Morgan Stone - The Russian Factor

Anna said nothing.

“What do you think? Should we go back?” I opened the door enough to see most of the courtyard.

“Back to where?”

“The subway, downtown, I don’t know.”

“The Grand Eastern?”

“Obviously not.” I gently closed the door, I wasn’t ready to enter the courtyard and hear it lock behind us. “But I wonder if we should go for the film or just forget it and get out.”

A woman with a small dog emerged from the elevator, stared at us standing there before flinging the door wide open. “Make sure you close it hard behind you or it doesn’t lock.” The dog and woman left. The door slammed and locked.

“She’s right about it not locking. Good thing for us.”

Anna smiled then got serious. “Okay, we need that film unless they are already at the apartment. Can you find out if they have been there?”

“How?” I shrugged.

“Phone someone. You are a spy. Do what you do.”

“I’m not a spy. I don’t do this . Besides, I’ve got no one to call. We’ll head for the apartment and if it looks like anyone’s been there, get out fast.”

With Sergei at the station, we’d either been followed or he’d been expecting us at that stop. Either way, our pursuers didn’t know about the film and must have assumed we wouldn’t be stupid enough to go for the apartment after being detected. At least, that’s what I was counting on.

Anna started out first, walking into the freezing night toward the apartment. On the lookout for trouble, I watched her go and then followed slowly, moving inconspicuously and keeping to the shadows.

The Prokuratura loomed over the street, bathed in sodium vapor light. “Okay, we’re home. What do you think, Jess?”

“I think we go in. Carefully.”

Anna entered the code and hiding behind the door, pulled it open. The old familiar stairwell, no sign of trouble. We crept up the stairs to the fourth floor. Peering around corners, we watched for any of the tufted upholstery-over-plate-steel apartment doors open a crack, ready for ambush. Muffled squawking from TV sets leaked into the stairwell along with the usual sounds of domestic life. Our door was locked and apparently untouched. Taking a deep breath I inserted the key and turned it.

Everything was just as we left it. The abandoned laundry had acquired a stronger stench, though. Rooms and closets checked, we changed into clean clothes. Anna, her hunger taking a backseat to danger, went for the fridge and began wolfing down whatever she found. I hauled out the cupboard and reached behind for the canisters of exposed film. I was sure they were gone, then what? No, there they were! I tore them loose and packed them in the lead lined Pelican case. “Film’s safe in the film-safe. Time to go.”

“Just a second.” Munch, munch, munch.

Hearing Anna toothing into whatever she’d found had me ravenously hungry. I tossed the Pelican case down the hall into the vestibule, veered right, and made a beeline for the open fridge. Sinking my teeth into a hunk of well aged asiago, Russian orders, course and distinct, erupted in the stairwell. It sounded like several men and they weren’t Ukrainian.

“Dinner’s over. We’ve got company!” I crammed the rest of the cheese into my mouth.

Swearing, banging and crashing from the floors below got louder. Doors were kicked and slammed. Tenants added to the cacophony with their own shouts, threats and expletives. The intruders, moving from door to door, were looking for a couple of women. I had a pretty good idea which ones. When they kicked at our door, Anna shrieked. I tried to muffle her, but too late. One of them heard and barked an order to, “Open up, or you’re dead!” followed by the promise that there would be no trouble.

We held our breath.

Then, gunfire.

“This is bloody serious!” I yelled at Anna. “Balcony! Drop ice on the cars. Make the alarms go off. Get attention!”

I lifted the receiver on the land-line phone: dead.

“Stay down. Go!” I added, careening around the corner toward the entrance hall and the film case I’d left there. Plaster and splintered wood blasted from the vestibule into my face. Whatever the caliber, the bullets were cutting through both the steel outer door and the solid hardwood inner door with enough force left over to crater the opposite wall, and they were coming from something seriously automatic.

“Shit!” I screamed, dropping and scrambling backwards on my butt. With my foot, I hooked the strap on the Pelican case and dragged it with me. The first crash made it sound like the thugs were using a telephone pole for a battering ram. Anna ran toward me and froze. I reached for her ankles and yanked her down. She fell hard. “Stay down! They have fucking artillery. Don’t think these walls will stop those bullets!”

There was another shuddering crash, machine gun fire, then something else, just at the edge of my hearing — sirens. Another crash… shouting… then sirens growing louder, what sounded like dozens of them. The gunfire stopped, replaced by the sounds of a chaotic retreat.

“Come on, we’re going!” I said, throwing on my coat. The wooden inner door came away in pieces. The outer steel door was bowed inward and riddled with holes. They cast weak beams of light through the swirling plaster dust. I shouldered into the outer steel door. Jagged bullet holes cut into my heavy suede coat. The door, however, didn’t budge. It was jammed solid in its frame.

Cops were just outside the building. Someone had a megaphone. They were either playing it safe or thought we were cornered. “The police could be working for the same bunch those thugs are.” I said. “At any rate, let’s not stick around to find out.”

The jammed outer door was a problem, but the two footed kick into a car door from flat on my back generated excellent results earlier. Why mess with success? Down I went, kicking hard with both feet. The lower corner gave and started to bend outward. “Unlock it!” I ordered, landing my next two footed kick a little higher, closer to the deadbolt. A surge of pain shot from my left ankle and figured I had only one good kick left.

Over the sirens, more megaphone calls cackled. Car alarms provided a weird counterpoint. Anna’s aerial ice bombardment had at least set off a few of them. Echoing up the stairwell were the excited cries of tenants. The police were evacuating the lower floors. They probably thought we were the shooters.

Anna pulled the bolt back and I wound up with every bit of kick I had left in me. One foot landed on the lock, the other, just below, near the frame. Over my own cry and the grinding of metal screeching out of the frame, I heard a distinctive crack. The pain was way more than I expected.

“Push it!” I got my right leg under me. “We’re going for the roof.”

The door ground open just enough to let us squeeze through. I hopped up on my right foot, tried my left, and was immensely relieved when it held me. The landing was littered with shell casings and shattered building debris. Crashing though it, I grabbed the rail and peered up the stairwell. Five stories straight up to a trapdoor onto the roof. One of the first things I had done before settling in was to explore the building — just in case — so I knew that trapdoor was unlocked.

“Move! Up! Fast!” We power climbed the stairs. Reaching the roof, I jammed a piece of rebar, I’d left there on my initial exploration, into the access door from the outside. No one was coming up through that trapdoor without a fight — or a cutting torch. The temperature had dropped a couple more degrees and howling wind tore at us. We pulled up our hoods and shoved our rapidly stiffening hands into mitts. Catching my breath, I gazed at Kiev spread out like an electric galaxy below us. The sky had cleared and ice-bright stars shone above.