He’d started his career as a Russia hand. He’d been a young man when Reagan had visited Red Square as a guest of Mikhail Gorbachev. He’d been in the room when his superior had suggested making a pass at the young KGB officer shipped in from Dresden, along with a hundred others, to populate Red Square. The First Gulf War broke out barely eighteen months later and he was transferred to the Middle East desk. Off he went to Kuwait and an assignment with the Special Activities Division. Russia was a memory.
But over the years, he’d heard whispers about “their man” in Moscow. Whatever the Agency was doing, it worked. From 1990 to 2000, Russia went from being the “main enemy,” a vaunted military power and feared rival, to the closest thing to a failed state. The old USSR broke up into a dozen pieces, most of which—not coincidentally—hated one another. What remained of Russia proper was ruled by the greediest bunch of plutocrats since Nero and his violin had plundered Rome. And presiding over this wholesale pillage was “their man in Moscow,” Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. First as a bagman for the mayor of Moscow, then as an assistant to President Boris Yeltsin (who else could have slipped Yeltsin the bottle of vodka he was forbidden during the fated visit to Washington, DC, when he escaped the White House in his pajamas and was found wandering down Pennsylvania Avenue at three a.m. singing “The Internationale”?), and then as president of Russia himself, a position he had held, on and off, for two decades.
At some point the Agency lost its man, which was par for the course. Putin accumulated too much power, too much money. He decided to be his own man. No one minded much. Russia needed a strong hand. Worse than a dictator was a weak democracy. The West required a reliable bulwark against the Chinese hordes. It also required an enemy with sharp teeth and a set of claws. Of late, however, he had grown too headstrong. It was decided he needed to be reined in. No one suggested replacing him. God, no. Just a slap on the hand to remind him who was “daddy,” to use the vernacular.
Vassily Borodin had been marked as a comer for some time. His rise through the ranks of the SVR had been rapid and without pause. He was smart, capable, ruthless, cunning, and very, very ambitious. For the first time in recent memory, Russia had spawned a man capable not only of replacing Vladimir Putin but of returning Mother Russia to some semblance of her former glory. For Vassily Borodin possessed another quality in even rarer supply. He was an honest man.
And so the letter.
It had been Neill’s idea. An ingenious means to draw the attention of a man with righteousness in his heart and treachery in his blood. A born usurper. The West had operatives by the dozens inside the Kremlin. The United States had operatives, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia. It was just a matter of having one drop a hint here and there. The rest they left to Borodin.
The goal was not to depose the sitting president but to weaken him. And at the same time, to remove an unwelcome successor. For there was one hitch that Vassily Borodin could not know.
The letter was a fake.
Everything up to this point had been done to make him think otherwise.
But one of the graphologists in the Kremlin would know better. The error was in Reagan’s signature. A loop that was too big. Or was it a curl that was too tight? Neill couldn’t remember which. Anyway, they would compare it to others and they would know. Goodbye, Borodin.
The money was Neill’s reward for a job well done.
He had an urge to open the case, to look at the piles and piles of currency, to wallow in a few moments of wanton greed. Another time.
He hoisted the case up and out of the truck, sliding it to one side of the door. He began to think ahead. His first order of business would be to kill Coluzzi. From there it was an hour’s drive to the ferry in Marseille. He had just enough time to make the eleven p.m. boat to Ajaccio. He’d be sure to bid Coluzzi’s family a silent hello and thank you. He couldn’t have done it without their son. From Ajaccio, he’d take a plane to Morocco. He had a friendly banker in Marrakech and enough passports to stay hidden for the next fifty years. From there, he would disappear.
Neill smiled at the thought. He’d done it. He’d pulled it off.
He needed a boost to pull himself out of the truck and searched the compartment for a platform where he might stand. The bench would do nicely. He put a foot on it and raised a hand to the doorway. When he looked up, Simon Riske was there, staring down at him.
“Go away,” said Neill. “You’ve done your job.”
“And yours, too.”
“What do you want?”
“You should know. I wanted him. Coluzzi. Now I want something else.”
“The money? Fine. We can discuss it. First, let’s get out of here. I’m sure we can come to a reasonable agreement.”
“Not the money.”
“There’s ten million euros in that case.”
“That’s a lot.”
“Plenty to keep that shop of yours going. You can buy yourself a car. Buy two, even.”
“This whole thing was your plan, wasn’t it? The letter, Borodin, Coluzzi, the money.”
Neill was growing impatient. “Is this about the girl?”
“She’s alive, in case you’re interested.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I never like it when there’s collateral damage.”
“You’re a real caring soul.”
“What’s done is done. Now let me out of here.”
“I can’t do that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m still figuring that out. I’m a little shaken up, to tell you the truth. My collarbone’s busted and I think my arm is, too. All I know is that I’m not letting you walk away from here with all this money.”
“So it is about the money?” said Neill, desperation growing. “I knew it. You’ve been after it all along.”
“Sit down and take a rest,” said Simon, pushing the door closed. “I’ll be back to you soon.”
“Don’t you…” Neill went for his pistol and fired a round as the door slammed shut. The bullet ricocheted and penetrated the floorboard. The armored truck was built to withstand automatic weapons fire, rocket-propelled grenades, even smaller improvised explosive devices. But all those delivered their charge to the outside of the vehicle. The truck was not designed to guard against a weapon fired inside it. The floorboard was built of standard sheet metal. The nine-millimeter bullet bounced off the reinforced steel door and passed through the quarter-inch metal plate into the gasoline tank, also armored exclusively on its exterior facing side.
The heat of the bullet and the friction it generated as it passed through the metal caused a spark. The gasoline exploded instantaneously, the force of the blast deflected entirely into the cargo bay.
At once, the truck was enveloped in flames.
Simon leapt from the truck and rolled in the grass, extinguishing his clothing. Coluzzi struggled to distance himself from the flames. Simon got to his feet and dragged him a safe distance from the burning truck. Neill’s screams lasted for a minute.
By now, police were streaming in their direction, drawn by the explosion.
Coluzzi pointed to the suitcase, which had landed perfectly upright a stone’s throw away. “Pity to give it to the authorities.”
“What do you suggest?”
Coluzzi looked at Riske and lay back in the grass. He shook his head, disconsolately. “Where did you go wrong?”
Friday
Chapter 69
The Cimetière de Saint-Paul et Saint-Pierre was where the poor, the unwanted, the unloved and unidentified of Marseille were sent to spend eternity, or at least the twenty-five years they were granted until each was dug up, incinerated, and another put in their place. It was the French version of Potter’s Field, and the worse for it. It sat on an untended plot of land a few kilometers outside the city, squeezed between a landfill and a recycling plant.
Rain was coming. He could smell it on the wind. A few drops landed on Simon’s coat as he made his way down row after row, reading the names of those buried here. He found the monsignor’s grave at the far corner of the cemetery, his final resting place marked by a stone cross that had originally been white but after years of neglect had faded to a mottled yellow where the paint had not chipped away altogether.
PAUL DESCHUTES
1931–2004