by Tim Tigner
“You went to the memorial service last night, didn’t you?” Vova didn’t wait for her reply. “I wish you’d stop going, Anna. It gets you too worked up. And besides, it’s been five years now.”
“It’s become more of a social event than a memorial service.”
“But it still upsets you.”
“Of course it still upsets me. We still don’t have closure. They still haven’t explained how it happened.”
“And they never will. The government is still living down Chernobyl. They’re not about to turn an anomaly into a pattern by adding Academic City to the list.”
She knew he was right. The legal system had gotten them nowhere. “You’re right. That’s why I’ve decided to get the information another way.”
Vova pounced on that, as she knew he would. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“It’s nothing too radical. I just agreed to take General Karpov up on his latest dinner invitation.”
Vova squeezed his bar of soap, sending it bouncing around the sink. “You’re going to try to finesse classified information out of Vasily Karpov, the slickest politician in Siberia? The most powerful man east of Moscow? A KGB general? And you don’t think that’s radical?”
“It’s just dinner. He’s been after me for months. He’ll be motivated to please me. To impress me. And his office is right there in the same compound where the accident occurred, so it won’t be hard to steer the discussion that way.”
“It’s still a big risk, Anna.”
“You weren’t at the hospital back then. You didn’t see the endless stream of our best and brightest as they were wheeled in looking like sausages off a grill. You didn’t hear the animalistic groans escaping their charred throats. They were burned so badly that their skin sloughed off their hands like gloves while I held them, waiting for the morphine to work. I’ve never felt so powerless, so ashamed.”
“Ashamed?”
“I didn’t even recognize Kostya. Didn’t know I’d . . . didn’t know that one of them was my brother until I opened his documents to fill out the death certificate.”
Vova clearly didn’t know how to respond to that.
Anna nodded toward the clipboard beside the sink. “Frostbite, you say?”
“It looks like his fingers are going to make it, but his left foot has to go.”
Anna nodded. They were seeing a lot of severe frostbite cases this winter, especially on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday mornings. Men would go out on payday weekends, drink themselves to within an inch of their lives, and then try to stumble home, only to pass out in the snow somewhere along the way. In the winter they usually died from exposure, but this patient had been very lucky. Professor Petrov had been warmly dressed and had probably fallen within an hour of being spotted by a snowplow.
Many of Anna’s colleagues turned their noses up at men like Petrov. They figured he got what he deserved for behaving the way he did, and saved their compassion for the wives left home alone to worry if their alcoholic husbands would ever return. Anna, however, did not blame these men. She blamed the system that had failed them.
Perestroika had turned Russia on its head, and not everyone could adjust to the new reality. Gorbachev’s great restructuring pulled them relentlessly forward toward an unknown future while they clung stubbornly to the past they knew. The tension ripped many apart. For Anna, the plight of the Petrovs was easy to understand. These men had lived in a very proud and stable system for decades. They had purpose. As the signs and posters that still hung everywhere proclaimed, “They were Building Communism!” But not anymore. Now they were limping to their graves on plastic feet.
Anna used a marker to circumscribe three-fourths of Petrov’s ankle and then drew the flap she would fold up to stitch over the stump. This was so sad. The leg barely bled as she cut through it with her scalpel—lack of blood supply was why it had to go.
She looked up at Vova, got a nod, and began to cut. As she put saw to bone, Petrov suddenly began convulsing. “Defibrillators,” she yelled to Vova.
“On it,” he said, flicking the switch to power them up and then handing her the paddles.
Anna placed one on either side of Petrov’s sternum and pushed the buttons. Nothing happened. She looked up and saw that the status light on the machine was still red. Anna stood there, paddles poised, waiting for the green light to indicate that the defibrillators would fire. Three seconds, ten seconds, thirty seconds, and then the EKG went flat. Petrov was in cardiac arrest. Forty seconds, forty-five, fifty, sixty seconds, and then it was too late. Petrov died with her hands on his heart. He died because the mighty Soviet Union could not afford to replace a battery. How long could this go on?
Chapter 32
SIBERIAN OUTBACK, RUSSIA
Yarik came out of his daydream to the sound of a buzzer and the blinking of a dashboard light. The tailgate was open. This could only mean problems, problems caused by the incompetence of others—again. First Sergey had lost Alex and now, now was it possible that seven armed guards had been so incompetent that Alex, bound and blindfolded, had managed to overcome them? No. It was not possible. It had to be a malfunction. Yet his instinct begged to differ . . .
Yarik got up to check. A twist and shove found the door to the cargo hold blocked from the other side. Until that moment, the safe bet was that either an electrical problem or the antics of an undisciplined soldier were behind the blinking light. Now with the door also blocked, Yarik knew there was a serious problem. One or more of his men must be a traitor.
But why? Who was this American? Victor had clearly underestimated Alex. Then Sergey had done the same. Now, Yarik realized with infuriating clarity, he, too, had not given Alex Ferris his due.
Yarik ordered the pilot to circle back and then turned to throw his 120 kilograms against the iron door. After a few tries he could tell that there was a blockage wedged between the overlap at the hinged end of the door and the bulkhead. His blows were flexing the metal, but only slightly. Fortunately a few millimeters of permanent deformation in either the door or the blockage would likely release the tension and allow the blockage to drop free.
To create those millimeters, Yarik dropped to the floor and braced his back against the copilot’s chair. He took a deep breath, pictured Ferris’s smug face, and pushed his legs into the door with the force of a hydraulic press. He knew from experience in the gym that he could apply over a thousand kilograms of pressure that way. The question was, which would give first, the door, the chair, or his back?
Thirty seconds later, his face red and his thighs sweaty, he relaxed his legs, stood up, and pulled the door fully closed. Then he kicked the spot where the bulkhead had bulged and was rewarded with the sound of the blockage dropping free.
Carnage greeted Yarik’s eyes when he opened the door. Normally it would have brought a smile to his face, but this was a victory for the other team. Team? Yes, team. Someone must have helped Alex. He could not have done this alone.
Yarik counted bodies and found only six. He checked their faces and deduced that the missing man was Bagrat. Could the Armenian be in cahoots with Ferris? No way. Bagrat had a large family, three sisters and four brothers. If he turned traitor, it would be a death sentence for them all. But then who? How?
Yarik checked the cargo benches to see if Ferris had stuffed Bagrat’s corpse inside, and found the bullet holes that told the tragic tale. Someone had stowed aboard and come blasting out of the bench. Had one of the Peitho victims learned something about the Knyaz and sent a mercenary to dispatch them? Did Alex have a partner that neither Victor nor Sergey had spotted? No matter, he would catch up with this mercenary soon enough. Then Alex’s secret partner would cease to exist—but only after Yarik made him talk.
Once again, Yarik would have to see the mission through personally. He knew this should infuriate him, but instead found himself anticipating the hunt. He withdrew a p
arachute from the untouched cargo bench and walked back into the cabin, donning it as he went.
As soon as he entered the cockpit, the pilot shouted, “There they are,” and pointed toward the eastern horizon.
Using aviator’s binoculars, Yarik watched with fascination as the two fugitives dealt with the nightmare that haunted every paratrooper at one time or another. Then he gasped in unison with the pilot when one of them cut himself free and broke into a terminal plunge.
“I’m jumping after them,” Yarik barked. “You land as close to that corpse as you can and wait for me.” Then, without a pause or second glance, Yarik ran and dove out the back of the plane.
The airplane’s altitude was less than half of what it had been when Alex and the mercenary had jumped, so Yarik deployed his parachute after the standard three-one-thousand count. Once it snapped open he checked his canopy, twice, and then began a sweeping search of the ground for his prey.
If Yarik could spot him fast enough, and the wind worked in his favor, he would be able to crash down on the survivor like a hammer from heaven. The wind, however, had other ideas. It worked so strongly against him that he couldn’t even catch sight of his quarry. It was all he could do to steer toward the martyr’s crash zone.
The landscape below was spotted with drifting snow in some places and covered with windswept rocks in others. There was no civilization to be seen. Yarik estimated they were at least a hundred kilometers from even the smallest of villages. It reminded him of the time he had parachuted with a group of hunters into Kamchatka looking for snow leopards. It was perfect.
A powerful explosion rocked Yarik’s ears when he was just a hundred meters from the ground. The blast sent a wave of heat billowing forth, slapping his face and sucking the wind from his chute. He dropped like a stone for twenty meters before reinflation, and then looked up to see the airplane plummeting to Earth. The resourceful bastard booby-trapped the plane.
With the plane gone, nobody knew he had parachuted after Alex. Even worse, the only member of the Knyaz who knew that Alex had an accomplice was now stuck in the middle of nowhere. Of course, either Alex or that accomplice was already dead, but like cockroaches, where there was one, there were likely to be others.
Was the Knyaz infested? Apparently it was. Yarik cursed Victor, but was just as mad at himself. In all these years, they had only let one slip through, but if the past twenty-four hours were any indication, that one could cost them the game.
A moment later Yarik did a parachute landing fall on the same frozen plane where one fugitive had planted himself at full speed, at “terminal velocity,” as they called it. He released his chute as soon as he planted his heels so that the raging wind would not drag him across the ground, plowing a furrow with his bald head as it went. Then he sprang to his feet like a panther released and ran in the direction of the corpse. It was extermination time.
While searching for the body, Yarik found himself hoping that it would not be Alex. Learning the identity of the mercenary could be far more valuable to the Knyaz than just having Alex himself out of the way. Plus, both he and Karpov wanted Alex alive, although for different reasons.
Six anxious minutes after landing, Yarik found it: a blood-soaked corpse staring blindly at the sky. It was not Alex.
Superficial gore and blind stare aside, the victim appeared to be asleep. The illusion would not last. Yarik had seen fall victims before. He knew that the impact liquefied their insides, and that the body would feel like a water bed to the touch. At the first bite from a wolf’s mouth, or peck from a vulture’s beak, the innards would ooze out through the gash like honey from an overturned pot.
Judging by appearance, the mercenary was both a Russian and a soldier. He wore a combat uniform stripped of rank and insignia like a special operative’s, and cut his hair to regulation. Given what he had done in the cargo hold, he was clearly no stranger to combat either. But he was more than just a soldier. This man had released himself from the parachute in order to save Alex. He had a martyr’s sense of honor.
Yarik pondered the implications for a moment as a frosty northerly wind howled about him and ice crystals melted on his face. Martyrs did what they did for a cause. Yarik felt a hollow pit open in his stomach. That cause was most likely the downfall of the Knyaz.
He did not have much patience for martyrs. In his eyes, they were fools. He had to acknowledge, however, that their principles did make them dangerous. He could respect the threat imposed by a man who lent fanatical courage and discipline to his convictions. But that was one weapon Yarik did not want in his arsenal. There was no one and no thing for which he would have cut himself free. To the contrary, as a predator and a survivor, he would have seen it as his duty to cut the other man free.
Enough philosophy. It was time to learn the martyr’s identity. With that information, he could look forward to hunting down all the fanatical associates inclined to assist Alex in his cause. Yarik searched the body for a wallet or dog tags. Both were absent. He looked for some other type of identification, something that would tell a tale. He found nothing. The man’s pockets only contained a couple of wigs and three pairs of glasses. The martyr must have had ID to enter the air base . . . Fucking Ferris must have taken it.
The martyr’s lack of identification was frustrating, but a setback of no consequence. He would pry it from the American by the skin of his—Wait a minute. Suppose Alex died before Yarik could reach him? What if he were to fall through the ice of a frozen lake, or twist an ankle and become wolf chow? Yarik had to catch Alex before Siberia did. It was crucial that he learn whom the Knyaz were up against.
Yarik paused to consider his backup options. He did not have a camera—he wasn’t the sentimental type—and he knew wolves would devour the body before he could return for it. Furthermore, the ground was too hard to dig a grave, and there were not enough rocks around to build one, not that he had time for either of those. Had Alex anticipated this predicament? Probably. He was a cunning bastard. Well, Yarik mused, he could scheme too.
It took but a moment for him to devise an elegant solution. This time it was Alex who had underestimated his opponent. Alex’s move may have been clever, but it was not clever enough.
Yarik’s blade was long and heavy, a cross between a hunting knife and a machete. He had acquired it a decade ago on the Ivory Coast from a man who had intended to take Yarik’s head but lost his own instead.
Yarik loved the feel of the finely carved cocobolo-wood handle, and was hypnotized by the reflection of its surgical steel. On a stakeout he could content himself for hours simply sharpening the blade as it glimmered in the moonlight. For a kill, he favored the knife over other weapons—it was more surgical, more reliable, more personal, more precise.
With a swift, familiar movement he brought the blade whistling down onto the martyr’s wrist, severing the right hand with a practiced expertise. Since Yarik was confident that his adversary was a military man, he knew that his prints would be on file. If he had not been so sure, he would have taken the head as well.
Time to move on. Yarik could still see Alex’s tracks heading into the woods, although the north wind would soon erase them.
As the corpse deflated through the severed wrist like a fly in a spider’s mouth, Yarik slipped his trophy into the cargo pocket on his left thigh. His fingers came into contact with a plastic tube as he did so, and he smiled. The tube had a fourteen-character code stenciled to its side and “Ferris” penciled in below. One way or the other, the American was his.
Chapter 33
SIBERIAN OUTBACK, RUSSIA
Alex heard the plane explode and looked up with satisfied eyes to watch it plunge to earth. Andrey’s booby trap had worked! As he watched, pointed questions bombarded his head like fallout from the explosion: Would the KGB be chasing him? Where was the closest village? Was his number up in smoke?
For a moment the elation of regained freed
om took Alex’s mind off the profound sacrifice his mysterious new acquaintance had made, and added fuel to his pumping legs. But only for a moment. It would take a while for Alex to get his mind around all of the ramifications of that heroic act, but one conclusion was inescapable: what had begun as an investigation for truth and evolved into a fight for justice, was now also a quest of honor.
Despite the shock that numbed him and the danger that surrounded him, Alex found it hard not to dwell in disbelief on the way events were evolving, colliding, cascading around him. It was like the scenes of a Schwarzenegger movie without the cuts and cameras. He had followed the twisted path of a clever murder to the discovery of a diabolical device. Then he had uncovered the connection between that device and a grand scheme for international industrial espionage. Now that scheme had brought him to the heart of Russia, where invisible, opposing forces were going to extraordinary lengths to either ruin or rescue him. Where would it end? His investigation was snowballing by the hour, the pool of blood was spreading by the minute, and the only conclusion that seemed completely clear was that he must not fail.
Alex’s elation over the explosion extinguished like a storm-blown candle as he caught sight of another parachute. A hulking figure had just dropped below the tree line a couple hundred yards away. Yarik.
Alex was glad he had taken the time to strip Andrey of identification. Now he could use it, and Yarik could not. It was too bad his fallen comrade’s pockets had contained little more than papers. The pocketknife was a pitiful weapon, although he was very pleased to have it as a tool. Of course this tool could create weapons, and Alex knew all about doing that, but improvisation took time. Time was another thing that Alex did not have.