The timing couldn’t have been better. Along with everyone back in the corridors of power in Moscow, he’d also been watching the events shaking the Arab world. In country after country, people were rising against their oppressors. Dictators were being toppled, their ill-gotten gains and gilded palaces confiscated before they and their cronies were dragged into court or strung up from lampposts. A new mind-set was gripping the oppressed corners of the planet, a desperate and angry yearning for freedom and retribution, and an accompanying unease was rippling through the Kremlin. The protesters in Moscow were getting louder and more ballsy, and there was a deep-set concern that the “Arab Spring” could spread to the Motherland. If that happened, it would pull the rug out from under those in power. It would also deprive Koschey of any chance he might have at carving out the slice of notoriety and wealth he now felt he deserved, the one he felt he was owed for all his years of service.
Well, he thought, maybe his time had come. Maybe he’d start carving it out right here, in America, and not in some oilfield or gas field in Siberia.
The thought of striking at America only made the prospect sweeter. For despite it all, Koschey was still, deep down, a patriot. A proud, staunch patriot. And the Americans, he felt, were too smug about their success. Yes, the collapse of his Motherland’s old political ideology was inevitable. Yes, his superiors had proven to be greedier and more predatory than the worst of Wall Street’s corporate raiders. But the Americans needed to be humbled. They were the only superpower left, and the way they wielded their power, with such arrogance and impunity, really grated on Koschey. They needed to be brought down, and Koschey relished the potential infamy that would be bestowed on the one who would do it.
With that prospect in mind, he took a corner of the office and lay down on the concrete floor.
After running through his plan one more time in his head, he finally allowed himself to drift into sleep.
STILL CROUCHED IN THE back of the van, Shin barely dared to breathe.
He was frozen in place, huddled against the partition, in the corner behind the passenger seats, a bundle of shivering sweat, listening intently while trying to make himself as small as possible.
He wasn’t sure what had happened out at Prospect Park. He was still in the back when they’d stopped, and out of sheer terror, he’d decided to stay there. Through the small window in the cabin door, he’d glimpsed Ae-Cha and the Russian standing across the lot from them, seen him shoot her in the foot, witnessed Bon going down-then he’d hit the cabin floor and stayed there for cover. Before he knew it, there had been a frenzied firefight, then the van was moving again-not just moving, but charging, plowing into something and bouncing over it, taking a series of sharp turns that had him hanging on to the metal box for dear life before the van finally settled into a reasonable pace.
He’d risked a very angled peek through the window, barely creeping out of his hiding place, just to see who was driving. And he’d almost had a heart attack when he’d glimpsed the Russian who’d shot Ae-Cha and Bon and probably Jonny, too, in the driver’s seat.
He’d slunk back into his corner and curled up there, trembling and sweating like he had typhoid, his mind locked in silent panic. He’d debated flinging the back doors open and jumping out while the van was in motion, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d remained in that pathetic state until, some time later, the van had slowed down and pulled in somewhere echoey before its engine was killed.
Shin had never been as terrified as he was in the moments that followed, waiting helplessly in the back of the van, staring at the rear doors, expecting them to swing open at any moment, expecting to see the Russian’s surprised eyes lock on to his before the man dragged him out, shot him, and dumped his lifeless body in some ditch.
His heartbeat had pounded out the seconds against his eardrums, but the doors didn’t open and the Russian never came.
Instead, he could barely make out some footsteps walking away, then back, then past the van in the other direction. Then there was silence.
And more silence.
Shin waited, as immobile as a wax figure. And waited. Then, after about an hour, maybe more, after not hearing a single sound for all that time, he decided he’d risk it.
Using extreme care, he opened the cabin door and peeked out. The van was parked inside some kind of garage. Faint light was filtering from somewhere, allowing him to make out some walls beyond the windshield, but none of the lights inside the space were on.
He climbed onto the passenger bench, then slowly, very slowly, he pulled the door handle until it clicked and cracked the door open. He waited. Didn’t hear anything. He pushed the door open farther and looked out.
An empty space, like a warehouse. Bare and basic.
He climbed down and gently set his feet on the ground, then pushed the door back against its locking mechanism without clicking it shut.
He hugged the wall and tiptoed toward the front of the large space, where moonlight was seeping in through some high clerestory windows that ran along the top of the wall.
There was a single door next to the large roller door of the warehouse. He tried it. The handle wouldn’t budge.
It was locked.
He cursed inwardly, then retreated and tried the first space he found to his left. It was a small room, also empty.
His spirits soared when he spotted a small top-hung window up in one of its corners, its sill around eight feet above ground level.
Moments later, he was scuttling away from the warehouse, keeping low, hugging the walls, hoping against hope that this wasn’t one of those tortuous bad jokes that life often liked to play, one where he’d soon find himself right back where he started, in the clutches of the murderous Russian and moments from a painful and very final death.
50
I was running on empty.
This thing had us in its grip since we’d first stepped inside Sokolov’s apartment Monday morning, and here I was back at Federal Plaza, three days later, bright and early, having managed all of a blissful two hours of sleep and a decadent ten-minute shower. Which is something I wouldn’t normally complain about, but after the previous night’s shootout at the docks, the restaurant, and Prospect Park, my body was threatening an insurrection.
The good news was that Ae-Cha was going to be okay. The foot would take a while to heal; the PT would take far longer to get all those tendons and bones to move seamlessly and do what they were meant to do, but at least it was time she still had.
The bad news was everything else.
The flak was coming in from all corners: the governor’s office, the mayor’s office, the chief of police, all of it fog-horned to us through my own esteemed boss. We spent a good part of the morning in his office: Aparo, me, the ADIC himself obviously, Kanigher, a couple of NYPD liaisons, and a couple of Bureau lawyers. After the requisite dressing-down for the massive body count and the fact that Ivan was still on the loose, Gallo wanted a detailed run-through of everything that had happened since our last little sit-down-which was only yesterday morning, after the shoot-out at the motel the night before. Sitting there and watching my boss frown intensely and purse his lips ever-so-thoughtfully as he questioned and second-guessed every move we made was truly painful, especially given the state I was in, but I’d decided to get through it as passively as I could in order to move on and get back to trying to figure out what was going on.