While this took place, the second attacker had already produced his own gun, and Aleksa gripped his wrist with both her hands, struggling and thrashing. But her opponent had nearly a foot on her, was twice her weight, and easily overpowered her. He backhanded her across the face, knocking her onto the street. Her head bounced off the wet pavement. Her vision blurred, and she felt on the verge of blacking out. A booted foot pressed down against her ribs, holding her against the street. She looked up and saw the hazy image of the masked man angling his pistol less than three feet from her face.
Avery fired the Makarov twice, tapping the assassin above his ear. As the man collapsed, Avery turned around at the sound of movement.
The other attacker lay on the street, gasping for breath, holding onto the knife handle jutting out of his throat. He stared up at Avery with pleading, watery eyes. He tried to speak but was unable to produce a sound, coughing and gagging on his own blood and the blade that was lodged through his windpipe. Avery shot him once in the head. Then he held the Makarov two handed in front of him and threaded a path around and between the parked vehicles, tracking for more targets — finding none — and came back around in the street to Aleksa.
She sat slowly up, disorientated and dazed from the blow to her head. Avery reached a hand out and pulled her up onto her feet. Her balance was off, and he steadied her. She had a bleeding scrape where her forehead struck the pavement and the shocked, haunted expression of someone who had just stared up helplessly at the business end of a gun in the hand of an apathetic killer while her life flashed before her eyes.
Keeping a hand on her back, Avery directed her toward the Siena. He helped her inside and walked around to slip in behind the wheel. He keyed the ignition, put the car in gear, and peeled out.
Only once they had safely put some distance between them and Shabany, Avery asked Aleksa if she was all right. He wasn’t being nice. He needed to need if she’d be able to hold herself together for a while longer. If she wasn’t, then he needed to think about leaving her behind.
“I… I don’t know…” He knew she wasn’t referring to the head wound. She’d taken a box of tissues from the glove box, and pressed a wad tightly against the cut. “I was attacked once, in Moscow, but this is different. Those men back there on the street were going to kill me. If they’d been a little faster or had a third man, I’d be… If I hadn’t met you tonight, I’d have been at the apartment with Yuri when they came… It doesn’t seem real. I’m meant to be dead right now…”
Her voice trailed off. Avery heard her hyperventilating. He lowered her window a couple inches. “Look at me. Focus on breathing. Don’t think about all the shit that might have been. You’ll just fuck yourself up even worse. It’s over now, and you’re alive. That’s all that matters.”
After a couple minutes, Aleksa got her breathing under control. She raised her window and wrapped her arms around herself. She shivered and stared vacantly through the windshield, through the wipers, at the street ahead. Avery knew she would have nightmares about this moment for the rest of her life. Christ, this was the last thing he needed to deal with now. He turned on the heat full blast for her.
“Where are we going?” Aleksa finally asked.
“We’ll stay at the Sputnik tonight and figure something out from there. Do the Belarusian authorities know you were staying with Yuri?”
“No. I falsified my visa application and contact form.”
“Good. If we’re lucky, we won’t have the police and KGB looking for you once they discover Yuri’s body. Those guys back there were mafiya”
“We should leave Belarus immediately,” Aleksa said.
“And go where? It might not be safe for you to go back to Russia either.”
“I have friends in the West, Russian expatriates.”
“You do what you need to do, but I’m not leaving yet.”
“Why not? Are you crazy?”
“I can’t leave now. I need to track the HEU shipment. If we lose track of it, there’s going to be a lot bigger problems for everyone.”
“I don’t understand. Can’t you go to your embassy?”
“Not exactly,” Avery said. If he went to the embassy, the chief of station would be more interested in what Avery was doing on his turf than he would be in the HEU delivery.
Near the city center, after making a thorough dry clean run, Avery abandoned the Siena. They walked a couple blocks before hailing a cab to take them the rest of the way to the Sputnik. There, they walked around to the rear stairwell door. When he’d left earlier, Avery had stuck a doorstop in the doorway to prevent the door from locking behind him, and they went inside and proceeded to his room, undetected by the hotel staff.
Avery proceeded cautiously into the room, and then carefully examined it, making sure everything was exactly how he’d left it and that there were no signs of visitors while he was away.
Aleksa took a long shower and changed into clean clothing, while Avery made her hot tea.
“You should try to get some sleep,” he told her. He sat at the little desk with the Glock and spare magazines laid out in front of him. “I’ll keep watch.”
She looked at him as if he’d just sprouted a third eye. “How can I possibly sleep after what happened?”
“Then don’t.” Avery shrugged. He wasn’t going to worry about it. “Tell me how Yuri knew about the uranium deal.”
“He had a source in Belarus’s Institute for Power and Nuclear Research, in Sosny. This man mentioned to Yuri the deal with Russia, and Yuri had him press for more information. We were supposed to see this man tomorrow morning. He thinks he may have details on the flight schedule by then. I know the delivery will be soon. This afternoon, a GlobeEx Ilyushin arrived from Moscow. That’s the official aircraft that will deliver the uranium to Russia. Litvin is going to split the stockpile and divert a portion to Tajikistan. I’ve checked flight records, and there’s also an outbound GlobeEx jet to Ayni tomorrow.”
“We need to see this man as soon as possible. Do you have any way of contacting him? If these people have Yuri’s laptop and phone, they may identify his sources and track them down.”
“Yuri arranged the contact,” Aleksa said. “There’s nothing I can do, and no way for me to reach him. Besides, Yuri was careful about protecting his sources. I don’t believe he’d save names in his files.”
“Let’s hope not,” Avery replied. They would have to take the risk and show up at the meet tomorrow. “So what’s your story? Why are you doing all this? There must be easier ways to make a living in Russia.”
Avery asked because he was genuinely curious, and he also wanted her to talk and focus on something other than the attack and Yuri’s corpse.
Aleksa Denisova was thirty-four years old. Estonian by birth, she was from Perm, in what was then called the Russian Federative Soviet Republic, where her grandparents had emigrated to shortly after World War II.
She’d never wed and had no children. Her only time for men had been during her time at university. After that, the few men who attempted courtship were quickly put off by her constant travelling and the demands of her work, not to mention the numerous death threats she received from gangsters. She maintained only a small, trusted circle of people she called friends. She’d devoted most of the last decade of her life, the time when others found spouses and started families, to her work. She didn’t strive for fame and success, but she was driven and dedicated and possessed a sense of purpose that had been instilled in her early in life.