Page 4 of The Atlas Maneuver
Austin kept walking his way, on the other side of the street. No head turns. No looking around. No hesitation. Just one step after another with a shopping bag dangling from one hand, a purse slung over her other shoulder.
Oblivious.
He tossed the chestnuts into the waste can beside him and stepped from the curb, zigzagging against the lanes of traffic tothe pedestrian bay at the center. There, at the first break in the cars, he crossed, fifty feet ahead of Austin. People passed by, heading in the opposite direction. The Saab kept coming, moving a little faster, now nearly parallel with Austin.
The rear window descended.
A gun barrel came into view.
No time existed to get closer to Austin. Too far away. So he reached back beneath his jacket and found the Beretta. Magellan Billet issue. Which he’d been allowed to retain after retiring out early. The appearance of the weapon sent a panic through some of the pedestrians. No way to keep the gun out of view.
He told himself to focus.
In his mind the all-pervasive background noise common to cities around the world ground to a halt. Silence dominated his thoughts and his eyes assumed command of the rest of his senses. He leveled the gun and fired two shots into the open rear window. The Saab immediately accelerated, tires grabbing the pavement as the car squealed past. The danger from return fire seemed great. So he sent another bullet into the open window.
People scattered. Many hit the ground.
The Saab raced away.
He focused on the license plate and etched the letters and numbers into his eidetic memory. The car came to the next intersection, then disappeared around the corner. He quickly stuffed the gun back under his jacket and looked around.
His lungs inflated in short, quick breaths.
Kelly Austin was nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER 2
LAKEBAIKAL, SIBERIA
4:40P.M.
KYRALHOTA PRESSED THE THROTTLE FORWARD AND POWERED THEboat across the water. The lake’s statistics were mind boggling. Formed from an ancient rift valley thirty million years ago. The world’s oldest reservoir. Containing one-fifth of the planet’s fresh water. Three hundred rivers fed into it, but only one drained out. Seven hundred kilometers long and up to eighty wide, its deepest point dropping fifteen hundred meters down.
On maps it was a crescent-shaped arc in southern Siberia, part of Russia’s great empty quarter near the Mongolian border. Two thousand kilometers of shoreline stretched in every direction and thirty islands dotted the crystalline surface, all of it a haven for the rich and poor. The latter huddled in villages and towns that hugged the pebbly-beached shores. The former occupied the forested high ground inside expensive dachas, the real estate remote and desired, commanding the highest price per square meter in Russia.
Summer was fading, autumn always short-lived, a long winter not that far away. This was also the stormy season and soon the freezes would come, transforming the lake into one continuous block of thick blue ice solid enough for trucks, cars, and railroads to move across.
But not today.
The surface remained wet and frothy.
Kyra marveled at the overwhelming sight of water and sky, both deep and saturated, each slightly different in hue, the blue colors blanketing everything with a mystical sense of calm and order. A stiff north breeze chopped the surface, which had little effect on the thrust from the triple outboards against the fiberglass hull. She’d rented the speedboat at a marina on the southern shore, one that catered to high rollers who loved to use Lake Baikal as their personal playground. Hers was a little over ten meters long and came with enough power to send the boat streaking across the surface at nearly fifty knots.
She stood at the center console, the wheel tight in her hands, and spotted another long narrow muscle boat about half a kilometer away. She yanked back on the throttle and brought her engines to neutral, then switched them off. Their roar faded until the only sound was the distant hum of the other boat. She grabbed her backpack, found the smoke grenades, and pulled two pins. They ignited, sending a dark plume up into the late-afternoon sky. From everything she’d read about the occupant of the other boat he should react to the sign of a fire. Part of his egotistical gallantry.
But the other vessel kept going.
She added a third grenade that generated more smoke.
The other boat turned and sped her way.
Finally. As predicted.
She prepared herself, unzipping her leather jacket and allowing it to hang open, revealing her tight toned body. More of her intel pegged the target as a rich narcissistic playboy who’d managed to make billions off copper mining with dabbles into agriculture, construction, and telecommunications. In Russia that success meant this oligarch had political connections, ones that surely reached deep into the Kremlin.
Which advised her to proceed with caution and make no mistakes.
The other boat approached and slowed, pressing against its wakeand easing up alongside. The lone occupant matched the photograph she’d been sent of Samvel Yerevan. Medium height. Coils of coal-black hair atop a muscular frame. An Armenian who’d relocated to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. There, he’d become enormously rich then reconnected with his Armenian homeland, buying a seat in the national parliament for his brother, eventually elevating him to prime minister. Net worth? In the five-to-eight-billion-euro range. A few international magazines labeled him the richest ethnic Armenian in the world. A title he reportedly cherished. He lived outside of Moscow in a palatial estate. Married, with five children. But that did not stop him from enjoying a variety of mistresses.
