Disposable Asset Read online

Escape by sea, then. Reach the coast and she might board a ship. But, of course, they would be watching the ports too. An ordinary-looking young woman hardly blended in among sailors and merchant marine. On the other hand, a pleasure cruise – if she could find one – might not be out of the question. But with eyes everywhere, how would it look to purchase last-minute passage with cash? And here, too, would be the problems of documents.

  That left the borders. Russia sprawled over one-eighth of the earth’s inhabited land mass, covering ten time-zones. That meant a lot of border to patrol, with infamously corrupt militiamen patrolling it. A relatively short jaunt to the west would bring her to Lithuania, Belarus, or Ukraine. Safer would be the long trip east, toward Kazakhstan and Mongolia … or north, toward Finland.

  The more she thought about it, the more plausible a border crossing seemed. Realistically, they could not keep all those miles of frontier secure. Out in the remote countryside, far from the scene of the crime, she could hop an unguarded fence or seduce a crooked sentry. If necessary, she could take another life. When circumstances required, as recent events had proved, she was capable of doing terrible things.

  It was a plan – at least the skeleton of one – and she immediately felt easier inside.

  She forced her eyes closed. This was her chance to rest.

  For many long minutes, the wheels in her head kept spinning. She rolled over, fluffed the pillow, forced out breath between clenched teeth. At length, she quieted. Gradually, her breathing turned even.

  Sometime later, she dozed.

  NEW YORK CITY: ONE YEAR EARLIER

  ‘Run,’ a voice breathed into her ear.

  Lights danced through the darkness. When she sat up, one burned directly into her eyes.

  She kicked the sleeping bag aside and flung herself off the mattress, on to bare floor. Even sleep-addled, she realized immediately that there were only two ways out of the room: the window and the door. The lights were coming from the door. She went for the window.

  ‘Police!’ a voice cried. ‘Don’t fucking move!’

  Fumbling at the lock, she pushed the window up. A gust of cold air ruffled her hair. Michelle was right behind her, breathing hard. ‘Hurry,’ Michelle said.

  Someone was coming into the bedroom. By then Cassie was slipping out, on to the fire escape and into the frigid night.

  The tenement was on the fifth floor. She looked down the air shaft, at the garbage cans and the rustling rats, and then up, at the roof and the night sky beyond. She began to climb, dimly aware that Michelle hadn’t made it out behind her.

  ‘Police! Freeze!’

  The fire escape was slippery with ice. She went heedlessly up anyway, throwing herself at rungs before finding firm grips. A moment later she was on the roof. Between this building and the next was a gap of perhaps six feet. Her tongue came out to scrape across chapped lips.

  A man was coming off the fire escape behind her.

  She licked her lips again and took a running jump.

  She landed hard, rolling on to one shoulder. Her wind was knocked out, and for an instant the world shrank to almost nothing: broken glass crunching beneath her, the ripe smell of her own unwashed body filling her nose. Giving her head a quick shake, she scrambled to her feet.

  Rattled down another icy fire escape, grabbing the handrails and sliding the penultimate two flights. Then she was in a garbage-strewn alley, sprinting toward the mouth—

  A brown Cadillac sedan came out of nowhere, jumped the curb in front of her.

  Doors sprung open; three men emerged. She reversed – but now two others were descending the fire escape.

  She reversed again and came to an abrupt halt. Three small, ugly guns pointed unshakingly at her face and chest.

  Slowly, Cassie Bradbury raised her hands above her head.

  She woke to the smooth sound of interstate unfolding beneath tires.

  For a few moments, she couldn’t remember where she was. Then it came back to her: squatting in the tenement, the midnight raid, the rooftop chase. Now she was in an unmarked police cruiser – driving, it seemed, between reefs of hulking dark forest.

  The clock on the dashboard read 1:24 a.m. The man who was driving glanced in the rear-view mirror, saw that she was awake, and returned his eyes to the road without comment.

  Trying to sit up, she discovered that her wrists were still cuffed behind her back. The circulation had been cut off; her hands felt like two numb, disembodied balloons. Surreptitious exploration convinced her that the cuffs were secure.

  She leaned back into the vinyl upholstery. Strange. She knew from unhappy experience that Manhattan had police stations every few blocks. What was the point of bringing her out here, into the country?

  Presently, they left the highway. They drove through a small town, past old-fashioned porches and darkened dormer windows. Then farmland: barns, silos, fields, frozen ponds. Eventually, they turned again, by a mailbox featuring the words ‘COBBLER’S COVE’, on which two carved pheasants nuzzled.

  They reached a high iron gate – so tall that Cassie, from the back seat of the sedan, couldn’t see the top – and then paused, idling, for what seemed like several minutes. At last the gate creaked open with a long, low, theatrical groan. They rolled forward again. The night sky was overcast, and she could pick up only ghostly impressions of the house they were approaching, surrounded by stands of pine.

  The house was a red-brick colonial, two solid stories, with porches and additions giving the illusion of a slowly spreading spill. Ten windows in front, trimmed white; an ivory portico topped with an American flag, which sagged slightly in the middle. History and old money in the air, alongside pine sap and chilled rosemary.

  In a circular driveway, Cassie’s chauffeur parked behind a gray Ford Escort with Maryland plates. He came to the back of the car, took her rucksack in one hand and her elbow in the other, and guided her across a flagstone walk scrupulously denuded of snow.

  They entered a dim foyer furnished with Yankee unfussiness. Then a living room straight from a Williams-Sonoma catalogue: dark wood, light fabric, couch and chairs and throw pillows and lamps skilfully arranged before a cold fireplace. She could feel the house sprawling and looming beyond arched doorways. The echoes were curious: unexpectedly dampened in some ways, unexpectedly sharp in others. Later she would discover that this was because some rooms possessed strange characteristics: padding and mats in the gym, antiseptic metal sharpness in the lab.

  A man stood before the fireplace. He looked as if he’d been standing for hours, just waiting. He had a sandy widow’s peak, pale-blue eyes behind stylish frames, and a pronounced cleft in his chin. He wore a black crew-neck cotton sweater, blue slacks, and brown loafers. To Cassie he looked like nothing so much as a kindly uncle – the intellectual variety, who maybe taught comparative literature at a small local college, and maybe puffed a J or two on a Saturday night with his sexy, horned-rimmed-glasses-wearing wife.

  For a few seconds the man considered her, in the dim light, in silence. ‘Have a seat,’ he said then.

  The one who had been driving set down her backpack, removed the handcuffs, and went to stand inconspicuous guard by the doorway.

  ‘Julian Quinn,’ said the kindly-uncle type as he settled down beside her on the couch.

  He reached for her bag and browsed blithely through her few possessions – clothes, notebook and pen, bowl and stashbox, macramé bracelets, baby wipes, candy bars, dog-eared copy of Catcher in the Rye. It had been her father’s copy, recovered from the attic after his death, marked up in his own hand. Of all the books she’d discovered up there, this had been her favorite, the only one she’d chosen to take along once she had started traveling light.

  The man set the backpack aside. Leaning away, he said, ‘I’m told you led the cops on quite the merry chase.’

  Cassie raised one finger, still tingling with pins and needles from the handcuffs, to part the lank curtain of blonde hair hanging over her eyes.

  �
�What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you want it to be?’ she replied acidly, and sullenly parted her hair again.

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve touched your hair, young lady. It’s what we call a negation behavior. Tends to indicate discomfort or evasion. In this case, I think both. Yes?’

  She blinked and forced both hands into her lap.

  For another few moments, he looked at her in silence. Outside, the wind whickered and moaned. Finally, he reached again for the bag. He withdrew the stashbox, turning it over. ‘You do hard drugs?’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Whatever you’ve done before,’ he said, pocketing the box, ‘is not my concern. But from here on out, you’re clean. You’re in training.’

  Her hand tried to go to her mouth so she could chew on a cuticle; she prevented it.

  ‘As it so happens,’ he said, ‘I already know your name.’ From an end-table behind the couch, he lifted a buff manila folder. ‘I know quite a bit about you, Cassie Bradbury. Enough to put you away, as it happens, for quite a few years … Have a look.’

  A thick sheaf of photographs inside the folder. Some were blurry – captures from surveillance cameras, obvious long-lens shots – but all were clear enough, she guessed, to serve as evidence in court. She saw herself picking pockets, hot-wiring cars, shoplifting with Michelle, breaking into abandoned buildings …

  ‘Am I going to be arraigned?’ she asked dully.

  ‘Not if I have anything to say about it.’ Gravely, he took back the folder. He handed her the rucksack, and then gestured to the man standing guard. ‘I’ve spent too much time looking for you, my dear, to let you slip away so easily. Get some sleep. Breakfast’s at six.’

  THREE

  SEREBRYANY BOR

  Senior Inspektor Piotr Vlasov had sunken cheeks, short blond hair, a neatly waxed mustache, and a soft little mouth like a child’s. He wore a cream-colored Anderson & Sheppard suit that might have cost him a thousand pounds on Savile Row and held a thin brown cigarette in the English manner, between thumb and middle finger.

  He was telling a story about two prostitutes who murdered their clients and then harvested organs for sale on the black market. Ravensdale, with thunderclouds of fatigue gathering inside his skull, had lost the thread. Otari Tsoi, wearing a polite smile, seemed not to have bothered picking it up in the first place. His attention was divided between the bare thigh of the girl sitting beside him and the arriving zakuski, the traditional first course of a Russian meal. Crystal bowls, seemingly without end, offered large-grained gray Beluga caviar, button mushrooms in marinade, beets vinaigrette, pickled cucumbers, cured anchovies, stuffed eggs, hard cheeses, and the fine ring-shaped bread called kalach. Dapper servants in tie and tails circulated smoothly and unobtrusively, keeping crystal glasses filled with water, wine, and vodka.

  ‘But of course,’ said Vlasov, after providing a wealth of grisly details, ‘this is hardly appropriate dinner conversation.’ He stabbed his cigarette into a cut-glass ashtray and reached for a deviled egg. Leaving space for someone else to seize the conversational reins, he popped the egg into his mouth, masticated, and swallowed. When nobody spoke, he went on: ‘But it does bring to mind a similar case from last year. A clinic in Mirny. Patients would die, accidentally-on-purpose, and their kidneys would be removed, packed in ice, flown west. The mastermind behind it? An Israeli national.’ An expressive gesture terminated in a circumspect reach for an olive. ‘As soon as we got on the scent, the man vanished like smoke. The surgeon who removed the organs, too. Both Jews. Try extraditing a Jew from Israel!’

  Elena, microskirt riding dangerously high on twig-thin legs, listened raptly.

  ‘When we asked for them back, they claimed political persecution. Israel’s Supreme Court upheld their citizenship and called the charges “groundless”. And they wonder why the world despises them.’ For the first time since their introduction he glanced at Ravensdale, inviting a comment, or perhaps a confession. ‘You’re not a Jew, are you?’

  Very slightly, Ravensdale shook his head.

  As the next course was delivered – a hot, unctuous soup of indeterminate ingredients – the Inspektor touched the corners of his mouth with a napkin. ‘I’m no bigot,’ he said. ‘But they’re the cause of so much suffering in the world. It’s just a matter of time, I tell you, until someone gets organized and finishes what so many have started …’

  After dinner, the girl went upstairs; the men retired to Tsoi’s study.

  The room had been furnished with every advantage except taste. Carved nymphs and pixies capered on a granite hearth. A burnished harpsichord gleamed beneath a crystal chandelier. Ormolu swans, shells, scrolls, cupids, and mermaids tumbled across wainscoting and boiseries. Finding a seat, Ravensdale squeezed his eyes briefly closed against the onslaught of ornamentation.

  He listened to Tsoi pour tutovka. A grandfather clock in one corner chimed dully, eleven times. Presently, Ravensdale opened his eyes and tasted his cognac. Through the window, a coppery quarter moon hung behind a scrum of cloud.

  After consulting his phone, Vlasov found his own seat. The three men went through various rituals with tobacco and khat root. Vlasov balanced his snifter carefully on the scalloped arm of his chair, arranging it with neat precision.

  ‘So.’ Tsoi smiled blandly. ‘The Inspektor is a dear old friend. I trust him completely.’ He faced Vlasov. ‘You were able, I understand, to have the investigation reassigned?’

  ‘It took a bit of doing. But the Chairman owed me a favor. So, yes; you are now speaking with the man in charge.’

  ‘And once the girl is captured, she’ll come here?’

  ‘First we’ll need to parade her in front of the cameras, let the Kremlin soak in some glory.’ Vlasov made a final tiny adjustment to the alignment of his glass. ‘But after that, she’ll vanish from her cell and come directly your way. I’ll make sure of it myself.’

  ‘But before any interrogation,’ cautioned Ravensdale.

  ‘Never fear. We all understand the … delicacies … of the situation.’

  ‘What measures have been taken?’

  ‘A cordon was in place around Turygino. But she must have evaded it; otherwise we would have her already. That is the bad news. The good news is, a new perimeter has been established. It reaches west almost to Rzhev, south to Serpukhov, east to Orekhovo-Zuyevo, and north beyond Sergiev Posad. Mobile search-parties comb every centimeter within. In the unlikely event that she has moved outside this sphere, we’ve established strategic checkpoints across the countryside. Three-hundred kilometers out in every direction. The Kremlin is determined to take this very seriously. Foreign interests cannot act with impunity on Russian soil whenever the urge takes them.’ His eyelids flickered ironically. ‘Officially, we are certain she will be brought to justice. Unofficially, we are guardedly optimistic.’

  Listening, Tsoi wore a neutral expression.

  ‘But the more we know about her,’ continued Vlasov, ‘the better our chances. Where she’s come from, the extent and nature of her training, who she knows in Russia …’ He trailed off artfully.

  Ravensdale took a moment. ‘I don’t know anything for certain.’

  Vlasov waited.

  ‘My guess – and it is only a guess.’ Ravensdale covered the sour taste in his mouth with a drag from his cigarette, a gulp of cognac. He took another moment to arrange his thoughts. When he had first noticed the pattern years before – agency business in Moscow undertaken by anonymous young assets whose bodies then surfaced in the Moskva, fingertips cut off and faces bashed in to frustrate attempts at identification – he had brought it to Fletcher. He’d been ordered to let it go. And he had. But not before meditating on the problem; not before comparing Fletcher’s schedule against windows that would have fit the training periods. He had found motive, means, and opportunity … and then he’d become swept up in developments with Sofiya. Put out to pasture, grateful just to have avoided Title 18 prosecution. Dmitri had
come along. The question of Fletcher’s side-game had been set aside … but never, it seemed, entirely forgotten.

  ‘She was picked up off the street, I think. From a big enough city that a disappearing girl wouldn’t leave a ripple. Whether we’re talking about the US or Russia, I can’t say.’ Another gulp of cognac. ‘She was a runaway. Perhaps an addict. Someone nobody would miss. She was trained in a secluded location, by a single officer or very small group. Absolute razdelenie, compartmen‌talization.’

  Vlasov’s slim eyebrows had climbed to maximum altitude.

  ‘We can assume standard paramilitary techniques and trade-craft. Once in the field, she would have had no contact with her case officer. He’s … He would be too careful for that. A network may have been made available to her for supply purposes. But no one – including the contact charged with disposing of her after the operation – would have known details of her mission.’

  Dead air. Ravensdale smoked again. ‘Just guesswork,’ he said.

  Vlasov and Tsoi exchanged a glance.

  ‘We are to believe,’ said Tsoi slowly, ‘that a runaway – a drug addict – managed to gain access to one of the most guarded men in the world?’

  ‘I’m telling you the way I suspect it’s been done in the past. Whether you believe is up to you.’

  Vlasov sat watchfully, a fisherman scrutinizing a bobbing lure.

  ‘This … street urchin.’ Tsoi picked at a seam of his pants. ‘Her motivation would be … patriotism? Allegiance to the good old red, white, and blue?’

  ‘Doubtful. I think she’d have had previous run-ins with the police, impressed them with her initiative. The man who tapped her would have assembled a file. He found some soft spot on which to push, to get the result he wanted.’

  Another glance passed between Tsoi and Vlasov. The latter nodded somberly. ‘It’s possible,’ the Inspektor conceded. ‘Considering how much evidence was left behind, we are faced with a remarkable surfeit of dead ends. We recovered hair and blood from a knit cap, but found no matches in any database. Because, I suppose, there is no pre-existing profile. She has effectively come from thin air.’