American Assassin

Chapter 51
MOSCOW, RUSSIA

IT was almost noon, and Ivanov was still in bed. He claimed he wasn't feeling well. Moaned something about the snow and the cold and the gray, depressing Moscow sky. Of course it had nothing to do with all of the vodka and wine and heavy foods he'd consumed until well past midnight. Shvets would have liked to throw him in a cold snowdrift and shock him back to the here and now. The young Russian didn't understand depression. He couldn't see how people allowed it to get so bad that they couldn't get out of bed, was unable to understand that the drinking and the sleeping were all intertwined like a big sheet wrapped around your body until you couldn't move. And then you started sinking. Stop the drinking, get out of bed, and work out. Have a purpose in life. It was not complicated.

Shvets crossed from one end of the parlor to the other, glancing at Alexei, who was one-half of his boss's favorite bodyguard duo. They were in a corner suite on the top floor of Hotel Baltschug. He looked out the big window across the frozen Moscow River at the Kremlin, Red Square, and St. Basil's Cathedral. Shvets had never understood why the Bolsheviks had let the cathedral stand. They were so anticzar, so antireligion, why let this one church remain while they destroyed so many others? The answer probably lay in their own doubts about what they were doing. The people has risen up and helped them grab power, but the people were a tough beast to tame. Shvets thought they probably feared it would bring about another revolution.

Frost had build up around the edges of the window. It was minus twenty degrees Celsius, and the wind was blowing, whipping up clouds of snow, but so what? That was February in Moscow. Only a weak man allows the weather to affect his mood. Shvets let out a long exhalation, his breath forming a fog on the window that froze within seconds. Ivanov was about to drag him down, take him under like some fool walking out onto the melting March ice of the Moscow River. These weren't the old days of deportation to a Siberian work camp, and executions against the back wall at Lubyanka, but the government was by no means just. The new regime was just more astute at PR. They could still be beaten senseless and be forced to sign false confessions of crimes against the state and whatever else they decided to trump up. Then they would be taken to the woods and shot, far away from the ears of the people and the new press.

Ivanov would of course try to save his vodka-soaked hide. That was his nature. He would blame anyone but himself, and since Shvets was the person most directly in the line of fire, the only person other than Ivanov who had actually met Herr Dorfman, he would be the scapegoat. Gripped with an unusual fear, Shvets had a sudden urge to flee. He paced from one end of the parlor and back, trying to calm himself, but he couldn't. The idea of running was suddenly in front of him, like a big flashing road signing warning the bridge is out. Turn now or crash.

But he had a wife and two boys - not that he saw them very much, or really loved them, or more precisely her. The boys were too young to judge. His wife, on the other hand, had been a mistake. She'd gotten fat and lazy, and Shvets spent as little time with her as possible. He could certainly live without them, but could he live with himself if anything happened to them? He wasn't sure about that one, so he set it aside. Starting over was the other problem. As Ivanov's top deputy, he was poised for lofty heights within the SVR, and like his boss, he could leverage that for personal gain in the not-so-distant future.

That was something he did not want to give up without a fight, but the rumors were starting, and by next week they would be undeniable. He had either to run or turn on Ivanov, go to SVR headquarters and ask for a face-to-face with Director Primakov. Even as he thought about it, he knew it would be far riskier than running. It was easy to trick himself into thinking they would reward him for doing the right thing, but the SVR was not all that different from the old KGB. You were rewarded for plotting, conspiring, and crushing your political and professional opponents, not for doing the right thing. If he turned on Ivanov in such a manner he would not be rewarded, he would be punished. Not right away, but eventually. They would send him away. No one would want to look at him, because he would be a reminder of their failures.

He didn't even consider going to the federal counterintelligence service. The FSK would jump at the chance to embarrass their flashy sister agency, especially if it meant taking down someone as big as Ivanov, but Shvets had no desire to be branded a traitor for the rest of his days. The men who turned against the security service had an extremely high occurrence of suicide.

Shvets was pragmatic to the core, but this sitting around could only spell disaster. Some type of action had to be taken. He turned away from the window and looked at Alexei, the thick-necked bodyguard. "Alexei, do you trust me?"

The bodyguard lifted his heavy head and looked at Shvets. He shrugged in the way a man shrugs when he finds a question not worth answering.

"Do you know what is going on with our boss?"

Another shrug.

"You know he's in trouble, yes?"

This time big Alexei nodded.

"He's in a great deal of trouble, and he doesn't want to admit it. He would prefer to drink himself silly and shut himself in with the hope that the problem will simply go away. The problem isn't going to go away. In fact, it is only going to get worse." Shvets was tempted to tell him what was going on, but wasn't prepared to go that far. "I need your help, Alexei. I need to get him out of bed and sober him up enough so that he can defend himself. Do you understand that?"

"Yes."

"Good," Shvets said, satisfied that he had gotten somewhere with the man. "Now don't shoot me or break my neck, but I'm going in there to wake him up."

Alexei pursed his big lips while he thought about that one. "He told me. No one. Including you."

"Your job is to protect him, right? Well, if he put a gun to his own head, would you try to stop him?"

"Yes."

"That's what he's doing right now. By getting drunk and sleeping the day away he's killing himself as surely as if he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. You need to help me save him."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing. Just sit here ... and don't hurt me." Shvets didn't wait for an answer. He went to the bedroom door, knocked twice, and then opened. The bed was huge, and with all the pillows and blankets and two prostitutes and poor light he couldn't tell what was what, so he went to the window and yanked open the heavy velvet drapes. Gray light poured into the room and Shvets heard Ivanov moan. He searched the tangled mess and still couldn't find the man's head.

"Sir," Shvets announced, "Director Primakov is here to see you."

A flurry of activity erupted from under the blankets. One or both of the girls screamed as Ivanov dug his way out, all elbows and knees. His red face appeared midway down the length of the bed. "What?" he asked, a mask of horror on his face. "You can't be serious."

"No, I am not, but if you don't get out of bed and do something about this situation, he will show up sooner than you think. Or maybe you would prefer Director Barannikov to show up with the FSK boys and drag you downtown."

Ivanov pulled his head back under the covers. "Go away."

"No, I will not. You have been pouting for three days now. We need to come up with a plan of action, or we are doomed."

"We are worse than doomed ... We are f*cked."

"Stop being such a baby."

"Be careful what you say to me, Nikolai, or I will get out of this bed and throw you out the window."

"Not a bad way to go when compared to what the FSK will do to me. Unfortunately, you have neither the strength nor the courage to throw me out the window, so it looks like I will be tortured in the basement of Lubyanka." He looked over at the bed, but there was no movement or reply. "Please, boss! I beg you do to do something ... anything. Defend yourself. Tell Director Primakov the money is gone."

"You are a fool. I will be put under an examination that I won't be able to withstand."

"Then place the blame on the dirty Palestinians. You know how Primakov hates them. Tell him they killed Sharif over a bad business deal and took all of the money. Blame the Americans, the Brits, the French, the Germans ... I don't care. Just blame someone and start investigating. What you are doing..."

"What was that?" Ivanov snapped as he popped his head back out.

"Blame someone and start investigating."

"Before that ... at the beginning."

"Blame the Arabs."

"You are right ... Primakov does hate them. But my money ... what about that?"

Shvets was pleased with his small victory. Now he needed to bait the hook. "I have some ideas about that as well." He started walking toward the double doors. "I suggest you get out of bed and shower. I will order an extremely late breakfast. We can discuss your finances over coffee and eggs."