Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

“I don’t fucking believe this,” he said. “There’s no way, no way at all.” He looked up at Jack. “This is a trick.”

“How could it be a trick?” Jack asked in a pleasant, almost friendly voice.

Kirilenko indicated Alli with his chin. “The girl. She must have done something when she had the phone, manufactured that message.”

“Don’t be idiotic.” Jack shook his head. “How could she—or any of us, for that matter—know about Mondan Limonev, who he was, or that he was a member of your team at the dacha?”

Kirilenko stared at Alli as if he was seeing her for the first time. Then his eyes went out of focus as the bleakness of his current situation began to sink in. At length he nodded. “Fuck it,” he said to Jack, “what d’you want to know?”

“What can you tell me about Trinadtsat ?”

“What?”

“You heard me. Are you a member of Thirteen?”

Kirilenko reared back as much as his bonds would let him. “I don’t know a thing about it. I keep my head down and my nose clean. I’m a detective, not an apparatchik. I’m a field man, small potatoes.”

Unsure whether the Russian was telling the truth, Jack tried another tack. “I could understand why the Izmaylovskaya might be after Annika, but what were you and your people doing lying in wait for us at Rochev’s dacha?”

“ My people. You mean your people.” Kirilenko nodded. “That’s right, Americans. The Americans are after Annika Dementieva.”

“You’re full of shit,” Jack said. “What Americans?”

“I’m dying for a cigarette,” Kirilenko said. “There’s a pack—”

“I know where the pack is,” Alli said, fishing it out of his pocket.

Jack put a cigarette between Kirilenko’s lips and Annika lit it with her lighter.

Kirilenko took a deep drag and slowly let out the smoke. “Harry Martin, you know him?”

“Harry Martin sounds like a made-up name.”

Kirilenko nodded. “That would be my guess. In any event, the man—whatever his real name is—is no fiction. He’s a spook, of that you can be sure. I was assigned to be his support.”

“Why? What’s he here for?”

“I don’t actually know because he didn’t tell me. I took him to Rochev’s dacha because that’s where he wanted to go. You know the rest.”

“Pretend I don’t know a thing,” Jack said. “What else do you know about Harry Martin?”

“Only bits and pieces, what I picked up overhearing parts of his cell phone conversations, presumably with his handler.” Kirilenko took another drag deep into his lungs. When he spoke again the smoke drifted out of his mouth and nostrils as if he were a dragon. “I overheard a word—Aura. I have no idea what it means, but I’m fairly certain that whatever else he’s after he needs to talk with that one.” He indicated Annika with a lift of his chin.

Jack turned briefly to Annika but she shook her head. “I never heard of Aura.”

Jack returned his attention to Kirilenko. “If you were assigned to Harry Martin, where is he?”

“I ditched him after I saw that photo and identified Annika Dementieva.” The acrid smoke drifting upward caused his left eye to half close. “I’m tired of being pushed around by everyone, my superiors included.”

“Is that why they want you dead?”

Kirilenko blew out smoke and shuddered. “I have no fucking idea why a sanction was put out on me, nor who authorized it. Like I said, I’ve kept my head down and my nose clean.”

“Not clean enough, apparently; you’ve picked up some serious shit on the way to the office,” Annika said dryly.

“Maybe it’s because you ditched Harry Martin,” Jack said.

“Everything went into the shitter when I was assigned to him,” Kirilenko said morosely.

“Who did you get the assignment from?” Jack said. “Who do you report to?”

“It wasn’t him, or at least it didn’t begin with him, though my boss is the division head. When he called me into his office he said he’d been given the directive. He didn’t seem happy about it.”

“Who?” Annika said. “Who would give him his marching orders?”

Kirilenko shrugged, then winced at the pain the gesture caused him. “You know the FSB, it’s a fucking mare’s nest of bureaucracy above division level. There are so many competing siloviks vying for power it’s difficult to know where anyone stands.”

Annika took out her cell phone. “What’s the name of your boss?” When Kirilenko told her, she punched a number on her speed dial and began to speak into the phone.

“I think we should untie him,” Alli said.

_____

RETRACING HIS steps down the hall Limonev hurried though the Arrivals hall and out the glass doors. He ignored the taxi lineup, and went swiftly around to the side of the building. From the layout of the Arrivals hall, he determined the window that led to the room where Kirilenko was being held. Looking for the most likely escape route, his gaze passed over the westernmost runway, the drop-off and subsequent field that led up to the parking lot. It was to the lot he went, stationing himself on the top of a car that overlooked the route. Then, using the replacement cell phone the SBU had given him, he called airport security and reported a disturbance in one of the airport facilities offices. Immediately following, he opened the case he’d been carrying and assembled the Dragunov, slamming home the ten-round magazine. Then, stretched out on his small but perfect patch of high ground, he put his right eye to the 4X PSO-1 telescope sight and waited for events to unfold.

JACK, LISTENING to what Annika was saying, at first missed her comment. People spoke to other people in varying ways. His brain was a repository of those different intonations. That was how he knew Annika was talking to Dyadya Gourdjiev, asking him about Kirilenko’s boss.

Alli was already behind the chair to which Kirilenko was bound by the time he’d diverted his attention back to her.

“What are you doing?”

“Untying him,” she said. “I think that’s what we should do.”

“You’re the one who spat in his face.”

“I didn’t like what he said to me, that doesn’t mean I hate his guts.”

Annika folded away her cell. “I’ll know who assigned you to the American spy in a couple of hours,” she promised. Then, seeing Alli unwinding the electrical flex from Kirilenko’s crossed wrists, said, “That’s a mistake we’ll all regret.”

“I don’t think so,” Kirilenko said.

“There’s a surprise!” Annika still held his pistol in her hand, though it was no longer pointed at him.

“Listen, in light of everything that’s happened here I have a proposal to make.”

Annika snorted. “This from a supposedly incorruptible FSB homicide investigator?”

“Let’s hear what he has to say.” Alli threw the unwound flex into a corner.

Jack was about to answer her, but into his mind came the image of Alli bound to a chair, which was immediately supplanted by the memory of Annika explaining why Alli had wanted to go to Milla Tamirova’s apartment, or, as Annika put it, to her dungeon. Kirilenko sat in the chair into which up to a moment ago they’d bound him. Jack knew Alli couldn’t help but equate his position to hers, and who was to say she was wrong.

Kirilenko made no aggressive move, or even an attempt to rise from the chair. He did nothing but massage his wrists in order to return circulation to his terribly chapped hands.

Lifting his head, he addressed Annika frankly, “My proposal is this: You kill Mondan Limonev and I’ll take care of the American Harry Martin who’s been sent to find you.”

“Wait a minute,” Jack said, “I think I’ve seen this film.”