Harry twisted off the cap, breaking the seal. “I was well taught, by one of your countrywomen. Never drink from anything but a sealed bottle in a public place.”
Seeing Vasiliev’s look of interest, he continued. “She was a journalist. Dead now.”
Vasiliev shrugged, pulling a flask from an inner pocket of his coat. “Journalism is a profession not without its…hazards. Particularly in Mother Russia.”
He held up the flask of vodka to the light, eyeing it critically before pouring a shot into the glass before him. “My own solution to that problem — bring your own beer, I believe you Americans call it. Or vodka, as the case may be.”
There was something quixotic, even faintly mocking, in the Russian’s posture as he sat there, glass poised delicately between long, slender fingers. “To the future.”
Prices had gone up at the supermarket. Again. If he’d been able to afford the gas, Nasir al-Khalidi thought — he would have loved to have driven around, just to see if prices were the same everywhere, or whether the American government was artificially inflating the prices in Muslim neighborhoods. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. He set the bags on the floor and pulled open the door of the apartment’s small refrigerator. The government he worked for.
It hadn’t been his choice. Just one of those things that had befallen him. Fate.
Footsteps on the stairs outside, the rattling of a key in the lock. Jamal came hustling into the apartment, stopping short as he saw his brother.
“What are you doing home?”
Nasir balanced the milk on top of the eggs. His brother was growing more absent-minded these days. As if some great concern was occupying his thoughts. “This is my day off,” he explained patiently, casting a weary glance in Jamal’s direction. “What do you need?”
It wasn’t like Jamal to be at a loss for words, but he stammered a moment. “I forgot my student ID. With the attacks in Virginia…the campus is taking their security seriously.”
Didn’t make any sense. At noon? He waited until his brother had disappeared in the bedroom, then put his fingers carefully between the dusty venetian blinds, peering down at the street, at the unfamiliar car that had brought his brother back from campus. A white Chrysler Sebring.
Something was wrong. Deciding quickly, he grabbed a pen off the card table that formed the centerpiece of their kitchen. The tip pressed into tender flesh as he scribbled the license number into the palm of his hand. Kilo 8 7 November Tango.
Omar was waiting in the Sebring when Jamal returned. “What took so long?”
He threw the packet of earplugs on the console between himself and the Negro. “My brother was home.”
The black man closed his eyes. So much must be sacrificed for the jihad. At times even families must be separated. “Will that be a problem?”
“Of course not. My brother…” Jamal hesitated. “My brother finds the decadence of America alluring, but he would never betray us. Not after what happened in our homeland, not after our father was killed, American weapons in the hands of the Jew.”
Omar considered that for a moment, then put the Sebring in drive. “Insh’allah.”
“The name of the man you are looking for,” Vasiliev began, dabbing his thin, bloodless lips with a napkin, “is Valentin Stephanovich Andropov. Former Spetsnaz colonel, weapons dealer, and current expatriate oligarch. He made his millions selling weapons to Sudan, Somalia, a hundred other godforsaken backwaters. He’s the man who brought Korsakov’s team into the US.”
“You can prove this?” Harry asked, taking another careful glance around them.
The Russian regarded him with a look of disbelief. “Since when have you and I concerned ourselves with proof, Harry?”
Vasiliev shook his head. “ ‘Innocent till proven guilty’ isn’t even in our lexicon. Andropov has the money, the power, the access with the mafiya. If anyone could bring a spec-ops team into this country, it would be him. And he and Korsakov served together in the first Chechen War.”
Guilt by association. Harry had seen it kill men before. Sometimes, in the ever-shifting war on terror, association was all you had to go on. Leads vanishing into the mist.
“Where is he?” he heard himself ask.
Vasiliev snorted. “Living peacefully in Beverly Hills, with his bodyguards, his son, and his current mistress, typically one of your blonde starlets, much better endowed physically than mentally.”
“If all you say is true,” Carol put in, the skepticism clearly visible in her eyes. “then why isn’t Andropov on our watch lists? Why is he living free here in the United States?”
Vasiliev let out a tired sigh, reaching for his phone. He ran a calloused thumb across the screen, scrolling through a series of photos. Finally he turned the screen to face them. “He’s re-cast himself as a benefactor of the common good — a philanthropist. Here you see him, during the 2008 Republican primary, at a dinner with Senator John McCain. And here — five months later — standing at the side of Barack Obama in Los Angeles. When Roger Hancock ran, a PAC bankrolled by Andropov was one of his biggest supporters.” The Russian leaned back in his chair, pocketing the phone. “Let’s face it, he’s played your country’s political system.”
“Like a Stradivarius,” Harry mused. “So you’re saying he’s untouchable.”
Vasiliev toyed with his knife, gazing intently across the table. “No man is untouchable, tovarisch. For some, though…you need asbestos gloves.”
“What are you suggesting?”
A smile. “I suggest nothing. I ask nothing, save one simple question: how far are you willing to go?”
Andropov’s mistress was awake at the very least, already stretched out facedown on a blanket by the heart-shaped pool. Nothing mattered more than a tan in California, Korsakov thought, eyeing her critically.
About the only point in her favor was her youth. Twenty-one, twenty-three at most. No doubt hoping that sharing the oligarch’s bed would further her career.
Bleached blonde, burnt flesh, and undeniably spoiled — there was a time when his old friend had possessed better taste in women. Times had changed.
“Sergei!” a familiar voice exclaimed, the door opening behind the assassin. He turned on heel just in time to see one of the bodyguards usher Andropov into the room.
Times had changed. The former colonel had aged in the ten years since they had last met face to face. Andropov had never been a small man, but his frame now carried the bulk that went along with fine dining and a sedentary lifestyle.
“You look well, comrade,” he whispered, embracing Korsakov and kissing him on both cheeks in the traditional Russian greeting.
“As do you,” the assassin lied, forcing a smile to his face as Andropov guided him to a seat on the sofa.
The oligarch nodded his head toward Viktor. “I have heard much about you from Sergei — you are a genius with computers, yes?”
The boy flushed, looking down at his feet. The traumas of his childhood had left him socially awkward, but he seemed particularly so in these opulent surroundings.
“My son Pyotr is about your age,” Andropov continued, “a junior at UCLA.”
Small talk. Korsakov remembered it well, the colonel’s way of putting people at ease…before moving in for the kill.