The Last Agent

by Robert Dugoni

  Efimov spoke as he entered the task-force room. Half a dozen analysts sat at computer screens poring through video of Moscow streets and tapping their keyboards. Telephones rang, and sotto voce voices spoke on phones.

  “Get the Traffic Management Centre on the line,” Efimov said to no one in particular. “And someone provide me an update on the ambulance.”

  A young woman entered and handed Efimov a mug of tea. He sipped it and set it down.

  “The ambulance left Lefortovo and proceeded north on the Third Ring Road,” Alekseyov said.

  “Bring up the surveillance cameras,” Efimov instructed.

  He leaned forward, watching the ambulance speed away from Lefortovo and eventually disappear in the Lefortovo Tunnel under the Yauza River. The analyst tapped at his keys and quickly changed camera views to one within the tunnel.

  “Two ambulances,” Alekseyov said.

  Efimov watched a second ambulance enter the tunnel and drive side by side with the first.

  “They’re identical,” Alekseyov said. “Intended to create confusion. I had them both monitored.”

  When the ambulances exited the tunnel, the analyst switched to cameras on the surface streets. As the lead ambulance neared an intersection, it turned right. The other turned left.

  “Third ambulance heading northwest,” the first analyst said.

  A third ambulance entered the picture frame, heading perpendicular to the first two. A shell game to not just fool anyone following, but also the cameras. Federov would have known of the camera coverage in Moscow, and he had clearly advised Jenkins. This was a well-coordinated plan.

  Efimov stepped down the row of computer screens, watching all three ambulances.

  “Fourth ambulance,” an analyst said.

  The first ambulance turned left onto Ol’khovskaya Ulitsa. It again disappeared from the camera’s view.

  “Find him,” Efimov said.

  The second analyst, seated beside the first, barked out quickly, “There. Novoryazanskaya Ulitsa, heading west.”

  “I have another ambulance,” an analyst said.

  Efimov stepped down the row and watched the second ambulance turn again. The ambulances were being sent all over the city. The first analyst said, “Right turn onto Ryazansky Proyezd.” A short street. The ambulance again drove from the camera’s view.

  “No monitors,” the analyst said.

  Efimov took a step back, thinking. The ambulances could go anywhere, but Jenkins and Ponomayova could not. Federov would know roadblocks would be set up on the main highways out of Moscow, and airports would be alerted. He and Jenkins would be pragmatic. They would ditch the ambulance as soon as possible. But then what? The analysts called out the various ambulances’ locations.

  “He’s headed to Komsomolskaya,” Efimov said. “Get me coverage.”

  The first analyst typed. In seconds an ambulance reappeared on the screen, heading northeast. Heavily trafficked, the road was congested with cars and delivery trucks. A Moscow trolley car ran down the center of the street and, as it was lunch hour, the sidewalks were also heavily populated, pedestrians wrapped in bulky winter clothing to stave off the cold. Jenkins and Federov would see this as an asset.

  “The railway stations are there,” Alekseyov said.

  “Yes,” Efimov said, having already come to that deduction. It was a wise choice by Jenkins or Federov. The Leningradsky railway station, the Kazansky station, and the Yaroslavsky station, three of Moscow’s nine main railway stations, were all situated around Komsomolskaya Square, with hundreds of trains departing in every direction to every city in Russia. The subway and light-rail stations were also nearby, providing further options and maximizing the chances of disinformation and confusion. Another shell game. Beyond that, President Putin had made improving Moscow’s trains his personal project, modeling them after the Japanese and German railways and their strict adherence to schedules. Efimov had no way to shut down the trains, or to delay them, if Jenkins and Ponomayova were to get on one.

  “Follow your ambulances,” Efimov said. He leaned over the first analyst’s shoulder but spoke to Alekseyov. “Notify Moscow police. I want uniformed and plain-clothed officers at each train station. Tell them we will transmit updated images of the people we are looking for as soon as we have them.”

  Alekseyov pulled out his cell phone and stepped away to make the call.

  On the monitor Efimov watched what he hoped to be the ambulance that had departed Lefortovo turn into a building driveway and disappear down the ramp. “I want access to all cameras within coverage of that building,” Efimov said. “Find out if they have cameras in the garage and in the building lobby, all entrances and all exits. Alekseyov!” he yelled. Alekseyov turned to him. “Alert Moscow police that the ambulance is in the garage . . . I need an address. Someone provide me with an address!” A voice barked out the building address and Efimov repeated it to Alekseyov. Then he said, “Tell them to find the ambulance. Make sure it does not leave the garage.”

  “What of the other ambulances?” an analyst called out.

  “Stay on them,” Efimov said.

  “I have coverage on the side of the building,” an analyst called out.

  Efimov moved quickly down the row of screens and looked over the man’s shoulder. The camera focused on a metal door on the side of the building. “Pull up any footage from closed-circuit cameras in that area with facial-recognition capability.”

  “The snow will make obtaining a clear picture difficult,” an analyst said.

  “We don’t need to be perfect. Pull up the photograph of the ambulance driver at Lefortovo, as well as known photographs of Jenkins, Federov, and Ponomayova,” Efimov said. “We only need a match to those.”

  The analyst pulled up each of the pictures and kept them at the bottom of his screen. The photograph of the ambulance driver was far from perfect. The man had kept his head down, the bill of his cap and a beard obscuring much of his face. Several people exited the metal door on the side of the building, but Efimov told the analyst to ignore them. He watched the clock in the lower corner of the screen and used the time the ambulance had entered the garage to gauge when the occupants had most likely left the building. Efimov was behind, but he could make up time quickly if he chose wisely and acted with diligence.

  A man emerged from the metal door dressed in a dark coat and skullcap. He kept his head down but looked up and to his right to check traffic before crossing the street. The analyst snapped a picture of his face, partially obscured by the swirling snow.

  As he did, another analyst called out, “I have a second man . . . He’s wearing the exact same clothes.”

  Efimov shot him a look. “Where?”

  “He came out the front of the building.”

  Efimov swore. They would no doubt also play another shell game with each person in the ambulance. The key was to determine where they would go, not to run around chasing them. “Get a picture of his face. Stay on the first man.”

  “I have a picture,” the first analyst said.

  Efimov slid to his console, considering the imperfect photograph on the computer screen. “Compare it to the picture of the ambulance driver,” Efimov said. The analyst did so, and within seconds the computer indicated a match.

  “That’s him,” the analyst said.

  “Follow him. Stay on him. Forget the other. Do not lose him. I want to know everywhere he goes. If he gets on a train or a bus, alert Moscow police immediately. Transmit his current photograph.”

  “Another man exiting the building,” the analyst called out.

  Efimov moved to the screen and watched a man in jeans, boots, and a blue down jacket exit the door to the street. He wore a black baseball cap low on his brow. He, too, kept his head down. Efimov thought he saw portions of a mustache and glasses. The man was not tall enough or broad enough to be Jenkins, but it could be Federov.

  “Get an image of his face,” Efimov said. “I want it compared to what we have on
file for Viktor Federov.” Federov may have played Efimov for a fool, but the game was not yet over.

  Far from it.

  “I can’t get a picture of his face,” the second analyst said. “Nothing I can use.”

  As the man passed the entrance of the building, a second man, again in identical clothing and of the same height and build, walked out the entrance. The two crossed paths in the sidewalk crowd, walked together for several feet, then split up.

  Efimov turned and spoke to another analyst. “You. Track the second man’s movements. I want to know where each goes. Do not lose either of them. Volkov.” Volkov stepped forward. “You stay on Federov,” Efimov said. “You know him best, where he is most likely to go. Find him.”

  Efimov returned to the first screen. Waiting. Several minutes passed before the door again opened. A woman stepped out. Fur from the hood of her coat blew in the wind, obscuring much of her face. It also didn’t help that the snow flurries had increased. “Can’t get a clear shot,” the analyst said.

  Efimov didn’t need one. According to the Lefortovo file he possessed, Paulina Ponomayova walked with a noticeable limp as a result of the injuries sustained in her car accident. Within a few steps he knew it was her. “Someone stay on her.”

  “I got her,” another analyst said from a different computer terminal.

  As before, an identically dressed woman emerged from the building entrance onto the street, walking beside her. She, too, walked with a limp.

  Efimov was running out of analysts.

  “What do we do?”

  “Track them both. Try to get a picture of their faces.”

  “We don’t—”

  “Do it. No excuses. Do not lose either of them.”

  “Where are you?” Efimov said to the computer screen. The door opened a fourth time. This time, an old man exited, stooped over with his head down. He shuffled forward. How would a man as big as Charles Jenkins seek to avoid detection? During the previous hunt he’d used a burka.

  Efimov turned to Alekseyov. “Get a car and a driver. We are going to Komsomolskaya Square.” He then spoke to the room of analysts. “Transmit the most recent photographs of each individual to Moscow police. We are still eleven minutes behind.”

  28

  Jenkins gave Paulina a three-minute head start, and it was difficult to watch her leave. It felt like the time he’d watched her exit the house in Vishnevka, and he again wondered if this would be the last he saw of her. He worried, not about her counterintelligence skills, but her health. She’d been hospitalized for months, and that had likely been the best care she’d received. He doubted they cared about her well-being in Lefortovo, wanting only to keep her alive long enough to interrogate her. Her physical condition certainly supported his theory. As she walked from the van to the stairwell, Jenkins noticed the pronounced limp in her step, and he feared that no matter her disguise, the limp would give her away. He hoped her doubles knew what to do.

  He exited onto Krasnoprudnaya Street and immediately dropped his head, though not before feeling the biting cold and wind that gusted, pelting him with snow and the aroma of diesel fuel. Cars flowed past, engines revving and horns honking. In the center of the road a trolley car rumbled down the street. He walked past the building entrance, as scripted, and a man stepped from the building dressed exactly as Jenkins was and nearly as tall. They walked several steps together, then split up, the man headed across the street.

  The building garage was three blocks from the Leningradsky train station. It would feel longer, walking into the wind, especially for someone physically compromised, like Paulina. Jenkins shouldered the duffel bag and pulled up the sleeve of his jacket to glance at his watch. 1:03 p.m. He’d have to hurry to catch his train, if he made it that far. Federov described Efimov as practical, pragmatic, and relentless. He also called him ruthless. Efimov would no doubt conclude there was little to gain from finding the ambulances. He would focus his resources on the train stations and the light rail. Even with three train stations and dozens of trains, all within a stone’s throw of one another, Jenkins knew this remained primarily a game of disinformation, and his advantage only minutes.

  He hoped they still had a precious few to spare.

  He kept his head down and his shoulders slumped, proceeding toward the Leningradsky train station. The brutal weather had not stopped seasoned Muscovites; the sidewalks remained congested. A small blessing. Jenkins did his best to blend into the crowd. He saw his doppelganger across the street, doing much the same thing.

  He raised his head as a blue Moscow Metro bus rumbled down the center of the road. After the bus passed, he spotted Paulina on the opposite side of the street, in the flow of foot traffic, her limp clearly noticeable. Her mirror image, identically dressed, also walked with a limp, as he had instructed.

  Around a bend in the road, Jenkins spotted the Leningradsky pale-yellow train station and recognized it from pictures he’d studied. The building resembled a European town hall, with ground-floor windows and an elegant clock tower rising to a green copper roof, though fog and the steadily increasing snowfall nearly obscured the roof. Though the building was historic, the trains were not. Federov had explained to Jenkins that Russian Railways had spent more than a billion dollars to modernize the system, including adding high-speed electric trains that traveled more than 220 kilometers an hour. Jenkins had decided that if this was to be a shell game, the trains provided the most shells, and there would be no roadblock to stop a high-speed Sapsan train once it left the station, if they could get on it. If the plan worked, they had a chance of getting out of Moscow and, maybe, getting lost.

  Across the street, Jenkins watched his and Paulina’s doubles break off, moving toward the Yaroslavsky train station. Similar doubles would enter the Kazansky railway station. Paulina climbed the steps to the Leningradsky station entrance. Uniformed police officers stood in their drab gray winter coats and ushankas. He also detected plain-clothed officers considering their phones and watching as commuters ascended the steps and approached the station’s glass doors. Federov had been correct about two things: Efimov had been practical and pragmatic. He’d wasted no time getting Moscow police officers in place at Leningradsky and likely the other train stations as well. Jenkins could only hope that Moscow’s police would be less than diligent looking for common criminals in a blizzard.

  As Paulina approached the building entrance, Jenkins noticed that she no longer limped, and he wondered if she had faked the limp for just such a purpose. To her right, a third woman, similarly dressed, limped up the steps to the entrance.

  A Moscow police officer stepped into Paulina’s path and Jenkins’s nerves spiked, but Paulina, well trained, calmly handed the officer the identification Jenkins had provided. The photograph used Paulina’s passport photo and superimposed the brown wig.

  The officer quickly studied Paulina’s face and handed back her passport, turning to another commuter. Paulina climbed the remaining steps to the door and went inside the building.

  Jenkins checked his watch. 1:07. He had eight minutes.

  He pulled a collapsible white cane from his coat pocket and slipped on black sunglasses, tapping the cane in front of him as he crossed the street to the building entrance. He stooped his shoulders and lowered his head to further minimize his height. People coming toward him stepped to the side. Rather than avoid the police officers, Jenkins deliberately walked into one.

  “Izvinite,” he said when the officer turned to him. Behind the officer, his doppelganger entered the train station.

  “Where are you going?” the officer asked.

  “The train station, of course,” Jenkins said.

  The officer touched his shoulder, turning Jenkins. “Up the steps,” he said. “Straight ahead. Do you need help?”

  “Net, spasibo. Ya ne pervyi raz edu na poyezde.” No, thank you. I have traveled the train before.

  Jenkins tapped the cane as he climbed the steps. A man held the door open for him.
Inside, voices echoed in the cavernous terminal, and warm, musty air assaulted him. Jenkins looked for a wall clock and found it across an expansive lobby. It said 1:09. Six minutes.

  He did not see Paulina.

  He tapped his way to a security line. Commuters stood waiting to send baggage through X-ray machines. Jenkins set his bag on the belt and stepped through a metal detector, grabbing his duffel on the other side. The wall clock ticked forward another minute. 1:10.

  Uniformed and plain-clothed officers stood in the cathedral-like main hall. Phones in hand, they studied the faces of the commuters rushing past them. Jenkins noticed his double, tapping a white cane, pass through the terminal. He searched for Paulina, thought he saw her, then realized another identically dressed woman limped through the terminal toward a different train platform.

  Jenkins picked up his pace as he crossed the ornate room. Above the cacophony of sounds, a woman’s voice spoke Russian, then English, advising commuters of the various platforms for each departing train. Jenkins spotted Paulina across the hall, coming in and out of view as the crowd ebbed and flowed. She walked toward the designated train platform, though still with no discernable limp. To her left, a police officer checked his phone, looked at Paulina, and crossed the marble floor with a determined gait. The photos had likely caught up with their disguises.

  Jenkins picked up his pace, intercepting the officer just as he reached out to Paulina, and knocking him off his path. “Izvinite,” Jenkins said. “Ya proshu proshcheniya. Ya opazdyvayu na poyezd. Ne podskazhete, kak proyti na platformu nomer devyat’?” Excuse me. I am sorry. I am in a hurry. Can you direct me to platform nine?