Blacklist Aftermath

10

They rendezvoused at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, which had a U.S. complement of nearly five thousand airmen. There, Fisher and Briggs returned to Paladin to debrief while the crew took care of refueling operations.

After dragging themselves up the rear cargo ramp and passing through the hatch, they entered the command center to the concerned looks of Grim and Charlie.

“Whoa, you guys got in deep,” said Charlie, gawking at the bloodstains covering their tac-suits.

Briggs sighed. “If it were easy, they would’ve hired someone else.”

“Grim, any word back from Kestrel?” asked Fisher, crossing directly to the SMI table.

“Not yet. Should I activate one of his trackers?”

“Call him again. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Give him a few hours to answer. If he doesn’t respond, then yeah, we’ll go after him.”

Briggs placed the backpack on the edge of the SMI. “This is all we got.”

“We’ll have Ollie and the rest go through that stuff,” said Grim. She regarded Fisher. “You told me the daughter has an apartment in Zurich?”

“Yeah, I want to check it out,” he said.

“I already have,” said Grim, bringing up surveillance camera video from the surrounding apartment buildings and college. “This street here is Via Trevano. The college is right here in Lugano.” She tapped a screen and brought up traffic footage showing an impressive four-story glass office building nestled in a valley. The snowcapped Lugano Prealps loomed on the horizon. The image switched to a luxury apartment building, then to a closer shot of the sidewalk outside the main entrance.

“See there, that’s Nadia getting into that Bentley Flying Spur,” said Grim.

“Nice set of wheels,” remarked Charlie.

Grim went on: “She’s wearing the backpack you guys found. She’s on her way to the airport to visit her father.”

“Any new intel on where she is now?”

“Nothing. We have more cam footage of her arriving in Moscow, but not much after that.”

“Any HUMINT on the pilots bailing out of the plane?”

Grim sighed even more deeply. “Still working on that, too, plus I’ve got a cleanup crew that’ll hike back into the mountains to pick up your jump gear. I just sent them the GPS locations.”

“Good. Now, here’s what I’m thinking,” Fisher began. “Kasperov decides to bolt. He sends off the daughter’s plane to confuse and divert us. She was planning on flying back, which is why she just left her backpack on board, figuring she’d study during the flight back.”

“That makes sense,” said Grim.

“Charlie, we get anything else on Kasperov’s friends, family, the old teacher, military buddies?”

“No red flags, Sam. Plus the FSB has operatives scoping out all those people, too.”

Fisher turned to back to Grim. “You said the plane was headed to Tbilisi. Any connection there?”

“Just that he’s flown through before. Attended a few conferences over the years. Again, nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Well, we do have this backpack,” said Briggs.

Fisher stood there, looking at them all. He opened his mouth, hesitated, then blurted out, “Let’s go to Zurich. Get inside the daughter’s apartment. Maybe there’s something there.”

“I doubt it, Sam. Have a look.”

Grim fast-forwarded through more security camera footage and slowed down on two sedans pulling up outside Nadia’s building. Four men got out and hurried inside the building. Grim switched to the hallway cameras. The men rushed forward, reached a door, and a fifth man, either the landlord or a maintenance guy, opened the door for them. They burst into the apartment like wolves.

“We can assume the SVR’s already ransacked the place,” Grim said. “Footage doesn’t show them taking anything outside, but I can’t tell if they removed smaller items and just put them in their pockets.”

Fisher stepped away from the table, rubbing his stubble in thought. “The POTUS said it herself: Kasperov is quite a character. And he’s a genius, so he’s anticipated the search. He won’t go to any of the obvious places. It’ll be someplace much more obscure, but it won’t be a place unfamiliar because he still needs to maintain security, and that’s tougher in an unfamiliar environment. He wouldn’t leave himself that vulnerable.”

“All that does is rule out all the places associated with him, his background, his family and friends,” said Grim. “And it leaves the rest of the world wide open.”

“Let’s take a look at his daughter’s place. What’d they do, leave an agent or two behind for surveillance?”

“We’ve picked up two watching the apartment,” said Grim.

“And Kasperov’s place in Moscow?”

“They tore it apart, Sam,” said Charlie. “I mean literally moved everything out of it, furniture, everything. It’s all gone to a warehouse in Moscow, along with everything from his headquarters. Security there is ridiculously tight.”

Grim shrugged. “I think we’d have better luck getting to Kestrel, see if he can tap us into Voron’s search—”

“But then we’re always a step behind them,” Fisher said. “We need to be out front on this—”

“Sam, this time I think Grim’s right,” said Briggs. “I don’t think we’ll find much there.”

“All it takes is one thing, something Kasperov overlooked that’ll give him away.” Fisher faced Grim. “How many scumbags have we taken out because they made one tiny mistake? It’s all about the details — the ones they’ve overlooked.”

“You trying to suck up so I’ll go along?” she asked.

“Flight time from here to Zurich?”

She consulted the SMI. “Little over three hours.”

“It’s worth a shot, come on,” he said.

“It’s your call, Sam,” she reminded him. “Why don’t you just order us there?”

His tone softened. “Because we’re a team.”

Charlie tugged nervously on the strings of his hoodie. “So maybe we lose half a day in Zurich. If we pick up something, it’ll be worth it.”

“And maybe by then the SMI will have something for us,” said Grim. “We’re checking out the flights of all of Kasperov’s friends and business associates, having the computer run through every piece of terminal data, the cam footage, scanning faces for Kasperov, his girlfriend, and Nadia. We’re talking about thousands of hours of footage across thousands of airports. Plus we’re looking at as many private airstrips as we can, but the enormity of this is just mind-boggling.”

Fisher nodded. “You know, we do have one more resource we haven’t tapped…”

“What’s that?” Briggs asked.

Fisher widened his eyes. “Kobin.”

“Aw, hell, are you kidding me?” Briggs cried.

Fisher nodded. “Let’s go get cleaned up. Then I’ll go have a word with the little man.”

Andriy Semyon Kobin was a fast-talking runt and the son of a Ukrainian American shipping clerk from Baltimore. His black hair was slicked back and now graying at the temples to match the soul patch beneath his lower lip. He had a penchant for bling — gold necklaces in particular — as well as large-collared silk shirts and dress slacks that made him resemble some oddball Euro-pimp-wannabe-gangster, even though in his own mind he was trying to flaunt his wealth. He’d fallen in with the Ukrainian mob, smuggling drugs and weapons, then graduating to his own “business,” where he’d established worldwide connections within the underworld. He’d been uncovered and captured by Third Echelon, then kept on as a useful and deniable asset. Fisher’s old boss had come to trust Kobin so much that he’d asked the man to provide a body to substitute for Fisher’s daughter, Sarah, when they’d faked her death. Kobin had, in effect, pretended to kill Sarah, allowing Grim to have leverage over Fisher. Lambert had thanked the man by setting him up with a smuggling operation in Malta. Kobin’s network expanded, but then he began to lose control as a life of wealth and excess took its toll; consequently, when Fisher hunted him down to learn more about Sarah, he’d barricaded himself inside his mansion in a coke-fueled frenzy.

Much had happened since then. Kobin had been unwittingly caught up in the Blacklist attacks via an arms deal gone very bad, and he wound up turning himself in to the CIA for protection. When his safe house got hit, Fisher had gone in to rescue the man — more for the intel he carried than any particular love for the scumbag. Kobin did, however, return the favor when Paladin’s flight controls were hacked, helping to get the plane restarted. His piloting skills and knowledge of the underworld were admittedly useful.

From that point on, Kobin took up residence inside Paladin’s cell, sleeping in the shimmering glow of the nearby server lights. Given the number of enemies he’d made over the years and the fact that he’d sold arms to the Blacklist Engineers, he’d probably spend the rest of his life in prison. Thus, he’d begged Fisher and Grim to let him stay on board so he could offer up what intel he could. He was actually working on Charlie, trying to convince him that he should be a new member of their team, even trying to teach the kid about weapons and the jet’s flight control systems.

“Hey, asshole,” Fisher said as he approached the holding cell.

Kobin was lying on his bunk, hands folded behind his head, staring off into space. Charlie had loaned him some clean clothes, so the ostentatious outfit was gone, replaced by a slightly grunge look that Kobin had whined about but accepted until they could find him more silly silk duds.

He finally glanced up from his trance. “You know, Fisher, back in the glory days they used to call me King of Assholes!”

“I’m sure they did.” Fisher unlocked the cell and stepped inside.

Kobin shook his head. “I told you, you don’t have to lock the door. I wanna be here.”

“Grim thinks it’s a good idea. Sometimes I sleepwalk and kill scumbags.”

“Like a PTSD thing?” asked Kobin.

“Yeah.”

“So it’s for my own protection.”

Fisher grinned crookedly. “Yeah.”

“So I take it you’ve come to the master seeking knowledge?” Kobin sat up, gazing emphatically at Fisher. “It’s gonna cost you.”

“The fact that you’re not dead means we can run a tab for as long as we want.”

“Dude, I’m just kidding. Why do you have to be so intense?”

“Because we’ve still got a hundred pounds of stolen uranium out there, along with a Russian software geek who’s just gone missing.”

“You talking about Kasperov?”

“You know him?”

“I went to one of his parties — and that bastard knows how to throw a party!”

“Any idea where he might’ve gone?”

Kobin snorted. “The fuck do I know? Why the hell did he run in the first place?”

“We’re not sure yet. We need to get into the SVR’s comm network — and even deeper, right into Voron.”

“Well, good luck with that shit.”

“You know, I’m so glad we’re keeping you here, free room and board, so you can tell us, good luck with that shit …”

“What do you want from me? If I knew something, I’d tell you.”

Fisher’s smartphone beeped, and he answered.

“Sam, I just activated the beacon to find Kestrel, but it’s dead,” Grim said. “No signal. He must’ve found it.”

“Shit, all right, thanks.”

“Did I hear her say Kestrel?”

“That’s right.”

“Why is that fucker not dead? I thought your people hauled away the body.”

“They weren’t my people…”

“So where is he now?” asked Kobin.

Fisher bit back a curse. “Last I heard he was in Moscow, settling some scores.”

“You let me make a few calls, and I’ll find him. If he’s on the hunt, then he’s asking a lot of questions, and that’s how we get him. I know the network in Moscow better than anybody.”

“Tell you what. If you find him, you’ll move up the espionage ladder from worthless piece of shit to unreliable scumbag who can sometimes help.”

“I’ll take it. And with a nickel pay raise, too. You motherfuckers are too generous. I’m crying with tears of joy over here.”

Fisher held open the door. “Shut up and get to the control room. Start making your calls.”

As Kobin walked past the cell door, he paused to sniff Fisher’s neck. “You just take a shower? You smell nice — like a three-dollar whore.”