Independence Day (29 page)

Sascha shook his head.

“I have tried Roman twice, Vladimir three times, and the other. There is no answer.”

Katya’s phone started ringing, then, after two rings, a voice came on: “Who is this?” the man asked. Russian.

“Where is she?” asked Cloud.

“This is Colonel Polyan from FSB. Who am I speaking to?”

“I am … Katya’s father,” said Cloud. “I have been trying to reach her.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the officer. “She is not here.”

“Where is she? There are news reports—”

The phone went dead.

Cloud stood up, a psychotic look on his face. He hurled the cell phone at the wall, where it smashed into pieces. He kicked his chair away and walked to the stairs.

“
Cloud,
” said Sascha.

Cloud ignored him.

He descended the stairs three steps at a time. When he reached the basement garage, he climbed onto his motorcycle. He turned it on, revving it hard, then screeched forward, pulling up the ramp to street level. As he was about to accelerate onto the dark street, a figure appeared and lurched in the path of the Ducati. Cloud slammed on the brakes.

It was Sascha.

“Come back inside,” he said, panting heavily from his run down the stairs, holding up both arms as if he could direct Cloud to do what he wanted. “Something has happened.”

“I have to go to Saint Peters—”

“She’s
gone,
Pyotr,” snapped Sascha.

Cloud stared into his friend’s eyes for several seconds. He didn’t say anything. Sascha stood as still as a statue, holding his arms up. Then he put them down and stepped to Cloud, walking to his side, moving to within a few inches of him. Gently, he placed his hand on Cloud’s shoulder.

“We knew this was a possibility,” said Sascha. “Going to Saint Petersburg will get you nothing, except caught. Now come back upstairs.”

Five minutes later, Cloud followed Sascha to his computer.

“The CIA is sending more men into the country,” said Sascha.

Cloud went behind Sascha and read the screen. It was a transcription of a CIA conversation.

Their eyes met. They both knew what it meant. They were coming for him.

“They’re coming to meet Andreas,” said Sascha.

“They’re going to try,” said Cloud. “Find out where the safe house is. There are agents already there.”

Cloud went to his computer. He joined Sascha inside the CIA network, then placed a piece of tracking code, similar to a cookie, on the records of the agents Langley had dispatched to Russia to assist Dewey. Any activity involving either Brainard or Fairweather would trigger an alert, which Cloud could then examine.

When he finished, he looked at Sascha.

“Put Andreas’s photograph out on the wire,” said Cloud. “Law enforcement, news agencies.”

“What about his identity?” asked Sascha.

Cloud was silent as he considered the question.

“Not yet.”

48

NEVA RIVER

SAINT PETERSBURG

Dewey treaded water and watched as lights in a marina building went on. A few seconds later, police cars poured in through a fenced-off entrance. Dewey dived beneath the surface and swam into the darkness, away from shore, resurfacing after more than a minute. Searchlights scanned the surface of the water near the shore. He turned onto his back and let the current take him away from the city.

The hum of the chopper’s rotors softened, blending into the slapping of the water. He floated for an hour as the lights of Saint Petersburg became a dome of dull yellow, blurry and silent, far in the distance. He came onshore along a rocky stretch of coast, bordered by a dense thicket of trees and brush.

He was exhausted. His knee was badly cut. He was cold and wet. He wanted to sit down and rest. But he couldn’t. Now was the time he needed to move. Not later,
now.

They’re coming.

He took a step, then another, his eyes weaving between the starry sky and the tree line, moving east, navigating by the stars. He walked for at least an hour, through a rough country of trees and fields. Eventually, he came to the first sign of civilization: train tracks.

The rail bed had a few weeds, but he smelled fresh oil. The track was still being used.

Dewey moved left, along the tracks. He walked for another hour, then saw the outskirts of a rail yard. It sat quiet but was large. The tracks split into a dozen lines. Boxcars and locomotives filled the sidings.

Dewey’s clothing was still damp. He was hungry. Mostly, the gash at his knee hurt. But whatever discomfort he felt, he ignored. There would be time to think about it later. Right now, he needed to focus on a few core issues, survival being at the very top of the list.

He reached to his left calf. Sheathed to his leg was his Gerber combat blade, seven inches of black steel, double-serrated, its hilt wrapped in black hockey tape. He pulled it out, then moved along the outskirts of the big rail yard, at the edge of a tree line, to a simple two-story brick building at the side of the yard.

Dewey studied the building from the shadow of the trees. Seeing no activity, he charged across the exposed side of the building, reaching the far end, then crouching against the brick. He stalked, back pressed to brick, until he came to the corner of the building. Dewey peeked around. He saw a doorway and, beyond it a parking lot, empty except for a pair of pickup trucks.

Dewey walked to the door, jiggling the doorknob. It was locked. He glanced around, making sure he was alone, then heaved his shoulder against the door. It was a steel door. The lock was double-bolt. It wasn’t going to be opened by force.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

Dewey got down on his knees and felt along the foundation, looking for a hidden key. He went right, crawling all the way to the corner of the building. He found nothing.

A loud, creaking noise, then the slam of steel as, in the rail yard, on the other side of the building, there was activity; a boxcar was being moved.

Dewey repeated his search for a key on the far side of the door, crawling, banging the foundation. A few feet from the door, a piece of concrete seemed loose. Dewey tugged at it. It popped out. Behind it was a set of keys.

Back at the door, he inserted keys until one fit. He went inside, relocking the building behind him.

He felt the wall for light switches, then flipped them on. Clutching the knife in his right hand, Dewey moved inside the building.

He passed two offices, then came to a locker room, with work boots strewn against a far wall, benches, and lockers. He opened and closed lockers until he found one with clothing in it: a pair of jeans hanging from a hook and a dirty T-shirt. He held the jeans up, but they were far too small. He heard the door down the hallway open. Then voices, two men, speaking in Russian.

Dewey stepped quietly along the line of lockers. He wedged himself between the last locker and the wall.

One of the voices was coming closer. He couldn’t understand what the man was saying, but his tone was unmistakable. Anger. He heard doors opening down the hallway, then footsteps moving up the stairs to a second floor. The two men were calling back and forth to each other.

From the corner, Dewey watched the room through a small gap between the top of the locker and the ceiling. He saw the man’s shadow at first, then the man. He was big, dressed in a dark green uniform. Local police or railroad security.

Dewey stood as still as a statue. His eyes followed the man’s as he scanned the room, taking a drag on his cigarette, a small hint of grin appearing.

Dewey’s eyes shot to the bench. There, sitting on top of the bench, was the set of keys.

“Fuck,” he whispered.
Don’t look at the keys.

The officer left the locker room and shut the door.

Dewey breathed a sigh of relief. He waited for the voices again. But there was nothing.

He should’ve searched the lockers.

Dewey understood in that moment that he’d seen the keys. He was getting the other officer.

Dewey scanned the locker room. There were two windows. Both were tiny.

The door was the room’s only entrance or exit.

Then the lights went off.

Dewey stepped out of the small hiding area. He had precious little time. He crawled to the pile of boots. There were several dozen pairs, piled against the wall. He dug out a crawl space beneath the pile. He covered every inch of his body and head in boots, still clutching the Gerber in his right hand.

Dewey waited for more than a minute. He heard the faintest scratching of metal, as the doorknob was slowly twisted open. He watched as the door opened. He saw the vaguest outline of a gun, moving in, then training right, at the space just inside the door along the wall, then the unmuted explosion of gunfire filled the room as the officer fired at the space next to the door in the same instant another man lurched inside, gun aimed in the other direction, and then, a second later, fired three blasts through the door; whatever was behind the door was now pelted with holes.

One of the men turned the lights on. Dewey watched through a tiny gap in the mass of boots that lay atop him. The two officers looked surprised at the empty corner, at the lack of a dead man just inside the door.

The second man was short and fat. He said something to the taller man.

Dewey guessed, from the shaking of the man’s head, that it was something along the lines of:
Are you sure someone is in here?

The bigger guard stepped to the bench and picked up the keys, as if showing him proof.

Dewey’s ears suddenly picked up the faintest hint of a siren in the far-off distance.

The short man barked something in Russian. The other guard began to open the door to the first locker, near the door, at the opposite end of the room from Dewey. He looked inside the locker, found it empty, then slammed the door shut. He moved methodically down the line of lockers, opening and closing each one.

The siren grew louder, then was joined by more sirens.

They were coming. They were moving quickly, and they were organized. The Russian authorities were angry.

But how could they possibly know he was still in-country?

It didn’t matter. There was only one way he’d be able to get out of the rail yard, and it would necessarily leave evidence, likely in blood. In a few short moments, things would get hairy.

A splash of lights cut in through one of the windows.

The larger guard registered the arrival of additional policemen. He muttered something to the other guard, now standing in front of where Dewey lay, covered in a pile of boots.

Dewey watched as the two Russians argued, voices rising as they barked back and forth at each other. The shorter Russian was still clutching a pistol, which was aimed at the ground. His legs were less than a foot from Dewey. Through the man’s legs, Dewey could see the larger guard, who held a submachine gun, targeted unknowingly at Dewey’s head.

Dewey’s left arm pushed out through the boots—quietly, quickly—creeping through the air unnoticed. Dewey snatched the muzzle of the guard’s pistol with his left hand as, with his right, he reached for the guard’s hand. The guard felt the tugging, yelled, and looked down, eyes bulging, as Dewey clutched the gun, and now his hand. The guard yanked at the gun, trying to pull it away, as he screamed. The larger guard looked back at his partner, an expression of confusion on his face, until he saw Dewey’s hand on the muzzle. He waited an extra moment, then swung his submachine gun in their direction, while in the same instant Dewey inserted his right index finger into the trigger opening, over the guard’s finger, and lurched up, boots tumbling off him, overpowering the guard. Dewey swung the guard’s arm, and the pistol, across the room, firing, just as the other guard triggered the submachine, blasting rounds into the wall to Dewey’s right. The pistol’s unmuted gunshot was like an explosion. The slug tore into the big guard’s forehead, splattering blood behind him. He fell to the floor, on his back, as Dewey forced the small guard’s arm to the left. The guard screamed, gripping the butt of the Skyph with both hands. But Dewey overpowered him. He forced the pistol skyward, so that the muzzle was aimed at the guard’s chest, then pumped the trigger. The bullet tore into the center of the guard’s chest, dropping him.

Dewey climbed onto the bench, glancing at the parking lot through one of the windows. Three police cruisers, lights still on, were surrounded by a cloud of dust. Several policemen moved across the parking lot toward the building, weapons out.

He charged down the hallway and dead-bolted the main door. He moved back down the corridor to the locker room. Dewey took off his damp jeans, removed the big guard’s green uniform jacket and put it on, just as the first fist, knocking against the door, made a dull pounding noise down the hall.

Frantically, Dewey took off the man’s weapons belt, boots, and pants and pulled them on. The pounding of fists grew louder, followed by shouting in Russian. Dewey pulled his jeans onto the big guard, then buttoned them, as a sudden, very loud explosion boomed from the doorway. Dewey’s eyes shot up, watching the door as it rocketed inward, slamming into the wall across from the doorway.

Dewey took the pistol from the first guard and stuck it in the big man’s hand. He grabbed the submachine gun with his left hand, and, with his right, dipped his fingers in blood from the dead guard, wiping it across his own cheek and forehead.

Calmly, as the first drumbeat of boots echoed from down the hallway, Dewey lay down, his head arched slightly up. He trained the muzzle of the submachine gun on the dead guard, waiting.