The Kremlin Phoenix (11 page)

Inspector McGuire stroked his
thick dark beard thoughtfully, then turned to Rick Harriman and Bill Corman,
sitting in the back seat. “Our team will trail him in shifts. If he gets a cab
we’ll follow in the car.”

Corman turned to Harriman. “Keep
your eyes open for the killer.”

“You think he followed him here?”
Harriman asked.

“If Balard has something he
wants, yes.”

A male voice sounded over the
radio, silencing their discussion. “The subject is exiting the premises.”

“There he is!” McGuire said.

Craig stepped out of the Irish
Rose and headed down the street towards the underground. Across the road, a man
who’d been leaning against a wall, watching the pub’s entrance for hours, began
walking parallel with him. He watched Craig’s reflection in the shop windows,
never looking once in his direction.

A London cab cruised slowly past
the unmarked police car, then slowed as it passed Craig. The cabby stuck his
head out and called out to Craig.

Harriman leaned forward. “Do cabs
solicit customers off the street?”

“Not usually.” The Inspector said
as he picked up the radio mike. “Central, this is McGuire. I want a
registration check on a cab.” He read out the cab’s number as it began to move
off. When it was just ahead of Craig, it stopped.

The radio controller said, “That
vehicle was reported stolen earlier this evening.”

Two balaclava clad men leapt out
of the rear of the cab. One hit Craig in the stomach, knocking him to his
knees, while the other forced a hood over his head, then together they dragged
him into the cab.

“Damn!” Inspector McGuire said,
nodding to his driver. “Don’t lose them!”

The cab sped away, swerving into
a side street as the police siren sounded behind them. By the time the police
car reached the corner, the cab was turning into another street. The cab hurtled
recklessly down narrow lanes, skidding wildly around corners, yet the driver
never lost control. The constant turns made it difficult for the police car to
close the distance, and several times, the cab briefly sped out of sight. After
a series of sharp turns, when the cab was momentarily unseen, it doubled back,
while the police raced on. Within minutes, the cab had disappeared into the
vast maze of London’s street.

When it was clear they’d lost the
cab, the police car slowed, and McGuire turned off the siren. “Now what?” the
Inspector asked.

“We wait until his body shows up
in the Thames,” Harriman said sourly.

* * * *

Craig’s kidnappers dumped the cab
shortly after escaping the police, then changed to an inconspicuous sedan for
the long drive out of London to a remote farmhouse. When the car stopped, Craig
was dragged from the car, hooded and hands bound behind his back. Gravel
crunched under foot as two of the kidnappers walked him inside, where creaking
wooden floors and the smell of a gas heater assaulted his sensors. He was guided
to a chair, where his hood and restraints were removed.

Craig found himself in a country
style kitchen, sitting at a plain wooden table. A wood framed window looked out
over ploughed fields which could have been any rural area outside of London. Pavlya
Fenenko, a swarthy man with a full beard and dark eyes held the hood and
handcuffs in one hand, and a gun in the other, while several other men from the
car stood watching. Sitting opposite him was a slim woman with short auburn
hair, fair skin and green eyes. She wore a gun holstered under her shoulder,
and from the way the others waited for her to speak, Craig realized she was in
charge.

“I am Valentina Petrovna,” she
said. “I trust you weren’t hurt?”

“Not much,” Craig said in a tone
suggesting more force was used than necessary.

“You were being watched, and the
location of this house must remain a secret.”

“Watched by who?”

Valentina glanced at Fenenko who
shook his head. “He never saw them. They must have followed him from the
airport.”

“Who followed me?” Craig
demanded, genuinely surprised.

“The British Police,” Valentina
said. “You’re not very good at this, are you?”

“I’m a lawyer, not a secret agent.”

“Did you bring the document?”

“Don’t you think you should tell
me what’s going on?” Craig asked suspiciously.

“I work for Sledstevenny Komitet
– SK – it means Investigations Committee. It’s like your FBI. I am a member of
the Criminal Investigations Department, currently an investigator, although one
day I will be a prosecutor.”

“You’re a lawyer?”

She smiled. “Does that surprise
you?” She was a graduate of the centuries old St Petersburg State University
Law School.

He shrugged and motioned towards
her gun. “Strange job for a lawyer.”

“Not so strange. My unit
specializes in crimes against the state, particularly crimes that damage Russia’s
economy.”

“Russia? It that what this is? A
criminal investigation?”

“It’s much more than that. It’s high
treason.”

“Treason?” Craig said, genuinely
surprised.

“Give me the document,” she said
in a tone that showed she was in no mood for small talk.

“Show me what you’ve got to trade
first.”

She nodded to the men standing
behind Craig. Several pinned his arms while Fenenko searched his pockets,
retrieving an envelope which he tossed onto the table. The men released Craig while
Valentina opened the envelope and studied its contents.

“You don’t know what this means,”
she said with relief.

“Sure I do. It means you cheated
me, and you’re now the richest woman on the planet.”

“Not a cent is for me!” she
snapped. “All of it will be returned to the millions of people it was stolen
from.” She leaned toward him, eyes flashing with a deep hatred. “The Communist
Party siphoned off the wealth of the old Soviet Union for decades, stealing
from people living close to starvation, and hid the money in western banks.
This is the crime my unit has been investigating for years now.”

“Why did they hide it, rather
than spend it?”

“The only thing they want is
power. This money was meant to help them get that power back.”

“Did Goldstein and the others know?”

“No, they were just pawns.”

Craig felt a twinge of sorrow for
the three men he’d worked for. They’d been decent men, who’d been pulled into
something they’d never understood. “So, what will you do with it?”

“Steal it all back, of course.”
She held up the page containing the master list.

“That’s going to seriously piss
someone off.”

“By the time they find out, it
will be too late.”

“Are you going to tell me what
happened to my father?”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” Valentina
said, “but you may not like what you hear.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Valentina folded the master list
and placed it back in the envelope. “Colonel Jack Balard survived the crash of
his plane in Serbia and was taken prisoner. You knew that from the photo Yegor gave
you.”

Craig nodded. “Did they execute
him for dropping bombs on them?”

Valentina shook her head. “No,
you don’t understand. A high ranking American Air Force officer flying a top
secret stealth plane would never be killed. Never.”

Craig looked surprised. “What
then?”

* * * *

May 17, 1999

Colonel Jack Balard lay on a
cot in a stark concrete cell in the Centralni Zatvor, Belgrade’s Central Prison,
submerged in darkness except for the flicker of candle light reaching him from
beneath the cell’s metal door. It had been weeks since he’d seen electric
light, so effective had NATO’s air campaign been to knock out Serbia’s
electricity system. Since he’d been captured, he’d been beaten and interrogated
many times. He’d managed to hold out, but his resistance was weakening.

He rubbed his nose absently. It
was sore to the touch, and swollen. He hadn’t seen a mirror since he’d been
shot down, but he knew his nose was broken, and from the sustained swelling on
the side of his face, he suspected his cheek bone was fractured. The Serb
doctors had provided him with basic medical attention, which was undone at the
next interrogation. He knew the Serbs were desperate, faced with an air
campaign that was reducing their country to rubble and a civil war that was
slipping out of their control. Even so, Serb air defenses were proving much
more difficult to defeat than was generally known back home.

Nevertheless, Jack had no doubt
what the result would be.
I’ve just got to hang on,
he thought,
until they surrender, then I’ll be going
home
,

The cell echoed with the clang of
the metal door swinging open, then two Serb soldiers dragged him out. They
forced him at gun point through dark corridors to a large square interrogation
room, where they pushed him roughly into a wooden chair. An elaborate, multi
fingered candelabra stood on the table in front of him, where two Serb intelligence
officers sat looking through his file and their notes. The limited light from
the candles left the edges of the room shrouded in darkness, obscuring the seats
positioned along the walls. Sometimes observers would sit in the shadowy
periphery, taking additional notes or requesting specific questions. Usually a
doctor drifted in and out of the light, ensuring the beatings were never fatal.

The more senior officer did the
talking. His English was remarkably good, suggesting he’d spent time living in
an English speaking country. Jack still didn’t know his interrogator’s name. He’d
been told in training that in these situations, interrogators tried to build relationships
with their subjects, but this officer clearly hadn’t read that book. As usual,
the soldiers stood behind him, ready to administer beatings if his answers were
unsatisfactory.

“Give your name and rank,” the
Serb interrogator said simply.

Are we
going back to the beginning?
Jack wondered. He
hadn’t been asked that for days. “Jack Balard, Colonel, United States Air
Force.”

“What type of aircraft were you
flying when you were shot down?”

What the hell?
he thought.
They know all this.

The interrogator tilted his head.
“Answer the question, Colonel.”

“I was piloting a F117 Nighthawk.”
It was no secret. They’d already shown him pieces of the wreckage. The air
force had not destroyed it, initially because they were unaware of its
location, later because the Serbs placed dozens of women and children on and
around the wreckage, preventing an airstrike.

“You were operating out of Aviano
Air Base, in northern Italy, correct?”

“Yes.”

“What flight paths are assigned
to the stealth bombers when they attack Serbia?”

They’d asked that question many
times also. He knew they wanted to site their anti-air missiles beneath the
flight paths, to increase the chance of more shootdowns. Slowly, he shook his
head. “Don’t know. They change all the time.” It was a partial lie. Transit
routes were varied, but the Dayton Accords had dangerously limited the options
open to Allied Air Forces, forcing them to fly predictable courses.

“Liar!” The intelligence officer
shouted suddenly, motioning to a soldier who jabbed Jack in the stomach with
the end of a wooden bat, knocking him to the floor. Another soldier dragged him
back onto the chair, where he sat hunched over, struggling to breathe.

“What do you know of the radar
absorbent material used in the construction of the F117?”

He shook his head slowly. “Nothing.
I’m a pilot, not a scientist.”

“You will answer my questions!” The
interrogator yelled again. “Or you will be shot!”

Suck it
, Jack thought.

“If you are a pilot,” the interrogator
continued, “Explain the flight characteristics of the F117.”

Jack scowled “She’s a pig. Roughest
damn plane I ever flew.”

“Why is that?”

“Radar can’t detect flying pigs,”
he said, allowing himself a crooked smile.

The interrogator nodded and a
soldier punched him in the face.

Not the
nose again!

Out of the corner of his eye, he
glimpsed movement from the far side of the room as two officers emerged from
the shadows. Jack tried to identify the uniforms, certain they weren’t Serb or
NATO. He peered at them a moment longer, before the shock of recognition hit him.

What are
they doing here?
he wondered.

The more senior of the two, a
stocky, broad shouldered major of the GRU, the Main Intelligence Directorate of
the Russian Federation, waved the Serb soldiers back. “Enough!” he snapped. “We’ll
take him!”