The Take(12)

“I’ll find whoever stole it,” said the prince. “I have contacts with the French police.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“But you can’t allow him to keep betraying your—”

“I will find it,” said Borodin, more forcefully than he wished. “Or I won’t. You’ve already done enough.”

“What will you do?” asked Prince Abdul Aziz.

Borodin didn’t reply. He turned and looked out over the cliff, over the dark, roiling mass that was the Mediterranean. For the first time that evening, he smiled, briefly, cryptically, and the prince smiled, too.

“Do you know,” said Borodin, “that if you look very hard you can see the lights of Turkey.”

The prince turned his gaze in the same direction, stepping nearer the precipice. “Not tonight.”

“Ah yes.” Borodin pointed to the north. “Just there.”

“Really?” The prince narrowed his eyes, his neck craned as pebbles scattered from beneath his shoe and tumbled over the cliff. “I can’t make them out.”

“Sparkles, there and there. Surely you can see them.”

The prince stared harder, shaking his head, patience waning.

“Perhaps you need to be a bit closer, my friend.”

“Pardon me?”

Borodin put a hand in the lee of the prince’s back and gave him a mighty shove. The prince lost his balance and put a foot forward. It found only air. He teetered, a hand reaching out for assistance. “Please…”

Borodin stepped back.

And then the prince was gone, his scream drowned by the wind and the tide.



Borodin retraced his steps down the runway, passing the jet without a sideways glance. His mind was on the letter and how he might get it back. He’d come too far to stop now. Wheels were turning. The intricate machinery he’d assembled these past months had been set in motion.

He threw open the door to the shack and signaled Kurtz to a corner. “I need to locate one of our agents. Top priority.”

“Of course, General,” said Kurtz. “Who?”

“Major Asanova.”

Kurtz’s sullen face took on an uneasy cast. “Major Asanova is no longer technically under our command. After the Dubai incident…”

“Where is she? I don’t care if she’s been reassigned. I require her services.”

Kurtz frowned as if experiencing intestinal discomfort. “General, please. With all due respect. Let’s not be hasty.”

Borodin stood on his tiptoes and brought his face closer to Kurtz’s. Close enough to see the beads of perspiration pooling on his lip. “I just asked the prince if he could see the lights of Turkey. Would you care to try?”

Kurtz looked out the open door toward the plane, which remained on the runway. Finally, he returned his gaze to Borodin and discerned in his expression what had happened. “No, sir,” he replied with a violent shake of the head.

“Well, then.”

“Berlin,” said Kurtz. “H and I against the Americans.”

“H and I” stood for “harass and intimidate,” and referred to provocative, often violent, measures taken to keep the American diplomats in a state of fear and apprehension, aware at all times that Russia was not a nation to be taken lightly.

“Call her at once,” said Borodin. “Get her back to Moscow by the time we return.”

“If I may remind the general, things did not turn out as neatly as planned the last time we engaged her services.”

“Tell me, Ivan Ivanovich, did she fail to accomplish her objective?”

“No, sir. Not that. It’s just that she…”

“What?”

“She tends to get a bit too…too…”

“Too…?”

“Involved,” said Kurtz, spitting the word out as if it were a bone stuck in his gullet. “The woman doesn’t know when to stop. She’s reckless. I’m only thinking of you, General.”

“Under our current circumstances, I’d prefer to use the word ‘effective.’”

“‘Effective,’ then.”

“That’s precisely what I’m counting on.” Borodin walked to the door and cast a backward glance at the foul room. “Berlin, eh? What the hell is she doing there?”





Chapter 6



The dark figure crept closer to the mansion, crawling expertly through the undergrowth. It was nearly eleven p.m., the sky cloudless, the moon overhead. From her position in the woods bordering the home, Valentina Asanova, a fifteen-year veteran of Directorate S, Department 9 of the SVR—currently on enforced segregation—surveyed the property. Am Grossen Wannsee 42 was an old imposing mansion built on the western shores of Lake Wannsee, an inlet of the Havel River twenty-five kilometers from central Berlin. A guardhouse stood at the entry to a long curving driveway, manned twenty-four hours a day by plainclothes United States Marines. A mesh fence enclosed the grounds, topped by a double strand of razor-sharp concertina wire. At the back of the house a dock extended into the water, a handsome motorboat moored at its end. Here, too, an armed sentry stood guard, his silhouette visible as he paced back and forth. The home’s current resident was the Honorable Thomas Pickering, the United States ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, and his wife, Barbara.