The Kobalt Dossier

by Eric Van Lustbader

  25

  KÖLN, GERMANY

  The Köln Kino was a large birthday cake of a building with thick layers of curlicue cement frosting running across its frontage. The marquee above the entrance danced with colored lights day or night, giving it the aspect of a carnival arch.

  The lobby was dim, swathed in fabric the color of oxblood and wooden panels stained a rich mahogany. The carpeting was lush, though worn in the center by the multitudes entering and exiting the theater.

  At this time in the afternoon there were only a handful of people scattered around the orchestra and no one at all in the balcony or side loges. The side walls were draped in a curtain-like fabric, the seats were upholstered in the same oxblood color as the lobby.

  They came in on the middle of a Die Hard festival. Bruce Willis was battering someone while exuding his characteristic smirk. There was a lot of noise. Also blood. An explosion or two couldn’t be far behind.

  “Who are you supposed to meet?” Ben said over the sound effects.

  “His name’s Otto Vimpel.” Evan scanned the sparse audience. “I’m to sit in the sixth row from the rear, first seat off the far right-side aisle that runs along the side wall.”

  “Are you absolutely certain you can trust your contact?”

  “For the hundredth time …”

  He responded to the annoyance in her voice. “Go on then.” But he longed to know something—anything—about the mysterious contact who had shown her the dossier on her sister. “I’ll hang back here in the shadows.” He surmised the contact was Russian, FSB or SVR, high-ranking; that made the most sense because they had met outside Russia. But why would Evan trust that kind of Russian? “That way I’ll be able to keep an eye on you without being seen.”

  He watched her walk all the way to the right and down the narrow aisle. As she slid into her appointed seat he scanned each member of the audience again. By their silhouettes, his trained eye marked their gender and approximate age. He counted six middle-aged men, each one sitting alone, two women in their twenties or early thirties, sitting together. A couple of an indeterminate age were seated closest to Evan. The farthest away were a trio of old men, perched like crows on a fence. And that was it. None of these patrons set off any alarm bells.

  Arms crossed over his chest, Ben leaned against the rear wall, his gaze quartering the immediate vicinity around Evan every thirty seconds. His mind was filled with Evan; he couldn’t help it. Like a fully wound clock, he could not stop. He thought of their hours spent in the fuggy atmosphere of the beer hall. He thought of her face, of the way her lips moved when she spoke, how her eyes could hold him in a vise-like grip. He experienced again the painful thrust of her seething anger. He wanted more than anything for them to find the children, to bring them home safe and sound. For him, finding Ana was merely the next step in rescuing Wendy and Michael. And yet, in the end, like a serpent eating its tail, he inevitably returned to the moment when his iron control, weakened by what he and Evan had been through in the last several days since she had returned from Sumatra, almost betrayed him. When he nearly told her how he felt about her. He had been so appalled that he’d had to excuse himself, take himself somewhere—anywhere—away from the magnetism she exerted on him—her moon to his earth, rising the tides within him as she came closer.

  He stiffened, his arms unfolding as a stocky man entered the theater. The man stood for a moment while his eyes adjusted to the darkness on the periphery of the film’s glare. Then he stepped to his left, went halfway down, and found a seat.

  Ben’s muscles relaxed.

  On the screen, a skyscraper at night, the top floors lit up. Sirens screaming as if in pain.

  A woman entered the theater—blond, buxom, late twenties, early thirties, large eyes, high cheekbones, pointed chin, too much makeup. In a skintight dress beneath an unbuttoned jacket and four-inch heels. He marked her as an escort. She stood very still; only her eyes moved, glittering like opals in the changing light of the projection. She found Ben last or seemed to at least; he had the tingling sense that she had marked him the moment she stepped into the theater.

  Ben watched her approach out of the corner of his eye. Her hips swayed provocatively as she passed right by him without even giving him the briefest of looks. He watched her as she went down the right-hand aisle, seated herself in the first seat in the fifth row from the back—directly behind Evan.

  Ben stood up straight, even took a step in their direction. Evan had been told her meet was with Otto Vimpel. Had she gotten the name wrong? Was this woman simply a moviegoer who happened to choose the seat right behind Evan? Or was this, indeed, Otto Vimpel?

  The woman dressed as an escort flicked open a lighter, put the flame to the end of a cigarette. She blew smoke upward, then bent forward. Was she talking to Evan? It was impossible to tell over the rush of sound from the speakers. A close-up showed a timer ticking down the seconds until detonation.

  In the periphery of his vision, Ben noted movement, and he turned his head fractionally to the left in order to bring it into view. The couple looked like they were changing seats, scuttling along, bent low so as not to block anyone’s view. They were in the same row as Evan. They had been sitting off to the left. It looked as if they were going to center themselves to the screen, but they kept on coming, past the center section, moving faster now as they approached the area where Evan sat listening to the woman dressed as an escort, who might or might not be Otto Vimpel.

  Ben silently cursed Evan’s Russian contact as he leapt over the seatback in the last row on a course to intercept the scurrying couple. Then, reaching over Evan’s seatback, the woman grabbed Evan, pulled her violently down.

  *

  Evan first became aware of the presence behind her as a scent of heather and lime. But apart from her hands she did not move. These she readied, curling them on the tops of her thighs. The key was to keep her upper body relaxed while her inner energy—ki Japanese termed it—gathered in her lower belly. If there was to be hand-to-hand or even if she felt a wire rising over her head from behind, she was prepared. She felt no fear, only anticipation. She tried to clear her mind of that, too. No thought. Action.

  A metallic click raised the downy hairs on her forearm until the sharp odor of tobacco smoke reassured her. Moments later, the heat of a female in close proximity, as if a missile were aimed at the back of her neck.

  Then she felt the breeze on her right ear. The breeze said, “You know me.”

  It was the beginning of the parole Lyudmila had sent her, the recognition call and response. “We met at Magda’s Christmas party,” she responded in turn.

  “No. It was New Year’s,” came the husky reply, ending the parole.

  Evan turned her head. The woman who was supposed to be Otto Vimpel spoke German with a French accent. She was slim, quite beautiful, with dark, wide-apart eyes and a wide, sensual mouth. She looked to be several years younger than Evan.

  “I was expecting Otto.”

  “I am Ottavia,” she said. “My friends call me Otto. Now listen, there’s not much time. This woman you seek—”

  It was at the precise moment that both Evan and Otto became aware of the scuttling movement to their left. The flash of steel as the knives came out, slender, wicked-looking blades leveled at Evan.

  “Merde!” Otto husked. “Pisse! Les con!” Reaching over Evan’s seatback, she grabbed the collar of Evan’s coat, dragged her up and then pushed her down to the floor. Then lying flat on the floor of her own row, she stretched out her arm and, with a flick of the lighter, set the flame to the hem of the curtain hanging in front of the side wall.

  *

  Ben smelled the smoke first. Then the first flame flickered off to his right, more flames quickly rising, like a field being set on fire by a fleeing army. He was now close enough that the couple became aware of him as he leapt seatbacks like a hurdler. A full charge of adrenaline spurted into his system. He felt only elation at being in the field, being his old fight
ing self, realizing that he could shake off the last of the man-desk rust.

  He was only a row away when the female of the couple broke off to engage him, while her partner carried on toward Evan. She was smart. She caught him in mid-leap, landing a punch to the point of his chin that rocked him back, entangling him in the seats. Climbing, she came at him with her knife blade bared, ready to spit him like a pig.

  *

  The fire Otto had started burst into full flower, flames running up the heavy folds, feeding on the highly flammable fabric. From her position on the floor, all Evan saw was a shadowed figure arcing toward her with the knife extended and murder in his eye.

  Otto was trying to drag her into the aisle when the knife slashed down, ripped open the back of her coat. Evan slipped from Otto’s grasp. The shadowed figure flipped her over onto her back and lunged at her.

  *

  Ben let her get close—frighteningly close—before he drove his knuckles into her throat. The woman reared back, and her wig fell off. It wasn’t a woman at all, but a man whose Adam’s apple he had bruised. The man started choking, but Ben made the mistake of going for his knife. As he wrapped his fingers around the man’s wrist, he saw the blur of a second knife, felt a flash of pain, and then the warm trickle of blood.

  *

  Evan had gathered herself. With smoke swirling, leaves of ash flying, and the handful of patrons running for the exit, she slammed the heel of her boot into the man’s face. He took the blow, dropped his knife, and grabbed hold of her foot by the heel and ankle, twisting hard. Evan bit her lip as a streak of pain shot up her leg, through her knee, into her hip. His blue eyes bored into her as he prepared to break her leg.

  *

  Ben saw the blue ink tattoos first—the manacle around the wrist, the horrific skull with a demon’s bared teeth on the back of his hand—then the dizzying stink of the man’s body odor, as if he’d slept in the same clothes for a week. And he thought, Left triceps, no big deal, and ignored the pain and the blood. Then he thought, Jesus, Russian prison. His scalp began to itch, his heart to pound, and he took a right hook to the jaw—shaken but undeterred, he fought back, using kites, the edges of his hands weapons that would inflect tremendous damage if they found their mark. Trouble was, each of his blows were taken on Manacle’s sturdy forearms. It wasn’t only the demon’s skull that was grinning at him—it was Manacle himself, his long tobacco-stained teeth bared from his pulled-back lips.

  *

  Evan breathed as shallowly as possible. Her eyes had begun to tear as the heat from the fire dried them out. Her cheeks felt like they were already on fire. Above her, Otto appeared. Lunging her torso over Evan’s supine body, she flicked her cigarette butt into Blue Eyes’s face. His hands came up reflexively, releasing Evan’s ankle, needing to brush tobacco ash out of his eyes. These precious few seconds were enough for Evan to free herself. She gave him another shot in the throat before Otto finally got a solid grip on her, levered her away.

  Pulling Evan into the aisle seemed at first a foolish move, as a whoosh of flames loomed up in front of them. But the flames were a hindrance to Blue Eyes as well. He was only steps behind them when Evan leapt straight up, grabbing handfuls of curtain that had not yet caught fire. Using her whole weight, she pulled it down between them and Blue Eyes. The wall of fire flared up in his path as the new material caught and burst into flame.

  No time to look back. They raced to the front of the theater, vaulted up onto the stage, past the edge of the screen, and into the gloom of whatever lay beyond.

  So chaotic were the last several minutes that it wasn’t until they were halfway up the iron maintenance stairs that she remembered.

  Ben! I can’t leave him there!

  They were almost at the head of the stairs when she turned back.

  “What are you doing?” Otto cried. She grabbed Evan’s arm. “You can’t go back down there! It’s death!”

  With a violent motion, Evan freed herself, took a step back down. “I’ve got to find—”

  She stopped, paralyzed, as Blue Eyes, clothing blackened by his brush with the falling curtain, rushed up the stairs, a PB semi-automatic pistol with integrated silencer aimed at her heart.

  *

  Manacle had Ben in a choke hold. Ben’s back was to him. He had one arm across Ben’s throat, the other at the back of his head. One swift motion would lay his throat open, blood gushing, consciousness failing. Death. Time seemed to dilate, each second felt like a minute. Ben saw the fire burning along the theater’s right-side wall. He saw Evan and the woman who should have been Otto Vimpel scrambling into the aisle, saw the man attacking them stumble after them, saw Evan pull down the curtain, the man entangled as they ran off. Saw him reappear, bat flames from his clothes, smother the fire in order to free himself, then light off after them.

  Ben absorbed all this input in the time it takes a heart to complete its double-beat. Then he set about his work. Grasping Manacle’s forearm with both hands, he made room for his chin to come forward. At the same time, he stepped back, a maneuver Manacle wasn’t expecting. It threw him momentarily off-balance, and in that instant, Ben levered his body forward into a crouch. Manacle came up over the top of him, and his back slammed down onto the hard edge of a seatback. He groaned and rolled over. But if Ben had expected the aikido move to put him down permanently, he was mistaken.

  Manacle rose, arched his back with a frightening crack like a tree limb breaking off under a blanket of wet snow. He drew a pistol. Later, Ben would recall that it was a PB semi-automatic pistol with integrated silencer, but for the moment he was solely concentrated on staying alive long enough to finish off this fight.

  *

  The 9mm bullet spanged off the iron so close to Evan she felt the staircase shudder and cry out. Or that might have been Otto, who was just ahead of her.

  “Let’s go,” she pleaded. And this time Evan listened. Much as she wanted to there was no way she could get through Blue Eyes alive. As she watched Otto clack up onto a catwalk that accessed the loge, she ducked away just as she heard the phutt! of another bullet, and then the ringing of the treads behind her as Blue Eyes came on. He was coming fast.

  *

  There was a move to disarm a gunman at close quarters that had been taught at the Farm for decades. Ben knew it as muscle memory, but his years in the field had taught him that it didn’t work in all circumstances. This was one of them.

  The problem was the wrist of the hand holding the gun. The instructors at the Farm taught their acolytes to bend the wrist with a hard blow. Too often that didn’t work; the wrist of a trained assassin was like iron; you could hammer it all day and not get it to bend. The alternative technique, which is what Ben used now, was this:

  He slammed his hand against the inside of the wrist to move the pistol aside and at the same time grabbed the slide of the gun itself, turning it hard to the left, thus making it possible to wrench it from Manacle’s grip. The maneuver was tricky; timing was essential, but so was speed. If you couldn’t do it fast enough you were dead. This was not a moment for thought; it was a moment for action.

  When Ben had the gun in his hand, he smacked the butt into Manacle’s temple. When that didn’t stop this human tank, when, with a maniac’s bulging eyes, Manacle head-butted him, Ben managed to remain conscious, stay on his feet, and shake the exploding suns out of his vision. He turned the gun around and shot Manacle point-blank between the eyes.

  26

  ODESSA, UKRAINE

  Back in Moscow, when she had seen Anton Zherov climb aboard the plane Dima had arranged for her, Kobalt had to tamp down on the anger she felt at being given a babysitter. He was Dima’s man, which annoyed her even more. It was at that moment that she had begun to consider and to plan. If Zherov was to accompany her, it would be so much better if he was her man. Was he susceptible to corruption? Almost everyone was—she only had to take her husband, Paul, as an example. He’d been corrupted by the money funneled to him through Wells’s
Super PAC. Running it had made him a millionaire many times over. His corruption was just the most intimate of the series of corruptions she was privy to living inside Washington’s Beltway. Was there anyone left in DC who wasn’t corrupt? The system disgusted her. Worse, Paul’s slavish worshiping at the altar of wealth repelled her. He wore made-to-measure suits, shirts and, incredibly, to her, shoes. He had bought a Ferrari, a Rolls, was looking for the right boat for his ever-rising status. He had begun talking of selling the house, moving to a larger one in a tonier area. When she thought of Paul there was only rage, a stone in her heart at the sacrifice she had made for Russia. As for her children, since coming over she had convinced herself that they didn’t exist, or if they did sneak into her thoughts or dreams every once in a while, they were hazed and indistinct, as if she were looking at someone else’s kids.

  It was not such a difficult thing to do. Her heart had been turned to ash by the knowledge that the couple who had called themselves her and Evan’s mother and father were no such thing. They, too, had been corrupted—with money, money they needed desperately when their tin mine collapsed and lawsuits came flying out of the rubble like vampire bats. All the lawsuits magically vanished, the mine was rebuilt, stronger and with the most modern equipment, just for taking on the burden of raising two children.

  And what of our real mother and father? This was a question that tore at her insides. They were Russian by birth; they were sleeper agents. They left us in America while they returned to the Motherland. They abandoned us, threw us away. They didn’t want us. Maybe, like me, they were only doing their duty to the Motherland. She should have hated them too, this nameless couple who had birthed them only to hand them over to true Americans. But the opposite had happened. The moment she had read the letter hidden away at the bottom of her father’s closet, when she was not yet ten years old, she felt free—no, not exactly free, but herself. Her real self. For the first time. She felt the thick heavy Russian blood running through her veins, and yet she felt light, as if a great weight had been lifted off her. Before, she’d look at herself in a full-length mirror and wonder why her posture was so bad, why her back was hunched, her shoulders up around her ears, as if expecting a blow from some invisible person. From that moment on, she was able to stand up straight.