Rasputin's Shadow

by Raymond Khoury

  He checked on his captive. Sokolov was still firmly cuffed in place and asleep, the latter courtesy of the SP-117. Koschey knew the scientist wouldn’t be coming out of it soon, although it was a process he could accelerate with some smelling salts. But he didn’t need to do it just yet. While he didn’t have too much time to waste, not with the kind of resources that must have been allocated to tracking him down, he had to get himself a new ride before waking up Sokolov.

  He didn’t have his SUV anymore, and the van was certainly too hot to use again.

  He also needed to think. He already had a plan, one he’d started formulating as soon as he understood what he was dealing with, one that became much more immediate and irresistible after hearing Sokolov’s revelations.

  He needed to refine it, put it through the wringer, make sure it stacked up.

  The event was soon—perhaps too soon. It had stood out from the list of major American events that the Center always kept track of. High-target-value events. But even if it was too soon—only a day away—it was the perfect venue for what he was planning. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. Besides, he couldn’t hang around much longer. He was on enemy territory, and he needed to act quickly, before the net tightened in around him.

  He needed to contact the key players—the backers, and the patsies—all of whom he knew, all of whom he also knew had the appetite and the means for what he envisaged. Then he’d put the plan in motion and he’d rock the world in a way that would never be forgotten, before disappearing to a comfortable outpost while waiting for the next opportunity to strike, the next occasion for him to flex his newfound muscle and lift himself even further up the podium of history.

  The timing couldn’t have been better. Along with everyone back in the corridors of power in Moscow, he’d also been watching the events shaking the Arab world. In country after country, people were rising against their oppressors. Dictators were being toppled, their ill-gotten gains and gilded palaces confiscated before they and their cronies were dragged into court or strung up from lampposts. A new mind-set was gripping the oppressed corners of the planet, a desperate and angry yearning for freedom and retribution, and an accompanying unease was rippling through the Kremlin. The protesters in Moscow were getting louder and more ballsy, and there was a deep-set concern that the “Arab Spring” could spread to the Motherland. If that happened, it would pull the rug out from under those in power. It would also deprive Koschey of any chance he might have at carving out the slice of notoriety and wealth he now felt he deserved, the one he felt he was owed for all his years of service.

  Well, he thought, maybe his time had come. Maybe he’d start carving it out right here, in America, and not in some oilfield or gas field in Siberia.

  The thought of striking at America only made the prospect sweeter. For despite it all, Koschey was still, deep down, a patriot. A proud, staunch patriot. And the Americans, he felt, were too smug about their success. Yes, the collapse of his Motherland’s old political ideology was inevitable. Yes, his superiors had proven to be greedier and more predatory than the worst of Wall Street’s corporate raiders. But the Americans needed to be humbled. They were the only superpower left, and the way they wielded their power, with such arrogance and impunity, really grated on Koschey. They needed to be brought down, and Koschey relished the potential infamy that would be bestowed on the one who would do it.

  With that prospect in mind, he took a corner of the office and lay down on the concrete floor.

  After running through his plan one more time in his head, he finally allowed himself to drift into sleep.

  ***

  STILL CROUCHED IN THE back of the van, Shin barely dared to breathe.

  He was frozen in place, huddled against the partition, in the corner behind the passenger seats, a bundle of shivering sweat, listening intently while trying to make himself as small as possible.

  He wasn’t sure what had happened out at Prospect Park. He was still in the back when they’d stopped, and out of sheer terror, he’d decided to stay there. Through the small window in the cabin door, he’d glimpsed Ae-Cha and the Russian standing across the lot from them, seen him shoot her in the foot, witnessed Bon going down—then he’d hit the cabin floor and stayed there for cover. Before he knew it, there had been a frenzied firefight, then the van was moving again—not just moving, but charging, plowing into something and bouncing over it, taking a series of sharp turns that had him hanging on to the metal box for dear life before the van finally settled into a reasonable pace.

  He’d risked a very angled peek through the window, barely creeping out of his hiding place, just to see who was driving. And he’d almost had a heart attack when he’d glimpsed the Russian who’d shot Ae-Cha and Bon and probably Jonny, too, in the driver’s seat.

  He’d slunk back into his corner and curled up there, trembling and sweating like he had typhoid, his mind locked in silent panic. He’d debated flinging the back doors open and jumping out while the van was in motion, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d remained in that pathetic state until, some time later, the van had slowed down and pulled in somewhere echoey before its engine was killed.

  Shin had never been as terrified as he was in the moments that followed, waiting helplessly in the back of the van, staring at the rear doors, expecting them to swing open at any moment, expecting to see the Russian’s surprised eyes lock on to his before the man dragged him out, shot him, and dumped his lifeless body in some ditch.

  His heartbeat had pounded out the seconds against his eardrums, but the doors didn’t open and the Russian never came.

  Instead, he could barely make out some footsteps walking away, then back, then past the van in the other direction. Then there was silence.

  And more silence.

  Shin waited, as immobile as a wax figure. And waited. Then, after about an hour, maybe more, after not hearing a single sound for all that time, he decided he’d risk it.

  Using extreme care, he opened the cabin door and peeked out. The van was parked inside some kind of garage. Faint light was filtering from somewhere, allowing him to make out some walls beyond the windshield, but none of the lights inside the space were on.

  He climbed onto the passenger bench, then slowly, very slowly, he pulled the door handle until it clicked and cracked the door open. He waited. Didn’t hear anything. He pushed the door open farther and looked out.

  An empty space, like a warehouse. Bare and basic.

  He climbed down and gently set his feet on the ground, then pushed the door back against its locking mechanism without clicking it shut.

  He hugged the wall and tiptoed toward the front of the large space, where moonlight was seeping in through some high clerestory windows that ran along the top of the wall.

  There was a single door next to the large roller door of the warehouse. He tried it. The handle wouldn’t budge.

  It was locked.

  He cursed inwardly, then retreated and tried the first space he found to his left. It was a small room, also empty.

  His spirits soared when he spotted a small top-hung window up in one of its corners, its sill around eight feet above ground level.

  Moments later, he was scuttling away from the warehouse, keeping low, hugging the walls, hoping against hope that this wasn’t one of those tortuous bad jokes that life often liked to play, one where he’d soon find himself right back where he started, in the clutches of the murderous Russian and moments from a painful and very final death.

  50

  I was running on empty.

  This thing had us in its grip since we’d first stepped inside Sokolov’s apartment Monday morning, and here I was back at Federal Plaza, three days later, bright and early, having managed all of a blissful two hours of sleep and a decadent ten-minute shower. Which is something I wouldn’t normally complain about, but after the previous night’s shootout at the docks, the restaurant, and Prospect Park, my body was threatening an insurrection.

&n
bsp; The good news was that Ae-Cha was going to be okay. The foot would take a while to heal; the PT would take far longer to get all those tendons and bones to move seamlessly and do what they were meant to do, but at least it was time she still had.

  The bad news was everything else.

  The flak was coming in from all corners: the governor’s office, the mayor’s office, the chief of police, all of it fog-horned to us through my own esteemed boss. We spent a good part of the morning in his office: Aparo, me, the ADIC himself obviously, Kanigher, a couple of NYPD liaisons, and a couple of Bureau lawyers. After the requisite dressing-down for the massive body count and the fact that Ivan was still on the loose, Gallo wanted a detailed run-through of everything that had happened since our last little sit-down—which was only yesterday morning, after the shoot-out at the motel the night before. Sitting there and watching my boss frown intensely and purse his lips ever-so-thoughtfully as he questioned and second-guessed every move we made was truly painful, especially given the state I was in, but I’d decided to get through it as passively as I could in order to move on and get back to trying to figure out what was going on.

  Because the one question I kept coming back to was this: what the hell happened at the Russian restaurant in Brighton Beach?

  That was something no one had really explained.

  It was still too fresh, but questions were being asked, particularly by the news media, who were all over the story. We had nine dead there. More than forty in the hospital, several of them critical. Men, women, young, old. The press and our own people were describing the massive brawl as a freak incident. Most of those who’d taken part were Russian. Theories were bouncing around that it was a gang thing. But it didn’t make sense to me. I’d never heard of anything like it, not involving women, not unrelated to a heated sporting event like a boxing match or a political event like a protest march. There was no rhyme or reason for such a savage outburst. It just seemed insane.

  The early information we had from the cops on the scene was that the victims themselves couldn’t really say what had happened. They didn’t know why they had done what they’d done, which was a useful defense, of course, though in this case, it felt like it was too widely consistent to be a cynical ploy from the guilty. A couple of them, however, had mentioned a rage, an aggression that had suddenly swelled up inside them, one they couldn’t explain. They said it was like they were in a trance, or drugged. And I couldn’t get that out of my mind.

  The van had been there too, of course.

  The van that Sokolov had hidden and lied about, the one Ivan had been so desperate to get his hands on.

  By eleven, Aparo and I were back in his Charger, heading out to an industrial park near Webster Avenue in the Bronx. It was where the DMV records for Sokolov’s van had it registered. Maybe we’d know more when we got there.

  “What is it with this van?” I asked as I stared at the picture of it that I was holding, a printout from the traffic cam. “What’s Sokolov got in it?”

  “Maybe he’s like Goldfinger and it’s made of gold,” Aparo said as we sped up the FDR. “Or it’s loaded with drugs. Or maybe,” he added, all excited, his index finger up in the air to press his point, “maybe he’s come up with some radical new kind of engine that runs on a super-cheap alternative fuel and the Mystery Machine’s his secret prototype.” He paused, then, undeterred by my dismissive look, he continued. “Seriously. The guy’s a bit of a nutty professor, isn’t he? Maybe he’s cooked something like that up. The Russians want to keep it under wraps so they can safeguard their oil exports. We want it. Everyone’s after it.”

  He looked at me again like maybe he actually had something there.

  I wasn’t really listening to him anymore, as a weird and nutty idea of my own had just sprouted in my mind.

  I hadn’t just been staring at a photo of the van. My attention had been drawn to the refrigeration unit on its roof.

  It got me thinking about why the unit was there. What one used refrigeration for.

  Meat. Ice cream.

  Bacteria.

  Viruses.

  My mind went all kinds of places with it. And suddenly it didn’t seem as weird or as nutty anymore. And it started to explain a lot about what had been happening.

  Aparo spotted it on my face. “You’ve got that look,” he told me.

  I was too busy concentrating to retort.

  “Come on, Sherlock,” he prodded. “For the cheap seats.”

  “This thing,” I told him, still pensive, tapping my finger against the unit on the van. “What if it’s not for refrigeration? What if it’s the opposite?”

  “A heater?”

  “No. A diffuser. Something to blow air out rather than suck air in and cool it. And what if the air it was blowing out wasn’t just clean air. What if it had something else in it?”

  Aparo wasn’t getting it, and his face clouded up. “Like . . . ?”

  “What if this is some kind of nerve agent?”

  LARISA TCHOUMITCHEVA TOOK A deep breath and straightened her back, then stepped inside Oleg Vrabinek’s office and closed the door behind her.

  “We need to talk,” she told him.

  He motioned for her to sit. She took a seat facing him.

  “I’m getting a lot of pressure from the FBI and the mayor’s office over everything that’s been going on since Yakovlev’s death,” she told him.

  Vrabinek studied her in silence, but said nothing.

  “What is going on, Oleg? You’ve kept me in the dark about this since Monday, but it’s getting way out of hand and I don’t know what I’m supposed to say anymore. All these shooting victims . . . What’s happening? Do we have him yet?”

  Vrabinek’s face clouded, then after a moment, he said, “I think so.”

  “You ‘think’ so? According to the FBI, we do as of around ten p.m. last night.”

  He frowned, the worry creasing his forehead. “I think we do,” he said gruffly. “But I can’t say for sure for the simple reason that I haven’t heard from our man in over twenty-four hours.”

  “How come?”

  “He was supposed to let me know when he had Sokolov so that I could arrange their extraction.” Vrabinek was clearly unhappy about the implication that the agent hadn’t done so. “I don’t know where he is.” He thought about it for a moment, then asked, “Could the Americans be playing us? Do you think they have them?”

  Larisa considered it briefly, then shook her head. “I can’t see why they would. What do they have to gain from it? Besides, I think Reilly was genuinely frustrated and angry about their failure so far.” She paused, then added, “Can’t you reach him?”

  “I’ve tried. He’s not picking up.” Vrabinek pushed himself to his feet and walked over to the platter of bottles that sat on a low cabinet by the large window overlooking the consulate’s rear garden. “The thing about Koschey is, he’s his own boss. He does things his way and answers to no one but the general himself. I can’t order him to do anything.”

  “So what do I do?”

  He opened the small fridge that was built into the bar unit, took out an ice-cold bottle of vodka, and poured himself a tumbler. He knocked it back, then grimaced from the burning feeling it shot down his throat. “Keep doing what you’ve been doing,” he told her. “Mirminsky’s dead. If Koschey does have Sokolov, then I don’t think you’ll be having much more trouble with this. It’s over.”

  Larisa nodded and walked out. And as she stepped into the hallway and headed back to her office, a worrying thought clawed at her gut.

  Koschey’s reputation was that he was a loner who played by his own rules. Which meant that he might be making his own travel arrangements. If he did, she would have failed at her task.

  With, as her handler had warned her, disastrous consequences.

  51

  A nerve agent?” Aparo asked. “You serious?”

  My thoughts were cartwheeling ahead with it. “Think about it. Sokolov, or whatever h
is real name is—he’s a scientist. A Russian scientist. We know he’s very bright. Maybe he came up with something that can turn people aggressive. Something airborne that can set off their most primal instincts. Something he didn’t want anyone to know about.”

  “A gas that turns people aggressive?” Aparo repeated, looking distinctly unconvinced. “You have the gall to say that with a straight face after blowing off my theory about alternative fuel?”

  “I don’t know if it’s a gas or a spray or what, but maybe it’s some kind of drug,” I countered. “One that can go airborne. Like inhaling secondhand smoke. The way pot has an effect on the brain. Maybe this is something like that. The opposite of Prozac. Instead of calming you down, it makes you real angry. Angry and paranoid. So you lash out at the merest provocation. Everything feels like a threat.”

  I felt a rush of energy. The more I thought about it, the less outlandish it seemed. A nerve gas would go a long way to explaining why the crowd at Lolita went from party animals to bloodthirsty savages and back within a matter of minutes.

  “We’ve got to run tox tests on the Lolita crowd,” I said.

  Aparo turned serious. “Hang on a sec, that doesn’t stack up. What about the docks?”

  “What about them?”

  “Sokolov went out of his way to get the van and take it to the docks when he and Jonny went to get Daphne back,” Aparo said. “Why take the van all the way there but not hand it over in exchange for her? That had to be the deal, right?”

  “Maybe that was the plan,” I agreed. “Maybe Ivan wanted the van all along, but maybe something went wrong and he got Sokolov instead.”

  Something about that felt wrong, but I still thought the diffuser/nerve-agent idea merited a closer look.