Private Moscow

by Patterson, James

  They’d taken a taxi from the Residence to Pyanitskaya Street, where they’d joined the meager groups of tourists who’d braved the late hour and freezing temperatures to see the grandeur of St. Basil’s Cathedral and Red Square. As they reached the Bolshoy Moskvoretskiy Bridge, Dinara could see the distinctive outline of the cathedral, and the spires of the surrounding buildings. The brightly colored structures rose from the snow-covered landscape and were floodlit against the dark sky. The cathedral’s rainbow of domes, pattered like whipped ice creams gave the district a fairy-tale quality, but the charm of this building was dangerously disarming. It was easy to forget the violence and oppression this place had witnessed. Bad things had happened here.

  Dinara and Jack walked north across the bridge. There were a few tourists milling around here and there, taking pictures of the landmarks. Jack said nothing as they crossed the river, his eyes set firmly ahead. Dinara had been impressed with how he’d tackled the fighter at Grom Boxing, and found herself wondering whether he’d been particularly hard on his opponent because he’d been one of the men who’d tried to abduct her.

  He’s not your knight in armor, Dinara told herself. He’s your boss and he did what he thought best for the investigation.

  Still, it didn’t hurt to dream, and there were far worse things to imagine than a life with Jack Morgan. He was handsome, strong, intelligent and capable.

  Dinara’s attention was drawn to a group of six men crossing the bridge in the other direction. She recognized Yenen’s bodyguards and saw the man himself at the heart of the entourage. He wore a tuxedo and a long woolen coat, and carried a tumbler of amber liquid.

  “You’ve been making a lot of noise for a company called Private,” he said in Russian.

  “It was necessary,” Dinara replied. She switched to English and said, “Maxim Yenen, this is Jack Morgan, the head of Private.”

  “I know who Mr. Morgan is,” Yenen responded in perfect English. “His name is being whispered all over the Kremlin.”

  “I’m flattered by the attention,” Jack said. “But I’m not interested in fame. I want to know why you hired us. I want to know who Yana Petrova is.”

  Yenen looked irritated and he waved his guards away.

  “Give us a minute,” he instructed them in Russian, and the five large men backed away.

  “I thought you were discreet,” Yenen said, rounding on Dinara.

  “Take it easy,” Jack interjected, putting himself between the two of them. “Did you know Petrova was—”

  “Don’t even say that name,” Yenen interrupted, looking round nervously.

  Dinara was puzzled. This wasn’t the confident billionaire they’d met days earlier.

  “Why did you hire us? Did you know her other identity?” Jack asked.

  “Who knows who anyone really is?” Yenen replied cryptically. “Truth. Lies. Does any of it matter?”

  “Yes,” Jack snapped back instantly. “It all matters. The lies someone’s spreading right now are destroying my business. What do you know about that?”

  “You’ve been making too much noise,” Yenen replied. “That’s all I know.”

  “Was Yana Petrova making too much noise?” Dinara asked.

  “They made an example of her,” Yenen said. “To discourage others.”

  “Others?” Jack asked.

  “Maybe I made a mistake,” Yenen responded. “It was wrong of me to involve you. I don’t know why I did it, but then who knows why I do half the things I do?”

  “Mr. Yenen, is there something you want to tell us?” Jack asked.

  Dinara thought he must have been picking up the same cagey feeling from the man. They were in the presence of someone who was desperately trying not to show how frightened and confused he was.

  “I want to tell you to stop your investigation,” Yenen said. He drank from the tumbler. “Scotch,” he added, raising his glass. “Thirty-year-old Glenfarclas. Good for the soul.”

  Dinara and Jack exchanged puzzled looks.

  “Yes,” Yenen went on. “I want to end the investigation. Shut it down. My lawyer will settle your bill.”

  “Mr. Yenen,” Jack began, but the powerful Kremlin insider raised his hand.

  “Shut it down, Mr. Morgan, Miss Orlova. Shut down the investigation and close the file.”

  CHAPTER 56

  I WATCHED THE Russian stagger over to his bodyguards, who quickly surrounded him as he walked toward St. Basil’s Cathedral. The guards were like limbs, extensions of the man and manifestations of his power.

  Or the bars of a cage, I thought darkly.

  I looked at Dinara, who was equally puzzled. Why did he bring us here to fire us? Here of all places … unless …

  I glanced at a group of tourists gathered at the north end of the bridge. Three men and two women busy taking selfies with the brightly lit cathedral in the background. As Maxim Yenen and his entourage passed, the tourists put away their phones and started toward us.

  Almost directly opposite us on the other side of the bridge, a middle-aged couple were watching us closely. Every inch of me suddenly came alive with adrenalin.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said.

  Dinara had spotted them too, and nodded.

  We turned around and headed south across the bridge. A trio of drunks came toward us, young men with their arms around each other’s shoulders, singing jovially. But there was something wrong; their movements seemed forced and their slurring artificial.

  “You got your gun?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Dinara said, and she slipped her hand into her coat pocket.

  We walked faster, and when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw the quintet of selfie-takers had matched our pace. The couple on the other side of the bridge were tracking a few yards behind us. And on came the trio of drunks, their singing growing increasingly loud.

  I sensed Dinara’s anxiety, and it magnified my own. I saw her arm shift slightly. She was probably adjusting her grip on her pistol. My breathing grew rapid and shallow and my head was pounding with the rush of blood being pumped by my thundering heart. I took my hands out of my pockets and pressed the fingers of my gloves tight as we drew near the three men. They were ten feet away.

  Then five.

  One of them glanced at me and I thought I saw a flicker of recognition. I steeled myself for the inevitable confrontation.

  But they passed us and kept on going, singing and swaying their way across the bridge. I glanced back and saw the couple had stopped and were looking over the barrier at something in the river. Even the quintet of men and women had halted and were taking selfies in the middle of the bridge.

  I looked at Dinara, who was visibly relieved. She shot me a smile and I grinned in reply. We’d let out imaginations run wild.

  When we reached the southern end of the bridge, I heard steps behind us and turned to see the trio of drunks sprinting toward us. There was a roar and a screech ahead of us, and a white van came racing along the bridge, and skidded to a halt beside us.

  Dinara had her pistol out and trained it at the masked driver, but the side door slid open and another masked man jumped out, brandishing an assault rifle. He pointed the barrel of the gun directly at me. He yelled something in Russian.

  “He says he’ll kill you this time,” Dinara translated.

  I studied the gunman’s eyes and recognized him as the assassin I’d followed from New York. The man who’d killed Ernie Fisher, Elizabeth Connor and Karl Parker. He was probably also responsible for Robert Carlyle’s death.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the trio of drunks who were almost upon us. Behind them, the quintet hurried in our direction, talking into radios. They were all part of what was about to happen to us. Only the middle-aged couple were innocent, and they fled the scene hurriedly.

  I heard a familiar hum above us and looked up to see a chopper sweep over St. Basil’s Cathedral and shine its powerful spotlight on us. There was no escaping this. Our instincts had been right
. Maxim Yenen had walked us into a trap.

  Why? I asked myself.

  It was my last coherent thought. One of the drunks ran up behind us and struck me on the back of the head, and the world went black.

  CHAPTER 57

  I COULD HEAR the crash of distant waves and felt the beat of the sun on my face. I was lying on warm sand and could almost taste the brine in the baking air. Part of me was puzzled by my circumstances, but there was nothing I could do about them. I couldn’t even move, which was troubling because I could feel the soft touch of a woman stroking my hair. I couldn’t see her face, just the edge of her wide-brimmed straw hat, which intermittently blocked the blinding sun that blazed in an unblemished sky.

  Then it was all gone, replaced by darkness. I’d been dreaming, and woke to a pounding headache and a bitter taste in my mouth. My eyes adjusted to the dim light and I realized I was in an empty apartment high above the city. The windows were covered in some kind of blackout material, but it had curled at the edges to create tiny gaps that enabled me to see the twinkling lights of Moscow spread out far below. These gaps were the sole source of light, and only cast enough to discern wall from floor and space from solid shape.

  My arms were stretched above my head, and when I looked up I saw my wrists were secured in fabric cuffs that were attached to a chain, which hung from a hook. My feet were bound together by similar fabric cuffs and attached by chain to a hook in the floor. I’d been stripped to my underwear.

  I was suddenly assaulted by loud noise, death metal music, and blinding light dazzled me. I squeezed my eyes shut and desperately tried to pull my arms down to cover my ears, but they were chained tight and the light was so bright it blazed through my lids. Then the light and noise were gone, replaced by darkness.

  “Are you with us?” a voice asked.

  It was a voice I’d heard before, belonging to a man with a Russian accent, the killer I’d chased from New York.

  A light went on behind me and illuminated the space ahead. I saw my shadow cast on the concrete floor, pathetic and helpless. I looked away from it and noticed the walls had also been stripped back to concrete, but they were covered with graffiti, scrawled in what looked like dried blood. It was a nightmarish scene, and I was at the heart of it.

  I heard footsteps to my rear and the man I’d pursued from New York stepped into my field of vision. He wasn’t wearing a mask or a disguise, which was bad news because it signaled he had no intention of letting me live.

  “Where’s Dinara?” I asked. My voice was dry and rasping. I cleared my throat. “What have you done with her?”

  He stepped forward and I got a good look at his face. He had short brown hair, a flat nose, almond eyes and a square jaw. Handsome, but those who knew what to look for would notice an ugly cruelty in his eyes. He wore black combat trousers, a matching T-shirt and boots, and looked every inch the highly trained soldier I’d suspected he was when I first encountered him in New York.

  “They call me Veles,” the man said. “It has been interesting to finally encounter someone who can almost keep up with me.”

  “Let her go,” I said. “You have me. There’s no need to hurt her.”

  “But there is,” Veles replied.

  He yelled something in Russian, and I heard movement behind me. I strained to turn my head as footsteps approached. Two sets, I thought, dragging something across the concrete.

  It was two men in the same uniform as Veles, and they were pulling Dinara. She too had been stripped to her underwear and was bound at her ankles and wrists. Her feet had been grazed by the concrete and were bloody, and she had a gag over her mouth. Her eyes met mine, and they shimmered with fear.

  “Jack Morgan. Marine. Detective. Fighter. Survivor,” Veles said. “Not the kind of man who cares about his own suffering. But the suffering of another …”

  He walked over to Dinara and caressed her shoulder.

  “Leave her alone!” I yelled.

  “What do you know, Mr. Morgan?” he said. “Tell me everything. And then tell me what your team knows, and we can decide who has to die.” Veles produced a butterfly knife from his pocket, flipped it open and pressed the point against Dinara’s exposed sternum. “And we can decide how they have to die. Quickly and kindly. Or slowly. In unimaginable pain.”

  CHAPTER 58

  I STRUGGLED AGAINST my restraints but they held firm. Dinara was defiant, but there was terror in her eyes.

  “Don’t do this,” I said. “Just let her go.”

  Dinara’s tough veneer was starting to crack and I could see tears forming. Blazing with anger and frustration, I struggled again, but there was nothing I could do.

  Suddenly, a gunshot erupted from somewhere behind me, followed by the thunderous sound of footsteps and the crash of a door being slammed against a wall. I heard heavy boots tramp into the room, and urgent cries filled the air. I couldn’t believe it when Veles dropped the butterfly knife, and he and the two men holding Dinara raised their hands, and backed toward the windows.

  The room filled with gun-toting police officers, who trained their weapons on our abductors. A female officer untied Dinara’s gag, and she began yelling at Veles, who ignored her and instead barked angry commands at the police. But they paid no attention to his instructions, and handcuffed him and his accomplices. The female officer used the discarded butterfly knife to cut Dinara’s bonds, and she ran over to me, just as Anna Bolshova, the Moscow detective who’d tried to interrogate me, entered the room.

  She seemed to be in command of the raid, and was barking instructions at the dozen or so officers in the large apartment. Two of them hoisted me off the hook and cut the bonds around my legs so I could stand freely.

  Dinara leaned against me, trying to control her emotions.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have known it was a trap.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  Veles exchanged angry words with Anna as he and his two men were frogmarched out of the room.

  Anna seemed unsettled when she came over. “Asshole!” she remarked. “Are you OK?”

  Dinara nodded.

  “How did you know where we were?” I asked.

  Anna looked over my shoulder, and I glanced round to see Feodor Arapov, the huge bear of a man from the Residence, pass Veles and the other two prisoners as they were led from the room.

  “Hello, American,” he boomed. “Did we spoil your fun?”

  “How …?”

  “Leonid asked some of us to keep an eye on you,” Feo said. “The couple you spotted at the bridge. They were our guys. We saw you get taken and followed you here.”

  “And they called me and said you’d been abducted by a drugs gang,” Anna added.

  Feo looked sheepish, and my expression must have given something away, because Anna suddenly realized she’d been played.

  “You mean that man really was SVR?” she asked nervously.

  None of us said anything.

  “He told me we were disrupting an intelligence operation,” Anna said. She looked at us searchingly. “Oh, come on! You said they were part of a gang.”

  “They are,” Feo replied. “It’s just a very powerful gang.” He took my arm. “Come,” he said. “Time for us to go, before she rethinks who the villains are.”

  “What about a statement?” Anna asked.

  “Those men abducted us,” I replied. “If you hadn’t arrived, they were going to torture and kill us.”

  “They can help you fill in the blanks tomorrow,” Feo said. “If you manage to hold those men for longer than a couple of hours. For now, these two need medical attention.”

  “SVR? This is going to cause real trouble,” Anna said.

  “You saved our lives,” I replied. “I owe you one.”

  Dinara added her own response in Russian, but neither of us seemed able to lift Anna’s spirits. She had a rough night ahead.

  As we followed Feo from the room, he took off his coat and wrapped it around Dinara’s s
houlders.

  “They found your clothes in another room,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  “I owe you,” I told him.

  “You’re welcome, American,” he said, patting my back. “Now let’s get you both home.”

  CHAPTER 59

  FEO TOOK US back to the Residence in his brown UAZ Pickup truck. Dinara sat in the second row and said nothing as we drove through the quiet city. It was a few minutes after two in the morning, and the roads were almost deserted. The apartment where we’d been captives was in a rundown estate in Solntsevo, to the southwest of the city. Our journey to Kuzminki took twenty-five minutes, and Feo tried to start a couple of conversations, before eventually reading the mood. He turned on the stereo, which played a Pink Floyd compilation.

  Dinara looked shell-shocked, and she avoided meeting my gaze whenever I glanced back at her. We’d found our clothes and got dressed, but she looked as though she still felt exposed. We’d shared an extreme experience and had been forced to confront death. I felt ashamed I hadn’t been able to do anything to protect her. Did she think me weak? Did she hate me for my failure?

  When we reached the Residence, Dinara made to go straight to her room without saying a word, but Feo grabbed her and uttered something in Russian.

  She still looked distressed, but she nodded and went into the smaller of the two recreation rooms that lay off the lobby.

  “I told her she needed medical attention,” Feo explained. “And so do you. Then you can rest.”

  I didn’t object when he steered me toward the recreation room. As we got closer, I heard the rowdy chatter of a large group, and when we stepped inside I saw fifteen men and women seated around a large table. They were passing four large bottles of vodka between them. Dinara had taken a seat at the table, near Leonid, who noticed me enter.

  “American! Boss man!” he yelled, clearly drunk. “I hear you had some problems.”