Brad Thor - State Of The Union

Popov removed a stiletto knife from his pocket and cut the crime scene tape sealing the front door. After a few moments of working on the antiquated lock with his picks, he was inside. The great hall, with its enormous fireplace, was where the police believed the murders had taken place. As he walked around, Popov could see where blood had stained the floor and walls. He wondered what Stavropol’s beef had been with the three men. They had been respected military leaders, just like him-great warriors. He was about to ask himself how Stavropol could kill his comrades and then realized how stupid he was being. He saw it on the streets of Moscow every day. That was simply how the world worked. Anyway, it had nothing to do with him and what he was being paid so handsomely to figure out.

Out of the three missing generals, the police had retrieved only two bodies. One had been bludgeoned to death and the other shot. The third was anyone’s guess, though they did find traces of blood in the empty grave that matched Karganov’s blood type.

If the two men had been murdered in the great hall, the quickest way to dispose of the bodies would have been to drag them through the kitchen and out back. He followed the trail of blood through the kitchen and briefly referred to the file, which positively identified the blood trails as belonging to both Varensky and Primovich, but noted that there was no trace of blood there that could be attributed to Karganov.

Outside he found the three graves were still cordoned off, but had been steadily filling with snow. As he examined the crime scene photographs in his file, he positioned himself in the different places that the cameraperson must have stood to take the shots. He focused his attention on the pictures of the empty grave, which was believed to have held Karganov’s body and read the report again. When police found it, it appeared to have been disturbed, though by what, they couldn’t say. Besides the traces of blood in the grave, there was nothing specific to indicate that a body had been there.

Popov had done his homework. He knew that Zvenigorod was not known for its wolves and that if any animal had actually gotten to the body, it would most likely have been a wild boar. But boars and wolves would eat their catch on the spot; they wouldn’t have dragged it away. And when wolves and boars feed, they leave evidence behind, yet there was none. Finally, it seemed that Primovich and Varensky had bled more heavily than Karganov-a sure attractor for a carnivorous animal. All that blood, and yet their graves were untouched.

No, it wasn’t a wild animal at work here. Popov was sure of it. Karganov had somehow gotten out of that grave and had left under his own power, or someone had helped him.

Though he had ruled out one possibility, Popov appeared no closer to answering the big question-where the hell was General Anatoly Karganov? A chill wind and a blast of icy snow froze the back of his neck and the sharp jolt caused him to ponder for the first time what might be at stake if he didn’t succeed. Men like Sergei Stavropol might respect those who set limits and drove hard bargains, but there was one thing that they certainly didn’t respect and that was failure. He had heard about Stavropol and what had happened to men who had disappointed him-even his own soldiers.

Popov tucked the file under his arm and hurried back to the Cherokee, possessed suddenly by a motivation even greater than a mountain made of money-the desire to stay alive.

SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE ZVENIGOROD, RUSSIA

Anatoly Karganov awoke with a start. Being buried alive had a way of doing that to people. Once you thought you were over the horror, you began to let your guard down. You no longer consciously replayed the terrible events over and over again in your mind. You stopped thinking how lucky you were to be alive. Your energies then turned toward making sure it never happened again. But the terror still lurked behind the curtain of consciousness, lingering in your psyche, waiting until you were most vulnerable to pop out and force you to relive the horror all over again.

But as he awoke, the slender, yet firm hands of a woman were there once again to calm him. Where she had come from, he had no idea, but in his delirium, he was convinced that she must be some sort of angel who had snatched him from the jaws of death. He had heard his soldiers tell of extraordinary visions they had witnessed on the battlefield as they teetered on the threshold of death, and now he was certain that this was what was happening to him.

The woman placed a cool compress on his forehead in an attempt not only to calm him, but also to help assuage the fever that had racked his body for the last week. Bullet wounds were extremely prone to infection and try as she might, most of her efforts appeared to be in vain. Karganov was hanging on to life, but just barely. She changed the dressings, administered the antibiotics and kept him nourished. That was all she could do. The fight was Karganov’s at this point, not hers, at least not entirely.

The man had cost her precious time. He had information she needed, but he was in no condition to give it. It was extremely difficult to play nursemaid to one of the men responsible for her father’s greatest embarrassment and eventual downfall, but she had been lucky to find him alive at all. The bullet wound had been serious, but not fatal, though the subsequent infection could prove to be the man’s ultimate undoing. When they had rolled him into his grave, he landed on his side, with his arm above his head. It had been just enough to create a small pocket of air. With the grazing wound the bullet had caused to his head, it was a wonder he had regained consciousness at all, but he had. The man’s primal instinct for survival and self-preservation had eventually kicked in and he had managed to claw his way out of the grave and collapse beside it.

The woman who now tended him had been watching the meeting from the woods. The distance had been less than optimal for the operation of her parabolic microphone. All she had been able to pick up were scattered words and phrases. There had been names-maybe first names, maybe last, as well as a few names of American cities. She also had made out the wordsairspace andguidance systems. They were pieces of a maddening puzzle that without the overall picture from one of the players, were near impossible to comprehend, much less begin to put together.

She knew only what her father had known. In his last days, as the cancer ate away at what was left his body, he chose to die at home. Though the doctors told him they could make him more comfortable if he remained in the hospital, he chose to return to the things which had provided so much comfort during the darkest days of his life-his books and his only daughter. After all, he was Russian, and thereby no stranger to discomfort.

His daughter followed the doctors’ orders to the letter, administering the morphine in the appropriate doses at the appropriate times. When he shared with her the secret of his undoing, the reason why their previously comfortable life had been reduced to one of shame and hardship, she thought that it was the medication speaking and not her father. It was too fantastic to be believed. There were so many things that didn’t make sense. She just smiled at him and pretended to listen as her mind wandered. It had been incredibly painful to watch her father die such an ignoble death.

When the time came, she paid for his funeral out of her own pocket. That was expected, as was the fact that no one from her father’s professional career and years of service to his country had attended his memorial. The state had all but turned its back on her father many years ago, though it could never prove any of the allegations against him. In Russia, allegations were enough to break a man, and indeed they had. She comforted herself with the fact that at least her father had not died alone. Broken, yes, but not alone.