The Kobalt Dossier

by Eric Van Lustbader

  Kobalt cleared her throat again. “Did you know that we were attacked in Istanbul?”

  “I know everything that happened to you and Zherov in Istanbul.”

  Not everything, Kobalt thought. You don’t know that I now have control over the millions of dollars Dima has been stealing and stashing away in a bank in Cyprus. You don’t know that, seeing he had already checked the account, I’ve drained it, using Dima’s ID and password. I transferred the money into a dummy account I had set up before my exfiltration just in case I ran into trouble in Russia. From there I bought Bitcoins. Two minutes after it cleared I sold the Bitcoins. I took a 2 percent loss, but that was more than acceptable, and now the money, absolutely untraceable, resides in my own account in a prominent Lichtenstein bank. You don’t know that I’ve ruined Dima. She said none of this to Lyudmila, of course; she still did not trust her. But there was another reason. Ever since she had stolen into her father’s closet, read the truth, Russian-through-and-through, she had been addicted to secrets. Hoarding secrets made her feel safe, as if they were stones in the walls of the castle she was building around herself. Secrets made her strong; if she gathered enough around her, she would be invincible.

  Instead, she said, “You must suspect who sent the ex-convict Russian assassin after us.”

  “You’d think so.”

  “So you don’t?”

  Her gaze passed over Kobalt, making her shiver. “I know that for the past six months or so SVR has been employing ex-con mercenaries to carry out their wet work. Very neat, very clean. No blowback to the State.”

  “I have come to the same conclusion. With none of Zherov’s contacts willing to talk, he and I are thinking maybe Director General Baev is behind the move. I’ve made myself extremely valuable to Zaslon and to the SVR. Maybe Baev didn’t expect that. Maybe he doesn’t want that shine on Dima.”

  Below them the engines started up. The lines had been secured, and they began to move, the slip they were in slowly sliding away. Soon enough they had picked up speed as they paralleled the coast, heading southwest. Despite all her protection, Lyudmila felt a distinct relief at leaving the warship behind.

  Having waited in silence while the yacht departed, Kobalt now turned to Lyudmila, one elbow on the railing. “Now might be the time to tell me why you stuck your head up into the waking world. Down below, you said, ‘Not now.’ But I think what you meant was, ‘Not now, not here.’”

  Lyudmila shook out another cigarette. When she offered it to Kobalt the younger woman shrugged and shook her head. Placing the cigarette between her lips she lit it. For some time, they stood in an uneasy silence, Lyudmila smoking, Kobalt gripping the rail with pale knuckles.

  The yacht headed steadily southwest, the shoreline slipping by in a haze of beaches, candy-striped umbrellas, whitewashed one- and two-story resorts, sunbathing figures, and hollering children splashing in the surf.

  At length, with smoke drifting out of her half-open mouth, Lyudmila said, “You may be right. There is the war between Baev and Dima.”

  “A war?”

  “Between Baev and his directorate heads there is always a cold war being waged beneath the surface. It’s the same between FSB and the GRU. It’s merely a matter of how nasty these wars get. The fact is Dima and Baev hate each other’s guts. That doesn’t happen so often, not within SVR, anyway.” She took another draw deep into her lungs. “You know, don’t you, that holding on to power is far more difficult than gaining it. Of this Baev is acutely aware. Retaining his power means, sooner or later, he must destroy the influence of those below him before they become a real threat.”

  She ran a hand distractedly through her hair. “This was my sin. Can you believe it? Because I am a woman only. I knew how to play the game. When SVR became too small for me, I moved up into the Politburo. I did what Baev does, what any politician worth her salt does, I began to obliterate my competition.” For a moment, she stared at the glowing end of her cigarette. “Had I been a man, I would have been hailed. Instead, as my power and influence grew, I frightened those above me. They formed a cabal and ousted me. In Russia, a man’s power and influence will always win out over that of a woman’s, no matter how smart, how clever she may be.”

  A gull swept down, crying, then cut sharply in toward shore, where wicker and plastic picnic baskets were being unloaded onto blankets and gaily striped beach balls lofted into the sunlit afternoon.

  Behind Lyudmila’s eyes her mind lit up like rocket flares. “But I mean to change that.”

  “How?”

  Lyudmila dragged smoke into her lungs, let it out through her nostrils. “All in good time, Kobalt. Now I will tell you why I came out of hiding. I’ve discovered the whereabouts of your parents—your birth parents.”

  Kobalt’s heart seemed to skip a beat and then another and another. She lost the ability to breathe. It was a good thing she was gripping the railing, otherwise she would have stumbled and fallen to her knees.

  Lyudmila’s eyes bored into her. “I am of the belief that you want to know about them. Is this correct?”

  “Yes.” Kobalt nearly choked on the word.

  “It is also my belief that you would like me to take you to them.” Another drag on her cigarette. “Is this correct?”

  “It is,” Kobalt said, in a strangled voice.

  Lyudmila placed a hand on Kobalt’s shoulder. “Then it is done.” For the first time, her smile contained genuine warmth. “It is for this—for you—that I have revealed myself.”

  Kobalt, still in shock, did not know what to say, so she said nothing. Concentrated simply on breathing.

  Lyudmila was finished with her cigarette. The shoreline sliding past them was now deserted beach; all signs of civilization had vanished.

  36

  BERGISCH GLADBACH, GERMANY

  At some point when she was lost in her increasingly taxing conversation, Ben had entered the inn. He was sitting at a table, drinking coffee and pretending to read a local paper he had picked up from the wooden rack beside the front door. She dearly wished there was some way she could tell him that Ana was a clinical psychologist who had been working at the clinic under Dr. Reveshvili.

  “Herr Doktor,” she said now. “Do you know where Ana Helm is now?”

  Reveshvili patted his lips fastidiously, set the linen napkin back on his lap. “The truth is, I don’t know. She left here under something of a cloud.”

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  He pushed his plate away, took a deliberate sip of coffee, set the cup back down precisely in the center of the saucer. “We had a disagreement over her commandeering more and more of the laboratories. Other clinicians were complaining that their own work was suffering as a result. At first, Ana put me off, saying she just required a bit more time to verify her work. She said she was very close.” He grimaced. “The disagreement escalated from there. As time went on, she contrived to evade me, until one night I returned to the clinic to find her feverishly working in three lab spaces at once. I realized then that her experimentation had become unacceptable, dangerous.”

  Evan forced herself not to lean forward, or in any other manner give away her heightened interest. “What was she working on, Herr Doktor?”

  He raised his hand, and Armand was at his elbow, refilling his coffee cup. “Do you wish anything else, Fraulein?”

  “Thank you, no.” She returned his smile, then turned it toward Armand. “Everything was delicious.”

  “You are too kind, Fraulein.” He did everything but click his heels. Then he was off to see to another table.

  She turned her attention back to Reveshvili. “The experiments, Herr Doktor. Ana Helm’s experiments.”

  “Yes, of course.” He rubbed his chin. “Ana was experimenting with organophosphorus compounds. More specifically those that deal with the human neurotransmitter acetylcholine.”

  “Toward what end?” Evan asked.

  Reveshvili shook his head. “This was the crux of our falli
ng out, and my subsequent order for her to leave.” He called for the check, signed it. Clearly, he had a house account. He left a generous amount as a gratuity, unusual for a European. Bills always included a tip, modest by American standards.

  “Ana claimed that she was creating a chemical that would rebuild neurotransmitters in the brain, in order to help victims of stroke, seizures, calamitous accidents, that sort of thing.”

  “And you didn’t believe her.”

  “I did not. She was clearly lying to me, hiding the truth.”

  “Have you any idea what her true aim was?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Her work was exceedingly complex; she left no sera, no notes behind. She worked alone, so there were no assistants to query.”

  He cleared his throat. “Now, if you will be so kind as to accompany me. I will drive you to the clinic so I can take a look at that head wound of yours.”

  *

  Reveshvili’s car was a vintage MG convertible the precise color of the forest that rose not a hundred yards from where it crouched on the far edge of the gravel. The doctor opened the passenger’s side door for her, and she got in. Standing, he was quite a bit thinner than she had imagined. Taller too, several inches over six feet, she estimated. His shoes, though, were just as she imagined. As he rounded the grille to get behind the wheel, she saw Ben hurrying out of the inn, looking at her with a furrowed brow. There was no way to contact him, as Reveshvili was already beside her. He turned the key in the ignition, the MG rumbled to life, and he pulled out of the parking area with more speed than she thought necessary.

  Almost immediately, it was clear that the doctor loved driving, loved his car even more. The engine hummed happily along, by which she knew he—or, more likely, an ace mechanic—kept the vehicle in perfect running order.

  The drive up to the clinic was level and straight, almost to the end, when the road curved to the left, sweeping around a steep grade, then heading right toward the side of the clinic where, it seemed, there was a private lot for the use of the staff.

  They entered via an unprepossessing door and were immediately in a corridor. He preceded her inside. As she was at the threshold, she glanced back over her shoulder, saw Ben silently getting out of his car. His eyes were riveted on her. She gave him a quick smile, then passed into the interior of the clinic, following Reveshvili’s narrow back. Without turning her head, she noted the CCTV mini camera aimed at the doorway, as well as someone who might at first be mistaken for a doctor or an orderly but by the width of his shoulders and the set of his stance she knew to be a guard. In the brief glance she caught of him she couldn’t tell whether or not he was armed.

  She followed a number of turns, memorizing each one. Behind her the clinic stretched away, seeming like a labyrinth. The corridor gave out onto a suite of offices. Apart from a faintly medicinal odor, she could have been in the core of any business on earth. As they entered into his office suite, into the anteroom to his surgery, his pace abruptly quickened. With a rapid motion he turned over a framed photo, locked it away in a drawer of his magnificent Biedermeier desk.

  “Come, come, Fraulein,” he said brusquely with his forefinger crooked. “This way.” He had become the doctor and she the patient. His territory.

  To Evan’s trained eye the anteroom might have been that of a Prussian general—which is to say a gentleman as well as a battlefield commander. Everything had its place, everything within the office was just so. Not a pen, not a sheet of paper, not even a paper clip was out of place. And yet, despite its precise formality it was neither austere nor inhuman. It was clearly a lived-in space. CCTV mini camera in here as well, and she supposed the entire clinic was thus protected from intruders and wandering patients.

  Though it was as orderly as Reveshvili’s office, the surgery was as cold as a stainless-steel ice chest. To their left was placed a reclining leather sofa, common to any therapist’s office, and, some six feet away, a high-backed chair upholstered in a well-worn tweed, thick as an English winter mackintosh. To their right rose a doctor’s examining table, covered in a sheet of disposable paper. It was on this Reveshvili indicated she should lie, while he washed his hands at a sink against the wall. No guard here so while his back was turned, she crossed through the doorway in the rear wall, peered down a corridor that led farther into the clinic’s interior. She saw two more guards chatting away. At that moment, she saw a light go on in the right-hand wall of the corridor, over an elevator. The illuminated B moved to 1, the door opened and as someone stepped out, she ducked back into Reveshvili’s exam room. As he dried his hands, she hoisted herself onto the table.

  She was still assessing what she had noted: the turns in the outer corridor, the CCTV cameras, the guards, and the elevator, as he brought over a hooded lamp, a magnifier on a gooseneck stand, and a rolling metal tabouret, in which, presumably, he kept his instruments.

  “Please be good enough to lie down, Fraulein,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I need to examine the wound.”

  He sat on a stool, snapped on a pair of latex gloves and, stooping over her, brought first the light, then the magnifier to bear on the left side of her head.

  “What happened here?” He could as easily been talking to himself as asking her.

  Nevertheless, she felt compelled to provide an answer. “The hazards of being in a foreign country and not knowing one’s way around, Herr Doktor.”

  To this, he made a sound: a good old-fashioned harrumph. Evan almost laughed. She didn’t know anyone harrumphed in this day and age. But, then, in some ways, Reveshvili seemed to belong to another time, a bygone age when men were ruled by honor.

  He spent an inordinately long time examining not only the wound but her entire face, a slight frown on his countenance that might have indicated a kind of puzzlement.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked. “Is the wound infected?”

  “Please remain still, Fraulein,” Reveshvili said sternly. “I am injecting you with a subcutaneous anesthetic. You will feel no discomfort whatsoever beyond this tiny pinch.” He worked in silence for the next ten minutes while she stared at the ceiling and tried to unravel the mystery of Fraulein Doktor Ana Helm—if that was, indeed, her real name. Who was she? What was her connection to William Onders, the man who had tried to kidnap her? Was she involved in some way, or was that photo of the two of them a remembrance of a fleeting romance? And why was Pine, Onders’s partner in crime, also carrying a photo of Ana? Only one thing was clear at the moment: Reveshvili wasn’t going to provide the answers. At least not willingly.

  37

  SCHNELLER PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC,

  BERGISCH GLADBACH

  “You seem uncommonly tense, Fraulein,” Reveshvili said when he had finished, and they were seated in his office. He cocked his head again, just slightly. “I haven’t overstepped myself, have I?”

  “Not at all.” She and Reveshvili had glasses of freshly brewed coffee he had poured from an insulated carafe on a polished wood sideboard. The coffee was strong and delicious. They held their glasses by their handles.

  “Mm.” He took a sip. “But I imagine trying to find a friend who has disappeared can cause tension, yes?”

  She nodded. “It can.”

  He sat back, lifted his head as if looking at the ceiling. “I look at you, Fraulein, and I think of myself at your age. But, you know, the older I get the harder it is to picture myself.” His head came down and his eyes fastened on her. “I can see the setting—school, ballfields, winter skiing trips to the mountains, summer excursions to a small house by a lake. A very still lake. Still and very, very deep.” He shook his head. “But there is no me in those memories, or if there is, I’m so blurred I cannot make myself out.”

  Evan was intrigued despite herself. Once again, his demeanor had done a ninety-degree turn. “What about home? Surely you can see your younger self at home.”

  He continued to stare at her with the same intensity as when she was lying on the table in his surgery
. “Home?” he said at length. “I have no memories of home at all.” His voice had taken on a kind of singsong quality, inviting her to sink into it. “And to that, dear Fraulein, I wonder whether I had a home at all.”

  “But you must have. Everyone has a home.” Did her own voice sound slurry, or was she imagining it?

  “You know, it is a strange and perplexing fact that I was and remain afraid of that lake. It was so large, so dark, so deep that no swimmer could touch bottom.” A peculiar calm swept over her—a certain warmth. “And do you know, as I remember it, the water was always black, as if something in it—a mineral possibly—repelled the sunlight. What was down there, I wondered in my youth. Monsters. My own monsters, perhaps.” His voice had changed again. Like the sirens of The Odyssey it had become a beguiling song. “And even though I still feel the fear, that gottverdammt lake is what I remember with crystal clarity.”

  He took a longer drink of his coffee as if this memory still had the power to unnerve him. At length, he got around to answering her question: “I was a ward of the State. I was raised by the State. Whatever other memories I might have once had of that time have been obliterated.”

  “I’m sorry, Herr Doktor.” Somewhat to her surprise, she found that she was.

  He did not acknowledge her sentiment. “My patients often tell me that you cannot miss what you never had. But home, parents … In this I think they can be very wrong, yes?”

  “It’s possible, I suppose.” Evan felt disoriented, as if she had been dropped into the black pool inside the caverns of her youth or that black lake of Reveshvili’s childhood. She fought to regain her sense of equilibrium, but it seemed to be a losing battle. In fact, she didn’t seem to want to regain it. She felt as if she were lying on her back, looking at the summer sky through the dappled shade of a huge apple tree. Back and forth the dappling went, swung by a breeze. Back and forth.