She remembered Yumatov’s line from the Diomede that they were two small people caught in a screwed-up world running out of control. Therefore, she should work with him. She watched the pace of the hotel. Check-ins. Check-outs. The flow to and from the restaurant; to and from the washrooms; to and from the elevator banks.
Carrie formed an idea. She stayed where she was and waited. The Chinese couple left. An elderly German couple, walking poles dripping with melting ice, took their place on the sofa. There were two women checking in at reception, mid-thirties, a calm brunette and an impatient blonde. They spoke Quebec French and English with Canadian accents, arguing with the receptionist about not being allowed to take their luggage into the restaurant.
‘I am sorry.’ A roll of the eyes from the receptionist. ‘I did not design the hotel. Please, take your bags to the storeroom.’ She tore off luggage tags for each case, one black, one yellow. They were hand-carry style with wheels. The brunette held open the luggage-room door. Carrie could see in. The blonde lifted the two bags onto a middle shelf. They left. Midway to the steps that led to the restaurant, the brunette remonstrated and pointed back. The blonde said. ‘It’ll be fine. No one will touch it.’
A tour bus pulled up right outside, windshield wipers on full. South Koreans came in, led by a guide with a national flag above his head.
The receptionist’s attention moved onto new guests. Carrie slipped into the luggage room and closed the door. The brunette’s yellow case sat at eye level, wheels out. Carrie turned it round. The main case was locked, but not the outer zipper pockets. Carrie opened one. There were a pack of tissues, gum, Halls lozenges. She unzipped the top pocket. There was a plastic transparent folder with flight schedules, hotels. The black case was to the left, wheels in, no need to turn it round. Carrie zipped open the bigger top pocket, slipped her hand inside, and felt a linen pouch, a money belt. It was empty. A thrum of irritation ripped through her. A walking pole was strapped to another case. She slid it out and levered the weak lock until it broke. Inside, there was a transparent plastic bag with a passport, credit cards, driving license, the works. She tried a bulging side pocket and her run of luck continued. There was a phone and charge cable, but no adaptor. Enough. No need to press her luck. She undid her own case, put toiletries and underwear in a small grab bag, and closed it. She opened the door an inch and froze.
Ruslan Yumatov had warned her, and they were here. Military-style men fanned out through the lobby. Or were they his men, looking for her?
Carrie counted four, working in pairs. They were plainclothed and their side arms holstered. They moved as if they owned the place. The receptionist ignored them, working through a pile of South Korean passports. The tour group clustered to the right of the door. Two of the men spoke to a back-packing couple. The woman, late twenties, long dark hair, showed her passport to them. They didn’t ask to see the man’s passport. Once they had covered the lobby, they would move onto the washrooms, the luggage rooms, the restaurant.
Carrie pulled her black woolen hat over her head and ears. She wrapped her red scarf around her, right up over her nose. She opened the door of the luggage room, walked out, and turned left toward the washroom. She didn’t look back. She pushed open the washroom door, went into an empty end cubicle. The women’s washroom was not the place for a showdown with male Russian thugs. It was a place to prepare and gather resolve. For reasons unknown, her captors had given her back her uncle’s flash drive. She needed to honor him by getting it out of Russia. That would be at risk if she kept it in her jacket pocket. She unwrapped a tampon, worked it loose, closed it round the drive, and lubricated it generously.
She left the washroom, holding the door so it closed quietly without a rush of air. The lobby was packed, the guests nervous and edgy about the intrusion. People were gathered outside. The South Korean tour bus was still there, engine on, baggage doors open. The driver had his hand over his eyes looking toward the end of the street. Carrie walked swiftly, wheeling her case, pushing through, passed the reception desk, passed steps to the restaurant, passed the orange sofa, through a cluster of South Koreans blocking the revolving door. She pushed the cold, wet edge of the revolving door with her free hand.
Two of the military men stepped in front of her. They had stubble. One had a bent nose, broken long ago and set badly. His eyes were red, and his breath reeked of tobacco. These were not the same caliber as in the van. ‘Passport,’ he demanded, holding out his hand.
‘Excusez-moi,’ said Carrie.
‘Passport.’ French. Russian. English. Passport sounded pretty much the same anywhere.
Carrie drew the dark-blue Canadian passport from her outer pocket and handed it to him. The photo wasn’t unlike her. The name was Gagnon, Sofia Alice. His colleague said: ‘Hat. Off.’
Carrie peeled back the hat, held it in her right hand. Her blonde hair fell. In the passport, the hair was brown. The colleague tapped the open page. Carrie spoke in Russian, a few words, as if she was learning it on a podcast. ‘Brown. Now blonde. I dyed it.’
The one holding the passport, lowered his head, conferring with his colleague. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Mayer. Walker. Not Gagnon.’ The colleague nodded. Carrie took back her passport. She began putting her hat back on.
‘Stop,’ said the one behind. Carrie held the hat midway to her head, stared at him, using every strength to rein back her who the hell are you look. ‘Where you go now? It’s late.’
‘Convenience store. Water. Some food.’ She looked down at her bag. ‘To carry back.’ All in bad Russian mixed with bad English. They had lost interest. Their eyes were on other blondes arriving in the thirties age range. Their task was to find a woman with a passport that read Sarah Mayer or Carrie Walker. They were not Yumatov’s people. But he knew who they were, that they were coming, that they were dangerous.
Outside, wind and sleet hit her hard. She pushed through people around the bus whose engine and headlights pointed toward the end of the street.
‘Be careful.’ A male voice in English; may have been speaking to her; may have been to someone else. Carrie cleared the crowd. There were less people on the sidewalk, mostly Russians, familiar with how their city worked. She asked what was going on. Police were at the end of the street, best to cross the road and keep outside the cordon.
Two police cars were parked at angles across the road, their blue and red lights static. Cops signaled pedestrians to stick to the sidewalk and keep moving. Beyond the cordon, as she got closer, she made out dark shapes, smudges within shadows, a meat wagon for corpses, two ambulances, security and police vehicles. A black minivan was skewed across the road. A cop shone in a flashlight. Carrie drew a sharp intake of breath, cold on her tongue and back of her throat. She stopped without thinking. A cop told her to keep going. Carrie obeyed, bumping her case along ridges of ice. She kept her gaze on the vehicle, her black van, the Mercedes Sprinter, its windscreen shattered. A man’s body collapsed over the steering wheel. Dead. Lines of bullet holes along the side, clear, jagged holes through which she could see lights from the other side.
Two bodies lay on the snow, faces covered, torsos bloodied. Police made way for a senior officer, wearing a black ankle-length greatcoat. Two cops crouched down, lifted the dead men’s heads and pulled off their black balaclavas.
Carrie stayed with the flow, walking quickly, looking back like everyone else. She recognized her captor, the one who wished her luck, the guy with no emotion who had given her the phones, whom she clocked as looking forward to the end of his shift. She slowed again, couldn’t help it, until a cop told her to go. Her phone vibrated. It was Yumatov calling from the same number as before. She ignored it. Instead, she used the Canadian phone to message Rake.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The Pentagon, Arlington County, Virginia
‘We need the room.’ Rake slid his phone across to show Lucas the latest message from Carrie. $750 in rubles, Western Union, Moscow Leningradsky. $750 St Petersburg tomorrow by 10.00. Sof
ia Alice Gagnon.
‘With respect, Major,’ objected the CIA agent Jeff Auden, ‘you do not have the authority to clear this room.’
There was a murmur of agreement from different agencies, one moment at each other’s throats, the next fighting for a common cause.
‘Congressman Lucas, General Whyte, Detective Wekstatt, and myself,’ said Rake. ‘The rest need to leave now.’
Rake included Whyte because the marine general was the highest-ranking military figure, and this was a Pentagon room. He needed Mikki to watch his back, and Lucas because he held sway in a way that Rake had yet to work out. Auden whispered to others. Heads shook. Phones lit as messages were punched in. Rake said, ‘General Whyte, could you give the order, please.’
‘It’s not up to you, General,’ interjected Auden. ‘If you want this room cleared, you will need authorization from ODNI, Director of National Intelligence.’
Dozens of rooms throughout Washington would be filled like this one, similar distrust, same topic. What made this special was that Rake, Wekstatt, and Whyte were here, the men at the heart of the action. Anyone who voluntarily left this room would be ceding ground to rivals.
‘Then we’ll do this somewhere else,’ said Rake. Mikki headed toward the door.
‘Hold it right there, Detective,’ said Jeff Auden. ‘On whose authority—’
‘Alaska State Police,’ said Rake. ‘If you want to stop him walking out that door, you need to call the Alaska Department of Public Safety.’
Lucas’ chair scraped back. He glanced at Rake as if to say trust me. He stood in front of Auden, touched his elbow, gave time for his gaze to travel the room so he had everyone’s attention. ‘You need to loosen up, Jeff. We’ve lost people in the field. There is a leak. We don’t know who or where, but it’s lethal. We have an American citizen on the ground in Moscow who needs help. We’re against the clock. For us to deliver that safely, you have to leave.’
‘I’ll need more than that.’ Auden held Lucas’ gaze.
Others shuffled, heads lowered, weighing career choices: Side with Auden? Side with Lucas?
Whyte stepped in: ‘In the interests of national security, you all need to get the hell out.’
‘You get the signature of the ODNI, I’ll comply,’ said Auden. ‘If not, I represent Director Ciszewski, and I stay.’
Rake took Auden’s left wrist and bent his arm behind his back, just below the point it would break. Mikki gripped his right arm and held open the door. Rake pushed him through into the corridor. Auden didn’t resist and the way Rake read his face, anger in his eyes, how an animal communicates threat, Auden’s enemy was not Rake, Wekstatt, or Whyte. It was Lucas. Maybe they had history.
Like tidal waters, people followed. The FBI led. Rake didn’t keep track of the other twenty or so who filed out. The door closed.
‘Do we know it’s her?’ said Whyte as he read Carrie’s message.
Lucas pulled up a satellite map of Moscow. ‘The phone is registered to a number in Montreal, Canada under the name Sofia Alice Gagnon. Gagnon is a pediatric nurse at Montreal Children’s Hospital. She entered Russia through St Petersburg three days ago. She took the train to Moscow today. Gagnon checked into this hotel, here just over two hours ago, a three-star, frequented by tour groups and budget travelers. Her phone is currently, here, half a mile north, by the Peter and Paul Church. The phone keeps moving north, logical destination would be Moscow’s Lenigradsky Railway Station where she’s asked to pick up money and more in St Petersburg. It’s now eight past midnight in Moscow. The next train to St Petersburg is at 01.15, which gives us just over an hour.’
‘I’ll be damned,’ said Whyte. ‘She stole the phone and passport.’
‘How long’s she got?’ asked Rake.
‘The theft hasn’t been reported yet,’ said Lucas. ‘At least until the train leaves. At a stretch until morning.’
Carrie had requested clever amounts, fifty dollars below what would have needed a higher level of authorization, a passport number and an ID reference. Less than $800 and Carrie could collect with a picture ID at the Western Union rail station sub-offices, which were dotted around Moscow. She would need to answer two confidential questions and she could walk away with some 50,000 rubles, enough to pay cash for a first-class ticket to St Petersburg and a flight or ferry to Helsinki. The ‘send’ instruction would go with a Homeland Security tag at the US end, meaning that Western Union, an American company, would clear its path and fast-track the money. It should be ready for Carrie within minutes.
‘Security questions?’ asked Lucas.
‘Favorite Italian restaurant. Answer: Boccaccio. Favorite color: yellow.’
‘These are subjective, not factual,’ said Lucas.
‘They’ll be fine.’ Rake and Carrie had discussed Boccaccio’s menu and the pros and cons of yellow as a favorite color enough times to lock them in concrete. If she didn’t know them, this wasn’t Carrie. If she was, she would know Rake was the sender. Lucas punched keys to transfer the money.
Rake said, ‘We need to get a new passport for her to St Petersburg. The theft of the one she’s using will be discovered by then.’
‘We have a consulate there,’ said Whyte.
‘Possibly.’ Lucas sounded unconvinced. He was concentrating on numbers across the screen as the money went through. Rake read his skepticism. They had yet to identify the breach that had left so many dead.
‘The consulate is safer than leaving her exposed on the street,’ answered Whyte.
‘We need a guaranteed option,’ said Rake. ‘Not the best of bad choices.’
‘Done,’ said Lucas. ‘Seven hundred fifty dollars to Leningradsky Station. Seven hundred fifty to St Petersburg station. Pick-up anytime.’ He swiveled round to look at Rake. ‘I’ve set up an account with another Montreal-registered phone. From that we will message back “done.” More letters than that, there would be a chance of it being detected. She’ll have to trust it’s from you.’
‘Then it needs to be more personal,’ said Rake.
‘Like what?’
Rake pulled up his sleeve where his O-negative blood group was tattooed on his right forearm. Carrie had told Rake that if he wanted to marry her and stay a soldier, he would have to get his blood group tattooed onto his body. She didn’t want to have her husband die because of something as dumb as not getting the right blood transfusion. They ended up having it done together. Carrie carried her A+ on her inside right wrist.
‘O-neg,’ said Rake.
‘Good,’ said Lucas, pressing a key.
‘That money won’t make Carrie safe.’
‘I know,’ said Lucas.
Attention went to the live shot of Dmitry Petrov, the Russian cameraman in the FBI interrogation room. A left column appeared of the identities of his two dead Russian colleagues, headshots, passport details, brief biography, brief family history, whatever was in the intelligence community files.
The one Mikki Wekstatt had killed was Valentyn Golov, aged sixty-three, former spetsnaz sniper, attached to 14th Separate Special Purpose Brigade based out of Ussuriysk about seventy miles north of Vladivostok, where he now lived. The tall one whom Rake had killed was Adrik Syanko, a serving sergeant in the 83rd Airborne Brigade, also based in Ussuriysk, aged forty-one.
‘Yumatov’s unit,’ said Rake
‘You know them?’ asked Lucas.
‘Those units were deployed to the Diomedes and would have been under Yumatov’s command.’ Rake recognized names, first Golov, then Syanko, on Russian casualty lists from the Diomedes. But these were not the Russian soldiers he had killed. ‘We need to match their facial recognition with Yumatov,’ he said.
‘On it,’ said Lucas.
While the computers did their work, Rake ran a plan through his mind. What they were doing now wasn’t good enough. Russia was ten steps ahead of them, even more, because in Washington, they weren’t even off the starting block yet. They didn’t even know there was a starting block.
Within minutes, facial-recognition matches began coming in. ‘This is worse than we thought,’ said Lucas.
‘We need to get there,’ said Rake. Lucas agreed.
Harry Lucas rode in front with the driver. Rake and Mikki were in the back, the same vehicle that had brought them into the Pentagon. Whyte, on the jump seat, faced them. They headed south past Ronald Reagan National Airport, through Potomac Yard into Alexandria and were running parallel to the Potomac River. There was a black night sky, stars and thin moonlight reflected on the river water.
Dozens of matches had come in from facial recognition of the two dead Russians, Valentyn Golov and Adrik Syanko, with Ruslan Yumatov. One photograph and two phone videos stood out.
The images showed a memorial ceremony, bleak light, harsh rain, dark, cloud-scudded skies by the river outside Khabarovsk, headquarters city of Russia’s Eastern Military District. Golov and Syanko, identified by red circles around their faces, were gathered in a group of fifty-three people, wives, children, a military family affair with national flags and regimental emblems. At a podium stood Russian President Viktor Lagutov, a man of no great charisma. At his side was Sergey Grizlov, then Speaker of the State Duma, skilled at manipulating Russian political sentiment. Next to him stood the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Makar Za, and a line of dignitaries. At the edge was Ruslan Yumatov, neither with the families nor with the dignitaries, vigilant as if it were his show, in full-length military coat, war medals, and a Soviet old-style gray sheepskin hat, embedded red star in the front. Golov and Syanko were fathers grieving for sons killed in action and honored with this ceremony.
There were phone videos of Yumatov escorting Lagutov from the podium and initiating a discussion with Lagutov, Grizlov, and Za in a conspiratorial huddle. Yumatov held a large red umbrella over them all, collars up against an oncoming downpour. Finally, another of Yumatov opening the back door of a Mercedes limousine for Grizlov, then walking round and getting in the back seat to ride with him.
Man on Edge Page 15