“Except it also sounds personal,” Nash said. “For both of you.”
Kotov looked up with hard eyes, and the bags below them looked heavy and tired. They were eyes that reminded Nash that he was sitting across from a killer. He could put on an Armani suit and select fine artwork for the walls, but he was every bit as ruthless as the man he was trying to replace. Nash had no doubt that Kotov was playing Holly Schultz and Clark Cafferty every bit as much as they thought they were playing him. If the time ever came that Kotov got his wish and took over at the Kremlin, his loyalties wouldn’t be to the United States. Or even to Russia. They’d be to himself. That was how it always worked.
“Personal?” Kotov smiled. “Of course it’s personal. When men are friends, that’s what you get. He’s trying to screw me. I’m trying to screw him. Only one of us will win. In the meantime, we play our games. You know, for years I wondered about Tati.”
“Wondered what?”
“Whether she was mine. I always figured he was fucking my wife.”
“What did your wife say?”
“Nothing. She died in childbirth and took the secret with her. So then it was just me and Tati. I could have run tests, but I didn’t. Some things you don’t want to know. I wanted a daughter, and I had one. I left it at that.”
“Do you think he suspects the same thing?”
“I’m sure he knows one way or another. He leaves nothing to chance.”
“If it’s true, then he definitely wouldn’t harm her.”
Kotov shook his head. “For a Treadstone man, you’re naïve, Rollins. Blood may be thicker than water, but it’s not thicker than power. Everyone in his circle is either an asset or a debit, to be manipulated for his ends. You can’t let personal feelings get in the way of those things.”
Nash looked up as he heard a rapping on the door that led out to the foyer. When the door opened, the live-in CIA man who managed the house gestured at Nash with an envelope in his hand. Nash went and got it, and then he sat down again and opened the note. Kotov looked at him, his face grim with anticipation.
“So?” the Russian asked.
“It’s from Holly. Confirming what we feared. Lennon killed Clark Cafferty. Cain and Nova found him this morning.”
Kotov’s shoulders made a little shrug. The death of one of his friends didn’t seem to affect him. “This is how the new era begins. Lennon knows the truth now, and so does Putin. I’ve come back from the dead.”
“I think we have to assume that’s true. If they killed Cafferty, they got the information they wanted.”
“What about Tati?”
“Lennon doesn’t have her, but neither do we. They’ve been watching the roads outside London, but so far, nothing. She’s disappeared.”
A little smile of paternal pride crossed Kotov’s face. “Tati is clever.”
“Maybe so, but we need to find her. Lennon knows you’re alive, but she doesn’t. She has no idea of the jeopardy she’s in, or what happens if she’s captured. As far as she knows, this is still about a terrorist assault on Sorokin in London.”
Kotov pursed his thick lips. “Yes. This is all true.”
“Does Tati know anything about Lennon?”
“Very unlikely. Lennon is Putin’s private asset. She wouldn’t be in that circle.”
“Who is Lennon?” Nash asked.
“I don’t know any more than you do. He’s a mystery. Believe me, Holly and Dixon asked me about him many times, and I couldn’t tell them a thing. There were rumors about him while I was still in Russia, when I was spying and passing along information. A new assassin in the mix. Another Carlos. But we had no idea where he came from. He operated in the shadows without any identity. Rather like your Cain, I suppose. Perhaps Putin suspected he had a mole among the siloviki, because whoever Lennon was, he reported to him and no one else.”
“So maybe it was Lennon who betrayed you three years ago,” Nash suggested. “He figured out you were a spy.”
“I’ve thought about that. It’s possible. I thought I was careful, but then again, how can you be careful around someone who doesn’t seem to exist? He could have been anyone, and I wouldn’t have known.”
Nash glanced at the note again. “Holly has a request for you. It’s urgent.”
“Namely?”
“She wants your help. If Tati was going to turn herself in, Holly thinks she would already have done it. But she didn’t. She’s running.”
“I’m stuck here in the woods,” Kotov replied bitterly. “How can I help?”
“You know Tati better than anyone. Where would she go? What would she do?”
“I haven’t seen my daughter in three years. I don’t know her habits anymore.”
“I’m talking about contacts, Grigori. Places she might go, people she might turn to if she’s in trouble. Is there anyone in the UK that Tati might consider a friend?”
Kotov got up and went to the fireplace. His cheeks were flushed red, partly from the warmth, partly from the vodka. “Well, I can think of one man she might reach out to. Former KGB, now living in England. Somewhere in Yorkshire, I think. A seaside town called Whitby. It’s where Dracula came ashore, if I recall correctly.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Maxim Zungaya. Maxim and I were in the KGB together, but he was quite a bit older. He went all the way back to the Cold War days. Then he retired after the wall fell. He must be in his eighties now. I remember he and I used to play chess together, and Tati would sit on his lap. She loved him.”
“Why is he in England?” Nash asked. “Not Russia?”
Kotov poured himself another shot and drank it down. “Twenty years ago, I discovered that Maxim was a spy. He’d passed secrets to the Brits for most of the 1970s and 1980s. My job was to kill him. Honestly, I couldn’t see the point. He was an old man by then, and the Soviet Union was long gone. Plus, Tati would have been upset, and fathers will do just about anything to keep their girls from being sad. So I let Maxim go. I told him he had forty-eight hours to get away, and the Brits smuggled him out. For years, we didn’t know where he was, but at some point, I discovered that he was in Whitby living under an alias. I sent him a chess set. Partly for nostalgia, partly to let him know he should be careful. An old spy generally isn’t worth troubling over, but you never know.”
Nash frowned. “Tati knows where he is?”
“Yes. She asked me about him, and I told her the truth. Actually, they used to play chess by mail. I don’t know if they still do. Maxim would trounce me, but he and Tati were evenly matched. Which is saying a lot, because Maxim is extraordinarily good.”
“You think she’d go to him for help?”
“I do,” Kotov replied. “And I think Maxim would do everything he could to help her. Once a spy, always a spy. Plus, he loves that girl.”
Nash nodded. “I’ll let Holly know. She’ll tell Cain.”
He got up and headed to the door, but Kotov crossed the room and put a firm hand on Nash’s wrist. “Rollins? Tell Cain he’s not likely to be alone up there. Tati and I know about Maxim, but so do others among the siloviki. Which means Lennon knows about him, too. If Whitby is the first place Tati would go for help, it’s also the first place Lennon would go to look for her.”
27
The two old men sat on opposite sides of a chessboard that was situated in a flower garden overlooking the cliffs above the turbulent North Sea. The board itself was built into the surface of a stone table, made of white marble with squares inlaid in pink-and-gray travertine. The six-inch chess pieces had been hand-carved out of alabaster.
A gift from a friend. A gift and a warning.
We know where you are. Be careful.
Maxim slid his queen across the board and snatched up one of his friend’s rooks. By his calculation, he’d get to checkmate in seven moves. He played chess with Seymo
ur Beyer every afternoon, outside when the weather was good, inside his conservatory when the rains came. They’d been doing this for nearly two decades, ever since Maxim first arrived in Whitby. In that time, Seymour’s game had never really improved, but Maxim only played now to keep his brain sharp and make conversation. They were two men in their eighties who enjoyed sparring about politics, religion, and women.
They also maintained a polite fiction with each other. His neighbor referred to him as Stefan Gurski, a retired house painter from Croatia, not as Maxim Zungaya, KGB agent and turncoat spy from Sochi. At the same time, Maxim pretended not to be aware that Seymour Beyer was formerly of MI-5 and had cultivated their friendship while under orders to keep a close eye on the former spy.
Maxim wore a chocolate-brown button-down sweater over a white dress shirt, and tan slacks and black leather shoes, as if he were still working at an office. He was a small man, slim, with thinning white hair and a pencil mustache. His skin was deeply lined. He’d given up smoking, drinking, and sweets on the orders of his doctor, so now he drank copious amounts of weak tea all day long. Seymour, who was similarly built, had gotten the same advice from his doctor, but he still brought cans of London Pride and packs of Marlboro to every chess game, and nibbled on Cadbury Flake bars while contemplating his next move. Maxim lived through Seymour’s vices vicariously.
“Did you see the news?” Seymour asked, blowing out a cloud of smoke, which the sea air quickly carried away. He studied the chess pieces with a furrowed brow, as if there were a way out of his dilemma on the board, but there never was. His heavy walking stick, which Seymour always carried, leaned against the table.
“What news is that?”
“Some Russian got shot in London yesterday.”
“Gennady Sorokin,” Maxim replied, a little too quickly.
“You’ve heard of him?”
“He was one of the oligarchs. A billionaire oil-and-gas man.”
“Well, sure hate to lose one of those,” Seymour chuckled.
Despite his government ties, Seymour was an avowed socialist, ironically much more left-wing than Maxim, who’d grown cynical about ideology long ago.
Maxim said nothing in response. Instead, he hummed Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance” and perused the flowers in his garden. His political instincts told him that there was more to the Sorokin story than was in the press, but he didn’t like veering onto the topic of Russian assassinations. He wondered if Seymour was testing him to see if there was any information he would reveal.
“How are the renovations going on your son’s rental cottages near the abbey?” Maxim asked, changing the subject.
Seymour picked up his knight, frowned, then put it down again. He took his walking stick and leaned his chin against it. “Tommy was hoping to open this month, but now it looks like it’ll be July.”
“He had me over there last week,” Maxim said. “The rooms all looked fine to me.”
“I know. I keep telling him to take some bookings, even if the paint’s not dry. But he’s a perfectionist.”
Seymour went back to the knight and tentatively made his move. Maxim responded immediately by taking it off the board. “Check.”
“Bastard,” Seymour replied with a chuckle.
“Did you ever read that book I gave you on Spassky’s best games?”
“I play chess. I don’t read about it. I’m not a freak like you.”
Maxim winked as he sipped his tea. “I just thought you might like to win once in a while, Seymour.”
“Not much chance of that, is there?”
He was right. There was no chance. As a teenager in Novgorod, Maxim had won multiple chess tournaments, and it was that intellect that had first attracted the attention of the KGB. He fancied the idea that he could have been a grandmaster if he hadn’t become a spy instead.
Seymour took a break from concentrating on the board. He eased back in the chair with the kind of groan old men make. Maxim’s friend glanced toward the cliffside walk near the sea, stretched both arms in the air, and worked the kinks out of his back. Then he whistled. “Well, now, that’s a sight that makes me wish I were a few years younger.”
Maxim followed Seymour’s stare. The garden wall of his small white cottage bordered open grass along the parkland, and people hiked and jogged day and night on the cliffside path that overlooked the water. It was evening now, with shadows growing over the rough whitecaps. He saw what Seymour had seen, which was a young woman walking toward them. She had blond-and-brown hair parted in the middle, blowing around her shoulders in the wind. She was fleshy and tall, wearing a bulky white sweater that didn’t hide her full breasts. Below, she wore shorts and hiking boots, and she carried a daypack on her shoulders. As she approached the garden wall, she smiled at them. Her eyebrows arched flirtatiously.
Maxim tensed. Strangers made him nervous. When someone approached him, he still thought: This is the one. They’ve come for me. He was an old defector, probably low down on the list for settling scores, but only a fool would think he was safe forever. Sooner or later, they’d get around to killing him.
That was why Maxim always kept a loaded gun within reach. As the woman leaned on the white stone wall beside them, he inched up his sweater and moved his fingers near the butt of the pistol.
“Evening, gents,” she said. “Lucky me, finding two handsome blokes together.”
“Evening to you,” Seymour replied, not showing any suspicion in his face. “I’m the good-looking one. He’s just an old grouch.”
She gave him a sparkling laugh. “Handsome and funny. I better watch out for you. My name’s Rhonda.”
“Well, that’s a pretty name. I’m Seymour, and the grouch here is—”
Maxim interrupted before his friend could introduce him. “Do you need something, miss?”
Rhonda turned her smile in his direction, trying and failing to make him melt. “Actually, I was wondering if you two saw a little dog run past here. A Cairn. I had him off the leash, and he saw a rabbit and took off. I thought I saw him head down this street.”
“There was no dog,” Maxim replied firmly.
He had seen no dog on the trail, because there was no dog. No dog running along the cliffside. No lost dog at all. The woman was giving him her best sad story, but he didn’t believe her. She was lying.
He inched his fingers closer to the gun.
“What’s your dog’s name?” Seymour asked.
“Ringo,” she replied, and for some reason, she laughed about that.
“There was no dog,” Maxim said again. “And I’m afraid you’re breaking my friend’s concentration on the game. He needs all the concentration he can muster.”
Rhonda’s lips made an exaggerated frown. “Aw. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Seymour said with a wink. “We’ll keep an eye out for your dog. But I think you should leave me your phone number, just in case Ringo wanders by.”
Rhonda wagged a finger at him. “Oh, I definitely need to watch out for you! But thanks. I’ll keep looking.”
She gave Maxim an innocent little stare that said: See? I’m just a dog owner. I’m no threat.
But she was a threat.
She was lethal. He’d been around spies for too long not to know when one was imagining her hands wrapped around his throat.
“By the way,” Rhonda said, with a glance at the board, “looks to me like checkmate in six moves.”
Rhonda waved goodbye. Then she wandered down the street away from the coast. Maxim didn’t expect her to look back—pros never did—but he followed her up the block, watching her go from one side to the other, whistling, calling, keeping up the fiction that her dog was lost. As she got farther away, Maxim relaxed enough to draw his hand away from the gun and drum his fingers on the table.
“She’d probably give me a stroke,” Seymour refl
ected, with the nostalgia of someone who hadn’t had sex in years, “but what a way to go.”
Maxim just grunted. He couldn’t see Rhonda on the street anymore, so he turned his attention back to the chessboard. Even so, he didn’t think he’d been wrong. Rhonda wasn’t just a girl taking a walk in the park. She was something else.
He also thought about the coincidence of a Russian oligarch being murdered in London the previous day. First Sorokin gets killed, and now a strange, dangerous woman shows up outside his house.
What is going on?
“Was she right about checkmate in six moves?” Seymour asked, tapping his walking stick against his chin.
“Yes.”
“Well, shit.” Seymour reached out and toppled his king. “How about another game? One of these days I’m going to get you, my friend.”
* * *
—
Rhonda reached the end of the block. As she called out, “Ringo,” in a cheerful voice, she took a quick look toward the cliff, to make sure that the man in the corner house couldn’t see her anymore. When she knew she was safe, she assessed her surroundings to confirm she was alone in the neighborhood. Then she reached behind to the zipper on her daypack and slid a leather dog’s leash into her hand.
She was standing in front of a two-story brick house, which had plenty of upper-level windows to take advantage of the sea views. Neatly pruned shrubs dotted the yard, and roses climbed white trellises. She smoothed her sweater over her chest and then went up to the front door and rang the bell.
A portly middle-aged man answered a few seconds later. As he opened the door, a waft of Indian takeaway food emerged from the house. He saw Rhonda, took a quick approving look up and down her body, and smiled with a curious little cock of his head. From the look on his face, pretty girls didn’t show up on his step very often.
The Bourne Treachery Page 21
