by Tim Tigner
An idea that had been building up in the back of Victor’s mind over the years like crustaceans on a breakwater. With Karpov’s grand revelation, that idea began to solidify into the foundation of an alternative lifestyle. As Victor pondered fresh possibilities, a real estate advertisement in the Wall Street Journal caught his eye. The Island of Emily was a mere forty-six nautical miles from the sand where he now strolled. It came fully equipped with a six-bedroom mansion and a fifty-eight-foot yacht. The cost was a mere thirty-two million dollars.
Now, Victor didn’t have thirty-two million dollars, but he did own a twenty percent stake in Knyaz AG, the Swiss umbrella corporation that owned Irkutsk Motorworks, SovStroy, and RuTek. Karpov had given twenty percent each to Yarik, Stepashin, and him, retaining forty percent for himself. Victor’s shares were only worth about half the cost of Emily now, but in a year or so, after the Knyaz had successfully launched all the new product lines, they would be worth billions.
There was one big problem, however. Victor did not yet have physical possession of the shares. He had not been to Russia since the companies had privatized.
Standing there on the scorching sand, watching the waves pound endlessly away like his father’s scorn, Victor weighed his options, and made his decision. He would find some excuse to go to Russia. He would take possession of his shares, one way or the other. Then, before Karpov knew what had and had not happened, Victor would be off to Emily in a puff of green smoke. Let the old man find someone else to kill Gorbachev.
PART III
Chapter 44
NOVOSIBIRSK, SIBERIA
Alex opened his eyes to a familiar face, a kind face, his angel’s face. Yes, yes, the doctor from the ambulance, now he remembered. “Where am I?”
“You’re safe. Don’t push it; let yourself come out of it slowly.”
Alex took a long, deep breath and propped himself up on one elbow.
“How do you feel?”
“I feel like I was rolled down a mountain in a rusty barrel. A big improvement. What’s your name?”
“Anna.”
“Where am I?”
“You’re in my apartment. Tell me, what’s your name?”
What’s your name: three mundane words, one tricky question. It got his mind going. Alex didn’t have his own documents anymore, or even Alexander Grekov’s. The last time he checked he had Yarik’s and Andrey’s passports. Could he pass for either of them? Should he try? Was it possible she had staged the rape?
“You’re hesitating.”
“I’m sorry. Your simple question got me thinking about a lot of things; I’ve been through quite a bit lately. My name is Alex, Alex Ferris.”
“What kind of a name is Ferris?”
“My mother was Russian. My father . . . American.”
Anna exhaled slowly. “How about I give you some tea, and you give me your story.”
“That sounds like a fine plan. One question first, please. How long was I out?”
It was her turn to pause and his to exhale. “Five days.”
Five days. Alex looked at his wrist. His beloved compass watch was still there, but it had stopped so he could not verify the date. Perhaps that was a good sign. A mastermind might well have wound the watch and set the date to reinforce a ruse.
Anna smiled and got up from the edge of the bed. “I’ll make tea.”
Once she left the room, Alex flopped back down and stared at the ceiling. He wanted to absorb and process what had happened before moving ahead, but he did not have the time. He had to decide if his surroundings were real or staged, if Anna was an angel or an actress. She passed his intuitive test—he was naturally relaxed in her presence—but he had been fooled before. Playing the long game, sending in a beautiful doctor, a vulnerable soul eager to save and be saved, was classic KGB.
Alex tried to distance himself from his emotions so he could run objectively through his options. He had four basic alternatives: he could delay, he could lie, he could tell her part of the truth, or he could tell it all. He only had a couple of minutes to decide while Anna waited for the water to boil. If this was all a clever interrogation—the ambulance, the rape, Florence Nightingale’s apartment—giving him time to think was their first mistake.
As he began to dissect the scenarios, Alex realized that his initial calculation had been wrong. He did not have four alternatives; he had two. If Anna was an actress, then he was a prisoner and nothing he said or did would get him anywhere but dead. Conclusion: lie to the liar. But if Anna was what she appeared to be, then the truth would set him free.
Images began flashing through his mind, ranging from Clint Eastwood’s do-you-feel-lucky line, to the logic problems of his youth. He never expected that he would actually have to make this decision, but he had been preparing for it all his life. The big difference between this puzzle and those: no eraser.
Alex was still chewing when Anna returned with two teacups and a basket of Russian chocolates. He accepted his cup with a smile and flashed back to the scene where she had found him staggering along the side of the road. She had given him tea then, too. Alex looked his benefactor in the eye. He saw nothing but kindness and concern painted there, in beautiful amber strokes. He smelled and then tasted the tea without breaking his gaze. Nothing peculiar registered. It occurred to Alex that he had been in a similar situation ten days earlier, sitting on a park bench with a woman no less desperate than he was now. Elaine had chosen to trust him. She had chosen wisely. Alex wanted to trust Anna, but would it be wise? With that thought Andrey’s image flashed before his eyes, and Alex made up his mind.
He could only imagine what thoughts were going through Anna’s mind as she listened to the crazy American with the bandaged head. Yet she listened without a skeptical crease or a judgmental twinge. She listened attentively even when Alex himself found it hard to believe. So he told it all. The only thing he kept secret was Elaine’s involvement and identity, and by the time he finished, he even felt guilty about that. He left nothing out, factual or emotional, from Frank’s death to Andrey’s to Yarik’s. Walking through it sequentially it struck him that each chapter concluded with a headstone. Would “Alex” soon be but another chapter of someone else’s larger story, or would he get to author the book?
For the first time in his life, Alex understood what drew people to counselors and psychiatrists. Perhaps they weren’t only for the weak. He had refused such services twice in his life: once when his father’s chain of mistresses came to light, once after the bomb in Rome. Perhaps if he had been more open-minded . . . But probably not. They had been sterile professionals in staged settings. By contrast, Anna was truly engaged, and likewise exposed. She was a partner rather than a third party.
After two hours of catharsis his story was complete. Alex leaned back on the couch, and Anna broke her silence. “I’ve got a few questions, if you don’t mind. But first I’ll make us some more tea.” As she rose, Alex knew that what she really needed was a few minutes alone to decide if she believed in him. Either that, or he was about to have another very bad day.
Chapter 45
NOVOSIBIRSK, SIBERIA
As soon as the kitchen door closed behind Anna, Alex crept across the room to see what she was up to. He crouched down so his shadow would not appear at eye level and then peered through the crack.
He couldn’t see much of the room, but the glass on the oven door reflected enough. Anna was sitting sideways on a chair with her back to the wall. She had tucked her knees up beneath her chin and wrapped her arms around them as though she were minding a nest. The pose wasn’t quite Rodin, but close enough. She was for real.
When Anna returned to the main room a few minutes later, she had a serious look on her face, but it melted when she looked his way. “What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
She gave a shrug and sat back down across from him. Then she took a deep breath an
d dove right in. “You really don’t have any idea who Andrey is or why he was helping you?”
Those were questions Alex had pondered more than once. “No, I don’t, although I’m sure those answers lie at the heart of the mystery. The only things Andrey told me about himself were that he worked for a cabinet minister and that his friend’s death was related to Frank’s.”
“And you believe him—a man you just met, the man who called you to the murder scene—when he tells you that a guy you went to four years of college with, your brilliant brother’s friend and confidant, is really a murdering Russian spy?”
Alex had gone over that one again and again while trekking through the wilderness. “As naïve as that may sound, I do. I have to admit that part of the reason I believe Andrey is that I want Jason to be the guilty one. But at the end of the day, I buy his story because the one thing I do know for certain about Andrey is that he was a man with a profound sense of duty, and honor.
“Mind if I ask a question now?” Alex said.
“Sure.”
“What’s been going on these last five days?”
“Well, as you might imagine, Vova and I have been concerned that the KGB rapists would track us down for personal revenge. We assumed, apparently correctly, that they would not report the embarrassing incident. We guessed that their most likely course of action would be to search the hospitals in their off hours for you.”
“So you didn’t take me to a hospital . . .”
“Right.”
“I’ve been here the whole time?”
“Right again.”
“There were some documents in a pocket. And some keys . . .”
“They’re in the end table.”
“Was I in a coma those five days?”
Anna flushed. “No. You were exhausted, depleted, and critically wounded. Your body needed quiet time to heal, but I couldn’t stay with you, and I couldn’t risk involving anyone else by asking them to stay with you . . . so I kept you drugged.” She looked up to meet Alex’s eye. He gave a reassuring nod while his hand found the spot on his arm where the IV had entered. “That way I knew you wouldn’t wake up while I was away during the day,” she paused, “and I felt safe at night. Today is Saturday, so I let you wake up. That’s why you’ve been able to keep talking these last few hours.”
“I can’t thank you enough for your kindness, your courage, your resilience. You’re an amazing woman, and I owe you my life. I won’t forget that.”
Anna blushed and looked relieved. “So, Mr. Private Eye, what’s next?”
Alex cleared his throat. “Good question. Can you get your hands on a map of the area surrounding Academic City?”
“I think I can manage that.”
“Excellent. There are some people I have to find.”
Chapter 46
NOVOSIBIRSK, SIBERIA
Two meals, eight hours, and a long nap after Alex’s story, they were in her kitchen, finishing off the cheap bottle of Moldavian wine she had uncorked with dinner.
Acting in the interests of her patient’s recovery, Anna had cajoled Alex into a day of rest and relaxation with the promise to procure him the map he wanted—tomorrow. Once he acquiesced, the pressure came uncorked, the wine began to flow, and a refreshing exchange bubbled forth. Anna did not usually drink or prescribe alcohol to her patients, but she knew that the sweetest memories were born in life’s exceptions, not its routines. She ran with her instinct on this one.
Their conversation eventually turned to the topic of Alex’s implant and the deviant power it represented. Soon they were slogging through a quagmire of conundrums, moral and political, but Anna felt uplifted despite the weighty words. She found it rejuvenating to enjoy an enlightened conversation with an attractive man, a man who wasn’t looking for anything from her but common kindness. “Do you think the axiom is true, that ‘all is fair in love and war’?” she asked.
“Of course not,” Alex said. “That’s the antithesis of the Golden Rule. The precipice of a very slippery slope. The universal justification for lowering the bar.”
“Go on.”
“I accept that ‘turnabout is fair play,’ but would assert that there is a ‘right’ side in most conflicts. You can identify it by looking for the side that doesn’t lower the bar. Morals are meaningless if you can suspend them at whim—and ‘love and war’ can encompass just about any whim.” Alex paused and rolled his shoulders. “I don’t mean to preach, Anna, I’ve just been thinking about this stuff a lot since Yarik Peithoed me.”
“It’s got to be terrible for you, the not knowing.”
“Pardon?”
“How do you handle not knowing if Yarik gave your number to someone else? It must be terrifying.”
Alex nodded. “It’s the pits.”
“If I were you I’d be spending every waking moment frantically trying to figure out a way to rid myself of that thing. How can you remain so calm and nonchalant with that time bomb in your body?”
“What are the alternatives?”
Anna wasn’t sure where he was going. “Alternatives?”
“The alternatives to being calm and nonchalant.”
“Are you saying you have a choice about how you feel?”
“It’s more of a question of control. When you can’t control a situation,” he nodded toward his hindquarters, “your best move is to control how you feel about it. In situations like that you’re almost always better off forcing vibrancy than feeling vulnerable.”
“Easier said than done.”
“Agreed. But I usually manage. More wine?”
“Uh-huh.” His tone was turning playful. She was ready for a little of that. “Is there some Zen technique they teach you in the CIA? Do they bring in a Tibetan monk to spend a day with you at orientation?”
“No, it doesn’t work like that.” He paused and grew the mischievous smile she had already come to know as his trademark. “In my case it was a Turk named Mehmet.”
Chapter 47
NOVOSIBIRSK, SIBERIA
“So a Turk named Mehmet taught you to be vibrant when vulnerable?” Anna said. “Is that another one of your American movie references like—what did you use earlier when you told me about your decision to leave the cabin—‘Yoda in the cave.’”
“Well, yeah. I mean yeah I did learn it from Mehmet, not yeah it’s a movie reference.”
“Go on. Tell me about it. I want to learn your secrets.”
“My partner Mehmet and I were in Turkey, near the Iranian border, looking for men of, shall we say, anti-American sentiment. After six weeks of dead ends, we had gotten a tip about a man who was willing to talk to us. He was a man whose son had been a member of the terrorist cell we were after—right up to the day they killed him. It was the first real break of the investigation.
“Mehmet and I were given a place to go and a time to be there. The site was an old abandoned monastery at the dead end of a dirt road ten miles from civilization. When we got there in our old Mitsubishi Pajero, a shiny, new black Range Rover was waiting. Four men wearing ski masks got out, two with AK-74s, and two with metal detectors. The leader yelled over that we should leave all our equipment in the Pajero. We did. Then his boys gave us the once-over with callused hands and metal detectors. They say you never really know the Middle East until you’ve been patted down by a fanatic, and I would have to agree.”
Anna choked on her wine and began to cough. She hadn’t opened a second bottle since medical school, and it showed. “Excuse me.”
Alex plowed on. “Anyhow, once mister feel-good was satisfied, the leader raised his AK and pointed a couple hundred meters to our right, and said, “The small building.”
“You weren’t afraid of a trap?”
“Of course we were afraid of a trap, at least at first—working these kinds of jobs you’re always afraid—but we figured we were
clear when the fantastic four didn’t use their AKs to improve our Pajero’s ventilation. So, Mehmet and I made the trek over the rocky terrain to the cliff-side plateau that housed the abandoned monastery.
“The small, windowless stone building to which we’d been directed looked like the sheltered entrance to a cellar, presumably the larder where the monks kept their food protected from the merciless sun. As we got close, we heard the pounding of feet and turned to see two enormous dogs barreling toward us with the ferocity of starving tigers.
“Mehmet and I ran to the building and jumped inside to put the door between us and those murderous fangs, only to find ourselves falling into darkness. The building didn’t cover a stairwell, but rather a water well. We splashed down after a five-meter drop. By the time we surfaced, the Caucasian wolfhounds were barking above, furious that we had denied them instant gratification.
“Can you picture it, Anna? There I am, treading water, shocked, scared, demoralized, and likely seconds from death. Then my eyes adjust, and I look over at Mehmet to see that he’s smiling. He looks back at me, and his smile turns to laughter. I’m thinking that he hit his head, or had a stroke. “What’s funny?” I ask. And do you know what he says?”
“Surprise?”
“No, but that’s a good guess. He says, ‘Alex, we’re in the middle of nowhere, trapped five meters down an abandoned well, with night falling and a couple of the meanest creatures on God’s green earth waiting above to devour us if we miraculously find a way to climb out of here before we drown. Absolutely nothing is funny.’