The First Order

by Jeff Abbott

  It was an awkward silence. Did he just order Varro to spend a few million of his own money for Morozov’s whim? Danny tried to imagine an American president or a British prime minister snapping orders to the captains of industry. Go invest in this odd business idea, because I want you to do so. It felt like the other side of the mirror.

  But Varro made no objection. He just gave another small laugh. “I’ll see to it.”

  Maybe this is why Firebird wants him dead. Danny said, “I would be happy to work with Stefan Borisovich on such a project, Mr. President. He’s full of great ideas.”

  “Truly?” Morozov couldn’t help but sound vaguely surprised. Stefan reddened but kept his smile in place. “Well done, then, Stefan Borisovich; you help your American friend. Hire an agency there, your father will see to the details.” And it was done.

  Stefan gestured to him and the two younger men took their leave. Danny thought: The Varros don’t fit in. His father laughs like the kid who can’t believe he gets to hang with the cool kids and Stefan just tries too hard. They think they will, but they’ll never fit in. They’re not Russian enough.

  Stefan was giddy, smiling. “That went well.”

  “Well?”

  “He let me do this. He…”

  “He told your father to spend his money.”

  “We must at times, for the president and Russia. It’s a privilege, not a burden.”

  The price of belonging to the club.

  But then reality caught up with Stefan. “But…you’re not an investments person. It’s not for real.”

  “You don’t need me for that. You know the Russian companies and an ad agency will do the heavy research and lifting. I’ll make some phone calls and we’ll share the credit. Thank you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the president you were Sergei’s associate?” They were walking away from the house. “He loved Sergei.”

  “I will. First we find the traitor who wants to derail the summit. Deal with them quietly and privately, so there is little attention. I spent yesterday surveying the terrain, as it were. Seeing who came and went.”

  “You said this person could outline Sergei’s actions.” He didn’t seem to want to say crimes. “That’s a small number of people who knew what he did.”

  “True, but someone may have told someone else in the years since. Remember your problem with your talkative mistress.”

  That silenced Stefan for several steps. “Now what?”

  “This afternoon,” he said, “we go to Mila’s bar and have a bit of fun before the party tonight.” And when Mila was dead in a couple of hours, it would be easy to blame her for being the spy he’d lied about to Stefan. He could say he simply eliminated her as a threat and it would be unquestioned and Stefan would be silent. Two birds, one stone. And he had a second reason to see Morozov: to deliver this report, his excuse for working with Stefan.

  It would be the next and last chance he could be sure of being close to the target. In his room, he opened his luggage. Inside was a laptop, wrapped in a protective sleeve. The Russians had scanned it back when he flew from Nassau, seen nothing unusual. He opened the back of it, took off the housing—it had been modified so this could be easily done. On the motherboard, in its own notch, was the circuitry for a basic cell phone. He took it out of its notch. On the side that presented to the X-ray machine was the circuitboard. On the other side was a very primitive screen that showed text in green letters, a simple speaker, and a rudimentary keyboard. The phone could be easily crushed and broken. It was untraceable and only to be used in communication with Firebird.

  He texted the number Claybourne had given him for Firebird:

  What I need from you is this—during the departure party, the front lounge of the plane, where M rides, must be cleared at some point before M’s departure. I only need five minutes.

  There was no immediate answer.

  I have my way to kill him now, Danny thought. Just have to deal with the Mila problem, and I’m done.

  A few minutes later, there was an answering text from Firebird.

  I understand. I will notify you when it is clear.

  He dismantled the phone, replaced it in its camouflage in the laptop’s motherboard, and then studied himself in the mirror. He was going deeper into the cave, closer to the dragons now, and he could not risk a mistake.

  Sam will know you had her killed. He’ll know it in his heart.

  Danny texted his friend, the assassin, an estimated time of arrival at the Tsar Lounge, attached a photo of Mila he’d managed to snap, and wired him the half-million.

  48

  The Church HQ, New York

  JULIAN AND ROMY had flown Bob Seaforth to New York, on a medevac jet loaned from the agency. The bullet was out of his shoulder and he told the doctor on the jet that he could not be given sedatives; he had to stay awake.

  He had no way to contact his source. If he had been attacked, what had happened to her? And to Sam Capra?

  He had slept, finally, in the hospital bed in the Manhattan brownstone. A doctor and a nurse, both former Marines, tended to him. He was staring at the ceiling, wondering how long the pain would last, when Romy and Julian entered.

  “Hey, how are you?” Romy asked.

  “Fine,” he said, sitting up. In the doorway the nurse, a broad-shouldered man, lingered and Seaforth waved him off.

  “Any word from Raven?” Seaforth asked. That was their code name for their source on the Svetlana.

  “No. No contact,” Romy said. “After you were shot, the Svetlana departed, headed to the Florida coast, then moved back toward the Bahamas. Kirov had a private helicopter fly to his yacht, and then it headed to Nassau Airport.”

  “I thought they were going to cruise up to DC.”

  “So did we. Change of plan. A private jet belonging to Yuri Kirov was prepped and it left Nassau a few minutes ago. We didn’t have eyes on it but we monitored the flight departures. It’s headed for Moscow, with a refueling stop in Lisbon.”

  “Is Raven aboard?”

  “I think it likely she is. Our attempts to contact her have failed.”

  “Sam Capra went to Nassau; where is he?”

  “Capra has fallen out of sight. He checked out of his hotel the morning after you were shot”—Romy managed to make this sound suspicious—“but we have no record of him leaving on a commercial flight. A plane registered to a company owned by Boris Varro left that same morning.”

  “So the Svetlana doesn’t sail to Washington and the Kirov and Varro jets race home.” Bob leaned back against the pillows. “And no song from our Raven.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Julian asked.

  “Find out when the Kirov jet is due to refuel in Lisbon. Get the police on there; if Sam’s aboard, pull him off—say there’s a problem with his passport.”

  Julian and Romy stared at him. “What painkillers did they give you, sir?” she asked.

  Julian added: “Kirov—and his daughter and all that circle—every one of them has diplomatic status.”

  “They’re not diplomats!”

  Romy shook her head. “They all have cultural attaché–coded passports. They don’t go through customs. And the Lisbon police aren’t going to storm a Russian plane without good cause.”

  He nodded. Romy was right. “Where did they say they would land in Moscow? Sheremetyevo?”

  “No. Private airstrip in Nebo, the oligarchs’ retreat outside Moscow. All the oligarchs are departing on Morozov’s jet from there to come to Washington.” Romy crossed her arms.

  Seaforth cursed softly. “Do we have any informants inside Nebo?”

  “Our office? No. Langley might, but they won’t share. They’ll want to know what we’re doing. What are we doing?” Julian asked.

  For a moment Bob Seaforth didn’t have an answer. “What’s the situation with Claybourne’s vanishing?”

  “Prakash is on it. Claybourne’s daughter has been texting her. We control the text app tied to her phone n
umber; we haven’t responded. Her daughter hasn’t reported her missing, though. As far as she knows her mother took a sudden trip to Seattle for a project and hasn’t been in touch. This is not unusual with Claybourne—she once went three days before answering her daughter’s texts and e-mails. But we’ll run out of time there.”

  “What about her involvement with Danny Capra?”

  Romy glanced at Julian, as though not wishing to bear bad news. “From what we’ve pieced together from her computer files, she has created an entire tangle of front companies and offshore accounts. She’s had years to build this up and we can’t untangle it all in a couple of days. We need a forensic accountant to sift through it all, Bob, and we don’t have one. But I think the only explanation is that she was brokering some highly illicit services. High-dollar ones.”

  “For the Russians? They’re connected to this somehow.”

  “We’re trying to start there…but Bob, there’s three of us and we’re busy trying to cover up a murder. One that you let Sam Capra walk away from.” Romy’s voice was tight.

  “He saved my life,” Bob said.

  “Well, he saved you and ruined our hopes of easily breaking through her cover,” Julian said. “If you can get us a forensic accountant, we can start to make progress.”

  “Get me…to Helsinki. I can call in a favor to get an agency plane. I want us to be ready to extract Raven. She knows to run to Finland if she needs an out and can travel without our help. That was our agreement. And if Sam Capra is there…ready to extract him as well.”

  Romy shook her head. “Sir. Please. You’re not in a condition to travel.”

  “I’ll…be fine. Bring Dr. Alvarez and Nurse Joe along. I want us close to Russia.”

  “Do we ask the agency for help? We’re supposed to be clear of them…,” Romy said. “We don’t have any people in Russia; we’re not set up for this.”

  “I’ll handle that. Just arrange the flight.”

  “Bob, seriously, you’re not well,” Julian said.

  “No, I’m not. I’m worried sick. Big money hidden, a presidential summit, a guy who’s been presumed dead for years and wasn’t…this is trouble.”

  49

  The Kirov Estate, Nebo, Russia

  MONDAY HAD BEEN a nightmare for Mila. The lawyers for Stefan Varro had been boring and detail-oriented and Mila passed the long hours of the meeting explaining bar economics while imagining ways to kill them. Then she was questioned for an hour by FSB agents protecting Morozov. The identity created for her by Charity was rock-solid. A South American ambassador was also staying at the Varro house, and he’d pestered Mila about having drinks with him. She’d put in an appearance at a party for visitors at another mansion, but no sign of Danny, no sign of Stefan. A schedule of events for the elite at Nebo was slipped under her door: a talk with the Russian ambassador to America, broadcast on the Internet; a Hollywood director giving a speech on why Russian and American studios could work together; a panel on joint military exercises the countries could try. All a warm-up for the summit. And all of it a chain around her ankles, keeping her here.

  Her plans lay shattered. She had no weapon, no car, no leverage. Guards stood at the ends of the hallway. The guests were watched. Security was everywhere. To act in haste would get her caught, arrested, or killed.

  She tried to text Sam again and got no answer. This had been a mistake. At least her room was grand. The four-poster bed was elaborately carved. The fabrics in the curtains and the sheets were modern but exquisite. In the bathroom there was also a stocked medicine cabinet, with everything she could need: lotions, eyedrops, hand-milled soaps, high-end perfumes from Dior to Chanel. This was a gilded cage.

  She ate a breakfast delivered to her room, showered, and dressed in her best clothes. She went to the window. She spotted a guard stationed outside the house, one in the expansive front yard, one by a fountain, and another in the street that divided the Kirov estate from the Varro estate. She’d tried to find out where the central garage was, hopeful she could steal a car. But every plan she began to formulate quickly fell apart.

  You cannot take Danny prisoner here. Make the call.

  A knock at the door. Stefan, smiling at her. She was almost happy to see him. “Everything OK? How was your day yesterday?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “It’d be great if you and Philip and I could go to the bar this afternoon. A fast trip, before the party tonight.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Let’s do that.” She must not show the relief she felt.

  “I guess we could wait for Sam and Katya, but they’re still many hours away.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, Irina called and said they will arrive for the party tonight.”

  She was under a countdown now. She had to get Danny Capra extracted from this compound before that plane touched down. The two Capras could not meet face-to-face. She had to call Charity.

  “Let me make some calls…some arrangements at the bar. We’ll make it into a proper party.” She forced herself to smile.

  She followed Stefan outside as he headed back to his own house. “May I just walk along the road in front of the house? I need to stretch my legs,” she asked the guard in Russian. The guard nodded.

  She waited until she was well away before she pulled out her phone.

  50

  Kirov Jet, En Route to Russia

  THE JET ARCED high over the Atlantic. In the small, pressurized cargo bay Sam Capra lay, bound in chains, both feet and hands cuffed. He stared up at the ceiling. His mouth tasted sour with chemicals. He ached where a bullet had creased his chest, and where Irina’s beanbag round, fired from a shotgun, had slammed into his neck and his skull. He’d woken up briefly to see Irina’s face above his, and at first he thought they were back in the bed in Sunny Isles, gasping with pleasure, but no, she wasn’t smiling, and she jabbed him with a needle, and then nothing again. He woke up on the plane, inside a huge duffel bag that had been unzipped.

  He tested the chains. Double-locked. Both his hands and his arms were bound. The compartment panel, in the ceiling, that led into the main cabin opened. Irina, dressed in jeans and a dark turtleneck, eased herself down next to him. She said something to someone behind her, and the door was shut. She knelt by him.

  “Hello, Sam. How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Confused.”

  “Physically, you’re fine. The bullet grazed your chest. The beanbag rounds did no lasting harm. Although if I fired several into your ribs at short range, it could send bone splinters into your heart.” She said this as if considering it as an idea.

  “Where am I?”

  “The Kirov jet. We are bound for Russia.”

  That was not good news. “And I suppose you want an explanation?” He could not betray Katya. They would kill her, and she was Seaforth’s agent. He’d stick to the code as though he was still in the agency. Never betray another.

  “I trusted you when we went to Miami. I trusted you…in many ways.”

  “Which is why I suppose neither Yuri nor Katya is hearing this discussion. You’d lose your job.”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps. Where were you going to take Katya?”

  Sam said nothing. Irina waited. Finally she said, “It’s an exceptionally long flight. And there is no in-flight movie. Why don’t you tell me a story, full of intrigue and action? Maybe no romance, though. I don’t believe in it.”

  He stayed silent for five more minutes, and she said, “Let’s try again. There is a cargo bay door. You are lying on it. It would be a long, long fall.”

  He was going to have to make a gamble with both his and Katya’s life. “What has she said?”

  “You want to hear her story first?”

  “I want to know if she’s lied about me.”

  “She said she found you at her father’s door, acting suspiciously, and she saw you had a knife. You took her back to your room, where you knocked her senseless with an injection.”

&nb
sp; Katya had done the smart thing: She had told the basic truth of how they had encountered each other. The truth was good, if it didn’t hang you. “That’s correct. I was going to take Yuri. I wanted the rest of the money. I figured out from Rolan that you’ve collected quite a bit of this cash. But Katya got in the way, and I thought it would be better to take her and force Yuri to tell me where the money was.”

  “This seems a stupid move.”

  “Especially now. I was going to take her to Sunny Isles. I wanted her to show me where the rest of the money was.”

  “You think there was more?”

  “Yes. A lot more. He’s a damn billionaire who’s worried about Morozov turning on him. He’s got to have cash hidden all over the world.”

  “So you decided to jeopardize your entire future by kidnapping her.”

  “I wouldn’t have hurt her. What was he going to do, call the police for me stealing his illegally hidden cash?”

  She studied him. “I think you’re lying to me. I think there’s more. You’re many things, Sam, but you are not stupid.” She leaned down, ran a finger along his jawline, like she had several times in the past couple of days. “I really like your face. If I give you over to Petr, he’ll make sure no one ever likes it again. He will beat you to a pulp. What do you think men like Kirov or Varro do to men who try and steal from them?”

  “I’m an American citizen, you can’t…”

  “You’re an American citizen that America thinks is still in the Bahamas. And will never know otherwise.” She put her finger along his lips, moved a hand into his hair. “We’re going not to Moscow, but to the private compound the most powerful families in Russia call their own. You don’t have long to convince me of what you were trying to do. Sergei used to take people to Nebo. There is a house there, smaller, away from the others. No law, no passport can protect you there. There is no law there except power. I have never had to use it. But I will.”