The Hunted Read online

  In fact, for the past ten years, he had abandoned all thoughts of dating and had simply begun working more than ever. After the nuclear strike, his job became exceedingly more urgent and complicated.

  Chopra leaned forward and studied the computer screen. At the moment he was making a large money transfer from a sovereign wealth fund bank account belonging to the former nation of Dubai. Although most of Iran and Saudi Arabia had been leveled in the blasts, Dubai’s infrastructure had been partially spared, although what was left of the country had been evacuated and even now, some five years later, it was still unsafe to be there, unprotected, for more than eight hours at a time.

  Chopra was and continued to be the minister and custodian of Dubai’s accounts, and this particular one was worth some ninety-two billion dollars.

  How he had come to this position was yet another small miracle. After his mentors at Axis had financed his college education, he had graduated and gone to work for them, becoming one of their chief financial analysts by the time he was just twenty-six.

  At thirty, he had been recruited by the Al Maktoum family of Dubai, who had ruled the country since 1833. They wanted him to manage their sovereign wealth fund and become one of the country’s chief financial advisers. Chopra left Axis with his mentors’ blessing because the bank continued to do much business with Dubai and other United Arab Emirates members. This was, as one of his American-raised mentors had put it, a marriage made in heaven.

  Chopra found his work in Dubai both stimulating and rewarding. His employers treated him like royalty, paid him ridiculous sums of money, and encouraged him to be creative with their investments.

  That creativity had continued—even after nuclear holocaust had effectively killed nearly all members of the family and left Chopra in a wasteland of grief.

  With care and precision, he worked the computer’s mouse and manipulated the funds. He was moving oil money into the green industry in an attempt to save the fund from more losses. A 400-billion-euro plan to power Europe with Sahara sunlight was finally getting off the ground after nearly twenty years of setbacks and debate, and Chopra saw a good future in that. His employers might be gone, but he deemed it his responsibility to manage their money—because he believed he had a moral and ethical responsibility to do so ...

  And because he believed that at least one heir to the empire was still alive.

  Hussein Al Maktoum would be sixteen now. The boy and his three sisters had been, like Chopra, out of the country when the strikes had occurred. They had been wisely hidden away from those who would attempt to manipulate them and undermine what resources were left in the country.

  Chopra had been sought by the other emirates to turn over the funds, but he had refused, instead saying that they belonged to the country’s rightful heir, and until Hussein was found, Chopra alone had been legally entrusted to manage them. While the emirates plundered what was left of Dubai’s other resources, Chopra kept the sovereign wealth fund in check—along with a considerable cache of gold and silver held within Dubai’s subterranean vaults, gold that belonged not only to Dubai but to other surrounding nations. Chopra believed he was one of the last “living keys” who could gain access to those vaults.

  For the past five years he’d wanted nothing more than to turn over this terrible burden he carried and deliver the codes, the funds, and the gold to the country’s new leader. He was a man of fierce loyalty, and he would rather die than see these resources fall into the hands of evil men. If Hussein was still alive, he could rule now with the help of a regent or adviser who could be appointed by the emirates, or he himself could choose one from among other surviving relatives.

  Indeed, there was a rumor that Sheikh Juma Al Maktoum, a family cousin, had become a warlord of sorts and occupied a few of the islands in the Strait of Hormuz, but Chopra’s attempts to contact the man had repeatedly failed because of mistrust and Russian interference in the area.

  Chopra finished the computer transaction and rose to fetch a glass of Merlot from his wet bar.

  His cell phone rang, and the name on the screen was familiar: Harold Westerdale, a British private investigator whom Chopra had hired years ago to track down surviving members of the Al Maktoum family. Chopra hadn’t heard from Westerdale in many months, so the call was, indeed, a surprise.

  “I think I have him, Mr. Chopra,” came the breathless voice. “I think I have him.”

  “You have Hussein?”

  “Yes, I’ve got some decrypted communications between him and his sisters, as well as the staff he’s been with since the attacks. They’re using high-tech military satellite phones to call each other now. Hussein is in the Seychelles.”

  “Call me back in five minutes with all the details. I’m packing right now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chopra rushed through the living room and into his bedroom. He’d been sitting there, making the transfer, reflecting on his life and what had happened to the Al Maktoum family when, at that very moment, Westerdale—a man he’d not heard from in months—had called about a lead.

  Perhaps there was, as Chopra’s mother had once told him, a connection between people with like minds and pure hearts. Maybe there was a connection between himself and Hussein, that they were destined to meet again now. To Chopra, Hussein was still just a small boy playing with a radio control car inside one of the new palaces.

  The Republic of the Seychelles was a group of islands off the east coast of Africa, and that was about all Chopra knew of the place. He’d have to get online and decide what to pack, but he vowed that he’d be en route to the airport within an hour.

  His heart raced. This was the best lead they’d had since the beginning.

  He would do it. Find Hussein. That was his purpose. He wasn’t sure if he was now the man with the metallic wings, but he understood that this was the right thing, the honorable thing, the only thing he could do. His heart ached for closure.

  He’d come a long way from his days spent rolling bidis, and as he entered middle age and could say he’d already enjoyed most of life’s luxuries, there would be nothing more pleasing than to see this young man become the phoenix of his nation and rebuild it from the ashes even as the boy himself rose into manhood.

  They would be Arthur and Merlin, and Chopra would do all in his power to help the boy sheikh—because there were others, particularly the Russian Federation, who wanted nothing more than to control Dubai, seize its remaining oil, decontaminate it, and profit from the sales. Their government had been eyeing the country like wolves in winter, but the time had finally come for Dubai to return to power and prominence.

  Chopra stood a moment and closed his eyes. Maybe this was the true purpose of his life. To bolster a young man, to see a nation rise again. His eyes burned with tears, but then he reminded himself that his celebration was premature, that he hadn’t located the young sheikh yet. Not yet. He wrenched a suitcase from his closet and tossed it on his bed. With trembling hands, he began to pack.

  TWO

  Montereau-Fault-Yonne, France

  She was a woman of three names—but only one accurately identified her.

  Her birth name was Viktoria Kolosov, the daughter of a schoolteacher and a car transporter from Vladivostok, Russia.

  Her married name was Viktoria Antsyforov, wife of the late Nikolai Antsyforov, a physician ten years her senior.

  Her code name was Snegurochka. The Snow Maiden. She was thirty-seven and once described by a colleague as a “woman of sinister beauty.”

  But those days were gone.

  The once long locks had been hacked off into a spiky punk cut. The once curvaceous body was now lean, raw muscle.

  However, some things never changed: The man currently chasing her down the narrow cobblestone street would die slowly.

  Painfully.

  He would, as all the others had, meet only the Snow Maiden, because that’s all she had left.

  Snegurochka was the snow maiden in Russian folklore. In on
e tale she was the daughter of Spring and Frost. She fell in love with a shepherd, but when her heart warmed, she melted. In another narrative, falling in love transformed her into a mortal who would die. In a third story she was the daughter of an old couple who created her from snow. She leapt over a fire and melted.

  Consequently, it was better to remain in the cold. Always the cold, where she could see her breath, where people warmed to her personality before she tore out their jugulars and walked away, feeling only the numbing chill.

  And the cardinal rule: Never look back.

  She rounded the next corner, pressed her back against the wall, then slipped the knife from her hip pocket and thumbed the button. The stiletto flashed out from its hilt and shimmered in the moonlight.

  Drawing in a deep breath, she willed herself into a state of calm and waited for him. Oh, how she hated this, hated it more than anything.

  She was always running now. Never pursuing. She loved the chase but despised being on the wrong end of it.

  Who didn’t want a piece of her?

  That was a good question. She was valuable to everyone: the Americans, the Euros, the Russians, even the Green Brigade Transnational—the terrorist bastards she’d betrayed back in Canada. They wanted her because she’d used and murdered their leader, “Green Vox,” a code name for the replaceable idiot in charge. She’d done an expert job of convincing them she was a bleeding-heart tree hugger who loved to blow stuff up.

  The Americans wanted her because she was a former member of the Glavnoje Razvedyvatel’noje Upravlenije (GRU) and could open up the Russian Federation’s entire intelligence community like a can of tuna.

  The Euros wanted her for the same reason, and the Russians wanted her dead for screwing them over when they had tried to invade Canada to seize the oil sands. Plus, they didn’t want her puking up all their secrets to their enemies.

  She smiled bitterly. It was, after all, nice to be popular. Where the hell was he? She dared not peek around the corner. He was waiting. So would she.

  The Snow Maiden had come to France, risky though it was, to wish her cousin Andrei Eskov good luck with his final stage of the Tour de France. Andrei was riding for Katusha, the Russian Federation cycling team, and he was currently wearing the yellow jersey after twenty days of brutal racing, but his lead was only forty-three seconds, so there was a chance he would win the entire tour ... or lose it. She had always had a fond place in her heart for Andrei, who as far back as she could remember loved to ride his bike up the hillside roads overlooking Vladivostok. Twice he had taken her on spectacular rides, experiences she would never forget.

  After a brief and somewhat tearful dinner together at the team’s hotel restaurant, she had slipped off and returned to her own hotel. At about midnight, she hailed a cab for the airport. Before she could get out of town, another car had followed, she’d been attacked, her driver killed, and now she was on the run.

  Her pursuer couldn’t wait anymore and finally rounded the corner, his footfalls light, his breath audible.

  She could even smell him—a faint mixture of cigarette smoke and leather.

  In one fluid stroke, she buried the blade in his abdomen while simultaneously relieving him of his pistol with attached suppressor. He gasped and fell back against the wall, his breath reeking even more now. She tore off his woolen balaclava to reveal a blond-haired man, perhaps only eighteen or twenty.

  “Who sent you?” she asked him in French. “You’ll die anyway. Just tell me.”

  He cursed at her in Russian.

  She grabbed the hilt of the knife still jutting from his abdomen, gritted her teeth, and drove it deeper into him. He gasped and clutched her hand.

  She put the gun to his head. “Did Izotov send you? Are you working with Haussler?”

  Before he could answer, a shot tore into the brick wall just over his shoulder.

  With a start, she spun—just as another round sent a piece of the wall tumbling onto her back. She flinched, squinted against the shower of debris, and tried to steal a look at her attacker.

  He was across the alley, but she only caught a glimpse before he ducked back behind the wall. He had cover. She was in the open.

  Time to run. She yanked free her blade, used the guy’s shoulder to close it, then raced away.

  The cobblestones beneath her boots threatened to send her tumbling if she wasn’t careful. Her ankle twisted slightly as she reached the end of the alley and turned right, heading down a broader street lined by dark storefronts. She kept low and repeatedly glanced over her shoulder.

  Napoleon had fought one of his epic battles in Montereau-Fault-Yonne, and so it seemed she, too, might engage in a battle to the death. She had never imagined herself dying on the streets of a small French town. She’d always assumed the Russian government would catch up to her, throw her in a Siberian prison, torture her for months, and then, one night, her cell would fill with light, and there would be Nikolai, standing there, welcoming her to heaven. They would be together, finally ... and forever.

  Before their marriage he’d been assigned to treat the workers cleaning up the 70-MWe and 90-MWe pressurized-water training reactors in Paldiski, Estonia. He had been fresh out of medical school and had attended to her own brother Dimitri, who had suffered radiation poisoning while constructing the two-story concrete sarcophagus that now encased the two reactors. Officials and administrators had been grossly negligent, and the Snow Maiden had lost her brother first ... her husband two years later, a delayed victim of the contamination.

  At the moment Nikolai died, the true Snow Maiden had been born.

  While standing at Nikolai’s funeral, she had vowed revenge. She’d kept her husband’s name to honor his work in the service of others and had set her sights on the GRU, the organization with the most power and freedom to move throughout the country and exact her revenge where and when she could. But first she would work her icy tendrils throughout the entire organization so that she could eventually choke them once and for all.

  Thus, she clambered her way up the intelligence ladder with a vengeance, becoming one of the most effective and lethal officers the GRU had ever fielded. Her martial arts skills and marksmanship were awe-inspiring, as evidenced by the looks on her colleagues’ faces when she competed against them. Her reputation grew, and she was eventually recruited by General Sergei Izotov himself to work missions on behalf of the director and the president.

  She’d been asked to work alongside another man, Colonel Pavel Doletskaya, and together they had coordinated several attacks on selected European Federation targets, mostly information gathering and a few assassinations.

  On the day she’d been promoted to colonel, she’d been called into Director Izotov’s office, where he’d told her she was one of the most brilliant and trusted GRU officers in the history of the organization.

  That remark was met by her shrug. “Is there something you need, sir?”

  He’d gone on to say that a security leak involving Doletskaya had been exposed and that the Euros had alerted the Americans. Izotov needed her to go underground by staging her own death with the GRU’s help. She would need to erase herself from the organization—all in the name of restoring the motherland to greatness.

  Would she take the mission? Of course. By going underground she could more efficiently destroy the entire Russian Federation. They’d helped her set the fire in her apartment, plant the body, and even Doletskaya, with whom she’d been having an affair, was not privy to the plan. Izotov became her mentor from that point on, a father figure ... and even a lover for a short time, though none of these men could ever replace Nikolai.

  As part of her new mission, she’d forged a relationship with the Green Brigade Transnational because the Russians liked to use them as fall guys for certain operations against Europe and the United States. It was painfully simple to set up these fools, and they enjoyed claiming responsibility for acts that were, in truth, perpetrated by Russian or Russian-backed forces.

/>   She had even made Izotov believe to the bitter end that she was with them, until she was able to blackmail him and the rest of the federation with some nukes in Canada. But then her other brother, Mikhail, had gone down with his submarine, Romanov, before he was able to help. That her plan had fallen apart didn’t matter. She was still free and still working for her new employers, whose goals were similar to her own. There was, however, no rest for the weary, no walking without checking your back.

  The Snow Maiden learned that Izotov had hired Heinrich Haussler, agent of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (the German Federal Intelligence Service), to capture her, since most of their own best spies had failed (and been killed by her). Haussler was a double agent, and the Snow Maiden knew him well. If anyone could capture her, it was probably him. He was a crafty bastard who made few mistakes, so she was beginning to believe that these fools after her now were not working for him. The attack was too sloppy.

  She dropped into the next alcove, finding herself huddled against the closed door of a bakery, and removed the small infrared camera from her coat pocket. She carried the credit-card-sized device wherever she went. Point and click and you had a picture of your environment with the heat sources illuminated. Forward-looking infrared radar in your pocket.

  The second man was coming straight down the road, toward her, and she had to gamble that he hadn’t seen her duck out of sight.

  She pocketed the camera, waited, heard his footfalls grow louder, then braced herself.

  Just as he passed, she balanced herself on one hand, slid out her right leg, swung it around, and made contact with his ankles, her leg like a blade cutting him down.

  As he dropped, she reached up and put a round in his gluteus maximus. He screamed, landed on his gut, and was about to roll over and fire when she dropped the gun, and, with both hands pushed up, she leapt on him, knocking him onto his back and latching both hands onto his wrist to release his weapon. She dug her nails into his skin and quickly pried free his gun, which clattered to the sidewalk. She shoved him back, grabbed the second gun, and trained it on him.