Deep Black

by Stephen Coonts; Jim Defelice

  Dean had been on a mission in Vietnam rescuing a South Vietnamese village official from the Vietcong. They’d gotten the man back alive—he’d actually been left when the small unit retreated as the Marines moved in. That guy had had the same look Martin did now, completely spaced. The gooks hadn’t hurt him physically, but their taking him screwed his head so badly, Dean had doubted he lived more than a few weeks after his rescue. The first cold he caught would kill him.

  Same thing with Martin. He slumped in the corner of the booth, eyes wide open, but body stiff, as if its joints were welded in place.

  Dean could’ve ended up like that, too. Still might.

  “Wow, you’re a cheerful bunch,” said Karr, sliding into the booth next to Dean. “Jesus, only Dean looks like he’s awake.”

  “You’re talking pretty loud,” said Lia.

  “You don’t really think they don’t know we’re from out of town, do you?” asked Karr.

  “What’s the drill?” asked Fashona.

  “The drill is, we have about an hour to get to the airport,” said Karr. “Our tickets await.”

  “Why’d we get off the charter?” said Lia.

  “Complications.” Karr looked at Martin. “Stephen, you figure you’re all right to travel by yourself?”

  Martin didn’t seem to hear. Lia kicked Karr under the table so hard Dean felt it. He looked over at her; her brow was furled as if she were trying to send a telepathic message.

  Karr ignored it. “Yo, Stevie?”

  “I’m OK,” said Martin.

  “I’ll give you the route when we get there. Come on, let’s do it.” Karr threw a small wad of crumpled rubles on the table. “Anyone looking for souvenirs can get ’em at the airport.”

  Karr didn’t bother checking in the rental car when they reached the airport. He’d booked Martin on a flight to St. Petersburg and from there to Sweden and then the UK; the rest of them were going to Moscow. Karr took Martin along to the gate—he’d booked two seats just so he could do so—while the others checked in. Their flight was already boarding.

  “He’ll have to catch up,” said Lia.

  “You know where we’re going?” said Dean.

  She rolled her eyes instead of answering.

  Their seats were next to each other. The airliner was a Tupolev Tu-154, somewhat similar to a Boeing 727 with a comfortable, if nondescript, cabin. But after the Fokker the interior seemed dowdy and crowded. Lia jerked her legs away as Dean’s foot accidentally brushed against hers. She seemed to have recovered from her brief try at being human and was back into full-bitch mode.

  Dean briefly fantasized about what she might look like without her clothes. He remembered the skirt she’d worn when he first saw her—very nice, though even in the baggy pocket-laden pants she was a knockout. One of the attendants was a blonde with a model’s body and soft blue eyes, but she looked bland by comparison.

  Obviously he needed real sleep.

  “Shit,” Lia muttered. The plane had filled up; Karr’s seat was empty.

  “You think we should get out?” Dean asked.

  “He can take care of himself.”

  “Just checking.”

  She twirled her finger around the bottom edge of her shirt, working out her anxiety or something.

  They were taxiing back from the gate as Karr bounced down the aisle, his shit-eating grin lighting his face.

  “Hey, homes,” he said, pointing at them and then plopping down next to Fashona in the row in front of them.

  “You cut it close,” said Lia, leaning forward.

  “Nah. I would’ve caught up on the runway if I had to.”

  “Is Martin OK?”

  “A question that won’t be answered until two hours from now,” said Karr. “Though I’m fully prepared to guess the answer now.”

  Karr pushed his seat down so abruptly the top cushion caught Lia in the face.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “Oops. Sorry.” Karr gave her one of his shit-eating grins. “Better get some sleep. We may not have a chance for a while.”

  Neither Dean nor Lia slept on the short flight, but Karr snored so loudly Fashona poked him once or twice in the ribs to get him to stop. Dean found himself admiring, even envying the kid, simply for his ability to relax.

  Dean dragged himself down the ramp after they landed in Moscow. The others walked through the terminal with the self-assured quickness of regular travelers, but Dean moved slowly, diverted by sights and slowed by his fatigue. His ribs and hip had stopped hurting, and while he had an assortment of scrapes and bruises, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him that rest wouldn’t cure. Though it was night, there was a certain excitement in the terminal. Dean began to feel curious and, thinking about the city, wondered if he might come back someday as a tourist.

  He had learned to sort the clothes. Karr was dressed in a fairly standard Russian style—simple brown pants and shoes, a couple of shirts that were obvious under the pullover, a slightly worn but clean suit jacket that didn’t match the pants. But he still stood out as a foreigner who dressed like a Russian. So did the others.

  They took a black-market taxi into the city, all four of them cramming into a ten-year-old Toyota Corolla. Dean stared from the window, expecting gold spires and painted domes, symbols of the city’s exotic flair. For a while, he was disappointed. From the highway Moscow looked a lot like any other city at night—lights and traffic, big boxy buildings in the distance. Finally, a quartet of gold-painted domes loomed above the shadows, glinting in the wash of nearby searchlights. Then they seemed to move back, hiding amid the more mundane facades, gray with the night.

  They got out in front of an apartment building on a block that could have been in Queens, New York. Karr led the way to the door, then abruptly turned around as the taxi drove out of sight. He double-timed across the street; Dean found himself running with the others down an empty sidewalk, into a building and then through a courtyard, out through another building, and once more to the street. Karr stopped short at the door, letting the others catch up before pushing it open and walking calmly down the stoop to the street, walking along to a small bus stop. Dean was still catching his breath when the bus appeared, a large yellow box that stopped in the middle of the street and held up traffic while they boarded. Lia grabbed his hand; Dean looked at her in surprise, then realized she had slipped a ticket into it. He watched her insert hers at the end of a small box and then pushed a large round knob at the other end; he did the same, validating it, then followed Lia to a seat about halfway down the aisle.

  Three stops later, they all got off. The houses here were two-family townhouses and seemed quite new. Small by U.S. standards, their sides were made of prefab cement panels and their fronts brick, though those might have been prefabbed as well.

  Karr went up the walkway of number 442 and slipped a key into the door.

  “Hang tight,” said Fashona, grabbing his shirt as Dean started to follow across the threshold. Karr stood just inside, a small probe in one hand and his tiny computer in the other. He laid his hand in the middle of a photograph on the wall before reaching for the light switch. As the others watched, he walked inside and to the right, entering the kitchen. A minute or so later, several other lights came on and Fashona nudged him forward.

  “Home sweet home?” Dean asked as Fashona walked into the living room and plopped down on the couch. Dean fell into the thickly padded seat across from it.

  “Never been here before,” said Fashona. He promptly closed his eyes and went to sleep, his head nearly 180 degrees to his body as it leaned on the back cushion.

  Lia locked and bolted the front door, then went into the kitchen, where she started taking pots from the cabinet. Karr, meanwhile, trotted up the stairs. He came back about ten minutes later.

  “When are we going home?” Dean asked.

  “Not sure we are, baby-sitter. I’ll let you know when I find out what the hell is up. Don’t look so shocked. Go grab some o
f that coffee Lia’s making. Fill about half the cup up with water before you pour in her sludge, that’s all.”

  Dean got up and went to the kitchen, where Lia was in fact watching the black liquid drip through a Braun coffee-maker.

  “Be done in a minute,” she said.

  “What’s going on? Were we followed?”

  “We have another assignment,” said Lia. “But we don’t know what it is yet.”

  Dean leaned back against the counter.

  “I don’t have another assignment,” he said. “I’m done.”

  She shrugged.

  He could go to the embassy, tell them he had to talk to Hadash. That would get him home pretty quick.

  Karr lumbered down the stairs and into the kitchen a few minutes later. He had a half-sheet of paper in his hands, which looked as if it had come from a thermal fax machine. He turned on the stove burner and set it on fire.

  “Eyes only,” he told Lia.

  “Screw you.”

  “There’s an empty bed in the back.” Karr turned to Dean and winked.

  “Think twice, big man,” said Lia, pulling down a coffee mug.

  “No time anyway,” said Karr.

  “What’s going on?” asked Dean.

  “You and Princess are going to go join a CIA team near the Kremlin,” he said.

  “What?” said Lia.

  “You’re going to help protect a VIP.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “She really is a gutter mouth, isn’t she?” said Karr to Dean. “Remember that when you kiss her.”

  “What’s the story?” Lia had her hands on her hips. Her face was shaded red.

  “Part of the Russian government is going to revolt. We’re going to stop it.”

  “How?” asked Lia.

  “Just focus on your little bit or you’ll go all to pieces like me,” said Karr. “Then you’ll smell like me and God, you’ll never get a date.”

  “Is this for real?” asked Dean.

  “Shit, no, I make this kind of stuff up all the time.”

  “What are you going to do? Sleep?”

  “I have a few things to run down,” continued Karr. “Including making sure Martin got where he was going. I doubt he did. I’ll catch up.”

  “Shit,” said Lia as the coffee splattered on her hand.

  “Better drink the coffee quick,” Karr said. “Spooks are sending a car over. You have to pee, Dean, you better do it now.”

  “Who are we protecting?” Lia asked.

  “Alexsandr Kurakin,” said Karr.

  “The fucking president?”

  “I’m not sure how sexually active he is,” Karr told her. “So use your judgment on that. I’d definitely bring protection, though, and I’m not talking about Charlie Dean.”

  57

  Alexsandr Kurakin studied his suit in the full-length mirror, examining the way his cuffs fell, adjusting and readjusting his tie. Then he leaned forward, making sure that his thick hair was precisely in place. If he was vain about anything connected to his appearance, it was his hair, still admirably thick at fifty-eight. He found a few errant strands and worked them into place with his fingers.

  As a young man, Kurakin had been fairly handsome. Now he was perhaps “more distinguished than pretty”—to use the words of an Italian magazine that had profiled him recently—but he could still cut a charismatic figure on television.

  He would prove so once again this evening. By then, this suit would be stained, most likely with blood. His hair would be disheveled. But everything would be accomplished.

  Not everything, not nearly. The Americans would be angry about losing their spy satellites, even though Perovskaya and his aborted coup would be blamed. Kurakin would face reprisals, even after persuading the American president that it was Perovskaya’s plan all along. There would be a storm, certainly; the only question was how severe.

  The Russian congress—well, they would rage furiously, but they were already impotent, and in assuming martial law he would depose them anyway. The military would fall behind him, following the initial confusion. The units that had been moved on Perovskaya’s authority would, unfortunately, suffer some consequences—but then, their leaders were not particularly loyal to begin with, which was why he had chosen them. Another storm, but only a brief one.

  And then, the deluge. But under his control. Martial law would sweep away the obstacles. First, the rebels in the south would be dealt with. The Chinese would stand aside or be punished severely. They would see this and probably not even have to be threatened.

  He needed a military victory to seal his position, and so defeating the rebels—or at least plausibly claiming to—was critical. And then, quickly, perhaps even simultaneously, the next step. The forces that had made Russia a chaotic asylum for thieves, gangsters, and lunatics would be crushed without mercy. The criminals would be dealt with summarily. Russian society would be restored.

  After that? Democracy? Too far in the future to tell.

  He had hopes. He was still an optimist at heart, an old believer.

  Kurakin stepped back from the mirror. There was a knock on the door—his bodyguards. It was time.

  58

  Johnny Bib kept twenty-three voices in his head. Exactly twenty-three. Twenty-three was a beautiful number, a prime with mystical qualities and associations. There were twenty-three ages of man, twenty-three major rules of life, twenty-three important places in the world. Eleven was a good number, and seventeen, and as far as his personal preferences went, Johnny had always felt something for 103. But twenty-three was sublime.

  One of the voices told him now that he was wrong about the coup. He heard it quite clearly as Rubens and the CIA people on the conference call debated whether the movements they had observed meant the coup was under way or still in its preparatory stages. Clearly, as Rubens argued, it was the latter; the intercepts made that clear. Johnny was about to cite the statistics to back up his superior when the voice broke into his thoughts and told him he was wrong.

  He was shocked. Rarely did he get anything wrong. He sat silently in his seat and waited for an explanation, but the voice did not offer one.

  Where was the error?

  The voice didn’t say.

  “Where was it?” Johnny asked.

  Realizing he’d spoken out loud, he glanced up immediately, looking to see if anyone had noticed. He could not tell anyone about the voices, since they would not understand, Rubens especially; they would think him more than usually eccentric, even for the NSA.

  Every pore in Johnny’s body opened. Sweat flooded into his clothes. His shirt was so wet he glanced down to make sure the pinstripes weren’t bleeding into his skin.

  But no one seemed to have noticed.

  “Latest, Johnny?” asked Rubens.

  “I—”

  “You mentioned a possible time window for the attempt on Kurakin, based on the driving distances and one of the intercepted schedules.”

  Rubens was prompting him. Johnny liked Rubens; he was one of his few intellectual equals at the agency and obviously was trying to help him now.

  He couldn’t let Rubens make a mistake.

  “It’s wrong,” said Johnny finally.

  “What?” said Rubens.

  “Wrong.”

  “Perovskaya, the defense minister—you had new information about him?” asked Rubens.

  Johnny nodded his head, though he wasn’t covered by a video camera and no one could see him. The intercepts seemed to point to Perovskaya. He was in contact with three of the obviously rebelling military units. There was additional traffic, not yet decrypted, between his secretary and two other units, as well as an order from his office to a key Moscow infantry unit allowing extra leave. Johnny had told Rubens all of this before the secure conference call.

  Wrong, said the voice again.

  Where?

  The voice wouldn’t respond.

  “Johnny, are you with us?” asked Rubens.

  Johnny
began to nod.

  “OK,” said Rubens. “Keep at it. Brott, any updates on the Air Force?”

  Johnny listened for a few seconds to the force analysis, then abruptly took off his headset and left the Art Room. He had to find his error, with or without the voice’s help.

  59

  The first thing Dean noticed about the CIA officers was that they smelled like they hadn’t taken showers in about a month. They were dressed almost identically in dark blue suits. Creases checkered the clothes like bizarre spiderwebs. Both seemed to have tried shaving a day or so ago, with mixed results.

  Using an apartment several blocks from the Kremlin as a command post, the two men were coordinating eight surveillance teams trying to find an assassin believed to be targeting Russian president Alexsandr Kurakin. Two of the teams were currently inside the Kremlin.

  Dean shared the common Western misperception that the Kremlin was a single building; in fact, it was a complex of roughly ninety acres that included a number of Russian government buildings as well as old cathedrals and ancient palaces, many of which were open to tourists. The president’s office, formerly in the Senate, had been moved the year before to the Arsenal, displacing the Kremlin guards; it was off-limits and equipped with a variety of devices to disrupt surveillance and eavesdropping, including a copper skin inside the president’s suite that made it almost impossible to place a conventional bug or fly there.

  Nonetheless, the CIA could track Kurakin’s position to within a few feet, even within his office suite, by using a variety of sensors, both preplaced and handheld. (“Handheld” simply meant that the devices were mobile and placed into position for a specific task; in this case it included a van’s worth of equipment that homed in on microwave frequencies.) The NSA had penetrated the computer that kept the president’s appointments calendar, which was not in code or cipher. But knowing where he was and would go was not the same as being able to protect him. While it was not difficult to get inside the Kremlin, getting close to the Russian president was at least as hard as it would be to get close to the American president.

  “We’ll know when they get him. That’s the only thing I guarantee,” said the officer-in-charge, Al Austin. He had flaming red hair and a sardonic, almost demonic, laugh. His breath smelled of coffee that had been made a week before and continually reheated. “They want us to catch his bullet. It’s a friggin’ joke.”