by Mark Terry
Looking at Viktor, Derek’s stomach clenched. The man must have slipped halfway out the rear window as the Audi rolled. His eyes were glazed, blood covering his face, his body twisted and bent in a way that could not support life. Derek sighed, shaking his head. Yet another corpse to visit in his nightmares.
Distant sirens wailed. That was probably good, although not if he was found with a gun in his hand. Raising the Beretta to a firing position, he moved slowly toward the idling BMW.
Suddenly shots pierced the night. Diving to the cold ground, Derek searched his surroundings for the shooter. Forty yards away Konstantin crouched by the upside-down Audi, gun aimed toward the shadows of a nearby alleyway. Konstantin shouted, “Come on out! FSB! Hands up!”
More shots fired. Konstantin dodged toward a telephone pole as bullets struck the Audi.
Derek, rolling, fired toward the alley. More gunfire rang out, followed by the shadowy figure of the assassin racing toward the BMW. Derek and Konstantin opened fire, but they were too far away to hit their target. The assassin jumped into the BMW, backed with a squeal of tires, and sped away.
Both Konstantin and Derek fired rounds at the receding vehicle until their weapons were empty.
Konstantin ran over to Derek. A red goose egg was growing on his forehead and blood from his nose leaked onto his upper lip, disappearing into his mustache and beard. “Are you okay?”
“I guess. You?”
“I’ll be okay. Viktor?”
Derek shook his head. “I’ve got his phone.”
Konstantin nodded. Glancing around, as people stopped to check on what was happening, he said, “Get the hell out of here. It’ll be impossible to explain you to my people or the local militia. Put the gun away and go. There’s a subway station about four blocks that way.” He pointed. “I’ll meet you at your hotel later.”
Clapping Konstantin on the shoulder, Derek jogged over to the Audi and retrieved his ushanka from the back seat, fitting it snuggly on his head. With a tip of his fingers to his forehead, he headed in the direction Konstantin had pointed.
18
Two members of the Red Hand, the ones who had chased Irina Khournikova, approached the wreckage of the stolen car. The vehicle had slammed into a telephone pole just inside the city. The car was pocked with bullet holes. The airbag had gone off.
Peering inside, gun held at his side, Andrei Grigorovitch felt a chill run down his spine. The accident had caused a fuel leak. The stink of gasoline was strong. He could see it pooling in the snow. But there was nobody inside the car.
He gazed around, looking for the woman, but saw nothing. Dozens of two-and three-story brick buildings, businesses mostly, empty for the night. Where had she gone? Had she been thrown from the vehicle?
Pasha said, “Sirens. We’ve got to get out of here. Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Pasha, blocky, built like a rugby player, with crew-cut brown hair and a round face, sniffed once, reached into his pocket and retrieved a cigarette pack. He tucked it into his mouth and lit up. “Stand back.” He took a deep inhale, then flicked the cigarette into the gasoline.
With a whump the car ignited. Flames ate hungrily at the car. As they hurried away, an explosion caused it to whoosh into a larger fireball.
Pasha said, “We’re fucked. Who’s going to tell Shos?”
Andrei swallowed. “I will. Let’s get out of here.”
Five minutes later, Andrei called Pasha. “We’ve got a job to do. Come on. Follow me back into the city.”
“What is it?”
“Shos and Zoya want us to create some insurance in case the woman’s still alive. We’ve got to go snatch her kid. Should be easy.”
Dr. Daniil Federov walked into the curtained-off area in the emergency room of Botkin Hospital and glanced at the chart. The triage nurse had scrawled notes he found hard to read—something about a rash, vomiting, fever. The number was clear, 40 degrees Celsius. The man was burning up and probably dehydrated. He’d come in by ambulance and his name was Pavel Botkin.
Federov was thirty-one years old with curly red hair, an oval face smeared with freckles and a tendency toward chunkiness. He’d spent a year in the Russian Army and was glad to leave that experience behind. He first attended Moscow State University, then went to the Volgograd State Medical University. Married with two little children, he’d just come on his shift and was thinking about the argument he’d had with his wife, Matrina, before he’d left. He barely remembered what they’d argued about. Probably money. It always seemed to be about money. He made decent wages as a physician, but Matrina always managed to spend it.
What the hell? He took his first real look at Pavel Botkin. The man’s face looked like a mass of bumps. Tugging on a pair of latex gloves, he pulled down Botkin’s collar to see how extensive the rash was. It disappeared into his T-shirt.
Federov’s first thoughts were of chicken pox, maybe a severe case of shingles. He’d seen plenty of shingles, and it didn’t look quite like this. He’d never seen chicken pox in an adult, although it wasn’t unheard of; he’d seen a lot of strange rashes in AIDS patients, some bizarre allergic reactions.
Botkin groaned and peered at him through half-closed eyes. Federov said, “Mr. Botkin, do you have allergies?”
Botkin’s eyes widened and he shook his head.
“Did you have chicken pox as a child?”
The patient turned his head away and didn’t answer. Federov wondered if he had passed out. With a temperature that high it was possible. The nurse had put him on an IV to help with the hydration, but he needed something for the fever. He decided to take a sample of the rash and send it to the lab. His diagnosis leaned toward either shingles or chicken pox.
Taking a sterile scalpel, he leaned down close to Botkin. Botkin turned, saw the scalpel, and jerked back. “What are you doing?” Botkin slurred.
“I thought you were unconscious. I’m going to take a sample of one of these blisters and send it to the lab. I think you might have shingles, but—”
“It’s smallpox.”
Federov stood up straight. “What?”
“You … heard … me.” His voice was barely audible.
“Why do you think you have smallpox?” Smallpox. Well, yes, that was a possibility. He’d of course never seen an actual case of smallpox. It had been eradicated worldwide in the 1970s, before Federov was even born. He’d seen photographs in medical school and they’d reviewed it a bit in 2001 when the Americans had their anthrax attacks. But …
“What makes you think you have smallpox?” he insisted. But Pavel Botkin refused to speak.
Stepping outside the curtained cubicle, Dr. Federov said to a nurse, “Get this patient into isolation immediately. Find out where he lives and start tracking down every single person he’s had contact with inside the hospital. This might be smallpox.”
The nurse went pale, but nodded.
Dr. Federov felt a shiver down his spine, thinking: Was I vaccinated for smallpox?
But he had to put that aside for now. If this was smallpox, they had a huge problem. He had phone calls to make. Yanking off his gloves, he dropped them into a biohazard bag and taped it shut. He told the nurse to take everything in the room, including the curtains, and put them into biohazard bags and seal them.
The hospital might end up in lockdown, he thought. He’d better get moving.
Derek kept his hands in his pockets and his neck hunched into his jacket and wondered what the hell he was doing. The Real McCoy was a couple blocks northwest of the U.S. Embassy, more or less in the shadows of the Arab Mission. During the car chase he had noticed they passed the Moscow Zoo, but after that he wasn’t really sure where they went. He’d been too busy trying to get information out of Viktor or shoot at the Gekko. He reflected that his inability to speak Russian or decipher Cyrillic was turning out to be a major headache. He walked on through the sleet, thinking what to do.
He’d come to Moscow to meet a son he didn�
��t know he had. He might have had some notion of looking into Irina’s death, but he hadn’t thought much past that. He sure as hell hadn’t planned on getting kicked into a Russian terrorism investigation.
And yet he was. Of course. The story of your life.
Stepping into the relative shelter of a closed office building’s entrance, he plucked out his phone and called Carter.
After three rings Carter answered with, “Kemosabe, are you out of your mind? Do you know what time it is?”
“No. I need something.”
“Shocked. I’m shocked, I say. Look, bro, it’s five-fucking-o’clock here. If you called to say ‘hi,’ I’d kick your ass.”
Derek grinned. “That’ll be the day. I’ve got a name and a list of phone numbers here in Russia. I want you to connect the name to the phone number, then pull up as much information—like addresses and anything else you can get—on that guy ASAP.”
Sigh. “Gimme.”
Using Viktor’s phone, Derek read all the numbers on the Recent Calls page. “Sure, bro, I’ll be back in a few minutes. Probably email you. Havin’ fun?”
“No, but I’m keeping busy.”
“Ciao, poppa.”
Pocketing the phone, Derek tried to think about what to do. Before he got very far in his musing, pressure built behind his ears. A black BMW crept around the corner. Derek met the driver’s gaze through the windshield. Mikhail Grechko. With a shriek of rubber on pavement the BMW roared toward him, the driver’s-side window rolling down.
Derek pulled his gun, dropped into a crouch and fired at the car. The front windshield cracked, but the car kept coming. Shots rang out. The glass door Derek was standing in front of shattered.
Turning, Derek kicked out the remaining glass and lunged through the door. Behind him the car squealed to a halt. More shots rang out.
Just inside the door was a reception area. To the right a bank of elevators. To the left, a lobby with chairs and potted plants. Sprinting across the lobby, he flung open the stairwell door and rushed up the flight, stopping at the first floor to listen.
A moment later he heard the door open. Quietly.
Controlling his breathing, feeling his heart hammering in his chest, Derek edged to the landing. He dodged over the rail, gun in front of him and fired. Grechko fired back.
Derek sprinted up the next flight of steps. Grechko pounded after him. On the second floor Derek grabbed the handle of the door and threw himself through it. He found himself in a carpeted hallway with a dozen closed doors. Rushing down the hallway, he slid into the first crossing hallway, then left at the next.
Back to a corner, he checked his ammo—he’d loaded his last magazine and there were about eight shots left. What had Hall told him when he gave him the gun at the Embassy? “If you can’t fight your way out of a situation with that many rounds you’re totally screwed.”
Yeah. Thanks, Jim.
Either Grechko was as quiet as a ghost or he hadn’t entered the second floor. Derek crouched down, waiting.
Seconds ticked by. Then minutes.
Suddenly Grechko leapt around the corner twenty yards away. Derek fired. Grechko spun as if hit, then turned back, gun raised and fired. Derek returned fire, rolling out of the corner into the adjoining hallway. Bits of wood and sheetrock sprayed around him. Springing to his feet, he sprinted down the hallway, shouldering through another stairwell and climbing upward, racing to the top floor.
The door on the second floor crashed open and Derek heard Grechko enter the stairwell.
Peering over the rail, Derek waited.
Whatever else you could say about the assassin, he was no fool. Derek could hear his cautious footsteps, but not see him. The man must have been sticking close to the wall, away from where he could be seen from above.
Derek didn’t wait around. Turning, he rushed up the steps. A shot ricocheted off the steel banister, embedding in the concrete wall near Derek’s head. A quick turn, he fired one round, then sprinted upward.
The top floor, ten flights. A locked door led to the roof. Derek aimed the Beretta at the knob and fired, turning his head. Metal shrapnel filled the air, the bullet ricocheting off the floor. Derek kicked open the door and rushed up the last flight to another locked steel door.
Again, he blew the knob off, thinking, Six bullets left.
He pushed through the door into the bitter Moscow night. The roof was covered with ice and snow, slick underfoot.
And nowhere to go.
Derek looked at the ledge, hoping for a fire escape. None was obvious and he didn’t have time to explore the entire perimeter. The next building was close, maybe a dozen feet and a little bit lower. In theory, he could run and jump to it.
In theory.
He brushed snow and ice off the lip and kicked snow around, thinking this was crazy.
Crouching down on one knee, he double-checked the gun, then aimed at the doorway.
And waited.
Dmitri Shotov was an old cop and an honest cop. He took his job seriously, helping people deal with the problems that could happen in any major city. He’d never taken a bribe in his life and he dealt with the relatively low pay of the Moscow Militia by acting as a handyman in his spare time—solving plumbing problems, rewiring apartments and houses, fixing broken appliances. You could talk about the New Moscow and all that money until your hair turned gray, but for most people, life went on just the same, scraping by. He spent his afternoons and evenings walking a beat or driving a patrol car in north Moscow, sleeping during the night with his wife of twenty-nine years, Karinna. They had two boys, both grown, one living and working as a venture capitalist in St. Petersburg, the other in college at Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Tonight Dmitri was working alone, his partner Oleg called in with a case of the flu. Oleg got the flu a lot, right out of a bottle of vodka. The Russian Flu, Dmitri sometimes thought.
No matter. He would do his job. Look for drunks. Stop speeders and give them tickets. Check when someone called in complaining that their drunken husband was beating them. Chase down runaways. Arrest hookers. Help people whose cars had broken down or who had a flat tire.
A quarter mile away he heard sirens. Listening to his radio, he noted that a car was on fire and a fire truck was on its way. A couple cops had already responded.
Not his problem, then.
Turning the corner, he saw what looked like a bundle of garbage against the wall of an office building, closed for the night. A second glance, he thought it was a person. Probably a homeless person or a drunk, passed out. Parking the car, he called in the stop, grabbed his flashlight and warily approached the person. Dmitri Shotov stood average height, balding and clean-shaven, sleight of build. It was cold enough he could see his breath before it dissolved into the freezing drizzle and sleet.
He saw that the figure crumpled against the building was a person, lit up in the circle of light cast by his flashlight. “Hey!” he said, stepping closer. “Wake up!”
Dmitri realized it was a woman. She wore black boots, camouflage pants, and a threadbare wool coat. Her hair was long and auburn, a tangled mess, wet from drizzle, flecks of ice and snow caught in it. Bending down he rolled her over and caught his breath. The woman’s face was swollen and bruised, covered with blood. Her jacket was soaked with blood, as were the pants. When he moved her she groaned and opened her eyes. “Lev…” she said.
“Hang on,” he said. “I’ll call an ambulance.” He rushed back to his car to make the call, returning with a blanket that he threw over her. The woman opened her eyes again and seemed to recognize him.
He found a bullet wound in her back and one in her leg. The leg was oozing, but the one in her lower back was a problem. Her skin was so pale she seemed carved from white marble. Taking the first aid kit, he made a compress and pressed down on the wound.
“We’ll take care of you. You’re going to be okay. What’s your name?”
“Ir … ina. I … escaped…”
Ko
nstantin stood in the cold. For a moment he considered walking away, but the local police would just track him down through the rented Audi, which rested on its roof. That wasn’t a huge concern. The FSB was the FSB and the local cops knew better than to go head-to-head with them. Walking away would just cause problems later.
A small crowd had gathered. Someone had asked if he needed anything. He had flashed his FSB credentials and shook his head, told the woman they were already on their way.
Finally an ambulance arrived along with several squad cars and an unmarked vehicle driven by two FSB agents. He recognized one of them as Alek Kuts. A sense of relief flooded him. Alek was the FSB agent who had asked him to run an internal investigation.
Kuts stood about six feet tall with broad shoulders made even broader by his long black leather coat. Kuts strode over to Konstantin, studying him. “So, Konstantin, this must be a good story.”
“I was bringing in an informant when someone tried to run us off the road.”
Kuts’s dark eyes surveyed the scene. “And succeeded. That your informant?” He gestured to Viktor’s twisted body.
“Viktor Solomov.”
“Get anything out of him?”
Konstantin shrugged. He trusted Kuts, but didn’t know how to interpret what he had found out so far.
Kuts spoke a moment with his partner, then took hold of Konstantin’s elbow and steered him away from listening ears. “I’m taking over from Titov temporarily,” Kuts said. “The coroner ran toxicology tests. It looks like Titov was murdered, poisoned with nicotine, of all the damned things. We’re waiting for an official report. What the hell’s going on?” Kuts’ gaze suggested he knew about Konstantin’s visit to the morgue earlier.
“I’m not sure. Viktor knew something about the Red Hand. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but the Red Hand’s involved in it.”
