As he went to a table with bottles and glasses, I saw Anna and Dinara enter. Everyone fell silent, and then a few of the assembled residents rose from their seats and offered Dinara their sympathy as she crossed the room. Her eyes glistened and I could see her fighting back tears. Anna gave her a steadying hand, and I stood as they approached.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
Dinara replied with a faint smile, but she looked punch-drunk. She took the seat Feo had vacated, and he returned with a drink and sat next to her. Anna pulled up the chair to my left.
Feo spoke to the two women in Russian, and their eyes widened and they both looked at me.
“I was there. I can tell people the truth,” Anna offered.
“You’ve been reported missing,” Feo said. “Be very careful.
Missing can become dead.”
“They wouldn’t. I’m a police officer,” Anna remarked.
Feo inclined his head and gave her a withering look. “You know the kind of people who are behind this. Police officer means nothing to them.”
“I’m sorry,” Dinara said. “If I’d been faster …”
“This wasn’t your fault,” I assured her. “You did everything you could. The fact you’re even here is a miracle.”
“That is thanks to Anna,” Dinara replied. “She saved my life.”
“What do you suggest we do then?” Anna asked. “Sit here and drink?”
“For tonight,” Feo replied. “We need to find out who we can trust before we do anything. At the moment, that’s no one outside of this building.” He filled a glass and passed it to her. “So you might as well drink.”
He stood up and raised a brimming shot glass to his fellow residents, “Leonid Boykov, vechnaya pamyat,” he announced loudly.
Dinara’s eyes filled anew and she leaned toward me, her voice straining with emotion: “It means let him be remembered forever.”
Everyone in the room stood, and we all raised our glasses. I joined a chorus of voices who all cried out in unison. “Leonid Boykov, vechnaya pamyat.”
Let him be remembered forever.
CHAPTER 81
GOD WATCHES OVER those who are careful, and death stalks those who are not.
Maxim Yenen thought about his instructor’s words as he hurried through the private parking lot beneath his apartment building. He’d bought an entire floor of parking spaces and had filled them with one of Russia’s most extensive car collections. His prized pieces included a Bugatti Royale Kellner Coupe, a Jaguar XKSS, and an Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale, but he rarely used anything other than his Bentley Bentayga. His choice was dictated by his security detail. The Bentley SUV and the Range Rovers his bodyguards used had an imposing presence. According to Diak Nesterov, his head of security, the cars were big, heavy and, particularly in the Bentley’s case, fast.
God watches over those who are careful.
Yenen had heard about the death of Leonid Boykov, who, like so many before him, had fallen at the hand of Veles, a masterful assassin. The public were being told that Jack Morgan was the suspect, but Yenen and a handful of others knew the truth.
Without warning, Yenen’s heart skipped a beat. It happened every now and then, but it had been getting worse recently. Anxiety had been his constant companion ever since he’d metamorphosed from a simple smuggler to a petrochemical oligarch. Of course, in truth he’d never just been a simple smuggler, his life had always been much more complicated. But it had taken on new complexity and risk with every step closer to the Kremlin. The more money he made, the more anxious he became. The more power he acquired, the more trapped he felt.
As they made their way along one of the six aisles that ran between the rows of expensive cars, Yenen looked at the men responsible for keeping him safe. Diak Nesterov, the grim-faced leader of his team, was almost certainly FSB Counterintelligence Service, and Tisha Bobrik, the former weightlifter who’d spoken with Leonid Boykov about past Olympic glories, was likely Military Counterintelligence Directorate. These men weren’t just bodyguards, they were jailers, and their watchful eyes saw everything. Nothing Yenen said or did could escape the Kremlin.
Well, he thought, almost nothing.
The Bentley and Range Rovers were parked halfway along the row nearest the elevators. Miron Sizy, a gaunt, methodical man who was responsible for vehicle security, was using a telescopic sensor to check the underside of the Bentley. There was a flight case of EMF sensors and counter-surveillance equipment at his feet.
“Anything?” Diak asked.
“It’s clear,” Miron replied. “They all are.”
The cars were swept every day, as was Yenen’s apartment, and the elevators. Yenen had no doubt the men were ordered to ignore Kremlin-approved devices, but anyone else who tried to spy on him wouldn’t get very far.
Yenen climbed into the back of the Bentley, and his entourage split between the three vehicles. Tisha drove the Bentley, and Diak rode beside him. Yenen settled into the soft cream leather as the engine purred to life. They rolled toward the metal shutter that secured his floor, the very lowest, from the rest of the building. They drove through the five public levels and turned onto a grey, cloud-covered Mosfilmovskaya Street. As they drove past the magnificent forty-story tower that was Yenen’s home, one of the Range Rovers overtook the Bentley, which was now sandwiched between the two larger vehicles. Even in the gloom of an overcast day, Yenen’s building shone like a monument to success.
It was a twenty-five-minute drive to the Kremlin, where Yenen had been summoned to a meeting with Yevgeny Salko, a director of the SVR, to discuss the threat Private posed. It was a conversation Yenen wasn’t looking forward to. He’d hired Private without realizing the attention the firm would bring.
The convoy was heading north along Mosfilmovskaya Street, a broad four-lane boulevard, and Yenen was rehearsing his conversation with Salko. As they crossed the intersection with Kosygina Street, Yenen became aware of rapid movement to his right. A fourteen-wheel truck careened past a line of traffic waiting at the lights, and smashed into the lead Range Rover.
“Go! Go! Go!” Diak yelled at Tisha.
The former Olympian stepped on the accelerator, and the Bentley shot forward.
Yenen felt sick, and his nausea deepened when he turned to see a large van smash into the trailing Range Rover. The two mangled vehicles crashed into the sidewalk. Both protective vehicles were out of commission, and the Bentley was speeding along Mosfilmovskaya Street alone.
Lines of vehicles dawdled along, their exhausts spewing clouds into the freezing air, but Tisha threaded past them expertly. They weren’t far from Krasnoluzhsky Bridge, where they might be able to lose their pursuers in the heavy traffic on the beltway. Yenen could see the arch of the steel railway bridge against the gray morning sky. If they could get there, they might be safe.
They didn’t make it.
As they shot past the junction with a side road that ran up from the river, a van surged forward and swiped the Bentley. Another van cut across the median and hit Yenen’s SUV from the other side, smashing the Bentley in a sandwich of grinding screeches, awful crunching and shattering glass.
The Bentley came to an abrupt and violent halt, and Yenen’s head hit the back of Diak’s seat. Airbags burst, Yenen’s ears rang and, as the edges of the world were frayed by darkness, he saw a gang of masked men stream from each of the vans.
He heard the crack of gunfire and realized that Diak and Tisha had been shot. Then, as the dark edges grew, he saw the masked men coming for him.
They loomed at the shattered windows like monsters from a childhood nightmare.
God watches over those who are careful, and death stalks those who are not.
His door opened.
He felt hands take him.
Then he blacked out.
CHAPTER 82
THE COLD WOKE him. His feet felt as though they were being dragged over shards of glass, and every inch of his skin burned with cold fire. He opened his
eyes, but the world refused to come into focus. All he saw was gray. Then his other senses returned and he realized he was moving, or, more precisely, he was being moved.
He heard the crunch of footsteps on snow, and felt hands beneath his arms. Gloved hands against his bare skin. Where were his clothes? His eyes started to regain focus and he could now see his bare legs and feet trailing through snow, his limbs numb and distant, as though they were someone else’s.
He raised his head and saw two men, both in ski masks and dark clothes, one either side, lifting him by his arms.
It was night, and their way was lit by a man at the head of a trailing group. A macabre procession of at least nine people, all of whom were also masked. There might have been more, but Yenen could only count nine before his eyes failed against the darkness.
“He’s awake,” one of his captors said.
Yenen prepared for the inevitable blow, but none came. He wore nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, and for a man accustomed to comfort and safety, his near nakedness left him feeling vulnerable. But the lack of immediate violence emboldened him, and after a few moments, he plucked up the courage to say something.
“Does Salko know about this?” he asked.
The man to his right, a towering figure twice as wide as the average person, glanced back at the man with the torch.
They said nothing, but kept pulling him on.
Where? Where were they taking him?
Much more time in the open, and he would die.
He peered into the darkness ahead and tried to pick out shapes. He saw black silhouettes against a gunpowder sky, and followed the edges to discern the outlines of some buildings. The curved roof of a warehouse, the flat roof of an office … wait … no … it couldn’t be.
But part of him knew it was. He hadn’t seen this place for years, but it was branded in his memory like an owner’s mark. Boltino Army Base. He’d never be free of its legacy. Not unless … He stopped himself. Now was not the time for dreams. Even if he could escape whatever dark fate this night held, true freedom was an impossibility.
His captors dragged him into the main administration block. They hauled him through the building and, as the flashlight beam fell here and there, Yenen’s memory brought the decayed place to life. Colonel Arman Zhuk, the camp commander, a man long since dead, had his office along this corridor. Yevgeny Salko, the young intelligence agent whose zealous mind dreamed up everything they’d done here, had been two doors down. Everywhere he looked, Yenen saw bursts of the past, and he wondered whether the cold had got to him. Was he beginning to hallucinate?
The men dragged him into what had once been a classroom. Now it contained nothing but snow and a broken desk, a relic of what had once been.
His captors tossed him into the snow, and the leader shone the flashlight in his eyes as the group encircled him. There were more than nine. Including the two who’d carried him, there were fifteen people in total. Men and women, all masked, all in dark clothes.
“Please,” Yenen pleaded with the leader. “I’ll die in this cold.”
“It’s good you know that.” It wasn’t the leader who spoke, but the huge man who’d dragged Yenen to this place. “It means you won’t delay in giving us the information we need.”
Yenen rubbed his hands against his frozen torso, and a wave of painful needles tracked the course of his fingertips. His teeth chattered and he felt as though death already had hold of him.
“What happened here?” the big man asked.
The question cut through the numbing cold, and woke Yenen’s deteriorating mind.
Who are these people? How much do they know already?
“You’re dying,” the big man said. “What happened here?”
“Things designed to change the balance of power,” he replied.
“What things?” the big man asked.
Yenen’s jaw snapped shut intermittently as automatic functions overrode his conscious mind. His body was rigid with cold, and was doing everything it could to keep him alive. “There was a program called Bright Star. It was designed to give Russia the advantage in the twenty-first century.”
The man with the flashlight, the leader of the group, shone the beam in Yenen’s eyes.
“I need to know what he’s saying,” the man remarked in English.
Yenen recognized the voice, but from where? Yenen fought to focus his panicked mind.
Then he realized who his captor was.
CHAPTER 83
POWER IS NOTHING but an illusion. We come into the world helpless and we leave the same way. In between, we might be able to convince ourselves and sometimes others that we are masters of our own destiny, but fate always conspires to give us a stark demonstration of the truth. Maxim Yenen was learning that lesson. We’d taken the billionaire from his life of power, and in a few simple steps had transformed him into a pitiful creature. He crouched in the snow, his skin red in the torch-light, his lips blue, his hands desperately rubbing his torso, trying to generate warmth. I wondered whether he was aware of the injuries he’d sustained in the crash, or if the cold had dulled his senses.
A mottled purple bruise covered his left ribs, he bled from a wound on his forehead and his right ankle was black and swollen; it looked as though it was broken. He needed medical attention, but if he didn’t get out of the cold very soon, none of his injuries would trouble him. He would die of exposure.
I didn’t like what we had done, but I liked losing a colleague even less. Maxim Yenen was clearly linked to Veles in some way—the trap he walked us into after firing us from the investigation into Yana Petrova’s murder had confirmed that—so he had Leonid’s blood on his hands.
“Please,” he begged. “Please, Mr. Morgan, give me some clothes. Something to protect me. Anything. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I’ll tell you all about Bright Star.”
I nodded at Feo, who’d been leading the interrogation, and he signaled one of his men, who tossed him a blanket. Feo handed it to Yenen, and the semi-naked man fumbled as he wrapped it around his shoulders.
“Start talking, or it goes,” I said.
The blanket must have given him courage as well as warmth, because he looked at me defiantly. “You’re not a killer, Mr. Morgan.”
“Don’t test me, Mr. Yenen,” I replied. “All I have to do is walk away.”
His gaze faltered and he looked beyond me at the squad of former police officers Feo had assembled. Our operation had been oversubscribed with almost every resident volunteering to play a part, so Feo had been forced to choose the thirteen men and women who stood behind me.
“Alone,” Yenen said. “I’ll talk with you alone.” His teeth chattered.
“You worried what they’ll do to you?” I asked.
“I’m not scared for me,” he snapped. “I’m scared for them. What I know brings death. If you want to know it too, that’s your concern, but don’t inflict this knowledge on others.”
I glanced at Feo. Like mine, his face was concealed beneath a ski mask, but his eyes expressed understanding. He said something in Russian to the squad, and they filed out of the room. He followed them out, and, within moments, it was just me, Maxim Yenen and one other masked figure.
“I said alone,” Yenen complained.
The figure removed her mask.
“I watched my friend die,” Dinara said. “So you will talk to me too.”
Yenen nodded. “OK.”
He shivered. “I’ve been leaking Russian intelligence secrets. I was using Yana Petrova to spread this information. I discovered she was Otkrov and made contact. She was more than happy to be the conduit. Someone in the Kremlin, I don’t know who, must have discovered her identity and they had her killed, as noisily as possible, probably to serve as a warning to her co-conspirators.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why betray your country?”
“The closer I get to the heart of the Kremlin, the more ugliness I see. The world works best when there is balance, Mr. Morga
n,” Yenen replied. “America checks Russian power. Russia checks American ambition. Neither has free rein.” He hesitated. “But that is about to change. The Bright Star program will give Russia geopolitical dominance. It will change the balance of power for a hundred years. What we’ve done with the Bright Star program will reshape the world.”
CHAPTER 84
“WE?” I ASKED.
“I was part of it,” Yenen admitted. “I sat in this very classroom as a child. There were dozens of us. Children from all over Russia, some from other countries. Orphans mainly. All taught to be Americans. Your democracies think short term. A four-year presidency? Ha! What can you achieve in four years? In Russia, a president can enact a plan to train children to infiltrate the highest echelons of American power, and he can still be in office when his plan comes to fruition.”
“Was Karl Parker one of these Bright Star agents?”
Yenen nodded, and I felt numb as the last tattered threads of my relationship with my former instructor were cut away.
“His real name was John Kubu. He was an orphan from Kenya. He assumed Karl Parker’s identity when he was nineteen, just before he joined the Marines.”
I shook my head in disgust. The man who’d trained me, my friend and mentor, was a traitor. I bristled with shame.
“Ernest Fisher and Elizabeth Connor—were they Bright Star too?”
Yenen nodded. “Yes.”
“Why would the SVR kill its own operatives?” Dinara asked. “Veles is SVR, correct?”
“He is.”
“Then why is he killing Russian agents?” Dinara pressed.
“I don’t know,” Yenen replied, “but we’ve lost twelve Bright Star operatives this month.”
“Twelve?” I said.
“Yes, Mr. Morgan. The ones you know about are the high-profile deaths. People Veles couldn’t reach easily. They had to be liquidated in a way that made a lot of noise.”
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