The Ajax Protocol

CHAPTER 57

Alexei Vysotsky set the phone down and sat for a moment, thinking of Korov, dead in America. He cursed and slammed his fist down on his desk. The door to his office opened and his aide looked in.

"Sir? Is everything all right?"

Vysotsky picked up an ashtray and hurled it at the startled man. It shattered against the wall.

"Out! Get out, now!"

The aide closed the door. Quickly.

Korov! Damn the day he had listened to Harker. Damn the Americans.

Vysotsky took a deep breath, another. He reached into his desk drawer and took out a bottle of vodka and a glass. He poured four fingers of the clear liquid into the glass and downed it. He poured another. The vodka ignited inside him. The warmth spread through his body, calmed him. He took out a papirosa, a long tube of paper and harsh, Russian tobacco. It was a peasant's cigarette, a habit left over from the old days when luxuries like American cigarettes were impossible to obtain. He pinched the end together and lit up, exhaled a stream of blue smoke toward the ceiling.

He thought about the Americans. Everything to do with America had always been a problem. He'd thought that he could work with Harker, even though she was the enemy.

Now my best officer is dead. That's what I get for trusting Americans. Lie down with dogs, get fleas.

He thought about Harker and her Project team. It was a good thing she didn't know about California.

In 1988 he'd been an ambitious young officer in the KGB, back in the days when the Russian security apparatus was far flung and almost invincible. Before Glasnost and the shame that followed. He had been adept at wet work, targeted assassinations carried out for the glory of the Motherland. A traitor had been discovered, an American recruited years before, supposedly a disgruntled CIA agent. The man had fooled them. He was a double, taking his orders from Langley and feeding Moscow false information. Who knew how many Russian lives had been lost, what damage had been done because of his betrayal? Alexei hadn't needed to think much about killing him.

It hadn't been hard to arrange the car accident. It was simple bad luck that the target had his family with him when the car went over a cliff. All except his daughter Selena, who now worked for Harker.

Vysotsky scuffed out his cigarette on the edge of Beria's desk. The irony did not escape him. The daughter of one of his assignments, now a key part of Harker's elite team. A dangerous woman. If she ever found out that he was responsible for her family's deaths, she'd come after him. But she never would. There was no way she would ever find out.

No way.

Vysotsky poured another vodka.