The Defector (36 page)

THE NEWS from the embassy confirmed what they always suspected: that Ivan had never intended to release Chiara. Shamron immediately spoke four words calmly in Hebrew: “Send Joshua to Canaan.” Then he turned to Adrian Carter. “It’s time.”

Carter snatched up his phone. “Switch on the jammers. And give Ivan the note.”

Shamron gazed at the message still winking at him from the display screens. His command had unleashed a torrent of noise and activity at King Saul Boulevard. Now, amid the pandemonium, he heard two familiar voices, both calm and unemotional. The first was Uzi Navot’s, reporting that the sentries at the back of the dacha appeared restless. The next voice was Gabriel’s. Joshua was thirty seconds away from the target, he said. Joshua would soon be knocking on the devil’s door.

THOUGH NEITHER Gabriel nor Shamron could see it, the devil was rapidly running out of patience. He was standing at the base of the passenger-boarding stairs, his malletlike hands resting on his hips, his weight shifting forward to aft. Veteran Kharkov watchers would have recognized the curious pose as one of many he had taken from his hero, Stalin. They would have also suggested that now might be a good time to take cover, because when Ivan started rocking heel to toe it usually meant an eruption was coming.

The source of his rising anger was the door of the American C-32. For more than a minute, there had been no activity there, other than the appearance of two heavily armed men in black. His anger scaled new heights shortly after 9:05 when Oleg Rudenko, who was standing at Ivan’s right hand, reported that his cell phone no longer appeared to be functioning. He blamed it on interference from the plane’s communications system, which was partially correct. Ivan, however, was clearly dubious.

At this point, he briefly attempted to take matters into his own hands. Pushing past one of his bodyguards, he mounted the passenger stairs and started toward the cabin door. He froze on the third step when one of the CIA paramilitaries leveled a compact submachine gun and, in excellent Russian, instructed him to stay back. On the tarmac, hands reached beneath overcoats, and the control tower staff later claimed to have spotted the flash of a weapon or two. Ivan, furious and humiliated, did as he was told and retreated to the base of the stairs.

And there he remained for two more tense minutes, hands on his hips, eyes fixed on the two men with machine guns standing shoulder to shoulder in the doorway of the C-32. When finally the CIA men parted, it was not his children Ivan saw but the pilot. He was holding a note. Using only hand signals, he summoned a member of the Russian ground crew and instructed him to deliver the note to the enraged-looking man in the English overcoat. By the time the note had reached Ivan, the aircraft’s door was closed and the twin Pratt & Whitney engines were roaring. As the plane began to taxi, those on board were treated to the extraordinary sight of Ivan Kharkov—oligarch, arms dealer, murderer, and father of two—wadding the paper into a ball and hurling it to the ground in disgust.

Another man might have conceded defeat at this point. But not Ivan. Indeed, the last thing the crew saw was Ivan seizing hold of Oleg Rudenko’s cell phone and hurling it at the aircraft. It bounced harmlessly off the belly of the fuselage and shattered into a hundred pieces on the tarmac. A few of the crew laughed. Those who knew what was coming next did not. Blood was going to flow. And men were going to die.

AS IT TURNED OUT, the wash from the C-32’s engines blew the note across the tarmac toward the Moscow delegation, and, eventually, to the feet of the deputy minister himself. For a moment he considered allowing it to continue on its journey into oblivion, but his bureaucratic upbringing would not allow it. After all, the letter was an official document of sorts.

Ivan’s mighty fist had compressed the sheet of paper into a wad the size of a golf ball, and it took the deputy several seconds to pry it open and flatten it out again. Across the top of the paper was the official letterhead of the 89th Airlift Wing. Beneath it were a few lines of English script, clearly written by the hand of a child under emotional stress. Glancing at the first line, the deputy considered reading no further. Once again, duty demanded otherwise.

We do not want to live in Russia.

We do not want to be with Yekaterina.

We want to go home to America.

We want to be with our mother.

We hate you.

Good-bye.

The deputy looked up in time to see Ivan boarding his helicopter. Look at him! Look at Ivan Borisovich! He had everything in the world: a mountain of money, a supermodel for a wife. Everything but the love of his children. Look at him! You are nothing, Ivan Borisovich! Nothing!

63

VLADIMIRSKAYA OBLAST, RUSSIA

THE WARNING sign at the entrance was Soviet era. The birch trees on either side had been there since the time of the tsars. Forty yards along the narrow track was a Range Rover, two Russian guards in the front seat. Mikhail flashed his lights. The Range Rover made no move.

Mikhail opened his door and climbed out. He was wearing a heavy gray parka zipped to the chin and a dark woolen hat pulled low. For now, he was just another Russian. Another one of Ivan’s boys. An Alpha Group veteran with a bad attitude. The sort who didn’t like having to get out of the car when it was ten below zero.

Hands shoved into his pockets, head down, he went to the driver’s side of the Range Rover. The window slid down. Mikhail’s gun came out.

Six bright flashes. Scarcely a sound.

Gabriel murmured a few words into his lip mic. Mikhail reached across the lifeless driver, turned the wheel hard to the right, moved the shift from PARK to DRIVE. The Range Rover eased clear of the track and came to rest against a birch tree. Mikhail switched off the engine and threw the keys into the woods. A few seconds later, he was next to Gabriel again, speeding toward the front of the dacha.

AT THAT same instant, on the back side of the dacha, three men acquired three targets. Then, on Navot’s mark, three men fired three shots.

Three bright flashes. Scarcely a sound.

They crept forward through the birch trees and knelt over their dead. Secured weapons. Silenced radios. Navot spoke softly into his lip mic. Targets neutralized. Rear perimeter secured.

EXACTLY ONE hundred twenty-eight miles to the east, on Moscow’s Tverskaya Street, Irina Bulganova, former wife of the defector Grigori Bulganov, unlocked the door of Galaxy Travel and changed the sign from CLOSED to OPEN. Seven minutes late, she thought. Not that it mattered. Business had fallen off a cliff—or, in the words of Galaxy’s sometimes poetic general manager, it was locked up tighter than the Moscow River. The Christmas holidays had been a bust. Bookings for the spring ski season were nonexistent. These days even the oligarchs were hoarding their cash. What little they had left.

Irina settled into her desk near the window and did her utmost to appear busy. There was talk of cutbacks at Galaxy. Reduced commissions. Even firings. Thank you, capitalism! Perhaps Lenin had been right after all. At least he had managed to do away with the uncertainty. Under the Communists the Russians had been poor and they had stayed poor. There was something to be said for consistency.

The ping of the automatic entry chime interrupted Irina’s thoughts. Looking up, she saw a small male figure slipping through the doorway: heavy overcoat, woolen scarf, fedora, earmuffs, briefcase in right hand. There were a thousand more just like him on Tverskaya Street, walking mounds of wool and fur, each indistinguishable from the next. Stalin himself could stroll down the street bundled in his warms, and no one would give him a second look.

The man loosened his scarf and removed his hat, revealing a head of thinning, flyaway hair. Irina immediately recognized him. He was the better angel who had convinced her to talk about the worst night of her life. And he was now walking toward her desk, hat in one hand, briefcase in the other. And, somehow, Irina was now on her feet. Smiling. Shaking his cold, tiny hand. Inviting him to sit. Asking how she might be of assistance.

“I need some help planning a trip,” he said in Russian.

“Where are you going?”

“The West.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“How long will you be staying?”

“Indefinitely.”

“How many in your party?”

“That, too, is still to be determined. With luck, we’re going to be a large group.”

“When are you planning to leave?”

“Late this evening.”

“So what precisely can I do?”

“You can tell your supervisor you’re going out for coffee. Make sure you bring your valuables. Because you’re never coming back here again. Ever.”

64

VLADIMIRSKAYA OBLAST, RUSSIA

A RUSSIAN DACHA can be many things. A timbered palace. A toolshed surrounded by radishes and onions. The one at the end of the narrow track fell somewhere in between. It was low and stout, solid as a ship, and clearly built by Bolshevik muscle. There was no veranda or steps, just a small door in the center, reached by a well-worn groove in the snow. On either side of the door was a window of paned glass. Once upon a time, the frames had been forest green. Now they were something like gray. Thin curtains hung in both windows. The curtain on the right moved as Mikhail slid the Range Rover into PARK and killed the engine.

“Take the key.”

“You sure?”

“Take it.”

Mikhail removed the key and zipped it into a small pocket over his heart. Gabriel glanced at the two sentries. They were standing about ten feet from the dacha, guns cradled across their chests. Their positioning presented Gabriel with something of a challenge. He would have to fire at a slight upward trajectory so that the rounds didn’t shatter the windows upon exiting the Russians’ skulls. He made this calculation in the time it took Mikhail to pick up a cylindrical thermos flask. He had been making such calculations since he was a boy of twenty-two. Just one more decision to make. Which hand? Right or left? He had the ability to make the shot with either. Because he would be climbing out of the Rover on the passenger’s side, he decided to fire with the right. That way there would be no chance of banging the suppressor against the fender on the way up.

“Are you sure you want them both, Gabriel?”

“Both.”

“Because I can take the one on the left.”

“Just get out.”

Once again, Mikhail opened the door and climbed out. This time, Gabriel did the same thing, parka unzipped, Beretta at the seam of his trousers. Mikhail approached the sentries, thermos aloft, chattering in Russian. Something about hot coffee. Something about the Moscow traffic being shit. Something about Ivan being on the warpath. Gabriel couldn’t be certain. He didn’t much care. He was looking at the spot, just beyond the Rover’s right-front tire, where he was going to drop to one knee and end two more Russian lives.

The guards were no longer looking at Mikhail but at each other. Shoulders shrugged. Heads shook.

And Gabriel knelt on his spot.

Two more flashes. Two more Russians down.

No sound. No broken windows.

Mikhail leaned the thermos against the base of the door and quickly retreated several steps.

The birch forest trembled.

Silence no more.

ON THE back side of the dacha, three men rose in unison and advanced slowly through the trees. Navot reminded them to keep their heads down. There was about to be a lot of lead in the air.

CHIARA SAT up with a start, hands cuffed, feet shackled, dust and debris raining down on her in the pitch-darkness. From above, she could hear the hammer of footfalls against the floorboards. Then muffled gunshots. Then screams.

“Someone’s coming, Grigori!”

More gunshots. More screams.

“Get on your feet, Grigori! Can you get on your feet?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You have to try.”

Chiara heard a moan.

“Too many broken bones, Chiara. Too little strength.”

She reached her cuffed hands into the darkness.

“Take my hands, Grigori. We can do it.”

A few seconds elapsed while they found each other in the gloom.

“Pull, Grigori! Pull me up.”

He moaned again in agony as he pulled on Chiara’s hands. The instant her weight was centered over the balls of her feet, she straightened her legs and stood. Then, amid the gunshots, she heard another sound: the woman with milk-white skin and translucent eyes coming down the stairs in a hurry. Chiara inched closer to the door, careful not to trip over the shackles, and squeezed into the corner. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but she was certain of one thing. She wasn’t going to die. Not without a fight.

IT TURNED out none of the phones were working. Yekaterina’s didn’t work. The built-in on board the Bell didn’t work. And not one phone among the security detail worked. Not a single phone. Not until the children’s plane was airborne. Then the phones worked just fine. Ivan called the Kremlin and was soon talking to a close aide of the president’s. Oleg Rudenko placed several calls to his men at the dacha, none of which were answered. He glanced at his watch: 9:08. Another shift of guards was due any minute. Rudenko dialed the number for the senior man and lifted the phone to his ear.