Tarnapolsky, who had spent years in the early part of his career tailing dissidents and petty criminals around Moscow, knew the city intimately. He drove, following the Bentley at a discreet distance, only pulling up fairly close when the traffic was heavy enough to provide cover.
When the Bentley turned left onto Kalinin Prospekt, it ran into a serious traffic jam. A large truck was jackknifed and stalled across all lanes of traffic, halting all cars in either direction. Truck horns blared, car horns honked repeatedly; there were loud shouts as frustrated drivers stuck their heads out of their car windows to hurl epithets at the obstruction. But there was nothing to be done; the traffic was frozen.
The filthy white panel truck was stopped immediately ahead of Labov’s Bentley, cars hemming them in on all sides. Tarnapolsky’s confederate had abandoned his eighteen-wheeler truck, taking the keys with him, on the pretense of searching for help. Traffic would not move for a good long while.
Bryson, dressed in black jeans and a black turtleneck and wearing black leather gloves, crouched on the floor inside the truck and released the hinged trapdoor. There was enough clearance to the ground that he was able to drop to the pavement and belly under the panel truck and then under Labov’s Bentley. In the extremely unlikely event that traffic somehow was able to move a few feet, the Bentley could not, since it was blocked by the delivery truck.
Moving quickly, his heart racing, Bryson slid under the Bentley’s chassis until he located the precise spot he was looking for. Although the undercarriage was mostly one solid mass of molded steel, aluminum, and polyethylene, there was a small perforated area where the air-intake filter was located. This was the second vulnerability: after all, even passengers of armored vehicles had to breathe. Swiftly, he pressed an adhesive-backed aluminum-alloy filter panel over the vent, a specially designed, radio-controlled device Tarnapolsky had been able to acquire from contacts in the private-security industry in Moscow. Once he assured himself it was securely in place, he wriggled out from under the car and, still undetected, back under the panel truck, the hinged trapdoor still open. He lifted himself up and into the truck and shut the trapdoor behind him.
“Nu, khorosho?” asked Tarnapolsky. Everything okay?
“Ladno,” replied Bryson. It’s fine.
Tarnapolsky called the driver of the jackknifed truck, ordering him to return to his abandoned truck and get it moving again, just as police sirens began to sound.
Traffic started moving a few minutes later, the blaring horns stopped, the cursing came to an end. The Bentley roared ahead, gunning its engine, passing the paneled delivery truck as it resumed its course down Kalinin Prospekt. Then it made its customary left turn, onto the quiet side street, essentially retracing its morning path.
It was then that Bryson pressed the switch on the transmitter he gripped in his hand. As Tarnapolsky maneuvered down the street after the Bentley, they could see an immediate reaction. The limousine cabin filled at once with thick, white tear gas. The Bentley veered crazily from one side to another before pulling over to the side of the deserted street; the driver had obviously been overcome. Both front and back doors of the limousine were flung open as both driver and Labov emerged, coughing and retching, hands pressed over their stinging eyes. The driver clutched a handgun uselessly at his side. Yuri Tarnapolsky veered the truck over to the side of the road as well, and the two men jumped out. Bryson fired a projectile at the driver, who toppled at once. The short-acting tranquilizer dart would knock him out for hours; the amnesiac effect of the narcotic would ensure that he had little or no recollection of the evening’s events. Then Bryson rushed over to Labov, who had collapsed on the sidewalk, coughing and temporarily blinded. Meanwhile, Tarnapolsky hoisted the driver back into the driver’s seat of the Bentley. Taking out a bottle of cheap vodka he had bought on the street, he spilled a good quantity into the chauffeur’s mouth and over his uniform, leaving the half-filled bottle on the seat beside him.
Bryson looked around to confirm that there was no one on the street who could see what they were doing; then he hustled Labov, half-dragging the small man, into the nondescript panel truck, a boxy vehicle like hundreds in the area, which would never be identified, particularly since its license plates, covered in mud, were illegible.
* * *
By just before eight o’clock in the evening, Dmitri Labov was bound, in a seated position, to a hard metal chair in a large deserted warehouse in the Cheryomushki district, not far from the wholesale fruit-and-vegetable market. The city government had confiscated it from a Tatar clan that had been caught selling produce on the black market to restaurants without paying the requisite tribute to city officials.
Labov was small and bespectacled, with receding, straw-colored hair and a round, pudgy face. Bryson stood before him and spoke in perfect Russian with a slight St. Petersburg accent, the legacy of his Directorate Russian-language tutor. “Your dinner is getting cold. We’d love to get you home before your wife gets frantic. In fact, if you play your cards right and cooperate fully, no one ever has to know you were abducted.”
“What?” spat Labov. “You deceive yourself. Everyone already knows. My driver—”
“Your driver is passed out in the front seat of your limousine, parked by the side of the road. Any passing militsiya will simply assume he’s dozing, drunk like half of Moscow.”
“If you plan to drug me, go ahead,” Labov said, at once frightened and defiant. “If you plan to torture me, go ahead. Or just go ahead and kill me. If you dare. Do you have any idea who I am?”
“Of course,” said Bryson. “That’s why you’re here.”
“Do you have any idea what the consequences will be? Do you know whose wrath you are incurring?”
Bryson nodded slowly.
“Anatoly Prishnikov’s anger knows no bounds! It is not impeded by national borders!”
“Mr. Labov, please understand, I wouldn’t think of harming a hair on your head. Or that of your wife, Masha. Or little Irushka. I won’t have to—there’ll be nothing left of them after Prishnikov is through.”
“What the fuck are you saying?” Labov shouted, red-faced.
“Let me explain,” Bryson said patiently. “Tomorrow morning I will personally drive you to Nortek headquarters. You may still be a little woozy from the tranquilizers, but I will help you into the building. And then I will leave. But everything will be recorded on the security cameras. Then your boss will become extremely interested in who I am, and why you were in my company. You will tell him that you told me nothing.” Bryson paused. “But do you think he will believe you?”
Outraged, Labov screamed, “I have been a loyal aide to him for twenty years! I have been nothing but loyal!”
“I don’t doubt that. But can Anatoly Prishnikov afford to believe you? I ask you—you know him better than anyone. You know what kind of man he is, how deep-rooted is his suspicion.”
Labov had begun to tremble.
“And if Prishnikov thought that there was even the slightest chance that you had betrayed him, how long do you think he would let you live?”
Labov shook his head, his eyes wide with terror.
“Let me answer my own question. He would let you live just long enough to know that your loved ones had died horribly. Long enough for you and everyone in the firm to be reminded of the price of betrayal—of weakness.”
Yuri Tarnapolsky, who had been watching from the sidelines, stroking his chin idly, put in: “You remember poor Maksimov.”
“Maksimov was a traitor!”
“Not according to Maksimov,” Tarnapolsky said gently. He toyed with his service revolver, polishing its barrel with a soft white handkerchief. “Do you know he and Olga had an infant son? One would think that Prishnikov would spare the young and the innocent—”
“No! Stop!” gasped Labov, ashen-faced. He was having difficulty breathing. “I know much less—much less than you must think. There is a great deal I don’t know.”
“Please,�
�� said Bryson warningly. “Evasion will simply waste our time and will add to the length of time you are gone—the period of missing time you must somehow account for. I want to know about Prishnikov’s alliance with Jacques Arnaud.”
“There are so many deals, so many arrangements. They accelerate. There are more than ever now.”
“Why?”
“I think he is preparing for something.”
“For what?”
“Once, I heard him speaking on his secure phone to Arnaud and saying something about ‘the Prometheus Group.’”
The name chimed in Bryson’s head. He had heard it before. Yes! Jan Vansina had used the phrase in Geneva, wondering whether he was “with the Prometheans.”
“What is the Prometheus Group?” Bryson demanded urgently.
“Prometheus—you have no idea. No one has any idea. I hardly know. They are powerful—immensely powerful. It is not clear to me whether Prishnikov follows their orders, or whether he gives them orders.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“They are important, powerful people—”
“You’ve said that already. Who are they?”
“They are everywhere—and nowhere. Their names are not to be found on mastheads, on letterheads, on papers of incorporation. But Tolya—Prishnikov is among them, this I am sure of.”
“Arnaud is one of them,” prompted Bryson.
“Yes.”
“Who else?”
Labov shook his head in defiance. “You know, if you kill me, Prishnikov will leave my family alone,” he said reasonably. “Why don’t you kill me?”
Tarnapolsky looked over, a wry smile on his face. “Do you know how they found Maksimov’s child, Labov?” He approached Labov, still menacingly polishing his revolver with the handkerchief.
Labov jerked his head back and forth like a child unwilling to listen. Had his hands been free he would surely have clapped them over his ears. Quivering, he blurted out, “The Jade Master! He is making arrangements with … with the man they call the Jade Master.”
Tarnapolsky gave Bryson a sharp look. They both knew whom the moniker referred to. The so-called Jade Master was a powerful general in the Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army. General Tsai, based in Shenzhen, was famously corrupt and had facilitated the efforts of certain international conglomerates to establish a foothold in the immense Chinese market—in exchange, of course, for certain considerations. General Tsai was also world-renowned as a collector of precious imperial Chinese jade and was known to sometimes accept blandishments in the form of valuable jade carvings.
Labov saw the look between the two men. “I don’t know what you hope to accomplish,” he said contemptuously. “Everything is about to change, and you cannot stop it.”
Bryson turned back to Labov quizzically. “What do you mean, ‘Everything is about to change’?” he demanded.
“Days remain—only days,” Labov said cryptically. “Only a few days I am given to prepare.”
“To prepare what?”
“The machinery has already been put into place. Now power is about to be transferred fully! Everything will come into view.”
Tarnapolsky finished polishing his revolver, pocketed the handkerchief, and then pointed the gun a few inches away from Labov’s face. “Are you referring to a coup d’etat?”
Bryson interrupted, “But Prishnikov is already the power behind the throne in Russia! Why the hell would he want something like that?”
Labov laughed dismissively. “Coup d’etat! How little you know! How narrow is your view! We Russians have always been happy to give up our freedom for safety and security. You will, too, all of you. Every last one. For now the forces are too great. The machinery is already in place. Everything is about to come into view!”
“What the hell are you talking about?” thundered Bryson. “Prishnikov and his colleagues—do they now aspire higher than the corporate world—do they aim to take over governments now, is that it? Have they become besotted with their own wealth and power?”
“We would appreciate some specifics, my friend,” Tarnapolsky said, lowering his revolver, the threat no longer necessary.
“Governments? Governments are outdated! Look at Russia—what kind of power has the government? None! The government is powerless. It’s the corporations that make the rules now! Maybe Lenin was right after all—it is the capitalists who control the world!”
Suddenly, with the speed of a cobra, Labov’s right hand lunged out a few inches, the maximum play allowed by the constraints. It was just enough for him to grab Tarnapolsky’s revolver, which was almost next to him. Tarnapolsky reacted swiftly, grabbing Labov’s hand, twisting it hard to loosen Labov’s grip on the revolver. For a moment, the gun was pointing upward and back, right at Labov’s own face. Labov seemed to be staring at the muzzle, hypnotized by it, a strange, sweet smile on his face. Then, just before Tarnapolsky was able to wrench it away, Labov pointed it between his own eyes and squeezed the trigger.
TWENTY
The suicide of Anatoly Prishnikov’s longtime aide-de-camp was a grim turn of events; Labov may have been a ruthless corporate functionary, the fax and the phone his deadly weapons, but he was no killer, and his death had meant the shedding of unnecessary blood. More than that, it was a complication, a deviation from their carefully laid-out plan.
Labov’s driver would return to consciousness within the hour; whether or not he would have any specific recall of the Bentley filling with tear gas, his memory would be disjointed, hazy. He would awake to find his uniform reeking of cheap vodka, a bottle on the seat beside him, his passenger and charge gone; he would panic. No doubt he would place a call to Labov’s home; that angle had to be covered as well.
Among the papers in Dmitri Labov’s wallet, Yuri Tarnapolsky had turned up Labov’s home phone number. From his cell phone—Moscow these days seemed to be overrun with mobile phones, Bryson had noticed—Tarnapolsky then placed a quick call to Masha, Labov’s wife.
“Gospozha Labova,” he said in the obsequious tones of a low-level office functionary, “this is Sasha from the office. Sorry for the interruption, but Dmitri wanted me to call to say he’ll be somewhat delayed, he’s on an urgent phone call to France that can’t be interrupted, and he sends his apologies.” Lowering his voice, he added confidentially, “It’s just as well, since his regular driver seems to have hit the bottle again.” He gave an aggrieved sigh. “Which means I’ll have to make alternative arrangements. Ah, well. Good evening.” And he hung up before the wife could ask any questions. It would do; such delays were unavoidable in Labov’s line of work. When and if the chauffeur called in a state of agitation and disorientation, the wife would respond with anger or annoyance and would dismiss him at once.
All this was reasonably straightforward. Labov’s suicide, however, was a loose end that had to be tied up as best they could. Bryson and Tarnapolsky were limited in what they could do, because the ex-KGB man was absolutely unwilling to place any calls to the Nortek office; assuming that all calls incoming or outgoing were recorded, he did not want a tape of his voice to be found. A solution had to be quickly improvised, an explanation for the suicide that might be accepted without too much follow-up investigation. It was Tarnapolsky who came up with the idea of planting various suspect items on Labov’s person and in his briefcase: a package of Vigor brand Russian-made condoms, a few soiled, dog-eared cards from less-than-reputable Moscow clubs known for the sexual hijinks that took place in private back rooms—Tarnapolsky had a small collection of such cartes de visite—and, the crowning touch, a half-used tube of ointment customarily used to treat the topical manifestation of certain more benign sexually communicable diseases. Quite likely such escapades were entirely alien to such a proper, work-oriented man as Labov; but it was precisely such a man who might react so violently to finding himself in the middle of a sordid embarrassment. Alcohol, tawdry sex: these were normal, everyday vices.
* * *
Now it was
a race: against time, against the likelihood that, one way or another, Prishnikov would learn that Nortek had been penetrated. Far too much could go wrong, Bryson knew. Labov’s limousine, with its semiconscious driver, could be identified by a vigilant militsiyoner and reported to Nortek headquarters. Labov’s wife could call his office back, for one reason or another. The risks were enormous, and Prishnikov would be quick to react. Bryson had to get out of Russia as soon as possible.
Tarnapolsky drove his Audi at top speed to Vnukovo Airport, thirty kilometers southwest of Moscow. This was one of Russia’s domestic airports, serving all regions of the country but particularly the south. He had arranged with one of the new private aviation firms for an emergency, late-night flight to Baku for one of his wealthy clients, a businessman with extensive financial interests in Azerbaijan. Tarnapolsky had not gone into detail, of course, except to mention a sudden eruption of labor unrest at a factory, the factory director taken hostage. Given the suddenness of the booking, a substantial outlay of cash was required. Bryson had it, and was glad to pay it. Customs Control had to be paid off, as well, for expedited paperwork; this required another hefty sum.
“Yuri,” said Bryson, “what’s in it for Prishnikov?”
“You’re talking about the Jade Master, I take it. Yes?”
“Yes. I know you’re well versed in the Chinese military, the PLA—you did your time in the KGB’s China sector. So what exactly would Prishnikov hope to gain from establishing an alliance with General Tsai?”
“You heard what Labov said, my friend. Governments are powerless now. It’s the corporations that make the rules. If you’re an ambitious titan like Prishnikov and you want to control half of the world’s markets, there are few better partners than the Jade Master. He’s a ranking member of the PLA’s General Staff, the one most responsible for turning the People’s Liberation Army into one of the world’s largest corporations, and the man in charge of all of its commercial ventures.”
The Prometheus Deception Page 33