Covert One 6 - The Moscow Vector (25 page)

a big one. But I’d still like to know exactly what role you’re playing in all of this mess.” He grinned tiredly. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you —not after you saved both our necks. I’m just kind of curious about how you just happened to show up in the nick of time. Especially armed and driving a conveniently untraceable vehicle.”

“Fiona asked me to provide distant cover for her during your rendezvous with Dr. Vedenskaya,” the Russian said quietly. “I was glad to oblige her.”

“Oleg runs a private security consulting firm, mostly advising companies interested in doing business here in Moscow,” Fiona Devin explained. For the first time since their capture and narrow escape, her large eyes twinkled with mild amusement. “But he has a rather wide range of clients.”

“Including your mysterious Mr. Klein,” Kirov interjected calmly. He smiled broadly at Jon. “So once again we are colleagues.”

Smith nodded slowly again as the pieces began falling into place. The retired Russian officer was one of Fiona Devin’s Moscow assets, a member of her handpicked Covert-One team. Pensioned off or not, it was a safe bet that Kirov still had reliable friends and trusted colleagues at every level of the Russian government. No wonder she had been so confident that she could vet his list of potential sources so quickly. And no wonder she had been so sure that Elena Vedenskaya’s FSB security file had been scrubbed clean of any damaging information. How many other files had Kirov doctored before allowing himself to be purged by the Dudarev regime?

Jon studied the taller man silently for a few moments, wondering how he squared working for an American intelligence organization with the lifetime he had already spent as a faithful high-ranking officer in Russia’s army and security services. Cases of divided loyalty all too often turned sour. Men, even the best men, cracked under the strain of deciding between abstract ideals and the closer ties of blood and nationality. Without thinking about how that might sound, he said as much out loud.

“I am still a Russian patriot, Doctor,” Kirov shot back. The muscles around his jaw visibly tightened. “But I am not a blind or unthinking patriot. Dudarev and his supporters are leading the Motherland back into darkness, down an old, tyrannical path that will only bring us to disaster. So long as that is true

and so long as the real interests of my country are not damaged, I see no harm in doing what I can to help you in this matter.” He looked steadily at the American, and when he spoke again there was a distinct edge in his voice. “In the past, we have fought side by side and shed blood together, Jon. And now I ask you to put your trust in me one more time. Is that too much to expect, after all I have already risked for you—and for Ms. Devin?”

“No, it’s not,” Smith admitted, realizing abruptly that he had pushed the other man too hard. He rose to his feet so that he could look Kirov directly in the eyes. “I’m sorry, Oleg,” he said quietly, offering his hand. “It was wrong of

me to doubt either your honor or your integrity.”

“In your place, I, too, would have such questions,” the Russian assured him. “Suspicion and doubt are inherent perils in this game we play—the game of spies.”

Both plainly abashed, the two men shook hands.

“Now that you and Oleg have decided that you’re both loyal, noble, trust-worthy, and paragons of all the other virtues, do you think you could finish helping me with Dr. Vedenskaya’s notes?” Fiona asked Smith, unable to hide a bemused half-smile. She indicated the papers scattered across the coffee table. “My Russian is very good. But my knowledge of high-tech medical terminology is almost nonexistent. So unless you can explain what all these phrases mean, I’m not going to get very far in turning this material into comprehensible English.”

Smith grinned back ruefully, acknowledging the justice of her complaint.

Still faintly red with embarrassment, he sat back down on the sofa and picked up the next set of case notes. “You may fire when ready, Ms. Devin,” he told her. “Mv brain is at your service.”

With a barely suppressed chuckle, Kirov moved into the apartment’s tiny kitchen to stow their supplies. He poked his head back into the living room only long enough to ask whether anyone wanted him to make tea to help them stay awake. Both did. Once that was done, he joined them, and together they fought their way through small, dense columns of Cyrillic typescript, struggling to make sense out of the various abbreviations and bits of medical shorthand Vedenskaya and the other doctors on her team had used.

This dreary, painstaking work took hours, lasting until well into the early morning. Though difficult to read and occasionally cryptic, Vedenskaya’s notes were remarkably thorough. She had listed every conceivable particular of the first four victims—their names, ages, sex, socioeconomic status, and significant physical and mental characteristics. She had included detailed observations on the course of this mysterious disease in each person, from the first moment they were admitted to the hospital up to the very second they died.

Every test result and autopsy report was there, with all the relevant data broken out and analyzed in dozens of different ways.

At last, Smith sat back with a discouraged sigh. His reddened eyes felt as though he had been rubbing them with sandpaper, and his neck and shoulders were so sore and stiff that they ached at the slightest movement.

“Well, what do you think?” Fiona asked softly.

“That we’re no closer to understanding this puzzle than we were when we started,” he said bluntly. “These notes essentially confirm everything Petrenko told me before he died. None of the victims knew each other. They all lived in widely separated sections of Moscow or the outer suburbs. They didn’t have any common friends or acquaintances. Hell, they didn’t seem to even share any of the same kinds of life or work experiences. There’s absolutely nothing here that I can see operating as a natural vector for this illness.”

“A vector?”

“A vector is any person, animal, or microorganism that transmits a given disease,” Smith explained.

Kirov looked at him closely. “And that’s important?”

Smith nodded. “It could be very important, since it strongly suggests this disease does not have its origins in nature. Which means that whatever killed those people could have been something cooked up in a lab, either accidentally or intentionally—”

He broke off suddenly, thinking hard. His mouth compressed into a thin, grim line.

“What is it, Colonel?” Fiona asked.

“A very ugly thought,” Smith said quietly. He frowned. “Look, those affected by this outbreak seem to have been as different as any four human be-ings could possibly be, right?”

The other two nodded, puzzled.

“Well, it’s almost as if they were selected as experimental subjects—chosen to test the action of some deadly organism or process on humans of varying ages, genders, and metabolisms.”

“That is an ugly thought,” Fiona agreed soberly. Her eyebrows rose.

“You’re thinking of that rumor Vedenskaya repeated, the one about that East German scientist, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am,” Smith said. “If Wulf Renke is still alive, this first outbreak is just the sort of gruesome bioweapons test that sick son of a bitch would love to conduct.” Then his shoulders slumped. “But even considering that possibility doesn’t get us much further. I still haven’t been able to zero in on a useful pattern in these case notes. They don’t seem to contain any data that would give us a clearer idea of exactly where this illness comes from, or how it kills its victims, or even how the damned thing is transmitted.”

“Which confronts us with a disturbing paradox,” Kirov pointed out quietly.

His eyes were cold. “If these records are so useless, then why have so many been murdered to prevent you from studying them?”

February 19

Berlin

Eighteen kilometers south of the city center, Berlin’s Brandenburg International Airport was still shrouded in early morning fog when a small corporate jet touched down on Runway Twenty-Five-R. Its twin engines howled as the aircraft decelerated smoothly, rolling past rows of paired red and green lights that bordered the long strip of concrete. Halfway toward the brightly-lit terminal buildings, the jet turned off the runway, taxied to a freight apron near a huge Lufthansa maintenance hangar, and then rolled to a stop.

A black BMW sedan sat parked close by on the gleaming, wet tarmac.

Four lean, fit men wearing heavy overcoats and fur hats disembarked from the aircraft and strode quickly toward the waiting automobile. Each of them carried a lightweight overnight bag, but no other luggage. Their cold, hard eyes were constantly in motion, checking and rechecking their surroundings for potential threats or any other signs of trouble.

A fifth man, this one shorter, heavier-set, and somewhat older, came forward from the BMW to meet them. He offered their leader a cool, correct nod. “Welcome to Germany, mein Hen. How is Moscow these days?”

“Gold and dark,” Gerhard Lange said bleakly. “Just like here.” He looked down at the older man. “Have our immigration and customs clearances been granted?”

“Everything is arranged. The authorities will make no difficulties,” the other man assured him.

“Excellent.” The slim, ex-Stasi officer nodded in satisfaction. “And the special equipment we will need? You have it?”

“In the trunk,” the heavyset man told him.

“Show me.”

The older man led Lange and the three members of his team around to the back of the BMW. He unlocked the large trunk with a flourish and stood aside, allowing them to examine the contents of the five metal cases stacked inside.

Lange smiled grimly as he noted the array of lethal weaponry secured in four of the five carrying cases: Heckler & Koch submachine guns, H&K and Walther-manufactured pistols, spare ammunition, blocks of plastic explosives, detonators, and timing devices. The fifth contained sets of body armor, communications gear, black jumpsuits, assault vests, and forest-green berets similar to those worn by Germay’s elite GSG-9 antiterrorist detachment. Glearly, Brandt was taking no chances. His hunter-killer team would be equipped for almost every conceivable contingency.

“Do you have a target yet?” the heavyset man asked curiously.

Lange’s thin mouth tightened. “Not yet.” Frowning, he closed the trunk and stepped back. “But I expect to receive our next set of orders from Moscow very soon.”

Near the Kazakhstan-Russo Border

A range of low, barren hills rose north of the Derkul River. There were a few scattered stands of stunted trees crowning the heights, but most of the shallow slopes were open ground, covered only by a carpet of long dry grass. Across the river, the terrain flattened out, spreading south and east beyond the distant

horizon. This was the northwestern edge of the vast steppes that made up so much of Kazakhstan.

Spetsnaz Senior Lieutenant Yuri Timofeyev lay concealed in the tall dead grass just below the crest of one of the low hills. The muted tan and brown patterns of his camouflage smock and hood blended almost perfectly with the natural cover, rendering him effectively invisible to anyone more than twenty meters away. He peered through his binoculars, again scanning the highway and railroad running parallel to the river below them.

After a minute, he lowered his binoculars and glanced at the man next to him. “Time: 0700 hours. I see two ten-ton trucks, both civilian, and one bus, mostly full. There is also a black Volga sedan, probably an official vehicle of some sort. They are all moving east toward Ural’sk at around eight}- kilometers an hour. There is nothing coming west just now.”

His companion, Warrant Officer Pausin, obediently jotted down his find-ings in a small notebook, adding them to the long list detailing the vehicle and rail traffic they had observed over the past forty-eight hours. “Got it, sir,”

he muttered.

“How much longer do we have to sit on our asses here, counting goddamned cars and locomotives?” groused a third Spetsnaz soldier, this one concealed a few meters off to the side. He cradled a short-barreled AKSU-74

submachine gun, a cut-down variant of the standard Russian assault rifle.

“As long as I say so, Ivan,” Timofeyev told him bluntly. Then he shrugged.

“And I say we stay here until headquarters sends me new orders on this little machine.” He gently patted the long-range portable radio set up beside him in the withered grass.

The three Russian commandos, all hard-bitten veterans of the endless fighting in Chechnya, were members of a special long-range reconnaissance group. They had slipped across the border with Kazakhstan two nights ago and established this hidden observation post overlooking the junction of two major roads and the only major stretch of railroad along the northwest Kazakh frontier. Their orders were to monitor all traffic moving on those lines of communication, paying special attention to any military or border patrol units. So far they had seen very few. Most of Kazakhstan’s small, poorly equipped army was stationed far to the east, along its border with the People’s Republic of China.

“It’s still a waste of time,” the third soldier, a sergeant named Belukov complained, still clearly unhappy and bored.

“Would you rather be out chasing after the Mujs?” Pausin asked with a grin, referring to the tough Chechen guerrilla fighters.

“Christ, no,” Belukov admitted with a shiver. Their last combat tour in Chechnya had been a prolonged nightmare, full of sudden, vicious ambushes and costly hit-and-run raids by both warring sides. “But I don’t see the point of

this reconnaissance. The only way this crap makes sense is if we’re going to invade. And why should we bother fighting over this dump?” He waved a hand over the desolate, empty steppe stretching off into the gray, half-lit distance.

“Because Kazakhstan once was ours. Nearly half of those who live here are ethnic Russians, people of our own kindred,” Timofeyev said quietly. “And because it is sitting on huge deposits of oil, natural gas, bauxite, gold, chrome ore, and uranium —all the precious stuff President Dudarev’s dreams are made of—”