by Tom Wood
‘You’ll have to excuse the mess,’ Kasakov said to Burliuk as they reached the top of the staircase, ‘but I think you’ll understand it’s about time I upgraded my security. My guards didn’t try to take your inhaler, did they?’ Burliuk shook his head and Kasakov smiled. ‘Be glad they didn’t insist on giving you a cavity search.’
An armed bodyguard was stationed on the landing, overlooking the staircase. Another stood at the bottom. One either end of the long hallway. Kasakov led Burliuk inside his study and closed the door.
‘Take a seat, Tomasz.’
Burliuk did.
‘Izolda is downstairs,’ Kasakov said, taking a seat behind his desk. ‘She’s taken the assassination attempt surprisingly well, I think. She’s a strong woman, but I’ve already left her for too long with just guards for company.’
‘Take some time off,’ Burliuk said, ‘stay with Izolda. Take care of your wife, and let me take care of everything else.’
Kasakov smiled at that. ‘That’s my plan, my old friend. But tell me, Tomasz, what’s the latest with the North Koreans? I assume it’s bad news.’
‘I’m sorry to say they’ve withdrawn the MiG order and gone with the Indians.’
‘I thought they would,’ Kasakov admitted. ‘For all their bluster, those people are scared of their own shadow. It’s their loss, not mine.’
‘If only that were true. That deal was vital for us, not only in monetary terms but for our reputation. It will be a long time before we are trusted again. And who else is there to sell to? How many conflicts are fought with tanks and jets today? War has changed. This is the era of the terrorist and the guerrilla. Rifles and IEDs are their weapons.’
‘You’re right, of course,’ Kasakov agreed, ‘but I still don’t care. How much money and power is enough?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m retiring.’
Burliuk struggled to respond for a moment, before asking, ‘Since when?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it for a little while, but when I found out I was going to be a father the decision was made for me.’
‘ What? ’
Kasakov stood. ‘Izolda’s pregnant. We’re going to have a baby. Finally.’
Burliuk’s mouth fell open. He struggled with how to respond.
‘Your manners are terrible,’ Kasakov remarked. ‘This is usually the point where you offer congratulations.’
‘Sorry, Vladimir. Congratulations. I’m just shocked, that’s all.’
He stood and they embraced. Kasakov squeezed his friend hard, but Burliuk’s return hug was limp.
‘You’ve taken me by complete surprise.’
They stepped back from each other. ‘Not as surprised as I was, or Izolda for that matter. After the attack, Izolda complained of stomach pains. You see, when the shooting started I threw her to the ground. I thought I must have hurt her. We went to a hospital and they ran some tests.’ Kasakov smiled. ‘But she wasn’t hurt at all. You should see her, Tomasz. She’s so happy, so happy. All she’s ever wanted is to be a mother. Now, she will be.’
‘She’ll make a wonderful mother.’
‘I know. And I’ll do my best as a father. I won’t treat the child any different than I would my own.’
Burliuk’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Did you not wonder why Izolda and I have been without a son or daughter for so long? We’ve never spoken of it, but I don’t believe you haven’t been curious. The reason is that I can’t father children, Tomasz. Of course, I never told anyone. Me and Izolda never even spoke of it until very recently, though she must have known for years, always afraid to bring it up for fear of my reaction.’
Burliuk was shaking his head. He used his inhaler. ‘If you’re not the father, then who is?’
‘My first thought was that it might be you.’
He coughed. ‘ Excuse me? ’
‘You should know me well enough by now to know I am no fool, my friend. I’ve seen the way you look at Izolda. The way you’ve always looked at her.’
Burliuk showed his palms. ‘Vladimir, I have never, ever — ’
Kasakov made another dismissive gesture. ‘I believe you. You’re in love with her, I know that. It was just a foolish idea, and one I dismissed quickly. I know Izolda thinks of you like a brother. She wouldn’t betray me with you. Someone else, yes. You, never.’
Burliuk’s eyes narrowed a fraction. He looked away.
‘I’m going to play along with the deception,’ Kasakov said. ‘I won’t let on I know the child isn’t mine. I don’t blame Izolda for what she’s done. If I had been strong enough to admit to my problem, we could have received help long ago. I’m doing this for Izolda. Not for me.’
‘Very noble,’ Burliuk muttered.
Kasakov stood in front of Burliuk and rubbed his friend’s arms. ‘Are you sad for me, Tomasz? Or for yourself?’
Burliuk said nothing.
‘It must hurt to have desired Izolda all these years while she shared my bed. It must hurt even more now that you know she chose another man, not you, with whom to lie. Maybe several men, for all I know.’
‘Vladimir-’
‘Don’t say anything. Let me speak. You’ve been at my side for all these years. My one true friend. You’re the only person in the entire world, besides my wife, who I could trust.’ Kasakov rubbed Burliuk’s shoulders. ‘It occurs to me that we still know nothing about who tried to kill me in Bucharest.’
‘Eltsina, surely. She said-’
Kasakov shook his head. ‘Only under the most extreme pain did she admit to hiring that sniper. However, her plan relied on you and I being discredited by the war with Ariff. Killing me before the war would not have achieved that. You would have been chosen to head the empire, not her. So, no. It wasn’t Yuliya.’ Kasakov squeezed Burliuk’s shoulders. ‘You, however, were most keen that I should personally go to Bucharest to negotiate with the North Korean broker. Why would you do that when they were willing to come to Moscow?’
Burliuk reached to again take out his inhaler. ‘Vladimir, I-’
Kasakov’s huge hands enveloped Burliuk’s neck and squeezed. Burliuk gasped and dropped the inhaler to grab at Kasakov’s wrists, pulling with all his strength. Kasakov’s hands didn’t move.
‘I spoke to your friend Danil Petrenko just before he disappeared in Barcelona,’ Kasakov said. ‘He told me about what went on in Minsk that time. About your deal with Gabir Yamout. You put him in touch with Petrenko and Yamout did you a favour. I wonder what that could have been. Maybe he put you in touch with a killer. One who could never be traced back to yourself.’
‘ No… ’ Burliuk managed to croak.
‘I know you’ve never shared Eltsina’s ambition,’ Kasakov stated, ‘so why else, I ask myself, if not to take over my empire, would you want me dead? The answer is obvious. For Izolda, of course. But I would never have believed you could do that to me, until just now. When I told you of Izolda’s affair you could not disguise the depth of your anger. Then I knew.’
Kasakov squeezed harder. The blood vessels in Burliuk’s face stood out beneath his reddening skin. He wheezed, breathless, punching desperately at Kasakov, who didn’t try to slip the blows, accepting each one as the price of forty years of friendship.
‘If only you hit like a heavyweight, Tomasz.’
Burliuk’s lips were turning blue. His eyes bulged. The toes of his shoes scratched at the floorboards.
‘In a way, I don’t blame you,’ Kasakov admitted. ‘You did see her first, all those long years ago, but for all your good looks she chose me, not you. Had that been reversed I would surely have done the same as you to make her mine. Only I, of course, would not have failed.’
Burliuk’s arms flopped to his sides, his legs slackened and his head tilted forward. Kasakov kept his own arms straight, supporting Burliuk’s weight, holding him upright for a long time after his heart stopped.
Kasakov then called his security to dispose
of his best friend’s body and went downstairs to look at nursery colour schemes with his wife.
CHAPTER 57
Washington, DC, USA
Procter pulled into the parking lot of a burger joint that had seen better days. The square of cracked asphalt at the rear looked no better. Procter spotted a blue Lincoln Town Car reverse-parked at the far end and headed towards it. No other vehicles were near the car. They were all parked closer to the restaurant itself. Customers never walked further than they had to. Procter stopped his Buick alongside the Lincoln, nose to tail. The night air smelled of exhaust fumes and grease.
Procter already had his window lowered. Clarke buzzed down his own.
‘Evening, Roland.’
Procter’s expression was hard, dejected. ‘Tesseract failed to kill Kasakov.’
Clarke let out some air. He said nothing, but his disappointment was palpable. It seemed as if there was a little fear mixed in as well.
‘The word’s all over the Agency that someone tried to take him out two days ago. Kasakov was on vacation. Multiple bodies have been found near to his Sochi dacha.’
Clarke looked at Procter. ‘Is Tesseract dead?’
‘There are three as yet unidentified corpses. I’ve seen the pictures. He’s not among them.’
Clarke stared across the parking lot. He was the most distressed Procter could ever remember seeing him. It wasn’t the anger Procter had been expecting. Clarke hadn’t raised his voice, hadn’t thrown across any accusations.
‘Looks like you were right about him all along,’ Procter said, as sympathetically as he knew how. ‘That’s twice now he’s failed and created an almighty mess in the process. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you earlier.’
‘Let me assure you I take no pleasure in being proved right. Do you know what went wrong?’
Procter made a face and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not a clue. Tesseract hasn’t reported in. But what does it matter? I’ve got no choice now. I’m pulling the plug. We’ll never get Kasakov. Not after this. Not after two assassination attempts in as many months. He’ll surround himself with nothing short of a small army. If we want him, we’re gonna have to drop a cruise missile on Moscow.’ Procter shook his head. ‘All this heat on us, all these questions being asked, and for what gain? Kasakov is alive and well and we didn’t even get our war, we got a skirmish.’
Clarke said, ‘This should be our last meeting for a while.’
‘Agreed.’
‘What about Tesseract?’
‘We’ll have to get rid of him.’
‘How?’ Clarke asked.
‘The contingency,’ Procter explained. ‘That boy has a lot of enemies, don’t forget. Most notably in the SVR.’
‘Efficient.’
Procter nodded. ‘We don’t have to get our hands dirty. We simply hand over his file, maybe say where he’s going to be. Anonymously, of course. The Russians are a lot better than us when it comes to making problems disappear.’
An hour later, Procter sat slumped in the chair of his study on the second floor of his Georgetown home. He wasn’t a big drinker, usually, but he was rapidly making his way through a bottle of Merlot. Everything he had worked so hard to achieve had fallen apart.
Patricia was watching soaps in bed and Roland Jnr was thankfully asleep, so Procter could stress in peace and quiet. Self-pity wasn’t usually something he wallowed in, but this time he figured he had a right to. What could he have done differently? He replayed the past few weeks in his head, the months and years beforehand. The plan had seemed like a good one. It came with a real risk of failure, sure, but Procter had expected success. After all, he had the right backer in Clarke, the right triggerman in Tesseract. It should have worked.
He drank some more wine. It dribbled down his chin and he wiped it away with the back of his wrist. On the screen of his computer monitor was Tesseract’s file. There wasn’t much information on the guy, but there was enough to enable the right people to track him down. Procter didn’t want to send it; as the man who’d brought Tesseract on to the op, the buck stopped with him, but the assassin had drawn a lot of attention, too much attention to allow him to carry on walking around.
Procter composed an email from an untraceable account and attached Tesseract’s file. He knew just who in the SVR to send the file to.
He drained the last of his glass and wiped his mouth. His finger hovered above the left mouse button. Sorry, my man.
The computer beeped at him before he could click the button. Incoming VoIP call. Procter’s eyebrows rose, and after a second’s deliberation, he accepted it.
‘I was just thinking about you,’ he said.
The voice that came through the computer’s speaker spoke in English but Procter couldn’t place the accent. It was vaguely American at times, British at others, but also neither. He had no idea where Tesseract was from.
‘You have exactly one minute to convince me you had nothing to do with what occurred on Friday.’ Tesseract’s voice was low and chilling. ‘Then I’m hanging up and getting on the next flight to the States. You can guess what happens after that.’
Procter frowned, considered. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Fifty-seven seconds left.’
Procter sat up in his seat. He gathered his thoughts. ‘If something happened, you need to stop playing games and just tell me what it is.’
‘Fifty seconds.’
‘ Jesus, what the hell is this? You can’t be serious. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Forty-six seconds.’
‘Okay,’ Procter said. ‘Someone came after you, right? That’s why you’re pissed. You think it was me. It wasn’t. I swear.’
‘Thirty-seven seconds.’
‘All right, you need more convincing than that. I don’t know what to say if I don’t know what happened.’
‘Thirty-one seconds.’
Procter grabbed hold of the desk with both hands. He leaned forward. ‘Come on, cut me some slack here, I’m trying my best. Someone came after you, we’ve established that. You think it was me. Okay, so, that means they did so while you were on the Kasakov contract. Right? They were waiting for you, so you think I set you up.’
‘Eighteen seconds.’
Procter stood. ‘I understand why you would think that. But I didn’t. You have to believe me. I know how good you are. I know what happened last time someone set you up. I don’t want you coming after me.’
Tesseract’s voice cut right through Procter. ‘I am coming after you. Nine seconds.’
‘Please.’ Procter shoved his fingers through his hair. ‘You have to believe me.’
‘Seven seconds.’
‘ Don’t hang up. We can work this out. I just need more time to figure out what happened.’
‘Three seconds.’
‘ SHIT.’ Procter slammed a palm down on the desk. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘Two seconds.’
Procter took a huge breath. ‘Okay, you win, my name’s Roland Procter. I work for the Central Intelligence Agency. I’m the Associate Deputy Director for National Clandestine Services. I’ve a wife and two kids. We live in DC. Georgetown.’
There was no response.
‘You already know what I look like,’ Procter continued. ‘Now you know my name, my position and where I live. It would have taken you a month to find me before, now you can find me in a day.’ He paused, caught back his breath. ‘If I set you up, would I have told you that?’
Silence. Procter breathed heavily. His heart thumped hard inside his ribcage.
‘All right,’ Tesseract answered eventually. ‘I believe you.’
Procter let out a massive sigh. He put a hand to his chest. ‘Christ, my heart’s beating fast.’
‘No blasphemy, remember?’
Procter fell backwards in his chair. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘You need to tell me what happened.’
Tesseract said, ‘For days I�
�d been waiting for Kasakov to be in just the right place to make the shot. A moment before I squeezed the trigger, I realised I was being watched. There was a team: three pros. American. Ex-Special Forces. They were waiting for me to kill Kasakov. The second I did, they would have killed me too. Otherwise Kasakov would be dead now and you wouldn’t be considering how best to remove me. Only someone who knew I was in Sochi could have sent that team.’
Procter remained silent.
‘That someone gave them a dossier on me. A dossier that included pictures taken in the hospital before we met. So, if it wasn’t you who set me up, who was it?’
Procter pinched the skin between his eyes and said, ‘My partner. No one but him and me knew you were going to kill Kasakov, or had access to those pictures.’
‘Name?’
‘No,’ Procter said. ‘I won’t do that.’
‘You should seriously reconsider that stance.’
‘Listen, I don’t know why all this has happened, but I’m not handing him over to be killed. He’s my friend.’
‘Not much of a friend. He betrayed you too.’
Procter sat up. ‘He was just trying to protect us both. It was stupid, but I get why he did it. I’ll talk to him. You’re not touching him. So, forget about that.’
‘I interrogated the kill team’s leader,’ Tesseract added. ‘He told me that before they were hired to kill me they’d completed another job for the same client. In Beirut. They kidnapped Baraa Ariff and his family, tortured and killed them. And filmed it.’
‘What?’ was all Procter could manage to say.
‘Now, that doesn’t sound to me like a typical assassination. But it does sound like the kind of thing someone would have done for revenge if that someone really hated Ariff. Every job I’ve done for you has revolved around him and Kasakov. At the start of all this you had me save Kasakov’s life, otherwise with Kasakov dead it might have been hard to convince Ariff that it was Kasakov who sent me after Yamout in Minsk. And I imagine the specific explosives I used to kill Farkas somehow convinced Kasakov to go after Ariff. I’ve got to hand it to you, it was a decent plan: trick the world’s biggest trafficker of small arms and the biggest dealer in heavy munitions to wage war on each other.’