Deeper Than Red (Red Returning Trilogy) (13 page)

She opened the door and raced down the steps, leaving Mr. Fremont in silhouette against the open doorway. He was still there when she turned and tossed a compatriot’s salute his way before slipping into the cover of the pines.

She was running on steam and sass because she had no other defenses. They’d served her adequately for many years. But tonight, she’d crossed a line in the sand, inside a clump of palmettos. No matter how inadequate those old defenses were now, she couldn’t turn back. Her mom was about to disappear into that black hole.

A
week after the assassination of President Dimitri Gorev, Moscow still vented its outrage. The ever-expanding crowd of mourning protestors hadn’t left their dug-in position in front of the Kremlin since news of the massacre, unaccountably delayed by hours. Some in the crowd simply wept while too many others shouted and hurled flaming bottles, their toxic indignation prompting the threat of curfew on the whole city.

Even at one in the morning, Evgeny Kozlov could hear the rumble many blocks away, crooking his way through a neighborhood too tired and defeated to raise much protest of its own. After all, some had noted callously, the president hadn’t done anything for them.

From an alley, Evgeny approached the back of the bookstore where he and his informant and friend, Viktor Petrov, had dared convene only once before. The store’s owner, indebted to Viktor for springing him from public-demonstration charges, had never detected surveillance of his shop, he’d assured Viktor. Still, Evgeny crept through the darkened alley, his hand on his gun and his eye on every doorway, his reflexes cocked and ready.

When he reached the door to the bookstore, he tapped a knuckle three times against its paint-bare wood. It opened immediately and the airless, blacked-out interior drew him inside. “Comrade,” Viktor said, embracing his friend and kissing both Evgeny’s cheeks. “It is too dangerous for you to be in the city. To be in this place.” He lit a small candle in the back room where a musty inventory of books lining the walls further insulated the conversation. “They found you once not far away. They will find you again.”

“Who did this thing, Viktor?” Evgeny charged, ignoring the warning.

“You know I cannot move too brazenly on this.”

“You must have some idea.”

“No different from your own. That Volynski’s people believed Gorev ordered their leader’s execution, and so repaid the president in kind.”

Evgeny dropped into one of two wooden chairs and hunched his shoulders. “But Ivan died at
my
hands, not Gorev’s. They killed the wrong man.”

Viktor slowly pulled the other chair beneath his bulky frame before confronting his friend. “By killing Volynski, you saved Russia from a kind of death at the hands of the Americans. Why he ever thought they would not retaliate for terrorist attacks on their soil is incomprehensible. A mark of pure madness.”

“Perhaps not.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is up to an American president to launch a full-scale attack or bury his head in ‘diplomatic sanctions.’”

“Travis Noland would have ridden the tip of the spear to the heart of Moscow,” Viktor declared confidently.

Evgeny stared into the small flame. “I do not know what he would have done, only what I had to do. I do not regret it, only the slaughter I encountered on that country road.” He thought a moment more. “It is curious to me that it took six months for Ivan’s people to strike back in revenge.”

After a long pause, Evgeny looked up and watched Viktor’s face in the flickering light. “I have known you too long not to sense your apprehension right now. You suspect something. What is it?”

The older man shifted in his chair, which creaked beneath the strain. “Glinka has not been seen in two days.”

Evgeny pulled himself up straight. “And …”

“Rather odd, you think? He is now our acting president until new elections in three months. Our nation is in turmoil over this atrocity. The world press looks on with drooling readiness to report our every move. And where is our leader in the midst of it all? Word has it that he is at his river dacha, choosing to prepare for his transition to the presidency in the privacy of his home. But my superiors refuse to confirm or deny that. Even more strange, we have been told to stand down in our usual security of a president’s home, that Glinka prefers his own guards, whom we never trained and hardly know.” Viktor shrugged. “Very odd, I say.”

Evgeny’s eyes bored deep into Viktor’s, his mind zooming down new pathways. “Keep going. I sense there is more.”

“Just one more thing. The morning before the assassination, someone taped a pamphlet to the post office door in Gorev’s village, where he was headed. Someone wrote over it. It read:
A Memorial Concert for the Late Dimitri Gorev.”

Evgeny’s mind spun. “Someone announcing what was to come. A teaser. But for what purpose?” He looked back at the flame. “What kind of pamphlet was it?”

But Viktor was silent too long. Evgeny raised his head, his forehead creasing over his black eyebrows. “Viktor?”

“It was German. Announcing an upcoming concert at the Nuremberg Music Festival.”

Evgeny stood up slowly, peering down at his friend. “A concert given by whom?” But he already knew, and the implications exploded like shrapnel in his brain.

Viktor stared up at him. “Calm down, Evgeny. You cannot let affection for that woman rule your better judgment.”

“One more question.” Evgeny placed both hands on his knees and bent eye level to Viktor. “Where is Glinka’s dacha?”

A
rkady Glinka had never owned a dacha until Gorev appointed him prime minister. Afterwards, Glinka wasted no time in purchasing a country retreat like those owned by, or provided for, others in the Kremlin’s upper echelon. Gorev had suggested a particular residence he knew to be available. Located farther up the Volga from Gorev’s village, the rustic two-story dwelling was larger than a man with only an ex-wife and no children needed. But of utmost appeal to Glinka was its seclusion.

The home was perched in a dense hammock overlooking a backwoods branch of the Volga, accessible only by a winding, unpaved road, or by water, though nothing but a canoe or kayak could navigate the shoals and rapids along that stretch of river. The fishing harvest from these waters, however, was bountiful. But Glinka cared nothing about fishing.

The air sagged over the river that Saturday afternoon, laden with moisture and lethargy. Though sheathed in a hazy gauze, the summer sun pulsed with relentless heat. The old man shuffling along the road to the Glinka house removed his cap and lifted his arm to swipe at his damp forehead. The old homespun shirt was already sticking to his skin.

He carried a fishing pole, bucket, and knapsack as he scuffed his worn-out boots over the gravel lane. Nearby villagers had long claimed these backwaters as their private fishing grounds, until Glinka bought most of the river frontage and moved his small entourage into the isolated house on the point. A few from town had been caught sneaking onto the private riverbanks with their fly-fishing rods, but were promptly chased away by the guards.

Before reaching the gated drive to the Glinka house, the man veered into the trees near the river and wound his way along a timeworn footpath toward the point, where the confluence of currents promised the best catch. He knew the gate would be guarded more heavily now that Arkady Glinka was the Russian Federation’s new president.

The man cautiously eyed the river, the woods, and the path behind and before him. What good fortune that no one appeared to be around. As he approached the fenced estate, he scanned the trees for security cameras, but saw none. Though electronic surveillance had never been detected around the house before, the old man knew it might appear at any time.

The man gripped his fishing rod tightly, threading it between trees that crowded more closely now, partially obscuring his view of the river. When he emerged into a small clearing beside a rapids, he stopped cold and his right hand shot inside the pocket of his pants. A uniformed guard stood on the bank before him, skipping stones across the water with one hand and tipping back a metal flask with the other. The fisherman was close enough to hear the slosh of liquid inside the container. Before he could retreat, though, the young guard turned a tipsy body toward him and slurred a warning, “Better stop right there, old peasant. They will shoot you dead.”

Old?
Evgeny Kozlov bristled slightly. His villager disguise had worked well, but it seemed nothing masked his age.

The guard skipped another rock and looked back at Evgeny. “But I tell you what. You go on and fish all you want to. I will just sit right here and watch you … me and my good friend.” He hoisted the flask as if by introduction.

Evgeny remained silent, his hand still on the gun in his pocket, his eyes darting between the guard and the hillside that rose to the Glinka house.

“They will fire me anyway because, as they say, I am a disgrace to the force, sent down here to the river to sober up. But that will not happen.” He lifted the flask again.

Evgeny couldn’t believe the opportunity before him, already gauging the guard’s size, the likely fit of his uniform on Evgeny’s own body. If Glinka were here, there was a chance Evgeny could get in and out of the estate with as much intelligence as he could gather there, if not from the man himself, perhaps from his aides. By force, if necessary.

“You are right, young man. What is wrong with a little drink?” He paused. “Did Glinka send you down here?” Evgeny asked sympathetically, plying the man’s inebriated brain.

The man laughed and shook his head. “Oh no. Comrade Glinka is off conferring with his ghosts.” The man bent to pick up more stones, nearly losing his balance.

Ghosts?
“What do you mean?” But even as he asked, Evgeny recalled long-ago rumors about Glinka’s penchant for the occult. Nothing was ever confirmed, and soon the rumors faded.

The guard wagged a finger at Evgeny. “Ah ha! I know something you do not.” He grinned with satisfaction. “That little place he goes to is a secret. Yes, it is. But this ‘disgrace to the force’ knows about it.” The man squatted low to the ground and clumsily slid into a sitting position. “He and his friends go there to talk to dead people. Ha!” The guard slapped his thigh and chuckled lightly. “What do you say about that?” Now the man stretched into a full recline on the ground, gazing up at the trees, his hand still tight around the flask.

Evgeny knew he didn’t have long before the man lost consciousness. “Have you been to that place?”

The man breathed deep and stretched again. “To America? Never. But he goes quite often. To Florida. The, uh … oh yes, the Keys.” He removed his hat and placed it over his face. Evgeny was about to pursue that when the man suddenly sat up, his head cocked. He was clearly alarmed. “Do you hear that?”

Evgeny listened. A car approached from the top of the hill. The driveway ran within sight of that spot.

The man did his best to stand up, stumbling once before righting himself. As the car drew near, the guard looked squarely at Evgeny, a sobering transformation. “He’s coming!”

“Who?” Evgeny asked. “You said Glinka was gone.”

“The other one.” The man kicked his flask into the bushes, then eyed Evgeny as if seeing him for the first time. “You better get out of here, old man. If he catches you here, he will shoot you!” Without further word, the guard scrambled up the hill into the cover of trees, a safe distance from the car descending the curving drive.

Evgeny dropped the fishing gear on the ground and followed the guard part way up the path, but where the man clambered away from the advancing car, Evgeny headed straight for it. Drawing his binoculars from the knapsack still strapped to his chest, he dropped to his belly and crawled through the underbrush, pushing toward a clear vantage point.

Just ahead of the car was the gate and what looked like a hastily assembled guardhouse, manned by two soldiers in the same uniform as the drunk now running away. One of the soldiers stepped away from the checkpoint to open the gate for the gray Mercedes sedan now approaching. Evgeny was just about twenty yards away.

As the car slowed at the gate, he trained his binoculars on its windows, which were all down. He could see two uniformed men in front and one plainclothes passenger in back, though not clearly. As the car exited the gate, its dark-tinted windows began to rise, front and back. Trained only on that back passenger, Evgeny squinted down hard as the window slowly closed.

He had only a couple of seconds. But it was all he needed. In the last instant, the face in the back seat turned toward the unobstructed light and Evgeny jerked at the sight.

Maxum Morozov!

A
strong headwind buffeted the yacht as it sailed toward the eastern horizon. The sooner it left U.S. waters the better. Inside the forward salon, three men gathered on creamy-yellow calfskin sofas. The sleek, glassy room was soundproof and routinely swept for listening devices, though none had ever been found. To the owner’s knowledge, no one had ever suspected who lived aboard his ship.

According to its registry, the vessel belonged to a Dubai real estate magnate with holdings all over the world. But the real owner and full-time resident was the man now pouring black tea for his guests. When they’d been served, he settled back to sip his own brew laced with potent herbs and roots, a potion prescribed by Curt Vandoren, who now eyed his host with amusement.

“We should all be banished to such exile,” Vandoren said, scanning the opulent salon clad in polished teak, crystal, and buttery leathers, all surrounded by a panoramic sweep of the ocean. It was an unfortunate comment that drew a scowl from the man who considered his ship a gilded prison and nothing more.

“I would gladly return with you tonight to your swampy little nest onshore and never see this ship again.” Ivan Volynski gestured toward the empty wheelchair near the sofa. “Never again confine myself to such an indecency as that.”