Rasputin's Shadow

6

London, England

At about the same time, four thousand miles east of there, another man received a similar call informing him of similar developments, only this call originated a couple of thousand miles farther east from his own location.

From Moscow.

From the Center, to be exact.

The Center being a sprawling, cross-shaped concrete structure nestled in the middle of a large forest just southwest of the city.

The Center was also the headquarters of the SVR, the successor of the KGB’s notorious First Chief Directorate. Officially tasked with foreign intelligence gathering and counterintelligence. Unofficially tasked with anything else that was deemed necessary to safeguard the Motherland’s interests.

Anything.

And when a particularly tricky anything came up, the odds were it would be assigned to someone from its highly secretive Zaslon unit-the word meant “the shield,” and not in its badge sense-an elite team drawn from the Spetsnaz special forces, whose members excelled in their physical and military prowess as well as their talents at deception.

And when the Zaslon unit was handed a particularly sensitive task, the odds were it would be assigned to Valentin Budanov.

Not many people knew that. For the simple reason that not many people knew Budanov even existed. They didn’t need to. Budanov worked alone. He worked in the shadows, only emerging when he needed a critical piece of information or some operational support from someone-usually a senior embassy staffer or a fellow SVR agent-who would have been ordered to provide him with anything he required. And when he did emerge, it was, of course, never as Budanov. Like other SVR agents, he traveled under a number of false identities. He also spoke many languages flawlessly-seven at last count-and could easily disguise himself so he would pass unnoticed. And on the rare occasions when he did break his deep cover, it was never as Budanov or as whatever ID he was using at the time.

It was as Koschey, a code name that inspired a deep-seated fear in those who heard it. A code name drawn from an old Slavic folktale.

Koschey the deathless.

Just then, Koschey was in London. He’d spent a lot of time in the British capital in the last decade. London was where a lot of the Kremlin’s enemies came to find a safe haven. It was also where a lot of its big hitters and their friends stashed their ill-gotten gains-billions that they parked safely in hedge funds, fabulous properties, and high-profile investments. The thinking was that, besides being a great place to live and to party, London provided a secure and stable hideaway for their fortunes. There, they would be unreachable by those running things back home if and when their old friendships turned sour.

But no one was unreachable. Not in London. Not anywhere. And certainly not with someone like Koschey on tap to reach them.

He’d been in London for six days, preparing to take out a GCHQ analyst who’d been recruited by Moscow eleven years earlier and who the SVR suspected had been rumbled by the British intelligence services. Then the call had come in on his encrypted cell phone.

The general told him he was to drop that assignment and fly to New York.

A file, also encrypted, had been attached to an e-mail and left in the drafts folder of a Gmail address that had been created specifically for that single task.

A file that Koschey retrieved and read immediately after terminating the call.

A file that Koschey found astounding.

The analyst had caught a lucky break. He would get to live a little while longer.

Koschey had a plane to catch.