He heard voices muttering from the hallway, and bright beams of light penetrated the privacy glass on the hallway door. The lights suddenly disappeared and everything became still again. He watched the doorknob closely, barely poking his head over the desk. The doorknob reflected some of the light from the outside door, and after a few seconds he was certain that it had turned. He ducked his head quickly, a fraction of a second before the door crashed open, slamming against the wall and cracking the inset glass window.
Footsteps filled the room and bright lights swept the walls and corners. He prayed that his head was far enough below the lip of the desk to remain unseen by the light focused on his corner. He tensed and prepared to make the first move, expecting bullets to rip through the desk at any moment. He started to lift the pistol upward when the light above his desk vanished and a grim voice sounded out in the darkness.
"He's not here either. What the fuck are you trying to pull on us?"
Gennady answered them timidly. "I told him to wait back there. Don't worry. He can't go far. He doesn't have the keys to the rental or his luggage. We'll find him," he said, and Anatoly heard a key chain jingling.
"You're not finding anyone," one of the men said.
The comment was followed by a deafening gunshot, which spurred Reznikov into action. He rose swiftly, extending the suppressed pistol forward with two hands, and repeatedly squeezed the trigger. Each flash from the suppressor showed a progressively macabre scene, as he fired into the center of each briefly illuminated figure, alternating back and forth between the two men until the slide of his pistol locked back. By the time he realized that the pistol's magazine was empty, the two men started sliding down the opposite wall, leaving dark, glistening trails of gore. He didn't hear a grunt or groan from either of the two men, as their bodies slumped to the floor.
He changed pistol magazines and walked over to Gennady's body, using one of the dropped flashlights to illuminate the man's face. His eyes stared up at the ceiling, and a single red dot on his forehead trickled blood down the side of his temple. Reznikov turned the flashlight on his body and located the keys to his rental car. Now, he just needed to figure out where to find his baggage, and he could be on his way.
With Gennady dead, the rental car would be untraceable. Gennady had rented the car in Moscow, using false paperwork, and driven it to Nizhny Novgorod himself earlier today. He looked down at the man again and shook his head. He'd hoped to kill the traitor himself, but maybe this would work out for the better. By the time the police straightened out this mess, if they ever did, the world would be different place.
Chapter 4
Alexei Kaparov slammed his right fist down onto a stack of papers that littered his desk and extinguished his cigarette into a crowded ashtray with his other hand. He lifted the report, which had been unceremoniously tossed into his daily slush pile, and squinted at its contents. Not even a simple folder, or anything. The single most important piece of information he'd seen in months had been unceremoniously added to the never-ending shit pile of papers on his desk. It might as well have been thrown in the trash. What about a priority flagged email? How long have they had email? Important shit like this still ended up travelling ungodly distances, only to be buried under a rubble pile. It really wasn't his team's fault, but he was pissed at the entire system.
If any of Kaparov's subordinates could have heard his frustrated internal dialogue, they would have agreed with him on several of his points, especially the part about the rubble. The deputy counter-terrorism director's office was a disaster, with loose stacks of paperwork scattered everywhere, sitting on top of boxes of paperwork that needed to be filed. Despite the appearance of chaos, Kaparov could find anything he needed and reviewed every single document that found its way into the room…as long as the paperwork was placed on top of his desk. He made a point of clearing through the desk every day, and then refilling it with new documents, or old ones he had decided to resurrect.
Daily, he scoured field reports from hundreds of FSB and Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) agents, looking for any clues, signs or trigger words that might indicate a potential chemical or biological act of terrorism on Russian soil. When he came across the four-page Southern District FSB intelligence summary of a recent counter-insurgency raid in Dagestan, he settled in for some interesting reading. Raids into Dagestan were rare, and the report piqued his interest. He could have just as easily dismissed the report. Threats limited to the volatile Caucasus Region were analyzed by another deputy director, leaving Kaparov's crew of analysts with the rest of Russia.
On page three of the report, he nearly had a heart attack. He felt a tightening in his chest and glanced down at the top drawer of his desk, which ironically held both a package of Troika cigarettes and a small plastic bottle of nitroglycerine pills. Right there, buried nonchalantly in the report, was a dangerous name. The fact that the name had been discovered among documents recovered from an Al Qaeda stronghold in Dagestan was even more disturbing. He chuckled at the thought of dying from a heart attack in his office. Maybe someone had slipped the name in the report just to trigger his death. They would probably take a look around at the mess, eyeball the ashtray, and shrug their shoulders.
At 57, Alexei Kaparov wasn't exactly a picture of good health. Slightly rotund and stuffed into a dark brown suit, his skin was devoid of color and almost matched his similarly dull gray, yellow-tinged hair. Only a hawkish, blood-vessel-riddled nose gave his face any contrast and also served as a beacon for his unhealthy habits, cigarettes being only one of many bad choices Kaparov made on a daily basis. Seeing the contents of the report not only turned his nose a few shades darker, but also ignited a craving for one of his other bad choices. Fortunately, he no longer kept a bottle of cheap vodka in his lower desk drawer. Those days in the Lubyanka were long gone for all of them. He was lucky to still have his cigarettes.
He stormed to the door of his office and opened it abruptly, which turned several heads in his direction.
"Someone find Prerovsky immediately! Goddamn it, I want this shit filed electronically," he said, waving the report at nobody in particular. "We're living in the fucking dark ages here, and we're missing shit left and right!"
Now everyone was looking in his direction, at a very atypical burst of emotion from their director. Several analysts broke from their seats, to either look for Agent Prerovsky or just get out of the way.
"He's over in another section. Caucasus Division," a female agent replied, who didn't appear to be moving from her computer workstation.
"Well? What exactly are you waiting for? A personal invitation to get off your ass and find him? For a bunch of analysts, you seem to have trouble connecting the dots. I need Prerovsky here immediately! I don't pay him to work in the Caucasus Division! He works here, and if you value your job in my division you'll fucking find him immediately!" he said, and retreated into his office, leaving everyone to scramble.
The door slammed shut, and he listened to the beehive of activity on the other side of the flimsy gray door. That went well. A little fire under their asses worked miracles from time to time. Kaparov was careful not to verbally explode on them too regularly, like many of the other directors and mid-level managers within Headquarters. It served no purpose other than to alienate, though every once in a while, he felt the need to show them that they weren't working on easy street. Granted, his division wasn't the busiest, but it was no less important than any other division, and on a day like today, it might be more important than anyone would care to admit. Just as he sat down to look at the report again, he heard a knock at the door.