The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(10)

Uri drove to the front entrance of the Metropol Hotel, and Jenkins stepped from the back of the car into a biting cold that stung his cheeks and hands and made it hurt to breathe. He’d packed a knit hat and gloves in the outer compartment of his bag, but instead of removing them, he took the moment to play tourist. He looked across the heavily trafficked road as if to admire the Kremlin’s clock tower, but focused his attention on the two men in the black Mercedes Gel?ndewagen. He’d first noticed the car in the side mirror on the drive into the city.

“You will be at office at two o’clock today. I will come for you at one thirty, yes?” Uri said, placing Jenkins’s bag on the ground. “You will sleep but not too deeply.”

Jenkins thanked him, picked up his bag, and climbed the steps. A valet opened the door to a marbled hotel interior. Ornate, beaded chandeliers hung from a boxed ceiling above gold statues and marble pillars. Expensive watches glistened in lobby display cases, and a harpist plucked the strings of her instrument. The clerk at reception spoke perfect English, and within minutes Jenkins entered his fifth-floor room. He had to fight the urge to lie down on the king-sized bed, knowing that if he slept, it would be “too deeply” as Uri had warned. Jenkins had work to do.

He walked into the bathroom, shut the door, and turned on the shower. Then he reached behind the toilet and felt the duct tape. Peeling free the tape, he pulled out a manila envelope. He sat on top of the toilet lid, opened the envelope, and removed several sheets of paper, reading the name of the inactive operation and the identity of the Russian double agent he would use to get the FSB’s attention.

Jenkins had the bait. Now he had to cast his line and hope for a strike.



After committing the materials provided by Carl Emerson to memory, Jenkins creased each page into an accordion fold, placed the first page onto the rim of the toilet, and ran the flame of a lighter across the top of the page. The folds caused the paper to burn without smoke or smell, and thus did not set off the smoke alarms. When the page had burned down, he pushed the stray ashes into the bowl and continued with the remaining pages, except for a small piece of paper he tore off and set aside.

Emerson had provided the telephone number to the FSB headquarters in Lubyanka Square. Jenkins opened his suitcase, pulled out a burner phone, and keyed in the number. He trusted his memory, but he was no longer a midtwenties kid without a care in the world. He hoped nerves, and not something worse, explained why his right hand had started to shake. The tremor was slight, but not one he’d ever had.

He shoved the burner phone into his coat pocket and grabbed his thick wool cap and fur-lined leather gloves from his suitcase. Then he committed to memory the position of every object in the room, which would be searched.

He walked to the door and dropped to a knee, as if to tie his shoe, and placed the piece of paper he’d torn from the dossier beneath his sole so the breeze when the door opened would not disturb it. Standing, he pulled open the door and stepped out, carefully shutting the door.

In the hotel lobby, the valet asked Jenkins if he desired a cab. Jenkins declined. “Just going for a walk,” he said, practicing his Russian. “I don’t suspect I’ll get very far in this cold.”

He zipped his jacket and pulled the knit hat down over his ears as he stepped outside. A gust of Russian winter smacked him in the face like a fist. He stopped just outside the door to slip on his gloves, which provided a moment to confirm the continued presence of the black Mercedes parked across Teatral’nyy Prospekt.

He walked north, each breath marking the air as he approached the burnt-orange building in Lubyanka Square. The rectangular edifice had once been one of the most feared in the world, home to the KGB and its infamous prison.

Emerson said the KGB had been Keystone Cops compared to the FSB, and that when Putin seized power, he made strengthening his position and the state top priorities. He created his own oligarchy, bringing friends and colleagues with him from Leningrad, then planted them inside the FSB to keep him apprised and to ruthlessly stop anyone who challenged him.

Across the square from the Lubyanka Building stood Jenkins’s destination, the massive, multistory building once called Detsky Mir, home to more than one hundred children’s stores. Jenkins trudged to a glass door entrance decorated for Christmas with three large neon figures—a young girl, a bear, and Pinocchio. He wondered if they had political significance—the young girl, new Russia; the bear, old Russia; and Pinocchio, a character caught in between. What Jenkins cared about, other than the building’s location, was that mothers and their children would pack the stores, particularly this close to Christmas. He wanted a public place for his first meeting, if a meeting was to take place at all.

Inside the mall, Jenkins removed his gloves and hat and shoved them inside his coat pockets. His face tingled as if he’d spent the morning at the dentist and the Novocain had begun to wear off. He found a Starbucks coffee shop on the ground floor, ordered a grande cappuccino, and carried it to an open table beneath an ornate and colorful glass atrium roof. Shoppers’ voices—a low hum—nearly drowned out Christmas music. Jenkins busied himself on his cell phone to give his two Russian handlers time to catch up. The two men entered the mall and stood near an ornate lamppost, one of the men with his head buried in a folded newspaper.

Jenkins took a deep breath and placed the call. It rang several times and he thought it would go to voice mail. Then a male voice answered. “Federov.”