The First Order

by Jeff Abbott

  Sam said nothing for several moments. “What will happen to me there?”

  “Well, we’re arriving at a busy time. You’ll be in my custody. I will question you. If you don’t satisfy me with answers, I might turn you over to the actual police. But that then would create a public record. They would have to acknowledge that you were on Russian soil, in their custody, right before the summit begins. It would be a bad start.”

  He waited.

  “But…worst case, we say you fell off the boat. No one saw you or realized you were missing for a day or so. We put a DO NOT DISTURB sign on your door. No one will disturb you.”

  “That seems unpleasant.”

  “Or…you can arrive in Nebo, not in chains, but as a guest, of sorts.” She shrugged. “Because, after all, Katya is unhurt. Even though Yuri wants your blood.”

  He had no room to negotiate. If he told her there was a threat to Morozov, she would turn him over to the federal police immediately, and if Danny was close, would he be caught and killed?…It was a simple choice. It was better to stay silent.

  “But maybe you can do me a favor,” she said quietly. “And I can do you a favor.”

  Room, perhaps. “What?”

  Her voice went low. “Why am I talking to you here, instead of up in the cabin like civilized people? The Kirovs.”

  He stared.

  “Someone on the Svetlana has been in touch with the Americans. Katya, I think, because she’s young and foolish. I believe she has been in touch with the CIA.”

  He could not let himself give a reaction.

  “And now, now Kirov is gathering all this money he’s kept stashed. Maybe to pay off the CIA, to leave his daughter alone, forget they ever recruited her?” Irina’s gentle smile went crooked and he could remember what he’d said to her: I don’t think you killed those people but you’d be capable of it. She would. He could see it in her, the cold calculation to survive.

  “Do you know, Sam?”

  He lied with a shake of his head.

  “I mean, what would happen if Katya was exposed as an informant for the Americans? Kirov would be ruined as well. Morozov would take Zvezda Oil away from him. They would lose billions. If she was sent to a Russian prison I don’t think she would survive long, do you? I think she played at being a spy, played at being an American girl, and now she’s tired of it. You came here to take her back. Was it a rescue in your mind? I think you are CIA, Sam.”

  “I swear to you that I am not,” he said.

  “Then you’re what? A money-grubbing kidnapper? Is that better? Should I just give you to Kirov then?”

  “Millions-grubbing,” he said. “Weren’t you ever tempted by that cash?”

  “I think you were sent to fetch her. Did she not want to come?”

  He met her gaze. “What if I told you this all had something to do with Sergei. With his death.”

  Anger flushed her face. “Don’t…don’t bring him into your lies. Don’t try to manipulate me. That will only make me mad.” She studied his face. “When we get you to Nebo, we keep you hidden for a while. To see how best to use you. I wish to test the waters. But I think with you in our hands, the Americans will be more deferential to Morozov’s demands. More willing to bend. A CIA agent sent to kidnap a billionaire’s daughter, a girl who is like family to the president? We could trot you out onto every TV screen in the world.”

  This could not have gone more wrong. “You’ll destroy the Kirovs, too.”

  “No, I think we will work out a story that protects them. That’s what they pay me to do: protect them. We can paint Katya as a hero who resisted the CIA’s requests. They will follow along with any plan I suggest to them that keeps them in power.” She put her fingers through his hair again.

  He turned away from her touch.

  “Tell me, Sam. The wounds on your back. Someone took a knife to you recently. I noticed when we…were together; I noticed when we stripped your clothes off you when you were pulled from the ocean.” She touched his jaw again. “What happened to you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. But do you think the CIA sends an injured operative on a job like this? I’m not with them.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  He didn’t answer. She got up and left him in the cargo hold and she opened the hatch to the main cabin. For a moment, he could hear Katya sobbing and Yuri Kirov bellowing in anger.

  She slammed the hatch door shut and he lay in darkness.

  51

  Near London

  I’M BRINGING YOU the target,” Mila said by way of greeting to Charity.

  “You better not be lying to me. That computer drive you sent me was garbage.”

  “It was encrypted; how could I know?” Mila said. “Are you still wanting this target or not?”

  “I’m listening,” Charity said.

  “In a few hours we will be at the Tsar Lounge, Moscow, off Tverskaya. Have an extraction team ready to grab the target. He is a trained killer, so we need to use maximum force. Also there will be a bodyguard contingent, probably a half-dozen. Also the son of one of Russia’s most prominent billionaires will be with us. Please don’t kidnap him by mistake.”

  Silence for five seconds. “Are you serious?”

  “One other thing. They cannot extract me. I stay behind.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  How to explain Sam? She couldn’t. “If I’m taken, then an ally of mine is left behind to face much suspicion. So you grab the target, you leave me, and my ally and I will get ourselves out. It’s the only way.”

  “And risk you being questioned by the Russians? Absolutely not. If I leave you behind then there will be no cooperation from your husband.” Charity hesitated. “A trained killer in league with one of our top men. Who are they planning to kill?”

  “No one, now,” she lied.

  “Are you saying this man could point Jimmy to an assassination plot?” Charity’s voice rose slightly.

  I need you to grab him and take him, Mila thought, before Sam gets here. So she had to put the spurs to Charity, so to speak. “Possibly.”

  “I’m looking at a Google street map of this bar,” Charity said. “You get the target outside the alley behind it. I’m not getting in a firefight with private security in a bar in the heart of Moscow.”

  That was exactly what Mila wanted to hear. “Fine. I’ll get him alone. But you must be ready, and take him then. You must.”

  She put up the phone and walked back toward the Varro house.

  “Location on that phone,” Charity said to the tech.

  “She called from Nebo, in Russia. The very exclusive retreat for President Morozov and his ten closest cronies.”

  My God. Charity put a hand on the back of her chair. What disaster had James de Courcey gotten himself into? President Morozov? Nebo was a security nightmare; no wonder Mila wanted them taken at this nightclub. She studied the map. She imagined the headlines if things went wrong in the heart of Moscow. She decided not to call the prime minister. Not yet. This was still an internal matter, one where she could claim to be pursuing a prime suspect in a case of treason. She had the right to make the call.

  She called her team in Moscow, and the plan, altered to Charity’s liking, was put into place.

  There had long been a sense that British businesspeople in Moscow could be targeted by Russian gangs. There were also informants working for the British in Russia. Any of them might need evacuation or rescue.

  In short: There were kidnapping plans and protocols put in place by Charity’s team. They wanted to get the target out of Russia, but they could also hide him in a safe house until any police search for him had ended. And then across a border of their choosing, preferably into Finland or one of the Baltic republics.

  Mila wouldn’t be happy, Charity thought. But she’d have to be happy with what she got.

  52

  En Route to Moscow

  STEFAN, MILA, AND Danny piled into a limo. Small Russian flags flew on it
, as if they were officials. An armored Dartz Black Shark SUV, filled with Belinsky Global security, followed them.

  The car drove on private roads out of Nebo, past the ruins of another village, the buildings already starting to be overgrown with grass and ivy. Mila wondered why the remnants of the village had been left standing. As if the circle around Morozov wanted to be reminded of their own power, their ability to reshape Russia.

  Danny was sitting on one side of her, Stefan on the other. A guard sat in the front seat next to the driver.

  We’ll get to Moscow, she thought, and I’ll get everyone settled with drinks, and as exhausted and jet-lagged as they all are, I’ll get them plastered in a private room. Spike the guards’ sodas or water as well with grain alcohol. Then upstairs with Danny by saying I have a message from Jimmy for him, we must talk, and as soon as we’re up in the office and seated at the desk I shoot him with the tranquilizer pistol Sam has kept at every safe house. Then drop him out the window into the alley, into the waiting arms of Charity’s team. And thus is the killer made harmless. I say to Stefan that our friend Philip stayed out in the bar, talking to a beautiful woman. Then he’s gone off somewhere. Stefan will freak but Stefan has other concerns in the next few days. Then back to here, for Sam. I can’t leave without Sam. Too much suspicion on him if I did. He’ll think the Russians figured Danny out and took him. And that’s a problem I’ll deal with tomorrow.

  Danny Capra smiled at her. It wasn’t a smile at all like Sam’s. How could they be brothers?

  They had crossed the private security perimeter surrounding the compound. Now they headed down a ten-kilometer road, heavily wooded before it reached a village and a main highway to Moscow.

  “So, Mila, what shall we drink at the Tsar?” Stefan asked. He put his hand on her knee.

  Mentally she timed how long it would take to break all his fingers. “Oh, I think the finest champagne. Only the best for you, Stefan.” She smiled charmingly at him. She could feel the weight of Danny Capra’s glare on her.

  Stefan’s smile went crooked. “I think this is the start of something beautiful—”

  The gunshots blasted the tires of the lead car and it veered into the ditch. Seconds later a gas canister was blasted into the car’s window, shattering the bulletproof glass.

  Flash grenades exploded around them and the limo driver cursed. A concussive shock sent the limo veering off the road. The limo flipped, throwing its passengers together, upside down, right side up, then upside down again, on its roof, halfway down the incline. For a moment Mila was stunned and blinded. They all were. She saw herself and Danny and Stefan, grasping at air, trying to grab back sight and sound.

  Charity had changed the plan. Taking Danny and her now, leaving Sam behind to face the consequences.

  The guard and the driver were yelling frantically into their mikes on their jackets, and she heard an eruption of gunfire hitting the limo.

  She had only one choice. Fight the team that was trying to save her. She would not leave Sam behind to face the private cruelty of the circle’s justice.

  She saw the expression on Danny’s face: He knew what this was. Arrest or death.

  Chaos. Mila heard gunshots, the thud of something heavy hitting the car, the guard in the front seat yelling that they were under attack, a door opening, then more flash bombs. Stefan, shielding his eyes, opened a holder in the back of the seat. A gun. She tried to grab one but he got it first…and shoved it into Danny’s hands.

  Cold terror flooded her. “Wait!” she yelled.

  But he didn’t shoot her.

  Instead Danny kicked her in the head as he wriggled out the door, dragging Stefan with him. Stunned, she fought back, trying to grab Stefan’s feet, but Danny pulled him away.

  She heard voices yelling in Russian, with English accents, telling men to throw down their weapons or be killed. Weapons fired. Then screamed demands to stop. Weapons fired. Both the men in the front seat, hanging upside down by their seat belts, unconscious.

  Voices screaming in Russian and English to stop. Through the broken window she saw Danny Capra running into the woods, through the towering pines, a bullet ricocheting off a trunk by his head, him returning fire, shoving Stefan Varro away. Hands pulled her free of the limo, out the door on the other side. “Go, go, go!” she heard someone yelling in English. More gunfire. She breathed in the odd-colored smoke, felt woozy.

  Smoke and sky, strong hands dragging her, forcing her to her stumbling feet, making her run.

  She screamed for Stefan, for the guards. She tried to wrench away; she threw a punch at one of the men dragging her along; he shrugged it off.

  Where was Danny? No, they had to have him. She was shoved into the backseat of a car that wheeled hard down the road, a hand keeping her pushed down, the car accelerating so fast she felt her stomach twist.

  “Where is he? The target? Where is he?” she screamed.

  “He got away. They’ve radioed for help. We can’t wait, we can’t go back.”

  “No!” she screamed. “No! You have to go back. You weren’t supposed to do this yet!”

  “Be quiet.” The man had a heavy Scots accent. “Nothing to be done.” He handcuffed her with zip ties as she coughed out the smoke.

  Charity. She would kill her for this. You are dead, woman. Sam. Sam.

  She looked up at the Russian sky through the window, and then the car drove up into the belly of a cargo truck—and darkness fell upon them all when the doors were shut behind them.

  “Let me go back,” she said, and they told her no, and she raged and screamed at them. She screamed a name at them but they didn’t know who Sam was. She felt the truck rumble along, taking her away from Danny, from Sam, and this was worse than betraying him, she thought: This was helping to murder him.

  53

  Near Nebo, Russia

  FIVE MINUTES AFTER the attack, Danny Capra emerged from the woods, helping Stefan Varro, who held his nose, bleeding. Cars from the circle’s compound raced up to the scene. The guards in the Black Shark were still bleary from the chemical gas jetted at them. Gas misted the air like smog.

  The driver and the guard stood by the wrecked limo. Rubber bullets lay underfoot, fired after the windows were shattered. Whoever the attackers were, they’d tried to make the attack nonlethal.

  “They took Mila!” Stefan said. “Why…why would they take her?”

  “For ransom? They might think she’s your girlfriend,” Danny said. That was close. So close. Stefan leaned hard against him. “Stefan, clearly you were the target.”

  Stefan accepted this without question. “What will they do with her? We have to call the police, find her…” His voice trailed off. “Don’t they know who we are? They can’t…they can’t…” He didn’t do frustration well, as though it were an alien sensation.

  Danny gripped Stefan’s arm as the security teams put him and Stefan in a car and rushed back to Nebo. “Let me do the talking. Do you understand? This is the work of the traitor. Say nothing.”

  “Is my nose broken?” Stefan asked. “Will it look OK?”

  A war council quickly gathered. And Danny found himself, again, in the same room as the president of Russia.

  The president’s security had taken command of him; Belinsky Global had taken command of the crime scene. It was remote; no one else had seen the attackers arrive or depart. Teams combed the village nearby, looking for the cars involved in the ambush. But the attackers were gone.

  Morozov looked hard at Stefan and his father, Boris. Then at Danny, who met his gaze for a moment and then modestly put it down. “We will not publicize this. Not before the party tonight, not before the summit. It will cause confusion and fear. The road must be cleaned now of debris and evidence, before the departure party. The injured men can be treated here at the private clinic. The cars junked here and replaced. Is that understood? I give no weapons to our doubters.”

  “Stefan is hurt,” Boris Varro said. “They took his woman friend. And we do
nothing?”

  “His nose isn’t even broken.”

  “And Mila, what about her?” Stefan said, nose clogged with gauze, eye already bruising.

  Danny sat at the table, calmly. “May I say something?” he said in Russian.

  “You are the one who got out Stefan, yes?” Morozov said. “Well done.”

  Danny gave the barest of nods. “Thank you, Mr. President. They took Ms. Cebotari but obviously they used nonlethal weapons. So they may release her, unharmed. Or they may ask Stefan for a ransom. I do not think they will just kill her when they could ask for a ransom.”

  “Ransom? Why would we pay for her?” Boris Varro said.

  “To avoid embarrassment,” Morozov said. “Because she was your guest and it was your duty to protect her. Sometimes you are not very Russian, Boris.”

  Boris Varro’s face went red with shame and fury.

  “You said she has a partner. Another American?” Morozov said.

  “Yes. We met in Nassau,” Stefan said. “Kirov and I are investing in their project.”

  “Can he be trusted to keep his mouth shut and not make a fuss?”

  Stefan shrugged. “I believe money may help there. We are investing in his business. If we can persuade him to let us handle this…and we can handle it quickly.”

  Met in Nassau. Danny kept his expression neutral. Seaforth had been there. Sam had been there. My God.

  “Are you all right?” Stefan whispered to him.

  Danny nodded wordlessly.

  Morozov said to one of his men, “I want word put out, immediately but discreetly, to the criminal underground in Moscow that we want this woman back, unharmed. Compliance will bring a financial reward. Failure will bring the entire wrath of this government on their heads. Find who did this. Now.”