The man loosened his scarf and removed his hat, revealing a head of thinning, flyaway hair. Irina immediately recognized him. He was the better angel who had convinced her to talk about the worst night of her life. And he was now walking toward her desk, hat in one hand, briefcase in the other. And, somehow, Irina was now on her feet. Smiling. Shaking his cold, tiny hand. Inviting him to sit. Asking how she might be of assistance.
“I need some help planning a trip,” he said in Russian.
“Where are you going?”
“The West.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“How long will you be staying?”
“Indefinitely.”
“How many in your party?”
“That, too, is still to be determined. With luck, we’re going to be a large group.”
“When are you planning to leave?”
“Late this evening.”
“So what precisely can I do?”
“You can tell your supervisor you’re going out for coffee. Make sure you bring your valuables. Because you’re never coming back here again. Ever.”
64
A RUSSIAN DACHA can be many things. A timbered palace. A toolshed surrounded by radishes and onions. The one at the end of the narrow track fell somewhere in between. It was low and stout, solid as a ship, and clearly built by Bolshevik muscle. There was no veranda or steps, just a small door in the center, reached by a well-worn groove in the snow. On either side of the door was a window of paned glass. Once upon a time, the frames had been forest green. Now they were something like gray. Thin curtains hung in both windows. The curtain on the right moved as Mikhail slid the Range Rover into PARK and killed the engine.
“Take the key.”
“You sure?”
“Take it.”
Mikhail removed the key and zipped it into a small pocket over his heart. Gabriel glanced at the two sentries. They were standing about ten feet from the dacha, guns cradled across their chests. Their positioning presented Gabriel with something of a challenge. He would have to fire at a slight upward trajectory so that the rounds didn’t shatter the windows upon exiting the Russians’ skulls. He made this calculation in the time it took Mikhail to pick up a cylindrical thermos flask. He had been making such calculations since he was a boy of twenty-two. Just one more decision to make. Which hand? Right or left? He had the ability to make the shot with either. Because he would be climbing out of the Rover on the passenger’s side, he decided to fire with the right. That way there would be no chance of banging the suppressor against the fender on the way up.
“Are you sure you want them both, Gabriel?”
“Both.”
“Because I can take the one on the left.”
“Just get out.”
Once again, Mikhail opened the door and climbed out. This time, Gabriel did the same thing, parka unzipped, Beretta at the seam of his trousers. Mikhail approached the sentries, thermos aloft, chattering in Russian. Something about hot coffee. Something about the Moscow traffic being shit. Something about Ivan being on the warpath. Gabriel couldn’t be certain. He didn’t much care. He was looking at the spot, just beyond the Rover’s right-front tire, where he was going to drop to one knee and end two more Russian lives.
The guards were no longer looking at Mikhail but at each other. Shoulders shrugged. Heads shook.
And Gabriel knelt on his spot.
Two more flashes. Two more Russians down.
No sound. No broken windows.
Mikhail leaned the thermos against the base of the door and quickly retreated several steps.
The birch forest trembled.
Silence no more.
ON THE back side of the dacha, three men rose in unison and advanced slowly through the trees. Navot reminded them to keep their heads down. There was about to be a lot of lead in the air.
CHIARA SAT up with a start, hands cuffed, feet shackled, dust and debris raining down on her in the pitch-darkness. From above, she could hear the hammer of footfalls against the floorboards. Then muffled gunshots. Then screams.
“Someone’s coming, Grigori!”
More gunshots. More screams.
“Get on your feet, Grigori! Can you get on your feet?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You have to try.”
Chiara heard a moan.
“Too many broken bones, Chiara. Too little strength.”
She reached her cuffed hands into the darkness.
“Take my hands, Grigori. We can do it.”
A few seconds elapsed while they found each other in the gloom.
“Pull, Grigori! Pull me up.”
He moaned again in agony as he pulled on Chiara’s hands. The instant her weight was centered over the balls of her feet, she straightened her legs and stood. Then, amid the gunshots, she heard another sound: the woman with milk-white skin and translucent eyes coming down the stairs in a hurry. Chiara inched closer to the door, careful not to trip over the shackles, and squeezed into the corner. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but she was certain of one thing. She wasn’t going to die. Not without a fight.
IT TURNED out none of the phones were working. Yekaterina’s didn’t work. The built-in on board the Bell didn’t work. And not one phone among the security detail worked. Not a single phone. Not until the children’s plane was airborne. Then the phones worked just fine. Ivan called the Kremlin and was soon talking to a close aide of the president’s. Oleg Rudenko placed several calls to his men at the dacha, none of which were answered. He glanced at his watch: 9:08. Another shift of guards was due any minute. Rudenko dialed the number for the senior man and lifted the phone to his ear.
THE COMBINATION of the concussive blast wave and the deafening thunderclap did most of the heavy lifting for them. All Mikhail and Gabriel had to do was take care of a few loose ends.
Loose end number one was the guard who had peered briefly through the window. Gabriel dispatched him with a quick burst of a Mini-Uzi seconds after entry.
Before the blast, two more guards had been enjoying a quiet breakfast. Now they were sprawled across the floor, separated from their weapons. Gabriel raked them with Uzi fire and stepped into the kitchen, where a fourth guard had been making tea. That one managed to squeeze off a single shot before taking several rounds in the chest.
The right side of the dacha was now secured.
A few feet away, Mikhail was having similar success. After following Gabriel through the blown-out doorway, he had immediately spotted two dazed guards in the dacha’s central hall. Gabriel had crouched instinctively before squeezing off his first shots, thus opening a clean firing line for Mikhail. Mikhail had taken it, sending a sustained burst of gunfire down the hall just a few inches over Gabriel’s head. Then he had immediately pivoted toward the sitting room. One of Ivan’s men had been watching the highlights of a big football match on television when the charge went off. Now he was covered in plaster and dust and searching blindly for his weapon. Mikhail put him down with a shot to the chest.
“Where’s the girl?” he asked the dying man in Russian.
“In the cellar.”
“Good boy.”
Mikhail shot him in the face. Left side of the dacha secured.
They headed to the stairs.
SQUEEZED INTO the corner of the blacked-out cell, Chiara heard three sounds in rapid succession: a padlock snapping open, a dead bolt sliding back, a latch turning. The metal door moved away with a heavy scrape, allowing a trapezoid of weak light to enter the cell and illuminate Grigori. Next came a Makarov 9mm, held by a pair of hands. The hands of the woman who had killed Chiara’s child with sedatives. The gun moved away from Chiara a few degrees and took aim at Grigori. His battered face registered no fear. He was in too much pain to be afraid, too weary to resist death. Chiara resisted for him. Lunging forward out of the gloom, she seized the woman by the wrists and bent them backward. The gun went off; in the tiny concrete chamber, it sounded like cannon fire. Then it went off again. Then a third time. Chiara held on. For Grigori. For her baby.