by Mark Dawson
‘Better?’
‘Yes.’
‘You can tell me to stop whenever you like. I’ll stop now if you like.’
‘How long to Ussuriysk?’
‘An hour,’ Pope said. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘I’ll think about it. You can start by telling me who you are and why you’re here.’
‘We have some things in common, Doctor,’ Pope said, staring into the darkness ahead of the car. ‘You and your husband did a deal to sell data. We’re here on behalf of the people you were dealing with. I don’t know how to describe them. We met a man who worked for them.’
‘Scruffy?’
‘Very.’
‘I never met him,’ she said. ‘But my husband said he looked like he slept in a dumpster.’
‘That’s not unfair.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘He’s good at finding people. He’s taken control of your phone. We’ve been following you since Beijing.’
Litivenko didn’t reply for a moment. Isabella looked across at her and saw that she was gritting her teeth. ‘And, what, you work for him?’ she said eventually.
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘What would you say?’
‘That it’s not a relationship I’d choose to have. He’s helping us with something in return for us helping him.’
She paused again. ‘How long have you been working for him?’
‘A week.’
‘Were you in Shanghai?’
‘Yes.’
‘When it happened . . .’ The words trailed off.
‘Yes,’ Pope said. ‘There was a sniper. They shot your husband. It was right in front of me . . . He didn’t suffer. He wouldn’t have felt a thing. I doubt he even knew what happened.’
They drove on in silence for another five minutes. Isabella glanced over at Litivenko and, even in the gloom of the cabin, she could see that the doctor was crying quietly. Pope said nothing, concentrating on the road ahead. They passed signs for Alekseevka and Razdolnoye.
Litivenko reached up and dabbed her eyes with a tissue, composing herself again.
‘You said they’re helping you. Helping you to do what?’
‘My family has been taken from me. Abducted. It’s very likely that they were taken by the people who killed your husband. Our mutual friend is offering to help me find them. I’d rather have nothing to do with him, but I don’t have anything else to go on.’
They passed a road sign. Ussuriysk was two miles away.
‘We’re nearly there,’ Pope said. ‘You have two choices. Work with us or hand yourself over to the Russians.’
‘Or leave and go somewhere else. Somewhere no one will be able to find me.’
‘With respect, Doctor, I don’t think you’re very good at this. Either the Russians will find you or the bad guys will. You won’t be able to leave the country.’
‘So you’re saying I have to trust you? I can’t do that, Mr Pope. My husband’s dead because we trusted you before.’
‘You weren’t dealing with me then.’
‘So you say.’
‘Fine. I’ll take you to the police station and you can hand yourself in. The secret police will get there soon enough.’
‘You keep saying how bad that would be for me. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe that’s the best option. At least they’ll keep me safe.’
‘In a gulag.’
‘No, a laboratory. You think Putin doesn’t have people working on the same projects as Daedalus?’
‘I’m sure he has. But it would still be prison.’
‘Perhaps. But at least I would be alive.’
Litivenko was quiet for a moment. Isabella watched her face and imagined that she was contemplating what her life might look like if she decided to stay here.
‘One mile,’ Pope said. ‘Make up your mind.’
‘What are you offering?’
‘The money you wanted is still on the table. Wherever you were going to go, you can still use it to get there. There’s no reason for you to hand yourself in to the Russians.’
‘Will wanted the money more than I did. And you can’t spend it when you’re dead.’
‘I know one thing: you’re going to need it. It’s a lot easier to hide with money than without it. You could buy yourself a new identity.’
‘Like you said, Mr Pope. I’m not very good at this game.’
Pope didn’t answer.
‘What about revenge?’ Isabella said. It was the first time she had participated in the conversation and it seemed to take Litivenko by surprise. She looked at her. ‘You want a reason to do it – how’s that? They shot your husband because they were scared about what he was threatening to do to them. You can still damage them. They’re still scared. Take the money. Hurt them for what they did.’
‘Who did you say you were again? His daughter?’
‘I’m not his daughter. But I know what I’m talking about. My father was murdered when I was a little girl and I was taken away from my mother. I’d grown up when she found me again. The people who did that to us were just like the ones who killed your husband. They had money. Power. They thought that meant they could do whatever they wanted. Hurt people. Kill them. Make them disappear. My mother hunted them down. She killed five of them. I killed the sixth when she couldn’t.’
Litivenko was staring at her now, slack jawed with surprise. ‘Did it make you feel better?’
‘Yes. It did. It felt good, because they all had it coming to them. But you don’t have to do it because it makes you feel good. You can do it because the people who killed your husband need to know that that has consequences. You can’t just roll up and hide.’
Litivenko squeezed her hands together, glanced forward and saw that Pope was looking at her in the mirror. Her eyes locked with Pope’s; he didn’t show any reaction to what Isabella had said.
‘And what do I need to do?’
‘Unlock the data,’ Pope said.
‘I can’t,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘That was what Will did. I’m an embryologist, not a computer scientist. I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘There was no failsafe?’
‘No.’
Isabella looked at them both: resignation on Litivenko’s face and frustration on Pope’s. The signage at the side of the road indicated that the exit for Ussuriysk was approaching. Pope saw it, too, and he flicked the indicator and drifted over to where the exit began.
But he didn’t turn off. Instead, he switched off the indicator and accelerated again.
‘What are you doing?’ Litivenko said.
‘There’s another way.’
PART ELEVEN:
Washington, DC
Chapter Forty-Four
The skies over Washington had promised snow ever since Maia had arrived three days earlier.
She had booked a room at the Ritz-Carlton in Georgetown and had spent the time preparing herself. She ran in Waterfront Park and along the Capital Crescent Trail. The route was built upon the abandoned rail bed of the eleven-mile Georgetown Branch of the B&O Railroad. Maia ran from Georgetown to west Silver Spring and back every day, twenty-two miles that helped her to rediscover her strength and endurance with every session. She took yoga classes in the hotel gym. She bought bags of ice and made herself ice baths in her bathroom every night. Her injuries healed. She felt better than she had for days.
She was returning from her run on the third day when she noticed a chalk mark on the garbage bin that she passed before she turned around at Silver Spring. She stopped, pretending to catch her breath while she ensured that the trail was empty in both directions. When she was sure that it was, she went to the garbage bin and reached inside. There was a small knapsack inside. She opened the toggles, looked inside and saw a large padded envelope. She closed the sack, put it on her back and continued with her run.
Maia returned to the hotel and made her way up to her room.
There was one final item in the envelope: a Frio cooling wallet. The wallet contained crystals that, when soaked in water, expanded into a gel that then cooled the contents of the wallet for several days. She opened the wallet and took out an injector pen. She lifted up her shirt, held the skin of her chest taut and pressed the pen against it. She selected the dose, pressed the side button and felt the sharp prick as the needle fired into her skin and the dose of citalopram was administered. It would be enough to balance out the dopamine and norepinephrine in her bloodstream and keep her level for a week.
Maia put the pen back into the envelope, meaning to dump it in the hotel garbage later. She switched on the cell phone and held it up so that the retina scan would confirm her identity and unlock the phone. It did. She opened up the ‘Notes’ application. Maia had been provided with a dossier of information on the target that she had been assigned. There were several photographs, links to websites and news stories, together with an itinerary that anticipated where he could be found.
The target was designated with the codename Seminole.
His name was Jack Coogan.
He was a United States senator.
Maia’s orders were to eliminate him tonight.
Maia walked from the hotel to Wisconsin Avenue and purchased the things that she thought she would need for the evening: a flirty dress from Madewell, a leather Le Pliage tote and a pair of red-heeled Louboutins from Steve Madden. The items had cost $2,000, and Maia paid for them in cash.
She returned to the hotel, laid the clothes out on the bed and regarded them. She had no interest in material things. She wasn’t interested in fashion. The dress and the shoes would form part of her disguise. They were some of the tools of her trade. She would morph into someone that her target would be pleased to spend time with.
She studied the dossier. The senator’s reputation as a ladies’ man was well known in the Beltway. There had been multiple affairs, hush money to prevent stories from going public, the suggestion of payments in return for discreet terminations. There was a pattern in the women that the senator favoured: much younger than him, slender and blonde.
She could see why she had been given his file.
She took the vial of white powder from the envelope and put it in the tote.
She checked the time.
Six.
Time to move.
She took out the SIM card, flushed it down the toilet and replaced it with the second card. She undressed and showered, letting the hot water splash over her scalp and skin, sloughing off the dried perspiration that had accreted over the course of the day. She stood in front of the mirror and dried herself. The wound on her shoulder was healing very nicely, just as Aleksandra had said it would. She flexed the muscle, rotating her arm in the socket, and it all felt smooth with just a faint residual stiffness. She was fit enough to be back in the field.
She allowed her mind to drift. Thinking about Aleksandra made her feel wistful. The atmosphere at the facility had been oppressive ever since she had disappeared. Ivanosky had questioned her for hours. That the professor was involved himself was an indication of how seriously the matter was being regarded. The senior man from Manage Risk had shouted and railed at her, saying over and over again that she must have noticed something, that she must have had some idea that Litivenko was planning to leave. Maia had said that she had not. It was the truth. Empathy didn’t come easily to her. She hadn’t noticed anything.
Still they had interrogated her again and again, and she had come to the realisation that she might not have said anything about Aleksandra even if she had known something was wrong. That had surprised her. It confused her, too. It felt like disloyalty, and she had never felt anything like that before.
She thought about it some more. She knew that she missed Aleksandra. She had been the only person who had cared for her. Prometheus valued her and the staff saw her worth, but there was no affection in any of those relationships. Maia was just an asset to them. Chattel. A tool. Why would anyone feel affection for a tool?
She rarely came into contact with the rest of her cohort and, when she did, there was no connection between them save their peculiar genetics. They had nothing in common. No shared memories. No childhood stories to recount. They were emotionally stunted, never given an opportunity to grow or develop in a way that might be considered normal.
The doctor was the nearest that Maia had to a family.
And she missed her.
She dressed and checked her reflection again. She thought that she looked good. She wasn’t vain and it gave her no pleasure, save a satisfaction that she was maximising her chances of bringing herself into range of her target.
The Beretta and cell phone both fit comfortably in the leather tote. She took it, locked the door behind her and started for the elevator.
Chapter Forty-Five
The doorman hailed a taxi for her and she told the driver to take her to 410 First Street. The first flakes of snow started to fall as they headed southeast on Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway. The snow grew heavier, the Lincoln Memorial blurred by the sudden flurries.
‘Been promising to do that for days,’ the driver said. ‘They saying it’ll snow all week now.’
They followed Independence Avenue, crossed the water and turned on to Washington Avenue with the solid bulk of the Capitol to the north. Bullfeathers was popular with the staffers who worked in the government buildings nearby. The bar was not particularly impressive, accommodated on the ground floor of a modern three-floor brick building with a subway and a Thai restaurant on one side and the Capitol Hill Office Building on the other. The street was lined with trees, and cars were parked up close to each other on both sides. The driver stopped as near to the bar as he could and Maia paid him.
‘You be careful,’ he said as she stepped out on to the treacherous asphalt. ‘That place is full of snakes.’
A group of men, overcoats warding them from the cold, stood beneath an awning, smoking cigarettes and sharing whatever salacious pieces of gossip that had circulated around the Hill that day. Maia made her way to the door, aware that the men had stopped their conversation to watch her as she approached.
‘Evening,’ one of them said to her as she went by.
She ignored him, pushed open the door and went into the warmth.
Maia recognised Jack Coogan at once.
The senator was in his mid-forties, handsome in a conventionally wholesome sort of way, with a square jaw, blue eyes and hair that was somewhere between blond and brown. He was dressed in his trademark Italian suit and polished brogues and, as he crossed the room and approached the bar, he flashed a million-megawatt grin at a table of men and women who had turned to acknowledge him.
The file had been thorough. Coogan had been under close surveillance for the past month. A Manage Risk team had been established to run the operation. Half a dozen male and female specialists had been assigned to the job and, by revolving their coverage regularly, they had been able to watch the senator without fear of his security detail making them.
They had quickly identified a weakness in his staff: an intern with a drug problem. She had been only too happy to cooperate in exchange for her cocaine addiction remaining a secret. In return, the intern forwarded Coogan’s daily itinerary, allowing them to set up their coverage in advance. She also told them that Coogan visited Bullfeathers every Wednesday, that he often dismissed his security and went alone and that the reason he went alone was because he often picked up women there.
He was alone, as the intelligence had suggested he would be.
He made his way up to the bar.
‘What’s tha
t?’ he said to Maia, pointing at her drink. ‘Martini?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Difficult day?’
‘You could say that.’
He indicated the empty stool next to her. ‘You mind?’
‘Not at all.’
He sat down. ‘I know what you mean. I’ve had better days myself.’
‘What do you do?’
If her feigned ignorance was a surprise, he pretended not to notice. ‘I’m in the Senate.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t recognise you.’
He put out his hand. ‘Jack Coogan.’
She took it. ‘Sherry McGrath.’
‘Nice to meet you, Sherry.’ He held her hand a little too long, but Maia didn’t attempt to pull away. He glanced down at her almost empty glass. ‘You want another one?’
‘Sure.’
He summoned the bartender with a peremptory snap of his fingers, the sort of gesture that Maia had seen before from some of the other entitled men that she had been sent to meet. He ordered another martini for her and a vodka tonic for himself.
‘What do you do?’
‘Law.’
He was looking at her, smiling that same bright smile that was almost his trademark. She wondered how many times he had deployed that smile to charm the women who came across his path.
‘You in here on your own tonight?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was supposed to be on a date, but he stood me up.’
He feigned outrage. ‘What? You’ve got to be kidding me.’
She shrugged.
‘Well, forget all about that loser. We can have a good time, right?’
The drinks arrived. He slid hers across the bar and then held up his glass. They touched them together.
‘Cheers,’ he said, grinning at her again.
Maia was able to stand back and observe the interaction from a professional standpoint. She supposed that the effect of being the focus of his attention might be attractive to some women. It wasn’t for her; she had no view on the experience. His personality was larger than life, and there was an undoubted magnetism, but it had no effect on her. It was easy to pretend otherwise, but it was nothing more than an act. She checked off the signs: his eyes on her cleavage, the way he tried to hold her eye, the way he turned to face her on his stool, his legs parted. Tick, tick, tick. She smiled and flirted as she had been trained to do. She was happy for him to think that she was pleased to be with him. It kept him at hand while she waited for her opportunity.