Fisher glanced at Grim, who pursed her lips then said, “No use lying to her.”
Fisher softened his tone. “We’re Americans.”
“So I’m being kidnapped again?”
“No, we’re trying to help your father. We know he’s on the run. We’re offering him—and you—asylum. Do you know where he is?”
She shook her head. “How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“She killed my friend.”
“Who? The Snow Maiden?”
“Is that what they call her? She’s . . . she’s . . .” Nadia began to break down.
Fisher placed a hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right. We’re taking you to our air force base in Turkey. She can’t touch you anymore.”
“Sam, it’s Charlie again. Police on the scene now. They’ve recovered a few of the weapons. I tracked the Snow Maiden on security cams for a few blocks, but then I lost her. She was favoring one of her arms, so Briggs might’ve shot her. Interesting that she doesn’t want any contact with the local authorities.”
“She’s not supposed to blow her cover.”
“Well, she lost Nadia.”
“No, she didn’t,” Fisher corrected. “Not yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ll get to that later.”
Charlie sighed. “All right, but I bet she’s on the shit list in Moscow . . .”
“I doubt that scares her.”
“Right. Anyway, glad you’re still with the living.”
“Me, too.”
Fisher glanced once more at Nadia, so frail and pathetic, looking as though she had nothing.
Instead of everything.
20
THEIR exfiltration route had involved chartering a boat out into the Black Sea and rendezvousing with a Black Hawk chopper whose crew would haul each of them up and into the hovering bird. However, Kobin had arranged for a much more pleasant yet equally clandestine exit. The crew of a private yacht owned by one of his gunrunning associates met them in Bichvinta, a city about thirty miles south of the hotel. They boarded the yacht and were ferried across the Black Sea and back to Trabzon. There, they met the crew of a CIA charter jet and were whisked back to Incirlik, some 360 miles southwest of Trabzon.
In order to maintain operational security, Nadia would stay aboard Paladin, where she would be examined by a doctor before being transferred to another jet for a flight back to the States. The 39th Medical Group’s commander sent them a general practitioner named Evren from the Deployed Flightline Clinic. The doctor was blindfolded and taken aboard the aircraft, where he was guided by Briggs to the infirmary.
“Sorry about all the secrecy,” Fisher said, removing the man’s blindfold.
Evren’s gaze panned across the room and toward the hatch beyond. “C-17?” he asked.
“Something like that. Gets us from point A to point B.” Fisher glanced over at the cot near the far wall, where Nadia was resting, covered by a blanket and with an arm draped over her forehead. “The doctor’s here to examine you,” Fisher said in Russian.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“I insist.”
Fisher muttered in the doctor’s ear, “I want you to check her from head to toe. I want you to look for recent incisions, small ones. We think she might have a tracking chip, and we need to get it out.”
“All right. And of course, I was never here, never saw you, her, or this plane.”
“My diagnosis for you is sudden, acute amnesia.”
Evren snickered. “Why don’t you leave the diagnoses to me. If we could have a moment of privacy?”
Fisher grinned and gestured to Briggs. They left the infirmary and returned to the control center, where Charlie spun around in his chair and said, “She talk yet?”
Fisher shook his head. “We need to take this slowly.”
“She knows where her father is,” said Charlie.
“Maybe not,” said Briggs. “He’s figured out now that they’ve got her, or at least had her, so he’s trying to anticipate what she might say.”
Fisher sighed. “And right now she’s not saying much, trying to protect him.”
“She said they killed her friend in front of her. What makes you think we’ll get her to talk?” asked Briggs.
Fisher considered that. “We need to earn her trust.”
Grim, who’d been conferring with Ollie, came back over to Fisher. She was holding Nadia’s diary. “There’s nothing in here to suggest a location—just a lot of rantings about teachers, school, books, and how ugly the boys are in her classes. Actually, pretty depressing stuff for a little rich girl.”
“Hey, Sam, you get a chance to try the khachapuri?”
Fisher glanced at Kobin, then returned his gaze to Grim. “Does he need to be here?”
“Hey, spy boy, who got you home from Sochi? And by the way, Bab is pissed about her guns.”
Fisher snorted. “We’ll pay her back with peanut butter.”
“Yeah, the old hag would love that.”
“And tell her the ammo sucked!” cried Briggs. “She’s probably had her grandsons reloading it.”
Fisher wasn’t complaining. The ammo sucked, all right, but it had also saved his life.
“So you got the girl,” said Kobin. “Now you call Daddy and wave the bait in his face.”
“And you think it’s that easy?” asked Grim.
“It is—if you know the right players.”
“And you do?”
“Look, if you want, I’ll put the word out to my contacts that we have her,” said Kobin. “See if any of them can pass it on. Maybe it’ll reach Kasperov. He’s got personal security, and a lot of those guys, well, let’s just say they’ve worked the black markets. You never know. If he realizes the Americans have his daughter, maybe he’ll come running to you.”
“No way. We’re not advertising that we have her,” said Fisher. “If that gets back to the Kremlin it’ll really stir the pot. We’ll take it from here.”
“And where are you taking it?” asked Kobin.
Fisher glared at Kobin, who threw up his hands.
“Look, I just want to help,” Kobin said.
Charlie turned back from one of his monitors. “Sam, the doctor’s calling for you.”
Fisher returned to the infirmary, where Evren frowned and kept his voice low. “There is a small incision near her lower back. I felt a capsule-shaped mass embedded beneath the skin.”
“That’s it. I need you to take it out right now.”
“What about her consent?”
“I’m telling you to take it out. That’s an order!”
“You have that authority?”
“Trust me, doc. I do.”
“I’ll need at least a local anesthetic and something to keep her calm.”
“We’ve got everything you need.”
“What would you like me to say to her?”
Fisher considered that. “You prep. I’ll get her ready.” He crossed back to Nadia’s cot and leaned over, softening his expression. “I know you’ve been through a lot. Do you remember if they sedated you? Maybe stuck a needle in your back?”
“They told me I fell and passed out and hurt my back. They told me I cut it and needed stitches.”
“They put a tracking device in your back. We’re going to remove it now. You won’t feel anything.”
Nadia bolted up and reached around to feel the wound. “You’re right. I can feel it in there.”
“Let us get it out.”
“Okay, yes, get it out of me.”
“First, did your father say anything to you about why he needed to run?”
“Not exactly. But he was always talking about all the pressure the government put on him. This is about them. I know it is.”
“Do you know if they were asking him to do anything for them? Maybe something he didn’t want to do?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t like to talk about work. He said it made him feel guilty. He always talked about vacations. Where are we going now?”
“There’s another plane on its way that’ll take you back to the United States.”
“I want to see my father.”