Savage Blood: Ryan Savage Thriller Series | Book 9 by Hardin Jack

Author:Hardin, Jack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Salty Mangrove Press
Published: 2021-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

The transatlantic flight from D.C. to Russia took nearly thirteen hours. By the time our airplane got wheels down at Pulkovo International Airport, the sun had already set over eastern Europe and the city of Saint Petersburg was aglow, an invaluable number of lights illuminating the darkness for the city’s six million inhabitants.

Charlotte and I disembarked and cleared customs without incident. Russia maintains a restrictive visa regime, generally requiring a minimum two-week wait for a visitor visa application to clear. Thankfully, we had a magic bullet. Kathleen had put in a call to a higher-up at the State Department, and within twelve hours had secured three visas for Charlotte, Brad, and me.

Our stated purpose for the visit was to advise a crew of U.S. cinematographers on a documentary they were currently filming at the Peterhof Palace. The Russian Tourism Bureau had pushed hard for our visas to be approved, as they were the agency who requested the documentary to be made and were financing most of the cost. The visa, however, had come with a strictly enforced duration: we had to be out of the country within seventy-two hours. That wasn’t much time, given that all I had was the name of a man that Oleg Zaboltny had given me—the only person I knew who might be familiar with Ivanov’s connections and networks.

I had to trust my gut. Over the years it had been right more times than it had been wrong. Training and skills can only take you so far; sometimes you have to trust that part of you that offers no rationale and no proof for what it’s prompting you to do. My intuition had brought me here, and I couldn’t shake the sense that something foul was stewing in Ivanov’s mind. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to take down a man like him, to get him behind bars with enough proof levied against him that he never saw the light of day again.

I picked up the keys to the rental car, and then Charlotte and I made our way to the terminal parking lot. We got into the car, exited the airport, and merged onto the freeway, blending with traffic as we took it out of the city. The airport was positioned on the south end of the city sprawl, and our destination was an additional thirty kilometers south of that, outside the secluded village of Pudost.

“Have you ever been here?” I asked.

“Not to Saint Petersburg, no. My parents and I visited Moscow after I graduated high school. I did my senior paper on the tactics used by the NKVD, Stalin’s secret police. Before I went off to college, I wanted to visit some of the places I had read about.”

“You did your senior thesis on the NKVD? That’s…” I searched for the right word.

“Odd?” she smiled. “It’s okay, you can say it.”

“Okay. It is odd. And kind of cool.”

“Dad was a military investigator. He always had a personal interest in understanding how secret police organizations like the NKVD and the Stasi operated.

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