Heart Strike (Project Kobra Book 3)

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “She has a four-day head start,” Quinn murmured.

  Dima glanced at her sharply. “So?”

  “I didn’t have a clue what I was doing in Austria, only you wanted me clueless and stirring things up.” Quinn gave a shift of her shoulders. “Fabian is asking questions about people which will make the Russians sit up and she doesn’t know what she’s doing either.”

  “We’re heading into a hornet’s nest,” Lochan muttered.

  By the time he had stirred enough to consciously hear his phone, Mischa got the impression it wasn’t the first time it had buzzed. It felt as though he had been swimming up to consciousness for a while.

  He groped for the phone. Then he remembered that he wasn’t in bed, but on the sofa. His phone was on the kitchen counter, a dozen strides away.

  Cursing, he sat up carefully. The vodka bottle had been resting against his hip. It rolled off the edge of the sofa onto the rug with a sodden thud. It didn’t break, because the sofa was low to the ground. That made it harder to get off the thing.

  The tilt of his head from horizontal to vertical didn’t help. He sat, waiting for the dizziness to pass, then eased to his feet and padded over to the counter and pulled the phone off the charger. It was a wonder he’d even remembered to plug it in.

  The call ended long before he managed to sit up. He checked the log.

  Bohdan Ivanov. Three calls, spaced over the last couple of hours. He’d only heard the last one.

  The time readout on the phone said it was just gone eleven in the morning.

  Mischa didn’t want to talk to Bohdan. His head hurt and the subject matter made his gut tighten. Only, Bohdan was a useful contact and not worth pissing off. He connected and waited for the clicks and pips and the burr of the phone at the other end.

  “Late morning for you, huh?” Bohdan asked, his tone merry.

  “It’s morning?” Mischa asked dryly.

  “Sober enough to write down an address?”

  “I’ll remember.” In fact, he had no intention of either remembering or using the address.

  “Write it down.” Bohdan’s voice was filled with wisdom. “Or you’ll hate yourself in a few hours, have to phone me back and listen to me give you shit about not listening to me in the first place.”

  One thing they’d instilled in Mischa from the beginning was that the truth made a better lie than a complete fabrication. If he needed to lie about catching a certain train, then he must go to the station and go through the motions of catching it, right up to stepping upon the train, if necessary. Then, when he lied about it, the little details the truth supplied would sell his lie better than his imagination would.

  So Mischa picked up the grease-proof pencil which lived on top of the fridge and bent forward. “Address?”

  Bohdan gave it to him. Mischa wrote the address on the tiled backsplash and read it back.

  “Ask for Gregor Palovsky.”

  “He’s expecting me?”

  “He’s expecting a beautiful woman with black eyes. Don’t let him down.” Bohdan laughed at his own joke.

  “I owe you,” Mischa said.

  “You do. Later, my friend.” Bohdan disconnected.

  Mischa threw the pencil against the backsplash and put his back to the counter. Then he put his head in his hands.

  That didn’t help, either.

  Fabian knew she would be deconstructing her last conversation with Mischa for a long, long time, trying to tease out meanings and intentions and more. One thing he had made clear, though, was caution.

  Leave Ukraine, he’d said.

  When she woke, the first thing she did was check international flights out of Kiev on her phone. It was already close to noon, for she hadn’t been able to sleep at all, last night. She had watched her phone’s clock scroll through ten p.m., then midnight, then two a.m.

  She had fallen asleep through sheer exhaustion some time after that, only to be woken when sunlight fell upon the bed and warmed her face.

  A flight to Reykjavik would be ideal, although she would take any flight heading somewhere west of here. East would take her into Russia itself.

  Then she realized that she didn’t know how long it would take to get to the airport from here. She would have to pay cash for the flight, too. Her credit card was in her real name, which didn’t match her passport.

  She dressed hastily and took her case downstairs. The concierge nodded at her as she wheeled her case up to him. “Um…taxi? To the airport?”

  “Aeroport,” he repeated. He moved through the front door and stepped out onto the pavement and waved.

  A white cab with yellow and black checkered stripes down the side pulled up with a jerk beside the footpath.

  The concierge gestured to her.

  She hurried out the door, as the concierge bent and spoke to the driver. “Aeroport Borispol.”

  “Dobre,” the driver replied.

  Fabian opened the back door and hesitated. A mass of irregular bumps pushed up a plaid blanket, laid out upon the seat.

  The trunk of the taxi popped open, as the driver spoke fast.

  “His son’s birthday present,” the concierge said. “You can put your case in the back and sit in the front. He apologizes and will take five percent off the fare.”

  There were no other taxis in sight. The need to get to the airport drove her to nod and say, “Yes, thank you.”

  She got in beside the driver, who gave her a friendly smile. The concierge put her case in the trunk and closed it, then patted the lid.

  The taxi merged into traffic smoothly and the driver relaxed.

  “Do you understand any English at all?” she asked him, hoping he would stare at her cluelessly. She didn’t have the energy for halting conversations, or even picking out Ukrainian phrases with her phone.

  “Little.” He shrugged.

  Great. “How old is your son?”

  The man held up a finger.

  Did that mean the boy was one, or that she should wait a moment?

  Then he snapped on his indicator and turned across the traffic into a narrow side street. All the cars parked along it were on one side, leaving a narrow lane for others to slide by.

  “Where are we going?” she demanded.

  A hand slapped over her mouth. Something sharp pricked her neck. Coldness slid under her skin, shooting down her neck and out to her arms and feet.

  Her eyes closed.

  A shower did a lot to restore clear thought, although it would be another few hours before he could eat anything and keep it down. Mischa moved back down the stairs, sorting out in his mind the series of phone calls he should make and who he needed to speak to.

  The first thing he needed to communicate was that Piá—Fabian—was beyond their reach here in the Ukraine. By now she would be out of the country. The hangover and late start had given her lead time.

  He halted on the far side of the chopping block, staring at the address written on the backsplash.

  Gregor Palovsky.

  Talking to Palovsky would delay reporting to Karl Pasternak, who was waiting for his update.

  Only, why would he get involved in that mess? Such matters were always contained in tight silos, the information discrete and secure. If Karl and whoever he reported to in Moscow learned Mischa was probing the matter, they would not be happy.

  Only, why wouldn’t he? It was his job to scrape information, build sources…a source connected to the old mobs might prove useful. Those organizations had deep roots and their loyalty to each other was as strong as any patriot’s.

  He moved over to the door, picked up his coat and the car keys from the pegs on the wall and left.

  Gregor Palovsky was in his eighties, with silver hair, bags beneath his eyes and fine paper-wrinkles all over his face. There were scars on his cheeks and forehead and gang tattoos on his wrists and neck, peeping beneath the thick cardigan he wore.

  He hunched over in an old wicker chair, on a concrete terrace the size of a handker
chief. The terrace was behind a single-dwelling house that, despite its small size, would have cost a fortune to buy, for it was within the city limits.

  The sun made the man blink up at Mischa, as Mischa held out his hand. “Bohdan Ivanov said you would speak to me. Is that all right?”

  Palovsky considered, then nodded. “Something about a girl?” He had a florid, thick gray mustache which bracketed his chin and wagged as he spoke, and fine silver stubble on his chin and cheeks.

  “Her uncle.” The lie would serve, for now. Mischa indicated the footstool by the man’s feet. “May I sit?”

  “Sure, sure.” Palovsky reached for the glass of tea sitting on the arm of the wicker chair and stirred it. “You sound American.”

  “I have been speaking nothing but English with an American for several days,” Mischa told him. “It bleeds across, I suppose. I am from St. Petersburg, myself.”

  “Ah. The old school.”

  “You might say that.”

  Palovsky considered him with his faded brown eyes. “Military, then…GRU, I’m guessing. Now one of the spooks who hide at the Embassy.”

  Mischa held himself still, hiding his surprise.

  Palovsky chuckled. “I have met a dozen like you, across the years. Always friendly, always handing out the vodka and the cigarettes and the powders. Girls. Endless favors.”

  “A favor for a favor,” Mischa said, to encourage him to continue reminiscing.

  “They knew we controlled the streets,” Palovsky said. “So they tried to control us.” He laughed again. “They never did manage it properly. Then Gorbachev and poof! All gone.”

  “That was a bit before my time,” Mischa admitted.

  “You’ve been in Kiev long?”

  “Seventeen years.”

  “My condolences.”

  Mischa smiled. “I like it here.”

  “Not why you were sent here, though, was it? What did you do? Fuck the wrong woman?”

  Mischa frowned. “It was a promotion,” he admitted.

  “Ukraine? A promotion?” Palovsky laughed even harder. “They fooled you, boy. The only place worse than Ukraine is being sent to Siberia. Only, when you get sent there, you know you’re in shit up to your chin. Here, it’s subtle. Yet it’s still Siberia for your career.”

  Mischa held in his reaction. The conversation was wandering far off target. Time to pull it gently back to where he wanted it. “Did Ivanov tell you why I wanted to talk to you?”

  “He was gushing about a princess, some woman…would that be the American you’ve been talking to for days, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “She isn’t here?”

  “She’s left the country,” Mischa told him. “The thing is, if I can find the information she wanted about Aslan, then she will feel obligated to me. If you know men like me, then you understand how it works. A favor, an obligation, then gratitude, then, later, commitment.”

  “Aye, I get how it works. Saw it happen way too often, even with my people,” Pavlosky admitted. “Aslan, did you say?”

  “Elijah Aslan, only that’s the name he used when he went to Britain.”

  “Mm.” Pavlosky frowned, reaching back into his memories. “Ilari Aslanov,” he said softly. “From Chernobyl.”

  “That’s him.” Mischa waited.

  “He came down from Chernobyl when the plant melted down. Lost all his kin.” Pavlosky grunted. “Angry boy. Stayed angry for years, too. One of our best soldiers.”

  “He left for Britain around 1989,” Mischa prompted him. “Someone helped him get there. He couldn’t get there by himself, not with a Soviet passport and his background. Someone eased the way for him. Do you remember who?”

  Pavlovsky shook his head, then grew still. “Wait, wait,” he breathed. “God above, now I remember! It fucked up our operations for months…” And he fell silent.

  Mischa waited and wondered why his heart thudded so heavily. It wasn’t as if he had any stake in finding out about the man.

  Only, whoever helped Aslan was…what? The man who had ordered the bomb which had destroyed Fabian’s future? Was it that direct? Was the single lead she had found that straightforward?

  “Aslan…yes,” Pavlovsky breathed. “He was a good-looking lad. Not that I’m any judge, myself. He could draw the eye of any woman in the room. I remember that, because it explained why it happened, in my mind.”

  “What happened?”

  “One of you happened,” Pavlovsky replied. “Took a real liking to Aslanov. Got him to change his name, shrug off his past, look to the future. Brought him nice clothes, taught him manners, how to eat at a table without slopping the soup. It wasn’t a great surprise to me when I heard he was bedding the boy, too.”

  Mischa frowned. “They were lovers?”

  “I thought the man was just fucking a pet. You know.” Pavlovsky grimaced. “Turned out, I was wrong.”

  “How?”

  Pavlovsky drank his tea and licked the spoon. “When you keep a pet, you turn it loose when you move on. Krupin moved onwards and upward—”

  “Krupin?” Mischa said. It was only then he realized he had been braced to hear the man speak Ilari Victorov’s name. “Who is he?”

  “One of you,” Pavlovsky said, with a tone which said he was repeating himself. “Got the grand pat on the head. Back to Moscow for ribbons, medals, whatever. Only he didn’t abandon his pet, oh no.”

  “He sent Aslan to Britain—out of the crucible,” Mischa finished, putting it together.

  Pavlovsky nodded, staring into his tea. “It was only after we figured out how much Aslan was running things, keeping them smooth. A genius, and we didn’t recognize it until later. Krupin saw it, though. I expect Aslan made billions and is living on some island somewhere, laughing at all of us fools who stayed behind.”

  “Aslan died in Austria, last year,” Mischa told him.

  “Was he rich?”

  “Very, I believe.”

  “Ha! There you go, then.”

  Mischa got to his feet. “Thank you for your time, Gregor Pavlovsky.” He paused. “Do you need anything?”

  Pavlovsky showed yellow teeth. “Trying to make me your pet, now? Your type doesn’t change.”

  “I offered merely as a thank you,” Mischa assured him, shaking off the uneasiness Pavlovsky’s observation delivered. “If you are ever in need, call me. Everyone at the Embassy knows me.”

  “I’m sure they do,” Pavlovsky said dryly. “Tell Ivanov we’re even. And don’t call on me again.”

  [10]

  Aloft Kiev Marriott Hotel, Kiev.

  The problem with the suite Dima rented at the Marriott was that the armchairs were too damn comfortable. Dima woke when Leander shook her shoulder and sat up, rubbing her eyes. “What is it?”

  Leander sat on the coffee table in front of the armchair, turned the open laptop he was holding around and balanced it on his knees so she could see the screen. It was a fuzzy CCTV image of a train station. A battered, older style passenger train waited beside the platform.

  A dark haired woman hauling a rolling cabin bag headed for the nearest carriage. Leander had grabbed the still shot as she looked over her shoulder, to check behind her.

  It was without doubt Fabian.

  “Where was this?”

  “Odesa train station, two hours after her ferry arrived,” Leander said quietly, for Scott was snoring in the other armchair. Quinn and Noah had got the bedroom with the closing door because this was their honeymoon.

  “And the train she’s heading for?”

  “The all-stops milk run to Kiev. It arrived close to midnight that day.” Leander reached over the back of the screen and tapped the right arrow key. The image changed.

  It was another train station, with the same train in the background. This station was far busier. Leander had zoomed in and cropped down to the interesting bit.

  Dima stared at the image. “Who the fuck is she kissing?” she demanded.

  “The million-
dollar question,” Leander said. He shut down the laptop.

  “This whole dash to Kiev is a booty call?” Dima hissed, fury building in her.

  Leander rubbed at his temple. “I don’t think so. I think whoever this is, it was unexpected. Consider—” He lifted his hand and tapped the ends of his fingers. “She’s spent years earning her doctorate and working in the field. If she was going to hook up with someone, even a foreign someone, it would be with a colleague, because she didn’t have a life outside of her career.” He tapped the next finger. “She was pissed about the bomb and whoever did it to her—and she took it very personally indeed, even though she wasn’t the target.”

  “She’s Benny’s daughter. Of course she thinks it was about her,” Dima murmured. “I would, if I was in her position. Even after you told me Lochan was the target, I would consider myself to be a collateral target because of who my daddy was. And I’d want payback.”

  Leander nodded and touched the next finger. “She moved directly from Iceland to Istanbul, dived onto the ferry and was alone at Odesa station, where she caught the first available train instead of waiting for the express. She met him on the train, Dima. It was an eight-hour train ride, she’s emotionally vulnerable and in a strange land. I bet this guy is a local. I bet this was purely an accidental meeting. I bet my salary on it.”

  “We need to figure out who he is,” Dima muttered, staring at the laptop under Leander’s hand. “Was that the best shot of him?”

  “I haven’t tracked him back through the crowd, yet,” Leander said.

  “Do that. Get the cleanest shot you can.” Dima shuffled her butt to the front of the chair and stretched, putting her hands to the small of her back. Her spine popped and protested.

  Leander got to his feet.

  “Lea.”

  He looked back.

  “Start with people known to us who are in the area.”

  “You think he’s a spook?” Leander said. “That would be a helluva coincidence.”

  “Maybe. Maybe Fabian’s stranger on a train knew who she was—who she really was—before they met. Start there, Lea.” A sudden, huge yawn stole her breath and held her still for a moment.