“Vladimir suggested we start here. During the Cold War, the First Directorate targeted American pilots for abduction, to learn the secrets and weaknesses of American aircraft. The protocols for the operation may be here.”
“But Julie…that happened after the fall of the USSR.”
“I know. But the men working in this building did not change. The operation may have continued under the direction of the FSB.” He made a cutting gesture. “Vladimir has never led me wrong.”
“I’m sorry. I should not have asked. I know that she must be very important to you.”
That stopped him. He turned to face her. “Asya, wanting to know what happened to my oldest daughter does not make me love you any less.”
Bishop felt her cheeks go hot.
I should not have said that, she thought.
“I wish you had known her,” Peter said. “You are so much alike.”
Bishop thought about what the search had already uncovered and the nightmare they had escaped in Virginia. “If King is right, maybe I will have a chance to know her.”
Peter did not respond to that, but resumed walking, faster now, as if to prevent her from asking any more questions.
They came to a corridor and followed it to a door at the far end. Beyond it was a dark room separated by a counter. The young man sitting behind the counter glanced up from the book he was reading and then grudgingly got to his feet.
Peter reached into his pocket as if to produce his credentials, then abruptly froze. A look of embarrassment came over his face. “I seem to have left my papers behind. I’ll come back later.”
Bishop quickly overcame her surprise at the sudden shift in Peter’s focus. Something had clearly spooked him. While she did not fully understand the nature of the threat, she knew that it was critical to stay in character. She faced the clerk behind the counter and gave a helpless shrug.
That was when she saw it.
“No need,” the man was saying, hands extended invitingly. “You’re here. Why make another trip?”
The man reminded her of Rook—tall, blond hair and broadly built, with muscles that strained the fabric of his dress shirt. Not the sort of person one would expect to find guarding a desk in a dark forgotten corner of the building.
Peter had caught the discrepancy immediately. If his instincts—and hers—were wrong about the man, then the excuse of having forgotten his credentials would be accepted at face value, and they would be allowed to make their exit without interference.
But if they were right about the man, then it was already too late.
“No, no,” Peter said, waving his arms. “We must follow procedure.”
He turned for the exit, and Bishop turned, too, but not before she saw the man vault over the counter. She reacted instinctively, dropping into a crouch and performing a spinning leg sweep that took the man’s feet out from under him a fraction of a second before they could touch the floor. The man went sprawling, sliding face first toward Peter.
At almost the same instant, the door behind the counter burst open. Two more men rushed out. They were big athletic men, like the phony clerk, wearing black suits and heavy coats, as if they expected the encounter to end with a trip out into the cold.
Despite the first man’s mishap, the new arrivals were gazing intently at Peter, as if he was both their primary target and the greatest threat in the room. As they rounded the end of the counter, aiming their compact Makarov pistols at her father, Bishop took full advantage of that misjudgment. She sprang out of her crouch and into a forward handspring, whipping her feet up and into the chest of the lead gunman. The added momentum of the acrobatic maneuver drove the man back into his accomplice and sent them both tumbling backward in a daze. Bishop landed cat-like on her feet. She whirled around to deal with the fake clerk, only to find that Peter had already taken care of that problem with a two-handed hammer blow to the back of the man’s neck.
“Run,” he shouted, rising up and throwing open the door through which they had entered only moments before.
Bishop moved, but before she got even halfway, two more figures clad in heavy greatcoats and wielding pistols appeared in the corridor beyond. They were too far away for her to charge them without taking a bullet first. The fact that they had not already fired meant maybe—just maybe—the intention was to take her and Peter alive, but alive did not necessarily mean uninjured. Worse, the two men she had bowled over were already recovering—four gunmen against the two of them.
Suddenly, the rearmost of the pair at the door vanished from her view, as if plucked off the face of the Earth by the hand of God. The lead man was oblivious to his partner’s fate, but a moment later, the same invisible force struck him as well. Something hit him from behind, driving him forward and snapping his head back so violently that Bishop thought she could hear bones cracking. As the man careened into the room, the face of their savior was revealed.
“Mother?”
Lynn ducked back out of view, even as something thundered in Bishop’s ear. It was a shot fired by one of the men she had earlier knocked down. The round sizzled through the air where Lynn had been standing a moment earlier.
Bishop spun around, and before the man could change his aimpoint to a more immediate target, she struck him in the Adam’s apple with a knife hand attack. The Makarov slipped from fingers that were now more interested in clutching his injured throat, giving Bishop all the time she needed to catch the pistol before it could hit the ground.
Or try to.
As her hand made contact with the falling metal object, the world vanished in a flash. She dimly registered the impact of something against the side of her head, and then she was face down on the floor. She knew what had happened. The other man had struck her. She knew that she was now vulnerable and exposed, and she knew that if she didn’t recover immediately, she would be dead. But the message was slow to reach the part of her brain that would enable action.
Another shot cracked the air above her.
She struggled to move, flopping sideways like a fish out of water. Then she managed to roll over, hands raised to ward off the amorphous shape that was descending toward her. Her fingers made contact but she was unable to deflect the thing that crashed onto her, pinning her to the ground.
Still, she did not give up.
She pushed against the thing holding her down and was surprised when, despite its mass, it shifted away. That was when she realized it was not an attack but rather the unmoving body of the man who had struck her. Dazed, she squirmed out from under the dead man, ready to rejoin the fight, but there were no enemies left. The only people still standing in the room were her family.
King reached out a hand to help her up. “I leave you alone for five minutes…”
“Thanks for coming to the rescue,” Peter said. He was bent over, hands resting on his knees and panting to catch his breath, but otherwise he appeared no worse for wear.
“It was mom’s idea,” King said.
Lynn merely smiled.
Bishop took the proffered hand and got to her feet. “I hope you have B Plan.”
King started to say something, but Peter beat him to it.
“Actually, I do.”
16
Lynn had been the first one to spot trouble. King had been watching the docent’s expression for any hint that the man had noticed two people missing from his tour group, and so he had not seen the line of men in long coats moving purposefully through the lobby. Lynn’s senses were evidently more attuned.
It was still hard for him to think of Lynn Sigler—or rather Lynn Machtchenko—as anything but the kindly woman who had always been there for him when he needed her, and even sometimes when he hadn’t wanted to admit that he needed her. The years had blunted his memory of her sharper edges, but it still boggled his mind that she had once been a spy. He supposed that was an indication of just how good she had been at her job.
Their abrupt separation from the tour group did not go unnoticed. Kin
g had heard the docent shouting after them, but Lynn had not looked back and neither had he. They followed the group of what King assumed were FSB officers into a stairwell, where Lynn had surprised him yet again by stealthily picking off the last man in the group. She had slipped a wire garrote—which King had not even known she possessed—over his head. Then, with a sharp cross-arm pull, she had throttled the man to death. She exhibited similar cold brutality when they caught up to the rest of the group, just in time to save Peter and Bishop.
My mom’s a killing machine, King thought, as he bent to relieve the fallen FSB men of their pistols. He handed one to Bishop, and tucked another in his belt. Who knew?
“There’s another way out,” Peter said, as he headed back through the doors. “There’s an entire warren of tunnels underneath Lubyanskaya. Secret passages to the Metro station and other places. We can leave through one of those.”
“Not to be a spoilsport,” King said, “but don’t you think they’ll have thought of that? This wasn’t a random event. They set a trap for us. For you.”
“Vladimir,” Lynn murmured.
Peter pursed his lips together for a moment. “I don’t want to believe that he informed on us. Maybe someone intercepted my last call to him.” He turned to King again. “They meant to take us here. Hit us with overwhelming force.”
“They didn’t count on our overwhelming force,” Lynn said.
Peter smiled at his wife. “They might be watching the main entrance and the passage to the Metro station, but there is one exit that I think they will not be watching. We have to hurry though. Once they realize they’ve failed here, they’ll close in.”
With Peter leading, they raced into the maze of passages, some of which looked—and smelled—like sewer tunnels. King brought up the rear, checking their six every few seconds. He didn’t see any pursuers, but a few minutes after the battle in the archive office, the sound of shouting became audible.
“Here,” Peter said in a hoarse whisper, leading them down yet another short passage. At the far end, a brick arch framed what appeared to be a doorway, except where the door ought to have been, there were only more bricks. The masonry appeared to be a relatively recent addition. The bricks were not as worn or discolored as those that formed the surrounding wall, and the faint extrusions of mortar that joined them indicated the work had been done from the opposite side.
“Uh, Dad…”
Peter raised a hand to silence him. “This exit was sealed a few years ago during the renovation. That’s why they won’t be watching it.”
“Right,” King said slowly. “Because it’s not actually an exit.”
Peter took something from his pocket and turned to Lynn. “Please tell me you brought it, Babushka.”
“You know how I feel about proper dental care,” she said, holding up a similar object. When he saw what it was, King was speechless. Both of his parents were holding small travel-sized tubes of toothpaste.
“Toothpaste?” Bishop said, incredulous. “Are we going to brush our way out of here?”
“Something like that,” Peter said. He uncapped his tube and pressed it to the wall, squeezing out a strip of blue gel that ran up the edge of the arch, around the top and back down the other side. Even before he was done, Lynn was doing the same with her tube, though her gel was a chalky white.
“Let me guess,” King said, at last finding his voice. “A compound explosive. Separately, they’re inert and won’t react to chemical screening, but combine them and you’ve got plastique. Very James Bond.”
“Please,” Peter said with a derisive snort. He stepped aside to allow Lynn to complete her contribution. “Ian Fleming got the idea for Q section from rumors he’d heard about what KGB Fifth Directorate was developing. He barely scratched the surface.”
“We should probably move back,” Lynn advised, standing up straight as soon as she had finished. “The reaction usually takes about thirty seconds, but there’s no telling—”
That was enough for King. He grabbed ahold of his parents, one with each hand, and pulled them several paces away from the arch. “Bish. Duck and cover.”
He had barely gotten the words out when a noise like a jet engine filled the passage. A shockwave shuddered through his body, followed by a blast of heat and a wave of nitrate smoke laced with gritty debris. From the midst of the miasma, he felt both Peter and Lynn pulling against his restraining hands, drawing him back toward the source of the blast, and then beyond. Shattered bricks crunched underfoot for a moment, but as the cloud began to abate, he saw that they were now standing in a small room, or possibly the end of another tunnel. It was illuminated only by the glow of Peter’s penlight.
“This way,” he called out, waggling the light like a beacon.
King fumbled forward until he was mostly clear of the debris cloud. Somehow, Peter and Lynn had emerged from the blast without even a hair out of place. Bishop was covered in dust, resembling a powdered donut. King suspected he was as well.
Peter kept urging them onward, deeper into what King now saw was indeed another passage, dark and musty from years of disuse. They came to a wooden door so warped by moisture and mildew that King thought they might have to use more of the explosive to get through, but a sharp kick from Peter caused it to burst open. The passage permitted entry into what looked like a cramped warehouse, filled with pallets loaded with cardboard boxes.
Peter paused there for the first time, as if uncertain where to go next.
“Not what you remembered?” King asked.
“Of course it isn’t,” Peter said, a bit testily. “They remodeled the building a few years ago, closed off the old tunnels. I know where we are. I just don’t know the most direct way to an exit.”
“We’re in basement, right?” Bishop said. “Maybe look for stairs?”
Peter gave a noncommittal nod and started forward through the maze of pallets. Unlike the supply depot in Virginia, little attempt had been made at organizing the wares. The wooden skids and their contents—some stacked too high for King to see over, others with only one or two boxes—were simply jammed in like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. As they moved toward the center of the storage area however, they found a central structure surrounding a large freight elevator door. Alongside it was an ordinary sized door marked with Cyrillic characters.
Stairs.
“That’s more like it,” Peter crowed. He pushed open the door and started bounding up the steps.
Lynn was only a few steps behind, but before she disappeared from view she turned to look at her children. King thought she had an almost manic expression, like a young child at an amusement park rushing from one thrill ride to the next. “Come on, kids. What are you waiting for?”
King recognized the signs of an adrenaline high, but try as he might, he could not reconcile his memories of the kind, nurturing woman with what he was now seeing.
My mom the superspy? Nope.
He exchanged a glance with Bishop and then nodded, signaling that he would continue to bring up the rear. A moment later, he was charging up the stairs behind the others. The well-worn concrete steps zig-zagged back and forth, rising without any exits. Finally, after at least two or three stories worth of ascent, they came to a landing. Peter already had the door open.
The area beyond was cluttered with boxes and pallets, but unlike the basement storeroom, here there were windows through which afternoon light streamed in. That was not the only difference however. As they emerged from the stairwell, several heads turned in their direction. The men, laborers by the look of them, looked up from their activities and regarded them with a mixture of curiosity and confusion. Peter seemed at last to have found his bearings. He ignored the workers and led the group away from the windows, toward a pair of double doors that let out into a brightly lit service corridor. He opened the first door they came to and led them through the cluttered backroom of a retail establishment. A young woman, wearing a blue apron embroidered with a cartoon image, was sitting at a t
able with a mug of some hot beverage. She looked up in surprise as they passed through. A moment later, they emerged onto the sales floor of an enormous toy store.
“This is Detsky Mir,” Bishop exclaimed.
“It was,” Peter said. “They had to change the name when they reopened last year.”
King mentally translated the name—Children’s World—and made the connection. While not widely known in the Western world, Detsky Mir was nearly legendary in Eastern Europe. Built in the 1950s, it was an enormous mall filled with shops selling almost anything a child could want—toys, candy, clothing—in a fantasy-themed setting. It was several stories high with a façade of tall arches. The signs out front identified it simply as ‘Central Children’s Store.’ He had only been vaguely aware of the building when they had arrived at Lubyanskaya Square. His focus had been on the FSB building across the street.
“A secret passage connecting KGB headquarters to a toy store,” King mused. “It makes sense in a disturbing kind of way.”
“We’ll blend in with the crowd,” Peter said without stopping. “Make our way to the Metro.”
Blending in was easier said than done, particularly for King and Bishop who still bore the soot and dust of the explosion in the underground passage, but Peter was not wrong about the crowd. They emerged onto a balcony overlooking an expansive atrium bustling with activity. On the floor below, children frolicked in elaborate playsets that resembled fairytale castles. For the older kids, there were science-fiction environments from popular American films. In contrast to the playful innocence of the setting, the interior façades seemed almost intentionally ostentatious—like the lobby of a gentrified luxury hotel. An ornate glass ceiling rose overhead, and at the far end of the atrium, five stories above the ground floor, were the exposed gears of the biggest mechanical clock King had ever seen. A suitably large pendulum, polished to a mirror sheen, hung down from the clock, sweeping lazily back and forth above the swirling human sea.
Empire (A Jack Sigler Thriller Book 8) Page 13