Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night. Литагент HarperCollins USD

Hunt for Dmitri is part of that continuum.

      It’s a Liz Sansborough story.

      Which means the Carnivore must appear, too.

      The Hunt for Dmitri

      The French never got enough credit. The Germans never got enough control. The Romanians had a guilt complex. And the Americans hadn’t a clue. As the good-natured slanders continued, Liz Sansborough, Ph.D., peered around the Faculty Club for her close friend and colleague Arkady Albam. He was late.

      The dimly lit bar was packed, every table filled. The rich aromas of wine and liquor were intense. As glasses clinked, a world atlas of languages electrified the air. Academics all, they were celebrating the conclusion of a highly successful international conference on cold war political fallout, post-9/11, which she had helped to organize. Still, there was no sign of Arkady.

      The economist from the University of London grinned pointedly at Liz—the only American in their group. “I hear Russia’s economy is so rotten that the Kremlin has had to sack dozens of its American moles.”

      “Only because we don’t sell ourselves cheap.” She grinned back at him. “Moscow can afford to keep your MI6 turncoats on the payroll forever.”

      As laughter erupted, the sociologist from the Sorbonne nodded at the empty bar stool beside Liz and asked in French, “Where’s Arkady? He isn’t here to defend his country!”

      “I’ve been wondering, too.” Liz’s gaze swept the lounge once more.

      Arkady was a visiting scholar in Russian history, on campus here at the University of California at Santa Barbara since January. They had met soon after he arrived, when he sat beside her at a mass faculty meeting, peered at the empty seat on his other side, then introduced himself to her. “I’m the new kid,” he said simply. They discovered a shared European sensibility, a love of movies, and that each had pasts neither would discuss. In her mind, she could see his kindly wrinkled face, feel the touch of his fingertips on her forearm as he leaned toward her with an impish smile to impart some piece of wisdom or gossip.

      The problem was, he was elderly—almost seventy years old—and so unwell the past week that he had missed all of Monday’s events, including his own seminar. He had phoned to tell her, but stubbornly refused to see a doctor.

      As the lighthearted banter continued, and more people arrived, there was still no Arkady. He was never late. Liz speeddialed his number on her cell phone. No answer again. Instead of leaving another message, she toasted her colleagues farewell and wound through the throngs to the door. His apartment was only minutes away. She might as well look in on him.

      The night sky was dull black, the stars pinpricks, remote. Liz hurried to her car, threw her shoulder bag across the front seat, turned on the ignition and peeled out, speeding along streets fringed with towering palms until at last she parked in front of Arkady’s building. He lived in 2C. In a rare admission, he had joked once that he preferred this “C” to the one that referred to the Cellar, Soviet intelligence’s name for the basement in the Lubyanka complex where the KGB executed dissidents and spies and those who crossed them. He barely escaped, he had told her, then refused to say more, his profile pinched with bad memories.

      Liz ran upstairs and knocked. There was no answer. His drapes were closed, but a line of light showed in a center gap. She knocked again then tried the knob. It turned, and she cracked open the door. Just inside, magazines were strewn in piles. A lamp lay on its side, its ceramic base shattered. Her chest tightened.

      “Arkady? Are you here?”

      The only sound was the ticking of the wall clock. Liz opened the door wider. Books lay where they had been yanked from shelves, spines twisted. She peered around the door—and saw Arkady. His brown eyes were wide and frightened, and he seemed small, shriveled, although he was muscular and broad-chested for his age. He was sitting in his usual armchair, drenched in the light of his tall, cast-iron floor lamp.

      She drank in the sight of him. “Are you all right?”

      Arkady sighed. “This is what greeted me after the last seminar.” He spoke English with an American accent. “It’s a mess, isn’t it?” He still wore his battered tweed jacket, his gray tie firmly knotted against his throat. His left hand held a blue envelope, while the other was tucked inside his jacket as if clutching at his heart. He was a man of expressive Rus disposition and ascetic Mongol habits and was usually vibrant and talkative.

      She frowned. “Yes, but you didn’t answer my question. Are you hurt?”

      When he shook his head, experience sent her outside to the balcony again. A gust of wind rustled the leaves of a pepper tree, cooling her hot face. As she inspected the street and parked cars, then the other apartment buildings, uneasy memories surged through her, transporting her back to the days she had been a CIA NOC—nonofficial cover operative—on roving assignment from Paris to Moscow. No one at the university knew she had been CIA.

      Seeing nothing unusual, she slipped back inside and locked the door. Arkady had not moved. In the lamplight, his thick hair and heavy eyebrows were the muted color of iron shavings.

      “What happened, Arkady? Who did this? Is anything missing?”

      He shrugged, his expression miserable.

      Liz walked through the kitchen, bedroom and office. Nothing else seemed out of place. She returned to the living room.

      Arkady rallied. “Sit with me, dear Liz. You’re such a comfort. If I’d been blessed with a daughter, I’d want her to be you.”

      His words touched her. As a psychologist, she was aware of her desire for this older man’s attention, that he had become a surrogate father, a deep bond. Her real father was her most closely guarded secret: He was an international assassin with a code name to match his reputation—the Carnivore. She hated what he had done, what he was. That his blood flowed through her veins haunted her—except when she was with Arkady.

      She sank into her usual armchair, where only the low reading table separated them. “Have you phoned the sheriff’s department?”

      He shrugged. “There’s no point.”

      “I’ll call for you.”

      Arkady gave his head a rough shake. “Too dangerous. He’ll be back.”

      She stared. “Too dangerous? Who’ll be back?”

      Arkady handed her the blue envelope he had been holding. She turned it over. The postmark was Los Angeles.

      “Ignore that,” he told her. “The letter was sent originally from Moscow to New York in a larger envelope. A friend there opened it and put the letter into another big envelope and mailed it to Los Angeles. That’s where my address was added.”

      Liz pulled out folded stationery. Inside were three tiny dried sunflowers. In Russia, an odd number of blooms was considered good luck. The writing was not only different, it was in the Cyrillic alphabet—Russian.

      “Dearest,” it began. She peered up at him.

      “It’s from my wife, Nina.” He looked past her to another time, another life. “She wouldn’t escape with me. We’d never had children, and she knew I could take care of myself. She said she’d rather have me alive far away than dead in some Moscow grave.” He paused. “I suspect she knew I’d have a better chance alone.”

      Liz took a long breath. With the stationery in one hand, and the sunflowers on the palm of the other, she bent her head and read. The letter recounted the ordinary life of an ordinary woman living on a small pension in a tiny Moscow flat. “I’ve enclosed three pressed sunflowers, my love,” the letter finished, “to remind you of our happy times together. You are in my arms forever.”

      Liz gazed a moment longer at the dried blossoms, now the color of desert sand. She folded the letter and slid the flowers back inside.

      Arkady looked at her alertly, as if hoping she would