The Lost Throne (28 page)

The fourth person to exit was a man in his late forties. He had a buzz cut, a gray suit, and a stiff posture that was common in the military. The instant he hit the sidewalk he stopped, casually scanning Nevsky Prospekt in both directions before he found his mark. Turning east, the man continued his pursuit of Jones, tracking him from a healthy distance.

Payne smiled at the scene. Now he could track his target as well.

K
ozlov had reached Byrd’s floor at the perfect moment, just in time to see the black man leaving the room. If Kozlov had arrived a minute sooner, he would have bumped into him inside Byrd’s suite, but what good would that have done? Kozlov would have been forced to kill the intruder on the spot, gather whatever was being taken from the suite, and then slip away before the police arrived.

On the other hand, if he had shown up a minute later, the black man would have been long gone, Kozlov would have found nothing inside, and his employer would have been pissed.

No, Kozlov was thrilled with the way things had worked out. He could shadow the intruder wherever he went, hoping to generate more leads to follow. With a little luck, Kozlov could recover Byrd’s things, figure out why Byrd had come to Saint Petersburg to begin with, and catch the morning train to Moscow so he could start working on his next contract.

Two days earlier, bumping into Byrd had been the result of horrible timing.

But this was just the opposite. This couldn’t have worked out better.

At least that’s what Kozlov believed.

P
ayne eyed the Russian the way a cheetah eyes a gazelle. He wasn’t ready to spring on him just yet. That would come later. For now Payne was more interested in studying his opponent, deciding if he was alone or part of a dangerous herd.

“What’s going on?” Allison demanded.

“D.J. is being followed.”

“How do you know?”

Payne didn’t have time to hold her hand or explain things. He could always fill her in later when they were safe. For now, he had to concentrate on his surroundings. He couldn’t miss anything or it could cost them their lives. “Just trust me, okay? I know what I’m doing.”

“I know you do, but—”

“Listen,” he ordered. “If I tell you to do something, you do it. No questions. No delay.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding her head.

Payne kept looking straight ahead. “If something happens to me or I tell you to run, go to the American consulate. Don’t go to the hotel. Go directly to the consulate. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“I doubt it will come to that, but I need to know you’ll be safe.”

“I promise. I’ll go to the consulate.”

Payne continued to watch Kozlov. He was a block behind Jones but was definitely following him. “The man I’m tailing is in a gray suit. I mention that for one reason. Not because I want you to stare at him, but because I want you to know he’s trouble.”

Allison spotted Kozlov a block ahead and nodded.

“Is that the man who killed Richard?” Payne asked.

“I can’t tell. I didn’t get a good look at him.”

“Come on,” he said as he grabbed her elbow. “We’re crossing the street.”

“Why?”

“What did I tell you about questions?”

Allison blushed but didn’t say a word. Filled with adrenaline, she had forgotten her agreement from a moment before. All this was so new to her. It was one of the reasons she had kept spouting random facts about the city: she didn’t know how to handle the excitement. So she burned her nervous energy by babbling.

At the intersection, several pedestrians waited for the light to change. Payne and Allison stood among them, hoping to blend in with the crowd. A few seconds passed before the entire group made their way across Nevsky Prospekt. Cars and buses filled every lane. It was mid-afternoon, but traffic was starting to build. Once they reached the far side, they turned right. They were now walking on the northern side of the street, the same side they had used on their journey from the Palace Hotel. The side they were most familiar with.

“Keep watching,” Payne said as they passed a small war monument that he had seen before. “D.J. will cross the street soon. It will help me spot other shadows.”

Sure enough, Jones did as Payne predicted. He walked across Nevsky Prospekt in the middle of a block, dodging cars as he did. This simple act, crossing the street with no one else around, forced Kozlov to react. He didn’t have time to wait or think. He had to cross immediately or risk losing Jones in an alley, a building, or a taxi heading in the opposite direction.

Payne studied the avenue, checking to see if Kozlov was the only one who followed.

And as far as Payne could tell, Kozlov was acting alone.

W
hile crossing the busy avenue, Jones spotted the man in the gray suit. He didn’t have a chance to look for Payne and Allison, but he knew they were back there, too.

Probably a block behind.

In situations like this, that was a safe distance. Close enough to keep an eye on his shadow but far enough to be inconspicuous. Normally, a man of Payne’s size would have a tough time blending in. Yet that wasn’t the case with Allison on his arm. She was the perfect cover. The two of them would look like a happy couple, strolling through the high-rent district.

And that gave Jones an edge that he planned on using.

Knowing virtually nothing about his opponent—who he was, who he worked for, what he wanted—left Jones with few options. Especially if this was the same man who had killed Byrd. Jones had seen video of him in action and realized he was highly trained. That meant there was little chance Jones was going to lose him, not while carrying three bags he couldn’t afford to drop. Not in a city he wasn’t familiar with. Not without the help of a friend.

A friend with the skills of Jonathon Payne.

T
he Church on Spilled Blood, a breathtaking Russian cathedral built on the spot where Tsar Alexander II was mortally wounded by revolutionaries in 1881, sits off of Nevsky Prospekt beside the Griboyedov Canal. The church’s onion domes and ornate façade look beautifully out of place in Saint Petersburg. Contrary to the European look of the city’s architecture, it resembles St. Basil’s Cathedral, the famous church that overlooks Red Square in Moscow.

As a tourist boat chugged up the waterway toward the colorful landmark, Jones crossed the canal on foot, hoping his blood wouldn’t be spilled next to the tsar’s.

For the time being, he felt optimistic that his shadow was working alone. Back at the Astoria Hotel, Jones had heard a single set of footsteps in the stairwell, and only one man had followed him across Nevsky Prospekt. Still, in this age of technology, Jones knew reinforcements were just a phone call away.

And phone calls were something Jones wanted to prevent.

While prepping for this mission, he had studied a map of the local terrain. He had memorized street names, bridges, and multiple escape routes. He had learned as much as he could as fast as he could, just in case something bad happened along the way. Something like this. Thankfully, his knowledge of the city gave him several choices. Instead of being trapped like a rat in a maze, he knew exactly where he wanted to go and what he hoped to accomplish when he got there.

In this situation, there was one obvious solution: the Saint Petersburg Metro.

A white sign with a blue letter “M” marked the entrance to the Nevsky Prospekt/Gostiny Dvor stations. Jones had never been inside, but he understood the basic layout of the system. Four lines, all assigned different colors, extended throughout the sprawling city and its suburbs. The blue Moskovsko-Petrogradskaya Line ran north and south. The green Nevsko-Vasileostrovskaya Line ran east and west. Both lines could be accessed from this central location, which happened to be the busiest terminal in the city.

To Jones, the large crowds were a bonus. If he timed things right, he might be able to slip away in the chaos underground. He was also thrilled that he could leave the city in any direction. That made it tougher for his opponent to anticipate where he was headed next.

In his mind, however, the best asset of the Metro system was the natural geology of the city. Because of potential flooding from all the rivers and canals in Saint Petersburg, the Metro is the deepest subway system in the world, buried under a thick layer of bedrock that prevents cell phone reception of any kind.

And no phone calls meant no reinforcements.

K
ozlov smiled at the development. He had used the Metro several times in the past week, so he was familiar with all four lines, where they went, and which stations would be crowded.

His immediate goal was to follow the black man wherever he went, hoping to generate as many leads as possible. But at some point, Kozlov knew, he would be forced to grab the bags that the black man carried—just in case they were filled with information about Byrd.

And when Kozlov made his move, the black man would have to die.

J
ones slipped inside the station and studied the flow of people in front of him. A row of turnstiles prevented passengers from entering the subway without a card or token. In the corner of the lobby, he saw three small booths manned by women cashiers. Jones hopped into the shortest line while digging through his pockets for local currency. A moment later, he placed a fifty-ruble note on the counter and signaled for one subway token.

She mumbled something in Russian, then gave him a bronze coin and a handful of change.

His ticket to freedom cost him less than an American quarter.

Jones hustled toward the turnstile, put the token in the slot, and pushed through the revolving bar. An arched hallway funneled all the passengers toward a long bank of escalators. Jones thought nothing of it until he reached the top step and had a chance to look down. The escalator was so long he couldn’t see the bottom, as though it were going all the way to Hell.

The person behind him pushed him gently, urging him in Russian to keep moving.

Jones nodded, stepped forward, and started his descent to the tunnels below.

Suddenly, he found himself trapped for the next several hundred feet. He couldn’t run or hide or change directions. His options were blocked by a waterfall of people, all of them inching forward at the same pace. Frustrated, Jones looked at his watch, wondering how long this journey was going to take. When the woman in front of him pulled out a novel, he groaned.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” he said to himself.

But there was nothing he could do about it.

He was stuck until he reached the bottom.

E
arlier in the week, Kozlov had purchased a Metro card worth several subway trips. So there were no lines or delays for him. He walked through the turnstiles, barely breaking his stride.

This helped him close the gap.

Up ahead, he spotted the black man carrying the three bags. At no point did his target turn around and look for someone behind him.

The guy was either crafty or clueless, Kozlov didn’t know which.

But he would find out when they reached the labyrinth below.

T
he trip took forever. At least it seemed that way to Jones.

Finally, the people in front of him gathered their things and stepped off the escalator. One by one, they scattered in both directions toward the different tracks.

The vaulted ceiling arched above him, lit by recessed lighting. The floor was made of polished stone. No trash or graffiti stained the terminal. The place was spotless. Jones stared at the sign on the wall in front of him. It was written in Russian. No translations of any kind.

“Damn,” he muttered.

This was going to be tougher than he thought.

Glancing to his left, he saw a neon sign with green Cyrillic text. To his right, one was written in blue. He couldn’t read any of the words, but he knew the blue trains went north and south. He remembered that fact by thinking of the map he had studied earlier in the day. In his mind, the north arrow pointed up toward the blue sky above.

And north was the direction that he was supposed to go.

Wasting no time, he hustled to his right and looked for another sign. The vaulted corridor stretched for a hundred feet before it branched again. This time both of his choices were written in blue. One was going north; the other was going south. He stood there in the intersection, calculating his options, as people streamed past him in both directions. The sound of screeching brakes echoed in his ears, followed by a whoosh of air and the heat of a surging train.

Or maybe that was Kozlov breathing down his neck.

T
he leader of the Spartans was named Apollo. His name was derived from the ancient Laconian word
apollymi,
which meant “to destroy.” And that was how he viewed himself, as a destroyer. His entire life had been dedicated to the art of war. How to attack. How to defend. How to conquer. The lifestyle had been beaten into him when he was a boy, and now that he was in charge, he returned the favor to the next generation—just as his mentor had done for him.

That was how his village had survived. They followed the code of their ancestors.

When the police officers arrived, Apollo was waiting for them. He had watched their slow approach up the treacherous mountain road. It gave him more than enough time to tell the village to be on full alert. In this part of Greece, the local authorities rarely stopped by, and when they did, it was usually for a very specific reason. The last time was a month ago. The cops had been looking for two missing tourists who had gone camping in the Taygetos Mountains and hadn’t returned when they were supposed to. A couple of questions were asked, a flyer with their pictures was shown around, and the police departed soon after.

The whole process had taken less than fifteen minutes.

Apollo hoped for the same efficiency on their current visit.

“Hello,” George Pappas said in Greek. He knew the villagers preferred Laconian, their native tongue, but he wasn’t able to speak it. Neither could Manos or Constantinou.