by Drew Chapman
The bomb exploded immediately, engulfing the truck in flames. The fire burned with a savage intensity, but Uni and Ilya didn’t look back. Ilya had estimated that they had fifteen minutes to clear the scene before the police started rounding up eyewitnesses. And he was right.
Fifteen minutes after the explosion, just as the two of them set foot in Manhattan, the NYPD closed off all entrances and exits to the bridge, and anyone who was left on the structure would have to pass through a police checkpoint to leave. Free and unobserved, Ilya and Uni walked to 175th Street and boarded the A train downtown. The subway was full of riders staring at their phones, gobbling down the latest tidbits of news. They looked frightened, and Ilya liked that. One man even yelled, “Oh, crap,” as he read an update on his iPhone. Ilya and Uni got out at Forty-Second Street, and Ilya felt like a kid about to unwrap his Christmas presents—he could barely wait to observe the effect his efforts were having on the city.
Walking through the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Ilya was not disappointed. New Yorkers were lined up, forty and fifty deep, to board buses out of the city. Scores of police were trying to keep order, but the bus travelers—or would-be bus travelers—were having none of it, shoving against each other to get to the front of their respective lines, dragging suitcases and cardboard boxes to stuff into the cargo holds of their buses, and generally behaving like frightened animals. The PA system spewed a long litany of delayed departures, interrupted by pleas for people to keep calm.
“Sheep,” Ilya said to Uni as they watched the chaos unfold. “One person runs for safety, and then they all do. As if being part of the crowd guaranteed you security. A group can be sent to the gas chamber just as easily as an individual.”
Uni squeezed his hand happily, and Ilya felt a twinge of discomfort; physical closeness was difficult for him, particularly if it did not directly involve sexual satisfaction. But he held her hand anyway, knowing that from here on in, everything about the future was unknown, and that he might want to experiment with human contact for a while. He might be dead tomorrow. The same could be said for Uni.
“When I’m with you, I feel like I see the world more clearly,” Uni said.
Ilya liked that. From early in his life he’d felt that he saw things as they were, not as the people in power wanted them to be seen. That had always made him an outsider. Perhaps with Uni he was becoming part of a group. Perhaps.
They walked to a small grocery store on the first floor of the bus terminal because Ilya was thirsty, and neither he nor Uni had eaten since the night before. But the shelves of the store were almost empty, and the Korean man behind the cash register was watching the crowds nervously, hands hidden under the counter. Ilya picked out a pair of candy bars and a bottle of water and laid them on the counter.
“Twenty-five dollars,” the clerk said.
“For two candy bars and a water?” Ilya asked.
“Twenty-five dollars.” The clerk’s jumpy eyes settled on Ilya.
Ilya laughed. “That’s price gouging.”
The clerk said nothing, but quickly put his hands on top of the candy bars to keep Ilya from making off with them.
“No, no. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for it.” Ilya peeled a twenty and a five from his wallet and laid them on the counter. “Gouge them all. And keep doing it. The end comes quicker when everyone pitches in.”
When they turned to face the lobby of the Port Authority again, a bald man with a cherubic face was blocking their way, smiling broadly at them. The man seemed to recognize Ilya, nodding and grinning, but Ilya had no idea who he was.
“Can I help you?” Ilya asked, preparing to fight, or perhaps flee.
“The city is in full bloom all around us.” The bald man nodded toward the chaos behind him in the Port Authority’s cavernous halls. “An impressive job you’ve done.”
He had a slight accent, German to Ilya’s ear, although he could not be sure. Given that English was Ilya’s third language, picking out the subtleties of foreign accents was not easy for him. Either way, Ilya wanted nothing to do with him. He grabbed Uni by the hand and started to walk around the man.
“Someone is looking for you, Mr. Markov.”
Ilya froze.
“No, no, not Garrett Reilly, although he too is searching for you. But Mr. Reilly is not paying me.” The friendly-faced man cocked his head slightly, as if picturing Garrett Reilly in his mind. “Although I like Mr. Reilly rather a lot. I like his spirit. I feel he will do great things someday. I would almost tell him where you were for nothing.” The man smiled. “Almost.”
Ilya’s thoughts raced. Who was this man? Could he be the link between the SVR and the hacker underground, the liaison who had first put Ilya in touch with his handlers in Russia? The name Ilya knew was Metternich, but he doubted it was real—or if any person alive knew the man’s actual name. But he was infamous—a spy and a dealer in information, a danger to any and all who met him, a man not to be trusted.
“Are you—”
“No need for names,” the man hissed, albeit with a smile.
“Do you know where Reilly is now?” Ilya asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.
“I have notions, but they are expensive, and I don’t think you have the cash on hand.”
Ilya stared at him, baffled. How had he found Ilya now, in the middle of this chaos?
“Here is what my job is right now. To tell you that your boss has arrived in New York City and urgently desires to speak to you.”
“My boss? I don’t have a boss.”
The man shrugged and handed Ilya a cell phone. “He will contact you soon.”
Ilya stared at the phone as if it were a device from the future, strange and potentially dangerous. “How did you find me?” He needed to know. For the future; for his own safety.
“To paraphrase an old saying—you’re only as invisible as the company you keep.” The man laughed, and his eyes flashed quickly to Uni, then back to Ilya, and Ilya immediately realized that his relationship with the young woman had been a mistake. This man, Metternich, had traced Ilya through Uni, because she was his moment of weakness, and no one covered his or her own tracks as well as Ilya did. Well, he thought, what’s done is done. He would live with the consequences of his emotional misadventure. He frowned, the cheap cell phone now snugly in the palm of his hand.
“You are thinking, if I can find you, so can Garrett Reilly,” Metternich said. “Well, he can. And he will, so be prepared.”
The bald man winked once—in an almost insultingly familiar way—then turned abruptly and walked off. Ilya was about to call after him when the phone in his hand chimed and vibrated at the same time. Ilya read the text on the screen.
Ya v New Yorke. Nam nado vstretit’sya. I am in New York. We need to meet.
“Son of a bitch,” Ilya said out loud but to no one in particular. How had this happened? He had been discovered, and now he was being summoned, all within moments. He looked up to ask the bald man—the man who he suspected was Hans Metternich—this exact question.
But the man had disappeared.
FBI FIELD OFFICE, LOWER MANHATTAN, JUNE 24, 7:43 P.M.
Alexis had to read the State Department bulletin on her cell phone because the Internet at the FBI field office was working at dial-up speeds. Bingo said connection times were molasses all over the city, probably a result of massive denial-of-service attacks at Internet providers throughout Manhattan. A shiver ran down her spine. When the rest of the team had come back from uptown—from the Vandy offices—she’d looked immediately for Garrett, to show him the bulletin, but he was nowhere to be found.
“What the fuck?” Chaudry said. “He came back downtown with us in a field car. Where the hell is he?” She turned her wrath on Agent Murray, who was wiping the sheen of sweat from his neck. The night was hot and sticky, even inside the FBI offices. “You were supposed to watch
him.”
Alexis stepped between the two agents. “I’ll find him. I’m sure he didn’t go far.”
She checked the bathrooms on the twenty-third floor, and the empty rooms near the front of the offices, then went downstairs to look on the street. She found him half a block away, hunched over the curb on his knees, his forehead resting on the side panel of a parked Volvo station wagon.
“Are you all right?”
He craned his head slightly to peek at her, then looked back down. “Yeah. Just—you know . . .” He let out a long, exhausted breath.
“Can I get you some—”
“It’s okay.” He stood shakily, using the hood of the Volvo to steady himself.
“You shouldn’t go off without telling Chaudry. She’s pissed.”
“She can kiss my ass.”
“She can put you in jail,” Alexis said softly, trying to sound measured but authoritative at the same time. “For a long time. You know it. I know it. You have to behave.”
He waved a hand in the air dismissively, but the motion was weak. He closed his eyes again, as if willing himself to have the strength to keep going. Alexis waited. Around them, a few cars raced down Broadway. Lower Manhattan had emptied out. Alexis figured that was because there was no way to get out of the city from this far south. All the smart passengers had already fled the sinking ship.
When Garrett opened his eyes again, she handed him her phone. The State Department bulletin was on the screen. “Gennady Bazanov entered the country at JFK about three hours ago.”
“Who’s that?”
“SVR agent. SVR is the foreign arm of the reconstituted Russian KGB. He’s a spy.” Garrett looked pale and sickly. Maybe it was just the yellow of the streetlights, but Alexis began to worry. “A spy who was stationed in Belarus for the last two months.”
Garrett narrowed his eyes and read aloud from the bulletin. “ ‘Primary responsibilities included sabotage and fomenting political instability.’ ” He looked up. “A trickster spy?”
“Who makes mischief. Not unlike Markov.”
“And you think—”
“That the timing cannot be coincidental. I think he’s here to find Markov.”
Garrett stared down the street. “But why? If he wanted to contact Markov, why wouldn’t he just call him from Russia?”
“Maybe he’s nervous about having his phone call traced. Or maybe Markov turned off his phone, shut down his e-mail. Bazanov can’t find him through normal means. So he’s here to make actual contact. To see him in real life.”
“Or maybe he wants to take him home. Physically bring him back to Russia,” Garrett said.
“Which could mean that something went wrong.”
Garrett turned to look at her, his eyes lighting up, the joy of puzzle solving flashing across his face. It made her less worried. If Garrett Reilly’s brain could be kept occupied, then he would survive. If his mind idled, then God only knew what would happen next.
“You think the Russians don’t like what they’re seeing?” he asked quickly. “You think Markov has gone off in a direction they can’t control? He’s doing something they didn’t tell him to do?”
“Maybe. But I’m not sure that makes things any better for us. Might make it worse. At least if the Russian government was calling the shots, then we’d know they had national interests at heart. If Markov is in it for himself, he could be planning almost anything.”
Garrett looked off into the night. He shook his head warily. “A lot of speculation. We think Bazanov is a spy, but we’re not positive. We don’t know if he has anything to do with Markov. And if he does have something to do with Markov, we have no idea if he’s here to make contact or observe or take notes or just stock up on bagels. To say all these things are true, and the Russian government is unhappy, seems like a giant leap of logic. To top it off, we still don’t know why the Russian government would want to make trouble in the United States right at this very moment.”
“But we might know. You mentioned it yourself a few days ago. Runoff elections in Belarus are in forty-eight hours. Between the pro-Russian dictator and the Western-leaning reformer. If the West is melting down, who would you vote for? The reformer? Or the autocrat? This whole thing might be the Russians making mischief to sway the elections. It’s a leap—but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.”
“On a probability curve—”
“—it’s about a seventy-five percent chance.” Alexis thought of his rambling statistics-laden e-mail to her, and how incredibly prescient it had been. Garrett looked at her and grinned. That kind of grin had attracted Alexis to him in the first place—wolfish and charming, full of swagger and confidence, but also full of intellectual curiosity. His grin said he was in love with all the information that the world had to offer. The more he knew, the happier he was. And she had just supplied him with an answer.
“Let’s go upstairs, shall we?” he said.
“Sounds good.”
The moment Chaudry saw Garrett she said, “Disappear on me again, I swear to God I’ll shoot you.” She pointed to Agent Murray. “Or I’ll have him do it.”
Garrett apologized—as Alexis had urged him to do in the elevator—and that seemed to mollify Chaudry. Then he and Alexis laid out what they thought might be happening. The rest of the Ascendant team watched as Chaudry, her anger seemingly gone, considered what she’d just been told. She shot a look to Alexis, as if to silently ask her if all of this was on the level, and Alexis nodded yes.
“Put out an APB on Gennady Bazanov,” Chaudry said to Murray.
“We got nobody left. Everyone’s on the street,” Murray said.
“Don’t care,” Chaudry said as she left the room. “And I don’t care what the charges are. Make something up. Let’s bring him in and see what he knows.”
MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, JUNE 24, 9:07 P.M.
Gennady Bazanov marveled at the fear that was crippling Manhattan. It was everywhere—in the erratic driving and blaring horns of the taxis and the cars in the streets, in the contorted faces of the pedestrians he passed in lower Manhattan, in the shuttered stores and the countless policemen he saw busily being deployed to multiple street corners. This was a city caught up in a spasm of pure panic.
Bazanov had not thought that Markov could do it. He hadn’t believed anybody could do it. When his bosses at Yasenevo had first come to him, months ago, with the idea of sending a psychological shock through the Western banking system, he had dismissed the concept as ludicrous. Of course he hadn’t said anything at the time; he was smarter and more political than that. But inwardly, as his SVR bosses debated the possibilities, he had roared with laughter. The KGB and its successor organizations were famous—or perhaps infamous—for their harebrained espionage schemes. They had hired psychics and would-be mind-controllers, hypnotists and con men. Under Vladimirovich Andropov, they’d even had a witch cast spells on foreign leaders before summit meetings.
But longtime SVR operatives understood that one ridiculed those enterprises at one’s own risk. And who was to say that they were not successful: foreign leaders had had unexpected heart attacks after all, and diplomatic U-turns had started in the most unlikely of places. Perhaps the witches had been a stroke of genius. One could never tell.
And one could not tell in the United States, either. A country that was so highly strung, so attuned to every misstep in the market, so convinced that every false prophet with his or her own TV show could predict the future—a country such as that could twist itself in knots at the slightest provocation. Ilya Markov understood that—and had acted on that understanding.
None of it mattered now. Bazanov had a job to do, and he was halfway there. He had finally made contact with Markov—although that had cost him quite a bit of money—and he would be meeting him in an hour. But how to get to the meeting spot—underneath the Manhattan Bridge—in one hour? A
cab was out of the question. The streets were gridlocked with cars and buses and trucks. The subways were a possibility, but Bazanov didn’t like taking subways; they made his claustrophobia skyrocket, and given the panicked mood of the populace, the mere thought of a crowd pushing in on him in a cramped train car made his heart pound.
So he ran. He was in excellent shape and wouldn’t be noticed, that was for sure; New Yorkers were running every which way already in the streets. One more balding, middle-aged man sprinting downtown wouldn’t raise any alarms.
He ran south on Madison, then cut over to Park. He stopped every few blocks to catch his breath, and by Fourteenth Street he was covered in sweat, but he no longer cared. He settled into a fast walk for about half a mile, his legs rubbery from the exertion and the adrenaline that was coursing through his veins.
Bazanov had gone around and around on the long flight from Moscow on how to handle Markov when he finally saw him. He wasn’t sure what he would say to him, but he knew the general information he wanted to impart to the young man. You have done your job. There is panic and chaos in the streets. The world has seen it and will react accordingly; now let us both depart this country and be done with the mission.
A normal operative would agree, and they would take the first flight home, perhaps even with Bazanov at Markov’s side, sipping a cabernet in business class. But Markov was not a normal operative. Bazanov’s deepest fear was that Ilya Markov had something else planned—something that had nothing to do with sowing financial chaos in America or the West. Bazanov’s fear was that Ilya Markov had a goal, and that it was his own and nobody else’s—not Bazanov’s or the Kremlin’s or even that of the Great Dark Lord himself.
Bazanov got to the end of Bowery and the beginning of the Manhattan Bridge at 9:54 in the evening. He had made the trip in forty-five minutes. He stopped to catch his breath and consider his next move—if he was earlier than Markov, then he would need to find a place to watch the young man and perhaps surprise him.
