War Plan Red Read Online Free PDF Page B

anymore, Scott knew it was time to go. But she caught his arm and said, “There is one thing.”
    Scott had started to shrug into his coat and stopped.
    “When I saw Frank in St. Petersburg, he seemed distracted,” Vivian said. “Oh, we were having fun, but beneath the surface I could tell that something was working on him. I knew how he was, how he had that damnable ability to be two people at the same time. He knew how to hide behind a mask of absurd good cheer even while his guts were churning.”
    “Did he say anything—anything at all—about what might have been bothering him?”
    “No, the only thing he said was something I knew he meant as a joke about how my being in St.
    Petersburg had saved him from himself.”

    “What did he say?”
    “That he had a blind date lined up in Murmansk.”
    3
    The Inner City, St. Petersburg
    T he girl’s long booted legs strode over cobblestones. One false step on stiletto heels would end badly for her. Demonstrating phenomenal poise, she negotiated the narrow street without a mishap. The street paralleled the Fontanka River, which was south of the Neva. It ended in a pleasant little park complete with benches and a fountain that served as a hub from which, like spokes in a wheel, three equally narrow streets branched off to other parts of the city. A few pedestrians lugging groceries in net bags or walking their dogs crisscrossed the square lost in their own reveries.
    Alikhan Zakayev sat on a bench near the fountain, which had been turned off at the onset of cold weather. Bundled up in his cashmere topcoat, he looked like a successful businessman who had sought a haven from the bustle of the city. On the bench next to him was a soft black leather zipper portfolio like those favored by Westerners. Instead of paperwork and a cell phone, the bag held a Heckler & Koch 9mm P7 pistol and a Czechoslovakian fragmentation grenade.
    Zakayev admired the girl’s performance as he watched her clip-clop over the stones, sable coat and all, long black hair parted down the middle spilling over her shoulders like wings.
    He had found her when she was fourteen, living on the streets in Grozny and suffering from starvation and dysentery. She had been raped and sodomized by Russian soldiers and left for dead. Her family had simply disappeared. One night the Spetsnaz showed up at her house and took them away. She had hid in the barn, and after her family had been forced at gunpoint aboard a truck, she watched Russian boys shoot the livestock and loot what little food was left before tossing phosphorus grenades into the house and barn. She escaped with only the clothes she had on and her parents’ wedding album wrapped in oilcloth.
    The girl had bound her life to Zakayev’s, even considered herself his “wife,” which he didn’t discourage. But Zakayev’s devotion to his cause didn’t allow attachments. Enemies could use them to destroy you. A woman made you vulnerable. Love made you weak, and a man devoted to the cause had to be strong. He had early on learned to purge himself of sentiment. To Zakayev the girl was simply a beautiful object that gave him pleasure. But there were moments when he saw what might have been if the world he knew had not been destroyed.
    The girl came up to Zakayev. He watched her casually finger-comb her hair, fascinated how she had transformed that ritual into a viscerally erotic act. “You saw him?” he asked.
    “Yes,” she said. “He’s on his way. And he’s alone.”
    “He never travels alone.” His hand brushed the leather portfolio, then patted the bench. “Sit. It will distract him while we talk.”
    The girl sat, crossed her legs, and began swinging a pointy-toed boot in the direction of a heavyset man walking slowly toward them from the direction of the river. He had a slight limp from an encounter with a Russian antipersonnel mine in Grozny. The shattered leg had not been set properly but he never complained. There were more important