal had caught her with Marat Solonik, and Lilith pushed to use that to their advantage.
Cal had texted Eeva asking if they could meet and then drifted into a fitful sleep. Her reply came just as the sun was rising, and Cal rolled over in bed with his phone in hand, lighting up his face.
Cal I'm sorry. Somethings come up and I'll reach out soon if it works out. I'm glad we met.
Cal read it several times, parsing each word. If what works out?
He thought back to their moment on the Ferris wheel where they held hands. Where they cried. Where they kissed. He didn't want to believe it was all a lie. Being a spook sucked. Cal typed his reply then dropped his phone onto the carpet at his bedside.
I have so many questions... but I'm glad we met too.
He'd heard his students complain over the years about text message break-ups, but this was more than that. She was saying goodbye, but she was also in trouble—no doubt related to the Russians she was working for. Or maybe it was all just a game; more lies and manipulation.
The smell of frying eggs hit him before he entered the kitchen. A pile of pancakes was cooling to the side, and Frank worked the eggs with a spatula, talking shop with Lilith about something intelligence related, the acronyms and lingo lost on Cal. It was surreal to see the two of them together again, even if they weren't really together.
"Morning, bud," Frank said. He was smiling.
Cal didn't return it and Frank noticed.
"Girl problems?"
Cal chewed a pancake instead of replying, and he grabbed another one as soon as he finished the first.
"Frank," Lilith warned before turning back to Cal and eying the pile of pancakes. "Save some for our guests."
"Guests?"
Frank answered with, "It's a Garden Gang reunion!"
"What? Why?"
"Jonathan fixed the thing."
Shortly after, Niles and Jonathan were seated around the small dining room table with Frank and Lilith, Niles in his electric wheelchair. Introductions were made, breakfast was eaten and cleared, and then the long black case took center stage on the table.
Cal hovered nearby, watching, the only one in the room without previous intelligence or military experience. Jonathan wasn't just a caregiver; he was retired SAS. How he went from British special forces to home health aide wasn't explained and Cal was beyond the point of wondering or questioning. The Garden Gang wasn't home to just two old spooks; it hosted two spooks and a special operator with experience in asymmetric warfare.
And a baseball coach, for whatever that was worth.
Jonathan opened the black case and revealed the long, rifle-like contraption embedded in a layer of dimpled foam. He carefully removed the device and set it on the table next to the case. It wasn't so much a rifle as it looked like a bazooka, with a padded stock designed to rest on top of the shoulders and long, plastic cylinder for a barrel. It clearly didn't shoot traditional bullets, and Cal could only guess at its purpose.
Radio waves?
Jonathan unfolded an LCD screen from the rifle and brought it to life with the flip of a switch.
"This, lady and gentlemen," he said with his deep and sonorous voice, "is a Russian-made, electronic warfare device. I'll be calling it the EWD for lack of a better description. Drone warfare has changed the modern battlefield, and countermeasures have evolved to jam their signals.
"This EWD is something different, though. It's more powerful in every way. Not only can it jam a drone's GPS and communications, but it can also target much larger vehicles and at a much longer range."
"What are we talking here?" Lilith asked.
"Ships and boats near the coastline," Jonathan mused. "Tanks. Helicopters. Maybe low-speed jets flying at low altitude. It can jam communications, radar, and even trick navigation systems to put a vehicle off course. The LCD on the side has a menu select with multiple language options, Russian as default. Funnily, there’s no English option."
Lilith leaned forward. "Could you translate?"
"No, but why do you think I keep Niles around?"
Niles beamed.
Jonathan patted the shoulder stock. "This houses the battery, but it won't last long nor have much of a range until you connect it back to the case."
He peeled back the foam lining in the black case to reveal what looked like a bank of batteries.
"Connect it here and you could really reach out and touch faith, as they say."
Lilith crossed her arms and spoke for the first time. "With a clear line of sight, we're talking about targets miles away."
"Correct," said Jonathan. "There's integrated target tracking and a mount up front, here, to attach a tripod or bipod for stability. Sold separately, I presume."
The table fell quiet until Cal said it out loud.
"The Russians are smuggling these into Nice. Jesus, Frank. We weren't just spying on local criminals. They're black-market arms dealers for terrorists."
Frank locked eyes with him and nodded.
"Marat Solonik," Frank said, spitting each syllable.
Cal added, "And Hoodie, Goggles, and Zebra."
"So, how is it," Niles chimed in with his Cockney accent, "that our wannabe art dealer is getting hold of such sophisticated machinery? I get that the Russian military supply chain has more holes than a wheel of Swiss, but it's not like they're handing these out on the corner."
"Right," Lilith affirmed. She pulled out a tablet computer from under the table and activated the screen with her finger. "I reached out to some European contacts and did some more digging."
"—You didn't bother calling Langley?" Frank interrupted with a sly smile.
Lilith scrunched her face with offence.
Cal didn't know much about spook shit, but he knew Langley was the headquarters for the CIA.
Lilith continued by flicking through several pictures as she talked, showing Marat Solonik against different backdrops and at different ages.
"I confirmed everything Cal's new girlfriend shared with you earlier. Marat Solonik is a Russian gangster who made it big with the usual mix of violence and extortion before moving up to international smuggling. He imported narcotics into Russia and exported black market fuel and Russian military gear. We can assume the EWD is here with us due to similar corruption."
She put the tablet down on the table with the skinny Russian's face staring up at them.
"He has family ties to the Russian-speaking diaspora in Estonia, and that seemed to be his business gateway into Europe. Now he's in Nice, which connects the Black Sea and North Africa via the Mediterranean."
"The beaches are nice, too," said Frank.
Lilith ignored the quip and looked up at Cal pacing the edge of the dining room.
"Cal, what Eeva told you is true: her brother was a pilot in the Estonian Defense Force, and he was shot down over Russian territory not long after the war in Ukraine kicked off. Their internal assessment is that the helicopter had its GPS spoofed so Eeva's brother was tricked into crossing the border, where the Russians shot him down."
Cal felt his brow furrow before he could control it. That night on the Ferris wheel with Eeva . . . he could feel puzzle pieces fitting together, but the picture was still unclear.
Lilith continued, "At the time, the Russian military had stronger, stationary EW weapons at their disposal, but they've been experimenting and miniaturizing, and I think this EWD is the result. I don't think it's a coincidence that Eeva's brother was killed via GPS spoofing and here we are looking at a Russian device that could do exactly that."
Cal tried to solve the puzzle, like he was setting the batting order and sorting his outfielders before a game.
"Why would she be secretly seeing a Russian when she blames them for killing her brother?" he asked. "And one peddling a similar technology to what killed him? That can't be a coincidence."
"What did you get out of her since yesterday?" Lilith asked.
"Nothing since this morning. She's pulled back—or maybe she's trying to spare me. She said she's up to something and would get back to me, maybe, but it felt like a goodbye."
He checked his phone for any new messages.
Nothing.
"I'm sorry you got sucked into this, Cal," Lilith said. "You were supposed to be enjoying your retirement," she shot a sideways glance at Frank, "but it looks like you got caught up in the FFE."
Cal was confused.
"The Frank Fumagalli Effect," she clarified with a sarcastic smile. "It's a localized weather phenomenon and—"
"Hey!" Frank protested.
Cal laughed. "I always called them the Frank Games, but—yeah—I got caught in the storm. Looking back at it all, though . . . Frank?"
Frank raised his eyebrows.
"It was all my choice. I wanted this. Hell, maybe I needed it. We're good."
Frank nodded in satisfaction.
Lilith jumped in.
"It warms my heart to see your bromance intact—even if you both stepped in some real shit that I had to fly across an ocean to clean up."
She continued before Frank could protest again.
"Regardless, I may have some more useful information about our bad actor, Marat Solonik. While our guy chose the path of organized crime, his brother joined the Russian army at a young age. While Marat, was expanding his smuggling empire, his brother worked his way up to the rank of colonel and specialized in—"
"—signals and electronic warfare," Frank finished for her.
Lilith confirmed with a satisfied nod, and started swiping again across the screen, searching.
"Here he is," Lilith said and began summarizing information from her screen. "Valeri Solonik, older brother to Marat. Signals and EW expert. Early advocate for integrating AI within Russian military systems—still unreliable from what I've seen. Field experience in both Chechnya and Syria, so double-fuck him, and—here we go—stationed with the Leningrad Military District along the Estonian border the same time Eeva's brother was sent off-course with GPS spoofing. Months later, Valeri Solonik was then transferred to the Southern Military District, which covers—"
"Ukraine," Frank finished for her again.
Now Jonathan chimed in, saying, "Where his expertise in signals and electronic countermeasures helped the Russians counter Ukrainian innovations in drone warfare."
"Bloody fucking Russians," Niles said and shook his head.
Cal tried to make sense of it all.
"Which brings me to the real reason I'm here, gentlemen," Lilith said. "Frank? You remember we had a conversation awhile back about a problem of my own."
"Black Fish."
Cal had no clue what they were talking about, and it looked like neither Niles nor Jonathan did either.
"My apologies, gentlemen, but that story is classified. It does, however, connect to what is happening here in Nice."
Then she flipped closed the EWD's case and revealed the stenciled logo that was apparently Marat's trademark: a killer whale in white paint against the black background of the case.
The table was silent until Frank broke it with a curse.
"Mother of fuck," he said.
"An orca," said Jonathan, pointing to the logo. "Certain indigenous tribes of the north call it a blackfish."
"Kosatka," Cal whispered and all eyes fell on him. He shrugged. "Eeva once told me it meant killer whale in Russian. I thought half of you spoke it?"
"Oceanic biology wasn't on the study guide," Frank mumbled.
Lilith flicked through more images on her tablet.
"It all ties back to the colonel brother, Valeri Solonik . . . except that he was killed in Ukraine a year ago. The master of electronic warfare was taken out by a three-hundred-dollar kamikaze drone courtesy of Ukraine's finest virtual pilots."
She plopped her tablet on the table for all to see and the screen showed an image of an old man in a drab green uniform looking up at a camera in confusion, captured—no doubt—by the drone that killed him. His face looked similar to Marat Solonik, like brothers, except—where Marat was rail-thin—Valeri had puffy cheeks and a thick, double chin.
Valeri Solonik was noticeably obese.
Cal and Frank met each other's gaze and said simultaneously: "The fat man on the boat."
Lilith asked what they meant, and Frank laughed cynically.
"Baby, your dead man ain't dead, and that's fucking great news for your operation Blackfish. It means we get to take him down."
"Woah, Frank!" Lilith said and raised her palms. "Slow down. We're not taking anyone down. If what you say is true, I'm getting on the horn to D.C. and sending this up the ladder. We can get surveillance on him and—"
"EEVA!" Cal said sharply and then froze. "She—"
He silenced himself and looked into the distance as his mind put everything in place. It all made sense now: Eeva's grief, her interest in Marat Solonik and the Kosatka, her double-life and brunette wig, and a perverse sense of relief washed through him.
Just moments before a wave of terror washed it all away.
"I gotta stop her!" he announced.
"Cal?" Lilith asked, her face scrunched in confusion and concern.
"Spit it out, chap! Who? What?" said Niles.
Frank looked at him like he'd just figured it out, too.
"Eeva! I've got to stop her," he said and then abandoned the table for the salon mantle where he kept his wallet and keys. Pictures of Molly and MJ looked up at him. Out of habit, Cal straightened the framed postcard from Grandpa Mac's World War II adventure in 1940's Nice. Promises made, promises kept was the handwritten refrain on the back. Then his keys were in hand, and he was out the apartment door, ignoring the echoes of confusion behind him.
There was no time to explain, and he didn't want anyone to stop him.
When he reached the elevator door, Frank was at his shoulder.
"What are we doing, Sundance?"
"Frank! I figured it out. Eeva. She's not sleeping with Marat Solonik, she's using him."
"Think it through, Cal. She's using him for what?"
Cal turned to Frank and said, "—to get to the fat man. Frank, she's not working with the Russians . . . she's going to kill them."