The Last Agent

by Robert Dugoni

  “I suspect you do not wish to have the names of the parties for whom you have served as a private banker made public knowledge. Moscow is very cold in the winter for the unemployed.”

  Koskovich pulled back his hand and looked to the computer screen. “What is the name on your account?”

  “My name.” Jenkins placed his Russian passport on the desk so Koskovich could read it. He did not release his grip. Koskovich typed in Jenkins’s name and studied the screen.

  “I recall this,” he said, which was logical given the amount Federov had deposited in each account. “Once I opened your account, the money was electronically transferred. Everything was handled electronically.”

  “I need the name on the second account you opened that day.”

  “Your account has been flagged,” Koskovich said.

  “I’m aware. So, if you would speed up the process, I think we would both like to get this done quickly.”

  Koskovich typed. He put a hand on the computer mouse, clicking and moving the cursor. Jenkins snuck a look at his watch. Ten minutes and forty-two seconds. He stepped around the desk, trying to read Koskovich’s computer, but saw only an assortment of numbers and Cyrillic letters. Koskovich typed again. Jenkins heard a commotion coming from inside the bank. He checked his watch as he went to the door and cracked it open. Two Moscow policemen had entered. One approached the tellers. The other remained at the doors.

  Jenkins shut the door. He’d run out of time.

  “Here!” Koskovich said.

  Jenkins locked the door and hurried to the desk. “You have a name?”

  “Vasilyev, Sergei Vladimirovich,” Koskovich said. He looked to the door with a smug smile. “Though I’m not sure it will do you much good.”

  “Put the money in a drawer so it is safe.”

  Koskovich took the money from the desk and put it in the bottom drawer, using a key to open and close it.

  “You will have to tell them what I have asked of you,” Jenkins said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You will also have to tell them that I forced you to provide the information.”

  “Of course.”

  “And that I physically assaulted you.”

  “Yes. Wait . . . What?”

  Jenkins delivered a straight jab, hitting Koskovich in the face and knocking him over his chair. His head banged against the wall and he lay unconscious. Jenkins pulled the retractable key chain from Koskovich’s belt and clipped it to his own belt as he walked to the office door. He took a breath before he stepped from the office, closing the door and locking a deadbolt. He walked with confidence toward the police officer stationed just to the left of the glass doors, resisting the urge to turn his head to determine if the young bank teller was watching him.

  The officer gave Jenkins a stern stare and raised a hand like a traffic cop.

  Jenkins waved it away. “Ya Dimitri Koskovich, vitse-prezident banka. Ob’yasnite mne, chto proiskhodit.” I am Dimitri Koskovich. I am the bank vice president. Tell me what is going on.

  “Nikogo ne vypuskat’,” the guard said. No one is to leave.

  “Kto vam dal pravo?” On whose authority?

  “Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti.” The Federal Security Service.

  Jenkins nodded, continuing to speak Russian as he pulled out the key chain. “Do you wish for me to lock the doors until the FSB arrives? It would ensure compliance and keep customers out.”

  The officer turned to the glass doors. “Do as you like.”

  Jenkins walked to the doors. He had no idea which of the three keys on the chain opened and locked the bank’s front doors.

  Behind him, a voice called out. “Izvinite.” Excuse me.

  The bank teller.

  In his peripheral vision, Jenkins watched the police officer step away from the doors. Jenkins inserted the first key. The lock didn’t turn.

  “Chto vy khoteli?” What is it you want? the officer asked the teller.

  Jenkins inserted the second key. It turned.

  “That man at the door.”

  “What about him?”

  “What is he doing?”

  “What does it look like he’s doing? He’s locking the door.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why would he have a key?” the teller asked.

  Pause. “He is the vice president.”

  “No. He is not.”

  Jenkins stepped out the glass door and pulled it shut. He tried not to look but saw the two police officers turn their heads toward him. He assumed, since it was a bank, that the doors would be at least shatter resistant, but he didn’t intend to hang around to find out. He inserted the key and turned the lock, deadbolting the doors. The officers sprinted toward him, but Jenkins turned and folded into the lunch-crowd lobby as the doors rattled behind him.

  13

  Simon Alekseyov stepped out from the passenger seat as soon as Arkady Volkov pulled the black Škoda Octavia to a stop behind several Moscow police cars parked in the plaza of the salmon-colored building. Volkov had been Viktor Federov’s partner for years, until Charles Jenkins put Volkov in the hospital and Alekseyov took his place. Alekseyov and Federov had chased Jenkins across the Black Sea and into Turkey and Greece. Alekseyov presumed Volkov had a working knowledge of Jenkins, which is why he wanted him along.

  Alekseyov hurried around the front of the vehicle and flashed his FSB credentials at several officers braced against the cold. Additional officers stood inside the lobby peering through a glass-door entrance to the bank. Good. They had locked the bank down, as instructed.

  “We have a bit of a problem,” the ranking officer said after Alekseyov introduced himself. “Someone has locked the door and taken the key.”

  “I instructed them to lock down the bank,” Alekseyov said.

  The officer shook his head. “Yes, but the person who locked the door was not a bank employee. He locked the doors from the outside.”

  “What?” Alekseyov stepped up and rattled the doors. “Open them,” he said to the officer.

  “We are trying. There is another key inside the bank, but they are having trouble locating it, and the bank officer is presently indisposed.”

  Alekseyov swore and stepped back. “And the person who locked the door?”

  “Fled,” the officer said.

  “They’ve been locked inside,” Alekseyov said to Volkov, who had joined them. Volkov still had a red scar along a crease in his forehead that extended down the side of his face, earned from his prior confrontation with Charles Jenkins. Alekseyov turned back to the officer. “How long have they been locked inside?”

  “Five minutes, perhaps,” the officer said.

  “Go to the garage,” Alekseyov said to Volkov. “Ensure they have shut the gate and that no car leaves.”

  Volkov crossed the lobby and pushed back outside.

  Inside the bank, a woman quickly approached, key in hand. She inserted the key and turned the lock, pulling the door open. Alekseyov stepped inside. “Who is in charge?”

  A man stepped forward holding a towel to his face. He had blood on his chin and his white shirt. He looked somewhat startled and perhaps dazed. “I am,” he said.

  “And who are you?”

  “I am Dimitri Koskovich, vice president of this branch.”

  Alekseyov held up a photograph of Jenkins used in the prior investigation.

  “Is this the man who came into the bank today?”

  Koskovich glanced at the photograph as if it hurt his eyes to do so. “Yes, but he has a beard. He assaulted me in my office and took the keys.”

  Alekseyov was not interested in the explanation. “Describe the beard.”

  “Black and white. A beard.”

  “Was it thick, thin? Groomed, ungroomed?”

  “It was thin. Groomed.”

  “Where is the teller who accepted the deposit?”

  “Here.” A young man in a cheap suit raised his hand.
r />   Alekseyov showed him the photograph. “You helped this man make a deposit?”

  “Yes. One million, six hundred fifty thousand rubles.”

  Alekseyov now understood why the account had been unfrozen. “Was that the extent of the transaction?”

  “No. He also asked to review the information on his signature card.”

  “Did he change the information on his signature card?”

  “No. But he asked to speak to the person who opened his account.”

  “And who was that?”

  The young man pointed. “Dimitri Koskovich.”

  Alekseyov walked back to Koskovich, who was wiping at the blood on his shirt with the towel. “You opened Mr. Jenkins’s account?”

  Koskovich looked up. “I was a bank teller at the time. Everything was done electronically.”

  “When?”

  “October twelfth of last year.”

  “What did Mr. Jenkins want from you when he came in today?”

  “Of me? Nothing.” Koskovich looked and sounded uncertain. Alekseyov wasn’t buying it.

  “Why did he ask for you? Why did he assault you?”

  “He wanted the name on a second account I opened at the same time. It is strictly against bank policy to reveal such information, but he hit me and forced me to provide it.”

  “He forced you? How?”

  Koskovich hesitated. “I believe he had a gun.”

  “Did you see it?”

  “Well, no . . . But he said he had a gun.”

  Unlikely. During their prior chase across Turkey and Greece, Jenkins never used a gun. “Did you give him the name on the second account?”

  “As I said, it is against bank policy, but he—”

  “Just answer the question,” Alekseyov said, growing impatient. “Did you give him the name?”

  “I had no choice. I could lose my—”

  “What was the name?”

  “I am not supposed to divulge—”

  Alekseyov stepped forward, inches from Koskovich’s face, keeping his tone stern but his volume low. “If you wish to keep your job, you will answer my questions. I know full well that many oligarchs and Bratva use this bank, and I have no doubt they have made it worth your while to ensure their names and their money are undetectable. I also highly doubt that Mr. Jenkins had a gun. I would suspect that rubles, not threats, would be the more likely incentive to loosen your tongue. Tell me the name on the second account, or you will find yourself part of a criminal investigation. Do I make myself clear?”

  No pretenses now.

  The FSB knew Jenkins was back in Moscow.

  He stepped around the rented Range Rover and got behind the wheel. He didn’t know how much time he had, but he knew the Range Rover was out of the question. The parking structure had cameras that would identify the car and license plate, and it would be easily recognized on surface streets. He pulled from the parking space and punched the gas, tires squealing as he made a sharp turn up the ramp to the first level. He stopped beside the heating and ventilation van at the back of the floor. The workers had left promptly at noon for lunch, as they had the prior day. What Jenkins cared about was the service van, which blocked the garage cameras. A short reprieve, no doubt, but he’d take what he could get. He grabbed a duffel bag with a change of clothes from the back seat, then removed the rental car papers from the glove box. He tossed the car keys on the car floor, hit the manual lock, and shut the driver’s door. Time to move. He flipped up the collar on his coat and slipped on a black knit cap, pulling it low on his head as he hurried to the exit.

  Significant commotion remained outside the bank, with more Moscow police vehicles and police officers arriving, as well as unmarked cars with bar lights atop their roofs and in back windows. Despite the cold, a crowd milled on the sidewalk, likely believing there had been a bank robbery. Jenkins dropped the car rental papers in a trash bin and checked his watch as he walked away from the garage. At the street corner he took a right and watched a bus pull to the bus stop precisely on time. He knocked on the door, which the driver kept shut against the cold. The doors pulled open and Jenkins stepped on board, keeping his head down and displaying the pass he had also picked up the prior day.

  The bus departed almost immediately after Jenkins boarded. He found a seat at the back, removed the encrypted cell phone, and sent Matt Lemore another message.

  Art dealer’s name is Sergei Vladimirovich Vasilyev. Need address.

  Jenkins slid the phone inside his jacket pocket, sat back, and took a deep breath. The bus made several stops along the busy Third Ring Road. On the fourth stop, Jenkins exited through the back door. The beltway remained congested with Moscow’s lunch commute, but this stop was closest to an exit. He hailed a Moscow taxi and slipped into the back seat.

  “Aeroport Sheremet’yevo,” he said.

  Alekseyov stood beside the Range Rover. Fingerprint technicians had been dispatched, but that was a mere formality. A security camera had captured the SUV with Charles Jenkins behind the wheel. Additional cameras showed Jenkins driving the Range Rover up the ramp. The vehicle, however, had never exited the garage, never even approached the kiosk at the top of the ramp. Alekseyov and Volkov walked the ramp and eventually found the car parked behind a heating and ventilation service van that had blocked the camera on that floor. The workers, speaking over the sound of the heating units, had never seen the car or the person driving it. They found it on return from their lunch break and discovered the doors locked.

  Charles Jenkins was buying himself time, and succeeding. But for what purpose? The bank teller said the frozen account contained more than $4 million, but Volkov expressed skepticism when Alekseyov suggested that money had been the purpose for Jenkins’s return to Moscow.

  Alekseyov called the phone number for the rental car company identified on the sticker on the back window and determined the car had been rented to a man named Ruslan Scherbakov, who fit Charles Jenkins’s physical description. The company described him as being of Middle Eastern descent. Alekseyov called Lubyanka and provided the name, not that he thought Jenkins would use “Scherbakov” again.

  He looked to Volkov, who hadn’t uttered more than a few words since the two men got inside the car and sped to the bank. He wondered how Viktor Federov and Volkov had worked together so many years. Volkov’s silence would have unnerved Alekseyov. “Why else would Mr. Jenkins come back to Moscow, Arkady? Why else if not for the money?”

  Volkov did not answer.

  It was like talking to himself. “You drive,” Alekseyov said. “I have phone calls to make.”

  Back at Lubyanka, a secretary approached Alekseyov and Volkov as soon as they stepped from the elevator. She directed them to a conference room on the third floor. Uncertain what awaited them, Alekseyov looked to Volkov, but the man only shrugged.

  When Alekseyov pushed open the door, he was surprised to find half a dozen analysts working telephones and computer screens, including Georgiy Tokareva, who had initially interrupted the deputy director. A barrel-chested man stood over Tokareva, who feverishly typed on a keyboard. Alekseyov did not know the barrel-chested man, but as he stepped toward him, he heard Volkov utter a name under his breath.

  “Adam Efimov.”

  Before Alekseyov could ask Volkov for clarification, he heard Tokareva say, “Both accounts were emptied electronically. More than four million from Mr. Jenkins’s account and nearly six million in Sergei Vasilyev’s account.”

  “Can you trace where the money was sent?” the man asked.

  “I am trying, but whoever emptied the accounts was sophisticated. There are many firewalls and false trails.”

  “Determine where the money went and whether it can be diverted or frozen. Also determine, if you can, from where the diversion took place, from what country.”

  The man turned, noticing Alekseyov and Volkov. He didn’t bother to greet them, stepping past them and motioning them to follow him from the conference room. They walked int
o an adjacent, unoccupied office. He shut the door.

  “Who are you?” Alekseyov asked.

  The man raised a hand. “I have been asked by the deputy director to take over this investigation.”

  “Take over?” Alekseyov said.

  “I assume you are Simon Alekseyov and you are Arkady Volkov?”

  “I did not receive this news,” Alekseyov said.

  “I just told you,” Efimov said. “Please, feel free to speak to the deputy director, but do so on your own time. I understand Mr. Jenkins was previously involved in a highly sensitive CIA operation.” When Alekseyov did not immediately answer, the man said sternly, “Is that correct?”

  “Yes, the seven sisters,” Alekseyov said.

  “Listen carefully, both of you. The director does not want it revealed that Mr. Jenkins exposed a highly placed source within the CIA. He is concerned it could jeopardize other ongoing operations. He also does not want the specter of international embarrassment.”

  “Embarrassment?” Alekseyov asked.

  “What would you call allowing a cadre of Russian women acting as American agents to spy under our noses for decades?” Efimov did not wait for an answer, his question apparently rhetorical. “This matter will be handled with the utmost sensitivity and discretion. It is no longer an official FSB investigation. Is that understood?”

  “Not an FSB—”

  “Is it understood?”

  “Yes,” Alekseyov said.

  “Good. Local police will be utilized to the extent possible and told only that Mr. Jenkins is a common criminal guilty of crimes in Moscow. Any public information will come only from the deputy director’s office. You are to reveal nothing. Is that also understood?”

  Alekseyov had not anticipated this, and though he was confused, a sense of relief washed over him. He did not want to be the lead officer. Not now. Similar instructions had been in place during Viktor Federov’s prior attempt to capture Charles Jenkins, and Federov had paid the price for his failure. Alekseyov did not want to become the FSB’s next scapegoat. “If it is no longer an FSB investigation, why am I involved?” he asked.

  “We have work to do.” Efimov ignored the question and pulled open the door. Alekseyov looked to Volkov, but the man remained expressionless.