by Will Jordan
‘Good girl. Now raise your hands and turn around.’
Turning, she watched as he emerged from behind a tree further down the slope, advancing towards her with an AK up at his shoulder. He was a fair shot, and caught out in the open as she was, she knew he’d drop her before she could find cover.
‘Back up,’ he instructed.
Again she did as ordered. There was no sense antagonising him. Not yet at least.
Keeping her covered, he bent down and picked up the M1911 she’d dropped, turning it over in his hand. ‘A good weapon,’ he remarked, pointing it playfully as if he were gunning down rows of enemies. ‘Like Dirty Harry, huh?’
Anya said nothing. Only her eyes reflected the depth of her contempt.
He grinned, undaunted by her anger now. ‘You just keep staring at me with those pretty blue eyes of yours, mako. Maybe I’ll take one as a souvenir. Would you like that?’
She didn’t dignify that with an answer. ‘What do you want?’
‘You, as it happens. We’re going for a walk together.’ He flicked the barrel of the gun towards the path. ‘Come on. Move.’
Miranova was right – they had indeed found Masalsky. In this case he’d been left in one of the small storage rooms at the back of the abandoned aircraft hangar.
Much like Demochev before him, the senior FSB leader had been stripped to the waist, beaten and tortured before being executed, though in this case the coup de grâce had come via a single gunshot to the forehead. The other gory details were, however, almost identical.
The bolt cutters, the severed digits, the single word in Cyrillic carved into his chest. Drake didn’t need to be an expert in Russian to recognise the word guilty.
Drake knelt down in front of the body to examine something else lying on the floor, looking absurdly out of place in such gruesome surroundings. Black and gleaming, carved with great care by hand, it was a knight from a chess set.
First a rook, then a knight. Whoever was doing this was clearly moving up through the ranks. And again they had managed to slip away before their pursuers could close the net.
‘Jesus,’ Mason breathed, surveying the scene with his arms folded. ‘Someone really had it in for this guy.’
It wasn’t Anya – that much he was certain of. There could be no doubt any longer that she was heavily involved in this, that her skills had formed the cutting edge of each attack so far, but the kind of sadistic torture on display here, the chess pieces, the cryptic messages … none of that was her style. She was a soldier, not a sadist.
He looked over at Miranova, realising how crushing this failure must have been for her. ‘I’m sorry, Anika.’
There was no response from her. Only her eyes reflected the depth of her feelings at seeing another FSB agent dead. Another comrade she had failed to protect.
Another link in the chain.
‘I must say, I was impressed,’ Goran admitted as he and Anya picked their way through the darkened woods. He was careful to keep her a safe distance ahead in case she tried anything. ‘The way you broke into that place and brought Masalsky to us … You made it look so easy. Tell me, where did you learn such things?’
Anya allowed herself a wry smile. ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.’
He chuckled at that. ‘I bet you would, too.’
‘The thought had crossed my mind.’
‘And yet here we are – me with the gun, and you with … nothing. Strange how things work out, isn’t it?’
In that sense, she was in total agreement. ‘So after we cross the border, what then?’
‘Then, I take you to some friends of mine. We will hold on to you for a while before we hand you over to the FSB,’ he said. ‘They’ve seen your face. I’d guess there’s a good price on your head already. A week from now it’ll be even better.’
Anya paused just for a moment, spotting something on the ground up ahead that evoked a mixture of urgency and anticipation. Her keen eyes had been sweeping the area this whole time, wary of a hidden danger that only she knew about. Before it had been nothing but a hazard to be carefully avoided, but now it represented a way out. A dangerous way out perhaps, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Satisfied that she was where she needed to be, she carried on, her brief hesitation passing unnoticed.
‘What about Atayev?’ she asked.
‘What about him? He’s a lot of things, mako, but he’s not a rich man. But you … you’re my retirement fund. I’ll retire happy, knowing I helped bring one of Russia’s worst terrorists to justice.’
Lifting her foot a little higher, Anya stepped over a small, almost invisible metal prong protruding from beneath last summer’s dead leaves, then stopped and turned to face her captor.
‘Listen to me, Goran. I want to make you an offer. I’ll only make it once, and I want you to think about it carefully before you answer. Lower your weapon, turn around and walk away. Forget you ever saw me here today, and I’ll do the same. I’ll tell Atayev you were killed by the FSB, and I promise you’ll never see me or hear from me again. You’re not my enemy – I have no interest in killing you.’
Just for a moment she sensed his resolve wavering, his cocky self-assurance briefly undermined by the conviction in her voice. Just for a moment it seemed as if he might actually accept her proposal.
And then, in an instant, his doubt vanished and his smile returned. ‘A tempting offer,’ he said with a sardonic grin. ‘But I’m afraid it doesn’t end with me being rich. Now move.’
Letting out a vexed sigh, Anya turned around and resumed her march. She had done what she could; had offered him a chance to save himself. It wasn’t her fault if he refused to take it.
‘And do you think the FSB won’t execute you once you hand me over?’
He laughed again. ‘Trust me, this isn’t the first time I’ve done this. I have plenty of friends who can make the exchange for—’
His sentence was interrupted by a muted thump that seemed to come from within the ground at his feet, followed by a hiss as something leapt up into the air right in front of him.
Having been waiting for just such a noise, Anya reacted instinctively, throwing herself into a shallow depression and curling into a ball just as a far louder bang echoed through the woods, almost drowning out Goran’s scream of pain and shock.
With her ears ringing, Anya opened her eyes and looked around, slowly uncurling her limbs and checking that everything still worked. Much to her relief, she seemed to have avoided the blast and the deadly hail of shrapnel that had scythed through the air right above her head.
The same couldn’t be said of Goran. The man was lying sprawled on the ground several yards away, jerking and gurgling while blood pumped from the countless wounds torn across his chest and stomach.
Anya picked herself up and approached cautiously, watching with curious detachment as he tried to reach for the AK with the shattered, bloody stump of his right arm, seemingly unable to understand that he no longer had a hand with which to grasp the weapon.
‘Strange how things work out, isn’t it, Goran?’ she said, reaching down to remove her M1911 from his belt. He wouldn’t be needing it where he was going.
A smoking hole in the ground nearby testified to the device that had brought him down. A bounding landmine, probably an OZM-72 or some derivative. They were designed for taking out groups of enemy soldiers, with the first man in the group triggering the device and causing it to leap into the air before detonating amongst his comrades.
Chechnya was one of the most heavily mined countries on earth. More than half a million of the things had been laid during both wars – everything from anti-tank mines to cluster bombs, to handmade booby traps, with most lying in unmarked fields. Little effort had been made to clear them, and as a result several thousand civilians were killed or injured by such unexploded ordnance every year.
Goran was staring blankly at her now. Unable to speak, he could manage only a low, bubbling groan as frothy blood seeped out f
rom the wounds across his chest.
Normally she would have used the pistol to end his suffering, but not today. Today all she could think of was his gleeful stories of the men he’d murdered, his derisive sneers whenever he looked at her, and his ill-conceived plan to betray her to the very people he’d taken such joy in killing.
‘You should have taken my offer,’ she said quietly.
Replacing the weapon down the back of her jeans, she turned away and resumed her hike towards the border.
Chapter 47
The mood at the abandoned airfield was understandably subdued after they had made their grisly discovery. A temporary field station had been set up in the hangar so that forensics teams could begin the task of combing the area for clues. Drake had little hope that they would find anything useful – Anya and her companions were too good for that.
‘Another failure,’ Miranova said as she watched Masalsky’s remains being carried away in a black body bag. Her hollow eyes and drawn appearance were mute testimony to lack of sleep, constant pressure and the stark realisation that another man was dead. ‘How many more will die before this is over?’
For that, Drake had no answer.
‘We should focus on what we can do for the living,’ he said, trying to salvage something from the situation, though his own outlook was scarcely better than hers. ‘As hard as it is to accept, Masalsky’s death might have given us exactly what we need.’
The woman looked up at him. ‘And what is that?’
‘A pattern. Each of these killings is a link in the chain. If we want to know where it leads, we need to find whatever it is that connects Demochev and Masalsky. We find that, and we might finally have an advantage.’
Miranova sniffed and nodded agreement, rallying her flagging energy. ‘You’re right.’
‘Can we get access to their personnel records?’
She was silent for a moment, considering his request, then finally seemed to make a decision. ‘Come with me.’
A couple of laptop computers had been set up in the centre of the hangar so that the forensics teams could upload pictures of the crime scene to FSB headquarters. Making her way over to the improvised comms station, Miranova sat down and quickly logged in using her own security clearance.
‘I should be able to download their service records from here,’ she explained as she called up what Drake assumed to be a database search tool. Inputting her search criteria, she waited a moment while her request was processed.
‘They were senior directors,’ Drake felt compelled to point out. Such files would have been far beyond the reach of field agents in the CIA. ‘Wouldn’t their records be confidential?’
She glanced at him. ‘When Director Surovsky put me in charge of this investigation, I was given a certain amount of … latitude. For now at least, my security clearance allows me almost unlimited access.’
Drake said nothing to that. He only wished his own superiors were so accommodating.
As the files came through, Miranova opened them up and skim-read the reams of text now displayed. Clearly the FSB kept detailed records of their people – both men’s career summaries alone would have filled several pages of printed paper. And with all of it written in Cyrillic, Drake was left with no choice but to let Miranova be his eyes.
‘Both of them have been with the FSB a long time,’ she said after a couple of minutes. ‘Their records are … extensive.’
‘Was either man involved in disciplinary action?’ Drake asked. He doubted the guilty reference would be anything so obvious, but it never hurt to cover the bases.
She shook her head. ‘Neither has any official reprimands on file, or charges made against them. In fact, both seemed to have been model employees.’
‘Everything we’ve seen so far points to Chechnya,’ Drake said, leaning closer. ‘Anything that ties them to this country?’
‘Masalsky served a number of years in Chechnya as part of his role, obviously,’ Miranova said, then called up the other man’s file. ‘But there is no record of Demochev being deployed here.’
Drake frowned. Chechnya wasn’t the link he needed. Look for a different common factor. ‘Did they ever serve together?’
‘Not directly. They were never part of the same unit, or even the same division for that matter. As directors, they may have met during central planning sessions.’
No obvious links to Chechnya, and nothing to suggest they had worked together. What was he missing? What event tied these two men together?
Then, just like that, an idea came to him. A question not so much of actions, but of timing. Timing was everything. ‘When did Demochev become director of counter-terrorism?’
‘It was … late 2004.’
‘And Masalsky?’
She was silent for a few moments, scrolling through the man’s list of official postings. Her eyes opened a little wider when she found what she was looking for. ‘The same time. Both men were promoted in November 2004; part of a shake-up of the FSB’s leadership after the Beslan crisis.’
That name was enough to trigger a reaction. Drake knew the grim story from the scattered news reports he’d read. Chechen terrorists had seized control of the school at Beslan and demanded immediate Russian withdrawal from Chechnya. The Russians had refused, and after a two-day stand-off, the shooting had started.
Massacre was the perfect word to describe what happened next. The school was all but flattened after hours of heavy fighting and artillery bombardment. Casualty estimates ran into the hundreds, mostly women and children, but the Russian government had imposed a virtual news blackout on the whole affair and little more had been heard about it.
But the revelation had given him an idea. ‘Was either man involved in Beslan?’
Once more she went to work on the two men’s records, rapidly scanning the information scrolling across the screen. Even Frost couldn’t have done a better job.
‘They weren’t in the same directorate, but both men were deployed in South Ossetia at the time of the attack. Demochev served as commander of a border security task force. He was in command of most of the military checkpoints in the area around the town.’
‘The rook,’ Drake mused. A castle: a shield, a protector to keep enemies at bay.
Miranova eyed him curiously for a moment before going on. ‘Masalsky was part of the FSB’s anti-terrorism directorate in the province. He was responsible for monitoring and apprehending suspected militants.’
‘The knight,’ Drake added, thinking about the chess piece they had found on him. A warrior, a protector intended to strike out at the enemy before they could do harm.
The symbolism was impossible to ignore. As he’d known all along, the man behind this was sending them a message with each body he left in his wake. And now, at last, the message was becoming clear.
‘They’re going after the chain of command,’ he said, hardly believing they hadn’t seen it before. Only Masalsky’s death had allowed them to find the common factor. ‘Everyone involved in Beslan.’
‘Everyone who should have prevented it but didn’t,’ Miranova said, quickly picking up on his reasoning. ‘They are being tried and found guilty.’
Drake’s mind was racing now as the implications finally sank in. ‘We’ve already accounted for military checkpoints and anti-terrorist leaders. Who was the senior FSB agent on site during the siege?’
It took her less than thirty seconds to find the answer. Opening a new personnel file, she turned her laptop around so Drake could see the file photo she had accessed.
The man staring back at him was in his mid-fifties and ruggedly handsome, with swept-back blond hair, a broad square face that was just starting to turn jowly, and penetrating blue eyes.
‘Roman Kalyuyev,’ she announced. ‘He was the special agent in charge of the crisis, flown in direct from Moscow. He was a Spetsnaz commander during the occupation of Afghanistan, specialising in urban fighting and house assaults.’
It made sense that a man wit
h practical experience like Kalyuyev would have been brought in to manage a crisis like Beslan. Such assaults were exactly what he was used to.
‘Where is he serving now?’ Drake asked, eager to learn more.
‘He isn’t,’ Miranova said. ‘He retired from FSB service in the wake of the massacre.’
‘Why?’
Miranova cocked a dark brow. ‘I believe the Americans have a saying for this – “carrying the can”? If I had to guess, I would say that a lot of the blame was placed on his shoulders. He was likely pressured into resigning.’
‘So Demochev and Masalsky get promoted while Kalyuyev takes the fall for Beslan,’ Drake mused. ‘Now we’ve got a man who’s angry, bitter, well acquainted with the FSB’s protocols and probably still has contacts on the inside. A man who could give our mystery woman the secure ID card she needed to access the compound in Grozny. A man who could have found out the route your convoy planned to take through DC.’
The scattered clues and fragments of information seemed to be coalescing in his mind with every passing moment, the pieces coming together at last, forming a conclusion that was so real, so solid that he couldn’t believe he’d failed to see it before.
Miranova had heard enough.
‘Whether he is a suspect or a victim, Kalyuyev must be our priority,’ she said, reaching for her cellphone. ‘We must find him.’
Physical surveillance teams would take time to arrange, but Kalyuyev’s emails and phone calls could be tapped within a matter of minutes. Soon, everything he said and did electronically would be tagged, logged and analysed by a team of experts trained to look for anything out of the ordinary.
Chapter 48
Moscow, Russia
‘Good evening, sir,’ the security guard said, giving Roman Kalyuyev a polite nod as he swept past. He received no acknowledgement. Kalyuyev’s mind was on other matters tonight.
As usual, his BMW had been started up and driven to the front door, the engine ticking over for a few minutes to give the heaters time to warm up. It was a courtesy afforded to most of the senior executives of Novobyrsk Engineering.
