owed it all to Gerald T. Boyd.
“Not as much as I’d hoped,” said Colonel Lee. He was a small man, with short-cropped dark hair and the gentle features of his parents, who had fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon.
Boyd watched his own bicep flex and relax, flex and relax. “There’s a problem?”
Lee reached for a fifteen-pound dumbbell. “This Guinness woman is the problem. I started by looking at her passport file.”
“And?” Boyd didn’t really care how Lee got the necessary information on October Guinness, as long as he got it-and was careful to cover his tracks.
“Turns out she’s in the Navy.”
Boyd frowned. “The Navy?”
“An ensign. I thought it would be a piece of cake, accessing her files.”
Boyd waited.
Lee cast a quick glance around and leaned in closer. “Instead, that’s when everything went to shit. The Navy doesn’t have her file.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “She’s been detailed to the CIA.”
“That’s a problem?”
“I don’t know what she’s doing, but whatever it is, it’s a deep dark secret. Special Access shit.”
“So why is she in Russia?”
“I don’t know.”
Boyd switched the dumbbell to his left hand. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like it one damned bit. But all he said was, “I need for you to stay on this. I want to know exactly who she is, and why she’s involved.”
A muscle twitched beside the other man’s small mouth. “I’m afraid I may have already stumbled across a trip wire.”
Boyd pushed to his feet and dropped the dumbbell on the rack. “I’ll take care of the Agency. Just get me the information I need.”
Sam Lee glanced down at the dumbbell in his hand, then up again, his shoulders drooping with fatigue and a touch of fear. “Yes, sir.”
24
Kaliningrad Oblast: Monday 26 October 2:30 P.M. local time
The Tatar kept a heavy foot on the gas all the way back to the city of Kaliningrad, his shoulders hunched, his hands clutching the wheel. Sheltered by the row of warehouses, he’d survived the explosion with only a few scrapes and bruises. But the Mercedes he’d been sitting in had been pretty badly pummeled by debris. They drove back to Kaliningrad in one of the blue-and-white militia vans with the siren wailing and Andrei shouting into his cell phone for so long that, by the time they thumped over one of the bridges crossing the Pregel River and onto the island of Kneiphof, the Russian was hoarse.
“I’m supposed to be at a meeting that started ten minutes ago,” he said as the van swooped in next to the curb. “You get out now.”
“Here?” said Jax, looking around. Once, Kneiphof had been the island heart of old Konigsberg, a jewel of medieval and renaissance architecture and learning. But the graceful, ancient university buildings were long gone, bombed to dust by the Allies, while the Russians had dynamited the city’s famous castle back in the 1960s and replaced it with a concrete governmental monstrosity frequently described as the ugliest example of Soviet architecture in existence-which was really saying something. Even the cobbles from the surrounding lanes had been taken up and relaid in Moscow’s Red Square. Only the cathedral had survived, as a hollowed-out shell that was now being restored.
“The car will be back for you by seven. You’re both booked on tonight’s flight to Berlin.”
“Berlin?” October froze in the act of scooting across the seat. “But my ticket is through Copenhagen.”
Andrei lit a new cigarette from the embers of his old one, his cheeks hollowing as he inhaled. “I want you out of here tonight, and the next flight to Copenhagen isn’t until later this week. You’re going to Berlin. And Jax-”
Jax paused with his hand on the edge of the door. “Yes, Andrei?”
“Be here. If I have to make other arrangements to get you out of the country, you really aren’t going to like them.”
“Got it,” said Jax, and closed the door.
“I guess he doesn’t want to play nice anymore,” said October, her brows drawing together as she watched the militia van speed away.
“No. But that doesn’t mean he’s not still playing.”
She glanced over at him. “What does that mean?”
Jax put his hand under her elbow, drawing her across the square toward the looming red brick nave of the cathedral. “Don’t look, but there’s a guy in a black leather jacket and a visored helmet who just parked his Kawasaki down the street. He was following us when we left the airport this morning.”
Jax watched, amused, as she struggled really, really hard to keep from staring down the street. “You think he’s one of Andrei’s men?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
She dug her fists into her pockets and kept her head down as they walked rapidly across the park. “Is he still following us?” she asked as they skirted the newly roofed sidewalls of the old German cathedral.
“Yes.”
They cut around behind the towering red brick nave, to where the still waters of the river reflected an autumn riot of golds and rusts.
The guy from the Kawasaki stayed behind them, one hand creeping to the small of his back as a tall rose- colored portico closed off by a wrought-iron fence loomed before them.
“What’s that?” said October, her head tilting back as she stared up at the soaring columns.
Jax turned so that he could keep one eye on the guy from the Kawasaki. “It’s the tomb of Immanuel Kant. He was an atheist, so they buried him out here. Which is kind of ironic, when you consider that his tomb is the only reason the Russians didn’t tear down the cathedral-Marx being a big fan of Kant, you see.”
She glanced over at him. “How do you know all this stuff?”
“I majored in history at Yale.”
She started to laugh.
“That’s funny? Why is that funny? Because I majored in history, or because I went to-” Out of the corner of his eye, Jax saw the Kawasaki rider’s hand come up. “Look out!” he shouted, shoving October to one side.
He heard a whine, and a corner of the worn old sarcophagus disappeared into dust.
“Shit,” said Jax, gravel rolling beneath his loafers as he dragged her behind one of the slender columns.
October lost her footing and almost went down. “He’s shooting at us? Why is he shooting at us?”
“Because he’s not Andrei’s guy.” Jax yanked her up. “Come on!”
As they sprinted around the side of the cathedral, October stumbled and almost went down again. “Ah, shit,” she cried, one hand on her knee.
He knew she had an old knee injury dating back to the same incident in Iraq that earned her a psycho discharge. “Here,” he said, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Lean on me. Can you make it?”
She straightened, her jaw set hard. “I can make it.”
Up ahead, a side door opened to disgorge two middle-aged women wearing heavy handknit sweaters and plastic rain caps over their coiffed gray heads. Jax yanked the door open wider and pushed October inside.
“Ey! Prikratitye!” bellowed a red-faced guard with a sagging belly and a walrus mustache. “This is an exit. You are not allowed to enter this way!”
“Sorry,” October shouted back at him.
October limping badly, they pelted down the soaring nave of the cathedral, the guard blowing hard on his whistle. She glanced sideways at Jax. “What’s the penalty for crashing a museum in Russia?”
“I don’t know,” said Jax. “But it can’t be worse than getting shot.”
They heard the door bang open behind them again, streaming natural light into the dim nave. The guard let
