Rasputin's Shadow (19 page)

J
onny
peered into his side-view mirror as the big storage tanks faded into the night. No one was following.

Not the maniac Russian. But not Jachin, either. Which didn’t bode well.

If his buddy had made it out, he’d be somewhere behind him already. The streets were dark and deserted, and Jonny knew he’d have seen his car’s lights, even in the distance. But there were no lights, and the phone link to Jachin had also gone dead.

He wondered whether Jachin was still alive, whether or not he’d be calling Jonny at any moment to tell him he’d picked off the Russian and was bringing Sokolov back.

For the fifth time that minute, he glanced at his cell phone. It stayed dark. And deep down, something told him he wasn’t going to get that call.

He wanted to go back, to try to help him. But he couldn’t do that. Not with Daphne.

A wave of vengeful rage crashed against his heart as he kept his foot on the gas, wrangling as much pace as he could from the old van and missing his souped-up Mitsubishi. Why he’d ever agreed to use his teacher’s lousy old van, he didn’t know. He couldn’t wait to dump it once he’d dropped Daphne off. More than dump it. Feed it to a crusher, maybe, or just torch the damn thing to hell.

Daphne was in the seat next to him, gripping his left arm so tightly it was starting to hurt. He gently uncurled her fingers and turned to face her. She was sobbing, but bravely trying to stifle the sound.

Jonny gently squeezed her hand and kept driving, in silence, not knowing what to say, even though he felt he had to say something. She needed it.

“We’ll get him back,” he finally said to her. “One way or another, we’ll get him back. This isn’t over.”

Daphne gasped a lungful of air and tried to take control of her emotions, but her body wouldn’t stop shaking.

“They must want him alive, Mrs. Soko. Otherwise, they would have killed him there and then.”

She nodded, staring ahead, and straightened up. “We have to go to the police, Jonny.”

He’d been wrestling with the same thought. Much as he hated to have anything to do with them, the cops needed to be alerted to Sokolov’s abduction. The events of that night were beyond both his comprehension and his firepower, and one of the reasons he was still alive was because he could back out of something just as quickly as he could burst in. But he didn’t know the first thing about what was really going on, who the Russians were, or what beef they had with Sokolov. The cops needed to be brought in.

But not by him.

He wasn’t used to having so little control over events in his life, and he wasn’t enjoying the feeling at all. But he didn’t want to upset Daphne.

He reached over for his smokes, lit one up, and took a deep pull. He offered one to Daphne, who declined.

“Do you know who took you?” he asked.

“You mean now, or before?”

Jonny wasn’t getting it. “What do you mean?”

“The men who grabbed me outside the hospital were Russian. They worked for a man they called
kuvalda
. It means sledgehammer. Does that mean anything to you?”

Jonny nodded. “Sure. He’s Russian Mafiya. Big.”

“The man you saw back there, the one who brought me there—he came to the motel where they were keeping me and he killed them and took me with him.”

“And you don’t know who he is or what he wants from Mr. Soko?”

“No,” Daphne said.

Jonny frowned. “I’ll drop you off at the precinct by the school, okay? But you can’t mention me when you talk to them. I need you to tell me you won’t. There’s nothing I can tell them anyway. I’ve told you all I know. I was just trying to help keep you both alive.”

She dabbed at her cheeks with a sleeve. “And I appreciate that,” she told him. “A lot. I won’t say anything about you if that’s what you want.”

He thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll hang on to the van for a while, if you don’t need it. Make sure it doesn’t have my prints on it or anything. Is that okay with you?”

Daphne looked confused. “Why wouldn’t it be? It’s your van.”

“No, it’s not. It’s Mr. Soko’s.”

Daphne seemed genuinely surprised. “It’s Leo’s?”

“You don’t know?”

“No. I’ve never seen it before.” She twisted around and glanced back at the partition and the narrow door, then looked at Jonny. “Why would Leo have a van? He doesn’t need a van.”

“I don’t know,” Jonny said. “Why didn’t he tell you about it?”

Daphne seemed confused and lost, and she started to sob again. Jonny decided not to take it any further. It was painfully obvious that whatever Sokolov was involved in, his wife knew nothing about it.

“I’ll take you to the station now,” he told her.

She didn’t reply.

***

L
ARISA WAS AT HER
apartment on East Seventy-eighth Street, restlessly waiting for news, when her phone lit up.

She snatched it and checked its screen, then took the call.

“Have you heard anything?” the man asked bluntly.

“Should I?”

“There’s been a shoot-out in Brooklyn. Several
bratki
dead. One in the hospital. The FBI’s got a man down too.”

She felt a prickle of concern. “Reilly?”

“No. Someone else.”

“What about Sokolov?” she asked.

“Gone. Taken.”

A rush of variables tumbled across her mind.

“This is bad,” the man said. “More than bad. It’s a fucking disaster. You need to find out where he is.”

“I’m being kept out of the loop,” she said. “Strictly need-to-know. I can’t get inside this, not since Monday night.”

“You’re going to have to. ’Cause right now, it’s looking like we might have lost him. For good. You have to find a way in. Find out where he is. Do whatever you have to do, but find him. At all costs. And I mean all costs. Do you understand?”

“Got it.”

She clicked off, stared at the screen, and brooded over her next move in silence.

She didn’t like it.

She’d been walking a tightrope for years, treading carefully across a ruthlessly perilous landscape. And it sounded to her like her handler had just asked her to jump off.

***

S
EVEN DEAD AT THE
motel last night. Three dead, one mangled up, and a fellow agent with a chunk of his leg missing in this godforsaken wasteland tonight.

I wasn’t too crazy about this new nightly routine we seemed to be settling into.

A bunch of paramedics were already on the scene. They were tending to Kubert, stabilizing him and getting ready to move him into the ambulance. I was with a couple of others, who were busy with the guy who was driving the SUV when I’d shot his tires out from under him. He was a mess of blood and bruises and looked like he’d been mauled by a Transformer.

“I need to talk to him,” I told the brunette who seemed to be running the show.

“And you probably will,” she snapped back tersely as she worked on him. “Just not right now.”

“When?” I asked.

“Does it look like he’s in a chatty mood?”

She had a point.

I stepped away and took in the scene around me. This was a disaster. While we’d been lured out here for an evening at the O.K. Corral, the real meet was probably taking place somewhere else. With consequences unknown for all involved. I wondered if we’d be finding more bodies there, and if they’d each also have one round through the forehead.

I was crossing over to where Kubert was being treated when my phone rang. It was a detective by the name of O’Neil, calling from the 114th Precinct. Adams’s and Giordano’s precinct.

“I think you need to come down here,” he told me. “We’ve got a walk-in here you’ll want to talk to. Daphne Sokolov.”

I
t was just after ten o’clock when O’Neil and another detective showed Aparo and me into the interview room where Daphne Sokolov had been settled.

She was the same woman I’d seen in the framed holiday pictures at the apartment, only any trace of that happiness had been sapped right out of her features. She looked scared, tired, and several years older as she sat hunched on the uncomfortable chair, her hands cupped around a steaming mug of coffee. But she wasn’t shy. Before we even got to tell her who we were, she said, “They’ve got my husband. They’ve got Leo. You’ve got to find him.”

I reassured her and tried to calm her down, but she ignored me and launched into her tale, her words frantic but precise and to the point. This was a woman who was used to being around life-and-death situations, although, admittedly, not ones that involved her husband of thirty years. So we listened as she told us about how she’d been abducted on her way home from work; tied up at the motel; grabbed by the other Russian; taken somewhere she couldn’t identify, as she’d been blindfolded and locked up in the trunk; then finally driven to the docks, where they grabbed Leo just before the shooting broke out.

Which was where I stopped her.

“Where was this? What docks?”

“I’m not sure. I was also blindfolded on the way there.” She paused, concentrating, then added, “Not far from Prospect Avenue. I could see on the way back.”

“Be more specific,” I pressed her. “What else do you remember seeing?”

She thought about it for a brief moment, then said, “There were these big tanks, like oil drums. You know, the kind they have at refineries.”

O’Neil said, “There’s an old fuel depot on Gowanus Bay, just before the IKEA. I can’t think of any other ones in the area.”

I felt a stir of acid in my gut. It couldn’t be more than a couple of miles from where we’d been faked out. The bastard hadn’t bothered sending us halfway across town. He was cool enough to have us that close. Sending us a message, showing us how in control he was. Toying with us.

“Let’s get some people out there,” I told O’Neil, knowing we’d probably be too late. Then I turned back to Daphne. “Tell us what happened.”

***

K
OSCHEY TOOK ANOTHER LOOK
outside the front of the warehouse and made sure no one had followed them there, then locked the door and walked back to where he’d left Sokolov.

The Internet had made his life much simpler. There was no need to rely on local intermediaries to arrange safe houses for him and others like him, not anymore. Websites like Craigslist made it incredibly easy to find and secure all kinds of last-minute, short-term rentals at a day’s notice. Which is what Koschey had done as soon as he knew he was coming to New York. In addition, arranging his own safe houses made them far safer, since no one but him knew their location.

Hotels were not an option for him. Too many people going in and out. Too much potential interaction with other guests and hotel staff. Not ideal, especially when you were carrying weapons or ferrying a hostage or two. A suburban house was good. The more secluded, the better. Or a ground-floor office space in some kind of second-tier commercial development. Those were better, as they tended to be deserted at night, which was when Koschey did a lot of his work. In this case, he’d gone with a bottom-tier warehouse by Jamaica, Queens. One month’s rent paid in advance, not too many questions asked. It had electricity and a bathroom with running water, and it was big enough for him to park inside. And right then, in the middle of the night, it was totally quiet, with no one else around but him and his guest.

He’d dumped the sniper’s garish road racer where he’d left his Yukon before the Sledgehammer’s men picked him up in their Escalade en route to the shipyard. The black Chevy had been safely stashed inside the warehouse, facing out. Behind it, in the office, Sokolov was on the floor, his wrists tied behind him, the nylon restraint looped around the wall mount of a low radiator.

Koschey went up to the back of the SUV and popped its lid open. He pulled out his travel case and set it on the floor, by the wall. He unlocked it and retrieved his toiletries pouch from it, as well as a couple more zip ties, then he went into the office and got down on his haunches, facing his captive.

Sokolov glared at him defiantly. “Was Daphne here?” he asked him in Russian. “Is this where you brought her?”

Koschey nodded, slowly, as he set the small pouch on the floor. “She was. She doesn’t know where it is, though. So I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high about any cavalry charging in here soon to rescue you.”

He studied Sokolov and his immediate surroundings for a second. He suspected the scientist wouldn’t be as compliant as his wife had been, and decided he’d need to use a different method. He reached behind the teacher’s head and tied one of the nylon restraints to the radiator. Then he picked up the other, and, without warning, his left arm lashed out and clasped Sokolov by the chin, jamming his head right back against the radiator and holding it there with such firmness that Sokolov couldn’t move his head left or right.

“So tell me, Comrade Shislenko,” Koschey asked as he calmly picked up the other zip tie and slipped it through the other cuff and around Sokolov’s neck. “I’ve read your file with great fascination. To think of what you were able to achieve . . . it’s remarkable.” He pulled on its loose tip, its teeth clicking tighter until it was almost choking Sokolov. “Miles ahead of anyone else’s work in that field. But then you disappeared on us.” Koschey released Sokolov’s head. The teacher looked at him with wide eyes, clearly in shock at being pinned against the radiator and hardly able to move his head an inch. “How long has it been now? More than thirty years . . . and a lot can happen in thirty years. A hell of a lot. Especially with all the advances in technology we’ve seen. Isn’t that so?”

Sokolov remained tight-lipped as sweat drops materialized across his forehead.

Koschey smiled. He could see the fear seeping across his prey, whose eyes widened to see what he was doing as he unzipped the small pouch, fished out two of his small plastic ampoules, and held them up to give them a quick check.

“So, what I’d like to know is, what have you been doing all these years? Did you just forget about your old life and all the revolutionary work you were doing for the Motherland and turn into a boring middle-class American? Or was your scientific curiosity too hard to ignore?”

He twisted two of the small tubes off its row, put the others back in the pouch, then snapped off its tip.

“Frankly, I’d be surprised if you were able to put it all out of your mind. Someone with your brilliance . . . it’s hard to put that genie back in the bottle, isn’t it?”

He leaned in closer, then his left hand reached out to pin the teacher against the radiator again. His splayed fingers were squashing both of Sokolov’s cheeks while his palm smothered the man’s mouth. Then his fingers crept up and held his eyelid open while he poured the clear liquid into Sokolov’s eye.

Koschey did the same to Sokolov’s other eye, then put the empty ampoules back in his pouch. “I thought you might like to sample the creation of one of your former colleagues at the S Directorate, comrade.” He paused, then added, “Department Twelve,” and let it sink in, enjoying the heightened fear that mentioning the KGB’s top secret biological weapons research group brought out in Sokolov. “Not as sophisticated as your masterpiece, of course. But still, it gets pleasing results.”

He picked up the pouch, pushed himself to his feet, and headed out of the office.

“Let’s give it a few minutes to take effect,” he told Sokolov. “Then when you’re ready, I want to hear all about what you’ve been up to all these years.”

***

W
E WERE GOING TO
find more bodies. At least a couple, according to Daphne. Maybe more.

Maybe even her husband’s, although from the sounds of it, the man who took him clearly wanted him alive.

By this point, I wanted him too. Not Sokolov. The other Russian, the one who had Sokolov. And I wasn’t too concerned about the alive part. Although, in some perverse way, maybe I did want him alive. I was curious about him. I wanted to know exactly who he was and why he was doing this and who he was doing it for. I wanted to look into his eyes—the eyes of probably the most impressive and ruthless shot I’d ever come across. I wanted to have some words with him and see how his mind worked before I put him away. Not that it would be easy. I wasn’t under any illusions there. So far, he hadn’t made a single misstep.

I was momentarily excited by the prospect of getting his description out of Daphne, but it wasn’t to be. We got as much from her as we could on that front, but it wasn’t too useful. The guy she saw at the motel had a goatee, glasses, and long hair that was parted down the middle. When she saw him again at the fuel depot, he had a beard, mirrored sunglasses, and a baseball cap pulled down low. We had the basics in terms of height and weight, and the artist we’d bring in would be able to sketch out something more specific, but for the moment it didn’t look like we were going to get the glossy headshot I’d been hoping for.

Throughout, Daphne had avoided mentioning the person who’d driven her back to the precinct by name. She’d kept referring to him as “some guy” and “Leo’s guy,” that kind of thing. But watching her, I knew she knew more than she was saying. I also knew why she wasn’t telling us who he was.

“Listen to me, Daphne. From what you’ve told us, the person we really need to talk to is the guy who showed up with Leo at the docks. Leo brought him for a reason. He brought him there to protect you. Which means Leo trusted him. And if he trusted him, he might have told him what was going on, and that’s something we need to understand if we’re going to have half a chance of finding him. ’Cause right now, we don’t know anything, and we don’t have much to go on either. Right now, Leo is out there somewhere, and there’s not much we can do besides wait and hope for the best. Which isn’t how we do things.”

She frowned, opened her mouth to say something, then hesitated. “I told you everything there is to know,” she said. “Leo’s friend doesn’t know any more. He told me so.”

“There’s bound to be more,” I insisted. “And sometimes, even the smallest thing can make a huge difference. This is what we’re trained to do. It’s our job. And every minute we waste here is putting Leo’s life more at risk.” I studied her for a beat, but she still seemed unconvinced. “From what you’ve told me, whoever it was out there with you was there to protect you. I don’t have an issue with that. I don’t care about him gunning one of them down. I’m not after him, all right? I just want to get your husband back and lock up the guy who’s got him. That’s all.”

Her eyes darted around to the other faces in the room before settling on mine again, then she nodded. “His name’s Jonny. Well, people call him Jonny. His real name’s Yaung John-Hee. He’s Korean.” She paused, then added, “Leo taught him. At Flushing High. Before he got into trouble.”

I got her to expand on that a little. What she said told me Jonny had a rap sheet. I asked O’Neil to pull it.

“What about his friend?” I asked Daphne. “The one who was covering you?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know who that was.”

“Where can I find Jonny?” I pressed. “Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say where he was going.” Her expression softened. “Promise me you won’t be hard on him. He was only trying to help.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, then looked across to O’Neil. “He’s also got the van. We need to put an APB out on it.” I turned back to Daphne. “Do you know what the license plate is on Leo’s van?”

“No,” she said, her tone bewildered and somewhat cross. “I didn’t even know he had a van until an hour ago.”