Limbo Man

by Blair Bancroft

  By offering himself as the sacrifice.

  No! He had a plan, of course he had a plan.

  Still huddled in a tight bunch, they climbed the two steps up to the raised floor of the open-sided building, coming to a halt in the center, well sheltered from sniper fire. The guards, turning their backs to Leonov and Vee, surveyed the courtyard. Waiting. Vee shifted her head, stood on tiptoes, trying to see around the men’s linebacker shoulders.

  The lobby door of the red brick building on the far side of the courtyard opened. A man stepped out. Alone. Leonov’s men went on alert, guns out, covering the newcomers’ approach. Damn you, Seryozha, I hope you know what you’re doing.

  Hands out to his sides, Sergei climbed the steps. He heaved an elaborate sigh, raking her with a look of supreme disgust. “Valentina, my love, you are a great deal of trouble. Now get going, straight through the door I came out of. And, no, we will not discuss it. Go!”

  He was such a good actor, she truly couldn’t tell how much of that delightful speech was for Leonov’s benefit and how much was the heartfelt truth. Unfortunately, it was probably both. Leonov dropped her arm, shoved her forward. Vee paused long enough to memorize Sergei’s grim, rough-hewn face, the unfathomable message in his green eyes. Was this the last view she would ever have of her personal Russian enigma?

  “Now!” he barked. Vee went, feeling a host of eyes on her back, far more than the five men standing in the middle of the pavilion. Yet surely no one was about to stage a firefight in a condominium courtyard.

  “Get in here!” Cade hissed as she turned at the condo door to look behind her. He pulled her inside. Vee blinked at the sight of Misha Zhukov. And then, while the world outside disintegrated into chaos, Cade held Vee tight, preventing her from charging back out. Fifteen seconds of gunfire, ten more for the reverberations to die away. Vee pounded her way off Cade’s chest and looked out.

  Not a man standing. Not one. Not. One.

  Vee’s short struggle with Cade ended with her knee in his groin. Doubling over in agony, he let her go. Misha, standing just outside the door, gun in hand, reached for her and missed.

  Crying children, terrified mothers, stunned sunbathers. Vee passed them all, falling to the ground beside the body with almost no hair. The one with the scar on the back of his head. The one all in black, making Leonov’s charcoal look like a Tokarev wannabe. Leonov—whose blood was pouring onto the green grass from a shot through the head.

  “Seryozha?” He couldn’t be dead. Dumb, stupid, self-sacrificing idiot! She wouldn’t allow it. “Seryozha!” She took him by the shoulder, tried to turn him over. No! There was blood. Blood everywhere. Clothing, grass, sidewalk. They were dead, all dead.

  Hands pulled her away. Misha felt for a pulse behind his brother’s ear. “Not dead,” he pronounced.

  Vee didn’t even attempt to figure out why an ambulance was already pulling up, sirens wailing, on the street between the condos and the boardwalk. She was too busy holding Sergei’s hand and praying.

  Stepping back from a window on the condominium’s first floor, Vanya Gronski told his men to stand down. He did not add a “Well done.” If one of them had accidentally killed Seryozha, he was a dead man walking.

  Unless he’d had private orders . . .

  Nyet. Petrovski did not give orders behind Vanya’s back. He packed away his sniper rifle in a fitted container that resembled an upscale briefcase and prepared to return to his boss. Mission accomplished. Leonov was gone, and good riddance.

  But what idiot shot Sergei?

  For the first time in twenty-two years Vanya Gronski was unsure whether his boss would deliver a pat on the back, a kick to the groin, or a bullet through the head.

  Chapter 24

  Vee bulldozed her way through the layers of security at Bellvue’s Psych Ward with the confidence of previous experience. And staff who remembered her well. After all it was—Vee paused her charge toward Seryozha long enough to do a quick count—less than two weeks since they’d sneaked out the hospital’s back door to the hum of giant air conditioners and the foul scent of the Dumpsters.

  Less than two weeks. Absurd. Her previous life hovered in the mist, seen through a glass, darkly. Another time. Another person.

  Same damn place.

  The door to Seryozha’s room was distinguished by the rigid blue-clad stance of one of New York City’s finest, with a couple of Homeland Security types sitting in chairs angled so they could view the corridor in either direction. Silently, Vee held out her credentials. This is what happened when a girl associated with a man marked Super Secret. A man who nearly got himself killed saving her life.

  Or maybe, as Cade had been all too ready to point out, Sergei was only alive because one of his uncle’s snipers missed. For a moment Vee closed her eyes, shutting out futile speculation. Sergei might have been playing a role, but his words in the pavilion still rankled. Compared to his determination to eliminate old nukes, Vee Frost didn’t count for much. Schooling her face into what she hoped was nothing more than concerned colleague, she pushed open the door.

  Well, damn . . . he looked like a wounded war hero, lying so still, eyes closed, his head wound round with bandages, as if he’d just dropped out of a Minuteman re-creation. Machines hummed, the IV dripped. The sounds and smells assaulted her like a dream she longed to forget. He was going to be fine, they’d told her. The bullet had only caught him a glancing blow. Just one more knock on the head for Sergei Tokarev.

  Vee pulled up a chair, took his hand. Seryozha’s eyes popped open. Instantly aware. No disorientation, no questions. He gave her a lecherous Tokarev once-over. “Well, darling, aren’t you a beauty? Where in this Godforsaken hellhole did they find you?”

  Vee gaped, snapped her mouth shut. Thought fast. “Uh, sorry, wrong room,” she muttered and dashed out, pushing the heavy door to within an inch of closing. Ignoring the three pairs of eyes regarding her with surprise, she put her ear to the crack.

  “Valentina? Valentina, I am sorry. Was joke. Tokarev’s an idiot. Valentina . . . do I have to be Nick the Wimp to get you back?” A long pause. Vee gulped in a breath, but didn’t move. “Hey, Vee. It’s me. Seryozha. Ivan Zhukov’s younger son. The guy who never knows what to say to women. Open the damn door or I’m coming out!”

  Blast it! No matter what role Sergei was playing, he always found a way to outmaneuver her attempts to seize control. This wasn’t the moment for him to be chasing anything but a good night’s rest. Vee expended her anger over Sergei’s little joke on a gargoyle scowl at the heavy wooden door. Then, pasting on a look which she hoped signified her complete indifference to whether he lived or died, she walked back into the room.

  Silently, they studied each other. Vee pulled up an ugly vinyl chair, exactly like the one in Nick’s old room, and sat down. “There were powder burns,” he said into the air above her head.

  “Wha-at?”

  “Doucette mentioned my suspicions about Petrovski?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the end the old man came through.”

  “You missed death by a hair’s breadth,” Vee shot back. “That’s hardly looking out for your welfare. And maybe his assassins missed you by accident.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” Sergei groaned, grabbed at his bandage. Vee thrust a container of water with a straw into his hand. He drank. “Sorry. I’m really fine, just a bitch of a headache.” Vee placed the water jug back on his rolling tray table. “There were powder burns on my forehead, Vee. That means one of Leonov’s men got off a shot before he went down. The bullet creased me on the way by.”

  “I still don’t trust Petrovski,” Vee muttered.

  “Ah, da. I have to agree. To all but Heydar the Horrible, Sergei Tokarev died today. The Organizatsiya has lost a good man,” he added mournfully.

  “Then I suggest you bury him deep. And forever. I will not miss him.”

  Seryozha’s face assumed an expression that could almost be called a pout. “But
he is a better lover than me.”

  “You’ll do,” Vee returned shortly. She sucked in a sharp breath, clamping a hand over her mouth. “Oh, shit,” she breathed past her fingers.

  “What?”

  She leaned in, whispering, “Wanna bet this room is bugged?”

  “Everywhere Big Brother watches,” Seryozha returned calmly. “I have spent my life finding ways to hide. It’s not easy.”

  Vee reached for the television remote next to the water jug, found a sportscast with continuous jabber and turned up the volume. Elbows on the bedcover, she rested her chin on her hands. “Bug or no bug,” she said, “I’ve been waiting a long time to catch you in a weak moment. You can’t run, you can’t hide. You need my help to get out of here. So it’s time to tell me a few things. Like how you speak the idiomatic English of a born American. Hey, lover,” she added with a soft smile, “this comes under need to know.”

  His attention seemed fixed on the touchdown and endless instant replays that filled the television screen. Vee felt a strong urge to poke him in the ribs. Finally, Sergei turned directly toward her, his voice pitched beneath the high volume blaring from the TV. “I was brought up to consider it classified information, as well as a private family matter, but”—he offered an apologetic smile that stabbed straight to her heart—“you’re right, it’s time you know.” He wiggled his fingers, urging her closer.

  “Any more and I’ll be in bed with you,” Vee protested, only inches from his mouth.

  He winked. “Is good. Sergei like. Uh—sorry, I’ll behave.”

  Vee ran a finger over his lips, followed by the soft flutter of a butterfly kiss. “So tell me,” she breathed. “What makes you sound more American than some of our native-born?”

  He gazed at the ceiling, as if gathering his thoughts, or was he simply hoping she’d give up and disappear?”

  “Many years ago,” he told her, “the old Soviet Union trained people to be long-term spies in the United States. ‘Sleepers’, they were called. People who might live ten or twenty years as ordinary citizens before being called upon to serve Mother Russia. Some lived out their lives without ever getting the call.”

  “Your family lived here?” That would certainly explain his expertise.

  “Later,” Sergei responded cryptically, “but not as planned.” He plunged back into his tale. “My mother was singled out for her skill in English when she was in college and drafted as a ‘volunteer.’ She excelled, living with other trainees in a town designed so authentically that you could set it down in Kansas and no one would know the difference from your classic American suburb.” Sergei broke off, offering a fond smile, a gentle caress on his cheek, as if making amends for his churlish reluctance to talk about his family history. A transformation Vee sucked in, like sunlight after a cold rain. She had never seen him so mellow. Maybe he should get creased by a bullet more often.

  “But love struck,” he continued softly. “My mother’s training was complete. A mate had been chosen for her. She was on leave before being posted to the American heartland, and on the shore of the Black Sea she met an up and coming Russian Army colonel, named Ivan Zhukov. I’ve wondered sometimes what life might have been like if either one of them were ordinary people, but they weren’t. Both were strong, intelligent, courageous, dedicated to their country.”

  “Your mother didn’t go to America,” Vee said. “Never used all that training.”

  Sergei shook his head. “Not then. Even the dedicated can suffer from passion, and Nataliya Andropova discovered her dedication was not quite as strong as she thought. She married her colonel and ended up inflicting all that training on her children instead. To use your own idiom, it was ‘Learn to speak American, or bust.’”

  Vee, grinning, popped a quick kiss to Sergei’s scarred right cheek. “When I was eight,” he continued, “and my father was occupied with our war in Afghanistan, my mother was posted to our Embassy in Washington. To say the Zhukov children integrated well into their American school would be putting it mildly.”

  “You were stars.” Vee smiled, thinking of the three young Russian children polishing their idiomatic American with proud relish.

  Her smile faded as Seryozha’s green eyes darkened. “All in all, we had a good life, the best of everything. My mother rose in rank through the GRU, my father became a general, adding one star after another. A very important man was General Ivan Zhukov.

  “And then we discovered what your people are now learning. Afghanistan can be tamed by no one. It was the beginning of the fall. Brezhnev stood on a tank in Red Square. The Soviet Union trembled, toppled, its center forced to a new kind of government, its extremities nibbled away by countries longing for independence. The classic death of an empire—like Alexander the Great, the Romans, Napoleon, and the Brits.”

  Seryozha’s spate of words stopped abruptly. Vee broke the silence by asking the obvious. “Did your father adjust to the new regime?”

  “I am tired, Valentina. Go now and arrange for me to be out of here tomorrow morning. There’s work to be done.”

  “You can’t!”

  “I can and will. Go now and do as I say. I am well aware I cannot walk out of a Psych Ward. That’s why they put me here. You will fix this.”

  Okay, so he’d hit a memory that made him like a cat with his tail under a rocking chair. And he was right. Only she could spring him from this place. She was, after all, his official keeper.

  “I’ll see what the doctor says,” Vee promised, well aware her tone was more cajolery than promise.

  “Unless you wish to see your lovely American cities melt into the ground, you will make sure the doctor signs me out!”

  Vee stood, snapped off a mock salute. “Hail, oh mighty Caesar, I’ll see what I can do. Dasveedanya.” At the door she turned a sickly sweet smile in his direction. “And kindly remember what happened to Julius.” A finger wiggle in Sergei’s direction, and she pushed the door open. This time she didn’t look back.

  Spring Sergei from the hospital. Whatever made her think she had an option? The bombs were on the move. Heydar was waiting. Only a call from Sergei Tokarev telling them the Organizatsiya’s internal problems had been solved would initiate the final sequence—the revelation of the locations where U-236 and Kiril Mikoyan were needed to activate the nukes.

  The stark truth was, she owed Seryozha. If not for Vee Frost, Petrovski could have eliminated Leonov without any risk to his nephew. Undoubtedly, dear Uncle Arkadi had proposed exactly that. Yet Seryozha had come for her. Risked everything. Everything. And she’d just quarreled with him. Stalked out in classic high dudgeon over nothing.

  She’d even smuggled his satellite phone into the hospital and forgotten to give it to him. And it wasn’t as if Heydar, Lion of Iran, would welcome a phone call from Valentina Zhukova.

  Vee paused just outside the hospital’s front entrance. Cade had spotted her, was pulling away from the curb, moving slowly toward her. She cocked an index finger at him—oops, give me another minute—and dashed back inside.

  When Vee returned to the condo, two stone-faced security guards flanked the door to her hotel room. Oh-oh. No surprise, then, to find Jack Frost seated at a table in front of the closed living room draperies, a drink that appeared to be mostly ice at his fingertips. “Sit down before you fall.” He waved a hand toward the chair across from him. “Don’t wince, Vee. You’ve had a rough day. No one expects you to look like Miss FBI, poster girl of always ready, willing, and able.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Somehow she made it to the chair before her legs noodled.

  Her father poured her a drink, shoved it toward her. As Vee downed a healthy swallow of scotch, a mirror image of her own blue eyes regarded her with what looked remarkably like sympathy. “I wouldn’t have tagged you for this job, Valentina, if I hadn’t known you could do it. Though I admit I didn’t expect some of the–ah–complications.” He tossed her a rueful smile. “But you’ve come through it with flying colors—”

&
nbsp; “Because Sergei saved my neck.”

  “Granted.” An admission that obviously pained him.

  “No thanks to Homeland Security.”

  The Deputy Chief heaved a sigh. “That’s partly why I’m here. To apologize.”

  “You found the leak.” Not a question.

  Jack Frost drummed his fingers on the table, took a sip from his drink. “Our people are vetted so thoroughly before they’re hired that we’ve been careless about follow-up. Particularly at the top, where our staff is considered the brightest and best, above reproach. They couldn’t possibly, etcetera, etcetera.”

  Vee had never before seen her father look ashamed. He’d never had reason. “Who?” she asked softly.

  “Classic case,” Frost said. “Our computer expert, the one who handled communications. All brains, lousy packaging. Went all female ga-ga when some guy paid attention to her. One of Leonov’s Russian charmers.”

  Vee kept her eyes fixed on her drink. It wasn’t just ugly, neglected girls who had their heads turned by a handsome face. Maybe even by a gargoyle face.

  “It wasn’t intentional,” her father continued. “Just pillow talk. Something exciting to share, tidbits to make her more interesting, hold his attention. Poor kid’s been bawling her eyes out for the last two days.”

  “But you’ll send her to jail?”

  “Of course.”

  Of course. It was called treason. And at the moment Vee wasn’t sure where she was on the treason scale. Every time she helped Seryozha get closer to his goal, she was enabling annihilation. Every time she failed to report something vital like Sergei hiding the U-236, his connections to the GRU, his relationship to Arkadi Petrovski, she flirted with treason. She was guilty of choosing Sergei and his quest over the dictates of her job.

  At the moment the two were one and the same, she had to believe that. Yet she’d set herself up as sole judge and jury of Sergei’s actions. No one else was invited to weigh in with an opinion, not even Daddy. What made her any different than the plain—ugly? fat? inarticulate?—computer nerd in Homeland Security’s main office?