Coercion (20 page)

Vasily
sat meditatively before the antique chess table that dominated the middle of his home office.  This was a longstanding tradition, and his favorite part of the week.  Saturday afternoons he would clear his mind with a long run and then nestle in behind the board with the lights on low and a fine Scotch in hand.  He would picture the Russian grand masters sitting across from him and run through their classic matches from memory.  His goal was to feel their strategies, to taste their techniques, to absorb their genius and make it his own.  There was always something more to learn.

Vasily
found orchestrating the revival of Russia to be similar to playing a master’s tournament of chess, albeit with live pieces and an evolving board.  Proper positioning, anticipation, and timing were everything. 
After three decades of play, it would soon be time for the end game
.

Unfortunately, he would
be moving toward checkmate without one of his best pieces.  Igor’s death had not yet hit Vasily at the personal level—that would come later he was sure, once the tension let up enough to allow for the softer emotions.  In the mean time, the loss was burning him at a professional level.  Although Vasily had made a number of sacrifices over the years, Igor was the first piece to be taken.  At least Igor had captured the Chief Justice first.  With the court neutralized, Vasily could start the sequence to capture the king. 

The key to that
move would not be the deed itself, the assassination sequence had been flawlessly scripted—and re-scripted.  The trick was getting away with it.  Since Vasily would be the man rising to power in Gorbachev’s wake, he would be the usual suspect if they were looking for one.  So he had to keep them from looking.  To accomplish that, he would do the same thing he did all those years ago at Pioneer camp: frame someone else.  Life was a series of circles.

Vasily
would hand the people of Russia an assassin they would love to hate, somebody no elected official or appointed commission would dare to defend.  He would give them CIA Agent Alex Ferris.

It was as satisfying a solution as any he had studied
or devised, and should prove to be a much easier sell than Anton Lebed had been: Alex had no father.  Furthermore, by framing an American government agent for the assassination of the President of the Soviet Union, Vasily would also be immunizing his companies from MicroComp’s and United Electronics’ charges of patent violation.  American companies could hardly choose to quibble before the world court over property rights after an American agent fired a couple bullets through the Russian Head of State.

Vasily
took another sip of Scotch.  Like the satisfying end of a fine novel, the elements of his plan were all coming together.  It felt good.  Just last week he had solved the surprise problem posed by Igor while his friend’s words still electrified the air.  Igor had said “queen” and Vasily had thought “Anna.”  She wasn’t a fresh solution, but she was the right one.

Vasily
had experienced an unexpectedly hostile response to Igor’s suggestion.  At the time, he neither understood his reaction, nor expressed his anger.  Later that evening he reasoned it out.

Vasily
had given his whole life to the cause of making his country great again, to shifting Russia’s focus from military might to economic strength.  He had made sacrifice after sacrifice.  Nothing had been off limits.  Marriage, Vasily realized, was where the remnants of his soul drew the line his heroic sense of duty dared not cross.  Vasily would not marry a woman he did not love.  He would not deliver Russia’s heirs-to-the-throne from the womb of a mother he did not respect.  He would not spend his nights in the bed of a woman he did not enjoy.  To Vasily’s knowledge, there was only one woman alive who satisfied both his needs and the needs of Russia, and that woman was Anna Zaitseva.

To start with, Anna was not part of the current apparatus, the Communist apparatus.  That was crucial, for
Vasily would position himself as the opposition party, which of course he was.  Furthermore, Vasily’s support base would be the common people, and therefore his bride had to be one of them, although an extraordinary one.  Again, Anna fit Vasily like a pink cashmere glove.

With her natural beauty and honest intellect, she would personify the image that would
form the heart of his campaign: a proud new Russia.  Once her image was plastered throughout the international press, Russians would be proud again to be Russian, whether they were walking into Harrods of London, or working in their Siberian garden.  They would thank him for that.

Then there was the personal attraction.  From the moment he laid eyes on her,
Vasily had connected with Anna at a subatomic level.  His reaction was chemical.  Her auburn hair and enchanting smile pulled at his loins, while her quick mind and feisty wit enthralled his heart.  Anna was a gem with many facets and only one flaw: she did not yet feel the same about him.  Or did she …

Their first date had
been unlike any before, and not at all what he had expected.  She had been sharp and opinionated and had fenced with him like an equal.  Nobody ever did that.  He was smitten, but she seemed unmoved.  Vasily did not let this get him down.  He reasoned that it wasn’t personal.  Anna had never been seriously involved with a man, and the way he figured it, she did not know how.  He would teach her.

The only thing about Anna that gave
Vasily pause was their connection through the death of her brother—and Anna’s dogged determination to learn the truth.  It would be virtually impossible for Anna to uncover the details of that day—nobody who knew what really happened would ever speak of it—but it would be uncomfortable to have her asking questions publicly, especially as Russia’s First Lady.  It would be uncomfortable in private too.  Those faces still haunted Vasily in his dreams.  He would just have to deal with that problem when he came to it.  Meanwhile, it was going to take some fancy footwork to get that far.

His next meeting with Anna
would be pivotal.  He knew he had engaged her mind in an unexpected way, and now the timing was right to engage her heart.

That would have to be done right away
.  They were writing the first chapter in a romance that had the potential to enthrall a nation for generations to come.  Vasily wanted to script it with all the passion and excitement of the best romance novels.  Given the right moves, their courtship would also capture the hearts of all Russian women.  The trick was figuring out how to do it.  That answer, he feared, could not be found on a chessboard…

Vasily
raised his glass and finished his Scotch.  As a rule, he limited himself to just one drink, but Vasily had the feeling that he was on the verge of a solution, so he didn’t resist the impulse to enjoy a refill.

As the ice cubes clinked into his glass, he felt the tumblers in his mind begin to fall into place.  Perhaps he was too accustomed to taking a long-term strategic approach.  Perhaps his strength was his weakness in matters of love.  The more
Vasily thought about it, the more he became convinced.  It was the spontaneity of youth that he appeared to lack.  He was, after all, twenty years older than she. 
And there it was
.  The solution was right there in front of him.  Vasily would skip the codgery hullabaloo and allow impulse to move him.  He would ask her to marry him—today.

Although Anna was still somewhat of a mystery,
Vasily knew himself.  He had made up his mind; there was no need to wait.  He would put on his dress uniform, gather a photographer and the biggest bunch of roses in Siberia, and go to her.  Now.

A knocking at
the front door superseded the pounding of his heart.

Those who knew where
Vasily lived also knew not to disturb The General on a Saturday unless it was urgent.  Urgent news was bad news.  He put down his drink.

Major Maximov
was at the door.

“Come in, Major.”

“Thank you, General.  Sorry to disturb you.”

Maximov
had that look on his face, the look Vasily had seen for the first time just a few days earlier.  There was only a short moment of silence, but during that span Vasily was powerless to breathe.

Maximov squared his shoulders. 
“I’ll get right to the point.  The plane that was flying General Yarik back from Irkutsk exploded in mid-air early this morning.  The cause is still unknown.  I’m sorry, Sir.”

Yarik snapped out of his daydream to the blinking of a dashboard light: the tailgate was open.  This could only mean problems, problems caused by the incompetence of others—again.  First Sergey had lost Alex, a fact the receptionist
at the Hotel Irkutsk made him aware of—Sergey was paying dearly for that—and now, now was it possible that seven armed guards had been so incompetent that Alex, bound, gagged, blinded and deafened had managed to overcome them?  No.  It was not possible.  Yet his instinct begged to differ…

Yarik got up to check and found the door to the cargo hold blocked from the other side.  Until that moment,
he had assumed that either an electrical problem or the antics of an undisciplined soldier were behind the blinking light.  Now with the door also blocked Yarik knew there was a serious problem.  One or more of his men must be a traitor.

But why?
  Who was this American?  Victor had clearly underestimated Alex, and then Sergey had done the same.  Now, Yarik realized with infuriating clarity, he too had not given Alex Ferris his due.

Yarik ordered the pilot to
circle back and then turned to throw his 120 kilograms against the iron door.  After a few tries he could tell that there was a blockage wedged between the overlap at the hinged end of the door and the bulkhead.  His blows were flexing the metal, but only slightly.  Fortunately a few millimeters of permanent deformation in either the door or the blockage would likely release the tension and allow the blockage to drop free.

To create those millimeters, Yarik sat on the ground with his back against the copilot’s chair and
pressed legs the size of tree trunks into the door with the force of a hydraulic press.  He knew from experience in the gym that he could apply over a thousand kilograms of pressure that way.  The question was, which would give first, the door, the chair, or his back.

Thirty-seconds later the red and sweaty giant relaxed his legs, stood up and pulled the door fully closed.  Then he kicked the spot where the bulkhead had bulged and was rewarded with the sound of the blockage dropping free.

Carnage greeted Yarik’s eyes when he opened the door.  Normally it would have brought a smile to his face, but this was a victory for the other team.  Team?  Yes, team.  Someone must have helped Alex.  He could not have done this alone.

Yarik counted bodies and found only six.  He checked their faces and deduced that the missing man was Bagrat.  Could the Armenian be in cahoots with Ferris?  No way.  Bagrat had a large family, three sisters and four brothers.  If he turned traitor it would be a death sentence for them all.  But then who?  How?

Yarik checked the cargo benches to see if Ferris had stuffed Bagrat’s corpse inside, and found the bullet holes that told the tragic tale.  Someone had stowed aboard and come blasting out of the bench.  Had one of the Peitho victims learned something about the Knyaz and sent a mercenary to dispatch them?  Did Alex have a partner that neither Victor nor Sergey had spotted?  No matter, he would catch up with this mercenary soon enough.  Then Alex’s secret partner would become a silent partner, but only after Yarik made him talk.

Once again, Yarik would have to see the mission through personally.  He knew this should infuriate him, but he just found himself anticipating the hunt.  He withdrew a parachute from the untouched cargo bench and walked back into the cabin, donning
it as he went.

As soon as he entered the cockpit the pilot shouted, “There they are,” and pointed toward the eastern horizon.

Using aviator’s binoculars, Yarik watched with unblinking fascination as the two fugitives dealt with the nightmare that haunted every paratrooper at one time or another.  Then he gasped in unison with the pilot when one of them cut himself free and broke into a terminal plunge.

“I’m jumping after them,” Yarik barked.  “You land as close to that corpse as you can and wait for me.”  Then, without a pause or second glance, Yarik ran and dove out the back of the plane.

The airplane’s altitude was less than half of what it had been when Alex and the mercenary had jumped, so Yarik deployed his parachute after the standard three-one-thousand count.  Once it snapped open he checked his canopy, twice, and then began a sweeping search of the ground for his prey.  If Yarik could spot him fast enough, and the wind worked in his favor, he would be able to crash down on the survivor like a bowling ball from heaven.  Unfortunately, he was not destined to be a holy roller.  The wind worked so strongly against him that he couldn’t even catch sight of his quarry.  It was all he could do to steer toward the martyr’s crash zone.

The landscape below was spotted with drifting snow in some places and covered with wind-swept rocks in others.  There was no civilization to be seen, and Yarik estimated they were at least a hundred kilometers from even the smallest
of villages.  It reminded him of the time he had parachuted with a group of hunters into Kamchatka looking for snow leopards.  It was perfect.

A
powerful explosion rocked Yarik’s ears when he was just a hundred meters from the ground.  The blast sent a wave of heat billowing forth, slapping his face and sucking the wind from his chute.  He dropped like a stone for twenty meters before reinflation, and then looked up to see the airplane plummeting to Earth. 
The resourceful bastard booby-trapped the plane
.

With the plane gone, nobody knew he had parachuted after Alex
.  Even worse was that the only member of the Knyaz who knew that Alex had an accomplice was now stuck in the middle of nowhere.  Of course, either Alex or that accomplice was already dead, but like cockroaches, where there was one, there were likely to be others.

Was the Knyaz infested?  Apparently it was.  Yarik cursed Victor, but was just as mad at
himself.  In all these years, they had only let one slip through, but if the past twenty-four hours were any indication, that one could cost them the game.

A moment later Yarik did a
parachute landing fall on the same frozen plane where one fugitive had done just a landing-fall.  He released his chute as soon as he planted his heels so that the raging wind would not drag him across the ground, plowing a furrow with his bald head as he went.  Then Yarik sprang to his feet like a panther released and ran in the direction of the corpse.  It was extermination time.

While searching for the body, Yarik found himself hoping that it would not be Alex.  Learning the identity of the mercenary could be far more valuable to the Knyaz than just having Alex himself out of the way.  And he wanted Alex
alive
.

Six anxious minutes
after landing, Yarik found it: a blood-soaked corpse staring blindly at the sky.  It was not Alex.

Superficial gore aside, the victim appeared to be asleep.  The illusion
would not last.  Yarik had seen fall victims before.  He knew that the impact liquefied their insides, and that the body would feel like a waterbed to the touch.  At the first bite from wolf’s mouth, or peck from a vulture’s beak, the innards would ooze though the gash like honey from an overturned pot.

Judging by appearance, the m
ercenary was both a Russian and a soldier.  He wore a combat uniform stripped of rank and insignia like a special operative’s, and cut his hair to regulation.  Given what he had done in the cargo hold, he was clearly no stranger to combat either.  But he was more than just a soldier.  This man had released himself from the parachute in order to save Alex, meaning he had a martyr’s sense of honor.

Yarik pondered the implications
for a moment as a frosty northerly wind howled about him.  Martyrs did what they did for a cause.  Yarik got a hollow feeling in his stomach.  That cause was most likely the downfall of the Knyaz.

Yarik did not have much patience for martyrs.  In his eyes, they were fools.  He had to acknowledge, however, that their principles did make them dangerous.  He could respect the threat imposed by a man who lent fanatical courage and discipline to his convictions. 
But that was one weapon Yarik did not want in his arsenal.  There was no one and no thing for which he would have cut himself free.  To the contrary, as a predator and a survivor, he would have seen it as his duty to cut the other man free.

Enough philosophy.  It was time to learn the martyr’s identity.  With that information, he could look
forward to hunting down all the fanatical associates inclined to assist Alex in his cause.  Yarik searched the body for a wallet or dog tags.  Both were absent.  He looked for some other type of identification, something that would tell a tale, but to his great frustration he found nothing in the man’s pockets but a couple of wigs and three pairs of glasses.  The martyr must have had ID to enter the air base…  “Damn you, Alex!”

The martyr’s lack of identification
was frustrating, but a setback of no consequence.  He would pry it from the American by the skin of his—   Wait a minute.  Suppose Alex died before Yarik could reach him?  What if he were to fall through the ice of a frozen lake, or twist an ankle and become wolf-chow?  Yarik had to catch Alex before Siberia did.  It was crucial that he learn whom the Knyaz were up against.

Yarik paused to consider his
backup options?  He did not have a camera—he wasn’t the sentimental type—and he knew wolves would devour the body before he could return for it.  Furthermore, the ground was too hard to dig a grave, and there were not enough rocks around to build one, not that he had time for either of those.  Had Alex anticipated this predicament?  Probably.  He was a cunning bastard.  Well, Yarik mused, he could scheme too.

It took but a moment for him to devise
an elegant solution.  This time it was Alex who had underestimated his opponent.  Alex’s move may have been clever, but it was not clever enough.

Yarik’s blade was long and heavy, a cross between a hunting knife and a machete.  He had acquired it a decade ago on the Ivory Coast from a man who had intended to take Yarik’s head but lost his own instead.

Yarik loved the feel of the finely carved cocobolo wood handle, and was hypnotized by the reflection of its surgical steel.  On a stakeout he could content himself for hours simply sharpening the blade as it glimmered in the moonlight.  For a kill, he favored the knife over other weapons—it was more surgical, more reliable, more personal, more precise.

With a swift, familiar movement he brought the blade whistling down onto the martyr’s wrist, severing the right hand with a practiced expertise.  Since Yarik was confidant that his adversary was a military man, he knew that his prints would be on file.  If he had not been so sure, he would have taken the head as well.

Time to move on
.  Looking up, Yarik could still see Alex’s tracks heading into the woods, although the north wind would soon erase them.

As the corpse deflated through the
severed wrist like a fly in a spider’s mouth, Yarik slipped his trophy into a cargo pocket.  His fingers came into contact with a plastic tube as he did so.  It made him smile.  The tube had a fourteen-digit code stenciled to its side and “Ferris” penciled in below.  One way or the other, the American was his.