“Soon. If they aren’t watching us, there may be time. They don’t know everything.”
“We can’t take that chance. You do know everything. If they make you talk—”
“I’ll die first.”
“You and I both know things happen so fast you may not have the chance.”
“We have an opportunity to prove the conspiracy between Putin and the mafia. We have to take the chance. If we can get world opinion on our side—”
“The world favors Putin. They’ll think we’re insane. Criminals.”
He put a hand on hers. She pulled her hand back and shot him a glare.
“Ana,” he said, “let’s sit tight for now. If the worse happens, we’ll deal with it.”
“How?”
“We’re Russians. The same way we always deal with problems.”
Anastasia drank some coffee and bit off a sarcastic comeback. She’d almost forgotten her coffee. It was still warm and the hint of vodka even better. She took a deep breath to calm down. A glance around the dining room revealed only couples or groups eating and engaging in animated conversation. No sign of surveillance.
Maybe Vlad was right.
“Okay,” she said.
Glinkov held her eyes a moment. “Don’t drink too much.”
“We’re Russians,” she said.
Glinkov frowned and rose from the chair and left her there. She watched him exit, and then examined the parking lot. Nobody trailed Glinkov as he headed for the corner bus stop.
She drank more coffee and felt the vodka hit her belly. The warm glow made her forget her sore bottom.
GLINKOV FOUND a seat on the bus near the driver. Other passengers crowded the remaining seat and the engine noise almost drowned his thoughts. The bus jostled violently over the rough city roads.
The need to remove Vladimir Putin from office became apparent after the nation-wide protests of 2011 through 2013, where tens of thousands marched in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and elsewhere to challenge what many believed were fraudulent elections, where Putin cheated his way to victory. Charges of corruption and the suppression of opposing parties were also voiced by the protestors. In the end they achieved very little and the government clamped down on organized protests, with stiff penalties for unauthorized gatherings. The Putin machine would not be moved.
A quiet whisper began drifting through opposition party leaders, the rich oligarchs who were losing money in the stagnant economy, military personnel, and people like Glinkov and Anastasia that something permanent had to be done. They could not allow Putin to hijack the office of the presidency and leave the nation a democracy in name only.
Their first indication that Putin was feeling some kind of heat was the reduction in his inner circle. He went from having dozens of confidants and advisors to a much smaller group, all of them hard-liners who shared his vision of authoritarian rule.
And the second indication was Zubarev’s assassination.
The bus made a left turn, bouncing some more on the rough street. Glinkov stared at the floor.
Somehow, they had been infiltrated. They weren’t ready to meet force with force, nor were they equipped to do so. Perhaps Zubarev was only a warning, but he didn’t believe that any more than Anastasia did.
The bus started for the suburbs, the road smoothing out a little. Glinkov looked up. Many of the passengers had disembarked while he was lost in thought, and of the remaining, none appeared to notice him. His wife had their only car to get their daughter back-and-forth to school. His routine was not hard to discern should anybody follow him.
He got the idea to send a note to the Americans to tell him what was going on. There was no way the C.I.A. would contribute to their effort, but an official inquiry to see about a rumored connection between the Zubarev murder and the Kremlin might slow down Putin’s machine.
Glinkov had worked with Scott Steletto several times, including a mission in Russia to take out a group of neo-Nazis. Glinkov had even passed along information he thought important to the U.S. from time to time. Had that earned him any credit with the Agency? Could he ask for asylum? Claim political persecution?
Glinkov shook his head. He could not turn his back on the Motherland. Not even to protect his family. What would the others do? They didn’t have the connections he did. And the U.S. would reject him anyway. Technically, what he was doing was illegal, so a claim of persecution would fall on deaf ears.
Presently the bus reached his stop, near a park two blocks from his home, and he walked the rest of the way, senses tuned to everything around him.
Street to his left, quiet; park to his right. People walking pets. Kids playing. Parents watching their kids and looking around. Some noticed him, but gave him no more attention than a parent taking a quick look for potential problems.
Glinkov’s shoes tapped a rhythm on the concrete sidewalk. The buildings around him were gray or white and drab all over. Some things in Russia never changed. The apartments were crammed close together, balconies on the upper floors only, mostly empty parking lots. Glinkov’s building appeared as he rounded a corner. He was lucky enough to have an upper floor, and he could see that his wife had hung out some towels on the balcony rail. Two pink towels.
Glinkov stopped and looked up and down the street. The two pink towels were a warning. Somebody was watching the building. But he saw no sign of surveillance. He kept walking. A quick glance back at the park showed nobody watching or following. The kids continued playing, making kid noises, and Glinkov couldn’t hear them over the pounding of his pulse.
Glinkov cut across the street, slipping through the parking lot of the neighboring building. He used cars for cover, squatting behind an old van to check the road ahead. A few vehicles were parked on the street, but nothing that looked like an official FSB car. Then he realized the FSB wouldn’t be the ones coming for him.
He watched the balcony of his apartment. The towels flapped in the light breeze. Glinkov swallowed and left the parking lot, walking briskly along the sidewalk. His pulse still hammered but he continued to see no visible threat, nothing even indicating somebody was watching. He cut through the hedgerow surrounding his building, following a grassy slope down to the blacktop of the parking lot, then slicing across to a narrow walkway leading to the center courtyard. He recognized a few other residents and reached the nearest elevator, pressing the button for the twelfth floor. The elevator rumbled loudly as it ascended, and the doors slid open and revealed the stained white wall and frayed yellow carpeting of his hallway.
He turned left and passed the brown doorways to his apartment, used his key on the lock, and pushed the door shut behind him.
“Vlad?”
He snapped his head around. Rina, his wife, stood in the entry way, her face white.
Glinkov rushed to her, hugged her close. “Why the towels?”
She squeezed him back. “They were out there earlier. Two men in a van!”
“Daddy?”
Glinkov split from his wife and scooped up his six-year-old daughter, Xenia, hugging her close. She hugged back as much as her little arms allowed. He set her down.
“When were they out there?”
“When we got home,” Rina said.
“Show me.”
They moved from the entry way to the living room, which was spotless, the furniture and wall fixtures old but functional. The television on the wall across from the brown couch was off. Out on the balcony, Rina pointed to a spot on the curbside across the street, but there was no vehicle there now.
“I didn’t see them leave,” she said.
“Okay.”
They went back inside where Xenia was watching them with wide eyes. “Mommy, what’s happening?”
“It’s okay, sweetie,” she said, scooping her daughter up. “I have dinner in the oven.”