The Eighth Sister Read online

  PRAISE FOR ROBERT DUGONI

  FOR THE EIGHTH SISTER

  “The Eighth Sister is a great mix of spycraft and classic adventure, with a map of Moscow in hand.”

  —Martin Cruz Smith, international bestselling author

  “Is there anything that Robert Dugoni can’t write? With The Eighth Sister, he boldly steps into the espionage arena with an expertly crafted tale of a long-retired CIA agent sent to modern Russia to hunt an assassin killing US spies. Told at a whipsaw pace in clear, muscular prose and filled with nuanced characters, nothing is as it seems or can be predicted in this tale. Indeed, everything about The Eighth Sister feels so fresh and authentic we could see the story breaking in the headlines tomorrow.”

  ―Mark Sullivan, bestselling author of Beneath a Scarlet Sky

  “Exhilarating . . . A tightly written, flawlessly executed espionage novel that takes the reader on a refreshingly unique, white-knuckle journey through the byzantine world of modern intelligence. Dugoni weaves a complicated web of deception and doubt around his unlikely hero, building tension and keeping the reader hooked until the end.”

  ―Steven Konkoly, USA Today bestselling author

  FOR THE TRACY CROSSWHITE SERIES

  “One of the best crime writers in the business.”

  —Associated Press

  “Dugoni is a superb storyteller.”

  —Boston Globe

  “[A] swift, engrossing story.”

  —Seattle Times

  “[Dugoni’s] characters are richly detailed and true to life.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Dugoni does a masterful job . . . If you are not already reading his books, you should be!”

  —Bookreporter

  “Dugoni continues to deliver emotional and gut-wrenching, character-driven suspense stories that will resonate with any fan of the thriller genre.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  ALSO BY ROBERT DUGONI

  The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell

  The 7th Canon

  Damage Control

  The Tracy Crosswhite Series

  My Sister’s Grave

  Her Final Breath

  In the Clearing

  The Trapped Girl

  Close to Home

  A Steep Price

  The Academy (a short story)

  Third Watch (a short story)

  The David Sloane Series

  The Jury Master

  Wrongful Death

  Bodily Harm

  Murder One

  The Conviction

  Nonfiction with Joseph Hilldorfer

  The Cyanide Canary

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by La Mesa Fiction, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503903036 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1503903036 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781503903319 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1503903311 (paperback)

  Cover design by Kaitlin Kall

  First edition

  To my daughter, Catherine, who has always made me laugh and smile.

  College is just your next adventure. Time to fly. Time to crow.

  CONTENTS

  Start Reading

  Prologue

  PART I

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  PART II

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Then you will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

  John 8:32

  The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

  Origin Debated

  Prologue

  Moscow, Russia

  Zarina Kazakova stepped to the glass doors of Belyy Dom, the Russian White House, and peered out at the leaden sky threatening to suffocate Moscow. It was not if the sky would unleash the first flurry of snow, but when. Meteorologists had forecast evening temperatures below zero, and as much as six to eight inches. Zarina sighed at the thought of another difficult winter as she forced her fingers into the soft fur of her mittens. Bogdan, one of the guards, stood near a metal detector with his body angled to peer out at the cloud layer darkening by the minute. “Pokhozhe, chto eto budet dolgaya zima, Zarina.”

  “When is it not a long winter?” Zarina replied in Russian. She intended her question to be rhetorical, and Bogdan, a true Muscovite, did not bother to answer it. They both knew “long” did not accurately describe Russian winters; “oppressive” more readily came to mind.

  “Do you have plans this evening?” Bogdan asked. He wore his somber green-gray military uniform beneath his equally somber wool coat. His peaked cap sat square on his head.

  “I always have plans,” Zarina said, being purposefully vague and hoping to discourage Bogdan before he got started. In her early sixties, she had her mother’s genes—just a sprinkle of gray in her auburn hair and skin as smooth as a woman half her age. Her mother had emphasized good living to be the key to a Russian woman keeping her looks, the one thing she truly possessed and thus needed to carefully guard. Zarina dressed impeccably, and she had never undertaken two of Russia’s national pastimes—smoking and drinking excessively, especially vodka. She’d also been single since her divorce, and it seemed every man in Belyy Dom knew of it.

  Bogdan smiled. “You’re dressed as if to go out.”

  Indeed. Her heavy winter coat and rabbit-skin collar matched the fur of her ushanka, which she pulled snug on her head, the earflaps lowered to protect against the anticipated wind and cold.

  “Can I only dress this way for a date?” Zarina asked. “Hmm?” She pulled the muffler over her mouth, not interested in Bogdan’s response, and moved toward the door. “Dobroy nochi.”

  “Spokoynoy nochi,” Bogdan replied, wishing her a
peaceful night as he pushed open the door for her. Zarina stepped into a gusting wind hurtling up the Moskva River with the fury of an approaching freight train. Tonight’s storm would be fierce.

  She navigated the concrete steps and hurried across the courtyard, head down. After passing through the ornate gate, she stepped onto Krasnopresnenskaya Nab, marching along the bank of the river to her bus stop at the corner of Glubokiy Pereulok. The deafening roar of buses and the blare of horns in Moscow’s twenty-first century “Putinstan” echoed above the wind, commuters scurrying to get home before the first flurry of snow. At the bend in the Moskva River, the Hotel Ukraina, a hulking mass of Stalinesque excess, dominated Zarina’s view. Stalin had commissioned seven such buildings following the Second World War to glorify the Soviet state and to impress the West, which was busy building skyscrapers. The persistent rumor was the dictator had also similarly designed each of the seven to confuse American bombers, if they were ever to fly into Moscow. Given the paranoid propensity of Russian leaders, Zarina believed the rumor.

  Preposterously Russian, each building was grossly overbuilt, with a stout base rising to a spire adorned with a red star, and infused with Greek, French, Chinese, and Italian architectural influences. Zarina wondered what Stalin’s reaction would have been to learn that the Hotel Ukraina had become the Radisson Royal Hotel, a symbol of western capitalism.

  Hissing air brakes and the smell of petrol refocused Zarina’s attention, and she shoved and squeezed her way through the folding doors of her bus; chivalry had long since given way in Russia to self-preservation. Remarkably, she found an empty seat at the back of the bus and removed her gloves and hat so she didn’t overheat. The humid, stale air had condensed on the windows and held the pungent smell of body odor, poorly masked by strong perfumes and colognes.

  The bus wound its way along the Moskva River, already filling with chunks of floating ice, another harbinger of the wicked winter to come. Thirty minutes after Zarina boarded, the bus reached her stop in front of the supermarket on Filevsky Bulvar. She crossed the bleak park, listening to the spindling tree limbs click and clack with each wind gust. Soviet-era apartment buildings stood like sentries around the park, grotesque concrete blocks with tiny windows and tagged with graffiti. Zarina pushed open the brown metal door to a Spartan lobby. The light fixtures had long ago been stolen—along with the marble floor and brass stair railing. Russians had interpreted capitalism to mean: “Steal what you can sell.” Attempts to replenish the buildings had only led to more thefts.

  Zarina rode the elevator to the twelfth floor and stepped into a hallway as drab and bare as the lobby. She undid the four locks to what had once been her parents’ apartment, wiped the soles of her boots on the mat so as not to mark the oak floor, inlaid with an intricate geometric design, and hung her coat and hat on the rack before she stepped into the living area.

  “We were beginning to wonder if you were coming home, Ms. Kazakova.”

  The man’s voice startled her, and Zarina screamed. He did not react. He sat on her couch, his legs crossed. A quick assessment of his uncreased gray slacks, black turtleneck, and long leather jacket, and Zarina concluded he was police, possibly FSB—the Russian counterintelligence agency and successor organization to the KGB. A second man, hidden in her kitchen, emerged into the hall behind her, preventing retreat—not that she contemplated it. He was as square and thick as a refrigerator.

  “Please, sit,” the man on the couch said. On the coffee table beside his ushanka and fur-lined leather gloves was a bottle of Zarina’s best vodka, which she saved for guests, and the two crystal glasses she’d inherited from her mother. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said, noticing her eyes shift to the table, “but Stolichnaya is almost impossible to afford on a government salary. I’m wondering how it is that a secretary in the ministry of defense can afford such a luxury?”

  “It was a gift,” Zarina said, trying not to sound nervous. “Take it with you and leave. I do not drink.”

  “Don’t be so hasty. Please. Come. Sit. Allow me to make introductions.”

  Zarina remained standing, uncertain what to do. She’d long contemplated the possibility of this day, and had hoped it would never come.

  “No? Well then, I am Federov, Viktor Nikolayevich.” He gestured to the refrigerator. “And this is Volkov, Arkady Otochestovich.”

  Federov’s formal introductions did not bode well, nor did the fact that he did not bother to show Zarina his FSB credentials. Zarina felt weak in the knees but mustered defiance. “I have many friends in the ministry of defense.” She checked her watch. “One will be here at any moment, a guard.”

  “Had,” Federov said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said ‘have.’ I think you meant the past tense, which is ‘had.’ And no one is coming, Ms. Kazakova. We have watched your apartment for several weeks, and no one has yet to come. Why is that? You are single and very good-looking.” Federov reached for and poured himself a shot of vodka. He looked up at her with hardened, dark eyes. “May I?”

  “What is it you want?” she asked.

  He sat back, glass in hand. “Right to the business. Good. I like that. No wasting of time. Very well.” He raised the glass. “Za tvoyo zdarovye!” He drank, then set the glass down on the table. “Tell me, what do you know of the seven sisters?”

  The question perplexed her. “Are you mad?”

  Federov smiled. “Let us assume I am not. What do you know of them?”

  “I am not a tour guide, and I am not here to amuse you. Buy a book if you want to know. I’m sure there are many.”

  “Oh,” Federov said, uncrossing his legs. “You think I am referring to Stalin’s seven buildings. A reasonable mistake. No. I do not wish to know of buildings. I wish to know of the seven sisters, of which you are one, who have spied for the Americans for almost four decades.”

  Zarina felt a trickle of sweat roll down her back. The room had become as warm and as humid as the bus. She had never heard the term “the seven sisters” for anything but the buildings. Were there six others like her?

  “Is it hot in here?” Federov asked Volkov. “I was a bit cold, though the vodka does help.” He redirected his attention to her. After a long moment, he said, “You see, Ms. Kazakova, the other two women also claimed they, too, did not know of the seven sisters, and do you want to know something?”

  A pause. Was he expecting Zarina to answer? No words came to her. Six others like her. My God.

  “I believe them.” Federov sat back. “Arkady can be very convincing. I would also like to believe that you, too, do not know the identities of the others, but I cannot leave here without similar assurances. We all have bosses to answer to, don’t we?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Zarina said. “You’ve made a mistake. I am a secretary in the ministry of defense and have been for almost forty years. My credentials have been checked and approved dozens of times. You can confirm this.”

  “You deny the existence of the seven sisters?” Federov asked.

  “As you have defined them, I certainly do.”

  Federov picked up his gloves and hat from the table and stood. He looked grave. “To me, it is a sad song I do not wish to hear. To Arkady, your denial is music to his ears.”

  PART I

  1

  Camano Island, Washington

  Charles Jenkins dropped to a knee and picked at the leaves and twigs cluttering the two graves. It had become his routine along his five-mile morning run to visit Lou and Arnold, his two Rhodesian ridgebacks that he’d buried along the creek bed. The wooden crosses had long since been swept away when the creek had overflowed its banks. He hadn’t considered that possibility when he’d hastily buried his two boys.

  Max, his mottled female pit bull, scurried from the brush as Jenkins stood from his crouch. “Still got you though, don’t I, girl? You’re the last of the Mohicans.” Max, too, was getting long in the tooth, her coat now more gray than brown.
Jenkins couldn’t be sure of her age, having rescued her from a man who had abused her. He guessed she was at least eleven, two years older than his son, CJ. “Come on, girl. Let’s get home and see CJ off to school.”

  He picked up his pace down the gravel road, Max doing her best to keep up. He wanted to get another dog. CJ was old enough to learn responsibility by caring for an animal, but Alex was dead set against the idea with a second baby on the way, and Jenkins was smart enough not to argue with a pregnant woman.

  He walked the final ten yards, his hands clasped on his head as he sucked in the cool November air. Sweat dripped from beneath his knit cap and heavy blue sweatshirt. He ran three mornings a week—his knees wouldn’t take another day—and lifted weights in his basement. At sixty-four, he could no longer stay in shape just watching his diet. It required blood, sweat, and yes, a few tears, but after a year of intensive and consistent exercise, he was six foot five and once again 235 pounds, just ten pounds heavier than his peak weight when he’d worked as a CIA case officer in Mexico City nearly forty years ago.

  The Range Rover idled in the gravel drive of their two-story home, the engine warming while Alex conducted the daily fire drill to get CJ out of bed and out the door in time for school. This morning, a Thursday, Alex tutored students who needed help in math, which added to the stress. Jenkins made CJ’s daily lunch and ensured his backpack was organized and near the front door so he could run without feeling completely guilty.

  “CJ, come on! We’re going to be late.” Alex stood in the doorway, yelling into the house, her tone already one of exasperation.

  Jenkins heard CJ’s reply from somewhere inside. “I can’t find my soccer cleats.”

  “That’s because you left them in the car,” Jenkins said under his breath.

  “They’re in the car where you left them,” Alex shouted.

  “Do you have my lunch?” Jenkins said softly.

  “I can’t find my lunch,” CJ said. “Do you have it?”

  “Yes,” Alex said, clutching the brown paper bag.

  “Where’s your jacket?” Jenkins whispered. “I don’t need one. Yes, you do. It’s thirty-eight degrees. Grab the jacket off the hook.”