The First Order

by Jeff Abbott

  From his balcony, Sam watched her leave. He’d picked up a newspaper from the stand downstairs and now he scanned its headlines. Most of the news was about the protest at the Russian yacht last night, but there was also mention that an American had been shot in Nassau. Wounded. It did not give his name or condition.

  Sam packed his bag and walked back to the Svetlana. It would be sailing out into the Atlantic in less than thirty minutes.

  41

  Varro Jet, Nassau Airport

  THE BELINSKY GLOBAL team searched Judge more thoroughly than he was searched on a commercial flight. It was a good thing he’d dumped his gun after shooting Seaforth. He only had the one bag. The searchers even checked the seams of the suitcase. The two men pawed through his toiletries: the eyedrops and the deodorant and the toothpaste. He didn’t twitch, didn’t react. They were thorough but then they put everything back in his toiletries bag and zipped it up.

  They used a portable X-ray scanner on his bag and his laptop. He stood there, as if bored. The laptop was special in a way no one suspected…but it passed their muster. They handed him back the laptop. He thanked them in Russian.

  “Forgive their caution,” Stefan said, as if they weren’t following orders. He’d brought Judge his wallet and phone that morning, and Judge had told him, I’m flying with you this morning to Russia. Make it so.

  “No worries,” Judge said.

  “And now that you’ve been thoroughly groped, let’s have a drink,” Stefan said.

  “Thank you. But I’m not much of a morning drinker,” Judge said.

  “A small one then. It’s a long flight.”

  “Don’t you have to check my passport or something? Like when you board on a commercial plane?”

  Stefan smiled. “No. I am an honorary consul for the Russian Federation. To…I forget which country. Maybe Rwanda.” He shrugged. “It means when I come back—when we come back to the States—I have a diplomatic passport; I need not mess with customs and I’m basically waved back inside. Lots of people close to President Morozov have this title. It’s convenient.”

  “Do I get waved through, too?”

  “You will in Russia, for sure.”

  He already knew Stefan and the inner circle had diplomatic passports. There had been an article in a now-shuttered Russian newspaper complaining about the privilege. If he were lucky, there might not even be a digital or paper record that he had entered Russia. He could hide in a dark corner of their own convenience.

  The Kirov jet was big, a Gulfstream V Global Express, suited to carry eighteen. Sitting in a chair by a window was an attractive woman in her late twenties or early thirties.

  “Philip, this is Mila Cebotari, also a new friend whose work we are investing in. Mila, this is Philip Judge, an American investments advisor. He’s worked with me for the past few years, off and on.”

  The woman stared at the sight of him. Judge thought her skin paled, her mouth quivered. It was the barest reaction, one no one else would notice. But Sergei, and experience, trained him to register such reactions. But she put on a firm smile and stood and shook his hand. Why the reaction? He studied her face. He had seen it before. Where? Where? Not another Seaforth. He wondered if he could run.

  He said, “Hello, Ms. Cebotari.”

  “Hello, Mr. Judge.”

  “Mila is a partner in several bars and nightclubs around the world. She is involved in one in Moscow and we might be investing in it,” Stefan said.

  Bars. He willed his smile not to tighten, his pupils not to dilate. He could give no sign he recognized her. But he knew then that she knew who he was, that the truth that James Court had whispered in his ear weeks ago was real. Your brother knows you’re alive. He’s looking for you. Pay me and I’ll make sure he never finds you. He’d seen this woman, once, two years ago, with James Court before; she knew Court; so therefore he had to assume she knew Sam. She could only be here because of Sam.

  She knows who you are.

  “It’s so nice to meet you,” Danny Capra said to Mila Court. He offered her his hand and she shook it. Her gaze didn’t leave his.

  The guards closed the plane doors.

  Why is she here? Is she here to confront me? Stop me? Deliver a message?

  Stefan insisted on vodka; Danny could not refuse, although the last thing he wanted to do was to drink, especially in front of this Mila.

  So he drank minuscule, polite sips of the Baikal vodka Stefan poured and counted the hours. He ignored the woman as best he could. She spoke little and sometimes watched him and sometimes closed her eyes and just listened as Stefan blathered on about the challenges of running businesses in Russia, in competing with Western companies. Russia was full of internal enemies, devils, who would try to bring the country and its leader down. Danny nodded and made sympathetic noises. He could do nothing about her now; he would have to deal with her upon arrival. She would seek him out, if she had an agenda.

  Then he had to do this quickly. Kill Morozov as soon as possible, vanish. Before the summit. Dead was dead, American soil be damned. He had the polonium-210 and now he had to force the opportunity. Before this woman brought his brother to him.

  And do what about her? If he were alone with her—the red eye in his mind might open.

  “How did you meet Stefan?” Mila asked him.

  “In London. I was doing investments consulting there.”

  “Ah. London is full of Russians. Like three hundred thousand of them,” Mila said. “They could be their own large city.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure there aren’t three hundred thousand Americans living in Moscow,” Danny said.

  Steel went into Stefan’s gaze. “Is that a judgment against Russia?”

  Danny shook his head. “I meant no offense, Stefan. No, just an observation. It seems like a lot of the Russians in London are making their lives there with no intent to return home.”

  “People,” Mila said, “should always consider returning home.”

  In the long years he had not encountered anyone who knew him for who he was. He could not look at this woman. So he looked at the vodka glass.

  “I wouldn’t mind living in London, but my father feels we should live in Russia.” Stefan sipped at his own vodka. “Sometimes my father is tiresome.”

  “Fathers forget what it is to be young,” Danny said.

  “He means well. My father came from nothing in Cuba. Russia gave him a home so he thinks he must stay forever. But…if you are not all Russian, Russia can be hard.” Stefan shrugged.

  You want to be accepted so badly, Danny thought. The thought rushed into his brain: Could Stefan be Firebird? It wasn’t just the oligarchs that had access to the money. It was their children as well. He remembered the figure he’d seen. Russia had a population just over 143 million. But only a hundred families controlled a third of all of Russia’s wealth. The wealth, so concentrated, was staggering. It wasn’t just the small, tight circle around Morozov that could fund the assassination. Maybe a younger person would want to make a murderous change. Grab power for himself.

  “It must be difficult,” Mila was saying. “To have so many enemies.”

  “Enemies killed my brother Anton,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” Mila said.

  “He was…he was in Tajikistan, on a trip for President Morozov, and he vanished. Never seen again. We had to assume he was dead.”

  Silence fell hard between the three of them. Danny knew this was the story fed to the world. Anton had been with Sergei. Danny had stabbed and shot Anton to death. Best not to mention that.

  Mila broke it. “Do you have much family, Philip?”

  “No,” Danny answered, his voice steady. “My parents are dead.”

  “I’m sorry.” Knife twist. “No sisters? Or brothers?”

  “I’m an only child.” The plane had started to feel very small. They had hours and hours of flying to go.

  What did she know? Was she just here simply because his brother was looking for
him…or did she know the real reason he was here? He had to assume she knew.

  “So maybe just don’t mention Anton to Uncle,” Stefan said. “He is sensitive about Anton’s death still.”

  “Uncle?” Mila asked.

  “President Morozov. The kids of his closest friends call him Uncle,” he said, almost embarrassed. “So, he’s like family, our godfather, you know. If something happened to any of our fathers and mothers, he’d take care of us. He always gives us gifts: watches, religious jewelry, fancy stationery to use so we will write him because he does not like e-mails or texts. So. We called the first Morozov Uncle and then when he died we called the second one Uncle, too.”

  “That’s nice,” Mila said. “Family is so important.”

  She knows, Danny thought. What would she do when they landed? Call his brother? He couldn’t let that happen.

  Maybe she was here to deliver a message from Jimmy Court. If she was, she would live. If not…in a back corner of his mind he thought how he would make Mila disappear.

  42

  The Svetlana, the Atlantic Ocean

  SAM HAD GOTTEN settled into his room on the yacht in short order. He had not had to surrender his cell phone this time, but Irina had told him, in a voice tinged with regret, that there would be no personal cellular service available once they sailed. The satellite phone system would be available should he require it. He stood on the sundeck and watched as the Svetlana headed out of Nassau, aiming toward Florida. He went to the lower deck, found an empty conference room, and worked on refining his proposal, adding in numbers and details from the breakfast meeting. Waiting.

  There were other guests aboard: a film producer looking to get Yuri to finance a picture, two software moguls, a vice president from a major retailer, an executive from an aviation firm. Kirov wanted to work on the investments announcements with them all before the summit. They were holed up in their cabins as well, coming out to confer with Kirov in the room that had been set aside. Katya spent time up on the sundeck with the film producer and an actress from a TV show Sam didn’t know. Yuri was sober and had not produced a firearm since the party.

  Something happened to get him drunk, to get the gun. A trigger, a source of fear or panic. That man, he’d said. He saw someone. Did Kirov know what had happened in that village of ghosts? Had Danny really been close?

  He worked until after lunch, which was brought to him by a steward. No one was looking for him. Now was the time to access the server room. He’d noticed card keys on the belts of crew members. He’d seen one of them, a bald man with glasses, talking to the software moguls about how the ship’s Internet satellite system worked, and how reliable it would be at sea. He’d seen the man point up to a small satellite dish, attached to a mast, aimed at the sky.

  Sam bumped into the crewman as he left the conversation, ogling up at the satellite dish, and apologized profusely in Russian. The crewman apologized as well and headed toward the bridge.

  Sam, the man’s card key now in his hand, lifted as delicately as if by a Charles Dickens pickpocket, headed down to the lower deck. He would have to hurry; the man might notice at any moment that his card key was gone.

  The server room. He glanced along the hall. No sign of a camera, but he drew from his pocket a mini camera detector, which could track either wired or wireless cameras. In a minute he determined the hall was clear. Kirov did not want to be spied on by his own security people.

  He slid the card key along the reader.

  The door clicked open. He stepped inside. He used the camera detector again—no telltale electronic signature. He put it back into his pocket.

  The room was cool and windowless. A server array stood along one wall, with a hookup to a satellite Internet system. A soft, varying hum rose from the cooling fans of the different devices. A glow of red and blue lights from the machines illuminated the darkened room.

  He spotted the server equipped with a pullout keyboard, eased the keyboard out, and lifted the folded LCD screen. Below it was a label with the admin password. This most common of security holes was truly international. He typed in the password on the label, which was…Firebird1991.

  He felt cold. Firebird.

  The system opened up. Where to start? He clicked on a device management icon.

  First he saw a navigation system that showed every device on the Svetlana, on every deck, that was accessing the server. Each had a unique serial number—Jack had told him these were called MAC addresses. He could see a cluster of the devices in the conference rooms where the Americans working with Yuri were updating their investment presentations. A couple on the upper deck aft, one on the bridge, a phone in the residential staterooms on the main deck.

  So anyone given access to the satellite Internet connection could have sent or received e-mails on this yacht from Claybourne. It most likely was Yuri Kirov…but it didn’t have to be.

  He jumped to an e-mail management tool. The e-mails delivered to the Svetlana went first to a land-based server, which then waited for the Svetlana to gather them when her systems used a satellite to connect to the Internet. The e-mails were then deleted from that land-based server and moved to the Svetlana’s server.

  He found the list of e-mails currently on the server. In the search bar he typed the e-mail address used by Avril Claybourne. Nothing. He searched for Firebird. Nothing.

  This couldn’t be. It came here.

  He paged through. There were e-mails pertaining to business deals, financial transfers. He had memorized the time stamp on the e-mail from Claybourne’s system—the first financial transfer would have been after that, probably very soon. Would there be a confirmation e-mail? He searched along the parameters of an hour after the e-mail was sent by Claybourne.

  He looked for encrypted e-mails. There were none.

  Someone had scrubbed the server of the incriminating e-mails.

  He heard voices in the hallway. Footsteps, laughter. If he was caught he had no reason to be here. The voices grew closer. Then passed him.

  He fought down a wave of frustration and panic. If there was a conspiracy to kill Morozov, maybe there were other e-mails, related to the plot, not sent to Claybourne. Like instructions to move funds. He searched for “instructions” and saw a cluster of e-mails—sent by Stefan Varro. They were instructions relating to the buying and selling of foreign oil stocks. Stefan and Boris Varro were placing sell orders by the millions, but only if the stock price rose into a certain window, a good ten dollars above what the current price was.

  Did…did the Varros know that Morozov had been marked for death? His death might well send oil prices climbing; political uncertainty in a major energy producer tended to drive prices up. Were the Varros setting up to profit off his death? Firebird, perhaps, was not one Varro, but both of them.

  He looked for e-mails to banks or other financial institutions. Kirov was moving money, but it was for investment in these software and retail ventures for which the entrepreneurs were here. Nothing unusual.

  He searched for Capra. Found one, an e-mail from Stefan’s laptop to his father in Russia. It was an attachment, with Sam’s PowerPoint for the Tsar Lounge. In Russian it read, “This is an easy investment; he speaks fairly good Russian; it will undergo much less scrutiny than investing in technology or a more formal business.”

  Again, voices in the hall. He froze: he waited. He thought about what Irina Belinskaya had done to the men she blamed for her husband’s death. Out here on the ocean—they could make him disappear and not even alert the other guests. He could not stay here any longer.

  He had failed. This was a dead end. But Firebird1991, as a password—it had to be Kirov. Yes, the firebird was one of the most famous of Russian stories and images…but coincidence only went so far. 1991? What could it mean? After a few moments he realized that was the year the Soviet Union collapsed.

  Was that why Yuri was drinking with a loaded gun at hand? Because he’d ordered an assassination, and the fear and worry of it were
eating away at him like an emotional acid? What would the pressure be like for such a man, who had billions at stake in always staying in Morozov’s good graces?

  You have your answer. Now what are you going to do about it?

  He logged off. He made sure everything was as he’d found it.

  He turned and then he noticed the door in the corner. RESTRICTED, it read in Russian. He tried the doorknob. Locked. He tried the card key. The light on the reader stayed red instead of flashing to green. He put an ear to the door to listen, but he could hear nothing over the hum of the cooling fans in this room. Could there be another server in there, one holding the information he needed? Or something else? He could try and pick the lock—but forcing a door equipped with an electronic key would likely set off an alarm.

  He’d have to find another way.

  He checked the hallway. It was empty. He stepped out and eased the door shut. He did not dare take the card key with him; it would soon be missed, and they might check to see if it had been used. He dropped it on the floor by the door to create the illusion it had simply been dropped on the deck.

  He took the stairs to his room’s deck. He opened his door.

  Irina sat in a chair, waiting for him.

  “Uh, hi,” Sam said.

  “I couldn’t find you. Where were you?”

  “Down in a conference room. I thought I’d find some table space to spread out my data and refine my proposal.”

  “Come up on the sundeck. I have my own proposal for you.”

  43

  Miami

  THE SKY WAS bright and blue. It would take a few more hours at their cruising speed to reach the coastal waters off Florida, where he assumed the yacht would settle into a long track up the East Coast. The sun was starting to set. He and Irina were alone on the deck. “You could help me with something important,” Irina said.