by Jeff Abbott
“You don’t have to do this. You witnessed Morozov’s right-hand man killing a CIA officer. You tell that to the world, Morozov is done in regard to the United States.”
“No one would believe me, and no other witnesses are alive.”
“The hard drive. From the village, sent to Mirjan Shah. You took it. You killed Shah and you took it, and it’s got Sergei’s face on it, before or after the video was shot. For insurance.”
Sam could see the truth of it all in Danny’s face. He could fool the world but not Sam. If I knock him out, where do I hide him? How do I explain to the guards that I attacked someone? Sam turned back toward him. “I know who Firebird is. He’ll kill you.”
Danny almost broke stride. “It doesn’t matter.” He laughed and he put an amiable arm around his brother’s shoulders as they went past a couple of party stragglers, laughing and merry. “I need you to do exactly what I say. Exactly. Go back to your room, wherever you’re staying…”
Sam pulled away from him, his voice a harsh whisper. “What are you? What are you now?”
“I’m your brother.”
“My brother couldn’t have done what you’ve done. Mom and Dad have suffered horribly. I joined the CIA because you were killed the way you were, and I wanted to fix the world…I reshaped my entire life because of what I believed about you, and that’s all been a lie…”
Danny turned his face away.
Sam slapped him, hard, forcing Danny’s face back toward him. “You don’t get to ignore me.”
Danny’s voice was flat. “Jimmy was supposed to keep you away from me. Don’t trust him or Mila when all this is done.”
Sam couldn’t even form the words You know Jimmy and Mila when a voice hailed them.
“Philip?” Stefan Varro hurried toward them. He smiled uncertainly at Sam. “Is everything OK?”
“Yes,” Sam said.
“It’s fine,” Danny said to him. “We’re having a wonderful chat.”
It seemed to satisfy Stefan. “Um, all right. Philip, I need to borrow you. Come with me, please.”
“Now?”
“Yes, my friend, now; come on.”
“Go,” Sam said. “I’ll catch up with you later, Philip.”
The dismissal seemed to surprise Danny. And Stefan gave Sam an odd glance. But they went, vanishing back into the crowd, Danny glancing back at Sam.
My friend, Sam thought. Odds were Danny was staying with Stefan. He turned and sprinted for the Varro house.
“What about Sam?” Stefan said, panicked. “What do we tell him about Mila?”
Danny kept his voice reassuring. “It’s all fine. Katya Kirova brought him. He was told Mila wasn’t feeling well and had gone to Moscow. He accepted it. He is eager for his investment. He knows nothing.”
Let this lie work, Danny thought. For Sam’s sake.
58
The Varro Estate, Nebo, Russia
MOST OF THE staff at each of the estates were busy assisting at the party. Sam smiled and went through the Varros’ kitchen entrance. An older woman glanced up at him; she was brewing tea—still the Russian national drink—in a large samovar and putting it onto a cart. All the kitchens, he guessed, had been pressed into service.
“Apologies, madam,” he said in Russian. “The American that is staying here with Stefan Borisovich—Mr. Judge? He asked me to fetch him a document from his room.” Then he gestured up, shrugging. “Which room is it…?”
“Ah. Second floor, third down. I can show you…”
“No need, madam, you are busy. I’ll find it.”
He went up the stairs closest to the kitchen. The floor was grand, the hall wide, and fine paintings hung on the walls. A Picasso, a Monet, a Frida Kahlo. Fresh flowers filled vases on marble-topped tables. He found the door the woman had indicated, and opened it. It wasn’t locked.
He shut the door behind him. The weapon must be here. Danny presumably was not going to kill Morozov with his bare hands. The weapon had to be small, had to be disguised as something else. Danny had to get it on a plane. He would be watched closely by the Secret Service, as part of the presidential entourage, and it would be difficult for anyone to pass a weapon to him or him to collect it.
Think like him.
And he had to kill him in a way that would give him time to escape. Danny was no martyr.
How could you kill a world leader and walk away? How do you kill without the weapon in your hand, and yet you survive? How did you do it so you struck here yet he died on American soil? A delayed death. He had to keep it close at hand, for fear of it being discovered by someone else. It had to appear innocuous. It had to get past the presidential security. Had he gotten it in the Bahamas or here?
He started to search the room, his mind racing.
You will know it when you see it. You will know it when you see it. You will…
59
Nebo, Russia
IT WAS A mistake. If one of the primary orders of Danny’s business was never to break cover, he had obeyed that personal commandment and yet he had made a mistake. He had erred in walking away from his brother because Stefan told him to, and when two minutes had passed listening to Stefan’s purred assurances, as they worked their way past the crowd, that these financial reporters needed a good story, he thought:
Sam won’t wait for you to come back. What if he’s off searching your room, looking for the weapon?
The thought froze his brain.
If he finds the polonium…if he breathes it in, he’s dead.
That unhappy possibility occurred to him just as Stefan introduced the financial reporters and Danny immediately forgot their names. Danny put on his best, most sincere smile and said, “Let me get you a summary that will help explain Stefan’s investment plan in America. Please, I’ll be right back.”
“Philip…,” Stefan started, clear annoyance in his voice.
Danny left Stefan and the two reporters staring as he barreled back through the crowd. He walked briskly, not running to avoid attention, toward the Varro house. The lawn seemed to stretch forever. He nodded at the front door guards, who nodded back.
He went inside and up to his room. He opened the door—had it been unlocked?—turned on the light, and let his gaze scan the room. Was everything in its place? He didn’t have much to search. His laptop was open, a printout of the faked investments report for Morozov next to it.
No sign of his brother.
He went to his toiletries bag and pulled out the eyedrops bottle, still double-sealed in his plastic bag.
There it was. Where he’d left it.
He looked at himself in the mirror.
Maybe Sam took his advice and was headed to the airport in Moscow. Or maybe he’d gone to get a cell phone to call their parents. The thought, insane but possible, rocked him. What if Sam came to him with a phone, with their mother on the other end of the line? Or to call his friend Mila, who was no doubt back with her husband? No. Sam couldn’t betray him, would never betray him.
The phone in his pocket, assembled from its hiding place in the laptop for the last time, stirred.
A text, sent untraceably, scrambled from server to server:
It is clear for ten minutes. You will have access. Go. Now.
Firebird, speaking directly to him. Fulfilling the final request he’d made.
Danny Capra put the eyedropper bottle in his pocket along with his fake financial summary and headed out the door.
60
The Presidential Ilyushin
THE MOROZOV ILYUSHIN Il-96 modified wide-body, the preferred presidential plane out of the unusually large Russian presidential fleet, was guarded, of course. But Philip Judge was an expected passenger, scheduled to fly to America with the Russian elite.
Philip Judge was passed through security, with his credentials, and walked through the portable scanner that checked for metal or any chemical trace of explosives. He was patted down, politely but thoroughly. He smiled and nodded at the guards, who waved him
on.
Danny thanked them and hurried up the portable stairs that led up to the massive plane, departing with smiles from the guards. He glanced back; no sign of Sam running toward the plane.
He entered the grand main cabin. Part of the plane had been preserved for regular seating, but here was a larger seating and working area where Morozov liked to spend the flight.
Maybe two minutes left.
The crew was gone, farther in the back of the cabin, and he could hear Irina Belinskaya’s voice outlining and reviewing the departure protocol for after the reception, to get the passengers flying to the West aboard and settled. Some passengers might be drunk, and would need to be reminded of security requirements, and not to bother the president or Mr. Varro or Mr. Kirov or his daughter during the flight…There was scattered laughter from the crew.
While they were all watching her…
He saw what he needed, ready for him. He walked up to the samovar, a reconstruction of the one used by the last czar, ready to serve the man who was czar in all but name. And there sat next to it the double-eagle mug, larger than the others for Morozov’s favored tea.
The same tall tea mug he’d seen Morozov use when they’d first been introduced at Boris Varro’s house.
The only one here. Just for the president.
He took a deep breath and opened the eyedrops vial. A single drop of the saline, containing an almost invisible speck of the polonium, in suspension, dropped in the cup, awaiting the tea that would be served even before takeoff. Resting in the bottom of the cup. Awaiting its chance to shape history.
The exposure to the microdose might make Danny sick, days from now. Or whoever handled the cup in preparing the drink or washing the cup. But he believed he’d been careful enough so that the dosage would only sicken those who handled the contaminated cup, and kill only one man: Morozov, who would drink his own tea.
Twenty seconds later he set the financial report down on the single leather seat that bore the double-eagle crest, where Morozov sat during flights. The note attached on the cover read: Stefan is being bold here in his investment choices. I hope it meets with your approval, written in both English and Russian. He had been careful not to leave prints.
Irina’s voice droned on; the crew laughed again.
A minute later he was down the airplane steps, heading for the party. Soon he found the financial journalists. He was a little out of breath. “The president wanted my report!” he said, by way of apology. The journalists smiled. “So I can’t comment on it until he has read it; I’m sorry.” The smiles fell.
He apologized and moved off.
He still had the polonium with him and he needed to get rid of the poison. He’d have to do that soon. But first he needed to find his brother and get him away from here.
Sam watched Danny come down the plane’s stairs, from the cover of a grove of pines close to the Varro house. Danny had been carrying a document and nothing else, and now he was empty-handed. Walking with purpose.
And then he saw Irina heading toward Danny, with two guards bracketing her.
They stopped Danny. Irina spoke to him. Then they moved off. Away from the party, away from his position in the trees. He realized after several moments that they were angling away from the estates, toward the empty house Sam had escaped from.
Sam started to follow, and then between them and him came a dense crowd, led by music. Morozov’s security team leading the way, Russian and American and British and French and Japanese flags waving, someone with a giant peace sign, some of them a bit drunk, the press recording it all.
Sam watched them. When the bulge of the crowd had passed, the military patriotic songs fading as the crowd reached the Ilyushin, there was no sign of his brother, or Irina.
61
Nebo, Russia
THE CAR MILA drove was licensed to the British consulate, so it did not undergo the normal security check search. Such were the perils of diplomacy. She was grateful for this, as the extraction team’s gear was hidden inside the trunk. Stun guns, a gas canister, rope. She thought she might need it all in dealing with getting Sam out and capturing Danny Capra. But Sam, she decided, was the priority.
And the moment she was spotted by anyone who recognized her, she would be facing an uncomfortable questioning from the security details. Irina Belinskaya would be unrelenting. She had to hope the crowd would be a suitable camouflage.
You don’t even know what they’ve done to Sam. He could be a prisoner. He could be dead.
Mila—or as the invite read, Alice Devere—parked in the sprawling diplomat’s lot. There were a number of limos waiting but many of the more junior diplomats had driven embassy cars.
“You’ve missed most of the fun,” one of the guards said, scanning the admission bracelet. She was past the first obstacle—the man checking invites hadn’t seen her when she was here before. The party was winding down, a few arriving late, more heading out before the traffic thickened.
She nodded and shrugged and moved through the thinning crowd. Morozov and the oligarch circle were gone, presumably already headed toward the Ilyushin. Those who weren’t boarding the flight—the majority of the guests—had turned out to watch, some sitting on the grass of the expansive lawns, drinking and laughing. Russian flags, American flags, flags from many other nations. That such a festivity was the sendoff for the president and his cronies would send a decided message to the West: that the Russians felt they were to be respected, to be equals, not arriving on bended knee. At least one journalist was parroting this Morozov party line directly into a camera as he broadcast from the gathering. She turned her face away as she moved past the camera.
She navigated the crowd and saw Irina Belinskaya and Danny Capra walking into the woods, and then saw two burly men following him closely. She had no idea where Sam was. The security teams that had been close to the plane moved off.
The music swelled, a medley of patriotic Russian tunes. A loudspeaker announced that the plane would soon be departing. She hurried forward a bit.
They were walking toward the house she wasn’t sure who owned, smaller, set away at a distance. Only a single light gleamed in a window. She hung back.
She saw Danny Capra get close to the house, saw him turn back toward Irina and freeze. He stopped walking; Irina didn’t. She said something to him. Then, the two guards rushed him and took him, hooding him, securing his hands with zip ties. He didn’t fight back.
Mila melted back into the shadows in her dark dress, watching. They dragged Danny off. She wondered why he didn’t fight back.
But a few moments later here came Sam, following them.
She hissed his name to him. He scanned the woods and she stepped out from behind a thick tree.
She thought for a moment he was going to embrace her, but he simply touched her arm. “Are you all right? What are you doing here?” he said. “They’ll arrest you if they see you.”
He doesn’t want me here, she thought. Does he know? “Most of those that know my face are, I think, on Morozov’s plane. I have weapons in the trunk of a car I brought.”
He watched the woods. “Why did you come back? It’s way too dangerous.”
“Because you need my help.”
“Is Jimmy here, too? To help?”
He knows. “Sam…”
Sam said, “I think Danny’s been made. Irina’s people are taking him to that abandoned house on the edge of the compound. The road curves back toward it. Drive the car down there and wait for me.”
“You can’t go in alone,” Mila said.
“I can and I am. I need you standing by to watch if anyone else comes and be ready to get us out. They’ll search your car, though, if they know that there’s trouble brewing. So I can’t let Irina or these guards raise an alarm.”
Mila said, “They won’t search. The car has diplomatic plates.”
He didn’t ask for an explanation. “He’s done their dirty work and now they need to make sure he doesn’t talk.”
“Done it…you mean he killed Morozov?” She looked confused.
“I’ll explain later. Please go get the car and get it as close as you can to that house without being seen. Please, Mila.”
She hurried through the grove, toward the road. She’d seen, in the extraction team’s escape van, a map of the satellite imagery of Nebo, and she had an idea where in the nearby woods she could put the car. She skirted the Morozov mansion this time, nodding at the guards on the perimeter, asking one of them the way back to the parking lot. He politely told her and she thanked him. She got into the car and drove not toward the exit, but toward the empty house.
One of the security men on the roadway stopped her. “Stop, please; the exit is the other way.”
“I know, I know,” she said in her perfect Russian. “So embarrassing. A stupid friend of mine had too much to drink and went wandering and passed out over by that smaller house. I don’t want to make a fuss; he just started at the embassy and our boss will be so upset. The lane is just a giant circle, yes? Can I go get him and circle back that way?” She made a circle with her finger and gave him her most pleading, harmless smile.
After a moment he nodded and waved her ahead.
Mila drove, and when she reached the farthest bend in the road she killed her headlights. She pulled into the woods closer to the empty house and popped open the trunk, considering her options. Sam needed backup. She selected a Glock 9 millimeter and a combat knife and hurried toward the house. Lights gleamed from the first floor, no sign of guards, no sign of either Capra.
62
The Empty House, Nebo
DANNY FELT A foot prodding him. A hood covered his eyes and his hands were bound. He tried to sit up. “Be still and be quiet.” Irina’s voice. He lay on cold concrete. He wriggled toward the foot.