The First Order

by Jeff Abbott

  “Of course.” Then she was silent for four long beats. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Jimmy?”

  “No, why?”

  “Just something in your voice.”

  “Sam’s story about his brother…it’s heartbreaking, darling. I know he and I have had our differences, but we can’t let him do this alone.”

  “Jimmy, I’m glad you see it that way,” she said in a rush, “and I’m so glad we can help him. Thank you.”

  “Of course. I love you and I’ll call you later.”

  “I love you, too,” she said. He hung up.

  Something like guilt swam around his heart and he pushed it away, concentrating on the drive, turning the Bach concertos on the radio up louder, thinking through his plan.

  He reached Vienna. He headed for the city’s eastern side. He stopped at an apartment that he had rented under a false name. He went inside and shut the door. Food first, then a phone call to Razur to plan the grand deception. He was searching in the refrigerator for a snack when the door opened and three men rushed in. He saw the face of one, a thick-chested man he knew, and he thought: No. No. Not now.

  “Let’s not have a scene, Lord James,” the man said, in a soft Scottish accent. “Makes it harder on you and everybody.”

  You can just bluff your way through this, Jimmy thought. He offered a wry smile. “Have you taken leave of your senses? I’m on a mission.”

  “It does not work that way today, Lord James,” the Scotsman said. “You are hereby detained under the orders of the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service. Keep your hands up, don’t resist, or I have official permission to shoot you in the leg.”

  “Just the leg?” Jimmy said.

  “Yes, my lord, nowhere else. Please don’t make me.” So polite. So formal. It told Jimmy how bad the situation was. Because his colleagues in the service never used his title.

  So, with a smile of surrender, Jimmy obeyed, his heart crashing in his chest. He thought he was ending the life Sam Capra knew; instead his own was ending. The men cuffed him and dragged him into a chair and they called their bosses back in London. At the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI-6, Britain’s spies.

  “What am I charged with, may I ask?” Jimmy asked.

  “Formal charges will depend on how well you cooperate, sir.” The Scotsman tilted his head. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do about your extracurricular activities. You’re supposed to spy for Her Majesty. No one else.”

  Jimmy’s skin went cold. And with his life as he knew it dissolving before his eyes, all Jimmy could think of was Mila. What would they do to Mila?

  7

  London

  AFTER JIMMY’S CALL, Mila pondered the unusual fact that her husband wanted to help Sam Capra. Odd. Maybe he was softening toward Sam. She might as well drive to Oxford and set up the safe house. The home in Oxford had been in Jimmy’s family for the past few years, last owned by a distant cousin who had died. So he said. Dead, like the rest of Jimmy’s family. She packed a bag, and headed to the parking garage where she kept her Audi.

  She left a window cracked in the car as she drove. The cool evening breeze in London felt wonderful. She loved London and felt a dizzy happiness that she was here and not in the small town in Moldova, where she had been raised. She loved it as well, but London was opportunity and life and energy. It was home.

  Sam. She had helped him save his child, and now she could help him save his brother. Life was odd. How, she thought, unlikely it was that the schoolteacher from rural Moldova and the boy who wandered the world with his relief-worker parents, both turned intelligence operatives, could have become such friends and allies.

  She decided to give Sam a call when she got to Oxford, an hour and a half away. She didn’t notice the car passing her and staying ahead of her on the M4, and she could not know about the second car a kilometer back, tracking her own car’s movement on a tablet computer’s screen.

  Five minutes after she walked through the front door of the Oxford house, she was making chamomile tea when two armed men burst through the kitchen door.

  The first man through the door had his gun leveled at her. “Freeze!” he said. But she ran out of the kitchen into the den to give herself cover, grabbed the heavy crystal ashtray Jimmy kept on the side table by his favorite chair, and threw it, baseball hard, at the first man’s head as he gave chase. He dodged, the gun’s aim dropping, and she kicked him in the face. He went down, cursing in anger and surprise, and she ran down the hallway toward the purse she’d tossed on the bed.

  The second man caught her by the shoulder and yanked her sideways, dragging her back toward the kitchen.

  Unhesitatingly, she rammed her head into his nose as he tried to pinion her arms. He staggered back, nose bloodied, and she tried to kick out his knee. She missed, but broke free of his grip. She bolted into the bedroom, threw herself onto the bed, and raised the whole purse toward her pursuer because there was no time to pull the gun she kept inside free. She aimed as he charged at her, calculating for the interference of the leather in the trajectory, and fired. He took the bullet in the chest and kept coming down the hallway.

  Vest, she thought, and as she fired again he landed on her, two hundred pounds of muscle. The air rushed out of her. He picked her up and threw her into the wall. Her ribs screamed.

  “Stop resisting, Mrs. Court,” he said. “We don’t wish to hurt you.”

  She aimed a fist at his throat. He blocked it and said, “I regret this,” and slammed a fist down into her temple. Colors exploded. He put his big knee in the small of her back. He snapped plastic cuffs on her and said, “Behave like a professional, please, Mrs. Court, and don’t make me hit you again,” and she went still. The way he said her name was mocking.

  The other man came in, his eye squinted shut where she’d kicked him. “She shot at you?”

  “She hit the vest.” Both had English accents.

  “Well.” The man she’d kicked leaned down close to her. “You’ll regret that, you will.”

  “It was self-defense.” She tried to twist to look at them and couldn’t.

  “Secure the rest of the house,” the man with his knee in her back said.

  The other man vanished. She heard footsteps upstairs, him checking. “Clear!’

  The man she’d shot at said, “The house is secure, ma’am.” Then he listened to his earpiece. “Yes, ma’am.” He searched Mila to make sure she had no further weapons or phones on her. He was respectful, not rough. He picked up Mila as though she weighed next to nothing and carried her upstairs to one of the two guest bedrooms. He opened the closet door. Gently he set her down on the floor.

  “You wait here for just a bit, Mrs. Court, and then we’ll have a very nice chat.” He leveled a look at her, opened his shirt, and picked the impacted bullet off the vest. He gave her an oddly kind smile. “Good try, that was. But life’s about to change for you, so I’d advise you to cooperate.”

  He closed the closet door on her.

  Who were they? If they wanted her dead, they’d just shoot her, yes? So they were what? Police? One of the intelligence services?

  She could hear their voices, beginning to search the house first. They want to be armed with information. Then they’ll question you.

  She wondered if Jimmy would make a deal for her. Or just walk away from her, forever. It was unsettling to not be certain what your husband would do. But this wasn’t a normal life they had chosen.

  She put her head on her knees and listened to the people searching the safe house, listened to the slow dismantling of her life.

  Whoever they were—the Round Table was over. And she had no way to warn Jimmy or Sam or anyone else who had worked for them.

  8

  Brooklyn

  NIGHT AND DAY had ceased to mean much for Judge. His mind was full, churning, dissecting, and thinking about the research amassed by Marianne and her team and his own findings. He’d read it all three times, then connec
ted the laptop to his printer and began to cover his bedroom wall with photos and articles.

  He was retraining his ear. His Russian was a bit rusty. On his laptop played Moscow’s Radio Russia, streaming news and talk shows via the Internet; on his table and in his refrigerator was leftover Russian food—pierogi, Georgian lamb soup, herring and potatoes—from a restaurant in Brighton Beach. It was a fifteen-minute taxi ride to Brighton Beach, but he’d been eating all his meals in restaurants there, eavesdropping on the conversations in the mother tongue in one of the largest enclaves of Russian immigrants. He’d spent the morning reading Russian language blogs and tonight he’d watch Russian movies, pirated on the web.

  You had to immerse yourself in the story you were going to build.

  Judge had printed out Marianne’s analysis of the circle surrounding this particular Caesar. Caesar, czar. The words were so close, and with good reason. The only people who could kill Julius Caesar were those closest to him. Firebird, to be useful, must be one of that inner circle.

  There were two key oligarchs who had stayed close to Dmitri after he rose to the presidency. One leaned toward the West; the other was much more hostile. All the others seemed to line up behind one of these two, so Judge decided to focus on them.

  The lead pro-Western oligarch was Yuri Kirov, who ran Zvezda, one of the major oil companies in Russia. Like both the Morozov brothers, he was ex-KGB. Fifty-six, worth twelve billion. Widowed and had not remarried, with a daughter, Katya. Yuri had the look of a former boxer, thickly muscled, with a granite face that could take a punch; in his photos he gave the impression of a rough-and-tumble, unpolished man. He ran Russia’s oil concerns with what one business magazine profile called “street cunning.” For a man who controlled much of the world’s energy resources, he kept a low profile. Now and then he would assent to an interview with a Western journalist, rare among the inner circle. He sometimes publicly disagreed with Morozov, something no other oligarch did, but the Russian press pointed to this as openness in Russian society. Western commentators thought it was a pose.

  His daughter, Katya, was in her twenties and Judge had found several pictures of her in the Western press, at movie premieres in Hollywood or London, often on the arm of a handsome young actor or athlete. One photo caption called her “Russia’s Sweetheart,” apparently for her prominence on the celebrity photo pages. Kirov wanted to sell oil to the outside world, especially the United States, China, and Europe—Katya enjoyed being splashed on the pages of celebrity magazines. The Kirovs’ interest in the West seemed pragmatic. Judge stuck a picture of him on the Western side of the circle, with Morozov at the center. He put a picture of Katya next to him, to the side.

  Now for the side that favored a Russia that was less engaged with the West, hungering for a return to its former imperial glory.

  Judge taped up the picture of the other key oligarch, Boris Varro. He ran one of Russia’s largest banking networks and had used that power to acquire a majority interest in a huge natural gas enterprise. He was the most unlikely member of the circle. His mother had been Russian, his father Cuban, a high-ranking member of Fidel Castro’s Dirección de Inteligencia, with many friends inside the KGB. His parents had made sure their son Boris was born in Moscow, not Havana, and that he had Russian citizenship. He was also ex-KGB. Varro was an expansive, highly social man, famed for his elaborate parties. Handsome still, with a crown of silver hair. He worked hard, one pundit noted, to be accepted as Russian. Varro, Judge guessed, had figured out that if he was going to ally with a parental homeland, Russia offered a brighter future than Cuba. He had served as a KGB operative in Latin and South America, given his fluent Spanish. He was fifty and worth nine billion. The joke was that he would soon return to his father’s homeland and buy Cuba outright. He was, ethnically, the closest thing to an outsider in the circle. He married a Russian opera singer, Maria, and had two sons, Stefan and Anton. Anton was dead; he had gone missing six years ago on a trip to Dushanbe, Tajikistan. He had been sent there as a Russian envoy…by Dmitri Morozov, who was then the president’s brother. A ransom was demanded, and paid, but Anton Varro was never found. A crime lord in Dushanbe was soon gunned down in the street, and rumor had it that justice had been paid.

  His surviving son, Stefan, was his father’s protégé and was often photographed with Morozov at social functions or with Katya Kirova when she was in Moscow. He was handsome like his father, but where there was a liveliness in Boris’s eyes, Stefan’s looked cold, calculating. Little was written about him in the Western press. And he had access to his father’s money. People who had been problems for Stefan and his father had ended up dead or had disappeared.

  Was this about revenge or misplaced blame? Morozov hadn’t killed Anton Varro. And Morozov protected the Varro family. The journalists in Russia who had dug into Varro’s past were either dead or dissuaded. One had been arrested for nine months, charged with financial malfeasance, a common tactic for those who peered into the past too deeply. Varro was quick to label dissidents as traitors.

  But…Judge believed Firebird was most likely either Varro or Kirov. They were the two most powerful—the others followed in their trail. And because of their power, they were Morozov’s rivals.

  And do they know what you’ve done for them already? He wondered. Do they know you’ve stood in the shadows for them? Do they know you exist?

  There was one additional picture, and he was unsure where it belonged on his chart. He printed it out from the files and stared at it. She was a striking woman, with a strong, intelligent face, eyes of piercing blue, beautiful red hair.

  Irina Belinskaya. She had been termed—by one reporter who later was shot dead in a Moscow elevator—the most dangerous woman in Russia. He read a profile of her from a London paper. She was former high-level GRU, Russian military intelligence, special-forces trained. She owned a private security firm that counted several families in the inner circle as their most important clients. Her husband, Sergei, had been a longtime right hand and protector of the Morozovs, killed a few years ago in a car bombing in Moscow. His murder was blamed on Chechen separatists. Popular rumor asserted a bloody vengeance: that Irina Belinskaya had personally hunted down and assassinated the men responsible for her husband’s death—and their families. She had done nothing to dissuade the rumors and blithely told this London paper she had no comment. She had used that steely reputation to build her business, to win over the inner circle, who might never have entrusted their safety to her otherwise.

  She was their protector. She ran security. There would be, of course, government security for President Morozov, but Irina Belinskaya protected the billionaire inner circle. Her operatives were the highest paid in Russia; the competition for their jobs was fierce.

  He looked at Irina’s picture, but he saw Sergei’s face. Laughing in the mountain moonlight. Handing him his life. Giving him a future.

  And now, giving him a way inside the inner circle.

  He sat and he studied the pictures on the wall. Thought over what he had read. What he already knew. He could trade on his past six years to find a path inside the circle. He only had to get close enough to kill, and then get out. To be part of the group, for a moment, then vanish. All for twenty million dollars.

  He called Mrs. Claybourne. “I’m leaving New York. You won’t see me again.”

  “I understand. Good luck. We won’t talk again until it’s done,” Mrs. Claybourne said.

  He left the pictures up on the wall. They didn’t matter anymore and if he died perhaps they would be a tantalizing clue to the investigators. Who had this man been? I’ve been whoever I wanted to be. Whoever I needed to be. But once, he’d had one name, and he’d had a bit of ego, of self-regard, and for some reason he didn’t want to tear the pictures down. And perhaps, if Firebird turned on him the way he had on Marianne, then this would be a smoking gun. A clear indicator that Morozov’s killer was backed by either Kirov or Varro.

  The map to killing Morozov was in
his head. He packed his bag, tidied up the apartment, and walked out the door. He had never felt so alive in his life.

  9

  Oxford, UK

  WHEN THE MAN she’d shot at finally brought Mila downstairs, the busted door was already repaired. No sign there had been a fight. An older woman sat at the dining room table. The bullet man pushed Mila into a chair. The other man—with a black eye from her kick—went and sat by the woman. The curtains were closed. She realized she didn’t know whether it was day or night outside now.

  The woman—fortyish, plain-faced, elegant in her movements—watched her with a stern gaze. Mila had taught school once, a lifetime ago, and she knew the stare. She’d used it herself.

  The woman put Mila’s cell phone on the desk.

  “You’re probably thinking it’s best you don’t say anything,” the woman said. “I’m here to tell you that now is the time to talk.”

  Mila watched her.

  “It’s just so awkward for us, dear, when it’s one of our own and not a grubby little hacker or a hireling or a religious extremist. Those we know how to deal with. You and James, though, you’re a challenge.”

  Mila frowned.

  “We don’t really have time for the usual dance,” the woman said. “I’d lay out the evidence, you’d get a solicitor in love with the press, we’d say we couldn’t comment, and then the press would waste gallons of ink. Much of it would smear us. Amazing how an organization can be blamed for the shortcomings of an individual. It’s grossly unfair. So that’s not what is going to happen here.”