They were outside seconds later, standing in a loading zone at the rear of the station.
“Over there,” she said, pointing to a group of warehouses across from a grass field. “You good?”
“I better be.” Simon took a last look behind him. The door to the storeroom remained closed. He led the way across the parking lot, over a dirt berm, and through the field. A minute later, they had reached the warehouses and were effectively out of sight.
“Now what?” asked Nikki, bent over, hands on her thighs.
Simon peered around the corner as the door to the loading zone burst open, a half-dozen policemen pouring outside. A few looked in their direction. One of the men raised a hand and pointed at Simon. It was the rail marshal.
“Hold on.”
The rail marshal jumped off the platform and began jogging across the field toward them.
“We’ve got company.” Simon ducked back behind the wall and checked his surroundings. All the warehouse’s doors were lowered. There were no vehicles nearby. No visible place to conceal themselves. A few steps away stood a stack of wooden pallets a head taller than him. He grabbed Nikki’s hand and led her to the pallets.
“Get behind there.”
Nikki tried to slip into the gap between the warehouse and the pallets. “Too tight.”
Simon squatted and slid his hands beneath the bottommost pallet. With a grunt, he lifted the stack and moved it a few inches to one side. He repeated the motion on the opposite side, creating a narrow space between wall and pallet. Nikki squeezed into the opening and Simon pushed the pallets as close to the wall as he could. “Stay here.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll figure something out.” He ran to the far corner of the warehouse. It was twenty meters across the road to the next building. Even if he made it before the marshal arrived, he had no place to hide. He searched for a door, a window to break, anything. Close by, the marshal’s radio crackled.
Simon saw a drainpipe and began climbing, praying it remained anchored to the wall.
The marshal reached the warehouse before Simon had made it to the roof. The marshal pulled up directly beneath him, hands on his hips, gathering his breath. Simon froze. Twenty-five feet below him, the marshal turned in a slow circle, reconnoitering the area. For a moment, he looked directly at the pallets, directly at Nikki, then looked away.
Still, he didn’t move on, but kept in his place as if nailed to the spot, his head scanning the area, nose raised like a cat scenting his prey.
Simon’s fingers grew tired. Between the day’s heat, his nerves, and the run from the terminal, his hands were moist with perspiration. He dropped one hand to his trousers and dried his palm, then did the same with the other.
Below, the marshal’s radio crackled again. A man said, “Jacques? Anything?”
“Still checking.”
Simon had wedged the toe of his shoe between the pipe and wall, the tip of his sole resting on a bracket securing the drainpipe. Now he felt the shoe slipping. He increased his pressure, wedging the shoe more tightly. Suddenly, his foot came free of his loafer. He slipped. His hands clutched the pipe with all his might. Miraculously, the shoe remained in place. He dug his other foot into the space, his ankle turned, his calf screaming. Hugging himself to the pipe, he guided his unshod foot back to the loafer. His toes touched leather. Slowly, he worked his foot into the shoe until he could put pressure on it and stand easier.
By now, it was not only his hands that were sweaty. His entire face was beaded with perspiration. He felt the drops rolling off his forehead, down his cheeks. As he stared at the top of the marshal’s head, he counted the drops falling from his chin and watched powerless as they fell to the ground.
“Well?” asked the voice on the radio.
A hand touched his hair. The marshal gazed upward, but not at Simon.
“Nothing,” he said finally. “They didn’t come this way.”
Simon let go a breath.
The marshal returned the radio to his belt. Instead of returning to the station, he took a pack of cigarettes from his jacket and lit up, leaning against the pallets, his shoulders inches from Nikki.
Simon held his position, hands burning with fatigue, growing stiff, unresponsive. He caught Nikki staring at him and he knew she was urging him to hold on. His hands began to slip. He dried them again but to less effect. His shirt was wet on his back, his legs quivering.
The marshal smoked contentedly and then, without warning, threw the butt to the ground with only half the cigarette finished and walked back to the terminal.
Simon slid down the pipe, his legs giving out when he hit the ground, his rear landing firmly on the concrete. After a moment, he stood and freed Nikki, who appeared as wrung out as he felt.
“Well,” she said. “I guess it’s official.”
“What’s that?” He was out of breath, too exhausted to pay much attention.
“I’m a fugitive, too.”
The idea made him laugh. “How does it feel?”
“Not good.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“And so?”
Simon straightened his back, some semblance of his normal self returning. “Wheels.”
“You mean a car?”
“Yes, a car.”
“There must be a rental car office near the station.”
“We’re not going anywhere near the station.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m just getting used to this. I’m sure we can find one downtown. It’s not far.”
“You’re still not getting it, are you?” said Simon. “You need a driver’s license and a credit card to rent a car.”
“What do you suggest? A taxi? It’s a hundred kilometers to Marseille. It will cost a fortune.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that either.”
Nikki stood taller, reading the look in his eye. “You want to steal a car?”
“Borrow it.”
“That’s where I draw the line.”
“You crossed the line in Paris when you didn’t report Falconi’s murder. You crossed it a second time when we ran away from the police. My guess is one of those officers got a look at you. Dumont knows you’re with me. It won’t be long before you’re made. You said it yourself. You’re a fugitive. Welcome to the dark side, Detective Perez.”
Nikki ran a hand through her hair, looking away, screwing up her face in anger or bewilderment. “I am a police officer. I can’t do this.”
“You’re doing this because you are a police officer. Helping me is the best way we can take down Coluzzi.”
“I sincerely doubt that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you get it, Riske? I’m helping you because I like you.” She stepped forward and kissed him on the lips, placing a hand on his buttocks. “Just don’t go thinking so much of yourself.”
“Too late for that.”
Simon grabbed her by the waist and looked into her eyes, seeing the flecks of gold he’d noticed when they’d first met in Marc Dumont’s office. He kissed her softly, enjoying the feel of her lips on his, the warmth of her open mouth. She pushed harder into him and he kept his body rigid, responding to her pressure.
“That was nice,” he said.
Nikki needed a moment to open her eyes fully and come back to herself. “Yes,” she said. “It was.”
They left the warehouse and headed into town. Ten minutes’ walk took them to a leafy residential area with cars parked cheek by jowl on both sides of the street. Simon spotted a black Porsche 911. He slowed, seeing that the door was locked—naturally.
“Don’t even think of it,” said Nikki. “This is what we want.”
She was standing next to an old white Peugeot—four doors, two-liter engine, decent tires, and gravely in need of a wash. In other words, as close to an anonymous vehicle as they were likely to find.
Simon looked around. A few kids were walking down the block a ways in front of them; other
wise, no one else was in sight.
“Gun,” he said.
She slipped her pistol from its holster. He took the muzzle in his hand and touched the butt to the sweet spot on the driver’s side window.
“Wait!” said Nikki.
Simon lowered the pistol to his side. Nikki opened the passenger door. “Unlocked.”
She slid in, leaned over, and unlocked Simon’s door. He climbed in and found the seat adjusted perfectly for his height. He reached below the wheel and yanked out the ignition cables. It had been years since he’d hot-wired a car, but it was like riding a bicycle or kissing a girl. He found the correct wires, peeled off the plastic coatings with his thumbnail, and crossed them.
The engine rattled to life. He touched the gas, and the car shook as if racked by a tubercular fit. “There’s still time to get the Porsche.”
“Drive,” said Nikki.
Five minutes later, they joined the highway. Their train would arrive in Marseille in twenty minutes’ time.
He wondered who would be waiting to greet them.
Chapter 51
It was the moment of truth.
In every operation, there comes a time when one must decide whether to pull the trigger, in metaphorical, and often real, terms. It is the moment after which there is no retreat and the only direction is forward.
Ending the call with the rascal Coluzzi, Vassily Borodin surveyed the bound dossiers arrayed across his desk. Each represented a documented instance of high treason.
The first sheaf bore the title “Kremlin Decree No. 1, 12/31/99.” He opened the cover to read the text as set forth the day the traitor took office. “No corruption charges shall be allowed against outgoing presidents,” it began, before listing in detail all such acts that might qualify as “corruption.”
The decree was also known as the “grand bargain,” the brilliant piece of political chicanery that secured the president his job by granting his predecessor immunity, and then protected himself against all financial misdeeds he might undertake during his own tenure.
For perhaps the thousandth time, Borodin marveled at the man’s audacity. Was there ever a more telling way to begin a regime?
The second dossier, dated 2002, was titled “Nord-Ost.”
The third, dated 2007, discussed the Ivanchuk affair.
The fourth, the invasion of Crimea.
There was nothing damning about the events taken alone. In fact, it was possible to argue that the president’s decisions in each case were made for the benefit of the country. It was impossible, however, to ignore payments to a series of shell corporations—set up in the name of the president’s closest friends and housed in places like Liechtenstein, Panama, and the Cayman Islands—that corresponded precisely to the dates of these events.
The largest of the payments dated to October 2014, one week after the invasion of Crimea, totaled two billion dollars. The recipient was one Platinum Holdings of Curaçao, a shell company set up in favor of one Oleg Kharkov, aged eighty-seven, retired judo instructor and, by odd coincidence, the man who had taught the president during his youth.
Good luck explaining that, mused Borodin, to a group of generals living on a pension of twenty thousand dollars a year.
“But why would anyone pay me to invade Crimea?” the president would surely demand. “Or Ukraine?”
To which Borodin would pass out the documents his men had obtained detailing secret NATO meetings in which top U.S. generals had argued for a substantial increase in military spending to counter the “rising threat in the East.”
“Because,” Borodin planned to explain, “without a threat, the West has no excuse to re-arm itself.”
Some traitors came cheap. Some even betrayed their country for free, so eager were they to do their homeland harm. Not this one. For him, every action was for sale. Every decision carried a price tag. The man viewed the country as his own candy store, which he could sell off piecemeal. Timber for two billion. Aluminum for six. Oil for ten. The highest price was for the store itself, the Rodina, Mother Russia.
Borodin slammed a fist onto his desk. His Russia.
The sum total of these payments came to sixty-one billion dollars. Not bad for a lieutenant colonel passed over three times for promotion and stationed in Dresden of the former German Democratic Republic, a backwater so unimportant its offices had been equipped with computers nearly twenty years old. No wonder the man hated his country.
One day soon he, Vassily Borodin, would present all this information to a group of senior government ministers and high-ranking members of the military. It was imperative his case was airtight. For that, he needed the letter. It was the detonator that would ignite the explosives he’d labored years to gather. With a sweep of his arm, he gathered the folders and replaced them in his private safe.
The moment of truth had arrived.
First a call. “Kurtz. Bring the car around in five minutes.”
“Where are we—”
“Just bring it.”
Springing from his chair, he dashed past his secretary with a speed she’d never before witnessed. He eschewed the elevator and ran down the stairs to the ground floor, reining himself in to a brisk but officious walk as he exited the building. Decorum.
It was a crisp, sunny day, a tinge of burning wood in the air, distinctly fall-like, though the autumnal equinox was three weeks hence. He crossed Andropov Plaza and made his way toward a modern single-story building constructed a year earlier. The building housed the SVR’s administration and banking section.
He slowed to a suitable pace as he nodded to the two armed security guards situated on either side of the door. He continued past a reception area and down a long corridor. He stopped at a steel door, again guarded by two armed sentries.
“Open,” he said.
A guard pressed a buzzer. A voice asked who was there. He answered, “Director Borodin.” A loud, pleasing click as the lock disengaged. Borodin opened the door and entered the SVR’s private bank.
“Good morning, sir,” said the bank manager, a portly, pink-cheeked man with ginger hair, rushing to greet him. “This is a surprise.”
Borodin had never set foot in the building. It was not the director’s job to gather cash for an operation. In this instance, however, he could trust no one but himself. He dismissed the manager with a sideways glance and walked directly to the teller’s window. On a withdrawal slip, he filled in the boxes with a ten and six zeroes. There was a space at the bottom for two signatures, one for the case officer and one for the director. He scrawled his signature on both lines and handed it to the teller.
“Ten million euros?”
“That’s correct.”
“Needed?”
“Immediately.”
“Any particular denominations?”
“An even split of hundreds, two hundreds, and five hundreds. Vacuum sealed and placed in the smallest bag possible. I believe it should fit into a standard-sized suitcase.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Mr. Voroshin,” said Borodin. “Not a word.”
Voroshin flushed a violent shade of crimson and shook his head.
“You have fifteen minutes.”
Voroshin spun on his heel and double-timed it down the hall, punching a code into a security system before disappearing into the vault room where the SVR kept a permanently stocked selection of the world’s major currencies totaling over one hundred million dollars. The money was Borodin’s and Borodin’s alone to allocate, though it was by no means a private slush fund. He must account for every euro, yen, or pound at quarterly reviews led by the president’s much too diligent anticorruption squad.
Borodin paced the room, hands clasped behind his back.
The moment of truth, indeed.
So far all actions taken over the past years to further his private investigation could be ascribed to his official responsibilities. The meticulous, time-consuming assembly of dossiers listing suspicious activities, the interviews wit
h retired agents, the prolonged interest in the pirated legal emails. All were natural activities to be performed by the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service.
This was different.
To take government money of your own volition with the intent to bring down the president constituted an act of high treason, nothing less, and if discovered would be punishable by death, the sentence carried out immediately, a bullet to the back of the head delivered most probably by the president himself.
A sobering thought. Yet such was Borodin’s confidence that he did not for a moment waver in the certainty of his actions.
He checked his watch, preparing to upbraid Voroshin for his lassitude, when the bank teller appeared, lugging a suitcase at his side.
“Ten million euros,” said Voroshin.
Borodin took the suitcase from his hand and left without thanking him.
Kurtz, his deputy, had pulled the car to the rear entrance as commanded. He stood by the open trunk. “Sir,” he said, “there is something you should see.”
“What is it this time? We need to get the money to the airport and transported to France. I don’t have time for anything else.”
“Major Asanova.”
“What about her?”
Kurtz handed Borodin his smartphone. A report from a French news channel was queued up. Borodin shot Kurtz a damning glance, then pressed PLAY. With horror, he listened to a reporter from France 2 describe the mysterious death of a female Russian passenger aboard a TGV from Paris to Marseille following a physical altercation with another passenger. A witness appeared on screen telling of the fight that took place in the dining car between a beautiful blond woman and an unidentified man, acting out how the woman had plunged a pen into her neck and then died gruesomely. The reporter ended by adding that the unidentified passenger with whom the Russian woman had quarreled had disappeared and could not be found.
Borodin returned the phone to his assistant. The unidentified man was an American, of course. Most probably, the one named Riske with an e. Oh, how they must want the letter back to engage in such theatrics aboard a train.
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