THE LONG BANGALORE night was nearly at an end. Thick with the stench of raw sewage, disease, and human sweat, dense with terror, displaced rage, thwarted desire, and despair, the ashen dawn did nothing to return color to the city.
Finding a physician’s surgery, Arkadin broke in and took what he needed: sutures, iodine, sterile cotton, bandages, and antibiotics to take the place of the ones he hadn’t been able to pick up at the hospital. Loping through the wheezing streets, he knew he needed to stop the bleeding of the wound at the back of his thigh. It wasn’t life threatening, but it was deep, and he didn’t want to lose any more blood. Even more, though, he needed a place to hide, where he could stop the clock that Oserov had set ticking, a place of respite where he could assess his situation. He cursed himself for having been caught flat-footed by the enemy. But he was also acutely aware that his next step was a crucial one, disaster could so quickly compound itself into a catastrophe of deathly proportions.
With his local security penetrated, he could no longer trust any of his usual contacts in Bangalore, which left only one option: the place where he maintained absolute leverage. On the way, entering an encrypted number that gave him access to a relay of secure signal routers, he called Stepan, Luka, Pavel, Alik, as well as Ismael Bey, the figurehead leader of the Eastern Brotherhood, which he controlled.
“We’re under attack from Maslov, Oserov, the entire Kazanskaya,” he told each one brusquely and without preamble. “As of this moment we’re in a state of war.”
He had trained them well, none of them asked superfluous questions, merely acknowledged the order with curt replies. Then they rang off in order to commence the preparations Arkadin had blueprinted for them months ago. Each captain had his specific role to play, each was activating his piece of a plan that literally stretched across the globe. Maslov wanted war, that’s precisely what he was going to get, and not merely on a single front.
Arkadin shook his head and barked a laugh. This moment was always in the wind, as inevitable as their next breath. Now that it was upon him there was a palpable sense of relief. No more grinning through gritted teeth, no more pretending a friendship where only bitter enmity existed.
You’re a dead man, Dimitri Ilyinovich, Arkadin thought. You just don’t know it yet.
A touch of watery pink had tinged the sky, and he was almost at Chaaya’s. Time to make the difficult call. He punched in an eleven-digit number. A male drone at the other end said “Federal Anti-Narcotics Agency” in Russian. The now infamous FSB-2 that, under its leader, a man named Viktor Cherkesov, had become the most powerful and feared agency within the Russian government, surpassing even the FSB, the KGB’s successor.
“Colonel Karpov, if you please,” Arkadin said.
“It’s four AM. Colonel Karpov is unavailable,” the drone said in a voice not unlike one of the undead from a George Romero film.
“So am I,” Arkadin said, honing his sardonic edge, “but I’m making the time to talk to him.”
“And who might you be?” the emotionless voice said in his ear.
“My name is Arkadin, Leonid Danilovich Arkadin. Go find your boss.”
There was a quick catch of the drone’s breath, then, “Hold the line.”
“Sixty seconds,” Arkadin said, looking at his watch and starting the countdown, “no more.”
Fifty-eight seconds later a series of clicks was followed by a deep, gruff voice that said, “This is Colonel Karpov.”
“Boris Illyich, we’ve almost met so many times over the years.”
“Would that I could cross out the almost. How do I know I’m speaking to Leonid Danilovich Arkadin?”
“Dimitri Maslov is still giving you fits, isn’t he?”
When Karpov gave no response, Arkadin continued. “Colonel, who else could give you the Kazanskaya on a silver platter?”
Karpov laughed harshly. “The real Arkadin would never turn on his mentor. Whoever you are, you’re wasting my time. Good-bye.”
Arkadin gave him an address hidden in the industrial outskirts of Moscow.
Karpov was silent for a moment, but Arkadin, listening carefully, could hear the harsh soughing of his breathing. Everything depended on this conversation, on Karpov believing that he was, in fact, Leonid Danilovich Arkadin and that he was telling the truth.
“What am I to make of this address?” the colonel said after a time.
“It’s a warehouse. From the outside it looks exactly like the hundred or so on either side of it. Inside, as well.”
“You’re boring me, gospadin Whoever-You-Are.”
“The third door on the left near the back will take you into the men’s room. Go past the urinal trough to the last stall on the right, which has no toilet, only a door in the rear wall.”
There was only a moment’s hesitation before Karpov said, “And then?”
“Go in heavy,” Arkadin said. “Armed to the teeth.”
“You’re saying that I should take a squad with-”
“No! You go alone. Furthermore, you don’t sign out, you don’t tell a soul where you’re going. Tell them you’re going to the dentist or for an afternoon fuck, whatever your comrades will believe.”
Another pause, this one dark with menace. “Who’s the mole inside my office?”
“Ah, now, Boris Illyich, don’t be so ungrateful. You don’t want to spoil my fun, not after the gift I’ve just given you.” Arkadin took a breath. Having witnessed the colonel take the bait, he judged the moment right to sink the hook all the way in. “But were I you, I wouldn’t use the singular-moles is more like it.”
“What-? Now, listen to me-!”
“You’d best get rolling, Colonel, or your targets will have packed up for the day.” He chuckled. “Here’s my number, I know it didn’t come up on your phones. Call me when you return and we’ll talk names and, quite possibly, much, much more.”
He cut the connection before Karpov could say another word.
Near the end of the workday Delia Trane was sitting at her desk looking over a three-dimensionally rendered computer model of a diabolically clever explosive device, trying to find a way to disarm it before the timer went off. A buzzer deep inside the bomb would sound the instant she failed-if she cut the wrong wire with her virtual cutter or moved it inordinately. She herself had created the software program that had rendered the virtual bomb, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t having the devil’s own time figuring out a way to disarm it.
Delia was a plain-looking woman in her midthirties with pale eyes, short-cropped hair, and skin deeply burnished by the genes from her Colombian mother. Despite her relative youth and her often ferocious temper, she was one of the ATF’s most coveted explosives experts. She was also Soraya Moore’s best friend, and when one of the guards from reception called to say Soraya was in the lobby she asked him to send her right up.
The two women had met through work, had sparked off each other’s feistiness and independence, recognizing and appreciating kindred spirits, so difficult to find in the hermetically sealed public sector inside the Beltway. Because they had met on one of Soraya’s clandestine assignments they had no need to conceal from each other their life’s work and what it meant to them, the number one relationship killer in DC. Further, both of them realized that, for better or for worse, their entire lives were bound up in their respective services, that they were unsuited for anything but work they couldn’t talk about with civilians, which in a way validated their existence, their independence as women, and their importance irrespective of the gender bias that existed here as virtually everywhere else in Washington. Together they daily took on the DC establishment like a pair of Amazons.
Delia returned to the contemplation of her model, which to her was like an entire world in miniature. Within seconds she was completely immersed in her problem, so she didn’t give a second thought to what her friend was doing here at this time of day. When a shadow fell over her work she looked up into Soraya’s face and knew something was terribly wrong.