“Yes. But quick,” he said. A pistol would be hugely helpful.
Katya ran to a bedroom. There was the sound of some piece of furniture being dragged across the floor and then a squeak, followed by a loud smack as something was slammed shut. She reemerged a few seconds later holding two identical Heckler & Koch P7s, two spare magazines, and two slim black suppressors.
She offered a gun, a magazine, and a suppressor to Johnson and put the others in her jacket pocket. Johnson noticed that the P7s both had threaded barrels for the suppressors.
“Suppressors?” Johnson asked, again taken slightly aback. Where the hell did she get those from?
Katya’s face tightened. “My father was an SVR colonel. They belonged to him.”
Johnson glanced at the safety of the P7 she had given him to ensure it was on, then slipped the gun and magazine into one of his jacket pockets and the suppressor into the other.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
Katya led the way out of the apartment, glancing down at her mother’s body on the floor as she went. Johnson took the key from the inside of the door and locked it as he left. If the Russians were looking for him, they would inevitably break into the apartment, see Varvara’s body, and hopefully conclude that Johnson had put it there and had left the building in a hurry. Locking the door would at least slow them down.
The light indicators on the elevator panel showed that there a car was coming up, already at the third floor. Johnson could hear the elevator mechanism whirring.
Katya ran along the hallway past a few apartments and stopped at the next, Johnson close behind her. She bent down, pushed the key into the cylinder lock and opened it, then removed the key.
Behind him, Johnson could hear the clunking sound of the elevator doors beginning to open.
He followed Katya and gently closed the apartment door behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
St. Petersburg
Severinov and Balagula emerged from the elevator door on the fourth floor of the apartment building, both with their pistols in hand.
The hallway was deserted and quiet. Severinov, the knuckles on his right hand showing white where he was gripping his Makarov, and his eyes darting, took in the scene.
“That one, presumably?” Severinov muttered, pointing at the closed apartment door opposite the elevators. There was a slight blood smear on the tiled surface next to the door and more blood specks on the white wall.
Balagula nodded. “They’ve moved the body.”
Severinov strode to the door and knocked twice. There was no response. He tried the handle. It was locked. “This is the police. Can you open the door, please,” he called. There was no reply, so he called again, this time more loudly. Nothing.
Severinov looked around and spotted a fire extinguisher cylinder hanging on the wall on the far side of the hallway. “Use that,” he said.
It took Balagula less than a minute to use the bottom of the metal cylinder as a battering ram to smash open the door, splintering the frame as the lock gave way.
Severinov stood to one side of the door, providing cover with his gun as he did so, and both men flattened themselves against the walls to either side of the entrance as the door swung open.
The first thing they saw was the lifeless body of Varvara Yezhova lying on the floor. The lights were off, and there was no sign of Joe Johnson.
Severinov, holding his gun in both hands, his body taut, inched his way along the wall as gradually his view of the rest of the apartment opened up.
There was nobody in the living room, nor in the three bedrooms, nor the kitchen or bathroom. The rest of the apartment appeared to be deserted.
“Dermo,” Severinov said. “If it was him, he’s gone.”
“I think it was him,” Balagula said.
Severinov glanced around. On the mantelpiece was a photograph of Gennady and Varvara Yezhova standing next to the driver’s door of a red Škoda sedan. Sitting in the driver’s seat was an attractive girl, who Severinov guessed was aged in her midtwenties, with shoulder-length dark brown hair.
That must be Katya, the daughter, he figured.
Another photograph showed the couple sitting on a park bench with the same girl and a boy who looked to be in his late teens, with short blond hair, who was presumably Timur.
“Nice-looking kids,” Severinov said.
“Yes.”
“Do they live here permanently?”
“Yes.”
Severinov paused for a few seconds. He was confident that the front of the building was effectively sealed off, with Pugachov guarding the elevators and the stairs at street level at the front of the building and Gurko the secondary set of stairs and entrance at the rear.
The likely conclusion was that Johnson had managed to get out of the building and away before they had arrived. Unless, that is, he was hiding somewhere else in the building.
“Let’s try the other apartments on this floor and check if anyone saw Johnson,” Severinov said.
They set off and began knocking on doors. Each time Severinov called the same thing. “Is anyone there? Can you open the door? This is the police.”
There was no response at any of them. Most people would be out at work, he assumed. And even if people were in, it wouldn’t be surprising if they didn’t answer, given the noise they had made when breaking into the apartment. They were probably all hiding behind their doors, staring at him through their security fish-eye-lens peepholes.
But all he needed was to strike lucky—an old man or an old lady, who might have seen Johnson.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
St. Petersburg
“Katya! What are you doing?” The voice was cracked and reedy. A diminutive white-haired woman who looked to be in her eighties, perhaps even older, stood at the far end of the entrance hallway. “Who is that man?”
“Quiet, Nina,” Katya hissed. “We are in danger. Some men are after us. My mother has been shot.”
The old woman squealed, causing Johnson’s heart to jump.
“Just shut up,” Johnson muttered under his breath.
Nina belatedly clapped her hand to her mouth. “Your mother has been shot?” she whispered. “Dead, you mean? Here? And we heard nothing?”
“You are both old and deaf, Nina,” Katya said. “Go and sit down. I will explain.” She took the old lady by the arm and gently led her into a living room, leaving Johnson in the hallway.
From the corridor outside, Johnson could hear the faint sound of two men’s voices. He picked up a few words, then heard a knock on a door, followed by someone speaking louder and quite audibly: “This is the police. Can you open the door, please?”
A short while later, there was a series of loud thuds followed by a crunching, splintering sound. As predicted, the Russians were smashing their way into the apartment. He was just going to have to hope that once they found it contained only Varvara’s body, they would leave.
Johnson placed his ear to the door and tried to listen. The thuds had stopped, but the voices continued. He could not make out what was being said.
After several more minutes, he heard footsteps on the tiled corridor floor, followed by vigorous knocking on neighboring doors.
“Is anyone there? Can you open? This is the police,” a loud man’s voice said after each volley of knocking. No one opened their doors—either they were too frightened to do so, or everyone was out at work.
Johnson took the Heckler & Koch from his pocket and clicked off the safety.
As was often the case when Johnson found himself in such situations, a large colorful image of his two children flashed across his mind.
Why do I do this?
The sound of footsteps grew louder. There came a sharp knock at the door that echoed down the hallway.
Johnson applied his eye to the fish-eye security peephole at the door and jumped a little as the distorted image of a man’s face appeared in the ti
ny circular glass lens.
It was Severinov.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
St. Petersburg
After knocking on about twenty-five doors, or it might have been thirty—he lost count—Severinov stopped. This was fruitless.
He tried to put himself in Johnson’s shoes. If Johnson had arrived at the apartment and had found Yezhov’s wife dead, what would he do?
Without doubt he was trying to find out more about the secrets her husband had been intending to pass to the West before the successful assassination in Berlin. So who else could he try? The children? Severinov thought it highly unlikely that Yezhov would have confided very much at all in Katya or Timur. Their father wouldn’t want to put them at risk, and what they didn’t know they couldn’t be forced to give to the FSB or any other agency.
But that wouldn’t stop Johnson from trying. He seemed a determined man and presumably wasn’t going to just give up and go home. If anything, the sight of Varvara’s body would make him even more inclined to believe that dark secrets were being covered up.
So Severinov concluded that Johnson would most likely return to the apartment at some stage.
He turned to Balagula. “We can’t break into every place in the building. We’ll get Pugachov to put Yezhov’s apartment under round-the-clock surveillance. My bet is that Johnson will be back to speak to the kids.”
“Yes, agreed, boss. He’s empty-handed so far. The kids are his last hope, even if they know nothing.”
Severinov nodded. He started toward the elevators. “We’ll give the stairs, elevators, and the basement a search, and if we can’t find him, our work here is done for now. We’ll get Pugachov’s gorillas to take care of him.”
But their search ultimately turned up nothing, and when they met with Pugachov at the front entrance to the building, the FSB man was busy handing out cards with a hotline phone number to a group of residents who had emerged from one of the elevators. He showed his FSB identity card, described Johnson, and instructed them to call the number on the card if they spotted him.
It was a sensible move, Severinov thought as he watched. The psychology of informing on neighbors and complying with instructions from police and security services had been ingrained into most Russians, especially the older ones, during the communist era and was still prevalent. Everyone ran scared of the FSB.
One middle-aged woman, wearing a white nurse’s uniform beneath a blue jacket that was unzipped, paused to scrutinize Pugachov’s card. She looked up at him. “I saw the man you are describing earlier,” she said. “On my way into the apartments. I came in through the front door, and he followed me in. It was as if he had been waiting for someone to enter to tail them in. He made some kind of a joke and insisted I go first. He spoke Russian but sounded foreign.”
Pugachov frowned. He followed up with a series of questions about where the man had gone and what he had been wearing, but beyond describing his waistcoat and glasses and that he had gone to the stairs, she was unable to give anything of further use. He took her cell phone number, apartment details, and name.
Severinov stepped forward. “Where are you going now?” he asked the woman. She seemed like a useful witness.
“I am going to my car. I keep it parked at the rear of the building,” she said.
“Where are you driving to?”
“I am a hospital nurse and I have a night shift,” she said.
“Please, keep your phone switched on. We might need more information from you. And if you see the man again, please give Mr. Pugachov a call,” Severinov said.
The woman nodded. “Yes, I’ll certainly do that.” She headed for the exit.
Pugachov turned to Severinov. “I have two more men on their way here. They will work with me and Gurko to keep this building under close surveillance. If Johnson comes back, we’ll see him. I need to go back to the safe house. I suggest you come with me; then we can discuss what we do next.”
Severinov nodded and turned to Balagula. “Vasily, you stay here with the FSB team. You know Johnson—if you see him, disable him. I don’t want him dead at this stage, though.”
Balagula grinned. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he’s disabled.”
“Good,” Severinov said. He and Pugachov headed out the door toward the Mercedes.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
St. Petersburg
When Johnson had seen Severinov through the peephole, he had briefly considered opening the door and putting a round into him. But that was the nuclear option and would most likely open up a whole can of worms and unintended consequences—probably nasty ones.
Instead, he had remained utterly silent.
During the following few hours, Johnson checked frequently out the window of Nina’s apartment to see whether the black Mercedes was still parked outside. But it did not move. Presumably Severinov and his cronies were searching the building.
Unlike the Yezhovs’ apartment, which had been fully modernized, including a kitchen with granite countertops and most appliances seen in American homes, this one looked as though it had not been touched since the Stalin era. It was more like how Johnson imagined Russian apartments to be outside the glitzy center of Moscow.
All the walls and ceilings, including the kitchen and bathroom, were painted in a nicotine-colored brown that was peeling in places. The kitchen consisted of a couple of unpainted wooden cabinets attached to the wall, a freestanding electric oven, and a large fridge that had yellowed with age. The only modern appliance was a gas boiler that hung on the wall next to the cooker. The sofas were covered in a worn floral pattern that had a number of holes.
Nina’s husband, Ivor, who had a mop of white hair that made him look like an eccentric professor, did not move from his armchair in the living room the whole time they were there and only spoke briefly, when his wife asked him if he would like tea.
Johnson watched as she heaped several spoons of dry tea leaves into a teapot and poured in boiling water from a rusting old electric kettle. Normally a coffee drinker, he sometimes enjoyed tea for a change. But the concoction that Nina produced was the thickest and darkest he had ever seen, even in Russia, where on previous visits years ago he had gotten used to the traditions of strong tea. He wondered whether Nina would have to cut it out of the pot with a knife.
After she had left it to brew for several minutes, she poured it into cups but filled them only halfway. Then she indicated to Johnson to top off his cup with hot water if he wanted to dilute it and to take his pick from cups of sugar and honey, and a lemon that had been cut into slices.
Johnson put a spoonful of honey and a slice of lemon in his tea. He had to admit, once diluted a little, it tasted better than he had expected.
As he sipped the brew, Johnson could not help recalling Severinov’s parting words to him and Jayne the last time he had seen the oligarch at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. They were ingrained in his mind.
Don’t come to Russia. I have friends deep inside the FSB and SVR—I will make sure you are both on their list.
He was glad that Katya had thought to bring the pistols, which now lay on the table between them.
“Do you know how to use those?” he asked, nodding toward the weapons.
“I’m Russian. My father spent a lot of time teaching me and my brother how to use guns, and I also used to go shooting in the woods with a couple of friends from university. One of my friends had a father who was special forces, a Spetsnaz member—she knew how to shoot and handle a gun. I learned a lot from her, I can tell you. Don’t worry, I’m very good with them.”
She explained that she had studied international relations at St. Petersburg University, and a handful of her cohort had also been the children of middle- or high-ranking FSB and SVR officers. They all took the view that learning how to use firearms and other self-defense techniques was a good idea.
Johnson was extremely tempted to dispatch a short text message to Jayne, who he assu
med was now in London, and Vic, in Berlin, to update them. In fact, it was a pity she wasn’t here with him right now. But he held back, concerned that the FSB would be checking all communications traffic in the immediate area. Even if they were unable to read his encrypted message, they might be able to identify his German cell phone number, pinpoint that it was being used from somewhere in the apartments, and start a new door-to-door search of the building. In any case, neither of them would be able to do anything to help him in his current situation.
Just after ten o’clock, Nina served them a large bowl of chunky beef and beetroot soup, served with a dollop of sour cream on the top and some brown bread. “I am sorry, it is all I have,” she said. By that stage, Johnson’s stomach was rumbling, and the meal was extremely welcome.
Johnson finished his food and walked to the window yet again. The Mercedes had gone, but two men in dark suits were standing on the sidewalk near where it had been parked. Even if Severinov and Balagula had left in the Mercedes, their sidekicks clearly hadn’t.
Severinov might logically assume that with Yezhov and his wife dead, Johnson would want to do exactly what he was doing now—making contact with Yezhov’s children. And presumably he would want to prevent that.
Johnson beckoned Katya to the window and pointed at the two men.
“FSB,” she said as soon as she saw them. “They’re guarding the place.”
“We could try and make a move now, but maybe we should wait until early morning and go before sunrise,” Johnson said. “Maybe by then they will have given up or dozed off. We can try and get some sleep here ourselves.” He indicated toward the two spare bedrooms that led off Nina’s hallway.
“Yes. I agree. It is a little risky to stay but riskier to try and leave right now. I do not think they will search every apartment in this building, just the public areas. Before sunrise is better.”
Katya discussed the options with Nina, who agreed that they could stay overnight. She showed them the spare bedrooms. Both were furnished in a very basic fashion: one had a rustic wooden bed but the other just a mattress on the floor.
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