Rasputin's Shadow (4 page)

We needed to find them. And fast.

Da
re County, North Carolina

T
he call came in as Gordon Roos was on his way back from his late-morning walk on the beach. He loved it out in the Outer Banks. The constant breeze coming in off the ocean, the salty taste in the air that did wonders for his sinuses, the Zen-like openness of the landscape—it was far more enjoyable than the confines of the Falls Church, Virginia, penthouse he used to live in before his retirement from the Company. A bit removed from the action, perhaps, but still close enough for him to be able to jump in when something juicy came up.

Something like this.

He checked the caller ID on his 1024-bit RSA key-encrypted cell phone, even though he knew who it was before he looked at it. Hardly anyone had that number, for besides being a retired agent of the CIA, Gordon Roos wasn’t a social animal, not by any stretch. A couple of tried and tested high-class escorts were more than enough to liven up his nights when he needed company. Which was not unusual at all for someone who’d spent most of his life running dangerous undercover assignments for his country. Not that he minded. Gordon Roos had never had much patience for small talk and cocktail parties, something his wife eventually decided she couldn’t live without.

He took the call in his customary fashion, without uttering a word.

His caller knew the drill.

“Our Russian friends just heard from two goons babysitting Sokolov’s wife,” the man said. “One of them was waiting for their guy outside the apartment and saw him take the dive. He drove off in a panic and they called it in.”

Roos kept walking at the same leisurely pace. “Where are they now?”

“They’re babysitting her at some dive. A motel in Queens, near JFK. Russian-owned. The guys at the embassy are waiting to hear back from Moscow on how to handle it now that Sokolov’s in the wind.” He paused, then added, “Maybe it’s time we move in and take her off their hands. It would give us leverage over Sokolov.”

Roos processed the suggestion in all of four seconds. “No. Let’s keep her there and let it play out. Sokolov seems to have some of that old pluck left in him. If she’s there, there’s a good chance it’ll draw him in. Even if he doesn’t find his way to the motel, she’s the bait that’ll flush him out. Better we don’t rock the boat and spook him. We just need to be ready to swoop in when he shows up.”

“All right. I’ll put a team on it.”

“Off the books, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Good. Keep me apprised. Day or night.”

“You got it, buddy.”

Roos hung up.

As he walked on toward his house, which appeared behind a wind-swept sandbank up ahead, his mind drifted back many years, to when it had all begun. To the initial, unexpected approach from the Russian. The excitement at the prospect. The meticulous planning. The green light. The adrenaline of putting the lift in motion.

The thrill of meeting the Russian for the first time.

Then came the little prick’s stab in the back.

The damn Russian. He’d been a major snag in Roos’s stellar rise at the Agency. More than a snag. He’d almost derailed his career altogether. But Roos had overcome the defeat and the humiliation. He’d cleaned things up, he’d redeemed himself by shepherding other tough projects to success—and here they were again, more than thirty years later, playing the game again.

He smiled inwardly at the prospect of what the days ahead would bring. Maybe it would all finally come good, after all those years. He had far more options now that he was out on his own. “Independent contractor.” It was the wave of the future, and a future with much greater promise than he’d ever counted on had suddenly dropped into his lap.

Sokolov could be a mighty prize indeed. The kind of prize that could bankroll a much more satisfying level of retirement. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let that prize get away from him a second time.

Lon
don, England

A
t about the same time, four thousand miles east of there, another man received a similar call informing him of similar developments, only this call originated a couple of thousand miles farther east from his own location.

From Moscow.

From the Center, to be exact.

The Center being a sprawling, cross-shaped concrete structure nestled in the middle of a large forest just southwest of the city.

The Center was also the headquarters of the SVR, the successor of the KGB’s notorious First Chief Directorate. Officially tasked with foreign intelligence gathering and counterintelligence. Unofficially tasked with anything else that was deemed necessary to safeguard the Motherland’s interests.

Anything.

And when a particularly tricky anything came up, the odds were it would be assigned to someone from its highly secretive Zaslon unit—the word meant “the shield,” and not in its badge sense—an elite team drawn from the Spetsnaz special forces, whose members excelled in their physical and military prowess as well as their talents at deception.

And when the Zaslon unit was handed a particularly sensitive task, the odds were it would be assigned to Valentin Budanov.

Not many people knew that. For the simple reason that not many people knew Budanov even existed. They didn’t need to. Budanov worked alone. He worked in the shadows, only emerging when he needed a critical piece of information or some operational support from someone—usually a senior embassy staffer or a fellow SVR agent—who would have been ordered to provide him with anything he required. And when he did emerge, it was, of course, never as Budanov. Like other SVR agents, he traveled under a number of false identities. He also spoke many languages flawlessly—seven at last count—and could easily disguise himself so he would pass unnoticed. And on the rare occasions when he did break his deep cover, it was never as Budanov or as whatever ID he was using at the time.

It was as Koschey, a code name that inspired a deep-seated fear in those who heard it. A code name drawn from an old Slavic folktale.

Koschey the deathless
.

Just then, Koschey was in London. He’d spent a lot of time in the British capital in the last decade. London was where a lot of the Kremlin’s enemies came to find a safe haven. It was also where a lot of its big hitters and their friends stashed their ill-gotten gains—billions that they parked safely in hedge funds, fabulous properties, and high-profile investments. The thinking was that, besides being a great place to live and to party, London provided a secure and stable hideaway for their fortunes. There, they would be unreachable by those running things back home if and when their old friendships turned sour.

But no one was unreachable. Not in London. Not anywhere. And certainly not with someone like Koschey on tap to reach them.

He’d been in London for six days, preparing to take out a GCHQ analyst who’d been recruited by Moscow eleven years earlier and who the SVR suspected had been rumbled by the British intelligence services. Then the call had come in on his encrypted cell phone.

The general told him he was to drop that assignment and fly to New York.

A file, also encrypted, had been attached to an e-mail and left in the drafts folder of a Gmail address that had been created specifically for that single task.

A file that Koschey retrieved and read immediately after terminating the call.

A file that Koschey found astounding.

The analyst had caught a lucky break. He would get to live a little while longer.

Koschey had a plane to catch.

T
he
rest of the day didn’t bring about any great revelations. We were covering all the bases on the Yakovlev case, but so far, we didn’t have much to show for it.

Visits to the school where Sokolov taught and to the hospital where his wife worked didn’t give us any leads. In the case of the former, he hadn’t shown up for work, which we already knew. The principal said he’d ask around to see if anyone had noticed anything unusual in Sokolov’s behavior of late, but as far as he knew, the Russian had been just as he always was: dedicated, pleasant, loved by his students, an all-round nice guy. Sokolov didn’t seem to have any family that needed notifying or that we could interview. Daphne Sokolov, on the other hand, had a sister, Rena. By the time we got to Delphi Opticians, her store over on Steinway, she’d already heard the news and was, to put it mildly, concerned. Rena’s maiden name, which she’d reverted to since her divorce, was Karakatsani, and her Greek blood was on full display.

Aparo and I calmed her down as much as we could, telling her there had been no evidence of foul play—a small lie, I know—and assuring her that all efforts were being made to find the Sokolovs and make sure they were safe. She eventually did calm down, and I finally got to the questions I needed to ask.

“Tell me, Rena. Your sister and Leo . . . is everything okay in their lives?”

“Yes, of course,” she said in her throaty, full-bodied voice. “Daphne and Leo—they’ve always been drama-free, you know? They’re like a fairy tale. He loves her to death and she’s the same. They’re like teenagers, which is weird, especially in this day and age.” She shrugged sweetly. “Lucky them, right?”

“They’ve been together a long time?”

She rolled her eyes. “Forever.”

“How long?”

Rena thought about it. “Let’s see. They got married in”—she ransacked her mind—“eighty-three, I think it was. Leo was new to the city, he hadn’t been here that long. Maybe a year or two. His English wasn’t too good, and when she first introduced him to us, we were like, ‘Seriously? This guy?’ I mean, he was a nice guy, but he was bussing tables in an Egyptian restaurant down on Atlantic Avenue. My parents, God rest their souls, they had bigger ambitions for their daughter. I did too. I was dating this E. F. Hutton guy at the time—don’t get me started on him. And Leo . . . lousy job, no prospects, and a drinking problem too. And boy, did he drink. Russian-style. He had a serious problem. But not violent, you know? No temper. He was just miserable, that much was clear. Sad, deep inside. But that didn’t excuse the fact that he was still a drunk. And Daphne knew it. But she saw something in him, and she said, ‘Yeah, him. He’s the one. He’s a good man. You’ll see.’ And you know what? She was right.” She paused, then her eyes darkened. “Where are they? What’s going on? What are you not telling me?”

“We don’t know anything, we’re just trying to figure out where they might be,” I replied truthfully. “But go back a second to Leo. So he was bussing tables? How’d he get from that to teaching science at Flushing High?”

“I’m not sure. I just remember thinking he was clearly smart, from day one. Even with the booze, you could see it. Too smart to be bussing tables. That was obvious. But his English wasn’t great, and he kind of kept to himself. Then Daphne got him off the bottle and they got married, and not long after that, I remember he was let go by the restaurant. Something about a cousin of the owner needing a job. So he got a job as a janitor at the high school. And we were like, yikes, you know? But then somehow, he started giving private lessons, here and there, bringing in some extra cash. God knows how he got that going. And through word of mouth, he got more and more work, and he got his teaching qualifications and ended up with the full-time teaching job, and that’s pretty much how it’s been ever since.”

I could see the
Good Will Hunting
wisecrack germinating inside Aparo’s head, and headed it off with a follow-up question.

“And no big arguments, nothing going on that caused you any concern? Nothing that could lead to them leaving home all of a sudden like this?”

Rena’s face crumpled with concentration. “Not really. I mean, I always thought it was a bit weird that we never met anyone from Leo’s family. He never talked about them. Daphne said any family he had were all back in Russia and it wasn’t as easy back then; it’s not like they had e-mail and Skype, right? But he was a quiet guy anyway. A loner, really. Which Daphne didn’t mind. In our family, she was the quiet one too.” She softened, and a bittersweet smile warmed her face. “She was his life.”

I nodded and wondered about the Sokolovs again. I didn’t think Rena was hiding anything from me, which meant that whatever it was they’d gotten themselves into, they hadn’t shared it with her. It was time to move on and dig elsewhere.

Then she said something that resonated with me.

“Maybe the one thing that did give them some hard times was when they were trying to have a kid and it wasn’t working—they were shattered when they found out they couldn’t. But with time, that sadness went away. Leo’s students kinda took their place.”

I just nodded and said nothing. Tess and I had been through that, of course. And we’ve been lucky to have little Alex fill part of that hole. I understood what the Sokolovs must have gone through, and it explained the lack of kids’ photos in their apartment.

“That’s all I can think of, really,” she added. “That, and a bad day for the Yankees. You don’t want to be around Leo when they lose.” She smiled again, but it didn’t really disguise the worry in her eyes. “I know what you’re thinking. Money problems, God knows we all have them these days. Gambling, maybe. The kind of stuff you guys must come across a lot. But there’s none of that. Not with Leo. He’s a sweet man and stand-up guy. Big on values, you know? Lives in a dream world. Like with Russia. He loves his homeland. We all do, right? But seeing it like that, even from this distance and after all these years. All that promise after the Wall came down and how it got all screwed up instead, all these gangsters running around, robbing the place blind . . . that made him sad. The rigged elections . . . he cared, you know? Like when that activist was killed last week, you know the one I mean?”

“Ilya Shislenko?” Aparo asked.

I gave him a look of surprise and admiration. He winked back, proud and cheesy.

“Yeah, him. Leo was so bummed about that.” She let out a small, wistful shrug. “Daphne told me he even went to their embassy and joined the protesters. She said she’d never seen him like that. Really down, she’d said. And he’d taken a few pulls of vodka—one too many, according to her—which he didn’t do, not anymore. You see what I’m saying? He’s a decent guy.” She paused, then added, “You’ve got to find them. Please.”

We left Rena’s shop without much more to go on than we had going in. We’d need to follow up at the school and at the hospital and see if any of Leo’s or Daphne’s colleagues had anything else to say about the missing couple. The CCTV footage from the hospital’s security cameras would be checked to see if anything unusual was going on around Daphne, especially at the time she had left. We’d also be checking any footage we could get from any cameras in storefronts or on ATMs close to the Sokolovs’ apartment building, as well as video and still images taken on cell phones by bystanders who had been there when Yakovlev had taken his dive.

Beyond that, I didn’t see that there was much more we could do. Not until we caught a break with some new piece of information, or if the Sokolovs decided to resurface. So Aparo and I headed back to Federal Plaza. I had a few loose ends to follow through on a couple of other files I was working on, then I was looking forward to going home to catch some quality time with Tess, Kim, and Alex, then mull over the plan that I was finding harder and harder to resist.