She reached the end of a block, an intersection, and stopped to check her map. Her breathing was heavy, but controlled. She didn’t know what she would do when she arrived at the bar, what she might say. She had no weapon.
She checked the map and realized she had run a block in the wrong direction. She swore and turned to her left, watching the blue dot with the arrow on her phone calibrate, then she again took off running.
Another block and she saw the red neon name lit up atop the single-story building like a beacon. The Goaltender. She crossed the street to a nearly vacant dirt-and-gravel parking lot, gravel crunching beneath her shoes.
Maria took a deep breath, pulled open the bar door, and stepped inside. A woman collected beer bottles and glasses from upright tables. “Zakryvayemsya cherez desyat’minut.” We close in five minutes.
Maria ignored her. No one stood at the upright tables. She walked to the back of the bar, seeing empty tables and empty chairs. About to leave, she noticed a jacket draped over the back of one of the chairs.
Helge’s jacket.
Her heart pounded.
She called out to the woman collecting bottles and glasses while pointing to the jacket. “Vy videli cheloveka, kotoryy prishel v etoy kurtke?” Did you see the man who came in wearing that jacket?
“He just left,” the woman said. “Out the back.”
“Alone?”
“No. With another man. Less than a minute.”
Maria rushed to a metal door but pulled her hands back before they hit the bar. She didn’t know what to expect, but she knew once she pushed the door open there would be no going back.
She shoved the handle. The door swung open.
Helge stood alongside Sokalov and two men she did not recognize, though one looked like Alexander Zhomov, one of Sokalov’s and the Kremlin’s most ruthless torpedoes.
Dmitry Sokalov placed his hand on Helge’s back and pushed open the back door into an alley of dull light. A black Mercedes sedan, one of the pool cars FSB officers could check out of Lubyanka, sat parked beside a blue garbage dumpster. A form had been filled out that evening checking out the car to Ilia Egorov.
When they reached the Mercedes, Sokalov knocked on the window with his wedding ring. The driver looked up and Sokalov gestured to Helge. The man opened the car door and removed his seat belt, stepping out.
“Officer Egorov,” Sokalov said. “This is Helge Kulikov.”
Egorov nodded and put out a hand. “Mr. Kulikov, it is a pleasure to meet you. I look forward to speaking with you.”
“What?” Helge asked, confused. He glanced at Sokalov, who had stepped back.
Alexander Zhomov stepped from the trees in a T-shirt, jeans, and black leather gloves. In his right hand he held a pistol fitted with a silencer. Zhomov raised the gun and sited a red dot on Egorov’s chest, and pulled the trigger. The gun popped twice. Egorov dropped like a puppet cut loose from his strings.
Zhomov redirected his aim at Helge.
“Helge!”
Sokalov turned his head at the sound of the familiar voice. Maria stood in the doorway of the building. “Dmitry. No!”
Zhomov fired again. The bullet struck Helge in the temple, splattering blood and brain matter. Helge crumpled to the ground.
Zhomov never hesitated. He didn’t even watch to confirm his second kill.
He turned the gun and his aim to Maria Kulikova.
24
Ramenki District
Moscow Oblast, Russia
Jenkins skidded to a stop in a deserted dirt-and-gravel lot in front of the stucco building. A single weak streetlamp illuminated a spot of ground like a fading spotlight on an empty stage. Jenkins thought perhaps he had arrived too late, or that he was in the wrong place, the wrong bar, but the neon light above the roofline clearly identified the establishment to be the Goaltender. The same name of the bar provided by Matt Lemore.
Just as he read the sign, the neon light switched off.
He stepped from the car, leaving the engine running, and waited a moment to determine if anyone emerged from the woods that surrounded the back side of the parking lot and the bar.
No one did.
Jenkins walked to the metal door and pulled it open, nearly bumping into a woman on the other side who held a set of keys, locking up.
“My zakryty,” she said. We’re closed.
Jenkins looked past her, scanning the empty tables. His gaze locked on the silhouette of a woman standing in a doorway with her back to him. Beyond her, in the dull light from the opened bar door, a man held two others at gunpoint. Before Jenkins had time to process the information, the gun puffed twice, and the first victim, a man in a dark suit, dropped to the ground.
“Helge!” the woman in the doorway yelled. Then, “Dmitry. No!”
Jenkins pushed past the woman with the keys, shouting at her as he did. “Ukhodite. Bystro.” Leave. Quickly.
He rushed to the back of the bar as the gunman redirected his aim. The second man had turned his head toward the woman in the doorway. The gunman fired once, striking the man in the temple. He, too, dropped. As Jenkins neared, the gunman pointed the barrel at the woman in the doorframe. Jenkins reached beyond her and pulled the door closed, hearing two pings, bullets striking metal.
To his left was a janitorial cubby behind a black curtain. He grabbed a mop and jammed the handle in the door lever. The woman stared up at him, mouth agape, eyes glazed over. Shock. Maria Kulikova. He’d studied photographs of her while training at Langley.
Jenkins grabbed her by the shoulders. “Poydem so mnoy, yesli khochesh’ zhit’.” Come with me now if you want to live.
He pulled Kulikova across the bar, not seeing the employee, but hearing her on a phone, calling the police. The broom handle rattled in the door.
They would have just a few seconds.
He raced outside, Kulikova in tow, pushed open the passenger-side front door, and shoved her into the car, then ran around the hood to the driver’s side and slipped behind the wheel. He threw the car into drive. The tires spit gravel. The rear window exploded. Kulikova screamed. He reached across the car and shoved her further below the seat, hearing bullets ping, then a loud pop. The car fishtailed, but Jenkins managed to correct the steering.
He’d lost a back tire.
They would not outrun anyone on three wheels.
Alexander Zhomov took aim at Maria Kulikova. He fired just after the old man had yanked the door closed. Zhomov stepped over Helge Kulikov and pulled on the door handle. The door rattled but did not open.