cigarette companies, many of whom had representatives in the Trust.
Michael hadn’t been watching the Mafiya for a while, but had been told by the Trust that Trotsky was still the poster boy for everything that was so keenly dangerous about the Russian mob—they had no code of ethics, and they were unbelievably ambitious. They would stop at nothing to get what they wanted, and what they wanted was money, power and control in the United States. Their kill-or-be-killed tactics worked, and they always carried out their threats. So the people who dealt with them gave them anything they wanted. But Michael was about to stop that. Or at least a piece of it. The Trust had asked Michael to get back in the game for this one mission because of his expertise. Michael had accepted because, from what he’d learned in the past, it was the right thing to do.
He entered the building through the glass-and-steel doors. He gave the name of Sergei Kovalev to the young man at the front desk who had feral eyes and, Michael could tell from the way he sat, a pistol tucked in the back of his jeans. Sergei Kovalev, thanks to Michael’s painstaking work in creating him over the last few decades, had a reputation as a quiet but very wealthy and respectable Russian businessman. A few phone calls to Trotsky’s people indicating Sergei wanted to join forces had led to this meeting while Trotsky was in the country. To get within even a block of Trotsky would have been impossible but for Sergei.
The young man with the feral eyes squinted into a computer screen. After a minute, he said something into a handheld radio. A door behind the man clicked open and a large, bald guy stepped into the lobby. He instructed Michael to take off his coat and to spread his arms and legs. He ran a wand over Michael’s body, covering every inch in a slow, meticulous fashion. He patted down Michael’s arms, chest, back, crotch, ass, legs and feet, then asked Michael to open his mouth and peered inside. He ran Michael’s coat through a gunpowder sensor. Finally, he stepped back, pointed to the elevator and said, “Four,” in Russian.
Inside the elevator was another young man with cold eyes, dressed in jeans. Michael asked for the fourth floor. The man eyed him and hit the button.
When they reached the floor, the man escorted Michael down an unadorned concrete hallway to a set of double steel doors. He pressed a bell. They both looked up at a security camera above the doors. Soon the doors clicked open. Inside, the man walked Michael down another concrete hall, past closed doors, until they reached the last door on the left. He knocked, then stepped back.
Radimir Trotsky opened the door and shook Michael’s hand. He was a pleasant-looking man with short brown hair, gray eyes and a blue wool sweater. He could have passed for a Midwestern, suburban father. But then, Michael had found benign appearances common to many heartless people.
Trotsky shook his hand, led him into the office and closed the door behind him. To steel his nerves against what he was about to do, Michael reminded himself of the man’s laundry list of crimes. He reminded himself of how much danger this man posed to the United States, should he continue his climb to power.
“Thank you for meeting me,” Michael said in Russian. “I won’t keep you long.”
Michael launched into his spiel about his business of making petroleum products, his exportation of his products, his contacts in the U.S., and how he thought their joining forces with Trotsky would benefit them both. When Trotsky turned his head to get a document off the credenza behind him, Michael leaped forward and over the desk, his body falling easily into a maneuver he’d performed too many times now. He locked Trotsky’s head with one arm, the other one covering his mouth and holding tightly to his chin. The Russian’s arm shot toward an emergency call button, but Michael anticipated the move and pivoted his body away. Michael knew he had to do this fast. The former hockey player was bigger than him, younger than him. If given even a second, Trotsky would gather his wits and make this a real fight, which would no doubt alert the guards. But Michael’s knowledge and experience trumped Trotsky’s brawn.
So Michael stopped reminding himself why this was necessary. He allowed himself no prayer for the soon-to-be-dead, no prayer for forgiveness for himself. He pushed down on Trotsky’s head and, at the same time, wrenched it to the left, then the right, then once back again, snapping the vertebrae, ensuring death.
Trotsky’s body slumped and Michael froze, listening for any sounds from outside. The breaking of a neck was a noisy maneuver, but it was the best alternative under the circumstances. His body was tingling with adrenaline and sick with the knowledge of what he’d done. He listened in fear for the sound of running feet. But Michael heard nothing.
Michael draped Trotsky’s torso over his desk. He took a tiny digital recorder from the lining of the waistband of his pants. It was nearly as thin as a business card and had escaped detection from the guard downstairs, as Michael knew it would. Pulling his sleeve over one hand, he lifted the phone off Trotsky’s desk and dialed the number for the security personnel outside Trotsky’s office.
When he answered, Michael pressed play on the digital recorder. The Trust had been watching and, more importantly, listening to Trotsky for over a year and had been able to splice together words they’d recorded.
Michael averted his eyes from the body, as he heard Trotsky’s voice shoot from the recorder. “He is coming out. And I want to be left alone for an hour.”
The security guard confirmed he understood. Michael slipped the recorder back in his belt, left the office and nodded to the guard on the way out.
Trotsky had been his last job, he reminded himself. It had to be his last, because Michael knew what would happen now. He would return to his hotel, check himself out and head for the airport. He would fly home in a comfortable first-class seat that folded out into a bed, but he wouldn’t sleep. He could never sleep for days after a job like this. During those days, he would remind himself why the Trust existed, why he had done what he had done.
Yet this time, he didn’t dread the next few days like he normally did, because he would insist that this be his final job, and that thought filled up the usually empty well where his optimism was to be stored. But it wasn’t just the thought of his diminishing role in the Trust that was filling the well. There was Kate. Thoughts of Kate. Kate’s quick, deep laugh. Kate’s vulnerability. Kate’s luminous brown eyes that gazed at him with wonder, seeing only the good in him. Kate was like water, clear and cool, rushing into his well. And he couldn’t wait to see her again.
Time to leave Moscow. Time to leave this world. Time for Kate.
7
Oakbrook, Illinois
“I can’t take it,” I said, holding the phone. “I can’t take this anymore.”
“God, I can’t either,” I heard Michael say. His voice was low and rough, his breathing ragged.
I turned over in my bed and lay on my stomach, still holding the phone. “Jesus, Michael.”
“I know, I know. This is the best sex I’ve had, and I haven’t even touched you yet.”
Since our date two weeks ago, Michael and I had been on the phone every night. We talked about our work, our comings and goings, our marriages, our dreams—those that had failed us and those we still had—but we also talked about how we would kiss each other if we were together; how we would do all sorts of things.
Technically, this was phone sex, a practice that had mystified me before. I mean, what’s the point? I used to think. Why not simply wait for the real deal? I hadn’t realized how much imagination was involved with phone sex. I hadn’t realized how it forced you to talk about precisely how you liked your
