The Last Agent

by Robert Dugoni

  Jenkins looked to Federov in the back seat. “How do you feel?”

  “Like someone hit me in the back of the head, twice.”

  “Twice?” Jenkins said.

  “Is long story.”

  “Is your scalp bleeding?”

  “Not much. The cold has helped. How did you know?” Federov asked. “About Efimov.”

  “I didn’t know it was Efimov, not for certain, but I figured anyone out in this weather was either crazy or looking for us.”

  “In this case, both,” Federov said.

  “I got that sense.” Jenkins turned to Paulina. “You can drive in this snow?” he asked.

  Paulina, who had lived her entire life in Moscow, arched one eyebrow and pulled the emergency brake, sending the car into a skid. She released the brake and punched the gas. The car corrected and shot down another alley. Jenkins gripped the handhold to keep upright. He smiled. “I guess that’s a yes. We’re going to need to ditch this car sooner rather than later.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But the marina is not close, and neither he nor I can walk far in this weather. It is difficult even for you.”

  Jenkins spoke to Federov. “I assume they have traffic cameras to monitor the streets?”

  “Yes, but Saint Petersburg is not Moscow,” Federov said. “Most of the cameras in Saint Petersburg are focused on major thoroughfares and tourist sites, for terrorist attacks. If we take back alleys and side streets, we can get far. The snow will help to hide us, especially if we drive without lights.”

  At the end of each alley, Paulina slowed and turned off the car’s headlights. Visibility was not much worse without the headlights, no more than a foot or two beyond the hood of the car. On two occasions she had to retreat when headlights appeared on the intersecting street. Police vehicles drove slowly past. When clear, she crossed the street and continued the game of cat and mouse. They exited an alley to a street running parallel to the Neva River.

  “First bridge,” Paulina said. Street signs indicated the Blagoveshchenskiy Bridge—with traffic traveling in each direction, though this night the bridge was deserted. “This is the greatest risk, but we have no choice,” she said.

  Once across the bridge, Paulina quickly found and navigated the alleys and side streets that eventually led to the Betankura Bridge, a shorter span across the Little Neva River. Again, they encountered no traffic. On the other side, however, the Petrovsky District looked largely industrial, with few streets. Paulina had no choice but to drive the deserted main road, Petrovsky Prospekt, increasing their chances of being seen.

  Eventually they reached the final bridge, Bolshoy Petrovsky, and crossed to Krestovsky Island. “How much farther to the marina?” Jenkins asked.

  “Not much farther. Half a mile,” Paulina said.

  “I think we’ve pushed our luck far enough. Let’s find a place to ditch the car before we get any closer to our destination,” Jenkins said. “Efimov will know we can’t walk far in this weather. We need to hide the car to buy us time.”

  Federov leaned between the seats. “The park.” He pointed. “We can hide the car in Primorskiy Park. It is very large.”

  Paulina drove off the shoulder of the road, the tires bumping over the curb. Jenkins could not distinguish walking paths from the streets. Paulina weaved the car through stands of snow-covered trees until they emerged at a parking lot littered with vehicles covered beneath six inches of snow.

  “Drive over the curb,” Jenkins said, pointing past the parking lot. “Into those trees.”

  Paulina kept her speed up so the car wouldn’t get stuck and navigated close to the tree trunks. The branches, laden with heavy snow, sagged nearly to the ground, providing a natural canopy.

  “Can you walk?” he asked Federov as the Russian stepped from the back seat.

  Federov considered the snow-covered landscape. “I think the better question is whether I can ski.”

  37

  Efimov staggered into a room at the police station in Saint Petersburg. He was both embarrassed and angry. The blow to the back of his head had not knocked him out, but it had stunned him long enough for Jenkins and Federov to flee. He had struggled to his feet and followed their shoeprints until the snow obliterated them, then he flagged down a police vehicle.

  Efimov assumed Federov and Jenkins had fled by car, since they could not get far on foot, especially not after the blow Efimov had delivered to the back of Federov’s skull. Either Jenkins would recognize this and hijack a car, though that seemed unlikely since there were none on the road, or he had reached a previously designated meeting place and had been picked up—most likely by Ponomayova.

  Efimov sipped whiskey and flexed his fingers to circulate his blood and warm his limbs. In the police car he had instructed Alekseyov to direct the Saint Petersburg police to scour traffic-camera footage in the general vicinity of Moskovsky station and the surrounding neighborhood, searching for either a moving vehicle or two men walking. Efimov knew traffic cameras were not as prevalent in Saint Petersburg as in Moscow, but then neither were the cars, at least not this night. While he waited, Efimov considered what Federov had said about trying to expose the entire network working to get Jenkins and Ponomayova out of Russia. No doubt these were the ramblings of a desperate man looking down the barrel of a gun, but there was truth in what Federov had told him. Catching Jenkins and Ponomayova remained the clear objective, but taking down the people assisting them would further elevate Efimov, perhaps enough for the president to consider bringing him back into the fold, a job within the Kremlin.

  That, however, was putting the cart before the horse, something his father had warned him to never do. Complete the job. Leave the reward to others.

  Alekseyov walked into the room carrying a cold compress and handed it to Efimov. “You should have that looked at by a doctor,” he said. Efimov dropped the compress in a waste can. He had no time for doctors. “They could not have gotten far, not in this weather,” he said to the officers in the room.

  “They could have parked the car. They could be hiding in any of the buildings in that area,” Alekseyov said.

  Efimov shot him a stern look. “Do not contradict me,” he said under his breath.

  An analyst monitoring a computer terminal spoke up. “I have located a car on the Blagoveshchenskiy Bridge.” Efimov and Alekseyov stepped to the computer screen. The analyst pointed. “This is the bridge approximately twelve minutes ago,” he said. “There, you see.” He pointed to the moving vehicle. “It is driving without lights.” The car disappeared from the screen. The analyst typed. “I picked it up again here, this time crossing the Betankura Bridge to Petrovsky Prospekt.”

  Efimov watched the vehicle navigate the snowy roundabout at Petrovskaya Square and head north across the Bolshoy Petrovsky Bridge to Krestovsky Island.

  “This is where I lose them,” the analyst said. “They appear to have driven into Primorskiy Park.”

  “Get a vehicle, whatever it takes,” Efimov instructed Alekseyov as he moved for the door. “Mr. Jenkins likely planned to flee by boat. If so, he has learned that Neva Bay has frozen, as has much of the Gulf of Finland. Have every marina on Krestovsky searched. He is either waiting for the ice to thaw or for an alternative means out.”

  38

  Jenkins took the lead, using his legs to cut a trail through the shin-deep snow, and his body to serve as a wind block for Paulina and Federov, though the wind had eased. Snowflakes now floated softly to the ground, like autumn leaves. Federov had broken off a tree limb to obscure their tracks but discarded it when he saw the depth to which Jenkins’s boots sunk, and the trough each step created.

  “I’d need a snowplow to obscure our tracks,” he’d said.

  With the decreased wind came a gray haze and eerie silence—no voices, not the hum of a car engine or a plane flying overhead. Behind Jenkins, Paulina’s raspy breaths became more pronounced; she was clearly struggling, though she would not admit it. Air escaped her lips in bursts of
white condensation, and her gaunt features and sickly appearance reminded Jenkins of the black-and-white photographs of the faces of Holocaust survivors—men and women horribly undernourished and underdressed. He suggested stopping, but she refused, telling him they were better staying in motion, that stopping would only make starting again more difficult.

  When he could, Jenkins kept close to tree trunks, where their natural awnings reduced the snow depth. The burdened limbs also served to hide them and their tracks, were a police car to drive by in search of them.

  “How much farther?” Federov asked, keeping his voice low. He complained of a splitting headache, but he had not thrown up or shown further signs of being concussed. He looked and sounded better.

  “Not far,” Jenkins said. He hoped he was right. He didn’t actually know.

  The cold burned in his chest with each breath, and he recalled reading, somewhere, that a person could permanently damage their lungs exercising in blistering cold air. Perhaps, but he was more concerned with the amount he was sweating and the possibility of their body temperatures dropping dangerously low and slipping into hypothermia.

  Jenkins dropped to a knee at a tree line and considered the intersection ahead—the snow unmarked by tire tracks or shoeprints. A red stop sign and a yellow street sign protruded above the snow, like lollipops. Jenkins shifted his attention to a marina across the intersection, looking for any sign that someone else also watched it.

  Federov knelt alongside him. “If the plan was to leave by boat . . .” He shook his head. “The arctic freeze has frozen the bay, Mr. Jenkins, and even if it had not, by now the naval base on Kotlin Island has been alerted to such an attempt.”

  Federov’s concern was something Jenkins had already contemplated, but without his encrypted phone, confiscated at the railway station when he had been arrested, he had no way to transmit to Matt Lemore the success or failure of their efforts, or the weather problems they had encountered. He hoped his contact at the marina had done so and an alternative plan had been formulated.

  “We move forward,” Jenkins said.

  “Yes,” Federov said. “But to what?”

  Jenkins stood and walked from the trees, trying to stay out of the glow of the streetlamps as he crossed the street. Paulina and Federov followed him past a clubhouse, its windows dark, the flags of various countries fluttering atop flagpoles. As he neared the marina, he could see lights outlining the piers. The bay looked like a block of ice, and the boats in the frozen slips varied in size and purpose—from small fishing boats and sailboats to much larger yachts. The marina, despite the freeze and the snow, emitted a briny smell.

  “What are we looking for?” Paulina asked. She coughed, a deep, raspy bark.

  Jenkins spoke as he walked. “Seas the Day.”

  “Clever,” Federov said, “but also a dubious sentiment, I am afraid.”

  Minutes later, Jenkins stopped at a trawler with the words “Seas the Day” across the stern in block letters. The hull was aluminum, painted black, and Jenkins estimated it exceeded forty feet, bow to stern. He walked the pier to the pilothouse, where a hint of light peeked out from between the blinds covering the window. Jenkins stepped down onto the deck and knocked three times on the cabin door.

  A woman pulled open the door. Mid-to-late thirties with light-brown hair, she spoke heavily accented English. “It is much too late for a fishing trip.”

  “But hopefully not too late for a boat ride,” Jenkins replied.

  “You are very late.” She stepped aside so they could enter.

  Jenkins ducked down, then helped Paulina inside. Federov followed. The cabin was knotted oak stained with a hint of red, outfitted with a brown leather couch, ottoman, and chair, all atop a throw rug.

  “We were delayed,” Jenkins said.

  The woman shut and locked the door. She had a youthful face but a serious demeanor and a muscular figure evident in navy-blue stretch pants and a white sweater. She stared at Federov. “I was told there would be two.”

  “Unforeseen change of plans,” Jenkins said. “There is also a good chance we have been followed. How far they are behind us, I don’t know.”

  Their contact looked from Federov to Jenkins. “You did not get the information?”

  He shook his head. “I had my phone confiscated.”

  “Neva Bay is frozen. And the Russian Navy has been alerted to the possibility of your fleeing by boat.” The woman had the television on, the volume low, a weather channel.

  “Again, we made that assumption,” Jenkins said. “I’m hoping alternative arrangements have been made.”

  Paulina coughed. To Jenkins her barking sounded like it was getting worse. The woman directed them to a folding table with sandwiches.

  “I have made tea and sandwiches for you while we talk.”

  “You should try to eat something,” Jenkins said to Paulina. “To regain your strength.”

  When Federov turned to the table, the woman removed a pistol from beneath a seat cushion and pressed the muzzle against the back of his head. “Do not move.”

  Jenkins raised his hands. “Whoa. Whoa. Take it easy.”

  Federov didn’t flinch, though he raised his hands, half a sandwich in his left hand. “If you are going to shoot me, do so. Just don’t hit me in the back of the head. Twice in one night is more than sufficient, I assure you.”

  “This man is an FSB agent,” the woman said.

  “Was,” Jenkins said.

  “That is irrelevant and not yet confirmed.”

  “He’s the only reason we’re here,” Jenkins said. “The only reason I’m here.”

  She kept the muzzle to the back of Federov’s head. “He cannot be trusted. There is too much at stake. Too many people working to get you out of Russia.”

  Jenkins considered the woman. “How do you know him?”

  “I will say only that I am well familiar with Colonel Viktor Nikolayevich Federov, FSB in Moscow. As well as his colleague, Arkady Volkov.”

  Federov shrugged. “It seems my reputation precedes me.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Jenkins said to the woman. “Whatever it is we are going to do, we need to do it, now.”

  “He does not go,” the woman said, unrelenting. “Too many lives are at stake.”

  “Go,” Federov said to Jenkins. “I will find my own way.”

  Jenkins turned to the woman. “He’s not armed.” Federov had lost his weapons in the confrontation with Efimov. “We bring him with us to keep him from telling anyone where we are going.”

  “I don’t have to bring him with us. I can kill him and leave him here.”

  “Search him. If he has a transmitter, anything that would give away our location, kill him.”

  Jenkins looked to Federov, who shrugged.

  The woman seemed to consider this, then quickly said, “Check his clothing. But be thorough.”

  Federov removed his clothing and Jenkins went through the Russian’s pockets, the lining of his coat and his pants, then his shoes and socks, even his undergarments. Federov stood naked.

  “Nothing,” Jenkins said.

  “Give me his phone,” the woman said.

  Jenkins did. The woman set it on the wood counter and smashed it with the butt of her gun. She combed through the pieces. Then she looked to Federov. “If you give me any reason, I will kill you. Are we clear?”

  Federov looked to Jenkins. “How do your spies in American movies say it? . . . ‘Crystal.’ No?”

  “Get dressed,” the woman said. “We are already behind schedule. And it doesn’t sound like we have time to spare.” As Federov dressed, the woman said to Jenkins, “What size shoe do you wear?”

  “Thirteen. Why?”

  “Because we are going to need to walk.” She turned to Federov, not about to reveal more. “I suggest we get moving.”

  Saint Petersburg police found the car abandoned beneath tree limbs in a grove in Primorskiy Park. They also found a path leading away from the
car. Given the amount of snow that had partially filled the path, Efimov estimated they remained half an hour behind Jenkins, Ponomayova, and Federov. The trail led to a marina of boats moored in slips along three piers. Though the wind had eased, the weather remained numbingly cold. Efimov looked out at the falling snow and the frozen waters of Neva Bay. Further out, the lights in the homes and buildings of the naval base at Kronstadt glistened on Kotlin Island, and streetlights defined the road stretched atop the complex of dams and levees from one side of Neva Bay to the other. Construction of Kronstadt dam and its floodgates had been one of Putin’s highest priorities—finally providing the city a defense against flooding, a persistent problem for centuries.

  Had Mr. Jenkins intended to get out of Saint Petersburg by boat? Or had he only wanted Efimov to believe that had been his intent? Alekseyov said that during their earlier attempt to capture Jenkins he had provided copious amounts of misinformation, but this time there was a significant difference; this time Jenkins had Ponomayova with him, and her physical health had been compromised—perhaps Federov’s as well from the blow Efimov had delivered. Jenkins could not move as quickly as he could alone, and how far he got and by what means would depend to a large extent on Ponomayova’s health and the weather.

  “Have the ships searched,” Efimov instructed Alekseyov. “And the snow on the ice checked for bootprints.”

  Armed with high-powered flashlights, Alekseyov and a team of officers stepped from the pier onto the frozen water. After just minutes of searching, an officer called to Alekseyov and Efimov.

  “Snowshoes.” The officer swept the flashlight over the snow. “Someone tried to obscure the prints, but not good enough.”