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They probably had two days, maybe three, until the SUV was reported stolen.
He’d take what he could get. They wouldn’t be in Tomsk long.
Ethan pulled up the address a friend at the FBI had emailed him. “Well, not really a friend,” Ethan had said. “Smithson owes me a few favors, though.”
In minutes, they were driving down the Bogashevskiy Trakt toward Tomsk’s city center and the Siberian State Medical University.
“Dr. Katina Sevastyanov,” Ethan said, reading off his phone as Jack drove. “She’s the daughter of General Igor Sevastyanov. CIA didn’t have anything in the records for General Sevastyanov, at least not that Smithson could access. But he did find Katina. She’s an epidemiologist and teaches at the university. She lives on campus in faculty housing.” He reread her address.
“So how are we doing this?” Blake leaned forward, hugging his backpack in his lap. Russian SUVs were far smaller than American ones. “Walk up and ask her if her dad is dead?”
“Ethan and I will talk to her,” Jack said. “Blake, Pete, you two keep watch on the street. Luke, be ready in the car if we need to get out of there fast.”
Welby nodded, and the rest of the drive passed quietly as Blake and Pete tried to catch up on sleep but inevitably descended into bitching about the weather, the cramped car, their bags in their laps and under their feet, and anything else that came to mind. Jack met Welby’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Welby shook his head faintly and gave Jack a ghost of a smile.
Siberian State Medical University could have been transplanted from Austria or France or Switzerland. Built in the late 1800s, it looked like a slice of classic Europe. Amid wooden churches and endless forests and the sprawl of a Siberian frontier town, what looked like Versailles rose before them on the left as they drove up Lenin Avenue. Tomsk Polytechnic passed by them in a blur.
Jack turned left on Moskovskiy Trakt and parked by the iron gates to the medical school. “Faculty housing faces the park inside the school.” The building was shaped like a horseshoe, opening up to a courtyard and facing the university gardens, bursting with summer flowers.
He and Ethan walked away first, leaving Pete and Blake stretching as they took in the nearly empty street. Students milled on the cobbled sidewalks, clutching laptop bags and cups of coffee, laughing as they strolled. “Clear out front,” Jack heard in his earpiece from Pete. “We’re following you now.”
Dr. Sevastyanov lived in a row of narrow Russian townhomes carved out of the university. This one was painted yellow with a mix of decorative accents from Europe and Russia that made it look like a summertime gingerbread house.
“Ready?” Ethan asked. Jack nodded.
They knocked and waited on the doorstep, eyeing the flowerpots clustered on the patio. Sunflowers seemed to have flown face-first at roses and combined in the wreckage. Sunflowers bloomed with rose petals, and roses grew to sunflower width, opening brazenly toward the sky in a way a rose never would.
Slowly, the front door creaked open.“Ya mogu vam pomoch?”a woman asked. She was slight and fine boned, her dark hair braided over her shoulder, threads of silver starting to snake through the strands. Her face was porcelain smooth, almost like a doll’s, but her eyes were pinched and filled with a weariness that seemed to take over her being.
“Yes, if you please,” Jack answered in Russian. “You are Dr. Katina Igorovna Sevastyanov?”
She nodded.
“We would love your help, Doctor. We’re looking for information on your father, General Sevastyanov—”
“Have you found something?” Katina pulled the door open, staring at them with painful hope on her fragile face. Jack’s heart twanged, a guitar string snapping. “Do you have more information? It’s only been one day.”
Jack frowned. “What do you mean, one day?”
“Yesterday, another man came about my father. I thought it was about the missing person’s report I filed, but he said he hadn’t heard of my report.” She scowled. “But now you’re here. Did he send you? Did you find something?”
Ethan’s stare bore into Jack’s as Jack quickly translated for him.
“I’m sorry for the confusion, Doctor,” Jack said. “It seems we’ve crossed paths on our investigation. Can you tell me who came to see you yesterday about your father? We’ll reach out to him and compare our notes.”
“Yes, of course.” Katina disappeared into her small home. She didn’t invite them in. A moment later, she reappeared with a business card. She held it to her chest. “The man yesterday was asking me questions about my father’s work in the army. I wanted to talk about the investigation. I wanted to know what they had found out. But he had no idea what I was asking about. You, though, you’re working on his investigation, yes?”
“Your father’s missing person's investigation?” Jack prodded. Katina nodded. “Doctor, when did your father go missing again?”
“I put it all in my report. He went missing one month ago.”
“One month?” Jack repeated. Again, he translated quickly for Ethan.
“Da, one month.” Katina frowned. “This is all in my report—”
“Do you speak English, Dr. Sevastyanov? I’d like to ask a few questions,” Ethan said.
“I do.” Her eyes narrowed. “Where are you from?”
