The Weapon

by David Poyer

  The smart thing to do was to hang up instantly and hightail it across the street. Siebeking had warned him: every second he stayed meant the cops might be in the elevator.

  But then Jack would still be in their hands. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as if they were still called the KGB. But maybe it would. Whatever, it wouldn’t be fun. Jack could be in prison for years.

  Would they leave him here, if he’d been set up? He hoped not. He’d spent enough time with the Marines to know: You didn’t leave your people behind. Was Jack Byrne his people? The hollow sensation behind his navel was his answer.

  Henrickson was signaling desperately. Dan waved him off. “Jack? Still there?”

  “Yeah . . . yeah. Look, lad, I don’t want you to—”

  “I’ve got to go do some stuff, but yeah, we can get together. How about tonight?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah. That all right? Too short notice?”

  “Well, tonight . . . wait one, Dan. Don’t—”

  Another disturbance on the other end. He spoke through it, knowing what Byrne was trying to do, suspecting what he was going to try. “Jack? Still there?”

  He was breathing hard again. “Yeah . . . still here.”

  “Where you want to meet?”

  A mutter. “Under the Kremlin walls,” Byrne said, and his voice sounded dead. “Under the walls . . . no.”

  “No?”

  He was thinking as fast as he ever had in his life. A glitter of sun winked in his mind. A knife slicing green silk.

  “The Kremlin? Okay. But you know me. I’m a water kind of guy.”

  “What’re you saying, Dan?”

  “Let’s meet by the river. Seven o’clock. It’ll be dark then, right? We’ll meet up and go for a walk along the river. Like those long walks we used to take in Bahrain, right?”

  They hadn’t taken any walks together in Bahrain, but Byrne didn’t disagree. He just said, the warning behind the false bonhomie ringing clear, “If you can spare the time. If you’re sure—”

  “Seven. By the river. Remember. No sooner and no later—I’ve only got a little time before I have to leave town.”

  “Copy. Seven sharp. By the river.”

  He hung up and sat motionless while Henrickson fidgeted in the doorway. “We going?”

  “We don’t need to now,” Dan told him. “We’re going to the Balchug-Kempinsky instead.”

  “What for? What was that about the river? You set up a meet?”

  “That’s their idea. Use him as bait. Have us show up, then gaff us all in at once. Then it’s show trial time. On television, a season series.”

  Henrickson stuffed his hands in his pockets. “So what’s the plan?”

  “That’s what I need to talk to Captain de Cary about,” Dan told him. “And I’m going to need a little help from you, too.”

  “Whatever you say, Commander.”

  “Still got that briefcase full of money?”

  “I think I just spent most of it,” Henrickson said.

  8

  It was dark. Dan, de Cary, and Henrickson hiked along the embankment toward the towers of the ancient fortress. Great red stars still lit their spires, which surprised him. He’d thought that with the fall of the USSR, they’d come down. They loomed ominously against the pinkish city night. Beyond them another column of molten white and gold towered, one of the huge mock-Gothic Stalin skyscrapers. To their left the lights from the far bank of the Moskva glittered on black chop. The wind was cutting, no doubt the reason there weren’t many other people out.

  He pulled his coat tighter, wishing he had a scarf. Under the coat he wore his running gear: shorts, and T-shirt, and over them his Naval Academy Gore-Tex running suit. He felt the same dread as before battle, a race, or a lacrosse match.

  “We’re gonna be early,” Henrickson muttered, studying his watch. Dan checked his Seiko and forced his steps to slow. A drunk swayed toward them, spewing slurred Slavic. Henrickson said a few words and held out a banknote; the man bowed nearly to the ground, and staggered away.

  They’d all been busy in the few hours between Byrne’s call and this chilly night. First, of course, had come packing up and sending everything they wouldn’t need over to Siebeking at the embassy. Dan had included a note explaining what they planned to do, and made clear in it that he wasn’t acting under orders of any kind, but that Henrickson was—in case the worst happened. De Cary had vanished for a time with the analyst, Monty taking along his suitcase of cash, while Dan had taken a taxi into the central city.

  He’d sauntered down the riverfront sidewalk between the ancient fortress and the river, scrutinizing every projection and culvert-mouth. The crenelated brick walls of the ancient Kreml paralleled the river, with guard-and bell towers every hundred yards or so, bare spindly treetops peering over it. Outboard of the wall was Kremlyoskaya Road: five potholed lanes of fast traffic, lit by lofty ornate streetlights, the standards green-tarnished bronze, the lamps drooping like bluebells. Thick power cables catenaried between them. Looking up, he guessed it was because they were so close to the river; underground cable-runs would have flooded.

  The embankment itself was vertical stone, and he’d looked down at the greasy-looking river-chop from a narrow cracked sidewalk that deserved cleaning. At one point, not far from the largest tower—the Spassky? He wasn’t sure—temporary barriers were set up where the railing was being repaired. The old stonework had given way and was collapsing into the river. No, he wouldn’t want to put power cables here, either.

  He stood there for some time, looking at the highway as grimy shoebox cars, huge-tired diesel trucks, and double-decker tourist buses zipped and rumbled past a few feet away. It wasn’t rush hour on the Beltway, but it was steady traffic, and they went fast, fifty or sixty miles an hour. Each car rattled like pennies in a can as it went over joints in the road, and the uncatalyzed exhaust was choking.

  As darkness gathered lights had snapped on inside the walls, bringing up the bulbous gold domes of the Arkhangelskiy, the Italianate facade of the Grand Palace, the tacky modernism of the Supreme Soviet. Then, all at once, floods powered on all along the wall, highlighting the whole exterior. The brilliance was staggering, like a set lit for filming. He’d stood shivering, watching it and then the river, and at last had stepped to the curb and waved down a cab.

  And now they paced three abreast through the darkness toward the light and he was shivering again, even his thighs trembling. Henrickson reached out and gripped his arm. After a few steps the analyst dropped his hand, and they walked in silence.

  Some time later the ancient fortress came into view. The lights were still up and the traffic was still fairly heavy, though less so than that afternoon. A light cold drizzle began to fall. It soaked them but Dan decided to take it as a good omen. They were walking west along the river, a glittering onyx expanse to their left. Only once did a set of lights move out there: a barge and tug, forging slowly upriver. A powerful diesel throbbed across the water.

  He watched the honeylit squares of the tug’s high pilot-house cruise past and wished he was in it. To know what he was doing, and simply do it. Stand a watch, maneuver a ship, fix one of your sailor’s pay problems; something straightforward and clean.

  He might never go to sea again. They’d said he was being put out of the way to protect him. But it seemed more and more like the Navy had forgotten him, squirreled away in his obscure stash billet till mold grew on him and all memory of him evaporated.

  Henrickson squeezed his arm again. “You okay?”

  “Peachy, Monty. You guys stop here, all right? See you in a little bit.”

  “Yeah. In a little bit.”

  Henrickson slowed and fell behind. Dan walked on, forcing each step. A truck tore past, trailing whirling rain-mist that swept over him. It smelled of mud, and sulfur, and cold metal. He straightened his shoulders, trying to get a grip on the dread. As he did so he noticed a group on the far side of the road, near the fortress walls.
One beefy figure in coveralls was pushing a broom along the sidewalk. Three others were on their knees, apparently taking up bricks; a small pyramid of them, and a portable cement mixer, stood to one side. They didn’t look his way but he had no doubt who and what they were. After seventy years of socialism, he couldn’t envision a city repair crew at work after dark.

  He glanced surreptitiously riverward, suppressing a shiver. But what he’d feared most wasn’t out there. Or if it was, it had its lights out. He looked over his shoulder. Monty was already out of sight.

  When he squinted into the rain there he was, a trench-coated figure in a gray hat. Jack Byrne stood with hands sunk in his pockets by the railing. Alone. The glare of the floods showed a bulky case at his feet. As he saw Dan, Byrne turned to face the river, putting his face in shadow and hiding one hand. With that hand, he motioned him back, flicking his fingers as if flicking off water.

  Byrne was warning him off. Trying to clue him in. Shit! Granted, Dan was a line officer, an 1100, and Byrne a 1600, intelligence. But just how dumb did he think he was? He kept on, glancing casually left and right, trying to pick up any other watchers.

  He did: a stir of motion atop the Kremlin wall. For a moment his brain said sniper, and he nearly ducked. But the black tube that tracked him was more likely attached to a videocorder. He’d be on the news tomorrow himself. This time when he looked over he caught one of the pavement repairmen talking to something in his cupped hand.

  “Dan, that you?”

  “Hi, Jack.”

  Five more paces. Byrne was still gesturing him away, more urgently now. Dan shook his head slightly, trusting to the distance and the falling rain to mask the motion from the observers. He went up to Byrne, put his arm around his shoulder, and pulled him into a hug. “I know it’s a sting,” he said into the older man’s ear. “Ready to go?”

  “Dan—you know? Go where?”

  “What’s in this big fucking satchel? Anything you need?”

  “Bulk paper. Moscow phonebooks.”

  “Just for the cameras, huh?”

  “Right. For the cameras.”

  Dan turned them both to face the river. Behind him tires sizzled on wet pavement. He pumped air in and out, charging his lungs, while a clot of oncoming traffic neared. Headlights grew brighter in the mist, lighting them up as if to be machine-gunned.

  “Take a deep breath, Jack.”

  It was the first time he’d ever seen Jack Byrne at a loss. His jaw dropped as Dan kicked the temporary railing aside. He grabbed Byrne’s shoulders, braced his Adidas, and hurled them both through the gap, over the embankment, and out into the river.

  The blackness was instantly freezing, numbing, shocking the breath out of his lungs. He’d let go of the other man on the way down, and immediately, even before he came up, was kicking off his running shoes, stripping off his overcoat. It was wool, but wet it was a recipe for drowning. He clawed at the darkness for what seemed like minutes but could have been only a second or two. Then his eyes broke the surface and he shook off the river like a wet Lab, looking quickly back above them.

  The top of the embankment was floodlit empty. It wouldn’t stay that way long, but it would take their watchers a few seconds to report and react. And more seconds—he hoped—to play Froggy across six lanes of fast traffic in the rain.

  He craned around, treading water. There was Byrne’s hat, a shadow bobbing a few feet away. Something else floating—a plastic bottle, trash. But where was Jack?

  He was sucking air to dive when the intel officer broke the surface. Byrne spluttered and choked, fighting some undersea beast that had him in its tentacles. Dan stroked over and started working the trench coat off. “Kick off your shoes,” he told him through a wave that leapt up into his mouth. The Moskva tasted like it had run through Russian fields, Russian factories, Russian kidneys. It was like chewing chemical-flavored worms.

  Coughing, he got an arm under Byrne’s shoulder and began stroking out into the river, orienting by sound rather than by sight, angling away from the whir and whine of tires on wet asphalt. Was that a head bobbing above the railing? The FSB were pros; it wouldn’t take them long to re orient. He kicked hard, wishing he had fins, a mask, snorkel. A scuba diver had to be prepared to swim long distances, but usually you had fins and at least some flotation.

  But this river was fresh, not salt; he had no fins, and they were struggling just to stay afloat, burdened with increasingly heavy clothing. His fingers and feet were going numb, and he was gasping. Byrne was older and no great swimmer, as far as Dan knew. He had a side stroke going, but it didn’t look like he could keep it up long. At the end of each reach his face disappeared beneath the waves.

  A flash from the embankment. A beam, sweeping the black breast of the Moskva. A shout.

  He and Byrne were being swept downriver, so they were already farther from where they’d gone in than they’d managed to swim. But still, not far enough. He concentrated on keeping their heads above water. He couldn’t land them on the near shore. Running, their pursuers would be on them before they had a chance to haul themselves up, even if they could get a grip on the slimy, vertical, finely fitted nineteenth-century stonework.

  The far shore? It was two hundred, maybe more yards away. Judging by Byrne’s increasingly frantic struggles, they weren’t going to make it. He could probably get to shore alone, if he didn’t lock up from the cold. But could he leave Jack? He couldn’t. If it wasn’t for Dan, he wouldn’t be in this particular deep shit now, beating the water to keep his nose in the air.

  “Jack. Jack! Relax! Just float.”

  In fact, Byrne’s clothes had held some air. But only at first. It was leaking away as they tired. Dan thought of jerking off his trousers, fashioning flotation, but that had been hard enough in the Academy natatorium; he didn’t think he had it in him tonight, with fingers he couldn’t feel any longer. Instead he grabbed the other man and twisted, getting behind him. Byrne went under. Dan hauled him up again, submerging himself in darkness and cold as he shoved, kicked. A hand groped for him, missed, but came back, clutching at his chest. If Byrne panicked, tried to climb him, they’d both drown.

  The beam steadied, a white dazzle that tracked them as they gyred in a waterlogged waltz, hitting an eddy as the turn south approached. Then the light lurched and started to bob. It jogged along the embankment after them.

  The FSB were in pursuit. Even with the current, they could make better time than Dan and Jack could through the water. All they had to do was keep pace till they gave up.

  Or went under. Dan felt fingers grapple in his sweatshirt and lock tight. Byrne began hauling himself up on his chest, thrusting him under. He kicked and sculled, but felt himself being gradually dragged under in a horrible slow grapple. Byrne was heavier. Byrne was desperate. The cold penetrated his brain, made him want to give up.

  He fought back to the surface for a snatched breath, then was forced under again in a welter of bubbling black shot now with a red glare he didn’t think was from anywhere but inside his own racked lungs, his oxygen-starved, panicking brain. He straight-armed Byrne in the chest but the other didn’t flinch.

  A flailing knee caught his groin and he saw red for real. He fought his way back up one more time, sucking air so hard pain snapped through his head like barbed wire being dragged through his cortex. He was paddling with stiff pieces of waterlogged lumber. He felt guilty, not that he was about to die, but that he’d taken a friend with him. In the world he’d made his life in, what mattered wasn’t how hard you tried, but whether you succeeded.

  He hadn’t, not in anything. Not with his first marriage. He hadn’t been much of a father. His career? A couple of times he hadn’t done badly. Stood up for what was important.

  Only what a stupid, stupid idea he’d picked to go out on—

  A black shape hissed through the water toward them. A low voice chanted syllables that did not cohere into sense. He ducked as a shadow flicked over his head, sharp and fast and close as a
guillotine blade, and knifed into the water and flicked back and cracked hard into his ear.

  The side of the racing shell rushed past above them, dragging a rushing burble and the deep sucking breaths of trained bodies giving enormous effort.

  Byrne went suddenly motionless. Dan took advantage of it to twist the other’s fist out of his clothes. He oriented after the passing shape and struck out with five or six desperate crawl strokes. Something hard and small whacked his arm lightly. He twisted after it, felt nothing. Lunged in sudden terror, and felt another whack along his ribs. This time he twisted his numb arm into the smooth, swiftly fleeting line. It twitched out of his grasp and slid quickly away until his groping hand hooked into a bight.

  A terrific jerk, and all at once he was being hauled through the black water so fast his head went under, and he fought to keep from twisting like a trolling lure. Byrne shouted as Dan crashed into him. He seized him with his free arm, nearly dislocating it before they were both on their backs, gasping, snorting, fighting on the end of the towline.

  He yelled and after a moment it slacked. A voice called something, and he reached for a splash and got Byrne’s arm into a second bight. He waved and the lines came taut again, the dark blades flashed, the chant resumed.

  The light, which seemed weaker now, steadied on them again. Angry shouting followed it. Then a reddish flash and an echoing pop came from the embankment. And after a short interval, another.

  It sounded like pistol fire, but though he waited there were only the two reports, two flashes. The chant went on from ahead and above, rhythmic and lulling. He forced himself awake. That sleepy comfort was hypothermia, the cold dropping his core temperature. He concentrated on holding tight and staying awake. But it was growing harder. For an indeterminable time he lay in a soft warm bed, then bungeed back to awareness as his head went beneath the river again and he was dragged along willy-nilly, fighting to right himself but feeling only that terrible lassitude. He came up choking, coughing. He tried to haul himself forward on the line but his hands wouldn’t cooperate. He let himself be dragged, eyes frozen open.