“I know you didn’t dispatch an agent to spy on your own mission. But unless you discover the identity of the dead man, you won’t know who did. FSB is but one option, Mikhail.” Pasternak paused to let the import sink in. “If there is a spy, you must find him quickly. Time is running out.”
They had reached the end of the block. Pasternak stopped and raised his wrist to read his watch in the light of a street lamp.
“I must go,” he said, pulling the leash. “I wish you luck. You know the price if you fail.”
Subkov knew all too well.
Chapter 44
July 28
“She’s not here?”
I looked at Reyna in bewilderment, my emotions going through the bipolar equivalent of a superfecta—from elation that Reyna hadn’t discovered the girl’s mangled body elsewhere in the apartment to panicked depression that the girl was missing; from euphoria that she must be alive to gloomy fear that Dmitrov had stashed her somewhere.
I deflated like an air mattress saying goodbye to the in-laws. “Dmitrov’s got her.”
She marched up to me wearing her warrior face, as fierce as I’d ever seen it. “He does not have that little girl. Listen to me, Blake. Think! You believe D’Amato sent her whatever it is Dmitrov’s looking for, right? Why would Dmitrov come back to the house for us if he had the girl? He would have called Marko and Grigori off, or had them kill us.”
My mind reeled, Reyna’s voice scarcely registering as what should have been obvious reared up and smacked me across the face.
She reached up, grabbed my arms and shook me. “Look at me. The girl is safe. We just have to find her. This isn’t your fault, Blake. None of this is your fault. Shit happens. Now, come on! We have to get out of here.”
“Wait! The doll! Did you see the doll?”
“No, I didn’t look. We don’t have time for that.”
“We have to look for it!” My voice rose in pitch, and I tried to bring it down. “If Dmitrov has the girl, the doll may be the only bargaining chip we have.”
“Fine, I’ll take the bedroom. You look out here.” She vanished down the hall.
I pivoted in a circle, scanning for the most likely places a little girl would leave a doll. Unfortunately, nothing indicated a little girl had even lived there.
Reyna was back moments later shaking her head. “Let’s go.”
She hustled me out to a monochrome landscape—gray car sitting on black asphalt under a pewter sky—that perfectly matched my mood. I felt numb inside. It was easy for Reyna to absolve me of blame, but what had I accomplished? I could have—should have—called the cops to take the dead man out of my back seat and then walked away from it. But to save myself the inconvenience of police questioning and delivering my papers late, I’d promised a dying man something I couldn’t deliver. And now five people were dead, the monster responsible for those deaths was loose on the streets, and my upstairs neighbor, one of my dearest friends, had to live the rest of his life with a killing on his conscience.
Reyna pulled onto the highway heading south.
“Let it go,” I muttered. “Let Dmitrov find whatever he wants. It’s time to go to the cops.”
“No! Are you crazy? I want my job back. My reputation. God damn it, we finish this, Blake. You said it yourself. We don’t have enough on Dmitrov to put him away for good. Even the things we know he did will net him only a few years in prison. Then he walks. You want that?”
“Is that all you care about? Your job? You didn’t come out here to help me. You came out to save your reputation? You’re still pissed that NCIS is investigating you because of me? I had nothing to do with that.”
“Does it irk me that I’m under a cloud of suspicion right now for no reason?” she said quietly. “You bet. Do I want to fix it and rub their noses in it? Damn straight. But you want to know why I’m upset? You told me you loved me.”
“Wait. What? I do love you. You’re angry because I told you?”
“I’m angry because I never heard from you after that.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You walked out of my life and went back to yours.”
“You let me. You didn’t try to stop me. You didn’t try to follow me. You let me go, Blake. You told me you loved me, and you let me go.”
“You don’t think I haven’t agonized over that? I’ve missed you every single minute of every day you’ve been gone, damn it! What was I supposed to do? We’re adults, with lives and roots where we are. I thought you felt the same way.”
“You never asked.” She pressed her lips together and shrugged, eyes on the road ahead. “What were you supposed to do? I don’t know, Blake. Something. Anything. You did nothing.”
I stared out the window, thoughts and heart running in place, racing nowhere fast. I wondered how she’d managed to blindside me so completely. I’d been a fool, and I didn’t know if I could wise up quickly enough to make things right.
I shook my head. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“You’re going to just roll over and play dead? You’re giving up?”
“I’m not talking about us,” I said wearily. “Though you make it sound like I’m a day late and a dollar short anyway. What I meant was, people die because of me. I stumble around trying to do the right thing, but it ends up making everything worse.”
“You did not do this, Blake,” she said firmly. “Get it through your thick skull and stop feeling sorry for yourself. D’Amato was already a dead man when he got into your car. Masha and Anya were Dmitrov’s girls and tried to get out of the life. He would have killed them anyway to set an example. As for Marko and Grigori, that was kill or be killed. I like breathing, Blake, and I like the view a lot better from up here than six feet under.”
“It’s so simple for you, isn’t it? You’re a soldier.”
“Sailor.”
“Well, I’m no soldier or sailor. I deliver newspapers, Reyna. That’s all.”
The jut of her jaw and throbbing vein in her temple said she’d gone from pissed to furious.
“Don’t you ever say that! You may not have been trained in combat, but you are one of the bravest men I’ve ever met. You saved my life, civvy. You took a bullet for me. I won’t let you forget that. Do you have any idea what you’ve accomplished in the times we’ve been together? How many lives you’ve saved?”
I thought of the bloody, snot- and shit-encrusted carcass in the apartment that used to be Anya. “You saw what they did to her, Reyna. Do you think she didn’t tell them everything?”
She drove in silence for a mile or so.
“If I had children,” she said fiercely, “I would do anything to protect them. Anything.”
My hands started trembling, and I jammed them between my thighs so Reyna wouldn’t see. The tension in my muscles loosened, and my last reserves of energy circled an open drain. The crash from the adrenaline high. I wanted to crawl into a warm bed somewhere and sleep for days.
So much had happened in such a short period of time that I couldn’t process it all. Exhaustion coupled with sensory and emotional overload was short-circuiting my brain. Reyna was mad at me but thought I was some sort of hero at the same time. Thought fragments caromed into each other forming bizarre mash-ups that made no sense. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken my meds, and as reality took on a hallucinatory flavor, a semi-lucid thought had me wondering if I might be slipping into a fugue state.
“Blake! Hey! Are you all right? Stay with me. If we’re going to do this you can’t be flaking out on me. Will you be okay going up against this guy?”
I nodded, rubbed my face and screwed my fists into my eye sockets. Images played against the back of my eyelids, quick-cut video clips of D’Amato’s apartment building, the hallway outside his apartment, the elevator door opening, riding down with Vera, the laundry basket… My eyes snapped open and I straightened up so quickly my head mashed into the car’s headliner with a thump.
“I know where she is,” I said.
“She’s at D’Amato’s.”
Reyna’s glance at me said she clearly thought I was crazy.
“Not his apartment. The building. The laundry basket—it had girl’s clothes in it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You remember we rode down on the elevator with Vera? She had that wheeled laundry cart. The clothes in it were small, too small for her. It has to be the girl. First time I met Vera I got the sense she and Anya had been friendly. Anya would have trusted her. And where better to hide the girl if Anya knew Dmitrov was looking for them both?”
“No harm in checking, I guess.”
The rush-hour traffic back into town crawled so it took nearly an hour to get to Vera’s apartment. I faded and nodded off several times, and when we arrived I felt as groggy and grumpy as a bear coming out of hibernation. The night had taken a toll on Reyna, too, and we rode up to Vera’s floor without speaking.
Vera’s eyes widened in fear when she opened her apartment door and saw me. She swung the door partway shut, but I managed to get a size 15 shoe in the way before it closed altogether.
“We just want to talk, Vera,” I said. “Is she here? We want to make sure she’s okay.”
Vera shooed me from behind the door and pressed her insubstantial weight against it. “Go away. Leave us alone.”
“Blake, honey, your face. It’s no wonder she’s scared.” Reyna poked her head under my arm into Vera’s view. “It’s all right, Mrs. Rasmussen. We really are here to make sure the girl’s safe. Is she here? Is she staying with you?”
Vera nodded, the gesture deflating and shrinking her, and retreated. Reyna pushed the door open and slid under my arm into the apartment. I followed, taking a step inside as the sound of the elevator doors sliding dimly registered. Opening? Closing? I focused on the triumph of having found the girl, having been right for once. By the time I heard the footfall behind me, it was too late. Someone slammed into me from behind, a battering ram smashing into my kidney. I stumbled and went down, sprawling on the carpet. Reyna skipped aside as I fell, and someone rushed past. By the time I scrambled onto my hands and knees, a gun wagged in my face. Dmitrov stood two paces away with one arm around Vera’s throat, holding her close to him like a shield.
“Weapons, please. You first.” He scowled at Reyna. “Slowly. Over here on the table would be nice. Set it down gently and back away. Good. Now you, Sanders.”
I pulled the gun out from behind my back with thumb and forefinger, knee-walked to the coffee table and gingerly laid it next to Reyna’s. Vera’s eyes had rolled up in fear so only the whites showed, and small, strangled sounds dribbled out of her mouth.
“Let her go, Dmitrov,” I said. “She can’t hurt you.”
“Shut up!”
He took two steps sideways. Vera’s slippers left drag marks on the carpet. Using his gun hand, he pulled a couple of silk scarves off a coat tree in the corner and tossed them at Reyna. They fluttered and fell short. He waved the gun.
“Navy lady, tie up your friend, Sanders. In there.” He pointed the barrel at the dining room. “Move! Both of you!”
I got to my feet, slowly walked to the dining room and took a seat at the head of the table. There’d been no sign of the girl, and I silently hoped Vera had lied, that she was safe at some relative’s house several states away. Reyna leaned over me with pursed lips and furrowed brow and wrapped a scarf around my wrist. I gripped the end of the armrest tightly barely arching my wrist above the wood as she tied it tightly. I don’t think even she noticed. She tied the other wrist. Dmitrov gestured toward the door with the gun, and Reyna retrieved two more of Vera’s scarves, this time tying my ankles to the chair legs. I tried flexing my knees a bit to buy some slack there, too, but was less successful.
“Sit down,” Dmitrov commanded her when she finished.
Reyna took a chair to my right and sat silently with her hands in her lap.
Vera looked only semi-conscious, eyelids partly closed, body limp in Dmitrov’s grip. He whispered fiercely in her ear, “Call the girl.”
Her eyelids fluttered, and she managed a quavering “Katya. Yekaterinka.”
Tentative shuffling sounds came from down the hall. Vera drew in a breath, but before she could call out, Dmitrov clamped his forearm against her throat.
“For God’s sake, let the woman go,” I growled.
He glared at me, and something dark and reptilian slithered behind his eyes.
“As you wish,” he said. Thrusting his jaw forward, he took hold of Vera’s chin with his gun hand and snapped her neck with a quick jerk. He flung her lifeless body to the floor. As Vera’s life was snuffed, the rage inside me bloomed.
Molly once told me the ADHD trait in me she hated most when we were married was my short temper. Easily frustrated, little things would light my fuse, and I’d pop like a small firecracker, lashing out with some stupid or hurtful comment before my brain got a muzzle on me. But sometimes, the anger superheated so quickly it overrode the foot-in-mouth safety valve, sharpening my focus, speeding my thought-process. An elbow from another player on the basketball court had done it in college, making me faster, better. Simple biology, maybe. Cortisol and adrenaline flooding the limbic system.
Dmitrov faced the hall as a small figure appeared. Dark, shoulder-length hair framed a tiny, pixie face, angelic in its innocence. Rail thin arms and legs as pale as skim milk stuck out of a denim shorts and red, cotton tank top. Her feet were bare. She paused at an imaginary line in the doorway and took stock without expression. I expected her to shriek at the sight of Vera’s lifeless form, but her mouth just tightened and she turned her head to look up at Dmitrov.
“My mommy is dead, isn’t she?” she said in a voice so small I strained to hear it.
Reyna’s eyes brimmed and she bit her lip, clearly chafing to rush over to the girl and wrap her up in a big hug.
Dmitrov looked puzzled. “How do you know this?”
“Mommy told me if a bad man comes to take me then she’s in heaven.” She looked at Reyna, then at me—or rather the scarves tying my arms to the chair—at Vera and back at Dmitrov. “You are a bad man.”
Dmitrov threw up his hands. “I’m being judged by children now? Little girl—”
“Katya. My name is Katya.”
“I don’t give a fuck what your name is,” Dmitrov snarled. “You do what I say, or you will see your mommy sooner than you think.”
Tears sprang to Katya’s eyes, but she didn’t make a sound.
“Okay, Katya.” Dmitrov injected venom in the word. “Here’s what I want you to do. Go to your room and bring out everything you took from your mommy’s house. Quick, quick!”
The girl ran from the room, little feet thumping down the hall.
“Big, brave man bossing a little girl around,” I spat. “You going to kill her, too?”
“No. I have other plans for her. She’s my property just like her mother, the bitch.”
The thought of what he might put that girl through sent a chill up my spine and roiled the contents of my stomach. “That’s bullshit! I’ll bet Anya paid her debt to you. Let the girl go.”
“No one stops working for me until I say they stop.”
“D’Amato bought out Anya’s contract, didn’t he? You can’t stand that, can you? You hate losing that much?”
“I never lose. Look around you, Sanders. You thought you could outsmart me? Hide from me? Who’s tied to a chair? You and your lady friend are fucked.”
“What was D’Amato selling that has you so willing to kill for it?”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I had a contract to deliver.”
“Look, we know it has something to do with laser communications,” Reyna said. “Like you said, we’re not in a position to do anything about it now. So, why not tell us? What is it?”
The corners of his mouth turned up in an ugly imitation of a smile. “It’s business. Just business.” He shrugged. “Some fucking hard-asses
in Russia want World War III, it’s not my problem. I’m getting paid. You two are better off dead, anyway.”
He glanced down the hall and roared, “Katya! Get your skinny, little ass in here!”
Chapter 45
July 28
Orlov pored over an old-fashioned chart in his cabin, silently fuming. Normally, he took delight and some pride in charting the ship’s position manually instead of relying on the GLONASS radio navigation system used on the bridge. Development of Russia’s answer to GPS had begun in 1976, and now GLONASS was superior to the global positioning system the rest of the world used. None of that mattered now.
The window was closing. Every nautical mile south they sailed took them farther from a comfortable range for either helicopter to retrieve the last piece for the laser, closer to the rendezvous with the Samara, one of their Akula-class submarines. It also bought them that much closer to whatever destiny awaited. And if he ordered the ship to slow or change course, they might miss their opportunity.
Hours had passed since he’d called the gryebaniy vor, that fucking thief Dmitrov, with no response. He’d warned Subkov from the very beginning that using members of the Organizatsiya was too dangerous. They were unreliable—how can anyone trust a thief?—and had no vested interest in the ultimate outcome of their mission. And without the laser their mission would fail, despite what he’d told Mikhail. He’d already committed treason—no, not treason but acts against the president, a man who was clearly insane. He’d resigned himself to facing a firing squad, but not for nothing. He would not go down without salvaging something from this pizdets, this fucking mess.
A rap on the door brought his head up sharply. “Come!”
Captain Marinesko swung the door open, stepped inside and saluted smartly.
Orlov brushed aside an imaginary fly then saw the captain’s gaze drop momentarily, his brows knit. “What is it, Valentin?”
“More bad news, I’m afraid. We’ve just received a communiqué from Temp airfield. They recovered a body, badly decomposed, with no identification. They say they have no one unaccounted for, so they’re contacting all naval vessels and air crews in and out of the base in the past month.”
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