While it sounded more like a garbage disposal than an elevator, the car actually moved swiftly toward the top floor. As it rose, Dean took out the small pistol Lia had given him in the car and made sure it was loaded and ready. The doors opened and he walked into the corridor calmly, trying to orient himself and calm the adrenaline that charged around his skull.
There were a dozen doors nearly on top of each other lining the hall. Dean counted off five and stood outside the sixth. He put his hand on the knob gingerly, expecting, knowing, it would be locked.
Except that it wasn’t. And now that it was moving, now that he had the knob in his hand, the door seemed to ease inward on its own — he was committed; there was no way to wait for Lia, no way not to jump inside the room gun-first, left hand coming up to steady his aim.
Nothing.
Dean’s heart pounded in his mouth as he slid along the wall, angling to keep the open doorway on the left in view. He could see a window, something moving — he dived forward into the space, hitting the floor and just barely keeping himself from shooting a shade.
Dust lay thick on the faded floor linoleum. Dean rolled up, started back to the hall — and walked right into Lia’s pistol.
“Fuck,” he said.
“Fuck yourself,” she said. “Shit.”
They looked at each other, catching the same breath, catching something besides fear and surprise and anger in each other’s eyes.
“Shit,” repeated Lia.
“Shit.” Dean pushed away, back into the hall to the next door. “This one.”
“No, there’s no one up here. I’ve seen the scan. You’re it.”
“Shit.”
He stood over her, peering down at the screen. “The building’s clean?”
“No — we can only get this floor from the satellite. We’re going to have to look at the others. And listen, don’t go springing open any more doors. They may be booby-trapped.”
“Let me see that 3-D again,” he said. He took the handheld from her as the view flashed up. “This office — let’s look at that,” he said, pointing to a window on the seventeenth floor at the far end of building. There’s an air shaft right next to it — see the roof?”
Lia didn’t answer. Her hand was once more at her ear. “Car’s about three minutes away, maybe less,” she said, loping for the stairs.
71
Alexsandr Kurakin leaned back in the Mercedes, listening to the defense minister babble on about the Navy’s needs for an aircraft carrier as if Kurakin were some second-level bureaucrat who didn’t know a machine gun from an anchor. For the past two years he had endured such mindless lectures silently, nodding when appropriate, pretending that Vladimir Perovskaya was a military genius. They were now within sight of the Education Building and it occurred to Kurakin that he no longer needed to listen to such lectures.
“Aircraft carriers are obsolete,” he said. “The American carrier battle groups can be sunk or disabled within an hour after I issue the order. The real difficulties are their satellites and missile systems, which will soon be rendered impotent. I have already given the order.”
Perovskaya finally stopped talking. His jaw lowered slowly as he stared at the president in complete disbelief.
Kurakin began to laugh. One of the phones on the console between the two men rang. Kurakin picked it up.
It was his chief of staff. The president of the United States had an urgent personal message and wanted to talk to him directly — now, right now. It was more urgent than possibly could be believed.
Kurakin could believe it. But while he had expected the Americans to discover the coup on their own — indeed, he had planted the clues — he had not expected a warning.
Touching, in a way.
“Well, the president of the United States,” he said, turning and looking at Perovskaya. He gave a snort of derision, which the defense minister didn’t react to. He held his hand over the mouthpiece; they were just turning into the complex.
“You go in without me,” he told Perovskaya. “Keep the old comrades entertained until I catch up.”
72
Karr had climbed out of the train yard when a pair of police cars sped past in the opposite direction. He waited until they were out of sight, then jogged quickly down another road, treading his way into an area of small shops and apartments.
About a mile from the train yard he found a table outside a small shop and sat down to take stock of his battered body. His pants were ripped in two places and his ankle was swollen; otherwise his legs were all right. His stomach was fine. His chest and side hurt like hell, but to check on the damage he’d have to take his shirt and vest off.
No sense doing that. Just see really big bruises. If there were
His head felt as if it had been taken off and put back on at an odd angle. He touched the skin near his right eye — the one he thought he could see out of fairly well — and nearly screamed with the pain. He didn’t dare try it on the other side.
The shop where he’d stopped sold secondhand clothes but also did a little bit of business in the morning and afternoon selling tea and drinks quite a bit stronger. A middle-aged woman noticed that he was sitting outside and came out to see what he wanted; she started to tell him that customers ordinarily came inside to get what they wanted but stopped abruptly, obviously put off by his face.
“Bandits,” he told her in Russian. “But I’m OK. Scared ’em away with my face.” He smiled. “Tea?”
She nodded, then backed through the door. Karr had to check in but decided he’d have to wait until she reappeared with his drink.
Some parts of Moscow could be Brooklyn, New York. In fact, some parts of Brooklyn probably seemed more foreign than parts of Moscow, more Russian at least, stocked deep with e?migre?s who were consciously and in some cases desperately trying to re-create what they liked about their homeland. Here people weren’t trying to hold on to anything except what they needed to do to get by. Dean watched a woman push an immense baby carriage up the nearby hill, stopping every few moments to take a break and talk to her passengers — a pair of large mutts, not children. Two workers shared a cigarette as they passed across the street.
The woman came out with his tea, along with a bowl of warm water and a washcloth. She wanted to wash his wounds. As gently as he could, Karr told her no, he was fine. “I’m OK; I’m OK,” he insisted. She was almost in tears as she went back inside.
Rockman answered in the Art Room when he punched in.
“Hey,” Karr told him. “Give me Rubens.”
“All hell’s breaking loose,” said Rockman. “We’re under way.”
“Yeah. Give me Rubens.”
“Fuck, man. We’re busy.”
“He wants to talk to me.”
“Fuck.”
“Just do it, runner.”
“Mr. Karr, quickly,” said Rubens.
