The Russian Temptation (Book Two) (Foreign Affairs 2)

by Nikki Navarre

  She slanted him a look. He arched his brows, as if daring her to try again.

  “Where was your previous post—if it’s not a secret?”

  “Minsk.” He stared back, his gaze curious. The electric headlights from the car behind them illuminated half his face, and cast the rest in shadow. His eyes were black as the Arctic night—and just as unknowable.

  “Minsk is a lovely city,” she said, voice edged in challenge. Though she tried to camouflage her reaction, this guy’s taciturnity was really getting under her skin. If there was anything she disliked, it was outright rudeness. “The Belarusians are quite hospitable people, I’ve found. Don’t you agree?”

  “That depends on your perspective, Dr. Rossi,” he murmured.

  I’ll bet it does, she thought wryly. If you did the same work in Minsk that you’re doing here, the Belarusians would despise you—if they knew about it. Quite possibly, his hosts hadn’t known the nature of his work.

  Casting about for an acceptable topic, she scanned the black expanse pressing against her window. That view grew more obscured every second as the accumulating snowfall clung to her window and froze there. The road they bumped over was rough, unlit, unpaved beneath the rutted snow. Beyond the narrow cone of lights from their vehicle, no glimmer of illumination pierced the darkness. This far north, it would be hours before the pale winter sun made its shallow swing above the horizon.

  The other vehicle was still following, a black SUV that hovered discreetly behind them, probably headed for the same destination. She wondered whether the driver behind those blazing headlights might be another of Nikolai Markov’s security measures.

  Even as the thought crossed her mind, the vehicle accelerated, clearly intent on overtaking them. The Volga slowed as Artur invited the SUV to pass.

  This unexpected courtesy tightened her nerves as the vehicle overtook them, accelerating rapidly until it cruised beside her window, its interior obscured behind tinted glass. She sensed the sudden tension that rippled through Markov as the vehicle kept pace, only inches away. The SUV’s rear window slid down, revealing the pale blur of a man’s face as he leaned out—

  Nikolai Markov gripped her shoulder. “Get down.”

  Obeying on instinct, she dove forward, pushing her attaché case to the floor.

  Simultaneously, the loud stutter of a machine gun exploded through the night.

  The window beside her shattered, spraying her back with glass. The old terror flooded her brain, sparked by the familiar bark of gunfire. Panic closed her throat, and suddenly she was fighting for enough oxygen to fill her lungs.

  Crouched beside her, Markov ordered, “Down on the floor, and stay there.”

  She curled up tight in the narrow space, arms wrapped around her head as the vehicle bumped and swerved beneath her. She prayed the spray of bullets hadn’t hit their driver—

  Another blast of gunfire tore through the vehicle, the staccato tat-tat-tat that haunted her nightmares. All around her, glass was shattering, jagged shards knifing through the air, the stuff of a thousand nightmares exploding into reality all around her. When something seared across her knee, a scream tore from her throat.

  Up front, a gruff curse erupted. The sedan swerved hard, throwing her against the door with bruising force.

  Frantically she twisted, wedged herself harder between the seats. The metallic tang of blood made her gag—the same sickening stench that filled her head the night she’d watched her father die. Beneath her wool trousers, a trickle of heat spilled down her leg.

  She clamped a hand over the stinging wound to stop the bleeding, tried to clamp down as hard on her rising hysteria. Markov’s cool fingers curled around the back of her neck, holding her in place as another sledgehammer stutter of gunfire sprayed through the shattered windows.

  As he crouched beside her, a sleek semi-automatic pistol appeared from nowhere in his grip. Apprehension seared through her like a laser.

  A scream clawed up her throat as she scrambled away from him—but she had nowhere to go. In another second that deadly weapon would be pointed at her, just like in her nightmares, barking fire.

  Spraying her brains all over the floor, just like her father’s.

  “Stay down,” Markov repeated. Slowly, through the fog of panic, the realization surfaced that he wasn’t aiming the gun at her.

  She managed to nod, though she couldn’t have spoken a word.

  When he fired a command in Russian, the Volga accelerated, wheels spinning in the churned-up snow.

  In the same instant, Nikolai Markov unfolded from the floor, dark coat billowing open in the blast of icy air that tore through the shattered windows, like the angel of death unfurling his black wings. Poised and balanced in the speeding vehicle, he extended his right arm. She caught a flashing glimpse of his features, intent and ruthless. His pistol barked once, twice, thrice.

  Rubber squealed, and the roar of the SUV’s engine receded swiftly behind them.

  “Keep driving,” Markov said calmly.

  Plastered against the rear seat, he peered through the back window. Skylar stayed curled on the floor, heart racing, terror both real and remembered churning her gut.

  Dio mio, my father...

  The old nightmare closed icy claws around her, and shivers swept through her. Was this how Dane Rossi had felt in that last desperate moment, when his so-called business partner pointed that semi-automatic pistol in his face and pulled the trigger?

  Again Markov’s fingers rested on her nape, glove missing, the frisson of skin on skin holding her with a butterfly touch. Long seconds crawled past as she struggled to control her breathing, arms locked around her folded knees, face buried against her woolen trousers. She trembled violently, teeth chattering, as cold wind knifed through the car. Snow stung her exposed neck.

  At last Markov’s fingers fell away, brushing shards of glass briskly from her coat and the seat. Swallowing hard, breath wheezing through her constricted airway, she stayed where she was until he gave the all-clear.

  Even then, she had to force her shaking limbs into motion as she crawled onto the seat beside him. Unrelieved darkness hugged the car again. No sign of the SUV, thank God. Snowflakes swirled through the broken windows to melt on her face. Only when she wiped clumsily at her eyes did she realize she’d been crying.

  Turning away for what little privacy she could snatch, she dried her eyes and fumbled in her pocket for her inhaler.

  After two long drags of albuterol, her bronchial channels opened. The terror of being unable to breathe eased its grip on her chest. With unsteady fingers, she tucked the device away.

  Gradually, she realized Nikolai Markov was examining her for injury. He tutted when he discovered her knee, torn by flying glass during the gunfight, as if she’d spilled tea at a garden party. Quietly he inventoried the damage, his fingers deft and impersonal—though he’d just saved her life, hadn’t he? It didn’t get much more personal than that.

  “Don’t worry, Dr. Rossi, it’s nothing serious. You’ll live.” Knotting his burgundy handkerchief in a neat bandage around her stinging knee, he shot her a keen glance. “Everything all right?”

  “Everything’s perfect.” A laugh that bordered on hysteria bubbled out. Pressing her fingers to her mouth, she clamped down hard on her panic. “I’m fine, really. But—are they—still following us?”

  “Unlikely,” he murmured. “I hit the shooter, though I doubt I killed him.”

  Despite that unflappable exterior, when he swept a hand over his tousled hair to push it back, his brow was furrowed. “The question now is where to take you.”

  “There’s no—” Skylar had to stop in order to clear her throat, steady her voice, try to pull herself together. “There’s no train to anywhere before the one you mentioned?”

  “Not one.” He engaged the safety and laid the pistol on the seat, its muzzle safely pointed away.

  “And no airport either, right?” Huddled in her seat, she chafed her arms against the bi
tter wind. It whistled through the car and swirled the hair around her face. “Could—could they send another helicopter from Novosibirsk if they had to? ICSI can pay for it, if that’s an issue.”

  “No one’s flying in this weather, no matter who pays.” Markov thumbed open his mobile phone and frowned at the display. “And the road to Novosibirsk in winter is impassible. We’ll continue to the hotel, which can be secured more easily than this vehicle. It’s regrettable that you declined to board that train.”

  He’s right. I should have listened to my instincts. But this is the only chance at Khimgorod anyone from the outside world is going to get. If I freak out now, it’s all over.

  Vainly she searched her mind for options, forced herself to focus on the practical. No U.S. Consulate closer than Yekaterinburg, which was still too far away to offer any practical help. But she’d call her contact at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow as soon as she reached the hotel. The Russian police, too, if they had police in this godforsaken place.

  Steeling herself, she glanced at the weapon lying on the seat beside her. Made herself look, just like her therapist had always urged. She’d even taken shooting lessons after the murders, in an effort to manage her phobia, though she’d hated every minute. This slender, snub-nosed pistol, encased in sleek aluminum alloy, looked like something straight out of an Ian Fleming novel—small, concealable and deadly—but her nerves were too scattered to identify the model.

  At least he’d engaged the safety, though she wasn’t certain why he hadn’t holstered it. Were they still in danger? Or did he just want to keep her off balance?

  Shuddering, she turned away.

  In the front seat, Ilya pressed a wadded muffler against Artur’s shoulder as the latter continued to drive, his scarred face twisted with pain. Seeing the dark blood that stained his coat, she clamped down on a fresh surge of panic. At least Ilya—the apparent mainstay of Nikolai Markov’s hired muscle—didn’t have a mark on him. In fact, it struck her as a minor miracle they hadn’t all been blown to smithereens.

  Beside her, Markov tapped out a swift message, then tucked the pistol away. “We’ll be in Khimgorod in eighteen minutes. There’s nothing to fear, Dr. Rossi.”

  Like hell there isn’t! She rode the ragged edge between terror and self-control. I should have taken that train, because there won’t be another for a good seventeen hours.

  Hopefully, she’d still be alive when the time came to board it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Focal Point: The square where a chess player focuses his attack.

  Forty minutes later, Nikolai Markov stationed himself at the dingy bar in the Soviet-era hotel owned by the Khimgorod Chemical Combine. Sipping a shot of gritty espresso, he extracted a Gauloise from his cigarette case and lit up, while he pretended not to observe the mark. For the past half hour, she’d stood at the reception desk in this miserable fourth-rate hovel—the only hotel in Khimgorod—and disputed her cancelled reservation with a dogged composure that had earned his grudging respect.

  Extraordinary, wasn’t it, being under the same roof as Skylar Dane Rossi after all these years? A lifetime ago, the KGB had ordered him not to touch her, not to seek vengeance against the pampered American princess whose adolescent antics caused his brother’s death.

  But the Soviet Union was dead now—as dead as his brother Kirill. And his old comrades from the KGB called themselves something else now, just as Nikolai did, though they all used the same old tricks.

  When the Ministry of Foreign Affairs approached him about this job, and he’d learned she was the mark, his long-term obsession with Dr. Skylar Rossi had become not only personal, but profitable.

  The clash of raised voices bounced off the granite floor. He glanced toward the reception desk. Despite standing in a lobby cold enough to hang beef, forced to negotiate with a surly receptionist in her no-more-than-adequate Russian, and despite the blood that stained her ivory slacks, the mark hadn’t lost her temper or her poise.

  Instead, she carried herself with cool authority and projected her voice in a way that commanded attention.

  He’d expected her to fall apart, to splinter into a thousand messy pieces, to be huddled in breathless hysterics on the hotel’s appalling couch. In fact, he’d planned on it, since shaking her up had been the purpose of the entire exercise.

  A pity his associate had bungled it.

  But there she stood, with her faxed reservation in one hand and a stack of crisp thousand-ruble notes in the other, still elegant in her tailored wool suit despite being shot at and nearly killed. Her oxblood attaché case rested before her, and she hadn’t parted with it for a second. He knew this, because of course he’d been watching for it.

  Clearly, the pickpocket he’d hired in Novosibirsk should have snatched the attaché case instead of her purse.

  He’d already known Skylar Rossi was a striking beauty, gifted with her father’s Italian coloring: glossy jet-black hair in a stylish bob, heavy fringe sweeping over sky-blue eyes, a model’s high cheekbones she did nothing to highlight under that golden Mediterranean skin. She’d inherited her mother’s build—the world-famous ballerina whose death had been so tragic and so unnecessary. Tall and long-limbed, just like Sabrina Rossi, sleek and sinewed with a dancer’s grace.

  But Sabrina’s American daughter did her best to camouflage her feminine assets behind that conservative pantsuit, which was rather a pity.

  Still, none of that would hinder the job he’d signed on for. He was a professional, he’d taken the job because he needed the money—had to have the money—and the mark was the mark. He’d do whatever was necessary to complete the mission and not flinch from the cold-eyed killing machine he saw afterward, looking out from his bathroom mirror.

  No reason in hell why looking at his reflection should trouble him. It had been a lifetime since anything human looked back.

  In the pocket of his Armani jacket, his mobile phone vibrated. Propping his cigarette neatly against the ashtray, Nikolai thumbed open the sleek unit and checked his messages. It ought to be his associate Slava calling from the SUV with an explanation and an apology, since he’d fumbled the hit so badly.

  Still nothing from Slava, which was unfortunate. Instead, Nikolai found another message from Irina.

  She sounded anxious, afraid, trying to hide it from him as always. Only seven days left until the deadline—the drop-dead line, as she called it. He’d sworn he’d have the money. He’d made a career out of lies and deception; no one lied better than Nikolai Markov. But this was one promise he intended to keep.

  Savoring the acrid perfume of his French cigarette, he fired off a series of text messages to his team. Artur was at the clinic, being treated for that minor gunshot wound, though Nikolai himself had taken worse on several occasions and doctored himself when necessary. Ilya was in position, tucked out of sight, checking the listening device installed in the mark’s hotel room and discreetly searching her luggage.

  Everything is under control as always. Nikolai Markov tossed back a last bitter swallow of espresso. In sixteen hours, one way or another, Skylar Rossi will be history.

  If she refused to leave, he’d just have to kill her.

  _____________________________________

  After a lengthy negotiation with the hotel manager, an aging battleaxe with a peroxide pompadour and a hard face divided by a slash of magenta lipstick, the hotel at last reversed her cancelled reservation. But if Skylar wanted an apology for the inconvenience, she’d probably be waiting until she died of old age.

  In fact, she was still waiting for her key, because the staff was allegedly cleaning her room.

  They were probably planting a listening device, or checking the film in their camera. Skylar would have to pretend she didn’t hear the shutter in her television clacking away at her. Once again she’d be changing in her bathroom, with the door closed.

  At least the apocalyptic struggle with the hotel manager had provided a minor diversion. God knew, she was desperate for
one after being nearly gunned down on the highway.

  Still a good half-hour until the U.S. Embassy—several time zones behind her—opened for business. As threatened, Markov had promptly impounded her smart phone. But she’d call the Embassy’s Chargé d’Affaires—the acting Ambassador—in Moscow at start-of-business, and beg Geoffrey Chase for backup.

  With a start, Skylar realized she was chafing her arms. Despite being swathed in her wool coat, with her animal-friendly faux fur hat pulled down around her ears, she’d been shivering for what seemed like hours.

  Gripping her attaché case, she strode briskly to the faded green sofa near the bar. This dive didn’t even have a proper name, not even Hotel No. 66 or something equally Soviet. The place was just “the hotel belonging to the pesticide plant,” which was the civilian cover for the chemical combine.

  At least her suitcase had reappeared, though the still-absent Ilya had undoubtedly searched it.

  Uneasily she glanced around the grim Stalin-era foyer: icebox cold and echoing, windows shrouded in layers of dingy puce velvet, an aging electric chandelier burning dimly overhead. The dirty snow from their boots had frozen in gray gobbets on the floor.

  She seemed to be nearly the only guest in this godforsaken hotel—as far as she could tell—except for a pair of Asian men in business attire who’d hurried past, muttering quietly to each other, while she filled out forms. Probably Japanese or South Korean businessmen, since Russia permitted scientific cooperation with some of the big conglomerates for purely financial reasons. They must have gotten special permission to visit Khimgorod, just like she had.

  But they too had undoubtedly received their marching orders from the FSB. They’d be permitted to meet their Russian business partners only outside the boundaries of the chemical combine.

  Although the pair had long since vanished, the back of her neck prickled as she crossed the foyer and perched on the rock-hard sofa.

  Unavoidably her gaze slid to the elegant black-clad figure standing at the bar, a coil of cigarette smoke twining above his head, one polished shoe propped casually on the knee-length rail. Nikolai Markov was watching her, just as he’d been doing all morning, with the cool intellectual interest of a scientist observing a mildly curious biological phenomenon through a microscope.