American Assassin

Chapter 28
MOSCOW, RUSSIA

SAYYED stood just inside the glass doors. He looked through the frosted window as a gust of wind whipped up a cloud of dirty snow. It moved like a ghost through the dark night and caused a shiver to run up his already frigid backside. He did not like Moscow, had never liked Moscow, and would never like Moscow. Not in summer and definitely not in winter. His warm Mediterranean blood found it to be perhaps the most inhospitable place he had ever visited. He could practically feel his skin cracking.

With voyeuristic awe, he watched an abnormally round woman waddle by. She was wrapped from head to toe in the dark fur of some animal he couldn't quite pinpoint. Why did these people live here? He would endure a hundred civil wars if he could avoid ever coming here again. A vehicle entered his field of vision from the left. The handler reached out and touched his elbow. He gestured to the waiting SUV and grunted the way big Russian men do.

Sayyed was fairly certain he'd smelled vodka on the man's breath when he'd met him at the gate. That was another thing about these Russians, they all drank too much. Sayyed was not the kind of Muslim who ran around telling everyone what they could or couldn't do. He enjoyed a glass of wine from time to time, but never in excess. They would want him to drink tonight. He knew it. He didn't want to drink and he didn't want to go outside, but he had no choice. He had been summoned, and his bosses in Damascus had eagerly offered him up. With great effort he clutched his long black coat around his neck and stepped into the cold Moscow night.

The bite of the cold wind snatched at his ears and cheeks. His eyes filled with tears, and he could have sworn the hair in his nose had turned to icicles in under a second. He opened his mouth narrowly to catch a breath, but his teeth ached from the subzero temperature, so he lowered his head and shuffled toward the car. He'd learned that the hard way on the last trip. You never ran on a Moscow sidewalk in winter. No matter how cold it was. You shuffled. Half skating. Half walking.

It wasn't until he was in the backseat that he realized he was sitting in a brand new Range Rover. Apparently capitalism had been very good to the SVR, the KGB's bastard offspring. The man who had fetched him from the gate tossed Sayyed's suitcase in back and jumped in the front passenger seat.

"I take it you don't like the cold?" a voice asked in decent yet accented English.

Sayyed had his head shoved so far down into his jacket that he hadn't noticed the diminutive man sitting next to him. "How do you people live here?"

The man smiled, popped a shiny cigarette case, and offered one to his guest. Sayyed grabbed one. Anything that would provide a scintilla of warmth was to be taken advantage of. After he'd taken a few long drags and had stopped shivering, Sayyed sat back and said, "I do not think we have met before."

"No, we have not. I am Nikolai Shvets."

Sayyed offered his hand, "I am Assef."

"I know," the boyish-looking man replied with a smile.

"I take it you work for Mikhail?"

"Yes. The deputy director is a very busy man. He will be joining us later."

That was fine by Sayyed. Mikhail Ivanov, the deputy director of Directorate S, was not someone he looked forward to dealing with. Sayyed had done everything in his power to get out of the trip, and then to delay it when he was told he had no choice. Two days ago Ivanov had called his boss at the General Security Directorate in Damascus and told General Hammoud he would consider it a personal insult if Assef Sayyed was not in Moscow by week's end. The last the general had heard, the meeting had already been scheduled. He was not a happy man, and he made sure Sayyed understood just how unhappy he was.

"The deputy director is very much looking forward to speaking with you. He has been talking about it for some time."

Sayyed couldn't pretend happiness over seeing the old spider, so he said, "it's too bad you did not travel to Damascus. It is very nice there this time of year."

"I would imagine." The man glanced over his shoulder and looked out the back window. "Your Mediterranean blood is too thin for our Moscow winters."

The boy man made idle conversation as they worked their way around one of the ring roads that circled the big metropolis. Sayyed barely glanced out the window even though it was his habit to be constantly alert for surveillance. It wouldn't matter in this iceberg of a city at this time of night. Street lights and headlights were amplified by the white snow, blinding him every time he tried to see where they were. This truly was a miserable place. No wonder communism had failed. How could any form of government succeed if everyone was depressed?

They finally stopped in front of a hotel in the heart of old Moscow. A doorman in a massive black fur hat and red wool coat with two rows of shiny brass buttons yanked open the door, and Sayyed felt a blast of cold air hit his ankles. With a second doorman shuffling along with him, he walked through the front door of the hotel and did not stop. Cold air was still whistling through the doors and he wanted to get as far away from it as possible. Eight steps into the lobby he found himself drawn in the direction of heat and then finally spied a roaring fire on the far side of the lobby. He actually smiled and shuffled over, his brain not realizing the lobby was ice free.

"What do you think?"

Sayyed parked his backside directly in front of the flames. He took in the opulent lobby and nodded. It was much nicer than the dump he had stayed in the last time he was here. "Very nice."

"It has just reopened. It is Hotel Baltschug. Very historic. Very expensive." Shvets left out the fact that his boss owned a piece of the hotel. He owned a piece of most things in Moscow these days. At least the nice things. A group of Russian, Austrian, and Swiss businessmen had purchased the hotel just after the collapse and had tried to renovate. After a year of getting turned down for permits and dealing with theft and workers' not showing up, one of the Russians went to Ivanov for help. The problems disappeared almost overnight. All they had to do in return was sign over 10 percent of the hotel.

Sayyed did not want to leave the fire, but he had to get ready for dinner. He was finally convinced to move when they informed him that his room had two fireplaces that were both lit and waiting for him. The room was as nice as the lobby, with gilded plaster and hand-painted murals on the ceiling, tapestries on the walls, and a commanding view of the Kremlin and Red Square. It was fit for a pasha.

That was when it hit him. Ivanov the spider never did anything nice unless he wanted something in return, and he was being extremely nice. Sayyed took a steaming-hot shower and wondered what the man was after. He'd heard stories lately that the SVR was worse than the KGB. That once they sank their talons into you, they owned you for the rest of your life. He suddenly longed for the bombed-out rubble of Beirut. There, he was a lion. Here, he could end up being someone's lunch.