The Zero Option

by David Rollins

  He clamped his eyes shut for a few long seconds. What to do? What to do? He had no idea. But he did know that if he didn’t act, and fast, Akiko would be dead within minutes. The man in the church grounds had a weapon. Ben couldn’t turn his back on him to try to rescue Akiko. He had to try to neutralize the threat at his rear first—that much he was sure of.

  Running at a crouch across the road, Ben timed it while the man had his back to him. He entered the grounds on his hands and knees and dived for cover. He worked his way quickly around a loose pile of bricks and leapt behind a stack of wood beams. He went to move again, to try and get behind the Russian killer, but his foot tangled in a coil of wire, one end of which was attached to a couple of the beams. His momentum brought several of them crashing to the ground. Jesus! Ben knew instantly that he’d just told the man with the gun exactly where to come looking.

  Ben moved fast. He took cover behind a couple of pallets containing roof tiles. He was sure he hadn’t been seen by Bykovski. He noticed the snow kicked up by his feet. Damnit! He’d just laid a nice trail to follow.

  Hurried footsteps crunching through nearby ice caught Ben’s attention. A heavily accented voice called out, ‘We have your friend. We just want to talk with you. Make it easy for us and yourself. Stand up. You don’t need to hide.’

  Part of Ben wanted to do as the Russian suggested. Was he just imagining the situation? Surely this was all a mistake. No one was going to get killed here. Not him, not Akiko. But another part of him knew this was just his desire for the nightmare to be over. Ben wondered what this man had said to Oleg before he and his partner murdered him. And, of course, the man carried a silenced handgun for a reason.

  Ben noticed there were other tracks in the fresh snow, probably made by the Russian as he’d searched on an earlier pass. He moved again, following these as quietly and as quickly as he dared. After twenty yards or so, he took a divergent path away from them. He would make the bastard choose which trail to follow. He came to rest behind a collection of stacked toilets, removed his gloves and hurriedly searched his pockets for something he could use. His fingers found some loose change, the bottle of vodka, a cell phone and half a packet of gum. He concluded that there was only one thing he could do—bury himself beneath his coat under the snow. And hope.

  Vlahd Bykovski heard the scuffle of movement, but the sound insulation provided by the snow coupled with the maze created by all the building materials made it impossible to know with any certainty the location of the source. Bykovski didn’t expect the American to stand up so that he could shoot him. But he did expect him to freeze with indecision and fear so that he could move in and shoot him. Korolenko would understand that the American and the Japanese woman had to die. Grisha said the Japanese woman had identified him. Bykovski wondered how they had known that he and Soloyov were following them. There had to be a connection they had missed, an informant. He put the questions out of his head to better concentrate on the job at hand. The church grounds wouldn’t stay empty for long. If someone came along before he could finish the job, the American would escape. They had the Japanese woman, but she was only half the problem. Perhaps she would reveal their mystery connection before she died so that all the loose ends could be tidied up.

  A cell phone suddenly chimed among the building materials reasonably close by. Bykovski grinned. The American really is an amateur, he thought as he hurried in the direction of the ringing.

  He approached the sound from the back, circling a large snow-covered collection of cement sacks. When he came around the far side, he shook his head at what he saw. The American was hiding beneath his coat, which he’d managed to cover with snow he’d spooned over himself with a piece of broken plywood. Stupidly, though, the soles of his shoes were poking out from the bottom of the mound. And, of course, his phone was ringing. It stopped. The Russian made a clucking sound with his mouth as he shook his head with amusement at the amateurism. The phone started ringing again somewhere under that snow. A persistent caller, thought Bykovski. A relative? His landlord? An airline confirming flights?

  He lifted the pistol and—phut, phut, phut—fired three rounds at close range into the mound between the shoes. The phone kept ringing. The mound didn’t otherwise make a sound, or move. This was strange. It wasn’t—

  Ben swung the short length of concrete-reinforcing steel like a baseball bat, putting all his 220 pounds of weight behind the swing. The Russian’s eyes were wide with a mixture of horror and surprise. The end of the rod connected with the side of his exposed neck, below the ear. Ben felt the crunching vibration of the man’s shattered vertebrae reverberate up through the steel and into his frozen fingers. With his neck broken, Bykovski’s eyes went wide and his head tilted to one side as the pistol dropped from his hand. His knees buckled an instant later and he collapsed like a house of cards exposed to a sudden draft.

  Ben heaved for breath over the body, trying to come to terms with what had just happened, his teeth chattering with cold. His bare, pink feet were achingly numb, as were his hands. He pulled his coat out of the snow, and sat on one of the toilets, massaging his freezing feet before putting his socks and shoes back on. As he blew on his fingers to get some feeling back into them, the alarm on his cell phone rang again. He reached over and picked it up. Turning it off, he put it in his pocket, feeling nauseous. A dead man whom he had killed lay in the snow nearby. It didn’t matter that the man had wanted to kill him. Ben had never killed a man, had never even seen a dead body before. It was a day of firsts. He had to hurry. He had to kill again.

  ‘You know who I am,’ the man said into her ear, the wire tight around her neck. ‘Why do you know this?’

  Akiko was too frightened to move in case the wire sliced deeper into her skin. The man released the pressure, but left the wire around her neck. One end, she noticed, was wrapped around a wood toggle, so that he could hold it without cutting his own hand. This told her the weapon was one he carried on him. He had killed with it before. He reached inside his coat and pulled out a pistol. It was small, smaller than his hand. He cocked it and then pointed it at her from beside his waist, into the base of her spine, so that it remained concealed from possible witnesses. The air was still and quiet but for the ever-present noise of the snowplows scraping the streets.

  ‘Do not run. From this distance, even a gun like this is deadly. Understand?’

  Akiko gave him a nod. The gun was not as personal or as gruesome to her mind as the garrote. The immediate shock of the confrontation and capture was wearing off. Her brain was starting to work. Her own survival instincts told her that to have any chance of seeing another day, she had to clear her mind of the fear paralyzing her.

  ‘Give me your passport—no copies. And your credit cards and wallet. Drop them on the ground.’

  Akiko reached inside her parka and took the packet hanging from a string around her neck. She dropped it onto the snow beside her feet. The man bent, picked it up. He glanced at the passport through the clear plastic window and then put it in his side coat pocket.

  ‘Answer my question or I will shoot you now. Who told you about us? How did you recognize me? You have three seconds to answer. Three . . . two . . .’

  ‘A woman told us,’ Akiko blurted, her mind racing, trying to find something that would prolong her life without endangering someone else’s.

  ‘Which woman?’

  ‘I don’t know her name. You and your friend killed someone in Khabarovsk. There were witnesses.’

  Two teenagers, no more than boys, appeared over the top of the riverbank nearby. They clambered down the slope and shared a bottle of something in a bag between them, not far from Akiko and the man threatening her.

  ‘Hey, you two gay boys,’ the man called out to them in Russian. ‘Fuck off somewhere else. I have paid good money for this whore. Can’t you see I’m busy?’

  The boys sneered at him. One of them flipped him the bird, but they moved off anyway and disappeared under the bridge.

>   ‘What witnesses?’ he continued in English. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘The police interviewed us. We were the tour operator’s last customers. They showed us photographs. I recognized you and your partner from them.’

  The man smiled. In other circumstances, Akiko would have called it a friendly smile.

  A snowplow came down the access road a hundred meters away, pushing the snow in a wave-like curl off the incline and into the water. The truck’s presence distracted Soloyov. He switched the pistol to his left hand to keep it hidden. The vehicle stopped and appeared ready to make a U-turn that would take it back up the access road.

  ‘Now I know that you are lying,’ Soloyov continued. ‘I am the police—FSB—and I know those Khabarovsk idiots are still running around dragging their cocks in the snow. You will tell me the truth or you will die where you stand. Your body will be thrown in the river. They won’t find you until the spring thaw.’

  ‘They have your names. You are Grisha Soloyov. The other man is Vlahd Bykovski.’

  That Akiko knew the names of him and his partner appeared to make the man nervous. He licked his lips and looked to his right, distracted by a roaring sound.

  The bucket of the snowplow smashed into the Russian. It scooped him up in a ball of snow and carried him away. As the dirty truck flashed past, Akiko saw Ben up behind the wheel, the cords in his neck stretched tight as cables, his mouth open, screaming a war cry, the sound drowned out by the howl of the diesel engine. The snowplow’s wheels locked up, but the vehicle continued to skid forward on the snow, heading for the bridge. Seconds later it crashed into the base of one of the abutments in a shower of powdered snow. Steam blew like a geyser from under the vehicle’s buckled hood.

  The driver’s door swung open and Ben toppled out, landing heavily on the snow. He picked himself up and staggered forward to look at the front of the truck, to check the bucket. When Akiko reached him, his face was calm, though spittle flecked his lips. He was swaying slightly, unsteady on his feet. She looked down on a body sandwiched between the bucket and the concrete abutment. Broken limbs stuck up from the top edge of the bucket. They twitched and quivered briefly.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘You’re okay?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ben turned to look at her and saw the garrote still around her neck. ‘Jesus,’ he said, in no more than a whisper. He unwound the wire carefully, Akiko not making a sound. When he’d finished, she hugged him and then went to the body and located the coat pocket with her passport pouch.

  ‘Get his ID,’ Ben said.

  Akiko checked the Russian’s other pockets and came up with a wallet and a matching black leather credentials case. There was a shield inside it. ‘Grisha Soloyov. FSB—Russian Security Police,’ she read aloud.

  ‘So I’m a cop killer. Great.’

  The Luydmila woman had been telling the truth. Snow had started to fall again. Ben blew some warmth into his naked fingertips.

  ‘We’ll put you in the water,’ Akiko said, addressing the broken corpse. ‘They won’t find you till the spring thaw.’

  Ben wiped his eyes and looked up and down the riverbank. The nearest people were maybe 600 yards further up river, on the far side of the bridge. He climbed back into the truck and managed to reverse it a couple of yards before the engine finally died, overheated. No longer pressed against the bridge pylon, the body slid away from the bucket. Ben climbed down from the vehicle. The Russian’s sightless eyes stared into nothingness, a deep depression in the side of his skull, his arms and legs assuming impossible positions. There was no blood.

  Ben stuffed the garrote inside the corpse’s jacket, grabbed the collar and dragged the body down toward the water. He picked up speed when he reached the ice and used the gathering momentum to swing the body in an arc. The dead Russian slid out to the edge of the ice and then disappeared, rolling languidly into the running water with a minimal splash. The river would take the body downstream, depositing it under an ice sheet once the current slowed. Ben fell to his knees and threw up.

  Once the stomach convulsions had stopped, he walked back up the bank toward Akiko, one heavy step at a time, overwhelmed by tiredness and stress. More than anything, he wanted to sleep, just to shut his eyes and drift off to oblivion.

  ‘What about the truck?’ Akiko asked.

  ‘With luck the police will think it was taken for a joy ride. We need to get away from here before we’re seen. There’s blood on your parka. Can you turn it inside out?’

  ‘Yes, good idea,’ she said, taking it off.

  Ben took another look at the vicious slices made by the wire into her neck.

  ‘You need antiseptic on these cuts.’

  ‘I have something in my bag. Where is the other man?’

  ‘Dead.’

  Akiko regretted asking the question. She’d known the answer instinctively.

  ‘We need to leave Russia,’ she said. ‘Forget our search. It’s too dangerous for us here now. We should have listened.’

  ‘We were just protecting ourselves. It was self-defense.’

  ‘We killed police.’

  ‘I killed police.’

  ‘With an accessory.’

  A horn sounded above them. They looked up and saw a familiar face. It was Luydmila and she was leaning far out over the bridge’s handrail.

  ‘Come! Hurry!’ she called down to them.

  Ben and Akiko looked at each other. They quickly searched the truck and the riverbank. Akiko picked up the Lonely Planet and they scrambled up a trail cut in the snow on the steep section of bank beside the bridge. They dived in the back of the car as it started to move.

  Luydmila glanced in the rear-vision mirror. ‘They are both dead—Bykovski and Soloyov?’

  Ben gave her a nod.

  ‘Then you saved me the trouble. I owe you.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

  ‘I have found someone who will take you to gulag, if you still want to go.’

  ‘We are leaving Russia,’ Akiko said.

  ‘Do not decide now. You are in shock.’

  ‘We should go to the police,’ said Ben.

  ‘No, you should get as far from here as you can—and as quickly as possible.’

  Luydmila swerved down a street into a busy bus terminus and parked the vehicle between two others.

  ‘Hurry. We must change cars.’

  ‘Why?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Because this one is stolen.’

  They got out and followed her as she hurried down a narrow connecting street behind the terminus, which opened up into a wider secondary road. She pulled out an alarm remote, aimed it at a new model Mercedes Benz and its indicator lights flashed.

  ‘You will come and stay with me,’ she said as they got in.

  ‘What about our luggage?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Forget luggage. You have your passport, money?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ben. ‘Why?’

  ‘You cannot go back to hotel.’

  ‘Why not?’ Akiko asked.

  ‘Because police from Khabarovsk wish to speak with you about Oleg’s murder. The two mechanics who worked for him told police that Oleg was angry and agitated when he returned from your trip with him. It is only matter of time before Khabarovsk police learn of your hotel booking through tourist police and send Ulan-Ude police to interview you. The questions will be difficult and they are eager to make arrest. You would be easy target for this. ’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Ben from behind his hands, which were pressed against his face.

  February 13, 2012

  Ulan-Ude, Siberia. Yellow police tape across the main entrance and the smaller side gate made a crime scene of the church and its grounds, though the forensics team was concentrating on the immediate area around the dead officer. Reconstruction workers had raised the alarm just after sunrise. Crows had found the frozen body much earlier, removing its eyeballs, tongue and lips. Korolenko looked down on his friend and form
er comrade-at-arms and seethed with anger. Bykovski’s neck had been broken; his head sat at a ridiculous angle on his neck, the exposed teeth and empty eye sockets combining in a strange deathly grin, as if the corpse could recognize some humorous irony in this grisly end.

  A preliminary judgement logged the time of death as being around 4 p.m. the previous day. There were no reliable witnesses, though an old lady who attended the tourist stall within the church recalled a female visitor at roughly the time of death, but she was uncertain about this, as well as being partially blind with cataracts.

  Another crime scene had been established around the snowplow crashed into the base of the bridge over the river no more than 100 meters from the church. Two young male witnesses had come forward and given detectives details of what seemed likely to be a second murder. Their story was confusing and contradictory, except on the points that a man had been hit by the snowplow and his body dumped in the river. A compact Czech Republic CZ 2075 pistol had been recovered from the snow collected in the snowplow’s bucket. Police divers were on the way to search the river for this second body.

  Korolenko had had an old FSB comrade in Moscow phone through his bona fides to the Ulan-Ude police, giving him access to the detectives handling the crime scene. They gave him a reluctant on-site brief in the churchyard. It appeared to Korolenko that they knew almost nothing, other than Bykovski’s name and that he was a plain-clothes officer in the FSB who had once worked for the now retired general they were talking to. They wanted to know if Korolenko was aware of any motive for what appeared likely to be a double murder. Korolenko said that he didn’t, which they didn’t believe. When pressed on this point, Korolenko declined to cooperate further, delivering the sidestep the FSB always gave local police when it suited them—that there were national security issues at stake. In fact, Korolenko was inclined toward filling in some of the blanks for the detectives and providing them with the identities of the two people he strongly suspected of the killings, but decided against it. The knowledge would spark a province-wide manhunt for the American and the Japanese woman and that would not suit his purposes.