Page 18 of Denied Access (Mitch Rapp #24)

M OSCOW , R USSIA

K RIS Henrik pulled her shawl tighter as she fought off a shiver.

A gust of wind howled down Klimentovskiy Pereulok sending bits of trash tumbling across the narrow pedestrian walkway.

The morning had seemed mild enough when she’d dressed for the outing, but the weather, as with everything else in Moscow, could not be trusted.

Where before the sun had streamed down from a perfectly blue sky, clouds the color of the gray stone walkway now gathered overhead.

Temps had dropped noticeably in the last thirty minutes and the breeze that ruffled her skirt and gripped her bare skin with icy fingers came more frequently.

The slate sky suggested that rain was imminent, or perhaps even sleet.

In Moscow, one never really knew.

Kris suppressed another shiver and recrossed her long legs. The plunging mercury or the foreboding wind could have been the cause of her discomfort, but they were not. Kris had to suppress the urge to shiver for another reason altogether.

She was terrified.

“Would you like my coat?”

“No, thank you.”

Kris tempered her response with a warm smile at odds with her thundering heart.

At five foot ten with shoulder-length auburn hair, green eyes, and a collegiate athlete’s physique, Kris was accustomed to standing out in a crowd.

Though it had been ten years since she’d served her last point for the Ohio State University volleyball team, she still exercised daily.

Physical activity had long been her method of dealing with stress—something that wasn’t exactly in short supply in Moscow.

Kris had hit her growth spurt in high school and had for a time slouched and stooped so that she wouldn’t tower over her friends or even potential boyfriends.

She’d detested the way both her flame-colored hair and stature made her stick out in a crowd, but a full ride to a Division 1 college helped change her perspective.

Meeting Barry her freshman year solidified that change.

Her football-playing boyfriend’s broad shoulders towered above her and she loved living life at his side.

Kris still wasn’t the life of the party, but neither was she a wallflower.

Marrying Barry had brought her a wonderful sense of balance.

Until Moscow.

“Please, take it. A beautiful girl like you should not be shivering on a cold bench.”

In a nod to the burgeoning influx of Western tourists, the bench in question sat adjacent to a two-story building that doubled as a fast-food eatery and gift shop.

The north side of the east-west-running Klimentovskiy Pereulok was resplendent with such establishments along with an assortment of cafés, gift shops, and the like.

All of these commercial entities lived in service to the main attraction, which sat on the southern side of the pedestrian walkway just across from Kris’s bench—an iconic red and white building topped with five unmistakable domes.

Kris smiled again, looking past the man standing over her to the doorway of the church behind him.

The doorway through which she was expecting Barry to appear.

“Quite beautiful, isn’t it?” the man said, shrugging out of his coat. “St. Clement’s Church is one of the wonders of our city.” Settling onto the bench next to her, he draped his jacket across her bare legs. “There—that’s better now, isn’t it?”

Though the heavy coat did feel nice, things were not better.

Not by a long shot.

The man’s appearance alone should not have elicited feelings of uneasiness.

He was dressed in a suit of impeccable tailoring and his black shoes shone with polish.

Though he appeared to be in his seventies, he was still trim, with an erect bearing and confident movements.

His full head of gray hair seemed at odds with his black bushy eyebrows, but his lined face spoke of wisdom rather than age.

His eyes sparkled and his smile was kind.

He could have been someone’s favorite grandfather.

Could have been.

But for all his outward signs of normalcy, something about the man’s presence had Kris on edge.

For one, he’d switched to English even though she knew her Russian was perfectly understandable.

And while the man’s attention wasn’t desirable per se, it did serve a purpose.

Or rather it confirmed Kris was serving her purpose.

She was seated on the bench wearing a skirt several inches short of her knee in questionable weather for a reason.

Kris was the distraction.

Unfortunately, the person for whom she was serving as a distraction was late.

And spies were never late.

“Thank you,” Kris said, resisting the urge to glance at her watch, “but I need to be going.”

“So soon? But the church is right here, and you haven’t even been inside.”

The statement was delivered with an odd certainty.

Kris had done a two-year stint as a missionary in Siberia after college.

She and Barry had thought they would spend the rest of their lives sharing the Gospel with the Russian people.

She knew a thing or two about fending off advances from Russian men, but this gentleman took things to a new level.

It was almost as if he’d been watching her since she’d taken a seat on the bench in the then-warm sunshine thirty minutes ago.

Maybe he had.

“My husband is the architecture buff,” Kris said, getting to her feet. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”

“You’re being modest. Barry Henrik wrote his dissertation on the architectural styles of Byzantine and Gothic churches. Your husband is one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic. Among other things.”

The man’s familiarity with Barry should have unsettled Kris even more, but it didn’t. Perhaps because her fight-or-flight response was focused on something else—the cold fingers wrapped around her biceps like bands of steel.

“Let go of me,” Kris said, attempting to pull away.

“I think not.”

The man wrenched her biceps downward. Burning needles exploded the length of her arm and into her shoulder. She gasped as the man transferred his grip to her collarbone and she involuntarily plopped back onto the bench to stop the pain.

“That’s better. Can’t have you running off, now can I? Especially since we’ve just met.”

“My… husband… is… coming.” Kris grunted each word between clenched teeth. Though she was less than half his age, Kris couldn’t move. The joint lock forced her to bend double in order to ease stress on her shoulder. “Help me. Please!”

Kris had the presence of mind to make the plea in Russian, but her quick thinking didn’t yield the results she’d imagined. Rather than the sound of footfalls announcing the approach of a Good Samaritan, she heard something else.

Laughter.

“You still have some things to learn about my country, my dear. Things not covered in textbooks or language classes. The Russian people are proud, but practical. A proud man might come to the aid of a beautiful woman screaming for help. A practical one knows better. Especially when the person causing that woman to scream is a lieutenant general in the Federal Counterintelligence Service.”

His words almost made her forget the tongues of fire burning up her arm. She had guessed that he might be Russian intelligence, but supposing something to be true and knowing it were two different things. “What do you want?” Kris said, hating the way her voice quavered.

“Exactly what you’re giving me. I apologize for the unpleasantness. It shouldn’t be long now. Ah, yes. Here we are.”

Kris couldn’t make sense of the Russian’s words.

Then again, it was hard to concentrate on anything beyond the agony enveloping her arm and shoulder.

Unlike Barry, her collegiate area of study had been more sensible—sports medicine.

Her plans to become a physical therapist hadn’t materialized, but she’d done enough practicums to recognize what was happening to her shoulder.

If the man didn’t ease the pressure he was exerting on the joint, her rotator cuff might tear.

As if hearing her thoughts, the pressure on her shoulder vanished.

Kris nearly sobbed with relief.

Nearly.

Until the agony that had enveloped her shoulder reappeared elsewhere.

As if he were scruffing a feral cat, the Russian grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head backward. Kris gasped and reached for the intelligence officer’s hand only to have her wrist snared in another joint lock.

“Just a moment or two more, my dear. A little to the left, please.”

The hand holding her hair jerked to the right, which turned her face left, bringing a familiar person into view. Someone stood in the center of the pedestrian walkway, flanked by a pair of Russians.

Barry .

The look of horror on her husband’s face quickly transformed into rage. She tried to call out to him, but the Russian chose that moment to viciously yank her hair.

Her words came out a sob.

Something pricked her neck.

She felt a rush of cold.

Then, nothing.