In the Crosshairs: Russian Historical Thriller (Nikolai Volkov Book 2)

  In the Crosshairs

  By Julia Gousseva

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, brands, names and events portrayed, referenced or mentioned here are products of the author‘s imagination and/or used fictitiously.

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  Chapter One

  When Nikolai took on a new and unusual assignment, he expected challenges and dangers. What he did not expect was a murder on a quiet stretch of the Rublyovka highway, and certainly not a murder on the way to his new worksite.

  That rainy June morning, after greeting his new client in the Moscow office of Centurion Personal Protection Agency, Nikolai agreed to travel to the location immediately after the meeting. Unlike his previous assignment that took him all the way to the Arctic Circle, this job was to happen right outside Moscow, in the prestigious Rublyovka settlement. Easy travel.

  Nikolai and Roman Mikhailov walked outside together.

  “That’s our ride.” Roman pointed to a black Mercedes parked by the entrance.

  The driver glanced up at them, waved, and started the car. Roman pointed to the front passenger seat. “All yours,” he said to Nikolai. “I’ll sit in the back.”

  Nikolai sat next to the driver who introduced himself as Grisha. He looked to be in his mid-forties, with strong arms, fair skin, and red hair still untouched by gray. For a while, as Grisha maneuvered the Mercedes through the busy midday traffic, everyone was quiet.

  Nikolai leaned back in his seat and looked out the window. The heavy rain that had been beating down all afternoon subsided and was now falling in thin gray streaks, splattering against the windshield and sliding down the side windows. Windshield wipers moved quietly and quickly across the glass, struggling to keep up with the falling rain. The weather felt more like late autumn than mid-June, even for Russia.

  The Mercedes made its way through the tunnel connecting Moscow to the sprawling suburbs and sped up as it reached the city limits and merged onto the Rublyovka highway, the land of the rich and the powerful.

  From his passenger seat in the front, Nikolai glanced at Roman dozing in the backseat. Roman specifically asked for Nikolai. The job was not typical bodyguard work but Nikolai liked the offer and immediately agreed. He enjoyed challenges.

  “How do you like working for Roman?” Nikolai asked Grisha.

  “It’s great,” Grisha said. “Roman takes good care of his staff. He pays well, and he employs two drivers. That’s great for me. I finally have the time to spend with my family.”

  “Sounds good,” Nikolai said.

  Grisha nodded. “Not what I had expected out of life, but I like it now.”

  “What did you do before?”

  “I was an engineer, worked for many years for the aerospace industry, and then...” Grisha put his right hand up to his throat and made a gesture as if cutting it with his thumb. “No funding.”

  “Exactly like the military,” Nikolai said.

  “A lot of my buddies were in the military,” Grisha said. “And most ended up in private security firms, like you. Some tried private businesses. I did, too.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I had my own business for a while, selling paint and other construction supplies, but you never know who’s your friend and who’s your enemy.” Grisha sighed and continued. “I got in debt to some dangerous people, and the only quick way out was to drive a private taxi. After three months of driving, I realized that it paid more and provided a more stable income than any attempts at being an entrepreneur. And then my brother Leonid introduced me to Roman.”

  “Your brother also works for Roman?” Nikolai asked. He was enjoying Grisha’s easy conversation, and he liked learning as much as he could about his clients as early in the assignment as possible.

  Grisha shook his head. “No. Leonid and Roman were classmates and best buddies at the university. Leonid was a better student, graduated with honors, and everyone predicted a bright future for him. But after graduation, Roman became much more successful. And that’s an understatement. He must have a brilliant mind. Leonid tried a few things in business but got burned, like many other people. For a while, there was some bad blood between the two of them.”

  “They had some joint projects?”

  “No. None. Leonid tried some things on his own but none worked out. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur, you know. Roman offered to help him a number of times, but Leonid’s pride tends to get in the way.”

  “Old rivalry from their university days?”

  “Perhaps,” Grisha said. “I’m not proud, so I asked if Roman had a job for me. He offered me this one, and I took it. I’m more than happy to drive him. Sure beats driving strangers in a taxi.”

  “Taxi driving is a dangerous job.”

  “Not as dangerous as yours.”

  “Mine is dangerous by design,” Nikolai said and looked out the window at the newly constructed Moscow business district, an area of five or six modern skyscrapers, a shopping mall with a metro station at the bottom level, and an underground parking garage, all clustered in a small area surrounded by freeways and cut off from the older Moscow by the Moskva River. Across the river, the city looked different. With its cozier buildings, wider streets, and trees planted along the sidewalk every few meters, the older part of the city looked more open, friendlier, more inviting, and definitely more familiar to Nikolai.

  This new business district, a tiny part of Moscow, was one of the most important ones financially. Nikolai did not like it, perhaps because it presented a sharp contrast to the other, more familiar Moscow, with its old-fashioned buildings decorated with ornate arches and plenty of wide open spaces between them.

  Many Muscovites liked the new addition and felt pride for all the glass and concrete but Nikolai could not get used to it. To him, the area looked foreign, an island of uber-modernity in his historical city, a creation from a dystopian science-fiction novel more than a sign of technological progress.

  “So, why did Roman hire you?” Grisha said, interrupting Nikolai’s thoughts. “He always says he doesn’t want a bodyguard.”

  “He didn’t hire me as a bodyguard. I’m here to help plan construction of his new house.”

  “Construction? What are you, an architect, too?”

  “No,” Nikolai said. “But I’ll be working with an architect. Roman wants to design the new house with protection in mind, and he needs my help identifying potentially vulnerable areas and minimizing the risks.”

  “You’re going to put in bunkers?” Grisha chuckled. “Like in sci-fi movies?”

  “Not necessarily. Safety construction can involve safe rooms, or bunkers, as you put it, or use Kevlar in doors and bullet-proof glass in windows. But that’s a small part of it. We need to look at the overall blueprint of the house, make sure that it can be divided into separate compartments in an emergency, with lockdown buttons, and other things like that.”

  “Lockdown buttons?” Grisha asked. “It sounds like a maximum security prison, not a house.”

  “Not at all. Designing with security and safety in mind is a balance,” Nikolai said. “We need to keep the occupants safe without the impression of a prison under lockdown. And that’s certainly achievable.” He glanced in his rear view mirror. Roman opened his eyes and yawned as the Mercedes gently and quietly glided on the newly paved surface.

  “Nice road, for a change,” Grisha said to Nikolai. “It took long enough to rebuild it. And many
people got very wealthy in the process.”

  Nikolai chuckled. “Like in all construction projects. The Sochi Olympics alone made a lot of billionaires out of millionaires.”

  “No doubt.” Grisha sped up as the road widened when the new construction gave way to patches of pine and birch trees that surrounded the highway. “Some people know how to use opportunities, honest or not.”

  The Mercedes entered a wider and more open stretch of the highway. Roman was fully awake now, leafing through papers from his briefcase.

  “Should I pull over?” Grisha asked Roman.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Why?” Nikolai said. “What’s here?”

  “Less traffic,” Roman said. “And I like to drive.”

  Grisha slowed down and started pulling over. As he was about to stop the car, Roman’s cell phone buzzed.

  “Bad timing,” Roman said. “Please keep driving, Grisha.”

  Grisha waited for a large truck speeding down the highway to pass and got back on the highway. They drove for about three more kilometers and entered a heavily forested area.

  Roman was still on the phone when it happened.

  The shots rang out loudly and suddenly.

  “Down! Down on the floor!” Nikolai yelled to Roman as the Mercedes swerved and lost control. The windshield shattered, and red splatter dotted the dashboard as Grisha slumped over the wheel. The car slipped off the main road and headed down the slope towards a massive oak tree, quickly gaining speed.

  Chapter Two

  Almost instinctively, Nikolai reached over to the driver’s side, grabbed the wheel and veered sharply to the right at the oak tree. The car was still moving fast, and Nikolai had a hard time reaching the brake pedal, with Grisha’s foot still on it. Finally, he hit it and felt the car come to a stop in the deep ditch by the road. He killed the engine, and all mechanical noises ceased. The only sounds Nikolai could hear were the scraping of the broken rear-view mirror against the car door and blood pulsing in his ears. He quickly evaluated the situation: the car was shielded from view by the thick line of trees, and it was a few meters lower than the surface of the road. Whoever shot at them was very unlikely to shoot again.

  “I can’t find my phone,” Roman said from the back. “We need to call an ambulance for Grisha. How is he?”

  “Are you injured?” Nikolai asked.

  “I’m fine,” Roman said. “How’s Grisha?”

  Nikolai felt for the pulse in Grisha’s neck, then in his wrist. There was none.

  “It doesn’t look good.” Nikolai climbed out of the car, ran over to Grisha’s side, and opened the door.

  “Grisha, can you hear me?” Nikolai asked. Unfortunately, he already knew the answer.

  Grisha was silent. A thin streak of red ran down Grisha’s neck where the bullet had entered. Nikolai swore under his breath, pulled out his phone and dialed the police first. Then, he called the ambulance.

  Roman got out of the backseat, walked over to the driver’s side and leaned in. “Kakoi koshmar,” he said. What a nightmare.

  A nightmare. Koshmar.

  Out of his twenty-eight years, Nikolai spent the last ten in occupations where such nightmares were daily occurrences, especially during his military service in Chechnya. Their frequency did not make them easier to deal with. Perhaps, harder.

  Over his years in the service and afterwards, he had buried friends and colleagues, shot wartime enemies, and killed perpetrators who attacked his clients. When he first joined the military, he was naive enough to believe that, in time, he would get used to violent deaths and become desensitized. With time, he learned that such beliefs were wrong. That’s what soldiers wanted to believe in hopes that time would dull their senses and make service easier. It was nothing but self-deception and wishful thinking. There was no getting used to death and violence. On the contrary, each new death brought more pain, nagging and recurrent, making you question yourself, your actions, your decisions, and wonder if you could have done something to prevent it. And that’s exactly what was happening now. As Nikolai kneeled next to Grisha, he wondered where he had made a mistake.

  “That should have been me,” Roman said. “I should have been at that wheel. Grisha had no reason to die.”

  “And neither do you,” Nikolai said. “There was nothing you could have done.”

  “What bastards.” Roman shook his head, then looked up at Nikolai, his eyes sparkling with a mix of sadness and anger. “We’ve been taking precautions, changing routes and schedules, but our options are limited. On this stretch, there is only one road that gets me to my house. This one.”

  “You had reasons to take these precautions?”

  “Nothing specific. Simply being careful. You never know.”

  “Right,” Nikolai said. “And you think you were the target, not Grisha?”

  Roman stared straight at Nikolai. “Of course, I was the target. Who would want to hurt Grisha?”

  Nikolai nodded.

  Roman thought for a moment and took a deep breath. “And I think I know what you’re going to say next. It was an inside job.”

  “Most likely. It was somebody who knows your habits well and knows that you take the wheel on this stretch of the highway. That phone call saved your life.”

  “And killed Grisha,” Roman said and shook his head.

  He was amazingly calm and reserved for somebody who had just survived an attempt on his life. Of course, one had to be calm and reserved to succeed in business, especially in business as it was conducted in the new Russia. Reports of prominent businessmen shot down in broad daylight, deaths in car explosions, mysterious disappearances, and poisonings were more common than anyone cared to admit. What was much less common was successful prosecution of these crimes. Most were committed by hired killers, and finding the customer or customers, the people who ordered the killing, was close to impossible. In most cases, the hired killers were either not found or found dead themselves, rendering any further investigation impossible.

  In the distance, the sirens were wailing and whining, approaching quickly.

  Soon, police and ambulance vehicles, light bars flashing, were next to the Mercedes.

  Two young paramedics jumped out, their blue medical bags in their hands, and rushed towards the Mercedes. The forensics expert, a middle-aged serious-looking woman with thick black hair and a tired expression, was right next to them, taking pictures and making notes. Nikolai had witnessed scenes like that before and knew that, despite all the efforts, finding the killers was next to impossible.

  Nikolai helped the paramedics take Grisha out of the car and lay him down on the stretcher.

  “Can you give us a moment?” Roman said to the paramedics. They stepped aside, affording Roman, Nikolai, and Grisha some privacy.

  For somebody who died such a violent death moments earlier, Grisha’s face looked peaceful and serene. His mortal wound was now hidden by the sheet that one of the paramedics draped around Grisha.

  “He was a good man,” Roman said. “And a great family man.”

  Roman made the sign of the cross over Grisha, took two coins out of his pocket and put them over Grisha’s open eyes, shielding them from the bright sun that finally emerged from the clouds, its heat creating a surreal fog effect over the wet asphalt.

  “Does he have kids?” Nikolai asked.

  “Two boys.”

  “It will be hard -- ” Nikolai started.

  “Financially, nothing will change for Grisha’s family,” Roman interrupted him. “I’ll make sure of that. That’s the easy part. The only easy part.”

  Nikolai remembered what Grisha said to him merely minutes earlier. Roman takes good care of his staff.

  They stood in silence for a few more moments, then Nikolai caught a glimpse of the paramedics lingering nearby.

  “It was an honor to know you,” Nikolai said quietly to Grisha.

  For a moment, Roman stood quietly, looking at Grisha. Then, he turned to Nikolai. “Ready?�
�� he asked and, without waiting for Nikolai’s response, signaled to the paramedics to return.

  And then, with the final sound of the body bag zipper, Grisha was gone. The last Nikolai saw of Grisha was the ambulance, its emergency lights dark, slowly taking off back to Moscow.

  Chapter Three

  For a moment, Nikolai and Roman stood next to the mangled Mercedes and watched the ambulance carrying Grisha’s body disappear in the distance.

  “I apologize for the intrusion,” a female voice said.

  Nikolai turned. The voice belonged to a petite short-haired woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties. She was dressed in a white blouse, a navy blue pencil skirt, and black shoes.

  “Marina Petrova,” the woman said. “I’m with the Moscow City Criminal Investigation Unit. I need to ask you a few questions about the deceased. Would you mind stepping aside to talk?” She gestured towards a shaded spot under a sprawling oak tree.

  “Let’s start with your names and the purpose of your trip,” Marina said.

  Roman explained who he was. Marina nodded and made notes in her book. Then, she turned to Nikolai. “You were hired as Mr. Mikhailov’s bodyguard?”

  Nikolai paused before answering. One of the absurdities of the Russian law was that despite the proliferation of bodyguards and schools offering bodyguard training, officially the profession did not exist. According to the current Russian law, nobody could hire another person to provide protection for anything other than property. The reasoning behind the law was convoluted and dated back to the time when the only people who had bodyguards were government leaders whose bodyguards were members of the Ninth Directorate of the KGB, the notorious Russian Agency for State Security. At that time, the bodyguard law involved the right of the KGB to search any property their clients would visit. Theoretically, if the existing law were extended to private bodyguard agencies, it would mean that virtually anyone with a bodyguard license would have the right to search any property. And that would be unacceptable. Thus, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the government refused to officially recognize the profession of a private bodyguard.