The Lone Patriot

by JT Brannan

  But was it still here?

  He stood still and cast the light from his cellphone around the tunnel, illuminating the walls, the ceiling, the water. But there was nothing, and he wondered if maybe he had missed it earlier. He turned to face the other direction, lighting up the way he had just come, scouring every inch of the tunnel around him.

  There was still nothing and he turned back, following the tunnel further down before stopping and checking once more.

  But still there was nothing, and after a moment of thought Cole turned off the flashlight completely, casting the tunnel into total darkness.

  But as his eyes gradually adjusted to the new conditions, he began to see that it wasn’t total darkness after all; there was light coming from just a few more feet down the tunnel, a tiny crack of light so small he might well have missed it, had he not been concentrating so fully. If he’d still had the flashlight on, he would certainly have missed it altogether.

  He pushed forward, the crack of dim light revealing itself more and more, until he could see that it came from a slight gap in the brick wall on the right-hand side of the tunnel. He turned the cellphone flashlight back on and examined the wall, saw that the brick here was different from the rest of the wall, how it must have been sealed sometime after the tunnel’s initial construction.

  Cole pushed against the wall, and it held solidly; but he could see that it was crumbling in parts, and it was clear that the flood waters had damaged the seal’s integrity. There was space behind it, and Cole knew that it wouldn’t hold forever.

  He backed up slightly, pocketed his cellphone, and then unleashed a powerful side kick that dislodged some of the brickwork. The seal held, but it was already weakening from the single kick, a tiny bit more light spilling through the widening cracks.

  Cole took a deep breath and kicked out again, and again, and again, every blow weakening the wall a little bit more, the space beyond opening up little by little. The water slowed his kicks, drained them of power, but they were having a cumulative effect and Cole kept on hammering away at the brickwork, lashing out with kick after kick until it started to break open in earnest, more of the dim light filtering out into the tunnel.

  And then, his muscles seizing with the cold and the exhaustion, he was finally through, a hole opened up through the sealed wall large enough for him to move through.

  He poked his head through the gap first, saw that the light didn’t come from the space behind the tunnel itself, but was being filtered down from above. He took the cellphone from his pocket and shone it through the gap, saw a set of old stairs leading up to another trapdoor, the source of the light.

  He pulled his body all the way through and edged slowly up the stairs until he was right at the top, hands resting on the underside of the trapdoor.

  Okay, he thought to himself as he started to push the door upward.

  Time to see where I am.

  Veronika Galushka hadn’t known what to do.

  For weeks, she’d been a plaything of the FSB, subordinate to their orders, at all times under their strict close-surveillance.

  The worst time, of course, was when she’d been arrested at home and hauled into the interrogation rooms of the Lubyanka. Things had changed in name only from those Soviet times when Muscovites had lived in abject fear of the KGB; now the FSB wielded the same authority, and being picked up by its agents was just as terrifying now as it must have been all those years ago.

  It had been Aleksandr Petrushkin’s fault, of course; or whoever the hell he really was, she thought bitterly. A foreign agent, an American most likely, the agents had told her; and she had willingly given herself to him, let him steal secrets from her.

  She hadn’t known what she was doing, not really; she was still lonely after her husband had been killed fighting the terrorists in Chechnya, and Aleks had come to her, so handsome, so charming, and he had been interested in her.

  Of course he wasn’t, she chided herself. You work for Boris Manturov, how can you have been so stupid? Did you really think that he could have been interested in you?

  She had had the same conversation with herself over and over again during these long, hard weeks, but knew that it didn’t even matter anymore. Her life was as good as over, whatever happened now.

  She had been relieved when she’d been allowed to leave the Lubyanka, to go back to her apartment and live her life ‘normally’ again. But that had soon proved to be impossible, her every move monitored. Every room in her apartment had cameras now, even her bathroom, and she wore a microphone at all times, recording her every conversation.

  She could go to work, but she was no longer trusted with anything of importance; and of course, her previous absence – when she was at the Lubyanka, but which had been blamed on illness – was the result of much gossip and rumor from the other members of staff, even her friends.

  Her life was no longer hers, and she wondered if things were actually worse now than they were when she was a prisoner. It was like being under a suspended death sentence; she knew that when her usefulness was over, she would be tried as a traitor. There was a moratorium on execution, but she knew that it was still legally allowed; and rumor had it that traitors were often still lined up and shot. And even if that wasn’t true, what would she have to look forward to? A life sentence in one of the female ‘correctional colonies’ in Perm, Siberia or Mordovia, where life was cheap and survival was a daily struggle.

  She sometimes considered taking her own life, but the fact was that she was so closely monitored, it seemed an impossibility. And, she admitted, perhaps she did not have it in her to make that final move anyway; even under heavy surveillance, she could throw herself in front of a speeding bus before anyone could stop her. And yet she always shied away at the last moment.

  But the stress was killing her nevertheless, slowly but surely; the acid in her stomach gave her constant pain, and headaches had turned to migraines. She couldn’t sleep, and she was but a shadow of her former self.

  But she had been instructed to act normally, and so she had agreed to go out with friends tonight; some of her laughter had even been genuine, even with her ‘watchers’ in the background.

  And then they had disappeared, one after the other; just before all hell broke loose inside the jazz bar, bullets flying, bodies falling.

  She’d had no idea what was going on, just knew that she was swept up by a mass of people, transported in the wild mêlée through the fire exit and out into the freezing December snow outside.

  And still the bullets had continued to fly, the sound of gunfire mingling with screams and sirens.

  And somehow, eventually, she had found herself on Nikitskiy Lane as the crowds from the bar fled in all directions, her watchers nowhere to be seen.

  She had stayed there for some time, frozen to the spot. What should she do? Where should she go?

  Where could she go?

  She could taste freedom, but at the same time knew that running would be hopeless; she was, after all, up against the internal security service of the Russian Federation, perhaps the most far-reaching and powerful organization of its type in the world.

  How could she ever hope to escape?

  And then one of the friends from work she had been drinking with had appeared next to her, put an arm around her shoulder and led her away, told her that she would take her back to her apartment with her.

  It was clear that Yana had sympathy with her situation, knew that something was not right with her, although perhaps not quite what it was; seemed to understand that this was the opportunity that her friend needed.

  Now she was seated at Yana’s kitchen table, in the small apartment her friend kept on Skaryatinsky, hands wrapped around a mug of hot black tea. The news was on the television, and Galushka and her friend watched as the newscasters reported on the chase across Red Square; information was scarce, and the government soon terminated the live camera feeds, obviously not wanting the world to know about the situation until the
Kremlin could put its own spin on it.

  Galushka wondered what she was going to do. Unlike her, Yana had a car, and she speculated on whether her friend would consider giving her a lift out of the city.

  She was about to ask, when there was a loud knock on the door and Yana turned to her, a look of sorrow on her face.

  ‘I am sorry Veronika,’ she said, and walked the few paces to her door, unlocking it and pulling it open to reveal two men in the darkened hallway beyond.

  Her heart fell, her dreams of escape shattered.

  She didn’t know the men, but she knew their type.

  FSB agents, come to retrieve her.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Yana said again, head bowed as the men moved past her into the apartment, and Galushka felt her soul being literally crushed. Even her friends were against her now, although she knew that Yana had probably had no choice in the matter.

  ‘Come,’ said the first man to Galushka, flashing the FSB badge inside his coat. ‘It is time for you to go home.’

  Cole put the cellphone down on the seat next to him, glad to have spoken to Julie Barrington, who was still driving around Moscow in the big SUV.

  Cole was driving too now, having stolen a BMW sedan from outside the Bolshoi. Giselle was currently in full swing, and he knew that the owner probably wouldn’t register the loss for another hour or so at least.

  The trapdoor had no longer been connected to the prima ballerina’s dressing room – if indeed it ever had been – but instead came out underneath a gigantic palette of boxes, crammed into one corner of the stagehands’ storeroom. The palette had been so low to the ground that the old wooden trapdoor had almost immediately hit the underside, giving Cole less than a full twelve inches of space in which to crawl out.

  It was a good job though, because the room was in almost constant use, stagehands going back and forth, carrying items to the winches which carried them up to the immediate back-stage area of the main stage.

  After he had painfully extricated himself from the small opening, Cole had lain under the palette and waited patiently. Finally, the room had been clear, and he took the chance to move, pulling himself out from underneath and racing for the side door. There was a set of stairs beyond, and Cole had rushed up these and finally exited the building via a fire door, just before another group of workers came back down.

  Cole had kept to the shadows as best he could, all too aware of how he must look. His legs were soaked up to his waist from the water in the tunnels, and his clothes were bathed in dust and grime. But he had finally made it to a small parking lot, where it had been a simple enough affair to break into one of the first cars he came to.

  As he drove off, he had seen a convoy of government vehicles streaming toward the Bolshoi, and realized he had been just in time; someone had obviously figured out what he was up to, and sent for the cavalry.

  He pulled now into the traffic on Sadovaya-Karetnaya, part of the Garden Ring Road, having already traveled some way north on Petrovska. Tverskaya would perhaps have been quicker, but he didn’t want to tempt fate by going back there; after what had happened at the Ritz-Carlton, the whole street was probably closed off.

  He moved south with the traffic, looking for the exit he needed at the same time as monitoring the target on his cellphone screen.

  He came off at Oruzheynyy, going straight on Triumfalnaya Square before turning right on 1st Brestskaya. It was a three-lane, one-way street that would eventually feed out onto Gasheka, which would then allow a left turn back onto the parallel road of 2nd Brestskaya – which was where Veronika Galushka lived, and where she was almost certainly now headed.

  Cole looked back at his phone, saw the icon moving slowly up the road ahead of him – from the tracer that he had placed in her coat pocket earlier that night – and looked up again, saw with satisfaction that he’d timed things perfectly.

  The car was right there, just fifty yards away.

  It was a dark government sedan, and Cole knew that the FSB were probably escorting Galushka home, until they figured out what they were going to do with her.

  When Cole had been waiting in the storeroom of the Bolshoi, he had come to a stark realization – after what had happened tonight, there was going to be no way he could get to Galushka . . . unless he acted quickly, when they didn’t expect it.

  He acted quickly now, putting his theory into action, accelerating hard up behind the sedan, cutting across into the next lane and darting forward until his front wing was level with the sedan’s rear wing.

  And then – before the FSB driver could react – Cole yanked his wheel hard over, hitting the sedan at the rear corner and sending it into a flat spin across the street.

  Cole pulled away cleanly as the car span once, twice, and then crashed hard into the row of vehicles parked down the land-hand side of the street.

  Cole stopped the BMW, blocking off the street from traffic, jumped out of the car and ran toward the crash. As he got there, the nearest door was opening at the front, the passenger trying to get out, and Cole stamped hard onto the door, smashing it back onto the FSB officer. The man screamed in pain as the bottom of the door crushed his leg, and Cole pulled it open and punched the agent in the jaw, dropping him to the tarmac.

  The driver, on the other side, was trying desperately to grab his pistol, but Cole already had his own weapon out, aimed at the man’s head. It was the pistol he’d taken from the security guard in the basement of GUM; he didn’t know if it would still work after being dragged through the tunnel-water, but the FSB agent didn’t know any better and immediately stopped moving, fear in his eyes.

  Cole reached across and slammed the butt of the pistol across the agent’s temple, knocking him unconscious; and it was only then that he heard the screams coming from the rear compartment.

  Cole pulled out of the front and wrenched open the rear door, aiming his pistol at Veronika Galushka. ‘Get out,’ he told her in Russian, but she just shook her head fiercely and turned away, trying to curl up into a protective ball.

  He knew there was no time for messing around, and reached in for her, yanking her out of her seat and dragging her into the street.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, pulling her northwards up 1st Brestskaya. He could already hear the approaching vehicle, and a moment later he saw it – the extraction team’s black SUV pulling over on Gasheka at the junction with Brestskaya, the side door already opening to reveal two team members ready and waiting, while another scanned the area over the top of an assault rifle.

  Cole had a hand over Galushka’s mouth to stop her screaming, and in a few more seconds they were there at the car, one man out and opening the trunk; Cole didn’t stop moving, merely shoved Galushka inside the trunk and followed her inside, the lid slamming closed over them an instant later.

  From the dark confines of the trunk, he heard the car door shutting moments later, and then felt the vehicle pulling cleanly out into the light traffic.

  The extraction had taken so little time that – especially in the dark of night – it was unlikely that anyone knew what had happened.

  As Galushka struggled in his arms, he almost allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief.

  He had turned adversity to his advantage; they were on their way to the safe house, and Cole could finally find out what the woman knew.

  PART TWO

  1

  ‘I trust everything is fine in Moscow?’ said the Belarusian president, with feigned concern.

  Or perhaps, Mikhail Emelienenko thought again, the concern wasn’t feigned at all, but was quite real? Given their current relationship, problems in Moscow might well mean problems in Minsk, and the Russian president decided to treat the comment seriously.

  ‘Nothing we cannot handle,’ he said with a smile. ‘And certainly nothing that will affect our own business together.’

  The two men were seated next to each other within Alexei Krinitsky’s private study in the sprawling Independence Palace in Minsk. Krinitsky was only the s
econd president of the Republic of Belarus, having inherited the title after Alexander Lukashenko – who had been in power since the first presidential election in 1994 – had been killed during the attack in London.

  He had been losing his grip on power for some time anyway though, as evidenced by the fact that Emelienenko had been doing back-door deals with Krinitsky for quite a while now. As an experienced general in the Belarusian armed forces before turning to politics, Krinitsky was just the man Emelienenko needed. The fact that Lukashenko had been taken out of the picture was to the benefit of both men, and it was perhaps no coincidence that Krinitsky had strongly advised his predecessor to attend that fatal memorial at Wembley Stadium.

  It was the first chance Emelienenko had had to visit his partner at his new residence, and he welcomed the chance to get out of Moscow. With the war that was coming, soon he would not have the luxury of moving around so easily, and wanted to make the most of it while he could.

  ‘Good,’ said Krinitsky, as he poured Emelienenko some coffee from the silver urn that rested on the small table between them. ‘That is good. Because we are entering a rather . . . delicate phase of your plan, are we not?’

  ‘Our plan, Alexei, please,’ Emelienenko said. ‘You have been involved in this for almost as long as I.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Krinitsky said, pouring coffee for himself now. He allowed himself a sip before looking up at his Russian colleague. ‘But let us not forget that the idea was yours.’

  Emelienenko knew that it was actually Vladimir Dementyev’s idea really, but held his tongue. ‘So everything is still in place?’ he asked instead. ‘All of our forces are integrated fully?’