The Kobalt Dossier

by Eric Van Lustbader

She heard Zherov’s voice as if from far away. Closer to, she became aware of the wind through the masts of the boats in the marina, the lapping of water against hulls, a sharp cry from a seagull disturbed from sleep.

  She opened her eyes but did not look at him; her gaze was still fixed on a point only she could see. “Listen to me, Anton,” she said in an almost dreamy voice, a voice she had used many times before in other difficult settings. “There once was a cat and a rat. This was a long time ago, in a world not so different than ours. The cat has the rat cornered. The cat isn’t particularly big, the rat isn’t at all small. Anyway, the rat is trapped, knows it, and starts to plead for its life. This rat has a particularly convincing manner about it, a sincerity most rats lack. The cat is impressed, as any cat would be.

  “‘I bet you don’t even like rat meat,’ the rat says. ‘You look like a discerning sort of fellow, someone I could even admire. You know rat meat is sinewy and gristly, no fit meal for someone such as yourself. I bet mouse is more your cup of tea. Nice plump mouse is a dish fit for someone as astute as yourself. Am I right?’ ‘It just so happens you are,’ the cat replies, impressed, despite itself. ‘And you’re hungry,’ says the rat. ‘Am I right?’ ‘It just so happens you are,’ comes the reply. ‘Well, then, we can strike a bargain. You let me go, you promise not to harm me or my family, and I’ll lead you to a nest of mice fat as houses, biggest you’ve ever seen.’

  “The cat agrees. Why wouldn’t it? Sounds like a great deal. So the cat backs up, lets the rat go. And what does the rat do? It speeds off around the corner, leaving the cat sitting on its haunches. But the cat is cunning, too. It puts its nose to the floor and follows the rat back to its own nest in time to see the rat’s hindquarters about to disappear into a hole it has gnawed in the baseboard.

  “The cat pounces, digs it claws into the rat’s back, drags it out, and bites off its head. Then the cat shoves its forepaw into the nest, drags out the rat’s family and, one by one, bites off their heads.”

  “What am I, a five-year-old who scares easily?” Zherov spread his hands, still careful not to get too close to Ermi’s head. “Why are you telling me this story?”

  Kobalt’s gaze swung toward him at last. “It’s not a story, really. It’s a parable. There’s a point to it, a moral.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Your sympathies are naturally with the cat. Cats are nice, right? They’re clean, they make you laugh at their antics, they’re empathetic to humans. Rats are, well, they’re rats; they’re dirty, they eat garbage, they spread disease. They’re rodents, for God’s sake.”

  “So?”

  Kobalt snapped her fingers several times. “Are you being deliberately dense, Anton? When you come down to it, the cat and the rat—they’re both the same. They lie, they betray others and themselves. And they’re vicious as hell.”

  Zherov sat still for some time. The seagull’s cry came again, this time joined by others. It was the hour before dawn, when the light in the sky was as uncertain as the future.

  “Dima,” he said at length.

  “Yes, Dima. Our boss. In your mind, he was the cat. But reading Ermi’s ledger, seeing how he profited from betraying his own people, you now know he’s the rat. The cat and the rat are one and the same.”

  “In other words, no one’s on your side.” He inclined his head toward her. “Except you, of course.”

  “Oh, Anton, me least of all.” For once her smile was genuinely benign. “But you knew this about me going in. And I know it about you. That’s our advantage. That gives us an edge. Neither of us are pretending we’re the cat.”

  “Rats till the end of the night.”

  “And beyond. Perhaps.”

  Zherov considered this for some time. He glanced down at poor Ermi’s head. “Rat,” he said.

  “No, Anton. It’s true he gave us up. But he also gave us a priceless gift.” She slid out the leather-bound ledger, the damning evidence against Dima Nikolaevich Tokmakov. “We have the electronic keys to his bank account in Cyprus. With that hoard we can fashion a new life, in our own image, not Dima’s, not the SVR’s, not the FSB’s.”

  Zherov got up. “I need a drink.”

  They returned below, rummaged through Ermi’s stash of liquor, which was more extensive than the one hidden bottle in his office.

  “Vodka!” Zherov proclaimed, holding high the bottle he’d fetched from the small freezer. “Beluga! Say this for Ermi, he had excellent taste in liquor.”

  Kobalt got down a pair of glasses and Zherov poured the vodka. They looked at each other for a long time before they clinked glasses and threw the icy liquor down their throats. Zherov immediately refilled the glasses and the contents were downed in seconds.

  “Now.” He kicked the door to the head closed so Ermi’s headless corpse was out of sight, if not out of mind. “I’ve been puzzling over something. If Omega killed Ermi, they’re also responsible for the ex-con at the knife shop.”

  She frowned. “The trouble with that theory is unlike the SVR, Omega would never hire anyone—Russian ex-cons included—to do their dirty work.”

  He spread his hands. “So, what? The SVR and Omega were both here in Istanbul at the same time, centered on you?”

  “Omega I can understand; they want revenge.” She shook her head. “But the SVR? That doesn’t track.”

  She poured them both a third round. This time, though, she took up her glass and sipped the vodka, savoring its unique flavor. It was made in Mariinsk, where the Trans-Siberian Railway crossed the Kiya River, and the artisanal water was superb.

  “To be honest, I don’t get it either.” He regarded her levelly. “Listen, about what I said before about you screwing up your Omega remit in Odessa—”

  “Forget it.”

  He nodded and drank up.

  When they had finished, she rose. “It’s almost dawn. Time to get out of here. You unplug us and cast off the lines. I’ll get the boat ready to move out.”

  “You know how to drive this thing?” Zherov asked.

  She looked at him archly. “And you don’t?”

  *

  When they were far enough from the marina to have reached deep water, she cut the engines to idle. Zherov had found a large tarp in which they wrapped Ermi’s corpse. Together, they hauled it topside. She added the head and the boat’s anchor, while Zherov added his tie and jacket, both of which were smeared with blood, then they secured the package with two of the nylon lines, one around the ankles, the other around the shoulders.

  After they rolled it over the side, heard the heavy splash, and watched Ermi vanish into the deep, they sat and finished off the vodka, taking turns drinking directly from the bottle. The sky had turned pink, the light edging ever so slowly from blue to gold. Wind gusts were weak and fitful. Not a good day for sailing.

  They had not exchanged a word for some time, fully absorbed in their tasks. At length, Zherov set the empty bottle aside. “Will you tell me more about your time with Omega?”

  “It took more than six weeks of living in Odessa as Alina Kravets,” she heard herself saying. “Naked, without any backup whatsoever, without even a Moscow-based exfiltration plan should I run into trouble.”

  “And you did run into trouble.”

  Kobalt nodded. “Eventually. But not the kind you think. I was only a sluzhashchiy—an acolyte. I wasn’t privy to their inner circle. Someone must have ratted me out. They came for me in the hour of the wolf—just before dawn. Strictly training book protocol. They felt they needed three of them, but they were wrong. I killed them one after another, and then I got the hell out of Odessa.”

  It seemed to Kobalt that Zherov was seeing her in a new light, but that might simply have been the rising of the sun.

  “What did you mean when you said the trouble you ran into was not what I think?”

  “Mm. Well, as I told you Omega’s foundation is deeply religious.”

  “Calling you an acolyte was a dead giveaway. In any ev
ent, with extremists that’s hardly new.”

  “This one is. Their liturgy is in Church Slavonic, which is almost identical to Russian. During one of the interminable services I slipped out.”

  Out at sea, boats could be seen, at first just smudges in her vision against the rising sun, but gradually revealing details, as if she were watching an artist layering in color onto her canvas. The water had turned from black to cobalt, lighter where the morning touched it.

  “I was sent to infiltrate, discover their mission, and to sabotage it. They were open about the mission—to cleanse the world of evil, what they considered evil, anyway—but I still had no idea how they planned on accomplishing it. I needed to penetrate their inner sanctum—papers, files, email or text conversations.

  “All the files were housed in a central building—a place I wasn’t allowed to enter. I had formulated a plan to get in unseen, during a service, but I never made it. A limousine came through the gates, rolling slowly, almost majestically, I thought, through the compound. I could only stay where I was and watch. It stopped beside the entrance to the central building. Two huge men in shiny black suits emerged—bodyguards, I had no doubt. When their surveillance of the area was complete, another figure stepped out. A woman.”

  Ermi’s boat had been drifting all this time. Now that there was water traffic, Kobalt rose and went to the cockpit, drew the engine out of neutral, and set a course parallel to the shore.

  “This woman, who was she?” Zherov had come up beside her.

  “Unknown.” Kobalt was staring straight ahead. “But my guess is she was the leader. She was certainly treated that way, not only by her bodyguards but by the people who appeared out of the central building to greet her.”

  “Did you see her face? Would you recognize her?”

  “I tried, but by that time the service was over. There were too many people in the compound. She was tall and slim. She didn’t walk like a woman.”

  Zherov frowned. “What? She walked like a man?”

  Kobalt shook her head. “Not that either, exactly. To be honest, I can’t put my finger on it.”

  She guided the boat onward.

  “Where are we headed?”

  “We need to scuttle this boat.”

  Zherov grunted. “And how will we do that and get back to shore without being seen?”

  “Do you know how to swim, Anton?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then all will be well.”

  He shook his head for a moment. It seemed that she utterly perplexed him. Every time he turned around, she did or said something that surprised—or even shocked—him.

  “One important thing I did discover before I left Omega is that Odessa wasn’t their home base.”

  “Where is it then?” Zherov asked.

  She gave him a penetrating look. “We’re going to go back to Odessa to find out.”

  17

  WASHINGTON, DC

  Evan is dreaming again of her sister. This time she is with Bobbi in Copenhagen. She is nineteen, Bobbi two years younger. They are holding hands. Bobbi’s face is alight with wonder and excitement. They had been in Sumatra, but had cut the beach lounging short because Bobbi had suddenly insisted they spend more time in the Danish capital, among all the tall, handsome blond men.

  So. Copenhagen. One minute the sky is sunny and clear, the next gray and low. Ominous rumbling abounds from all sides, as if the oncoming storm is descending upon the city from every direction at once. Even before the wind begins to pick up, lifting up coat flaps, upending the most careful hairdos, swirling newspapers in tiny gyres, Evan knows they should be seeking shelter. But the streets are full, clogged with more and more people. Moreover, she does not know which way to turn. As a consequence of her fear and indecision, she is rooted to the spot. A swirl of people, coming out of nowhere, denser than the rest, shoulder by, and Bobbi’s hand is wrenched out of hers. Almost at once, Bobbi is swallowed up in the chattering throng. Evan tries to call out, but she has no voice. She screams Bobbi’s name but it’s as if her vocal cords are paralyzed. She tries to run after her sister, but she cannot find her way, and cannot recall in which direction Bobbi was headed when she vanished amidst the dense knot of strangers. Then, as the clouds open up and rain begins to pelt her, she finds that she cannot even remember her sister’s face.

  *

  Cold sweat bathed her. Gloved hands clamped around Pine’s throat, her eyes refocused. They had heard him enter the building, heard his raised voice coming closer and closer.

  “You’re cornered now. I have you up a tree. The only escape route is through the front door. Believe me, I won’t hesitate to shoot out your kneecaps. My orders are to bring you in alive. No one said anything about what shape you need to be in, as long as you’re conscious.”

  “Who are you working for?” Evan shouted just before she and Ben scuttled from one room to another.

  “I’ll share that bit with you,” Pine called back, “after I’ve shattered your knees.” His voice echoed through the empty building.

  “Will’s dead,” Ben called. “And soon you will be too.”

  This time, they stayed put. They let him come at them, then, according to plan.

  Evan took him down just after he jumped Ben, sending Ben tumbling against the far wall. She heard the throttled gurgle of Pine’s breathing, she was aware of his arms beating against the floor helplessly as he tried to drag oxygen into his starving lungs. She concentrated on Pine’s face—his bulging eyes, his ruined nose, blackened, stump-like, the rictus of his grimace, the trembling of his lips, lifting away from his bloodstained teeth.

  Then she felt strong hands on her shoulders, trying to lift her away. She resisted. A voice in her ear, but the words meant nothing to her. She was in another time, another place. The hands lifted from her shoulders, grasped her wrists, trying to pull her hands from Pine’s throat. She resisted. Her thumbs dug deeper into his windpipe. A moment more and she would crack open his cricoid, the ring of cartilage that protected his trachea. That would be the finish of him.

  “Evan. Evan!” It was Ben’s voice buzzing in her ear. “Let him go. Evan, take a deep breath and let him go.”

  “Why?” Her voice was thick, curdled, seeming foreign even to herself.

  Ben said, “We need what he has to tell us.” His voice was urgent but calm. That was her Ben.

  She nodded numbly and let go.

  Pine was striped with the pale lavender illumination from a construction fixture lying on the floor that Ben had found and plugged in. Luckily, the construction company hadn’t had the electricity turned off.

  “Now you’ll tell us everything,” Ben said from over her shoulder.

  Pine did not acknowledge Ben’s existence. His eyes were fixed on Evan as he took a long shuddering breath. Then he smiled. And gnashed his teeth, his smile morphing into a smirk.

  The acrid smell of bitter almonds came to her. Her head jerked away.

  “Ben!”

  But Pine’s lips were already turning blue. A baby blue foam bubbled up through his smirk.

  Ben pulled her away. “Cyanide,” she said thickly.

  “In a false tooth.”

  “Old as time.” She teetered back on her haunches. Her muscles ached, her head hurt like the flaming spires of hell. Her mind vomited up the image of Onders’s gun to the back of her head, his words dripping like poison from his lips. Her entire body began to shake.

  Ben slid down, his back against a bare wooden stud. “Jesus wept, Evan.” He reached out and put his arm around her, and this time she didn’t brush it away, but curled into him until the shakes subsided.

  She looked around at the severely abused room in this falling-apart building. As if seeing it for the first time. She sat up straight. “Are we alone?”

  “Nobody alive here but us, the rats, and the roaches.”

  Evan rose, holding on to a girder. She stared down into Pine’s face. The blood from Pine’s nose, smashed by her hammer blow, was
a black stain, overrun by the last dribble of foam. The cyanotic lips looked livid purple. She bent, looking more closely. Four parallel scratches on the left side of his neck were dark with dried blood.

  Ben crab-walked over to the corpse, systematically plundered his pockets, finding only pocket litter—the usual detritus of restaurant receipts and the like meant to help authenticate his legend. He ran his fingertips down all the seams of Pine’s clothes, looking for anything that might have been sewn in. The last seam he checked was on the collar of Pine’s jacket. “Something here.” Using his knife, he carefully slit open the seam, slipped out a small, 2x3 photo of a woman from the waist up.

  He held it up for Evan so see. “Recognize her?”

  Evan took out the photo taken outside Cologne, put the two side by side. “It’s Ana,” she said. “The same woman who was with Onders two years ago.”

  “Ideas?”

  “Her hair’s shorter here. They were both her lovers?”

  “Huh.”

  “Anyway, Pine called him Will, the photo is ‘To W,’ so I’m thinking William Onders really was his name.”

  “That would be a break,” Ben confirmed.

  He rose, took her elbow, and together they left Pine there. It was an open question what would get to him first—the rats or the roaches.

  *

  “When I had my hands around his throat, I was thinking of Onders, his gun on me, his words in my ear. I was terrified and elated all at once.” She gave him a searching look. “Does that make sense?”

  “Perfect sense.” Ben cleared his throat. “Look, you’ve just gone through more traumatic events than most people—even in our business—experience in their lives. So cut yourself some slack.”

  “I can’t.” Evan put her head in her hands. “Not when Wendy and Michael are missing.”

  They sat across from one another at a booth in the roadside bar and diner within walking distance of the Lethe motel, where they had holed up the night before. They had chosen the booth that had the best view out the plate glass windows at the parking lot and the traffic on the interstate behind.