Mission Critical

“The rash disappears when the stress is relieved, within seconds. Nothing relieves stress quite like death, Vladi. He was alive in the photos, and anxious, which I can believe if he had to feign his own death in the middle of a combat zone.”

“But—”

“And the other body next to him, that man was dead. His blood had congealed, not much, but a little. He might have been dead thirty minutes, an hour at most, but I’ve seen a lot of bodies, Vladi, and there is no way both men were killed by the same mortar round.”

“This is all fantasy, my darling. I understand why you want it to be true . . . but it simply is not true.”

Zoya pressed the knife tighter against his throat. But this did not change his story. “Feo is dead. Your papa is gone, darling. Kill me, too, if you must, but that won’t bring your dear father back to life.”

Zoya leaned closer to the older man now, right in his ear. “I always liked you, but even as a little girl, I knew you were his bitch. Did whatever he told you to do. After he was declared dead, you left GRU and went into the oil business. Made billions. That only happens with state approval. The Kremlin set you up here in London, and there must be a reason why they did that. I never put it together until I saw you in the picture and realized my father was alive. You are still connected to him somehow, still connected to the Kremlin, and London holds the key.”

“Crazy talk. Asinine. We Russians leave Russia and come here when we have the means to do so because the Kremlin wants to take our riches from us. This is the only place we can protect them from the greedy Siloviki who run the Rodina.”

Zoya shook her head with certainty. “I’ve been following your career since you left military intelligence. No way you’re working against the Kremlin. You were always a loyal servant, both to my father and to the Rodina. Nothing has changed, except your bank account and your location. Now that I know my father is alive, I am wondering why you are here with so much money, and what it is you are doing.” She added, “Are you still his bitch?”

“What am I doing? I am raising horses, I am donating to charity, I am buying property all over the world, I am fucking a different hooker every night, if you must know. What I am not doing is spending my money helping your dead father.”

His voice had grown louder with each word, and Zoya slapped him hard against his face to shut him up. His glasses flew off onto the nightstand.

Momentarily stunned, he reached for them and put them back on. When he turned back to the bed, the knife was gone from Zoya’s hand, but the Czech pistol was there in its place.

“You fire that gun and my twelve-man security team will be on you in an instant.”

“It’s a six-man security team, eight perhaps, if two of them are somewhere sleeping, and the safety of London has made all of them slow, fat, and lazy. I, on the other hand, am still Russian, and I am fast, lean, and hungry for the truth.”

“Truth? What truth? A fantasy is what you’re after.”

Zoya reached over him, to the table and to his mobile phone. Handing it to him, she said, “Open it.”

He did so and handed it back to her.

Zoya kept the gun on the man who had been like a second father to her, but she scrolled through his contacts, his text messages, and his phone calls. She looked first for her father’s name, although she knew both he and Belyakov would have been too smart to use it. She checked a few of the many aliases he used, the diminutive of his name, but found nothing that looked relevant.

She scrolled through text messages, some in English, some in Russian, and stopped at one from the day before. It was an exchange with a man named Terry Cassidy, and it was in English.

I have some things I need to get out of your safe, Belyakov wrote.

In Berlin at the moment, came the reply. Return tomorrow. Can this wait till Wednesday or do you need to go to my office without me?

It can wait. Lunch Wednesday? Belyakov replied.

Excellent. You do your business with the safe and then we’ll walk over to the club.

Zoya looked at Belyakov, wanted to ask him about Terry Cassidy and his safe where Belyakov held items, but knew better than to tip him off to her interest. She pulled up a random text message to hide what she’d been looking at, locked the phone, and threw it on the bed. “Fucking useless.”

The Russian expatriate oligarch cocked his head. “Was that English, Zoya?”

Shit. Zoya realized she’d switched to English accidentally. She faked a smile. “As Papa always told me, own your cover.”

Belyakov smiled a little, too, at this. “Why, Zoya? Why do you come with weapons to find your father? If you think he is alive, what threat does he pose to you?”

She hesitated for several seconds, and started to say something twice, but each time she stopped herself. When she did finally speak, she did not answer his question. “I will leave you now, Vladi, but I can come back at any time. When I go, I want you to call him, tell him I was here, and tell him his daughter only wishes to see her papa. Will you do that for me?”

Pleadingly, the old man said, “How can I do that, Zoya Feodorovna? He is buried up in Mytishchinsky. You’ve been to his damn grave, girl.” The Federal Military Memorial Cemetery was in the Mytishchinsky district, on the outskirts of Moscow to the northeast.

Zoya said, “You’re right, I have been there. And I knelt down and wept over the grave of a man I’ve never met, because whoever is buried in my father’s plot at Mytishchinsky is not my father.”

Belyakov sank his head back into the pillow. “Come back tomorrow, in the light. You and I can have breakfast together, and we can talk more.”

Zoya did not answer; she just climbed off the bed, the pistol still level at the prostrate man’s chest, and backed off into the dark.

 

* * *

 

• • •

Seconds later Belyakov heard the bedroom door shut softly.

He started to reach for his alarm button to alert his security team, but he thought against it. Shooting Zoya Zakharova would cause vastly more troubles for him than it would solve. No, better she got out of here safe and sound.

Belyakov did, however, reach for his mobile. He scrolled through his contacts and tapped the one for David Mars.

Mars lived in Notting Hill, also here in London, and it took him several rings to answer the phone.

With a hoarse and tired voice, Mars said, “Vladimir? What bloody time is it? Why are you calling me so damn late?”

“We need to meet, very first thing in the morning.”

“What is it?”

“I . . . I can’t . . . Not on the phone.”

“Come here for breakfast, then.”