The Target

by Saul Herzog

  “Tatyana’s life is on the line.”

  “Tatyana’s life was already on the line, Alex.”

  “Sir, I don’t know what else I could offer. I assure you I’ll take my secret to the grave.”

  “Alex, I’m going to throw you a little bit of a curveball here.”

  “Sir?”

  “Have you ever heard the name Oleg Zhukovsky?”

  “I have not, sir.”

  “He’s a friend of mine. Well, friend is too strong a term. He’s a colleague. Works for the First Directorate.”

  “I see, sir.”

  “To be honest with you, Alex, he’s a bit of an odd duck. Always has been. He’s one of those creeps that does things to animals.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “He flays them, Alex. Skins them alive. Does it by the dozen. Cats, dogs, rabbits, foxes. Apparently, it’s some kind of fetish.”

  Sherbakov swallowed.

  “It’s truly disturbing, if you ask me,” Kirov said. “Truly disturbing. The animals, he knows how to get their pelts off them without killing them. It’s quite a feat. But the pain of it, Alex. Can you even begin to imagine what that’s like?”

  “Mr. Kirov, please, sir.”

  “But that’s not even the worst part of it, Alex. You want to know what I recently learned? He’s not just down there, playing with the animals aimlessly. It turns out there’s an objective to it all. He’s got some sort of plan.”

  “A plan, sir?

  “Apparently, he’s got some medical training. Don’t ask me where he got it. Probably some quack on the internet. But somehow, he got this idea that he can graft the pelt of a furry animal onto a living woman.”

  Sherbakov had dropped the phone. He flung himself across the room to the trash can and immediately began throwing up. He heaved so violently he thought he was going to lose an organ. When he eventually finished, he wiped his mouth and went back to the phone.

  “Sherbakov,” Kirov was saying. “Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” he said weakly.

  “Apparently, that’s where the fetish goes,” Kirov said. “He takes the skin from the animal alive, and then stitches it onto a flayed woman so that her blood vessels begin feeding the pelt, and it stays alive.”

  “Please, Mr. Kirov.”

  “Apparently, it’s no more complicated than the kinds of things they do to reconstruct burn victims, although if you ask me, I think they botch a lot of those operations too.”

  “Sir, I’ve heard enough.”

  “He’s creating his own pet, I suppose you would say. Sick, but quite fascinating. I wonder if I’ll ever get to see how it turns out.”

  “Please, Mr. Kirov,” Sherbakov begged. “If you were trying to get my attention, you have succeeded.”

  Kirov’s tone changed. “What I’m saying, Sherbakov, is that if you let out so much as a single peep about your GRU involvement, or any kind of Russian involvement whatsoever, then Zhukovsky gets your whore. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you, sir.”

  “Very good, Alex. Very good. So are you ready to hear what I want you to do?”

  29

  Lance and Sam were sitting at the dining table in front of a log fire. The lights were dimmed, and candles had been lit. There was a pizza on the table and a bottle of wine.

  Life was good, Lance thought.

  At least for tonight.

  And that was something he knew not to take for granted.

  He looked across the table at her. She looked like her father.

  It brought to mind the first time he’d met the man. The two hadn’t thought all that much of each other. There’d been some rivalry in the unit in those days. Some jockeying for position.

  Lance certainly wouldn’t have guessed he was looking at a man who would one day take a bullet for him.

  “What are you looking at?” Sam said.

  She was pouring wine into a glass, and the look on her face said she wasn’t worried about anything at all.

  That wasn’t how she’d been when he’d found her.

  And maybe, just maybe, he’d stepped in early enough to set things on the right track.

  Maybe, he’d managed to keep his promise after all and had looked out for a friend’s kid.

  That might not sound like a lot to most men, but to Lance, it was everything.

  He’d spent so much of his time putting people in the ground that he felt that if he could help just one person up off it, it might make all the difference in the world.

  Sam’s life hadn’t been a walk in the park, but maybe life wasn’t a thing you were supposed to get through and walk out clean on the other side.

  Maybe no one came out clean.

  That was the thing the priests never said.

  They talked about the Pearly Gates, and those unsullied, who’d never put a foot out of place, breezing right on through.

  But maybe there were no unsullied, and anyone who passed, if they passed at all, did so through mercy.

  “You’re quiet,” Sam said.

  “Oh,” Lance said, picking up his glass, “I was thinking about something.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “About your father.”

  She looked away, it wasn’t a subject she liked talking about, but there was one thing he needed to say to her, and then he’d let her be.

  “He’d be proud of you, Sam.”

  She looked back at him. “How do you know that?”

  “Because if you were my kid, I would be,” he said.

  She looked uncomfortable.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll stop talking now.”

  She shook her head. “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s just, no one’s ever talked to me like that.”

  “Well, I just wanted to make sure I said that to you, just that one time.”

  She nodded and took a long sip from her glass.

  He served her some pizza, then took some for himself. They ate quietly, neither saying much and when they were done, he got up and took her plate into the kitchen.

  “That was delicious,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “What for? Ordering it?”

  “That, and what you said.”

  He put on the coffee and went back to the table with an ashtray. Already, they were settling into an after-dinner routine of sorts. He liked coffee and a cigar. She liked another glass of wine.

  He had something for her upstairs, and he said to her, “I’ll be back in one second.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just wait here.”

  He went to his bedroom and opened the safe he’d installed into the stone chimney stack of the house.

  It contained passports, documents, some guns and ammo, cash in various currencies. He looked beneath the papers and found what he was looking for.

  A necklace.

  It was a man’s necklace, a gold crucifix on a simple chain, and he brought it back downstairs with him.

  “Here,” he said, handing the chain awkwardly to Sam.

  He wasn’t sure if she’d recognize it, but when he saw her eyes, he knew.

  “This was his?” she said.

  “He told me once his father gave it to him.”

  She nodded and put it around her neck, turning to let Lance close the clasp at the back.

  The backs of his fingers grazed her neck as he did it. He could smell her hair. He shut his eyes.

  “Tomorrow’s the anniversary,” Sam said.

  She turned and looked up at him. Her eyes seemed larger.

  He cleared his throat and poured the coffee.

  This was his friend’s daughter, he told himself. He was old enough himself to be her father.

  He was no choir boy.

  He’d done things he couldn’t say he was proud of, and he didn’t tend to dwell on them. Most of them anyway.

  But this was different.

  He’d made a promise.

  He would protect
her.

  If he couldn’t keep his word on that, he didn’t what kind of man he was.

  He sat down and lit his cigar, and when he looked up at her, she was looking at him again, with those enormous doe eyes.

  “He’d want us to celebrate,” she said. “He’d want me to live my life.”

  Lance didn’t move a muscle, and Sam stood up and took a step so that she was right in front of him.

  She was about to reach out. She was about to touch him. Lance saw it happen before it happened, and then he destroyed the moment.

  “Dinner then,” he blurted.

  He stood suddenly, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet as quickly as he could. Clumsily, he knocked over the chair, and it fell to the ground behind him.

  “Dinner,” he said again, like an idiot, and bent down to pick up the chair. “I’ll book a table at the Eureka. Seven o’clock.”

  “All right,” Sam said, a bemused smile on her face.

  Lance backed away from the table toward the stairs. From the look on her face, she knew exactly what temperature of shower he was going to take.

  “Get a table by the fire,” she said. “Something with candles.”

  “All right,” Lance said.

  “And make sure they have champagne. If we’re going to commemorate my father, we’re going to do it right.”

  30

  Alex didn’t sleep a wink. Over and over in his head, all he could think about was what Kirov had told him. Every time he thought of some GRU lunatic in a dungeon in Russia trying to graft animal fur onto Tatyana, he gagged. More than once, he had to run to the bathroom to spill his guts.

  The rest of the conversation with Kirov was a blur. There was a man in Montana, a CIA asset.

  “Call him an old friend,” Kirov had said.

  Alex said, “You want me to kill him.”

  That caused Kirov to fall into a fit of laughter, as if he’d never heard anything so ludicrous in his life.

  Alex sucked down one cigarette after the next while Kirov explained to him that this was a man he could not kill.

  “You said he wouldn’t see me coming,” Alex said.

  “He’d see if you tried to kill him,” Kirov said and burst into another fit of laughter. Then he said, “As you’re only too aware yourself, Alex, all men have a weakness.”

  “A woman?” Alex said.

  “She’s just a girl, really,” Kirov said. “Just a girl.”

  “And you want me to kill her?”

  Kirov laughed again. “Heavens, Sherbakov. Enough with the killing. We’re not psychopaths.”

  Kirov had been very clear. Under no circumstances was he to kill the girl.

  “I need to distract this man,” he said. “Not set him off on a rampage. If you kill the girl, this man will find us, Sherbakov. He’ll find you. He’ll find me. He’ll find my colleagues. He’ll find our families. He’ll burn down the world if he has to. Heaven and earth won’t be able to stop him. He’ll kill everyone, and if he does that, then there’ll be no one left to stop Zhukovsky from putting your slut into one of his cages.”

  Essentially, what Kirov needed, was for the CIA man to be distracted but not enraged.

  Like poking a bear.

  But gently.

  Alex was to steer clear of the man and only approach the girl when she was alone.

  Kirov knew things about her, about her personal life, that he would be able to use to draw her in.

  “What do you want me to do with her?” Alex said. He genuinely didn’t know.

  “Nothing you’ll enjoy,” had been Kirov’s answer. “I’ve got your psyche profiles here, Alex. I’ve got a lifetime’s worth of assessments. There’s really nothing in your record that suggests this will come naturally to you.”

  “Just tell me what it is,” Alex said.

  “I just want to make sure you’re up for the task, Alex. I wouldn’t want to send you into something you aren’t ready for.”

  And it had been at that point that Alex found his voice.

  “Don’t underestimate me, Kirov,” he said. “You forget that I’ve been groomed for this job since before birth. I’m ready.”

  He’d thought that would bring out Kirov’s anger, but he liked it. “That’s good, Alex,” he said. “That’s good. Don’t forget that. Don’t forget who you are. That’s Russian blood in your veins.”

  Then Kirov said something about maybe, if everything went according to plan, both of them being recalled to Moscow.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Alex said.

  “I’m just saying, Alex, this is an important mission. If you pull it off, well, who knows what the reward might be. The whore is a traitor. I can’t fix that. But if you keep a tight leash on her, who’ll object to you having a little pet of your own?”

  Alex knew it was bait. He knew he wasn’t going to end up happily ever after with Tatyana.

  It was a dream.

  But a dream he found himself incapable of shrugging off.

  “What do you want me to do with the girl?” he said.

  “I want you to upset her, Alex.”

  “Upset her?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Don’t worry about that now. You’ll know when the time comes.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “And then you’ll have to run, Alex. This man. Her protector. He’s going to be looking for you. And the more you upset her, the harder he’ll look. So you don’t want to go too far.”

  “So you want me to upset her just enough to get his attention?”

  “Like I said, you’ll have all the information you need when the time comes.”

  Before he hung up, Kirov gave him the details of a charter flight out of Teterboro, New Jersey the following morning. When he got to the airport, he found a fully fueled jet on the tarmac, ready to go.

  “You’re the guy going to Montana?” the pilot said when Alex entered the hangar.

  “Yeah,” Alex said, feeling out of his depth.

  “Glacier Park,” the pilot said. “We had to bring you in a larger plane. The Learjet originally requested by the consulate doesn’t quite have the range you’re looking for.”

  “I see,” Alex said.

  “This puppy will get you there in one piece, though,” the pilot said. “Shouldn’t be much more than four hours flight time.”

  “All right,” Alex said, wondering if the pilot would be blabbing all the way.

  Onboard, the plane was more luxurious than anything he’d ever seen. There were six enormous cream-colored leather seats, configured so that four of them faced each other. The other two were off to one side, facing a television screen. The leather was quilted in a crosshatch pattern, and around it, the burnished mahogany was so smooth it felt like glass.

  There was a stewardess and two pilots, and even before they took off, the stewardess saw to his needs, offering him drinks and hinting that she might be able to provide more sensual diversions if that was what interested him.

  She assumed he was from the consulate and spoke to him in Russian. Alex played along, and as he sank into one of the chairs, allowed himself the indulgence of a scotch on the rocks.

  Her hand brushed his when she delivered his drink.

  He took a gulp and realized that for the time he was on this flight, he could have whatever he wanted.

  That, he supposed, was how men ended up working for an agency like the GRU. He’d never really thought about it, but now that he was there, he could see the appeal.

  The stewardess took her seat, and Alex watched her as the plane prepared for takeoff.

  She was facing him, and the way she crossed her legs revealed the tops of her thigh-high stockings. The plane accelerated down the runway, and before the wheels even broke contact with the tarmac, she was opening the buttons on her blouse.

  Alex wanted her.

  Of course he did.

  But Tatyana was the only woman he’d ever been with.<
br />
  He turned away from her, looking out the window at the New Jersey sprawl. When they broke through the clouds, sunlight filled the cabin.

  “You don’t want to play?” the stewardess said.

  Through the open blouse, he could see her bra, an intricate patch of black lace that only very barely concealed her nipples. He didn’t know what to say.

  He drained the scotch in his glass, and the stewardess reached behind her back and unhooked the clasp of her bra, letting it fall away from her breasts.

  By the time the plane landed, she had become the second woman Alex had ever had sex with.

  He didn’t know how he felt about it.

  He disembarked, and the pilots stood at the bottom of the steps, thanking him as if he’d personally paid the bill for the flight. The stewardess stood next to them, and Alex avoided making eye contact with her.

  There was a local cab waiting in the hangar, and he got into it. It brought him to the Deweyville EconoLodge, where a ninety-nine dollar-a-night room with two double beds and satellite television was waiting for him.

  He sat on the side of the bed and stared at the television, which was off. After a few minutes, he lay back, fully-clothed and with his shoes on, and shut his eyes.

  His dreams were an unsettling mix of the stewardess, Tatyana, and Kirov’s raspy, grating voice.

  “Everything and everyone we ever loved will turn to ash,” Kirov said in the dream.

  He rolled over and looked at the clock by the bed. It was mid-afternoon, and he’d been told to check in with his handler as soon as he arrived.

  He picked up the room phone and dialed the front desk. “I need some aspirin,” he said.

  The kid who’d checked him in arrived with water and a bottle of aspirin. Alex thanked him, took four pills, then sat on the side of the bed and rubbed his temples in a circular motion.

  He went into the bathroom and rinsed his mouth at the sink.

  Then he went back to the bed and dialed the number he’d been given.

  A female voice, Russian but speaking English, answered.

  “You’re late. You were supposed to check-in hours ago.”

  “I know,” Alex said.

  “Do you have the case?”