Russian Law (Law Series ) (Volume 1) (23 page)

Chapter 27

Director
Vladimir Mishkin took in the devastation, he couldn’t believe his eyes. How
could someone do such at thing to a National Monument for fuck’s sake? A major
piece of history like the Winter Palace of all frigging places? He would find
the bastard who did this and would kill him – slowly, painfully. The body count
was going to be high. He could see the body parts strewn across the remains of
St George’s Hall. He saw movement and walked over to the survivor. His eyes
widened when he saw a bloodied Lucas Gates and he bent down to help the man to
his feet.

The
American had more lives than a cat. That or he was one lucky son-of-a-bitch. He
didn’t look too bad for what he had just lived through. He still had all his
limbs and didn’t seem to be suffering greatly from the loss of blood caused by
the gunshot wound on his shoulder.

When
this was all over he and Gates were going to have a real long talk. Mishkin had
heard from the FSB that an American had warned them to remove the President
from the room due to a threat against his life and they had reacted in the way
all good agents did in such a situation. They got the President the fuck out of
there. Even if the informant turned out to be a nut case, it was better safe
than sorry.

Lucas’s
head swam as he was brought to his feet. His head pounded like a jackhammer and
he could’ve done with a bottle full of Vicodin and several glasses of Scotch.
His shoulder throbbed as he moved his arm and he gritted his teeth against the
searing pain. His mind tried to make sense of the images surrounding his vision.
Fire fighters barged into the hall with their hoses at the ready, the water
spraying over the flames. He watched as medics entered with their medical bags
and moved over to the visible bodies lying scattered about the hall. His memory
came rushing back and he immediately looked about for Elena, God if anything
happened to her he would never forgive himself.

“Good
God! Do you destroy everything you touch?” Mishkin’s face was the color of a
red delicious apple. Lucas wasn’t sure if it was the temperature in the room or
if Mishkin was just plain mad. From the state of St George’s Hall he expected
it to be the latter.

The
words started off garbled but by the time he was done speaking the constant
ringing had lessened and he could once again hear other sounds. He wasn’t sure
that was a good thing if he was about to get a lecture from Mishkin. Lucas ran
the fingers of his good arm through his hair as he took in the damage.

Oops.

He
had meant to diffuse the bomb but having unsuccessfully accomplished that, had
done the next best thing, called for an evacuation. He could understand
Vladimir Mishkin’s anger. He would feel the same if someone failed to prevent a
disaster at the White House.

“Mishkin
are the President’s safe?” he croaked out as if he hadn’t used his voice in a
while. How long had it been since the bomb went off? How long had he been
unconscious and where the hell was Elena? He remembered rolling her beneath him
for protection. She should have still been there when he recovered. Had she, finding
him unconscious gone for help or had something else happened to her?

“A
few cuts here and bruises there but they will live to tell about it, thanks to
you.”

Lucas
nodded, good to know, one crisis adverted. He caught the fleeting glimpse of
Alexei and Elena exiting through a hidden door at the other side of the room
out the corner of his eye,
son-of-a-goddamn-bitch
.

“Good.
Give me your gun.”

He
had expected Vladimir to protest, instead he passed over the Russian
Federation’s Government issued pistol.

“May
I ask as to why?” he politely enquired as if Lucas was merely asking to borrow
a pen.

“I
have something to do. I’ll see you later.”

He
then began to run after Elena.

Chapter 28

Alexei
pushed
Elena
down a hall and to the ground when he came to a dead end, a steel blast door
blocking their exit. After going through the hidden escape door in St George’s
Hall, Alexei had pulled her down a narrow staircase that had led down to the
basement and back into the hidden tunnels under the palace. Adrenaline pumped
through Elena and was the only thing keeping her moving. She was exhausted. It
had been a long few days. She had tripped a few more times on the way since her
arms were behind her back and she had no way to balance herself as she and
Alexei made a swift getaway. She wasn’t exactly sure of his plan but knew she
was his insurance. There was no other viable reason to keep her with him.

Elena
was fuming. She had trusted this man, confided in him. She had gone past scared
and annoyed to downright pissed off and she was now ready to let him know it.
She didn’t plan on making this easy for him. Certainly not let him use her to
make his escape. He was a traitor, of his country and of his friendship with
Nikolai. The latter pissing her off the most.

It
all made sense to her now. Nikolai had called on Alexei when he had discovered
the plot to kill the Russian and American Presidents at the UN Summit. He knew
it went high within the ranks of the Government and was unsure at who to trust.
He had sorely misjudged his friendship with Alexei and had paid the price.

“It
was you who provided the intel to Ducane wasn’t it? Zimtovich just worked for
you.” He grunted and she took that as assent. “So this was your big plan all
along? This is why you killed Nikolai?”

And
she knew it was him – personally
him
. Nikolai trusted him as she had.
They had been friends since the academy, been his best man at his wedding. The
amount of times he had come to dinner, then working on a case with Nikolai
while they had drunk Vodka. She felt sick, sick with grief, sick with anger,
sick at herself for believing his lies.

“He
trusted the wrong person.” Alexei said simply.

All
those years of friendship had meant nothing to him, the bastard had waited for
Nikolai in their apartment, she remembered Nikolai giving him a key for ‘just
in case’. She could see him waiting in the dark, listening to the key in the
door as Nikolai unlocked it and entered their home, waiting for him to come
closer, revealing himself ‘the friend’ before taking Nikolai’s life away.

One
thing made Elena smile though and that was Nikolai had outsmarted him, in truth
had not fully trusted the man he had known for years. It must have been
frustrating for Alexei not being able to find his carefully laid plans. After
searching the apartment and realizing they weren’t there, how he must have
sweated. Worried that Nikolai had passed them on to Vladimir after it became
apparent that she had known nothing about them.

He
had not guessed that Nikolai had made a copy of her wedding ring and had
swapped them out one night while she had slept. Nikolai had had the last laugh
and imagined him sticking it to Alexei from the grave.

“Why?
What is this all about, your hatred of anything besides Russia?”

“At
first yes, but then I found our President to be a spineless coward. Unable to
stand up for what is best for this country,
our
country, he does not
deserve to be called our President. It is time for a new President.”

Her
eyes widened. “You wanted to kill Sergei Smirnov just so his opponent would
become President? Was he in on this with you? Is that how far all this goes?”

“Yuri
Volstov was always the better man, Smirnov should never have been made President.
He is a weakling.”

So
that was what it was all about. Alexei had constructed the entire thing. From
beginning to end, from murdering Nikolai to arranging for Michael Ducane to
slip through immigration and get in touch with Alvin Pochenchov. All for a man
like Yuri Volstov. There was a reason that Yuri failed in the polls. His plan
for Russia was barely two steps away from another communist regime.

“And
raving psychotic,” she said.

Alexei
slapped her across the mouth, splitting her lip and snapping her head back. She
could taste blood in her mouth.

“When
you back a political figure you go all out don’t you?”

Dimitrovich
grabbed her hard, bruising her soft flesh as he brought her to her feet and
through the blast door he just opened. She bit her bottom lip, determined not
to cry out in pain and give him any satisfaction.

“So
help me God, Alexei I will kill you.”

His
thin restraint snapped and he pushed her head first against the wall. She was
dazed as her head connected with the concrete. She blinked to clear her vision.
Alexei turned her around slowly, keeping her against the wall unable to move
away from him. His face close to hers, she felt the skin on her hands tear as
they scraped against the concrete as he kept her pinned to the wall.

“Really?
From where I’m standing you are the dead one. Well at least not until I get out
of here anyway.”

Elena
spat at him. “You bastard.”

She
struggled with him, surprising him. Her knee came up and connected with his
groin. Alexei doubled over in pain, dropping to his knees, holding his family
jewels in one hand, and grabbing her ankle in the other as she tried to get
away. She kicked at him with her free leg, her thick leather shoes connecting
with his ribs, his face anywhere she could get at him and felt immense satisfaction
at the sound of his ribs crackling under the pressure. Her foot rammed his
protecting hand into his bruised genitals almost causing him to throw up. He
released Elena and she took off running in the direction he had been taking
her, deciding not to turn back with him still there. She could her him
screaming out, “
Suka
,” behind her.

Alexei
cursed again, before gingerly standing up. He had underestimated Elena. She had
always seemed weak to him, crumbling when she had found Nikolai. He had always
thought of her as fractured. He would not make the same mistake again, he
thought as he limped on after her, determined to kill the bitch.

Elena
didn’t know where she was or where she was going. She only knew she had to get
as far away from Alexei Dimitrovich as possible. If only she could find the
exit and get topside, the area would certainly be crawling with emergency
personnel.

Elena
stopped when she got to a small circular room with five tunnels spouting out in
different directions, she would have to choose. Which one was freedom? Would
all of them take her away from this place? Away from Alexei? she wondered
before making her decision. She stepped forward into the tunnel of her choice
when she was grabbed from behind as Alexei emerged from another tunnel, Elena
struggled with him causing him to lose balance and he backhanded her across the
face, stunning her into admission. Tears burned in her eyes, once for the slap,
the second because she had failed in getting away from him.

Alexei
dragged her down the tunnel she had planned on going down. Cold water appeared
on the floor as it leaked through some cracks in the concrete. As they made
their way deeper into the tunnel the water got higher until it was at ankle
depth, seeping into her socks and chilling her feet. Alexei pushed her to the
ground once again, Elena landing in the freezing water, soaking her jeans as he
opened another blast door to reveal the frigid air outside. He got her to her
feet and she could see a white well-used thirty-four foot Sport Cabin resting
on the water of the river Neva.

Alexei
pulled her towards the Sport Cabin and knew that that was his destination and
that there was nobody around. They were alone. She assumed any locals were all
watching the drama unfold behind her at the Palace and she realized that she
and Alexei had completely passed under the palace and the embankment dividing
the Palace and the river.

Elena
began to panic. She was handcuffed, all alone with a murderer who had no
reservations about killing her. She struggled, fighting Alexei with everything
she possessed as he continued towards the boat, undaunted by her attempts. With
one last ditch effort to free herself, Elena let her feet drag, making him pull
her full weight.

Realizing
she was no longer cooperating with him, Alexei turned around and picked her up,
draping her over his shoulder like a sack of flour. She tried to kick at him,
but he dodged each attempt.

He
hopped into the boat and dumped her unceremoniously onto the deck floor,
stepping over her to turn on the engine and prepare to take the boat out.

Elena
gritted her teeth at the shooting pain that was attacking her body as she hit
the hard deck. Tears escaped her eyes, rolling down her cool cheeks only to
freeze halfway down. The night’s temperature had dropped well under the record
low and Elena knew all Alexei had to do was drop her overboard into the river
and she would either freeze to death or drown as her winter clothes would get
waterlogged and pull her down beneath the surface.

Do
something you idiot, Elena chastised herself. If you die it’s no one’s fault
but your own she internally warned herself. So get up and do something now before
it’s too late.