by Mark Terry
“Whatever works,” Derek said. He thought of their hand-to-hand encounter. Derek had been in Special Forces and had studied martial arts for over twenty-five years. The Gekko had training and experience, the kind that came from a lifelong obsession, or military and intelligence op training.
“They believe he’s expensive, probably non-ideological, and picky about who he works for. Age is probably in his forties—”
“That’s a safe bet.”
“And if he’s Russian, he’s probably out of the GRU or the FSB. I’ll email you the encrypted files.”
“Thanks. Any idea why he would want to kill me?”
Carter leaned forward. “Buddy, that’s the question you’ve got to answer.”
Gabriele Mann and her friend Natasha Hilbert waited in line outside a popular nightclub in Moscow called Club Karma. A bouncer checked IDs, then paid particular attention to the length of the girls’ skirts. Gabriele figured she was just fine that way—short, tight leather skirt—but she was freezing her ass off and wanted to get in and start dancing.
Natasha, in German, said, “Hey, look! It’s Georg! Hey, over here!” Georg was a local Russian student Natasha had met while working in a coffee bar. Dark hair cut short, brooding eyes, a fuzz of a dark goatee. His face lit up and he walked over. “Hey! How’s it going?” A blond guy tagged along.
Natasha introduced Gabriele to Georg, who introduced his friend Ivan. Ivan was quiet, hands tucked deep into his denim jacket, but he eyed Gabriele and smiled. Suddenly he looked up and said, “Hey! It’s Johann! Johann!”
The bouncer glanced up and waved him over. Ivan told them to follow him and they did, ignoring the glares and muttering of the other people in line. Johann and Ivan bumped fists and talked for a second, then Johann let the four of them into the club, which was wall-to-wall people dancing beneath a flashing sea of laser lights, hip-hop slamming out of huge speakers.
Gabriele hooked up with Ivan, dancing into the crowd. Gabriele was a German exchange student, spending a year in Moscow, working on a degree in languages—she was fluent in Russian, Ukrainian, and Arabic, and was working on Uzbek and Turkish. She lost track of Natasha and Georg, but that was okay—Ivan was pretty hot and a good dancer and he bought her drinks.
Two hours later she caught sight of Natasha and told Ivan she needed to go to the bathroom. She caught Natasha’s arm and headed to the ladies’. It was crowded in there, but she used the toilet and freshened her makeup while Natasha said, “Ivan’s hot! Do you like him?”
“Uh-huh. He’s older than he looks. He’s working on a grad degree in business while he works as a trader at the Russian Stock Market.”
Ready to go back into the club, they pushed back into the morass of bodies, searching for the men. Finally they spied them leaning against the bar, iced glasses of vodka in their hands. They headed in their direction but never made it.
A huge explosion ripped through the crowd. For just a moment Gabriele saw flames erupting from behind the bar. She saw in the blink of an eye the wooden bar explode outward, catching the two men and flinging and shattering their bodies across the room. Almost simultaneously the pressure wave struck her and Natasha and it was the last thing either of them ever saw again.
Konstantin Nikitinov pulled up to Club Karma, or as close as he could get. The building, still in flames, was surrounded by fire trucks, police cars and ambulances. The night pulsed with red and blue and white lights. The media trucks were in the area, being held off to one side by the Militia.
Parking, he held out his FSB credentials and worked his way as close as he could get. He saw the enormous figure of Pietr Titov, slouching in a leather trench coat, a cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, ember glowing orange. Titov was talking to a fireman. When Titov saw Konstantin, he nodded to the fireman, who went away.
Titov said, “Over a hundred dead so far. A bomb. A big one. The blast probably killed a lot of them, then the building caught fire and they were trapped inside.”
“No sprinkler system?”
Titov shrugged. “Didn’t work properly if there was. Emergency exit was blocked, although I’m not sure if it would have been of much use.”
“What do we know about the club?”
Titov shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“I’ll find out.”
Konstantin approached the crowd of onlookers, flashing his credentials. “Why are you here?” he asked a middle-aged woman wrapped in a quilted coat, a tangle of red hair peeping out from a heavy scarf. “Live just a block down,” she said, pointing to an apartment building. “Felt the blast. Heard the sirens.”
“Ever been to Club Karma?”
She made a face. “Course not. Too young for me.”
“What kind of people go there?”
“College kids. Students. Lots of foreigners.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”
The woman shrugged, but a younger man had been standing a few feet away. He wore black jeans and a black leather jacket. His head was shaved, face long and thin, a shadow of a beard on his bony jaw. In Russian thick with a French accent, he said, “Yeah. Not tons of Russians here. Kind of the expat crowd. I was a block away when it blew up. I was headed here, going to meet a friend, but she was running late. Thank God.”
“Did you see anything suspicious? People driving away quickly, people too old for this type of club? Somebody who might have set a bomb or thrown a bomb?”
“No,” the Frenchman said. “Nothing like that. Just the usual crowd lined up outside.”
Konstantin took down his name and started working the crowd, hoping to find more witnesses who actually saw anything. His phone buzzed. It was Ivan, heading up his B team in the Red Hand investigation.
“There’s been a major explosion at Begovaya station. It looks like the bomb was on a train.”
Konstantin’s grip tightened on his phone. Was the Red Hand declaring war? Three bombings in one day? Were they insane?
“Who’s on it?”
“Viktor and Pavel. I’m in HQ … wait, wait, wait…”
Stomach churning, Konstantin waited. Looking around, he saw that Titov was on his phone, as were a number of high-ranking police and fire personnel. Further away he saw members of the media, phones clamped to their ears, some sprinting for their cars.
Ivan’s voice came back, shocked. “It’s a goddamned war out there, Konstantin! Multiple explosions, almost simultaneous. Looks like car bombs—at the Canadian embassy, the Saudi embassy, and the Israeli embassy. And I think they’re gas bombs like this morning at the U.S. Embassy!”
12
Pavel Botkin, the chief bomb maker for the Red Hand, did not feel well. Damn winter, he thought. Got a case of the flu.
In the bedroom of his small apartment of what was once state-owned housing, Pavel lay wrapped in a quilt, shivering, hot with fever, racked with chills, his head pounding. He’d been like this for three days, one of the worst cases of the flu he’d ever had. Couldn’t hold anything down. The old babushka who lived across the hallway and took care of his cat when he was out of town dropped in on him periodically and made him soup and tea. She hadn’t been in since late last night. He only left his bed to vomit or shit
his guts out.
Pavel heard the apartment door open and called out, but was so exhausted he dozed for a moment. He opened his eyes when she shuffled into the room with a bowl of soup on a tray.
“Pavel, how are you …” She faded off, head cocked to one side, studying him. After a moment, a catch in her voice, she said, “Pavel, how do you feel?”
“A little better,” he lied.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come in earlier … I … how long have you had … Pavel …”
He opened his eyes and saw the frightened expression on her face. “What is it, Baba?”
She did not rest her hand on his forehead like she usually did. Instead she set the tray of soup next to the bed and hurried out of the room.
P
avel struggled to sit up. The room spun and he gripped the quilt hard around him, taking a deep breath. He felt horrible. The worst case of the flu ever. Even the smell of the soup made his stomach churn.
Stumbling into the bathroom, he dropped to his knees and dry-heaved into the toilet for what seemed like forever. He lay curled on the cheap rug, sweat soaking his brow, wishing, praying that he would feel better soon.
Finally, after a long time, five or ten minutes at least, he struggled upright, pulling himself up by the sink and turned on the water. He splashed cold water on his face and shivered. Glancing up, his heart thrashed in his chest. A rash burned across the left side of his face and down along his neck. Part of the rash formed into raised blisters.
He gripped the edge of the sink, staring in disbelief, then crashed to the bathroom floor as his strength left him. His head slammed against the wall and Pavel passed out. When he woke up, he was riding in the back of an ambulance, the siren wailing, wondering where he was and where he was going and who had called the ambulance.
Pavel thought, One of the canisters leaked. One of the damned canisters filled with smallpox leaked.
It took a few seconds for the pounding on his door to wake Derek from his intense sleep. Rolling over, he glanced at the clock, realized it was 3:45 in the morning. He slid out of bed and crept to the door, peering through the peephole. Erica Kirov. He flung the door open. “What could you possibly want?”
She stared at him. For a moment Derek was puzzled by her response, then he realized he was wearing only his underpants and the fur hat Raisa had given him. “Ah,” he said. “Come in. Hang on.”
He pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, putting the ushanka aside, running his hands through what he was certain was a serious double-dose of both hat head and bed head. Plopping down on the bed, he rubbed his eyes. “Have a nightmare, Agent Kirov?”
She found the remote control and turned on the TV. It only took a moment to find a news station that was covering the attacks in Moscow. Unfortunately for Derek, they were all in Russian. He gathered from the film footage that there had been a bombing of some sort, but he had no clue what they were talking about. It could have been a Russian report on a bombing in the U.S., in France, in Moscow, or almost anywhere else in the world. He yawned. “Translate, please.”
Kirov balled her fists. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t speak Russian. What possible help did Secretary Mandalevo think you’d be in Moscow?”
“I didn’t come here with the intention of helping you at all. Remember?”
“And yet, here you are.”
“And yet, here I am. Translate or let me go back to sleep.”
“A bomb went off in a disco, a train station, and three embassies in Moscow.”
Derek wrapped his mind around that. “Simultaneous?”
“Close.”
“Which embassies?”
She told him. “And they think they were gas bombs like the one on the U.S. Embassy.”
Derek went into the bathroom and splashed water into his face. He returned a little bit more awake, but not much. “Are we being recalled to Moscow?”
“No. But … oh God!” She turned her attention to the TV set.
A heavy-set older man in a military uniform was speaking. “Who is he?” Derek asked.
“Colonel General Valery Zukhov, head of the Western Operational Strategic Command. It used to be the Moscow Military District. In 2010 it merged with the Leningrad Military District, the Northern Fleet and the Baltic Fleet. He controls a huge chunk of the military and he’s often at odds with the Duma and the president and prime minister.”
“What’s he want?”
“He’s gone public, he’s working the press. He’s telling them that he believes all of Russia is under attack by terrorists, and the government and police can’t control it, but the military can, and they should declare martial law and he and his forces will restore order.”
The camera cut to President Eltsin, lean, dark hair, hawk-like eyes. Erica translated as Eltsin told the Russian people to stay calm, the government had everything under control. Martial law was not necessary.
Derek blew out a gust of air. “Zukhov making a power play or is he right?”
“Both. Zukhov’s definitely a hardliner and he definitely has ambitions. Eltsin’s not terribly powerful. The U.S. likes him, he’s a fairly weak Russian president, but Prime Minister Kirill Arkhipov is more old-school and probably more in line with Zukhov. Eltsin’s progressive, but he came to power when Vakhach was assassinated and he’s been struggling to stay in office ever since. Eltsin and Zukhov, in particular, are at each other’s throats. Arkhipov seems to play them off against each other, but he may just be caught in the middle.”
Derek checked his PDA for emails, didn’t note anything particularly pressing, and said, “So we continue to investigate.”
“Yes. What’s the first thing we do?”
Raising an eyebrow, Derek said, “Get a couple more hours of sleep, get coffee, something to eat, then we have to search the hotel room where McGill committed suicide.”
“Or was murdered.”
“Yeah, that. So unless you’d like to join me, go back to your room. Good night.”
Three hours later Derek was in the hotel restaurant drinking coffee and eating eggs and sausage. Erica finally showed up, dark circles around her eyes. “The news isn’t good. There were two more attacks, both in St. Petersburg. There’s some feeling among the general public, apparently, that maybe they should let Zukhov get things under control.”
Derek stirred his coffee, thinking. Finally he said, “The room McGill was in is occupied, but they’re checking out this morning. In the meantime—” He glanced at his wristwatch. “There’s a guy I want to visit before he heads off to work.”
“Who?” A waitress came by and Erica ordered something in Russian.
“Dr. Jurek Petrushkin.”
“Friend?”
“As close to one as I have in Russia. He’s a scientist at Vector.”
Jurek Petrushkin lived in a bungalow in the shadow of a new high-rise apartment building. Compared to Moscow, Novosibirsk was still in winter—not slush and sleet, but snow. It was bitterly cold, although Erica had checked the news and noted that it was supposed to warm up above freezing later in the day.
“Are you sure he’ll be in?” she asked.
“I sent him an email. He said he doesn’t leave until 8:30.”
Erica parked the rental car on the street and the two trudged to the front door. Derek knocked and a moment later the door was flung open by a short, stooped older man with wispy white hair. He wore dark slacks and a white shirt and black tie. Faded blue eyes twinkled behind glasses.
“Derek Stillwater!” he said in lightly accented English. “How are you, son? Come in, come in. We have a little time to talk before I must leave for work, unless you plan to come out for an inspection.”
They entered the house and Derek said, “I might join the inspection team, but if I don’t have to I won’t.” He introduced Erica as an associate. A Siamese cat prowled from around a corner, then disappeared behind a sofa covered with a colorful afghan.
“Tea or coffee?” Jurek asked.
Both went with coffee. Jurek shuffled into the kitchen and started a coffee pot burbling. “So, Derek, you never were one for small talk, but how is that wife of yours?”
“We divorced quite a while ago, Jurek. Last I heard, Simona’s fine.”
“Ah, that’s a shame. No woman in your life?” He peeped at Erica.
“Nobody regular. How about yourself?”
“Not since Galya passed away.”
“Yes. I was sorry to hear that. I’m sorry I couldn’t attend the funeral.”
“I received your flowers and your card, young man. Neither of us would have expected you to travel around the world to see her into the ground.” He shot Erica a look. “I first met Derek many years ago at a conference in Berlin. Then the following year in Rio, I bel
ieve it was. His wife was quite lovely.”
“As was yours, Jurek.”
“And you, lovely lady. Are you a scientist as well?”
“I work with the embassy in Moscow.”
“Ah. What brings you both to my home, then?”
“James McGill,” Derek said. “Among other things.”
Jurek nodded. He poured three cups of coffee and brought one to both Erica and Derek, returning for his own. He dropped lightly into a faded blue armchair and crossed one leg over the other. “Committed suicide, or so we were told. You have reason to doubt that?”
Derek shrugged. “You’re aware of yesterday’s embassy bombing and all the attacks last night, of course.”
“Of course. I’m an old man, but I’m not an idiot.”
“It was Novichok.”
Without expression, Jurek sipped his coffee. “You’re quite sure?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “That would explain why you’re here, if that’s true.”
“Was the theft an inside job?”
Jurek shrugged. “I’m not privy to all the security issues at Vector. I’m a lowly researcher.”
A snort escaped Derek’s lips.
A slight smile crossed Jurek’s wrinkled face. “I do not know the details, but there were military guards that were believed to have been involved and who were never seen from again.”
“Are they being prosecuted? Held somewhere?”
The Russian scientist shrugged. “I know no details, and if I did, I wouldn’t be able to share them with you anyway, Derek. You know that.”
“What was McGill doing?”
“Poking around, asking questions most of us didn’t want to answer.”
“Sounds like business as usual. Why would someone want to kill him?”
Again Jurek shrugged. “I don’t know that someone did. Why is it so difficult to believe he committed suicide?”
“It’s not. He was moody and on antidepressants. He might have flung himself out of the window, but, well…” Derek splayed his fingers. “It’s Russia, my friend.”