The Silent Sisters (Charles Jenkins #3)(50)

She gave him an inquisitive look.

Jenkins nodded to the pizza box in the back seat. “If you’re hungry.”

She shook her head and let out a nervous chuckle. “I don’t think I will be hungry until we have left Russia. What now?”

“Information will be provided as you go. I set lights on timers within your home to turn on and off in the various rooms for the next few hours. Eventually everything will go black. Depending on how things go from here, you will be leaving Russia before the lights shut off in your bedroom.”

Petrekova nodded. “What about the dog?”

“The dog will go back to its owner.”

She placed her hands in her lap. Jenkins noticed the tremors. He reached inside the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the photograph of Petrekova with her family. He handed it to her.

She took it and grimaced. Then tears of joy rolled softly down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said, clutching the photograph to her chest.

Taking it was a risk, but Jenkins hoped thoughts of her family would calm Petrekova, which was equally important. She remained a bundle of nerves. She had a right. A year or so ago, Jenkins had done his genealogy. Not for himself, but for CJ and Lizzie, so that when they got older and curious, they would know who they were and where they had come from. Alex’s family history had been well documented. She had a binder of materials about her ancestors in Mexico City. Jenkins’s research revealed his ancestors had been slaves in Louisiana, until his great-great-great-grandmother escaped via the Underground Railroad made famous in books and movies. His relative had the courage and the moral fiber to repay her freedom by sending money to companies that helped others escape by processing forged papers and paying for train tickets. When he had learned of her heroism, Jenkins wondered if helping others to be free was somehow a genetic family trait he could not ignore.

Possibly. But he refrained from drawing a correlation between his ancestors helping others escape slavery and his helping Zenaida Petrekova to escape from Russia. He also didn’t tell her about it.

Another of his relatives had also tried to escape, a young man.

He’d been captured and hung.

Jenkins drove until he arrived at the designated dead drop, though this time he would be dropping off a package very much alive. He had no further knowledge of Petrekova’s journey. The driver of the second vehicle knew nothing more than her next designated transfer. It ensured Petrekova could not be betrayed. Jenkins wouldn’t know the exfiltration had been successful until he returned home to the United States.

He had no sooner said his goodbyes and returned to his vehicle than his cell phone rang.

Lemore.

He was not using an encrypted number or chat room, which meant he was forsaking security for expediency.

Jenkins got a bad feeling that grew worse as Lemore spoke.





22


Yakimanka District

Moscow, Russia

The computerized woman’s voice filled the Metro car, informing commuters that the train approached the Kropotkinskaya station. Maria departed the train with the mass of humanity emitting a cloud smelling of body odor, cologne, perfume, and cigarettes. Unable to push through the throng, she had no choice but to go with it. She considered those around her, their eyes. Was someone following her? Was someone already waiting to arrest her?

After forty years, she sensed her days of espionage coming to a sudden end, and she was glad to be done with them.

But also afraid.

They would come for her. They would come with a vengeance. Sokalov had let slip what had happened to the sisters who had been captured, the brutal torture and interrogations they had undergone. Their deaths must have been a blessing.

Sokalov had much to lose if the depth of Maria’s betrayal were revealed. If the president did not kill him, his father-in-law surely would. Maria’s one hope was that she knew everything about the man, the way he thought, his survival instincts. She knew Sokalov pulled the strings on the task force set up to find the sisters, and that the information had been compartmentalized and tightly controlled. Few knew of it. Sokalov would not order the task force to capture and interrogate Kulikova. She would destroy him. His only choice was to kill her and silence her before she could ever talk. To ensure she had not told others, he would also order the deaths of anyone he suspected might have knowledge of her betrayal or her infidelity.

Helge for certain.

If this was to be Maria’s end, so be it. She had never believed she would survive this long, and she had long ago decided she would never allow those in power the gratification of her capture. She kept a cyanide capsule in the tip of a pen she had carried in her purse every day for thirty years. When the time came, she would not hesitate to bite down and end her life, taking to her grave the extent of her betrayal. Her death would be her greatest triumph; her only regret would be that she would not remain alive to witness Sokalov’s punishment, which would finally bring her some pleasure.

Helge, however, was innocent, so much so that he had no idea the magnitude of his disclosure to Sokalov. He had no idea he had just signed his own death warrant. Perhaps Maria had underestimated the depth of the pain she had caused Helge, the damage to his pride, and the insult to his Russian virility. Perhaps Helge had gone to Sokalov to save face, hoping Sokalov would punish Maria for breaking one of the tenets of her position—to see her suffer, as he had suffered, all these years.