The Silent Sisters (Charles Jenkins #3)(4)

She found the file Sokalov needed inside her safe, exactly where he had told her to put it, then walked to the interior door that provided access to Sokalov’s inner sanctum—an office that was a testament to his excess. The furniture and accoutrements were worth more than the GNP of some small countries, and the bar so well stocked it would rival the most popular in Moscow. She pushed open the door without a knock and stepped inside.

Sokalov paced the hardwood floor along the draped windows that provided a view of downtown Moscow while he spoke on his personal cell phone. FSB officers carried two cell phones: one for personal calls, and one encrypted and used only for FSB business. Kulikova waited alongside Sokalov’s Louis XV desk while his wife, Olga, led him by his nose over his personal cell phone.

Olga Sokalov had something other women did not—a father who adored his little girl and his grandchildren, and whom Sokalov feared intensely.

Sokalov nodded to Maria, then rolled his bloodshot eyes. He wore his suit jacket in anticipation of his meeting. The tip of his tie rested on his protruding stomach, which tested the resiliency of the thread on his shirt buttons. The chemical odor of Sokalov’s hair oil, used in a futile effort to protect what remained of his thinning hair, dominated the room.

“Yes. I have told you that I will be there. Of course, I will be there. No. Nothing will come up. Yes, I understand you do not wish to disappoint your father on his birthday. Yes, of course.”

Olga’s father was General Roman Portnov, the former head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, or SVR. “I have to go, Olga,” Sokalov pleaded. “I have a meeting starting in minutes and I must prepare. No, nothing is more important than your father’s seventy-sixth birthday, and I would be pleased to hear about all the preparations, just not this morning. Fine. Yes. This afternoon.” He moved the phone away from his ear as he spoke. “Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. Goodbye. Good . . .”

He lowered the phone and gave Kulikova an exhausted sigh, then lumbered to his desk. With thin shoulders and legs, and no butt to speak of, Sokalov looked like a pregnant Popsicle stick. “What could be more important than a man’s seventy-third, seventy-fourth, and seventy-fifth birthdays? His seventy-sixth, of course!” He sighed. “She is exhausting. I have—”

“A meeting starting in ten minutes with Chairman Petrov, Deputy Director Lebedev, and General Pasternak.” Kulikova held up the manila file folder Sokalov had given her the prior evening for safekeeping, but which alcohol had wiped from his memory. She had read and memorized it thoroughly, though it seemed incomplete. “The file was locked in the safe in my office, as you requested.”

Sokalov reached for it like a parched man accepting a glass of cool water. He used a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead, despite his air-conditioned office. “Where would I be without you, Maria?”

She arched her eyebrows. “Abusing my staff, no doubt.”

“This meeting has me anxious. Chairman Petrov has been particularly obtuse about its purpose. Does the file contain all of our recent operations and assets?”

“As you requested. Why are you so worried, Dmitry? You’ll have Chairman Petrov’s position soon enough.” Petrov had announced his retirement as of the year’s end.

“Lebedev is pushing hard for the position.”

“Lebedev is only a stone on which you will step on your path to the Kremlin.”

Sokalov smiled at the praise. His desire was to get out of Lubyanka and sit at a table at the Kremlin, and Maria had a vested interest in his reaching this pinnacle. He would insist that she come with him, giving her unprecedented access to the president, his inner circle, and their most classified secrets.

If Operation Herod did not disclose her true purpose first.

“With your help, no doubt.” Sokalov stepped into her personal space so he could peer down her blouse and inhale her perfume. “Oh, if I could bottle and sell your fragrance, I would never have to work another day in my life.”

“Yes. Yes. A wonderful fantasy, but now you must prepare for your meeting.”

“I was hoping we could meet after work.”

He kept an apartment just a few blocks from Lubyanka on Varsonof’yevskiy Pereulok where he and Kulikova could rendezvous whenever Sokalov had a good enough excuse to not immediately go home. The contents of that apartment would sicken most, a testament to Sokalov’s perversions and fetishes.

Kulikova smiled thinly and lightly licked her lips. “Don’t you have your father-in-law’s birthday celebration this evening?”

“Bosh!” He grabbed the file and moved behind his opulent desk, sitting with a “hmpff.” His leather chair groaned from the punishment. “The man has a birthday and Olga makes the world come to an end. It is worse than having another child.”

“Yes, but you do not want to upset the general by upsetting his Tsvetochek.” Little Flower.

“I wish for you to sit in on this meeting,” he said. “I will tell the others you are taking shorthand. There is to be no recording.”

No recording. Interesting. “Of course, Director. Whatever you desire,” she said breathlessly.

Sokalov groaned.





2


The Island Café

Stanwood, Washington State

Jenkins stepped inside the Island Café in Stanwood determined to convince Matt Lemore there was just one six o’clock per day and it was not a.m. He surveyed the booths, surprised to find most already full and the café in express mode—both waitresses hurriedly delivering food and busing tables, cooks calling out orders over the cacophony of customer voices, the cash register ringing, and the clatter of forks and knives on porcelain plates.