The Kremlin Phoenix (23 page)

“If you can’t show me his file,
show me his grave!”

Valentina stared at Craig for a
long time before answering. “Do you know what is happening in this country?”

Craig looked out of the window at
the black tunnel walls speeding past. “I haven’t exactly been watching CNN
lately.”

“There’s a coup d’état under way.
The President is under house arrest, the Prime Minister is hiding, and the military
control the streets.”

Craig gave her a surprised look,
remembering the armored column he’d seen driving into the city.
So that’s
what that was!
“So which side are you on?” he asked.

“I don’t want things to go back to
the way they were,” Valentina replied, “but the country is bankrupt. It’s
vulnerable. The money you control can solve that.”

Fenenko stood up, certain the
exchange would not resolve itself soon. “I’ll check outside,” he said and slipped
out.

The train guard was still leaning
against the wall with his flask, looking a little drunker than before. Fenenko retrieved
the radio from his pocket, and whispered, “Are you there?”

“We’re listening,” the voice came
back immediately.

“He wants to make a deal,” he
said, then outlined Craig’s demands.

There were several seconds of silence
before his controller spoke. “We’ve relayed your report. Standby.”

Fenenko studied the faces in the
carriage, but no one paid him the least attention. The train passed through
several more stations, then he spoke impatiently into the microphone. “When we
reach Moscow Central, we’ll be getting off. What do you want me to do?”

The voice came back, “We’re still
waiting. Standby.”

He forced himself to relax by counting
down the stations until the train terminated. When there were just two stations
remaining, the calm, controlling voice sounded again.“We have received
instructions. This is what you will do.”

* * * *

When Karmanov was certain no one was
ahead of him, he crossed into the south bound tunnel and hurried back towards
the metro station. He expected to encounter Valentina and Fenenko coming to
meet him, but instead he discovered three men, one lying wounded by the tracks.

 “Who are you?” Karmanov asked in
Russian as Rogers wrapped his neck tie around Harriman’s leg as a makeshift
pressure bandage.

Corman recognized the chief
criminal investigator from his photograph in the embassy briefing. “American
diplomats. We need an ambulance, Mr Karmanov.”

Karmanov showed only momentary surprise
at being recognized. “Who shot you?” he asked in heavily accented English.

“I didn’t see his face,” Harriman
replied. “He ran into a side tunnel.”

Harriman’s gun lying on the
tracks, briefly caught Karmanov’s eye. “Who do you work for? CIA?”

“It’s a long story,” Corman
replied, not denying his suspicions.

Karmanov used his radio to call
for assistance. “Help will be here soon.”

“Thanks,” Harriman said relieved.

“What is your connection with
Craig Balard?” Karmanov asked. “I’m no fool, so do not try my patience with
lies.”

“I wouldn’t think of doing such a
thing,” Corman said, then introduced himself, Rogers and Harriman. “Considering
your attack on the safe house this morning, I know you’re not working for the
Emergency Committee. The question is, who are you working for?”

Again, surprise flashed across
Karmanov’s face, this time because Corman knew about the safe house. “Prime
Minister Gundarovsky.”

Corman sobered. “You know where
he is?”

Karmanov hesitated, then nodded
slowly.

“In that case, Mr Karmanov, considering
the present situation, I think we have much to discuss.”

* * * *

“We’ll phone Alexander to pick us up,
when we reach the station,” Valentina said, as the train approached the last
stop.

“Our phones will be bugged by
now,” Fenenko said. “If we contact Karmanov, they’ll know where we are.”

“What choice do we have?”

Fenenko made a show of locking
the door to the guard’s compartment. “I know who the informant is.”

“You do?” Valentina said, astonished.
“How?”

“I helped Demidoff. He swore me
to secrecy, because we were worried about a leak,” he said, carefully repeating
the script Nogorev had given him. It was part of the ruse to trick Craig into
revealing how he planned to access his Swiss account.

“You know what happened to my
father?” Craig demanded.

“I know who does, but he may not
speak to me.”

“Why didn’t you say something
sooner?” Valentina demanded.

“When Demidoff was killed, I
thought it safer if no one knew.”

Valentina nodded understandingly.
“What did you have in mind?”

Fenenko sat down and spoke in a
low voice, as if taking them into his confidence. “If we go to SK headquarters,
or our homes, we’ll be arrested. If we call Karmanov, they’ll trace the call
back to us. However, if I call the informant, offer him a lot of money, he
might give us the file and you,” he said nodding to Craig, “can give us the
account information.”

“I’ll pay anything he wants!”

“Not too much,” Fenenko said, “or
he’ll grow suspicious. It has to be enough to get his interest, but not so much
as to frighten him off.”

Valentina saw through the window
that the train was pulling into the central metro station. “You call the
informant, find out what his terms are.” She glanced at Craig. “I’ll get us a
change of clothes, to make us harder to identify.”

 “He will have to prove the
documents are legitimate,” Craig said.

Fenenko nodded. “He would expect
that.”

* * * *

Craig zipped up his new black jacket
and adjusted the dark sunglasses Valentina had bought him as a disguise. His
new jeans and running shoes were poor quality, but were clean and comfortable
and had allowed him to dump his suit in a trash bin. Valentina had changed into
jeans, and had replaced her jacket with a sweater that hung low enough to
conceal the Makarov semi-automatic pistol in her belt. Fenenko, also now
dressed casually, waited a short distance away under a large clock mounted on
the Metro station wall.

A middle aged man carrying a brief
case and wearing a dull brown suit emerged from the crowd and walked purposefully
to Fenenko. He wore dark rimmed glasses and appeared to be the type who might
have managed a library. It was why Nogorev had selected him. The man acknowledged
Fenenko without shaking hands.

“To confirm my authority,” the
man said abruptly, “we know your name is Pavlya Fenenko. You work for the
Federal Security Service, internal security division. Your mother’s name is
Alina, your father’s name was Luka. He died four years ago. You have two
sisters.” He then recited Fenenko’s FSB identification number. “Satisfied?”

Fenenko struggled not to show his
surprise. He still hadn’t told his Emergency Committee controllers his name.
“How did you know who I was?”

“I tell you this to prove we have
authority over you. The Emergency Committee instructed the Director of the FSB to
inform us who his deep cover agent was inside Sledkom. You are now under Warrant
Officer Nogorev’s orders. He is the mission commander.”

“I understand,” Fenenko said,
astonished the Director of the FSB himself was directly involved. He also
appreciated the significance of the Director following Emergency Committee
orders, considering he had been appointed by the President.

“Remember this, my name is Yarol
Tupitsyn. I am the Chief Archivist of the former KGB archives. We have met
three times before, on the tenth of October, on the fifteen of December last
year, and on the third of March this year. Give out no other information.”

Fenenko nodded, memorizing the cover
story details. “Are the others listening?”

“Of course. They can hear every
word. Now, introduce me.”

Fenenko led Tupitsyn to where Valentina
and Craig waited. He made the introduction with a carefully pitched degree of minimal
familiarity. Tupitsyn merely nodded to them, then led them across the station
to a small coffee house where he selected a table away from other customers.

When they were seated, Tupitsyn began
in an authoritative tone. “I have here the complete file on an American air
force officer by the name of Colonel Jack Balard. The brief case is equipped
with acid, so if you try to open it without the combination, the file will be
destroyed. You should also know, I am armed. The price for the file is ten
million American dollars transferred into an account of my choosing. Once the
transfer is made, I will give you the file.”

“Files can be faked,” Craig said,
wary of a trick.

Tupitsyn looked down his nose
disdainfully. “Yes, they can.” He pulled four tickets from his pocket. He kept
one and placed three on the table. The others looked at the tickets confused.

“What’s this?” Valentina asked.

“Tickets for the Trans Siberian
Railway. You want proof. I will show you proof, then you will give me my money
and I will go to Rio De Janeiro, watch football and fuck pretty girls.”

“You’re not going to give us the
file?” Craig asked.

“Do you want the file, or do you
want proof?” Tupitsyn said. “You can have the file now, if you give me the
money, but then I go. No proof.”

Craig hesitated. Paying ten
million dollars was nothing, compared to the money sitting in Switzerland, but
without proof, he would always wonder if the document was a fake.

Tupitsyn worked the tumbler
locks, careful to ensure they didn’t see the combination. He opened the case, revealing
an aging folder thick with papers, and stamped with the crest of the now defunct
KGB. Tupitsyn lifted the cover of the folder, revealing the first page, yellow
from years of aging, and pointed to a name neatly typed in Cyrillic characters.

Valentina leaned forward and translated.
“It says Colonel Jack Balard, USAF.”

“Are you sure you do not want the
file now?” Tupitsyn asked, tantalizing Craig with the prospect of an immediate
answer, against the risk of a forgery. “Note the age of the paper. That cannot
be easily faked.”

Craig studied the dry, yellowed
pages, thinking they looked genuine. “Old paintings are faked all the time. I
want real proof and the file.”

“As you wish.” Tupitsyn slammed the
case shut and spun the locks. “Only I know the combination. Remember, if you
try to open the case, the file will be destroyed. So, do we have a deal?”

“Absolutely,” Craig said.

Tupitsyn handcuffed the brief
case to his wrist. “Our train leaves in fourteen minutes!”

* * * *

November 6, 2280

“Lost him
again!” Zikky said, unable to find any trace of Craig Balard in twenty first century
Russia.

“What does that Russian police
report say now?” Mariena asked.

Zikky shook his head. “There isn’t
one.”

“Did it disappear out of the
memory core after the last reset?”

“Nope,” Zikky said. “It never
existed in the memory core – ever! I did a molecular scan of the base encoding.
There’s absolutely no trace of it.”

Mariena fell silent for a moment,
deep in thought. “Craig Balard never died in Russia, in this timeline. So you
never uploaded the police report of his death.”

“I uploaded something!”

“Yes, but what data in which
timeline?” Mariena smiled wistfully. “My brother would have loved this.”

“Loved what? Confusion?”

“The causality paradox,” she said
simply. “We read a Russian police report, that caused us to send a message into
the past, that got Craig Balard to do something different, which saved his life,
and caused the police report that triggered the whole chain of events, never to
have existed – even though it caused this timeline!”

“Oh yeah, that makes a whole lot
of sense!” Zikky exclaimed.

“At least we know he got your
warning,” Captain Wilkins said.

“We know more than that,” Mariena
declared. “We know we’re fundamentally impacting the timeline. The fact the station’s
memory core
physically
changed from one timeline to the next proves it.
The question is, what are the resets doing to our memories?”

Zikky scowled. “I remember
everything we did – at least, I think I do.”

“How would you know?”

“I remember the previous
timeline, because I remember the Russian police report.”

“But in this timeline, we have a dataset
in the station’s memory core originating from
this
timeline, not the
previous one. How did it get there, if
you
didn’t upload it? So which dataset
do you really remember uploading?”