“How do you figure?”
“Krupin’s desperate. The volatility of energy prices, breakaway states looking Westward, his political opponents and the oligarchs constantly searching for weakness in him. I let you defeat me in the Middle East and now he’s desperate.”
Krupin had put Azarov in charge of a plan to turn Saudi Arabia’s oil producing region into a radioactive wasteland. The ensuing chaos in the energy markets would have bailed out natural resource–dependent Russia while trashing the economies of the rest of the world. Rapp had managed to stop it, leaving the aging Krupin to lead his country toward an increasingly uncertain future.
“What’s that have to do with you anymore, Grisha? As near as my people can tell, all you do is surf and float around in your pool.”
The television screen shifted from brutalized protesters to Krupin speaking from an outdoor stage. It was in Russian with Spanish subtitles, but the gist was clear. He was appealing to his core supporters—the ultra nationalists, the fascists, and the people old enough to remember former Soviet glory. He was calling on them to help him in his desperate fight to defeat the massive conspiracies being carried out by the West. The imaginary plots to impoverish and surround Russia, to finance political opposition and protests, to relegate their great nation to irrelevance. And the people in the crowd were eating it up.
Azarov’s eyes had gone dead, locked on the man who used to control every aspect of his life.
“How is she?” Rapp asked.
“Living only by the grace of the machines she’s connected to. I’m told that she’ll need a new liver but that there’s a long list of people ahead of her to get one.” He turned away from the television and locked his dead eyes on Rapp. “Why didn’t you warn me?”
“We knew a lot of Costa Rica’s power had gone down but just assumed it was a technical issue. When Irene got wind it was a Russian hack, we tried to get you by email and phone. It didn’t work, so I got on a plane.”
“When you came to me earlier this year and asked for my help, we made a deal.” His voice was emotionless, almost robotic. “I would help you take care of Prince Musaid and in return you’d help me if enemies from my past resurfaced.”
His eyes narrowed slightly and Rapp realized that this was what rage looked like in Azarov. He’d never seen it before. The Russian tended to do what he did because he calculated that it was in his best interest. Now—maybe for the first time in his life—something had gone wrong that he actually cared about.
“A blackout is nothing for the CIA!” Azarov shouted, suddenly letting go of the icy exterior he was so famous for. “You knew and didn’t want to send local assets. You didn’t want to expose their identities. And now Cara’s paying the price!”
It was obvious that the Russian didn’t really believe what he was saying. The number of valuable clandestine assets the CIA had tanning themselves in Costa Rica was precisely zero. But at this point, facts didn’t matter.
Azarov was fast as hell, but not like before. He was exhausted from carrying Cara and had cut his training regimen by about ninety percent since retiring. Still, the impact between them lifted Rapp into the air and slammed him into the wall next to the door.
Rapp slipped an ankle around the back of Azarov’s leg, pulling him in close enough that he couldn’t get much momentum behind his blows. The first was an elbow coming in hard from the right. Rapp managed to get a shoulder up, causing Azarov’s forearm to glance off it and absorb most of the force. What was left, though, nearly took him down.
Seeing him buckling, Azarov swung a knee up, but Rapp managed to block it and ride it away from the wall. Azarov tried to sweep his foot but Rapp put all his weight onto it, compromising the Russian’s balance when his move failed.
Azarov’s decades of training and the perfection they’d instilled in him were both his strength and his weakness. He could always be counted on to flawlessly execute exactly the right technique at exactly the right moment. It made him predictable.
Rapp took advantage of the Russian’s split second of instability and ducked under his arm, getting behind him. He rammed a fist into the back of his head and then another into Azarov’s kidneys. Under the circumstances, he would normally pull the punches, but it wasn’t necessary in this case.
Azarov remained upright and shoved against the wall in front of him, trying to throw his weight back onto his opponent. Again, though, it was exactly the right move at exactly the right moment. Rapp was countering before it even started.
He sidestepped and stuck a foot out. That, combined with a firm grip on Azarov’s hair, sent the Russian rolling across the tile floor.
He came to stop on his back and Rapp moved right, leaving Azarov with the worst possible line of attack. He didn’t move, though. He just lay there staring at the ceiling.
“I’m just a Russian murderer, Mitch. Without the light she casts on me, I disappear.” He let his head fall to the side so he could look up at Rapp. “You’re responsible for your wife’s death. How did you come to terms with that?”
If it had been anyone else talking, those would have been their last words. But from Azarov, it wasn’t an attack. It was a serious question.
In fact, he’d disappeared into Southeast Asia and tried to forget with the help of whatever needle or pill he could find. At first it had worked, but after a time the memories learned to fight back. There was no cheating the grief, rage, and guilt. It was going to have its day no matter what you did.
“You don’t want to use me as a model,” he said, sliding down the wall behind him and sitting on the floor.
“Then what? What happens to me now?”
Rapp rubbed the bleeding knot rising on the back of his head. “There’s a difference between us, Grisha. My wife was dead. Cara’s not.”
CHAPTER 10
“GIVE me the short version,” Rapp said to the Costa Rican doctor leaning against the wall. Claudia had checked him out and given him the thumbs-up. A gifted general surgeon who had been trained in Madrid before returning to settle a few miles from where he was born.
“Are you sure it wouldn’t be better if I came back in a few minutes?” he said through a Spanish accent that was easier to understand than Joe Maslick’s South Carolina one.
Rapp’s impact with the wall had left a gash in the back of his head that refused to stop bleeding. A local nurse was standing behind him plunging a suture needle in and out of the wound with impressive gusto.
“I’ve got time between now and her finishing. Go.”
“Okay. The first aid your people performed was excellent but her wound is extremely serious. I was able to remove the bullet and stabilize her but that’s all I can do here.”
“Can we transfer her? To San José or back to the States?”
He shook his head. “I’m not even sure she’s going to make it through the night. If she does, it will be a few days before we can even think of moving her.”
“I heard someone say something about her liver.”
“Yes. It’s not salvageable. If she survives, she’s going to need a transplant.”
Rapp let out a long breath as the nurse finished up. It hadn’t been long ago that he’d been in a similar situation with Scott Coleman. People who got too close to Azarov didn’t do so well. It was a problem Rapp understood better than most.
“If you have good news, go ahead and give it directly to Grisha. If you have bad news, go through me.”
His expression turned a bit confused. “Who are you? And what’s your relationship to the girl?”
“Have you ever heard the saying ‘shoot the messenger’?” Rapp said by way of answer.
“Of course.”
“I’m going to tell you once and you’re going to listen to me. If the message is that Cara’s dead or dying, your life may depend on me being the one who delivers it.”