Final Epidemic (11 page)

“Hello, Alexi. No, just not as flexible as I used to be.” Beck eyed the collar insignia on the crisp uniform. “A General, I see. Last time I saw you, weren’t you a Lieutenant Commander? In the Russian
Navy
?”

Alexi looked down at his tunic, and shook his head mock sadly.

“True. And I much preferred the Navy’s taste in fashion. But what is there to be done, my friend? In our business, I have found it valuable to stay flexible.”

He made a gesture, and the blond Russian quickly helped Beck strip off the G-harness. Malenkov watched with polite interest as Beck unzipped the Nomex flight suit, peeling himself out of it like an arthritic snake shedding skin.

“ ‘Iowa State,’ ” Malenkov read aloud, and pursed his lips theatrically. “Perhaps I could lend you something a little more . . .
formal,
my friend?” He shrugged at Beck’s expression. “No matter, eh? So. Your pilot will stay here; there are accommodations waiting. We have business to do. Come.”

As Beck settled in to the rear of the auto, Malenkov spoke to the driver in Russian.

“Yehat ’k Kremlin,”
he said.

Beck automatically translated:
To the Kremlin.

The trip from Sheremetyevo to the center of Moscow is no more than twenty miles, but it can take as long as two hours—unless, that is, one is a passenger in a state vehicle
equipped with a siren. Cars swerved aside to let them pass, some with alacrity and others with a studied indifference to the show of official impatience.

The back seat of the Zil was spacious. Beck stretched his legs, feeling his muscles threaten mutiny as he did. Outside on the right, they were passing what appeared to be a forest of massive concrete obelisks: concrete antitank hedgehogs arranged as a monument to the counteroffensive that sent Hitler’s supermen reeling more than a half century earlier.

“I have missed you, Beck,” Malenkov said.

“Three years is a long time, Alexi. Director of state security; you’ve done well for yourself.”

“Bah.” Malenkov tried to look humble, and failed utterly. “I have become a bureaucrat—the type of person that as field operatives, we both loved to hate.”

There was an extended silence that threatened to become awkward.

“Your last visit to my country—” Malenkov frowned and shook his head. “Well, it is of no matter now. Necessary evils, eh?”

He lit a cigarette, without which no Russian feels complete. It was a Russian brand, the kind with the long cardboard tube that serves as a holder. Malenkov inhaled deeply of the fragrant smoke, and blew it toward the roof with obvious satisfaction.

“I myself have always feared torture,” Alexi continued conversationally. “I knew that I would be unable to resist. In the end, one always talks, yes?”

“Of course you talk,” Beck said tightly. “You answer every damned question they ask. If you don’t know, you make up the answers that you think they want to hear. And finally, when they run out of questions, you tell them everything else I . . . you can think of.”

“Ah, Beck—you are upset. I apologize. I thought it would be perhaps therapeutic, to talk of these things. And I
am frankly curious. Few men survive an abduction by the
Mafiya
.”

Beck looked out the car window.

“Alexi, we’ve known each other a long time. I even enjoy your company. Sometimes, you’re so affable that I tend to forget what I know about you.”

“And that is?”

“That you were a KGB thug before you started shaving. You’re old school, Alexi—we both are, so please don’t tell me how uninformed you are about the
Mafiya
. Half of the people who wired me up like a science project were working in your
Direktorate
back in the early ’nineties. Now they’re
Mafiya
.”

“Yes,” Alexi agreed. “A sad commentary, how many of these criminals are former KGB men.”

“And so convenient. They have such excellent contacts throughout your armaments industries. Even in those parts of it that make biological weapons.”

Malenkov shrugged expansively.

“It is difficult to restrain commerce, my friend. Many countries seek such items. It is unrealistic to think that the less idealistic of my countrymen would not attempt to fill this demand. That they did so as . . .
private
businessmen—well, neither is that particularly difficult to understand. The state could no longer afford their services, so they became entrepreneurs.”

“It’s always valuable for a government to stay close to its business community. To work in each other’s interests, so to speak. Of course, the relationship was very fortunate for me.”

“Beck, we
bought
you from them,” Alexi said, as if he was explaining to a child. “You awakened in a Moscow hospital. Did you think the gentlemen of our
Mafiya
were so considerate?”

“I always wondered about that,” Beck said. “It wasn’t as if the CIA was working overtime on my behalf.”

Alexi laughed, and to Beck it sounded like genuine amusement.

“No, except for the usual inquiries between diplomats, the CIA was surprisingly inactive. While there were those in my government who wished simply to let the filthy
govnos
leave your body in Gorky Park, your survival was the result of Russian humanitarianism.”

“I’m honored.”

“You should feel so. Though, I admit, we did purchase several hours of audio recordings made during your . . . interviews. There was some official curiosity as to your presence in my country, you see. After all, my friend—a year earlier, you did arrange the defection of Comrade Alibelikov.”

“He defected on his own, Alexi.”

“If you say so. Still, it was quite embarrassing—having the head of our bioweapon program suddenly surface in Langley, telling your CIA all of our little secrets. Some of my people blamed you. Some continue to do so, I fear.”

He lit another cigarette from the still-burning ember of his first.

“Now, your family. Your daughter, how is she?—young Katherine. Little Katie—but no. She can be no longer little. She must be what now? Fourteen years?”

“Fifteen,” Beck said. “She lives with her mother. In Virginia, across the river from D.C.”

“Yes. Your divorce is known to us. So sad. I am divorced myself—two times, and I do not expect my current wife to be my last. It is the nature of our business, no?”

“I don’t believe in divorce, Alexi.”

“Nor did my first wife, my friend. But only one of the two parties is required to do so, yes?”

“Perhaps.”

“Ah, I see.” Alexi nodded. “When I heard that you had left the employ of the CIA—well, had I believed it to be so, I would have been much saddened. Do not smile; in truth, our
profession is populated with so many unimaginative brutes. On both sides, do you not agree? They see only what is on the surface; so superficial, so boring. You were so . . . so
unpredictable,
my friend!”

He leaned forward confidentially. “You will enjoy this, Beck: I was once told, in all seriousness, that you were believed to be possessed of
psychic
abilities. This, in an official KGB assessment. Ah, you laugh. So did I. I told them, no—Beck Casey is no wizard. He is merely a genius, I said, adept in analyzing what to most would be meaningless trivia. And in jumping to the most startling conclusions—many of which happened to be frighteningly accurate. I told them that you were most likely an idiot savant—that it was doubtful you yourself understood the mechanics of what you did. Oh, yes. You were quite a puzzlement to us, Beck.”

Alexi sat back, a doleful expression on his features.

“And now you are—what, teaching history to children? A man with your gifts, a man with such value to his government. I am to seriously believe this?”

“Please don’t tell me that you people stopped keeping files,” Beck said. “That would truly break my heart, Alexi, lying to me like that.”

“Files,” Malenkov said, and waved his hand dismissively. “We need no files to tell our stories. We know each other too well. I still do not believe you are ‘retired,’ but it is a path you should consider with much seriousness. No, my friend, do not look at me like that. To play this game of ours, one must be ruthless and single-minded. This, you were never. Competent, yes. But not without scruples, and that is your failing.”

Beck smiled. “After all we’ve been through. I’m hurt, Alexi, deeply wounded.”

The Russian laughed. “I do not complain about this defect of yours, Beck. Had you been ruthless, you would have killed me. Remember? As you did poor stupid Borelovich, four years ago.”

“Yes,” said Beck. “At the cemetery.”

“Did you know that those cemeteries grew out of another plague?” Alexi Malenkov asked. “Yes. In 1771, almost sixty thousand Muscovites died of the Black Death. It was forbidden to bury the victims within the city limits, so the bodies were taken to fields forty kilometers from the Kremlin’s walls. Thus were established Danilovskoye, Kalitnikovskoye and Vagankovskoye. Our three great cities of the dead.”

He drew again on the cigarette, and exhaled a prodigious amount of tobacco smoke.

“Well. Now Moscow may surpass them all, if what I am told about this virus is accurate. Since last we spoke to your CDC, we have confirmed another thirty-six cases of this ‘flu.’ That makes seventy-seven cases in all, and the number of deaths is now up to twenty-two.”

“We have two deaths, out of two confirmed cases.”

“Pardon me, but it is now three deaths and six confirmations. So far. We received word while you were in the air.”

“Bad time to be in Florida,” Beck said, and paused. “Or Moscow. Alexi, did this thing start here? Is this virus one of yours?”

Malenkov shook his head.

“Our virologists say no,” he said. “The genome sequencing is wrong. There, you see, I have no secrets from you. I have admitted that my country possesses such things. This is not a time for the usual games, you see.”

Outside the window, the roadway was now lined with ugly apartment buildings that resembled badly molded children’s blocks. Beck could see that they were making good time. Moscow sits within five concentric rings of roadways, like a bull’s-eye with the Red Square at the center; this was the first ring, and very soon they would traverse to a four-lane they would follow to the Kremlin. As if reading his thoughts, the Zil turned right onto a ramp that curved to meet yet another roadway. At this rate, Beck knew they would be at their destination in less than fifteen minutes.

Malenkov crushed out the cigarette, then leaned toward Beck and patted his knee.

“It has been too long, my friend,” Alexi Malenkov said. “And what a hell of a way to renew our acquaintance, is it not?”

“I am very happy that you are not hiding anything, Alexi. But I do have one concern.”

Malenkov shook his head in mock disappointment. “And that is?”

“You’ve assured me that this virus isn’t one of yours,” Beck said. “But why aren’t you asking me if it is one of ours?”

Moscow
July 22

The Zil swept into the Kremlin, avoiding the main Trinity Gate used by most visitors in preference for a more discreet entrance closer to the Presidium, which houses the Russian governmental offices. Slowing only slightly, the vehicle turned right, past the great bell towers and cathedrals and armory.

Immediately, Beck could sense the tension that gripped the vast fortress of the czars. Normally, on a fine summer’s day like this, throngs of tourists would be milling about the various courtyards and parade grounds in T-shirts and shorts, buying photo postcards or admiring in various languages the eighteen minarets that stood graceful sentinel around the triangular walls.

Today, no tourists were to be seen.

Instead, there were armed men everywhere—not the ceremonial guards dressed in Cossack costumes for the benefit of the foreign tourists, but soldiers in full battle dress whose posture and attitude displayed the casual toughness of the professional warrior. Nor were any pikes, ornate sabers or even fancifully engraved matchlock rifles in evidence; each of these troopers, Beck noted, carried the far less elegant but
much faster firing AK-47. In addition, from each web harness hung a ceremonial knife, a stiletto with an ornate haft.

And that spells elite unit,
he thought,
probably paratroop or even Spetznaz.

Alexi Malenkov saw Beck’s eyes scan the courtyard and correctly guessed his thoughts.

“Yes, there are more soldiers here than is usual,” Alexi said. “Officially, the large number of soldiers throughout the city has been attributed to ceremonial requirements. Today we have yet another anniversary of the Great Patriotic War; Putin even placed a wreath somewhere, I believe.”

“You can’t believe you can keep this a secret, Alexi.”

“There has as yet been no official announcement of the situation, and our media is being uncommonly cooperative in—how did I phrase the directive? Ah, yes—‘in not spreading rumors that might encourage civil disruption.’ All has been very orderly, so far. But even so—yes, there has been talk in the streets. The kettle is boiling, and it is always best to be prepared.”

They turned a corner and the car skidded to a stop on the cobbled pavement. Opening his door, the Russian motioned for Beck to follow.

The location was correct for the presidential residence. But instead of the expanse of yellow-white marble and faux-Romanov architecture, a vast olive green canopy of rubberized fabric was tented over the entrance. To Beck, it looked not unlike the massive shrouds used in the States for building fumigation.

Two no-nonsense guards, assault rifles at the ready, flanked a clear plastic flap that served as the only entry. If they noticed Alexi’s badge of rank, they gave no indication of deference. One of them carefully checked Malenkov’s ID against a computer-printed list, then keyed a radio handset.

As they waited, Beck noticed the sign affixed to a stanchion.
CONSTRUCTION
—
KEEP AWAY
, it said in five languages, with the Russian added seemingly as an afterthought—it
was, he thought, at best a transparent attempt to explain away the extraordinary activity.