CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Moscow was pitch-dark and freezing when we landed. White snow covered the land and frost hung from the trees. We came in on a U.S. Air Force converted 747 carrying the Secretary of State, who was arriving for a swiftly arranged meeting with his Russian counterpart.
Katrina and I were dressed as U.S. Air Force enlisted troops and were described on the flight manifest as crewmen, Katrina as a steward, me as a radio-telephone operator. The Secretary of State was scheduled to be there only a few hours, which was tight, but coming and going under his diplomatic cover was the only way to get done what we needed to accomplish. Mary was along also, listed under an alias as a publicity aide to the Secretary, which was a thin cover, but she wasn’t leaving the plane, as the Russians knew her on sight.
It had to be us three. Alexi knew Katrina and me, and Mary had been his contact all those years. We were the only ones who knew how to contact him, who he’d talk to-the only three he’d conceivably entrust with his fate.
The instant the Secretary’s official welcoming ceremony was over and the cavalcades of black, official-looking cars had departed, we got to work. Another stream of cars began trickling in, and men and women camouflaged in workers’ coveralls began streaming up the steps and clustering in the lounge next to the Secretary’s sleeping suite. Within ten minutes, twenty CIA folks were packed in that compartment, and Mary began her briefing.
You’ll never guess who was in charge of the ground team. My old buddy Jackler, the grand inquisitor himself, and he had Mary’s former embassy crew working for him, since they were intimately familiar with Moscow and Russia’s security procedures, which was essential for our purposes.
Jackler had apparently been warned to be nice to me, and he was-to a point. You could see it really hurt him, but he was trying. He was like that pit bull you keep chained in the basement. Politeness had been bred out of his gene pool. When we were done with the operations briefing he barked at everybody to get moving, and bodies began slamming into one another as they raced for the exit.
As soon as the last of the common field hands were gone, Jackler and Mary sidled over to Katrina and me. He growled, “You two need to have your friggin’ heads examined. We don’t do shit this way. You’re flyin’ by the seats of your pants.”
Katrina said, “And is there another alternative?”
“Yeah. Send Arbatov a goddamned sympathy card. That’s how the code works in these things.”
“It isn’t an option,” Katrina said, eyeing him suspiciously.
“Lady, it’s your ass. If this thing goes south, we can’t help you. This is their country. You got any idea what Russian prisons are like?”
“I don’t care.”
Maybe she didn’t, but I did-I cared a lot. I mean, I was all for getting Alexi out of there, but it sure would suck if our plan was foiled and all three of us ended up in Yurichenko’s hands.
I gave Jackler my most badassed stare. “You better make sure it doesn’t go south. See, I left copies of some very embarrassing tapes with some friends back in the States. If I don’t come back, they’ve been told where to send those tapes, and trust me, that would be a disaster for you and all your buddies at Langley.”
Jackler’s eyes darted over at Mary. She simply shrugged, like, Yeah, I know it sucks, but that’s the way it is.
Then Mary looked at me. She put a hand on my arm and dragged me away, into a corner. With her hand still on my arm, she leaned so close that I could feel her hair against my face and her breasts pressed against my arm. “Sean, please, be very, very careful. Our people have the meeting site staked out. If they give you the signal to abort, you and Katrina get out immediately. You understand that, right?”
“I understand that.” Although I somehow suspected that that wasn’t what this was really about.
“Listen… I, well, uh… I know you’re disappointed in me.”
She paused for me to answer. I was supposed to say something like, “Uh, yeah, I’m not too happy about the way all this went down, but crap happens; I’m over it now, and my heart still goes pitter-patter when I’m around you.” I didn’t say anything. I used Eddie’s favorite stunt. I left the full onus of carrying this conversation on her shoulders.
“Anyway,” she finally said, “I’m still serious about divorcing Bill. I contacted a lawyer yesterday. He’s filing the papers.”
“Yeah, well,” I said.
She gave me that toe-tingling smile. “Open and shut, the lawyer said. He really loved those pictures of Bill slipping in and out of hotels with different women. There’ll have to be a year-long separation, but I’ll have freedom to see who I want.”
Those breasts pressed a little closer. Those blue eyes turned a little more imploring. “I don’t want to lose you at this point, Sean. I, uh, I… well, I hope we can… maybe… well, maybe recapture what we once had.”
I stared at her.
She pressed a forefinger against my lips, the way they do in those mushy movies. “Don’t say anything,” she murmured. Of course it was already evident I wasn’t about to anyway. “I know you’re confused right now. I don’t blame you. There’ll be plenty of time to sort things out later. Just come back safely, okay?”
“I plan to,” I said, which was as neutral a signal as I could offer under the circumstances.
She stepped away and I looked over at Katrina, who was gazing back at me curiously, wondering what in the hell was going on here. I shrugged, then walked over and joined her. We departed with Jackler and climbed into a windowless van parked right at the base of the steps.
You could tell by Jackler’s sour expression what he thought of this whole thing. Actually, his thoughts probably weren’t any different from mine. Katrina was a civilian. If I was glaringly short of field crafts, she was ten gallons past empty. We were going into a complex, high-risk operation with a couple of complete hacks who could clumsily trigger a huge international incident with the one country the United States didn’t want to piss off right at that pivot point in history.
But there really wasn’t any other way this could work. It might not work anyway, but it was the only shot. We were pitting Alexi’s affection for Viktor against his affection for Katrina, and it was still a flip of the coin. However, there’s no disputing the influence of human plumbing in these situations.
Jackler put tiny microphones under Katrina’s and my shirt collars and then ran a few quick tests to be sure the electronics worked. They did. One of Jackler’s agents was driving. Another was riding shotgun in the passenger seat-literally riding shotgun, because he had a lethal-looking sawed-off model resting on his lap. I looked at my watch; 4:30 A.M. local time, right on the dot.
The drive took thirty-five minutes. A radio operator in the back with the rest of us kept receiving reports from various teams that were already maneuvering into position. The operation was still an hour off, but nobody was taking any chances of getting caught in traffic, or having an accident en route. Since it was my ass on the line, I highly approved of that. I’ve never been one who likes to hang out with type A anal-retentive assholes, but in situations like this you gain a whole new appreciation for them. Katrina sat calmly, while I drummed my fingers and peppered Jackler with incessant questions about precautions and failsafes in the event anything went wrong. He humored me. I was obviously keyed up and overanxious.
Katrina and I climbed out of the van a block down from the subway station. We looked around and there was hardly a soul there, unless you want to include a bunch of beggars and miserable-looking veterans, the normal shrubbery of Moscow streets. We rushed to the subway entrance and down the stairs till we found the sculpted she-bitch from hell, and we scraped our three stripes at the base of her foot.
Then we rushed back upstairs and to the ninth floor of the hotel that overlooked the kiosk. Neither of us said a word. We were both too immersed in our own thoughts to make small talk, which was the only kind of talk possible in moments like this.
At 5:45, he came out of the subway entrance and then walked nonchalantly toward the kiosk. He bought a magazine from the vendor, then stood for a moment, flipping through it and studying the pages. Katrina stopped breathing. If Alexi didn’t head for the bakery, this was the last time she’d ever see him alive. I put a hand over her shoulder and held her.
