Smiling for no good reason could draw notice, just the same as spitting on the floor. Most anything out of the ordinary could spell trouble, if you thought about it long enough.
Collect the stranger, he’d been told. Taras had given him a name and flight number, then placed him in charge of the collection team. Which was an honor in itself.
Collect could mean a hundred different things, but Taras had added one crucial proviso. Bazhov had to deliver the stranger alive. Not necessarily undamaged, but breathing and able to speak.
More specifically, to answer questions.
Bazhov wondered if he would be privileged to witness that interrogation. Certainly, he wouldn’t be in charge of it. The family had specialists for such occasions, legendary in their way. Kokorinov was probably the best—or worst—a cold man with no concept of remorse or mercy. Bashkirtseva favored power tools, but could be flexible. Nikulin was a savage, plain and simple.
Any one of them could teach Bazhov a thing or two, perhaps speed his advancement up through the ranks. Though, come to think of it, his choice to head up the collection team was quite a vote of confidence.
He needed to be certain that he didn’t fuck it up.
Bazhov squinted at the monitor, watching its list of flight arrivals and departures scroll across the screen. He suspected that he would need glasses soon, a damned embarrassment and scandal at his tender age of thirty-five, but he would put off the indignity as long as possible. The first person who made fun of him was dead.
According to the monitor, the flight from Montreal had landed more or less on time, a minor miracle for Domodedovo International. Bazhov couldn’t approach the gate where passengers deplaned—another security precaution—and he didn’t know whether his target had checked luggage in the belly of the plane. To cover every possibility, he had two men on standby at the baggage carousels, two more positioned where he could observe them from his present station, and his driver, on call, driving incessant loops around the terminal.
If anything went wrong with the collection, it wouldn’t be Yuri Bazhov’s fault.
But he would pay the price, regardless.
Such was life.
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
