Red Dawn Rising (Red Returning Trilogy) (34 page)

Shelton’s drooping face lifted slightly. “The KGB stiff neck? Who could forget the guy? Made of serrated Soviet steel.” He chuckled. “Speared you with it a few times, didn’t he?”

“And with pleasure.” Noland searched his old friend’s face and its network of hard-won crevices. “Shelton, there’s something I never told you about that first return trip to Moscow I made, with you and the others.” He paused to gather his thoughts. “You remember I didn’t want to go. Hated the thought of confronting that man again. He was just nine years older but postured himself as an elder statesman, out to rid his country of any interference from young Westerners like us.”

“I remember well. Go on.” Shelton picked up his cup and leaned back.

“After our first meeting, at which I said next to nothing, he approached me and suggested I might like to visit his office.” Noland shook his head and sniffed. “I don’t mind saying it scared me. But I went, too curious
not
to.” He sipped his coffee and replaced the cup solidly in the saucer, pausing a moment more. “Volynski closed the door behind us, and the first thing I noticed about the office was the framed print of van Gogh’s self-portrait, the one with his bandaged ear.”

Shelton grimaced. “I can see how that would serve as inspiration to a guy like that,” he offered snidely.

“There were paintings by other artists, but mostly van Gogh’s.” He paused again. “He asked me to sit across the desk from him. I knew it was the old superior-subordinate game, but I didn’t object. He rambled on and on about the mercurial state of the Soviet Union, that if it ever fell—which it did four years later—it would return. He said he would personally guarantee that. I dismissed it as the bluster of a colossal ego.”

Shelton returned his own cup to the saucer on the table and leaned forward.

“I should have paid more attention.” Noland paused. “I believe Ivan Volynski is the Architect. That he’s in the U.S. and ready to strike.”

For all his years on the front lines of international disputes and power plays, Shelton Myers looked genuinely stunned.

“But there’s more,” Noland added, moving closer to the edge of the sofa. “When he finished his diatribe on Soviet Russia that day, he pulled a letter out of his desk drawer. He handed it to me and told me to look at the pictures inside, then to read the letter.

“They were old snapshots. Three of them. My father was in each one with his arms around a woman I’d never seen before. Then I read the letter. It was in my father’s unmistakable hand, telling things only he could know.”

Noland locked eyes on his friend. “Ivan Volynski is my brother.”

Chapter 37

E
vgeny Kozlov had long suffered the moniker of KGB rabbit. He could dig a warren quicker than anyone else, most of the time on the run and needing a handy hole—such as that very night, after fleeing Ava’s ambush near the Seaport apartment.

He’d found a very suitable camper van with draped windows in a parking garage near Wall Street and helped himself to it. For the rest of the night, he’d done what he’d been trained to do—defend and prosper his country by stealth and with swift, uncompromising judgment of others. Only this time, he answered to no one but himself.

That night, using tools he could work as easily as his own appendages, he’d disarmed security systems and entered a half-dozen stores and storerooms around Manhattan, preparing for the coming day.

By five o’clock Monday morning, he’d finished his work and longed for sleep. Like the rabbit, he burrowed into blankets he’d found in the back of the camper and slept for an hour. He was parked outside the gate to a heliport on the lower East River.

The broad aviation dock was populated by a flock of sleek corporate birds that flew their privileged owners to and from their next million-dollar deals. Now awake, if not sufficiently rested, Evgeny had his eye on one bird in particular, a seven-passenger Bell 429, its serial number
matching
the one scribbled on the back of the printout he’d found in the Seaport apartment.

Two fresh guards at the gate had replaced the one Evgeny had circumvented earlier that night. It hadn’t been difficult since the old man’s snoring surely could be heard up and down the river. Evgeny had come prepared to tranquilize a guard dog or two if necessary, but none were on duty.

As the famous skyline behind him slowly emerged in faint relief against a creeping red dawn, Evgeny glanced about at the few cars parked nearby, then back at the guards. Content that the camper had drawn no undue attention, he settled back with his doughnuts and coffee. He had no idea how long he would have to wait. The few groceries he’d stashed in the back would have to suffice. He’d even provided himself with a chamber pot of sorts. There would be no leaving the site.

He wondered at his incredibly good fortune. It had been just a date written in pencil. It might have been someone’s dental appointment, and all his efforts would have been pointless. But written on the back of a heliport printout? Next to the model and serial number of a chopper? No, it smelled too much like a travel date.

Where are you going, Architect?

Chapter 38

T
ravis, who else knows that Volynski is your brother?”

“Half brother,” Noland corrected. “I never told anyone. Never even confronted my father. Later, when all those other photographs implicating him arrived at the
New York Times
and the scandal broke, I knew who was behind it. They were different from the ones Ivan had shown me, the ones of his mother. He wouldn’t drag her into it. The pictures he sent the
Times
showed my father with a couple of different women—both purported to be spies for their various governments. I never believed they were. I was so angry with my father by that time, though, I had trouble mustering sympathy for him—only for my mother. She didn’t deserve to suffer like she did.”

“Your father never knew you’d met his illegitimate son?” Shelton asked incredulously.

Noland shook his head. “No. I wanted to protect him.”

“Who?”

“Ivan.”

That took Shelton by obvious surprise.

“My father was very powerful. I didn’t know what he’d do if I told him about Ivan. I’m not sure why I kept the secret all these years, even after my father died. Survival instinct, I guess. But I always feared Ivan would pounce again. This time on me.”

“Did you ever see him or talk to him after that day in his office?”

“I tried to reach him many times, but he wouldn’t return my calls. I really wanted this guy to know how sorry I was for what my father did to him and his mother. But Ivan would have nothing to do with me. I saw him once more at the Kremlin years later. I approached him and asked if we could talk. But he just looked me dead in the eye and walked away.

“Not long after the Soviet collapse, Ivan left Russia and left no trace of himself. No one on either side of the U.S.–Russia divide knew anything about him, reportedly. But you’ll remember, after we uncovered the plot to assassinate the Russian and Syrian presidents, a buzz started. When Andreyev and Fedorovsky—whom we thought masterminded the plot—went to prison, we started picking up chatter about someone else out there. Some mystery man working Andreyev and Fedorovsky.” Noland looked toward the ceiling, then back at Shelton. “I never made even the slimmest connection to Ivan.” He picked up the telltale file. “Until this.”

Shelton read the report, then looked away, visibly processing it all. “So now we know what this man looks like.”

“You and I do.”

“And the FBI doesn’t.”

Noland shot up from his seat. “I have a photograph!”

Chapter 39

B
y eight Monday morning, Cass and Jordan were still rifling through files in Hans’s study. They’d slept only a couple of hours at the Kluen apartment before Ava dispatched them to Southampton, and their search had grown almost robotic. When the agent sent to oversee them stepped out to make a call, they fought the temptation to curl up on the floor and give in to weary defeat.

Instead, they trudged on with their search. Jordan closed one cabinet and opened another. He picked up a small envelope containing a black-and-white photograph. “Look at this,” he told Cass. It was an aerial shot of a walled complex with one large house and a few smaller outbuildings.

Dropping the folders she was searching, Cass took the photo from him. “It doesn’t look familiar.” She turned it over. “There’s something written lightly on the bottom edge.
Brooklyn house
.” She looked up at Jordan. “Hans doesn’t own any property in Brooklyn that I know of.”

“Ask your mom.”

Cass hurried from the room and down the stairs. She found her mother in the second-floor master bedroom, sitting like a propped mannequin on the velvet chaise overlooking the ocean. “Mom, are you okay?”

Jilly Kluen wiped tears from her face and reached for her daughter.
Cass
sank onto the soft blue velvet next to her mother. “What is that?” Jilly asked, pointing to the photograph.

“Do you recognize this place, Mom?”

Jilly studied it. “No. Where did you get it?”

“In Hans’s study.”

“Well, it might be useful, dear. I just don’t know.” Cass knew her mother had slipped into some distant realm, someplace where the window shades on reality were half closed.

“Did he ever own a house in Brooklyn?”

Jilly thought a minute. “I don’t think so.”

Cass tugged at her mother’s shoulders. “You okay down here by yourself?”

“I guess I’d better get used to it,” Jilly said with enough resolve to lift Cass’s hopes for her.

“We’re going to be fine, Mom. I don’t know how I know that. But I’ve been … asking God for help.”

A pleasant surprise lit Jilly’s face. “Oh, really. When you have time, I’d like to talk about that.”

Cass kissed her mother on the cheek and returned to the study. She grabbed Evgeny’s phone and called Ava about the photograph. “Excellent!” Ava exclaimed. “I’m here at headquarters. Now do just what I say as quickly as you can. Use your phone to photograph the image as large and clearly as you can, then send it to Delaney.” She gave Cass the number. “He can run it through aerial inventory for a footprint match and give us an address.”

“Is this where Hans is?”

“We’ll see. Now get to work.”

“Where are you?”

But Ava had already hung up. A little later, though, she called back and asked for Jordan.

“He’s right beside me,” Cass answered, catching Jordan’s eye.

“Good. I’m sending you a photograph. I need to know if this is the man Jordan spoke to in the apartment near the UN. Got that?”

“Yes. But how did you get a picture of him? Do you know who he is?”

“Too many questions, Cass. Just tell Jordan to stand by. I’ll need his answer immediately.”

They both watched the phone as if it might burst into flames. When the image finally appeared, Jordan cried, “That’s him!”

Chapter 40

L
iesl opened the blinds and looked out at the harbor. “So this is a safe house,” she said. “On top of a high-rise in handshaking distance from FBI headquarters.”

“All the better to watch you, my dear,” Ava teased from the kitchen. “Short of parachuting onto the roof or climbing the outside walls, the only access to you is one express-elevator ride up with no exits along the way, plus the stairwell. And you’ve seen the number of guards posted at all those points.”

“I can’t live this way, Ava. Not anymore.”

Ava came up behind her and touched her back. “I know. Not much longer, I hope.” Then she returned to the coffee she’d just poured for herself.

Liesl turned slightly. “Did you get any sleep?”

Ava nodded. “A few hours at headquarters. I’m okay. Just needed to check security here this morning. I can’t stay long.”

“Then where will you go?”

“Got a few things working.”

Liesl waited. “And that’s all you’re telling me, right?”

Ava nodded.

“Well, can you at least tell me where Evgeny is?”

“Can anybody?” Ava asked rhetorically. “He’s a ghost. Nothing to hold on to. He disappears in plain view. But I’m confident he’ll reappear for one reason—you. He cares a great deal for you. Who would have believed that a year ago?”

As Ava busied herself with phone messages, something Liesl had read in the book of Romans returned to her.
We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose
. She closed her eyes.
Lord, look at all the ones you’ve brought to me, who’ve taught me to love again, and to forgive
. She opened her eyes and looked on the streets below.
I forgive Evgeny. Will you?

“What are you so thoughtful about?” Ava asked, pulling on her coat.

Liesl turned from the window and smiled at the woman she’d come to love as a trusted friend. There hadn’t been many of those in Liesl’s life. Just then, the image of Ben Hafner burned inside her, and the fumes of betrayal rankled the air around her. She fought to hold back her anger, knowing how quickly she could bolt back into the world of her own human grievances.