Disposable Asset Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by John Altman

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Two

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part Three

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Recent Titles by John Altman

  A GATHERING OF SPIES

  A GAME OF SPIES

  DECEPTION

  THE WATCHMEN

  THE ART OF THE DEVIL *

  DISPOSABLE ASSET *

  * available from Severn House

  DISPOSABLE ASSET

  John Altman

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2015

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2015 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2015 by John Altman.

  The right of John Altman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Altman, John, 1969- author.

  Disposable Asset.

  1. Moscow (Russia)–Fiction. 2. United States. Central

  Intelligence Agency–Fiction. 3. Soviet Union. Komitet

  gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti–Fiction. 4. Mafia–Russia–

  Fiction. 5. Spy stories.

  I. Title

  813.6-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8509-8 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-612-1 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-663-2 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For my father

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Steve Sims, Richard Curtis, Leslie Silbert, Robert and Jane Altman, Daniel and Sima Altman, Margaret Gray, Judith Rosenberger, Kate Lyall Grant, Rachel Simpson Hutchens, and Charlotte Loftus.

  A prince should have a spy to observe what is necessary, and what is unnecessary, in his own as well as in his enemy’s country.

  Hitopadesha, twelfth century

  PROLOGUE

  SOUTH-EAST OF MOSCOW

  She cruised in at fifty feet, the wind at her back.

  A pre-dawn hush lay across the Russian countryside. Beneath a quarter moon, the backcountry roads were dark ribbons crossing featureless black landscapes. To anyone on the ground, the fiberglass and anodized aluminum tubing of the ultralight Flightstar would be just a furtive glimpse of chrome, an unremarkable twinkle in the night.

  Nearing the police cordon, she killed the Rotax 530 engine. In relative silence, then, she glided over a patch of land manned by half a dozen oblivious sentries. The dacha lay before her, dark and insensate; she aimed for the silhouetted peaks of the roof. Reaching down, she set the bricks of RDX on their thirty-second timer. Thirty …

  Here came the roof, monochromatic through her night-vision goggles. From her belt she selected a white phosphorous grenade and then held it tightly, waiting for her moment.

  Twenty-eight …

  Raising herself out of the pilot’s seat, she clung to the glider with the strength of a single index finger. Two sentries stood atop the rapidly-approaching roof, as expected.

  Twenty-six …

  The tallest peak of the roof was passing beneath her. She triggered the phosphorus grenade and then jumped, rolling out behind the forward propeller, releasing the grenade as clouds of thick white smoke pulsed up around her.

  For a few instants she was in terrifying free-fall, tumbling forward and down at forty miles per hour, stomach lurching. Then she hit the roof, tucking and rolling, spending off her momentum.

  Twenty-two …

  Gaining her feet, she took quick inventory. A rib on her left side felt bruised but not broken. The hazard suit, lined with charcoal, seemed intact. The Flightstar was passing overhead; the roof’s two sentries, confused by the pulsing smoke, emptied their weapons after it.

  Crouching in the shadow of a brick chimney, she drew a silenced Remington, small enough to fit nicely in her hand, and straightened her night-vision goggles. A strand of long blonde hair had come loose; she tucked it efficiently back beneath the black-knit cap.

  Eighteen …

  On the far side of the dacha, the Flightstar hit the earth with enough force to shudder the house’s foundations beneath her feet. Paying no attention, she sighted on one of the sentries, took careful aim, and fired.

  Down he went. Climbing a peak, crouching in another shadow, she tried to find the remaining guard. A dog somewhere started barking hoarsely. Floodlights, mounted all around her, switched on, shining out on to the lawn.

  Fourteen …

  Locating the remaining guard, she took aim and fired. He spun away, clasping one hand to the side of his throat before crumpling off the roof.

  Using the chimney to orient herself, she summoned the dacha’s blueprints to mind. The master bedroom should be four meters west of her current position and two south. She began to pace it off—

  —but someone was shooting; she had to duck back behind the chimney.

  Ten …

  With a mirror mounted on the Remington’s stock, she tried to locate the shooter. Another guard on the roof? A sniper by the helipad? Failing to find him, she was forced to improvise.

  Six …

  From her spot behind the chimney, she hastily arranged four cutter charges in a square on the roof and then backed away, ducking and covering.

  One!

  Right on schedule, the bricks of RDX stashed in the Flightstar exploded, filling the night with a semblance of daylight. At the same instant the cutter charges flared thermite, slicing a square clear down to the dacha’s first floor.

  Donning a gas mask, she lobbed a tear-gas grenade through the hole she’d cut in the roof. Spitting and hissing, it discharged its contents. Hanging from her fingertips, she followed the grenade, dropping on to a charred lip of second-floor carpet.

  The first guard she encountered was already unconscious. The second was still twitching. Sparing him only a fleeting glance, she consulted her mental blueprint again. Two doors opened off
the corridor in which she found herself. Which way to the master bedroom? She fought to concentrate. Every instant she hesitated, the element of surprise slipped farther away. Outside, dogs continued barking; an alarm joined them, pealing wildly up and down.

  Go!

  She chose a door.

  Inside the room, a tiny figure – a little girl – cowered in a bed. ‘Otkuda vy?’ the girl whispered.

  Cassie closed the door and went to sit beside her, stroking dark hair off a tiny forehead. ‘Nichevó stráshnovo,’ she murmured through the mask. ‘I’m an angel. Go back to sleep, honey.’

  After a moment, she crossed to a door on the room’s far side. Behind it, she should find a walk-through bathroom; beyond that, the adjoining master bedroom.

  She led with another tear-gas grenade, followed by a fragmentation grenade. Spider-like, close to the floor, she pressed forward. Bedclothes were burning. Heavy tendrils of smoke and gas clogged her night-vision goggles; she tore them off. She glimpsed the target: wearing a silk bathrobe, patting desperately at flames dancing across his torso. Solidly built, tiers of muscle going to fat, receding gray hairline. He was alone in the room – but his bodyguards would not be far away.

  Three steps put her beside him. She brought up the Remington 1911 R1. Despite the flames dancing across his chest he froze, eyes widening, at the sight of the semi-automatic hovering inches from his face.

  A suspended instant; then she pulled the trigger, sending a parabola of blood and brains splattering across the wall.

  She spent another heartbeat looking down at him. The ruined face, sheeting off the skull like snow off a mountainside beneath a hot sun. A stunningly ordinary face, she thought, for the man she had built up in her head to superhuman proportions, for the man who had—

  Security thundered through the door. As they opened fire, she dove to her right. The sharp smell of Primex powder assailed her nostrils. The wall behind her sprouted smoking holes. She kept moving, rolling behind a chaise settee. Falling on to her back, she planted her feet against the settee and sent it airborne, buying an instant.

  Another shot – zwip – and wood splintered, grazing her temple. She turned and leapt toward the window, hitting the pane high, slicing apart the hazard suit and opening a wide gash on her forehead. Twisting in mid-air, she managed to get a grip on the dacha’s facade, helped by tiny adhesive hairs in her gloves, and avoided tumbling two stories to frozen earth.

  Scaling quickly down, she dropped lightly on to a side patio. Parked in the adjacent driveway were an Infiniti, a Bentley, and a Porsche. Nearby was a fourth vehicle, a Polaris snowmobile: large, chunky, and insectile, painted black and gold, like a yellow jacket. Her hands shook as she found a latch to open the cowl, then removed the air box and worked free the back of the key switch. Five slots, two wires … The engine roared to life.

  Throwing one leg over the saddle, she opened the throttle. An instant later she was whipping past sugar-coated pines and stands of white birch.

  Her temple pulsed. She had lost the knit cap; long blonde hair flayed her face and cheeks. Her ears strained for a descending whistle, for the grenade that had her name on it. None came. Fixing the night-vision goggles back across her eyes, she leaned low over the handles and exhaled: a sigh mixed with a sob. After a moment she risked a look back. No pursuit – not yet – but they would be close behind.

  She passed a wooded meadow and a potato field. The trees gained grandeur. Soon she would hit the road. Then she could dump the snowmobile, find the motorcycle she’d hidden, and vanish.

  She had done it.

  She forced out another shaky breath, made herself focus. Beyond a copse of birch stood a tall chain-link fence, topped with barbed wire; beyond the fence, the road. Skidding to a stop, she abandoned the snowmobile. From a singed pocket of the hazard suit she withdrew a pair of wire-cutters.

  Slicing a gap in the fence, she discarded the cutters and slipped through. Hidden in shadows, dusted with snow, her motorcycle waited. She jumped aboard and started the engine.

  She had done it.

  With a tight smile beneath the mask she whipped back into motion, bending low against the wind.

  PART ONE

  ONE

  BELIY GOROD, MOSCOW

  The hazard suit had been traded for soft brown boots, crisp blue jeans, and an ordinary hooded parka; twin wounds on her temples had been cleaned with handfuls of snow. To anyone watching, she would look like an average young woman of nineteen or twenty, perhaps a bit prettier than most, out past her curfew.

  Moving swiftly, she crossed a cobblestoned street. With its wrought-iron lamp posts, medieval monasteries, and picturesque eighteenth and nineteenth century cottages, the snow-hushed neighborhood evoked a Russia of a bygone era. Approaching a darkened doorway, she felt like Rodion Raskolnikov skulking through shadows after the murder of an elderly pawnbroker … or Anna Karenina, determining in a moment of desperation to fling herself beneath the carriage of an onrushing train.

  Grasping a heavy brass door-knocker, Cassie delivered three soft raps. Then she waited, hugging her elbows and counting. One-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three—

  The door opened. Her contact absorbed her impassively, stepped aside, and waved her up a narrow staircase. Neither spoke until they were behind a closed door on the cottage’s second story, inside a simple room sparsely decorated with religious icons, smelling vaguely of liniment.

  The man was tall and slim, in his middle forties, with cool eyes and a thin, peevish mouth. After locking the door, he turned to a roll-top desk. ‘There’s a white Mondeo parked outside.’ He tossed something, which she caught reflexively: keys. ‘Go to the Mayakovka House on Tverskaya Ulitsa. Pull up outside the lobby. A man will approach the passenger side. Small white bandage on his left hand—’

  Later, thinking back, she was unsure what had tipped her off. His voice might have tightened, or she might have noticed a tension in his carriage. Whatever the case: by the time he turned from the desk, gun in hand, she had already sidestepped and advanced. With her right elbow she struck his Adam’s apple, hard.

  On his knees, emitting small strangled cries, he grappled after the weapon. She bent, pulse thudding in her throat, to recover the silenced GSh-18 before he could reach it.

  Still working on instinct, she opened the door and slipped back out into the narrow stairwell. Again the image of Dostoyevsky’s haunted murderer flashed through her mind. Banishing it quickly – the man might have backup, even now closing in – she turned up, keeping to the sides of the risers, and made for the roof three steps at a time.

  TICONDEROGA, NEW YORK

  Inside the rambling lake house, Ravensdale hung his windbreaker on a hook and then helped the boy take off shoes and coat. ‘Go and play, buddy, while I get dinner ready.’

  His son pattered dutifully, with two-and-a-half-year-old gravity, off into the living room. After watching for a moment, Ravensdale carried his groceries into the kitchen. Putting on water to boil, he began transferring packages into cupboards and refrigerator.

  At the sound of tires against gravel outside, a crease appeared between his eyes. Lifting a curtain, he saw a gray Ford Escort with Maryland plates pulling up beside his Volvo S40. When the Escort stopped, brake lights remained dark. Ravensdale’s scowl deepened. Surveillance vehicle drivers, he thought, sometimes disabled tail lights so that wary targets would not catch the car changing speed to keep pace.

  In the mud room he found the shoebox on the high shelf, withdrew the old Beretta, checked the safety, and slipped the gun into the back of his chinos. Covering the stock with his oversized black T-shirt, he returned to the kitchen, peeking again through the curtain. A figure was moving carefully up the icy walk.

  Opening the front door, Ravensdale caught his visitor in the act of reaching for the bell. Beneath a tweed overcoat and crimson scarf, Andrew Fletcher looked essentially unchanged since their last encounter: high corrugated brow, sandy widow’s peak, pale-blue eyes crackl
ing with intelligence behind stylish Dolce & Gabbana frames. Upon his promotion to Moscow Station Chief, the man had gained a few pounds; now back inside the Beltway he had lost them again, making the boyish cleft in his chin stand out.

  ‘You should have called,’ said Ravensdale curtly.

  ‘I tried. The number you gave me’s no good.’

  ‘Boom!’ said Dmitri from the living room. ‘And red car says, I mad! And blue car says, no, I mad! And red car says, no, I mad!’

  For an uncomfortable moment, Ravensdale refused to cede the doorway. Fletcher looked at him evenly, expectantly, breath forming frosty plumes on the cold air. At last the larger man moved grudgingly aside, gesturing his guest into the kitchen without offering to take coat or scarf.

  In the kitchen, Fletcher spent a moment soaking in the surroundings: percolating water on the stove, shoddy fit of doors in frames, framed photograph on one wall – Ravensdale in happier times, with one arm around Sofiya – and mournful winter twilight beyond a wide picture window. The lake in January was a sad, gray presence. The houses speckling its banks looked small, inconsequential, impermanent. He said dubiously, ‘You like it up here?’

  ‘Suits me.’

  ‘Ha.’ Fletcher loosened his scarf, fixed a cufflink poking out from beneath one overcoat sleeve. ‘I thought retirement might have mellowed you. No such luck, I guess. Well, hell. You must be exhausted. I can’t even imagine chasing after a toddler at this age. These weary old bones.’

  Ravensdale leaned against a counter – the Beretta poked uncomfortably into the small of his back – and said nothing.

  ‘You’ve seen the news?’ asked Fletcher mildly.

  Ravensdale raised his eyebrows.