Private Moscow

Chapter 58

I struggled against my restraints but they held firm. Dinara was defiant, but there was terror in her eyes.

“Don’t do this,” I said. “Just let her go.”

Dinara’s tough veneer was starting to crack and I could see tears forming. Blazing with anger and frustration, I struggled again, but there was nothing I could do.

Suddenly, a gunshot erupted from somewhere behind me, followed by the thunderous sound of footsteps and the crash of a door being slammed against a wall. I heard heavy boots tramp into the room, and urgent cries filled the air. I couldn’t believe it when Veles dropped the butterfly knife, and he and the two men holding Dinara raised their hands, and backed toward the windows.

The room filled with gun-toting police officers, who trained their weapons on our abductors. A female officer untied Dinara’s gag, and she began yelling at Veles, who ignored her and instead barked angry commands at the police. But they paid no attention to his instructions, and handcuffed him and his accomplices. The female officer used the discarded butterfly knife to cut Dinara’s bonds, and she ran over to me, just as Anna Bolshova, the Moscow detective who’d tried to interrogate me, entered the room.

She seemed to be in command of the raid, and was barking instructions at the dozen or so officers in the large apartment. Two of them hoisted me off the hook and cut the bonds around my legs so I could stand freely.

Dinara leaned against me, trying to control her emotions.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have known it was a trap.”

“Me too,” I said.

Veles exchanged angry words with Anna as he and his two men were frogmarched out of the room.

Anna seemed unsettled when she came over. “Asshole!” she remarked. “Are you OK?”

Dinara nodded.

“How did you know where we were?” I asked.

Anna looked over my shoulder, and I glanced round to see Feodor Arapov, the huge bear of a man from the Residence, pass Veles and the other two prisoners as they were led from the room.

“Hello, American,” he boomed. “Did we spoil your fun?”

“How...?”

“Leonid asked some of us to keep an eye on you,” Feo said. “The couple you spotted at the bridge. They were our guys. We saw you get taken and followed you here.”

“And they called me and said you’d been abducted by a drugs gang,” Anna added.

Feo looked sheepish, and my expression must have given something away, because Anna suddenly realized she’d been played.

“You mean that man really was SVR?” she asked nervously.

None of us said anything.

“He told me we were disrupting an intelligence operation,” Anna said. She looked at us searchingly. “Oh, come on! You said they were part of a gang.”

“They are,” Feo replied. “It’s just a very powerful gang.” He took my arm. “Come,” he said. “Time for us to go, before she rethinks who the villains are.”

“What about a statement?” Anna asked.

“Those men abducted us,” I replied. “If you hadn’t arrived, they were going to torture and kill us.”

“They can help you fill in the blanks tomorrow,” Feo said. “If you manage to hold those men for longer than a couple of hours. For now, these two need medical attention.”

“SVR? This is going to cause real trouble,” Anna said.

“You saved our lives,” I replied. “I owe you one.”

Dinara added her own response in Russian, but neither of us seemed able to lift Anna’s spirits. She had a rough night ahead.

As we followed Feo from the room, he took off his coat and wrapped it around Dinara’s shoulders.

“They found your clothes in another room,” he said.

“Thank you,” she replied.

“I owe you,” I told him.

“You’re welcome, American,” he said, patting my back. “Now let’s get you both home.”