The Skorpion Directive (31 page)

“No,” said Davit. “She is safe. After we found out about Pavel, we put her in a safe place so nothing could come to her. Do you wish to see her? She is only a few hours away.”

“No,” said Dalton. “Tell us about this spy.”

“Yes. Pavel,” he said, his mood darkening. “As I say, I am afraid that he is the cause of Mr. Galan’s death. After I heard about what had happened to Galan—in Vienna?—I required an . . .
audit
? A security audit. A process of elimination, of checking personnel logs, e-mail lists, the timing of events . . . We arrested Pavel Zelov a few days later. After some . . . difficulties . . . he admitted he was hired by some Serbian person, he did not know who. But the nature of the contacts are consistent with the way Mr. Kirikoff works . . .” His voice trailed away, and his face lost some light as he went inward. “But there it lies. Zelov is in Kiev, Irina Kuldic is safe, but Mr. Galan is brutally dead, and you are here to avenge. As for me, I am angry. I too am ready to do something about all this whether or not Kiev says okay. So, you—how do you say it—you show me mine and I’ll show you yours?”

“Something like that,” said Mandy, smiling at Dalton.

Dalton, still leaning on his forearms, looking into Davit’s eyes. Holding his attention now, he told him about the death of Issadore Galan, the manner of it, the attack on the highway from Sevastopol. Davit began to write rapidly on a notepad as Dalton described the Kamov and the men he had fought, what they found at the compound in Staryi Krim.

“You will excuse a call,” he said, picking up the phone, waiting a moment, his long fingers drumming on the card-table top. Then there was a rush of Ukrainian, delivered with quiet force. He set the phone down, lifted his hands in an apologetic gesture.

“Forgive me. You have been badly treated in the Ukraine. I have sent men to . . .
mop up
? To Staryi Krim, and to the road beyond it. This Kamov you mention. I have seen it go over—”

“When?” asked Dalton sharply.

“Two hours ago. A little less. No markings, brown. It flew slowly over the city and the harbor. I thought it was looking for something. For your car, I now think. It flew over the harbor and hovered low. I was having my lunchtime tea on the roof deck. Then it rose up and went east into Russia, the impudent fellow. There was no way to stop it. We do not have helicopters in Kerch.”

“Is there any way to find out where it went?”

Davit smiled broadly, a sharklike grin, drumming his fingertips, a happy little rattle on the tabletop. “But we
know
where it went. This is a shipping port. Kerch, The City of Industry. We have excellent radar equipment, even a big dish up on the mountain behind us. The coastal hills here are low, the sea flat and wide. When it appeared, without markings, I called over to the harbormaster and asked her to track the flight. I have her chart right here,” he said, holding up a sheet of plotting paper. “It went east southeast for about eighty kilometers and then dropped below our radar screens. We believe it landed here.”

He laid the paper out in front of Mandy and Dalton, held it flat with his left hand, set his teacup on a corner, and touched a point on the southern coastline of the Russian mainland.

“This is Anapa. It is a little seaside town, a resort. Many Russians go there for the beaches, the clinics, the mud baths—”

“Clinics?” asked Mandy, “Like the one Kirikoff was running here in Kerch?”

“Yes,” said Davit, losing some of his lightness. “Just like. In Anapa, there are many of these sanatoriums, on the beaches and in the town. Many for drunks—Russians drink almost as much as we do—for people recovering from cancer, even for plastic surgery.”

“Can you . . . Do you have any access to the business records of those clinics? Any kind of description.”

Davit was looking at Mandy, but his mind was clearly deep in the question. “There are so many. But, yes, there would be—what you call
samizdat
?”

“Pamphlets?” asked Mandy. “Brochures?”

“Yes, we would have those.” He tapped a button on the wall. A heartbeat later, Marika appeared at the door, her cheeks a little red. Dalton realized that she had probably been listening and hoped that Davit noticed it too. “Marika, those clinics in Anapa . . . Can you find some material on all of them? Brochures?”

She bobbed, turned away, and then reappeared in the doorway, looking uncertain, as if afraid to raise a delicate topic. Davit apparently recognized the look.

“Yes, Marika, what is it?”

“Corporal Zelov, sir—”

“Yes?”

“He was drinker, remember?”

“God yes,” said Davit, not in any way delighted to have the matter aired in front of Dalton and Miss Pownall. “And . . . ?”

She plucked at her hair and then at her uniform blouse. Dalton wondered how close she had been to Corporal Zelov.

“I . . . I was
listening
, sir,” she said, her face flaring into scarlet, setting her eyes alight by contrast. “You did not close the door—”

“We
burned
it. Last February, Marika. Remember?”

“Oh yes. So we did. I am sorry. But Pavel—Corporal Zelov—went to a clinic in Anapa. For drunkards. He was there six weeks.”

“I thought he was seeing his sick mother in Kiev.”

Marika went from red to snow white, her lower lip trembling, her cornflower blue eyes welling up.

“Yes. Well, sir, he was afraid you would—”

Davit, now as pale as Marika, began to erupt in Ukrainian, and Dalton, if only to get the kid out from under Davit’s acid rebuke, cut in, asking her if she knew the name of the clinic. She turned to him with obvious relief, her voice rising into a squeak.

“No, sir. But Corporal Zelov said it was very big and had a bright red roof. His room even had a view of the water. It was all by itself, far out on the sand. Nothing else for many, many meters.”

Dalton stood up, glanced out at the harbor, turned back to the girl: “Thank you, Marika. Bogdan, you have patrol craft? Fast cruisers? I recall one that met us after the fishing boat we were chasing last year blew up. Long, steel gray, a big fifty on the bow?”

“Yes. The
Velosia
. She is there,” he said, pointing to a ninety-foot-long slate-gray cruiser moored at the quayside studded with swivel guns, a huge radar array, and flying the Ukrainian flag.

“How fast is she?”

Davit looked reflexively out at the water—flat and steel gray, under a lowering charcoal sky, rain drifting downward in curtains.

“She will do forty knots,” he said, realization opening in his face, his eyes widening. “You think Dobri Levka is in Anapa?”

“Yes,” said Dalton. “But not for long.”

 

 

 

BY
twilight, they were lying a half klick off the Russian coast, well within her territorial waters and therefore illegal as hell. All her running lights out, the
Velosia
was dark, her sharp destroyer bow slicing with a sibilant hiss through the surface chop hidden inside a bank of fog that had spread itself out across the Russian coastline. To the north, off their starboard bow, the yellow lights of Anapa glimmering faintly through the mist.

Directly abeam, set out on an isolated sandspit, there was a low, rambling structure, the Bospor Clinik Spa. It was world famous, according to the clumsy translation of the online brochure that Dalton had found on the Internet, “for the certain resurrection of big drunkards and the putting of their feet to the solid ground.” Its sloping red roof was just discernible in the fading light. A few yard lights twinkled in the haze, and a light glowed on the front deck. Other than that, the place looked shuttered and deserted.

He and Mandy and Davit had studied the floor plan of the place, laid out for their convenience on the website. There was a large parlor, spreading across the entire front of the house, full of comfortable chairs, and a large dining hall on the north side next to a communal kitchen with showers and a bathroom next to it.

On the second floor, running along the beach side of the spa, were the guest rooms, fifteen of them in a row, each with a little fenced-in balcony overlooking the ocean. Behind the guest rooms, accessed by an internal hallway, was a clinic and some private rooms where patients could consult with their therapists.

A phone call to the spa, placed by Marika using Mandy’s BlackBerry to disguise the local number, found that the spa was “closed for renovations” and had been for two weeks. The speaker, she reported, was a male, who spoke fluent Russian “but with a strange accent and a lisp. And his voice sounded funny, like he was whispering.”

“Vukov,” said Dalton.

 

 

 

DAVIT
was standing beside Dalton, both men in jeans and black sweaters, booted and gloved. Both men were staring out at the coastline, Dalton quiet and withdrawn, thinking about what might be happening to Dobri Levka right now or what might already have happened, Davit, vividly alert, humming with energy and a kind of gleeful anticipation like a gundog on a chase.

“I have three of our patrol boats out there,” he said, indicating the darkening seas. “They have radar. They will stop and search any boat coming out of Anapa. Our own radar tells us that no helicopter or other aircraft has left Anapa since we steamed out of Kerch. We are
blockading
Holy Mother Russia,” he finished with a flourish, spreading his arms out wide. “Isn’t it
wonderful
?”

“They’ll have radar too. In Anapa.”

Davit made a dismissive gesture, grinning at Dalton.

“But
they
are not military. They are a tourist town. Even if they see us, they will think we are trawlers, poaching their fish in the Kumani Canyon. It is right underneath us. They would never think we Ukrainians would be so crazy as to sail a fleet into their waters.”

Dalton nodded, distracted, troubled.

Worried sick, images of Issadore Galan’s body flickering on the screen at the back of his skull.

“They may have taken him inland,” he said.

Davit nodded, put a comforting hand on Dalton’s shoulder.

“This is true,” he admitted. “But we can do nothing about that. Come. Be cheerful. We are doing what there is for us to do. I have six men ready. Or do you still insist to go ashore alone?”

“Is it a big town?”

“No. A few thousand people, spread out along the coast. It is early for the tourists, so most of the beach places will be boarded up. This business here, the Bospor Clinik Spa, it is set apart from the main town. I think you will be okay to approach it. Please. You will take my men?”

Here he gave Dalton a sidelong look, smiling carefully.

“Or maybe . . . just me?”

Dalton turned to look at the young man.

“If you got caught on shore, what would happen to you?”

Davit’s face hardened.

“Maybe better ask what would happen to men who try to catch me. I am sick at heart to rest on my ass and let Russians push us around. Anyway, you know what, my friend? I
decide
, I am captain of this boat.
You
are not going at all if you are going in alone. No offense to America and the CIA.”

“None taken,” said Dalton, smiling into the gathering darkness, his heart lifting at the idea of doing something—anything—to strike back at these people. “Okay. Just us two, then.”

“Good,” said Davit, whistling to one of his sailors, giving him a quick instruction in Ukrainian. The man lumbered into the darkness, and Dalton could hear an electric pulley begin to whine, a boat being lowered into the water. Davit came back to stand beside him, but this time he was holding a large pistol. He press-checked it and stuffed it into a holster on his belt. He straightened his shoulders, chuffed out a breath, stopped for a moment.

“Miss Pownall . . . If we do not come back, what would you wish to be done for her?”

“Mandy knows what to do. She has a video proving that I did not kill Issadore Galan. And another video of the parking lot at Leopoldsberg showing Vukov dropping off Galan’s Saab in the early morning. When they see those, the Mossad will be very happy to come after Kirikoff and Vukov themselves. Mandy knows enough to help the Mossad deal with them. Where is she?”

“In the officers’ wardroom, drinking vodka, charming all my boys. Do you wish to say go inside and say good-bye to her?”

“No,” said Dalton in a soft voice. “We don’t do farewells.”

 

 

 

THE
boat, a gray lap-strake cutter with a powerful and virtually silent electric motor, slipped away from the
Velosia
, the towering bulk of the cruiser fading quickly into the fog. Davit twisted the throttle, and the cutter shot forward, the sharp bow rising, seawater hissing and curling along her wooden sides, a gurgling sound coming up through the slanting floorboards.

Davit sat on a bench at the rear, the control stick in one hand, his pistol, a Polish P-64 he had probably retained from the Russian occupation, in the other. Dalton, in the bow, watching the shadow of the beach come slowly closer, had his Anaconda, three autoloaders and a slender, double-edged fighting knife he had taken from the BDS agent back in Venice.

The air closer to the mainland smelled of seaweed, mud, and salt. The twilight had passed into night, the amber lights of Anapa shimmering in the north, ahead of them only the glow from the Bospor Clinik Spa, and a few faint halos from the yard lights.

In a few minutes, the cutter—long and narrow, high-peaked bow—hissed lightly over a sandbar, grating along the keel, broke free into a tidal lagoon close to shore, skimmed across it, and ran up onto the beach, crunching gently into the gravel. Dalton was out over the bow before it settled, jumping onto the coarse sand and tugging the boat ashore. Davit clambered up the centerboard and stepped off the peak, carrying a thin rope with a mushroom anchor on the end of it.