Chapter 15 #2
Nikitin, on the other hand, was clever, intelligent, often amusing, often charming.
He liked women and was prepared to like Abramova until she backed him off.
He was also a psychopath. If what he felt in killing wasn’t pleasure, it was something off in that direction—apparently, a kind of release.
It seemed to Abramova that a long period without a kill built up a psychological pressure within him, and she suspected that when the job didn’t provide him with a target and a kill, he would find one on his own. A man to keep an eye on.
Orlov, however, was a self-effacing man, almost a nebbish, and brilliant in his ability to walk through the streets of even a small town without being particularly noticed or commented upon.
He could follow a wary target a mile through Berlin, Amsterdam, or London without ever being seen, and could efficiently and precisely zero Nikitin to the target.
He also had an instinctive sense of direction and a love of maps.
He could navigate through the canyons of a major city after looking once at a satellite photo.
The team was very good at what they did, and they’d done it seventeen times, though never before in America.
· · ·
Back in her room after leaving Titov’s, Abramova took a shower—one of the things she liked best in America, the long hot showers in even routine accommodations—then lay on the bed and thought about a new approach to the Sokolov problem.
How do you get at a man concealed somewhere in a large building, not under his own name, with hospital staff alerted to inquiries, with possible expert surveillance by non-uniformed FBI agents, and with armed and well-trained gunmen covering the target?
Could somebody go in as a patient? It would have to be Titov, since Nikitin had a strong Russian accent; she also had an accent, and either she or Nikitin would set off alarms.
It was a puzzle.
And after a long review, she decided that the puzzle had no easy solution. It did have a solution, but one that she was almost afraid to suggest.
· · ·
They left before dawn the next morning, to mitigate the possibility of being seen and identified at the motel. They checked out one at a time, five minutes apart, and once gathered in the car, Titov drove, Abramova rode in the front passenger seat, and Nikitin lay in the back, out of sight.
Two hours to the Twin Cities. As Titov settled into the flow of traffic on the interstate, Abramova said, “I have been puzzling this situation, looking for an answer. I think Lev is correct. We will not get another chance with the rifle.”
Titov: “We give up and go home?”
“Not with the man watching. But, there is somebody close to Sokolov, who is on our side. Yes? I’m thinking we use this ChapStick.”
Titov grunted. “Ah. Then everything is out in the open. They might learn the identity of our agent.”
“Not our problem,” Abramova said. “We do a dead drop with the ChapStick, and then we’re out.”
From the back seat, Nikitin said, “If we shoot him, it might not be an official assassination. It might be anyone, even somebody who is legal in America, but who suffered from Sokolov’s actions. Revenge. If we use the ChapStick, it is a known Kremlin action. The man will be blamed.”
“Does he care?”
The ChapStick had started life as an actual ChapStick, the strawberry flavor.
It had been taken apart in a laboratory outside Moscow, where the waxy lip balm had been carefully removed as a tube, and cut into two portions.
The top three-quarters had been set aside, and the bottom one-quarter, thrown away.
That quarter was replaced with a transparent cylinder of malleable plastic, that looked much like the ChapStick.
The plastic cylinder contained a bead of a waxy nerve agent known as Novichok, developed by Russian chemical warfare researchers and used in several assassinations and assassination attempts.
A thin black-glass seal with a pull tab was placed over the poisonous portion, and then the original ChapStick compound reinserted on top.
An X-ray would not detect the change. In use, an assassin would turn the ChapStick dial at the bottom of the tube, pushing up the contents, until the glass appeared.
The actual ChapStick would be discarded, the glass seal carefully peeled away and flushed down a toilet.
The cap would then be replaced until the actual assassination attempt.
The assassin would have to get close to the target, remove the cap, and contrive to rub the Novichok compound on the victim’s skin.
The victim’s death would resemble heart failure.
The reworked tube of ChapStick currently resided in a plastic box inside a bag of medicines that none of them used, stashed in Abramova’s suitcase. They all feared it; even the smallest touch of Novichok could be a killer.
· · ·
On the way north, they talked off and on about other possibilities but concluded that most were fantasies. “We have to talk with Kuznetsov,” Nikitin said. “I believe the man would be consulted about the ChapStick.”
“We have to ask,” Abramova said. “The only other possibility I see is a direct attack on the FBI vehicles taking Sokolov to an airport. An ambush, in which FBI agents would be killed, and we might be killed as well. Sokolov might not be.”
“Not that the man would suffer over our deaths,” Titov said.
“Maybe a little bit,” Abramova said.
Titov snorted. Then, “We must consult with Kuznetsov.”
“And see what we can see at the hospital,” Abramova said. “Test all possibilities.”