Oleg smiled grimly as he pulled a package of cigarettes and a lighter from his jacket pocket. He lit one and took a long drag. He closed his eyes and seemed to savor the taste and the moment.
“Before we forget, I need the passwords to get into all your files,” Marcus said.
Oleg reopened his eyes. He reached into another pocket, retrieved a folded piece of paper, and handed it over. Marcus opened it and found it was a computer printout of at least twenty different passcodes. He took out his mobile phone, snapped several pictures of it, then borrowed Oleg’s lighter and set it aflame.
Suddenly Morris’s voice crackled over the radio.
“Keyhole to Razor—the choppers will be here in nine minutes. Over.”
“Roger that,” Marcus replied. “Get the car in position, and stand by.”
He turned back to Oleg. “Since we have a moment, can I ask you a question?”
“Of course,” Oleg said.
“You told me that Nimkov wants to proceed with the invasion but Petrovsky does not. Did I get that right?”
“You did.”
“So if you succeed tonight and the president is out of the picture, do the war plans go forward without the full and active support of the defense minister?”
“Probably not.”
“Are there others in the cabinet or in the war council pushing for war, others who really want to attack NATO?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Just your father-in-law?”
“And Nimkov.”
“Right,” Marcus said. “And if the president is gone and Nimkov is alone, could he persuade the others to proceed?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so—no.”
“What will Petrovsky do?”
Oleg considered that for a moment. “I think there’s a real possibility he will arrest Nimkov for treason. And call off the war.”
“Could he do that?”
“I believe so. The last public statement made by the president to Senator Dayton and the world was that he was going to pull all Russian forces back from the borders and deescalate the situation. Petrovsky could proceed on that basis while accusing Nimkov of trying to orchestrate a coup against Luganov. He could throw Nimkov in prison and announce that he was carrying out the express wishes of the late President Luganov. It just might work.”
It had better, Marcus thought.
Again, Morris radioed in. “Seven minutes.”
Marcus ignored her.
“So you remain convinced it all comes down to whether Luganov lives or dies?”
“Believe me, Mr. Ryker, I want there to be another way,” Oleg said. “But I can’t come up with one. Can you?”
“No, I can’t,” Marcus said. “And I’m sorry.”
“Then may I ask you a question?” Oleg said.
“Of course.”
“If you were in my place—if the situation were completely reversed—would you do it?”
Marcus paused. He hadn’t thought about it in those terms. “It doesn’t really matter what I’d do, Oleg,” he finally said. “It’s your life. Trust me, I won’t judge you for a moment if you choose not to do this. You can leave with us right now, and we’ll get you out of the country if you want. It’s your choice.”
Oleg looked thoughtful. “I keep thinking about what Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago. ‘In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.’ My father-in-law is attempting to perpetrate a terrible evil. I can’t just save myself. That’s the coward’s way out, and I’ve been a coward for too long. I want to do something significant, something important with my life. I wouldn’t have chosen this. I’d much rather have retired to the Riviera and tried my hand at writing a great Russian novel. But these are the cards I’ve been dealt. This is the hand I need to play.”
“And your wife and son?” Marcus asked, wondering why he’d never once brought them up. “Don’t you want to be with them?”
Oleg looked down at the smoldering cigarette in his hands. “Whom do you think I’m doing this for, Mr. Ryker? I may never see them again, but at least they won’t be vaporized in a millisecond of brilliant light.”
Again the radio crackled. The choppers would be there in less than four minutes. They were out of time.
86
“Go, go, go!” Marcus yelled as he bolted out of the house and into the Mercedes.
“Where’s Kraskin?” Morris asked, visibly stunned to see her partner alone.
“Never mind. Floor it, Jenny,” Marcus ordered.
The CIA’s top operative in Russia bristled, but with the choppers inbound she did as she was told.
Marcus reloaded his rifle and prayed for his crazy scheme to work as they blew through the front gates and tore down the slick back roads at dangerously high speeds.
It was still pitch-black. The clock on the dashboard said it was only 4:28. Few other cars were on the roads at such an hour, but the snow was coming down even harder now, and Morris had the windshield wipers on full blast. As blood continued oozing down his left leg, Marcus reached into the backseat, grabbed his backpack, and pulled out his first aid kit.
“I have the flash drive,” he said at last as he fished through the kit until he found a hypodermic needle, loaded it with a painkiller, and jammed it into his left thigh.
“Good,” Morris said. “But where is Oleg? Was he killed?”
“No, he’s alive,” Marcus said. He spread antibiotic ointment over the wound and wrapped it with gauze and tape. “He said he’d meet us at the airport. But first he has to go see Luganov.”
“Why?”
“He said he had to see him about something critical that might help stop the war.” Marcus stuffed the first aid kit back into his pack and tossed it behind him as he scanned the skies for the inbound hostage rescue team. At the same time, he was looking from side to side for the SUV that had gotten away, lest it was lurking in the shadows, waiting to ambush them. He knew full well he was edging close to a line. He wasn’t lying to her, not quite. But he couldn’t tell her a thing. Not now. Perhaps not ever.
“Ryker, that’s not acceptable,” Morris shot back. “We had orders from the president of the United States to bring the Raven out alive.”
“Look, he knows the risks, especially with Luganov launching an all-out mole hunt. But he was adamant. He believes he has to go see the president one more time. There was nothing I could do.”
“You could have grabbed him anyway.”
“Kidnapped him?”
“Call it what you want, Ryker—the president gave us the green light to execute a plan you initiated. Not just to get the files but to get the Raven.”
“And we will. I told you, he said he’d meet us at the airport.”
“That wasn’t the plan.”
“It is now.”
“Please don’t tell me we just killed eleven Russians to retrieve a thumb drive Mr. Kraskin could have simply left on the kitchen table for us to grab.”
It was a brutal accusation, tantamount to murder. Marcus would have none of it. He pushed back with a vengeance. “We’re in the fog of war, Jenny. The situation changed. Oleg kept his word. He gave us what he promised. But he doesn’t think it’s enough. He thinks he can do more, something that could significantly change the course of the war or even derail it from the outset. You really think I should have kidnapped him? The son-in-law of the Russian president? What if I did? How would we get him to the airport? How would we get him onto the plane? Drug him? And then what? Take him to a black site? Beat the crap out of him to tell us everything he knows? And what after that? If we don’t kill him, we have to release him. You want him to go public with all that? Are you insane?”