The First Order

by Jeff Abbott

  Morozov and Boris Varro and the police security chief took over the conversation. Stefan glanced at Danny, and Danny barely nodded, just once.

  The meeting broke up. Morozov was bundled up by his formidable security team and left. The last glance he gave was for Danny, curiosity and suspicion mixed together. Stefan got himself a glass of water from a pitcher and swallowed another painkiller.

  It was only Danny and the Varros still in the room.

  Danny thought about the extremely expensive hitman waiting near the bar. No job now. A canceled job could create problems. Damn this woman. And then, even if Sam was in Nassau, the Russians could come after him. What if Mila had told Sam that he was here? He needed a way to shield his brother. Part of his brain said to leave it alone. The other part said, Do something to protect him.

  He had to do this. There was no choice but to save Sam. “Stefan has been assisting me,” Danny said. “I was taught my work years ago by a master. His name was Sergei; we worked together closely. We protected you all. I am still protecting you.”

  Boris Varro turned and stared at him. “Who are you?”

  The lie came easily, polished in his mind for when he needed to tell it. “My name does not matter. But there is an internal threat here. A problem, possibly, with the Kirovs. I am unsure who is behind it. Threats have been made to expose Sergei’s crimes to end the summit.”

  “Crimes.”

  “Sergei killed a CIA operative in cold blood. It was this operative who killed your son Anton.”

  “What?” Stefan said.

  Boris held up a hand. “Hush, Stefan. Let him talk.”

  “The killing was done as a faked execution video, but Sergei cut the operative’s throat. I learned an enemy has acquired footage from then. It shows Sergei unmasked, the kneeling agent next to him. I believe it was stolen from a hard drive Sergei used. He is clearly the same man killing the agent. Now. The Americans will not take kindly to Morozov’s right-hand man killing a CIA agent on tape. They will not want to buy oil or gas from his billionaire friends. So. I need your help. I need to be close to the Kirovs. I think one of them is the traitor.”

  “Yuri could never…” Boris began.

  Danny held up a hand. “Yuri has been acting very strangely.”

  “He was drunk and shooting at a guest. He missed,” Stefan said quietly.

  “And we must not have further incidents. I was suspicious of Mila and that was why I wanted her away from Nebo. I would have handled her in Moscow—taken her for questioning. Her American partner—I have studied him, as has Irina, I am sure, and there is no suspicion attaching to him. He is innocent; he poses no threat. Mila is Moldovan, even with that British passport. I think Mila was working with someone looking to embarrass the families. There are many Russians in London who would love to hurt you, hurt Morozov, in the public eye. This person who got the evidence against Sergei could well be one of them, and have gotten help from the Kirovs. If Morozov falls, the premier elected with him falls as well. Yuri could rise.”

  The Varros stared at him. “How do we know you worked with Sergei?” Boris demanded.

  “He knew things, Father. Things only Sergei could have known,” Stefan said. “He speaks true.”

  “When does Irina arrive?” Varro asked.

  “In a few hours.”

  “Radio the plane. I want to talk with Irina,” Varro said. “Put out feelers. I want to know everything about this Sam and this Mila. Someone in Moscow knows about him.”

  “Sir. Irina does not know about my work with her husband. Few people knowing about me is the only way I have been able to work and to survive. Please, do not tell her.”

  Boris Varro studied him. If either Stefan or Boris was Firebird, he thought, they would play along and protect him. If not, they might well tell Morozov this very moment who he was.

  Risking it all for Sam’s safety.

  Stefan picked up the speakerphone and got connected to the Kirov jet. Irina Belinskaya’s voice came over the speakerphone. “Yes?”

  They told her about the attack and the taking of Mila. Nothing was said of Philip Judge, or Sergei.

  Now I know who you are, Firebird. The both of you.

  Irina was, he thought, strangely silent, until she said, “I understand.” And the conversation ended.

  “I am glad,” Boris said, “that we have come to understanding.”

  Danny nodded and left.

  Danny Capra sat alone in his room. Thinking.

  So the immediate problem was fixed. He felt a sense of sharp relief. Whoever had taken Mila—he was sure it was her husband’s organization, the Round Table, which he’d had a few dealings with—had managed to take all the heat off him. He looked, more than ever, like an ally and friend to the inner circle. He had saved Stefan. Morozov had nodded approval at him. They would close ranks now, and he was well inside the ranks.

  And he had protected Sam. He had told the Varros that Sam was nothing to fear. And even with Morozov dead, Sam was thousands of miles away, and Mila was gone. They could be suspected of being troublemakers, but not of murder.

  Sam and Seaforth both in Nassau. Sam would be protected by his old employer. He would be OK. Danny repeated it, like a prayer.

  He closed his eyes. Morozov would be dead soon enough. And he himself would be gone, into Finland, soon enough. He would take a car—they had an actual large pool of cars here for their use—and drive the M10 to Moscow, get another car, and drive to Finland. He had a cache of money and a different passport hidden in Moscow. It had been a caution that Sergei Belinsky had taught him. Always have papers, always have cash, hidden where you could get to them. The closest border crossing between the European Union and Moscow was Latvia, but he thought it would be watched more closely. Plus, he had a friend in Finland who could hide him. He’d made a few friends over the years. Then he’d get to England, become the Robert Clayton identity he’d established, and life would be a fresh new adventure.

  He would vanish, the shadow that never was. When they went looking for Philip Judge…they would find nothing. And what would Sam say? Oh, that was my brother, who killed the Russian president. Of course not. He would keep silent. The rest of the world would think maybe he’d been a man who looked like Danny Capra but no one would make the connection anymore. Mila and Jimmy would say nothing. They themselves were criminals of a sort; they would never go to the police.

  And it didn’t matter. He could get to London; he could step into being Robert Clayton.

  Because he was going to be smart about how he did this. That was the problem with killers of heads of state. Rarely were they daring enough to be smart.

  He looked at his watch. A few hours to go. He lay down on the bed to calm his thoughts, to close his eyes.

  He slept, and he didn’t hear the buzz of the Kirov plane approaching.

  54

  Kirov Jet, Approaching Nebo, Russia

  IRINA UNHOOKED SAM from his chains. “There’s nowhere for you to run,” she said. “If you run, I’ll shoot you in the kneecaps. And not give you to a doctor for a full day. Do you understand me?”

  He nodded. She helped him up into the main cabin. Two of her men were there. Katya sat, looking miserable and sick, food untouched before her. Yuri Kirov stared at him but said nothing.

  “Katya,” he said. “Are you OK? I’m sorry.”

  She nodded. For a moment she looked at him. But she said nothing.

  “I don’t think you speak to my daughter again,” Yuri Kirov said. “Sit there and be quiet.”

  Sam sat. Irina nodded at the two guards; they went into the back area of the plane, which had been fashioned into a small, separate room, and shut the door.

  “Sam. Mila has been taken.”

  “Taken?”

  “Kidnapped. It looks like they were aiming to grab Stefan, but he escaped. The attackers took her instead.”

  “Who is they?”

  “We don’t know. Doesn’t she work with you? Perhaps it is your fr
iends at the CIA, making sure they get out at least one of their agents.”

  “Neither Mila nor I are CIA,” he said. “I told you that already.”

  “Was Sam your CIA contact?” Irina demanded of Katya.

  Katya stared at him. And then she nodded. “He works for them, too,” she said, very softly. Saving herself. And maybe saving him, he thought, because they needed him alive if he was CIA. “I told the CIA I couldn’t help them anymore, and he came for me. To force me, or persuade me.”

  “I understand,” Irina said. “Thank you.”

  “Katya has given you what you want, Irina,” Yuri said. “Use Sam how you see fit. But leave us out of it.”

  You are Firebird, Sam thought. Is this why you want Morozov dead—to protect your daughter?

  “All right,” Irina said. “This is what we’re going to do.”

  55

  Moscow

  THE EXTRACTION TEAM had taken Mila first to a safe house, on the outskirts of Moscow. They hurried her up the stairs, turned on a few lights, sat her down. The room was bare, just a table and three chairs. They left her alone for a long while after making sure she wasn’t injured.

  “You screwed up,” she said when the leader came back into the room.

  “So you told me,” the team leader said. He had a broad Scottish accent.

  “You’ve made it impossible for me to go back there,” she said.

  “That was the idea.”

  “No, the idea was that you extract the one target I told you to. You’ve killed a man.”

  His phone rang. He went into the other room. The four others watched her. She watched them.

  The Scotsman came back into the room. “The Tsar Lounge. You wanted us to grab the target there. Why?”

  “I could control things there. It’s friendly territory.”

  “Is this bar your husband’s base of operations when he’s doing dirty jobs on the side?”

  Then she saw a way out. “Yes, it is,” Mila said.

  “Is information there on his operations?”

  Mila nodded.

  “We’re going to this bar,” the Scotsman said. He gestured at the one woman on the team, standing near Mila. “You’ll come with us.”

  “I was supposed to go to that sendoff tonight for Morozov,” the woman said. “And report back on what the feeling was at the party. There’s been nothing on the news about the incident so far.” Mila realized the woman must have diplomatic cover in Moscow, at the British embassy. All the diplomats had been invited.

  “Obviously this takes precedence,” the Scot said. “Let’s go.”

  The assassin, waiting for the man he knew as Philip Judge and a woman in an e-mailed photo, kept waiting. He’d fashioned a quick kill nest in a building across from the Tsar Lounge, being remodeled into office space. It had been a lucky break to find a roost to give himself such a clean shot. But Judge was badly overdue. No contact. Something had gone wrong.

  Then he saw her, walking with another woman and a broad-shouldered man, jumping the early line to get into the Tsar Lounge. It was a bar that got busy early. He scanned the crowd. No sign of Judge, who had specifically said the woman and Stefan Varro would be with him. He knew what Stefan looked like; everyone in Russia did who read a paper. Normally he would simply leave. Judge wasn’t here, so the job must have been aborted. But…this was a million dollars. A million. Far beyond what he was normally paid. And he already had half.

  Shouldn’t he deliver?

  He put his eye back to the scope, adjusted the rifle.

  They arrived at the Tsar Lounge. A well-dressed line to get in stretched along the sidewalk in front of the club, and Mila went up to the bouncer, spoke to him in a low voice, and he spoke into his headset. After a moment the bouncer told Mila that Galina, the manager, was in and Mila and the Scot and the English woman were waved through. Mila heard an annoyed woman curse at them for jumping the line.

  Inside. He’d hesitated and they’d gone inside.

  The assassin decided he’d wait. What if Judge was dead or captured by the police? There was no advantage in doing the kill then; he would not get paid.

  He put his eye back to the scope, a million dollars a number that kept crowding out thought, logic, sense.

  Galina Berg, the bar’s manager, hurried down the stairs from the apartment above. She was in her early thirties, dark-haired, immaculately dressed.

  “Mila?”

  “That’s all right,” Mila said quickly, cutting her off. “These are some friends of mine. I’m taking them upstairs for a bit.”

  “No one’s supposed to go up there,” Galina said. “You know that.”

  “It’s all right,” Mila said. “I promise. Sam is coming soon. We’ll wait for him there.”

  “All right,” she finally said.

  Mila led the Scotsman and the woman upstairs. At the top of the flight was a door, marked PRIVATE NO ENTRANCE in five languages. Mila opened the door and they stepped inside a well-furnished apartment/office. In one corner there was a desk, with a laptop. The Scotsman had drawn his weapon as they came through the door and he checked the room, the kitchen, the two small bedrooms. All was clear. There was one door that was locked.

  “What’s in here?”

  “Storage,” Mila said. The room stored weapons, false IDs, and a cache of money, but she did not volunteer that information.

  “Open it,” he said.

  “As I am not the owner, I don’t have the key.”

  He listened carefully at the door and heard only silence. “I’ll shoot off the lock.”

  “Do what you must.”

  He did and after he shattered the lock he kicked in the door. Searched the room. Found the weapons and the cash. There were no false IDs in the drawers and Mila felt a surge of relief.

  “This is your husband’s home roost when he’s working for the Russians.”

  “He’s not working for the Russians,” Mila said. “He’s working for himself.”

  “Let me see the laptop,” he said.

  “It’s encoded,” Mila said. She sat down at the desk, unasked. “Do you want me to type in the password?”

  “No!” he said. “You might activate a failsafe and destroy the data. Get up from that desk.” He’d holstered his gun and stepped toward her.

  She pulled the gun that was hidden under the desk. There was one such weapon holstered at every desk in every bar Sam Capra owned. She leveled at him and fired. It didn’t make a blast, but a pocking sound, and he dropped. Then she shot the English woman, who didn’t have time to scream.

  She waited until they went still, and pulled out the darts. They had been injected with a heavy dose of veterinary tranquilizer. Then she put the gun back where it was. She pulled both of the unconscious agents into the bathroom. She zip-tied their hands and feet. Then she sat down at the laptop that Sam used when in Moscow, which had nothing to do with the bar’s business, and entered in a command to destroy the hard drive. It wound and ground and made distressed noises.

  She took the Scotsman’s gun. She took his car keys and the phone. The call log showed that the number he’d just received a call from was the same one she had for Charity. From the woman’s purse, she took an ID—she had brown hair, was about Mila’s height—and the bar-code bracelet that was the entry into the farewell party back in Nebo. She kept a dress suitable for each bar in the spare bedroom, and it would be fine for a cocktail reception that was a farewell to the Russian circle before they boarded their planes. She put on the dress. She found a brown wig that wouldn’t look stylish, but would serve to pass muster as the English woman should there be a physical description tied to her bar code at the security checkpoint. She took the woman’s glasses off her and put them on herself and made a final check in the mirror. It would have to do.

  She went downstairs. “Close the bar,” she told Galina.

  “What?”

  “Close the bar. Pull the fire alarm. I don’t care. Shut it down after I leave. In abou
t a half hour, there will be British agents coming here. Once you’ve shut down, leave. Don’t go upstairs. I left my friends there. They’ll wake up in about three hours but I think the Brits will be here before then.”

  Galina nodded.

  The assassin waited. He was a patient man. The line had thinned as more people had gotten in. Only a few left. A group of laughing women, a few couples, a brown-haired woman in a hurry. He kept the scope aimed at the front door.

  He could not help himself. The million—how would he spend it? A new car. A better apartment for his mother. He could take her to that theme park in Paris, or even the one in Orlando. He could…

  And then a crowd began to spill out of the bar, the distant whine of a fire alarm. Far too many people leaving. Far too many.

  The job was ruined. The assassin raged in his head, trembling with frustration. A half million was better than nothing. But a job that had gone wrong made him uneasy. Perhaps it would be good to leave the country for a while, until he found out what had happened to his client.

  He packed up his gear and went home, where his mother asked him if he’d had a nice day.

  Mila went to the English woman’s car, noticed it had diplomatic plates. That would be useful. She got in and tossed her purse on the seat.

  She drove out of the lot and headed for the highway that would take her to Nebo.

  56

  Nebo, Russia

  AT THE EDGE of Nebo, the airfield lights showed the president of Russia’s Ilyushin Il-96 aircraft standing on the runway. Torches and streamers covered the walkways, the roads. Hundreds of guests thronged the spaces between the houses, and the grandest house of all belonged to Morozov.

  The evening party was on.

  They had taken Sam to a modest empty house at the edge of the compound. The house, he supposed, that Sergei had used for his interrogations. There was a guard outside. Sam stood at the window and watched the distant crowds, the illuminated jet. He had failed.