He was still unsteady. The stairs were steep. There were no handrails. As we started down again, I took his arm. He shook me off. Not much strength in the gesture, though. Harley was seventy-eight years old, but until this moment you wouldn’t have guessed it.
My satellite phone, set to vibrate instead of ring, vibrated. I got it out and answered, expecting to hear Charley Hornblower or another Old Boy on the line.
Instead, a youthful but faintly familiar voice said, “Hi, Kevin here.”
Kevin?
He said, “Don’t hang up. I thought you’d be interested to know that the light in your friend’s window went off, then came back on again just now. Now it’s off again.”
“Maybe he’s gone to bed.”
“ One of the men who followed you here blinked back with a flashlight.”
Turning lights on and off was typical KGB tradecraft. I put my hand over the mouthpiece and told Harley what was going on.
He pointing to his chest. “Nice timin’.”
“Now two of your watchers are going inside,” Kevin said. “Are you on the stairs?”
Where else would we be? “Yes.”
“What floor?”
I saw no reason to tell him that. I said, “How many does that leave outside?”
“Just one. His weapon is drawn.”
I hung up. Harley had already turned off his penlight. I said, “Sit down, Harley. Stay out of this.”
“Not spoilin’ for a fight just now,” he said. “But I can do the talkin’.”
“We’ll see,” I said, wondering how much talking was going to be done. “If Mikhail comes down from the rear, trip him.”
I moved down the stairs, turning a corner onto the landing just below us. There was no sign of a light further down, but I could hear rapid footsteps and hard breathing. The two men were running up the stairs. I had no weapon, of course. When they reached the landing, breathing hard, I stepped back around the corner, pressed my body against the wall, and switched on my flashlight, holding it as far away from my body as possible. One of the men fired an entire magazine. Sparks flew from the barrel of the pistol. Red-blue-yellow muzzle-flash lit up the shooter’s moon face, unshaven under a tall fur hat. High-velocity bullets ricocheted from wall to wall and ceiling to floor, drawing fiery lines on the concrete and filling the air with the smell of burnt gunpowder.
I dropped the flashlight and groaned loudly. An empty magazine clattered on the concrete floor as the shooter reloaded. The second man, the one who had held his fire, now rushed up the stairs, pistol held rigidly in the approved two-handed grip. I could see him clearly in the light of the fallen flashlight, and I guess maybe he saw me, too, before I kicked the gun out his hand, then smashed him in the nose. His gun went off when it hit the floor. The other man fired another full magazine, creating more pyrotechnics. The noise was deafening. My ears rang.
Without pausing to reload, this wild shooter threw himself up the stairs. He saw his friend lying on the floor and me on my feet and stopped in his tracks. I was taller than he was to begin with and stood above him on the stairs. I lunged and grabbed him by the skull and put my thumbs in his eyes. He tried to get away with a sudden violent spin of his whole body. His fur hat flew off. He was a big, compact, powerful man. I planted my feet and held on. Halfway through his bearish pirouette, the man broke his own neck. I felt it go and with it, the life from his body.
I dropped him and picked up his gun and held it on the partner, who lay facedown on the stairs. I spoke to the man in Russian. He did not answer. I gave him a hard kick in the ribs. No sound from him. His body hardly moved. He was dead, too, maybe struck by a ricochet.
Harley picked up my flashlight and shone it on the corpses. The dead men were leaking blood. One of them had his head on backward. He looked a lot like the man who had sat next to me on the train from Paris to Geneva. I fell to my knees and sniffed his open mouth. He smelled the same, too, a stranger to toothpaste.
“Quite a mess,” Harley said. “Better go get Mikhail unless you want him behind you.”
Harley pilfered a full magazine from one of the dead men and handed it to me. That left him with the empty pistol. I hesitated.
“Go,” he said, and rolled over a corpse to look for more ammunition in its clothes.
My satellite phone vibrated.
“Kevin here. Heard shots. You guys okay?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll be right up. And don’t worry. The third man is out of it.”
By now Harley had harvested another magazine. He slapped it into the pistol.
As I mounted the stairway three or four treads at a time, adrenaline flowing, ears still ringing, I was even more terrified than I had been three minutes before when bullets were flying around my head. The stairway was as black as the Pit and just as silent— not a single light showing, not a curious head in sight.
Mikhail knew too much and had told me too little to be left behind, but he worried me. He was cornered—no place to go but up onto the roof—and that is never a good thing. The fact that he had only one leg didn’t mean that he was defenseless. I had to assume that he was armed, if only with a kitchen knife or his spare leg. There was only one way into his flat, through the flimsy door. I was a big target. If he had a gun I was dead. Even a whack on the head could do me in—not instantaneous death, perhaps, but unconsciousness at the very least and, consequently, capture by Mikhail or whoever came up the stairs next.
Far below, a single gunshot rang out, creating a string of echoes in the staircase. As in playing football and making love, it is best not to think too much when engaged in mortal combat. When I reached the top landing I did not stop to ponder the situation, but without even knowing why I was doing it until I had done it, took a running step or two, and launched myself horizontally, feet first, against his door. It splintered under my weight. I landed inside the room on my back.
Mikhail was armed, all right. The blinking muzzle-blast of his pistol outlined his figure. Rounds flew over my prostate body. I kicked out at what I hoped was Mikhail’s artificial leg. He fell with a crash, still shooting into the ceiling until the hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
I kicked Mikhail in the groin—no easy trick because the harness of his prosthesis gave him protection. He howled. I picked up his pistol, shone my flashlight on him, and patted him down. No hideout weapons, but a large wad of cash and a spare magazine in the pocket of his baggy pants. He gasped out curses in Russian.
I said, “Roll over and take off your leg, Mikhail.”
His eyes widened in fear and hatred.
“Now,” I said, pointing both guns at him Tombstone style, “before I shoot it off.”
To my own surprise, I was shouting. I was also shaking with anger and would probably have drilled him full of holes if he had demurred. Luckily for both of us—who would want to go through life knowing he had shot a one-legged man when he was down?—Mikhail did as he was told. In a matter of minutes he was hopping trouserless down the stairs. It was a remarkable display of balance and athleticism, especially for a man who had just been kicked in the testicles. I brought up the rear, a pistol in one hand and Mikhail’s made-in-Germany titanium leg, heavy Russian boot attached, in the other.
The dead bodies lay where they had fallen. I turned on the flashlight to make sure that Mikhail got a good look at them. He hopped on by without sign of recognition, careful not to slip in the blood, as if the dead men were bags of garbage that had split open and spilled their contents.
5
When we got to the bottom, we found a dead muzhik sprawled wide-eyed in a corner of the stairwell. He had been shot between the eyes.
Mikhail, breathing heavily, looked at the body and said, “You are going to die in Russia, my friend Horace.”
“Why do you say that, Mikhail? Is there something special about these fellows?”
“Special? Yeah. They’re Chechens. You should say your prayers, wise guy.”
Wise guy? Had Mikh
ail been watching gangster movies? An image of a roomful of KGB men learning English in the dark from Jimmy Cagney popped into my head. I laughed loudly.
“That’s right,” Mikhail said. “Laugh.”
Just outside, Harley was chatting with Kevin Clark while another all-American boy stood lookout. Beside them, an Audi sedan with driver at the wheel waited, motor running.
“We should get started,” Kevin said.
“Where to?”
“Anywhere but here, Mister Hubbard.”
I looked to Harley for a sign. He shrugged and smiled. We didn’t have much choice.
“Okay,” I said. “What about our friend here?”
“He can ride in back,” Kevin said.
One of Kevin’s silent men patted Mikhail down, bound his wrists with plastic shackles, and heaved him bodily into the trunk. He then produced a syringe and plunged the needle into Mikhail’s buttocks before tossing his titanium leg in after him, covering him with a blanket, and closing the lid.
“Better get in front, sir, more legroom,” Kevin said to me. “If either of you has to pee, we’ll stop somewhere. Don’t do it here. DNA and all that.”
“What about Mikhail?”
“He’ll sleep for a while.”
Kevin said nothing about the gun in my hand. I kept it there.
The Audi’s Quattro drive took us steadily through snow and ice. This car was a big improvement over Zikkar’s 4Runner. So was the driver, who kept us moving without headlights under a sky unpunctured by moon or stars. He drove at a steady 80 kph through unlit empty city streets, and after we left the city and entered open country, much faster over narrow highways in which snow had drifted into windrows. The compass in the rearview mirror indicated that we were headed east-northeast. Sometimes the direction changed briefly as we took yet another back road. I noted the numbers on the odometer. We passed a few big trucks, but not a single car besides our own was on the road at this hour.
Harley said, “Where’re we headed—Leningrad?”
“Not quite that far today, Mister Waters,” Kevin said. “We’ll stop soon. You fellows must be tired.”
“Any idea who those dead fellows were?”
“Chechens,” Kevin replied. “Very angry people.”
Hello, fatwa.
As dawn broke we turned into a narrower road that cut through a forest of birches. I wasn’t at the moment attuned to the beauties of nature, but I had to agree when Kevin remarked on loveliness of the chalky tree trunks in the watery morning light. He had said little during the trip, the other two men nothing. Through the trees a sugar-cake dasha, frosted with snow and decorated with icicles, a flat aluminum sun behind it, came into focus. Wood smoke curled from the chimney.
“Home sweet home,” Kevin said. He smiled and pointed fondly at Harley, who was sound asleep, ashen hair disheveled, steel-frame eyeglasses askew. Harley uttered a loud snore. His eyes snapped open.
“What is this place?” he said.
“A dacha,” Kevin said.
“Who does it belong to?”
“We have the use of it for the day,” Kevin said.
He got out of the car and stretched. This was nothing so simple as reaching for the sky and bending over backward to make the joints crack. He did the entire set of regulation stretching exercises.
While Kevin exercised his helpers got a groggy, barely awake Mikhail out of the trunk. They had taken the precaution of taping his eyes. Each man took one of his arms. He hopped between them into the dacha, leaving a trail of single footprints in the dusting of fresh snow that had fallen during the night.
Inside the dacha a cheery log fire burned in a stone fireplace. A furnace was running full blast as well. The smell of coffee and frying bacon mingled in the stale scorched air trapped inside the dacha.
“My suggestion,” Kevin said, “is that we have some breakfast, get some sleep, and then talk.”
“Talk about what?” I said.
The orthodontia flashed. “Oh, I think we both have a thousand questions,” he said. “The bathroom is down that hall, first door on the left.”
Still the very model of hospitable courtesy, he said nothing about the pistol that I still held in my hand.
Kevin’s men served an excellent American breakfast—orange juice from concentrate, scrambled fresh eggs and thick-cut bacon, toasted English muffins and super-sweet strawberry jam. Coffee that took the enamel off the teeth.
Kevin showed Harley and me to our room. Our bags were already unpacked, spare suits hanging in the closet, shoes lined up beneath.
Harley said, “You checked us out of the hotel?”
“Yes, sir,” Kevin said. “It seemed best.”
“You did this before the episode on the stairway?”
“Yes, but after you went upstairs to see Mikhail.”
“So you were going to abduct us when we came downstairs no matter what?”
“Abduct you?” Kevin said. “Look at what happened to the guys who actually tried that. Our plan was to extract you in case you needed help.”
“‘Extract us?’” I said. “That has a ring to it.”
Kevin smiled with his eyes. What a likeable old curmudgeon I was turning out to be. “We’re all tired, sir,” he said. “Get some sleep. No one will disturb you, I promise.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Another smile. “One request,” Kevin said. “Please don’t use your satellite phones.”
The room was cozy, with its own bathroom. While Harley showered I wedged the door and the window and checked our arsenal. Two Glocks from the man with the broken neck and his friend, one Makarov belonging to Mikhail, one full magazine for each with a few rounds left over. Expensive ordnance. I took the rubber bands off Mikhail’s plump bankroll and counted the money: Five thousand U.S. dollars in crisp new hundreds stuck together by static electricity.
Harley came out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam. “How much did you pay Mikhail?” I asked.
“Twenty-seven-five U.S.”
“Thousand?”
Harley snorted. “Hundred.”
I showed him Mikhail’s money.
“I wondered why he didn’t hold out for more,” Harley said.
In the shower I scrubbed the smell of dead Russians—fresh blood, old perspiration—off my skin, but not out of my nostrils. Harley was already asleep when I came out of the bathroom, and I followed him to dreamland as if falling off the roof.
6
“If I may say so, gentlemen,” Kevin said, “that was impressive work on the stairway last night.”
It was late in the afternoon and from the look of Kevin, he had just woken up, too. We were drinking coffee by the fireside and eating tuna sandwiches, heavy on the mayonnaise. A quiet moment went by—sparks popping from birch logs, snow falling outside, the scent of the food.
Harley finished his coffee, put the cup down gently, and turned to Kevin. “Excuse me if I ask a question,” he said. “Who in the wide world are you, son? And what’re you tryin’ to do? I know you can’t tell us, but tell us anyway. We won’t breathe a word.”
Kevin gave each of us a long look.
“Gray Force?” Harley said.
Kevin was astonished. So was I—not because Harley knew something I didn’t, but because it wasn’t like him to just come right out and reveal something he knew but wasn’t supposed to know.
Harley explained. “Gray Force is one of those outfits that doesn’t exist,” he explained. “Doesn’t belong to the Outfit, doesn’t belong to Defense. Doesn’t belong to anybody. It’s private enterprise, kind of like a civilianized Delta Force. Their people are ex-Green Berets or Navy Seals or whatever. Guns for hire. They do things like look for connections between organized crime and terrorism, like drug lords in Colombia and what used to be M-19 before Maoist freedom fighters went out of style, then bust up the connections.”
It sounded like useful work. I said, “Unless you want to correct Harley’s information, Kevin, we can wor
k from that. You’re working under some sort of contract. Is that it?”
Kevin was smiling. It must have been sincere this time because he was doing so in spite of himself, teeth hidden behind puckered lips.
“It’s funny,” he said. “Our motto is Never Underestimate.” The smile broke loose.
“Meaning what?”
“If you want to make that assumption, it’s okay with me.”
“Who’s the contractor?”
“You’ll understand if I didn’t quite hear that question,” Kevin said. “The way you guys operate you stand a pretty good chance of falling into the hands of the enemy and we wouldn’t want to be compromised.”
“The only operation we’re interested in is the one you’ve already involved us in,” Harley said.
I said, “I’ve got an easy question for you. Do you really think there are no stolen missiles, and that it’s all an old KGB disinformation op designed, as you put it, to make the Outfit run around like chickens with their heads cut off?”
“From what I’ve observed, the Outfit already knows how to do that,” Kevin said. “The answer is, I don’t know.”
“Don’t know or don’t know yet?”
“You ask tricky questions, sir.”
“You know what Mikhail says about the bombs. Have you checked that out? Was he in Turkmenistan, doing what he said he was, at the right time?”
“I believe he was, based on other data. The problem is, the folks back home don’t believe Mikhail’s story because they can’t bring themselves to believe him. He’s a retired torturer and assassin, so how can he be trusted?”
Harley said, “Well, Horace, here, and I don’t have to worry about Mikhail’s past. And I’m part of it. I’d like a chance to say good-bye to him.”
Kevin gave Harley another puckered smile. “Okay,” he said. “But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t give Mikhail’s money back.”
Harley said, “Why’s that?”
“To take away his alternatives,” Kevin said. “In order to restore his bankroll he’ll have to go back to the mob, show them his bruises, and tell them how he was kidnapped and beaten up and robbed by you two crazy old Outfit types who had a grudge from the Cold War.”
The Old Boys Page 12
