Mitch Silver - The Bookworm

Lara tried to think. “I took a ten-minute walk around the Arkhiv, no more; came back to find this enormous guy in the Listening Room.”

Viktor beamed, inappropriately, in triumph. “Well, that’s when he dropped in the spyware. Probably used a flash drive. Thirty seconds and you’re done.”

“So everything Lara typed—” Gerasimov didn’t finish his thought.

Lara did. “The eBay search, the feedback, the vodcast, my notes in the Arkhiv…”

Viktor said, “It’s worse than that. Even though I think I disarmed all the spyware, whoever planted it knows what I just did, all the entries I just made looking for their ‘trojan horse’ before I destroyed it. If they’re any good—by that I mean, if they’re really bad and mean you harm—they’re on their way here right now.”

The sound of four people not breathing filled the room.

“Get just the stuff you absolutely have to take. Grigoriy Aleksandrovich, is there somewhere you can take Lara for the evening? Trina’s flat is awfully small.”

“My place in town. I’ll drive her in my car.”

“Then let’s get going.”

Two minutes later, the van and the Alfa Romeo had made it only a hundred meters up the road to a little park, where Lara was busy being sick in the bushes. The rain was coming down a little more and Gerasimov was with her. Katrina was in the van, sitting next to Viktor, inspecting her nails and thinking, if she made it out of this in one piece, how much she needed a manicure.

Lara was coming back, wiping the last of the regurgitated ponchiki from her mouth with Gerasimov’s handkerchief and feeling rotten. Rolling the van’s passenger window down, Viktor leaned past Katrina and said, “Hurry up, Lara, or you’ll run right into the bad guys.” Then he gunned his motor and pulled away from the curb, yelling, “ Udachi! ” out the window.

In the circumstances, they’d need all the “Good luck” they could get.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Sun Tzu would approve of the way Lara was jammed right next to Grigoriy Gerasimov in the little Italian sports car. Her hair was damp from the rain when she’d been ill, the moisture working its way down the back of her neck as he pulled away.

“I’ll make you some hot tea when we get to my flat.”

“This flat of yours, it’s in town?”

He grinned. “In the Arbat, where else?”

The new-money quarter of Moscow was all glitzy casinos and high-rises. “Okay, but just for tea.”

Craning around to get some tissues from her purse behind and under her seat so she could dry her wet neck, Lara glimpsed a red-and-silver motorcycle pulling into traffic behind them.

Her thoughts, though, were on the man sitting beside her. Once and for all… friend or foe? She’d share a piece of information and see how he reacted. So she told him of the death of Lev’s American friend, Craig.

All Gerasimov evinced was surprise. “My God! And your brother, he’s all right?”

“I wish I knew for sure.”

“You’ll feel better when you’ve had a little something to eat.”

“Eat? I don’t think so.”

Right then her phone rang in her handbag. She groped for it, but only succeeded in pushing her purse further under the seat mechanism. Then it stopped, and Lara realized it was the ringtone she’d given Pavel. She’d call him back, finally, once they got to Gerasimov’s place.

They were heading west, tooling along Novy Arbat, the huge five-lane boulevard, with the rain increasing. The wipers were laboring to keep the windshield clear, but the neon signs and the headlights of cars zooming in and out of the side streets produced a blinding white haze.

“This isn’t good,” he mumbled.

She looked over at the man peering through the occluded windscreen and tried to tune in on his thoughts. Was he Mr. Right or Dr. Evil? If he was involved, somehow, in any of this, there was no sign of it in his handsome face.

For no reason, Lara pressed the button on the little glove box in front of her.

“Don’t do that,” Gerasimov said, sharply.

Too late. Lara was staring at the gun nestled inside. “Is it loaded?”

“Naturally. That’s the only way it works.”

“Why… why a gun?”

He sighed a big sigh. “If you have to know, I took it away from Nikki. He said a friend gave it to him to hold. A ‘friend.’” Lara looked over at him and, briefly, he looked back.

“With friends like his, you don’t need enemies. Lara, please, close it up again.”

When she leaned forward to do as he asked, her eye caught a glimpse of red in her side mirror. A moment later, there it was again in the rain-slickened traffic behind them.

“I think we’re being followed.”

They were coming up to the Garden Ring road; beyond it was the flat. Gerasimov, instantly tense, peered at the driver’s side mirror. “The truck?”

Lara looked in her mirror again. “Behind it. A silver-and-red motorcycle.”

“I see him, with the black helmet on the Ural Volk. Well, there’s one way to find out.”

Instead of continuing ahead, Gerasimov made a last-second turn onto the ramp that led up to the Garden Ring. So did the cyclist.

Surprisingly, she felt Gerasimov relax. Speaking into his mirror, he said, “It’s not enough you tapped her computer. So now you’re stalking her? Us?”

He gunned the engine. In less than a minute on the elevated highway, they were approaching the exit for Barrikadnaya, named for bitter street-fighting in the 1905 revolt. Gerasimov took it without slowing down.

Lara peered into the mirror outside her window, looking to see whether they were still being followed. They were. “Now that I think of it, I saw him when Nikki was driving me in.”

They moved in and out of traffic, the motorcycle in their wake. Halfway to the Third Ring Road, Gerasimov eased off the gas pedal, closing the distance back to the motorcycle behind them. “Roll down your window.”

“But, it’s raining.”

“Just for a moment. My turn signals aren’t working. Point to that exit coming up. Let’s have it out right now. They wouldn’t dare try something out in the open.”

Against her better judgment, Lara rolled the window down just enough to be able to stick out her arm and point. The Alfa’s three-piece seatbelt was constricting, so it meant unbuckling it and raising herself as she leaned out. She was halfway through the maneuver when Gerasimov violently swerved left and yelled, “Duck! Get back in, he’s got a gun!”

Her body was thrown against the partly open window, bruising her under the arm. Craning her neck to her right with the rain coming in, she saw the guy on the motorcycle holding what looked like a big, black cannon.

Gerasimov floored the sports car, jamming Lara back against the seat. Over the suddenly deafening engine whine and the road noise from the wind and the wet tires, Gerasimov yelled, “Ha, feel it?! That’s the turbo!” He had a strange grin on his face. He was enjoying this.

She was being crunched by the g-forces kicking in as she struggled to get the seatbelt back on. The tach pushed past 7500 revs and the speedometer needle flirted with 150 kph. The motorcycle, now two lanes to the right, fell back.

With the window back up, all she could do was hang on to the door handle with her right hand and the edge of her seat with her left. She couldn’t tell which was worse, the gun or the fear of dying in a crash.

It was the gun. When a slight opening appeared in the traffic, the man on the motorbike raised his hand to fire. A lorry with a load of lumber was to their left, leaving them nowhere to go. As Lara watched, a hole the size of a beer can bloomed in the canvas that was covering the wooden boards. He’d shot just over the top of them.