He sighed as he relaxed among the cushions. The warmth of the liquor made his fingertips tingle.
“Shall I fetch you a sample?” the ferret whispered.
Treloar nodded happily. To pass the time, he closed his eyes and let the music roar through him. He stirred when something soft grazed his cheek.
Standing in front of him were two blond-haired boys, their eyes a perfect blue, their complexions flawless. They could not have been more than ten years old.
“Twins?”
The ferret nodded. “And better, virgins.”
Treloar groaned.
“But they are very expensive,” the ferret warned him.
“Never mind that,” Treloar said hoarsely. “Bring us some zakuski. And soft drinks for my angels.”
He patted the cushions on either side of him. “Come to me, my angels. Give me a taste of heaven….”
__________
Six kilometers from the Krokodil are the three high-rises known collectively as Dzerzhinsky Square. Until the early 1990s, it had been the headquarters of the communist KGB; after democratization, the complex was taken over by the newly formed Russian Federal Security Service.
Major-general Oleg Kirov, hands behind his back, stood in front of the windows of his fifteenth-floor office, looking out at the Moscow skyline.
“The Americans are coming,” he murmured.
“What did you say, dusha?”
Kirov heard the tap of heels on hardwood, felt slender fingers slide across his chest, inhaled the warm, sweet perfume borne on the words. He turned and took the beautiful brunette into his arms, kissing her hungrily. His passion was returned as he felt her tongue teasing his, her hands slipping to his belt, then lower.
Kirov pulled back, gazing into the provocative dark eyes that tantalized him.
“I wish I could,” he said softly.
Lieutenant Lara Telegin, Kirov’s aide-de-camp, stood with arms akimbo, surveying her lover. Even in the drab military uniform she looked like a runway model.
“You promised me dinner tonight,” she pouted.
Kirov couldn’t help but smile. Lara Telegin had graduated at the top of her class at the Frunze military academy. She was an expert marksman; the same hands that caressed him could take his life in a matter of seconds. Yet she could be as shameless and provocative as she was professional.
Kirov sighed. Two women in one body. Sometimes he wasn’t sure which was the real one. But he would enjoy them both for as long as he could. At thirty, Lara was just beginning her career. Inevitably she would move on to other posts, and finally a command of her own. Kirov, twenty years her senior, would go from being her lover to her godfather— or, as the Americans liked to say, a “rabbi” who would look after the interests of his favorite.
“You didn’t tell me about the American,” Lara said, all business now. “Which one is it? We get so many these days.”
“I didn’t tell you because you were gone all day and I had no one to help me with this infernal paperwork,” Kirov grumbled. He handed her a computer printout.
“Dr. Jon Smith,” she read. “How very common.” She frowned. “USAMRIID?”
“Our Dr. Smith is anything but common,” Kirov said dryly. “I met with him when he was stationed at Fort Detrick.”
” `Was’? I thought he still is.”
“According to Randi Russell, he still has an association with USAMRIID but is on indefinite leave. She called to ask if I would see him.”
“Randi Russell…” Lara let the name hang.
Kirov smiled. “No need to get catty.”
“I only become catty when there’s good reason,” Lara replied tartly. “So she’s paving the way for Smith… who, it says here, was engaged to her sister.”
Kirov nodded. “She died in the Hades horror.”
“And would Russell— whom we both suspect operates a CIA front— vouch for him? Are the two of them running some kind of operation? What’s going on, dusha?”
“I think that the Americans have a problem,” Kirov said heavily. “Either we’re part of it or they need our help. In any event, we will find out soon enough. You and I will be seeing Smith tonight.”
__________
In the waning afternoon Smith stepped out of the apartment block on Ulitsa Markovo. He turned his collar against the wind and stared up at the grim concrete face of the building. Somewhere within the anonymous windows on the twentieth floor Katrina Danko would be attending to the heartbreaking task of telling her six-year-old daughter, Olga, that she would never see her father again.
To Smith, the task of calling on the relatives of the dead was a task that pained him like no other. Like all wives and mothers, Katrina had known why he was here from the minute she opened the door and laid eyes on him. But she had iron in her spine. She had refused to surrender to tears, asking Smith how Yuri Danko had died and whether he had suffered. Smith told her as much of the truth as he could, then said that arrangements had already been made to fly Danko’s remains to Moscow as soon as the Venetian authorities released them.
“He talked a great deal about you, Mr. Smith,” Katrina had told him. “He said that you were a good man. I see that is true.”
“I wish I could tell you more,” Smith said sincerely.
“What good would that do?” Katrina asked. “I knew the kind of work Yuri was involved in— the secrecy, the silences. But he did it because he loved his country. He was proud of his service. All I ask is that his death not be in vain.”
“I can promise you it won’t be.”
Smith walked back to his hotel and spent the next hour lost in thought. Seeing Danko’s family added a personal sense of urgency to his mission. Of course he would make sure that Katrina and her daughter were well provided for. But that wasn’t enough. Now more than ever he needed to know who had killed Danko, and why. He wanted to be able to look his widow in the eye and say, no, the man you loved did not die in vain.
As night descended, Smith made his way to the lobby bar. Randi, wearing a navy blue power suit, was already waiting for him.
“You look pale, Jon,” she said quickly. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine. Thanks for meeting me.”
They ordered pepper-flavored vodka and a plate of zakuski— pickled mushrooms, herring, and other snacks. After the waitress withdrew, Randi raised her glass.
“To absent friends.”
Smith echoed her toast.
“I spoke with Kirov,” Randi said, and gave him the details on the upcoming meeting. She glanced at her watch. “You’ll have to get going. Is there anything else I can do?”
Smith counted out some rubles and left them on the table. “Let’s see how things go with Kirov tonight.”
Randi came close and slipped a business card in his hand. “My address and phone number— just in case. You have secure communications, right?”
Smith patted his pocket. “The latest in digitally encrypted cell phones.” He gave her the number.
“Jon, if you find out anything I should know…” She let the rest of her thought hang.
Smith squeezed her hand. “I understand.”
__________
Jon Smith had been to Moscow a number of times, but he had never had occasion to visit Dzerzhinsky Square. Now, standing in the cavernous lobby of the Zamat 3 building, all the stories he’d heard from Cold War warriors came back to him. There was a soulless indifference about the place that no amount of fresh paint could hide. The echoes off the varnished floorboards sounded like the footsteps of the condemned— men and women who, since the birth of communism, had been dragged through there on their way to the interrogation chambers in the cellars. Smith wondered how those who worked there now dealt with the ghosts. Were they aware of them? Or was the past hurriedly dismissed for fear that, like a golem, it might come back to life?
Smith followed his junior-officer escort into the elevator. As the car rose, he mentally reviewed the details Randi had provided on Major-General Oleg Kirov’s career, and that of his deputy, Lara Telegin.
Kirov seemed to be the kind of soldier who straddled the past and the future. Raised under the communist regime, he had distinguished himself in combat during Afghanistan, Russia’s Vietnam. Afterward, he had thrown his lot in with the reformers. When a fragile democracy took hold, Kirov’s patrons rewarded him with a post in the newly formed Federal Security Service. The reformers were eager to destroy the old KGB and purge the diehards in its ranks. The only people they trusted to carry out that cleansing were battle-tested soldiers like Kirov, whose loyalty to the new Russia was unquestioned.
If Kirov represented a bridge to the future, Lara Telegin was that future’s best hope. Educated in Russia and England, Telegin was the new breed of Russian technocrat: multilingual, worldly in her outlook, a technological wizard who knew more about the Internet and Windows than did most westerners.