Cliff Ryder - Black Widow

Sergei reached through the open window and shoved the automatic transmission into park. The car shuddered to a stop.

In the parking lot, a handful of new arrivals screamed and shouted in alarm. Sergei ignored them and caught the dead man's wrist, exposing a thumb microphone.

"This is Sergei Prokhorov," he said with as much control as he could muster. "I have killed your driver and am escaping."

Opening the car door while keeping his gun in hand was awkward, but Sergei managed it. He grabbed the dead man by the collar and shoved him over, then slid into the bloody driver's seat, put the transmission into drive and floored the accelerator. He narrowly missed an arriving ambulance as he shot out into the street.

* * *

New York

"Well," Jake said laconically, "I didn't see that coming. I liked it. I thought you said this guy was a plodder, not a take-charge kind of guy."

"Usually he is." Kate stared at the multiscreen view of the Russian hospital.

On one screen Sergei nearly sideswiped an ambulance but then vanished quickly into the heavy traffic.

"Gotta say," Jake told her, "I like the change. Probably saved his life. Maybe his partner's, too."

Inside the hospital the three gunmen turned away from the emergency room and headed outside.

"Don't know what Prokhorov said to them," Jake commented, "but he got their attention."

Kate surveyed the security-camera view that showed the entrance to the OR where Sergei ProkhoroVs partner fought for his life. None of the gunmen had reached that part of the hospital.

"Do you think Sergei's ready to listen now?" Jake asked.

"Would you be?"

"I wouldn't be happy right now, but without us, he's got nowhere to go. He's exposed and cut off from everything he knows."

"Think he's calm enough to figure that out?" Kate asked.

"Only one way to find out."

* * *

Moscow

Mired in traffic, Sergei felt foolish and afraid. Blood from the dead man had sprayed the windshield with a crimson fog. He used the cuff of his jacket sleeve to try to wipe the mess away but only made it worse.

Someone behind him honked and he realized space had opened up ahead. Before he could accelerate into it, a cab swooped in front of him and blocked him. Sergei cursed the man and resisted the impulse to bump the taxi out of frustration.

Movement in the rearview mirror, also muddied by the blood, caught his attention. Three men threaded through the stalled traffic. In disbelief, he turned and looked over his shoulder in time to see the three gunmen aim their weapons. They fired in concert, hammering the back of Sergei's stolen vehicle with bullets. The back windshield exploded in a torrent of broken glass.

Frantic, knowing he was exposed and was a threat to everyone around him, Sergei pulled the steering wheel hard to the right and hit the accelerator. He kept his left hand on the horn as he sped forward through the tables and chairs of a sidewalk cafe. Patrons jumped away for their lives.

Even then, he was afraid to go too fast. Still, the maneuver allowed him to pull away from the men following him on foot.

His phone vibrated in his pocket.

When he spotted a side street, Sergei powered into it. His bumper briefly nudged that of a cargo van. The resulting shudder ran the length of the sedan and made the dead man slump lower in the seat.

The phone continued to vibrate.

Sergei checked the rearview mirror, peered through the shattered windshield and found he'd left the gunmen behind. He kept an eye on the streets around him and in the sky in case helicopters got involved.

You have been watching far too many American movies, he told himself.

The vibration continued.

Angrily Sergei pulled the phone out and shouted, "What?"

"That was good," the woman said. "You pulled them away from your partner."

"Mikhalkov is still alive?" Sergei almost whooped with joy.

"Yes. You ran and the men followed you. Predator's instinct."

The dead man's arm flopped across Sergei's knees, and the bitter guilt he'd been dreading hit him, in spite of the adrenaline flowing through his system. He'd shot a man in cold blood.

"Sergei," the woman said.

"What?"

"Are you still with me?"

"Where else would I be?" Sergei moved the dead man's arm and made another turn.

"I need to know what you learned from Pasternak."

Sergei concentrated on his driving and didn't say anything. Some of the glass from the shattered rear window lay scattered across the seat. Two bullets had ripped through the front windshield, as well.

"You learned something," the woman continued. "Otherwise those men wouldn't have killed Pasternak, and they wouldn't have come after you and your partner."

"This is police business."

"Is that where you're headed? To the police?"

"Yes."

"You'll be dead before night falls."

Sergei swerved to miss a car making a left turn. Horns blared behind him. Hang up the phone, he told himself. But he didn't. He gripped it more tightly than ever.

"You don't want to die, Sergei."

He didn't.

"And once they're through with you, they'll kill Mikhalkov."

Moscow

Sergei slapped the steering wheel in frustration. He was glancing into the rearview mirror so much that he almost collided with a truck in front of him. He slammed on the brakes and drew attention from the passersby on the sidewalk. Several of them pointed at the car — at the bloodstained windshield, bullet holes and the dead man — then quickly backed away.

"Whatever Pasternak told you," the woman went on, "it's worth your life. You see that, don't you?"

"Yes."

"You could have told your superiors before now. You talked to someone at FSB when Mikhalkov was admitted to the hospital."

Sergei had, and he'd claimed that he hadn't known what had happened that morning because he'd expected Mikhalkov to wake up and tell him what to do. The old man wasn't supposed to be on an operating table. For the time being, Sergei had claimed that Pasternak must have been taken out by a rival. He'd mentioned nothing about the frail of weapons that had led them there.

"Think about it," the woman said. "You didn't tell your supervisor what you knew this morning. Now you're going to run to him and tell him everything? Won't he be suspicious? Won't he be irritated that you and Mikhalkov took it upon yourselves to pursue a cache of weapons that's somewhere in Moscow?"

It was true. It was all true and Sergei knew it. The FSB hated secrets, and the agency hated agents that withheld information. At the very least, he was going to lose his job. But they could lock him up, too.

"Not only that, but if you're taken into custody, how long do you think you'll live? These people chasing you seem very determined."

The wind whistled through the holes in the car's windshield and reminded Sergei just how determined those men were.

"I cannot go there," he said, and he didn't know if he said that more for himself or the woman.

"I know," she said calmly. "Let me help you."

"I do not even know who you are."

"Then think about that. I could just walk away from this. There's nothing to tie you to me. If I wanted you dead, I wouldn't have warned you about the men entering the hospital. I want you alive. I want to know what you learned from Pasternak and I need you to help me find those weapons."

Sergei had enjoyed the idea that he worked for some super-secret spy organization within the Kremlin. He had enjoyed spy novels as a boy, and the idea of working in clandestine affairs had excited him. He had only been called on a few other occasions, and he'd made his peace with being a small, anonymous cog in a big operation.