That Time in Moscow Read online

  That Time in Moscow

  A Wolfgang Pierce Novella

  Logan Ryles

  Contents

  Also by Logan Ryles

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Ready for more?

  About the Author

  Also by Logan Ryles

  End Page

  Copyright © 2021 by Logan Ryles. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  THAT TIME IN MOSCOW is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Control Number:

  Published by Ryker Morgan Publishing.

  Cover design by German Creative.

  Also by Logan Ryles

  The Wolfgang Pierce Novella Series

  Prequel: That Time in Appalachia (coming soon)

  Book 1: That Time in Paris

  Book 2: That Time in Cairo

  Book 3: That Time in Moscow

  Book 4: That Time in Rio (coming May 21)

  Book 5: That Time in Tokyo (coming June 4)

  Book 6: That Time in Sydney (coming June 18)

  The Reed Montgomery Thriller Series

  Prequel: Sandbox, a short story (read for free at LoganRyles.com)

  Book 1: Overwatch

  Book 2: Hunt to Kill

  Book 3: Total War

  Book 4: Smoke & Mirrors

  Book 5: Survivor

  Book 6: Death Cycle (coming soon)

  Book 7: Sundown (coming soon)

  Visit LoganRyles.com to receive a free copy of Sandbox.

  The Wolfgang Pierce Novella Series is dedicated to:

  Abby and Naomi, my original super fans, and two of the coolest people I know.

  Thanks for keeping me inspired.

  “I would wake up in Moscow…my heart beating fast, feeling bitter and helpless.”

  - Alfred Schnittke

  1

  November, 2011

  The inside of the dealership smelled like the interior of a country club—or, at least what Wolfgang imagined a country club smelled like. Truth be told, he’d never set foot inside a club of any sort, or even a restaurant fancier than a Longhorn Steakhouse.

  But Elite Motorcars of Kansas City had that ambiance—that sort of low-light, vaguely smoky, even-if-nobody-was-smoking vibe that brought to mind images of men in suits sitting around a poker table and swapping jokes about compound interest while deciding the fate of the world. It was the kind of place where Wolfgang expected to be offered a snifter of bourbon, not a bottle of water. The kind of place that he never in his wildest childhood memories imagined he would set foot, let alone set foot with a wad of cash in his pocket the thickness of a Bible.

  “Good afternoon, sir.”

  Shoes snapped against the polished tile floor to his left as Wolfgang glanced around the glistening showroom at an array of expensive cars—Maseratis, Mercedes, Jaguars, Land Rovers, and Porsches. He indulged in a boyish grin and turned to the approaching salesman.

  “Hey, there. I’d like to buy a car.”

  The salesman—maybe he called himself an automotive concierge—wore a suit that cost ten times the value of Wolfgang’s entire wardrobe. Pinstriped, with an understated tie, and shoes with leather soles. The man was tall, bald, and carried himself with the attitude of somebody who was accustomed to addressing people by their last names and was comfortable doing so. He wore narrow glasses with metal frames and squinted at Wolfgang with a gaze that was both pitying and condescending, all at once.

  “You’d like to buy a car . . .” the man said, then stared at Wolfgang’s feet.

  Wolfgang nodded, then glanced down to see if there was gum on his shoe. He looked past his washed-out jeans from Walmart to his scuffed sneakers from the sneaker warehouse in Chicago—buy two pairs, get a third pair free.

  Wolfgang looked up and nodded. “Yeah, a car. I was thinking a two-door, maybe a convertible.”

  “A convertible.” The man said the word as if it were an ancient racial slur he was only semi-familiar with but still offended by. “You mean a cabriolet?”

  Wolfgang shrugged, looking back at the cars. His eye was drawn to a sleek coupe in bright yellow. It was a Mercedes coupe, small and agile-looking, with a retractable hard-top. “Sure, whatever.”

  The salesman sighed, at once a patient and exhausted sound. “I’m not sure we have the sort of motorcar you’re looking for, young man. I feel compelled to say that the vehicles we stock are in the moderate to significant price bracket.”

  Wolfgang frowned. “Huh?”

  Again the salesman stared at his shoes. Again Wolfgang checked for gum.

  “Our cars are expensive,” the salesman said, lowering his voice as if he were divulging nuclear launch codes.

  “Oh, yeah.” Wolfgang dug the stack of hundreds from his pocket and ran his thumb over the end, then tossed it to the salesman. “I’m not sure if that’s a moderate or a significant amount. What do you think?”

  The salesman’s eyes bulged as he caught the wad. He blinked, ran his own thumb over the end of the wad, then looked up with a smile bright enough to overload a solar panel. “I don’t believe I caught your name.”

  Wolfgang offered his hand. “Wolfgang Pierce. Tell me about the yellow one.”

  Ten minutes later, Wolfgang sat in the plush leather seat of the coupe and hit the start button as Stanley—his name was actually Stanley—slid in beside him, adjusting his glasses and talking faster than an auctioneer on crack.

  “Brand new from Mercedes, this is the 2012 SLK55 AMG, featuring a special-order paint finish that the Germans call Streetfighter Yellow. I have to tell you, Mr. Pierce, it’s an exquisite machine. Truly a work of art. Crafted leather interior, a deluxe entertainment system, and suspension designed to make every trip a path carved through the clouds.”

  Wolfgang was barely listening as the car rumbled to life and the dashboard lit up with enough lights to shame a Christmas tree. He grinned, feeling the rumble of the coupe shooting up his spine. Everything around him felt premium. His mind flashed back to the beat-up pickup trucks and rusted-out sedans of his childhood, many of which were lucky to run at all.

  Look at me now.

  Stanley held out a pair of gloves, shooting Wolfgang that solar-flare smile again. “You’ll want these.”

  “For what?”

  Stanley blushed, then lowered his voice again. “Driving gloves, Mr. Pierce. All true enthusiasts wear them.”

  Wolfgang waved his hand as he steered the car through the open showroom door and into the parking lot. “I’m new to cars, Stanley. Not life.”

  He hit the button to lower the top, and the Mercedes’s roof retracted into the trunk with a low whine, allowing bright sun and gentle wind to stream into the car. It felt amazing.

  Stanley dropped the gloves into his lap with a dull sniff, then motioned toward the street.

  “You’ll want to take it onto the freeway, Mr. Pierce. The quality of the ride is truly —”

  “Is it fast?”

  Stanley frowned. “Mr. Pierce, this is a Mercedes. The nuance of the driving experience cannot be simplified to a word
as limited as fast. To appreciate a car like this, you really—”

  Wolfgang hit the gas. The nose of the car bucked upward as the engine roared and the back wheels spun. A moment later, they rocketed out of the parking lot in a wild slide, tires screaming and the engine throbbing. Wolfgang felt equal parts adrenaline and fear rush through his system as the tires grabbed and rocketed them onto the multi-lane street that faced the dealership. Horns blared, and cars swerved past. Stanley screamed. Wolfgang clutched the wheel with both hands and broke the turn as the car shifted, then he felt something in the base of his spine like the explosion of gunpowder detonating behind a cannonball. He was pinned to the seat as the nose lifted again and everything around him turned into a slow-motion light show of extrapolated colors.

  Engine noise, tire smoke, and the incessant screaming of the petrified salesman next to him all blended into a glorious crescendo of sensational overload. Wolfgang cut the wheel to the left, sliding through a light as it turned red. A moment later, they were on the freeway, and the speedometer zipped past one hundred. Wind ripped through his hair and Wolfgang threw his head back and shouted, cutting in between cars and trucks as the Mercedes clung to the pavement as though it were on rails. He’d never felt anything quite like it—power, flash, and thrill.

  And Stanley screaming. Wolfgang took them two miles down the freeway, then abruptly swerved off the highway and slid to a stop at a fuel station. The engine wound down and throbbed with glassy-smooth perfection, unstrained by its sudden workout.

  Stanley sat panting in the passenger seat, and Wolfgang ran a hand through his hair. His fingers still trembled with adrenaline overload, but the sensation felt good. It felt like life.

  “I’ll take it!” he said, looking for the first time at Stanley. The salesman sat quaking, his fingers wrapped around the edges of his seat so tight that his knuckles turned white. To his credit, he hadn’t wet himself, but Wolfgang sniffed a couple times just to be sure.

  Stanley brushed the wrinkles out of his suit with two sweaty hands. He adjusted his tie, wiped his glasses, then nodded. “That’s most excellent, Mr. Pierce. I’m so glad you like it. If we can find our way back to the showroom, I’d be delighted to draw up the papers.”

  Wolfgang absentmindedly stroked the smooth leather of the steering wheel. In the back of his mind, he heard a soft, distant voice, and the words came back to him as clear as if they had been spoken the day before. “You’ll go far one day. The world will be yours.”

  Wolfgang blinked, then looked out the window. Stanley rambled on next to him about service packages and premium warranties, but Wolfgang wasn’t listening. He was in another place, at another time, standing barefoot in the kitchen as his mother leaned over the stove, cooking up a box of Hamburger Helper. Her left eye was swollen, almost shut, and her dirty hair hung over a bruised neck. “You’ll get out of here. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll see you out of this hellhole.”

  “Mr. Pierce?”

  Wolfgang realized he’d zoned out as the memory took over. He turned the car back toward the highway, driving gently this time. There was no rush. The phone in his pocket buzzed, and he dug it out. He punched in the passcode as Stanley mumbled something about “complete cellular integration,” and Wolfgang saw a single text message light up the screen from a contact labeled only as E.

  “Gonna have to expedite that paperwork, Stan,” Wolfgang said. “I’ve got to be in Saint Louis by five.”

  After parking the Mercedes in a garage across the street, Wolfgang ascended to the fourteenth floor of the Bank of America Plaza in downtown Saint Louis. The entire fourteenth floor—like most of the building—was vacant, save for the unofficial operational headquarters of Charlie Team, the elite espionage unit that Wolfgang was a member of. Charlie Team was the third operational unit of SPIRE’s field division, and SPIRE—a private corporation specializing in sabotage, procurement, infiltration, retaliation, and entrapment—was America’s elite provider of for-hire espionage services.

  At least, Wolfgang thought so. He joined Charlie Team five months earlier after spending three years as an individual operator running minor corporate sabotage gigs. Since then, Charlie Team had conducted high-stakes operations in Europe and Africa, both of which delivered levels of adrenaline Wolfgang had hitherto only dreamed of, not to mention paychecks that outstripped his lifestyle by an order of magnitude.

  Hence the Mercedes.

  Wolfgang stepped through the office door and was immediately greeted by the acrid odor of cigarette smoke. He wrinkled his nose, glancing around the darkened room, but saw none of his teammates gathered around the table or the marker board on the far wall.

  Then he saw Megan leaning next to the floor-to-ceiling window at the far end of the room, a cigarette smoldering in one hand as she stared out over the Mississippi River. Wolfgang nudged the door shut and shuffled toward her, feeling his heart rate quicken as the sun glimmered off her tanned skin.

  Megan was petite—barely five feet tall—but two missions with her taught Wolfgang that size was no measure of ability. Megan was distant and elusive—a personality shrouded in shadow that, no matter how many times he tried to get to know her, still remained aloof. He’d at first attributed her distance as some manner of arrogance or condescension with the new guy on the team, but there had been flashes now and then of a deeper warmth to her that gave him hope—hope that maybe she’d give him the time of day. Because besides being mysterious and interesting, Megan had the sort of confidence and subtle good looks that made a man stare. Wolfgang was staring now.

  “Nice car,” Megan said before taking a pull of the cigarette.

  Wolfgang frowned. “You saw it?”

  She laughed. “It’s bright yellow, Wolf. Everybody saw it.”

  Wolfgang felt suddenly self-conscious, and he shifted, staring down at his tennis shoes. Still no gum, but the smudges bothered him now—as did the cheap jeans.

  Why didn’t I stop to change? She shouldn’t see me like this . . . not while she looks this good.

  “I don’t know. I guess I liked the color,” he mumbled.

  Megan laughed again, softer this time. Smoke drifted from her mouth, and she waved for him to sit. “Chill, dude. It’s a nice car. I just didn’t take you to be a car guy.”

  Wolfgang sat down, pulling his legs toward his chest and watching as she sucked on the cigarette. He hated the smell of smoke and the stench of sour clothes forever permeated by it. But right then, it didn’t bother him so much.

  Megan caught him staring and gestured toward the pack of cigarettes sitting on the floor next to her.

  Wolfgang shook his head. “No, thanks. I don’t smoke.”

  She turned from the window and leaned back against the wall, taking another pull and staring at him with quiet grey eyes that left him wondering what was happening behind them. The kind of eyes that told you Megan only said about five percent of the things she thought, but that the other ninety-five percent was well worth his time.

  “You don’t smoke,” Megan said. “You don’t drink. You don’t cuss. What’s with you, anyway? Religion?”

  Wolfgang looked away, weighing the questions one at a time. Ever since he’d first met Megan, the day before the Paris job, he’d longed for a time like this—a time when they were alone and could talk. Now that the moment had come, he felt thrown off guard. All his usual charisma and wit fled him quicker than the Mercedes powering onto the freeway, and he felt like a silly little kid.

  “Not religion,” he said, still not looking her way.

  Megan said nothing for a long moment, then grunted. “I get it. I won’t pry.”

  Idiot. You can’t expect her to talk to you if you won’t talk to her.

  “My father was a drunk,” Wolfgang said, looking up. “He beat my mother all the time. He smoked a lot, too. When he was really mad, he’d burn her stomach with the cigarettes.” Wolfgang winced as he spoke, then turned away and stared out the window.

  Fool. You said too muc
h. What the heck is wrong with you?

  Megan said nothing, but when Wolfgang looked back, she stared at him with the cigarette lowered next to her knee. Her eyes were softer now, and when he met her gaze, she didn’t look away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice soft but strong.

  Wolfgang’s cheeks flushed.

  What was I thinking? Now she sees me as a pansy.

  He cleared his throat, feeling his old wit return as he shoveled the memories back into their graves and reburied them with willful denial. “It’s a pretty sweet car,” he said, flashing a grin. “You should take a ride with me. Maybe someplace downtown. Maybe someplace with good food.”

  A smile played at the corner of her mouth. “You never give up, do you?”

  Wolfgang shrugged. “It’s just a meal with a coworker. Can’t object to that, can you?”

  Megan rolled the cigarette between two fingers and cocked her head. “I told you, Wolfgang. I’m not getting involved with anybody on the team. But”—she hesitated, then shrugged—“you know, dinner with a coworker, maybe.”

  A rush of elation overwhelmed Wolfgang as the door swung open and the remaining three members of Charlie Team burst into the room, headed by Edric, the team lead.

  “On your feet, guys!” Edric said, clapping his hands. “We’ve got work to do.”

  2

  Charlie Team gathered around the plastic conference table as Edric assumed his position in front of the whiteboard. He wore a blazer over a T-shirt, and Wolfgang realized it was the first time since joining Charlie Team that his boss wasn’t wearing a cast or a sling over his left arm. During a botched mission in Damascus, Edric had fallen two stories and wrecked his shoulder, elbow, and forearm. It was also that mission that claimed the life of James—Wolfgang’s predecessor and Megan’s former boyfriend. Hence her unwillingness to date a team member.