Bazhov saw passengers emerging from the corridor that served the various arrival gates, plodding along with the enthusiasm of dumb cattle entering an abattoir. A few cracked smiles on recognizing relatives or lovers who had come to greet them. Most kept their faces deadpan, as if it would cost them extra to reveal a trace of human feeling.
Bazhov felt his pulse kick up a notch when he picked out his target. He hadn’t been shown a photograph, but the description fit, albeit vaguely. More than anything, it was the target’s bearing that betrayed him.
Yuri Bazhov recognized a killer when he saw one.
After all, he owned a mirror, didn’t he?
SPOTTING A TAIL on foreign turf, particularly in a crowded public place that welcomed strangers by the thousand every hour, could be difficult, to say the least. In airports, where small hordes of people gathered, scanning faces of the new arrivals to pick out their loved ones, partners, rivals, even people they have never met but have been paid to greet, curious staring was routine. The rule, not the exception.
Bolan was on alert before he cleared the jetway fastened to the bulkhead of the Aeroflot Airbus. He had a likeness of his contact memorized, but there was always a chance of some last-minute substitution. People got sick or got dead. They got sidetracked and shuffled around on some bureaucrat’s whim. Whole operations got scuttled without any warning to agents at risk on the ground.
Bolan followed the flow of humanity past more arrival gates, following the multilingual signs directing passengers to immigration and passport control, to customs, baggage claim and ground transportation. His only baggage was a carry-on, and he was expecting a ride at the end of his hike through the concourse, but there was no mistaking the rest.
Bolan showed his passport to an immigration officer whose cropped hair, military uniform and plain face conspired to disguise her sex. She held the passport up beside his face, her eyes flicking back and forth between the photo and its living counterpart, then asked him the obligatory questions. Bolan answered truthfully that he didn’t intend to spend more than a week on Russian soil, and that he had no fixed address in mind.
“So, traveling?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
Frowning, the agent stamped his passport with a vehemence the task scarcely deserved, and passed him on to customs. There, a portly officer with triple chins pawed through the contents of his carry-on, presumably in search of contraband.
“No other bags?” he asked.
“That’s it,” Bolan replied.
“And if you need more clothes?”
“American Express.”
Apparently disgruntled at his failure to discover some incriminating bit of evidence, the agent scowled at Bolan’s passport stamp, then nodded him along to clear the station.
Thirty feet ahead of Bolan stood a wall of frosted glass, preventing those who gathered on the other side from seeing what went on at customs. Bits of faces showed each time the exit door opened and closed, but Bolan didn’t think his contact would be pushing up to head the line.
He cleared the doorway, with a hefty woman and her two unruly children close behind him. Bolan let them take the lead, converging on a thin, small-headed man whose pale face registered despair at the sight of them.
The joys of coming home.
Bolan was looking for his contact when he saw the skinhead on his left, leaning against a wall there, staring hard at Bolan’s face until their eyes met. Caught, be broke contact and made a show of checking out the other passengers, while muttering some comment to the collar of his leather jacket.
Glancing to his right, Bolan picked out another front man of the not-so-welcoming committee, nodding in response to something no one else could hear, hand raised to press an earpiece home.
Clumsy.
But in his present situation, Bolan thought, how good did his opponents really need to be?
“I THINK HE SPOTTED us!” Yuri Bazhov stated.
“So, he has eyes,” Evgeny Surikov replied, his voice a tinny sneer through Bazhov’s earpiece. “What’s the difference?”
Seething with anger yet afraid to make a spectacle in public, Bazhov hissed at the small microphone concealed on his lapel. “What do you think, idiot? That we should take him here, in front of everyone?”
“Why not?” Danil Perov chimed in.
Turning away from customs, Bazhov fell in step a dozen yards behind his target. “I don’t want the damned militia coming down on us,” he said into the microphone. “Whoever wants to be arrested, do it somewhere else. You can explain to Taras personally, if you don’t like following his orders.”
That silenced the bellyachers for now. Bazhov followed his man, still unsure where the stranger would lead him. The target carried a bag, but might have other luggage awaiting attention downstairs. Who flew to Moscow with a single bag, even if he was only staying for the night?
Who was this man? Why did he matter to the Family?
Nobody tells me anything, Bazhov thought, frowning to himself.
All right, the bosses didn’t owe him any explanation, but he should be told enough to let him do his job effectively and safely. What if this one was some kind of kung fu expert, for example? What if he was carrying a deadly virus in his blood or sputum? Bazhov and his men could wind up beaten to a pulp, infected with some damned thing that would kill them slowly.
Before it came to that, he’d use the GSh-18 and damn the consequences. But it was a last resort, and if he had to kill the stranger, Bazhov might consider saving one round for himself.
The target didn’t turn to see if anyone was following his path along the concourse. He played it cool, but Bazhov was convinced that he’d been spotted, maybe Surikov, as well. That made the job more difficult, but not impossible, by any means.
With odds of six to one, how could they lose him?
They took the escalator down toward the baggage claim and ground transportation area, and the other services designed to hasten new arrivals from the airport. Bazhov couldn’t help scowling as his target reached the bottom and turned left, away from the long bank of luggage carousels.
“No bags,” he told the microphone. “Repeat! No bags. Vasily, Pavel, come rejoin us.”
“On my way,” Vasily Radko answered.
“Coming,” Pavel Malevich replied.
Apparently, their target meant to hire a car. He had no less than half a dozen agencies to choose from, but he might have reservations with a car already standing by. In either case, they had to intercept him, before he vanished into city traffic.
Domodedovo International stood twenty-two miles from downtown Moscow. Call it a half-hour’s drive if nobody was speeding, drawing attention from traffic police. In the worst-case scenario, Bazhov could stop the mark’s car in transit, stage an accident if need be and lift him before the militia arrived.
Better to take him at the airport, though, perhaps in the garage where the hired cars were kept shiny-clean, with their dents and scratches inventoried for insurance purposes. There would be fewer witnesses, none likely to step forward and defend a stranger in the face of guns.
“Close in,” Bazhov commanded. “We will take him when he goes to fetch his car.”
ANZHELA PILKIN SMELLED the trap before she saw it closing on the stranger she had come to meet. She seemed to have a sixth sense for such things—so much so, if the truth be told, that fellow agents of the FSB sometimes referred to her as wed’ma.
Witch.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t a witch, only an FSB lieutenant who couldn’t work magic on a whim. She couldn’t twirl a wand and