“Broad strokes I already know myself. Give me the details! What kind of car did they have?”
Burkov, guilty expression on his face, spread his hands. “None of the merchants had seen the escape car. They’re scared out of their minds, some are in shock.”
“Bad business, Yuri,” Grigoriev signed.
Burkov took out a cigarette and a lighter.
“Put it away!” the colonel ordered quietly, but firmly. “You and I represent an important government organization before the ordinary citizens. By our appearance and actions, they judge the entire Service. Look at yourself. Crumpled pants, stained tie, and about to smoke. No smoking in public! Better yet, quit altogether.”
The first lieutenant crushed the cigarette in his hand, embarrassed, and started looking around for a place to toss it. The colonel reassuringly patted him on the shoulder.
“Keep the office’s image in mind. And one more thing. This is a busy place. Someone definitely saw the terrorists leave. Maybe even remembered the license plate number. Keep working the scene, and I’ll head back. Have to look at everything together. I have a feeling that those airplanes and today’s events are links in one chain. And that chain isn’t complete yet. You find out anything, call me.”
Chapter 4
August 31, 8:11 PM
Riga Overpass
Andrei Vlasov drove onto the Riga overpass and immediately found himself in a standstill traffic jam. Cars barely moved; drivers looked down, bewildered. Between the Rizhskaya metro station and the Krestovsky shopping mall, several cars were on fire. A thick column of black smoke rose up into the sky.
Andrei stuck his head out of the car’s window. Up ahead, a young woman driving a Toyota Corolla looked this way and that and kept asking, “What is this? Why are they on fire?”
“An act of terror, dammit,” a tired-looking cabbie cursed. “A bomb.”
“Maybe an engine shorted out and went up in flames?” Andrei made a guess.
“An engine fire? Are you freakin’ blind? Look at it!”
Vlasov looked and froze.
On a square in front of the metro station, people were wounded. The lightly wounded, their clothes torn, tried to help themselves and others. Some barely moved, but there were dead, too. Immobile bodies broken by explosion left no hope for an alternative outcome.
“What a nightmare,” the Corolla girl moaned, rolled up her window and tried to drive between the lanes.
Vlasov got out of the car. His eyes kept stumbling on the details of the horrible spectacle.
An elderly woman desperately tried to hold together the bloody mess that used to be her abdomen. A severed hand with fingers spread apart was lying on the sidewalk tiles.
“Look over there,” the cabbie pointed.
Andrei turned and shivered. On the roof of a pavilion, there was a woman’s head. The face, deep cuts all over it, eyes gone and mouth open, was turned towards the metro station. Long black hair got into the gaping mouth, clung to the empty eye sockets and the bloody fragments of the neck. The hair must have gotten tangled when the head rolled along the roof like a ball.
If the head is on the roof, the body… Now it was clear what the strange lumps in-between the bodies were. The soot, it seemed, smelled of burned flesh.
The cabbie wheezed. He was throwing up.
The sound of sirens made Andrei tear his eyes away from the terrifying picture. Through the standstill traffic on Prospekt Mira, multiple ambulances and fire engines made their way. He felt a little better. At least someone would get help.
Vlasov returned to his car. On the back seat, the battered girl stirred. With some difficulty, she lifted herself up, a grimace of pain on her now pale face. She saw the fire and black smoke and leaned forward. An expression of interest showed in her eyes.
“Is that a metro station?”
“Rizhskaya.”
The girl’s thick black eyebrows furrowed; she whispered grudgingly, “Zarima is already in paradise, and I…”
She looked up and around. The sight of the traffic jam seemed to somehow improve her mood. Her lacerated fingers picked up the loose wires and tried to connect them. When the naked wires touched, the girl closed her eyes happily and leaned back on the car seat.
The traffic jam started moving. Andrei drove in short bursts, looking at the girl in the rearview mirror. The smile was gone; she opened her eyes, surprised, and tried to reconnect the wires a few more times.
“It won’t detonate. The battery’s gone,” Andrei explained calmly.
The surprise in the Shahid’s eyes turned into desperation. Her narrowed eyes stared at the car’s cigarette lighter. Picking a moment when Vlasov’s attention was on the road, the girl pushed the lighter in. When it popped up, she grabbed the little cylinder with a hot spiral inside and jammed it into her belt. Her clothes began to singe.
Andrei turned to look and braked hard.
“Stupid!” He tried to pull away the hand holding the lighter.
The girl bit him on the wrist. Andrei wrestled the lighter away from her and threw it out the window. On his hand, there were bloody teeth imprints.
“What a beast! Are you tired of living?”
The girl hissed. Big dark eyes gave off lightings of fury. Her headscarf slid all the way down to her neck. She started thrashing, strands of hair falling across her open forehead.
“Hey, Shahid, calm down. You’ll wreck my car.”
The girl opened the right door and tried to get out. But the door was blocked by the bus sitting next to the car in the traffic jam. She threw herself over to the other door and pulled the handle. Andrei looked at her fruitless efforts and smirked, “Sorry, that lock’s broken.”
The girl, hysterical, attacked Andrei; screaming, she went for his throat. Her fingers pressed on with mad determination; her fingernails bit into his skin. Vlasov swiftly swung his elbow backward.
“Get away from me, you idiot! You’ve already been beaten up!”
A powerful swing hit her squarely on the head. The girl helplessly dropped back on the seat. He heard a common sniveling female weep.
Andrei rubbed his throat and glanced around. From the next car over, the fat driver smiled insolently, but approvingly.
He thinks I am manhandling my wife, Vlasov thought, irritated. A wife; what the hell! For him, there’s only one woman in the world! Only one! And this psychopath… Whatever possessed him to get involved with her?
If only she didn’t have that birthmark on her neck. Just like Sveta’s…
Chapter 5
Nord Ost
Day One
Sveta. His darling Svetlanka. How could he forget her?
So many times he was startled by incoming calls on his cell phone. So many times he thought he heard her voice and saw her lithe figure in the street crowd. So many times the simple melody of a popular song brought him back to the day when their carefree life changed forever.
On that October evening, Andrei ambivalently watched TV. A movie was on; something about a werewolf and wolves. Actors worked hard at creating fear, indistinct howling figures and wild green eyes flashed on the screen.
His cell phone chirped an upbeat