The Kobalt Dossier

by Eric Van Lustbader

  “Kobalt is one of your own, so I’m given to believe.” Kata shook out another cigarette and lit up. “That’s quite a problem you have there, Yuri.”

  He nodded. “I’m painfully aware of that.”

  She started laughing.

  He frowned. “What’s so funny?”

  “No, no. Not you. But the situation itself is, you must admit. Here you are an officer in the FSB asking me for help in terminating one of your own.” Her eyes crinkled. “The irony tickles me pink.”

  He did not share in her hilarity. “For a number of reasons, the killing cannot be traced back to … the FSB.” In his quaking heart he meant “to me,” but knew Kata would interpret this to mean “to Baev,” since as far as she knew, and would ever know, the remit he was here to give her came straight from the good Director General Baev himself. He suspected she had made sure the FSB, and Baev, had been carefully distanced from any number of previous assignments Baev had given this terrifying woman.

  “Mm,” she said, sobering up. She pulled out the olives from her glass. Her teeth crushed through them, one by one. “Poor, poor Yuri.” Her hand cupped his face. Then she laughed again and said, “Have no worries, Kata can keep a secret.” He felt her warmth, but only for a moment, before her hand was back on the bartop. She stubbed out her cigarette. “Let us now repair to a place that affords us privacy.”

  “As you wish.” He nodded. “Lead on.”

  He followed her toward the private room, but at the last moment she veered to their right, taking him down a short corridor. Click-clack. Click-clack. The walls were covered in flocked fabric, the sconces gold rimmed. At the end, she opened a door and they stepped into a smallish room, square, windowless, that looked to be an office, at other hours of the day. Perhaps at this time of the night it might also serve as a venue for a private lap dance or two. A narrow desk, a swivel task chair, and a pair of club chairs were the furnishings. On the wall was a framed poster of Muhammed Ali in a boxing ring, standing over Sonny Liston, exhorting him to get the fuck up off the mat. Indirect light rimmed the room where the walls met the ceiling.

  She closed the door behind him and said, “There now. This is an atmosphere more conducive to the finalization of our contract.”

  “How much do you want?” He was eager to consummate the deal—his deal, not Baev’s, he thought smugly.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Yuri.” She stepped closer to him, watched his nostrils flare. When he told her he liked her perfume, she laughed her husky laugh. “Oh, Yuri, I never wear perfume.”

  She turned away to light up another cigarette, then turned back to him and took another step closer. “Now Yuri, back to business.”

  “Yes. I asked about your price.”

  Kata’s eyes twinkled. “All right, let’s start there. I think … let me see, oh, I don’t know, one million should get it done.”

  “Rubles?”

  “Don’t be absurd.” She tapped ash from her cigarette into a square dish, took a small drag so the lit end glowed brightly again. Blew the smoke into the air. “American dollars. Always.”

  For the sake of saving face, he considered this for a beat or two. “That can be arranged.”

  “Then you’ll provide me with all salient details.”

  He handed over his mobile, open to where he’d already loaded the parts of the Kobalt dossier he wanted her to see, the information she would need to get to Kobalt. She sighed out another cloud of smoke as she read the intel. When she was finished memorizing, she looked up. “Since you’ve made it quite clear that the target will prove difficult, I shall require 70 percent up front.”

  “The usual payout is fifty before, the balance afterward, but in this case I’m willing to go to sixty up front.”

  She smiled into his eyes. “I don’t bargain. My terms are non-negotiable.”

  He nodded. He was in too deep now to back out. All his chips were on the table and she’d seen his hole card. He took back his mobile, and she gave him the name of her offshore bank and the account number. His fingers moved over the keyboard, then he handed her the phone again. “Done,” he said. The money Baev had earmarked for Ryder’s termination, now put to much better use.

  She checked her account, saw the $700,000 had been electronically deposited.

  She nodded. “But, Yuri, darling, you haven’t heard all of my terms.” She slipped his phone into one of his jacket pockets.

  “What? But—”

  That was when she leaned forward, pushed the glowing end of her cigarette into his left eye.

  Gurin screamed. His body tried to jump back, but she had a firm hold on him, and she was strong. Her hand clamped him like a vise.

  “My eye! My eye!”

  “Yes, Yuri. Or should I call you Ilya Ivanovich? No, we don’t know each other well enough. So. Gurin, if you ever want to see out of your left eye again, you’ll tell me precisely how dangerous the target is. Very, I think, otherwise you would not have come to me.”

  “Please!” He nearly screamed. “Yes, yes, she’s very dangerous. She evaded a trap in Odessa, and in Istanbul she killed one of our farm hands—” He paused, panting. “You know what a farm hand is.”

  She wriggled the cigarette slightly and Gurin would have slid to the floor if she hadn’t been propping him up. “One of us is a moron, Ilya, and it isn’t me.” When he whimpered, she laughed. “You were right to seek me out. Clearly, brute strength and blunt force will not work on your target. This is your lucky night, Gurin. What you need, my friend, is someone with guile and the expertise to deploy … how shall we say … unorthodox methodology.” Kata’s eyes seemed to have glazed over. She was talking more to herself than to him. “She dodged death twice. Oh, killing her is going to be such fun.” Silently, she thanked Baev for sending her this assignment, and of course the easier one she was about to finish. He really did know how to make her happy.

  Gurin’s face was blue-white, like a snowbank. His muscles were in spasm. She was expending more and more energy just keeping him upright.

  He was weeping out of his good eye. “Please,” he whined. “Please take it away.”

  “Sure thing.” She shrugged. And reversed her ring, dragged the emerald in a scimitar line across his throat, stepping smartly away before the first gout of blood could sully her outfit. Without even a backward glance, she walked away. Click-clack. Click-clack.

  39

  BERGISCH GLADBACH, GERMANY

  “Ana Helm.”

  Evan nodded. “Fraulein Doktor Ana Helm. According to Dr. Reveshvili.”

  Ben gave her a critical look. “You don’t believe him?”

  “I don’t know what to believe, to be honest.” She paused, looking around the lounge area of their inn to once again make sure they were alone. Security had become something of a tic with her since leaving the clinic. “For sure he’s been lying to me about some things.”

  Ben’s eyes narrowed. “But not everything?”

  “No. That’s my sense, anyway.” She pressed her fingers into her eyes, rotating them slowly.

  “Are you okay?”

  “That’s about the hundredth time you’ve asked me that, Ben.”

  “Well, a, you were in there far longer than I expected, and, b, you came out looking a bit spaced out.”

  “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

  Ben grunted. “Being tired isn’t your thing, Evan. What the hell happened in there?”

  “I already told you. Reveshvili took care of my wound, and then we talked about his interest in twins, nature versus nurture, those kinds of things.”

  “And what else?”

  She frowned. “I don’t recall, exactly. More of the same, I guess.”

  Ben gave her a concerned look. “And about Ana? You think he lied about her name.”

  “At the very least he didn’t tell me everything he knows about her.”

  “So how do we find out the truth?”

  *

  “Guards who didn’t look l
ike guards and a state-of-the-art CCTV system.”

  “No alarm?” Ben asked.

  “If there was one,” Evan said, “I didn’t see it. And believe me I was looking.”

  They were crouched behind the manicured hedge that bordered the side of the staff parking lot farthest away from the clinic. At night, the hulking structure seemed to take on an altogether different aspect, larger, somehow muscular, as if it were a crouched animal waiting to lash out at its prey. Lights were on all over the building, which was only to be expected at a place like this when emergencies among the patients were apt to erupt at any time, day or night.

  Evan led them around to the rear of the building, but there was no way to gain entrance. Continuing on, she saw that the land dropped away on the far side, and her pulse rate quickened. If there was an outside entrance to the basement, it would be there.

  Coming around the corner, she raised a hand, and they froze in the deep shadows of the eaves. Ahead of them, a pair of men in clinic whites stood in the halo of a security light, smoking and chewing the fat. Every once in a while, they’d check their mobiles. They looked bored out of their minds.

  Evan’s heart was pounding. She shook her head, trying to clear it of the fuzziness that had been her close companion since she exited the clinic. She recalled a lake, black as this starless, moonless night. She recalled monsters deep beneath the surface. She recalled the cave system she explored in her youth. She recalled Bobbi’s face, white as milk in the beam of her flashlight, her mouth opened wide. She recalled Bobbi tripping her as they ran down to the stream’s edge. She recalled Bobbi laughing at her. She recalled Bobbi sobbing in bed when she was certain Evan was asleep. And she recalled the next morning when Bobbi had to explain why she had put her fist through the wall beside the place she slept.

  Her vision cleared for a moment and she looked at her hand. Five fingers, she counted them off. Five. What did Reveshvili mean? The dream shadows moving across the wall, the floor.

  “Evan.” Ben whispered in her ear. “Evan, they’re gone.”

  She refocused her attention. Through the vanishing cobwebs of the past, she saw he was right. The guards had moved on, leaving only the butts of their cigarettes ground in the grass beneath their boot heels.

  “Did you see where they went?” she asked.

  “Down. There’s the entrance to the basement.”

  They crept forward, silent as the unstirring pines off to their left. They paused just outside the circle of light, saw it illuminated a wide, well-worn staircase. At the bottom of the short flight was a metal door set into the building’s stonework.

  Ben ran his fingertips around the edges. “No wire. No sign of an alarm.”

  She looked at the keys on the electronic locking panel. Standing to one side, she shone the light from her mobile on it from an oblique angle. The keys last used by the two men shone with the oil on their fingertips. She tried the combinations. The door opened on the fifth try.

  They slipped inside. The basement was dimly lighted. It was clearly used mainly as storage. Boxes, crates, oxygen tanks all had their sections, all were stacked or lined up neatly. To their right a walk-in refrigerated unit such as would be seen in a butcher’s shop, to their left the elevator and, beside it, a flight of ascending stairs. There was no one around, not that she expected there would be at this time of night.

  Stepping over to the refrigerated unit, Evan pulled the lever, opened the door. She didn’t know what to expect but she was hoping she wouldn’t find anything grisly, such as body parts, jars of eyeballs swimming in fluid, the sort of evidence that was the stuff of pulp fiction. There was nothing like that, but rather glass cases lining both side walls, in which were arrayed sera in racks, clearly marked and numbered.

  “Anything?” Ben asked when she had stepped out. He’d been keeping a lookout.

  She shook her head as she closed the door. “Nothing of interest.” She turned. “But then it’s Reveshvili’s office that interests me.”

  He indicated with his head. “We’re best off taking the stairs.”

  They were moving toward the steps, when the elevator opened and Jon Pine stepped out.

  *

  Ben drew his pistol. “You’re dead,” he said incredulously.

  Jon Pine raised his hands, but he was laughing good-naturedly. “Please be good enough to stand down, Herr Butler.”

  Ben’s eyes narrowed. “You know my name.”

  “Consider what an absurd statement that is.” Jon Pine was clad in a neatly tailored three-piece suit in pin-striped lightweight wool, a snow-white shirt, and a pale-blue tie. His feet were clad in tasseled loafers, shining brightly even in the low light.

  “Ben, put the gun away,” Evan said. She took a step forward. “You look exactly like Jon Pine. If you’re not him, you must be his twin.”

  The man inclined his head. “Indeed, Fraulein Ryder. My name is Leonard Pine, and I am Jon’s twin brother.” His smile was genial, with not even a hint of guile. “I am the clinic’s night manager.”

  Evan took another step forward. “You know both our names.”

  Pine’s smile never faltered. “Dr. Reveshvili has many resources at his disposal.”

  She frowned. “Then why did he keep up the masquerade?”

  “Ah, Fraulein Ryder, it was your masquerade. It interested Dr. Reveshvili.” He lifted a hand. “Now if you will step into the elevator …”

  Though Ben had stood down, he’d never returned the pistol to its holster in his armpit. It was aimed at the floor, but it was still an active threat. “Now why would we do that, Herr Pine.”

  Leonard Pine held the elevator door open. “Because you are both expected.” He stood aside for them to enter.

  *

  A proper English tea, complete with ginger scones, clotted cream, tiny assorted cakes in a triple-decker metal stand, and, of course, a pot of Earl Grey, judging by the scent of bergamot wafting upward from the spout.

  This midnight repast was set up in Reveshvili’s office, although the Herr Doktor was nowhere in evidence. Evan asked where he was. “Resting,” Leonard Pine said laconically.

  Ben, having had the good sense to finally holster his weapon, said, “None of this makes any sense.”

  “Now,” said Leonard Pine.

  “Now what?” Ben said.

  “It doesn’t make sense now, at this moment.” Was that completely benign smile ever going to leave Leonard Pine’s face? “But it will.”

  The English tea service had been set up in the center of a small café table that might have been imported from Les Deux Magots in Paris or Berlin’s original Café Einstein. A pair of black-and-white wicker chairs were on either side.

  Leonard Pine gestured to Evan. “If you would be so kind.”

  As both she and Ben moved toward the chairs, Pine said, “Just Fraulein Ryder, if you please.”

  Ben turned, bewildered. “What about me?”

  Leonard Pine stood, back straight, hands clasped at the small of his back. “You will accompany me, Herr Butler.”

  “And leave Evan here on her own.” He shook his head. “Never happen, my friend.”

  “Ben, please.” Evan took the chair indicated by Pine.

  “Allow me to reassure you, Herr Butler, Fraulein Ryder is perfectly safe,” Pine said in his stiff-necked manner. “There is no danger to her here. Her safety is vouchsafed by the Herr Doktor himself.”

  Still, Ben did not move until Evan gave him a look with which he was all too familiar. Only then did he step to Pine’s side.

  “Is everything to your satisfaction, Fraulein?” the night manager asked.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Ben muttered, but over him Evan said, “Yes, thank you, Herr Pine.”

  “It is entirely my pleasure, Fraulein.”

  She looked pointedly at the empty chair. “The tea is getting cold.”

  “I think not, Fraulein.”

  Ben took a more direct tack. “Someone else is expected.”
<
br />   “Indeed, Herr Butler.”

  “Would it by any chance be Reveshvili?”

  The briefest flicker of displeasure at Ben’s lack of manners passed across Leonard Pine’s face before the professional smile returned. “The Herr Doktor is resting.”

  “As you said.” Evan’s smile was thin, inelastic. “But not indisposed, I trust?”

  “He is quite well, Fraulein,” Pine assured her. “Thank you for inquiring.”

  She was beginning to feel like Alice during her first few minutes at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. She needed to shake things up. “Herr Pine, I regret to inform you that your brother Jon is dead.”

  “That does not surprise me,” Pine said without one iota of change to his masklike expression.

  “He attacked us—Herr Butler and me. We were forced to defend ourselves.”

  “Again,” Pine said, with maddening sangfroid.

  Evan looked at him searchingly. “This fact doesn’t surprise, let alone disturb, you?”

  “In no way, Fraulein. Knowing my brother as I did, his demise was only a matter of time.”

  “But we killed him.”

  “So I gather.” His head briefly inclined to just the correct angle. “You are to be congratulated.”

  Ben stared at him, his mouth half-open.

  “And now, Fraulein, Herr Butler and I will take our leave.” With that pronouncement Pine turned on his well-shod heel. Ben accompanied him out, leaving Evan for the moment alone with the elaborate and inviting tea service.

  Evan watched them out of Reveshvili’s office. As she rose and stepped to his desk, she thought about the instant déjà vu she had felt upon first seeing Leonard Pine as he stood in the open doorway of the elevator. What a head rush! Dressed as he was, and with his impeccable manner, he was like looking at Jon Pine in a distorted funhouse mirror.

  At Reveshvili’s desk, she immediately went to the drawer in which he had locked away the photo he hadn’t wanted her to see. The drawer was still locked, but it was with one of those small, flimsy mechanisms typical of desks. It took her less than ten seconds to jimmy it open, and there lay the 8x10 frame facedown.