by Tim Tigner
He followed the general’s trail along the dusty floor to a door at the left end of the corridor. There was another card reader there. Once again, he bet his only chip on green—and won. As this door opened, the scent of chlorine assaulted his nose, and a concrete stairway greeted his eyes. It led down into darkness with no end in sight.
As he descended through the dark, a dozen horror films, mystery novels, and detective shows assailed his imagination and ripped at his resolve. None of them had happy endings. This was not the eccentric neighbor lady’s basement that had frightened him as a kid. This was the KGB, and the fright was man style.
Thirty-eight steps later, his sweaty hand came into contact with a door. This was it. He had gone one-on-one with Yarik, and Andrey had given his life, all to learn what was on the other side of that door. He found the handle, gave it a firm twist, and walked into wonderland.
In sharp contrast to the dusty abandon above, the subterranean suite surrounding him matched his image of the White House Situation Room. It was not a large setup, but it was an extremely well equipped one. He would have liked to take the tour, but could not risk the time. For all he knew, Yarik had a twin, too.
Alex crossed the common area to what appeared to be the executive offices of the clandestine organization whose headquarters he had infiltrated. There were no names or titles on the doors, but the suite was obviously equipped to service a triumvirate. He assumed Yarik was one of those three, and wanted to find his office. The odds were best that no one would discover him there or notice if he disturbed anything. That might be splitting hairs, but his victories on this case had all been razor thin, so split he would.
He had three doors from which to choose. Once again, he was living a logic puzzle. Despite the giant’s intelligence, Alex was intuitively certain that Yarik was not the top dog, so the central of the three offices was out. That gave him a fifty-fifty choice between the two flanking suites. What else could he infer? Yarik exhibited an underdeveloped sense of right and wrong, and displayed an unabashed disregard for society’s rules. He was a man of passion, of instinct. That indicated right-brain thinking. Right-brained people prefer the right side of the room. Conclusive? No. But Alex played it conservative nonetheless, and went right.
He went straight to the computer and began the boot sequence. If he could not hack his way in, his backup plan was to take the hard drive with him. He hoped it would not come to that. Actually, “hack” was not the right word. Alex hoped to walk right in the front door. He was betting on human nature.
It took fifty-two seconds for him to find the password cheat sheet taped to the bottom of the pencil holder. LuV2KiL confirmed that he had selected the correct office. Although there is nothing so frustrating as being denied critical information by an unresponsive computer, the opposite is also true. Alex was feeling good. Once inside the system, he ran a search for the fourteen-character sequence that was “his number.” Nothing! Alex let out a long, slow sigh of relief and then performed a second search. This time he used “Kimberly Evans,” and he got a hit. The file was titled “Peitho.” He should have searched for that in the first place. Three minutes later Alex tucked two printed copies of the Peitho victim list into his pocket.
The Peitho list was a long one, but it was not outrageous. Relieved as he was to learn that there was not an army of forced combatants out there, Alex was nonetheless overcome by a wave of pity for the hundred or so souls laid raw before him. Then a second wave struck, only this time it was inspiration.
It took two minutes for Alex to change a random character in each of the 116 Peitho codes. It was one of the simplest things he had ever done, and yet undoubtedly the most significant single event of his life. One small mouse click for man . . . For kicks, he destroyed Yarik’s cheat sheet and changed his network password to “Ferris1” before logging off.
Now Alex had a new priority in life: getting the list of Peitho victims out of Russia. He spent ten minutes packing the list of names into his brain as a type of insurance, hoping it would be sufficient for passive recall if disaster struck. What else could he do? Within a few feet of where he was sitting, there was probably equipment that could compress the data onto a microdot he could swallow or implant beneath the skin of his forearm, but there was no time for that. A swift retreat was clearly the winning wager at this point.
Alex had one more thing to do before leaving. He needed to find a uniform. His own clothes were a wreck after riding beneath the general’s jeep. He would be a fool to attempt marching out the front door looking like a hobo, and marching out was exactly what he planned to do.
A quick search of Yarik’s office was unproductive, but he struck pay dirt in the office to the left of center. Three minutes later Alex Ferris was a general in the KGB. The rank of general was much too conspicuous for his tastes, but there was nothing he could do about that, so he pressed on. It was time to get the hell out of Dodgenik.
Chapter 55
NOVOSIBIRSK, SIBERIA
Karpov couldn’t believe the twist of fate that had him arresting the woman he’d been wooing just hours earlier, the woman he had hoped and conspired to make his wife. But Russia was his first love, and Anna had been harboring a spy. “Take her away, major. Confine her at The Complex and wait for my arrival.”
“The Complex. Yes, sir.”
Maximov’s tone was obedient for Anna’s benefit, but Karpov caught a questioning look in his eyes. All Karpov said was, “I’ll be there in a couple of hours.” He had shown weakness once before. He would not show it again.
“Very well, sir.”
Karpov shut the door, tucked the Medusa pen back into his breast pocket, and sat somberly on the edge of Anna’s bed. Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t her complete defiance. She had completely stonewalled him, but her bed said everything there was to say. It was obvious that two people had slept there. The woman he loved was sleeping with the man he hated. Alex had made it to Novosibirsk a week ago. That meant Yarik had not. One week to bag Yarik and bed Anna. Yes, hated.
Karpov had pushed Stepashin to Peitho the chief justice, and now Stepashin was dead. He had pushed Yarik to bring Ferris in alive, and now Yarik was dead. Had he gotten too cocky? Too greedy? No. Both were required to complete the plan. The three had committed to that decades ago—whatever it took, and despite the risks.
And they were so close, so very close. And he still had Victor. Karpov felt his blood pressure rising unexpectedly as he thought of his son. A moment later he understood why. Victor’s incompetence had brought about this mess. If Anna didn’t cooperate, if she didn’t give him Alex, he would summon Victor back to Russia immediately. Let the boy clean up his own mess.
Despite this morning’s setback, the Knyaz were still on course. His overall strategy of using Alex as a lever to pry Anna into the Kremlin was still sound and salvageable. In fact, he might still be able to win Anna’s heart and have Alex in jail by nightfall if he played the interrogation just right. That was why he instructed Major Maximov to take Anna to The Complex.
Maximov would not take Anna there by way of the gravelly road Karpov had used an hour earlier when he went to retrieve Medusa. Maximov would walk Anna through the main lobby of the KGB headquarters, where Karpov had his official office. This would give her a false hope he could later snatch away. He would walk her past the lobby elevators and down the long hallway that ran the length of the first floor and continued along the back. Once they reached its far end they would board a service elevator, which, according to its buttons, would take them either two levels higher or two levels lower. Major Maximov would push and hold both the “-1” and the “-2” buttons long enough for the computer to identify his thumbprints. Then the doors would close, a special light would illuminate, and the elevator would descend to a secret level. When the doors opened, Anna would find herself looking into the mouth of a long tunnel blasted from bedrock. This was the back entrance to the Knyaz
headquarters, the one they almost always used. It virtually cried out, “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”
Karpov was proud not just of the tunnel and the headquarters at the other end, but of the clever means by which he had acquired them. Like most everything else of note he owned, they were the spoils of a strategic campaign.
If there is one constant that applies to leaders and governments throughout the world and across time, it is this: whatever they do well for their people, they do even better for themselves. When the Soviet government built the peoples’ bomb shelters in preparation for the nuclear war their strategists thought inevitable, they created metros, deeply buried metros, in all of Russia’s first-strike cities. When they built the party leaders’ bomb shelters, they found the hardest location within fifty kilometers of the city center, and then built themselves an escape tunnel to reach it.
Novosibirsk’s elite bunker was located beneath the ten meters of hardened concrete that formed the foundation of its nuclear power plant. When Karpov built the new KGB office a few kilometers from there, he ensured that it rested directly above that escape tunnel, presumably so that the top KGB brass would also have access to it. Then, as soon as the building was completed but before anyone had moved in, he faked a radiation leak at the nuclear plant, Peithoed the children of a couple government inspectors, and voilà, the bunker became the Knyaz’s invisible headquarters.
This morning, Maximov would whisk Anna to The Complex through the last three kilometers of the forgotten tunnel in a glorified mining cart. He would know to leave the headlights off, making the silent five-minute commute feel like an endless journey to the depths of hell. By the time she reached the other end, she would feel like she was buried alive. After a couple claustrophobic hours alone in a dark cell, she would be thrilled to see him. Then the fun would start . . .
Chapter 56
NOVOSIBIRSK, SIBERIA
The road or the woods? Alex was facing a dilemma. His exit strategy from the KGB compound was bold and simple; out the front door. The dilemma was selecting the route that gave him the best chance of getting that far.
It’s hard to judge distance while riding beneath a jeep—kind of like judging descent when falling from a plane—but he figured the KGB complex was no more than three miles from the nuclear power plant, and probably closer to two. That fit with his recollection of the map. If he took the road he increased the risk of encountering a patrol, but he would probably reach the building before daybreak. That would increase the odds that he could slip in the back door unobserved. On the other hand, if he went through the woods, he wouldn’t need to worry about patrols, but then his last hundred meters would be fully exposed.
He looked to the heavens for guidance and chose the road. Eighteen breathless minutes later he arrived undetected at the back of the central building. Whether the patrols were infrequent, or he was just lucky, Alex did not know or care. Freedom was but a few feet away, and conditions were favorable. He tapped the Peitho printouts in his breast pocket with a sense of profound satisfaction.
Once he passed the front gate, he would take the bus to the metro and the metro to the center of Novosibirsk and the US Consulate. There he would work with the officer-in-charge to get himself on a plane home. Then he would team up with a couple of Agency friends and pay a visit to his old friend, Jason Stormer. Yes, just a few steps more . . .
Alex took a moment to catch his breath, and then held it again while sliding Yarik’s card through the reader. The red diode turned to green with a friendly click, and he slipped inside. You couldn’t get much closer to the fire than this.
Alex found himself standing near the toe end of an L-shaped hallway. There was an elevator a few yards farther down the dead-end hall to his right. To his left the hallway ran about ten yards and then turned right. Alex did not want to risk taking more than a moment to shake off the cold and get his uniform in order. The elevator doors could open at any time.
The hallway lights were still working on their nighttime dim setting, indicating that not many people had arrived yet, if any. Excellent. Now he had to work his way to the front of the building undetected and find a window from which he could watch the front gate. There he would wait for either a changing of the guard or the arrival of a large group of people before attempting his bold frontal retreat. Just a walk in the park. Nothing to be nervous about.
Alex had a general’s uniform and a colonel’s ID. That wasn’t perfect, but at least the Soviets didn’t share the Americans love of nametags. No reason to worry, Alex, guards never pay much attention to people leaving, right?
No sooner had Alex turned the corner into a long corridor and begun his homeward march than the hallway lights brightened. Had he tripped a motion detector? Activated a surveillance camera? Neither. Two other people were walking his way from the other end.
It was a long corridor, probably fifty yards or so. He continued walking at the same pace while his mind raced ahead, trying to get an early read. They did not look like a security detail. One was in uniform; the other was not. Alex began willing them to turn into an office before they reached him, and he slowed his pace to improve those odds.
Natural, natural, try to look natural. What! Holy shit! It’s Anna.
The KGB officer with Anna had his right arm tightly around her left bicep. It was not a gentlemanly escort. The sight flipped a switch in Alex’s brain, releasing chemicals and reactivating the predator within.
The pair was ten yards away and closing with no one else in the hallway. Alex turned to the doorway on his right and pretended to fumble in his pocket for keys. Then, as the couple walked past behind him, he whipped his right elbow back and around and smashed it into the man’s nose with all the fury he was feeling. The crack was sickening, but only Anna was there to hear it. Fortunately she didn’t scream. Alex continued his pivot and caught the KGB major by the throat as he dropped. Squeezing hard and moving fast, Alex used his free hand to open the door. Then he propelled the stunned officer inside.
“Close the door, Anna.”
Alex had planned to pinch the man’s carotids until he passed out, but now he saw that this would not be necessary. His elbow had punched the cartilage from the major’s nose up into his brain. He was dead. Wow. Alex knew that this was possible, but he had never done it before—it was hard to find volunteers for practice. His drill instructors would be proud.
He looked up at Anna and felt a rush of affection.
“Are you okay?”
Anna nodded. Her eyes were wide as saucers.
He took her arm and led her to a chair. “Why don’t you sit down for a second?”
Alex looked around. They were in a storage room full of dusty metal desks and filing cabinets and other odds and ends. Someone was watching over him. He grabbed the major’s corpse by the heels and dragged it to the back of the room, where he stuffed it into the foot-well of a desk. Then he paused in thought, nodded to himself, and ducked back under the desk for a demotion. A moment later Alex was a major. Now he was underranked versus Andrey’s identification—he couldn’t use Maximov’s ID since the guards almost certainly knew him—but at least he was less conspicuous.
He walked over to where Anna was sitting and crouched in front of her.
“What happened?”
“They came looking for you,” she began, sobbing. Then Anna pulled herself together and told him everything.
When she got to the scene where she stood her ground against the general, Alex added toughest to the list of superlatives he could use to describe Anna. When she had finished Alex took both her hands and said, “I’m so sorry to have gotten you into this, Anna. All I can do to make it up to you is help you to get out of it safely. Do you trust me to do that?”
“Of course I do.”
“Good. Here’s what you need to do . . .”
After Alex finished he made her repeat everything back, twice.
Anna seemed stunned, but then who wouldn’t be. Her life might never be the same again. It certainly wouldn’t be anytime soon. Although they needed to move, he gave her a minute to breathe deeply and let his instructions sink in. He needed the minute himself to figure out one last problem.
When at last Anna looked up, Alex handed her a copy of the Peitho list. “Anna, on your way out of town, I want you to go to the church and hide this in the spine of the big Bible when nobody is looking. It’s my backup.”
“Okay. Why there?”
“Your apartment is clearly out, as is your mother’s. And you can’t entrust it to friends without endangering them. The US Consulate isn’t an alternative because they will have it watched the moment they find you missing. Actually the KGB probably has somebody permanently inside.”
“Okay. But Alex, how will you find me?”
He felt a surge of emotion but pushed it aside. There was no time for anything but action. “We’ll use a simple code. Leave a note in the care of Father Nikoli, a message for him to pass to Father Fyodor Fedin.”
She nodded again.
Poor girl. He had dragged her into the deep end of his dangerous world. It was time to change the subject. Alex looked at his watch: ten to eight, time to get moving. “All right now, you need to compose yourself. You’ve got to walk out that front door looking calm and relieved.”