of double doors. He opened the one on the right and stepped into the sitting room of Vladimir Putin’s private office.
There was no desk, only chairs and tables and glittering blue stone “Imperial Porphyry” columns. The tall windows were covered in bloodred velvet fringed with gold. The chairs were gilt and red upholstery in the Louis Quinze style, the carpets covered with rich “tree of life” patterns from Azerbaijan. The tables by each chair were chased silver and crystal, and the central coffee table the chairs surrounded was a circular slab of inlaid marble held up on curved gold legs with lion’s-paw feet. On the coffee table was a solid-gold platter holding three sweating bottles of red-labeled Istok vodka, a dozen green-and-gold bottles of Baltika 9 beer and the appropriate glassware.
Three of the four chairs around the table were already occupied. To Bortnikov’s left was the balding, narrow- faced Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, prime minister of all the Russias. Directly in front of the FSB director was Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, the diminutive, boyish-looking Russian president and Putin’s successor in the job. The gray-bearded older man on the right, wearing a very expensive pin-striped suit from Bond Street instead of his ornate robes, was Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyaev, known during his days in the old KGB by his code name “Mikhailov” and otherwise known as Kirill I, patriarch of Moscow and all Rus, primate of the Russian Orthodox Church-effectively its pope and, by the numbers, the most powerful of all the Orthodox patriarchs.
Gundyaev was the oldest of the four by a few years, but all of the men were in their late middle age. Friends since boyhood, all four had been in the Leningrad Oblast KGB during the same period.
Bortnikov turned and closed the door firmly behind him. He turned back to his companions, a hand raised in greeting, then sat down in the fourth chair. Putin stood, went to the coffee table and poured out four generous shots of vodka into the crystal old-fashioned glasses. The other three men stood and Putin passed the drinks around.
“Perhaps we should sing patriotic songs,” said the gray-bearded Gundyaev. He began to sing the moody, solemn chorus of
“I really don’t think that will be necessary, Vladimir Mikhailovich.” Putin laughed. “Singing such a song outside this office might get you into terrible trouble with the proletariat.”
“But it is such a nice song,” complained the primate. He’d obviously been drinking before Bortnikov got there. “It has gravity, strength, power. Not like that rude stuff you hear in the streets now.” The head of the Russian Orthodox Church launched into a reasonably good imitation of a beat-box song called “Black Boomer” by Seryoga.
“You seem to know the words quite well, Your Holiness,” said Putin.
“I hear it when I go to the radio station for my Sunday sermon to the people. It distresses me.”
“What on earth is a ‘black boomer,’ I wonder?” Medvedev asked, sipping from his glass.
Putin shrugged. “According to my daughter Yekaterina, black boomer refers to the pistol the man is carrying-a black boomer. On the other hand, my daughter Maria says the ‘black boomer’ in question is the young man’s vehicle, a black BMW. I tend to agree with Maria.”
“Perhaps we should get down to business,” said Bortnikov, putting his half-filled glass down on the side table beside his chair.
“Ah, yes.” Putin nodded. “What have you to tell us, my dear Alexander Vasilyevich?”
“The American we were told about and his Cuban companion crossed the Turkish border and went with an unidentified third man to the monastery of Saint Simeon the Plowman at Ahtopol in Bulgaria.”
“The place Beria went to in 1945.” His Holiness nodded. “And where he retrieved the secret sword.”
“Which told us nothing,” said Putin. “Only gave us more riddles to solve.”
“At any rate they went there and were observed by several CSS thugs.”
“They were followed?”
“Of course.”
“By the Bulgarian State Security people?” Putin asked.
“No, by our men.”
“And?”
“They were killed.”
“The American and his friends?” Medvedev asked nervously. “They killed an American?”
“No,” said Bortnikov, blood coming into his face, not from embarrassment but from rage. He reminded himself about his doctor’s warnings concerning his blood pressure and lit a cigarette to calm himself down. “Our people,” he said after a moment, drawing on the cigarette. He took a swallow of vodka. “All of them.”
“This American has. . how do you say it in English. . skills?” Putin said. He’d been working hard to improve his English for the past two or three years and was now reasonably fluent. His daughters were always teaching him little colloquialisms.
“I would say he has excellent skills,” said His Holiness, raising an eyebrow.
“Where are they now?”
“We lost track of them for a while and then they showed up in Odessa. He visited a document thief and was provided with everything he needed.”
“You know the names they are traveling under now?”
“Not yet, but there are not many Americans in Russia at this time of year. Somewhere along the line he will have been required to show his identification. We know he did not enter Russia through any known airport or train station, so in the end it will simply be a process of elimination.”
“How long?” Putin asked.
“A matter of days. Maybe less.”
“We don’t want them harmed,” cautioned His Holiness, pouring himself a foaming glass of the potent Russian beer. “You have a tendency to be overzealous in your actions.” He paused. “And perhaps your people are not as good as you have boasted on more than one occasion. You are not a street policeman anymore, Alexander Vasilyevich.” The primate’s tone was chiding, and the FSB director bristled.
“No, Your Holiness, and neither are you a parish priest taking the confessions of your people and then passing them on to Vladimir Vladimirovich anymore,” replied Bortnikov, glancing at Putin. He turned back to the primate. “I leave the running of the Church to you,
“We should stop arguing like children in the schoolyard,” said Putin. “This is about neither the Church nor the Foreign Intelligence Service, nor the FSB. It is about the four of us in this room and our great duty, and it is about the Order of the Phoenix. Most important, it is about Russia, our motherland, the Rodina and her future. Remember that.”
Bortnikov’s cell phone chirped loudly. He slipped it out of his breast pocket, thumbed it on and held it to his ear. His face brightened as he listened. Finally he ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket.
“They have discovered who the third man accompanying Holliday and the Cuban is. His name is Victor Nikolaevich Genrikhovich, and he is a curator of documents at the Hermitage.”
“Dear God,” whispered Medvedev, the president. “We could be ruined.”
“Don’t worry,” said Bortnikov. “He is being arrested as we speak.”
