Disposable Asset Read online

  ‘It is,’ said Bordachenko, ‘the very spot at which Karakozov tried to assassinate the czar in 1866.’

  ‘My point. So. We’ll need additional men – plain clothes – on both sides of the bridge. A sniper here …’ Zig. ‘And here.’ Zag. ‘Once we’re across: left on Sadovaya. Then over another, smaller bridge crossing the Moika. Too much open space here, I’d think, but again, we err on the side of caution. Plain-clothes agents here, and here. Snipers here, and here. Continuing down Sadovaya, we reach the intersection with Italyanskaya. Another prime location: multiple escape routes, cover to shoot from, heavy traffic. Again, we need men close enough to act, not so close as to scare her off. Here. And here.’

  Bordachenko pooched out his lips, nodded.

  The image zipped to Prachechnyy, on the bank of the Moika. ‘Then on to Nevsky. When he leaves the car, she’ll have trouble getting close; plenty of uniforms in the area already. But she might turn that around on us. Come up with a disguise we don’t anticipate, strike where we least expect. We need to be ready for anything.’

  ‘Whilst giving the appearance,’ said Bordachenko, ‘of being ready for nothing.’

  Ravensdale smiled mirthlessly and nodded.

  SOUTH OF NEVSKY

  Cassie selected ingredients, keeping one ear cocked to make sure the old woman’s snoring didn’t pause.

  Behind cleaning solutions and detergents she found potting soil and fertilizers, seeds and bulbs, bleach and lye, pesticides and mousetraps, ammonia and drain unclogger, batteries and antifreeze. She began taking down bottles, lining them up on the washing machine.

  A Molotov cocktail, Quinn had said, is the world’s simplest firebomb. Any highly flammable material in a large glass bottle will do. That means lighter fluid, ethyl or methyl alcohol, gasoline, kerosene, turpentine …

  She arranged her ingredients with grim satisfaction. But Molotov cocktails are just a start. Should circumstances conspire to keep you from your contacts – should you find yourself unable to get your hands on Pyrodex or plastique or any of that good stuff – you can whip up something nearly as effective using the contents of any ordinary house. The secret to explosives? In a word, combustion. Combustion requires oxygen, hydrogen, a spark of energy, and a carbon source. So; we’ll start small. Take a common bathroom cleanser, which contains ammonia, ethyl or methyl alcohol, and various additives in trace amounts. Then take a little piece of aluminum – aluminum foil, a can, some wiring with the insulation stripped. Drop it in and close it up and back away, because your aluminum will be reacting with your ammonia, creating hydrogen gas and azide, and pretty soon you can apply the Ideal Gas Law, which says that if the temperature is high, the pressure will be in direct correlation … To give you an idea of the kinds of temperatures and pressures we’re talking about here, Cassie, this is the same principle that drives the space shuttle, which uses hydrogen gas for rocket fuel.

  She poured the contents of a bottle of disinfectant into the sink, then half-filled the bottle again with fertilizer. She shucked a large battery from a flashlight, dashed it against the concrete floor with a grunt.

  But your ammonia-and-aluminum-foil bomb is a firecracker compared to, say, ammonium nitrate. That’s what Timothy McVeigh used in Oklahoma City. Ammonium nitrate is powerful, but insensitive. That means it’s not going to explode until you want it to. You can transport it without worrying about losing a finger. The flip side is that when you do want it to go off, you’re going to need to help it along – using some kind of priming charge.

  Biting her lip, she tipped the leaking battery, trickling liquid into the bottle. Her hands shook slightly, slopping out acid on to the floor. Each time a drop fell, she braced herself. In a chemistry lab this all would have been done with rubber gloves, collective flasks, safety goggles, stabilizing compounds …

  Slow and steady.

  A clammy sweat had sprung up on her brow. She paused to wipe it off, then kept pouring.

  Gently, she mixed, using a circular, soothing motion, dredging up in the process a memory of trying to mix a very full glass of chocolate milk without a spoon, the Nestlé Quik Bunny grinning loonily at her from a box on a countertop. She had been a very little girl.

  She mixed faster. Not being as careful as she should. In a hurry to get this done, to get at Quinn while she still had the chance. What kind of man took advantage of a girl who’d lost her parents? He had led her, under false pretenses, down a dark and bloody road. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. The miseries he’d put her through, the cold and hunger and danger and fear, all for his own selfish purposes. What’s done cannot be undone. The machinations, the manipulations. Overall, men prefer sloppy kisses, which pass chemicals, including testosterone, via saliva. She was going to be sick—

  She paused, swallowing hard, pressing down rising bile.

  She blew sweaty hair off her forehead. After a few moments, she returned to the task at hand.

  When the precipitate had mixed to her satisfaction, she felt a sudden urge to pour the concoction down the drain. She could slip back into bed and, in the morning, continue her new life with Masha, pretend none of this had ever happened. Nothing was preventing it …

  Instead, she carefully set down the bottle on top of the dryer. She turned back to the washing machine, to make another selection. From the damask chair down the hall the old woman snored steadily, all unknowing.

  ULITSA VARVARKA

  Yuri Antsiferov watched closely as the prisoner cleaned her bowl.

  Months in the katorga had melted any superfluous ounce of flesh from her frame. Close-shorn hair revealed every lovely contour of her face and skull. Even starvation and filth could not compromise her air of status, of prestige. As Yuri understood, she was a very important asset, a Director’s case run straight from the top floor of Lubyanka, a veteran of the Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti herself, now awaiting a vital and top-secret prisoner exchange. But she possessed a natural regality which went beyond station and circumstance, which was inherent and inviolable.

  When she handed back the bowl, their eyes met.

  As a younger man, he had been accustomed to the attention of beautiful women. At twenty-two he had become the Russian Professional League’s undisputed master of bare-chested, full-contact kick-boxing; his nickname had been the Dragon. Females had fawned over him, fought over him. But many years had passed since. He had lost, one at a time, the things that attracted beautiful women. Now women only ever looked at him to see what they could get from him.

  This one, too, only wanted to get something from him. Captive and captor, he reminded himself. So let her make eyes all she wanted. Cozying up to him would not mean an extra ration, nor even a kind word. Yuri Antsiferov was not a man to fall prey to the manipulations of a beautiful woman. He had seen his mother manipulate his father too many times to ever let it happen to him.

  When he turned toward the door, she said: ‘Wait.’

  He looked back. She held herself meekly – but her meekness was unconvincing, a facade with which she tried and failed to conceal her tremendous natural beauty.

  ‘What are they going to do with me?’ she asked.

  He thought about it, shrugged, and reached again for the knob.

  ‘Wait,’ she said quickly. ‘Please.’

  He looked back again, dully.

  ‘I need a bath,’ she said. ‘Some clean clothes. Can you—’

  He shut the door on her. Shooting the deadbolt, he frowned. She must think him a very easy mark, indeed.

  In the kitchen, a neglected skillet was sizzling on the stove. At an old trestle table, Viktor Samsonov was examining a fan of cards from below heavy-lidded eyes. Yakov Pikhoya sat across from him, crossword puzzle propped on his ample belly, frowning dourly at his own hand. Both men wore over-the-shoulder holsters equipped with PSM pistols, as did Yuri himself.

  ‘Any day now,’ Yakov was saying as Yuri came into the room.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ Viktor answered.
At thirty he was the youngest of the group and seemingly too nice for the business in which he’d ended up. He would have done better finding a simple girl and moving somewhere out of the city, thought Yuri, and taking up something harmless, like farming.

  ‘It’s not brain surgery, kid. But take your time. No hurry.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Viktor said. ‘There’s no time limit.’

  ‘Yeah, but your eggs are burning.’

  Yuri Antsiferov fell into a chair without comment. Viktor studied his cards.

  ‘It’s not rocket science,’ Yakov wheedled.

  ‘I’m thinking.’

  ‘No. If you were thinking, I’d be smelling the smoke. All I smell are burning eggs.’

  Viktor threw down his cards, flustered, and pushed back from the table. At the stove, he looked into the skillet and muttered a curse. He scraped eggs into the garbage. ‘Someone’s got to go to market.’

  Yakov and Yuri both said nothing.

  Viktor sighed. ‘Blyad.’ He set down the skillet with a bang and, grumbling, stormed off to find his coat.

  Yakov squared his cards on the table, went back to his crossword puzzle. Yuri turned his head a bit, catching a glimpse of himself in the door of the oven. In the dim reflection he could see only rough shapes – the heavy jaw of his face, the solid block of his shoulders – and no fine detail. Without the wrinkles and sagging pouches, he could see the man he once had been. The Dragon.

  His mind circled back to the woman … if it had ever really left her. She must, he thought again, consider him one hell of an easy mark. But in playing with him, she was playing with fire. The Dragon, after all, was a force of nature. His opponents in the ring had learned that lesson the hard way. Push the Dragon too far and a veil of black rage fell over his eyes, and he did not come back to himself until the referee was pulling him off a limp, bloodied mess on the canvas.

  And if the woman pushed too hard, she would regret it. Because a man had needs. And he had not been with a female since a wild night with two prostitutki the year before. If she kept batting her eyelids at him, she would find out just what happened when a beautiful woman took a man for a fool one time too many … just as his mother had eventually learned from his father.

  ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall,’ cracked Yakov.

  Yuri looked quickly away from his reflection, flushing, and then kicked out the chair from beneath the man, guffawing rudely as his partner spilled down to the dirty floor.

  ELEVEN

  FURSHTATSKAYA ULITSA

  The man calling himself Julian Quinn climbed into the limousine; a Marine slammed the door behind him.

  The ZIL-4112R pulled away, sandwiched between pilot car and rear guard, riding low on puncture-proof tyres thanks to military-grade armor doors. After navigating a narrow access road fronting the row of embassies, the limo merged on to the main avenue heading west … and then, in the bumper-to-bumper sludge of Saturday morning traffic, drew immediately to a stop.

  ‘Clear at beta,’ said a voice in Vlasov’s ear.

  ‘Clear at gamma,’ said a second voice.

  ‘Clear at alpha,’ said Vlasov into his collar.

  No gunshots had sounded; no explosions had shaken the block’s windows in their frames. Yet the Inspektor felt an intuition, a vibrating instinct. Their quarry, he thought, was nearby. Invisible in the crowds, sizing up the situation, developing a plan of attack.

  He looked up the wide avenue, checking faces, and then down. He saw tourists and chauffeurs and bodyguards, diplomats and secretaries, soldiers and couriers, traffic cops and construction workers. Tour buses and private cars and police cruisers and limousines, delivery vans and taxi cabs and a single lumbering backhoe. Horns blared; exhaust blew everywhere.

  No sign of the girl.

  The limousine crept glacially forward with the rest of the traffic. Vlasov strolled down the sidewalk ahead of it, making better time on foot than the ZIL made on the street. Reaching the end of the block, he came to a stop. To cover his lack of motion, he lit a thin brown cigarette. Drawing deep, he looked around again.

  Here came the limo, turning left on to Liteynyy, still moving at a crawl. His lips brushed the collar microphone. ‘Trapdoor on Liteynyy. All clear.’

  ‘Clear at Chaykovskogo,’ said another voice.

  ‘Clear at Kirochnaya,’ confirmed a third.

  The ZIL edged south. Maintaining a distance of about ten yards, Vlasov followed.

  Four kilometers away, Inspektor Bordachenko listened to the voices in his earpiece.

  A sudden sharp report made him fall into a crouch, reaching beneath his coat. But it was just a sooty Moskvich, backfiring as it put-putted down the road before the Admiralty Building. Bordachenko straightened sheepishly, withdrawing the hand from beneath his lapel.

  No civilians seemed to have noticed his reaction. Students from the nearby Art and Industry Academy rushed to catch trolleys. Two girls walking with hooked arms laughed merrily. A slender, bearded teenager struggled with a heavy black viola case. German tourists bartered aggressively with a street vendor; an old woman urged a poodle to piss in a gutter; a young family pitched coins into the dry fountain of Alexander Garden. Even the contingent of politsiya posted before Sledkom headquarters paid no attention. Only the undercover operatives – a pair on the nearest corner, another on the corner beyond – exchanged taut, loaded glances.

  Bordachenko smoothed down his coat, stood straight, and checked his watch. She would not show herself, he thought.

  He tugged anxiously on his nose. Just seventy-two hours before, life had been easy. There had been no escaped girl, no demanding Inspektor from Moscow, no slippery Americans, no dangerous political rip-tides to be avoided. Of course, at the time he had not appreciated his good fortune. Instead, he had worried about his mistress, his love handles, the irregular mole on the back of his neck. Such was life. You never knew what you had until it was gone.

  He looked up the street and down. She would not show herself, he thought again.

  Ravensdale stood on a corner, facing east.

  Wind blew a light skim of snow along the sidewalk. Three women walking past engaged in animated conversation. Across the street, two men leaning in a doorway ate pastries out of tightly-clutched waxed paper. A traffic light at the nearest intersection changed. A motorcyclist cut off a truck driver. Angry words were exchanged. Down the block, a clutch of off-duty soldiers lounged outside a cellphone store.

  A girl was threading her way through the crowd: shoulders closed, head lowered.

  His eyes followed her. Early twenties, dark hair. Yellow silk scarf, face tilted down. Poised on the balls of her feet. Hiding something beneath a dun-colored cloth coat.

  She came to a stop on the corner, standing behind a bald man wearing a blue windbreaker and a gym bag over one shoulder. Sidling closer to him as they waited for the light to change.

  A traffic policeman blew his whistle, glanced toward the corner. The girl turned away from the man in the windbreaker, wandered a few aimless paces.

  Ravensdale watched her.

  She was half a head too tall. But she might be wearing lifts. He checked his watch. The motorcade would be along any minute. She was less than five yards away, hovering.

  Better safe than sorry.

  He dropped his cigarette and moved forward.

  Inside the limousine, Andrew Fletcher exhaled shortly. ‘Can we get some fresh air back here?’

  The driver, a young Marine in midnight blue, glanced over his shoulder, adjusted the climate control, and refocused on the traffic.

  Fletcher wiped his brow. His hand continued inelegantly – the range of motion compromised by the Kevlar body armor beneath his dark Ermenegildo Zegna suit – to check his breast holster. Listening to the voices chattering in his earpiece, he leaned back and heaved another sigh.

  Once upon a time, he thought, it had not been such an uphill fucking climb.

  Once upon a time they had all been idealists, bright college boys who knew
that they had right on their side, who knew that America stood for everything good in the world, that it was a privilege to spend one’s days trouncing her enemies. Now it was all opportunists like Blakely and Ravensdale, looking out for number one; back-stabbers treated by the twenty-four news cycle like brave saviors because they dared to ‘buck the system’ – really, because they dared to be selfish, and because the maw of the media had to be fed. Leaving men like Fletcher, who cared only about what was right, who saw the lasting simplicity of the equation, to pick up the slack, to bend over backwards, and now to place himself squarely in the center of a cross hairs. Had Benjamin Blakely not been a turncoat, had Charlie Bent not proven incompetent in Beliy Gorod, had Sean Ravensdale delivered on his promises with Tsoi, Fletcher would not have found himself here. He would have been back in his office in Washington, doing good on a wide scale, putting into place the components of a new operation, instead of risking his life to mop up a messy spill before it spread.

  Ah, but there was a saying about that: something about spilt milk.

  Despite everything, he grinned.

  As Ravensdale drew close, the girl broke into a run.

  He lunged after her, diving between two well-dressed businessmen, pushing aside a kid with a balloon. He almost got hold of the tip of the yellow scarf; then she spun on one heel, pivoting away … and plowing into a wall of matronly flesh. Then he had her. Pulling back, using his bulk as an anchor, he tightened the silk around her throat, stopping her dead.

  From farther up the block, the off-duty soldiers watched. Across the street, the two men in the doorway paused their breakfast. But nobody roused themselves to interfere. The girl had gone limp on the other end of the scarf, playing dead, or something like it. She was younger than Ravensdale had thought in that first glance; sixteen, seventeen. Long attenuated eyelashes. Frightened mouth like a small pursed apricot.

  Reaching beneath her coat, he found items tucked into large, loose pockets: two wallets, three phones, a key ring, a guilloche gold cigarette lighter.