Coercion (32 page)

Victor lay on the guestroom bed and busied himself by tossing Elaine’s antique teddy bear up into the air, playing chicken with the ceiling fan. 
Two doors down, Elaine was reading
Dancing Shoes
to her sleepy-eyed girl, as oblivious to her impending fate as a fish to a hook.

Victor
had weighed the decision for a week, the risks and rewards of another murder.  In the end, the possibility that Elaine had assisted Alex tipped the scale against her.  That pissed Victor off.  They had a deal: he didn’t kill Kimberly, she was his bitch.  If she had reneged, all bets were off.

Victor’s change of plan, his decision to disappear, had toppled the first domino
.  Once he oversaw the remaining sabotage at United Electronics and MicroComp, his Knyaz job would be complete.  He would have assured Knyaz AG’s position at the forefront of three booming industries.  His twenty-percent interest would be worth billions.  He could buy his island, have women flown in and out with the groceries and trash, and enjoy the rewards of his life’s labor.  It would be perfect—unless someone was looking for him.

The way to avoid that, of course, was to tie up every loose end.  Yarik had taught him as much.  The only person left in America who might suspect his identity, was Elaine.  Alex’s meddling had frayed the knot.  She was the difference between a carefree life in a bungalow, and a cowering life in a fortress, between breathing easy, and holding his breath.  He gave teddy another toss.  No, not that tough a decision after all.

The time to act was now.  Completing the sabotage would take a week, ten days at most.  Then he would pay daddy a surprise visit to deliver the news, pick up his Knyaz AG stock, and vanish.  Once comfortably and anonymously ensconced in his new island life, he would contact his KGB boss and inform him of his decision to retire.  Victor was still three years short of twenty years service, and his action would be highly irregular, but they would let him go.  Since his KGB boss had no knowledge of Peitho, Victor’s results had appeared miraculous.  He had allowed his boss to take the credit for those miracles in Moscow, and that put him in Victor’s debt big time.

Victor
had spent two prior evenings in and around Elaine’s house, studying her from the shadows and learning her routines.  After putting Kimberly to bed, she would change into her bathrobe and slippers and begin drawing a bath in her deep Roman tub.  Then, while the tub filled, she would zip down to the kitchen to pack Kimberly’s lunch and flip through a magazine over a cup of tea.  Tonight, Victor would slip from the guest bedroom into the linen closet in the master bath while she sipped her tea completely unaware that she only had minutes to live. Her god had nothing on him.

Once Elaine finished her tea, she would come back upstairs and hop in the tub with the water still running, waiting for it to hit the perfect level.  When she moved to turn the faucet
off, Victor would slip out behind her and release Medusa.  Even if she should happen to see or sense his approach there would be little she could do.  One paralyzing puff and it would be over.  While she lay paralyzed in the tub he would slit her wrists with a razor blade.

Her death would look like a cut-and
-dry suicide to the investigating detective.  There would be no struggle, and she would be in the bathtub of her own accord, as was her normal routine.  Lord knew the police were gullible enough to lap that easy explanation right up, at least if the Frank Ferris murder were any indication.  Victor was not pleased that the kid would find her mother that way.  It would be traumatic to say the least.  But in the end, Kimberly was going to lose her mother anyway, so what did it really matter?

T
he only tactical downside to the plan was that there was no way for him to work sex into the equation.  He had thought about using one of the killer condoms Yarik had sent him.  Thought, hell, he had racked his brains for a way to use one.  Unfortunately, the evidence of copulation would raise too many questions.  Given all the other events that had happened, the police might not buy into the heart-attack scenario that the condom supported.  Such a shame.  Victor still remembered the note that Yarik had attached with the shipment—for use in sexecutions—and laughed.  It did have a ring to it.  He launched the bear again.

The sound of a filling tub snapped Victor out of his fantasy.  It was like the starting gun at a sporting event.  As he rose from the bed, Victor realized that he had an erection.  “Ready for battle, eh boy.  Well, let the games begin.”

A minute later he heard Elaine’s soft footfalls going down the stairs.  They were music to his ears.  He felt like a Maestro conducting a symphony of one—until his pager chimed a dreaded note and the music stopped.  Oh, how he hated that thing.  He snatched it from his belt, input his code and read the unwelcome text: 001-111 SU326 SFO-SVO 2300 !!!  “Nnnooooo,” he mouthed a long silent scream.  It was a message from his father, urgent, priority one, drop everything else.  He was booked on Aeroflot flight 326 for Moscow departing San Francisco in, he checked his watch, less than two hours.  He would have to leave immediately.  The “!!!” was clear enough: drop everything and get to the airport at once.  There were to be NO excuses.

Just one more week.
  That was all he needed, just one more week
.  Victor looked at his watch again.  The tub took close to ten minutes to fill.  There would not be time to dispose of Elaine properly.  Victor refused to make the amateur mistake of deviating from his plan—that was how fools got caught.  He would just have to pick up where he left off when he returned.  Oh, but how he wanted to do her now.  The juices were flowing, the plan was in place, and he was ready for action.  Suppose he were to disobey his father …

Anna was going crazy.  She had awakened this morning with a love in her heart greater than any she had ever felt, and now she had a block of ice in her chest that she feared would never melt.  She had thought the first ten minutes were tough, the ten minutes while she waited at the metro for the next bus to arrive, the bus that
would bring Alex to her.  Now she realized that those ten minutes of anticipation were nothing, nothing compared to the ten minutes of fear she now faced worrying if Alex would ever come.

In her head Anna knew he had probably just been delayed.  Alex was calm enough to wait for the right moment rather than panicking himself into
the rash dash as she would have been tempted to make.  But what if there was more to it than that?  What if he didn’t get off the next bus?  What would she do?

Actually, Anna knew what she would do.  Alex had told her exactly what to do, which was why she had the block of ice where her heart should be.  She could do it, but she did not want to do it alone.  Alex had told her to go straight to her mother’s apartment to
fetch her.  Under no circumstances was she to return to her own apartment, or spend more than a minute or two at her mother’s.  With mom in tow, she was to go to the church, hide the Peitho list in the spine of the pulpit Bible, and leave town.

Alex would be furious with her for risking recapture by waiting for him there by the metro, but she didn’t care.  It was just twenty minutes.  He would understand.  It wasn’t as though she w
ere being stupid about it, standing there at the bus stop with conspicuous tears running down her flushed face.  No.  She was forty meters away, looking through the curtained window of a stand-around-the-bar-tables café.  With all the people bustling about the metro during the morning rush hour, she could easily lose herself in the crowd if need be. 
Six more minutes until the next bus
.

Anna looked down at the
flimsy plastic cup full of hot sweet tea but did not take a sip.  Her stomach wouldn’t take it.  She glanced nervously over at the man across from her.  Same cheap cup, very different liquid. 
How did these guys do it?

She shifted her gaze to the busy morning commute taking place on the other side of the glass.  Funny the way it looked foreign to her, like the distant memory from an era long passed. 
Would she ever return to her old life?

Alex’s plan for getting word to her in hiding was a clever one.  She would never have thought of it herself, certainly not on the spot as he had.  His plan did not require anyone, including Alex himself, to know where she was. 
How had he come up with it so quickly?  Did the CIA teach skills like that, or was Alex just special?

Alex had promised her that when he was safe, he would leave word—a code of sorts—with Father
Nikoli at the church.  He would tell Father Nikoli that “Father Fyodor would be visiting for Easter.”  This would not mean much to Father Nikoli—he didn’t know a Father Fyodor—but he would certainly pass on the information when asked, and Anna would be asking.  Then, once it was safe for Anna to come home, Alex would again leave word with Father Nikoli, this time that Father Fyodor’s Easter visit was canceled.  It was an unbreakable code, and more importantly, one that even Father Nikoli would know nothing about.

Of course, Alex’s plan assumed that Anna did as she was told.  She was not doing as she was told.  Rather than running as fast as she could, she was waiting by the bus stop for him.  Anna was waiting for him because she could not bear the thought of what she would be running to: days of waiting on pins and needles at the dacha for Father
Nikoli to confirm word of Father Fyodor.  It would drive her crazy.

As she thought about it, Anna realized that Alex’s plan would only work if he
was in a position to get word to Father Nikoli himself.  What if he never got out of that complex?  How long would she and mom have to fret away there at the dacha?  Or suppose something went wrong with the code, say Father Nikoli got sick?  Alex would never be able to find her.  He knew she would be at a friend’s dacha on Lake Baikal, but Lake Baikal had tens of thousands of dachas spread over hundreds of kilometers of coastline.  If her mind was already running wild with blind conjecture, just imagine the demons that would torment her listless mind at Baikal.  Those demons were the reason she risked recapture to wait for Alex. 
Four minutes until the next bus
.

Anna
had pitied Alex so, being a fugitive in a foreign country.  Now she realized that worse things could happen—had happened—to her.  Anna was now a fugitive in her own country.  At least foreigners have a place to return to, a goal to target, hope.  The block of ice got heavier.  Without Alex, Anna could only hope to hide, hide until … what?  Without Alex, what would it take for this all to be over?  No, no, she couldn’t allow herself to think like that now.  She had to have faith in the man she loved. 
Three minutes
.

Anna tried to stay with the moment, to focus on the positive, to forget about the fact that the life she had awakened to would never be hers again.  God would protect her.  Alex would protect her.  She just needed to have faith.  Sure, her tears were rolling now, but nonetheless there were things to be thankful for.  She was healthy, mother was healthy, and they had the perfect place to hide, someplace even
Vasily with all his power and connections could never find her. 

Although
the Zaitsevs had been going to the dacha for decades, it didn’t belong to them.  Mother had sold their dacha after father died.  This dacha belonged to Uncle Vanya, or rather his widow Tanya, and Tanya lived a thousand kilometers from Torsk.  Vasily would have no knowledge of her, and there was no documented connection.

Papa and Uncle Vanya had grown up together, raised their families together, been sent off to war together, and died together.  One bomb had destroyed two families, but some things had remained unchanged: to this day the families of the two fallen soldiers vacationed together.  The dacha was distant, it was remote, and it was unknown. 
Father was still taking care of her.  She could be thankful for that. 
Two minutes until the next bus
.

Think
positive, think positive, Alex is going to be on that bus.  He has to be; there’s only so much cruelty one person can be expected to endure in a single day.  He’s going to be on the bus, and he’s going to know about some secret CIA passage out of the country.  Surely, he’ll take you with him
…

It dawned on Anna that that was not necessarily the case.  Alex might not take her along.  She had pushed him and he had said no.  He had explained, but he had said no.  It would not be fair to assume that this would change things.

Anna’s thoughts drifted back to the conversation they had a few hours earlier and a world away.  To think that someone as intelligent and resourceful as Alex Ferris would shun long-term commitment because he didn’t like the way his father treated his mother.  It was incomprehensible, seemed unbelievable.  Yet she believed it, or rather she saw that he believed it.  It was in his eyes.  He silenced her objections and dashed her hopes with a simple phrase: “It’s a genetic lock.”  And then the discussion, his visit, their future—was over.

There’s the bus!

Anna ran from the café toward the bus stop.  She couldn’t help herself.  She desperately needed this to be over—now!  If it wasn’t, if it wasn’t … the thought was unbearable.

She hid herself amidst the mob of
rush-hour commuters and watched with great anxiety as the doors opened and passengers began getting off.  The first wasn’t Alex, nor the second … if only the windows weren’t so dirty.  Suddenly Anna found herself being swept onto the bus with the crowd.  Why were people getting on before everyone got off. 
No!

Anna pushed her way to freedom and looked around as the bus pulled away in a choking cloud of exhaust. 
He wasn’t there.  Alex wasn’t there!
  He had missed the second bus as well. 

Anna wanted to collapse but found
herself stiffening rather than softening.  Like a lion cub suddenly forced to hunt alone, she felt powerful claws emerging from her soft paws.  She held her ground.

With the emergent self-reliance came clarity of mind.  Anna knew what she had to do.  Alex had told her what to do, and that was what she would do.  Then it struck her just what she had
already done.  She had wasted twenty minutes and there was not another second to spare.

I’m coming for you mom
…