March 13, 5:45 P.M.
Kazan, Russia
“And this concludes the day’s tour,” the guide told the group clustered in the cold. “Feel free to wander the grounds on your own for another fifteen minutes, then the gates will be closing promptly at six P.M.”
Tucker stood with the others in a red baseball cap and knockoff Ray-Ban sunglasses, just another tourist. The disguise was in place in case he had the same blond tour guide as before. In the end, it turned out to be a man, so maybe such a level of caution was unnecessary.
At his side, Kane had initially attracted some curious glances, but as he had hoped, the service animal documents passed muster at the ticket office. It also helped that Kane could be a charmer when allowed, wriggling happily and wagging his tail. He also wore a doggie backpack with I LOVE KAZAN printed in Cyrillic on it. The bored teenagers at the gate only gave Kane’s pack a cursory exam, as they did with his own small bag.
Now free to roam, Tucker wasted little time. As casually as possible, he strode with Kane down Sheynkman Street until he reached the green-roofed barracks of the old Cadets’ Quarters. He walked under its archway and into a courtyard. He ambled around and took a few pictures of a fountain and a nineteenth-century cannon display. Once done, he sat down on a nearby stone bench to wait. Beyond the arch, tourists headed back down Sheynkman toward the main exit.
No one glanced his way. No guards came into view.
Taking advantage of the moment, he led Kane across the courtyard and through a door in the southwest corner. The corridor beyond was dimly lit, lined by barrack doors. He crossed along it, noting the polished walnut floors and the boot heel impressions in the wood outside each barrack. According to the guidebook, cadets of yore stood at attention for four hours each day as their barracks underwent inspection. Tucker had thought the claim a yarn, but apparently it was true.
He came to a flight of stairs at the end of the hall and stepped over a “no access” rope. He quickly climbed to the second floor, found it empty, and searched until he located a good hiding place: an unused and derelict storage room off one of the cadets’ classrooms.
He stepped inside with Kane and shut the door behind him.
Standing there, he took a breath and let it out.
Phase One . . . done.
In the darkness, he settled with Kane against one wall.
“Nap time, if you feel like it, buddy,” he whispered.
Kane dropped down and rested his head on Tucker’s lap.
He used the next two hours to review his plan backward, forward, and sideways. The biggest unknown was Anya. He knew little about the woman or how she would behave in a pressure situation. Nor did he know much about the escorts who guarded her here on the Kremlin premises, except for what Bukolov had learned from her.
According to him, two men—both plainclothes GRU operatives—guarded her day and night. He had a plan to deal with them, but there remained some sketchy parts to it, especially in regard to the Kremlin’s K9 patrol detachment.
Over the course of the day’s two tours, Tucker had counted eight dog-and-handler pairs, mostly consisting of German shepherds—which Kane could pass for. But he’d also spotted a few Russian Ovcharkas, a type of mop-coated sheepdog used by Russian military and police units.
He feared confronting any of them. He didn’t kill animals, and he desperately wanted to keep it that way. Dogs did what they did out of instinct or training. Never malice. Tucker’s reluctance to harm was a chink in his armor, and he knew it. Ultimately, he truly didn’t know what he would do if his back were against such a wall.
In the darkness, his watch vibrated on his wrist, letting him know it was time for Phase Two.
8:30 P.M.
Tucker and Kane changed into their uniforms, a process complicated by the enclosed space and the need for quiet. Tucker already wore the police boots, their height hidden under the legs of his jeans. The rest of the clothing was split up between their two packs. He slipped into his winter military suit and tugged on the brigade cap and stuffed his old clothes into the backpack, which he stashed in the closet’s rafters.
With care, he emerged back into the classroom and strode over to the windows overlooking the darkened boulevard below. At this late hour, with the temperature dropping, a light icy mist had begun to fill the streets, glistening the cobblestones under the gas lamps.
Tucker stood still for another fifteen minutes, partially because he wanted to observe the routes of the night guards—but also because his arrangement with Anya required precise timing.
At nine o’ clock, she would be escorted from the private research archives to the Governor’s House, one of the nonpublic buildings under intense Kremlin security. Once she crossed inside there, Tucker would have no chance of reaching her.
As the time neared, Tucker attached Kane’s leash and left the classroom. He went downstairs and out onto the misty boulevard. With Kane tightly heeled beside him, Tucker put a little march into his step.
At an intersection, he spotted a guard and his dog coming in his direction. Tucker called out an order in Russian to Kane, one taught to him by Utkin, though he had to practice the local accent. Kane didn’t speak Russian, so Tucker reinforced the order with a hidden hand signal.
Sit.
Kane dropped to his haunches.
As the guard approached the intersection, Tucker’s heart pounded.
Keep walking.
Unlike Kane, the guard refused to obey. Both man and dog suddenly stopped, staring suspiciously at the pair.
Taking a risk, Tucker raised his hand and gave the man a curt wave. The man didn’t respond. Press it, he thought. He took two strides forward and called out brusquely in one of the phrases Utkin had taught him, which translated roughly as, “Is everything okay?”
“Da, da,” the guard replied and finally returned the wave. “A u vas?”
And you?
Tucker shrugged. “Da.”
The pair continued walking again, passing by Tucker and Kane.
The two quickly headed in the opposite direction, south toward the Spasskaya Tower. He had to concentrate on his steps until the acute tension worked out of his legs.
After a hundred meters, he drew even with his destination. It was called the Riding House, once a former stable, now one of the Kremlin’s exhibition halls.
Thirty meters away, the guard at the Spasskaya Tower gate waved to him. He was barely discernible through the thickening mist.
Tucker lifted his arm high, acknowledging the other.
Sticking to his disguise, Tucker put on a show, shining his flashlight into the Riding House’s windows and over its walls. He spotted another K9 unit crossing the square surrounding the neighboring mosque.
Tucker waved and got one in return.
“One big happy family,” he muttered and kept walking.
As Anya had promised, he found the pedestrian door at the northeast corner of the building unlocked. He swung it open and scooted inside, closing the door behind him.
The interior was what he’d imagined a riding house would be: horse stalls lined both sides of a central hall. Only now the spaces were dominated by glass cases displaying artifacts of the cadet corps’s past: saddles, riding crops, lances, cavalry swords. The room’s main halogens were off for the night, but emergency lighting allowed him to see well enough.
Anya was working in the archives located in the building’s cellar, the genesis of what was soon to become the Kremlin’s Museum of Ancient Books and Manuscripts. How the diary of a Boer botanist had come to rest here Tucker didn’t know. It was a long way from South Africa to Kazan.
He leaned down and unclasped Kane’s leash.
Time to get to work.
He pointed ahead. “SCOUT AND RETURN.”
He didn’t want any surprises.
On quiet paws, Kane trotted off and disappeared around one of the display cases. It took him ninety seconds to clear all the former stalls. He returned, sat beside Tucker’s legs, and looked up at him.
Good boy.
Together, they crossed the central room to the south wall. A door there opened to a staircase leading down. At the bottom, milky light glowed, accompanied by the distinctive hum of fluorescent lighting.
He and Kane started down.
A couple yards from the last step, an order barked out in Russian. “Who’s there?”
Tucker had been expecting this and whispered to Kane, “PLAY FRIENDS.”
The shepherd loved this command. He perked up his ears, sprung his tail jauntily, and trotted down the remaining steps into the corridor beyond.
Tucker followed. Ten feet down the corridor, a thick-necked man in an ill-fitting business suit frowned at the wriggling dog.
It was one of Anya’s escorts.
“Dobriy večer,” Tucker greeted him, wishing him a good evening.
Taking advantage of the guard’s divided attention, Tucker kept walking forward.
The man held up a stiff arm and rumbled something in Russian, but Tucker made out only one word—identify—and the tone was demanding.
Tucker gestured at Kane, playing the chagrined guard and a misbehaving dog. “Sasha . . . Sasha . . .”
When Tucker was two strides away, the man had had enough and reached into his jacket.
Tucker dropped the act and called to Kane. “PANTS.”
Kane clamped his jaws on the man’s pant leg and jerked backward, using every ounce of his muscled frame. The guard tipped backward, one arm windmilling, the other still reaching for his gun.
Tucker was already moving. He closed the gap and grabbed the hand going for the concealed weapon. He lashed out with his opposite fist, punching the man squarely in the center of the throat.
The guard croaked as he fell to his back, still conscious, his eyes bulging, his mouth opening and closing spasmodically as he tried to draw breath.
Tucker slipped the man’s gun out of its shoulder holster—a GSh-18 pistol—and cracked its steel butt across his temple.
His eyes finally fluttered shut.
Tucker dropped to one knee and aimed the pistol down the corridor. Although the takedown had gone relatively quietly, there was no way of knowing the second escort’s proximity.
When no one immediately came running, Tucker pointed ahead. “SCOUT CORNER.”
Kane trotted down the corridor and stopped at the next intersection. He peeked left, then right, then glanced back with the steady stare that meant all clear.
Tucker joined him and searched ahead.
Unlike the floor above, the storage cellar had undergone little renovation. The walls consisted of crumbling brick, and the floor was rough-chiseled granite. The only illumination came from fluorescent shop lights bolted to the exposed ceiling joists.
On the left, stacks of boxes blocked the corridor. To the right, it was open. At the far end, a rectangle of light was cast on the opposite wall.
A door.
Tucker led the way down the hall. He flattened himself against the wall and peeked around the corner of the door.
Inside was a massive storeroom with an arched roof. It occupied the length and breadth of the main floor above. Bookcases covered all the walls. In the center, row upon row of trestle tables lined the hall, stacked with books, manuscripts, and sheaves of paper.
A raven-haired beauty in a red blouse stood at the nearest table, partially turned from the door. With her arms braced on the table, she studied an open manuscript. To her left, the second guard sat at another table, smoking and playing solitaire.
Tucker drew back, motioned for Kane to stay. Keeping to the hallway, he stepped past the open door to the opposite side. He shoved the stolen pistol into his side pocket. He signaled Kane—distract and return—then pointed through the open door.
Kane trotted a few yards into the massive storeroom and began barking.
A gruff voice shouted in Russian, accompanied by the sound of a chair scraping on the stone floor.
Kane trotted back through the door, and Tucker waved for him to continue down the corridor, back the way they’d come.
A moment later the guard emerged, hurrying to catch up. Tucker let him get two steps ahead, then rushed forward and swung a roundhouse punch into his kidney. Gasping, the man dropped to his knees. Tucker wrapped his right arm around the guard’s throat and used his left palm to press the man’s head forward. Five seconds of pressure, squeezing the carotid artery, was all it took. The man went limp in his arms. To be sure, Tucker held on for another thirty seconds before lowering him to the floor.
Kane returned to his side, wagging his tail.
Tucker patted the shepherd’s side, then turned and stepped into the storeroom.
The woman was facing him now, a worried hand at her throat. Her striking blue eyes stared at him, glassy with fear, making her look even younger than her midtwenties. She took a couple of wary steps away from him, plainly skittish. But he couldn’t blame her, considering the circumstances.
“You . . . you are Tucker, yes?” she asked in lightly accented English.
He held both palms toward her, trying to calm her. “I am. And you’re Anya.”
She nodded, sagging with relief, while also quickly composing herself. “You were almost late.”
“Almost doesn’t count . . . I hope.”
Kane trotted forward, his tail high.
She stared down with a small, shy smile. “I must say he startled me with that sudden barking. But, my, he is a lovely animal.”
“His name is Kane.”
She glanced up at Tucker with those bright eyes. “As in Cain and Abel?”
His voice caught. “Just Kane now.” He turned back to the door. “We should get moving.”
He quickly led her back upstairs, pausing to frisk both men on the way out, taking their identification cards.
Anya followed, clutching to her chest a leather shoulder bag studded with rhinestones. It was large enough that she could’ve carried Kane in it. Not exactly inconspicuous. She caught him staring as they climbed up from the cellar.
“A Prada knockoff. I’m leaving my entire life behind, my career. Is one bag too much to ask?” As they stepped back into the main hall of the Riding House, she turned to him. “So what’s your plan, great rescuer?”
He heard the forced humor in her voice, masking nervousness, but perhaps deeper down even a glint of steel. Now rallying, she seemed tougher than she first appeared.
“We’re walking out the front gate,” replied Tucker.
“Just like that?”
“As long as you can act worth a damn.”
9:09 P.M.
Tucker spent a few minutes rehearsing with Anya in the main hall of the Riding House, running through what was to come. Once ready—or ready enough—he led her toward the exit door.
Before stepping back into the misty night, he reattached Kane’s leash, straightened his military coat and brigade cap, then took her by the arm.
“All set?” he asked.
“This would be easier if I was really drunk.” But she smiled and waved him on. “Let’s do this.”
Together, they slipped out of the Riding House and onto the boulevard. He headed immediately for the Spasskaya Tower and the main gate. He held Kane’s leash in one hand, and with his other arm, he attempted to balance a struggling and stumbling Anya.
When he was thirty feet from the gated exit, the guard stepped out of his shack and called something that probably meant, “What’s going on?”
“She was sleeping in the cadet quarters!” Tucker called out in Russian, repeating a preset phrase taught to him by Utkin for this very situation.
Anya began her performance, jabbering in Russian and generally making a fuss. Though Tucker understood none of it, he hoped the gist of her obscenity-laced tirade was what he had instructed her to say: this guard was a thug . . . his dog stunk . . . there were no laws against sleeping in the Kremlin, let alone drinking . . . the visiting hours were much too short . . . and that her father was the vengeful editor of the Kazan Herald.
Tucker manhandled her roughly toward the gates and yelled to the guard in another of his memorized stock phrases. “Hurry up! The police are on their way! Let’s be rid of her!”
Behind them, farther down the boulevard, a voice called out to them. A glance over his shoulder revealed another K9 unit hurrying toward the commotion.
Biting back his own litany of curses, he turned and gave the approaching guard a quick wave that was meant to convey, I’ve got it under control.
Under his breath, he whispered to Kane, “NOISE.”
The shepherd began barking loudly, adding to the frantic confusion.
All the while, Anya never slowed her tirade.
Still, the other K9 unit closed toward them.
Improvising, Anya went red-faced and bent over double, hanging on to Tucker’s arm and covering her mouth with her other hand. Her body clenched in the universal posture of someone about to toss their cookies all over the ancient cobblestones.
“Hurry up!” Tucker yelled, repeating the little Russian he knew.
Finally, turning away from the young woman about to vomit, the guard fumbled with the keys on his belt and crossed to the gate. He unlocked it and swung it open—then he waved his arm, swearing brusquely, and yelled for him to get her out of there.
Tucker hurried to obey, dragging Anya behind him.
The gate clanged closed behind them. The Kremlin K9 unit reached the exit and joined the other guard, staring after them.
Tucker waved back to the pair in a dismissive and sarcastic manner, as if to say Thanks for leaving me to clean this mess up.
From the ribald laughter and what sounded like Russian catcalls, his message must have translated okay.
Twenty feet from the gate, Anya started to cease her performance.
Tucker whispered to her, “Keep it up until we’re out of sight.”
She nodded and began shouting and tried to pull free of Tucker’s grasp. He recognized the words nyet and politsiya.
No and police.
More laughter erupted behind him at her weak attempt at resisting arrest.
“Good job,” he mumbled under his breath.
He dragged her along, angling right, until they were out of the guards’ view.
Once clear, Anya stood straight and smoothed her clothes. “Should we run?”
“No. Keep walking. We don’t want to draw any attention.”
Still, they moved in tandem briskly and reached the forested lawn on the north side of the Church of Ascension. He pointed to the black Marussia SUV parked under a nearby tree.
They piled into the front, with Kane in the back.
Tucker started the engine, did a U-turn, and headed south. He dialed Utkin’s cell phone.
“We’re out. Be ready in five.”
As planned, Utkin and Bukolov were waiting in the alley behind their hotel. Tucker pulled up to them, they jumped into the back with Kane, and he immediately took off.
Bukolov leaned forward to hug Anya, to kiss her cheek, tears in his eyes.
Tucker let them have their brief family reunion—then ordered everyone to keep low, out of sight. Without a glance back, he fled Kazan and headed south.
Now to get the hell out of Russia.