The First Order

by Jeff Abbott

  “Give me the knife,” Sam said.

  “He’s not just your brother,” Mila said. “He’s a paid assassin.”

  “It doesn’t look like I’m getting paid,” Danny said. “Does that make a difference?”

  “Shut up,” Mila said. “I do not want to hear a word from you.”

  “Please give me the knife,” Sam said.

  Mila’s voice was ice. “Listen to me. We are surrounded by Russian security. I’m guessing most of the guards aren’t in on this little capture because they’d all be here, taking in the scene. For Irina the fewer who know, the better, until Morozov can’t be saved and she blows the whistle. We’re going to put him in the trunk, still tied up,” Mila said. “And drive out.”

  “If we have to fight our way out we need him,” Sam said.

  “If we have to fight our way out we’re already dead,” Mila said. “I told a guard on the road I was driving down here to retrieve a drunk friend. Act drunk. Your face looks like crap, by the way; we need to clean you up.”

  Danny lay in the darkness of the trunk. They perhaps had only minutes before the dead guards were discovered. But they had been off on their own, doing work for Irina that needed to be concealed from the rest of the force. If her own security teams knew that Irina was behind the slow-motion murder of Morozov, they would turn on her.

  His only comfort was that there were weapons here in the trunk with him. Mila and Sam were riding in the front. He heard Mila say, “I found my drunk friend, taking him back to Moscow” in her impressive Russian, and the guard telling her good night and to drive carefully.

  As long as Sam gets out. He did not want to die. But he did not want Sam to die, and Mila could absolutely not be trusted. His concern as the car accelerated onto the road was how upset Sam was going to be if he had to kill her.

  67

  En Route to Moscow

  WE HAVE TO ditch this car,” Sam said.

  “It’s too valuable; it has diplomatic plates. No one can stop us.”

  “We are at least twelve hours away from the border. Irina will find the dead men long before that. And as soon as that guard who tried to keep you from driving away reports you as having headed toward the empty house, they’ll know to look for this car. Diplomatic license plates aren’t going to save us. Let’s not head for Latvia. That was where they were going to stage our capture, nice and far from the oligarchs’ circle, escaping the country. Head for the Finnish border.”

  She drove toward Moscow. Traffic, late, was thin and the sky was clouded.

  She tuned the car radio to a news-and-talk station in Moscow, and it was full of reports from the reception and the departure. All good news so far.

  This, she thought, was a terrible silence.

  Sam said, “He knew about you. And Jimmy.”

  “Jimmy took money from your brother to give you false information for your search, so you’d never find Danny. I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  “And when did you learn this?”

  She glanced at him, quickly. “In New York City.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Where is Jimmy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Mila.”

  “I honestly do not know where he is—somewhere in England, hiding, and I don’t care to know. He and I are over.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sam said. “Please pull over and let my brother out of the trunk.”

  “This is not the place for a family reunion.”

  “Please do as I ask.”

  “Sam. He just killed the Russian president…”

  “No. He didn’t,” Sam said.

  “What?”

  “He was going to poison him. It was the only logical weapon I found in his room. Eyedrops. I replaced them.”

  “How…”

  “Each room had its own stocked medicine cabinet, you know, like a stocked fridge in a hotel. Eyedrops, toothpaste, deodorant, aspirin, all the basics.”

  Mila nodded; her room had been the same way.

  Sam said, “So I took out the eyedrops bottle in his toiletries, which was double-bagged, and replaced it with the one from next door. I emptied the replacement eyedrops and filled it with tap water and put it where the poison had been. Danny came back to his room and I watched him leave to go to the plane. I checked his room again. The eyedrops from his bag were gone. That was his weapon. So technically, not knowing the dosage Danny used, he’s probably expecting Morozov to expire in flight or shortly after landing. On American soil.” Technically, he thought, satisfying the requirements of the contract. “But Morozov just got a little extra tap water and saline residue in his drink.”

  “Sam. Thank God you had the presence of mind…so where’s the actual poison?”

  “In my pocket. I’ve not opened it because I suspected it’s something like polonium-210. Highly radioactive but contained by plastic or paper, he had to get it past the security here—you just can’t let it get in your body. It takes a long while to act—for him to get to America—and it makes you very sick. Very hard to get. It takes a government to produce it because you need a reactor.” He smiled. “It’s been a Russian weapon in the past, so its use might well point back to Russia. Danny might have chosen it as a precaution to point guilt back here, regardless of where Morozov died.”

  She let out a sigh. “But still, how could he have gotten access…”

  “Irina might have cleared the cabin for a pep talk to the security team or the crew. She would have made it easier for him. That’s what she’s been doing all along. She wants revenge on both Morozov and Danny and this is how she gets it.”

  “So you saved Morozov,” she said in a flat voice.

  “I saved us from an international incident that could have led to war.”

  “You saved your brother.”

  “No. Irina’s teams—the top private security in the world—will be hunting us. They probably already are. We have to ditch this car.”

  “Do you know why I don’t want to ditch the car?”

  “Why?”

  “Because that will involve letting your brother out of the trunk.”

  “He’s in the trunk with weapons. I saw them. That should make you uneasier.”

  “What are you going to do, Sam? Announce to the world that his death was faked and he’s been in hiding the past six years, doing the dirty work of the Russians and then being a freelance killer? He’ll go to jail for the rest of his life.”

  “He could vanish. Into a new life. Daniel and I will vanish with him.” He stared out into the night.

  “Is that fair to Daniel? To Leonie? What about your parents? Shall they vanish, too? Trust me, that is far harder said than done with older relatives.” Her voice nearly broke.

  “What do you want me to do?” Sam asked.

  “I want you to stay who you are. I don’t want you to vanish.”

  He let five seconds tick by. “Your husband is buying out the bars. Your help and his help on finding Danny was the price. He said I have to get out of your life. His life. He wants me gone from the Round Table. Now.”

  “I’m going to offer you and your brother a new deal,” Mila said.

  Then they began to hear a thump from the trunk. Danny, wanting out.

  68

  Nebo, Russia

  THE LAST OF the diplomats had left the estates. They were the unimportant ones. A crew had begun to sweep through the compound, cleaning up the reception house and the grounds.

  Irina Belinskaya was waiting in her office for a phone call. But she wouldn’t have to wait for long, she supposed. No telling how much of the polonium was in the dose that Danny gave to him. It might take hours. Alexander Litvinenko, assassinated in London, had not fallen sick until the next day. She hoped Morozov would sicken quickly.

  She scanned the cameras that monitored the periphery of the compound. The party had gone well. There had been no incident. Except of course for the odd behavior o
f the American Philip Judge, which had resulted in arousing her suspicions, as the press would be told later. She had already sent texts to her two subcommanders. Philip Judge acted oddly at the party and did not board the flight, which was a considerable honor.

  Shortly after the panicked call would come from Morozov’s security, then the search would begin for the American who had not boarded the plane. She would have to wait for her security team to take them to the M9 highway that led to Latvia and a team near the border would be alerted to intercept them and kill the hired gun and the CIA man.

  She checked her phone and listened to the radio chatter on the private network. A drunk young man, a relative of an ambassador, had been put up in a guest room at the Varro house. Another diplomat had had car trouble, but it had been fixed and he’d been sent on his way. All calm.

  But nothing from the two guards at the house. They had been very well paid, one Sergei’s nephew, the other an old trusted friend. When she had told them she was sure Morozov ordered Sergei’s death they had sworn to help her avenge him. However long it took.

  She’d given the older guard a burner phone. She called it. No answer.

  She headed out of her office. “I’m going to walk about,” she told the assistant on duty. “Let me know if we get any calls from the plane.”

  “I’m sure they’re all sleeping off the champagne and vodka.” The assistant laughed.

  Irina forced herself to smile. She got in her car and drove down to the small house. It had all been in the timing. Once she discovered the CIA had seduced Katya, it was the time to strike. She could steal the money from Kirov for the assassin’s payoff, and he could not complain because she could expose his daughter as a traitor. She needed a scapegoat, and when she got one she moved forward. The cash from Kirov would be moved off his yacht to a new hiding place, where she could replenish the five million she’d paid from Belinsky Global accounts to initially hire Philip Judge. It had taken a while to find him, too, and the woman who served as his handler. But she had been patient.

  She walked into the house, feeling very good about the evening.

  The bodies of the guards lay sprawled on the kitchen floor. Downed with one shot each to the head. Not execution style, taken by surprise. She frowned. She drew her GSh-18 from her shoulder holster. She had miscalculated. They had reported all was well.

  Her phone vibrated—it had been modified to have an entirely silent mode—and she nearly leaped out of her skin. She continued her sweep. She went through the house. No sign of the assassin or the CIA agent.

  She fought down panic. She could raise the alarm. But if she contacted the police, the two men might be taken alive. Live men could tell their tales. That she could not risk. She called in and asked the security at each house to check the few overnight guests that were staying. Was anyone missing from their room?

  She chimed into the network. “Did anyone clear anyone for driving down to the small house?” she asked.

  She waited for the response; it came quickly. Her assistant came on the line. “One of the street guards said a woman asked to drive down there to retrieve a drunk friend. She was in a car with British diplomatic plates. We found her on the entrance security tape.”

  “Description?”

  Except for brown hair, the woman fit Mila Cebotari’s description. She came back. Amazing, Irina thought.

  The assistant continued: “She came in using credentials given to Alice Devere, an embassy attaché. She left with a man who did appear to be drunk, in the passenger seat.”

  “Just one man?” Irina asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Check the surveillance system. I want to know when Alice Devere’s car was checked out of the lot.”

  Diplomatic plates. My God, the woman—maybe she was British intelligence, and she had been here, and she was taking Irina’s pawns out of the country. No.

  “We need to find that car. I want a feed on every traffic camera between here and Moscow.” Such feeds were only available to the FSB, but she had her own hackers who had found their ways into every government database in Russia.

  “Find them now.” She had been far too careful; this could not go wrong now. She would not let it.

  69

  Toward Moscow

  THEY HAD PULLED off the main M7 road, down a side road, into darkness.

  Sam opened the trunk. Danny climbed out. “We need a new car. The police will be looking for one with diplomatic plates.”

  “I wonder if Irina will call the police,” Sam said. “She won’t want us talking to the police.”

  “I took this car from an extraction team,” Mila said. “They wanted me out of the country.”

  “Is that your new deal? You extract us?”

  “No,” she said. “You and me. He’s on his own.”

  “I’m not leaving him,” Sam said.

  “You should go with her,” Danny said. “If she can get you out…”

  “You don’t seem to understand what I have been through to find you,” Sam said. “I said no.”

  “Mila,” Danny said, “I know you have no love for me. But you care about Sam. Please take him. Sam, go with her.”

  “No.”

  “Sam, our pictures will be on the television in hours, if not minutes.”

  “It’s the night. No one’s looking for us. And they don’t even know that we’re three people. They’ll look for two men,” Sam said.

  “If guards remember me, they’ll know we’re three,” Mila said.

  “We should split up then,” Danny said. “Mila one way, us the other.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Mila said.

  “That’s true. Sam, look, take this weapon.” Danny leaned down into the trunk and picked up the Taser and before Sam could stop him he fired it into Mila. She jittered to the ground.

  Sam tried to seize the weapon. “Stop it! Stop it!”

  Danny grabbed him and shoved him against the car. “She’s with British intelligence. I recognized one of the guys in that extraction team that tried to grab both her and me. He’s MI-6, used to be in Berlin. That is who grabbed her. Not her husband. The Brits. That’s who she’s going to hand us over to. She doesn’t come with us, Sam.”

  “Let go of me.”

  Danny said, his face close to his brother’s, “Say you will listen to me.”

  Sam nodded and Danny released him.

  Sam knelt by her and pulled the Taser needles out. “Mila, are you all right?” He held her hand while the effects subsided. When she could form words she gestured at him to lean close and he did.

  “Shoot him,” she whispered, barely managing the words. “Shoot him in the leg and let…let the team take us out of here.”

  “Why are you working for the British?”

  “They spotted Jimmy talking with Danny in Copenhagen right before all this started and they knew Danny paid Jimmy. They want Danny as a client, to figure out what Jimmy did.” The words came out in a spill.

  “What does Jimmy do, exactly? The Round Table?”

  “There are six or seven of them. Jimmy was one. High-ranking officers in intel networks—British, US, German, Japanese. They help each other, without official sanction, when one needs something done. And they make deals under the table with each other. To share information, to do jobs for hire under the cover of their regular work and split the money.”

  “Oh, hell.” If you needed something stolen, who better than a professional spy? “Did you know this?”

  “Only recently.”

  “So what happens when you give my brother to the British?”

  “They leave my aunt and uncle alone. What they do to Jimmy—I don’t know. I’m not sure I care. They would question Danny about the past six years, I’m sure. If he killed anyone in London…”

  “Let’s go,” Danny said.

  Sam stood up. “I won’t leave her here.”

  “She,” Danny said, “can call her British friends, who will be happy to ge
t her out of the country and to safety.”

  “You’re not half the man your brother is.” She bit her lip and wouldn’t look at him, only at Sam. “Don’t do this.”

  Danny said, “Give her a phone, and let’s go. They’ll pick her up.”

  “Maybe they won’t,” Sam said. “She turned against them.”

  Danny shook his head. “They won’t want her falling into the hands of the Russians. That would be worse.”

  “Sam,” Mila said, “I may not see you again.”

  “C’mon, Sam.” Danny pulled at his brother.

  “Sam. Give your son my love,” Mila said. “Tell him I love him.”

  Sam’s chest hurt. He had thought he was ready to pay any price to find Danny and now…“Mila, please.”

  “I’m not coming with you and you won’t come with me. Done, finished, Sam. I did what I had to do. You do, too. That’s who we are. It’s who we’ll always be.” Her voice hardened.

  “Call your people now and let me know that they’re coming for you,” Sam said.

  She called Charity’s number and gave her position. The backup extraction team said they would be there within an hour. She turned off the phone and shrugged. “Café back at the highway. So I’ll go inside and have a coffee and if my face appears on the TV screen I’ll wait outside. Goodbye, Sam.” She turned.

  “Mila…,” Sam said, and it was as though his world had collapsed into one word.

  She stopped, but didn’t turn to face him. “I was going to screw you and Danny over to save Jimmy. We played the game, you won. Have a good life.”

  And she walked toward the crossroad for the café, looking in her evening gown not like an undercover agent but a woman who’d spent too long at a party.

  Sam watched her go and a core deep inside him, past bone and heart, broke.

  “Sam. I’m sorry. But get in the car. Now,” Danny said.

  They drove into Moscow in a painful silence and abandoned the car near Moscow State University. They took the subway to a parking garage not far from Red Square. Parked in a back corner in the garage’s top level was an older-model black Mercedes, with the key under the bumper. Inside Danny had a new passport, cash, and two guns. “Do you have another passport?”