War of Shadows

by Leo J. Maloney

  “I said, does that ring a bell to you?”

  “Yeah,” he repeated, without giving a hint that his mind was wandering on anything else but business. “Smith said that the game would now change.”

  “How so?”

  “That they’d be less interested in me specifically, and more interested in creating alliances that would be more powerful than any alliances Smith could set up.”

  “They?” Jenny echoed.

  No one looked at her askance, or with anything other than respect and professionalism.

  Bloch agreed. “Zeta’s enemy specifically, and America’s enemies in general,” she explained. “Alpha still wants to destroy us, but not specifically over the TAS anymore.”

  “Yeah,” Conley drawled. “Now they just want to use it as their ticket to ride.”

  Jenny looked from Cougar to Cobra with just a little confusion.

  “Telling other powerful intelligence organizations in unfriendly countries that they can get their hands on it,” Dan explained to her.

  “So they can team up to destroy us,” Alex added.

  “And the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, Homeland Security,” Randall reminded them all, “and anything else they can catch in the blowback.”

  “Oh, dear,” Jenny blurted.

  Conley looked at the others. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  Jenny followed his gaze to look at the others herself. “What can we do?” she asked without insincerity.

  “Excellent question,” Bloch retorted without facetiousness, then looked into each Zeta face. “Any answers?”

  Dan looked at the others as well, but spoke while he was doing so. “I don’t know if any answer we can come up with is workable without knowing what Smith’s got in mind.” Dan gave that just enough time to sink in before he added the kicker. “Or what Paul Kirby is doing.”

  The mention of that name was like dropping a stink bomb into the room. Dan did his best to dispel the odor.

  “Diesel tried to shoot me in the head by using the name of Paul Kirby as bait,” he detailed. “Hell, Paul Kirby used Paul Kirby as bait at the very beginning by answering his goddamn phone and demanding I come to his Beacon Hill abode for what turned out to be a nasty little ambush.”

  “Not so little,” Alex murmured. “But plenty nasty.”

  “You got any idea of his twenty?” Dan asked Bloch, using trucker lingo for “location.”

  Bloch, apparently, knew what he meant, but she made them all wait while her eyeballs shifted and her eyebrows knitted.

  “Not,” she answered, “at the moment.”

  Dan’s chin raised as he let his top teeth tap on his lower teeth. The rest remained silent, watching the two of them as if they were in a tennis match using balls made of bombs. It was, seemingly, Bloch’s serve.

  “I think,” she continued, “our Mr. Kirby…”

  “Your Mr. Kirby,” Dan corrected.

  Bloch acknowledged the interruption, but let that ball go by. “Zeta’s Mr. Kirby,” she corrected before continuing, “may be looking for safe passage and sanctuary.”

  “And is willing to accept it from anyone?”

  Dan was kind enough to phrase it as a question rather than a statement.

  Bloch allowed him to score the point. Her head down, her eyes softly closed, she replied.

  “That,” she said, “is possible.”

  The silence was longer than ever before. Alex, for one, was concerned it might last forever until the only person with the position and knowledge to break the stalemate took action.

  “And what,” Jenny Morgan asked, “can we do about that?”

  The others may have regarded her question as an unsolvable riddle, but Diana Bloch reacted to it as if it was manna from heaven.

  “What we can do about that,” she emphasized, putting her fists on her hips and leaning forward until her head came through the floating, rotating planet Earth, “is to catch up with Smith again while creating the most enticing, beautiful, secure safe passage and sanctuary the world—and Paul Kirby—has ever seen.”

  Chapter 36

  It may not have been the most secure safe passage and sanctuary Dan had ever seen, but it sure was in the running for the most enticing and beautiful.

  Dan managed to tear his eyes away from the seven-story, rectangular central plaza with a gigantic clock whose swinging pendulum was four stories high, all crowned by two-story stained-glass murals that encircled the entire two million square foot building.

  These murals did not picture religious or even historical themes. They pictured scenes from the works of Alexander Pushkin, whom many considered the greatest Russian poet of all time.

  Dan didn’t know that, of course. He had been told this information by his guide—a guide he was very familiar with by now.

  “Really?” he asked Valery Dobrynin, an ex-KGB frenemy who had proven invaluable on a recent mission, and was proving so again. “A toy store?”

  “Really,” said Dobrynin, looking happier than Dan had ever seen him. “And not just a toy store. The toy store. The largest in the world.” The little Russian looked around, trying—and failing—to take in all the glowing, golden interior with its balconies, mezzanines, inlaid flooring, neon, and so much else. “At least a hundred separate stores, featuring every variation and genre of toy, a separate floor for just games—board, video, arcade, and otherwise—one whole floor for an international buffet …”

  “All right already,” Dan said. “Not here for a tour.”

  He was already somewhat overwhelmed with what had happened that morning. This toy store—The Central Children’s Store at Lubyanka Square—sat smack dab in the middle of Moscow, between the Bolshoi Ballet, Saint Basil’s Cathedral, Red Square, and, as Dan had put it when Bloch had originally presented the operation, “the effing Kremlin.”

  Dan still didn’t like to swear in front of his wife and daughter, although Alex could curse any sailor under any table.

  Cobra was not only a bit dazed by the sites he and the little Russian had walked by on the way here—Dobrynin nonchalantly, Morgan not so much—but by the speed at which “Operation Janus” had come together.

  Right after declaring that they should create safe passage and sanctuary for their Zeta’s errant second-in-command, Bloch had taken up a position away from O’Neal, Chilly, Hot Shot, and even Renard in the Fox Burrow information center, and they all had typed and talked furiously with the goal of reaching Smith or Kirby—not necessarily in that order. But all too soon afterwards, Bloch, being Bloch, had come up with so much more. According to her, Kirby had reached out, and was willing to negotiate a return to the fold.

  “He’s frightened and doesn’t know whom he can trust,” Bloch had informed them.

  “Join the club,” Dan had muttered. “At least on that second thing.”

  Then, faster than anyone, including Bloch, was comfortable with, Operation Janus was a go.

  That was fine as far as it went, but the next problem was that Zeta would have to go to Kirby, who was, as it turned out, in Russia. That choice bit of intel created a little stir, some looks between Zeta agents, and a lot of tongue biting—except in one notable case.

  “Good luck with that,” Dan had told Bloch before standing up to leave.

  “Not so fast,” Bloch had replied, unruffled. “I also would have turned him down flat, if it wasn’t for one thing.”

  Bloch knew Dan too well. She knew that would stop him, as well as make him turn back to face her.

  “Okay,” he had said. “I’ll bite. What’s the ‘one thing’?”

  “Oh,” Bloch had said with mock innocence, clearly resurrecting their previous verbal tennis match. “I misspoke. I meant to say ‘one person.’” The look she had given Dan at that point could’ve frozen butter. “I believe he’s managing your classic car dealer
ship, isn’t he?”

  Dan had nearly stuck his nose in Bloch’s face, planning to make it crystal clear that Valery Dobrynin would be dead meat the second his ex-KGB handlers knew he was back in town, but Bloch had already been way ahead of him.

  Seems the agent that those who knew him best called Tarakan—the cockroach—had been nursing acute homesickness for some time. And when cockroaches are homesick, they don’t just pine or moon, they send out feelers.

  “You little sukablyad,” Dan had said, using a handy and versatile piece of Russian profanity when Dobrynin came out of the Palecto hatch some hours later. “Shouldn’t you be dead?”

  “Many times over,” the little man had agreed as they headed for the planning room. “Only this time, apparently, the Alpha-ites thought it only necessary to destroy your home and secret headquarters—not your place of business.” He glanced up at the man who had made his defection possible and had given him his new American job. “By the way, had a lovely chat with Yuri after we nearly shot each other in surprise. Turns out we have a lot in common.”

  “Great,” Dan had said. “If we survive this suicide mission, you and he can partner up.”

  Dobrynin had given Dan an apologetic smile, already knowing that Kirby and Tarakan’s own Russian Intelligence superiors had made it abundantly clear that only the two of them, of all the Zetas, could enter Moscow to negotiate. But before then, there was one more outlandish thing they had to do, and it had been waiting for them in the planning room in the form of two makeup chairs and two makeup masters.

  The art of movie special effect makeup had been all but eliminated by the advent of digital visual effects, but the great makeup artists had not lain down or stood still. Renard, being a huge fan and friend of those brilliant technicians, had been almost giddy with excitement to get a few into his house to work Dan and Valery over before their flight.

  “It’s not enough for you to have face recognition software scramblers in your R-comms,” he had commented as a thin, older, balding man who had four fingers on one of his hands worked on Dobrynin.

  “Yes,” Bloch had said, standing by as a younger man with a widow’s peak haircut and goatee worked on Dan. “What if one of Valery’s old friends happened to see him, but hadn’t known of his free pass?” She looked at the Russian. “Acquired at great expense and sacrifice.”

  “Da,” Dobrynin had added without moving his head. “You know as well as I do, Cobra, that Moscow is crawling with ex-KGB just looking for a fight.”

  “Not to mention FSB, SVR, GRU, and FSO,” Dan had almost moaned, assuming that, to pull this off, Bloch had called in every favor she had ever made in her life—as well as some she probably hadn’t even made yet.

  Any other thoughts he had were wiped away when the makeup man had stepped back and Dan had looked into the face of a stranger in the mirror. He knew it worked for not just him when Jenny and Alex had been called in, and hadn’t recognized him either. But they had certainly recognized his voice.

  “Janus have anything to do with Judas?” Dan had asked Jenny as the entire remaining Zeta crew and Renard headed back to the Flying Fox.

  Jenny had shaken her head. “Roman god of duality,” she had told him, her past as a teacher and reader coming to the fore again. “God of beginnings, endings, and everything in between. Pictured as two-faced so he can look at the past and future.”

  Dan had given Bloch and Dobrynin a meaningful look before Cobra, Conley, and Tarakan had made their good-byes to the others, and re-boarded the supersonic stealth. Six hours later Palecto was in Russian Federation airspace, and Dobrynin knew just where Cougar could drop them off.

  “Stalin City,” the little man who was unrecognizable as Valery Dobrynin had said to Cougar and Cobra as the former had brought Palecto swiftly down amid a grove of oak trees just southwest of Moscow University. “No buildings or any permanent structures are allowed here.”

  Dan, wearing a dark olive suit and dark blue shirt, had followed behind Dobrynin as the little man, now wearing a black shirt and dark gray suit, had hopped out and scuttled to what looked like the top edge of a sewer entrance hidden amidst gnarled, cross-linked tree roots. To Dan, it looked like the Russian equivalent of the entrance Jenny had led Alex to in Boston.

  As Palecto had shot into the clouds like God’s yo-yo, Dobrynin had slipped down into the opening, and motioned for Dan to follow. Within seconds, they were standing in what looked like an abandoned subway tunnel, only in much better condition than the one under Boston.

  “Deja vu,” Dan had muttered as he had followed Dobrynin, who had not even stopped to get his bearings.

  “You know Stalin was paranoid, yes?” the Russian had asked.

  “Is the Pope Christian?” Dan had replied, his eyes scanning the granite and concrete-colored, moderately well-lit, tunnel, empty of anything but subway tracks and wires attached to the walls and ceiling.

  “No, he’s Catholic,” Dobrynin had corrected before continuing. “In the twenties, Stalin wanted a top secret escape route in case of coups. Later, he was worried that he would wind up like Hitler—trapped in a bunker—so he expanded this on an epic scale. Then later than that, he worried that he’d be hit by a nuclear bomb, so this was enlarged again. So now it’s big enough that the Politburo can survive down here for even years if necessary.”

  Dobrynin had looked up at Dan with a grin. “But, so far, not necessary, so no one comes down here. Still, top secret, and a good place for executions or hikes into the city.”

  Dobrynin had known where to enter, and he had known where to exit, bringing Dan up via a grating near the Kiyevsky Railway Station, just west of the Moskva River. From there it was only twenty minutes by subway to the Revolution Square station, and then a ten minute walk—past a Chamber Music Theater, an Audi dealership, Dolce & Gabbana, Tom Ford, Alexander McQueen, and Yves Saint Laurent shops, a Spanish tapas joint, Greek gyros, Chinese dumplings, Japanese sushi, and even a place called Wine and Crab—before they’d arrived at the toy palace, which looked from the outside like a grand, romantic train station decorated for Christmas.

  After trying to take it all in, Dobrynin had given in to Dan’s seeming depression.

  “Very well. The tour portion of our adventure is officially over,” he assured him. “But really, if you were choosing a public meeting place, wouldn’t you choose something like this?”

  Dan was trying to study every possible hiding, escape, and attack place, forcing him to see the method in Kirby’s madness. But the accent, for him, was on the madness, not the method.

  “No, I would not,” Dan told his guide. “I would never choose a place that depended upon the enemy’s unwillingness to hurt children.”

  Dobrynin exhaled, acknowledging Dan’s point with a worried look of his own.

  “Come,” he said. “We are to meet on the top floor.”

  “Of course we are,” Dan muttered, still trying to lock as much of the surroundings as he could into his mind’s eye, as they made their way through the throngs of children, teens, and adults to one of many silver escalators.

  As they rose, Dan saw a working circus carousel surrounded by dolls and model kits, an entire wing of building blocks, and a jungle of stuffed animals of every size, until they reached the buffet. It was decorated with zeppelins—small, medium, and large—made of wood, plastic, rubber, and steel, all flying or floating or bouncing just over their heads.

  As Dobrynin led Dan to a corner table overlooking the intersection of Pushechnaya and Rozhdestvenka Streets through large, wide picture windows, they both got their bearings. The desserts and drinks were to their left. More tables, banquets, and booths were in front of them. And beyond that were many more food stations boasting the best surf and turf of Asia, Europe, and Mother Russia.

  Dan kept an eye out for any sign of anything, but his eyes couldn’t help settling on one of the small tables nearest him. At it
sat a man, a woman, and a little girl. The man looked to be in his forties, wearing jeans, jacket, a t-shirt and a glowering expression, as if telling anyone in sight, mess with me at your peril. The woman looked to be in her thirties, wearing a worn but clean wraparound dress, flats, and a somewhat worried expression, as if saying to everyone in sight, please don’t do anything to me or my family.

  But the little girl looked to be under ten years old, wore bright new shorts, sandals, and top, and had a smiling, open, carefree expression that said, everything is awesome.

  Dan realized that these three represented the last fifty years of Moscow’s history—just as Paul Kirby, wearing a dark tan suit over a light blue shirt and tie, appeared from behind a cashier’s station and started walking toward them.

  Dan tapped Dobrynin’s leg under the table, and when the Russian looked up at him, directed a glance in Kirby’s direction. Dobrynin shifted as naturally as he could to seemingly look at the desserts and drinks just as the fortyish man at the nearest table started to get up. As he bent to get his feet under him, his jacket flapped open and Dan could see a brand new Lebedev PL-15 pistol in his shoulder holster.

  Dan went for his own Walther as he also got his feet under him, but it was too late. Just as Dobrynin scrambled around, going for his own PSM pistol, the fortyish man stood, pointed the Lebedev, and shot Paul Kirby point blank in the chest.

  Chapter 37

  He should have known. The bang, being that the PL-15’s ammo was not subsonic, was one of the loudest Dan had heard in years, but the blood bursting from Kirby’s shirt made an even louder noise in Dan’s mind.

  “Get to Kirby!” Dan barked at Dobrynin as he bolted up and started to bring his Walther to bear. But, seemingly, in the very middle of the movement, Dan jammed the PPK back into its holster under his jacket, and charged like a minotaur entering a labyrinth.

  Because, in truth, that is just what the Zeppelin-decorated restaurant at the top of the gigantic toy store had become—a maze of screaming women and children, all trying to get blindly away from the loud bang and spurting blood.