“I need a few minutes on the computer,” Glinkov said. Rina took Xenia into the kitchen while Glinkov crossed the room to the corner desk, where his old laptop sat. He booted up the machine and quickly accessed the internet, waiting while the connection linked to the web. He heard Rina and Xenia in the kitchen spooning food onto plates, Xenia chattering, and when he heard a spoon clatter and Xenia say, “Uh oh!” he didn’t turn around. He quickly typed an email to Stiletto, his fingers flying across the keyboard, and he kept the message as short and to the point as he could. When he clicked send, he stared at the monitor a moment. He didn’t feel any better, but at least somebody on the outside would know what was going on.
“Vlad?” Rina said.
He turned in his chair.
“Your dinner’s getting cold.”
The front door crashed open.
HIS NAME was Rostov and he’d have preferred to grab the woman and the child, too, but orders were orders.
It wasn’t hard to figure out why the wife had hung out the towels so he told his support team in the van to relocate around the block. Parking in such easy view of the Glinkov’s balcony might not have been the smartest move, but the van’s disappearance would throw the family off guard just long enough to get sloppy.
Rostov was a big man with a crew cut and graying goatee, and a member of the Solntsevskaya Bratva crime family. A senior enforcer. He had no problem doing Putin’s dirty work because the cash bonuses in American dollars were funding his retirement. Another five or six years and he’d be spending the rest of his days on the French Riviera. He already spoke the language fluently.
Rostov sat in a BMW sedan parked around the farthest end of the park from the Glinkov’s apartment and used a sighting scope to watch the balcony. He watched Glinkov and his wife speak frantically, then go back inside. From what he knew of Glinkov’s routine and the time of day, they’d be sitting down to dinner.
He put away the scope and pulled a cell phone from the inside pocket of his coat. He dialed the back-up team leader and told them to move in. He started the car and drove into the parking lot. The van pulled in behind him.
Rostov led the team of three into the elevator and the machinery groaned and clanked as they went up. Rostov made fists with his hands. He carried no weapons but the other three did, handguns they were under orders not to fire. They only needed to keep the woman and child quiet. Their orders were to leave the wife and child behind to stir panic in the other members of the cell.
The elevator doors opened and they turned down the hall to the Glinkovs’ door.
The door crashed open and slammed against the inside wall, Rostov holding it there as the three gunmen rushed in, guns out. The wife and daughter screamed, knocking dinner plates from counter to floor, food spilling. The wife grabbed up her daughter as two of Rostov’s men held guns in their faces.
Rostov and the third goon converged on Glinkov, who stood in the center of the living room. Rostov drew a syringe from another pocket and pulled the cap off the need.
“Traitor,” Rostov said, “come quietly.”
“No!”
Glinkov lashed out at the nearest target, the goon with the gun, using his left hand to deflect the hand holding the pistol, and his right to deliver a two-finger strike to the goon’s throat. The gunman let out a strangled cry but not before countering with a blow to Glinkov’s right knee. Glinkov started to fall, taking the goon with him, and Rostov moved in with the needle. He stabbed the syringe into Glinkov’s left arm, piercing cloth and skin, and pressed the plunger. By the time Glinkov and the goon hit the carpet, Glinkov was limp and out cold, and Rostov picked him up like a sack of potatoes and threw him across his back.
He barked an order and started for the door, Glinkov’s wife yelling, her face streaked with tears, the little girl crying too. Rostov had a moment’s regret. It was too bad the girl would never see her father again, but that’s what happened when you betrayed your country. So, really, it was her father’s fault.
One of the gunmen pulled the apartment door closed behind him.
Chapter Four
ANASTASIA HAD her gun out as soon as she heard the van’s engine rev.
She was walking along Kozhukhovskaya a block away from her building, her senses overpowered by a construction crew that had one lane of the roadway closed and were using a jackhammer on the pavement. She stayed close to the wall of the building beside her, an art gallery on the ground floor, wide support beams holding up the floors above. The white van passed the construction zone in the open left lane, and it was so obvious who was inside that Anastasia almost laughed.
She cleared the construction zone and the length of open curb space ahead created the perfect spot for a grab.
The Makarov pistol warmed in her hand; as the van sped up and approached the open curb, she pivoted left, raising the gun. As the side door slid open and a man in black started to exit, she fired. The snap of the shot, drowned out by the jackhammer, nonetheless created the expected recoil and Anastasia let her wrist rise in perfect follow-through.
The bullet plowed through the man’s head, his face registering a brief second of shock. The back of his head exploded in a spray of blood and bone and spotted the white van with red. Anastasia ran back the way she’d come before the body hit the sidewalk.
Shocked pedestrians scattered as she ran, the corner up ahead leading to Saykina where there were warehouses and car repair shops and a freeway overpass to hide any noise. The warehouses and shops would be empty at this hour. As she turned the corner onto the tree-lined street, she stole a glance back. Another man in black clothes chased after her, his own gun out and a hunter’s look in his eyes.
Anastasia made the corner as he man fired and a spray of brick pelted her face and neck. She ignored the sting and kept going, the entrance of an alley up ahead. She turned into it and stopped short as the white van entered from the other side, headlamps bright and hitting her like a spotlight. She fired twice. One of the headlamps winked out and the windshield spider webbed on the passenger side. She turned to exit as the pursuing gunman entered the alley, and Anastasia put two rounds into his chest. She leaped over his falling body, running into the middle of the street. She crossed to the sidewalk opposite and found a padlocked garage door. One of the car repair shops. The gray sheet metal door clashed with the red brick of the rest of the building. She shot off the lock, raised the door and slipped through the opening. The garage door slammed shut behind her. She stood in the dark a moment, then carefully moved forward, bumping into cars on the paved floor and up on lifts. The garage door started to rise, clanging loudly. Anastasia dropped between a car and a trio of oil drums, shifting to avoid a patch of oil already on the ground. The place smelled not only of motor oil but tire rubber and stale sweat. The garage door raised some more and she slapped a fresh magazine into the Makarov.
A pair of gunshots cracked and the garage door slammed closed, her ears ringing with the racket. She rested her arms on the hood of the car, her leg muscles aching as she held her gun in both hands. The garage door opened again and she tightened her finger on the trigger, but held her fire when she saw the face of the man holding up the door.
“Ana!”
It wasn’t the man from the van, she knew for sure—it was Dimitri Ravkin, a friend and member of the group plotting the coup.
“It’s Dimitri, Ana, we gotta go!”
Anastasia let out the breath she held and emerged from cover, approaching Ravkin. The body of the van’s driver lay near him, a pool of the man’s blood flooding into the street.