Death Echo

32

DAY FOUR

NANAIMO, B.C.

MORNING

A ctivate sleeper.

Only two words had been texted to Taras Demidov’s cell phone. Two words that conjured a world long lost, when only two powers ruled the planet.

Or seemed to.

And nothing was ever as it seemed.

Demidov erased the text message and drove his small white Japanese car off the Horseshoe Bay ferry at Nanaimo, Vancouver Island. His wallet was thick with Canada’s modestly colorful currency, his pockets clanked with one-and two-dollar coins.

Best of all, the last time he had checked the locator numbers, he was still ahead of Blackbird. The cautious captain apparently had done everything but dismantle the yacht to reassure himself that there was no contraband aboard.

Demidov crawled in a line of vehicles until he got onto the bypass around Nanaimo. He drove north toward Lantzville, a small coastal community that had been buried under the sprawling waves of housing developments and malls surging out from Nanaimo. His destination was just beyond Lantzville, in an undeveloped area overlooking Nanoose Bay.

When he held down the accelerator, his small rental whined. Reluctantly the car increased speed. In the old days, he would have traveled under diplomatic immunity in a powerful black Mercedes. He still had the diplomatic passport-and the connections to make it stick-but he preferred using the fake Canadian identity.

It was more anonymous.

As a Canadian, his cover would probably hold for the return trip into the United States, where he would disappear back into the loose diplomatic community representing the Russian Federation. Such ease of movement was difficult for people with foreign diplomatic credentials, particularly those from nations who might be unfriendly to the U.S. Unfriendly diplomats were required to seek formal permission to travel more than twenty-five or fifty miles from their consulates or embassies.

Demidov amused himself by thinking about the multiple copies of his itinerary he wouldn’t be filing.

Even if he had to blow this cover, he could slip back into the U.S. through the woods east of Blaine, Washington, and return to Seattle with its consular protection. Russian security officers paid professional marijuana smugglers for current maps of the sensors and guard posts on the American side. Despite the Homeland Security Act, illegal passage between Canada and the U.S. was easy. Only legitimate citizens had difficulty and long waits.

He switched screens on the cell phone he’d left on the passenger seat. Nothing unexpected.

His target was being slow, if predictable. After a delay in American waters, Blackbird had resumed its northerly course. But if the big American had found the bug that had been put aboard in Asia, he hadn’t disabled it. Moscow Center was locked on Blackbird’s locator signal. Everything was on track.

Demidov was locked on the location of a sleeper who had been under so long he wondered if she still spoke Russian. To find her address, he followed the electronic maps on a device attached to the dashboard. It was amusing to have so much accurate, on-the-ground information about local roads at his fingertips. Even where the technology existed in Russia, his country wasn’t nearly so helpful to visitors.

Some things never changed. Paranoia was one. Staying alive was another. Demidov understood the necessity of the first for the second.

The colorful little display panel on his dashboard directed him to a small, weather-beaten house in a grove of cedar and alder trees overlooking Nanoose Bay. Demidov lowered the window, turned off the ignition, and simply sat, letting the sounds of the place wash over him.

Birds.

Whisper of sea breeze edged with salt and cold.

Engine ticking.

More birds.

Silently he got out, eased the door shut, and looked through the trees toward the saltwater. A big, gray-hulled service vessel with a large white number painted on its side slid through the chain of islands at the mouth of the bay. There were other boats on the water, smaller boats, civilians rushing around, ignoring the official naval installation that had become an accepted, if sometimes irritating, part of their daily lives.

The sweeping view on the cliff was the reason for putting a sleeper in place at this spot. The ships coming and going were mostly Canadian naval vessels, with regular visits from U.S. vessels for joint actions in Whiskey Gulf. Each ship that paid a visit to the wharves tucked into the blind end of the bay had to pass beneath the wooded bluff. The sleeper logged the movements and duly reported to her homeland.

Or she once had. The reports had stopped a few years after the government stopped sending payments to her Hong Kong account.

Demidov walked to the other vehicle that was parked beneath the trees. He touched the hood of the car. Cold.

He listened for a time and finally picked out the sound of a radio or television underneath the natural sounds. It was coming from the cabin. Swiftly, silently, he walked up the overgrown path and knocked on the door.

Footsteps approached. The door opened.

The trim, aging woman with the unlikely red hair wasn’t the same as his memories, but there was no doubt of her identity. The female wearing a gray fisherman’s sweater and lightweight wool pants was the same agent he had put in place a lifetime ago.

The world had changed a lot since then. But not enough to free Galina Federova, known to her Canadian friends as Lina Fredric.

She stared at him for a long three count. Understanding-and a deep current of wariness-darkened her blue eyes.

“Galina,” Demidov said. “Invite in an old friend.”

She started to slam the door. Then she noticed his left hand deep in his jacket pocket, sensed as much as saw the deadly weight his fingers were wrapped around. Fear streaked through her, followed by anger.

So many years.

So many, and still not enough.

She had finally believed she was free. And now he stood in front of her, holding a weapon hidden in one pocket.

“And what do you have in your other pocket, Taras?” she asked coldly. “Money? Another weapon?”

“A different kind of shot, Galina.” He smiled, deepening the lines in his face. “Vodka. Much preferred, yes?”

“My name is Lina.”

“But of course. Let me in, Lina.”

The dark hair she remembered was steel gray now, thinner, but the deadly grace of the man himself hadn’t changed. In a physical confrontation with him, she would lose.

Without a word she turned her back on him and walked into her small house, leaving him to stay or follow as he wished.

It is always what he wishes, she thought bitterly. So much changes, but that never changes.

Damn Taras for the devil he is.

Demidov shut the door and followed his unhappy hostess down a short hallway into a living room with three big picture windows that faced out onto the water. The gray ship entering the harbor was in the middle of the view.

“I see the Americans are still using the torpedo test range,” Demidov said.

He walked over to a telescope on a tripod that was set up by the big window. Turning his back to her, he closed one eye and looked through the eyepiece. The point of focus wasn’t the channel where big ships came and went, but a small island perhaps a mile offshore where fir trees clung to rocky outcrops. The biggest fir’s storm-twisted crown held the immense weight of an old eagle nest.

Nobody home.

Gone fishing.

Demidov’s mouth curved in amusement and envy. Once he had loved to fish Kamchatka’s wild lands. Once, a lifetime ago. He could hardly remember that boy now, only his young enthusiasms and savage ambition.

“The ships come and they go,” Lina said. “Destroyers and submarines and patrol boats from the Canadian forces, as well as games with American ships. I quit paying attention after the deposits stopped coming to my account at Bank of Hong Kong.” Her hand made a dismissing movement. “There are other ways to survive than spying. I found one that worked for me.”

Demidov adjusted the focus on the telescope. Though decades old, the instrument was still good. Fallen feathers and unwanted boney bits leaped into focus, debris of a predator.

“So you resigned in place,” Demidov said.

Silence answered.

He glanced at the woman who stood, arms folded across her chest, staring out at the water.

“Don’t you think it would have been wise to turn in your equipment?” he asked, his voice mild. “This house is in your name but it still belongs, technically, to the Russian people. Just as it did when your predecessor lived here.”

Lina’s smile was a grim curve. “I took my share of the state’s assets, just like everybody with any sense. Why do you care? You’re too smart to be working for a fallen regime. Everyone who originally hired us has long since turned to civilian pursuits. Much more profitable, if equally violent.”

Demidov watched her smallest movement. They had been lovers once, a lifetime ago, when the world was different and people were the same. Maybe she had better memories than he did of those times. She had always been more of a romantic than he was or ever would be.

Like the generations of eagles that had built the huge nest, he survived. And like the eagles, when he became too old for the hunt, he would die.

Soon. A handful of years, maybe more. Maybe less.

In the end, luck rules.

His great-grandfather had lived to be one hundred and four, but he had been a peasant, a grass-eater. His great-grandson was a predator.

“I take my satisfaction from doing my job well, not from my paycheck,” Demidov said.

She shrugged. The movement was tight, impatient, almost a flinch. “So you stayed with the spiders in the KGB web, waiting for your blood meals to come trembling to you.”

He laughed softly. “Still the romantic. What have you done to occupy your clever mind since the fall of our great and noble Soviet Union, followed by the rise of capitalist Russia?”

“Old history. All of it. I’m no longer a part of that.”

“I’m disappointed, Lina. I trained you so…thoroughly.”

She gave him a sideways look that hadn’t changed through all the years.

“You taught me to be a wise little spider, alert for the tiny vibrations at the edge of my web,” she said. “That kind of teaching doesn’t fade. Nor does the teacher. You know what I’ve been doing as well as anyone does.”

“From spy to licensed fishing guide,” Demidov said. “Quite a good one, I hear. I’m impressed.”

“Stop pretending to be an old friend. What do you want?”

“You have a fast boat. When it doesn’t carry summer fishermen, it carries other cargo. B.C. Bud, yes? Marijuana. Illegal in your adopted country as well as in the country you smuggle it into.”

Lina closed her eyes. It had been many years since she had smuggled British Columbia’s premier cash crop, but time didn’t matter. Demidov knew enough about her to crush the small, fragile world she had built for herself from the wreckage of empire.

And he would do just that if she didn’t obey him.

Fear left her along with choice. She would do whatever he wanted. All that remained was waiting for orders.

“I was raised on the water,” she said. “That’s why I was given this assignment. As for the rest, a woman alone does what she must to survive. The training passed on to us from Lubyanka Street was rather useful in my new life, at first. Today, my boat isn’t a racehorse. I chase salmon, not outrun police.”

Demidov reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the bottle of Grey Goose that he had purchased in the duty-free shop on his ride north. He held the bottle by its neck with his thumb and forefinger. In his other fingers he held a fan of photos. They showed a modified trawler style boat with a black hull.

“If you would just produce two glasses, my old love,” Demidov said, “we will toast one another as we used to do. So much more civilized. Then I will tell you why I request your help.”

Lina stared at him for a long time, seeing the young wolf beneath the older, harder exterior. If anything, he was more dangerous than he had been so many years ago.

“You’re very good,” she said. “I almost believe my cooperation is a voluntary matter. Almost.”

Demidov waited, one hand holding out the vodka and photos, the other in his pocket holding a knife.

“Two glasses,” she agreed. “I prefer vodka to blood.”