Red London (Red Widow, Band 2) - Hardcover

Buch 2 von 2: Red Widow

Katsu, Alma

 
9780593421956: Red London (Red Widow, Band 2)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593421957 ISBN 13: 9780593421956
Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

CIA agent Lyndsey Duncan's newest asset might just be her long-needed confidante...or her greatest betrayal.

After her role in taking down a well-placed mole inside the CIA, Agent Lyndsey Duncan arrives in London fully focused on her newest Russian asset, deadly war criminal Dmitri Tarasenko. That is until her MI6 counterpart, Davis Ranford, personally calls for her help.

Following a suspicious attack on Russian oligarch Mikhail Rotenberg's property in a tony part of London, Davis needs Lyndsey to cozy up to the billionaire's aristocratic British wife, Emily Rotenberg. Fortunately for Lyndsey, there's little to dissuade Emily from taking in a much-needed confidante. Even being one of the richest women in the world is no guarantee of happiness. But before Lyndsey can cover much ground with her newfound friend, the CIA unveils a perturbing connection between Mikhail and Russia's geoplitical past, one that could upend the world order and jeopardize Lyndsey's longtime allegiance to the Agency.

Red London is a sharp and nuanced race-against-the-clock story ripped from today's headlines, a testament to author Alma Katsu’s thirty-five-year career in national security. It’s a rare spy novel written by an insider that feels as prescient as it is page-turning and utterly unforgettable.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alma Katsu is the award-winning author of eight novels, most recently Red London, The Fervor, and Red Widow. Prior to the publication of her first novel, she had a thirty-five-year career as a senior intelligence analyst for several U.S. agencies, including the CIA and NSA, as well as RAND, the global policy think tank. Katsu is a graduate of the masters writing program at the Johns Hopkins University and received her bachelors degree from Brandeis University. She lives outside of Washington, DC, with her husband, where she is a consultant to government and private industry on future trends and analytic methods.

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Chapter 1

London

It starts after midnight, when most harrowing and horrifying things seem to take place.

Emily Rotenberg has been in bed for about an hour but is still awake. It takes her hours to fall asleep these days, no matter how hard she tries. And she has tried everything to fix the situation, but nothing works-not a dreary book, not prescription pills. Not even a couple glasses of wine.

Emily has no reason to believe that anything was different about this night. After all, she lives at the most desirable address in London. That's what the newspapers say, anyway: the way the media fusses over The Bishops Avenue you'd think God himself lived there. She read about the mile-long stretch just north of Hampstead Heath years before she met her husband, Mikhail, breathless stories in the color Sunday magazines when she was a little girl. It all sounded so grand, like something out of a fairy tale, and she would wonder what it would be like to live there.

She doesn't have to wonder anymore. A huge mansion on Billionaires Row is one of the things her husband, a Russian oligarch, has given her. Though she would say that the only thing of worth he's given her are the twins, Kit and Tatiana, asleep in the adjacent wing.

Mikhail is home. She knows this, even though he is not in bed with her. The fact that he's home is by no means a given: as often as not he spends the night without her at the Knightsbridge apartment, his in-town residence closer to business associates, but that night he is in the house they share. He is downstairs somewhere in the rambling mansion, still awake. The man is famous for never sleeping. When they were dating, Emily used to joke that he was secretly Count Dracula, that he slept during the day and rose refreshed and ready for an evening of wining, dining, and dancing. Though she knew that he'd been working because she saw the evidence of it in the news. He seemed to have a finger in every pie in Russia, not to mention his international interests. Mikhail Rotenberg is a machine for making money.

She hears a muffled noise toward the back of the property. That in itself is a rarity worth noting, but they do live in London, albeit a quieter, sleepier area to the north. It is a Saturday evening-technically, Sunday morning-so you can't rule out the occasional odd bit of noise. Only a curmudgeon would complain on a Saturday night.

What happens next, however, never happens.

There is a burst of gunfire.

She bolts upright in bed. It's just a couple shots but that sound is unmistakable. Pop, pop, pop. While Emily was not wealthy growing up, she came from an upper-class family. She has been to her share of hunting parties, spent many an autumn weekend slogging through the woods of a family friend's Scottish estate, a rifle in her hands, once she was old enough to participate. She wasn't a bad shot. The father had proclaimed her a natural, marked her forehead with the bright vermillion blood of the deer she'd taken down.

The gunfire tonight is nothing like the quaint old hunting rifles she'd used for pheasant or grouse. These first shots are deceptively quiet, however. Nothing like what will happen next.

She's reminded immediately of a murder on Billionaires Row she'd read about. It took place almost four decades ago, a foreign businessman shot dead in his home on New Year's Eve. What made the case so fascinating is that it didn't fit the usual pattern for home robberies. The robbers locked the wife in an upstairs bathroom instead of killing her alongside the husband. The gun used to kill the man was one of those tiny ladies' pistols, the kind that was designed to fit in an evening bag, and-curiouser still-the bullets were made of silver. This last bit makes the whole thing ludicrous, as far as Emily is concerned. They had to be decorative or a conversation piece, unless the man was suspected of being a werewolf. Somehow, the wife managed to escape from the bathroom and run for help, but the assailants were never found.

Because the wife survived, there were rumors that she was involved-of course. Even when a woman is the victim, she can't escape suspicion.

That infamous house is a few doors down. It was eventually sold and now, predictably, stands empty, another of these absentee owners who only comes to London once or twice a year.

It's the peculiar sound of the gunshots that make Emily think of the unsolved case she'd read about. Is that what the ladies' handgun sounded like, soft and dainty? Emily can't help but wonder.

Her first, wishful thought is that it has to do with one of the neighbors. Some have their own security, just as they do-though, unlike the Rotenbergs, the neighbors' security tends to amount to nothing more than one or two personal security guards. One for the husband, maybe one for the wife and children. The bodyguards are discreet and professional, almost always former military. Many are Israeli, the preferred source for security at the moment-though Mikhail uses Russians, of course. The Rotenbergs have more security than most of their neighbors, but that's only to be expected, given who Mikhail is and his special circumstances. Igor Volkov, their chief of security, lives with them. I like to keep my important people close is how Mikhail explained it to Emily when they first started dating. She'd never known anyone as wealthy as Mikhail, so she took the otherwise bizarre situation as a given, assumed that all rich people had a clutch of people following them like a comet's tail. Volkov is an old family friend, to hear Mikhail tell it, and he has been with Mikhail from the very beginning. He is only a few years older than Mikhail but looks a hundred times tougher. Tall and wiry, and covered with scars. One circles his left eye, the circumference of a beer bottle. Like most Russian males, Volkov went right into the army after school. In contrast, Mikhail, due to family connections, avoided conscription and went to college, where he started to build his business empire.

Who else is on duty? she wonders. There's always three or four twitchy young Russian men at the mansion. Emily is never told their full names and refers to them by Anglicized nicknames she gives them. That night, it is Leo, Max, and Mikey.

Then comes the second round of shots, much closer to the house and altogether different in character. They must be automatic-something the police will confirm later. Short bursts of fire-bang, bang, bang, bang-much louder now.

Emily trembles. What is going on? she asks even though deep inside, she knows. Has always been expecting this, if she is honest with herself.

Her first thought is of her babies in the children's wing. Alice Wilkinson is with them, of course, her bedroom next door to the nursery. It is her responsibility to get up in the middle of the night when one of the children coughs or cries or is wakened by a bad dream. But, given the circumstances, it doesn't matter that help is in the same room with them. A nanny isn't enough: Emily has to be with them, to make sure they are all right.

It's funny, the stupid things one does in a moment like this. She takes a few precious seconds to put on a dressing gown. In her defense, what is she wearing is rather sheer and hardly the kind of thing you want to be caught in when armed gunmen descend on your home. She hopes, as she yanks on the dressing gown and ties the belt, that she will be locked in one of the bathrooms. Maybe it is only Mikhail they want.

The house is dark. Why hasn't anyone turned on the lights? Have the burglars cut the power? You hear of robbers doing that sort of thing. Where is everyone? Igor, undoubtedly, has gone to check with his men. Two are supposed to be posted at the back of the estate, but it is ominously quiet back there....

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Verlag
G.P. Putnam's Sons
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593421957
ISBN 13 
9780593421956
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
352
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Verantwortliche Person
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