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“That’s what I need to know. As usual all our intel assets will be available to you.”
“We’re on it,” said Fisher. “We’ll get to Turkey and refuel there. Hopefully by the time we land we’ll have a lead on Kasperov’s location.”
“Stay in touch. I’m counting on you.”
The president’s seal reappeared, then the screens went blank.
“Charlie, full profile on Kasperov,” Grim ordered. “Right down to the brand of vodka he likes. Briggs, see what you can dig up on his employees, people from his past. We’ll have the SMI analyze possible escape routes.”
“Got something good already,” said Charlie, who’d already been diving into his databases while the president was speaking. “He was married for thirteen years, but his wife died of ovarian cancer. They have a daughter, Nadia, now twenty. We’ll locate her. Right now he’s got an American girlfriend, Jessica North, super hottie. We can follow up with her entire family. Also, he was a Soviet intel officer. I’ll search for old buddies. Says he attended the Institute of Cryptography. Could find an old teacher or somebody providing a safe house.”
“Go for it,” said Fisher.
Briggs chimed in: “Kasperov’s right hand was a young guy named Patrik Ruggov, aka Ka
“I’ll get the SMI on that, too,” said Grim.
Fisher was working through a sidebar on the SMI, sifting through magazine articles on Kasperov. “Jesus, this guy’s been everywhere. He sponsors an F1 race team: Kasperov-McClaren. Maybe he’s got contacts in one of the race cities. And look at this, he’s hung out with rock stars all over the UK, going on pub crawls and taking his people on lavish company retreats in Costa del Sol, Monte Carlo, and Cancún. Says here he threw a New Year’s Eve party with over a thousand guests. His company operates in more than one hundred countries. Go
“No kidding,” said Grim. “And that localized virus? It’s affecting ATC over Moscow right now. Look at these reports.”
Fisher sca
“Like I said,” Charlie began, “he’s a genius. He won’t do anything stupid like use a credit card or allow his face to be photographed. He knows where the security cameras are, and he knows all about facial recognition software. Hell, he wrote some of it. If he wanted to run, then he pla
Fisher turned to the image of Kasperov glowing now on one of the big screens. “So, comrade, where are you going? Are you going to pull a Bin Laden and hide in the open? Or maybe something completely different.”
“You’ve gone underground before,” said Grim. “Where would you go if you were him?”
Fisher thought for a long moment but didn’t answer.
4
MAJOR Viktoria Kolosov—code-named Snegurochka, the Snow Maiden—had tied her long, black hair into a neat bun. This was not because she preferred it that way, but because most times when she knifed a man he tended to flail about, reaching violently for anything he could grasp—and she liked her hair, thought it was one of her best features, didn’t want any dying bastard to mess it up.
Unsurprisingly, Boris reached out as she punched the folding blade into his neck, ripped it free, then stabbed him in the heart, which was her original target before he’d turned and spoiled her whole attack.
As he fell to the asphalt with a gurgling “Why?” she raised the stolen PSS silent pistol at Oleg.
She cut loose with a pair of 7.62mm rounds that traveled at two hundred meters per second to impact squarely with his forehead, a textbook double tap that kicked him back into the old subway’s crumbling wall.
The knife attack on Boris was quieter than the gun and gave her enough time to shoot Oleg before he realized what was happening. Besides, she liked variety when it came to killing. Blade, pistol, weak arm, strong arm. Also, a combination knife/gun attack was riskier than just shooting both of them in the back of the head. There was no sport in that.
She leaned over, wiping the bloody blade on Oleg’s chest and thankful she had remembered her gloves, always a good idea when you pla
The Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye, or GRU, the motherland’s foreign military intelligence agency, was headed by Sergei Izotov, who’d called upon any SVR operatives in the immediate area. They were to capture Igor Kasperov’s twenty-year-old daughter, Nadia, after the girl had made the fatal mistake of posting a status update to her VK page, saying good-bye to Moscow. She was, the SVR had assumed, rushing to the airport to link up with her father.
While a domestic job like this ordinarily belonged to the FSB, the Snow Maiden, Boris, and Oleg had been heading out to their airport themselves to catch a plane to Poland when they’d picked up the daughter’s limousine. Nadia and her four bodyguards had either spotted the tail or been tipped off.
The Snow Maiden had enjoyed taking out both tires on the limo and forcing them off the road, but it seemed the bodyguards had already pla
The Snow Maiden sprinted off and turned left into the first arching entranceway, spotting the shifting lights in the distance. The bodyguards had improvised on the fly, using the flashlight apps on their smartphones to lead the way. The Snow Maiden did likewise. She grimaced as the musty scent grew thicker and the cobwebs wafting down from the ceiling blew across her face. The concrete walls were scarred by rust and mold, and the floors alternated between dirt-covered concrete and what felt like mushy earth.
One of the bodyguards broke off at a T-shaped intersection, turning right while the rest of the group went left. He knew exactly what he was doing, thinking he’d ambush her from behind as she was forced to go after the others.