by Tim Tigner
Chapter 41
Health Food
I WAS DETECTING A PATTERN.
I was also tiring of being one step behind.
I needed to figure out how to get one step ahead.
That was the problem with following clues: you were following. Behind by definition. Getting ahead required ideas.
I had a couple to try.
But first things first. There was no need to check Tarasov for a pulse. A swollen tongue protruded from his mouth, and stains on his jeans indicated that he’d voided his bowels. I glanced around the bathroom for a fake suicide note, something referencing his not wanting to go on without his beloved wife, but the black suits hadn’t bothered with those finer details. No need. The setup itself looked good. Perfect motive. No signs of struggle.
My guess was that they’d tranquilized him before stringing him up on a belt in the shower. No other way to do it, really, since his feet were touching the bathtub floor. There would be traces of the tranquilizer in his bloodstream, but the police wouldn’t find it if they weren’t looking.
Getting them looking was one of my ideas.
I pulled the bathroom door shut behind me and dialed Katya. “I’m okay, but Tarasov’s not. They killed him. How are you? I’m going to need about twenty minutes.”
Katya took a few silent seconds to absorb that blow before coming back with, “I’m fine. The group of teenagers has grown into the double digits, but no sign of unfriendliness. Are you in danger? What are you going to be doing?”
“I’m working on getting us leads. I’ll be fine.” I hung up and began searching the apartment for computers, notebooks, or papers — anything that Dr. Tarasova might have brought home from work. I was sure the black suits had beat me to it, but I couldn’t not look.
The size of the apartment made it a quick job, and I came up empty on all accounts. But I’d saved the best for last. That was where my second idea came into play.
Tarasova wouldn’t have bothered to hide her notes or computer, because taking those home was part of her job. Not just permitted, but required. One thing, however, probably wasn’t allowed. It wouldn’t be left laying around in plain sight, not that there was a great deal of choice in where to lay it.
I rubbed my palms together like I was getting ready to roll dice or pick a card, and opened the refrigerator door. Milk, juice, sausage, cheese, condiments, various plastic storage containers, and a six-pack of probiotic yogurt drinks in a cardboard box.
The plastic containers were the obvious first choice, so I removed the yogurt box instead. It felt full — and it clanked. I looked inside. A dozen glass vials winked back at me. “Now we’re talking.”
Setting the yogurt box off to the side, I grabbed an insulated lunch box off the kitchen counter, and checked the freezer for cooling agents. No ice, corn, or peas. Although it did yield bags of frozen strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries — the constituents of a smoothie I was guessing, noting the bananas, blender, and thermos on the counter.
Seeing them gave me another idea.
I loaded the blender with fruit and milk, then secured the lid. I put the yogurt box in the lunch box, set a quart-sized ziplock bag on each side, and packed in as many frozen blueberries as would fit. Satisfied that the Brillyanc would keep cool for hours, I slung the lunch box’s shoulder strap around my neck, and went out the way I’d come in.
Chapter 42
112
“WHAT’S THAT?” Katya asked, her face awash in relief and curiosity.
“That,” I said, “is one step ahead.”
“What?”
I was back in the driver’s seat, with the lunch box on my lap. “Figuratively speaking. Literally, it’s a couple of pints of frozen blueberries, and a dozen vials of Brillyanc.”
“No way!”
I passed her the box. “See for yourself.”
Katya unzipped the lid and pulled out the yogurt carton. She opened it up and extracted a glass vial. “Two fluid ounces. I was expecting IV bags.”
“I assume the Brillyanc gets diluted with saline or some other buffering solution for the infusion. If it takes six hours to go in, there’s probably some sophisticated biochemistry involved.”
Katya brightened even more. “Fortunately we know a sophisticated biochemist.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“What made you think to look? In a yogurt carton in the refrigerator, I mean.”
“A sophisticated biochemist. Max made it clear that he’d do whatever it took to keep taking Brillyanc after the clinical trial ended. The only reason he didn’t arrange it was that he didn’t know the trial was ending.”
“So?”
“So I figured Tarasova would feel the same. Only she did know the trial was ending. And she had access to the product. And since Brillyanc has to be kept refrigerated, I knew where to look.”
Katya grew the face of a professor who’d heard the right answer. “What do we do now?”
“Call Saba, and see if he and or Max can meet us now at Leningrad train station. You can let him know we’ve got something for him, but don’t hint as to what it is. Just in case.”
“Okay. Are we going to St. Petersburg?”
“No, that’s a red herring. Just in case.”
“I’m picking up on a motif.”
I couldn’t help but smile at that. It felt good. “Leningrad station also provides tactical advantages. We do need to get out of Moscow ASAP though. Between the black suits and the police, there are too many forces working against us here. But we need more information first, and I’m not sure how best to get it. I’ll give that some thought. Meanwhile, I’m going to work on getting us two steps ahead.”
Katya had learned better than to ask, but her eyes flashed concern.
I put calm in my tone, and a grin on my face. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
“Be careful.”
I retraced my steps from earlier that evening, and a few minutes later was back in Tarasova’s kitchen. I reversed the lighting pattern in the apartment, turning on the kitchen light and turning off the main room light. After checking the blender’s lid to be sure it was secure, I flipped the on switch. As the violent roar disrupted the silence, I ran back to the main room, stepped behind the curtains, raised the Glock, and waited for a black suit to come through the door.
I didn’t have to wait long.
The front door opened, slowly — just a crack. The blender drowned out any noise as it screamed for attention. After a ponderous second, the door crashed all the way open, its thunk loud enough to hear over the high-pitched mechanical drone.
It was followed by nothing.
For six long seconds there was no other sign of movement from the hall. Then the chrome barrel of a large automatic emerged. Probably a Desert Eagle. Next came a leather gloved hand followed by a black sleeve. A powerful shoulder panned it back and forth nearly six feet above the floor, like a tank turret. Hallway, kitchen, main room. Light to light to dark.
The Desert Eagle stopped on dark. Then quickly, suddenly, smoothly, the rest of the body followed in from the hall. As he kicked the door shut, I squeezed my Glock’s trigger.
When a bullet rips through your heart, you don’t bring a hand to your chest and wobble around moaning before sagging slowly to your knees, and then toppling forward to the floor. When a bullet rips through your heart, the blood stops pumping and the oxygen stops flowing and the central nervous system effectively shorts out. It’s like someone yanking your power cord. You simply drop.
Suit collapsed.
Three hundred pounds of muscle turned to three hundred pounds of beef in three-hundredths of a second. His joints all gave way at once: ankles and knees, hips and shoulders. Because he’d been a pro ready to release a magnum round, his center of gravity had been a vertical dead center. When the ounce of lead I’d thrown his way came calling at 1300 feet per second it was enough to tip the balance, so when he dropped, he dropped on his back.
Well,
mostly.
His legs fell akimbo in an entirely unnatural pose, and his head came to rest propped up against the edge of the wall as if he was looking at his own misplaced legs and thinking WTF.
The bark of my gun followed by the thud of his body and crack of his skull would normally have alerted even the most dimwitted of neighbors. But the blender was still doing its thing. I was eager to silence it, but wanted to lock the door first.
Since suit had kicked the door closed behind him, I was relatively certain that he was alone, but I wasn’t willing to risk being wrong. So far I’d only seen suits in pairs.
I crept toward the front door, remaining near the wall but keeping the soft soles of my shoes on the oriental carpet rather than the hardwood floor. Stepping over the corpse and resisting the urge to look through the peephole, I slid the lock into place from the protected position of the far side.
The blender stopped wailing. A failsafe to prevent overheating, I assumed. I stood still, listened for thirty seconds, then crept to the peephole. The landing was clear.
This suit had worked alone.
I didn’t bother searching the body, certain that he’d be as sterile as the last guys and wanting to leave him untouched with my next move in mind.
I was pleased with the little bit of progress I’d made — another thug down and some Brillyanc in my bag — but I felt like a climber who, having conquered a foothill, was looking up at the mountain ahead. As crazy as it sounded, even in my own head, it was time to turn up the heat.
I dialed 112, the Russian equivalent of 911, and reported a shot fired at this address.
Chapter 43
Smoothie
I SLID INTO the driver’s seat, started up the van, and hit the gas.
Katya looked up from the Brillyanc bottles, her face awash in curiosity. “What’s up?”
“The police are on the way.”
Katya looked around. Listened. “How do you know?”
“I called them.”
“Why on Earth would you do that?”
“I left a suit upstairs. Wanted to make sure they’d find him. Put a little heat on our pursuers.”
“You killed another one?” Katya’s face morphed to an expression somewhere between marveled and horrified.
“They did a convincing job of making it look like Tarasov killed himself. I wanted to make sure the police didn’t fall for it, so I added another body to the scene, reducing the forces against us at the same time. Kind of a two-for-one deal.”
We were on the third ring road around Moscow, driving counterclockwise toward the Leningrad train station. With the fall of the Soviet Union, they’d changed the name of the city founded by Peter the Great from Leningrad back to St. Petersburg, but the train station retained its communist name.
Wanting to lighten the mood, I pulled the thermos from my pocket and handed it to Katya. “I made a smoothie.”
“What!”
“Want some? It’s triple berry with banana.”
She didn’t reply.
It was getting colder. I added a notch to the van’s heater. After a couple of silent minutes, I said, “I trust you got through to Saba, and he’s meeting us at the station?”
“I did. They’ll both be there.”
“Did he sound normal on the phone?”
“You mean, did it sound like someone had a gun to his head?”
“Yes, I suppose that’s exactly what I mean.”
“No, he sounded fine.”
I could tell by the way she trailed off the last word that Katya had more to say, so I waited. It had been two days since we had laid on a warm rooftop in Palo Alto and watched death visit Katya’s door. Since then, death had kept calling: at the hotel, at the clinic, and at the Tarasov’s.
Sergeant Dix told me that at Fort Bragg they found that two to three days of constant tension was what it took to figure out if a soldier was going to break. Most who made it to the Special Forces Qualification Course could take anything the Army cared to throw at them for forty-eight hours. But by day three, with reserves depleted and nothing but misery on the horizon, a soldier’s core became exposed. His baseline ability. His essence. Superficially, this was evidenced by the decision to quit or continue, a temptation the drill sergeants dangled every time they spoke.
The real game, of course, was mental. Beating the Q boiled down to a soldier’s ability to disassociate his body from his mind, his being from his circumstance. This was relatively easy during the mindless procedures — the hikes, runs, and repetitive drills that form the backbone of military training. Disassociation became much tougher, however, when the physical activity was paired with judgment calls and problem solving. If a soldier could engage his higher-order thinking while simultaneously ignoring the pain and willing his body to continue beyond fatigue, then he had a chance at making it to the end. If he couldn’t, then the strength of his back, heart, and lungs didn’t matter.
Dix had concluded that the Q-Course was as much about self-discovery as a prestigious shoulder patch.
Katya was in that discovery phase now.
The big question was what we’d do if she decided to quit.
She broke the silence after a few miles. “Do you ever get used to it?”
“The killing?”
“Yes.”
“We’re all used to killing — just not people. We kill when we spray for bugs, or squash a spider, or buy a leather bag, or order a hamburger. I don’t think of the individuals I’ve killed as people any more than you thought of the last steak you ate as Bessie.”
“But they are people.”
“When people are trying to kill me, I categorize them as a virus in need of eradication. I know that sounds cold, and I’m aware that the violent life I’ve led has skewed my perspective, but I don’t want to lie to you and tell you that I cry a little every time I squeeze a trigger.”
“How did you do it this time?”
“I set a trap and encouraged him to walk into it. I used the gun his colleague pressed against your temple last night in the stairwell.”
I wanted to watch her process this, but we were nearing the train station so I had to keep my eyes on the road, and there was no time to stop for tea. Would she be able to rise above the individual acts and look at the big picture? Could her mathematical mind parse it into a simple kill-or-be-killed, them-or-us, details be damned? Or would the hurdle be too much for her moral framework to handle, now that her reserves were depleted, and her baseline exposed?
“You made a smoothie,” she said, her voice tentative. It was a statement. A challenge. An opportunity.
“The blender was the trap. The smoothie’s a reminder that we’re just doing what it takes to stay alive. That we’ve got to play the cards we’re dealt, with the big picture in mind. That despite all the crap that fate has thrown our way, life still has a lot to offer.”
I looked over at Katya.
She looked back, meeting my eye. Then she unscrewed the thermos’s lid and took a sip. Then another. “Pretty good.”
I had my answer.
Once the smoothie was gone, Katya busied herself playing with the Brillyanc bottles. They clinked about like gold coins as I maneuvered the van through the city center’s stop-and-go traffic.
When I finally hit the parking selector in an undersized spot in Leningrad station’s long-term lot, I looked over to find Katya beaming her beautiful smile back at me, excitement in her eyes. “What?”
“Do you know who Rita is?”
“Rita? No, I can’t say that I do.”
“I don’t know either. But Tarasova did. And she wrote her phone number on the inside of the yogurt carton.” Katya opened the lid to reveal the note, handwritten in blue pen on the cardboard. “If I’m not mistaken, that area code is in Washington, DC.”
Chapter 44
Blending
I STARED at the handwritten name paired with a 202 number and ran various scenarios through my mind.
“Who do you think R
ita is?” Katya asked.
“Not a patient. Not with a DC phone number.”
“Do you think she’s connected to Brillyanc?”
That was my hope. “If Tarasova was just using the yogurt box as a notepad because it was handy, she’d have written it on the outside. Or torn the lid off. And this is written carefully, not a quick scribble. Given that, and the way it’s hidden, I think it’s clear that Rita’s somehow connected to Brillyanc. What expiration date is stamped on the bottom?”
Katya closed the lid and carefully inverted the carton. “May 20.”
“Still nearly a month to go. So the box is fresh, meaning the note is fresh.”
“Should we call it?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. I like your attitude, but I’d like to do some research first. Meanwhile, I think your friends are probably here by now. Where are they waiting?”
“Beneath the clock in the main hallway.”
I locked the van with an enthusiastic press of my thumb and hid the key under the fender. Now that we had a solid lead to follow, the smart move was to get out of Moscow before either the suits or the police got lucky. My intuition was that our investigation would eventually lead us back to Moscow, and I wanted the van ready and waiting when it did.
Katya came around to my side of the car. “What did you mean earlier when you said this meeting location gives us tactical advantages? The police are bound to be looking for us at all the major transportation hubs.”
“Major train stations have thousands of people mulling about, looking this way and that, walking here and there. Having been on the other end of an operation in a place like this, I can tell you that visual fatigue sets in quickly. By now, anyone posted will have been at it for hours. Meanwhile, it gives us an anonymous place to leave the van long-term, and the ability to quickly and inconspicuously conduct counter-surveillance.”
I led Katya in the direction of the road rather than the station, and ducked into a kiosk I’d noted while driving in. It yielded winter jackets and watchman’s caps, black for me and white for Katya. We studied our reflections in the saleswoman’s smudged mirror before handing over our cash. Picking us out of the crowd dressed like this would be nearly impossible. We’d probably have to introduce ourselves to Max and Saba.