by Mitch Silver
“Viktor, please,” Lara said. “In simple Russian.”
“All right. But if I tell you, I want the floor lamp.” He smiled. “Just kidding. Somebody installed malware in your machine, maybe in a spam email you opened and then trashed. It left behind a cookie, a sort of footprint of a file that left behind a kernel-based rootkit. Very hard to detect, the kernel-based ones. It grabs any information typed on the keyboard as it goes to the operating system, transmitting it …” he paused to look at Katrina, “… wirelessly, maybe to a predetermined email address or a website, but more probably, if they used the ethernet, they can directly access the logs stored right on this machine. Have you left your iPad alone at any time?”
Lara tried to think. “I took a ten-minute walk around the Arkhiv, no more; came back to find this enormous guy in the Listening Room.”
Viktor beamed, inappropriately, in triumph. “Well, that’s when he dropped in the spyware. Probably used a flash drive. Thirty seconds and you’re done.”
“So everything Lara typed—” Gerasimov didn’t finish his thought.
Lara did. “The eBay search, the feedback, the vodcast, my notes in the Arkhiv …”
Viktor said, “It’s worse than that. Even though I think I disarmed all the spyware, whoever planted it knows what I just did, all the entries I just made looking for their ‘trojan horse’ before I destroyed it. If they’re any good—by that I mean, if they’re really bad and mean you harm—they’re on their way here right now.”
The sound of four people not breathing filled the room.
“Get just the stuff you absolutely have to take. Grigoriy Aleksandrovich, is there somewhere you can take Lara for the evening? Trina’s flat is awfully small.”
“My place in town. I’ll drive her in my car.”
“Then let’s get going.”
Two minutes later, the van and the Alfa Romeo had made it only a hundred meters up the road to a little park, where Lara was busy being sick in the bushes. The rain was coming down a little more and Gerasimov was with her. Katrina was in the van, sitting next to Viktor, inspecting her nails and thinking, if she made it out of this in one piece, how much she needed a manicure.
Lara was coming back, wiping the last of the regurgitated ponchiki from her mouth with Gerasimov’s handkerchief and feeling rotten. Rolling the van’s passenger window down, Viktor leaned past Katrina and said, “Hurry up, Lara, or you’ll run right into the bad guys.” Then he gunned his motor and pulled away from the curb, yelling, “Udachi!” out the window.
In the circumstances, they’d need all the “Good luck” they could get.
Chapter 56
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Sun Tzu would approve of the way Lara was jammed right next to Grigoriy Gerasimov in the little Italian sports car. Her hair was damp from the rain when she’d been ill, the moisture working its way down the back of her neck as he pulled away.
“I’ll make you some hot tea when we get to my flat.”
“This flat of yours, it’s in town?”
He grinned. “In the Arbat, where else?”
The new-money quarter of Moscow was all glitzy casinos and high-rises. “Okay, but just for tea.”
Craning around to get some tissues from her purse behind and under her seat so she could dry her wet neck, Lara glimpsed a red-and-silver motorcycle pulling into traffic behind them.
Her thoughts, though, were on the man sitting beside her. Once and for all … friend or foe? She’d share a piece of information and see how he reacted. So she told him of the death of Lev’s American friend, Craig.
All Gerasimov evinced was surprise. “My God! And your brother, he’s all right?”
“I wish I knew for sure.”
“You’ll feel better when you’ve had a little something to eat.”
“Eat? I don’t think so.”
Right then her phone rang in her handbag. She groped for it, but only succeeded in pushing her purse further under the seat mechanism. Then it stopped, and Lara realized it was the ringtone she’d given Pavel. She’d call him back, finally, once they got to Gerasimov’s place.
They were heading west, tooling along Novy Arbat, the huge five-lane boulevard, with the rain increasing. The wipers were laboring to keep the windshield clear, but the neon signs and the headlights of cars zooming in and out of the side streets produced a blinding white haze.
“This isn’t good,” he mumbled.
She looked over at the man peering through the occluded windscreen and tried to tune in on his thoughts. Was he Mr. Right or Dr. Evil? If he was involved, somehow, in any of this, there was no sign of it in his handsome face.
For no reason, Lara pressed the button on the little glove box in front of her.
“Don’t do that,” Gerasimov said, sharply.
Too late. Lara was staring at the gun nestled inside. “Is it loaded?”
“Naturally. That’s the only way it works.”
“Why … why a gun?”
He sighed a big sigh. “If you have to know, I took it away from Nikki. He said a friend gave it to him to hold. A ‘friend.’” Lara looked over at him and, briefly, he looked back.
“With friends like his, you don’t need enemies. Lara, please, close it up again.”
When she leaned forward to do as he asked, her eye caught a glimpse of red in her side mirror. A moment later, there it was again in the rain-slickened traffic behind them.
“I think we’re being followed.”
They were coming up to the Garden Ring road; beyond it was the flat. Gerasimov, instantly tense, peered at the driver’s side mirror. “The truck?”
Lara looked in her mirror again. “Behind it. A silver-and-red motorcycle.”
“I see him, with the black helmet on the Ural Volk. Well, there’s one way to find out.”
Instead of continuing ahead, Gerasimov made a last-second turn onto the ramp that led up to the Garden Ring. So did the cyclist.
Surprisingly, she felt Gerasimov relax. Speaking into his mirror, he said, “It’s not enough you tapped her computer. So now you’re stalking her? Us?”
He gunned the engine. In less than a minute on the elevated highway, they were approaching the exit for Barrikadnaya, named for bitter street-fighting in the 1905 revolt. Gerasimov took it without slowing down.
Lara peered into the mirror outside her window, looking to see whether they were still being followed. They were. “Now that I think of it, I saw him when Nikki was driving me in.”
They moved in and out of traffic, the motorcycle in their wake. Halfway to the Third Ring Road, Gerasimov eased off the gas pedal, closing the distance back to the motorcycle behind them. “Roll down your window.”
“But, it’s raining.”
“Just for a moment. My turn signals aren’t working. Point to that exit coming up. Let’s have it out right now. They wouldn’t dare try something out in the open.”
Against her better judgment, Lara rolled the window down just enough to be able to stick out her arm and point. The Alfa’s three-piece seatbelt was constricting, so it meant unbuckling it and raising herself as she leaned out. She was halfway through the maneuver when Gerasimov violently swerved left and yelled, “Duck! Get back in, he’s got a gun!”
Her body was thrown against the partly open window, bruising her under the arm. Craning her neck to her right with the rain coming in, she saw the guy on the motorcycle holding what looked like a big, black cannon.
Gerasimov floored the sports car, jamming Lara back against the seat. Over the suddenly deafening engine whine and the road noise from the wind and the wet tires, Gerasimov yelled, “Ha, feel it?! That’s the turbo!” He had a strange grin on his face. He was enjoying this.
She was being crunched by the g-forces kicking in as she struggled to get the seatbelt back on. The tach pushed past 7500 revs and the speedometer needle flirted with 150 kph. The motorcycle, now two lanes to the right, fell back.
With the window back up, all s
he could do was hang on to the door handle with her right hand and the edge of her seat with her left. She couldn’t tell which was worse, the gun or the fear of dying in a crash.
It was the gun. When a slight opening appeared in the traffic, the man on the motorbike raised his hand to fire. A lorry with a load of lumber was to their left, leaving them nowhere to go. As Lara watched, a hole the size of a beer can bloomed in the canvas that was covering the wooden boards. He’d shot just over the top of them.
Gerasimov refused to give him a second chance, spinning the wheel hard right and sending them careering on a diagonal through three lanes of traffic the way a bishop might cut through a cluster of pieces to end up all the way on the king’s rook file. If a bishop could hydroplane at 150 kilometers an hour.
They were already under the Third Ring. Lara felt her stomach trying to climb out her throat. It was getting harder to see through the windshield. Apparently Alfa engineers don’t care that much about defrosting either. “Wipe it for me,” Gerasimov yelled. “With your sleeve.”
The way the glass was curved, she’d have to use her right arm. It hurt her to lift it but Lara managed to do it. The corridor of vision she revealed showed the southbound exit for the expressway coming up. We’re going too fast, she thought, and closed her eyes.
For the next twenty seconds, the centrifugal force of the turn kept her injured arm pinned to the door. A moaning sound seemed to be coming from the tires, and then she realized it was coming from her.
Gerasimov reached out to touch her good arm and Lara opened her eyes again. They were hurtling south along the Third Ring, the motorcycle still twenty meters behind them.
“Keep your hands on the wheel, damn it!”
He looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Okay, hold on. Let’s see if he can stay upright in this rain.” He gunned the car till the needle passed the 9,000-rpm line and then drove onto the roughly paved shoulder, passing a slow-moving van and a camper ahead of it.
Gerasimov was weaving in and out of the two right lanes of traffic. Every now and then, looking behind them in the mirror, Lara could see a smudge of red in the gloom, keeping up. She turned around and tried to see through the plastic back window of the convertible’s top. Impossible.
Now the motorcycle was on the shoulder too, shuddering over the broken tarmac directly behind them. At least it would take both hands on the handlebars to stay upright. The turn for Shmitovskiy proyezd was almost on them. Gerasimov shifted left a lane as if to go on, and then pulled another hard right at speed, fishtailing them onto the ramp, barely. The little Italian car fought to regain its grip. The back end gave a second little waggle and they were through.
Looking back, Lara could see the cyclist had gone for Grisha’s head fake left. Now he had all he could do to duplicate their move. They were hurrying away from him. With the side windows starting to fog up, she couldn’t tell if the guy had made the turn or spun out.
Gerasimov was taking no chances. The car was now heading away from town and the flat, and he took the bridge over the Moskva River at full speed. He was still doing 130 when they turned off onto one of the promenades that sliced a short way through the Moscow Hills. There wasn’t another vehicle to be seen. Or heard.
Finally Grisha let up on the gas and they watched the unrelenting rain as they made their way south along the tree-lined allée. At the end, crossing busy Minskaya at the light, he puttered over to Park Pobedy on the other side, the two of them so drenched in their own sweat they might as well have been driving with the top down. Lara was starting to feel the chill. She put a hand up to her cheek. Her hair was matted against her face.
Gerasimov said, “Your arm took a hell of a whack back there. You okay?”
She wanted to say something like, “I’ll live.” Instead, now that they were safe, the terror came welling up. “You’d better pull over, now.”
Good thing she had almost nothing left in her stomach from the time before. She got back in the car, soaked to the bone. Gerasimov had found a clean rag in the Alfa’s trunk and was trying to dry her off with it. But it was so threadbare, all she could feel was his hand running over her neck and down her arms and through her hair.
They drove slowly on. Up here, above the city on Victory Hill, they were coming to the spot where Napoleon waited in vain in 1812 for someone to deliver the keys to the defeated city of Moscow. Now there was a Victory Arch on Poklannoya Gora, the hill’s formal name, one dedicated to his defeat and the defeat of every other would-be conqueror.
The road to the Arch was blocked off due to the just-completed renovation work on the huge War Museum that lay ahead. Instead of the dark, drafty place where Lara discovered her love of history, they could see lights were ablaze in the remade entrance hall of its fancy successor, three hundred meters away across the vast pedestrian plaza. But there was no place to stop and get out of the rain—the workers had taken down the acres of scaffolding and dumped them on the plaza and here in the car park.
Lara really had to get her feet on solid ground. She pointed across the road to the neighboring building, the ugly box that was the Holocaust Synagogue. Gerasimov nodded and nosed the car into the deserted temple’s parking area.
There was an overhang over the short flight of steps in front. Lara’s legs were rubbery going up. The bile in her throat tasted bitter. She shook with a long, five-second shiver. Grisha took off his windbreaker and wrapped it around her shoulders. He kept his large hands there, warming her. Despite her misgivings about him, the strange man’s hands felt good.
He said, “Do you smoke?”
“No. My brother’s a chimney, and I hate the smell on his clothes.”
“I think you should start.” He pulled a couple of French Gitanes out of a pack. “It’s a good way to warm up, from the inside.” When she was slow to accept, he added, “One won’t make you an addict.”
He lit a cigarette for himself and mimed his intention to light the other. She shrugged and then nodded.
Lara took the cigarette smoke down into her lungs. Almost everyone at the University smoked, which Lara considered a sign of moral weakness. Now she said, with a cough, “It doesn’t warm you up.”
“I know. I just wanted to take your mind off what happened back there.”
They stood smoking in front of the great doors to the holy place, one more Russian palace of the dead. Moscow was a giant mausoleum with people living in it.
Lara asked, “Where did you learn to drive like that?”
“The Army. It’s all I did, drive and shoot.”
Lara looked up at him. “You were in Afghanistan?”
He laughed. “I was defending these very hills from Afghan attack, eight kilometers over that way. There’s a shooting range; my father pulled strings.”
He was still holding her. She said, without really intending to, “I’m glad.”
He kissed her, adding his cigarette smoke to hers. It had been so long since a man had kissed her. Even longer since one had meant it. If he was a bad guy, this was so wrong.
She kissed him back and, without making a conscious decision, moved so their bodies touched.
The noise was almost imperceptible, a buzzing like a far-off mosquito, mixed in with the dull throb of the Minskaya traffic on the other side of the trees beyond the car park. But the mosquito didn’t go away.
Gerasimov broke off the kiss and looked back toward the war museum. A single light was moving slowly, methodically, among the piles of iron scaffolding. Coming slowly this way.
Lara didn’t immediately understand when Grisha said, “I have an idea.” He hurried down the synagogue’s steps to the Alfa Romeo and opened the door. He got in, flicking on the interior light as well as the radio. Lara couldn’t see what he was doing with the car’s windows steamed up, but her ears told her he’d turned on a classical station. Then he was out of the car again, taking the steps two at a time. The Alfa’s light was still on and the radio was going in the closed car.
“Stay
here out of sight, whatever happens. You understand?” He took what was left of her cigarette and crushed it with his against the rough concrete wall of the building. “And keep quiet.”
Lara said, “You left the radio on.”
“I meant to.” Gerasimov hurried away, leaving her there.
The light on the motorcycle had been going up and down the Poklannoya’s narrow paths. Lara saw it hesitate when the radio came on. Almost immediately, the headlight flicked off. In the dark, Lara could hear the machine start up again, coming toward them, an unseen mosquito getting closer in the night.
The sound stopped on the far side of the car park. What was the stalker doing? And where was Grisha?
There was a security floodlight high up on the corner of the synagogue. It picked out the cyclist in dark leathers and full-face Uvex helmet, making his way on foot across the lot, slightly bent over, trying not to be seen from inside the parked car.
The man was now right behind the Alfa, keeping low and creeping around to the passenger side just as the tiny voice of the program’s host on the car’s radio came on. “Next up on our program of stormy music, Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, the original 1867 version performed by …”
The figure had stopped at the sound. Now he moved again, all the way around to stand beside the passenger window, Lara’s window. Something in his hand glinted in the strengthening floodlight.
The explosion rocked the parking lot, throwing Lara to her knees twenty meters away. She looked back to see the car window gone and the man with the gun leaning inside.
Before Lara could do or say anything, a second shot rang out. The man wasn’t standing there anymore. He was smeared across the door and slowly, slowly falling to the ground.
From the still-working radio came the sound of kettledrums. Gerasimov was running out of the dark into the circle of light near the building. He bent down and prodded the man on the ground with the gun in his hand, Nikki’s gun, and then with his foot. The figure didn’t move.
