The Zero Option

by David Rollins

  The detectives finished their briefing and, through gritted teeth, politely said good morning. Korolenko left the church and walked back toward the center of town. So, the two people that Mr Buck had informed him were ordinary citizens had somehow managed to dispatch two experienced killers. Were the American and his Japanese friend more than he’d been led to believe?

  His cell rang, a Moscow number. It was the tourist police, a call he’d been expecting, providing him with the current address logged for the passports belonging to Ben Harbor and Akiko Sato. A few minutes later, Korolenko arrived at the Hotel Sagaan Morin. He brushed the snow from his jacket and ushanka before walking through the door manned by security.

  A middle-aged woman with heavy make-up and two metal front teeth sat behind reception. He showed her his FSB shield, which weaved its magic, the woman’s demeanor switching from bored and slightly resentful to helpful and respectfully fearful. He asked her name. It was Evgeniya. According to Evgeniya, the two foreigners were the hotel’s only guests and, as far as she knew, they were still in their room.

  One of the security men went up to confirm this while Korolenko stood in reception, gazing out the windows at the blizzarding snow with his hands behind his back, impatiently rocking on the balls of his feet. It wouldn’t be long before the Ulan-Ude and Khabarovsk police talked to each other and, like himself, turned to the tourist police.

  The security man returned with the news that the guests’ beds hadn’t been slept in, but all their baggage was still in the room. Everyone was puzzled by the discovery, including Korolenko, albeit for different reasons. Were the American and the Japanese woman also at the bottom of the river, he wondered. He asked whether the guests had received any calls or messages. Evgeniya checked under the counter and came up with an envelope. Inside was a message signed by a woman called Irina. It read: ‘Tentative travel arrangements have been made on your behalf. Please call.’

  Korolenko pocketed the letter, said good day to the woman with the metal teeth. A few minutes later he had the phone numbers for the travel agents in Ulan-Ude, which he called one after the other until he got the answer he wanted. A police car with its lights flashing rushed past. He watched it turn into the forecourt of the Hotel Saagan Morin. Korolenko hurried in the opposite direction, the GPS on his phone taking him to the Buryat-Intour for a talk with Irina.

  Ben and Akiko had both slept fifteen hours, waking just after dawn. Luydmila was already up and speaking on the phone when Ben hauled himself off the sofabed. She concluded the call and put the phone down.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked as he stood and scratched his stomach.

  ‘The police have no leads. The crime in Khabarovsk has not yet been linked to what happened yesterday, but it will not be long until it is.’

  Ben pulled up a chair. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten, he’d just refused to believe the pictures that kept playing across his mind in the twilight of consciousness before waking.

  ‘I think you have surprised yourself,’ Luydmila told him.

  That’s an understatement, Ben thought. He sat slumped, his head hanging forward.

  ‘You must get past this. The men you killed have killed many themselves. They were killers with badges. They tried to kill you and Akiko. You did what you had to do, which was to kill them first. Give yourself pat on back.’

  ‘You could get a job in hotel reception with that attitude,’ he said.

  Luydmila smiled, lifted his parka, which was draped across a chair. She held it up and showed Ben the three bullet holes in its back.

  ‘You were lucky.’

  She passed him a plastic zip-lock bag containing a flattened pellet of lead. ‘I picked up your coat to move it and this fell out.’

  Ben squinted at the gray slug. He exhaled heavily. Whether it had been in self-defense or not, ending another man’s life was so far beyond his everyday experience, it was almost impossible for him to comprehend that he was capable of such an act. This Ben was utterly foreign to his self-image, as if there was someone else living inside his skin, acting on his behalf. Yet while this person was foreign to him, he was also strangely familiar.

  ‘I also found this.’ Luydmila placed a handgun on the table.

  Ben stared at it. It was black with wood grips, darkened with years of sweat. It had an extra-long barrel.

  ‘You recognize it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ben. ‘I wasn’t aware I’d picked it up.’

  ‘It is Makarov, much modified. An old Soviet weapon favored by Spetsnatz—Special Forces. The magazine holds ten rounds. Three have been fired. Of course, the bullet I found in your coat comes from this gun.’

  Ben stared at the pistol.

  ‘And where do you come from?’ he asked.

  ‘From Moscow.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean and you know it. You keep . . . I don’t know . . . you keep just turning up.’

  ‘You employed me back in Khabarovsk.’

  ‘I remember you telling us to go home before you drove away.’

  ‘You offered me job. I decide to accept, at least for short while. I didn’t want you getting caught up with police. They are not always so understanding, especially to foreigners.’

  ‘We don’t know your rates.’

  ‘I am sure you can afford them—don’t worry.’ Luydmila changed the subject. ‘I went to shop and bought new underwear and thermals for you and Akiko.’ She indicated a parcel on the table. ‘I guessed your size.’

  A door opened and Akiko appeared, wrapped in a blanket, sleep in her tangled hair.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Luydmila.

  ‘Hey,’ Ben said.

  ‘Have breakfast,’ Luydmila told them. ‘We leave in one hour.’

  The truck smelled of wet dog and was covered in dog hair. The man driving had a big nose, heavy jaw and jowls to match. He looked like a dog and smoked a cigarette that smelled of fresh shit. His name was Marat and he spoke no English, apparently. He drove too fast for the conditions, the van sliding precariously around every corner. Somehow, though, he managed to catch the slides before they amplified and hit anything.

  Luydmila sat in the front, beside Marat, chatting easily with him. They laughed occasionally.

  Ben and Akiko sat behind them on wooden boxes. Their backs rested against steel mesh that kept dogs caged in the back when they needed to be transported somewhere.

  The windows were heavy with condensation. Ben wiped away a patch, but there was nothing to see outside except for snow and ice. Occasional dark shapes wrapped in mist flashed past—homes made from the black wood. Eventually, even those gradually gave way to trees. He glanced at Akiko, who gave him a nervous smile. It could have just been a smile. But it could also have been an admission that their continuing quest had brought them nothing but an introduction to death and to the darkness hidden within their own natures. Failure and despair were creeping into the spaces once occupied by optimism. It was a smile that said, ‘What the hell were we thinking?’ Nevertheless, they’d agreed to have a final throw of the dice. Ben gave Akiko a rub on her knee, Gore-Tex against Gore-Tex, a sound like sandpaper against wood.

  After an hour’s drive, the van bumped over some rough ground and came to a stop. Dogs barked and yelped somewhere close by.

  Luydmila turned around and said, ‘We’re here.’

  ‘Where’s “here”?’ Ben asked.

  ‘This is where Marat keeps his dogs. It is also where we part company.’

  ‘You are not coming with us?’ Akiko asked.

  ‘No. I hate dogs,’ Luydmila replied.

  ‘Was there no other way to do this?’ Ben asked.

  ‘No. The weather is getting worse. I could find no one else to take you until at least Tuesday.’

  ‘Where are you going now?’ asked Akiko.

  ‘One of Marat’s sons will give me a ride back to Ulan-Ude. From there, I am going back to Moscow.’

  ‘We should pay you,’ said Akiko.

  ‘I have addre
ss from passport. I will send invoice,’ Luydmila replied. ‘You speak Russian. Marat is Mongol but he also speak Russian. He is charging you 500 euros for this trip.’

  ‘Of course he is,’ said Ben.

  ‘The old gulags are half a day’s journey from here, perhaps more. I wish you good luck.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Akiko. She leaned forward and the two women embraced.

  ‘There have been developments,’ said Korolenko, his voice coming through the earpieces along with an echo and a half-second delay.

  Governor Garret poured himself another Glenfiddich and felt the Gulfstream bank smoothly to the southwest, headed for Santa Fe. Ackerman, three campaign strategists and two consulting journalists were hunkered down up the front of the aircraft, planning the next media event, well out of earshot.

  ‘What developments?’ Hank asked, pulling a curtain across the aisle.

  ‘Your friends negated my associates.’

  ‘Providing you’re taking the standard precautions, General, you can give it to us straight up,’ said Garret. His private jet was swept for bugs twice daily and the ‘standard precautions’ referred to a random public telephone line at the Russian’s end.

  ‘My men have been killed,’ said Korolenko.

  ‘We’re talking about Bykovski and Soloyov?’ Hank asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Killed by which friends?’ Garret continued, puzzled.

  ‘The Japanese woman and the American.’

  Hank, disbelieving, glanced at Garret.

  ‘What happened?’ asked the governor.

  ‘There was some kind of shootout.’

  ‘The subjects have no military, paramilitary, police experience or training,’ said Hank. ‘The American is a civilian pilot and the Japanese woman is a teacher. Something else must have happened.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I have military and police training and experience and both are telling me that things aren’t what they seem with these two. They are now wanted by the police at Ulan-Ude for questioning about these killings.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ Garret enquired, looking for a solution.

  ‘On their way to a labor camp. It is twenty-five below zero, it is snowing, and still they are on the move. You would have to admit that they are very determined for a tourist pilot and a schoolteacher. I should tell you that they are also wanted by the local police in Khabarovsk in connection with a murder there.’

  ‘Did they kill someone else besides your men?’ Hank asked.

  ‘That is what the police there believe.’

  ‘Why do I have the feeling that you’re not giving us everything?’ said Hank.

  ‘The operation is on the verge of spinning out of my control, unless you think having them rot in a Siberian prison suits your purposes.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Garret muttered. The last thing they wanted to give Harbor and Sato was a US State Department official, a lectern and a room full of journalists, which he saw as the inevitable outcome of an arrest.

  ‘I do not think these two are going to stop until they have achieved their objective,’ the general said.

  ‘Is their objective achievable?’ Garret enquired, his gut churning.

  ‘There is always a risk. With Soloyov and Bykovski dead, they are moving beyond my scope to micromanage this situation.’

  ‘You don’t have other people?’

  ‘Yes, but they are not as reliable or discreet.’

  ‘I sense a recommendation on the way,’ said Hank.

  ‘You told me that you hoped they would return home convinced that their quest was a worthless endeavor. I think now is the time to reconsider whether they come home at all.’

  A small amount of long-distance static drummed through the speakers. Garret considered his options. The Englese woman over at the NSA hadn’t managed to produce the missing tape. It was still out there. Perhaps if Harbor and the Japanese woman were dead and buried, the tape would suffer the same fate. There was a lot at stake—too much to risk. Garret gave Hank an imperceptible nod.

  Hank agreed. It was the right decision.

  ‘If it presents itself, General, take the zero option,’ he said. ‘You understand me?’

  ‘Yes, I understand.’

  The line was cut from the Russian end. Hank concluded the call from theirs.

  ‘It’s not just those two in Russia, Roy,’ said Hank. ‘They have connections here. We’re going to need to close those down, too.’

  ‘How many?’ Garret asked.

  ‘Less than half a dozen—four, maybe five.’

  Garret upended the drink and let the Glenfiddich curl around his tongue. ‘This goes back to that RC-135, Hank. It was a mistake.’

  ‘You want to say I told you so?’

  ‘I believe I just did.’ Garret breathed deeply and longed for another scotch. He could sense the presence of chaos and it was closing in. ‘This stops now, Hank. Is Korolenko up to the job, because I’m wondering.’

  ‘Maybe he’s getting past it.’

  ‘We need a result here, Hank. You get on a plane and hold our Russian friend’s Zimmer frame. Do you have a reliable backup on home soil?’

  ‘It can be arranged.’

  ‘Then do what you have to do.’

  The snow and the cold weren’t nearly as bad as the wind, which sliced through the seams in Akiko’s clothing and ate into her skin like acid. Marat kept the dogs going to keep them warm, stopping only occasionally to feed them chunks of raw meat. Akiko reclined on the forward part of the sled beneath an ancient goose-down rug, Marat standing on the back of the sled behind her, steering and driving the team of eight Siberian huskies with a fine whip that curled out over the dogs like a trout fly cast over a white river. Behind them, on a second sled, was another of Marat’s sons, Anatoly, transporting Ben. The teams had barked and yelped for the first hour of the journey, but now they were running through a track in a pine forest, the branches laden with snow, and the only sound was their breathing, the shush of sled skis over the fresh powdered snow, and Marat’s voice reassuring the dogs that they were doing a good job. It was a strange dream-like sensation being pulled along with the familiar accompaniment of an engine replaced with panting.

  The wind stopped for a time, but then started again as they exited a valley, a shrieking banshee of a gale that whipped the tops of the pines back and forth, deposited frozen branches across their path and threw a blinding whirlwind of powdered snow into their faces.

  Akiko counted three brief stops in a journey that seemed to last days, but was in fact less than five hours. Eventually, the dogs pulled into a small village of black huts on the edge of the forest in the dying moments of daylight, the smell of wood fires in the air. While Anatoly attended to the dogs, Marat took them to a crowded bar where they drank vodka with shaking hands and chattering teeth and breathed the acrid smell of dozens of Russian cigarettes and warm unwashed bodies. He then showed them to a room in the roof of the bar where there was a single large bed. Akiko and Ben climbed in without thinking about it, their bodies shattered by the cold. They fell asleep before their heads touched their rolled-up parkas.

  ‘You got anything yet on our Mr Buck?’ Lana asked Kradich over the speakerphone.

  ‘Zip. His records are sealed up tighter than a fish’s butt, and that’s watertight. That suggests to me he was involved in black ops. I even called Governor Garret’s campaign office for the heck of it and asked for a bio. He doesn’t have one.’

  The fact that they knew nothing about this guy only served to light a fire under Lana’s curiosity. ‘Keep at it,’ she said. ‘What about Garret?’

  ‘According to his people, he’s a great patriot who has dedicated his life to the service of his country.’

  ‘So nothing solid on him, either.’

  ‘I can tell you where he was born, went to school, college, university and so forth.’

  ‘I was thinking . . . Garret was an NSA analyst. What was his specialty?’

  ‘He was in European
—Soviet Relations.’

  ‘See if you can dig up some papers he wrote.’

  ‘You want to see if he was any good?’

  ‘Call it professional curiosity.’

  ‘A lot of the stuff from that era has since been declassified. You can get it yourself from NSA records.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Garret wasn’t the reason I called you,’ said Kradich. ‘Something’s turned up on Harbor and Sato. I’ve been dipping into FSB comms. They’re wanted for murder.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah, at a place called Ulan-Ude, out in the middle of Siberia.’

  ‘Who are they supposed to have killed?’

  ‘I’ve sent you a link to the photos.’

  Lana found it and clicked. Two photos came up: male Caucasians, both in their early fifties, broad Slavic faces, brutal faces.

  ‘Who are they?’ she asked.

  ‘The one with dark hair is Vlahd Bykovski and his buddy is Grisha Soloyov. Both career FSB, based in Moscow.’

  ‘Ben and Akiko killed cops?’

  ‘That’s the rumor.’

  ‘What were they doing out in Siberia?’

  ‘Good question. At the very least, they were getting bumped off by Ben and Kiko—allegedly. Bykovski was run over by a snowplow. The other guy had his neck broken. We intercepted a little police radio traffic. Seems Ben and Akiko have headed into the badlands and the local sheriff has sent a posse after them. I’d say their arrest is imminent.’

  February 15, 2012

  Somewhere north of Ulan-Ude, Siberia. Ben made his way down a rickety wood staircase into the bar, Akiko close behind. The room stank of ingrained alcohol, sweat and tobacco smoke. An elderly woman with concave cheeks and toothless gums hailed their arrival. She walked out of the room and came back moments later with a plate of black bread, cheese and sour milk cakes, put a bottle on the table with two glasses, and started sweeping the floor with a birch broom.