Bystrykh's bodyguard was the mustached man from the Toyota. Blood spurted from his hip as he lifted himself off the floor, teeth bared in a snarl, bringing his gun at Sokolov.
Sokolov fired the shotgun again. The magnum slug ripped through the snarling face. His body slackened against the banister.
Constantine glanced at the corpse and turned away, cringing. Sokolov gestured upstairs. They sidestepped the body and climbed the staircase.
Sokolov tiptoed to the upper floor. With his finger on the trigger, he pivoted, searching for targets, but there were none.
The brightly-lit bedroom was wide open, overspread with Persian rugs. Sokolov approached the doorway cautiously to see a large four-poster bed, made from oak. The bed's canopy of dense red fabric draped its sides, drawn tightly between the ornate columns, making it impossible to distinguish anything inside. Sokolov's eyes darted from an empty chair, to a mahogany wardrobe, to … a dummy. A torso mannequin dressed in a Red Army tunic, decorated with rows of medals. A forgery of military glory. The meaningless ribbon bars showed a colorful mosaic which included a Soviet Gold Star.
Nobody and nothing else to be found in the bedroom.
Sokolov stepped closer to the curtained bed, Saiga loaded. Constantine stayed behind, covering the rest of the floor.
With the barrel of the shotgun, Sokolov reached for the edge of the drapery.
Constantine shouted, “Gene!”
The wardrobe creaked.
Sokolov spun around to see a gun protruding from a crack in the wardrobe door. The shot banged a split second after Sokolov dodged the line of fire. The bullet hit the wall next to the bed. With all his weight, Sokolov slammed a foot against the hinged door, mashing the hand gripping a Makarov PM pistol. It broke free, dropping to the exotic carpet as a pained cry bellowed from the wardrobe's enclosure. A bare-legged, elderly man wearing a nightshirt came crashing out of it, landing spread-eagled.
In his checkered flannel nightshirt, Vladimir Bystrykh looked pathetic: bald, feeble and undignified, panting as he twisted to a sitting position on the rug, clutching his damaged wrist. But any semblance of pity evaporated at the sight of his vicious, hate-filled stare. When he talked, spittle flew from his mouth.
“You scum, your mother should have killed you in her womb. I shed my blood fighting the Nazis, only for bastards like you to be born! Is this how you're repaying the debt your generation owes me? Traitors! Bandits! Nothing is holy for you. I'm a war veteran! You should be kissing my feet. Instead, like enemy collaborators, you are defiling the home of this country's hero!”
“Oh? I can tell you a story about collaboration,” Constantine said. “When the Germans came, the people welcomed them with flowers. Four million Soviet soldiers surrendered, unwilling to fight for the Communists.”
“How dare you!”
“But soon the people realized that the Nazis weren't going to liberate anyone. Across Russia, the Nazis saw that the Bolsheviks had created the perfect system for sucking the life out of occupied territories, so they kept the model intact. They even preserved the kolkhoz farms. Meanwhile, although most Bolsheviks had fled, some stayed and greeted the Nazis, quickly pledging allegiance to their new rulers. They swapped colors like chameleons. Or should I say, swapped the hammer and sickle for the swastika, the red flag unchanged. The Nazis, in dire need of experienced cadres to govern such immense areas, signed them up without much thought.”
“Be damned!” Bystryth seethed. His liver-spotted face flushed crimson.
“Bystrykh senior, your father,” Constantine continued, “was a small-town communist functionary. He gladly embraced the regime of Stalin's recent ally—Hitler. Thus, he enjoyed even greater power in his office. He was able to screw the Germans any way he wanted. To the SS, he gave a list of all the Jews in his town. The Jews received lead in their skulls, and your daddy earned more trust. To the SD, he gave a list of all the political prisoners, those that the NKVD hadn't had the time to kill. He claimed that those were NKVD agents, even though the opposite was true, as most of them were staunch anti-communists and NKVD-tortured victims. The Nazis shot them without ceremony, finishing the job for the Bolsheviks.”
“I'll kill you for this!” Bystrykh screamed.
“Then the Nazis left, saving their skins from the Bolsheviks. For your old man, it meant business as usual. He continued to rule the town, this time terrorizing the population as the Soviets returned. You should remember that period quite well, in spite of your young age at the time. You were still a child. So you see, there's no way you could have managed to shed your blood in any of those gruesome battles you've memorized.”
Bystrykh panted with rage. The veins in his temples throbbed. He disgorged the most putrid flow of obscenities.
Constantine didn't bat an eyelid. “As such, I believe there is only a single debt to settle between us and yourself. And we're here for payback. You murdered our great-grandfather. You've never been anything more than a maniac who shot innocent captives.”
This time Bystrykh leered. “If I did kill your relative, my memory fails me. I killed so many of those brutes. I did it for fun. And now I'll have the last laugh as I kill you two bastards.”
From the pocket of his nightshirt, Bystrykh snatched a hand grenade and deftly removed the safety pin.
“Either of you can pull the trigger, but in that case you both die.”
Sokolov locked Bystrykh in the sights of the Saiga.
“Last chance. Tell me when and where the next terrorist strike will occur.”
“Like hell I will!”
To his brother, Sokolov said, “Get out, now. Go downstairs.”
Overcoming doubt, Constantine backed away. Before he could exit the bedroom, Bystrykh lunged for his PM pistol on the carpet.
Firing the shotgun, Sokolov blew half of his scalp off.
The grenade slipped from Bystrykh's fingers. An old Soviet F-1 type frag.
Three seconds. That was all they had.
Two seconds.
Sokolov made a dash for it. Together, he and Constantine dived through the doorway and rolled away.
With a booming thunderclap, the hand grenade detonated in a storm of fragments pelting the bedroom.
They stayed down. Ears ringing, Sokolov picked himself up. Constantine got to his feet slowly.
“Are you hit?”
“No, I'm all right,” Constantine said. “You okay?”
“Fine. But that was close.”
Luckily, the grenade fragments had missed them, contained by the bedroom walls.
Constantine glanced in the direction of the blood-splattered room.
“Don't look,” Sokolov warned. “It's not going to be pretty. Bystrykh is dead for sure.”
“It's not about that. There's something else I spied in the wardrobe.”
Looking away from Bystrykh's gory remains, they re-entered the room through whiffs of smoke. They found it strewn with glass shards from the demolished window pane and bits of debris chipped off the battered, shrapnel-peppered furniture.
On a shelf inside the wardrobe, they discovered a cuboid steel container.
It was a fireproof strongbox, designed for the storage and transportation of valuables. About thirty centimeters in each dimension, it had a carry handle and an electronic lock, programmable via a digital keypad.
“This is what Bystrykh was trying to protect,” Constantine said.
“Whatever the safe holds, we don't have the time to open it.” Sokolov grabbed the handle and picked up the strongbox. Weighing at least six or seven kilos, it felt heavy for its size. “Let's take it with us.”
20
IN THE DARK, THEY roughly traced their path back to the Land Rover. Sokolov tensed, anticipating another clash at any moment, but no new guards had shown up. It was a walk through an unlit land of the dead, entire hectares attended only by corpses.
Only when they reached the Wolf did Sokolov notice his own ghastly appearance. It looked like he himself had just ret
urned from hell. His clothes were smeared with grass, mud and blood from neck to toe. He couldn't do much about the jeans but he took off his ski parka. He threw it in the rear of the car over the strongbox, which he'd placed alongside the shotguns.
They crossed the stream again. This time the Wolf charged across the water as Sokolov pressed the accelerator with more confidence. From there, they approached the highway without incident.
By sunup, they had traveled almost two hundred kilometers south of Moscow.
21
PAVEL NETTO HAD NEVER imagined seeing the inside of a cell at Lefortovo prison. The wrong side. Never in his scariest nightmares had he envisioned being jailed in it. And he had hardly pictured himself as a punching bag pummeled by an FSB operative.
All of that had transpired over the previous twenty-four hours. For some of that period, he had endured a savage beating. Plucked from his dreamy world of terabytes and gigabits, he had sunk through multiple stages of pain and misery. He struggled to fathom how such lawlessness could occur in this day and age. Every breath he made sent sharp pain quaking through his body. A cracked rib? He had no idea. He needed a doctor. Demanding one had proved futile, of course. Protests had resulted in more blows. The FSB man had pounded him wordlessly. He hadn't even asked any questions yet.
Netto fought against the nausea induced by the pain and the stench of impurities permeating the stuffy air. He pressed against a grimy wall, shuddering as he sank to the floor of the frigid cell. It wasn't so much of a cell as a stone sepulcher. The pale-green paint inside it had faded and flaked off in patches, rubbed raw by the backs of countless inmates before him. In the cramped space, his legs were numbing.
Abruptly, the slit within the metal door clanged open.
“Good morning!” a guard said with sardonic cheerfulness. “To the exit!”
He led Netto through a drab maze of beige-colored corridors, which converged in the shape of the letter K. Positioned at the intersection was a command post where a group of five or six guards watched a row of computer monitors. Netto thought of his own LCD screen setup at home. Home felt like something on a different planet.
At home, he had read somewhere that, back in the day, the NKVD had shot its numerous victims right here, in the cellars of Lefortovo. He wondered if the FSB still did that. Surely not.
The guard brought him to an investigator's office.
The man waiting for him inside was not the same strong-armer who had beaten him up. In fact, everything about this man appeared different. Stylish. He wore a navy-blue pinstripe suit and brown shoes manufactured from some fancy leather. His hair was slick with gel and his fingers were manicured. That gave Netto a glimmer of hope. Such well-cared-for hands were most likely unaccustomed to punching anyone.
“Please, Pavel, be seated,” the man said.
Netto occupied the single chair across the table.
“What's going on?” he demanded.
“My name is Anton Minski and I'm investigating your case.”
“What case?”
“Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Extremism.”
Netto gaped.
“This is outrageous!”
“I know. That is why, as of now, you are practically a free man.”
“What?” Netto said, confused.
“I'll let you go, provided that you fulfill three conditions. For starters, you will sign this little document.”
Minski handed him a single page of printed text. Netto read it quickly. As he finished, he felt the urge to crumple the paper and throw it into Minski's face.
“It basically says here that I'm agreeing to become your informant!”
“Which you will most certainly do.”
“Sorry, but I have to decline your offer.”
Minski was not amused.
“Don't be so reckless. In the space of merely a few hours, you've been given a taste of how fickle one's fate can be. Under our penitentiary system, your life might alter its course quite drastically. Unless you sign that paper, I will put you back into your cell. But instead of solitary confinement, you'll be whiling away the time in the company of some very violent inmates. Those ruffians will smash your face to pulp, rape you and give you AIDS. After that, an impending prison term will be the least of your worries. How do you like that prospect?”
Netto hesitated. Minski handed him a cheap ballpoint pen.
“If you sign, I'll arrange a court sanction right away. You'll be released on your own recognizance. You'll just have to appear at my office when I summon you. You can walk out of this nasty place today. It's only up to you.”
Netto took the pen from Minski. With his hand shaking, the tip hovered over the page. Finally, he scrawled his signature at the bottom. Then he put the pen aside in disgust.
“Good.” Minski nodded approval and collected both the pen and Netto's cooperation agreement. “Secondly, from now on you're going to relay any information you will obtain on Sokolov or his brother. Specifically, I must receive their whereabouts.”
Minski produced a cell phone and gave it to Netto. An ancient clamshell model, maybe the cheapest no-name handset that Minski had managed to find.
“My number is in the address book. You may contact me at any time. Also, call your friend Zubov to pick you up from here. Stay close to him. Of course, if Zubov is up to something, I must be the first to know. Whatever he or anyone in your EMERCOM team is scheming. Got it?”
Netto answered through gritted teeth. “Yes, boss.”
“Wonderful. And one more thing. As soon as you get in touch with the Sokolovs, make sure you tell them that I've kept my end of the bargain.”
22
FSB DIRECTOR FROLOV HAD ordered a complete media blackout on the shooting in Usovo. The news would have to break in due course, but for now, he wanted the scene to be quiet. He wanted to inspect it himself.
His second visit to Bystrykh's dacha in as many days made his disposition even more dour. A sullen, misty sky seemed to reflect the dark mood that morning.
At the main entrance to Dacha Number Three, his limo drove past heavy security cordons sealing the area. The limo parked in front of the house and Frolov climbed out. The general's residence was teeming with FSB personnel. Seeing their Director, the armor-clad, helmeted FSB operatives stood rigidly at attention. The senior FSB officer in charge presented himself, a bald, plump man whose name Frolov didn't care to remember. The plainclothes investigator gave Frolov a tour of the crime scene.
The forensics team had already finished its job and the corpses had been taken to the morgue. A plentiful number of corpses, judging by the lawn outside the guest cabin. The soil had soaked up a lot of blood, which had dried in reddish-brown splotches on the grass.
“One guy hemorrhaged badly,” the investigator commented. “A major stab wound. Another one died bleeding from penetrative ballistic trauma, and the third guard got shot dead inside the cabin. I have to say the killer or killers were pretty ruthless.”
“More than a single person?”
“From my experience, it's unlikely that a lone attacker did it. We've found two discarded submachine guns out there in the woods. Magazines spent, empty cartridges all over the place. No fingerprints. But the guards had also been fired at with shotguns. I assume that someone distracted them, shooting from behind the trees, while other assailants approached the cabin.”
“What else have you got?”
“Not much at present. A couple of expended flares. The attack came from the riverside, as evidenced by tire marks on the beach. The padlock's broken. We'll review the camera footage and hopefully identify the perpetrators. I mean, we will certainly identify them, Comrade Director.”
“Flares?”
“Yes, Saveliy Ignatievich. Emergency flares.”
Frolov growled a curse.
He proceeded inside the house. In the living room where he and Bystrykh had been drinking vodka the previous morning, blood covered the floor in ugly stains. He
ascended the staircase and stormed into Bystrykh's bedroom.
“Comrade Director!” the investigator said, keeping up. “Saveliy Ignatievich, it's unreasonable for you to enter! There are bits of the General still smudged on the walls.”
“I don't give a damn.”
The room did present a repugnant sight, despite the body's removal. On the surfaces around the scorched carpet, spread a pattern of speckled gore and tissue. Ignoring it, Frolov opened the wardrobe.
The strongbox was missing.
Furiously, he clenched his jaw and strode back outside.
He didn't doubt that the attack had been carried out by the Sokolovs. It was absolutely audacious. In a way, he blamed himself for it. Despite his perpetual mantra of never underestimating the enemy, he had done exactly that. He had never expected the hunted to become the hunters. Not for long, though, as they had gone back into hiding. Bystrykh's death had dealt a heavy blow to Frolov's plans, but the dent could be mended. The Sokolovs, however, had dug their own grave. Now Frolov pondered how best to terminate them. Lingering on the subject of graves, his mind turned to Bystrykh's funeral.
General Bystrykh was—had been—a prominent public figure, the nation's icon. If anything, his death provided excellent media opportunities. Not only would his televised funeral attract a mass audience, it would also stir indignation at his killers. Sokolov would become the most loathed household name in the country for years to come. The label of Wahhabi terrorists would have to be amended to neo-Nazis, or better yet, combined to include both. Islamic fascists. That had a nice ring to it.
His musings gave way to the most pressing matter at hand. The Sokolov bandits had stolen Bystrykh's part of the Red List. He had every reason to believe they had also obtained Chagin's part, transferred to them by Nina Lanskaya.
The Red List served as a system of checks and balances at the top of their hierarchy. United by one goal, the four powerful wise men—Bystrykh, Chagin, Dedura and himself—had devised a way to ensure that their individual ambitions never rose above the collective cause. All of them shared a past bound by blood, their current success born from the victory of the Revolution. If one of the four wavered on the road to their ultimate triumph, the others would keep the renegade in check or destroy him.
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