The Russian

by Saul Herzog

  “There’s no use running,” he called out.

  She dropped behind the wall as two bullets hit the cinder block, sending chips of concrete flying.

  She was on a narrow track. It went in both directions, but she knew she’d never outrun the man barefoot. Across the track was another fence, and she began climbing it.

  Her feet were numb with cold. Her hands were beginning to shake. The initial burst of adrenaline was wearing off. As she struggled to the top of the fence, she knew she wouldn’t make it over in time. The assassin would peer over the cinder block wall any second, and when he did, she’d be a sitting duck.

  That knowledge made her panic. She lost grip on the fence, and her foot slipped. Some loose wire cut a deep gash in her ankle.

  She kept climbing, desperately pulling herself up the fence, and just as she swung her leg over the top, heard the voice of the assassin behind her.

  “Don’t move,” he said.

  She froze. She could leap down the other side of the fence, but he’d simply pull the trigger the instant she moved.

  The chase was over.

  No one escaped the clutches of the GRU. It was impossible. The organization put more effort into tracking down and killing its defectors than it did pursuing foreign agents.

  What had she been thinking? The moment she betrayed the agency, she’d signed her own death warrant.

  Her mind grasped desperately for options.

  She knew he was going to kill her. Whether she ran or not made no difference. He hadn’t been sent to bring her back alive.

  She turned back to look at him. He wasn’t a man she recognized. He’d pulled himself onto the wall and was sitting on it.

  “Who sent you?” she said.

  “You know who sent me.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Does that make a difference?”

  “I guess not,” she said.

  “My name is Genadi Surkov,” he said.

  He was scarcely twelve feet from her, and she could see his face clearly. He looked over her body, hardly covered at all under the t-shirt. She was shaking so vigorously now she felt she might lose her grip and fall from the fence.

  “You’re GRU, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Until a few days ago,” she said.

  “What happened a few days ago?”

  “I killed my boss,” she said.

  He nodded. “Igor Aralov? I heard about that.”

  “They’re saying it was a robbery,” Tatyana said.

  “I knew it wasn’t a robbery.”

  “Well, now you can say you killed the woman who killed Aralov.”

  The man nodded. “It’s a shame I have to do it,” he said. “You look so lovely in the moonlight.”

  “Just get it over with,” Tatyana said. “She shut her eyes, held her breath, and braced herself.”

  The bullet rang out with the clean, crisp snap of a breaking tree branch. She felt nothing. She waited, she knew what a bullet felt like, but nothing happened. All she felt was the icy numbness in her feet and hands, and the bitter coldness of the breeze.

  She opened her eyes.

  The assassin was on the ground. He’d fallen from the wall, and blood spurted from his right arm in steady gushes. He’d been shot.

  He writhed on the ground, and Tatyana looked around frantically to see who’d shot him.

  In the darkness beyond the wall, she saw no one.

  Genadi was still on the ground, his gun three feet away from him. She looked at it, then back at him.

  He hadn’t seen it yet, but if she moved for it, he would.

  She leaped from the fence, falling into the heavy brush on the other side, and rolled down another twenty feet of slope. The ground was steep and she lost control as she fell, crashing through leaves and branches until her head hit something hard and everything went black.

  6

  Lance got to his feet and, ignoring the pain in his leg, ran to Tatyana’s room, pulling his gun from inside his coat. He scanned the room for the intruder but didn’t see him. What he did see was crimson blood seeping through the white sheets on Tatyana’s bed.

  He was too late.

  Then he heard two shots from the bathroom and rushed toward it. The window was smashed, the thin curtain blew in the breeze. Lance looked outside and saw a man chasing someone across the parking lot.

  He leaped out the window onto the snowbank directly below.

  The shock of landing hurt his leg, and he had to limp across the lot, struggling to keep up.

  He came to a high chainlink fence and climbed over it. There were two sets of footprints in the snow and he picked up his pace, running through the brush blindly as he followed the footsteps.

  He heard a man’s voice up ahead and more gunshots. The ground began to slope downward and he half ran, half crashed through the brush until it opened onto a railway track. Across the tracks, further down the slope was a cinder block wall. The assassin was on top of it, a hundred feet away, pointing his gun at Tatyana on the other side.

  They were talking to each other.

  Lance didn’t wait to hear what they said. He took a deep breath, held out his gun, steadied his hand, and pulled the trigger.

  His bullet hit the man on the shoulder and knocked him off the wall.

  Lance stayed where he was and waited. Approaching the wall would expose him. He watched about ten seconds and nothing happened.

  He would have waited longer but he knew Tatyana was behind that wall.

  He made his way cautiously along the track, approaching the spot where the man had been, and had to dive for cover when three shots came at him from behind the wall. He fired back, hitting the wall twice.

  He waited another few seconds before inching forward, keeping as low as possible. He kept his sights on the wall, moving cautiously. If the assassin looked over, he’d have a clear line of sight. In the moonlight, Lance would make an easy target.

  But he didn’t look over. Instead, he reached over and fired more covering shots without aiming. They hit the ground around Lance and he rolled off the track into the shallow ditch between the track and the wall.

  He was lying against the wall and knew he had to get over it.

  He waited a few seconds, then stood and pulled himself to the top.

  He could see the spot where he’d shot the assassin. The man wasn’t there. Neither was Tatyana.

  Lance listened, then climbed over the wall, proceeding very cautiously. There was a trail of blood leading down a rutted dirt road in the direction of the power plant. Lance was about to follow it when he saw a fainter trail of blood leading into the brush on the other side of the fence.

  He called out. “Tatyana.”

  She didn’t answer, and he climbed the fence and went down the slope into the brush. Where the ground leveled out he saw her, lying on the ground, facedown in the snow.

  7

  Tatyana woke in a bright room, a ceiling fan spinning above her head. She didn’t know where she was and reached under the pillow for her gun. There was none there.

  She sat up and was about to make for the door when a man entered.

  It was Lance.

  “What happened?” she said.

  “You’re awake.”

  She looked at him, then around the room. “We’re in the apartment,” she said.

  “Yes we are.”

  “My things?”

  “I went back to the hotel and cleared your room.”

  “What about my …?” her voice trailed off.

  Lance looked at her, forcing her to say the word.

  “My … friend.”

  “Your friend?”

  She shook her head. “The man who was in my bed, Lance.”

  “Oh, that friend.”

  “Yes, that friend.”

  “He’s dead, Tatyana.”

  She leaned back in the bed.

  “I hope he was at least a good lay,” Lance said.

  “Shut up,” she said. />
  “That was a risk you didn’t have to take.”

  “I said, shut up.”

  Lance shrugged. There was a chair next to the bed and he sat on it, stretching out his leg.

  “How is it?” Tatyana said, indicating his leg.

  “It’s getting there.”

  “Did you kill my assassin?” she said.

  “I shot him in the arm. He got away.”

  She nodded. “I know you told me to be careful,” she said.

  He looked at her. “I’m sure you were doing something important.”

  “I didn’t realize they’d track me so quickly. I used every safeguard.”

  “And your people? Are they safe?”

  “I deleted my source records, contact reports, anything that could be used to get to them,” she said. “I don’t know if I got to everything in time, but I had to do it, Lance. Those people trusted me.”

  Lance nodded.

  She was grateful he wasn’t fighting her on that.

  “It’s going to be hot around here,” Lance said. “They’ll send more guys. We can’t go back to the hotel.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “And no more accessing the network.”

  “I’m done with that,” she said. “I’m ready to leave the city.”

  “Good,” Lance said. “We need to get you on a train as soon as possible.”

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “We should stay together,” she said.

  “Things aren’t finished here,” Lance said. “I know there’s more coming. The Dead Hand was trying to start a war.”

  “We killed them,” Tatyana said. “Davidov, Timokhin, Aralov. They’re all dead.”

  “This isn’t over,” Lance said. “The Dead Hand goes straight to the president. If the Kremlin wants war, killing a few generals isn’t going to stop it.”

  “Whatever they do next,” Tatyana said, “is not your responsibility. You’ve done what you came to do.”

  Lance shook his head. “I’m not leaving yet, Tatyana. I can’t.”

  She looked at him and tried to read what he was thinking. She’d thought he was done with the CIA, that he’d had enough of their dirty work. She couldn’t imagine that would have changed.

  “All right,” she said.

  She looked across the room to where her things had been stacked neatly on a desk. Papers, laptops, clothing.

  “You done with the electronics?” Lance said.

  She nodded.

  “All right. I’m going to get rid of them. When I get back, we’re going to the train station.”

  “Leningradsky station?” Tatyana said.

  “Too risky. They’ll be expecting you to go west.”

  “I have to go to Leningradsky.”

  “Paveletskiy will be safer,” Lance said. “You can go south to Astrakhan. You’ll be on the Caspian there.”

  “And do you have a boat waiting for me?”

  “No, but you’ll think of something.”

  Tatyana shook her head. “I know it’s riskier, Lance, but I have to get to Leningradsky. There’s something I need to do there.”

  “What do you need to do?”

  “Leave someone a message.”

  “Your loose ends almost cost you your life last night.”

  “I know, Lance.”

  He shook his head.

  “This person is more than just a contact,” Tatyana said. “It’s personal.”

  Lance looked at her.

  She said nothing more.

  He sighed and got up. He went to the desk and began packing the electronics. Two burner phones, two laptops, a small plastic box that looked like someone had pried open an old gameboy to expose the electronics. It contained a 580 megahertz processor, some flash storage, two ethernet ports, and was able to automatically redirect data over the Tor network.

  “Did you make this?” Lance said, holding it up.

  She nodded.

  He looked at it a little closer. “Is this GRU hardware?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s off the shelf stuff.”

  “Do you mind if I keep it?”

  She shrugged.

  He put it in his pocket and slung the bag over his shoulder.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m going to get rid of all this. You take a shower and get ready. As soon as it gets dark, we’re leaving.”

  She watched him go and then went through the things he’d salvaged from her hotel room. Her Browning handgun was there. It had been a gift from Lance a long time ago, and she brought it on every mission. If he’d left it behind, she’d have gone back to the hotel for it.

  She packed it, along with three fake passports, a credit card and some cash, and whatever clothes and toiletries he’d gathered.

  There was something else. Another item she’d have risked her life to go back for. She felt a flood of relief when she found it under the clothes. A small shoebox. She opened it and looked at the shoes inside.

  Her eyes glazed over as she looked at them.

  Then she dressed and went into the kitchen.

  She checked the refrigerator. It was empty. Lance wasn’t much of a cook. There was some coffee, and she put water on the stove to boil. Then she looked around the rest of the apartment, snooping more than anything, seeing what she could learn about this American man who’d saved her life.

  Most of the apartment was empty, untouched since he’d move in.

  He’d set himself up in the bedroom overlooking the street, and it seemed he spent most of his time there. There was a lamp next to the bed and a leather-bound book. It was a notebook, a diary. She picked it up.

  She was about to open it when she heard Lance returning.

  She put the diary down and hurried out of the room.

  Lance was just opening the front door.

  “Looking for something?” he said.

  “No, I was just…”.

  “Snooping.”

  “I need toothpaste.”

  “Right,” he said.

  The kettle on the stove began to whistle, and she used the distraction to escape. She went to the kitchen and prepared the coffee. Lance followed a moment later with a tube of toothpaste.

  “Thanks,” she said, embarrassed, thinking how she’d never know what was in that diary.

  “I bought some bread and cheese,” he said, putting them on the counter.

  “Oh,” Tatyana said.

  “I figured you’d be hungry.”

  She nodded. “I made coffee.”

  They went into the living room, sparsely decorated but it had a sofa and a view of the street, and sipped coffee and ate the bread and cheese.

  Lance lit a cigarette, and she asked for one.

  At dusk, they went down to the street and caught a cab.

  “Where to?” the driver said.

  “Leninsgradsky,” Lance said.

  Tatyana looked at him. “Thank you.”

  He nodded. “I just hope we don’t regret it.”

  The evening traffic was heavy, and it took over an hour to get downtown. Neither spoke on the way, but when they arrived, Tatyana turned to Lance and said, “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”

  “I’ll come in and make sure you get to the train,” he said.

  “But you don’t want to get on it?”

  He thought a second before saying, “I can’t leave yet.”

  “Do you even know why you’re staying?” she said.

  He looked at her and was about to answer when the driver said, “Hey, I don’t have all night.”

  They got out of the cab, and when Tatyana looked at Lance, it was clear the moment had passed. She followed him into the station, which was packed with people, thousands of them, all rushing in the evening commute.

  Tatyana had insisted on this station for one reason, a storage locker on the platform of one of the commuter lines.

  “The ticket office is this way,”
Lance said.

  “I’m not buying a ticket,” Tatyana said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’ll be looking for me on the express trains.”

  “You’re taking a suburban service?”

  “I know how to get across Russia,” she said. “I’ve lived here my whole life.”

  Lance shook his head.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing.”

  She smiled. They took the escalator down to the Khimki platform and Tatyana pulled her scarf over her hair. On the platform, she sat on a bench and adjusted her makeup. She had a few tricks with an eyebrow pencil that could alter her appearance, not enough to confuse a human, but it was enough to require a far broader search by facial recognition algorithms. The GRU would be scanning every public camera in the country, running a search for her face, and a few simple changes could buy her weeks of processing time.

  “I’ll get the ticket,” Lance said.

  Tatyana nodded. She watched him go to the kiosk, then got up and crossed the platform to a bank of coin-operated lockers. The last locker on the left was number fifty, and she opened it with a code. Inside was a notebook and pen, which she took and placed in her backpack. In their place, she put the shoebox she’d brought with her and a pack of matches.

  She glanced around the platform. Nothing was out of the ordinary. She saw Lance at the kiosk paying for her ticket. She took one last look at the contents of the locker, breathed deeply, and shut the door.

  8

  Larissa Chipovskaya only ever wanted to be a dancer. As a little girl, she dreamed of being prima ballerina at the famed Bolshoi theater. She pictured the crowds in London and Paris and New York giving her rapturous standing ovations. When she shut her eyes, she could almost smell the roses that would rain down on her, flung from the balconies of the world’s most beautiful opera houses. She would stand in front of the mirror in her bedroom and imagine the sequined gowns, the diamond tiaras, the giant Swarovski crystal chandeliers that would bathe her in the light of a thousand electric bulbs.