JET - Sanctuary

by Blake, Russell

  Gaspar had arranged for a Falcon 7X charter, with a flight plan to Lisbon, Portugal, and from there to Moscow. When Jet arrived at the airport, the plane was waiting, the crew alerted by a call from Estefan. Jet gratefully stepped aboard and strapped herself in as a perky young flight attendant announced that she’d be available for anything Jet wanted, and had dinner and breakfast loaded and ready to be served whenever she wished.

  The flight to Lisbon took twelve hours, and after an hour on the ground for refueling and replenishing, she was hurtling east, where an attorney who believed that you could erase people from the insulated safety of an office would soon be getting the last rude awakening of his life.

  Chapter 42

  Moscow, Russia

  The broad boulevards of Moscow were already icing over, the sidewalks knee-deep in snow from the storm that had blown through overnight and continued all through the miserable day. Anatoly Filipov stood at his office window, staring down at the pedestrians slogging through the freezing slush, and shivered as he turned back to his desk, to consider the pile of documents that had accumulated throughout the day, a blizzard of paper that matched the one outside for its intensity.

  A French antique clock on the wall chimed softly – it was seven in the evening, several hours after his offices normally closed, but he’d had a lunch that had run long with a pair of up-and-coming players in the petroleum industry who wanted to upgrade their legal counsel, and had hoped to catch up on the work that hadn’t gotten done while he’d been pressing the flesh. Unfortunately, circumstances had conspired against him, and he’d have to come in early if he was going to have any shot at climbing from under the pile.

  As one of the top legal minds in Moscow, Filipov was always in demand, and because of the amount of power and influence he wielded as the right-hand man to a number of oligarchs, his firm had more business than it could handle. His brother, who was his partner, specialized in structuring deals, whereas Filipov loved making them. It was a good fit, and the firm was successful beyond any of his aspirations, now with over thirty employees.

  But there were some things that had to be handled personally, and much as he’d have liked to pass them on to a subordinate, anything that made it into his inner sanctum required his, and nobody else’s, attention.

  Filipov sat back in his executive chair and rubbed a tired hand across his face. He felt older than his years, no doubt because of the constant stress of his position. And his mood hadn’t improved when for days now Leonid hadn’t responded to his messages. He’d gone from cautiously optimistic after the last missive when Leonid had requested clarification on what Filipov would accept for identification of the target to despondency after Leonid had gone dark. Two follow-up requests from Filipov had gone unanswered, and in spite of his distance from the operation, Filipov felt anxious.

  He sighed and yawned. Tomorrow would bring its own set of challenges, and possibly news from Leonid. There was no point to dwelling on that which he couldn’t influence. Filipov placed a quick call to the garage to alert them he was on his way down so they could pull his car around, and then grouped the documents on his desk into three piles: critical, urgent, and to-do ASAP. He’d be in earlier than usual in the morning and hit the ground running – the downside of having the rich for clients was that they, like spoiled children, expected their needs to be attended to instantly, and they didn’t care for excuses.

  He moved to the door, turned off his office light, and then walked down the marble hall to the lobby, noting with approval that over half his staff was working late. They would likely remain in the office until the wee hours, billing insane amounts for their time. It was a good business, but on days like this one, retirement seemed far more appealing than usual. It wasn’t like he still needed money – he had enough to last him ten lifetimes no matter how lavish a lifestyle he indulged himself in. It was that he thrived when in the game, immersed in the corridors of power, making moves that would make or break whole companies and change lives. While the prospect of rest was appealing, he couldn’t see himself relegated to a life of brunches and soirees.

  The uniformed attendant all but saluted when Filipov descended the stairs and approached his car, which was purring at the curb, the heater warming the interior. An icy wind blew a flurry of snow as he climbed behind the wheel, but the attendant didn’t seem to notice.

  The short drive home was annoying, traffic coagulated at a major intersection where a truck and motorcycle had intersected in a grisly fashion, and Filipov tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited for the police to wave him around the grim scene. His sense of impatience was unwarranted – he was divorced, his two children grown, and he lived alone, so there was nobody waiting for him to get home. Dinner would consist of whatever delicacy his housekeeper had prepared and left for him in the refrigerator, washed down with a half liter of excellent vodka while watching the international news stations distort world events.

  He immediately sensed something off when he stepped into the foyer and placed his briefcase and keys on a long side table. It was subtle, but there, as if the atmosphere was electrically charged. Filipov flipped on the light switch and the hallway illuminated, the polished wood floors glistening, nothing different from when he’d left that morning. As he made his way to the kitchen, he shrugged off the feeling of unease; his nerves were overly sensitive, a function of the stress he was under.

  Filipov swung the refrigerator door open and looked inside, and then froze when he heard a click behind him from the dining room. Not so much a click as a snick – metal on metal, some mechanism snapping into place. He straightened and turned slowly, his face gray, and peered into the darkness. A figure sat at the dining room table, unmoving, facing him. Holding a pistol.

  “Come in, have a seat. Anatoly Filipov, I presume?” a woman’s voice said, her tone even, her words measured, her Russian that of a native speaker.

  He took several cautious steps, and his eyes darted to the wooden block on the counter, its array of Swiss knife handles holding slim promise against a gun. The woman snapped her fingers.

  “Don’t even think about it. Walk this way, pull up a chair, and sit down.”

  “Why should I do anything you ask?”

  “Because I’ll splatter your brains against the wall if you don’t. Consider this your only warning. Now sit.”

  Filipov approached the dining room table. As he neared it, he could see the intruder better – short black hair, Asian features, the pistol steady in her hand, her expression as calm as though she were in church. His gaze drifted to the tabletop, and he saw a bottle of his favorite vodka there, a tumbler poured three-quarters full next to it, a prescription medicine container beside it.

  The woman motioned with the gun. “Sit.”

  He did as instructed, wondering whether he could make it to the bottle and somehow evade being shot while he broke it across her face. Another look at the woman’s alert emerald eyes dispelled that idea.

  “So, Anatoly, here we are, just the two of us.”

  “Not for long. I’m expecting company any minute.”

  “Oh, well, then, we’d better make this quick. You contracted a group of killers to hunt me down and eliminate me. That didn’t go so well. I’m here to stop you from ever doing that again.” She eyed the gun for a moment and then smiled. He realized she was an extraordinary beauty even in the dim light, the thought incongruent with the situation. “It was handy that you had a Makarov handy,” she said. “Not a bad pistol. One of the few things the Soviet Union did well.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m an attorney. I don’t hire killers.”

  She ignored his denial. “I have messages from you to someone named Leonid. Ring any bells?” She placed a cell phone on the table and tapped it with her finger. “Let’s spare each other the effort of pretending you’re innocent. I’m here to make you an offer.”

  Filipov’s pulse quickened. Perhaps this was to be a negotiation. His s
pecialty. Maybe there was hope after all. He slowly reached toward his coat pocket. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “If anything comes out of your pocket but a pack of cigarettes, you’ll be dead before you can blink.”

  “I believe you.” He slid his hand into his pocket, felt around, and then slowly removed a package of Marlboro reds and placed them on the table. He tapped out a cigarette and lit it, all the time studying her. “You mentioned an offer. You’re sitting here, holding my own gun on me, and you have an offer for me?”

  She nodded. “It’s the best one you’re going to get.”

  He took another puff and blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. “Let’s hear it.”

  “You have two choices. The first is that you can enjoy your cigarette while sipping your favorite vodka, washing down that bottle of valium with it, and slip into oblivion with no pain or suffering. The second is I shoot you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “That’s the offer?”

  “If you like, I can waterboard you and then dismember you with one of your knives.” She smiled for the first time. “You sent men around the world to execute me like they would a dog. They didn’t give me as civilized an option. That’s the only offer on the table. Decide which it’s going to be. Apparently we don’t have all night.”

  “If you shoot me, the police will be all over this place within seconds. You’ll never get away with it.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Does that mean you want the bullet?”

  A bead of sweat ran down his face. “Please. We can come to an arrangement. This is nothing personal, I assure you.”

  “Really? I take being murdered rather personally.”

  “It…it’s a mistake. I had no choice. It was…I don’t want to insult your intelligence by saying it was only business, but it was. Grigenko’s estate set aside funds to…well, you can imagine.”

  “And you put the contract into motion. That makes you the problem. The contract dies with you.”

  “No. Others will see that it’s carried out. I’m nobody in this.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t believe you. You were his attorney. His confidant. There’s no way anyone else knows about this. He’d have never committed it to writing, and even if he did, there are few stupid enough to pursue it.” She paused. “What’s it going to be? Pills or bullet?”

  He sighed. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Neither did you. But I intend to finish it. Decide. Or I’ll decide for you.”

  He reached for the pills and shook several out. “You’re really going to make me do this?”

  “Stop talking and start swallowing. I counted twenty. I want the bottle empty in the next two minutes.”

  He placed three pills under his tongue and took a burning sip of vodka. His eyes watered as he swallowed, and he considered hurling the tumbler at her but realized it would do no good.

  “Now some more. Hurry up. Remember, your guests will be here any minute,” Jet said.

  “I lied. There are no guests.”

  “Probably the first honest words you’ve spoken this year.”

  “I have a lot of money. You can have it all. Many millions.”

  She waggled the gun at him. “More pills.”

  “You’d be rich,” he said. “Unimaginably so.”

  “Didn’t do you any good, did it? Swallow.”

  He gulped down three more pills and took another pull of the vodka. She stood and picked up a small glass ashtray in her gloved hand and slid it across the table to him. “Hate to see a beautiful piece of furniture get scarred because of your filthy habit.”

  Filipov tapped the ash into the glass disk and nodded, his eyes beginning to droop. “Thank you.”

  “All right. Enough. Down the rest. Now.”

  He spilled the pills onto the table as his hands fumbled for the bottle. She sat back down and aimed the gun at his head. “Pick them up. You have ten seconds. Pick them up and put them in your mouth, or this ends now.”

  Seeing no way out, and beginning to drift from the first effects of the Valium, he clumsily gathered the pills and stuffed five more into his mouth, and then drained all but the last inch of the vodka. He tried a defiant stare, but his face seemed to be melting like it was made out of hot wax, the muscles liquefied, his will no longer his own. The woman stood again and circled the table. Standing far enough away from him so that he couldn’t make a move on her, she poured the glass full again.

  He stared at her, his vision blurry. “The angel of death. You’re beautiful. Deadly, but beautiful.”

  “Now the rest of the pills. It will all be over soon.”

  He nodded, her wisdom suddenly making perfect sense. It was so clear. He managed to get another handful into his mouth and chugged a few more gulps of vodka before he coughed the pills onto the table in a pool of liquid.

  “Pick them up before they melt. Swallow them,” she ordered, steel in her voice.

  He did the best he could, got about half down before his neck muscles refused to support his head and he fell face first onto the table.

  Jet rose and circled over to him, picked his cigarette up, and placed it gently in the ashtray. She knocked the vodka bottle over, spilling the contents over the table and floor, and then hurried to the bedroom and replaced the pistol in Filipov’s night table drawer. When she returned to the dining room, she removed a glove and felt Filipov’s neck for his pulse. Faint as a butterfly’s trembling wings. She replaced the glove and pressed against Filipov’s carotid artery for a minute, and then felt for his pulse again. Nothing.

  Another alcoholic suicide in a city with the highest alcoholism rate in the world wouldn’t raise eyebrows, and the attorney’s passing would be a nonevent. The contract died with him, and the madness that had been Grigenko’s legacy expired there, in a lavishly expensive dining room, on a cold Moscow night.

  Jet studied the empty street before she walked down the steps to the sidewalk, the townhouse dark behind her. A dusting of snow drifted from the sky as she turned and made her way toward the large boulevard three blocks away, the sound of her boots muffled, the danger to herself and her family eradicated in a way that would arouse no suspicion, ending the pointless vendetta for good and leaving them safe at last.

  Chapter 43

  Santiago, Chile

  The afternoon sun was blindingly bright, streaming through the hotel windows with the intensity of a laser. After four overcast days in San Felipe, and then the nation’s capital, the glow was a welcome relief from the seemingly unending drab gray – a color that perfectly reflected Igor and Fernanda’s mood after running into a brick wall on locating their quarry.

  Igor was packing his satchel when Fernanda’s cell phone rang.

  “Tell me you have some good news,” she said.

  “I think I might. Or rather I will. Soon,” the agent promised.

  “It’s taken long enough. The trail’s worse than cold.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Explain,” she said.

  “It’s delicate. But by this evening, at the latest, I’ll have information for you.”

  “Why is it taking so long?”

  “Haggling over price. We don’t want to overpay, do we?”

  Igor was watching her when she hung up and slipped the phone into the back pocket of her jeans. She moved to him and kissed him on the lips, and she leaned into him as his hands moved to her breasts.

  “He says we’ll be in play by tonight. Which gives us a little more vacation time.”

  “I wonder what the late charge on the room will be?”

  She pulled him by his leather jacket to the bed. “Whatever it is, let’s make sure it was worth it.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Moscow, Russia

  Jet stood near a sad collection of atrocious Russian art mounted along a wall adjacent to the departure gates of Sheremetyevo International Airport, waiting for her cell phone call to go through. The warbling in her ear was replaced with a series of pops and clic
ks, and then Matt’s voice came on the line.

  “Sorry about that. These satellite phones aren’t the greatest,” he said.

  “No problem. How’s the cruise going?”

  “Good. Relatively calm seas. We should be in Panama in another day and a half or so.”

  “I’ll be there right around the same time. I’ll come meet the fishing boat at the wharf. Alejandro gave me pretty decent directions. Said any cab driver would know it.”

  “How did everything go?”

  “Never better. How’s Hannah?”

  “She’s behaving herself. Misses her mother.” Matt paused. “Same here.”

  “I miss you too.”

  “You believe your problem’s solved now?”

  “Yes. Definitively.”

  “That’s great. You want to talk to Hannah?”

  “Of course. How’s the hand?”

  “I’ll be up to my old tricks in no time.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  Matt called to Hannah, and Jet’s throat tightened at the sound of his voice. The flights back would take a full day, with connections – now that she was on her own dime, she was flying commercial. She missed them both with a dull ache in her stomach, and couldn’t wait for her plane to take off, winging her back to her daughter and the man with whom she’d finally found peace, if the world would only let them alone. She heard Hannah squeal with happiness when Matt announced that Mama was on the phone, and Jet closed her eyes, marveling that the sound of a little girl’s voice could cause the earth she was standing on to shift as profoundly as a realignment of the poles.