Katrina was taking a long time. I was drumming my fingers on the table. I watched several men and several big, fat babushkas leave the bathroom area and waddle out. I let my eyes stray over to seven or eight younger men I figured were the best bets for SVR agents. I tried to detect if they were watching me. Two or three returned my stare, and I wrote them off. I mean, professional watchers never return your gaze, right? They act like they don’t even know you’re there. That narrowed my suspects down to about five guys, three of whom were seated at the same table, and I wondered if undercover agents traveled in packs.
I sipped my coffee and kept watching them. My staring made one of them nervous. He began playing with a napkin, and his eyes were darting around in distraction. I also noticed a bulge under his left arm. He either had a very ugly tumor or was packing heat, as they say.
Another minute passed before the door to the men’s room opened. Alexi’s head popped out and he looked around, then walked out. But before he could get to the table, I got up and walked toward him. I took his arm and tugged him toward the doorway. We almost made it, too. In fact, I’d just gotten the door opened when the three guys at the table leaped out of their seats and rushed toward us, yelling and hollering and reaching for their guns. I swung open the door and fled out onto the street, now only worried about saving my own ass. In situations like this, it really is every man for himself.
My best bet was the subway, and I sprinted as fast as my legs could carry me toward the entrance. I was less than twenty yards away when three guys carrying pistols came careening around a corner and cut me off. I spun to the right and lurched into the traffic, praying I could make it to the other side.
A black sedan came straight at me, and that option evaporated. I fell back, and a couple of pairs of hands jerked me off my feet.
I yelled, “I’m unarmed, I’m unarmed.” I didn’t want anyone getting any funny ideas.
Two very big thugs moved alongside me and took hold of both my arms and nearly carried me back toward the bakery, where four more goons were holding their traitor. A black paddy wagon immediately pulled up and we were both shoved inside, roughly, so that we landed on our bellies. Five SVR goons crawled in behind us and began slapping cuffs on our hands and ankles and gags on our mouths.
Nobody said anything. We felt the van jerk forward and remained quiet while we went wherever the hell we were going. This wasn’t the way this thing was supposed to end. I was scheduled to be in a different van, headed toward the airport, where there was a big comfortable plane that would take me back to the good ol’ U.S.A.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
It took twenty minutes before the van jolted to a stop. One of the guards swung open the door, and we were both shoved out. We were then pushed and dragged inside a big, multistoried building that didn’t seem to have many windows. I didn’t like that not-many-windows thing. Buildings that don’t have a lot of windows don’t have them for a reason.
We were led to some stairs in the back that went down to a basement. The inside of the building had an institutional look and air to it, like a hospital. Or, considering the circumstances, like a prison. We took a left at the bottom of the stairs and then walked down a hallway before we were shoved into a starkly empty room.
Our gags were removed, but neither of us said a word. We were both stunned. We just stood with our hands and ankles cuffed, staring at the white walls and contemplating our fates. We remained like this for nearly five minutes before a door opened behind us. I spun around and saw four really big goons enter, then the diminutive figure of Viktor Yurichenko.
Viktor immediately said, “Alexi, Alexi, it is so tragic that it has come to this. I am truly sorry it had to be this way.”
Alexi said nothing, so Viktor angrily shouted, “But you’ve been a damn fool! You never should have dealt with the Americans.”
When Alexi still didn’t answer, Viktor walked around me, until he faced him. His eyes narrowed into angry slits, then he barked something in Russian that I didn’t understand, but I didn’t need to. It was probably the Russki version of “shit” or “damn it,” and I started chuckling.
I tried to stop myself, but the chuckles kept bubbling out of my chest. Viktor walked in front of me and slapped me as hard as he could. The truth was that it wasn’t all that hard, and I chuckled even harder, partly because this whole thing was funny as hell, and partly because I was so damned nervous, it was either laugh or faint.
Viktor yelled something in Russian at his goons, and two of them rushed over and forced my partner to bend over. Then one pulled off the wig, and the other began yanking at the elastic, skinlike rubber of the mask. It came off in chunks and pieces, and after about thirty seconds of tugging they had most of it off. Those modern Hollywood disguise kits, you can’t believe how authentic-looking they can be.
I didn’t know the guy under the mask, except that he was a federal prisoner chosen for this job because he had identical physical measurements to Alexi’s. He’d been doing hard time for three counts of armed robbery and the CIA had cut him a deal. Since he was a three-time loser serving a life sentence, if he took this job and it worked, the President of the United States would get him a pardon.
At that moment he looked absolutely bewildered, since his role in this operation wasn’t supposed to end this way. The CIA had positioned him in that bathroom for an entirely different purpose. The real Alexi was supposed to join Katrina in a stall in the ladies’ room, they’d both don chubby babushka disguises, and then saunter out together. That touch was mine, of course. I mean, it had worked for me in the mall, right? I was supposed to leave right behind them.
Only that plan hadn’t considered the fact that there’d be a bunch of SVR goons inside the bakery. The way that plan was supposed to end was that the convict disguised as Alexi would emerge from the men’s room a few minutes after Katrina, Alexi, and I made our escape. He’d then hurry to the subway, get off after a few stops, dodge into a restroom, get out of his Alexi costume, then go to a linkup point where the CIA would meet him and get him back to the States and freedom.
But we all know what they say about the best-laid plans, right? The minute I knew the SVR had agents in the bakery, I realized it was time for plan B. Which was a bit of a problem, because there wasn’t any plan B. With both Alexi and Katrina in the bathroom, I was the only one left that the SVR watchers could observe. When I saw Alexi and Katrina leave in their disguises, I had to buy them at least two or three minutes to make it to the CIA van idling three blocks away, so they could make their getaway. Had I gotten up and followed them out, the whole thing would’ve collapsed.
I felt pretty proud about the self-sacrifice I’d made to get them a chance at a new life. There’s a certain nobility in that, right? It’s like that classic Dickens line “ ’Tis a far better thing I do,” and all that crap. But as I stared at the enraged face of Viktor Yurichenko, I remembered how that same novel opened: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” “The worst of times” were on their way.
“Who are you?” Yurichenko growled at the prisoner.
I said, “Let him go. He’s nobody. He was a federal prisoner hired to do this job. He had no idea what the operation was about, or even why he’s here. He was promised freedom if he just hid in that bathroom and then walked out two minutes after he heard a knock on the door.”