The Zero Option

by David Rollins

  Kradich picked up the menu, opened it and used it to shield a sheet of paper, which he removed from his inside coat pocket. He placed it in the menu, closed it and handed it to Lana.

  ‘Handwritten, in pencil,’ she observed when she opened the heavy leather-bound folder and scanned the sheet.

  ‘You want to keep it secret, these days you go low tech. Besides, I could hardly expect you to eat a thumb drive.’

  Lana glanced up at him.

  ‘You think I’m joking. I’m not. Once you’ve had a good look at what’s on that paper, do what you have to do to get rid of it. Ketchup works, I’m told, though if it were me I’d try washing it down with a lusty cabernet sauvignon.’

  Lana was intrigued. Kradich’s neat handwriting showed a numbered list of twenty-seven names, all of which looked foreign. ‘Who are these people?’ she asked.

  ‘They’re dead people. They all died within four months of the crash of 007.’

  ‘I’m sorry, am I missing something?’ Lana asked. ‘I don’t recognize any of these names.’

  ‘They’re agents, anti-Soviet. They’re not ours, not directly anyway. They lived in various Eastern Bloc countries—Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Romania. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but I doubt it. Every single name on that sheet had a connection with Gehlen, either when he was the Nazi spymaster in the east, or when he was the boss of the West German BND intelligence service. Most of those names belonged to people who were personally trained by him. Agents.’

  ‘Jesus . . .’ Lana said as the connection became apparent to her. ‘Jesus—McDonald gave them up.’ Then: ‘There were 268 people besides McDonald on that airliner. Are you saying they were all held or executed so that the Soviets wouldn’t have to return the congressman?’

  Kradich summoned the waiter.

  ‘I think that list of dead agents might be one of the items you’d find in the compartment you’re not read-in on,’ he said. ‘I also think we both know who is read-in on it.’

  ‘The man who could be the next President of the United States,’ Lana whispered.

  February 12, 2012

  Ulan-Ude, Buryatiya region, Siberia. The platform was crowded with people waiting to board the train, accompanied by suitcases, boxes, crates, hessian sacks straining at their seams, and various other unidentifiable goods stacked and ready to load. They jostled with those waiting to welcome the newly arrived, who themselves were collecting cargo being passed down to them from the train. Meanwhile, snow was falling, fat flakes that drifted and swirled on the wind, whipping across railway tracks and ties embedded in ice. Ben and Akiko moved quickly through the crowds, stepping through snow up to their calves, encased in layers of clothing and trying to stay warm, hoping not to bump into the men in the photos, avoiding eye contact.

  They left the area of the train station without delay and found a hotel after ten minutes of careful walking along cracked, icy sidewalks, located behind an odd, pyramid-shaped shopping center. A couple of low- browed thugs held the entrance door open for them as they approached.

  After grabbing a few hotel cards and fulfilling the usual financial and immigration requirements at reception with a surly woman who wore her hair in a sixties beehive, they dumped their bags in their room and went for a walk in the freezing cold. A couple of old and dirty snowplows roared past, one behind the other, pushing the ice, snow and gravel slush toward the gutter.

  ‘The guidebook says there are a couple of good tourist information centers here,’ Ben yelled over the traffic noise. ‘I think we should just go to both and ask about gulags in the area.’

  ‘What?’ yelled Akiko, shaking her head, indicating that she couldn’t hear.

  Ben made a gesture that said ‘Forget it, follow me’ and walked down the hill toward the underpass that took the local traffic snarl, banked up behind more snowplows, under the railway lines.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ he said into Akiko’s ear when they were away from the road, ‘but I could use a few shots of vodka, and maybe some of that deep-fried lard.’

  Akiko, falling snowflakes melting on her cheeks, gave him a wan smile, put her head down and kept walking.

  The first of the tourist offices was located on the ground floor of another hotel. They went inside and peeled off layers of clothing, instantly starting to sweat in the steaming, overheated foyer. The office was small, dark and covered with posters for places like Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the Bahamas and Fiji, probably, Ben decided, to keep the staff’s minds off reality. He spoke to a middle-aged woman sitting at a desk, knitting.

  ‘Excuse me, do you speak English?’

  She shook her head, nodded at a narrow doorway and then called out something. A young Mongol woman with a chubby, perfectly round face and narrow black eyes came out.

  ‘Yes, can I help you?’ she asked in surprisingly unaccented English.

  ‘Can we come into your office?’ Ben asked, not wanting to broadcast their plans.

  ‘Please,’ she said, standing aside and holding the door open.

  Akiko hesitated, then went in first. ‘Spasiba,’ she said.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ the Mongol woman replied. ‘Please, sit. How can I help you?’

  The office was small and dark, the desk littered with papers and dominated by an old PC desktop cluttered with folders bearing Cyrillic names. More posters of summery island escapes plastered the wall, along with a large political map of Russia.

  ‘We are college professors,’ Akiko began, going into their spiel, delivering the now familiar lie.

  ‘Gulags?’ the woman said, frowning, once Akiko had finished. ‘I wouldn’t know. Let me call my mother. She has been here her whole life.’

  Akiko sat back as the woman dialed out on her cell phone, and started talking into it in a language that wasn’t Russian. After a few minutes of conversation that ended with, ‘Uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . uh-huh,’ the woman put down her cell and said, ‘I’m sorry. There were labor camps to the north of Ulan-Ude many years ago, but they were abandoned.’

  ‘Are there any towns in the area where the gulags used to be?’ Ben asked.

  ‘There are small settlements, I’m sure.’ From the top drawer of her desk she pulled out a map of the area around Ulan-Ude. ‘My mother said that up here, along this river, there were rumors. Two camps. Sometimes the KGB would come to Ulan-Ude and drink. When people drink, they talk.’

  ‘Could someone take us to this area?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. It is too cold, too much snow. Also, my mother says many Russians today do not want to know what happened back then. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Akiko.

  ‘We’ll pay whatever it takes,’ Ben said.

  ‘I can ask around for you. What would you pay?’

  ‘What would be fair?’

  She smiled. ‘This is Russia—whatever you are prepared to pay is fair. Where are you staying?’

  Akiko hesitated, then gave her a card from their hotel.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Irina.’

  ‘I’m Ben, and this is Akiko.’

  They took a card and thanked her and went back to the foyer. Through its smoked brown windows, they could see that it had stopped snowing. But from the lean on the people walking around outside, the wind was up, blowing fiercely. It would be bitingly cold.

  ‘The other place isn’t far,’ said Ben, adjusting his clothing before they took on the weather. ‘Just across the road. Here.’ He handed Akiko the guidebook, his gloved finger on the spot.

  Moments later they were scudding along the street, the wind behind them. They found the tourist center, but the door was locked shut. There was a notice pinned to it.

  ‘Closed until Tuesday,’ said Akiko.

  It was Sunday.

  ‘Terrific.’

  Ben glanced across the road. A massive bronze head of Lenin, the size of a two-story house and mounted on huge blocks of
granite, stared impassively cross-eyed in their direction, impervious to the cold. Snow had collected on his bald head, eyebrows, the tops of his ears and the bridge of his nose. A gust of wind blew a swirling veil of snow around his chin.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Ben said.

  They made their way back past Irina’s tourist office and headed down the hill toward the river. Ben found a supermarket on the way and bought a bottle of vodka like a good Russian, developing a taste for it.

  A plaza opened out at the bottom of the hill between two rows of buildings that provided shelter from the wind. Buskers, vendors selling sweet cakes and pastries, and merchants with stalls of winter clothes, old CDs, underwear and kitchen staples had gathered in the lee of the buildings out of the worst of the weather in the hope of attracting shoppers.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it’s fifteen below,’ said Ben.

  Akiko answered with a smile and flipped the fur-lined hood back from her face. At the far end of the plaza, an old Russian Orthodox church with a gold dome caught a faint gleam of sunlight and, beacon-like, magnified it. They wandered through the market toward the church, taking a few moments to act like tourists in a country far different from their own.

  Akiko’s cell rang. ‘Hello,’ she said, answering it. ‘Yes, it’s Akiko.’ She turned away to improve the signal. ‘Oh . . . No sooner . . . ? Yes, we will take it. A deposit? Can we come by this afternoon? Spasiba. Dasvidanya.’ Thank you. Goodbye.

  ‘What’s up?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Irina has found someone who will take us, but not until Tuesday.’

  ‘What is it with Tuesday?’

  ‘They say the weather is going to get worse tomorrow. It will cost around 500 euros.’

  ‘Tour operators don’t seem to cross the street for less in this country. I guess we don’t have much choice.’

  ‘That’s why I agreed,’ Akiko said as they stopped to let a snowplow rumble past, its ancient rusted front bucket pushing a rolling ball of dirty snow. Once past them, it pulled to the side of the road. The operator jumped down and strode off with a day pack over his shoulder, his shift over.

  Ben and Akiko crossed the road and arrived at the church. It was in the middle of restoration work, one side encased in scaffolding. The walled grounds were full of concrete moldings, tiles, stacked lumber, steel reinforcing rods and other building materials, much of it covered by recent snowfalls. The church was still open for business, though, and a busload of worshipers was getting ready to leave, several zealots kneeling in the snow at the main entrance gate, crossing themselves.

  ‘I would like to go in and have a look,’ said Akiko.

  ‘I might wait around outside and drink some of this vodka. Purely for medicinal purposes, of course.’

  ‘I’ll be quick.’

  ‘No need to hurry. I bought a pint and a half.’

  Akiko walked through the gate, up to the main door and went inside. She skirted a tourist stall selling various religious icons, books and postcards, and took a seat. On the opposite wall was the reason for the church’s popularity: an ancient painting depicting Jesus and various saints robed in rich greens and reds, surrounded by gold. In front of it, an old lady was on her knees on the bare stone floor, her head bent in prayer. She stopped muttering, struggled arthritically to her feet, and waddled off.

  After a few minutes of quiet solitary contemplation out of the snow and the wind, saying a prayer in her head to her kami, Akiko went over and lit a candle. She returned to the main door, dropped some loose change into a donations bucket, then pushed the door open and let in a wind-blown flurry of snow. The door closed behind her and Akiko hurried to the gate. She got halfway there before realizing that she’d left the Lonely Planet guide on the seat in the church. She turned and went back for it. The woman manning the tourist stall inside the church scowled at her with brown milky eyes. Akiko found the book where she thought she’d left it, on the seat. She picked it up and walked to the main door, which opened just as she put her hand on it. A man was standing in front of her, about to come in. They looked at each other. He hesitated. Akiko recognized him. This was the man in the photo. The man on the train. The man called Soloyov. Murderer. Torturer.

  Akiko fought to keep the recognition out of her face, fought the desire to run. She looked down and took a step past him. She heard the door click shut behind her. She took another step, her heart racing. The man was behind her. Suddenly a gloved hand was over her mouth. She flinched and her knees collapsed beneath her, but an arm slipped inside the crook of her elbow and she was almost lifted off the ground as he marched her forward. Akiko tried to scream, but the gloved hand tightened around her mouth and she tasted sweat and leather and smelled burnt tobacco.

  He pulled her head back and said, ‘Scream and I will kill you.’ The whisper was hoarse and alcohol-stained. ‘Struggle and I will kill you. Move forward, go to your right.’

  The Russian steered her in the direction he wanted her to take. He was maneuvering her behind the church. Akiko’s wide eyes flashed from side to side, searching for help. They were alone but for the drone of the snowplows at work somewhere beyond her view.

  The man pulled something from his pocket. ‘I am going to take my hand away. Do not make a sound. If you do, I will kill you. Nod if you understand this.’

  Akiko was paralyzed with fear. It was almost impossible to move her head, but she managed.

  The hand came away from her mouth, as did the arm locking hers behind her back. In an instant, something was around her throat, a thin wire. It sliced into the delicate skin beneath her chin. Tears welled in her eyes.

  ‘For your own safety, move only when I tell you,’ he warned her.

  He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and dialed one-handed. ‘Vlahd, they know about us . . . Yes, the Japanese woman and her boyfriend,’ he said in Russian. ‘We have lost our cover . . . I ran into her going into the church. She knew me. I have her . . . Yes . . . yes . . . We are behind the church. I will take her across to the river . . . Korolenko will understand. In the field, things don’t always go as planned . . . Find the American. Wait . . .’

  The Russian rotated his fist, tightening the wire so that it bit into Akiko’s throat. In English, he asked, ‘Where is your friend?’

  Her eyes darted with terror. Ben, run . . .

  ‘He is somewhere near,’ Soloyov said into the phone. ‘Once you have found him, bring him. If he won’t come, kill him.’

  Akiko’s heart thumped against her ribcage.

  Grisha Soloyov ended the call.

  ‘We are going to walk through that gate up ahead,’ he told Akiko, switching again to English, turning her toward an archway in the wall where there was an old rusted gate askew on ancient hinges. ‘We are going to meet your companion down at the river. He is waiting for you. If you do as I say, you will not be harmed.’

  As much as Akiko was able to function, she realized the man wasn’t aware that she spoke Russian. She also realized with complete certainty that he was going to murder her.

  The vodka was good. It tasted peppery and went down easily, flooding his stomach with a comfort that chased away the chill. Ben regarded the bottle. ‘Liquid Russian culture,’ he said aloud. This was the kind of culture he could get into. What was there to look at inside a church anyway. Pews? He took another swig and figured he had ten minutes to kill while he waited for Akiko, perhaps less. The church was deserted now. The busload of worshipers had departed, headed to another cold stone building most probably. Akiko was the sole remaining visitor.

  Ben walked behind the church to have a look at the river. A narrow bridge spanned it. He went across and looked over the bridge on both sides. The river was by no means a big one and it was completely iced over but for a narrow trickle of running water in the middle of the flow where the ice was thinnest. The banks were littered with thousands of empty booze bottles and beer cans, and away in the distance, up river, there were small groups of young people standing around in the cold, drinking
, urinating, kissing.

  As Ben turned back to the church, he saw two people coming out a side gate in the surrounding wall. It took him a moment to register the picture for what it was: Akiko, and a man wearing a black ushanka behind her. Her hands were raised, like she was trying to balance, and she was walking carefully, delicately poised as she maneuvered through the gateway. Something was wrong. For one thing, she appeared to be sobbing. For another, there was a bright red stain on the shoulder of her white parka. Was that blood? The man pushed her forward, both his hands up behind her neck. An instant later Ben pegged the guy. He was one of the men in the pictures Luydmila had shown them, the man Akiko said she’d seen on the train—Grisha Soloyov. He had captured her, and now he was taking her somewhere.

  Ben threw himself into the ice and snow, shielded from view by the bridge’s solid concrete handrail, and crawled forward on his elbows and knees to the end of the bridge closest to the church. He peered around the concrete railing. The man behind her was pushing Akiko across the road to the riverbank.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit . . .’ Ben whispered, steam from his breath rising in front of his face. What the fuck am I supposed to do?

  He took another peek around the end of the bridge. Both the man and Akiko had their backs to him. A few steps later they disappeared from view, down the riverbank.

  ‘Shit,’ Ben said again, his palms sweating, his mind racing but not coming up with any solutions. He crouched, looking left and right, hoping to see something or someone that could help. But there was nothing and no one.

  He stood up to get a better view of the situation. He could no longer see Akiko or the man with her, but from the higher vantage point he spotted another man within the walled church grounds. He was walking around, choosing each step carefully, and there was a black shape in one of his hands. Jesus Christ—a pistol with a long, fat barrel on the dangerous end. A silencer. The man was walking slowly among the piles of building materials, looking for something. At that moment, Ben realized that the man with the gun was looking for him.