Operator - 01 (29 page)

The concrete walls are just a façade now. There was never a roof on the structure and a large courtyard takes up most of the interior space. There are a few surviving interior walls at one end, but mostly it’s just a grassy open space. Veronica is sitting at the far end from where I enter. She’s bound hand and foot and there is a thick piece of duct tape over her mouth. She seems to be okay, but I can’t really tell much in the moonlight. I step forward into the open courtyard about twenty yards from her and stop, with my hands out in front of me.

“Take off your coat,” the voice rumbles from the darkness. I notice the red pinprick of a laser sight on me and as I comply I trace the narrow beam back to its origin in an upper window. Or rather, the place a window should be. From up there, Yuri will have a pretty good view of all of the approaches to the structure. I hold my breath for a second while I wait to see if I’ve judged him correctly. I peel off my shell jacket and my fleece and drop them on the ground without being shot. I take this as a good sign, although I’m chilly in a long-sleeve Under Armor compression shirt. Then the laser light flicks off and I hear a faint rustle. After a few moments, Yuri appears at the other end of the courtyard. He’s wearing plain, pale green fatigues with the pants legs bloused from a sturdy pair of leather boots. It looks as if it may be his military uniform, and I chew on that for a moment.

Yuri approaches with an MP5 pointed at me and a rifle slung over his back. He’s a little taller and a lot thicker than he looked the first time I saw him from a distance, but I’d make a fair-sized bet there’s not much fat on him. He moves like a big cat, a panther stalking prey. His hair is blond and shaved down to a flat-top, like the deck of an aircraft carrier. Those tattoos I’ve seen on the other men wind up his neck, glistening in the moonlight. When he gets within spitting distance, Yuri motions for me to turn around. He pats my jacket and expertly frisks me. I’m not carrying a gun. He leaves the SOG Seal Pup knife in its kydex sheath attached to my belt. Then he backs away, telling me to stay put. I wait a long moment before he says, “okay.” I turn around.

Yuri has stripped down to a plain khaki t-shirt and there’s steam coming off of him in the cold air. I can see that in addition to the snake tattoos on his neck, his arms are covered with a gothic mix of black ink. He’s holding a knife as he steps forward. It’s a Kizlyar Strella, a wicked, double-bladed weapon with a simple, cord-wrapped handle. He flicks it from hand to hand as he comes face to face with me. I slide the Seal Pup from its sheath and hold it blade downwards in a defensive posture.

“Why are we doing this, Yuri?” I ask. He starts circling me while I talk and I rotate slowly to keep him from flanking me. Yuri moves like a wrestler, with his feet flat on the ground all the time, never crossing each other.

“Why are you asking me questions you know the answer to already?” he responds in Russian. “You killed my brother.”

“Your brother was armed, he was shooting at me and he was in a rough business. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t tried to kill me first, or if your friends hadn’t kidnapped Veronica.” I involuntarily look toward her when I mention her name, and just as I make eye contact, Yuri takes advantage of my momentary distraction, feinting forward with the knife, then coming in with a powerful shot from his left arm, a classic kidney punch. I deflect the Strella with the flat of the blade of the Seal Pup and spin away from the punch, but just barely. He’s quick.

Yuri shakes his head at me. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t understand. That boy, I looked out for him for his whole life. I protected him from my father, from the army, from everything.” Yuri looks sad, a little weary. I’ve seen the dossier on his brother, passed along by Sammie. The kid was a screw-up. He tried everything that Yuri did, from the army to the Tambov gang, only with less success and a lot more problems.

“I have a sister like that. One of your guys was holding a gun to her head just an hour ago.”

Yuri nods. “It is a bad business. I should never have become involved. But my country is not like yours. When I left the army, there was no private contractor job waiting for me. I could not become a security advisor for a rich corporation. The government would not have wanted me. I could have prostituted myself to one of the oligarchs, but I couldn’t face that. At least there is some discipline with the Tambovs. But it all went to shit and cost Seryoza his life. You cost him his life.” He corrects himself and launches another attack. The blade flashes in a figure-eight pattern as he feints towards my neck then crouches and comes in low. The knife darts forward past my guard toward the inside of my thigh. He’s aiming for my femoral artery – severing it would exsanguinate me in under a minute. I sweep downwards with the Seal Pup at the last second and manage to deflect the Strella, which slices through my pants instead.

“I’m sorry about your brother, Yuri, but what’s the point? Killing me won’t bring him back. The operation here is finished. All of your colleagues are either dead or in prison, Constantine Drubich is dead and the SVR is treating anyone connected with the whole business like a stain on a wedding dress. You’re a professional, Yuri. Why would you stick around for vengeance instead of getting the hell out of town? You know they’ll be hunting you too, don’t you?”

Yuri looks at me and I can feel world-weary disappointment spilling from his lips as he sighs. “You speak my language well, but you don’t have a Russian soul. Blood is blood. It’s all that matters. You took my brother. The blood debt must be repaid. It’s not complicated.” Yuri comes in again, and this time I’m ready. Our knives meet two, three, four times as he probes my guard. His lips are set in a grimace and I can tell that he’s done talking. He leans in and focuses, then charges me suddenly, trying to block my knife with his free left arm. Then he spins around me, his right arm extended with the intention of planting the Strella in the base of my spine. The razor-sharp blade passes through empty air instead as I lean forward, extending my entire body over my bent right knee, my torso parallel to the ground. As I extend, my right arm windmills upward and my wrist catches him under the armpit of his right arm holding the knife. Yuri is off balance, having braced himself to push the Strella deep into my spine, and I toss him over my hip. He grunts loudly as his body hits the ground but then he rolls back over his shoulder and is upright again before I can press the counterattack.

As soon as he regains his feet, Yuri goes back on the attack, leaping to the right, stabbing out and again forcing me to block inside his arm with the edge of my left hand. With his own left hand he thrusts upward, trying to put the heel of his callused palm through my nose. Instead, we become entwined as I drop the Seal Pup and block his strike from the inside with my forearm, then slide it up and over, wrapping his arm with mine. With both of his arms engaged, Yuri goes for a head butt, slamming his head forward like a soccer star looking for the goal. I’m waiting for this and I dodge my head to the side, causing him to wrench his neck while I use his momentum to carry us backward into a roll, wedging my right knee between us and then using it to fling him over me as I hit the ground. I grab his right wrist with my left on the way over and twist, forcing him to release the Strella. I kip back onto my feet and turn, quickly spotting the black Strella on the ground. I kick it away from us. He looks at me in disgust for a moment until I pick up the Seal Pup and toss it aside as well. It’s not a show of bravado on my part, even though Yuri interprets it that way. Yuri is better than me with a knife, and I’m lucky that I haven’t been sliced yet. Against a lesser man, I’d counter barehanded and attempt to immobilize him. But where other men have nerve endings, Yuri seems to have solid muscle. I need to wear him down if I’m going to have a chance of beating him.

Absent his knife, Yuri roars like a lion and charges low, going in for a wrestling takedown. I deflect his right arm downwards then plant my left hand on his right shoulder and cartwheel over him as he dives past. The next time he attacks, it’s as a boxer, with a solid three-punch combination. I bob away from the first two jabs and then when the solid cross comes, I step in towards it, twist outside of the punch and grab his wrist and the underside of his elbow as he goes by. Then I spin as I work the wrist and elbow over. After a revolution, I force him down and he rolls to escape the lock. He’s as strong as a bear and I’m sweating. Before I can plan a strategy, he’s back up and leaps into the air feinting a kick, then bringing down his fist like a hammer. I use his momentum to throw him again, forcing him to roll on the twig-covered grass.

Yuri begins to sweat as I counter a half-dozen more moves, several times tossing him into a throw or forcing him to roll. He’s getting frustrated and I can see him looking over towards the Strella and then to the spot where I suspect he’s stashed his weapons. But when he makes a move in any direction, I corral him with small strikes and slaps that sting and anger him without doing much damage. Instead they make him swear and charge me again. Then I put him down on the ground a little more roughly. He’s at least fifteen years older than me and he is finally starting to feel it.

As our fight stretches on, I see a glint of recognition light up in Yuri’s eyes. He suddenly understands my strategy. Instead of fighting like gladiators or sumo wrestlers, I’ve turned our contest into a bullfight. Yuri is better than me with a knife, and too strong for me to best in straight wrestling. I’ve been wearing him down systematically with safe moves to deplete his strength to the point where I can disable him. He’s been fighting madly, just like a bull, not thinking I had a larger strategy. A rueful smile tells me all I need to know. He gathers his remaining energy and comes in flat at me like a Greco Roman or Sumo wrestler. As his left hand latches onto me I jab him sharply in a tiny spot underneath his arm. The hand starts to tremble, and he loses control of it. He starts to panic and brings his big right arm up in a powerful uppercut. I dodge the blow and then jab at the arm on the upswing. His right arm, too, starts to spasm. Before he can regroup, I pull him around and wrap my forearms around his head, one on either side.

“It doesn’t have to end like this, Yuri,” I say through labored breaths. “Tell me that it’s over and I’ll let you go.”

He laughs. “You
are
a romantic, and a fool. You can’t let me live now – I’ll never stop hunting you. Finish what you started!” Yuri seems oddly exuberant as he says this. I roll my arms apart, applying more and more torque to his neck until my hands run out of slack and I grip his chin and the back of his head with my palms and twist sharply. I feel his neck snap and he collapses, limp and dead. I sit there with him for a moment panting.
He knew
, I think,
he knew from the beginning he was going to lose
. Our match was like assisted suicide, an honorable way for him to die. But he still felt that he’d won somehow, even at the end…

I pant as I stand over him as my mind races to catch up with my intuition. Then, with a sinking feeling, I rush over to Veronica.

She is an awful shade of white and blue, dappled with bits of ghostly light underneath the hunter’s moon. She gasps as I pull the tape off of her mouth and it takes her moments to regain her breath. “He…injected me with something just before you called. He wouldn’t tell me what it was…told me you’d know.” She has to pause to breathe, as if a heavy weight is sitting on her chest. She fumbles with a zipper on her jacket pocket and withdraws a pharmaceutical vial. I read the label and recognize the drug. It’s not good news. She looks at me and I just shake my head.

“I’m sorry.” I say, looking down at her head in my lap. I don’t cry. I feel numb. I pull a phone out of my pocket and call Menetti – tell him to bring paramedics, but I know it won’t help.

We sit there for a few minutes, talking quietly. Veronica tells me things she wants me to say to her parents. Then she tells me a few things I would rather not hear and I respond with some things that I know she needs me to say. But still I feel nothing, like I’m observing all of this from a safe distance. After awhile, she drifts away, still breathing shallowly but no longer conscious. She’s still in that state when the FBI guys come crashing through the forest, but I barely perceive them. They won’t be able to help her. I am numb, almost insensate. As they take her away, I slide to the ground, my back against a concrete wall, and look up at the sky through grasping branches of oak and sugar maple intruding over the old bones of the hotel. It comes to me then, sinking in slowly like the encroaching chill of winter. I perceive the exact form of Yuri’s revenge. It’s not that he’s taken Veronica’s life, not just that. It’s that he has completed what he started when he killed Mel. The transformation that began when I first set my foot on the road to uncover Mel’s killer is finished. Yuri has robbed me of my new life. I have devolved back to the man I once was: an operator.

Epilogue – Three Months Later

Jonathan Dunleavy contemplates the delicate bit of Maine Cod on the end of his fork, which he has scooped from its beer-battered crust like an oyster from its shell. The food is solid if not stellar at Old Ebbitt’s Grill, but food isn’t the attraction of the place. The 154-year-old restaurant just across the street from the Treasury Building is one of a handful of lunch spots that attract the power players in Washington, D.C. At least three days a week, Jonathan hits Ebbitt’s, the Willard, the Hyatt Regency, Palm or one of a half-dozen other key power scenes. Dunleavy’s assistant, Josh Levin, is excellent at wrangling good tables for these occasions. Levin is also proficient at scheduling lunches with the Washington A-list: prominent policymakers, well-connected lobbyists and high-profile journalists. In his three decades in Washington, Dunleavy has become a master at applying Capitol Hill’s cardinal rule: appearance is reality. Appearing powerful, popular and persuasive makes you so. The men and women in Washington, D.C. might rule the world, but it often feels to Dunleavy more like a small company town. Everyone is obsessed with gossip; the chattering classes spend endless energy reading the tea leaves for signs of shifts in power.