Black Flagged Redux

Chapter 47





7:21 AM

Obolons'kyi District

Kiev City, Ukraine





Feliks Yeshevsky knocked on the thin wooden door and waited with a cracked smile on his face. To the right of the door, his partner pressed up flat against the wall with a retractable metal baton held tightly along the side of his black trousers. Feliks listened for movement inside the apartment. Nothing. For a few desperate seconds he wondered if Mr. Kaluzny had somehow slipped past them on the street. Dragging him out of his office downtown would be less than optimal given their time constraints.

He couldn't see how they had missed him. They had seen his wife exit the aging apartment building with their six-year-old daughter. They had walked hand in hand down the street toward the local primary school. Mrs. Kaluzny was dressed formally and carried a large handbag, so they didn't expect her to return to the apartment. They had waited fifteen minutes before entering the apartment building's unlocked main door.

He knocked on the door again and heard a voice from inside the apartment. He widened his smile and saw the light behind the peephole disappear.

"Can I help you?" Vanko Kaluzny said.

"Do you mind opening the door? I'm one of your neighbors from a few floors up. I saw something strange yesterday when your wife and daughter were walking into the building," Yeshevsky said.

He heard the deadbolt slide open, followed by a small click from the doorknob. He reached behind his back, underneath his thick wool coat, and gripped the compact Makarov pistol tucked into his belt. The door opened a few inches.

"I'm sorry. What exactly did you see happen to—"

Yeshevsky didn't allow him to finish the sentence. He kicked the door as hard as he could into Kaluzny's face, knocking the man several steps backward into the apartment. The man hidden along the wall sprang forward through the door and hit the stunned man squarely on the head with the metal baton, adding to the confusion and pain suddenly thrust into his life.

Mr. Kaluzny barely made a sound when hit, which was odd in Yeshevsky's experience. His partner shoved the man to a sitting area in front of an old television and forced him down onto a flimsy wooden chair. Yeshevsky locked the door behind him and removed a bulky suppressor from one of his inner coat pockets. He started to screw the suppressor to the Makarov's threaded barrel as he walked over to Vanko Kaluzny.

"What in hell do you want? Is my wife all right? My daughter?"

"That all depends on you, Mr. Kaluzny. We're interested in your university roommate, Anatoly Reznikov. We need to know where to find him."

"I don't know where he is. I haven't seen him in years," Kaluzny said.

Yeshevsky nodded imperceptibly and his partner's arm flashed, bringing the metal baton down on Kaluzny's left shoulder. The man screamed.

"Hold on! Hold on! I don't understand. Who are you? Russian Federal Security? You have no jurisdiction to—"

The baton crashed down on the man's collarbone, audibly cracking it. The force from the blow nearly collapsed the chair under Kaluzny.

"F*ck! Stop! Stop! Why are you doing this? I haven't seen him in several years," he said, exasperated from the pain.

"That's not what your mother told us."

"You visited my mother?"

"She's fine, for now, but she's not very fond of Mr. Reznikov. Said she found some false identity papers while snooping around his things. Isn't that why she refused to let him stay there? She could never understand why the two of you were such good friends," he said, tightening the suppressor on the pistol.

"Look, I don't know what he's doing or—"

"But you know he can't travel under his real name?"

"A lot of people from Russia seem to have that problem nowadays."

"Maybe we'll ask your sister next. Your mother said the two of you were close. Following in your footsteps were her words. I have a few nice pictures of her on my phone. Sent to me this morning. She was on the way to classes at Volgograd State University. Would you like to see them? Maybe my colleagues should yank her out of class for a chat."

"You people are crazy," Kaluzny whispered, staring at the floor.

"Not crazy. In a hurry. I was really hoping that you would help us right now. I won't be in such a good mood if I have to wait around all day for your wife and daughter to return. Especially if I'm cooped up all day with your rotting corpse. Just the thought of their screaming and crying at the sight of your bloated body puts me in a foul mood. I've never been good around kids."

Kaluzny flinched at the baton's movement and glanced up at Yeshevsky. "He gave me a forwarding address in Sweden. I forward maybe two packages a year for him. 22 Bondegatan, Apartment 3B, Stockholm. Please don't hurt my family," he pleaded.

"Is he at this address right now?" Yeshevsky pressed.

"I really don't know. I haven't heard from him in over a year. I passed a few packages on to the address several weeks ago. 8x10 padded mailers from Novosibirsk. Looked like an air shipping company name. Something with aviation in the title."

A few weeks before, FSB agents had found three men murdered at the Nizhny Novgorod airport. Two Chechen mobsters and a guy who ran a VIP transportation business out of Novosibirsk. It was enough to keep Vanko Kaluzny alive for the moment. Yeshevsky signaled for his partner to leave, and they both walked briskly toward the door of the apartment.

"That's it? Are you going to kill me?"

Feliks Yeshevsky stopped and turned his head. "Do you want me to kill you?"

"No. I just—"

"Then quit trying to talk me into it. We know where you live. Where everyone you care about lives. If you f*cked us over with this address, we'll kill all of them in front of you. If you somehow miraculously remember a phone number for Mr. Reznikov and try to call him, I will personally arrange the rape, mutilation and live incineration of your entire extended family. If I were you, I'd call in sick at Cragnia Biotech and head to the hospital to have that collarbone examined. Once the shock of our visit wears off, the pain will become unbearable."

Yeshevsky followed the other SVR agent out of the apartment and closed the door behind him. He quickly removed the suppressor and placed it back in his jacket. Screwing the suppressor onto the pistol in front of the suspect almost always produced immediate results. As they walked toward the staircase, he pulled out his cell phone and placed a call to Moscow.