He was just about to step out when his mobile buzzed. He listened for perhaps thirty seconds, said, “Understood,” and rang off.
The front door opened and there stood Kata in high heels, thigh-high stockings, and nothing else. She grinned when she saw him.
She welcomed him inside with a kiss on the side of his neck that quickly turned into a little nip. “I’m pleased you decided to extend your stay.”
23
KÖLN, GERMANY
“Once upon a time, this was my kind of city,” Evan said. “In the medieval age many of the guilds were run by women.”
“An open city,” Ben replied as they took a taxi into town from the airport. “But that’s history. Now, today, and from now on it’s Moscow Rules.” Which meant they were in enemy territory, they should assume nothing, blend in as much as possible, and take coincidence as opposition action.
Clouds chased each other across the sky, like children playing tag. The sun winked in and out, sending inconstant shadows skittering across streets and sidewalks. Ben had told the taxi driver to drop them off across the street from the thorny twin steeples of the gothic Church Cathedral of St. Peter, home to the archbishop and the archdiocese of Cologne. Evan was looking at it—the third tallest church in the world, its first stones were laid in 1248, but what with the extreme turbulence of history, it was not completed until centuries later, in 1880—when her mobile vibrated. An encrypted text had arrived in the sandboxed section. She opened it and began to read.
“Evan,” Ben said, “we’re here.”
“Have the driver keep going,” she replied without lifting her head from the screen.
Leaning forward, Ben told the driver to keep going. The driver shrugged and drove them on.
The text was from Lyudmila. Via her sandboxed mobile, Evan had texted her their current names, Carla and Len Johnstone—legends they had used before—their flight number and arrival time in Cologne as soon as Ben had made the reservations. Lyudmila had responded with a name, an address, a time, and detailed instructions for the meet. Glancing at her watch, Evan saw they had about three hours to spare.
“We’d like sausages, kraut, and beer,” she told the driver. “Take us to the best place on Ebertplaz.”
The driver nodded, turned at the next corner. Twenty minutes later, they were walking through the glass doors of Liebchen, an old-school beer hall with wooden tables and floors shellacked black from decades of shoe and boot soles, a testament to its popularity. It was overheated and vaporous with steam from huge cauldrons of potato and cabbage soups.
When they seated themselves at a table halfway back, a slim waitress set out silverware and glasses, handed them menus, and went off with their beer orders.
“Bratwurst or weisswurst?” Ben asked.
“Brats, definitely.” Evan put her menu aside. “Sauerkraut and potatoes.”
The beers came, and they ordered. The waitress took their menus and departed.
Evan shook out a single painkiller and washed it down with a gulp of beer. She winced. “Nein.” Pushed the beer over to sit side by side with Ben’s. Catching the eye of the waitress, she ordered a large bottle of mineral water. Drank down an entire glass when it came.
Over their food, Ben said, “Does your mysterious contact know you’re here with someone?”
Evan was cutting into her brat while trying not to let the juice spray her. “No.”
“Good. Let’s keep it that way.”
She needed to concentrate on the two gold Omegas, Paul’s horrific end, and the children, the death gag with Ben’s name on it, and how they all fit together. In order to do that, she knew she had to block out her history with her sister. In the present circumstances this she could do without too much difficulty, but there was another issue that needed to be brought out into the open now.
“Ben,” she began, “if we’re to continue working in the field together we have to talk about that night here in Germany.”
He put down his fork. “Maybe better to discuss the aftermath.”
“I know. We were both complicit in keeping the truth from Lila.”
“My wife was a good person. She didn’t deserve to be lied to.”
“And if you had confessed? What would have been gained, Ben? She would have hated you, demonized me, and your marriage would have imploded. Is that what you would have wanted for Zoe? For any of us?”
“No, of course not. But …” The end of his thought dangled in the air like a loose thread on the hem of a coat.
“But what? We spoke about it at the time, remember?”
“Yes. Long into the night.”
“Face it, Ben. The only reason to tell Lila was to assuage your guilt.” She took a breath. “Unfortunately, the truth doesn’t always earn you forgiveness.”
He nodded. His face was sallow and drawn. “I can’t help missing her.”
“No, you can’t.”
He lifted his head up. “And I can’t help feeling …”
Abruptly, he pushed his plate away, rose, and went toward the rear where Evan assumed the toilets were. She wondered what he’d been about to say, and what had stopped him from voicing it. She wondered whether his hesitation had something to do with Isobel Lowe. She wondered about their history—how long was it, how had they met, what did they mean to each other? She had seen for herself how strikingly beautiful Isobel was, how compelling her personality was. It was not at all inconceivable that Ben was in love with her. In fact, now that she thought about it, the two of them made a likely couple. Not a happy-making thought. Not at all.
Movement in the periphery of her vision made her lift her head. Ben was coming back. He had more color in his face and his hair was damp. He must have thrown cold water at himself.
As he slipped back into his seat, he said, “I was about to thank you for what you did back there in Anacostia.”
“One good deed begets another. You pulled me out of the flaming wreck I’d made of my Charger.”
Ben shook his head. “I don’t know. Pine gave me more grief than I had expected.”
“Do you need a refresher at the Farm?” The Farm was the closely guarded campus deep in the hills of Virginia where recruits were schooled in the dark arts of tradecraft, Moscow Rules, and, for some, wet work.
“Ah, no.” He shook his head. “This is the only way to hone my instincts.”
“Of course.” Evan smiled. “Those instincts never die, Ben, they’re just buried under an avalanche of paperwork.”
He returned her smile. “The natural result, I suppose, of having been half man, half desk for years.” He chewed on a brat, swallowed it down with a swig of beer. “Imagine my striving for that, thinking running my own shop would be the pinnacle of my career”—he spread his hands—“when I realize now how much I’ve missed the adrenaline rush of the field.”
She waited patiently, sensing there was something more he wanted to say.
He cleared his throat. “What I want to say is that we have a special bond, an intimacy that, I think, gave us permission to have sex that night. But it’s only now I realize that the intimacy we share is bound by violence. We have killed people together and in each other’s presence. And I find it so odd, so inexplicable because this is something no one else can share; it’s ours alone.”
She nodded. “For better or for worse.”
“Hm. It’s probably both, don’t you think?”
“I do, as a matter of fact. But we’ve chosen this life, Ben. We found it, it didn’t find us.” She placed the two gold Omegas on the table. “Shall we continue?”
“Of course.”
“All right.” She set the two photos down beside the sigils. “Clearly, Onders and Pine were members of this group”—she tapped the Omegas—“whatever it is.”
“But is Ana?” Ben turned the photos around to look at them more closely. “At the very least, she’s the link between the two men. But there must be more to it than that.”
Evan put the Omegas away. �
�Isn’t that why we’re here?”
24
ODESSA, UKRAINE
They came into Odessa in filthy weather. It was that curious time of day between afternoon and evening when nothing looked quite right. Nevertheless, after the hair-raising descent through the worst turbulence Kobalt could recall, it was a relief to be on the ground.
The plane ride from Istanbul had been short; time only for a catnap. Zherov stayed awake, however, staring at Kobalt while she slept, as if he could read her better this way than when she was awake and aware of him.
They took an Uber to Ekaterininskaya Square. It left them off at the entrance to Le Pechêur, The Fisherman, the best hotel in the city, where successful importer-exporters would be expected to stay. She looked at the façade, which was built in the classic Parisian style, and thought that these days no matter what city you were in, you were in the same place you started from. I could be anywhere, she thought. Except for the fact I hate it here.
Inside, just like at Versailles, enormous chandeliers depended from the high vaulted ceiling, throwing crystals of light across everything: the marble floor, the plush sofas and chairs in perfect sitting arrangements, even the liveried personnel click-clacking across the floor. It was not yet high season, so it was easy for Kobalt to have her choice of two-bedroom suites. She asked for a suite that had a view of the Black Sea. They were given key cards and shown the way to the elevator bank by a young liveried man.
The suite was spacious and luxurious, with large bay windows that overlooked the street down to the sea a block away. The water was rough, the color of gunmetal, as if the secrets at the bottom had been churned up. She set down her small weekender and her briefcase.
They took dinner in the bar, an opulent rectangle of perpetual twilight, the lamps in wall sconces turned low. She ordered bourbon and, after a moment’s hesitation, Zherov followed suit. They drank through the appetizers and the main courses. She didn’t order dessert, but Zherov ate a large square of cherry cake. Afterward, they strolled down to the water. The weather had cleared. They could see lights moving on the now-calm water, tankers and freighters lumbering through the dark.
“What exactly do you expect to find here?” Zherov was leaning, forearms on the top iron railing below which waves lurched and sucked against the seawall. To their right, the beach stretched away, and above it the aqua-colored pools of the major resorts glimmered in the mercury-vapor security lights like a string of blue jewels.
“Omega.” Kobalt was staring out across the Black Sea, as if she could look all the way across to Istanbul on the southernmost shore. “I’m going to find out who that woman in the limo was. I’m going to find out if she’s the head of Omega, and then I’m going to find out where the headquarters is. These answers will come to me, either through hell or high water. I will get them no matter how many people inside the Omega compound have to die.”
The Zherov who had first stepped onto the FSB jet outside Moscow would have been skeptical, would have given her a contemptuous, almost amused, look. But the Zherov who stood beside her tonight, listening to the wash of the water, the screaming of the last gulls heading in for the night, was only impressed.
“You have a plan.” He meant it as a question but somehow it didn’t come out that way.
“I always have a plan.” She said this without any trace of self-aggrandizement. She possessed not one iota of braggadocio, and this impressed him more even than her quiet self-confidence.
She turned her back on the shoreline. “We both need to sleep. We move out at 4 A.M.”
Back in the suite, they retired to their respective bedrooms. Zherov kicked off his shoes, unbuttoned his shirt, slid off his trousers, hung his clothes neatly in the closet. They had both changed on the flight over, but he needed a shower. Padding into the bathroom, he turned on the taps while he cleaned his teeth with the toothbrush and paste from the hotel’s amenity kit.
After showering, he wrapped himself in the oversize terry cloth robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door. Checking his mobile phone he saw that he had one call-back message. He punched in the number and had a short conversation with his contact on the other end of the line. Mostly, he listened to what the man had to say, then began a shouting match that escalated until Zherov rang off in fury.
He was so angry that, without getting dressed, he padded across the room and passed through the door connecting his bedroom to the living area without giving his state of undress a second thought. She was sitting on the sofa, drinking vodka from a glass, a half-filled bottle of Beluga Gold Line on the glass-topped cocktail table in front of her. The TV was on, but the sound was muted. Not that it mattered since the TV was showing Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s Expressionist masterpiece. She didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the images flickering across the screen, though; she was lost in thought. She was still dressed in the stylish business suit she had changed into on the plane. It was navy shantung silk, a short jacket with standup collar and a pencil skirt. She had pushed her feet out of the black pumps with three-inch heels, sensible but still flattering to her figure.
He stood there watching her, feeling slightly unnerved. But then he always felt unnerved around her—it was only a matter of degree depending on the situation and how acid her tongue.
When she didn’t acknowledge his presence in any way, he thought about clearing his throat, but realized that would make him feel like a schoolboy again. He had hated school, had fought with fellow classmates more than he studied, was disciplined almost daily.
Shaking off shadows from the past, he crossed to the sideboard, got himself a glass.
He poured the vodka as he sat down beside her. He took a sip, then said, “When is news not news?”
“When?” She did not look at him or seem in any way surprised he was there. Possibly, she had registered him in the periphery of her vision.
He ran his hand through his still-damp hair. “When there’s nothing to tell.”
Now, at last, she came out of her semi-trance and looked at him.
“My contacts are all too terrified to go deep enough to find out who’s put this deep-cover termination order out on you.”
“So … someone high up.”
“Okay, but you’re the department’s shiny new toy. No one would—”
“But someone clearly has. It’s a bear-eat-bear world we’re in. I stepped into it with my eyes wide open and I will continue on with it. But there are lines I will not cross, like fucking Dima, no matter what the consequences.”
“And that’s something I admire in you, Bobbi.”
It was the first time he had called her by her real name—her American name. The gesture touched her. She found the stirring of her emotion utterly surprising.
She regarded him silently for some time. “Anton, we’re on the cusp of something more dangerous than I had imagined when I set out. Someone with a great deal of power wants me gone.”
He laughed. “You’re not trying to frighten me off, are you?”
When she made no reply, he said, going for the simple truth as he saw it, “Often, and now would be one of those times, I feel as if we’re communicating from different planets through the vacuum of outer space.”
She upended the bottle, refilled both their glasses. “You’ve made it clear that you don’t trust me.”
“That was then,” Zherov said. “This is now.”
After some thought, she nodded. “All right then. I suppose I should come clean. I’m giving you my trust. Understand, this is a very difficult thing for me to do. It always has been, ever since—” She waved away what she might have been about to say, erasing the slate. “The abduction of my children keeps filling my headspace. I don’t want it to, but there it is, bright as noontime. In return, I must have your trust. In just a few hours we’ll be infiltrating the Omega compound. It could well be that we’re walking into a life-or-death situation. If we can’t trust each other completely one or both of us are liable to wind up dead.”
His eyes engaged hers as they had not before. “I told you about the daughter I’ve never seen.” His tone was earnest. “I want to see her. I want to be a part of her life, so I understand the filling of your headspace as you aptly put it. When I spoke to you about my daughter, you listened. You said you would help me see her. It’s important to me you understand that I will be eternally grateful for anything you do on my behalf.”
“So.” Her hands lay in her lap. “We trust each other?”
He sat back, eyes half-closed. At this hour and without sleep he was actually feeling the liquor racing through his system. “At school I was always getting into trouble—fighting, I loved to fight, especially boys bigger than I was. It was a genuine pleasure to knock the shit out of them. Of course I got disciplined every day, not that I minded so much. It was the head of school calling my father that was the problem.” He took another swallow of vodka. “After the third call, my father got fed up. He began what became his nightly routine of physically punishing me—belt, chains, what have you. But always my mother would steal into my room after my father had begun his nightly snore fest. She’d feed me a wedge of cake, the bottom half of which was made up almost entirely of cherries soaked in kirsch. Later, when she deemed me old enough—sixteen or seventeen, in my memory—she substituted a shot of ice-cold vodka.”
He finished off the vodka in his glass. “I still bear the scars across my back.” She poured him more. “I’ve never told anyone that. The women I’ve slept with never once asked. Never. Who knows, maybe they were scared. Anyway …” He turned to her. “In a few hours I will be trusting you with my life. Again. So, yes, Bobbi, we trust each other.”
The meeting of their glasses echoed through the suite.
The Kobalt Dossier Page 17