Jonathan walked out, past the vast square facing the station. After a minute, he spotted the hotel a few hundred yards away. The Radisson’s monolithic structure, some ten stories high, dominated the riverfront. Jonathan planned his next move. He’d go through the lobby and find a spot to observe the entrance, just as he’d done at the Baltschug Kempinski Hotel when he first tracked down Mariya. He was counting on the likelihood that C.J. would not dare do anything illegal in public, but he couldn’t be sure.
Approaching the hotel, Jonathan methodically rehearsed his means of escape in his head, mentally etching the detailed images of each locale. He glanced at the row of cabs. He’d have to use one to quickly get to Kiev Station, if things got out of hand. And then race past the ticket booths, he thought, down the corner stairs, through the passageway to the Kievskaya Metro station and on to the second platform on the left.
Suddenly, the sound of squealing tires made Jonathan turn around. A white van had pulled up along the curb right next to him. Before he could even step back, the van’s side door flung open and two men quickly disembarked and lunged at him. Jonathan tried to run, but one man grabbed him by the coat while the other took hold of his collar. Jonathan swung his elbow and felt it pound the guy behind him, but before he could land another hit, the second man had Jonathan in a choke hold. He was being dragged away.
Jonathan cried out as he felt a punch to his kidneys. Another punch followed, and he felt his body flying uncontrollably toward the vehicle. He landed face down onto the metal floorboard as the two thugs leapt on top of him and barked words in Russian. Jonathan looked up. The back of the van had no seats, nothing at all, just a couple unfriendly Russians, one of whom twisted Jonathan’s arm behind his back. The pain ripped its way through his sore shoulder.
Jonathan heard the sound of duct tape being unwound. He had to get away, or he would surely die. The van accelerated violently, the sudden movement helping to loosen the assailant’s choke hold. Jonathan whipped around and managed to pull himself half-up. The man behind him lost his grip, and Jonathan body-slammed him against the half-caged divider behind the driver’s seat.
Jonathan saw the driver frantically dialing into his cell phone as he punched the second attacker in the back of the head. A revolver went flying across the floor, hit the side and bounced back to the center of the van. The Russian yelled something to his partner or to the driver. The other assailant lunged at the gun but Jonathan turned and kicked the guy in the groin from behind. Jonathan jumped on the other man, who was about to get back up off the floor, grabbed him by the coat and threw him toward the back of the speeding van, and the rear doors suddenly swung open from the force. The assailant was ejected, his head hitting the pavement first and his body rolling across the centerline, where a large sedan in the opposite lane drove over him and slammed into a stretch of parked cars.
Jonathan turned and attacked the other man. The speeding van suddenly turned sharply, throwing the men to one side. Jonathan again eyed the back of the vehicle, the doors swinging wide open with the swaying thrusts.
He punched the man’s face and then dug his fingers into one and then both eyes.
“Skotina!” the man cried in pain and jolted back. Jonathan punched him again and again until the man collapsed onto his back. His adrenaline racing, Jonathan kicked him in the belly, pushing him until the man rolled off the speeding van to the street below, just like his cohort.
Jonathan turned to the driver, who whipped his head back at him and began to swing the van from side to side. Jonathan grabbed the ribbed steel side of the van and crawled his way forward. He took hold of the caged divider with one hand and latched on to the driver’s hair with the other. He pulled himself up and then dove partially over the divider.
Oncoming cars, their horns blaring, twisted away from the van’s path as it crossed back and forth over the median.
“Stop right now!” Jonathan barked as he contorted the driver’s neck to one side and pulled harder on his hair until the man’s head was facing nearly straight up. The driver dropped his cell phone and gripped the steering wheel with both hands.
Jonathan stretched his body into the forward compartment, trying to take control of the steering. He head-butted the driver and then quickly repositioned his arm around the man’s neck, squeezing it with all his might. The driver finally lost his grip on the wheel.
“Shit!” Jonathan barked, as he glanced out the windshield. The van jumped the curb and sped along the sidewalk, downed a parking meter, and then another, the thumping sounds blending with more car horns and screams from pedestrians diving clear of the vehicle. Jonathan tried to grab the steering wheel, but the driver bit his arm.
Still traveling at a high rate of speed, the van scraped along the wall at the river bank. Jonathan again head-butted the driver, but the van swerved into a street lamp and mailbox, instantly peeling the hood up against the windshield and shattering it. The force catapulted the van back across the street. It then headed straight for a parked truck. Jonathan jumped back behind the driver’s seat and braced for the impact. The smashing metal reverberated as Jonathan hit the van’s roof and landed on his back.
He took a deep breath and got up. The driver’s bloodied face was plastered across the mangled dashboard, the steering column jammed in his chest. Jonathan grabbed the driver’s cell phone that had fallen on the floor below the front passenger seat. He then took off running, quickly escaping as onlookers gathered around. He spotted the Kiev Station three blocks away and realized the van had traveled in a circle before wrecking. He could still use his escape plan, but from a different direction.
Jonathan crossed the street, glancing over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t followed. Sirens began blaring from a few blocks behind him. As he crossed the next street, a blue- and white-colored police car screeched past him, its lights on but no siren. It sped away toward the river, heading to the scene of the crash.
Jonathan darted through the train station, down the stairs at the far end, which led to the Metro. He stepped on the waiting subway car, breathing a sigh of relief. He leaned back against the side and gazed at the doors as they closed. The platform edged away and all he could see out the windows was the darkness of the tunnel. He was safe. Safe for now.
When Jonathan approached his hotel, he pulled out the confiscated cell phone and dialed the last number the driver had called. The voice that picked up was exactly who he’d feared would be on the other end of the line. It sounded like C.J.
Jonathan quickly hung up, realizing that not only would C.J. never agree to any deal, he was out to crush Jonathan, and he would do so with the surgical precision of a bulldozer.
From his room at the Metropol, Jonathan called Alexandre with a request. “I need a secure place to stay,” Jonathan began.
“What’s happened now?” asked Alexandre, as if he knew Jonathan had caused another disaster.
“I’ll explain later. Please, pick me up here and take me where I can be safe. Things are out of control.”
“I already knew that,” the Russian lawyer retorted.
“Please!”
“I think these people won’t stop until they kill you.” Alexandre now sounded angry. “It’s time to leave all this alone and go back to your country. And there’s no evidence your brother didn’t die seven years ago.”
“I’ve come a long way for answers. My wife is on a hospital bed fighting to stay alive. Too many people have suffered to simply turn back now. I beg you, Alexandre. Please, do the right thing.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Jonathan stared out the window, at the gray sky the hung over the Bolshoi.
“Boris will pick you up in thirty minutes,” Alexandre said, still sounding pissed off. But Jonathan couldn’t blame him. He’d given Alexandre grief nearly every moment since he’d arrived in Moscow. “By the way, I have more news for you. And it’s not good. I’ll explain later.”
* * *
Jonathan sagged b
ack into his sofa and thought about what else he needed to do. He dug into his wallet and found the business card he’d carried with him since Stockholm. He began dialing, his mind calculating how he would approach Erland.
“I have news for you,” Jonathan said excitedly upon hearing the Swedish intelligence officer answer the phone. “I’m in Russia and I got the information that—”
“Stop!” Erland protested. “Say no more. You should know there is no such thing as a private telephone call in Russia.”
Jonathan sighed. “I also need another favor from you.”
“We shouldn’t talk so—”
“I don’t care,” Jonathan said. “Find out what you can about a man called C.J. Raynes, a diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Moscow.”
“Don’t—”
“Please. He’s tried to kill me, and I have no one to turn to right now, except you!”
Erland didn’t reply right away.
Jonathan closed his eyes as he felt a momentary spike of pain in his shoulder. He’d taken another dose of painkillers minutes earlier. He thought of taking more, but it would surely send him into oblivion.
“I have an idea,” Erland began. “Get a magnifying glass. Are you in a hotel?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Get a magnifying glass and then look at the back of my business card. You will see three pairs of names. The three names on top are local hotels; the corresponding names below them are the contact persons. Go to the last hotel on the list and ask for that person at the reception by saying he left an umbrella for you. You’ll then receive instructions on what to do next. I will find out more information by the time you meet with your contact.”
“When do I go?”
“Be there at four-thirty if you can.”
* * *
The Ukraina Hotel is a gigantic structure—part skyscraper, part palace. Its airport-sized lobby, paved in white marble, dwarfs any building he’d seen so far in Moscow.
As instructed, Jonathan went to the reception desk and asked for an umbrella left by a man named Barnesworth, the name printed on the back of Erland’s card. The clerk disappeared into the back office for a moment and then returned with an envelope in hand. After showing his passport, Jonathan was given the envelope and realized he wasn’t going to meet anyone. He quickly rejoined Boris outside and opened the envelope to find a note and a tiny electronic device similar in size and shape to a cigarette lighter. He read the short, handwritten missive. It had instructions on how to use the device—how to record the information he had gotten about the Swedish Air Force DC-3 crash. Following the instructions, he pressed a small black button on the face of the device and spoke clearly. He mentioned the location of the crash site the way Nikolai had described it, and he also explained who Nikolai was and how he’d managed to get into the Kremlin.
Boris then drove Jonathan to an address on Gagarinskiy Pereulok, as was indicated in the note. There, Jonathan got out of the car, walked half a block to the large glass storefront of an art gallery named Genesis, noticing the spotlights illuminating several modern paintings and sculptures behind the glass. As instructed in the note, Jonathan held the device in his hand and approached the glass. He discreetly pointed it at a large painting with colorful, abstract cubes blending into autumn leaves. He squeezed a tiny button at the tip of the device, which somehow allowed the data to upload. The note said it would take only a few seconds. He sensed a bit of satisfaction at having made good on his debt to Erland, but mostly at having given the families of the DC-3 crewmen some peace. Their situation was not unlike his own. They all deserved answers to a haunting past.
The device vibrated briefly, signaling that the data had been properly uploaded. Jonathan returned to the car.
“I take you to Alexandre, da?” Boris asked.
“Yes,” Jonathan replied, gazing at the bright storefront as the car whisked by. He was in awe of the efficiency with which Erland had organized this arms-length encounter. The Swedish sleuth had left an impressive mark.
21
The scent of pine and the sounds of windblown leaves magically transformed the dark forest around Alexandre’s suburban dacha into a tranquil oasis. Jonathan stood on the porch, gazing at the snow-covered trees and the dusk sky, the array of stars slowly brightening.
Alexandre sat nearby, smoking a Marlboro Red and digesting everything Jonathan had told him, including the assault by the men in the van.
“How am I going to get out of this mess?” Jonathan asked him.
“Yes, you’ve stretched the use of your tourist visa to cause havoc in the streets of my city,” said Alexandre, his tone half-joking. “But don’t worry yourself to death. There has to be some solution, even if you don’t see it yet.” Alexandre had barely refilled his glass when he flushed the vodka down his throat. He exhaled deeply, the odor of booze wandering to Jonathan’s side of the porch. “It now just seems harder—and more dangerous—than before. All will be fine.”
Jonathan sat on the wood railing and in an instant decided to not dwell on the topic. He’d know soon enough whether Alexandre had lost touch with reality.
“You must promise me to visit this place in summer, and without all the problems you have today.”
Jonathan almost laughed. “I’m not sure when all is said and done, that your country will ever allow me to come back.”
“What did your military tell you about your brother’s death?”
“We were told it was a small transport plane—an engine failure during a routine non-combat mission. And then a few weeks later, we received what was said to be his remains. And we believed them because we never had reason not to.”
Alexandre yawned and stretched his arms. “Well, maybe America is not so different than the old Soviet Union, with its lies, its half-truths.”
“I can’t judge my country that way. The only fact I now know is that they lied about my brother and have gone to great lengths to hide the truth. Whether it was a few rogue officials or a much wider group is something I hope to find out.”
“Your wife should be very proud of you,” Alexandre said. “Your perseverance; your ability to escape catastrophe.” Alexandre refilled his glass and seemed to slowly slip into a state of liquid comfort.
“I am the proud one. Linda is an extraordinary woman, whose fabric of life is woven with threads of Kevlar and velvet. She has New Orleans in her pulse, in her soul.”
Alexandre smiled.
“But most importantly, she’s my wonderful wife.” Jonathan thought about how sappy that must have sounded to Alexandre, a bachelor genetically predisposed to a life of skirt-chasing. But it was true. Jonathan had no qualms professing his devotion, as cheesy as it might have seemed to others. As he thought more about it, he quickly became overcome with sadness. Her absence seemed to have a huge presence all its own, weighing his soul and silencing his rambling declaration of pride and loyalty.
“Are you okay?” Alexandre asked, appearing to sense the American’s mood.
Jonathan gazed at the stars and breathed from the bottom of his lungs.
For no clear reason, a precise set of images came to mind—images that Jonathan had carved twelve years earlier on the shores of Destin, Florida.
Only their footsteps marked the pristine sand, its color a pale rose from the setting sun. Their day had gone as one would have expected for day four of a honeymoon. The tactile feeling of the ring on his finger was still new, so satisfyingly fresh. The sounds of gently disturbed waves mixed with a Bob Marley tune that drifted their way from a nearby open bar. Life was finally good. The woman he’d known since grade school was now his wife, a title and word that had morphed into a strangely rich meaning. And everything seemed more potent than it had at any time before—whether it was her words or her gestures. He remembered them all as if it were yesterday.
“Will you be there if nothing happens to me?” Linda had asked, her hands caressing Jonathan’s shoulders. Her blond hair waved in the breeze, her inviting gaze luri
ng him to kiss her. “Tell me, will you be there?”
He didn’t quite understand what she had meant. “If nothing happens?”
“Yes, if for whatever reason, I don’t attain what I’m reaching for. If I fail in my career; if I get laid off; if I burn out from the stress. Or if, God forbid, I just wanted to become a typical housewife.”
Jonathan laughed. “There is nothing typical about you.”
“And what if I become an invalid and you’re still healthy, vibrant. Will you be—”
“Shh,” Jonathan said, covering her lips with his hand. “You will never have to ask this again. What I have for you is much more than love. You have always been my destiny, as if we are reliving our lives—our wonderful lives—together.”
The cool breeze numbed Jonathan’s face. Moscow was not nearly as warm as that moment in Destin so many years earlier. But that burst of recollection had warmed him from inside. He was with her that very second, at her hospital bed side, in spirit, the thousands of miles of physical distance seeming so irrelevant. Jonathan smiled as he imagined her peaceful face.
He turned to Alexandre, who had succumbed to a vodka-induced sleep.
Before falling asleep himself, Jonathan made two calls: one to Gary; the other to Linda. He told them everything he’d learned since they’d last spoken. It was even more crucial now that they everything, in case his luck would run out in the coming hours or days. He also acknowledged that the calls now risks exposing him his location.
22
The bedroom door abruptly opened, and Alexandre charged in. “Wake up!” he said agitatedly. “There is a car outside. It’s not good.”
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