The woman had stayed put, staring south, exactly like all the other would-be riders of public transport whose connections uptown were delayed due to slippery streets.
He paid her no further mind, and focused on a pink and green marquee about twenty yards ahead. It was the Irish pub where Boris said they’d meet, a spot he frequently chose to conduct business, enamored by their collection of single malt scotch.
Yuri stepped inside, and scanned the long wooden bar that shone from a century of wiping up spilled drinks.
A half-dozen middle-aged men sat hunched on the stools, each one separated from company by at least two empty places. Their wrinkled faces were already ruddy from happy hour, the glow accentuated by an illuminated sign that read Busch in freehand script. “The beer or the president,” Yuri had always joked whenever he visited the place. Regulars usually smiled, politely, sensing someone who might buy them a drink, and sometimes he would. He didn’t feel in the mood to play that game now.
A younger crowd occupied the dozen or so booths that jutted out from the wall, mostly couples downing fries, salads, and the house specialty, Buffalo Wings.
But no Boris.
He took one of the empty tables toward the back near the kitchen and sat facing the front door. Gunfighter’s seat, he thought, remembering the collected teachings of Coop, John Wayne, and Jimmy Stewart.
A young girl wearing a ring in her nose threw a menu in front of him. Her short, black leather skirt revealed more of her bum than it covered.
One point in his life he might have simply verified she was over eighteen, and seen where events led. Now, at thirty-nine, he’d stopped dating women who looked closer to Kyra’s age than his own.
He ordered a Glenfiddich.
Up near the cash register, a TV mounted in the ceiling silently broadcast images of talking heads, the sound having been turned down.
No sooner had he received his drink but a helicopter shot of Waikiki filled the screen, the aquamarine waters steaming like a hot springs, a tangle of blackened wreckage at the very center.
“Miss, could you turn it up please,” he called to the girl who’d served him.
She smiled, walked over to the set, and stretched up on her toes to reach the volume control.
The row of old men watched her hemline creep north.
“. . . military officials are providing local health professionals with HAZMAT protective gear from Pearl and allowing them to care for the dead and injured. As for civilians, they’re being confined to their homes and apartments. ‘Until what we’re dealing with is known, we won’t risk further contamination,’ said the director of public health . . .”
Nothing new, Yuri thought, and slumped back in his seat.
The front door opened and two more couples walked in.
He glanced at his watch.
Boris was now five minutes late. That never happened. Maybe he wasn’t going to show after all.
The front door opened again.
An Asian woman entered, accompanied by two occidental men, and all three took a seat near the entrance without so much as a glance at the rest of the place.
Yuri went very still.
What if good old Bori has decided to throw me to the wolves?
He rested his head on his right hand, shielding the upper half of his face, and peered through his fingers.
The woman remained completely occupied with the two men.
He didn’t think she was the lady he’d seen waiting for the bus. It had been hard to tell in the darkness, but that woman’s coat had appeared to be tan colored, and this one wore black.
Still, he felt trapped.
Them up there, blocking the way out.
Him back here, no idea who they were.
He studied her again.
During the two hours he’d spent milling around Times Square, he’d gone on alert every time anyone remotely Asian got close to him in the crowds.
He tried to remember if he had seen this trio.
Or her alone.
He didn’t think so, but couldn’t be sure.
This woman had a distinctive pixie haircut. Very attractive. It reminded him of Shirley MacLaine in a comedy he’d seen where she pretended to be Japanese. He was pretty sure he’d have recalled seeing her before.
She’d certainly showed no interest in him or anyone else in the room. Her attention remained focused on the pair sitting with her as she laughed loudly and talked animatedly with her hands, all the while speaking perfect English.
Probably American-Asian he thought, or rehearsed enough to pass herself off as that. The bunch who’d come after him this afternoon had also spoken flawless English.
He sipped his whisky and glanced behind him, checking if he could make a run for it through the kitchen to a back exit.
The announcer on TV suddenly spoke with a new urgency.
“. . . and on the home front, a scene that could be out of the Middle East has occurred right here in Long Island. Local police are investigating the murderous ambush of a prominent Russian businessman and his entourage . . .”
The smoking remains of a burnt out SUV appeared on the screen.
“. . . Boris Yurskovitch, well known arms dealer, obviously had a disgruntled customer, someone who breached security at the Yurskovitch home and blew up his vehicle, killing Yurskovitch and two associates as they pulled into the garage. The attacker used one of the very rocket propelled grenades, or RPGs, that Yurskovitch is purported to have marketed all over the world . . .”
Yuri sat completely motionless, stunned by the images of slaughter, his drink half raised to his lips.
“. . . Mr. Yurskovitch’s bodyguards related that their employer had insisted on driving himself to a meeting this afternoon . . .”
The screen showed a stern-faced man in a black coat holding his hand up to block the news camera from taking his picture. Yuri caught a glimpse of the scar that curled up from his right eyebrow.
“. . . Mrs. Tania Yurskovitch is in seclusion and made no comment to the press as to who might want to kill her husband. But an acquaintance of the family who lived near their home put it succinctly enough. ‘I’m not surprised. He lived by selling the gun, and he bought it with the gun. That’s justice.’ The acquaintance did not wish to give his name . . .”
The announcer shuffled his papers together and gave a little smirk.
“. . . Obviously, not a man who will be missed, unless you need a bazooka. And now, onto sports . . .”
Yuri downed his drink in a single gulp and pressed himself back in the corner of his booth.
He wanted to run.
But where?
He hadn’t a hope of protecting himself if Boris couldn’t, surrounded with all his Siloviki. Or had they been the ones who’d set him up?
Shit.
Maybe they knew about the meeting here and were waiting outside.
Waiting for him now.
Cold sweat prickled onto the surface of his skin between his shoulder blades.
He needed to think.
He needed another Glenfiddich.
He got the waitress’s attention by raising his empty glass at her, then shrank back in the corner. The footage of Boris spattered all over the interior of his SUV and seared to a crisp did reruns through Yuri’s head. He shivered and rechecked the Asian woman.
She continued to dominate her conversation with the two dinner companions.
Think coolly, he told himself. First, get out of here. Back to Times Square where he could stay lost in the crowd. Then grab a cab and hole up somewhere. Figure the next step, where to go, who to call. Most of all, try to piece together what was happening. Why were the Chinese sweeping up Boris’s network? Some kind of internal war? He’d no illusions about either group’s ruthlessness or the extent of their powers. But why would they try to kill me? he kept asking himself. They hadn’t asked him to get them anything since 2006, and, try as he might, no way could he see how that business, especially his part in it, could
have anything to do with the outbreak on the Reagan or what had happened in Hawaii. Yet if that hit team were trying to grab him before the FBI did, they must have been afraid he could tell the Feds something. So what did he know that he didn’t know he knew?
The waitress went behind the bar selected a clean glass, and opened the bottle.
Maybe she’d take him home with her.
He considered the possibility, absently picked up a red plastic stirrer that had come with the first drink and twirled it between his thumb and forefinger.
Or he could make a stand, right in the booth. Fight off all comers with a swizzle stick.
The TV announcer’s voice abruptly grew urgent again. “. . . and we are just now receiving a breaking story over the wire. Police are looking for two New York physicians, Dr. Yuri Raskin and Dr. Anna Katasova. The FBI has named these individuals as persons of interest regarding the catastrophic events in Honolulu . . .”
Side by side photographs of Anna and him popped up on the TV screen.
“. . . I repeat, New York physicians, Drs. Yuri Raskin and Anna Katasova . . .”
His waitress began to pay more attention to the TV screen than pouring his drink.
“. . . Dr. Katasova is director of the New York offices for the World Health Organization . . .”
Yuri got out of the booth, and walked toward the kitchen, hoping anyone who noticed would think he was looking for a toilet. Seconds later he ran through the back door, across a parking lot, and into the Manhattan night.
7:31 P.M. EST
Amtrak Acela Express, destination Boston
Anna startled awake, her mouth open to scream.
She’d dreamed the nightmare again. Running through a gray fog that clung to her like cellophane, pursuers following in the shadows--of all the memories stirred up by turbulent sleep, her brain had unerringly zeroed in on that one.
She slumped back in her seat, yielding to the train’s sway. Snow streaked past the window, and golden reflections from the passenger cars undulated over the surface of billowy drifts alongside the tracks. But neither the scenery nor the rocking movement could soothe away her fear. It lingered, as always, when she dreamt of Guangzhou.
Her daughter dozed peacefully in the seat beside her. Kyra might be just thirteen, but her features showed two extremes, from the fleshy roundness of the dark-eyed little girl who’d run through the grasses in a cranberry-red coat, to the more linear sweep of brow and jawline that hinted at the woman to come. Tonight, oblivious to the catastrophe about to descend on her parents, she appeared heartbreakingly vulnerable. Who would take care of her?
Already running on pure adrenaline, Anna’s heart pounded into triple digits. Whether in Sverdlovsk, Gabon, Guangzhou, or America the free, it was as if having been born to tyranny, she’d been branded by it, the mark inviting tyrants and control freaks everywhere to abuse her. The warrant for her and Yuri’s arrest had to be Robert Daikens’ doing. He’d jail her to pressure Yuri into surrendering, then throw away the key. Well, the hell with Daikens, and anyone else who tried to rob her of Kyra. The days of being at the mercy of rogue jailers and generals, no matter what flag they flew, were over. Watch mommy and learn, my love. We’ll set them right. Just curl our toes and let fly where it hurts. Trust me. I’ve done it.
As for Yuri, Anna would never betray him. Because he’d die to protect their daughter. In that one thing, he remained more constant than any man she knew. Which meant she damn well better figure out what the idiot had to do with all this and, if still possible, pluck him out of trouble.
For the thousandth time, her gaze swept the other passengers.
Travel by rail had seemed the safest way to go. The FBI might have already put her on a watch list at security checkpoints in airports, but during rush hour at Penn Station, a glance at her photo ID by a harried woman manning the ticket counter failed to set off any alarms. As an added precaution, Anna paid the fare with cash in case the Feds had red-flagged her credit card. Yet with so many travelers viewing newscasts over their Blackberries, the biggest risk of being recognized lay in someone spotting her picture on CNN.
No one paid her the slightest attention.
Her thoughts turned back to Yuri, the nightmare, and a day seven years ago in Guangzhou.
The China Incident
2002
No pestilence had ever been so fatal or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and seal--the redness and the horror of blood.
Edgar Allan Poe, The Masque of the Red Death
There are traumatic events in a human lifetime, whether leading to great loss or gain, that ingrain themselves in a person’s instincts. They shape our subconscious response to peril thereafter, for better or worse, as sure as adrenalin sets the heart pumping, quickens the breath, and prepares our muscles to stand and fight, or flee.
Dr. Walter Blake, American Journal of Heart and Brain
Chapter 10
Friday, March 15, 2002, 6:10 A.M.
Quingping Free Market, City of Guangzhou, Guangdong province, South China
Morning arrived sticky and pale, the cool night having wrung a thick mist from the humid air.
Anna could barely see in any direction. A few people shuffled out from the gray haze, some close enough to brush against her before they disappeared again. But up ahead a chorus of shrill voices clashed against one another, suggesting a throng of thousands, as if she were wandering into an invisible army of quarreling spirits.
The stink of fish told her it couldn’t be far.
“Go earlry, or best bargains gone,” the night clerk at her hotel had warned while he drew a map of the landmarks to follow, not that they’d be visible in the murk.
“I’m just looking, not buying.”
“No, must buy. Hotel chef will cook Chinese delricacy. A great treat for you.”
“I don’t think so--”
“Eel, rat, cat, monkey, big birds--”
“No, not Big Bird. My six year old daughter wouldn’t like that.”
“Everything good,” he’d continued with boring earnestness.
Either the guy had never had a TV and kids, or he lacked a sense of humor.
“Ask for speciarlty of cook.” He’d paused to lick his lips, the way a waiter might before describing the pièce de résistance in a gourmet meal.
Trying to be polite, she’d feigned interest. “Which is?”
“Snake!”
“How nice.”
The voices grew louder, and soon she came to the edge of a crowd that buzzed so noisily it must have extended blocks beyond what she could see in the gloom. The shadowy figures nearest her wandered through a maze of wooden display stands and stood clustered around lines of wheelbarrows, arguing over the price of their contents. Obscured by the fog and wearing loose-fitting work tunics, they were timeless beings, their costumes bearing no visible markers that tied them to the present. She might have been standing at the break of day five thousand years ago when Chinese farmers first decided they’d be better off to trade their goods rather than kill one another for them, and started the history of barter on this exact spot.
Drawing closer, she glimpsed a slash of crimson at the center of a table.
Freshly skinned eel.
She checked over her shoulder.
No sign of the woman.
Anna passed the next huddle of bargain hunters as they pawed over another mound of fresh kill--skinned rats this time, their claws curled up in the air, as if the creatures had died scratching and kicking. Still moist, they glistened scarlet in the charcoal light, heads left on of course. According to local custom, that’s what kept the body meat from going dry.
Yesterday she’d made it clear at her lecture that the market would be on her agenda this morning. “Taking inventory of the live produce that vendors sell will be the most direct way I can itemize what animals might transmit zoonotic organisms to humans in this humid, fetid, crowded part of the world.” If Wey Chen had been in the audience, or joined the many young doct
ors who thronged around the podium asking questions at the end of each session, she knew where to meet.
But had given no sign that she would.
Then again, Anna’s Chinese minders had always been close by. Not that they behaved in an overbearing manner. Their demeanor had been nothing short of polite from the beginning, more that of hosts than police as they chauffeured her around. She certainly found it a far cry from the heavy handed antics of their KGB counterparts back in the bad old days when Western scientists visited Sverdlovsk. However, the Chinese cops, even with their edge in etiquette, allowing her a dawn sojourn alone had been a surprise.
Rope to hang herself? Ryder’s warning of a setup remained fresh in her mind.
Or like state employees everywhere, they didn’t like unpaid overtime.
Anna felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature and looked behind her for the twentieth time. Might as well try to see through gauze, she thought. If watchers were hidden out there, they’d have a hard time keeping track of her.
But so would the pale young woman with the round-shaped face who had been standing outside the entrance of the hotel.
Dressed in a beige Burberry raincoat, which indicated someone with enough income to buy high-end clothing, she’d made no acknowledgment of Anna and might simply have been expecting a taxi.
But as Anna had worked her way through the dark streets, the occasional footfall sounded behind her. Not the slap of leather or the click of heels, but the soft pad of a crepe sole, much like the faint noise her own sensible shoes would make. It could be anyone, of course, going anywhere. Except when Anna stopped to consult her map and find her bearings, that faint noise ceased. And once she got underway again, it resumed. A female doctor would be more apt to chose comfortable crepe soles that don’t slip on the linoleum floors found in most hospitals.
At the moment, unfortunately, the ruckus from the market made it impossible to hear anything so quiet. Anna didn’t want to be taken by surprise, not having quite made up her mind what to do if the woman did make an approach. Nor had she figured out what Ryder had been up to with his warnings. “A picture of her would have been nice, Terry, so I could spot her.” Why hadn’t he offered?
The Darkness Drops Page 16
