With no little deliberation, she replaced the presents in her handbag. Of course, she had forgotten to buy something for Paul. He was always an afterthought, if she thought about him at all. She could never fathom Bobbi’s attraction to him. The fact was Evan couldn’t stand him; she found him condescending on a good day, dismissive on a bad one. He once told her to cut out the abrasive and combative attitude, clearly preferring how Bobbi seemed to roll over every time he put his foot down. The less contact she had with him the better. When she would visit the kids after Bobbi was gone, she was always cordial to Paul for the sake of Wendy and Michael, but their interactions were abrupt and chilly. She suspected that Paul disliked her as much as she disliked him. And in time it seemed to her that he came to resent her being around the kids so much. Not that he spent much time with them, so far as Even could tell. But still, as he so bluntly put it, “I don’t like you rubbing your scent all over this house.”
Paul didn’t matter, though. She missed the kids: Wendy’s bright blue eyes, her winning smile, the way her thick blond hair smelled of lemongrass; Michael’s serious expression, his clever, curious mind, the way he wrapped his arms around her neck when he buried his face in the hollow of her shoulder; the way the siblings finished each other’s thoughts, as if they were twins, rather than Wendy being her brother’s senior by two years. Ever since Bobbi’s murder, she had made it a point to spend time with them and with Zoe, whenever she was back in DC. Sometimes she brought Zoe along. The two girls, especially, got along and, God bless them, they had an unspoken understanding not to leave Michael out of their time together. None of this, however, stopped her from feeling she never spent enough time with them. The truth was she hated DC, tried to stay away as much as possible. If it weren’t for the children, she’d probably take her new remits from Ben remotely.
At length, with thoughts of the three kids dancing like sugarplums in her head, she drifted off.
*
From twenty rows behind her, a man—nondescript, inoffensive, so completely unremarkable even those sitting in his row were scarcely aware of his presence—stared at the top of her head so intently it was as if he were memorizing each strand of her hair. Every time a flight attendant or a passenger moved up or down the aisle, obscuring his view, he closed his eyes, as if trying to imprint what he had seen on the inside of his eyelids.
*
Distanced from sleep by a tingling that rose from the base of her neck all the way to the crown of her head, Evan’s eyes popped open. Already fully awake, she turned in her seat. Scanning the rows behind her, she saw no one looking her way. Nevertheless, she rose, headed for the toilets at the rear of the plane. She passed a young woman reading the current issue of Vogue, a man in a corporate-style suit engrossed in the screen of his laptop, a kid playing with his Nintendo, a young couple holding hands, whispering to each other, a thin man reading an old hardcover of The Ugly American. The novel caused a sensation when it was published in 1958, detailing as it did the corruption and incompetence of U.S. foreign policy in Southeast Asia. No one and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, nothing to have caused the tingling. And yet it persisted, as she stood in back, waiting for a toilet to be free. She stared back down the length of the plane, taking in every detail, every movement of head or hand, but could find nothing untoward or out of place.
A flight attendant smiled at her, indicated the toilet on her right. “It’s free now,” she said.
*
Before her flight from Singapore had taken off she had fired up her mobile, scrolled through her list of specially curated images, sent the image for Singapore Airlines, followed by the flight number, to Benjamin Butler, for the past several years her boss at an unnamed intelligence shop funded by the DOD.
Upon arrival at Dulled, she passed quickly through customs and while she waited by the carousel for her suitcase, she turned on her mobile. Ben had sent his reply while she was still in the air: a clock without either hour or minute hands. The service used images with prearranged meanings so that even if the mobile was hacked, the “conversation” would be meaningless. But to Evan and Ben it meant:
RDV at 1
All service mobiles were deemed secure, the software updated bi-weekly, but in these days of constantly evolving hacking by bad actors in China, North Korea, Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran, even Israel, it paid to be paranoid.
She grabbed her suitcase and threaded her way through the crowd to the exit. Once outside, she took a deep breath of the balmy mid-May air. It was overcast, dampness in the air, but it felt almost cool and dry compared to the heat and humidity of Sumatra into which she had sunk so deeply for two months. Packs of other newly arrived travelers milled around her, pushing and shoving to get to their taxis, Ubers, shuttle buses.
Evan paused, forcing herself to casually look around, as if she were meeting someone. The tingling in the back of her head had returned, stronger than ever. But all she saw above the heads of the milling throng was the DC night sky, and the branches of recently leafed-out trees swaying in the slight breeze.
She had left her car at a hotel lot in Herndon, which offered long-term parking rates one-third the cost of the lots at Dulles. With a wheeze of brakes and the sigh of doors opening, the shuttle arrived, and her exhaustion after the long series of flights mixing with her anxiety over Ben’s sudden recall signal impelled her onto the vehicle. Taking a seat across from the folding doors, she watched every person who boarded. Her sister was again very much on her mind, arising like a dark shadow the moment Evan had stepped outside the terminal. Her betrayal of Evan and the ideals of her country were unspeakable. Evan’s feelings were in no way mitigated by Bobbi being dead for over three years. Why hadn’t she seen what Bobbi had become? The answer to that was, of course, obvious. She was too close to the subject; sibling clashes had blinded her to the larger truth.
The driver was reaching for the lever to close the doors when she saw Ben. He was outside the terminal, his back to her, craning his neck, presumably looking for her. She knew it was him—without question it was Ben.
“Hold on!” she called, rising from her seat. “I’ve got to get off.”
She swung off the shuttle, reached Ben just as he was turning around.
“Ben, what are you doing here, breaking protocol?”
“Thank God I’ve found you.” He took her elbow, steered her away from the curb, into a pocket of space away from anyone else.
“Listen, Ben, I have news that’s been eating at me all the way back from Sumatra.”
“Whatever it is can wait.” He cleared his throat. His eyes caught hers as if with a hook. “We’ve got to find your niece and nephew.”
“What?” Her heart lurched, began beating so hard and fast she felt it in her throat. “What did you say?”
“Wendy and Michael are missing.”
She blinked heavily. Her lips trembled as she felt an icy quiver run through her. “I don’t understand—”
“Neither does anyone else,” he said. “Not even the FBI suits who’ve been assigned to the case. They’re gone as if they never existed.”
“But that’s impossible. What about Paul?”
“Paul Fisher is MIA. No one in his workplace knows where he is. They haven’t heard from him and neither has anyone else, including their babysitter. And before you ask, Fisher has either turned off his mobile or destroyed it. No signal, no GPS, nothing.”
“How long?” Her eyes were shining, enlarged with incipient tears.
“It’s Monday night … so it could have been anytime from Friday night until today, when the kids failed to show up to school.”
“I want to go to their home. Right now.”
He nodded. “Come on. I’ll drive you.”
“I have my car in a lot in Herndon. I don’t want to leave it there.”
“Let’s go then.”
They crossed to the center median where his car was parked, its emergency lights blinking. They got in and Ben pulled out into the slowly movi
ng traffic flow.
Evan was aware of his warmth, his solidity as she sat beside him. She hadn’t thought about Ben the entire time she’d been away, but now that she was back inside the Beltway, all the memories of their time together in the field rushed back to her, as if they were a pack of needles penetrating her flesh, particularly the mistake they had made on their last assignment together.
Fifteen minutes later, they pulled up at the entrance to the parking lot.
“I’ll wait for you here, then we’ll caravan over.”
She nodded numbly, her mind whirling. What could have happened to Wendy and Michael? Had Paul taken them? But why? And where on earth would he take them?
At the edge of the lot she paused, trying to clear her mind. Her keen training kicked in as she made a close observation of the geometrical rows of cars, taking inventory. A family of four banged out of the hotel’s side door, laden down, barking at each other as they made their way to their Ford Explorer. A businessman swung his briefcase into his Audi, climbed in after it.
No one else was about. She could see the twin beams of Ben’s car as he waited for her.
She unlocked her matte-black 2013 Dodge Charger SRT8, swung in behind the wheel, thinking inanely, I’ve got to get that taillight fixed. The Charger might look like crap from the outside, but that was just camouflage. Inside, it was tricked out with a new turbo-charged 650-horsepower engine, the latest three-point seatbelts and airbags, plus a clutch of other goodies. She strapped in, then slipped the key into the ignition. In that instant, as she leaned forward slightly, she sensed a shadow out of the corner of her left eye, emerging out of the darkness. It moved fast, and so did she. But she was not fast enough. She was half-turned out of her seat when she found herself confronting the muzzle of a Sig Sauer P320 Compact semi-auto pistol aimed at the center of her forehead.
She tried to look up at who was holding the pistol, but he was making sure she couldn’t see past his chest.
“Unlock the rear doors,” he said in a smoker’s phlegmy voice.
She did as she was told. Her body was rigid, her muscles tense, even though she did her best to relax. She was not in the field, not in a blood zone. Half of her mind was on her niece and nephew and Ben, the other half still back with Lyudmila on the sun-splashed beach carved into the shoreline of Sumatra. She cursed herself for not being more vigilant.
“Hands on the wheel,” he said. “Ten and two.” He settled himself in the backseat directly behind her, not bothering to use the seatbelt. People most often didn’t when they were in the backseat of a vehicle, and he, especially, wouldn’t want to hinder his own movements.
A glance in the rearview mirror proved fruitless; he’d pulled a woolen balaclava over his head. All she could see of his face were his eyes and mouth, neither of which gave away anything.
“Let’s go,” came the directive from the backseat.
“And then?”
“You’ll know soon enough.” A harsh laugh. “Turn by turn.”
Her mind was reeling, as if she had stepped onto a Tilt-A-Whirl going full speed. How had she missed his approach? She thought she had covered all quadrants of the parking lot. Her exhaustion, the time change, the shock of Ben’s news all had contributed to her lapse. But they shouldn’t have.
“Now!”
She felt the muzzle of the Sig cold as an icicle at the back of her neck. “Or what? You’ll kill me?” She forced out a metallic laugh. “If that was your purpose, I’d already have a bullet in the back of my head.”
“How’s this?” He growled and slammed the barrel of the pistol into the side of her head just behind her ear.
Her torso recoiled sideways, and she bit off a yelp as pain shot through her like an electric shock.
“Liking that, are you?”
She tried to speak, but only a gasp emerged from between her lips.
“Okay, then. Get going.”
She put the Charger in gear, pulled out of her space. All of a sudden, it began to rain, water quickly slicking the road, blurring her windshield. She flicked on her wipers, had to turn them to fast.
“That’s right,” her captor growled. “Take the east exit out of here.”
As she drove out of the parking lot, Ben’s car pulled out ahead of her. Her captor didn’t notice; he was wholly fixated on her and completing his assignment. He told her to make a left. The filthy weather made oncoming traffic difficult to make out clearly, the expanding lights smeared against her windshield. The road ran straight ahead for as far as she could see, which wasn’t far at all. Rain thundered onto the roof.
Just then she heard her mobile sound. Ben!
“Don’t even think about it.” And the muzzle dug painfully into the base of her skull, grinding away. She winced, and was immediately angry at herself all over again, for letting the pain get to her. At the same time, she knew she had to stop blaming herself, but her mind felt unfamiliar, sticky as melted taffy. I’ve got to think clearly, she said to herself. Think quickly and strategically, or this will end in tears for me.
*
One minute she was in his rearview mirror, the next she wasn’t. What the hell, Ben thought. He punched her number into his mobile, but when she didn’t answer, he made a frighteningly quick U-turn. Brakes screeched, horns blared, and drivers hurled epithets silent against their windows. Ignoring it all, he returned to the intersection where he’d lost her. He looked left, then right, immediately saw the Charger with the busted taillight, and gunned the car after it, fishtailing on the wet road as he made the turn. He righted the car, got it under control, and sped off.
*
Vehicles passed her, drivers and passengers alike oblivious to the mortal danger she was in.
“What do you want from me?” she said. The best thing—the only thing—she could do now was to keep him talking. Maybe he would inadvertently reveal something important.
“Keep driving.”
“Where are we going?”
“Where you need to be,” he said with a deep chuckle, “and from what I hear you’ll wish I had kept you driving.”
Something: a tiny ray of light. “You could, you know.”
“What?”
“Keep me driving,” she said. “We could go—”
“Huh. We couldn’t go anywhere where they wouldn’t find us.”
They. So she was right. There was a “they.”
“Who are these people who want me so badly?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.”
He directed her to head north.
“One thing’s for sure though, they’re gonna have you killed in a very unpleasant way. A terribly slow and painful way. They hate you.” He tapped her on the left shoulder with the barrel of the Sig. “Bear right at that fork. Then a right at the first signal.”
“Why do they hate me? What do they know about me?”
“Everything.” He laughed again. “Every-fucking-thing.”
Could that be true, or just what he was told? A shiver ran down her spine. She needed another ray of light in this deepening darkness. “Like what exactly?”
She saw the signal up ahead, one of those new steel ones with LED lights.
Her eyes flicked to her side mirror in one last desperate hope that Ben was behind her. But she saw no headlights. She was alone with a gun at the back of her head and the knowledge of nothing but a sure and exceedingly agonizing death ahead of her.
Her gaze switched to the rearview mirror, locating her captor’s precise position in her mind. She tried as best she could to calculate the vectors of speed, his weight, and centrifugal force. She counted off the seconds, terrified out of her mind.
“Everything you’ve ever done from the cradle till earlier this morning.” Finally answering her question.
Her blood seemed to congeal in her veins. “How?” she managed to get out through a thick and furry tongue.
It was now or never, she thought.
“They’re fucking magicians, that’s h—”
He would have finished the sentence but Evan, accelerating, turned the wheel hard as she could to the left. The Charger slewed wildly on the rain-slick road. She’d judged it just right. She rammed the right rear side of the Charger into the steel signal post at such speed the rear side door staved in. The car jolted, shuddering and screaming like a beast in its death throes. Glass and twisted metal flew across the backseat. Spears, arrows, and edged weapons impaled her captor in thighs, groin, belly, and chest. The Sig discharged as, in galvanic response, his forefinger pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the agitated air. A spray of hot blood, sweetly copper, and then the pain shot through her.
Dimly, she could smell smoke, the heat as of a fire somewhere behind her. She tried to turn her head, but her seatbelt and the airbag gripped her too tightly, locking her in place. She tried harder and—
Everything vanished into a vast black whirlpool.
3
MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Half a world away, it was sleeting. The ice piled into corners, stairways, rooftops, and doorways, before slowly melting, blueish in the illusory light of a false dawn. Spring in Moscow could be magnificent or tainted with the last claws of the long winter.
Inside the private suites of the Kremlin, where she stared at herself in a floor-length mirror, it was warm as toast. The Sovereign himself saw to that. She stared at her face first, making sure her makeup was neither too little nor too much. No eyeshadow, but definitely lash thickener. Her green eyes stared back at her, implacable, impenetrable.
Her hair she had dyed blond upon her extraction and, liking it, had kept it, and had it cut into a bob that reached just above her shoulders. No matronly drawn-back-into-a-bun hairstyle for her.
She wondered, not for the first time, who she was, and when, precisely, she had stepped out of one world into another. Or perhaps she had always been in this world because three and a half years in Moscow had not changed her. It had occurred to her more than once that she had been born with Moscow in her blood buried deep like a seed awaiting its time in Russia’s watery sun. And now, in just a few moments, it would be her moment to shine, to become her own sun, burning brightly beneath the vaulted and gilded ceiling of Russia’s palace of power. It had taken her less than thirty minutes to feel comfortable in the baroque excessiveness of these interiors, so at odds with the drab utilitarian streets beyond the square.
The Kobalt Dossier Page 3