The First Order

by Jeff Abbott

  “Yes. At the Tsar Lounge, but I don’t know if it’s been compromised or not.”

  “We’ll try it.”

  He drove over to Tverskaya. The Tsar Lounge was closed; it was now the middle of the night, but one light shone upstairs. And a man Sam didn’t recognize stood near the front door.

  “The Scot I recognized,” Danny said. “She could have warned us. She didn’t.”

  “Keep driving,” Sam said tonelessly. Mila had exposed the bar as a safe house to her British masters. There was no point in stopping. “They’ll probably learn about all my bars. That part of my life is over, too.” Mila. The bars. What else was he going to lose tonight?

  “Then we’ll just have to figure another way to get you across the border.”

  “You won’t leave me,” Sam said. In the tone of that child he’d once been in Burundi.

  “No, Sam, I won’t leave you. You didn’t leave me just now. That’s the first order of being brothers, still.” He tried to smile but it didn’t quite work.

  “Stop with that first-order garbage,” Sam said. “You left us for six years.”

  Danny had no answer to that. They headed out of Moscow, onto the M10, heading northwest toward Finland. Fourteen hours of driving lay ahead. It was easy to forget the vastness of Russia until you had to travel it.

  “Well we always wanted to take a road trip together,” Sam said.

  Danny laughed, an odd, broken sound. “Not this way.”

  “You had an escape route out already.”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you have that in Afghanistan?”

  Danny didn’t answer.

  “Why?” The one word that lay between them like a mountain.

  “I wanted to be me.”

  “Be you.”

  “I could do what I was best at.”

  “Killing people. I read your account of saving me in Burundi.”

  “I don’t just kill people. I eliminate problems. Did I go after those men in Burundi? For sport? No. They hurt you. They took you. The rules were off.”

  “Danny—”

  “I know you don’t understand how I think. Fine. But I wanted to be good at it. Sergei was the best.”

  “You told Irina you didn’t kill him. But you did.”

  Danny glanced at him.

  “I still know when you’re lying.”

  “He was blowing up apartment buildings full of sleeping people for Morozov, to justify crushing a breakaway republic. Kids, old folks, families. So, I found my line I wouldn’t cross. Sergei was moving a bomb to be planted in Moscow. I fiddled with the wiring. Problem solved.”

  “Irina thought Morozov ordered him dead.”

  “I don’t think Morozov wept much, but…the decision was mine.”

  “We have to think about how to get out of here,” Sam said. “I don’t think I can risk my passport. The border, where there aren’t guards, is electronically monitored on both sides. And another problem.” He paused. “You didn’t kill Morozov. I switched the eyedropper bottle. I have the one with the polonium. It’s in my pocket. The one Irina took off you is…eyedrops.”

  Danny said nothing for several long seconds. Sam expected him to explode in fury. Instead he said, quietly: “Sam, for God’s sake…we need to get rid of it.”

  “I’m not dumping it where an innocent person could find it and poison themselves.”

  “Thanks for spoiling my job. I thought I’d been rather elegant about it.”

  “Except for being set up and played,” Sam said, “you were.”

  “Even with Morozov alive, Irina has an excuse to hunt for us. Her men are dead.”

  Sam said, “I assume you had a plan to get out.”

  “When we get past St. Petersburg, I know where we might get a way out of Russia. Into Finland. You said you wanted to go there.”

  “What’s this way out?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  “There’s a man I could call. CIA. Bob Seaforth. He’s helped me, under the table, in the search for you. I know how to reach his people.” He wondered how his brother would react to the name.

  “No. No CIA.” Danny shook his head. His tone was insistent.

  “They can protect us.”

  “I shot Seaforth. In Nassau.”

  Sam jerked to look at him. “Why?”

  “I recognized him from when you worked for them. I thought he was tailing me. Maybe he saw my face, maybe not. But no CIA for me.” He glanced at Sam. “I witnessed the murder of a CIA operative and never came forward. Aside from shooting Seaforth, I won’t be their favorite person.”

  “Oh, Danny. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.”

  “I have a photograph of Sergei, from the video. He forgot to keep his mask on when he was practicing his lines; he didn’t realize the camera was filming. You can tell that it’s the same man who kills Zalmay. That video could be worth something to the CIA. Leverage over Morozov. I lied to Irina, though. No one’s standing by to publish it if I don’t make it out of this mess.”

  “Where is it? We can use it to make a deal.”

  It took him thirty seconds to decide to answer. “If I don’t make it, it’s at a home owned by a guy named Robert Clayton in Miami,” Danny said. “But I will get you out of here. You and me, we don’t need anyone else.”

  “Thinking that way has gotten us into this mess,” Sam said. “I can call someone. I can get us out.”

  “No. We’re doing this my way.”

  “Why? Because you’re the oldest? You walked away from being my brother. I just…” Sam had no words. He thought seeing Danny would fix everything, make his life whole. But the fracture ran too deep. Fix the fracture when they weren’t being hunted. He stared out at the night. “Let’s get clear of Russia. We have hours to go. Let’s not lose our focus.”

  “Focus, yes,” Danny said. “That’s what we’re good at. Taking care of each other. Getting out of trouble.”

  “We, together, are not good at anything, Danny.”

  Danny said nothing for several minutes and Sam had resigned himself to a night of silence. Then his brother said quietly, “It’s a long drive. I want…I want you to tell me all about your son. And that pretty ex-forger that lives with you.” He paused for a moment. “And Mom and Dad. Tell me about Mom and Dad.”

  70

  St. Petersburg, Russia

  NINE HOURS LATER, the Mercedes pulled up in front of a modest apartment building on the southern outskirts of the city. Danny went to a seventh-floor apartment. The rent and taxes on it had been paid regularly for many years, from an account in a bank in St. Petersburg.

  It was morning and Danny used the tire iron from the car’s trunk to pry open the lock. He stepped inside and saw a small alarm pad asking for a code. He entered the code Sergei had given him for his safe houses…and it still worked. It hadn’t been erased. Relief swept over him.

  The lockbox was in the closet. He pried it open with the tire iron. The keys, two of them, on a hoop, were inside. He scooped them up. There was cash there as well, and two Makarov pistols, and two passports, one with Sergei’s face and one with Irina’s, both Finnish, along with a set of entry and exit stamps for Finland and the Baltic states. He didn’t bother to reset the alarm. He closed the door.

  In the Mercedes, Sam waited. He made the impossible choice. He watched his brother go into the apartment tower and he pulled out his phone. He called the number Seaforth had given him as they spoke in Avril Claybourne’s gallery, her lying dead on the floor.

  “Yes?” Seaforth’s voice.

  “You’re alive. Thank God.”

  “How did you know…”

  “I’m in trouble.”

  “Where are you?”

  “St. Petersburg. I have no way out of Russia. I can’t use my passport. We are headed for the Finnish border.”

  “We.”

  “My brother is with me. We are being pursued by private security, but it could go public at any time. Frame-up. My br
other is using a safe house once used by Sergei Belinsky; he says he has a way out but he won’t tell me. He forbade me to call for help.”

  “I’m nearly to Helsinki,” Seaforth said. “I came here looking for you. We knew they took you off their yacht. I can get to the border…”

  “Irina Belinskaya is after us, with all her security force. We have info that could bring down Morozov. We’re only maybe two or three hours from the border. Can you track me on this phone? I want a deal for my brother. Protection for him in exchange for cooperation.”

  “I agree. Yes. Leave it on…and I’ll…”

  “He’s coming,” Sam said, and he slipped the phone into his jacket pocket.

  The Mercedes wheeled out and headed north.

  71

  Above Russia

  IRINA WAS AIRBORNE, in a Zvezda Oil jet. A call to Yuri Kirov aboard the presidential Ilyushin jet ensured that she had full access to all his air fleet. She had simply told him that he would give her all logistical assistance, and he agreed. Yuri made no mention that Morozov had fallen ill. Patience, she thought. You’ve waited long enough.

  Thanks to the Belinsky Global hackers, who had infiltrated the extensive street camera network in Moscow, Irina knew the British diplomatic car had been abandoned near Moscow State University. Then subway cameras showed the two men traveling toward Red Square, entering a parking garage on foot. A few minutes later a Mercedes and a BMW left. Both were being traced. There was no sign of Mila.

  Fifteen minutes later, she knew the BMW was a legitimate car. So it was the Mercedes. Philip Judge was very good, she thought. Prepared. Like Sergei had taught him. Your greatest creation, Sergei, she thought, and I’m going to destroy him.

  Then they made a mistake. The old apartment in St. Petersburg. She’d kept it because you never knew when a place to hide or a place to run would be useful when you were contemplating, for years, an assassination. She had not been there in two years. But when the entry code was entered, she got an alerting text.

  She hadn’t known Sergei had told Judge so much. It irritated her. It told her they were in St. Petersburg now. Two hours or so from the Finnish border. Or perhaps they would try for Estonia.

  But why would they stop? If Philip Judge had the foresight to have a Mercedes, he would have stored cash, documentation, and more in it. The stop was needless. Unless…

  The keys. He knew about the keys. The amount Sergei had shared with this man staggered her, as if it was an intrusion on her marriage.

  She called an operative in the Belinsky Global St. Petersburg office and told him the address, and what to look for. But she knew the keys would be gone, and she knew exactly where they were going.

  She told the pilot to head north. She told him to arrange a car and a Zvezda helicopter for her upon landing at a private airstrip near Vyborg, close to the Finnish border. Then she got on her phone and started calling in every favor. Irina knew every forger, every money launderer, every fence who could be a help. Sergei had given Philip Judge all his contacts, all his knowledge; had given everything to his weapon. Those would be the people Judge would turn to.

  Her message was the same: I need these men found. If you see him, hear from him, I need to know. He must be found. Whatever he pays, I will triple it. Nothing bought loyalty like money. It had been true even in the old Soviet days.

  I need these men found.

  72

  Finland

  LIKE IRINA BELINSKAYA, Bob Seaforth had gone begging. He was riding toward the border not in a CIA chopper but in a borrowed helicopter from a Finnish phone mogul eager for American government contracts. Bob Seaforth told Julian, “I want to break into the Belinsky Global communications network.”

  “We don’t have a way in.”

  “Find a way. Hit them with a worm, find a vulnerability. I want to know what that woman is saying, who she’s talking to.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Put Prakash on.”

  “Here, Bob.”

  “You are tracking Sam’s phone?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s on the A127. But his battery is dangerously low and we could lose him at any time. We picked up intel that the Russian border stations are watching for a black Mercedes. There was an anonymous tip. Highest priority.”

  “Tell Julian to get me on Belinskaya’s phone. Now.”

  73

  The Border Zone, Russia

  THE BORDER ZONE stretched five kilometers into Russia. The border itself with Finland—eight hundred miles of it—was maintained by electronic surveillance and guarded crossings. Landmines had been laid during the Cold War, according to rumor, despite Finland’s carefully managed neutrality. Finland was a European Union country, but not a NATO country. Here there was a carefully controlled peace, almost a politeness.

  But the Russian Air Force had made four incursions into Finnish airspace in the past three months, so the studied peace was at risk. Tensions were higher.

  Near Vyborg, at a former Soviet airfield turned into a private airport for the use of the Russian elite, Irina Belinskaya stood by her jet and waited. At the end of the runway a helicopter landed. It was a small Zvezda Oil chopper, owned by Yuri Kirov.

  She had armed herself with an assault rifle, two pistols, and two of her top men who had flown up with her from Moscow.

  The pilot waved her toward the small chopper. She boarded and told him to head for the border. The Border Service was a division of the FSB, and the agent in charge of this stretch had been told to give full cooperation and not ask questions. There was a promise of an excellent job for his soon-to-graduate-university son at a Kirov company. He was glad to comply. He told his team to ignore any electronic signals or triggers activated by Irina and her team. It was a matter of national security, and he considered himself a good Russian.

  “Where exactly are we headed?” one of her men asked.

  “I’m going to tell you a secret,” Irina said. “There is a short tunnel that goes under the Finnish border. Built by our clients, years ago, in case they needed a secret way out of the country, into a neutral state, without making a border crossing. The tunnel goes from a weather station owned by a subsidiary of Zvezda, the oil company owned by Yuri Kirov. It then reaches to a house in the Finnish border zone owned by a Finnish subsidiary of a Russian bank, owned by Boris Varro.”

  The man whistled. “And you know they’re coming here how?”

  “They stole a pair of the keys that open the tunnel doors. Let’s find a position. I want them taken alive if possible. I need to know what they’ve been doing the past fourteen hours.”

  She needed to plant the polonium on Danny and Sam once they were dead. And her men could not know about it.

  Bob Seaforth listened to Irina’s words. Julian—devious and brilliant—had managed to access and activate the microphone in Irina’s phone. He heard what she said to the operative and he ordered Romy and Prakash to find every house owned by a Finnish subsidiary of Varro’s bank that was close to the border.

  Ten minutes later Romy called him back. “There are three of them. First is ten kilometers away from the second one, then the third one is a further four kilometers.”

  He couldn’t be in three places at once. He had to choose one. If he picked wrong this could be a disaster. The pain from his bullet wound felt like a building tsunami. He hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, and now he was playing a game of Russian roulette with Sam Capra’s life. “Give me the coordinates for the one closest to the border. Even if it’s just five feet closer. Give me that one.”

  He was alone, and Irina Belinskaya wouldn’t be. And he could not allow two brothers, one with CIA ties, to be captured in Russia for murder. Not today. Not ever. He loaded a full clip into his gun. He had to have enough to deal not only with Belinskaya but the Capras. Danny Capra was dangerous, and Sam might be if his brother was threatened.

  Sometimes the best way to end a problem was to clean it entirely.

  In Washington, the Russian president�
�s plane had arrived, to flags and music. Morozov came down the stairs, stern-faced, until he touched American soil and then he broke into a wide, warm grin and waved for the cameras. He felt great. It was going to be a wonderful day.

  74

  The Border Zone, Russia

  SAM AND DANNY pulled off onto a side road close to the border zone itself. Signs warned them against trespassing and that the zone was patrolled and that crossings were allowed only at official stations. But one sign was marked PRIVATE ROAD ZVEZDA ENERGY WEATHER STATION NO TRESPASSING.

  “Kirov’s company,” Sam said.

  Danny held up the keys. “A tunnel.”

  “A tunnel.”

  “Sergei and I used it once before, when he needed to get me out of the country after a job for him. They built themselves a bolt-hole, in case there’s another Russian revolution and they need to get out. It comes up just across the other side of the border.”

  “Irina knows about it then.” Sam glanced into the woods.

  “Irina doesn’t know we’re here.”

  “Don’t underestimate her,” Sam said. “She’s here. Or she’ll have sent someone here.”

  Danny considered. “Then this is what we’ll do.”

  They argued, but Danny was at the wheel and a few moments later, he barreled down the road as soon as he heard the whine of the helicopter.

  “There! There!” Irina yelled at the pilot. Their helicopter was a Russian model based on the American MH-6 Little Bird, designed for special operations work. Capable of carrying four, not armed with fixed weapons, fast and maneuverable, a standard of private military contractors. Seated behind her and the pilot were the two Belinsky Global operatives, now armed with AS Val assault rifles.