“So I did,” Brandt admitted coolly. “And so you shall.”
Then, without hesitating, the gray-eyed man took Smith’s Makarov off the coffee table in front of him, thumbed off the safety, aimed, and shot Klimuk in the forehead at pointblank range. Blood splashed across the back of the sofa, staining its richly colored fabric an ugly red.
While the other servants were still staring at their dead colleague in horror, Brandt swung the pistol slightly and fired two more times. The maid and the younger man both slumped back against the sofa, each killed by a single shot.
The former Stasi officer turned away. There was no expression whatsoever on his face.
Madame Zakarova sat motionless in her high-backed chair, looking at her murdered servants with an ashen face. “Why?” she spat out furiously. “Why kill them? They were not spies. Yes, Klimuk and the others were ignorant and foolish, but they had done nothing to deserve death.”
Brandt shrugged. “Very few people ever do.” He raised the Makarov and fired again.
Shot through the heart, the older woman fell back in her chair. Her eyes stared up at the ceiling, forever locked in an expression that mingled anger, contempt, and the first horrified realization that she too was marked for death.
Carefully, Brandt set the pistol down on the floor and then kicked it away under the sofa. He glanced at Smith. “When the militsia arrive, they should find the fingerprints on that weapon of great interest, don’t you think? Your fingerprints, naturally.” He shook his head in wry amusement. “You Americans are so violent, so trigger-happy. No wonder you are so widely disliked throughout the world.”
“You’re nothing but a black-hearted, murdering bastard!” Fiona told him fiercely, speaking through gritted teeth.
‘Yes, I suppose that I am,” Brandt said calmly. Then he stared back at her with his cold gray eyes. “And now you are my prisoner, Ms. Devin. Think about that, why don’t you?”
He swung back to his watching men. “Bring them,” he snapped. “Let’s go.”
I With gunmen prodding them from behind and others watching warily from the front, Smith and Fiona were hustled out through the door and shoved into the backseat of one of the three vehicles parked outside the dacha?an all-wheel-drive Ford Explorer. Brandt and one of his men climbed into the front seat. One of the remaining gunmen scrambled into the Volga brought by the Americans, while the others got into the third car, another big four-wheel- drive Ford.
In convoy, with the Explorer transporting Brandt and the two Americans in the lead, the three vehicles turned across the patch of gravel and drove away from the dacha, bumping slowly down the rutted track leading back to the road. Once on the road, they turned right, not left, and sped up.
Ignoring the pain from his abraded wrists, Smith sat up a little straighten They were heading west through the darkness. Trees, high, mounded snow-banks, and brush-choked turnoffs to old logging tracks appeared briefly in their high beams and then vanished behind them into the night.
He glanced at Fiona to see if she had noticed. She nodded slightly. Brandt and his men were not taking them back to Moscow.
Why not? Smith wondered. If the former Stasi officer was working for Malkovic, and the billionaire was working with the Kremlin, why not simply hand them over to the Russians for interrogation? Were Brandt and his wealthy employer playing a double game of some kind?
Vladik Fadayev lay perfectly still among the clumped birch trees lining the road. Thanks to his snow parka and twig-laced camouflage netting, anyone looking at the lean, hollow-cheeked sniper from more than a couple of meters away would only have seen one more snow hummock among many in the woods.
Despite the bitter cold, Fadayev was content. As a younger man he had spent two years in combat in Afghanistan’s rugged mountains and foothills, killing mujahideen warriors at long-range with his much-loved SVD rifle. The experience had taught him to enjoy the difficult and dangerous game of hunting other men. After the Red Army abandoned its long war against the Afghans, peace had come as a tremendous letdown. All in all, the sniper reflected, he was fortunate to have found employment with a man like Erich Brandt?a man who appreciated his special skills and found many different ways in which to employ them.
One by one, the taillights of Brandt’s three vehicles disappeared around a bend. The sound of their engines faded into the night.
Fadayev stayed motionless, waiting.
His patience was rewarded.
A big boxy GAZ Hunter lumbered out of the woods ahead of him. Gears shifting noisily, the Russian-made jeep swung sharply west onto the narrow road and accelerated. Snow and broken boughs and branches slid off its roof and hood, tumbling across the lane in its wake.
The sniper smiled. He spoke quietly into his radio mike. “This is Fadayev.
You were quite right. The Americans had company. And now you are being followed.”
Smith fought to control his expression when he heard the report crackling over the tactical radio hooked to the Explorer’s dashboard. Beside him, he heard a soft, in-drawn breath from Fiona. They both knew Oleg Kirov had been spotted. And now they were powerless to warn the Russian that he was in danger.
Brandt leaned forward and took the mike. “Understood, Fadayev. We’ll deal with the situation from this end. Out.” He looked over his shoulder at the two Americans. “That will be your colleague, I imagine.”
Neither moved a muscle.
Brandt smiled at the sight of their carefully impassive faces. “I am not a fool,” he said calmly. “You are both professionals. I knew that you would never go into a danger zone without support.”
To hide his sudden feeling of despair, Smith stared out the window. In the dark, it was difficult to see much of anything, but he thought they were just coming up a little rise, following the road as it wound along a low, densely wooded hill. Off on their left, the ground fell away in a gentle, tree-covered slope, cut here and there by steeper-sided ravines that were choked with boulders, brush, and scrub timber.
In the seat ahead of him, he heard Brandt using the radio again. “All vehicles, halt,” the tall man said flatly. “Deploy for action to our rear.”
Immediately, the big car they were in slowed, pulled over to the side just past a blind curve, and stopped. Hie Volga and the second Ford Explorer did the same, pulling up right behind them. Doors slammed open, and Brandt’s men spilled out onto the narrow road, rapidly fanning out among the trees with their automatic w eapons ready.
In the silence, Jon and Fiona heard the noise of another car coming up the hill behind them. Awkwardly, they swung round in the seat to stare through the back window.
Smith felt his jaw tighten. What could he do? Grimly, he ran through possible courses of action. But, with his hands bound behind his back there seemed very little he could achieve. Sure, he might be able to hurl himself across the front seat at Brandt and the driver, but would that create the kind of distraction needed to give Kirov a real fighting chance? He shrugged mentally. Though the action seemed futile, it was his only real option. Furtively, he flexed his arms and legs, trying to loosen stiff muscles before he made his move.
“Be still, Colonel,” Brandt said coldly. “Or I will put a bullet into your brain.”
Warily, Smith glanced over his shoulder.
The gray-eyed man sat there staring straight at him, aiming a pistol squarely at his head.
Suddenly, sooner than any of them had expected, the oncoming GAZ-manufactured jeep came racing around the corner. It was moving fast in a blaze of headlights.
Brandt’s men opened up instantly, firing their submachine guns on full automatic. The stuttering, clattering roar of gunfire shattered the frozen hush of the winter night. Bullets hammered the speeding jeep, punching enormous holes through its chassis and sending pieces of torn metal flying. Its windshield blew inward, shattered into a thousand separate bits by 9mm rounds fired at close range.
Without slowing at all, the bullet-riddled jeep veered sharply off the road and plunged wildly down the wooded slope. Still skidding downhill at high speed, the Hunter slammed into a birch tree with an earsplitting crash, spun away, and then slowly toppled sideways over the edge of a ravine. The pale beam of one headlight lit the overhanging trees and brush for a few seconds longer and then winked out, again leaving the hillside cloaked in absolute darkness.
