The Russian's Greed

by Cap Daniels

  THE RUSSIAN’S GREED

  AVENGING ANGEL

  SEVEN DEADLY SINS SERIES

  BOOK #2

  CAP DANIELS

  ** USA **

  ALSO BY CAP DANIELS

  The Chase Fulton Novels

  Book One: The Opening Chase

  Book Two: The Broken Chase

  Book Three: The Stronger Chase

  Book Four: The Unending Chase

  Book Five: The Distant Chase

  Book Six: The Entangled Chase

  Book Seven: The Devil’s Chase

  Book Eight: The Angel’s Chase

  Book Nine: The Forgotten Chase

  Book Ten: The Emerald Chase

  Book Eleven: The Polar Chase

  Book Twelve: The Burning Chase

  Book Thirteen: The Poison Chase

  Book Fourteen: The Bitter Chase

  The Avenging Angel – Seven Deadly Sins Series

  Book One: The Russian’s Pride

  Book Two: The Russian’s Greed

  Book Three: The Russian’s Gluttony (Autumn 2021)

  Stand-Alone Novels

  We Were Brave

  Novellas

  I Am Gypsy

  The Chase Is On

  The Russian’s Greed

  Avenging Angel

  Seven Deadly Sins Book #2

  Cap Daniels

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, historical events, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Although many locations such as marinas, airports, hotels, restaurants, etc. used in this work actually exist, they are used fictitiously and may have been relocated, exaggerated, or otherwise modified by creative license for the purpose of this work. Although many characters are based on personalities, physical attributes, skills, or intellect of actual individuals, all of the characters in this work are products of the author’s imagination except those used for historical significance.

  Published by:

  ** USA **

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including information storage and retrieval systems without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  13 Digit ISBN: 978-1-951021-22-1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021907293

  Copyright © 2021 Cap Daniels – All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design: German Creative

  Printed in the United States of America

  “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.”

  ―Mahatma Gandhi

  THE RUSSIAN’S GREED

  Zhadnost' Russkikh

  CAP DANIELS

  1

  ZAPAKH DYMA

  (SMELL THE SMOKE)

  March 2004

  Anastasia "Anya" Burinkova gripped the brushed nickel handle of the heavy wooden door, raising the handle and silently moving the door through its arc. Providing the precisely measured amount of lifting force on the door, she kept the tell-tale creaks of the hinges from alarming anyone beyond the temporary barricade.

  She’d learned and memorized the sound over the previous six days of her confinement. She could tell who’d opened the door by the tone of the crying hinges. Those in a hurry brought a high-pitched squeal, while the people who moved through their appointed tasks with patience caused the creaking to sound like light, repeating clicks. The pneumatic closer attached at the top of the doorframe hissed like the sound of a sleeping child’s breath and was punctuated by the awful clang of the bolt striking the jamb. The sounds were etched into her memory like the words of an old favorite song.

  When Anya opened the door slower than anyone else, the hinges gave no hint of discomfort and offered only silence through the arc. The former Russian assassin peered through the narrow opening down the seemingly endless hallway, but her vision was not the chosen sense; instead, she held her breath and allowed her ears to listen for movement in the dimly lit corridor. Like the unique sounds of the hinges, she’d learned the subtle differences between the footfalls of the eleven women and seven men who rotated through shifts, day after day, in the place where minutes passed like hours and hours like weeks.

  The meticulous planning had occupied her mind while her body recovered from the injuries inflicted aboard a luxurious yacht at the hands of a Russian mafia boss in Miami. He’d gained the upper hand after slipping an odorless, tasteless sedative into the hot tea that had become part of her routine.

  Her mind drifted back to a time when she’d admonished Chase Fulton, an American covert operative, for always drinking from the same cup. Routines breed predictability, and predictability leads to vulnerability. That’s exactly what Leo, the Russian mafia boss, used to disorient her just minutes before he’d shoved her into a mirrored wall so violently that she’d suffered lacerations to her neck, head, and shoulder. The cosmetic surgeon promised only minor, hardly noticeable scarring.

  Anya’s natural Eastern European beauty was a tool she learned to use to its fullest advantage. The early skills were cultivated and developed at the Sparrow School just outside Moscow, but she’d mastered the skills on the streets as an officer of the Sluzhba vneshney razvedki Rossiyskoy Federatsii, officially dubbed The Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation. The SVR rose from the ashes of the former KGB after the fall of the Soviet Union, but the intelligence services of the world believed there was little difference between the modern agency and the Cold War–era beast.

  Just as she expected, the hallway was empty and the lights were dimmed. Confident she could make the requisite sixteen strides to the stairwell without being seen, she stepped into the corridor and applied just enough pressure to the door to avoid the hiss of the closer and the knock of the bolt striking the jamb. She moved precisely as she’d been taught, allowing the outside of her feet to strike the ground first and then rolling onto the balls and toes.

  Reaching the metal door to the stairwell, she meticulously pressed the panic bar and listened as the metal bar sank into its frame. Avoiding the metallic clang would be impossible, but with motions barely above a snail’s pace, she could mitigate the sound. Once through the door, she scanned the hallway again and eased the door back into place without being noticed.

  Taking the stairs two at a time, she reached the landing on the roof of the building. To her delight, the door to the roof was propped ajar with a small block of wood keeping it from closing—a sign that her target was indeed on the roof.

  The door swung silently as she stepped through and onto the flat roof. Instantly, her nose filled with the smell of a cigarette—the same smell she’d detected on the skin and clothing of the man who did the tasks the registered nurses would not.

  She stepped from behind an enormous air conditioning unit and watched David, the LPN clad in blue scrubs, exhale a long plume of white smoke into the night sky over the Walter Reed Military Medical Center at Naval Support Activity Bethesda, just north of Washington, D.C. She’d assumed he would see and hear her coming, but the sounds of the night masked her stealthy approach.

  “Could I get one of those?” she said.

  David jumped and shot his eyes toward the sound of her voice, dropping his cigarette as he did. He threw his hand over his heart. “Don’t do that! You scared the hell out of me.”

  Anya took three more strides, closing the distance between them. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to frighten you, but I would like to have a cigarette.” With her Russian accent impossible to hide, she tried to overcome it with a flirtatious smile . . . just as she’d been taught.

  And it worked. David produced a pack from his pocket a
nd shook up a single cigarette through the small hole in the top.

  Anya pulled the long white cigarette from the pack and placed it between her lips. She leaned in and spoke without parting her lips. “Could I have a light?”

  David cupped his hand around the lighter as he moved the flame toward Anya, and she raised her hands to further shelter the flame from the night wind. In the instant when the fire touched its target, Anya clasped the man’s wrists, spun him around, and shoved him face-first into the base of an antenna bolted to the roof. Blood flew from his nose and forehead on contact, so Anya roughly threw the now unconscious man to the ground. She carefully rolled the front of his shirt into a tight wad and pulled it across his bloody face, trying to keep the scrubs free of blood. Next came the pants and shoes. They were easier since there was no need for caution to avoid blood. Anya draped her gown across the unconscious man and stepped into his scrubs. The shoes were a size too big, but they were better than no shoes at all.

  She felt for a pulse in David’s neck and found an athletic thump. He was alive, but she didn’t envy the headache he’d have when he woke up. Back through the door and down the stairs she went, ignoring the floor on which she’d been confined for days. She reached the ground floor in record time, and seconds later, she walked through an exit door and onto a concrete walkway leading from the hospital.

  Escaping the hospital had been simple, but getting off the Navy base would prove to be a horse of a very different color. A grove of trees stood to the right of the sidewalk, while an open grassy area laid to the left. Crossing the open field, even under darkness, made for too many opportunities for someone to see her and start asking questions she couldn’t answer.

  The only logical route was through the trees, so she bent down and retied the oversized shoes, drawing them a little tighter on her feet. The desire to run was almost too powerful to overcome, but she willed herself to walk at a leisurely pace as if she belonged on that stretch of sidewalk at that hour. David’s ID badge hanging from the pocket of the scrubs wouldn’t withstand scrutiny. She looked nothing like the LPN, but from a distance, it was close enough to fool onlookers.

  Four strides into the trees, a confident, strong voice came from beside a mighty oak. “Why do you smell like smoke, and where are you going, Anya?”

  She froze and turned to the voice. Special Agent Ray White of the U.S. Department of Justice stood in the shadows, nonchalantly leaning against the solid oak.

  She sighed, obviously disappointed with herself and surprised by Ray White’s appearance. “You can’t make me stay. You promised if I did one mission for you, I would be free.”

  Ray picked at his teeth with a twig he’d been whittling with his pocketknife. “That’s not exactly what I promised, but it’s close. The mission involves more than just one man in just one city. Phase two is waiting for you as soon as you feel up to it, and from my observations tonight, you’re definitely ready for something to do. What do you say we hop in my Suburban and find an all-night diner where we can have a piece of pie and talk about what happens next?”

  She eyed him with both contempt and admiration. His choice of words had been meticulous, and she’d fallen into a seemingly open-ended agreement with the man who’d likely send her to her death on the streets of yet another city and at the hands of the Russkaya mafiya.

  2

  SKOL'ZHENIYE

  (SLIPPING)

  The 1950s-style chrome and Formica tables and vinyl-covered seats gave Capital Diner the look and feel of a bygone era. A Wurlitzer sat silent against an otherwise empty wall, and the yellowing of the ceiling tiles told the story of fifty years of fried food, cigarette smoke, and neglect.

  Supervisory Special Agent Ray White slid a plastic-covered menu across the table to Anya. “Every time I come here, I always expect The Fonz to show up, punch that jukebox to life, and say, ‘Aaaay!’”

  The Russian frowned in utter confusion. “What does this mean?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen Happy Days.”

  Her frown continued. “My days are sad since I met you.”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s an old TV show, and The Fonz was this guy . . . Oh, never mind. I can’t explain it.”

  “I do not watch television.”

  A waitress whose apron looked worse than the ceiling tile ambled to their table. “What’ll it be?”

  Ray looked up at the woman and wondered if she ate exclusively at the diner, and he tried to imagine her cholesterol numbers. “What kind of pie do you have tonight?”

  The waitress turned to gaze into the cooler. “It looks like we’ve got apple, lemon meringue, and one piece of cherry left.”

  Ray turned to Anya. “What’s your favorite kind of pie?”

  She laid her hand on his arm and twisted until she could see the face of his watch. “Coulibiac with sturgeon and salmon is best pie in all of world, but no one should eat pie at one o’clock in morning.”

  The waitress beat Ray to the punch. “We don’t have anything like that, but I think we’ve got some fish sticks in the freezer.”

  Ray ignored her and screwed up his face. “Fish pie? Really? That’s disgusting.” He didn’t wait for Anya to put up any further protest, and he turned to the bulbous waitress. “We’ll have two pieces of apple pie, coffee for me, and I’m sure she wants hot tea.”

  Anya shook her head. “No, not tea. I will have only water.”

  The waitress scribbled on her green-and-white order pad. “Suit yourself. Ice cream on the pie?”

  “Yes, definitely ice cream,” Ray said. “Thank you.”

  As the woman shuffled away, Anya said, “Why do you think I will not kill you and walk away?”

  Ray rearranged the salt and pepper shakers and picked at a damaged corner of the table. “It’s not what you do.”

  “Is exactly what I do.”

  Ray drew his pistol from the shoulder rig beneath his jacket and slid it across the table. “So, do it. There are seventeen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. By my count, there are three people other than you and me in the diner: the drunk passed out in the corner, the waitress, and a cook. By my estimation, the drunk could sleep through a train wreck, and it’s likely that neither the cook nor waitress is armed.” He tapped his index finger to his forehead. “Put one right here. It’ll make a mess in the booth behind me, but that’s none of your concern. I’ll be dead before the sound stops echoing off the walls, and you can put a pair in each of the employees. They’d probably welcome anything that gets them out of their miserable day-after-day existence in this place. If you want to shoot the bum for fun, I guess you could, but I’m betting you won’t.”

  Anya stared down at the Glock 17 and let Ray’s scenario play out in her head. He was right. She could kill them all and disappear into the night, never to be seen again, but that’s not all he was right about. She pulled a napkin from the dispenser beside the salt and pepper Ray had carefully arranged, and she laid it on top of the pistol. Without touching the weapon, she slid it back across the table with one finger pressed into the napkin. “I do not need pistol. There is piece of broken metal on my chair. I could have it pulled free in seconds and cut your throat with it. You have ink pen in pocket of shirt and another in pocket inside jacket. With either of them, I could make hole in your brain through eyeball. There is knife, fork, and spoon rolled inside paper napkin. All of these are sharp enough to leave you bleeding to death on floor. Except for sounds you would make, all of these ways I could kill you would be almost silent.”

  He eyed the napkins rolled around the silverware. “There’s no need for threats.”

  “Is not threat. Is only most convenient things I could use to kill you.”

  Ray re-holstered his gun. “Please don’t use the fork. I believe that would take the longest and hurt the most. Don’t get me wrong . . . I’m not afraid of dying. It’s just the agony leading up to it that I’d like to avoid.”

  Anya stared into his soul. “I beli
eve coming of death will be greatest peace any of us will have.”

  Ray ignored the philosophy lesson. “Okay, your point is taken. You could kill me, but you won’t. At least not tonight. You’re slipping.”

  “What does this mean, slipping?”

  Ray subconsciously slid his silverware, still wrapped in the paper napkin, away from Anya’s hand. They were likely the deadliest hands he’d ever seen only inches from his own, yet they were still beautiful—like the hands he might see in the full-color jewelry ads folded inside Sunday’s Washington Times. “It means you let me predict when you’d run and what direction. You let me choose this diner and what you would eat. Worst of all, you let Leo get the jump on you in Miami. If Gwynn hadn’t been there, this operation would’ve been over, and you’d be rotting in a pine box somewhere. These aren’t the kinds of things SVR Captain Anastasia Burinkova would allow to happen.”

  The accusation stung almost as badly as the reminder of her days as one of the Rodina’s most feared assassins. “I am not this person anymore. I am American now.”

  “You’re American by choice and by the mercy of the American government, but”—he pointed toward her chest—“Captain Burinkova still lives in there. The skills, the mindset, the fearsome beast . . . They’re still in there.”

  The waitress reappeared and slid two pieces of pie, a plastic cup of water, and a mug of coffee onto the table. “Will there be anything else?”

  Ray White didn’t take his eyes off Anya. “No, that’s all. Thank you.”

  Anya looked up and smiled. “I think I would also like coffee, please.” As she spoke, she slipped the toe of her right foot behind the waitress’s left heel.

  The woman sighed. “Sure, one more coffee coming up. Cream or sugar?”

  “No, thank you. Just coffee.”

  As the woman turned to leave, she stumbled across Anya’s borrowed shoe and caught herself against one of the swiveling stools mounted in front of the raised counter behind her.