by Saul Herzog
He did have it, a leather briefcase that had been couriered to his apartment from the consulate the night before, and he lay it on the bed and opened it.
Inside, it contained a small, concealable earpiece, a Makarov pistol, and two clips.
“You’re ready then?”
Alex sighed. He had no idea what he was doing. He had no idea what his life had become. He was obeying the orders that were given to him on autopilot.
He felt that if he could just get through the next few hours, everything else would take care of itself.
“I’m ready,” he said.
31
Alex rented a car from the front desk of the hotel and had to wait about thirty minutes for it to arrive. He tipped the kid at the front desk and the kid who delivered it. It was a dark blue Chevy sedan, and he called his contact again from the driver’s seat.
“This is Sherbakov,” he siad.
“All right, Alex,” the operator said. “We’ve got visual. You’re in the rental.”
He glanced at the sky. He could see nothing, but something was up there, a drone, or a satellite.
Something.
It was scary what they were capable of.
“Have you put in your earpiece?”
He took the earpiece from his pocket, pressed a tiny button on the side of it, and put it in his ear. Then he paired it with the cell phone.
“All right,” he said.
“Put the phone somewhere safe.”
“The glovebox?”
“No, somewhere on your person.”
He put it in an inside pocket of his coat and zipped it shut.
“Okay,” he said. “Done.”
“And the gun?” the operator said. “You’ve got the gun?”
“I’m not an imbecile.”
“Just confirm you have it, Mr. Sherbakov.”
“I’ve got it.”
“Good,” she said. “Now, the street in front of you. Turn right toward town. There’s a bar on Main called the Eureka.”
“All right,” Alex said, pulling out of the hotel lot.
It took less than a minute to reach the Eureka, an old-style bar that looked like it had been there since the days of the gold rush. He pulled up right outside.
“Not there,” the operator said.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t park there.”
“Where should I park?”
“Park across the street with your back to the bar. You can watch through your rearview, and try not to draw any attention.”
Alex rolled his eyes, then reversed from his spot and pulled into the one directly across the street.
“All right,” he said again.
“Sit tight,” the operator said. “She’s inside the bar.”
“Alone?”
“Just sit tight, Alex.”
He waited about ten minutes, the engine running, the heat on. He’d thought it had been cold in New York. The temperature here was twenty degrees lower.
He opened his window a crack and lit a cigarette.
Eventually, an attractive girl, about twenty years old, dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and white ski jacket, came out of the bar. She wouldn’t have been out of place in Aspen or Vail, and she walked up to a pickup truck and opened the door.
“Follow her?” Alex said.
“Just sit tight, Alex. We’ll tell you when to move.”
She reached into the truck and pulled something out, it looked like two bottles of Veuve Clicquot champagne, and brought them back into the bar.
She came back out of the bar a minute later and got in the truck.
She fired up the engine and pulled out into the street.
“Follow now?” Alex said.
“Just stay where you are, Sherbakov. Hold back. You’re not going to lose her.”
He watched her drive down the street and around a corner, and then the operator said, “Now you can follow her, but take your time. It’s not a race.”
He pulled into the street and drove after her, stopping at every stop sign, being courteous to the other vehicles. He’d lost visual on the truck, but the operator guided him.
“Not too fast,” she kept reminding him every thirty seconds or so.
“You want me to go slower than this?” he said.
She ignored him and directed him to the parking lot of a large grocery store. There were plenty of other cars in the lot, and he saw the pickup parked next to one of those bays for shopping carts.
“Park next to the passenger side of the truck,” the operator said.
He did so, and she said, “Have the gun ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“You’re going to get into the passenger side of her truck and stay low to the ground beneath the seat. You’re wearing a black coat. Use that to conceal yourself as much as possible. She shouldn’t see you until she’s inside the truck.”
“She’ll see me as soon as she opens the door.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, like she was consulting with someone, then she said, “No, she won’t see you until she’s in the truck. Then all you have to do is tell her to drive.”
“Drive where?”
“Don’t worry about that, and don’t let her know you’ve got an earpiece. This has got to look just some random attack by a local guy.”
“What if she tries to run?”
“Try not to let her run. The point of this is to scare her, upset her, and you can do that better if you get her out of town.”
“But if she runs, what do I do? Shoot her?”
“Absolutely do not pull that trigger, Sherbakov. If she runs, you let her go. You get in your car, and you drive straight back to the airport, you hear me?”
“I hear you,” he said.
“We’re just giving her a little fright here. Something to distract her protector. That’s it.”
“Got it,” Lance said.
“Okay then, go. Get in her truck.”
“What if it’s locked?”
“Would we tell you to get in a locked vehicle?”
Alex sighed.
“And Sherbakov.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t forget the phone.”
He patted his coat pocket to make sure the phone was still there, then opened the door and, acting as naturally as possible, got out of his car, opened the door to the girl’s truck, and climbed inside.
“Stay low, Sherbakov. Hide beneath your coat.”
He crouched down low in the area in front of the passenger seat and saw that, in all likelihood, the girl probably would not see him until she was already driving. He opened the zip on his coat and pulled it up over his head as an extra precaution.
“I’m in position,” he said.
“Sit tight, Alex. She’s coming out of the store now. Just stay calm and do what we discussed. Tell her to drive the truck. It doesn’t matter where she goes so long as she gets the vehicle moving.”
About thirty seconds later, the door opened, and the girl put a cake box on the seat and hurried to get in from the snow.
She started the engine.
Alex waited until the truck was moving, he let her drive out of the parking lot and get on the road, before revealing himself to her.
“Keep driving,” he said, pulling aside the coat and pointing the gun right at her.
He scared the living daylights out of her. She screamed, stopped, then screamed briefly a second time.
In her shock, she’d slammed the brakes, and he said, “Drive, or I’m going to shoot.”
She looked at him, paralyzed with fear, then looked around at the surrounding streets.
“Get her moving,” the operator said in his ear.
He jammed the gun into her thigh and said, “Don’t make me do this. Just drive and no one has to get hurt.”
Her hands were shaking. Her voice was quivering.
“Just take your foot off the brake and get us moving,” he said, pressing the gun fi
rmly against her leg. “Come on. Deep breaths.”
She took two deep breaths, and it seemed, after the initial shock of seeing him there, she was able to calm down enough to control herself.
“Who are you?” she said, her voice on the edge of tears.
“That doesn’t matter. Just keep us moving.”
There was a car behind them, and it honked impatiently before driving around them, horn blaring.
The girl looked in her rearview mirror, then began driving slowly.
“Where do you want me to go?” she said.
“Get her to drive out of town,” the operator said in Alex’s ear.
“Just drive,” Alex said. “Get us out of town. It doesn’t matter where.”
From where he was, Alex couldn’t actually see where they were going, but the operator was following their every movement.
“Tell her to turn right,” she said, and Alex passed on the instruction.
“Tell her to slow down.”
“Tell her to keep going.”
“Tell her to turn off here.”
Alex passed on the instructions, remaining on the floor with the gun pressed against her thigh.
After a few minutes, the operator told Alex to tell her to stop, and he did.
She pulled over, and Alex got up into the seat.
They were on a clearing off a small sideroad. It was a secluded spot with nothing but trees as far as they could see in every direction.
“All right, Alex,” the operator said. “This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to tell her to take off her coat and throw it out of the window.”
Alex thought that was strange, but he couldn’t question the operator in front of the girl.
“Take off your coat?” he said.
The girl started to cry. It was the first time since he’d initially terrorized her that she was beginning to let her emotions get the best of her.
“Please,” she said to him.
“Just do as I say,” Alex said.
Slowly, reluctantly, she began to take off her coat. Tears were streaming down her face, and she was looking right into his eyes. Alex looked away, ashamed of what he was doing but also feeling strangely aroused.
He suddenly felt as if he had absolute control over this girl, as if he could get her to do anything he could think of.
“Please don’t do this?” the girl said.
“Take off the sweater,” Alex said.
“Alex,” the operator said. “What are you doing? We only want to frighten her.”
“Go on,” he said again to the girl, ignoring the voice of the operator.
“Please,” the girl begged.
He pointed the gun in her face, and slowly, reluctantly, she began to pull off the turtleneck sweater.
“Alex,” the operator said. “That’s enough. Tell her to get out of the truck and leave her there. You’ve done enough.”
Alex took the earpiece from his ear and threw it on the floor, shutting up the operator for good.
The girl had removed her sweater, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. She looked around outside the vehicle, growing increasingly frantic, increasingly desperate. She still had on a white undershirt, and Alex told her to take that off next.
“No,” she said defiantly. “I won’t do it.”
“Do it, or I’m going to pull this trigger,” Alex said, pressing the gun against her chest.
She shook her head and tried to say something, but no sound came from her.
She was crying, but silently.
Alex had never seen anguish so extreme, emotion so intense, and he’d never felt so aroused in all his life. All those psyche evaluations, all those checks, they’d clearly missed something. He’d clearly missed something. This was a facet of himself he’d never realized existed. Perhaps he never would have realized it existed were it not for the extreme pressures of the past twenty-four hours, but somehow, something had awakened this in him.
He laughed, quietly at first, then hysterically. Kirov should have seen this coming, he thought. He’d said this was something Alex might balk at, something he wouldn’t enjoy, but after the childhood Alex had had, the relationship he’d had with his parents, the realization that his entire life had been a ploy by a distant, foreign government, someone should have known there’d be a few cracks in the plaster.
There was a creature inside Alex, a twisted, corrupted creature, and once out of its box, no one would be able to put it back in.
The girl was still shaking her head. “I won’t do it,” she said again. “You’re going to have to pull that trigger because I’m not doing it.”
Alex wasn’t about to let her spoil this for him. He grabbed at her shirt, and she pushed his hand away. He grabbed again, tearing at the shirt, causing it to rip, and she clawed at his face ferociously.
“Bitch,” he growled and smacked her in the face.
She grabbed the hand that was holding the gun and tried to take it from him.
He smacked her again, and again, and then jammed the gun into her stomach, and before he knew it, he’d pulled the trigger.
The shot rang out deafeningly in the enclosed cabin, and the look on the girl’s face said she knew her life was over.
But something strange was happening. She was breathing. Her eyes remained focused.
At the same time, they both looked down at her stomach, at the white shirt that Alex had been tearing at so aggressively, and there wasn’t a drop of blood.
The penny dropped for her first, and moving like a panther, she opened her door and was out in the snow, sprinting across the clearing and into the trees at the far end.
Alex watched her run. One second passed. And another. And another.
Kirov had given him a gun loaded with blanks. Of course he had. Kirov had no intention of seeing this girl killed and had made sure Alex didn’t screw up and fire the gun accidentally.
Something about that, the insult of it, the humiliation, enraged Alex. It was like Kirov, and the operator, and this girl, and Tatyana, every one of them, was conspiring behind his back to completely and utterly castrate him. To remove him of all potency and power.
And it was about to end.
He grabbed the keys for the truck and put them in his pocket. Then he slid across to the driver’s seat and climbed out.
The girl was running, sprinting, like a terrified rabbit.
Alex didn’t run. He followed the trail she left in the snow with wide, powerful strides, as if proving to himself, to the world, that he was not impotent.
It would be getting dark soon, and the light was already beginning to fade, but following the girl was as easy as walking in the deep footsteps she’d left in the fresh snow.
Alex saw where she’d fallen. He saw where, in her panic, she’d slipped at the top of a hill and rolled down it. A tree at the bottom of the hill had stopped her, but there was a scarlet bloodstain in the snow.
“There’s no use running,” Alex called. “I’m going to find you, and when I do, you’re going to do exactly what I say.”
He followed her over a brook and back up another small hill on the other side of it.
And that was where he found her, on her knees, her back to him, panting and gasping for breath.
The wound was serious. There’d been no blood on her shirt before, but there was now.
She turned to face him.
“Why are you doing this?”
He looked at her. He walked up to her. He put his two large hands on her frail neck, and he began squeezing.
She struggled, but the strength was gone from her.
He looked into her face, and as it began to distort from asphyxiation, as her eyes bulged and her tongue lolled, he said to her, “I don’t know, my dear.”
32
It was a crisp, clear night, and Lance felt good entering the Eureka. An enormous fire was burning in the hearth, and when he saw the table, with a candelabra holding three tall candles, and a silver ice bucket with
a fancy bottle of champagne sitting it, he felt as if he’d walked into the life of another man.
It couldn’t have looked more inviting.
He’d lent his truck to Sam earlier, she hadn’t told him what it was for, but now he saw what she’d been up to. The Eureka didn’t stock champagne, it didn’t have silver ice buckets, it didn’t serve candlelit dinners like this.
The owner, a burly guy named Stodder, stood behind the bar in a plaid shirt and leather boots.
“Still snowing out there?” he said.
Lance nodded. He looked at the table and raised an eyebrow.
“She’s been busy all afternoon,” Stodder said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s fixing to get her heart set on something.”
“She’s not setting her heart on anything.”
“I don’t know, Lance. You might have signed yourself up for something here.”
“She could be my daughter,” Lance said.
“That never stopped you before.”
Lance said nothing. He’d slept with Stodder’s daughter. He didn’t know if Stodder knew that or not but thought it wise to steer the topic to another subject.
“I served with her father,” he said.
“I heard the story.”
“Then you heard he’s the reason I’m alive.”
Stodder nodded.
“And I’m the reason he’s dead.”
“You’re not the reason he’s dead.”
Lance was a little early and took a seat at the bar.
The bartender put a bottle of beer in front of him.
“It’s the anniversary of his death today,” Lance said. “That’s why we’re having dinner.”
“We’ll see,” Stodder said.
Lance took a sip of his beer. He prayed he had the good sense not to prove Stodder right. He knew himself. If anything happened between him and Sam, there was only one way it would end.
“Can you do me a favor tonight,” Lance said.
Stodder was polishing a glass and looked up.
“Don’t let me get drunk.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Stodder said.
Lance looked at his watch.
Sam was running late.
He finished his beer, and she still hadn’t arrived.
“I’m going to have a smoke,” he said, getting up.