The Kobalt Dossier

by Eric Van Lustbader

  “Yes,” Pine said gently. “That is possible. But more likely it’s that they are family. She is without issue.”

  “What?”

  “She’s barren. I don’t doubt she will find a way to use the children. I believe she will indoctrinate them into Omega’s extremist religion. If she has her way—if she is not stopped—she will ensure they become Omega’s future standard-bearers.”

  Ben sat perfectly still. His heart thundered so hard in his chest he could scarcely breathe. “What …” his voice cracked, forcing him to start over. “What did you mean, family? How on earth could Bobbi’s children be family to Ana?”

  Before Leonard Pine could answer, three people stepped into the kitchen: Evan, Reveshvili, and a woman—a wan beauty, willowy and alluring, who Ben had never seen before. He stood to meet them, as did Pine.

  “Ben Butler,” Evan said in a formal manner Ben felt odd in the extreme, “I’d like to introduce you to my parents: Herr Doktor Konstantin Reveshvili and Frau Doktor Rebecca Reveshvili.”

  44

  CONSTANTA, ROMANIA

  Less than a quarter mile from the airport squatted a nondescript building that might have been the regional headquarters of a since defunct import-export business. That’s what it looked like from the outside. Once inside, however, it became clear that nothing could be further from the truth, for this was a former black site, used by the CIA a decade ago for the interrogation of terrorists known and suspected.

  Even ten years later, the interior held on to the smells of blood, brain matter, sweat, pain, fear, and human waste, which, like cigarette smoke in a pub, had seeped into the porous bare concrete walls, giving the place a gaggingly thick atmosphere like few other places on earth.

  Apart from the stench, the first thing that drew their attention when they switched on their LED flashlights was the four industrial-size water spigots protruding obscenely from the walls. Then the three enormous drains sunk into the floor. The concrete surrounding those drains served as indelible evidence of the strenuous work performed by the previous occupiers. The stains were dark, wide, and deep as lakes. In a far corner, a pyramid of the huge glass bottles used to fill industrial water dispensers rose, mottled with myriad spiderwebs.

  They had arrived in the area early. Lyudmila had rightfully decided they should not wait at the airport, where their presence could be questioned or reported. They wished to remain unheralded and unsighted in Romania.

  While Zherov checked out the space in detail, Lyudmila had her final talk with Kobalt—final in the sense that after this they would both be changed. Or they would be dead.

  “Kobalt, I won’t lie to you. I have been given the location of Omega’s headquarters.”

  “That last call you got.”

  Lyudmila nodded.

  “Then we’re all set to go as soon as my plane lands? How far are we going? Will it require refueling?”

  “You and Zherov are returning to Moscow.”

  “What?” Hands on hips, feet at shoulder width, an altogether aggressive stance. “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “You have urgent business in the capital.”

  “More urgent than taking down Omega? I don’t think so.”

  “I’m going to take care of Omega.” She had no intention of telling her that she would be meeting Evan there, just as she had no intention of telling her that her real parents were alive and living in Germany. “You had your chance with them, and your failure, no matter the reason, has gotten you in hot water with those inside the FSB who control your fate.”

  “Dima.”

  “And his boss, Director General Stanislav Budimirovich Baev.” She reached out, gripped Kobalt’s shoulder. “Hear me, Bobbi, if you’re ever to have the career at FSB we both want, you—”

  “‘We’?” Kobalt echoed. “How does my career involve you?”

  “You’re alone, Bobbi—totally alone. None of your superiors can be trusted an inch. Do you really believe you can find your own way when I could not?”

  Kobalt looked away, at Zherov peeking into corners, looking for what she could not say.

  “I’ve learned from my mistakes. But in the conventional sense it’s too late: I’m persona non grata in Moscow. I’m an exile. And yet I have all this knowledge. Ironic, don’t you think? But this is knowledge vital to you. It can guide you past the pitfalls, the internecine warfare that riddles FSB and all its offshoots.”

  Kobalt rubbed her temples. “Why should I trust you?”

  Lyudmila shrugged. “Don’t, for all I care. But know this: we both want the same thing.”

  “And what is that?” Kobalt’s tone was blatantly skeptical. “This better be good.”

  “We both want to be in the game, while remaining free—our own people.” She peered at Kobalt. “Is that not what you want, Bobbi, or have I read you wrong from the moment I first met you?”

  Kobalt took a long time in answering. She seemed to be gathering herself around a center she was not yet altogether sure of. At length, she cleared her throat. “No, Lyudmila. You’re not wrong.”

  “Then fly back to Moscow and clean up the mess you made.”

  “The mess I made? Someone ratted me out. The same person who coerced Ermi into giving me up in Istanbul.”

  “And you must find that person and air them out,” Lyudmila said. “The sooner the better. Whoever it is, is a danger to you. Being undermined from inside is a long walk off a short pier.”

  “I want to finish what I started with Omega. Dima gave me the remit—”

  “And how did that end?” Lyudmila shook her head. “Think with your mind, not your emotions, Bobbi.”

  “But I had already formulated a new plan. Dima was about to accompany me to an interview with Baev to present it when I got the news about the abduction.”

  “Lucky for you. That interview would not have gone well. Baev would have raked you over the coals.” Lyudmila shook her head. “No, you need to tend to business back in Moscow right now.”

  “If you know all this, what do you need me for?”

  Lyudmila smiled, showing sharp teeth. “What comes to me now is second- and thirdhand. With you on the inside and rising up the hierarchy everything will change for both of us. You get the career you deserve, and I get straight intel. In addition, you will be protected.”

  Kobalt turned away, but there was nothing to see in this place, the bones of an abattoir financed and overseen by the darkest of American forces.

  “Take the plane,” Lyudmila said. “Return to Moscow, use the leverage you’ve unearthed.”

  “And how d’you propose I do that?”

  “Assert yourself, Bobbi.”

  “I have the means to destroy Dima, a list of payouts for giving up the missions outside St. Petersburg, Berlin, Kiev, and Aleppo that blew up in SVR’s collective face.”

  “But it isn’t enough to destroy Dima. You have the power to damage Baev, as well. Dima was his hire, and even though they are at war, this war is par for the course inside FSB.”

  “Then … ?”

  “You must take your information to the one man who distrusts you more than anyone else: the director of FSB, Minister Darko Vladimirovich Kusnetsov.”

  Kobalt started as if hit with a cattle prod. “That’s insane. A suicide mission. You’re insane.”

  “Kusnetsov is, above all else, a pragmatist. This pragmatism is what has allowed him to stand above the fray, watching those below him eat each other. He is a man acutely aware of just how treacherous the balance of power inside FSB can be.”

  “What if I think your plan is nuts? What if I think you’re using me to gain your own ends? What if I shake the Omega location out of you?”

  “No need. I’ll give it to you,” Lyudmila said deadpan. “If that’s what you want. But Omega will be expecting you. You’ll encounter your children. In all likelihood they’ll find out who you really are. And back in Moscow your own personal antagonist mole will continue to undermine you.

 
“Look, I know you have doubts. You think I’m lying to you. But the irrefutable fact is what you’ve uncovered on Dima is seismic. In Kusnetsov’s hands, it will shift the balance of power all the way down the line. And the truth is if you agree we’ll be using each other. We’ll know that up front.”

  Kobalt considered. This was the same argument she used to recruit Zherov. She meant it and perhaps so did Lyudmila. One thing was true—she needed to tamp down on her seething emotions. She had allowed her failure—for whatever reason—at the Omega compound to get under her skin. It was clouding her judgment, Lyudmila was right about that. What if she was right about everything? As she continued to ponder the imponderable, she ticked off her own list: she had Dima’s fortune banked, she had recruited Zherov, but, yes, other than these positives she was alone, again as Lyudmila pointed out. What use was money without an infrastructure, without her knowing the ropes? She could say no here and be on her own, but with all the new information was that really a wise idea?

  Ermi’s money set her free. But even walking away had its pitfalls, for surely her Russian masters would come after her, hunt her down, kill her. Alternatively, she could operate on her own. But doing what? Hiring herself out to the highest bidder? She already knew who some of those bidders would be: warlords, arms dealers, international drug traffickers, authoritarian heads of state—human scum she had no intention of working for.

  Belatedly, she realized that she had been so wrapped up in this second chance at breaking up Omega, she had not thought her future through. Ermi’s money had changed everything, as huge amounts of money will. It gave her freedom, but it also could become a prison, an overseer to which she became enslaved. But if, for the time being, she ignored her cache … she could envision the way forward Lyudmila was offering. So … what was it to be?

  At last, she nodded. “All right. I’m in.”

  “Good. You have two Moscow remits,” Lyudmila said. “The first is to get in to see Kusnetsov. The second is to ferret out your mole and terminate him.”

  “I don’t know a thing about Kusnetsov,” Kobalt confessed. “How do I handle him?”

  Lyudmila grinned, her teeth shone in Zherov’s flashlight beam as he returned from his recon. “Once you’re with him, this is what I suggest.”

  45

  FLESH/METAL/BONE

  Two persistent rumors running through FSB lore centered around its head, Minister Darko Vladimirovich Kusnetsov. The first was that he never slept; the second was that he slept in a coffin. Like most rumors there was a kernel of truth to both. Kusnetsov slept on average two hours a night. He also had an aversion to direct sunlight. He was never seen in daylight without his signature wide-brimmed hat, black as a raven’s wings.

  Director General Stanislav Budimirovich Baev had cause to think on these things as he made the two-mile journey from his home to Permskaya Ulitsa, on the northeast outskirts of Moscow. No light penetrated the car’s blacked-out windows, keeping him shadowed as he was driven through the city and out past the Ring Road. Usually, he disliked getting up at 5 A.M., but today was different, for he’d slept hardly a wink. Besides, this was the best time of the day and week to meet with Kusnetsov; his news couldn’t wait for their next shark tank dive tomorrow night.

  But inevitably, possibly lamentably, his mind turned to Kata in whose townhouse he had been staying the past couple of nights. Long after they would cease their bouts of sex the taste of her flesh would linger on his tongue, like a bite of the best chocolate slowly revealing its constituents, its secrets, as it melted. That complex taste kept him from normal sleep, in a kind of suspended state, not quite awake, but floating on a sea of her hot flesh. He closed his eyes, and her taste came to him, risen from his memory. It was dangerous to think of her naked body now, to become aroused when he needed all his attention focused on the imminent meeting, but her fragrance was too alluring to resist. But last night, he lay in her bed, inhaling her scent like attar, and listened to the silence of the house, for the first time alone in her townhouse. Odd. The place seemed dead without her electric presence.

  His reverie broke apart as his driver turned the car in to the entrance to the Poryan Meat Processing plant, a cluster of neat blue-and-cream-tiled buildings. Concrete and asphalt dominated, dotted here and there with small patches of grass and a rather sad-looking line of plane trees scarcely out of their infancy. The sodium lights were still on, illuminating the car park and the antiseptic fronts of the buildings. The sky radiated the sickly yellow of the nighttime city, like an old man’s rotted teeth, blotting out all stars.

  Inside the spotless stainless-steel interior the night manager, still on duty this early in the morning, greeted Baev formally and, sweeping one arm out, ushered him into the cavernous building. They passed beef carcasses hanging on hooks, enormous vats where meat and its byproducts were ground, until the whine of rotary saws and the heavy, wet thwacks of cleavers striking raw beef presaged their approach to the butchering station.

  The glassed-in cubicles were aligned side by side. Each featured a pair of waist-high benches, a rotary saw, an array of knives, cleavers, and the like, along with a pewter slop sink. Kusnetsov, clad in a thick neoprene butcher’s apron, occupied one such booth. The night manager stopped, pointed wordlessly, and left Baev to navigate the butcher’s row on his own.

  Kusnetsov’s apron was splashed with blood, but not nearly as much as Baev would have expected. Uncharacteristically for him, his hair held beads of sweat, his forearms were bare and glistening with his efforts with a mighty cleaver, which he wielded with frightening aplomb. His grandfather had been a butcher in a small town outside of St. Petersburg. And legend had it that he taught Kusnetsov all there was to know about butchering. Of course, as legends will, this one became entangled in the absurd—mainly the notion that Kusnetsov plied his beloved sideline on humans—traitors, criminals, even oligarchs who dared to defy him. Looking at him now, however, Baev could believe the legend.

  Even before he came abreast of the cubicle in which Kusnetsov labored, he began to swagger. The bearer of glad tidings, he had good reason to feel buoyed up.

  “Minister Kusnetsov,” he said loudly and in his heartiest tone, but before he could go any farther, Kusnetsov waved him backward.

  “Stand clear, Slava. You want your suit to remain spotless.” So saying, he applied a powerful blow with his cleaver, slicing through red muscle, pale sinew, and bone pink with blood.

  Peering down at the portion he had cleanly separated from the mass, he nodded, satisfied. Tossing the mass aside, he drew another large slab of meat to him. “You know, Slava, the rumor about me.” He slammed the cleaver down through muscle and bone. “It’s not just animals I butcher.”

  Baev shuddered. “I have heard them of course, Minister, but I—”

  “They’re true, Slava.” Slam went the cleaver. “Absolutely true. Look here, who’s to say this is a side of beef, eh?” Slam went the cleaver. Baev felt his gorge rise. “This could very well be the side of … Well, anything, really.”

  This fairly took Baev’s breath away. “You mean Anatoly Vasiliev?” Anatoly Vasiliev Ivanovich was a senior officer of FSB Border Service. Baev had worked with him a number of times when their remits in counterintelligence overlapped. Baev had found him to be an unremarkable man, easy to work with.

  “The same.” Thwack went the cleaver. “We discovered he’s been selling secrets to the enemy, using his position to cross the border to make the exchange: intel for cash.” Thwack. “I will not countenance traitors.” Thwack. He held up the lozenge-shaped piece so Baev could see the split bone. “Fatty. Still it might make a base for a decent stew.”

  Baev put a hand over his mouth. He’d heard that human flesh was inordinately fatty.

  Heaving the sigh of a job well done, Kusnetsov dropped the meat and turned. “Bad news for Anatoly Ivanovich, and his boss. A complete purge of the directorate has been carried out.”

  Alarmingly, Baev noticed he hadn’t let go of the cleaver
, which now hung at his side.

  “There are no traitors in your service, are there, Slava.” Again, not a question.

  “Certainly not, Minister!”

  Kusnetsov smiled, at last putting aside the cleaver. He washed his hands at the sink. Stepping forward, Baev handed him a clean towel off a pile.

  As he dried his hands, Kusnetsov evinced a more relaxed mien. “It is good to see you this morning, Slava.” He tossed the towel into a trash bin. “You bring good news, I expect.”

  “Indeed.” Baev did not want to look at the red-and-white striated meat behind Kusnetsov, but the stench of the raw meat, blood, and offal dizzied him. It was all he could do not to heave up the meager breakfast he had hurriedly consumed standing in Kata’s kitchen. Now, swallowing bile, he put as genuine a smile on his face as he could muster.

  “I have discovered the source of the security breach that allowed the Kobalt dossier to be hijacked.”

  “And you have closed this breach.” It was not a question.

  “Oh, yes. And the source already has been terminated.”

  “Good.” Kusnetsov’s brows came together. “Was the source internal or external?” Ominously, his voice dropped half an octave, or so it seemed to Baev.

  “Internal, Minister.” Despite his better judgment, his eyes flicked to the bloody cleaver and back to Kusnetsov’s face. “A single individual,” he continued, his bravado fading. “An adjutant, as it happens.” He wasn’t about to tell his boss that it was his own assistant.

  Kusnetsov’s eyebrows rose. “Is that so?”

  Baev ducked his head, but only slightly. “A lapse in judgment. It won’t happen again, I assure you.”

  “See that it does not, Slava, or there will be hell to pay.”

  Baev absorbed this body blow as best he could. Better a body blow, he thought, than a cleaver to his rib cage. Once again, he shuddered inwardly.