Rasputin's Shadow

by Raymond Khoury

  Nothing came back.

  “Nick. Come in.” Nothing. “Everett? Anyone?”

  Nothing.

  I looked at Larisa. She seemed as spooked as I was.

  I had a really bad feeling about this.

  We stood there for a minute, in silence. Wondering about what had happened. I tried to raise them again, but the radio was still dead.

  Then I heard loud footfalls coming our way. I tensed up, swung my gun up and aimed it at the edge of the wall, waiting to see who was going to show up. They couldn’t still be under the machine’s effect now that it was in pieces. But for a split second, I found myself wondering if its effects lingered even after it was turned off.

  Then I saw Aparo appear from behind the corner, rushing toward us, with Everett close behind. They had their guns out.

  I leveled my gun at them—then Aparo shouted, “Sean, whoa, it’s us. It’s us.”

  I hesitated, then brought my gun down.

  “What happened, man?” he asked as he reached us and took in the crashed bus and the squashed minivan.

  I said, “He’s dead. It’s over.”

  He slapped me on the back. “Glad to see you’re still in one piece, buddy.” Then he smiled at Larisa. “You too.” Then he added, with a grin, “Even more so.”

  I swallowed hard, then I asked, “What about POTUS? Is he okay?”

  “Yeah, he’s fine,” Aparo confirmed, laconic as always. “Confused, but fine. They’ve got him locked down in some storage room in the basement.”

  I breathed out with relief and for the first time in days, I felt my entire body unclench itself.

  “What about everyone else?”

  Everett said, “We had some punch-ups and four agents outside took bullets to their vests, but they’re okay.”

  Which, if true, was a much better outcome than I expected. “So the signal didn’t make it into the ballroom?”

  “Oh, it did,” Aparo said. “We heard the shots over our comms and we felt it all right, but before anyone inside was affected enough to pull any weapon, I came up with a Buck Rogers trick of my own.”

  I was lost. “Come again?”

  “The electronic countermeasures van,” Aparo said, beaming. “I don’t know if it did the trick or not, but I got them to switch on every jammer they had full-blast when it all started to go weird.”

  I smiled with relief and nodded to myself, feeling exhausted. A key component of the presidential motorcade was a Chevy Suburban that was used to counter any remotely controlled attack. It had powerful barrage jamming equipment on board that was designed to kill any kind of phone, radio, or electromagnetic signal in order to block any remotely controlled bomb threat.

  “And Sokolov?” I asked.

  “He’s fine. The guys in the command unit didn’t really feel anything. Might have something to do with the amount of electronics they have in there,” Aparo said.

  “I’m guessing we’re all staring down the barrel of a weeklong debrief, at best.” Everett chortled.

  “I can’t wait,” I told him, pulling my earbud out.

  There was something I needed to check.

  “Give me a sec,” I said. Then I glanced at Larisa. She understood.

  I headed back to the crushed minivan. Larisa followed.

  It was battered beyond recognition. Front to back, it couldn’t have been more than six feet long. I walked around to the back of it, which had slammed into the brick wall. Among the twisted debris, I could see various electrical components, all busted up. Like someone had chucked a stereo from a fifth-floor window.

  Still, I didn’t want to take any chances.

  I pulled back a couple of bent panels and climbed into the wreckage. I found three components that didn’t look completely damaged. They were the size of stereo amps. I also found the laptop, closer to what used to be the front of the minivan. It didn’t look as badly broken as the rest. A small travel case was also relatively unscathed. I pulled it out and opened it. I found some clothing and men’s grooming items inside it. I also found a hidden compartment in which Koschey had stashed several passports and credit cards as well as a decent bundle of hundred-dollar bills.

  I set the three components down on the asphalt, then I looked around until I found a more-or-less whole brick that had come off the wall.

  I looked at Larisa. “You okay with this?”

  She studied me, then nodded. “Seems like the reasonable thing to do.”

  I raised my arm and battered them with the brick until they were unrecognizable. Then I tossed the components back into the wreck.

  I picked up the laptop. “I’ll need to dispose of this properly.”

  “What about Sokolov?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Might need your help on that.”

  74

  There was nothing I wanted more just then than to be back home with some Joss Stone in the background, a cold beer on the nightstand, and a warm Tess in my arms. But that would have to wait.

  There was a monster issue I needed to sort out first, and it had to be done quickly and carefully if it wasn’t going to get me trussed up in an orange jumpsuit and thrown into a dingy cell.

  I needed help, but not just anyone’s help. This had to be someone I could trust implicitly. Someone who had the resources and the strength of character to make the impossible happen. Because what I needed was the impossible.

  My monster issue was called Leo Sokolov. Or Kirill Shislenko, take your pick. Either one led to the same headache.

  There were only three options. One was for him to die. That was one way to guarantee that his horrific discovery wouldn’t rise out of the carnage of the Oyster/Adams Bilingual School’s playground and unfurl its cloak of pain and suffering again. Inconveniently, Leo had survived this whole debacle, and I didn’t really have it in me to put a bullet in his head. Plus, I’d grown to like the guy in the short time we’d spent together. Yes, he had blood on his hands. But I didn’t think he deserved the gas chamber or a 115-grain jacketed hollow-point slug penetrating his brain at 1,300 feet per second.

  Option two was to hand him over to Larisa’s people at the CIA. He’d be well looked after. They’d probably sort out a wonderful life for him as a member of one of their protection programs. Slight hitch, though. Remember what I said a few seconds ago about that nasty cloak of pain? Option two pretty much guaranteed that Leo’s machine would be reborn—bigger and nastier, too, no doubt. And I didn’t think I could ever forgive myself for unleashing that on the world in which Kim and Alex would grow up. It was already screwed up enough as it is.

  Option three was for him to disappear. I liked that option. It also felt like the fairer one to Daphne, who hadn’t really deserved any of what she’d been through so far. Problem was, if Leo was going to disappear, he had to really disappear. I mean, disappear disappear. Never-to-be-heard-from-again disappear. And that, as Osama bin Laden and countless others would testify if they were still around, was pretty tough to pull off.

  But I thought I knew one man who could help me make it happen.

  We’d avoided the post-event briefings and flown the coop, taking the chopper right back to New York City, the four of us—me, Aparo, Larisa, and Leo. It was around ten o’clock by the time we landed at the East Thirty-fourth Street heliport. Aparo’s Charger was there, where we’d left it. But what I was going to do next, I needed to do alone. For Aparo’s sake, and for Larisa’s.

  “You guys know what to do?” I asked.

  They both nodded.

  Leo went up to them and thanked them warmly. Then it was time to go.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” I told them, then looked at Aparo. “You gonna be able to keep Miss Tchoumitcheva here entertained until then?”

  I could almost see his blood pressure rise as he struggled with a controlled grin. It was like waving a red rag to a bull.

  Larisa sidled up to me.

  “You sure you want to do this alone? You still don’t trust me?” she
asked. Then before I could formulate an answer, she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “I love watching you squirm,” she said. Then she nodded at Aparo, turned, and walked away. He followed her, flicking me a wave of his hand.

  Leo and I got in the Charger. We bypassed Federal Plaza completely and drove straight across to Brooklyn and then to the 114th Precinct in Astoria, where we sprang Daphne with minimal obstruction from the overworked and underpaid desk sergeant.

  Seeing Leo and Daphne hug each other tearfully only confirmed my feeling that these two deserved to be left alone to enjoy the rest of their lives together. Whether we’d get away with it—that was another matter. But it seemed like a gamble worth taking. And like I said, options one and two—not really options at all.

  Next came the hard part. Where to stash them.

  I explained it all to Daphne. How if we went ahead with this, she would never, ever be able to communicate with anyone in her family again. Not her sister, who she was close to. No one. We’d let the sister know they were okay. But that break would have to be final. That was the only strictly nonnegotiable condition she had to accept.

  It’s never an easy one for anyone to accept. But after some painful moments when it finally sank in, she said she would do it.

  I knew she would.

  ***

  THAT TIME OF NIGHT, and with my lights spinning, we made it to the Canadian border in five hours.

  We talked a lot on the drive up. I got to listen to Leo tell Daphne his whole amazing story. Daphne was in turns stunned, fascinated, shocked, but to her credit, she took it all well, considering. He’d had quite a life, by any standard. I was glad that the worst part of it would soon be over.

  I asked him about Corrigan, of course. He couldn’t give me much more than a general physical description, which was pretty broad—no one-armed distinctive trait for me—and thirty years out of date. It killed me that I couldn’t sit him down with a sketch artist back at the office and get him to draw up a portrait of my ghost, which we could then age appropriately using our software. I couldn’t use the Bureau’s resources on this, nor was there time for that. I had to make Leo and Daphne disappear quickly, before anyone noticed they were gone.

  We hit the border, and I was able to badge my way through. A few minutes later, we were in the parking lot of the Best Western at Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle.

  True to his promise, Cardinal Mauro’s people were waiting for us there.

  I didn’t want to know where the Church would hide them. It was safer that way for everyone. What I knew, though, was that the Vatican would ensure the Sokolovs’ safety. They’d be fine. Mauro assured me of that. As the Vatican’s secretary of state, basically the pope’s right-hand man, he had the power to make pretty much anything happen. And I knew he’d be true to his word. We’ve been through a couple of seriously intense experiences over the last few years, both related to Templar secrets, the most recent of which was a couple of years ago, when Tess had been kidnapped. He owed me, I owed him. We helped each other out.

  Daphne gave me a long, tight hug, Greek-style. I loved every second of it.

  “Efkharisto poly,” she said into my ear, thanking me. “You’ll be in my prayers, always.”

  I reached into my jacket’s inside pocket and pulled out the wad of cash I’d found in Koschey’s bag, and handed it to Sokolov. “Take this. It might come in handy.”

  He flushed, then nodded. He reached out and gave me a firm, warm handshake, cupping my hand in both of his—then he pulled me in for a big bear hug himself.

  “Thank you,” he said, not letting go. “Truly.”

  I nodded.

  He paused and studied me for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to say anything. Then he said, “You know, your people are researching this too. Who knows? Maybe they’ve already figured it out.”

  “God, I hope not,” I told him.

  “They could already be using it in ways you can’t imagine,” he added. “The thing is . . . this is going to be the century of the mind. The technology’s finally here for it. And these discoveries . . . they’ll have the ability to either free us to explore our minds and reach higher potentials that we never dreamed about—or they’re going to enslave us. And it’s going to be very tough to explore the first without opening the door to the second. I wish you the best of luck in keeping that door firmly shut.”

  “I think we’re going to need it.” I smiled. Then I watched them get into the car and disappear into the early dawn.

  75

  By the time I caught up with Aparo and Larisa at the French bistro in Chelsea, it was almost noon and they looked wrecked.

  Which was the idea.

  We’d be showing up at Federal Plaza sometime soon, looking like someone had slipped us some serious mickeys. Which is what we needed everyone to believe. After all, we would have allowed one of the government’s most wanted prizes to slip through our fingers, and if we were going to hang on to our careers and avoid prosecution, we needed to have a solid story. One that we all agreed upon and would be able to give individually without being caught out.

  It wouldn’t be too difficult. It was an easy tale to tell. After all, Sokolov had done it before. And there was no reason for us to know about it.

  Predictably, the debriefs took a while, but it was all handled without too much aggravation. Sure, they were pissed off that he’d gotten away. FBI, CIA, you name it. But then again, the president was alive and well, and he wanted to meet us personally to thank us for what we’d done, which helped. A lot.

  I managed to extricate myself from that first session at around seven and was home in Mamaroneck about an hour later. It felt great to be back and even greater to have Tess in my arms.

  I polished off the leftover roasted chicken she’d made for dinner and we both had a laugh watching Alex and Kim taking Super Mario through space on the Wii, then we all hit the sack. I was exhausted and couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a solid stretch of sleep. My body demanded a respite, and it was finally going to get it.

  I showered and was on the bed putting my phone on its charger when I remembered something. I’d never gotten around to reading the third Corrigan file that Kirby had sent me. The JPEGs were still sitting in my message inbox.

  The lure was stronger than my exhaustion. I couldn’t resist a peek.

  I padded into the study, downloaded the files, and pulled up the first image.

  The file was massively redacted. There were more lines blacked-out than there were unmarked. It was about an assignment code named Operation Cold Burn and was marked SCI—Sensitive Compartmented Information. It involved something called Project Azorian. In my tired state, I just skimmed past it and cast a weary glance on the page before clicking on to the next page, also heavily redacted, then the next one that was just as mutilated.

  I was about to switch it off and head back to bed when two unredacted letters on the page caught my eye. CR. Something inside me flinched, something at the very edge of my consciousness, a minute stab of recognition.

  CR.

  Could be anything, normally. Except that in this case, the two anodyne letters weren’t just anything. And it was because of the context. It was because of the word I’d passed over lethargically only moments earlier. Azorian.

  It was a word I’d seen before. And in that instant, prompted by the two letters, I remembered where I’d seen it. And heard it. And asked about it.

  It was a long time ago. Back when I was ten years old.

  I’d seen it on CR’s desk. Heard him say it. And when I’d asked about it, he’d said it was someone he worked with who had a silly name, a name they’d laughed about at work. The Mighty Azorian. We’d joked about it before he brushed it away and we moved on to something else.

  CR was Colin Reilly.

  My dad.

  The dad I had walked in on all those years ago, when I was ten, to find him at his desk, slumped in his chair, with a gun on the floor by his side and a wall of blood spat
ter behind his head.

  Sitting there on the edge of my bed, exhausted beyond reason, I found myself frozen, my mind focused on two questions:

  Did Corrigan know my dad?

  And given all the mind-control mumbo-jumbo Corrigan was involved with . . . had my dad really killed himself?

  Author's Note

  There is so much research material on Rasputin out there, it was hard to know when to stop. Even better, a lot of it is firsthand. A huge trove of letters and diaries of many of the key players still exist. Most striking are those of the tsar and the tsarina: their letters and telegrams to each other, and their diaries, all of which have been carefully preserved, give us a clear and incredibly detailed insider’s look at their lives and their dealings with Rasputin. All the main players testified to the Extraordinary Commission in 1917, a few months after Rasputin’s death and after the tsar’s abdication. The monk Iliodor wrote a book about him from the comfort of his new home in America. Even his murderers published their memoirs long after fleeing Russia, although their versions of the events surrounding that infamous night have glaring, self-serving inconsistencies. Rasputin himself wrote—or, more likely, dictated, to Olga Lokhtina—several works, most notably “The Life of an Experienced Wanderer,” which was published after his death. All of which allowed me a phenomenally intimate look at what happened in those final turbulent years of the Romanov dynasty.

  Remarkably, every event described in this book’s historical chapters actually happened—with one caveat: Misha and his discovery are, of course, my invention. Rasputin really did everything described in this book, and as far as I know, he achieved it without a shadow like Misha helping him out. Which is astounding. He did keep the tsarevich alive long enough for the young boy to face an executioner’s bullet three weeks short of his fourteenth birthday. He bedded countless aristocratic women, culled from the highest rungs of St. Petersburg society. His influence over the tsar in affairs of government was mind-boggling and contributed in no small amount to the fall of the monarchy and the onset of the revolution.