At length, Kobalt sat back, turned her mind to other, more practical matters.
They reversed direction, headed northeast, crossed the Moskva River via the Bolshoy Bridge. It had a longer name, but no one used it. They headed along the northern embankment road, still on a northeast course. They had long since left the upper- and middle-class residential neighborhoods, and were in one of the poorer, industrialized sections of the city. Soon enough, they were passing hulking warehouses and electrical plants that were so long outdated, beyond repair or rehabilitation, that they had been abandoned by all but the most destitute pilgrims from far away, those who had lost even a vestige of hope of finding employment. Here and there, enclaves of the homeless could be spotted, their drugged-out denizens sprawled, insensate.
Presently, the canal ended, and they rolled sedately through Andronyevskaya Square. The space was entirely deserted; not a soul was visible. Rising up and facing each other were a pair of enormous structures, probably apartment buildings, judging by the number of windows pockmarking their filthy yellowish façades. The glass in every window was blown, as if from titanic blasts from inside at some time in the past. The buildings had a haunted aspect, as even from the outside it was clear no one was bedding down inside them. Not an area any tourist would be taken to. Although street crime was exceptionally low in Moscow, poverty wasn’t.
The SUV pulled in to the curb near the building on the western side of the square.
“Last stop,” Kata said without a trace of irony. She killed the engine, then stepped out. Moving to the rear passenger’s door, she unlocked it, swung the heavy door open. What Kata was wearing beneath her black ankle-length duster was impossible to say.
“Out,” she ordered curtly.
Kobalt expected to see a pistol pointed at her, but, curiously, there was none.
“Tell me who you are.”
In a blur of motion, Kata whipped out an electric cattle prod and, leaning in, jabbed it hard against the left side of Kobalt’s chest. Kobalt spasmed backward as if she had been shot. She lay on the backseat, seeing flashing lights amid the darkness at the edges of her vision. Her heart seemed to be skipping beats, then throbbing like a runaway train.
The next moment, she felt herself being hauled out of the SUV. Immediately, she fell to her knees, her head swinging back and forth as if she were in a drunken stupor. She knew the driver was speaking to her, but she couldn’t understand a word. What had happened? she asked herself. Had a grenade gone off next to her?
She felt the driver’s breath on her cheek, and she lifted her head.
“I told you. Kata,” the driver whispered in her head. “My name is Kata Romanovna Hemakova.”
Slowly, her blurred vision cleared. The world around her righted itself. She rose to her feet but not without having to grasp the top of the open door for support.
“If you’re going to kill me”—Kobalt’s voice was a thick rasp—“just do it now and get it over with.”
“Oh, it will come,” Kata said, “but first you’ll try to escape, just like in the American movies. But I will bring you back, and shortly after that you’ll tell me everything I want to know. By that time you’ll be screaming for your daddy.”
“I don’t have a daddy. I never did.”
Kata’s eyes narrowed and she stepped closer to Kobalt. “Everyone has a daddy and a mommy.”
Kobalt’s grin was sardonic. “You’re making such a huge fucking mistake.”
“Am I?” Kata cocked her head. “Well, before we go any further …” The cattle prod jabbed out, the end connecting with Kobalt’s kneecap. Kobalt grunted as her right leg collapsed. But she kept hold of the car door, her torso tilted away from it, as if she were a flag battered by the wind.
“Let’s see how much running you do on one leg.”
Kata grabbed her by the back of her collar. A brief tug-of-war ensued, which, inevitably, Kobalt lost, her handhold on the door slipping away inch by grudging inch. Blood welled where a nail was ripped off. Kata, grunting with the effort, hauled Kobalt behind her as she made her way across the pavement. They passed through the mouth of the derelict building, the door hanging by a single rusted hinge.
The dim interior stank of age, mold, and desperation. Here and there the remnants of cooking odors seeped out of the walls, as did the acrid stench of cheap tobacco smoke. Precise squares of light from the blown-out windows checkered the filthy floorboards.
Kata hauled Kobalt into the center of the space, which long ago in a forgotten past had been cleared of interior walls. To the left, a pockmarked concrete staircase rose upward. Beside it, an elevator shaft; the elevator itself was missing.
“What’s your beef with me, anyway?” Kobalt said in a dry, cracked voice.
Kata stood over her. She pulled Kobalt to her feet, thrust her face forward. “What? What did you say?”
Kobalt tried to isolate the pain in a corner of her mind, to lacquer it over with what needed to be done in order for her to survive. “Why are you doing this? Who’s ordering you around like a puppet?”
Kata laughed. “Ah, here’s where you keep me talking. The longer we converse the further you put off the pain.”
“I’m already in pain,” Kobalt pointed out.
“You think so?”
In response, Kobalt raked the HVAC grille she had managed to pull out of its socket in the car’s rear console down Kata’s face. Blood exploded from her forehead to her eyelids, her nose, her lips, and chin. She staggered back and Kobalt stepped forward, raking the grille again and again.
But they were so close together Kata didn’t need her sight to jam the end of the cattle prod into Kobalt’s side. Kobalt screamed, dropped the grille, and closed her fingers tight around Kata’s wrist, pulling the cattle prod away.
Off-balance, the two women tumbled to the floor, rolling through the filthy detritus, disturbing the hunting of every rat on the ground floor. First one was on top, then the other. Their concentration was centered on the prod, nothing else mattered. Slowly but surely, Kobalt started to gain control, swinging the end in a shallow arc toward Kata’s chest. Suddenly, Kata’s right hand released and Kobalt felt the surge of victory. She almost had full control of the prod, but then a blur slashed across her vision. She jerked her head back just in time to avoid losing an eye, but the leading facet of Kata’s emerald took a chunk out of the bridge of her nose. They were both bloody now.
Kata slammed the side of the prod against Kobalt’s ribs. Pain shot through Kobalt’s entire body and for a moment she felt as if she was going to lose, that this person whom she didn’t even know was going to get the better of her, batter her into submission, extract what she wanted from Kobalt, and then kill her.
But that black moment passed, and she gathered her strength around her like chainmail armor. She buried her elbow in Kata’s solar plexus, drove her right knee into Kata’s groin. They both screamed in pain, and Kobalt lost all feeling in her right leg from the knee down. Her right foot seemed to hang in the air, as if it was connected to her by only a thin bit of tissue.
Kata regained control of the prod. “You fucking bitch,” she managed through her grinding teeth.
But Kobalt had wrapped both hands around Kata’s fist, and she drove the faceted emerald into the soft flesh of Kata’s throat. The emerald tore through skin and fascia, crushing her cricoid. Air rushed out and Kata began to gasp, her inhales a horrific rail, gurgling and bloody.
Kobalt unwound her fingers, stiff with how tightly she’d held onto Kata’s fist. Of a sudden, Kata’s left arm reached up, her fingers clutching Kobalt’s throat. Her face a death mask, she squeezed and squeezed with an unholy strength.
For a second, Kobalt was sure she blacked out, that for a second time within moments she could see the specter of death coming for her. Then she whipped the prod out of Kata’s fingers and jammed it down her throat. Kata’s eyes opened wide, her limbs drummed a spastic tattoo against the floor. This went on a seemingly endless time, though
in reality it couldn’t have been more than ten or so seconds, before her eyes rolled up into her head, one leg gave a last galvanic kick, and she lay dead beneath Kobalt’s panting torso.
Kobalt was crying now, both out of terror and relief. She stared down at the bloody face of her erstwhile adversary with not an iota of remorse. After some time, her breathing returning to normal, she sat up, wrenched the emerald ring off Kata’s finger, wiped it off, slipped it onto her own.
“Fucking bitch,” she whispered hoarsely. “You got that right.”
She scrabbled in the blood, found the key fob for the SUV, to which a set of keys were attached. She searched for Kata’s mobile phone but couldn’t find it. With no little difficulty she rose, her breathing painful and stertorous, and limping badly, moved toward the dim rectangle of the doorway.
With each step the cattle prod dripped a line of blood behind her.
51
ANA
THEY’RE COMING.
Ana stared down at her mobile’s screen, checked the text was from Leonard Pine’s dedicated phone number. How many? She texted back.
three, he replied.
that’s all? she only brought two people with her?
kobalt seems supremely sure of herself
I’ll disabuse her of that mindset shortly
b careful she’s a nasty piece of wk
Ana thought about how it would be to confront her older sister face-to-face. It was something she’d longed for for some time. A sister who had children, the only one possibly who could conceive, as she and her twin could not. And now Kobalt was coming to get her children back.
She was about to sever the connection when Leonard Pine texted her again.
How is Hel?
And she thought, Oh, for God’s sake.
same as she ever was, and immediately pressed END.
*
Swinging around, she saw Hel striding toward her down one of the citadel’s labyrinthine corridors, a small, compact figure, well-toned, sunbaked body, with a ready smile that didn’t conceal its caginess. Both her hair, cut short as a man’s, and her eyes, were dark as iron. She was dressed in deepest blue leggings and fitted sleeveless shirt. Her boots were rugged but lightweight. Their soles made no sound on the stone floor. Bandoliers crisscrossed over her chest and back. The gold cross on its chain she never took off glinted softly in the light. A handgun was holstered at her right hip, a scabbarded throwing knife at her left hip. Paired smaller throwing knives lived inside the tops of her boots.
Watching her approach, Ana considered once again how everything and everyone had its place. To her, there was no difference between the things and people, though each had its assigned place in her hyper-analytical mind. If either was of no use to her, she had ignored it. And if it did have a use, that use was, by definition, finite. Be it a day, week, or year there was always a sell-by date, when she would inevitably discard that thing or person, move on to the next useful item. Even Hel, whose fighting prowess and tactical mind she held in the highest regard, was just another station in her journey to the salvation of the world.
“Have the children been fed?” she asked.
Hel looked up at her. “Fed and asleep, Mother.”
Ana’s eyes narrowed. “How deeply asleep?”
“They are beyond dreams, Mother.”
“Yes.” Ana smiled, almost wistfully. “What child doesn’t love hot cocoa?”
“They won’t awake until it’s time,” Hel assured her.
She nodded. She trusted Hel, but not as much as Hel trusted her. That was, of course, by design. She took Hel by the elbow, guiding her back along the corridor. “Kobalt will be here soon with two of her cohort, but I seriously doubt that the three of them will show up at the same time in the same place.” She glanced meaningfully at her companion.
“I understand, Mother,” and, breaking off at a branching of the corridor, Hel strode purposefully away. “We will be ready,” she said over her shoulder.
When Hel had disappeared around a corner, Ana headed off to the children’s new sleeping quarters, the state-of-the-art operating theater hidden behind the stone wall of the Chapel of the Burning Sword of God.
52
MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Kobalt stood in Kata’s shower, wincing as the hot water cascaded over her wounds. Strings of blood slithered down her torso and legs, turning into pink rivulets as they snaked their way into the drain. Her eyes were closed, her face turned up to the spray, despite the pain spreading out from the wound on the bridge of her nose. A bruise of many colors bloomed across her throat, but at least the imprints of Kata’s powerful fingers were but a memory.
Every few moments, an involuntary shiver ran down her entire body, and a chill swept through her despite the steamy water. She could feel her right foot now, but the knee above it throbbed with every pulse of blood that ran through its veins under the cartilage.
It had taken all her willpower not to vomit on the way to the SUV, but in the end, she managed not to puke her guts up. Still, she leaned against the vehicle, trying to gather herself. Part of her knew she was in shock, but another part had forgotten where she was or how she had arrived here in this altogether unfamiliar section of Moscow.
The SUV. Of course. Sighing, she opened the driver’s side door and, wincing with pain, hauled herself inside. She sat for a moment, head against the seatback, her hands gripping the wheel with all her might as if willing the strength back into her weakened body.
After an indeterminate amount of time, she picked her head up, noticed her surroundings, saw at once Kata’s mobile lying on the passenger’s seat. Bringing it out of sleep, she activated the GPS, found Kata’s home address.
On the way there she passed by Zherov’s building. The front was cordoned off, there was blood on the concrete steps, but no chalk outline, no sign of the medical examiner’s vehicle or, indeed, a forensic team. In fact, only one police was standing guard, and he seemed there only to allow residents in and out of the building. As was the case in Moscow, there was no crowd. Pedestrians on the sidewalk hurried by, heads either down or averted. No one wanted trouble, or God forbid even be stopped and questioned.
Gritting her teeth, she turned off the hot water. As the shower slowly cooled then, abruptly, turned cold, she took a series of deep, cleansing breaths, clearing her mind. The cold water felt good on her nose and knees, but the spray felt like needles on the round bruise just above her left breast where Kata had first struck her with the cattle prod.
Stepping out of the shower, she wrapped herself in a luxurious bath sheet. She kept the water on, the sound of the spray calming her. She had looked for and found a professional doctor’s first aid kit in the cabinet under the sink. Now she stood in front of the mirror, tending to the torn bridge of her nose. It took five stitches—the dissolving kind—to repair the damage, and studying it before she applied the liquid skin, she doubted her nose would ever look the same. Not that she cared overly; she welcomed this reminder of the fragile line between life and death.
When she was done with her nose, she walked gingerly into Kata’s bedroom, opening the mirrored sliding door to a closet larger than most apartments in downtown Moscow, selected a silk dressing gown to replace the damp bath sheet.
Sitting on the end of Kata’s enormous bed, she retrieved her phone from her bloody clothes, punched in the speed-dial number for Dima’s private mobile line.
“Moya malen’kaya osa!” Dima cried when he heard her voice. My little wasp! “I have been beside myself. As soon as I heard Zherov was taken to the hospital my thoughts turned to you. Are you unhurt?”
“I’m fine,” Kobalt said. “Where is Zherov? I dropped him off in front of his building.”
“Shot,” Dima said. “In the back.”
“Is he alive?”
“For the moment, anyway,” Dima said. “He’s in surgery.”
She felt a surge of relief.
“Your remit?” Dima asked.
Of course he would ask this, but she was prepared. “Omega has been neutralized.”
“Congratulations. And your children?”
“Safe.”
“That must be a relief.” When she said nothing, he changed tack. “Who shot Zherov?”
“Unknown. I didn’t see anyone. Whoever it was must have waited until I drove off.”
A short silence. “Motive?”
“There could be so many.”
Dima grunted an agreement. “My office tomorrow at nine sharp for your formal debriefing.”
In the kitchen she made herself an ice pack with cubes wrapped in a dishtowel, fetched a bottle of vodka from the freezer, and sat at the oval table, leg up on another chair, and applied the ice pack.
She felt no remorse about lying to Dima about Omega. She hoped Lyudmila had neutralized it or would soon. If she failed, there would be no future for anyone. Not for the first time she felt the stirring of regret about leaving her to come back here. But as Lyudmila pointed out Moscow was her future. Besides, Lyudmila was right, Omega was expecting her. No point in trying to evade the trap they had set and making the infiltration more difficult than it already was. Still, it rankled her not being involved. Lyudmila had asked for her trust, not an easy thing for Kobalt to accept. But if there was one person she was apt to trust it was Lyudmila, who had brought her closure on the enigma of her birth parents. She thought about them, recalled standing in front of their graves, sensing a closeness she had never felt before. She owed Lyudmila.
Turning her mind to more immediate matters, she went to work on the vodka, straight from the bottle. Ice and fire slid down her throat, settling in her stomach, spreading warmth and a lessening of the pain. From where she sat, she could see into the living room and, craning her neck a bit, a sliver of the den. Whoever the hell Kata Romanovna Hemakova was, she thought, the bitch sure had herself a sweet deal, because there was no way Kata Romanovna could afford this atrociously furnished palace on her own dime. And so … The very first name and number she found scrolling through Kata’s mobile was that of the SVR’s Director General Stanislav Budimirovich Baev’s mobile. Which meant one of two things. Either Kata was Baev’s mistress or he had sent Kata to terminate her. Or both, judging by the three texts for a sitrep he had sent her. Who knew with these people?
The Kobalt Dossier Page 34
