They took a hard left, where darkness and shadow prevailed. Only small reddish lights dimly illuminated the way. Their escort began to climb a vertical metal ladder. Baev courteously waved Dima forward and followed behind them both. As they ascended, the mineral odor became stronger, mixed with a definite fishy smell.
At length, they reached the top, and the escort helped him the last little way.
“Careful here,” he said. “The boardwalk across the tank can seem rather narrow to anyone not used to being up here.”
Dima frowned. “Where are we?”
“Oh, you’re in for a rare treat,” the escort exclaimed enthusiastically. “The sharks haven’t been fed today. It’s a sight to behold, let me tell you.”
He felt Baev behind him now, as they moved out along the boardwalk. “Is this the surprise?” he said over his shoulder. The moment the words escaped his mouth he felt foolish. Of course this was the surprise! What else could it be?
The escort paused at the center of the tank. “Stanislav Budimirovich, I have much to attend to. I will leave you here.” He moved off. Stepping at what Dima thought an alarmingly swift pace. But then he must be used to being up here.
Just before he vanished into the darkness, Dima saw him sidestep another figure that was heading their way.
“Well, Dima,” Baev said, close at hand, “what d’you think of the view from up here.”
Dima, who had studiously avoiding looking down did so now with no little reluctance. The vista was vertiginous. He saw some sharks, not too big, really. But then, well below them, a few shadows, terrifyingly huge, glided in the gloom.
“Bull sharks,” Baev said. He pointed. “And that’s Ongendus. He’s the largest, the king of the shark tank.” He lifted his gaze. “What d’you think of him, Dima?”
Dima had no words. Possibly Baev had anticipated this. “Oh, now, look who has graced us with her presence,” he said without a pause.
Dima looked up, recognizing the figure approaching as it moved out of the deep shadows, into the ruddy illumination of one of the lights.
“Kobalt.” His eyes opened wide. “What are you doing here?”
“Tonight, Dima, I’m a messenger.” Coming up to him, she handed him a packet.
“What’s this?”
“Open it.” Baev’s voice from behind him caused him to start.
He hesitated. Something deep inside him screamed at him not to open the packet, that the moment he did everything would change for him. And yet, moving of their own accord, his fingers opened the flag, pulled out the ledger. Opened it to proof of his first betrayal of FSB field personnel.
“What … what?” His voice was no more than a squeak. His knees had turned to aspic. “Lies … all lies!” Humiliatingly, his hands trembled visibly. “Where did you—?”
Kobalt smirked. “I discovered this ledger hidden in your conduit’s Istanbul office. You had quite a horrific side business going—profiting from your comrades’ demise.”
He continued his protest in a strangled voice, but Baev cut him dead. “Don’t, Dima. Don’t humiliate yourself further by lying to us.”
Dima, panicked, looked from Baev to Kobalt and back again. “What … what d’you mean to do?”
“Dima,” Kobalt said, snatching the ledger from him, “I told you tonight I was a messenger. But I have been given a special privilege. At this very moment I am also Kali, goddess of death.”
Her arm blurred out. The corner of her emerald ring sliced into the side of his neck. Even as Dima clapped a hand to the wound, his blood flowing out between his fingers, he dropped his coat, revealing a push dagger in his free hand. But before he could use it Kobalt jammed the electric cattle prod into his kidney. Dima screamed. Again. His arms flung out. And again. He torqued off the edge of the boardwalk, plunged into the shark tank
“Now,” Minister Kusnetsov said, emerging from the shadows, “let us see who takes the first bite, Slava, my cohort of tiger sharks or Ongendus.”
“Ten thousand to the winner,” Baev offered.
“Done,” Kusnetsov said, clearly in a festive frame of mind.
And they—all three of them with varying amounts of avidity—watched the hungry sharks shoot toward the flailing body, the scent of blood already upon them. Soon enough, the water was churning, the interior of the tank clouding, but not before the two men had settled their bet.
“Ongendus it is!” Baev crowed.
“Well done, Slava.” Kusnetsov turned to face Kobalt. “And well done to you, Kata Romanovna.” For that was who Bobbi was now. Kobalt was officially dead. Baev personally had wiped her name, dossier, and what few references remained from the relevant sector of the FSB servers, backups, and redundancies, overwriting the entire sector ten times on every one, leaving no electronic trace, no possible way to retrieve the original entries.
“Slava was right about you all along.” His smile broadened. “He has nominated you as the new head of Zaslon, which you will inhabit for a trial period of one year, overseen by Slava, of course.” He sniffed the air, as if sensing the blood below them. “After that time, I will make a final determination.”
He took her hand in his for a moment, and when she felt the immense power flowing from him to her, she thought immediately of the feeding sharks far below her boot soles.
“Your first remit is to purge the entire directorate. Slava will have the personnel files sent over to Dima’s—to your office. You can evaluate each one.”
“Unnecessary.” Kobalt returned the cattle prod to safety beneath her long black coat. “They all go. Full purge of Zaslon.”
“Is that so?” Kusnetsov cocked his head, as if seeing her in a new light.
“It is.”
He shot Baev a glance. “If that is your decision.”
“It’s made,” she said with finality.
Baev cleared his throat. “What about Zherov?”
“Zherov’s a special case. Besides, he’ll be in no shape to return to duty.”
Kusnetsov let out a barking laugh. “I like this one, Slava. I do indeed.” There was silence for a moment, save for the sloshing of the salt water. Then he pursed his lips. “By the way, I understand the millions Ermi stashed away for Dima have vanished.” His hand swept outward. “Completely gone.”
“With Ermi and Dima both dead,” Baev said, “we’ll never know what happened.”
Kusnetsov shrugged. “The spoils of war,” he opined. Then, with a glance at Kobalt. “So, Slava, is this one supremely smart or supremely dangerous?”
“Could be I’m both,” she said before Baev opened his mouth.
Kusnetsov laughed again. “Yes, I believe you just might be. So …” His tone changed, warmed. “It seems tonight we have much to celebrate.” He turned. “Slava?”
“Ah, yes.” Baev rubbed his hands together. “I do believe we have a reservation at Turandot, the finest restaurant in all of the Federation!”
55
CITADEL II
Evan stood in the pouring rain, waiting for her sister to open the door of the citadel. She felt a prickling at the nape of her neck and a serpent uncoiling in her lower belly, where her inner strength originated. This was not good, and she knew it. She would need every last ounce of strength in the coming hours, of this she had no doubt. She would be taxed to the limit and beyond. There was a distinct possibility she wouldn’t make it out of the citadel alive. Ben knew that, too, which was why he’d initiated their short convo back at the airfield in Graz.
The door—thick wooden slabs bound by massive iron bars—slowly swung back, revealing a slender woman, beautiful, deep-blue-eyed, impossibly tall. From her asylum, she regarded Evan with a steady, penetrating gaze.
“So. Robin. You’ve come such a long way to fetch your children.” Her words pierced even the downpour, honeyed, spinning a mesmeric web.
Evan was fascinated. Even so, her parents had prepared her. “Something like that.”
Ana smirked. “Spoken like a true mother.”
Evan cocked her head slightly. “But my dear sister, how on earth would you know?”
You must strive to wrongfoot her at every turn, her father had said during their briefing. That is your only path in.
A flicker of Ana’s eyelids someone less astute would attribute to a raindrop confirmed Evan had hit home.
The smirk was back, one side of Ana’s mouth jerking up. “How does it feel, my dear sister, to be standing out in the rain, while I’m as dry as a bone.”
“Dry as a bone inside as well as out,” Evan shot back.
If she feels, even for an instant, that she’s gotten the best of you, her father warned her, it’s too late. She’ll eat you for supper.
That flicker of Ana’s lids again, like a flame momentarily knocked sideways by the wind.
Evan took a step forward, spoke again before her sister could reply—and how strange it was, confronting a sister she’d never known she had! “I’m not even sure the Reveshvilis are my parents,” she said. “I don’t look anything like them.” Another step forward; now there was scarcely six feet between them. “But you … you’re the spitting image of your mother.”
This was a barb her father predicted would sink deep, and immediately she saw that he was right. Ana huffed out a breath.
“I’m nothing like her,” she spat out.
Evan could almost feel her venom as well as hear it. There was a toxicity to her that made Evan’s blood run cold. Watching her sister now she had cause to wonder at the extreme dichotomy of her thinking. She was a biologist dependent on the scientific method, but she was also a would-be messiah, requiring the stealthy application of psychology.
“I understand completely why you’d think that,” Evan said. “But from an objective point of view, the two of you are frighteningly alike.”
“What would you know about it?” Ana sneered.
Evan ignored her question. “You’re the dark side of her, Ana.”
“She’s as insane as a mad hatter.”
“You’re the child who should never have been born.”
Ana’s eyes narrowed. “Fuck you.”
“Mama was right.” Evan leaned in. “There’s a shadow on you, the mark of evil.”
Ana laughed but all her muscles tensed up. “I am the Light.” The cords on the sides of her neck stood out like steel bands. “I am the living embodiment of God.”
“What you are is a charlatan—a butcher posing as a scientist. You think you’re unique? There were plenty of you in the Third Reich. What they did to prisoners, to children is unspeakable. And now you’re following in their footsteps.”
Ana shook her head. “You could not be more wrong. We are prayer warriors here. We are one.”
“But it was you who decided to experiment on the ‘prayer warriors’ who came to their senses, who refused to follow you any longer.”
A resolute urgency constricted Ana’s frame, a coiled energy, as of a viper about to strike. She lifted an arm, her hand spattered now by raindrops. “You see this land? This place? This is my kingdom—the forest between worlds.”
Her face was a mask, half in light, half in shadow. “You’re a stranger here. You know nothing of my world.”
“I know you think you’ve exalted yourself in God’s sight just as Noah did. And like Noah you believe you’re God’s instrument in remaking the human race. That’s what your experiments on human reproductive organs are all about, aren’t they?”
There was no answer Ana could have made, just as there was no answer Evan could have heard. She slapped a palm to the side of her neck as she felt a pinprick like a mosquito bite. But it was no mosquito. Moments later she felt the world begin to swim around her. The last image she had was of Ana’s grinning face, large as a harvest moon, before she plunged into unconsciousness.
*
She awoke as groggy as if she had been on a three-day alcohol bender. The headache behind her eyes was pretty much the same, too, but the stinging on the side of her neck was decidedly not. Her body felt impossibly heavy, and it was an effort to raise her head. She could not have been out long; she was still sopping wet.
When her vision sufficiently cleared, she saw she was in a spacious room filled with polished chrome and low pebbled glass partitions—a far cry from what she imagined the interior of the citadel would look like. She was tied hands and ankles to a stainless-steel table. All around her machinery winked and clicked and clucked like hens about to give birth. Her nostrils flared to sharp scents, to the chill air-conditioned air. She knew a sterilized room when she smelled it.
“Ah, there you are, Robin.”
Ana entered her field of vision. That grin so wide it looked distorted.
“Now we can continue our talk in comfort.” She reacted to Evan’s involuntary shiver. “Chilled, are we? I’m not surprised. All right, then, let’s warm you up.” She reached to her left, spread a blanket over Evan’s body.
“Better now? Yes.” Ana leaned in, her face bare inches from Evan’s. “Regarding the beginning of our conversation, I didn’t believe a word you said. Why should I? You can hardly know the Reveshvilis.” She spoke their name as if she was unrelated. In her mind, Evan supposed, she was. “I can’t fathom why you’d want to, Robin. They abandoned you and your sister. Rebecca bore you and then gave you away to strangers—strangers!—in a strange land. What could they possibly mean to you? Nothing. Less than that when you think about it.”
She withdrew her head like an adder changing its mind. “And yet here you are, speaking to me as they would speak to me. Parroting their criminally distorted view.”
Evan was disappointed in herself. Here she had thought she was winning the psychological war with Ana when in reality her sister had been playing her, keeping her attention riveted so, along with the noise of the rain and wind, she wouldn’t hear the prayer warrior coming up behind her. What a fool she had been. Her father had warned her, but she had come here smug, too sure of herself. Her only hope was that through her own sleight of hand Ben and Lyudmila had found their way inside the citadel undetected.
*
They split up. At a T in the corridor Ben went one way, Lyudmila the other. Neither of them knew where the corridors would take them, but at the moment that was a secondary issue. Staying alive was primary.
Ben had no weapon. So far as he knew, everything they needed was in Lyudmila’s backpack. There was only one way to rectify that. He slowed his pace, listening carefully for oncoming footsteps. When, inevitably he heard them approaching, he stood his ground. The moment the Omega man came into view he rushed him. That was the last thing this man expected, and the moment’s lag between his brain and his brawn was too long.
Ben barreled into him—a large square man with a military brush cut. The man was all muscle; Ben’s rush sent him back only one step, but Ben hooked a leg behind his ankle and sweeping inward with the leg sent Brush Cut crashing onto his back. At once, Ben was on top of him, but Brush Cut smashed a fist into Ben’s sternum. Ben’s vision went white, then black. By the time it returned to him, he’d lost his advantage.
Brush Cut grabbed him by his shirtfront, hauled him up, sent him rocketing into the stone wall. All the breath left him, pain flared from the epicenter of the first strike. The balled fist came straight at his aching sternum, aiming for a killing blow, but Ben just managed to knock it aside with an edge-kite to the inside of his wrist. This gave him the opening he needed. The leading edge of his massed fingertips slammed into the side of Brush Cut’s neck with the effect of a two-by-four. Brush Cut’s head swung like a pendulum. His eyes were unfocused, like a heavyweight who was out on his feet.
Ben stepped in. It was a mistake. Brush Cut was feigning helplessness. He covered Ben’s punch with his hand, twisted, then again threw Ben against the wall. He followed that up with … But at the last second Ben twisted away, absorbing only a third of the blow that might otherwise have rocked him off his feet. He’d had about enough of this sonofabitch. He stayed against the w
all, allowed Brush Cut to come to him. He ducked a roundhouse, struck two quick jabs to his kidneys, then jammed his knee into his crotch. As Brush Cut’s body folded reflexively, Ben grabbed his head and twisted it violently, hearing the neck vertebrae snap, crackle, and pop.
Brush Cut collapsed. Bending over, Ben took possession of his weapons—a compact Beretta Model 12 machine gun and a Czech-made CZ 75 semi-auto handgun. Dizzied, he slid down the wall. He hurt all over and he had trouble breathing. He had to pull himself together. He went into prana—slow deep breathing, returning oxygen to his lower belly, where the root of his strength lay.
Got to get going, he thought as he rose, and shakily set off down the corridor, his strength returning to him like a series of little gifts with each step he took.
56
CITADEL III
Lyudmila got caught trying to circle back to retrieve her backpack. But perhaps that was her plan all along. A man and a woman stood in front of her, grinning, the man gesturing with the barrel of a submachine pistol, the woman with a wicked-looking knife. Obediently, she raised her hands.
“Let’s talk about this,” she said in Russian. Their baffled expressions confirmed they didn’t speak the language. “What are you dick-faces doing here being lorded over by Tsarina Ana? She’s a bitch-psycho, you know that, don’t you.”
As she spoke to them, she stepped closer, unthreateningly, without giving them a reason to fire the weapons they had leveled at her.
“Listen, I’ve got a whole box of candy bars in that backpack, and I’m dying for one. I’m happy to share.” She took another step closer. “You like candy bars, right. I mean, who doesn’t?”
No reaction. She kept coming, a tiny bit at a time, so as not to alarm them.
“Wait, wait, you’ll like this one.” Another step closer. “This is exciting, I promise! Vladimir Putin just announced a brand-new plan for the economy. The goal? Make people rich and happy. List of people attached.” She grinned. “No? Nothing?” She shook her head. “You people, I swear!” And promptly grabbed the short barrel of the man’s submachine pistol, smacked him hard on the point of his nose with the heel of her hand.
The Kobalt Dossier Page 36