Rasputin's Shadow

33

Jonny peered into his side-view mirror as the big storage tanks faded into the night. No one was following.

Not the maniac Russian. But not Jachin, either. Which didn’t bode well.

If his buddy had made it out, he’d be somewhere behind him already. The streets were dark and deserted, and Jonny knew he’d have seen his car’s lights, even in the distance. But there were no lights, and the phone link to Jachin had also gone dead.

He wondered whether Jachin was still alive, whether or not he’d be calling Jonny at any moment to tell him he’d picked off the Russian and was bringing Sokolov back.

For the fifth time that minute, he glanced at his cell phone. It stayed dark. And deep down, something told him he wasn’t going to get that call.

He wanted to go back, to try to help him. But he couldn’t do that. Not with Daphne.

A wave of vengeful rage crashed against his heart as he kept his foot on the gas, wrangling as much pace as he could from the old van and missing his souped-up Mitsubishi. Why he’d ever agreed to use his teacher’s lousy old van, he didn’t know. He couldn’t wait to dump it once he’d dropped Daphne off. More than dump it. Feed it to a crusher, maybe, or just torch the damn thing to hell.

Daphne was in the seat next to him, gripping his left arm so tightly it was starting to hurt. He gently uncurled her fingers and turned to face her. She was sobbing, but bravely trying to stifle the sound.

Jonny gently squeezed her hand and kept driving, in silence, not knowing what to say, even though he felt he had to say something. She needed it.

“We’ll get him back,” he finally said to her. “One way or another, we’ll get him back. This isn’t over.”

Daphne gasped a lungful of air and tried to take control of her emotions, but her body wouldn’t stop shaking.

“They must want him alive, Mrs. Soko. Otherwise, they would have killed him there and then.”

She nodded, staring ahead, and straightened up. “We have to go to the police, Jonny.”

He’d been wrestling with the same thought. Much as he hated to have anything to do with them, the cops needed to be alerted to Sokolov’s abduction. The events of that night were beyond both his comprehension and his firepower, and one of the reasons he was still alive was because he could back out of something just as quickly as he could burst in. But he didn’t know the first thing about what was really going on, who the Russians were, or what beef they had with Sokolov. The cops needed to be brought in.

But not by him.

He wasn’t used to having so little control over events in his life, and he wasn’t enjoying the feeling at all. But he didn’t want to upset Daphne.

He reached over for his smokes, lit one up, and took a deep pull. He offered one to Daphne, who declined.

“Do you know who took you?” he asked.

“You mean now, or before?”

Jonny wasn’t getting it. “What do you mean?”

“The men who grabbed me outside the hospital were Russian. They worked for a man they called kuvalda. It means sledgehammer. Does that mean anything to you?”

Jonny nodded. “Sure. He’s Russian Mafiya. Big.”

“The man you saw back there, the one who brought me there-he came to the motel where they were keeping me and he killed them and took me with him.”

“And you don’t know who he is or what he wants from Mr. Soko?”

“No,” Daphne said.

Jonny frowned. “I’ll drop you off at the precinct by the school, okay? But you can’t mention me when you talk to them. I need you to tell me you won’t. There’s nothing I can tell them anyway. I’ve told you all I know. I was just trying to help keep you both alive.”

She dabbed at her cheeks with a sleeve. “And I appreciate that,” she told him. “A lot. I won’t say anything about you if that’s what you want.”

He thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll hang on to the van for a while, if you don’t need it. Make sure it doesn’t have my prints on it or anything. Is that okay with you?”

Daphne looked confused. “Why wouldn’t it be? It’s your van.”

“No, it’s not. It’s Mr. Soko’s.”

Daphne seemed genuinely surprised. “It’s Leo’s?”

“You don’t know?”

“No. I’ve never seen it before.” She twisted around and glanced back at the partition and the narrow door, then looked at Jonny. “Why would Leo have a van? He doesn’t need a van.”

“I don’t know,” Jonny said. “Why didn’t he tell you about it?”

Daphne seemed confused and lost, and she started to sob again. Jonny decided not to take it any further. It was painfully obvious that whatever Sokolov was involved in, his wife knew nothing about it.

“I’ll take you to the station now,” he told her.

She didn’t reply.

LARISA WAS AT HER apartment on East Seventy-eighth Street, restlessly waiting for news, when her phone lit up.

She snatched it and checked its screen, then took the call.

“Have you heard anything?” the man asked bluntly.

“Should I?”

“There’s been a shoot-out in Brooklyn. Several bratki dead. One in the hospital. The FBI’s got a man down too.”

She felt a prickle of concern. “Reilly?”

“No. Someone else.”

“What about Sokolov?” she asked.

“Gone. Taken.”

A rush of variables tumbled across her mind.

“This is bad,” the man said. “More than bad. It’s a fucking disaster. You need to find out where he is.”

“I’m being kept out of the loop,” she said. “Strictly need-to-know. I can’t get inside this, not since Monday night.”

“You’re going to have to. ’Cause right now, it’s looking like we might have lost him. For good. You have to find a way in. Find out where he is. Do whatever you have to do, but find him. At all costs. And I mean all costs. Do you understand?”

“Got it.”

She clicked off, stared at the screen, and brooded over her next move in silence.

She didn’t like it.

She’d been walking a tightrope for years, treading carefully across a ruthlessly perilous landscape. And it sounded to her like her handler had just asked her to jump off.

SEVEN DEAD AT THE motel last night. Three dead, one mangled up, and a fellow agent with a chunk of his leg missing in this godforsaken wasteland tonight.

I wasn’t too crazy about this new nightly routine we seemed to be settling into.

A bunch of paramedics were already on the scene. They were tending to Kubert, stabilizing him and getting ready to move him into the ambulance. I was with a couple of others, who were busy with the guy who was driving the SUV when I’d shot his tires out from under him. He was a mess of blood and bruises and looked like he’d been mauled by a Transformer.

“I need to talk to him,” I told the brunette who seemed to be running the show.

“And you probably will,” she snapped back tersely as she worked on him. “Just not right now.”

“When?” I asked.

“Does it look like he’s in a chatty mood?”

She had a point.

I stepped away and took in the scene around me. This was a disaster. While we’d been lured out here for an evening at the O.K. Corral, the real meet was probably taking place somewhere else. With consequences unknown for all involved. I wondered if we’d be finding more bodies there, and if they’d each also have one round through the forehead.

I was crossing over to where Kubert was being treated when my phone rang. It was a detective by the name of O’Neil, calling from the 114th Precinct. Adams’s and Giordano’s precinct.

“I think you need to come down here,” he told me. “We’ve got a walk-in here you’ll want to talk to. Daphne Sokolov.”