The Kremlin Phoenix (26 page)

Tupitsyn watched the tediously
slow way Craig went through the file, often asking Valentina to repeat seemingly
irrelevant details. He’d paced for the first hour, then sullenly sank into one
of the deeply padded chairs against the wall. Deciding this time consuming
process had hours to run, he stood and nodded to Fenenko to follow him.

“I will be outside,” Tupitsyn
said. He glanced at the barred windows, certain there was only one way in or
out. “Do not attempt to leave.”

Craig looked up, as if he hardly
cared and return to the file.

“I need to use the men’s room,”
Fenenko said and followed Tupitsyn outside.

Tupitsyn ordered Fenenko not to let
Craig or Valentina leave, while he called Nogorev.

Inside the office, as soon as the
door closed, Craig straightened. “God, I thought they’d never leave! Give me
your phone, quickly.”

“My phone?” Valentina said,
handing it to him with a puzzled look. Translating every word for Craig had
been tiring, but she’d suspected he was buying time, although she didn’t know
why. “Who are you calling?”

Craig removed the air force pin
he’d recovered from the grave site and polished it on his jeans. “See the
inscription,
Libertas vel mors
. I don’t recognize it. My father’s unit
was the 49th Fighter Wing. It’s motto was
Tutor et ultor
: protector and
defender.”

Valentina looked stunned. “But
you found the tags with the body!”

“They had to be planted. It would
have worked too, if I hadn’t spotted this pin.”

He logged into his Twitter account
on her phone, then typed:
#90045884 What US air force unit had the motto,
Libertas vel mors?

“What’s the name of this town?”
he asked

“Lesosibirsk,” Valentina said,
spelling it for him.

Craig added the name of the town
and the hotel, and then ‘Manager’s Office’ so Mariena could fix his location.

“Is this really the time to be
tweeting?” Valentina asked.

“It’s the perfect time,” Craig
said, then hit enter.

A moment later Mariena appeared almost
facing the manager’s desk. Valentina looked up startled to see a woman appear
out of thin air.

“Hello Craig,” Mariena said. “The
motto
Libertas vel mors
means Freedom or Death. It was the motto of the
388
^th
Tactical Fighter Wing which fought in World War Two, Vietnam
and Iraq. Why is this important?”

“How did you get in here?”
Valentina demanded of Mariena’s apparition.

“She can’t hear you,” Craig said,
then tweeted,
Thanks. Just getting my facts straight.

Mariena continued, “Based on your
computer’s time stamp, you are now entering the Second Russian Revolution. You
must transfer the money to Valentina Petrovna immediately, while there is still
time.”

“How do you know my name?”
Valentina demanded. She glanced at Craig. “How does she know me?”

“I guess you’re . . . a historical
figure,” Craig said.

Mariena continued, “Once they
kill the Russian Prime Minister, it will be too late for you to break the
timeline.”

“Kill Gundarovsky?” Valentina
whispered, shocked. “How do you know this?”

“I told you, she can’t hear you,”
Craig repeated, then tweeted again,
Did Yarol Tupitsyn work in the KGB
archives?

Mariena listened as his message
was read out, then she vanished, only to reappear a few seconds later. She now wore
a freshly pressed uniform and her hair had changed slightly, signaling days had
passed for her. “There is no record of anyone with that name ever being associated
with the KGB archives.”

“I knew it! We’re being played!”
Craig said. He wanted to get away, but something Mariena had said stopped him.
What
did you mean, break the timeline?

“It’s the only way to trigger a
new reality.”

Why do you want to do that?

“Because anything would be better
than this reality,” Mariena said soberly. “Even if it means we are never born.”

You could die?
.

“No. Never having existed is not
the same as dying. But others will exist, and their reality will be better than
ours.”

“That’s nuts,” he said, then
decided to continue the conversation later.
I’ll be in touch
, Craig
tweeted. He held up Valentina’s phone. “Mind if I keep this for a while?”

Valentina pointed to Mariena, “If
you tell me who that woman is and how she knows so much?”

“I barely understand it myself,
but trust me, she’s on your side.” He scooped up the KGB file. “Let’s get out
of here.” He started for the door, partially passing through the holographic
image, surprising Valentina. A moment later, Mariena vanished as Craig opened
the door to find Fenenko hovering outside.

Tupitsyn stood down the hall,
talking on his cell phone. Hearing them emerge from the office, he ended the
call and hurried toward them. “Are you finished?”

“Definitely,” Craig said, holding
up the air force pin. “Wrong grave, asshole!”

Tupitsyn reached into his coat
pocket for his gun, but Craig lunged forward, hurling a wild punch into his
jaw, knocking him to the ground. Tupitsyn rolled, shrugging off the blow and
bringing his gun up. Years of Spetsnaz training took over. He aimed
instinctively for Craig’s torso, the highest probability shot. Before he could
fire, a single shot rang out, and Tupitsyn fell back dead.

Craig turned to Valentina,
thinking she had saved him, but her hands were empty. He then saw Fenenko, holding
his Makarov still aimed at Tupitsyn. “I couldn’t let him kill you,” Fenenko
said, thinking,
Or we’d never get the transfer code!
In a split second,
he’d guessed Nogorev would not want Craig dead, leaving him no choice but shoot
Tupitsyn to keep the mission alive.

“Thanks,” Craig said. Before he
could say more, they heard the distant squeal of tires.

Valentina rushed to the window. A
large white truck was racing down the street toward them. “It’s the
refrigeration truck!”

“And I bet it’s not full of
frozen food!” Craig said.

They retrieved the minivan keys from
Tupitsyn’s pocket, then raced through the hotel, out into the carpark. Valentina
took the minivan’s wheel, as Craig and Fenenko jumped in behind her. Before
they had the door closed, the van surged forward. A moment later, the
refrigeration truck lurched around the corner, trying to block the hotel drive.
Valentina swerved towards the refrigeration truck, turning aside at the last
moment and plowing through the hotel’s garden. The truck screeched to halt, its
wheels smoking as they locked up, then the back door opened and Nogorev
appeared. He fired at the minivan’s tires as it bounced onto the road and raced
away.

“Where are we going?” Craig asked,
seeing the truck starting to turn, too big and slow to catch them.

“Away from them!” Valentina declared.

Craig glanced through the rear
window apprehensively. “It’s been hours since we saw that truck, but they knew exactly
where we were. How do you figure that?”

“Right!” Valentina said. “We’ve
got to dump this van fast.”

They drove across town to the
freezing blue-brown waters of the Yenisei River. Valentina turned onto a road
that ran down to the water front, stopped and ordered them out.

Fenenko hesitated. “We can’t
escape on foot!”

“We can’t escape if they’re
tracking us. Now get out unless you want to swim.”

Craig and Fenenko climbed out
while Valentina put the minivan into first gear and let it motor toward the
water. She jumped out, then watched it roll down the dirt road and splash into
the water. The gentle current caught the van and carried it away from the shoreline
as water flooded in through the open doors. The van nosed forward and glided
beneath the surface twenty meters from shore. Before it hit bottom, they were
running north through quiet streets, intent on putting distance between
themselves and the minivan’s watery grave.

* * * *

The white refrigeration truck pulled up
at the minivan’s last recorded location. Inside the truck, the tracking
specialist pulled off his headphones. “We’ve lost the signal. They must have
found the transmitter.”

“Impossible!” Nogorev snapped. “They
would have had to tear the vehicle apart.” He pushed the rear door open, jumped
down onto the road and scanned the water front, wondering where the van had
gone, then his gaze settled on the river, guessing what had happened. “They’re
on foot! We’ll have to cover the roads out of the city.”

“Can we use the local police?” Corporal
Marat Chernykh asked as he jumped down beside him. He’d served under Nogorev in
Chechnya, and while he didn’t count him as a friend, he knew his temperament
well.

“No, we can’t trust the police. Get
on the radio. That FSB officer will contact us as soon he has an opportunity.”

“Yes sir,” Chernykh said before
climbing back inside the truck to listen for Fenenko’s signal.

Nogorev watched the river in
frustration. For once, Balard and his Sledkom accomplice had done something
smart.

* * * *

Valentina translated the words on the
poster beneath a stock photo of President Tokarev for Craig. It had obviously
been pasted to the wall by someone opposing the Emergency Committee.

Craig touched the paper, finding
it still wet. “It hasn’t been up long.”

“Whoever put that up can help us,”
Valentina said, looking for any sign of the bill poster.

“There’ll be informers
everywhere,” Fenenko said. “We’re safer on our own.”

Craig took a few paces to the
corner of the street. A block away, on the other side of the cross street, a
man was using a roller to spread glue on a wall, then he slapped a poster over
the glue.

“There!” Craig said, starting to
run toward the man. Valentina hurried after him, while Fenenko followed more
slowly, weighing up whether to risk radioing their position.

The man putting up the poster finished
and walked toward a nearby car. Another man waited in the car. It’s engine was idling,
ready to move off fast at the first sign of trouble. When the poster man saw
them, he reached for the car door, thinking they were security.

“Wait,” Valentina called in
Russian, “We’re pro-Tokarev!”

The man hesitated, speaking
inaudibly to the driver, who climbed out of the car and leveled a shot gun at
them. Both men had short military style haircuts, although they wore civilian clothes.
Craig raised his hands, showing he was unarmed while Valentina held up her identity
card.

“I’m an SK investigator, working
for Prime Minister Gundarovsky. We need your help!”

The poster man glanced suspiciously
at her identity card. “You’re a long way from home.”

“We need transport. Pro-coup
agents are after us.”

The poster man looked around the
streets carefully. “I don’t see anyone after you.”

“They’re Spetsnaz.”

“Why do you warrant such
attention?”

Valentina nodded to Craig, “This
man has important information the Coup leaders want.”

The poster man studied Craig uncertainly,
then returned his gaze to Valentina. “Are you armed?”

“Yes, both of us,” she said,
indicating herself and Fenenko.

“Hand over your guns.”

“I can’t surrender my weapon,” Fenenko
said. “It’s against regulations.”

“If you want our help, you will hand
over your weapons until I can verify your story.”

Valentina nodded, then handed her
gun to the poster man, while Fenenko defiantly refused to comply. Valentina
stepped over to him, lifted his sweater and pulled the gun out of his belt. “You’ll
get it back.”

Fenenko scowled, but said
nothing.

Valentina handed Fenenko’s weapon
over. “The guns are police standard issue.”

The man glanced at the weapons,
unconvinced. “Makarov’s are common weapons. Any street thug can get one.”

“You’re police?” Valentina asked.

“No, air force,” the poster man
said pocketing their guns. “Get in the car.”

* * * *

While the plain clothed air force men
drove, Craig handed the KGB document to Valentina. “Can you find out when my
father really died? I didn’t want to look while I was trying to get Tupitsyn to
leave.”

Valentina quickly found where they’d
been up to, then continued flicking through the document. “There’s a medical
report here. He had pneumonia in 2004, but he recovered.”

“When did he die?”

“He was moved in October 12, 2005,
when Camp 497 was closed. This is a transfer order to a different facility. I
guess by then, they couldn’t release him.”