by John Altman
He paused, still pointing the SIG Mosquito uncertainly toward the pavement. She reached unhurriedly for his gun-hand, her body language conveying the opposite of urgency. Almost tenderly, she pressed her thumb into the ulnar nerve. The collateral ligament released; she plucked the Mosquito from unresisting fingers.
The one holding the dog dropped the leash, hissed a command. The beast tensed, preparing to leap, haunches bunching, lips peeling back, and she put a bullet between its eyes.
Turning on the one whose gun she had taken, she shot him in the chest, sending him falling back.
Weapons were coming around, berets and pointed caps. Voices shouted. She ducked inside the minivan. A gun fired, zwing, and glass shattered, and then an aerating red vapor filled the air, throbbing from a victim Cassie couldn’t see. Oh fuck, she thought. She was twisting the key. The key seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. Oh fuck, I fucked up royally.
‘Hold on,’ she told Nikolai mildly, without turning to look at him.
She jammed the van into gear. Beyond the Plexiglass barricade was a lane of stopped traffic: the front fender of a blue Latvija, the back fender of a red Trabant. Not enough room for the minivan to pass through. But behind her the traffic was even more clogged, so she aimed forward, wrapped ten white knuckles around the steering wheel, and floored the gas. In the rear-view she vaguely saw Nikolai’s head rock loosely on his neck as the car sprung forward.
The barrier splintered. The front of the van plowed into the Latvija and Trabant, moved them a half-yard each before the engine stalled. A tattoo of automatic weapon fire sent more glass flying. She ducked, not in time to avoid a shard which sliced open the side of her face.
A circle of men advanced. A few cars away, someone was crying. Woozily, she blinked. Scents of primex and smoke thick on the air. Gun still in her hand. She raised it. But why? These men were innocents. Dupes, like her.
She tossed the gun on to the passenger seat. Twisted the key in the ignition again. The engine coughed, sputtered, and reluctantly fired.
Something whishhhhhhed. For a fraction of a second she sifted through surreal impressions – a hot-white shooting star cutting toward her, a blooming white flower – and then a great percussive whomp rattled her brain inside her skull, and she entered the formless stuff of dreams.
She came back. The van was filling with haze. Something was spitting and rolling and hissing and rattling. A CS grenade, kicking around the back seat.
She reached over the saddle between seats, found the boy’s hand. It would be OK, she wanted to tell him. It was over now. They would take him away before she could do any more harm. It was finished, at last.
The hand was limp.
The face was white – except for a shocking welt of red where a fragment of glass had opened the throat.
She stared at him.
The clouds of gas rose. Her eyes burned. The mist closed in. You are telling me that he is asleep?
Suddenly, then, she remembered the quick change she had devised. Somehow, in the heat of the moment, she had forgotten. She reached for the door with one hand. Not too late. She would become someone else, someone new, someone uncompromised. Someone innocent. She would be gone like the wind. Deathless …
Even as her hand touched the latch, it fell. Misty brightness faded. Pain and sorrow faded. And then there was only darkness.
SIXTEEN
LUBYANKA SQUARE, MOSCOW
Aleksandr Marchenko’s office in FSB headquarters was cramped but clean, featuring parquet floors and pale-green walls, a glass-covered desk, a secure white phone on a credenza, and a view of Solovetsky Stone across the square. The sight of the stone, which was intended to honor the victims of political repression, irked him. The irony of placing it at Lubyanka, home of every secret service from the Cheka onward, was undeniable. Of course, it was just a bone they had thrown the dogs. But it would be nice, for once, to receive praise and thanks for the burdens they took upon themselves, to be encouraged to stand up proudly and say: We do this for you, fucking suka, all for you.
An unfocused mind: a peril of old age. Look, by comparison, at the young technician hunched on the other side of the desk, wearing headphones, working the dials of his signal receiver with utmost concentration. Foxy dark face, mole beside his mouth tugging down with his frown. A serious young man, thought Marchenko with approval. So long as the Motherland kept turning out serious young men like this, she would be in good hands; the elder generation could go gently off into the good night without remorse.
The young man was snapping his fingers, indicating a pair of headphones on the desk. Marchenko leaned forward – creak – picked them up, slipped them on.
‘—regular doses of midazolam and sevoflurane. Also, five armed guards will ride on-board the chopper, ready to take action should sleeping beauty so much as stir.’
That was the corrupt Inspektor. The fidelity was remarkably clear, as if the man shared the room with them. Marchenko’s agent – the same Internal Affairs representative who had accompanied Ravensdale in the van the previous day – must have aimed the parabolic microphone very skilfully indeed.
When the American answered, the voice was softer but still easily audible. ‘And in Moscow?’
‘She’s expected at Lubyanka, of course. But a switch will happen en route from the airport. A traffic jam, an extra ambulance … She’ll end up in Serebryany Bor. And then it’s out of my hands.’
The flick of a lighter’s wheel, followed by a muted cough. The ensuing silence was so long, so conclusive, that Marchenko glanced at the fox-faced young man, raising his brow interrogatively.
‘All these myshynava voznya,’ remarked Vlasov at last. ‘All these mice games. But here, at last, it ends.’
A bolt of static. Then more silence. Then Ravensdale said: ‘Dobriy vecher, Inspektor. Until next time.’
Marchenko made arrangements.
First and foremost came the trade. Za dvumya zaitsami pogonish’sya ne odnogo ne poimaesh. Run after two rabbits, and you’ll catch none. Only once the assassin was safely in hand would he risk complicating the situation. Time enough to regain possession of Ravensdale and wife, at an airport or a border crossing, after the prime objective had been attained.
He ordered Sofiya Kirov not only delivered to Lubyanka, but cleaned up. Watching the feed he noted a fierce beauty, largely in the quarrelsome emerald eyes, which had survived the prison camp and the tussle between her keepers – one man was now dead – and now survived the fire hose and delousing. He could see why counter-intelligence had dispatched her, way back when, to develop Ravensdale. He could see why Ravensdale considered her worth any sacrifice. He felt a thump of something wistful, something long dormant. His own wife was twenty years gone, and he never thought of other women. Almost never.
Behind his desk again, he readied his ranks. To assume that Ravensdale would allow the initiative to remain with the FSB was naive. So he put into play six mobile units on the street. Four drones – quieter than helicopters – overhead. He designated code numbers on encrypted channels; backup plans, backups to backup plans. Then he sat, phone by hand, and waited.
The call came at ten minutes before nine p.m. He let the phone ring twice as the fox-faced young tech started the trace. Then he answered. ‘Marchenko.’
‘Ivanovsky Convent,’ Ravensdale said. ‘Twenty minutes. Just you and Sofiya.’
‘No. Smolenskaya—’
‘Don’t play games.’ The line went dead.
The tech shook his head. Marchenko sighed, pushed back from the desk.
Fifteen minutes later he sat with the woman – handcuffed, hooded – in the back of an unmarked high-top van outside the domed katholikon of Ivanovsky Convent. They shared the van’s interior with two guards wearing standard MP-443 Grachs. The fox-faced tech crouched on the floor between low benches, working his equipment.
The phone rang again. ‘Sanduny banya,’ Ravensdale said. ‘Twenty minutes.’
‘Comrade. Let us—’
‘He’s moving,’ said the tech. ‘But not with a cellphone. Something harder to trace. A two-way radio.’
‘Sanduny banya,’ Marchenko told the driver. Was it his imagination, he wondered as they pulled back into motion, or did the cant of the woman’s head beneath the black hood indicate amusement?
They had driven only three minutes before the phone rang again. ‘Next right.’
Before he could answer, the line cut out. ‘Next right,’ he told the driver and gestured at the tech, who sent a coded burst on an encrypted channel.
They bounced past a darkened culvert, turned down a potholed residential side-street. Rows of double-parked windowless vans lined both curbs. Ten, twelve, fifteen vans, high-top, low-top, gray, white, black, and green vans. A gaggle of vans, a kettle of vans, a murder of vans. All windowless.
The phone rang. ‘Stop,’ Ravensdale commanded.
Marchenko waved a stop.
‘Out. With Sofiya. No one else.’
Marchenko stood – creak – taking hold of the chain between the prisoner’s wrists. One of the guards ratcheted open the rear door, letting in cold wind and fine black dust. Marchenko climbed down, pushing the woman before him.
Fire escapes. A few lighted windows. A few bare-limbed trees. Dirty snow piled in gutters. A cell tower on the next block. Near the corner, a young couple walking with heads together, moving away. And everywhere, the windowless vans.
‘Walk forward,’ said the voice.
Marchenko walked forward, holding the phone in one hand, the handcuff chain in the other. No sign of the watchers, the drones, the mobile units with PKMs capable of pumping out 750 rounds per minute. But they were there, close by. Let the American have his game. Get the rabbit in the snare. There would be time enough, time enough …
‘Stop,’ said the voice.
Marchenko stopped.
‘Take off the hood.’
He took the hood off the woman. She looked around, blinking, bruised, narrow-eyed, swaying on her feet.
‘Send her forward. By herself.’
‘Not until I have mine.’
‘First send her forward.’
‘First give me mine.’
A second passed.
Five seconds.
A side door on one of the vans slid open.
Ravensdale climbed out, leading his own thin woman, wearing her own manacles and black hood. He held no firearm. Of course he didn’t. It was still a gentleman’s game. No intelligence agent had intentionally harmed an opponent, on the playing field, since World War II. Once the Americans were in the basement, strapped to tables, it would be a different story – but for now, here, they were all gentlemen.
Ravensdale came forward, positioning the girl in front of him, using her, perhaps unconsciously, as a shield. She wore a billowing coat that concealed her figure, and beneath the hood something chunky, possibly a mouth guard. She took small, restricted steps, indicating that her ankles had also been manacled.
Three steps away, Ravensdale stopped. He looked at Sofiya. ‘Alë, garázh’, he said: Hey, citizen.
She gave a weak smile.
He whipped the hood off his captive, exposing a shaved head. Nose and ears pierced with holes; hazy drugged eyes beneath glitter-coated lids. As expected, the bottom half of the face was covered by a leather restraint mask. Up close the girl looked even smaller, even younger, than Marchenko had expected.
Behind and around Marchenko, a dozen engines turned over.
A van pulled up beside him. A side door banged open. A flat top reached out expectantly.
Marchenko’s eyes met Ravensdale’s.
He released Sofiya, who was pulled into the van. In the same instant, Ravensdale pushed the girl forward. She stumbled, and Marchenko moved to catch her.
Ravensdale vanished into another van. Then vehicles were pulling away on every side, moving in different directions. A starburst, a stampede, designed to overload the watchers. Marchenko hardly cared. Up now to the drones, the mobile units. Out of his hands. In his hands, at long last, he had his prize: the American assassin.
She was still anesthetized, legs loose, eyes muddy. His own unmarked van pulled up, brakes squealing. He handed her inside, climbed after. They pulled away, nearly colliding with another vehicle which had executed a sudden rybolovnyi krjuchok, fishhook reverse.
They gained speed, reached the end of the block, turned on shrieking tires. He snapped his fingers before the girl’s overcast eyes. No reaction. For an instant, panic consumed him. The cold-blooded American had poisoned her. Marchenko would be denied his prize, even now …
… no. Just anesthesia. Already, her eyes were starting to clear.
A muffled groan. Beneath the leather mask, her jaws were trying to work. Marchenko told himself to wait. But it was Christmas Day. He was five years old again. He must open his present.
He reached behind her head, worked the straps on the leather mask. Instants later, it fell into her lap. She opened and closed a pasty mouth.
‘Chyort.’ Thickly. ‘Chyort … voz’mi.’
Not the voice he had expected. A younger voice; the voice of a native Russian. And she was not emaciated, he saw now, so much as willowy. Her head had been shaved and her face pierced, but …
… the mask had hidden her jaw. Slimmer than the assassin’s. Younger, slighter.
‘Ambal?’ she said muzzily. ‘’Tchyo za ga`lima?’
Marchenko leaned closer, glowering – and then leaned away, cursing bitterly.
The official State Residence of the President of Russia, called Nogo-Ogarevo, was a refurbished nineteenth-century manor surrounded by a six-meter wall, tucked into a dense forest of pine and black fir west of Moscow.
Following a duty vehicle down the long driveway, Marchenko found himself thinking – how could he not? – of the old days. No lack of officers had found themselves, back in Stalin’s time, beckoned to late-night meetings in remote dachas like this one, to receive their sentences from Uncle Joe. Most had probably quaked in fear. But Marchenko was not afraid. Unlike Stalin’s treacherous and cowardly inner circle, which on a fateful night in March of 1953 had delayed medical assistance in a dacha very like this, Marchenko cared more about Rodina’s future than his own. If a scapegoat was needed, he would gladly offer his resignation – or his head.
The anteroom into which he was led echoed like a tomb. Moonlight bled through mullioned windows. He followed a skeletal man down a twisting corridor, past bodyguards, to a private study. There he found a solemn President, standing still as a mountain, gazing philosophically into a hearth in which a tasteful fire crackled softly.
The escort removed himself. Marchenko put his heels together, achieving full height, and said without preamble: ‘Bad news.’
Only a flicker of reflected flame inside the cold blue eyes moved.
‘The American switched the girl. We have lost the assassin … and gained only the gangster’s whore.’ He tipped his chin up proudly. ‘I accept full responsibility.’
A long minute stretched out. Marchenko could feel his fate drifting this way and that, a tattered flag caught in a capricious wind.
At length, the President gave a thin smile. ‘We should,’ he declared, ‘drink to our worthy opponents. And a game well played.’
At a sideboard of Burmese teak, he splashed Platinka into tumblers. They drank together. Yet Marchenko took nothing for granted. Uncle Joe had also served his victims drinks – although he himself had usually abstained, preferring to keep his faculties for whatever may come.
‘In your estimation,’ said the President casually, ‘our chances of recovering the assassin before she crosses a border …?’
Marchenko scanned for hidden meanings. Inconclusive; he shrugged. ‘Tsoi has clearly thrown his full weight behind Ravensdale. He will find some shady back alley through which they might escape. And if that proves impossible …’ He gestured with the tumbler. ‘The American has only to kill the ass
assin, rather than let her fall into our hands. And so I would say: not good.’
‘Comrade Tsoi has pushed his luck too far.’
Marchenko said nothing.
‘But right at the moment, he is the most powerful man in Moscow. The shpana respect him. Action now creates problems we don’t need.’ A knot popped in the fireplace, sharp enough to echo. ‘The future will bring more opportune chances. Unless, that is, you see something to be gained by moving now …?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t.’
‘We will content ourselves, then, with executing his whore.’
Marchenko gave a somber nod.
‘Don’t stuff a rag into her mouth before feeding her to the dogs. Let her scream. And make sure word gets out.’
Marchenko nodded again.
The President downed the rest of his vodka in a simple peremptory draft. He seemed considerably less troubled than Marchenko had expected. The equanimity was perhaps explained by his long history in the KGB. The man still relished the game. And, of course, he still had Blakely’s cache – spoils whose true value would become clear only in time.
Or perhaps it had more to do with those judo-thickened shoulders. Although the West could not help picturing the Kremlin’s spymasters as they had during the first Cold War, chess players hunched over a board looking five moves ahead, this President played not chess but judo. He was accustomed to the long patient wait for the perfect opening, the period of watchful inactivity preceding the sudden critical strike.
‘And the corrupt Inspektor?’ Offhandedly, dispassionately; an afterthought. ‘Will he, too, commit treason against us with impunity?’
‘Here, at least, I have good news. Inspektor Vlasov was picked up trying to board a flight at Pulkovo, with false documents, three hours ago. He will be arriving at Lubyanka even as we speak.’
The President’s thin smile flickered back. ‘One must admire his technique.’ It took Marchenko a moment to realize he meant not Vlasov but the American, Ravensdale. ‘Like watching a monkey play the violin.’
Nodding, Marchenko polished off his own vodka.
‘Brings to mind the good old days.’ The President poured himself another drink. ‘Don’t look so glum, comrade. It is the battle, not the war. Glory waits just around the corner.’