The Kingmaker (42 page)

But there really wasn’t any other way this could work. It might not work anyway, but it was the only shot. We were pitting Alexi’s affection for Viktor against his affection for Katrina, and it was still a flip of the coin. However, there’s no disputing the influence of human plumbing in these situations.

Jackler put tiny microphones under Katrina’s and my shirt collars and then ran a few quick tests to be sure the electronics worked. They did. One of Jackler’s agents was driving. Another was riding shotgun in the passenger seat—literally riding shotgun, because he had a lethal-looking sawed-off model resting on his lap. I looked at my watch; 4:30
A.M.
local time, right on the dot.

The drive took thirty-five minutes. A radio operator in the back with the rest of us kept receiving reports from various teams that were already maneuvering into position. The
operation was still an hour off, but nobody was taking any chances of getting caught in traffic, or having an accident en route. Since it was my ass on the line, I highly approved of that. I’ve never been one who likes to hang out with type A anal-retentive assholes, but in situations like this you gain a whole new appreciation for them. Katrina sat calmly, while I drummed my fingers and peppered Jackler with incessant questions about precautions and failsafes in the event anything went wrong. He humored me. I was obviously keyed up and overanxious.

Katrina and I climbed out of the van a block down from the subway station. We looked around and there was hardly a soul there, unless you want to include a bunch of beggars and miserable-looking veterans, the normal shrubbery of Moscow streets. We rushed to the subway entrance and down the stairs till we found the sculpted she-bitch from hell, and we scraped our three stripes at the base of her foot.

Then we rushed back upstairs and to the ninth floor of the hotel that overlooked the kiosk. Neither of us said a word. We were both too immersed in our own thoughts to make small talk, which was the only kind of talk possible in moments like this.

At 5:45, he came out of the subway entrance and then walked nonchalantly toward the kiosk. He bought a magazine from the vendor, then stood for a moment, flipping through it and studying the pages. Katrina stopped breathing. If Alexi didn’t head for the bakery, this was the last time she’d ever see him alive. I put a hand over her shoulder and held her.

Finally, Alexi casually walked away from the kiosk and headed straight down the sidewalk and hooked a left into the coffee shop. Katrina and I left the window and raced down to the lobby.

Just as we were going through the entrance, a short, chubby woman dressed like a street person shoved her way past us to get to the warmth inside the lobby. At the instant we passed her, she swiftly whispered, “Abort.”

I was stunned. We were so close—there was no time to think about it, though. On the sidewalk I grabbed Katrina’s arm and whispered, “That lady just said to abort.”

Her brown eyes glanced at my face for a brief instant. Then she ripped her arm out of my grip and raced down the sidewalk to the bakery. I hadn’t expected it and was caught flat-footed for a critical moment. I finally came to my senses and ran after her, but she dove into the bakery before I could stop her. That was always the problem with Katrina: She was too stubborn and willful by half.

She was seated at the table, kissing Alexi, when I entered. This time Alexi had ordered three of everything, I guess in the event we both showed up.

Alexi broke away and gave me a delighted smile. “Ah, Sean, how very good to see you.”

Unfortunately, there wasn’t time for pleasantries. In a very quiet tone, I said, “Alexi, appear normal, but listen closely. You’ve been followed. Viktor knows about you. He’s known for years.”

I chuckled like I’d just told some big joke, then picked up my coffee cup to take a sip, and Alexi did the same thing, although in his case to disguise what had to be his shock.

Katrina was whispering, “It’s true, Alexi. We’re here to get you out.”

He put his coffee cup on the table, to his credit appearing perfectly unaffected. “You are making mistake, Katrina. Viktor cannot know about me. This is not possible.”

“There’s no mistake,” she assured him. Under the table I pressed a tiny earphone into his hand. The earphone was connected by a wire to the tape recorder I also slipped him under the table. There was a moment of confusion until he figured out what the earphone was. Then he carefully reached up and placed it in his left ear, where nobody in the bakery could see it.

While he listened to a carefully condensed version of
Martin’s confession, I gave Katrina a hard stare. I whispered, “Do you know what you’re doing?”

She smiled, like I was flirting with her. “Don’t be going soft on me now.”

“These people are pros. We’re in big trouble.”

She smiled harder. “We’re not leaving without him.”

I turned my head and did a few big phony sneezes, using the chance to spy around. Fifteen or so people were seated at tables and about twenty more were standing in line. It was impossible to tell who the followers were. There were probably fifteen young or middle-aged men—any of whom, or all of whom—could’ve been SVR agents. Or any of the women in the shop, for that matter.

Or maybe none of them were SVR people. Maybe Jackler just wanted to call it off. He hadn’t seemed the least bit enthusiastic anyway, and by calling it off he could say, “Hey, we did everything you demanded, only the operation was compromised, so tough shit.”

Katrina suddenly said, “My bladder’s killing me. I have to go to the bathroom.”

She reached under the table and gave my hand a hard squeeze, and then left me with Alexi. I didn’t say anything till he reached up and pulled the earphone out.

“This makes no sense,” he whispered.

“Tell me about it,” I complained.

“Where did Katrina go?” he asked.

“The bathroom. Wait ten more seconds, then go join her. She’s going to tell you about our escape plan.”

He looked indecisive, like he wasn’t sure what to do next. Finally, he got up and went to the bathroom, leaving me alone at the table. I sipped from my coffee and pondered this whole thing. I’d had some lousy cases before, but nothing comparable to this. I’d nearly been killed three times, found out my dream woman was a manipulative, coldhearted witch, and I was clearly facing an ugly confrontation when I got back and tried to
explain to my superiors how I killed six men, and tortured a suspect, and blackmailed the Central Intelligence Agency—and all for a client I could barely stand to look at.

Katrina was taking a long time. I was drumming my fingers on the table. I watched several men and several big, fat babushkas leave the bathroom area and waddle out. I let my eyes stray over to seven or eight younger men I figured were the best bets for SVR agents. I tried to detect if they were watching me. Two or three returned my stare, and I wrote them off. I mean, professional watchers never return your gaze, right? They act like they don’t even know you’re there. That narrowed my suspects down to about five guys, three of whom were seated at the same table, and I wondered if undercover agents traveled in packs.

I sipped my coffee and kept watching them. My staring made one of them nervous. He began playing with a napkin, and his eyes were darting around in distraction. I also noticed a bulge under his left arm. He either had a very ugly tumor or was packing heat, as they say.

Another minute passed before the door to the men’s room opened. Alexi’s head popped out and he looked around, then walked out. But before he could get to the table, I got up and walked toward him. I took his arm and tugged him toward the doorway. We almost made it, too. In fact, I’d just gotten the door opened when the three guys at the table leaped out of their seats and rushed toward us, yelling and hollering and reaching for their guns. I swung open the door and fled out onto the street, now only worried about saving my own ass. In situations like this, it really is every man for himself.

My best bet was the subway, and I sprinted as fast as my legs could carry me toward the entrance. I was less than twenty yards away when three guys carrying pistols came careening around a corner and cut me off. I spun to the right and lurched into the traffic, praying I could make it to the other side.

A black sedan came straight at me, and that option
evaporated. I fell back, and a couple of pairs of hands jerked me off my feet.

I yelled, “I’m unarmed, I’m unarmed.” I didn’t want anyone getting any funny ideas.

Two very big thugs moved alongside me and took hold of both my arms and nearly carried me back toward the bakery, where four more goons were holding their traitor. A black paddy wagon immediately pulled up and we were both shoved inside, roughly, so that we landed on our bellies. Five SVR goons crawled in behind us and began slapping cuffs on our hands and ankles and gags on our mouths.

Nobody said anything. We felt the van jerk forward and remained quiet while we went wherever the hell we were going. This wasn’t the way this thing was supposed to end. I was scheduled to be in a different van, headed toward the airport, where there was a big comfortable plane that would take me back to the good ol’ U.S.A.

I
t took twenty minutes before the van jolted to a stop. One of the guards swung open the door, and we were both shoved out. We were then pushed and dragged inside a big, multistoried building that didn’t seem to have many windows. I didn’t like that not-many-windows thing. Buildings that don’t have a lot of windows don’t have them for a reason.

We were led to some stairs in the back that went down to a basement. The inside of the building had an institutional look and air to it, like a hospital. Or, considering the circumstances, like a prison. We took a left at the bottom of the stairs and then walked down a hallway before we were shoved into a starkly empty room.

Our gags were removed, but neither of us said a word. We were both stunned. We just stood with our hands and ankles cuffed, staring at the white walls and contemplating our fates. We remained like this for nearly five minutes before a door opened behind us. I spun around and saw four really big goons enter, then the diminutive figure of Viktor Yurichenko.

Viktor immediately said, “Alexi, Alexi, it is so tragic that it has come to this. I am truly sorry it had to be this way.”

Alexi said nothing, so Viktor angrily shouted, “But you’ve been a damn fool! You never should have dealt with the Americans.”

When Alexi still didn’t answer, Viktor walked around me, until he faced him. His eyes narrowed into angry slits, then he barked something in Russian that I didn’t understand, but I didn’t need to. It was probably the Russki version of “shit” or “damn it,” and I started chuckling.

I tried to stop myself, but the chuckles kept bubbling out of my chest. Viktor walked in front of me and slapped me as hard as he could. The truth was that it wasn’t all that hard, and I chuckled even harder, partly because this whole thing was funny as hell, and partly because I was so damned nervous, it was either laugh or faint.

Viktor yelled something in Russian at his goons, and two of them rushed over and forced my partner to bend over. Then one pulled off the wig, and the other began yanking at the elastic, skinlike rubber of the mask. It came off in chunks and pieces, and after about thirty seconds of tugging they had most of it off. Those modern Hollywood disguise kits, you can’t believe how authentic-looking they can be.

I didn’t know the guy under the mask, except that he was a federal prisoner chosen for this job because he had identical physical measurements to Alexi’s. He’d been doing hard time for three counts of armed robbery and the CIA had cut him a deal. Since he was a three-time loser serving a life sentence, if he took this job and it worked, the President of the United States would get him a pardon.

At that moment he looked absolutely bewildered, since his role in this operation wasn’t supposed to end this way. The CIA had positioned him in that bathroom for an entirely different purpose. The real Alexi was supposed to join Katrina in a stall in the ladies’ room, they’d both don chubby babushka disguises,
and then saunter out together. That touch was mine, of course. I mean, it had worked for me in the mall, right? I was supposed to leave right behind them.

Only that plan hadn’t considered the fact that there’d be a bunch of SVR goons
inside
the bakery. The way that plan was supposed to end was that the convict disguised as Alexi would emerge from the men’s room a few minutes after Katrina, Alexi, and I made our escape. He’d then hurry to the subway, get off after a few stops, dodge into a restroom, get out of his Alexi costume, then go to a linkup point where the CIA would meet him and get him back to the States and freedom.

But we all know what they say about the best-laid plans, right? The minute I knew the SVR had agents in the bakery, I realized it was time for plan B. Which was a bit of a problem, because there wasn’t any plan B. With both Alexi and Katrina in the bathroom, I was the only one left that the SVR watchers could observe. When I saw Alexi and Katrina leave in their disguises, I had to buy them at least two or three minutes to make it to the CIA van idling three blocks away, so they could make their getaway. Had I gotten up and followed them out, the whole thing would’ve collapsed.

I felt pretty proud about the self-sacrifice I’d made to get them a chance at a new life. There’s a certain nobility in that, right? It’s like that classic Dickens line “ ’Tis a far better thing I do,” and all that crap. But as I stared at the enraged face of Viktor Yurichenko, I remembered how that same novel opened: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” “The worst of times” were on their way.

“Who are you?” Yurichenko growled at the prisoner.

I said, “Let him go. He’s nobody. He was a federal prisoner hired to do this job. He had no idea what the operation was about, or even why he’s here. He was promised freedom if he just hid in that bathroom and then walked out two minutes after he heard a knock on the door.”