“I don’t understand,” Cassidy began.
But the minute he spoke the words, he did understand. He stared at the major for several seconds, feeling like an idiot for not realizing the truth sooner.
“Mystique.”
* * *
Ten minutes after the Soviet soldiers had dispersed, the truck rolled east again, toward Minsk. Igor was at the wheel, Logan riding shotgun. The others were in the back, with one exception. Though Wolverine had been reluctant to let her out of his sight, Mystique had argued convincingly that she had to stay behind with the Soviet troops, at least for a short time. They were to drive on for ten miles, and then pull over and wait for her.
But Mystique never showed.
Logan cursed after they had waited half an hour. “I should’ve known better.”
“It’s possible she was discovered, even captured,” Silver Fox suggested.
“It’s possible she just ain’t caught up to us yet,” Sabretooth added.
“Yeah,” Wolverine snorted. “An’ it’s possible she played me for a fool, and is goin’ for the gold all by herself.” He turned to Igor. “Better get a move on, bub,” he snarled. “You’re our ace in the hole; even if that blue-skinned femme fatale’s gone on ahead o’ us, you’re gonna help us get where we’re goin’ first, aren’t you?”
The KGB interrogator started the truck, put it in gear, and pulled out onto the narrow, dusty road. He didn’t even look at Wolverine as he spoke in Russian.
“You’ve killed me already, ‘Wolverine,’ ” Igor said. “You simply haven’t realized it yet. Or perhaps you have. Even if your friend ‘Sabretooth’ doesn’t take my life, my KGB superiors will execute me for my failure.”
Logan considered the man’s words. After a moment, he smiled.
“You wanna defect?” Wolverine asked.
Igor took his eyes off the road long enough to glare at Logan for several seconds. “I would rather die,” he said coldly.
“I don’t believe you for a second,” Wolverine replied. “If you’d rather die, you wouldn’t still be alive.”
Igor stared at him a moment. The truck began to drift, and the Soviet snapped his attention back to the road. The man looked stricken, Logan thought. Almost nauseous. Sometimes the truth could do that.
“If I take you to where I believe the Black Widow will meet with her controller, you will bring me back to America with you?” he asked, and his words, even in Russian, seemed filled with self-loathing.
“If you get us there before Mystique, you’ve got a deal,” Wolverine replied.
Igor’s eyes flickered down to his lap, and his face went slack.
“I am a coward,” he muttered.
“No,” Logan said. “You’re a wise man.”
It was late morning, but the Black Widow was not going to take any chances. She skirted the edges of the city of Minsk, hoping to avoid any further entanglements. The sedan was low on fuel, but there wasn’t much further for her to go. Three miles east of Minsk, she diverged from the main road, steering the car down into a shallow valley dense with foliage. The road there was little more than a cart path, but soon the shimmering surface of a small lake came into view and, on the shore of the lake, a home.
Yet it had not served as anyone’s home for many years. Instead, the gray stone manse at the water’s edge had been transformed into a KGB way station. Natasha had only been here once before, yet she guided the sedan unerringly along the crude roadway.
Two hundred yards from the house, she killed the engine and let the car bump and crash into the forest to the right of the path. Those inside might have heard her approach, but it would not matter. Once she was on foot, with the cover of the forest, they would not see her before she wanted to be seen.
Sure enough, moments later a trio of KGB soldiers bearing AK-47s appeared on the road, combing the woods to either side. Natasha passed right by them without being noticed, and approached the stone face of the house soundlessly. She moved quickly along one side, saw that a second-story window was open slightly, and began to scale the stone wall.
With one fluid motion, she slid through the open window and into a large office whose walls were lined with leather-bound books. She strutted to the high-backed leather chair behind the wide mahogany desk and sat down, pleased to finally be able to rest a moment. She leaned back in the chair, put her hands behind her head, and closed her eyes.
When the door slammed open to admit a pair of brawny gunmen whose weapons were aimed at her head, Natasha didn’t even flinch. Instead, she smiled while the men shouted at her, put her legs up on the desk, and stretched, catlike. One of the men shouted again, cocked his weapon and took several steps toward her, ready to fire.
“Put that down, you idiot,” a female voice snapped from the hall. “Don’t you have any idea who you’re dealing with?”
This time, Natasha was surprised. She recognized the voice, but had not expected to hear it within these walls. The woman who walked into the room then was taller than Natasha by several inches, and broader as well. Olga Lokhtina had once been the Soviet Union’s greatest Olympian, a gymnast without peer. But she had also been one of the KGB’s greatest assets. Now the woman’s hair was getting gray to match her unsmiling face and dull eyes.
“You were expected, Black Widow,” Olga said. “But I don’t see why you felt it necessary to put us all on alarm when you might have simply knocked on the door.”
Natasha sat forward in the chair, cocked her head slightly to look at Olga.
“Where is my controller?” she said bluntly.
Olga stiffened, obviously offended by Natasha’s brusqueness. She had been the lieutenant to the Widow’s controller since Natasha had first been recruited by the KGB, but Natasha had never liked her. In addition, it had ever been clear to her that Olga despised her, though she never knew why. Her youth, perhaps, or her skills, for despite Olga’s achievements in gymnastics, Natasha had always exceeded the older woman’s abilities.
“Your controller is otherwise engaged,” Olga replied warily, eyes narrowed and focused only on the Widow. “Why? Have you failed in your mission. Widow?”
“Failed?” Natasha snapped, climbed angrily to her feet, and leaned over the desk to glare at Olga. “No, I have not failed, comrade. I am here, am I not? Would I have returned without the disk in question? The Black Widow has never failed. No, I ask where my controller is because his absence seems odd to me. I was told that he would be here, along with his bodyguards, and that he would take possession of the disk, after which I would return to Moscow.”
Olga smiled. Natasha didn’t like that smile at all.
“Ah, Comrade Romanova,” she said patronizingly, “you are still so naive. Do you think you are the only agent the controller is responsible for? You overestimate your importance, girl. I have come in the controller’s place, as his lieutenant. These men are here for my protection and for yours.”
Natasha studied the faces of the two men: hard, cold, and vacant. They would do what they were told, no more and no less. Then she looked at Olga again, and her mind was made up.
“Then I will hold on to the disk, and they can escort both of us back to Moscow,” the Widow said. “For your own protection, of course, Comrade Lokhtina. At every step of this mission, it has been compromised. Several other agencies were after the disk and the traitors who stole it. They have known a great many things they never ought to have been able to find out, which makes me think we have a double agent working closely with us. So, you see,” she went on, with a smile and a tiny shrug, “I must only hand this disk over to the controller when we see him in Moscow.”
Lokhtina was livid. “If you are implying …” she began in a rage.
“I imply nothing,” the Widow replied angrily. “I only tell you what I must do in order to see this mission through to its completion. Now if you’ll show me to a room where I might shower and have a change of clothes, I’ll prepare for our departure.”
Olga stared at
her a moment, then nodded toward one of the two bodyguards. “Sergei,” she said. The man in question holstered his weapon, nodded respectfully at the Widow, then led her from the room.
“I will see to it that your behavior is noted by your superiors,” Olga said coldly as the Widow stepped into the hall.
“Yes,” Natasha agreed. “I would appreciate that.”
The truck had rolled into Minsk just after eleven o’clock in the morning. For the first time since the whole op had gone wrong back in East Berlin, Wolverine actually felt as though they were in control of things again. Now that Igor had realized he was going to have to defect or he’d end up dead, he was more than helpful. The safehouse they were headed for was several miles outside of Minsk. Igor had been there many times—slept there, even. He’d been KGB for more than a decade, but he’d done it for the power, not because he’d bought into the load of double-talk coming out of the Kremlin.
Strangely, Logan found that he had a bit in common with the man behind the wheel. Igor didn’t trust his bosses either, but he went on doing the job just the same. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for Wolverine to feel the tiniest trace of sympathy for him. Igor would be better off when this op was over. As long as they all got out.
Which was why the KGB interrogator was even more cooperative when it came to finding them a telephone in Minsk. Not just any telephone either, but one that was guaranteed to have long distance service that wasn’t in a government office. They found what they were looking for in the offices of a small academic book publishing firm. Of course, they were completely in line with the communist regime in the Kremlin. They’d have to be. But they also needed to be able to call London or Vienna or Stockholm when business called for it.
London would do. Wolverine had a number that would bounce the call to a safe line in the States. A line the Agency would never use again after that one call came in. Which was fine with him. It was an emergency line, and Logan couldn’t think of a greater emergency than having his whole team stranded in the middle of the Soviet Union.
They might have been able to make it out the same way they got in. But chances were, when they caught up with the Widow, they were going to have the entire KGB on their trail. And it was a long way back to friendly territory, especially traveling with a tall red-headed, fair-skinned man with a brogue.
Igor was still KGB, that was the key. When Logan and North entered the publishing house’s offices with Igor in the lead, the receptionist looked askance at them thanks to their attire. That was until Igor produced his identification, glaring at the woman all the while. The ranking executive in the firm fell all over himself to bring them to an empty office where they might place their call to Prague.
Or, at least, Prague was what they told him.
Inside the office, which was sterile and utilitarian, Logan picked up the phone, got a dial tone, hung up, and began again to make certain nobody else was on the line. He dialed the London number, got a series of beeps, a pause, and then it began to ring. Not in London, but in Washington, D.C.
“Code?” a voice answered.
“Kestrel on the wing, 5571,” Logan replied.
The phone clattered on the other end, and then John Wraith’s voice came over the line.
“Where have you been?” Wraith snapped.
“Finishing the job, Kestrel,” Wolverine answered. “Now just shut up and listen. There’s a field six miles due west of Minsk. Big enough to land a chopper. Two hours before dawn, come and get us.”
A pause. “You’ve got what you went after?”
“We will,” Logan replied. “Just be there.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Wraith replied.
Logan hung up the phone. Silently, he and North hustled Igor out of the publisher’s office, realizing that the clock was ticking. Once the KGB figured out that such a call had been made, it would be only a matter of time before they started scouring the city for Team X. And if they’d been listening, well, Wolverine wasn’t stupid enough to give an uncoded message over an unsecured line.
Land masses substituted for bodies of water. A “river” would be a road. In this case, a “field” was a lake. Distances were doubled, and opposite of one another. Six miles west became three miles east. “Big enough to land a chopper” was just nonsense. Wraith didn’t need any transport other than himself. And two hours before dawn was actually two hours after dusk.
It was simple if you knew what you were listening for. Igor knew the extraction plan, and even he looked at Logan strangely, trying to interpret the side of the conversation he’d heard. Eventually, the man simply shook his head.
A short time later they were back in the truck, on their way from Minsk. In the back of the vehicle, the others sat in mournful silence. Cassidy and Creed had barely exchanged a glance, but Wolverine knew that violence was brewing between them. The Irishman didn’t think Creed had been justified in killing the Soviet soldiers back in that village. Wolverine figured Cassidy was right about that, but there was nothing to be done for it now.
On the other hand, Creed’s savagery had the advantage of leaving them with a few extra weapons. Team X had crossed the Soviet border with a pair of AK-47s, various knives, maybe a dozen concussion grenades, and four semiautomatic pistols. Now they had three more Kalishnikovs that they put aside as backup. If they were going to storm a KGB safe house, they were going to need all the firepower they could lay their hands on.
Natasha felt renewed. She was still exhausted, body and soul, but she had gone longer without sleep in the past year. The shower had invigorated her, and she wore fresh clothes that Olga had brought along at the controller’s instructions. The Widow wanted to kiss the man, or she would have, if she was certain he wasn’t the double agent. It was difficult for her to believe, but not impossible. Someone was informing other agencies about KGB operations, or at least they had in this case.
She believed it was Olga, of course. But that bothered her. It was too easy to suspect someone she already disliked.
Somewhere on the first floor, a tea kettle whistled, and Natasha smiled as she walked downstairs. A pair of black-garbed men with chiseled features glanced up at her as she peeked into the kitchen. These were two of the gunmen who’d come outside to search for her after she’d stashed the sedan in the trees.
They didn’t say hello.
In the central area of the first floor, a large room with an enormous conference table, three women conversed quietly. One of them was Olga. The others were obviously agents on some assignment or other. Olga’s bodyguards stood in a far corner.
“Ah, Natasha,” Olga said in Russian, standing to greet her. “Are you ready to go, then?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind,” the Black Widow replied.
Olga smiled, but that smile was a lie. Its falsehood was more than mere dislike for the Black Widow. Natasha knew, in that moment, that Olga was indeed a double agent. But how could she prove it?
“I’m ready now,” Olga said, and motioned for her bodyguards. “Sergei, go get the car, will you?”
Natasha watched Sergei carefully. She was paranoid now, and she knew it. But it was impossible for her to know if Olga was working on her own, or if there were other traitors in the house.
“There must be other agents here, other guards?” she said, making the question sound as innocent as she was able to.
“Oh, yes,” Olga replied, and moved around the table to come toward Natasha. A pair of many-paned glass doors looked out on the lake behind her. A beautiful view, placid and comforting in some way.
“It’s a large house,” Olga said. “There are several other agents upstairs, I would guess. And four men guarding the grounds. It isn’t as though there isn’t internal security.” She smiled again. “After all, we knew immediately when you entered the house.”
Natasha returned the smile, trying her best to make it more genuine than Olga’s. How to deal with the older woman’s duplicity was a question that she knew would haunt her the entire ri
de back to Moscow.
The front door opened. Sergei stepped in. He didn’t smile, of course. His type never did. But he opened his mouth to tell Olga the car was ready. There came the crack of a single gunshot, and a piece of Sergei’s forehead exploded. The man stumbled forward and fell dead in the foyer, bleeding onto the carpet.
“Get down!” Natasha shouted.
A body crashed through the double doors, landing on the conference table in a shower of glass and setting off alarms that pealed ear-shatteringly loud throughout the house. Gunfire shattered windows and tore into the furnishings. Heavy footfalls tromped across the floor above her head.
With the exception of her widow’s bite, Natasha was weaponless. She was on her knees when she spotted Sergei’s corpse and realized that he must be armed. The Black Widow scuttled forward, planning to grab the dead bodyguard’s weapon. Windows and mirrors exploded, and plaster chunks flew from the walls as bullets punched holes in them.
Something bounced heavily on the foyer carpet and rolled up to land right next to Sergei’s body. Natasha blinked.
It was a concussion grenade.
She ran for the stairs and was three steps up when the grenade exploded. It threw her up and flat against the stairs, hard, knocking the wind out of her. Suddenly the air was split with a wailing sound that drowned out the alarms, a sound of fury and agony. A human sound.
Cassidy.
Natasha got quickly to her feet. A pair of concussion grenades detonated elsewhere in the house, shaking its walls and raining plaster from the ceiling. Before starting upstairs again, she took a glance back and saw something that bothered her even more than hearing Cassidy’s sonic scream.
Two figures had just come through the shattered glass rear doors. A dark-skinned woman with long, silky black hair, and a huge blond man whose grin marked him as a killer. They carried AK-47s in their hands, and the guns leapt at their command, cutting through the pair of female KGB agents who had been returning fire from behind the conference-room table.
Christopher Golden Page 23