Heart Strike

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  “A friend of a sort. Don’t worry about it,” Mischa said. He reached for the door handle and looked past Fabian and Agata, to Dima, sitting beside the other door. “Give me a minute. She’s elderly and inclined to startle.”

  “Take all the time you need,” Dima said complacently, which was not what Fabian expected her to say.

  Neither did Scott. “Boss!”

  “Sokolov is wanted by every agency and authority in three countries. Right now, we’re the best sanctuary he’s got. He’s not about disappear on us.”

  Fabian felt relief trickle through her, for the same thought had crossed her mind, too. Her heart slowed.

  Mischa made a wordless sound which might have been grumpy agreement. He got out of the car. His dark silhouette moved up the front path to the door. After a minute or two, a porch light came on. It illuminated Mischa’s hair and the dark coat. The door opened. A smaller figure—the elderly woman he had mentioned—looked up at Mischa. Then she raised her arms up and they hugged each other.

  “I’ll be damned,” Scott murmured.

  Mischa came back to the car, opened the door and leaned it. “Lyudmyla is happy to let us stay in her house, although she regrets there is not enough beds for all of you. She is putting on the kettle.” He scooped Fabian up and out of the car and carried her up the path, leaving everyone else to follow.

  Lyudmyla had no English at all, and very little Ukrainian, for she was Russian. While the rest of the team spread out on old armchairs and a couch, and corners of the floor, their laptops arrayed in front of them, Dima spoke to Lyudmyla with a warm tone.

  Fabian couldn’t follow the exchange. She was felt ignorant among people who could switch from English to Russian to Ukrainian and make themselves understood. She suspected it didn’t matter which country they found themselves in—most of them would know enough of the local lingua franca to communicate.

  Dima glanced at Mischa, who was bringing in an enormous wooden tray with an old samovar and glasses, cream and sugar. “Saved her son, hmm?”

  Mischa put the tray on an antique card table. “She insists it makes me special. I was, in fact, simply trying to survive and a few others followed my lead.” He shrugged.

  Scott’s eyes narrowed as he considered Mischa. He said nothing and went back to his laptop. The others got to their feet and came over to pour tea for themselves. All of them thanked Lyudmyla in Russian, which made her smile warmly.

  Fabian stayed on the end of the sofa. She could walk without the brace, but it was a shuffling, dragging, embarrassing gait, and slow, too. Carrying a full cup of tea back to the sofa would be impossible.

  She did not regret the loss of the brace, though. It was replaceable. When Mischa had asked her for it, she had barely hesitated. “I won’t be able to walk fast,” she said, as she hauled the leg of her trousers up and unstrapped the steel, hinged cage, with its neoprene outer casing.

  “You won’t have to,” Mischa replied, his gaze on the road ahead. The Bentley was moving far too fast even for him to glance aside. He did look in the mirror, a split-second movement.

  She tore the brace off and held it out. Ahead of them, at the end of the road, with no side roads turning off it, was an official looking gate, with a boom and a sentry box. Beyond it were buildings and structures which made Fabian think of oil refineries.

  The Bentley decelerated slowly. “Take off my belt,” Mischa said. His tone warned her not to argue. She unbuckled the belt while he raised up his hips and slid it from the carriers. She had to fight with the holster clip to free the belt.

  “Buckle it around the steering wheel, under my hand,” he told her. “On the very last hole.”

  She obeyed, as a trickle of understanding came to her. Surely, he didn’t really intend to…? “Done,” she breathed.

  “Loop it over the gear stick.”

  She fitted the leather over the gear stick, fighting to make it reach.

  The Bentley was moving at a walking pace, now. Mischa opened his door and pushed it so it stayed fully open. Then he grabbed the brace and shoved it against the accelerator pedal, and turned it so the top end was jammed against the axle mound. The car slowed even more.

  He put his arm around her waist and hauled her over the console onto his lap. “When I say, I want you to use your good leg to straighten the joint on the brace, so it locks. Ready?”

  “I really wanna get out now,” she said, her voice shaking.

  “You will.” He peered ahead, and minutely adjusted the steering wheel, forcing the belt to slide and then hold it. “Now,” he said.

  She shoved at the joint of the brace, and the engine roared. She felt the joint click and hold, even as Mischa fell back and sideways, out of the car, which leapt ahead.

  The car’s sudden snap forward jerked the door closed.

  Fabian didn’t see anything else after that, for they were rolling across the frosty, cold tarmac, pebbles digging into them.

  The second they halted, Mischa leapt to his feet, and hauled her onto hers. He scooped her up and ran across to the other side of the road, and into the trees on that side.

  The roar of the Bentley was drowned by the engines of dozens of patrol vehicles, interceptor cars, trucks, SUVs and more, barreling up the road toward the refinery-whatever.

  Mischa didn’t pause. He didn’t linger to watch the Bentley’s progress. He didn’t run, yet his pace didn’t slow as he pushed through the bushes and ducked under branches.

  The explosion and roar of flames made Fabian jerk in his arms.

  “It’s all right. It is what I intended.”

  “I know.”

  “There,” he said. “Green metallic paintwork.”

  She turned to look and saw the vehicle which Dima had been leaning against sitting right up alongside the chain-link. Mischa had looped through the trees to where he had expected them to be…and there they were.

  “You’ll have to tap on the window, I think,” Mischa said, sounding amused. “The fireworks have distracted them.”

  He leaned down so she could rap her knuckles against the window.

  No, she didn’t regret the loss of the brace at all, she decided. It could have been far worse.

  “Fabian,” Dima said, jerking her out of her reverie.

  Fabian shook off the tense memories.

  Dima held out one of the tea glasses toward her. “Cream and two spoonfuls of sugar, if I remember right?”

  “Thank you,” Fabian said gratefully, taking the glass by the silver handle. She was parched. “Where did Mischa go?”

  “He said he would be right back.”

  “You believe him this time?” Fabian asked.

  “Until I have a serious conversation with him, nothing is certain,” Dima said shortly.

  Fabian raised her brow. Such directness was unusual. The Dima she knew was a reticent woman, kind and gentle and sometimes even shy. That persona had to be the civilian day-to-day mask Dima wore. This iron core, then, was the real Dima.

  Fabian thought she might like the real Dima far better than the introverted Muslim woman who had hovered on the fringes of her family for years.

  Mischa came into the room and over to the sofa. He held out a gnarled, old wooden walking stick, with a semi-circular handle. “Here,” he said softly. “Lyudmyla is happy for you to have it. It was her husband’s.”

  Dima raised her brow. “The wood won’t set off metal detectors, either.”

  “And it’s a good blunt instrument, in an emergency, although it will break if you whack hard enough,” Mischa replied.

  Fabian took the cane gratefully, her heart glowing. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Mischa looked at Dima. “I think you and I should talk, Dima Parvana.”

  “Yes, we should,” Dima said softly. “Kitchen?”

  “This way.”

  Fabian smoothed her thumb over the curved handle of the cane, and watched them leave, her heart fluttering uneasily. The shape of her future was about to be deci
ded.

  Mischa took the Parvana woman into the old kitchen, with its creaking floor and yellowed linoleum. He didn’t bother shutting the door. The entire conversation would be reported back to her superiors sooner or later. His task right now was to make sure it was “later”—the later, the better.

  Parvana didn’t cross her arms defensively or lean against the counters. She just stood, relaxed and ready. Her gaze was steady. “Now is when you explain why you insisted we not go directly to the Embassy and instead stay out in public, with your face plastered across screens everywhere.”

  He reached into his pocket and withdrew his keys. “Lots of reasons, but only one is needed to convince you. Give me your cellphone for a moment.”

  She pulled the phone out of her pocket and held it out. “I’m listening.”

  “Borya Krupin.”

  She gave no visible reaction, yet tension strummed through her. Her gaze didn’t shift. A tiny vein throbbed beside her eye.

  Mischa nodded. “That’s the Kobra’s real name.” He stripped the cover off the false key and fitted the convertor on the end and pushed the drive into her phone.

  Dima swallowed. She let out a breath that wasn’t entirely steady.

  “I’m sure you won’t take my word for it—”

  “I do, actually,” Dima said. “I didn’t ask you for the name. Fabian told you I was looking for him?”

  “I inferred it from the very little she did give up. She spun a story about a lost uncle that, for a while, I completely swallowed.”

  “Aslan,” Dima breathed.

  He turned on the phone and swiped through screens to find the directory. “I have been living and working in Ukraine for seventeen years,” he said. “Until Fabian came along, I might have continued that way for another twenty years. She has been a catalyst of the most violent kind.”

  “Fabian is a sweetheart,” Dima said, her voice firm.

  “I agree. Her quest to find Aslan and through him, the Kobra, shifted tectonic plates which have been undisturbed for decades. Tonight is the result. Me standing here with you is the fallout.”

  Parvana considered him. “There is more to this than a simple affair…”

  “Yes,” he said heavily. He pulled up the document he wanted, scaled it so it was readable and handed the phone back to her.

  Dima scanned it. “I’ve seen this before…”

  “I know.” He took the phone back and pulled up another document and handed it back again.

  She frowned as she read it. “This…is new.” She looked up at him. “What else do you have?”

  “Every record, file or document which mentioned Krupin, that I could scrape onto the thumb drive in ten minutes. I took those from the archival servers at the Russian Embassy last night.” He took the phone back and pulled the thumb drive out and held it up. “Forgive me, but this is my bargaining chip. The new file is a taster, and payment for pulling us out of the ditch tonight.”

  “With more to come for services rendered…” Dima finished. “What do you want, Sokolov?”

  He fitted the false key back over the thumb drive once more. “I will give you this—the whole drive—for one simple exchange.”

  She waited.

  Mischa gripped the key. “I will eventually have to seek asylum in America. This—” and he hefted the key, “will cement the matter. It will also, I hope, be my buy-in. Only, if I present myself to the embassy and your government now, I will be tied up in red tape and debriefings for months, then parked in a flat in Utah and cut off from information, to live out my days as an unreliable asset who once sold out his country.”

  Dima said nothing. They both knew how it went, after all.

  “I’m asking you to hold off on that processing,” Mischa said. “I want to work with you to find the Kobra. I want to bring him down. I will do everything in my power to make that happen. And once it is done, then I will willingly submit to whatever processes your Company people want to put me through. I will sing endlessly for my supper…after I’ve dealt with Krupin.”

  For the first time, she showed emotion. “What did Krupin do to you?” she asked softly.

  Mischa braced himself. He had to hand over the truth, for Dima would accept nothing less. She would fact check and cross check everything he told her. He knew that because he would do the same. “In the circles I move in—moved in—you people are denigrated because of your morals and qualms. You won’t kill an American on American soil, even if the man is evil personified. You’ve never been able to successfully install sleeper agents because you don’t have the courage to demand your citizens give up their entire lives for their country.”

  “That is what you believe?” Dima asked. She didn’t sound upset.

  “I thought it was a weakness,” Mischa admitted.

  “Past tense…” she murmured, then waited. She was good at using silence to coax a man to speak.

  “How much have you learned about me?” he asked.

  “We’ve been a bit busy.”

  “Aeroflot Flight 353, in 2006,” he said.

  “Ah. Your wife and children.” She grimaced. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Yesterday, I found out the flight wasn’t bought down by a stray American GTA.” His throat tightened. He frowned, as his heart lurched. “It was…” His voice closed down.

  Dima made a soft sound. “Krupin!” she added, horror in her voice.

  Mischa fought to throw off his reaction and speak. “One hundred and six deaths, just to tie me to the Motherland and ensure I would give everything I had to serve her.”

  Dima frowned. “I’m sorry, Mischa,” she said softly. “You must know, though…yours is not a unique story. Speak to the others. You will find this is the Kobra’s pattern.”

  “Fabian included.” His head ached. “The irony of it is that I would have given my complete loyalty and served Russia to the end of my days, anyway.”

  “But not now?”

  He rubbed his temple. “If I am to do what I must…if I am to find the Kobra and deal with him, then I must give up my country.” He dropped his hand. “It seems I have qualms and morals which limit my work, just as you do. I find I cannot let a man of no conscience like Krupin continue to operate. Men like him are the ruin of Russia. He must be stopped, Dima.”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice low.

  “Will you let me help you?”

  She held out her hand.

  Mischa dropped the key into it.

  [19]

  Stari Petrivtsi. A glass of tea later.

  Fabian’s heart fluttered when Dima and Mischa came back into the room. Dima went straight over to Scott and murmured to him.

  Scott straightened from his hunch over the laptop with a snap of his spine. “You’re fucking joking, right?” he said loudly.

  Mischa plucked the tea glass from Fabian’s hand, then picked up her hand. “A moment, please?”

  She reached for the cane and got to her feet. The reason she had refused to use a walking aid the first time around was that she couldn’t seem to coordinate the movements needed to walk smoothly. She realized she was stumbling like a newborn colt across the floor, yet nobody looked up and Mischa said nothing. He just held her hand.

  The kitchen was warm and redolent of meals-long-gone, tradition and permanence. Family.

  Mischa leaned against the counter and she sensed he was holding off any signs of tiredness with sheer will power. She was more than ready to sleep, herself. Everything ached, including her face bones.

  He kept hold of her hand. “I wanted to be the one to tell you what will happen now.”

  She swallowed. “I suppose…well, thank you. I think.”

  He nodded. “It’s fair to doubt me. I’ve given you no reason to…well.” He cleared his throat. “This is my one chance to speak,” he said, his voice firmer. “So, I must say everything.”

  Her heart squeezed.

  “I will work with Dima and the others,” he said.

  Fabian shru
gged. “Okay?”

  Mischa’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think you understand how unconventional that is.”

  “I’m just a volcanologist,” she reminded him.

  “Which is why I will work with Dima,” Mischa replied.

  Her heart gave another little strum. “Because of me?”

  “Because of you and because of Yana and Anton and Inna,” he added. “He killed them, Fabian. I found out two days ago, and…and…” He drew in a breath, his chest lifting.

  Horror touched her. “The Kobra? He killed them? Oh, Mischa…”

  He shook his head, his fingers tightening on hers. “No, no, don’t look like that. God, I’m explaining this all wrong. You are the reason I found out. And when I did learn the truth, it hurt. It enraged me…but Fabian, a voice spoke in my head, the moment I realized what the Kobra had done. The voice was calm and so clear.” His blue eyes were steady. “We Russians are fatalists, you know. It is in our blood, formed by a history which constantly grinds us down. Yet we persevere. And that was what the voice said.”

  “To carry on?” she asked, her voice weak.

  “No, no. Well, yes, that, too. Once I could think again, it was perfectly obvious to me.” He stroked her cheek. “I had to love once and lose them, so I would recognize love when I had it once more. I had to lose my wife and children, so I could find you. No, not even find you. So that when you did fall into my arms, I would be able to let go of everything which ever had meaning for me and be with you.”

  Fabian held still, all except her heart, which beat so fast, the beats were a single, hurting blur. Her eyes ached.

  Mischa lowered his hand from her face. “Unless…I’ve guessed wrong,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  Fabian shook her head, her tears spilling. “No, you haven’t guessed wrong at all.” She reached for him and he pulled her against him.

  The cane clattered to the floor.

  She ignored it, for Mischa was kissing her and the joy it brought her made her tremble. He had come back to her.

  When he let her go, she leapt with her heart and soul. “I love you,” she told him.