Zrada

by Lance Charnes

  This, he hadn’t expected. The woman can handle a weapon and quote poetry. “Did you ever have a chance to use that advice?”

  “Sort of. That thing about the job being more interesting than chores? That was my ex.” They emerge onto a paved plaza dominated by a Soviet war memorial. She stops to read the inscription. “Other women were also more interesting than chores.”

  “He was a fool.”

  “One way to put it.” She nods toward the marker, a relief of a Soviet soldier in a flowing cape, carrying a flag that reads, For the Homeland. “I guess they’re buried here.”

  “Yes.” He steps back, comes to attention, then salutes the monument. Tarasenko watches him quietly. He returns to her side. “My grandfather died outside Minsk in 1944.”

  “My grandfather ran an antiaircraft battery near Kharkiv. He met my grandmother there.” She paces west, toward another footpath. “You’re not giving back the money, are you?”

  The question surprises him; her directness doesn’t. “Why do you say that?”

  “The militia’s hunting all of us. They want me and Galina because we screwed them. We can’t fix that. Mashkov wants the million euros you still have in your backpack. Give him the money and he’s gone.”

  There’s no reproach in her voice. She’s asking about a practical solution to a difficult problem. The more time Rogozhkin spends with her, the more he likes her. “Would you think less of me if I don’t?”

  “Depends on why you’re doing it.”

  “Fair enough.” He feels her eyes again. A pointed look, but not a hostile one. “My career’s over. Tomorrow I’ll officially be a deserter.”

  “There goes the pension.”

  “Exactly. I need something to live on in exile. All my career, I’ve followed official orders to help make gangsters and warlords rich and powerful. Now it’s my turn.”

  Tarasenko’s lips are pursed, her eyes thoughtful. “Well, that’ll help with the ‘finding a wife’ thing.”

  “I hope so.”

  Another few quiet steps. “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

  No scolding, no speeches, no appeals to duty or morality. She understands. “Well, the highway’s out. The locals probably closed the western checkpoint early so they can fortify it. It wouldn’t do to leave a road open to let Kyiv’s armor go rolling through. The same very likely applies to the northbound route. The last time I saw the plan for tomorrow’s operation, the main push is south of the city to eliminate the salient around Mykolaivka.”

  “And east is the wrong direction.”

  “True. If we can go by foot, I know several routes. Perhaps you could persuade Galina…?”

  “Forget it. Everything she owns is in that car.”

  “Pity. I’d like to try the northern route to Olenivka. It may not be open, but there are a lot of meanings for ‘closed’ and some are porous. If that’s how it is there, we can get out easily without having to deal with artillery fire. If it’s closed, there’s another way we may be able to use. It’s much…harder, but still possible so long as it doesn’t rain between now and then.”

  Tarasenko shakes her head. “No rain in the forecast.”

  He knows that. “We’ll start at 0300. We have to wait for dark anyway, and by then any guards will be half-asleep.” They reach the southeast corner of Lenin Square. “Would you like to walk more?” He hopes she’ll say yes. He’s enjoyed her company and this conversation.

  Tarasenko’s phone buzzes. She pulls it from her hip pocket, then turns the screen to show it to him. It’s a photo of a very old depiction of the Annunciation. “Mashkov’s got the picture. We’re meeting in half an hour.”

  Chapter 48

  Mashkov buttonholes Vasilenko as the senior sergeant bustles through the half-activated temporary command post. “I need a sniper section. Now.”

  Vasilenko wipes his forehead on his sleeve. “Yes, sir. Where are they going?”

  “To the city administration building. High positions overlooking the football pitch. Send them in a civilian vehicle if you can.”

  “Okay…I’ll see what I can do. What’s the target?”

  “Remember the Tarasenko woman? She’s going to be there at 1915. So will I. When I light a cigarette, they take her down. Understand?”

  Rogozhkin watches the clouds slowly turn red through his hotel room’s window.

  Tarasenko’s deal with Mashkov may hold an opportunity for him.

  Mashkov killed the brigade’s senior Russian officers and started this rebellion. If he dies, the rebellion loses its leader and its momentum. It won’t take much to impose another commander, one more…acceptable to Moscow.

  And if Rogozhkin kills Mashkov, he’ll have a powerful argument to clear his name. Proskurin and the rest failed; he cleaned up after them and brought matters under control. He’ll be able to fight off the wolves and retire honorably.

  He knows where Mashkov is going to be, and when. No matter where he sets up, he’ll be no more than a hundred meters from the target. An easy shot with an AK.

  Yes, Tarasenko said she’d promised Mashkov there’d be no tricks or traps. He’s sure Mashkov promised her the same. But will he honor that?

  Rogozhkin doubts it. The man holds grudges.

  So he can both get rid of Mashkov and protect Tarasenko from her own scruples. A win for everybody.

  Except Mashkov, of course.

  “I told you before. No. I won’t do it.”

  Carson clamps her mouth shut so she doesn’t blurt out the first few things that roar into her head. “You know that isn’t your money, right?”

  Galina plants her fists on her hips. Her face is pink heading toward scarlet. “I know. It doesn’t matter. I won’t let you give all that money to that man.” She pokes a fingertip into one of the many bruises around Carson’s collarbones. “If you say you want it for yourself, I would say, ‘Here, take it.’ If you want to give it to the Red Cross or the church, I would give it to you in a minute. But him? Do you remember what I told you about Ilovaisk? Those creatures shooting the wounded men in my lorry? Maybe they shot me?” She jams her arms together over her chest. “No. Absolutely not.”

  So far, this has gone just as badly as Carson expected. Once again, she wishes Matt was here. He can sweet-talk people… “Galina, look. I wouldn’t ask if I had any other option. I—”

  “Why don’t you take the Kacáps’s money?” She jabs a finger toward the room’s front door. “He shouldn’t get it—”

  “Because he’d kill me. You, too. Believe me, I thought about it a lot. I even thought about fucking him to—”

  “Watch your language.”

  “Give it a rest. I gamed that out as far as I could. We end up in a bad way no matter what. So here we are.” Carson forces herself to breathe slow. It helps her cool off and think. She’d like to sit on the bed but can’t afford to give up her power position. “Do you think the museum’s gonna forget about that picture?”

  For the first time, Galina doesn’t stomp on Carson’s words. It’s progress.

  Carson makes an effort to calm her voice. “They won’t, you know. They’ll send somebody else with another suitcase full of money. Probably the same cash you have now. I told you all this about the icon. The situation hasn’t changed.”

  Galina’s face is holding on pink. The fire in her eyes has turned into glowing coals.

  “You saying ‘no’ won’t stop this. Mashkov’s gonna get his money. Somebody else will walk into danger to finish it. And…” She didn’t want to play this card, but she needs it. “I probably won’t get paid for anything that’s happened since Wednesday. That’s what my boss says.”

  Galina’s mouth slowly unclenches. The fire dies in her eyes. “They…won’t pay you?”

  Carson shrugs. “I spent a lot of the client’s money and didn’t get the job done. That’s how it goes.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Lots of things aren’t
fair. You know that first-hand. So do I.” Carson holds out her hand, palm up. She gentles her voice as much as she can. “Come on, Galina. I don’t want to fight you. I want to get us out of here and help you get Bohdan and send you off to your new lives. Can you help me do that?”

  Galina stares at the hand, then her own feet, then out the window, then into Carson’s eyes. “I have hated those people for two years. People like Mashkov, the Kacápskyi, all of them. They took my husband away from me.”

  Please don’t. I know you’ve been hurt. I can’t fix any of that. Please…

  “Now all I want is to get Bohdan back. I will do anything to do that.” Her eyes close for a moment, then reopen. “If that means I have to give you this money to give to that Mashkov person, I will even do that. Even if it makes everything inside me ache.” She stomps to her bed, drags out the rucksack, then drops it into Carson’s hands. “Take it.”

  Carson rummages through the bag, grabs a strap of cash, and hands it to Galina. “Here. This way, Mashkov won’t get his full million.”

  Galina turns the bundle of €200 notes in her hand, then holds it out to Carson. “No.”

  “Take it. You’ve earned it.”

  Galina weighs the strap, sighs, then squats to hide it in her duffel. “Are you going by yourself?”

  “I don’t want to. Will you come with me? Watch my back?”

  “Okay.” Galina looks up, frowning. “I don’t want you to haunt me if the tarhany kill you.”

  Carson almost smiles. “Thanks. After this, I’ll stop licking knives.”

  Carson checks her watch. Five minutes to the swap. She thumbs Mashkov’s number into Heitmann’s phone, just to confuse things.

  “This is Mashkov.”

  “Tarasenko. The plan’s changed. I don’t like the swap site. There are too many overlooks for snipers.”

  He sputters. “You can’t change things this late. I—”

  “The Avanhard football stadium in the park. I’ll see you there in five…if you want your money.”

  The floodlights on the four tall standards—two at each end of the field—are lit by the time Carson and Galina approach the stadium from the south through the Soviet war memorial, even though there’s nearly an hour of daylight left. A lot of people freak out at the thought of being in the middle of a couple dozen bright floods. When she steps onto the surprisingly well-kept sod, though, it’s a flashback to Alberta.

  Galina’s eyes are wide, her jaw’s stiff, and her head’s on a swivel. She keeps wiping her palms on her jeans, alternating so she always has a grip on her AK. “We are so exposed,” she mutters.

  “He will be, too. Didn’t you play sports in school?”

  “Not in a place like this. Did you?”

  “Yeah. This reminds me of my high-school rugby matches.”

  “I am not surprised that you play rugby.”

  Nobody ever is. Carson scans the stands. Nearly all the individual plastic-backed seats are empty. Most are white; blocks of blue seatbacks are interspersed with white ones that spell out “DFDK” in huge Cyrillic letters. There’s a couple making out in one corner in the back row and a gaggle of girls smoking and giggling near the fieldhouse at midfield left. “This is like the crowd for our matches. Girls’ rugby wasn’t much of a draw.”

  Galina stands a couple of paces away, holding her rifle across her chest pointing down, looking like she’s the one in the crosshairs. “Your parents didn’t come?”

  “Pops would when he was in town. My brothers would. Mostly they liked watching healthy girls in tight shorts jump on each other.” When that line doesn’t get the usual laugh, she glances at Galina. “It’s okay. There’s hardly anyplace to hide.”

  A figure in Russian camo appears in the fieldhouse door. He’s almost fifty meters away, but he stands like Mashkov. After a few moments, he marches down the short stairs and onto the field, followed by a militiaman carrying a familiar dark-green rectangle in front of his chest.

  Mashkov stops about five meters from Carson. “Good evening, Miss Tarasenko. I’m glad to see you’re exactly on time. Shall we begin?”

  Rogozhkin covers in the bushes a few meters from the stadium’s northwest portal. He’s been there for nearly half an hour, wondering where Tarasenko was. The militia sniper bustled in six minutes ago to take position behind the wrought-iron gate with the Olympic rings. This one knows what he’s doing; he’d set up with economical movements and no noise. He’s now prone with his Dragunov sniper rifle settled on a bipod near the gate’s bottom rail.

  The sniper knows that part of his job, but he didn’t check the bushes for threats.

  It’s 18o C and humid. Rogozhkin’s black wool turtleneck and balaclava were heavy and sticky twenty minutes ago; now they’re frustrating the mosquitos even more than him. It’s almost comfortable compared to doing this during a Chechen winter.

  Rogozhkin checks his watch. 1917; time to start. He slowly edges out of the bushes, taking care with every step to not disturb the foliage. When he reaches the asphalt driveway, he draws his Vityaz tactical knife and ghosts the two meters to the sniper. Luckily, the man’s watching the football pitch through his rifle’s scope, not paying attention to his environment.

  After two breaths, Rogozhkin drops a knee on the small of the man’s back, then wraps a gloved hand around the sniper’s mouth when his head rears back. Rogozhkin then rams the knife through the base of the man’s skull into his brain. His body bucks twice, then goes limp.

  Once he disposes of the corpse in the shrubs, Rogozhkin takes up the Dragunov to check the action in the stadium. Tarasenko and Mashkov are face-to-face in the center of the pitch, roughly five meters apart, her with her arms crossed, him with a hand resting on the top of his holster. Galina’s three or four steps behind Tarasenko and to her left, an AK aimed at Mashkov, who has his own second a few paces to his right, holding a plastic-wrapped painting with both hands.

  The brigade has four three-man sniper sections. Mashkov would use a full section. There may be two more hostiles here.

  Rogozhkin starts hunting with the scope.

  Mashkov tries to watch the rifle’s muzzle with some measure of detachment. Difficult when it’s aimed at his head.

  Tarasenko growls, “Ease off, Galina.”

  The shorter woman—Galina, apparently—shifts her grip slightly but doesn’t lose lock on his forehead. He’s seen that kind of hatred before in other people’s eyes, but not usually when they’re also threatening to shoot him. He swallows. “Miss Tarasenko, I came here in good faith, as promised. Can you please…”

  “Ease off, Galina.” If Tarasenko wore a uniform, that tone of voice would’ve added that’s an order. They may not have that kind of relationship, but Galina clearly heard it: she slowly lowers the barrel to point between him and Bulaev with the painting.

  “Sorry about that,” Tarasenko says, not sounding terribly sorry. “She’s had bad experiences with your brigade.”

  “I understand. Do you have the money?”

  Tarasenko pulls off an olive backpack, unzips the top, then tosses it on the ground halfway between them. She nods toward Bulaev. “That the picture? Open it up so I can see it.”

  Mashkov nods at Bulaev, who settles on one knee. They’d already undone the wrapping, so all the private needs to do is pull the painting from the outer bag and peel back the inner plastic sheet to expose the painting’s face.

  Mashkov gestures toward the bag. “May I?”

  Tarasenko nods. She’s obviously wearing body armor and is likely armed. Should he trust her? He knows better than to trust her friend Galina. But he still needs to check the money.

  He squats next to the knapsack and gaps the top opening. The mound of yellow banknotes inside practically glows in the harsh light. He was usefully tense before, but now his heart starts galloping like a racehorse approaching the finish line. So close… “Is it all here?”

  “As far as I know. Can’t vouch fo
r what Stepaniak did when he had it. It’s about the right weight.”

  “I’m curious. How much do a million euros weigh?”

  “Fifty straps of a hundred notes each? A bit over five kilos.”

  Mashkov’s not surprised Tarasenko knows how much the money should weigh. She likely does this regularly. He hefts the bag with his right hand; it feels about right. He burrows his hand into the pile and pulls a bundle of notes from the bottom. Currency, not newsprint or butcher paper.

  He stands, slings the knapsack over his shoulder, and takes another good look at Galina. If her eyes were cannon, he’d be erased from the Earth by now. His brain makes a few automatic connections. “Tell me, Miss Galina…did you burn my lorries?”

  Her feral smile answers before she says a word. “Yes. I enjoyed it. At least no one was in them. Not like when you burned ours.”

  Tarasenko blows out a long breath. “Galina…”

  Mashkov raises a stop gesture toward Tarasenko. “No, it’s fine. Miss Galina, did you fight?”

  “Yes. The Donbass Battalion.” She stands straight and squares her shoulders.

  Our past sins return to haunt us. Going any farther down this road could make things tricky. Time to end it. “You fought well. Miss Tarasenko, you have your painting, I have my money. Our business is done.” Except it won’t be as long as these two are still walking. He reaches into his left breast pocket. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  Rogozhkin has a clear shot at Mashkov’s head. The rangefinder in the rifle’s sight says the distance is just shy of a hundred meters. The wind’s out of the southwest at around ten kilometers per hour; a minor windage adjustment.

  Do it now.

  But he’s found the other two members of the sniper section. The young man in the dark hoodie winding his way through the east stands isn’t ready yet. The one who worries Rogozhkin most is the man at the southeast gate. Tarasenko’s partly masking him; Rogozhkin can’t get a good solution on him that lasts more than a few seconds.