The Kobalt Dossier

by Eric Van Lustbader

  “Good morning, Ermi,” Kobalt said. “Here is Anton Zherov.”

  “Just consider me a fly on the wall,” Zherov said, thinking himself a wit.

  “More like a bug on the sole of my shoe.” Ermi turned back to Kobalt. She did not ask him to sit and he did not seem inclined to want to.

  “Where are they?” Kobalt said shortly.

  Ermi spread his thick-fingered hands. “Alas, that I do not know, dearest lady.”

  Something changed behind Kobalt’s eyes, something dark and restless stirring. “Yet you contacted me. Even so you are of no use this fine morning.”

  “Oh, but dearest lady, for you I always have a use. In the context you mention I have a close business acquaintance who may know their whereabouts.” With this pronouncement, he set a folded slip of paper on the table beside her coffee cup.

  Kobalt studied it for a moment as if trying to read the tea leaves or the bones thrown. Then she picked up the paper and read its contents. Without another word she reached into a pocket, drew out a number of bills, folded into a pack.

  Ermi whisked it away as quickly and smoothly as a magician performing his vanishing coin trick.

  “A pleasure, as always, dearest lady.” He bowed slightly, backed away, then turned and with surprising agility and speed, disappeared off the terrace.

  “Lovely fellow,” Zherov said with a laugh as he glanced at the address written on the paper in Kobalt’s hand. “Where is this, anyway?”

  “Across town,” she said, frowning. “We need to get out of here now.” But their waiter was nowhere around.

  While Zherov went to pay the bill, she turned her gaze back out to Istanbul, which had been much beloved by her. Now, the tenor of the times, the presidential strongman, the Islamic crackdowns, the tension and anxiety souring the air, made her feel sad.

  *

  The address Ermi had given her was a shop in the eastern quarter of the labyrinth of the city’s famed Grand Bazaar. The sprawling market seemed even more jam-packed than the last time she had been here, if that was possible. As they negotiated the twisting, narrow lanes, merchants on either side beckoned, smiling, urging them to buy silks and broadcloths woven with gold and silver threads, felt and suede slippers with turned up toes and tassels at the heels, copper pots, bronze figurines, intricately filigreed hanging lamps, strings of beads of all kinds from cheap glass to semiprecious stones. They passed coffeehouses, where heavy-lidded men lolled drinking and chatting, shop fronts jammed with hookahs of all sizes and shapes from traditional to fanciful, and so many rug dealers they soon became impossible to count. Here and there, the wooden fretwork balconies of cafés and restaurants overhung the street under the canvas ceiling. And everywhere people teemed in an unending stream. Above all, the exotic scents of cinnamon, clove, allspice, myrrh, sage, cumin, sumac, and mint created a heady swirl, along with the multitude of raised voices enticing, cajoling, bargaining, and haggling vociferously but good-naturedly.

  “Who is the ‘they’ who were the subject of your negotiation with that smarmy piece of—”

  “Shut your piehole,” she snapped.

  “I’m not familiar with—”

  She turned on him. “You like pies?”

  “I do.”

  “Now you know what a piehole is,” she said.

  “Another of your stupid Americanisms,” he muttered.

  “Shut it and keep it shut until further notice.”

  He was about to respond, but the fiery look she threw him changed his mind in a hurry, and he shrugged instead, if only to save whatever face he had left.

  Three-quarters of the way down their destination street, they came to a knife shop that displayed small bladed weapons made of Damascus steel, the kind from which Japanese katana were made. The method of layering stainless steel with carbon steel over and over gave those blades both strength and flexibility. The process, though refined to exquisite excess by the Japanese, originated in the Syrian city for which it was named.

  Kobalt spent some time at the shop window, examining one blade after another. The shopkeeper, seeing her interest, stepped out and inquired whether she wished to buy some of his wares.

  “Not any of these,” she said. “I want to see what you have inside.”

  He gave her a penetrating look. He was a stone-faced man with lifeless button eyes and buzz cut hair. His eyes roved over her. “Have I seen you before, madam?”

  “I was in Istanbul four years ago.”

  “The weather was bad that year, if I remember correctly.”

  “It was too hot,” she responded, the last part of the parole, the recognition exchange previously agreed upon.

  The shopkeeper introduced himself as Ali Khan. Kobalt didn’t bother to give him any name.

  “Wait here,” she told Zherov as he made to follow her and the shopkeeper.

  The interior was narrow, dimly lit, and smelled of oiled metal and incense. Light was provided by a pair of shaded lamps hanging on either side wall. Tendrils of aromatic smoke spiraled from inside a squat worked brass burner sitting on one end of the counter. Motes of dust hung in the air, as sluggish as drunks in a bar.

  Ali Khan stepped behind the counter. Snapped on a modern articulated lamp clamped to the center.

  “Tell me what you know,” she said. “But while you do, please show me your best straight-blade knives, not the crappy folders you sell to tourists.”

  If Ali Khan was insulted, he gave no sign of it, merely reached underneath the counter, producing a roll of felt. He unfurled it onto the polished wooden countertop revealing pockets, each with a knife tucked into it. That he hadn’t offered her tea was the first sign that all was not as it should be.

  The lamplight was a dazzling bluish oblong that illuminated the entire length of the felt. He slipped out one of the knives, held it under the light for her to examine. As he bent forward, she watched a bead of blood run down from behind his ear. This was the second sign. Looking down, she noticed the crescents of blood beneath his fingernails. Three on a match, she thought.

  Keeping her voice calm and steady. “I’d like to hold the knife, check its balance.”

  “Of course, madam.” But at that moment, he slapped at the drop of blood on his cheek as if it were a gnat.

  “You’re bleeding,” Kobalt commented, as if annoyed at being distracted from her scrutiny of the knife.

  “Forget it, it’s nothing,” he said forcefully.

  But he was withdrawing the knife from the light. She snatched it from him, drove it down point first, impaling his hand, pinning it to the countertop. The eyes of the man who was clearly not Ali Khan opened wide. His mouth opened as well, but not a sound emerged. It looked like he was yawning.

  “Who are you?” Kobalt said, as she rolled up the rest of the knives and moved them out of his reach. “What have you done with Ali Khan?”

  The man stared at her with venom. But otherwise gave no sign he was listening.

  “Anton Antonovich!” Kobalt called over her shoulder.

  Zherov came at a trot. He took in the scene instantly. “Nicely done! What’s going on?”

  “This one isn’t the shopkeeper,” she said, moving around the end of the counter. “Watch him. Carefully. There’s something weird about him.”

  “Weird how?” Zherov asked, but she was already through a beaded curtain into the back space.

  *

  The man was looking into the middle distance, ignoring Zherov completely. Leaning across the counter, Zherov slapped him across the face. No visible reaction.

  Gripping the man’s jaw, he turned his head so that the man could do nothing else but look at him. He studied the man’s facial features for several minutes, and apparently recognized something there. “Who the fuck are you?”

  When the man’s lips curled upward, Zherov broke his nose with the heel of his hand. It happened so fast, the man’s eyes briefly rolled up in his head. Blood squirted out as if from a squeeze bottle. He hated to admit it, but Koba
lt was right. There was something weird about the guy. Either he was one of those people incapable of feeling pain, or his non-reaction was something else altogether. Something sinister.

  “Hmm.” Zherov came around the counter, took up a knife, slit the man’s shirt, then ripped the shirt entirely off, baring him down to his waist.

  The man stood immobile, as if he was inured to being stripped and searched.

  “Tats,” Zherov murmured to himself. “It’s tats I’m looking for.” But there was nothing on the guy’s back or on his arms, though he searched every square inch, looking to see if a tattoo had been abraded with a brick or scraped off with a shard of glass.

  While he was thus occupied, the man’s free hand gripped the handle of the buried knife and with a mighty effort that spasmed the muscles in his arm and shoulder wrenched it free. He whirled, the bloody knife raised to strike at Zherov’s heart, but Zherov’s fist was already moving. It slammed into his throat, fracturing his windpipe. All the energy should have drained out of him as his body was deprived of oxygen, but the knife still followed its arc. Though Zherov was positioned differently it was too late to alter the path of the knife, which buried itself in the meat of Zherov’s left biceps. Zherov snarled into eyes as flat and stony as discs. A punch to the man’s heart finally stopped him. Zherov pulled the knife out of his arm, teeth bared as he grunted in pain. The man collapsed back onto the countertop, gasping like a landed fish, utterly spent.

  That’s when Zherov saw the tat. Through the blood from the man’s broken nose, he found himself staring at a tattoo of a knife plunged through the man’s neck: the hilt and part of the blade on the right side, the point of the blade on the left. It was a Russian prison tattoo, crude but effective, made with a mixture of rubber scorched in the kitchen ovens and urine. Each tattoo had a specific meaning and carried a heavy weight. This one marked the guy as someone who had killed an inmate in “the zone,” as Russian prison was called, and who for the right price was available to kill again.

  Clearly, he’d continued this profession when he’d been released from “the zone.” Who had hired him to intercept Kobalt was unknown and now, because Zherov’s interrogation of him had resulted in retaliation, it was no longer possible to retrieve that information. Ripping off a length of cloth from the man’s shirt, Zherov fashioned a tourniquet, tied it tight above the wound on his own biceps with the help of his teeth.

  The criminal assassin splayed out, sliding down off the countertop to crumple at Zherov’s feet, as dead as everything else in the downtrodden knife shop of horrors.

  *

  Speaking of horrors, the real Ali Khan was waiting patiently for Kobalt.

  A trap, she thought. Fucking Ermi led us into a trap.

  He was sprawled on the floor of the back room, a space filled with shelves of finished blades and unfinished handles. Machines for grinding, sanding, and carving, as well as a thick-topped wooden worktable, took up most of the space. Judging by Ali Khan’s ripped nails and knuckles he hadn’t known the man in the front of the shop and had put up the best fight he knew how. But squatting down beside the mutilated corpse, she could tell that he’d had no chance. Whatever else that guy posing as Ali Khan was, he was most definitely a professional sadist.

  Kobalt was well acquainted with the sadistic mind and the devastating abuse, both physical and emotional, it could inflict, since long before she was exfiltrated out of the United States. But this devastation was something else entirely. The unabashed delight with which this unspeakable horror had been inflicted spoke of a sadistic mind of a higher order. The man had been carved and gutted.

  He was to all intents and purposes inside out.

  8

  MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

  It was a fact, known throughout the vast and terrifying Lubyanka building, that Dima Tokmakov was possessed of a restless nature. It was also a known fact that once a week, without fail, through sunshine, rain, sleet, and snow, he would take a long lunch with his mistress du jour, a position that spun as often as the wheel in Wheel of Fortune and was currently occupied by a svelte blonde named Nadya.

  Clad in his heavy overcoat, Tokmakov took the elevator down to the ground floor and made his way out of Lubyanka Square. He walked to the Lubyanka underground station. Approximately two minutes later, he boarded a train on the K line, exiting one stop later at Teatral’naya Square. He could have walked the distance, and in fine weather he was tempted to do so, but his security conscious mind would not allow that. It was far easier to check for tags and to melt into the crowds in the massive underground passageways and stations.

  Nadya was waiting for him at their appointed time at the Christian Louboutin Petrovka Street boutique. She laughed when she saw him and kissed him boldly on the mouth in front of the browsing tourists, all of whom, men and women alike, felt pangs of jealousy like arrows through their hearts. And why not? Nadya was gorgeous, tall, lean, blond, and blue-eyed, with the figure of a pole dancer, which she, in fact, had been before she met Dima. Now through his influence she was a top model at a first-rank international modeling agency. This perfect specimen pointed out the shoes she coveted this week and he bought them for her, no questions asked.

  Afterward, as was their weekly routine, they strolled arm in arm to the flat he rented for his rotating mistresses a block and a half from the Bolshoi Theater. Once inside, she turned on some sultry music, kicked off her shoes, slipped on the new Louboutin pumps, and began to slowly undress for him. Dima, still in his heavy overcoat, watched her with eyes gleaming with lust.

  When she was naked, save for the Louboutins, she lowered herself to her hands and knees, crawled across the floor to where Dima stood, eyes riveted on her. Still on her knees, she rose until her torso was perfectly straight. She raised her hands to her breasts, offering them up to him.

  There followed forty or so minutes of strenuous, not to say acrobatic, sex, integrating an astonishing array of erotic implements, that resulted in Dima lying flat on his back gasping for air while Nadya took a wet face towel to his red and sweating parts. This resulted in another erection, to which she attended as artfully as an ikebana iemoto—grand master.

  Later, they shared ice-cold vodka, along with a light lunch, after which Dima left without a word or a backward glance at Nadya’s gracefully sleeping form.

  It was now precisely two in the afternoon. There was a seven-minute walk south awaiting him from Teatral’naya Square to Nikolskaya Street. He took a circuitous route, doubling back several times before entering the vast, humming post office. He crossed the echoing space to the bank of small brass lockboxes against the left-hand wall. Using a key, he opened his box, slid a neatly wrapped package approximately the size of two bricks laid one atop the other from within his voluminous overcoat, and locked the box back up.

  Crossing to the other side of the room, he joined a queue for stamps. He waited patiently. From time to time, he graciously allowed someone to precede him so that he never came close to the bronze-framed window where the stamps were being sold.

  At precisely 2:45 a uniformed courier entered the post office and, without looking around, proceeded directly to the bank of bronze-faced lockboxes. Using a key identical to Dima’s he opened Dima’s lockbox, took out the package, wrote on a receipt with the tracking number, placed that in the box, and locked it.

  When he was gone, Dima left the queue, opened the box, slipped the receipt into the pocket of his overcoat. Eighteen minutes later, he was back at his desk in the Lubyanka, dealing with SIGINT—signals intelligence consisting mainly of electronic intel reporting, risk assessments on targets, and possible assignments in order of their importance.

  He was thinking how easy it was these days to interrupt or even redirect electronic communication, which thankfully could not be done with a private courier service, when Feliks knocked on his door.

  “Come.”

  Feliks set a pair of red-jacketed dossiers before Dima. “How was lunch?”

  Dima picke
d up his faint snicker. “Better than yours, of that I am certain.” He didn’t look up or in any other way acknowledge Feliks’s presence.

  9

  WASHINGTON, DC

  “The fact is I’m actually no longer your boss.”

  “I already established that.”

  Ben and Evan were in his car, heading toward the Fisher house in the Cleveland Park area. Ben was driving, Evan in shotgun. She was staring fixedly ahead, as if she could already see Bobbi’s house. She wore black stove-pipe jeans, a black T-shirt with THE WHO in white across the chest, and a great-looking three-quarter-length car coat with a stand-up collar, in a shade of jade green. It was the outfit that had been left carefully folded over the slat-backed chair in the room where she had recovered. Much to her surprise, every item fitted her perfectly, which meant they were picked out by Isobel, not Ben. Of course it was Isobel; she remembered the house from when she’d been there previously. It seemed strange to her that Ben hadn’t mentioned Isobel by name. Was he trying to hide his relationship with her? And, come to think of it, what exactly was his relationship with her?

  Ben shot her a quick look. “Yeah, but what I mean is we’ve been fired.”

  That got Evan’s attention. “Come again?”

  “They’ve closed down the shop. The others have been reassigned, probably as desk jockeys stashed somewhere in the bowels of NSA, filing briefs no one cares about.” And he told her why POTUS had decided to ax his shop. “Partly, he hates women in any capacity of power, hated that I had as many women agents as men. It’s also part of the systematic gutting of the intelligence sector. But also this is retribution for our dismantling Nemesis in the Bavarian Alps three months ago.”

  This news shook her out of her monomania, at least for the moment. “You must be devastated. I know how much the shop meant to you. You’d been working toward it for years.”