Rasputin's Shadow

61

I couldn’t believe it.

An anonymous tip.

A warehouse out in Jamaica.

Larisa could see something major was going down.

“What?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

I told Aparo I’d meet him at his car and hung up. “I’ve got to go.”

“What’s happened?”

“I’ve got to go. I’ll call you.”

She reached out and grabbed my arm. “Talk to me. Don’t cut me out. We’re on the same side.”

“Oh, so now we’re on the same side?”

“Come on,” she said, her eyes all fierce. “I couldn’t tell you. And I wouldn’t have told you if you hadn’t figured it out by yourself. But now that you know, you also know how useful I can be. Let’s help each other. Neither of us can afford to let this guy run off with Sokolov or the van.”

I didn’t have time for this. Aparo was rushing down to meet me. A dozen SWAT guys were gearing up and getting into their vans. Every second counted.

“Fine. Come with me.”

“What’s happened?” she said as she sprinted across the street alongside me.

THE WAREHOUSE WAS IN a run-down light-industrial zone close to the LIRR station, just south of Liberty Avenue. There wasn’t much around in terms of activity-a lot of the warehouses and commercial structures had “Available for Rent” signposts outside them. It was clearly bust time in the old cycle, and the loading zones around here looked like they’d been hit hard. Which made it a perfect place for someone like Koschey to find himself a quiet little corner from which to sow his mayhem.

The caller’s information had been good enough to match up to a particular warehouse, the one we were currently staking out. Me, Aparo, Kanigher, Larisa, and twelve highly trained members of the Bureau’s SWAT team. The four of us were all suited up in Kevlar, windbreakers with big letters on the back, earpieces in and weapons out, poised to raid the place. The SWAT guys looked like they were ready to storm hell itself.

A thermal-imaging scan showed only one person in there and no heat signature from a warm car engine. The lone figure was on the ground with his back against the wall and wasn’t moving, which meant he had either dozed off or he was tied in place. It didn’t guarantee he was alive. At this distance, the FLIR camera couldn’t tell us what his temperature was, and the human body didn’t cool down that fast.

With nothing else moving in there, we decided to go in.

The SWAT-team leader-Infantino again, from the shoot-out at the docks-led his team in. They battered the door down and streamed in with breathtaking precision and smoothness, like storming a place was an Olympian synchronized sport. We went in right behind them. I heard a lot of “Clear,” then someone’s voice burst through my eardrums and I followed the instructions and cut through the large space to a small office in the back corner and a face that I was very familiar with by then, even though I’d only seen it in photographs.

It was Sokolov, on the floor, his hands tied to a radiator behind him.

He was very much alive.

We freed him and I had him whisked out of there by three of the SWAT guys while the rest of us checked the place out. The van was there, its back doors wide open, only it was empty. And that was it. There was nothing else there.

“He’s got to be coming back,” I told the team. “No way he’d leave Sokolov like this. He’s coming back.”

“Then we’d better get ready for him,” Infantino said.

I left Kanigher with the SWAT guys to help set up a perimeter, and Aparo, Larisa, and I set off to talk to Sokolov.

KOSCHEY SCOWLED AS HE eyed the two parked SWAT vans and the Bureau sedan from a discreet position behind the edge of a building a block away.

So they had Sokolov. And they were lying in wait for his return.

Chyort voz’mi, he cursed inwardly.

He was angry at himself. Livid. He should have taken Sokolov with him on his test run. He’d considered it, but then he’d decided that Sokolov could be a liability out in the open. The schoolteacher knew Koschey planned to kill him. He knew he had nothing to lose. And people with nothing to lose could do reckless things.

He hadn’t wanted to terminate Sokolov either. Certainly not before he was sure that the device still worked properly. He wasn’t sure when he’d pull that trigger, if at all. Sokolov could still be useful if he didn’t become too much of an encumbrance. But at the moment, that was academic. The scientist was in the hands of the Americans. And there were too many of them there for Koschey to wade in with his guns blazing-assuming Sokolov hadn’t already been spirited away to some secure location, which he probably had been.

He watched some more, an unpleasant feeling tugging at his chest-then he thought of the laptop and an idea blew the feeling away. Not just any idea.

A deliciously ironic one.

WE FOUND SOKOLOV HUDDLED in a SWAT support van a block away from the warehouse. Four of Infantino’s guys were locked and loaded and watching over him.

He stood up, all jittery and anxious. “Is Daphne okay? I keep asking and they won’t tell me she’s okay.”

“She’s fine,” I assured him. “We have her in protective custody till this all blows over.”

I watched as relief flooded his face. “Does she know you have me? Can I talk to her?”

“Not just yet. But soon. Just as soon as we have everything well in hand. It’s as much about your safety as it is about hers.”

He nodded, his eyes blinking nervously. “All right. Thank you.”

He seemed shaken and looked weary and haggard, but at least he was unhurt and in reasonably good shape. We gave him a bottle of electrolyte-rich water, sat him down, and asked him if he needed any medical attention, food, or anything else. He said he was fine. We then quickly went through what he knew about Koschey’s current whereabouts. He told us they’d moved “it” out of the van and into another vehicle, a black SUV. A Chevy, he thought.

I was about to pass that on to Infantino when an urgent sense of foreboding ripped through me. “Wait,” I asked Sokolov, “this ‘thing,’ your machine-it’s in another car and it’s operational?”

“Yes…” He hesitated, unsure as to what I was getting at.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” I blurted. “We’ve got to get everyone out of here. He could use it on us.”