The Asset

by Saul Herzog

  “Anything show up on the radar?” he said.

  “No, and it won’t, she’s not that stupid.”

  “And you wouldn’t tell me, even if it did,” Igor said.

  “There are people around, Igor, who are beginning to question your loyalty.”

  “What?”

  “They’re wondering if maybe she was tipped off.”

  “Tipped off? She walked straight into your trap. A trap I helped you lay.”

  “Still, Igor. They wonder.”

  “Who wonders?”

  “The same people who are upset that you killed Agniya.”

  “Fuck them,” Igor said, but there was a hint of doubt in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

  “You need to stop sticking up for this slut of yours, and help us track her down.”

  “Your assassin can’t help with that? He’s the one who botched the job in the first place.”

  Timokhin looked agitated.

  “What’s wrong?” Igor said.

  “My assassin is dead, Igor.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. Killed in front of his eighty-year-old mother.”

  “How unfortunate.”

  “You see,” Timokhin said. “That sarcasm is what’s going to be your downfall.”

  “Calm down,” Igor said.

  “Look at you. Grinning. I haven’t seen you this happy in days.”

  “The only thing that upsets me about this, is that whoever killed your man deprived me of the pleasure.”

  “Igor, you’ve really got to stop talking like that. First Agniya. Now this. You have no idea how much danger you’re in.”

  Igor eyed Timokhin carefully. He couldn’t tell if he was bluffing or not, and that in itself set alarm bells ringing.

  “You need to forget about your slut, Igor. Now that she’s on the loose, she’s going to get you in trouble. Go to a whore house like everyone else. Stop shitting where you eat. It’s going to catch up with you.”

  Igor nodded.

  Timokhin sighed. “In any case, I’m going to need a list of all known resources she has. Contacts. Safe houses. Drop boxes.”

  “I’ll have a list sent up just as soon as I get a new secretary.”

  “Careful, Igor.”

  “She had it coming.”

  Timokhin shook his head. “You can’t be this stupid, Igor. The people she was working for, I shouldn’t even be saying this to you, but they don’t fuck around.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Don’t ask, Igor. They are people you do not want to fuck with.”

  “Don’t ask?”

  Timokhin smiled. “Let’s just say, if I were you, I wouldn’t start any long books. I’d hate for you not to find out how the story ended.”

  46

  When Laurel came to, she couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t move. It was pitch black and her feet and arms were pressed against the sides of some sort of sealed box.

  She tried to move and the pain at her clavicle shot through her like a dagger.

  She was cold, and there was a very loud noise coming from outside the box.

  She kicked at the walls, pushing against them with all her strength. She felt the wall with her fingers. It was a wire mesh. As her eyes began to adjust, she realized she wasn’t in a box at all, but a cage.

  It was a transportation cage.

  And she was in the hold of an airplane.

  She struggled against the walls of the cage but it was no use.

  She called out, “Help. Help.”

  No one came. Her throat was very dry. She needed water. She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious.

  She could feel a change in air pressure in her ears.

  Were they taking off or landing?

  She thought back to the incident. She’d shot the man, but he’d shot her too. Two bullets. She’d lost consciousness then.

  What had gone wrong?

  The Russian had been followed to the meet. She’d expected to find Lance at the bar. They’d had a plan. Between the two of them they should have been able to take out the man.

  But they’d failed.

  She felt the plane turn as if coming in for landing, the air pressure change, and then the moment of touchdown.

  She tried not to think about where she’d been taken, or what was in store for her.

  The plane taxied and then stopped. Everything was still for a long time. She tried struggling again but it only caused her pain. There was no way she was going to break out of the cage.

  And then she heard some movement above her. A door opened, and she looked up into the blinding beam of a flashlight.

  “That’s her,” someone said, but not in English.

  She was in Russia.

  Some men in overalls lifted the cage out of the storage compartment she’d been in and carried her off the plane.

  They placed the cage on the concrete floor of a hangar and then stood there, looking at her.

  “She’s wounded,” one of them said.

  “Where am I?” she said in Russian.

  “She speaks.”

  The men all laughed.

  She was pretty sure from the accents that she was in Moscow.

  One of the men poked her through the wire mesh like she was some sort of animal. She ignored it.

  “Well, looks like that’s the only cargo,” one of them said.

  They looked at each other and then began to walk away.

  “Wait,” Laurel said. “Where are you going? You can’t leave me like this.”

  She watched them leave, hugging herself to conserve as much body heat as possible. The door of the hangar was wide open and the wind gushed around her. It was snowing outside. And it was night.

  She was still in the clothes she’d been wearing in New York. The gunshot wounds had been bandaged and thankfully they’d put her back in her coat, the expensive ski coat. It was stylish, with it’s little logo that looked great when she was in line at her local Starbucks, but as she lay there on the concrete, huddled and shivering, she swore she’d never choose a coat for style again.

  The minutes stretched on and she told herself over and over that no one would have brought her all the way to Moscow just to let her freeze to death. Nevertheless, she was getting so cold that she felt herself starting to get sleepy.

  She struggled not to lose consciousness again.

  Time stretched on.

  Flurries of snow whipped into the hangar.

  And eventually, she heard the clack of electrical lights coming on.

  That was followed by the opening of a door.

  Laurel had to squint to adjust her eyes, but she gradually made out the figure of a very short, very small man, walking her way with the aid of a cane. He walked with a hunch, taking his time, tapping each step with the cane.

  He was smoking a cigar that he held in his mouth as he walked. The suit looked expensive, the black leather of his shoes gleamed, and as he got closer, she made out fine silver details on the cane.

  He got to the cage and stopped, looking at it as if he’d expected to find something else.

  For some reason, Laurel avoided looking at his face. She focused on the cane, the silver lion at the top. The hand that held it had a large, gold ring on every finger. Some of the rings had gems in them.

  “You’re injured,” the man said.

  Laurel placed his accent as Saint Petersburg. He spoke like he had something distasteful in his mouth. He made a sucking sound with each word.

  “You need medical attention,” he said, as if it were her fault.

  She looked at his face for the first time and immediately wished she hadn’t. He looked to be in his seventies. The way he ran his tongue over his lips made her think he was planning to dig in to a meal. His face was pocked mercilessly, as if by some childhood illness. He had facial hair but it was patchy. Mangy was the word she’d have used.

  She’d been right in her initial assessment of his size. He was five feet tal
l at most, and probably weighed less than a hundred-twenty pounds.

  He looked too frail to be out there alone. He was the kind of man people would offer their seat to on the subway.

  He pulled a phone from his jacket pocket and croaked into it.

  “I need a medical team at hangar two, right away.”

  He took a long suck from his cigar and then just stood there, leaning on the cane, smacking his lips, looking at her.

  “A dog cage,” he muttered to himself, “How appropriate.” Then to her, he said, “Who has the key?”

  She said nothing.

  He rattled the cage with his cane.

  “Come now. Don’t be rude. I asked a question.”

  Laurel’s Russian was a little rusty, but good enough to get by.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “What?” he said, sucking as if he had a candy in his mouth.

  “I don’t know who has the key.”

  He nodded, and hit the cage again with the cane.

  “Do you bite?”

  She looked at him. He was grinning, and if she’d thought he couldn’t get any uglier, she was wrong.

  “Woof, woof,” he said.

  She pictured what she’d do to him if she ever got out of that cage. He hit her again, harder, as if testing the cage’s strength.

  “You know what we do with bitches in Russia?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “We beat them,” he said, grinning again.

  He pushed the tip of the cane through the wire mesh and poked her with it. He poked her hard, where she was wounded, and she reached for the cane and grabbed it.

  She couldn’t hold onto it though.

  “Feisty bitch,” he said.

  She wondered how long this would last. If he was all they’d sent, she wouldn’t be getting out of the cold any time soon.

  “You’re shivering,” he said.

  He bent down to get a closer look at her. They were face to face.

  “Pretty, pretty,” he said, and her blood shivered at the look in his watery eyes.

  He blew cigar smoke into her face.

  “My name is Evgraf Davidov,” he said. He said his name clearly, enunciating each syllable, as if it was very important she remember it. “Maybe you’ve heard of me? Your predecessor certainly did.”

  Laurel hadn’t heard of him, but wouldn’t have told him if she had. She wondered what he meant about her predecessor. Was he referring to Clarice?

  “And you are Laurel Everlane,” he continued. “One of Levi Roth’s little cunts.”

  Laurel was surprised. He seemed to know everything about her. It meant the group had been infiltrated.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Your reputation precedes you. In fact, in the circles I move in, you’re quite well known.”

  Laurel said nothing.

  “Don’t be shy,” Davidov said. “What you did, changing yourself like that.” He leaned in closer to her, so close she could smell his rancid breath. “Look at you. Remarkable.”

  He brought his cigar to the cage. Laurel’s face was so close she could feel the heat of it. “After all that work, it would be a shame if someone were to spoil it.”

  She tried to back away from the cigar.

  “Your dedication set the bar to new heights for my handlers,” Davidov said. “But I wonder. Did they reconstruct the pussy too? Or just the face?”

  She wanted to spit at him. The cigar was so close.

  “If the pussy doesn’t match, what good is the face?” he said.

  He laughed, amused at his own joke. He was toying with her.

  If they knew who she was, there was no question what would happen. They’d torture her mercilessly. They’d torture her to death.

  Roth would come for her, she had to believe that, but if she was in Moscow the chance of her being found in time were virtually nonexistent. The Russians weren’t going to be taking any chances with her. She wasn’t headed for any ordinary jail.

  She was getting colder and her shivering was beginning to get out of control. She was shaking so much the cage was beginning to rattle. She knew it wouldn’t take long for the cold to become a bigger threat than the gunshot wounds.

  “What are you going to do with me?” she said, and as soon as she spoke she regretted it. It was a sign of her weakness, her desperation.

  “I’m sure you can imagine.”

  Laurel grimaced. She was in trouble and she knew it. The next few days of her life were going to be the worst thing imaginable. She would be tortured and interrogated in some dungeon built by Stalin, and no one would ever come to save her.

  They’d pull her apart, body and soul, and strip her of anything that could possibly be of value to them. And when they were done, and she had nothing useful left to offer, they’d continue anyway, torturing her all the way to the end, prolonging the process, making her suffer as much as possible, until finally, in the end, her life would slip away from her body like a leaf falling from a tree.

  She was a casualty of war and it was not going to be a happy ending.

  “I’m freezing,” she whispered.

  Davidov shrugged, like it was something he had no control over.

  “The nurses will be here any minute,” he said. “You can tell them.”

  He was old, and hunching down was difficult for him. Nevertheless, with some effort, he moved around so that he could get a better look at her face.

  “Such a pretty thing,” he said. “And so much work. I almost feel guilty destroying it.”

  He brought the cigar to the mesh, and carefully began sliding it through the gap in the wire. It was scarcely an inch from her eye.

  Laurel’s hands were pressed against the wire and it was hard to move them, but she managed to squeeze them up past her chest and knock the cigar away.

  It fell from Davidov’s hand and fell to the ground.

  Davidov laughed. His face was so close to hers she almost could have clawed him through the mesh.

  He was staring at her intently. “So perfect. I’m glad I got to see it so closely, this beautiful face, before I destroyed it.”

  47

  Roth gave Lance the address of a hockey rink in Alexandria for their meeting. He told him to use all precautions, and Lance spent two hours getting there, backtracking, covering his tracks, making sure he wasn’t being tailed. There was a game going on between two local teams and the crowd provided plenty of cover.

  He waited outside the rink and when Roth arrived, Lance watched for an extra twenty minutes to make sure no one was following him.

  When he got inside, Roth was sipping coffee by the concession stand. Lance ordered one for himself.

  “What took you so long?” Roth said. “I was beginning to worry.”

  “I was making sure you were clean.”

  Roth nodded.

  “Did you bring the passports?” Lance said.

  Roth had a black briefcase with him and he slid it toward Lance. “There are some clean papers in there for you. Nothing from the group’s files.”

  “Nothing traceable on your internal system?”

  “No,” Roth said.

  He looked dejected. It wasn’t a look Lance had seen too often.

  “How bad is this hack?” Lance said.

  Roth shrugged. “There’s talk of shutting me down.”

  “Over this?”

  “Yes, over this. I’m supposed to be completely under the radar. That’s the point of the group.”

  “How much did they get?”

  Roth shrugged. “My guys are still looking into it. But it’s bad.”

  “How did they get in?”

  “How do you think?”

  Lance shook his head. “A rat?”

  Roth nodded, almost imperceptibly, as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “It’s beginning to look that way. They’ve been a step ahead of us for weeks. I thought they were just lucky. I didn’t dare think I’d been breached.”

  “What are we goin
g to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Roth said. “One thing’s for certain. Serious shit is about to go down.”

  Lance leaned back in his seat. “Do they know about me?”

  Roth leaned back next to Lance and shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Until I know the full extent of the breach, I think we have to assume the worst.”

  “That they know everything?”

  Roth nodded. “How was your trip to New Jersey?”

  “He gave me a name.”

  “What was it?”

  “Timokhin.”

  Roth leaned in closer. “Timokhin,” he repeated.

  “You know him?”

  Roth nodded. “GRU. Top floor.”

  “Makes sense,” Lance said. “If they have a rat, someone on the top floor would have to run him.”

  Roth nodded, but Lance could tell something else was bothering him.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Roth.”

  Roth sighed. “If I tell you this.”

  “Just tell me,” Lance said.

  Roth looked at him. “Timokhin’s not just top floor, Lance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s Dead Hand. He answers directly to our old friend, Evgraf Davidov.”

  Lance nodded slowly. That was very bad news. And Davidov? That was personal.

  The Dead Hand was the reason the CIA needed people like Roth. It was the reason assets like Lance were permitted to exist.

  Groups like the Dead Hand didn’t play by the rules. They didn’t play by any rules. While they were tightly connected to the Kremlin, and took their orders from the Russian president, they acted more like terrorist organizations than members of the Russian intelligence community. They didn’t take their orders through ordinary political channels, and they didn’t seek normal Russian state objectives. The Dead Hand came into play when the situation called for something more drastic. It was known to pursue terrorist and anarchic outcomes when ordinary outcomes were insufficient to meet the needs of the ruling regime.

  If they were involved, it meant the hacking of Roth’s network, and the capture of one of his agents, just became a whole lot more critical. Roth had been in a life and death struggle with the group for years. So had Lance. They knew all too well how slippery an opponent they made. And how dangerous.