* * *
The sun had set just over the line of buildings directly ahead. Jonathan’s cab ride to the Baltschug Kempinski was short, barely enough time for Jonathan to think things through. The cab drove past the massive Russiya Hotel on the banks of the Moskva River, in the shadows of the Kremlin. Right across the bridge, the Baltschug Kempinski’s pearl facade glowed from the floodlights at its base.
Jonathan had heard it was a German-managed luxury hotel, and this was evident the minute he walked in. Everything seemed elegant, orderly and spotless. The staff, their faces serious and their strides long, moved around like finely tuned robots, fully programmed to deliver opulent service in a land unaccustomed to it.
He didn’t know quite where to start. Should I ask for her by name at the reception desk? he asked himself, before dismissing the idea outright. Or stalk her in the lobby? That’s when he glanced up at the mezzanine, at what looked like a bar and lounge area at the top of the spiral marble stairs. Or try to spot her coming or going while having a drink? The bar it was. And it was perfectly situated, his large cushioned leather chair offering a bird’s eye view of the entrance and lobby.
A scantily clad waitress quickly appeared, her slender Russian features offering a welcome air of exoticism in an otherwise cool, reserved Aryan palace. She quickly brought him his gin and tonic. It will work wonders with my meds, he thought. He sipped his drink and every few seconds glanced down at the lobby, scanning the hotel guests for Mariya. He was confident he would recognize her from the photograph.
He waited.
At eleven-ten, on his second round, he hadn’t yet seen her. He gave himself another twenty minutes. If by then she hadn’t come, he would simply ask for her at the reception desk, no matter what risks would come with doing that.
He paid his tab and lifted his glass but then suddenly froze in mid-sip. There she was, thirty feet away, strolling through the revolving doors. Unaccompanied, it seemed. He recognized her straight, dark hair and her stunning angular features. She carried her coat over her arm as she headed through the lobby, but then she stopped and looked back, toward the glass entryway.
That’s when Jonathan realized that he had a problem. She wasn’t alone, and the person who quickly joined her was no lesbian lover escorting her for a night of frolicking. The man was a two-hundred-something-pound lug, built like a Brink's safe. Perhaps a bodyguard, judging from the nonchalant way she seemed to treat him. Regardless, it didn’t look good.
“Dammit,” Jonathan whispered to himself, thinking that his gunshot wound would pale in comparison to what this guy could do to him. The fact that Jonathan had a pistol in his coat pocket didn’t even cross his mind. And when it did, seconds later, he thought the bullets might simply bounce off the man. Think, think, he told himself as he headed down the stairs. He had little time to decide his approach. Should he just walk up to her and introduce himself, with the likelihood of being swatted away by her Neanderthal? No way. That’s when a more insane idea came to mind, one that could land him in a Siberian Gulag where Alexandre would have better luck finding the Dead Sea Scrolls than bailing his ass out.
Jonathan strolled to the far end of the lobby and casually observed them. Her escort was certainly the problem. His long trench coat most likely hid an arsenal of weaponry. Jonathan wasn’t so worried about her; she was dressed in a thin blouse, short skirt and carried a wallet-sized purse, all of which offered little place to hide a weapon, except, of course, if Russian agents had mastered the unconventional use of orifices.
Seconds passed and finally the beauty and the beast headed to the elevator. Mariya walked in first, the man second, Jonathan next and a hotel employee last. Mariya pressed the button for the sixth floor, just as Jonathan pretended to reach for the same one. The employee was headed to the third floor. When the elevator stopped, the employee said something in Russian, nodded politely and stepped out. Jonathan felt the increasingly pacifying effects of the painkillers, perhaps because of his drinks.
The confined space was ideal, Jonathan thought, since their floor might be too open to keep the two in check. His heart began beating out of his chest and excited warmth filtered through his veins. He felt the pistol pressing against his hip. He’d have to be quick. Damn quick. There was no room for error. The fourth floor passed, and the fifth. Then the icon to the sixth floor lit up, the elevator now decelerating.
Jonathan took in a deep breath to clear his head and then lunged at the man from behind. With his left hand he grabbed the man’s head, his fingers digging deep into his hair. With his other hand he whipped his gun out and rammed the tip of the barrel into the man’s neck. “Don’t move!” he shouted. “Or I’ll blow your head off.”
Mariya jumped back and let out a restrained cry. Her accompanying piece of furniture yelled a series of words—profanity, for sure, Jonathan guessed, even if he didn’t know the language.
“I’m not going to hurt anyone, but you must cooperate,” Jonathan said coldly, pushing the barrel deeper into the man’s skin. “I only want to speak with you, Mariya. That’s all I want.”
“You are a madman,” Mariya said in perfect English. She seemed to be more curious about Jonathan than frightened.
“Put your hands on your head,” Jonathan said, pulling the man’s head farther back so that his face was now aimed at the ceiling. But gauging that he didn’t understand his instructions, Jonathan quickly turned to Mariya. “Tell him!”
She did and her security complied, grudgingly.
The elevator came to a stop, and the door opened.
“Move, move,” Jonathan said in a more normal tone. “But you first,” he added, glancing at Mariya.
“You’re not going to get anything,” she said stubbornly with a blank gaze. She stepped out. “You’re not frightening me.”
“Shut up and walk.” Jonathan didn’t like her attitude; she had recovered her confidence too quickly. He began to fear that she—a career spy—would easily discover that he was no professional.
Mariya walked ahead of Jonathan and his captive. As she got to the door of her suite, she turned and crossed her arms. “You are completely crazy,” she said. “This is unacceptable behavior.”
Jonathan was stunned by her brazenness and in no mood to play games. “I’ve been drinking; I’ve been shot; I’m on painkillers; and I’m holding a gun,” Jonathan said testily. “Are you sure you want to irritate me?” Indeed, he felt both woozy from the medicines and booze and also weak, perhaps from the sleepless nights or the fact that he had barely eaten since arriving in Moscow.
“What exactly do you want?”
“Answers,” Jonathan replied, pushing her bodyguard up against the wall.
“Answers to what?”
“Operation Tranquility.”
The color suddenly drained out of Mariya’s face. Her shoulders drooped. “I’m not your villain,” she replied. “For that, you should go to your own embassy.”
Holding on to the man’s neck with one hand, Jonathan quickly patted him down. The thug was armed, as he’d expected. Jonathan removed a large pistol from the man’s belt holster and tucked it behind his own belt. “Open the damn door.”
Mariya hesitantly turned and slid her card into the reader. The three headed inside.
“Sit in that chair,” Jonathan said to her as he prodded her bodyguard to move forward.
Mariya was now seated where she’d been told, but her eyes told Jonathan she was still unpredictable and dangerous.
With his pistol lodged against the man’s ear, Jonathan pushed him face-first onto the bed, quickly removed the man’s belt and began tying his hands with it. He then slipped the man’s shoes off, pulled each sock off and bundled them into a ball. Jonathan reached his hand around her bodyguard’s jaw, forced open his mouth and stuffed the pair of socks deep inside. “Hopefully for you, you wore clean socks today.”
“That’s a little mean, isn’t it?” Mariya said.
“What’s your thug’s name?”
“Yuri.”
“Okay, Yuri, do you understand English?”
Yuri murmured incoherently, sockmouthed and no doubt fuming.
“Get up slowly and sit in the corner of the room, behind the television. Now!”
The man crawled out of his position, stood up and did as he was told.
If Jonathan wasn’t hallucinating, he thought he caught Mariya with a smile, albeit a momentary one.
“You’re making him awfully mad,” she said to Jonathan.
“Good, that makes two of us who feel that way.”
Mariya crossed her legs and seemed at ease, which made Jonathan more nervous than he already was. She lit a cigarette. “Pour me a drink, will you?”
Jonathan glanced at the dresser. Two bottles of vodka lay next to four glasses. He also poured himself one. “Here,” Jonathan said, handing her a full glass, “if it will make you talk.” She took the glass in such a way as to caress his hand. It was comfortably inappropriate and reinforced his uneasiness. She is a bizarre chick, all right, he thought gazing at her from top to bottom. He tried to guess her age. Forty, forty-five, maybe. She had an air about her—part movie star, part serial killer.
“What do you want to know?”
“Your mission to disrupt Operation Tranquility.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t play dumb. I’m not playing games.”
Mariya chuckled. “You’re a rather good looking man; you can’t possibly be with the CIA. All they have sent here lately are computer geeks and ugly, overweight paper shufflers. Tell me you are not one of them.”
“I’m not telling you anything, lady. Not yet, anyway. You do the talking.” He guzzled a mouthful of his drink and sat at the foot of the bed, his attention focused entirely on the Russian woman seated three feet from him.
“As you wish.”
“I’m not here to cause trouble,” Jonathan said, finishing the last of his vodka. “I’m no spy; I’m not involved in your line of work, and I don’t care about what you people do. This is a personal thing for me. I’ve gone through hell over the past ten days to find information about my missing brother. He was shot down over the Baltic seven years ago and I’m certain it had something to do with your plans, whatever they were.”
Mariya lost the smirk. She tilted her head to one side and exhaled a long plume of smoke. “Shot down, huh?”
“Yes, sometime when—”
Suddenly, Jonathan heard the front door latch snap. The door opened, and a woman wearing a parka casually walked in saying something in Russian. As she strolled further into the room, Jonathan got up and pointed his gun at her, after which he saw only fear in her eyes.
“Move, move,” he said loudly, motioning her with his gun to go around the bed to join Mariya on the other side of the room. But as Jonathan was about to say something else, he felt his fingers and hands tingling sharply, and his tongue too. He shook his head, but the numbness had spread to his cheeks and neck.
“Relax, will you?” Mariya said to Jonathan. She held her hand out to the woman next to her, who reached for hers. The two women smiled at each other. “You come at a perfect time,” said Mariya.
The absence of feeling in his skin grew, and his mouth began to salivate profusely.
“Are you not feeling well?” Mariya asked, her arm now wrapped around the other woman’s hips. She slid her hand up the woman’s blouse.
“What are...” mumbled Jonathan before he couldn’t utter anything more. His head was spinning.
He saw the women undressing one another, but his fuzzy vision gained such intensity that he could only focus on his hands. He heard Mariya and her companion laugh. He shook his head several times, fighting to regain his focus, but the weakness in his limbs made him fall backward onto the bed. The empty glass in his right hand fell somewhere near him; so did the gun from his other hand. He had no strength to speak, to get up, to do anything at all except breathe.
Mariya’s half-dressed body rose up over the comforter, embracing her nude companion. The women rolled over Jonathan’s legs as they kissed and fondled each other and continued to bump into him as if he were a stray pillow.
“You shouldn’t drink from a stranger’s bottle,” Mariya said as both women again erupted in laughter. He’d been drugged, and there was little he could do now.
Unable to move, he gazed helplessly at a slender, nude leg that rose above his head, the sound of passionate moaning filtering through his skull. The leg then descended and the heel slammed into his jaw, knocking him off the bed. The loud sounds of giggling, rustling bed sheets and mattress springs drowned the thud from his body hitting the floor. Her bodyguard reappeared, and he didn’t have the sock in his mouth. He looked angry but his face began to blur. Jonathan’s surroundings melted into a kaleidoscope of fuzzy shapes and lights, and then suddenly, only darkness.
20
Freezing pungent air seeped into Jonathan’s lungs. The rest of his body suddenly felt frozen. He opened his eyes as his grogginess slowly dissipated, but everything still seemed blurred. He blinked, but he couldn’t move his limbs nor his head. A cobblestone surface lay in front of him at a strange angle. He coughed, a cloud of vapor exiting his mouth. He was on the ground, on a street. The smell of sewage grew stronger, as did the bitter cold, and then the pain in his shoulder. He saw small metal wheels. Two of them and then another farther from him. And a large metallic object hovering above. He blinked again. A dumpster. He lay partly under it. Where the fuck am I?
He brought his hand to his face. His fingers were stiff and reddish-blue, and the skin felt numb. He slowly rolled over, his back crunching into a pile of snow. His body was now shaking uncontrollably from the cold, and the pain in his shoulder burned like the bullet was passing through it once more. He moved his legs, both of them as stiff as his arms. Dried blood covered his right hand. He heard the sound of an empty bottle tip over and roll along the stone pavement. Despite the pain and bitter cold, he managed to gather the strength to sit up and then, a minute later, to stand. He glanced down. His coat lay on the other side of the dumpster. It was soaked and looked as if a vehicle had driven over it.
The back alley was crammed between rows of mid-rise buildings—apartments, it seemed. There was no one around, but Jonathan could hear the sound of traffic not far away.
He rubbed his arms and chest to regain some warmth. When he turned the corner and passed a few shops, he realized from the looks of things that he had not left the city center. He then spotted, some fifty yards away, a large graded-arch structure with an “M” sign hanging over the entrance. Jonathan didn’t know which Metro station it was, but it was an ideal place to get to safety. He crossed the street and headed into the Krasnye Vorota station. Fortunately for Jonathan, it was on the red line, just three stops from Teatralnaya, the closest station to his hotel.
After getting strange looks from the hotel bellman, no doubt because of his disheveled look, Jonathan headed to his room, showered, changed and came up with a plan. It was time to approach C.J. Raynes and see if he could strike a deal. Jonathan was convinced that C.J. was no ordinary diplomat, but he wasn’t sure what role he may have played in the smuggling of the cargo, and ultimately in Matt’s disappearance.
After looking through the hotel tourist guide, he picked out a place he thought would be well suited for a rendezvous with the American. Jonathan descended to the lobby. From a courtesy phone, he dialed the main U.S. Embassy number and, surprisingly, managed to be transferred to the guy himself.
“C.J. Raynes,” the man answered on the fourth ring.
Jonathan nervously gathered his mental strength. “I have a deal to make.”
“Who is this?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jonathan said sternly. “Does Operation Tranquility mean something to you?”
Silence took over the phone line. Jonathan then heard on the other end what sounded like a door closing.
“I want to meet,” said Jonathan, “and alone. None of your frie
nds. Besides, Frank can tell you what happens when you don’t play the game right.”
“What the hell do you want from me?” C.J. asked, his voice deep, his tone condescending.
“Maybe I should go to the Russians with the dirt I have on you. They would love what I have to say.”
C.J. sighed. “Don’t do anything stupid. If you want, we can meet me at—”
“No, no,” Jonathan interrupted. “We’ll meet on my terms. I’ll be at the Radisson on Berezhovskaya.” Jonathan had passed the huge American-run hotel with Alexandre and guessed it would be a safer spot than any place C.J. might suggest. “Be there, in the lobby, at two-thirty today, alone, unarmed—I only want to talk, so you won’t need any guns or thugs. And carry a copy of the New York Times clearly visible in your left coat pocket.”
“You’re playing a very dangerous and careless game, Mr. Brooks,” C.J. declared coldly.
Jonathan wasn’t surprised C.J. knew his name, but it still brought a chill to his spine. It also helped Jonathan connect the dots. Vice-Admiral Scarborough and whoever else was involved must have given C.J. a heads-up. Jonathan realized that he’d have to play it smart—real smart—or else he’d be dead in no time.
“I have little to lose at this point,” Jonathan replied, anger lacing his words. “A lot less than you.” He hung up.
Before heading out, Jonathan went to the front desk and dispatched a telegram to Linda. “I am with you, my love,” he wrote. “Don’t worry.” He gazed at it one more time before handing the form to the clerk. As trivial as the message seemed, it gave him strength to know that within hours Linda would read his words. He needed every ounce of courage he could muster.
* * *
Kievskiy Vokzal, the Kiev Train Station, was a happening place; two women in red stilettos, their bodies wrapped in giant fur coats, following a porter carrying their oversized luggage; a pair of leather-clad, spike-haired teens smoking by a pillar; a cluster of hyper Japanese tourists photographing each other in front of a food stand. Jonathan had arrived there by Metro a few minutes before two to survey the surroundings. The station was a large, bustling place, the perfect escape route should anything go sour during his rendezvous with C.J. It was the closest public venue to the Radisson.
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