A woman appeared on the sidewalk below and Azarov watched the wind attack her umbrella. It seemed like Krupin would send a somewhat more formidable operative to drag off the dying soldier, but it wasn’t certain. Force was his preferred method, but in this case perhaps he felt that secrecy was more important.
Azarov felt a distinct wave of disappointment when she passed by without giving the house a second look. As she disappeared into the mist, Maxim Krupin disappeared with her.
“Moneypenny was M’s secretary,” he said. “Not Bond’s.”
“Know-it-all.”
He leaned into the window, scanning up and down the street. Once again it was devoid of life.
“I understand Claudia visited you yesterday.”
“With her daughter,” Cara confirmed. “Have you met them? So sweet. Anna’s—”
An unexpected knock on the door caused him to lose focus on what she was saying.
“Dr. Kennedy just came in,” he lied. Again. “Can I call you back?”
“Sure. But you need to be more interesting next time. I’m pretty sure the boredom of lying in this bed is going to kill me before the liver does.”
“I’ll work on it. If you promise to get some rest.”
He disconnected the call as a second knock sounded, this time insistent enough to cause dust to float from the old wood. Azarov looked around the room, taking in its details again. The entire space was perhaps four meters square with a small table in the center and a rudimentary kitchen along the north wall. A pullout sofa partially blocked the door to a minuscule bathroom. The only window was the one he was sitting at.
If Krupin had found him, there would be no escape. Rapp wasn’t going to come to the rescue again and Nikita Pushkin wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of Costa Rica. He’d have no fewer than thirty men, multiple attack helicopters, and satellite coverage.
In light of all that, there seemed to be no reason not to answer.
Azarov crossed the room and opened the door, not bothering to even put a hand near his weapon. Instead of Pushkin and a Spetsnaz team, though, he found a lone man in his late twenties. He wore sunglasses despite the gloom and his damp shirt strained to contain a physique sculpted more for appearance than athletic prowess. He was prettier than most, but still identifiable as a member of one of the gangs that infested this part of Russia.
“Can I help you?” Azarov asked, already knowing the answer. He was new in town and had used a significant amount of cash to rent a room that was barely better than sleeping outside. This young thug would assume he was on the run—from the police, from people to whom he owed money, from the military. A man on the run was easy prey.
“The landlord made a mistake,” he said, entering without an invitation. “The rent is actually double the amount he told you. And it would be best if you paid me my half in cash on the first of every month.”
He squared off with Azarov, tensing slightly to make his muscles ripple under the cloth constraining them. “The first installment is due now. My mother needs a new heater for her apartment.”
His eyes were blue and clear, his hair full, and his skin smooth. Azarov’s gaze fell to the tattoos snaking around his thick forearms. High-quality artwork from a shop that would follow professional hygiene standards.
“Do you talk or are you some kind of idiot?” the young man said as Azarov fixed on the pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket. Disappointing, but not catastrophic.
“Hey! I’m fucking talking to you!”
A powerful hand shot out and grabbed the front of Azarov’s shirt, breaking him from his trance. He raised his gaze from the man’s chest to his face, examining the furious expression without really seeing it. “You wouldn’t happen to know your blood type, would you?”
He released his shirt. “Are you on drugs or something?”
Azarov didn’t answer, instead reached out and closed the door.
? ? ?
Azarov pulled a broken cigarette from the pack and held a lighter to it. The blood-soaked tobacco resisted the flame at first, but finally it caught and allowed him to draw the smoke into his lungs.
He remembered being poor before being taken by the Soviet athletics machine. People helped each other then. There had been a sense of community built around lives mired in despair and hopelessness. So much had changed since then. And so much had stayed the same.
The blood beginning to penetrate the cracks between the floorboards needed to be addressed. People tended to mind their own business in this part of the country, but if a crimson rain started in the apartment below, the police would be called. There were towels in the bathroom and a few threadbare blankets on the sofa. They’d be enough.
He picked up his phone and dialed Joe Maslick, who was on the outskirts of Novosibirsk, surveilling a woman afflicted with leukemia. She was an intentionally low-priority target, leaving him with the time to act as the CIA’s coordinator for this operation.
“Go ahead,” the American said, picking up the call.
“I need a courier to take an item to Dr. Kennedy. Time is of the essence.”
“You got something?”
Azarov looked at the dead man lying at his feet and at the large hole in the right side of his back. A sloppy job, but considering it had been done with a folding knife and a few YouTube videos, a respectable one.
“Yes, but nothing related to the task at hand.”
“How big and heavy?”
Azarov put his cigarette out on the linoleum tabletop and walked to a small refrigerator. The liver, with a significant amount of flesh still clinging, was lying next to a carton of eggs. “Let’s say a thirty centimeter cube weighing perhaps three kilos.”
“Understood.”
“It will need to be transported in a cooler with ice.”
“Could you repeat that?”
“A cooler. With ice.”
Maslick didn’t respond immediately, but when he did he didn’t ask questions. A good soldier through and through.
“It’ll be at least three hours before I can get anyone there. Then onto a private jet from the local airport. Call it another twelve hours to Langley.”
“That’ll be acceptable. But no longer.”
CHAPTER 31
RIGA
LATVIA
“LEFT up ahead.”
Coleman turned onto a traffic-choked street as Rapp scanned the sidewalk through his open window. The scene seemed almost surreal. The day before he’d been mugging a group of Russian soldiers and then escaping into the woods on horseback. Now he was looking out on cafes packed with people talking, laughing, and gesturing with wineglasses.
No one in Riga seemed the least bit worried about the troops building on their eastern border. Latvia was a NATO nation that had prospered since its break with Russia, working toward a free, modern, and westward-leaning future. For many, their Soviet past was just ink in history books and rambling stories from their elders.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Coleman said.
“What?”
“That all this could be gone in a few days. And for what? A sick old man trying to cling to power for another few months.”
They’d made the long drive partially to stay out of airports that were easily monitored by the Russians, but also to give the Agency and military intelligence time to reexamine their data through the filter of Krupin’s illness. What they’d come up with wasn’t encouraging.
Coleman let out a long breath that spoke volumes. The threats posed by the terrorist groups across the Middle East were massive and ever evolving, but completely different in scope than those posed by Russia. It was a country with a sophisticated military machine made up of more than a million professional soldiers armed with cutting-edge equipment. And that was leaving aside the nuclear arsenal capable of wiping out the majority of life on the planet.