They went to the back and pulled out a gurney, moving with a noticeable lack of urgency. For a moment, Azarov thought that the man inside might have succumbed to his illness but dismissed the idea almost immediately. All four men seemed to have an inordinate interest in the empty neighborhood around them, constantly scanning the street and the silent houses that lined it. One, a wiry dark-haired man with a confident gait, turned his attention to Azarov’s second-floor window. The light flowing from the back of the ambulance illuminated his features enough to make them recognizable.
Nikita Pushkin’s eyes lingered, staring into what from his position would be impenetrable shadow. The fact that the window was open in this weather would register as unusual, though explanations abounded—the apartment might be abandoned, the latch could be broken, the resident might be unaccustomed to the stink of the old building.
In the end, youth and arrogance overpowered caution. Pushkin turned to follow his men toward the house, undoubtedly anxious to complete the task Krupin had charged him with.
? ? ?
Yuri Lebedev opened one eye, staring into the darkness as his wife snored softly next to him. For a moment, he thought the noise had been part of a dream, but then it came again. Someone was knocking.
He rolled on his side, suspecting he knew the person responsible and deciding to ignore it. He’d barely gotten the blanket back over him when it came again, this time insistent enough to have the potential to wake his wife.
Swearing under his breath, Lebedev rolled out of bed and snatched his robe from a hook on the wall. If it was his daughter’s on and off boyfriend, drunk and weepy with remorse again, there would be hell to pay.
The tumor in his brain was unquestionably killing him—he could feel its effects every moment of every day—but he wasn’t dead yet. Even with the weight loss, he still tipped the scales at a solid eighty-four kilos. Not that it was his intention to injure the boy—he wasn’t really a bad kid. But his daughter was driven and beautiful and near the top of her class at her school. Russia was hardly the land of opportunity, but there were places at the top for a girl like her. All she had to do was get away from this town and the people in it.
Lebedev padded across the living room, turning on an overhead light before yanking open the front door. Instead of a lovesick teen, though, he found three men in the uniforms of an ambulance crew.
“Who are you?”
The man in the center smiled but there seemed to be a vague cruelty to it—not what you’d expect of someone in his profession. In fact, none of them were. They looked more like the special forces men he’d known during his military days than the paunchy, bleary eyed locals who held jobs like this.
“We were notified of a medical emergency,” the man said through his frozen smile.
“You have the wrong house.” Lebedev started to close the door.
“A young woman made the call. Her name was Tatyana.”
His brow knitted. “That’s my youngest daughter’s name.”
“Are you certain she’s all right?”
He didn’t know why she wouldn’t be. Tatyana was a healthy and reasonably sensible girl. On the other hand, she’d just turned thirteen. The age when women went insane.
“Come in,” Lebedev said, starting toward the room his two girls shared.
The men brought in their gurney and he heard the front door close right before the barrel of a gun was pressed against the back of his head.
His jaw tightened in anger as he raised his hands. What the hell was happening to his country?
“We don’t have anything of value. Certainly, nothing that would pay the rent on your fancy uniforms and fake ambulance.”
“Not true,” the man behind him said as his companions moved toward the back of the house. “I’ve been told that you’re the most valuable man in all of Russia.”
Lebedev heard struggling and a brief scream. The reason for that brevity became clear when his wife was dragged into the living room with a garrote around her neck. A few moments later, the second man appeared with Lebedev’s daughters, each with a similar wire subduing them.
He moved forward instinctively, but the man behind, grabbed him by the throat and increased the pressure of the gun barrel against his skull.
“What a beautiful family, you have, Yuri. You’re a lucky man. Except for the tumor eating your brain. They tell me you’re going to lose your mind and control of your body. That you’re going to die slowly and horribly. Why would you want to put them through that? It’s the act of a coward.”
“You’re the one who needs a gun to protect him from a dying man and three women. If you’re going to run your mouth, why don’t you use it to tell me what you want?”
His wife’s eyes were starting to bulge and the wire was disappearing into the flesh around her neck. His daughters were both frozen in their nightgowns, tears flowing silently down their cheeks.
“I want you, Yuri. I want you to accept the generous offer of treatment for your disease.”
Lebedev nodded slowly and the pressure around his throat eased slightly. He’d turned it down because his doctor—one of his closest friends since grade school—had advised him to. People had been offered similar opportunities, but there were no details about the study itself or the outcomes of the subjects who had agreed to take part. The lack of information went beyond unusual, crossing the line into suspicious.
As it had been so many times before, his friend’s advice seemed to have been sound.
“My family won’t be harmed?”
“Of course not. I need them here to tell people you had a seizure that convinced you to join our study. Or something like that. I don’t really care about the details as long as it’s convincing. If it’s not, I’ll come back here and visit them again. Do you understand?”
CHAPTER 35
THE KREMLIN
MOSCOW
RUSSIA
THE pain behind Maxim Krupin’s eyes was considerable, but different in both quality and magnitude than he’d become accustomed to in recent months. It wasn’t the result of his tumor or an indication of an upcoming attack, but instead the result of the stimulants he’d injected.
The benefits of Dr. Fedkin’s potion had exceeded even his wildest hopes. The details of the corridor he was walking along had sharpened. The red of the carpet, green of the military uniforms, and gold of the ornate molding glowed with newfound intensity. Intoxicating, but also an undiluted glimpse into how much he’d weakened. Until now, the decline had been too slow to fully grasp.
His short-term memory had been restored, as had his unparalleled ability to sort and prioritize information. The sensation of being in control again—of bending the world to his will instead of being overwhelmed by it—was intoxicating.
The guards at the end of the hallway snapped to attention and opened doors leading to a cavernous room that had been converted into a military command center. When he entered, though, the expected machinations of modern war were nowhere to be found. The junior staff appeared to have been dismissed and his generals were arguing over a tabletop map of the Balkans.
Sokolov snapped to attention while the others fell silent and offered somewhat less enthusiastic acknowledgments of their president’s arrival.
“What is this?” Krupin said, waving a hand around the empty room. “My understanding is that the cyberattacks have begun and we’re fully operational.”
“That’s correct,” Sokolov said. “Unfortunately, the initial phase of the invasion hasn’t been as effective as we’d anticipated.”
Krupin turned to Oleg Gorsky, the young air force general who oversaw their cyber warfare unit. “Explain.”
“I can’t. We had excellent penetration into all the Baltic systems. We’re trying to evaluate—”
“They knew,” Sokolov interrupted. “Their security forces have been searching for our malware and then doing nothing to eradicate it. They lulled this fool into complacency while creating patches that they implemented minutes after our attack.”