A Darker Place Read Online Free PDF Page A

He’d been led into a small anteroom next to the main office, with chairs and a TV in the corner.
    He said, “All right, I bore easily, so what is this about?”
    The lieutenant gave him the DVD. “Watch this. I’ll be back.” He opened the door and paused. “I’m a great fan.”
    The door closed behind him. Kurbsky frowned, examining the DVD, then he went and inserted it, produced a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and sat down. The screen flickered. A voice quoted a lengthy number and then said, “Subject Tania Kurbsky, aged seventeen, born Moscow.” He straightened, stunned, as he saw Tania, his beloved sister, gaunt, hair close-cropped, with sunken cheeks. The voice droned on about a court case, five dead policemen in a riot, seven students charged and shot. Tania Kurbsky had been given a special dispensation obtained because of her father, Colonel Ivan Kurbsky of the KGB. Instead of execution, she’d been sentenced to life, irrevocable, to be served at Station Gorky in Siberia, about as far from civilization as it was possible to get. She was still living, aged thirty-six. There followed a picture that barely resembled her, a gaunt careworn woman old before her time. The screen went dark. Kurbsky got up slowly, ejected the DVD and stood looking at it, then turned, went to the door, and kicked it.
    After a while, it was unlocked and the lieutenant appeared. One of the guards stood there, machine pistol ready. Kurbsky said, “Where do I go?”
    “Follow me.” Which Kurbsky did.
     
     
    IN THE NEXT room, he looked Luzhkov over. “And who would you be?” Behind him, the lieutenant smiled.
    “Colonel Boris Luzhkov, GRU. I’m acting under Prime Minister Putin’s orders. You’ve just missed him. How are you?”
    “For a man who’s just discovered that the dead can walk, I’m doing all right. I’ll be better if I have a drink.” He went to the cabinet and had two large vodka shots, then he cursed. “So get on with it. I presume there’s a purpose to all this.”
    “Sit down and read this.” Luzhkov pushed the file across the desk, and Kurbsky started.
    Fifteen minutes later, he sat back. “I don’t write thrillers.”
    “It certainly reads like one.”
    “And this is from the Prime Minister?”
    “Yes.”
    “And what’s the payoff?”
    “Your sister’s released. She will be restored to life.”
    “That’s one way of putting it. How do I know it will be honored?”
    “The Prime Minister’s word.”
    “Don’t make me laugh. He’s a politician. Since when do those guys keep their word?”
    And Luzhkov said exactly the right thing. “She’s your sister. If that means anything, this is all you can do. It’s as simple as that. Better than nothing. You have to travel hopefully.”
    “Fuck you,” Kurbsky said, “and fuck him.” But there was the hint of despair of a man who knew he had little choice. “Anything else?”
    “Yes. Igor Vronsky. Does he mean anything to you?”
    “Absolutely. The stinking bastard was in Chechnya and ran a story about my outfit. The Fifth Paratroop Company, the Black Tigers. We were pathfinders and special forces. He did radio from the front line, blew the whistle on a special op we were on, and the Chechens ambushed us. Fifteen good men dead. It’s in my book.”
    “He’s working as a journalist in New York now. We want you to eliminate him, just to prove you mean business.”
    “Just like that.”
    “I believe you enjoyed a certain reputation in Chechnya. The smiler with a knife? An accomplished sniper and assassin who specialized in that kind of thing. A lone wolf, as they say. At least three high-ranking Chechen generals could testify to that.”
    “If the dead could speak.”
    “That story in On the Death of Men where the hero is parachuted behind the lines when he had never had training as a parachutist. Was it true? Did you?” Luzhkov was troubled in some strange way. “What kind of man would do such a thing?”
    “One who in the hell that