Rasputin's Shadow

59

Sokolov was Jericho.

And everything started to fall into place.

Sokolov develops some kind of radical entrainment technology in Russia. Decides to defect for some reason. Maybe he doesn’t want his bosses at the KGB to have it. Maybe he doesn’t want his brain-manipulating technology in the hands of the most ruthless oppressors in history.

Or anyone else, for that matter.

Because as it turns out, he doesn’t trust us with it either.

Soon after he lands on U.S. soil, he gives his CIA handlers the slip. It happens at a hotel in Virginia. He’s taken there by the agents who spirited him out of Europe from under the KGB’s nose. Somehow, he manages to smuggle in a powerful tranquilizer with him. Easy enough to do, I suppose. All he would have needed was a small sachet of powder. He slips the two agents a Mickey and by the time they wake up, he’s disappeared.

They lose track of him. End of file.

Except that we now know what happened to him.

He lies low, takes menial jobs, and gets himself a fake identity as Leo Sokolov. Marries Daphne. Gets a job teaching at Flushing High. Lives happily ever after. Or should have. Except that, evidently, Leo couldn’t keep his inquisitive mind in check. He builds something, whatever it is he’s got in his van. Why he would do that-could be for any number of reasons. But regardless, he keeps it a secret. And, as we discovered, it works-which made me wonder if he’d ever tested it. He had to have done that. I made a mental note to look into it.

Somehow, the Russians track him down, all these years later.

I pored over the next JPEGs from Kirby.

The code names of the two agents who smuggled him back from Europe and lost him in Virginia were Reed Corrigan and Frank Fullerton.

Which triggered all kinds of questions in my mind.

Corrigan was the point man on Sokolov all those years ago. Then I get assigned to Sokolov’s case.

No need for electromagnetic or other stimuli to prod my paranoia. Was this just a coincidence? Or did Corrigan have anything to do with my being assigned to the murder at Sokolov’s apartment? And if so, why?

Was Corrigan still working the Sokolov case?

Was he still after the man who had slipped out of his fingers and most likely caused him all kinds of headaches and embarrassment inside the Company?

Was he playing me? Had he been doing it from the get-go? And if so, why?

Kirby had said the case file was live, and I needed to know if the updates mentioned any activity from Corrigan.

The first entry was dated just over a week ago, a few days before Aparo and I were sent to Sokolov’s apartment. It was marked EYES ONLY: DDS &T-a reference to the director of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology-and, in cold and urgent prose, it warned that Jericho’s current identity and whereabouts had been discovered by the Russians. He’d been conspicuously noisy and rambunctious at a protest outside the Russian consulate in Manhattan. They’d realized who he really was and tracked him down, but the identity he’d been living under was a closely guarded secret and whoever filed the update couldn’t get hold of it.

A second update said Moscow had assigned its top SVR agent in New York, Fyodor Yakovlev, to bring Jericho in.

I scanned the reports, looking to see who had authored these updates. It sounded to me like they were written by someone with a solid inside track into the Russian consulate. They could simply have been the result of electronic eavesdropping, but I’d seen such reports and their format would have been different. There’d be all kinds of references on there that these updates didn’t have. Alternatively, the updates’ author could have a mole inside the consulate. But in that case, I would have expected the mole to be referred to as the source of the information. The third option was that the updates were written by the mole himself. Which meant a CIA agent working inside the consulate-a double agent.

The blood vessels around my eyes pulsed with anticipation as I checked who was credited on the reports, but there was no mention of Corrigan. Instead, the header ascribed them to Grimwood, no first name, reporting to FF-Frank Fullerton, Corrigan’s CIA partner back during Sokolov’s defection fiasco. “Grimwood” had to be the agent’s code name, which reinforced my mole suspicion. Then I flipped screens and saw that there were further updates. The first one was five days old and related that Yakovlev had died in a fall from Jericho’s apartment.

The next one had my name on it.

Well, if not my name, my initials. Because it said that “FBI SACs SR/NA” (meaning Special Agents in Charge-me, and NA, or Nick Aparo) “assigned to investigate FY death” (meaning Fyodor Yakovlev).

Then it said something curious.

It stated “Scene indicates physical struggle with no clarity on how Jericho managed to overpower FY. Unlikely FY would have accepted drugged drink. SR to follow up autopsy tox report.”

SR to follow up autopsy tox report?

I wasn’t sure how many shocks my system could take.

Grimwood had to have been there. In Sokolov’s apartment. The morning Aparo and I first showed up, four days ago. The report was written by someone who’d visited the scene. Someone who knew I was going to follow up on the coroner’s report. My mind flashed back to the apartment and to who had asked me that. Then to that late meal at J. G. Melon’s when it had come up again.

I knew who Grimwood was.

And he wasn’t a “he” at all.

KOSCHEY SAT IN THE Suburban with his engine running and watched as the youths battled it out on the basketball court.

He couldn’t hear any of it, of course. The bulky ear protectors were blocking out all the screams and grunts, giving the savage outbreak an eerie and even more surreal tinge.

Given everything he’d seen and done in his life, it took a lot to impress and even shock him, but this did. One minute, they were just a bunch of average neighborhood guys, some with their shirts off, some not, dribbling and blocking and jump-shooting away, all sweaty and committed, letting some steam off. Then Koschey started hitting the presets on the laptop.

The first one was like hitting them with a massive dose of tranquilizer. They slowed down and went all sluggish. Some of them sat, others lay down on the rough concrete of the court. Some wandered around aimlessly with dazed expressions on their faces. They all seemed lost and disoriented.

The second was more graphic. They started retching and throwing up as they hugged their stomachs in pain.

Then he hit the third setting, and they began laying into one another with fists and kicks and anything they could get their hands on.

The speed with which it took effect, the intensity and commitment of the savagery it triggered-it was as if the youths were suddenly facing a desperate life-or-death situation, one in which the only way they could survive was to make sure everyone else was dead.

A sharp knock burst through the ear protectors and startled him. He turned to see a crazed teen with wild eyes and a bloodied nose pounding his side window, shouting wildly, trying to break through the glass and get at him.

It was time to end the test.

Koschey reached over to the open laptop on the seat next to him and struck one of the keys. The kid by his window hammered it a couple more times, then his fist relaxed and he stared at Koschey with a look of utter bewilderment.

Satisfied that it was all working properly, he put his Suburban into gear and pulled away. There was no time to waste. He needed to pick up Sokolov and hit the road.

History was waiting.