Rules of Vengeance (50 page)

“So now you’re an expert? You were a decoy. That’s what you were. I was the one who convinced that bunch of doctors in London to book you as their speaker. I allowed you to follow me. I knew I couldn’t blow that car bomb without being spotted. I needed something to take the English police off my trail. It made things easier for me if they were wasting their resources following you.” She checked her wristwatch. “Now get out of here—”

Just then there was a terrific explosion. The entire building shuddered for several seconds, and one of the massive overhead lamps snapped and dropped into the cooling pond. Jonathan fell to a knee, almost toppling into the water. The lights flickered. Giant bubbles rose to the surface of the water. A Klaxon began to wail. Jonathan stood shakily, observing the bubbles that continued to break the surface. He noted with alarm that the water level in the pool was sinking rapidly. Deep below the surface, he could see a gaping hole in the wall where the water was escaping.

Finding his balance, he ran to the far end of the building, where Emma was rising to her feet. “Get up,” he said, grabbing her arms and lifting her. “Turn off the bomb.”

Emma struggled to free herself from his grip. “I can’t do that,” she said, knocking him away.

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“Take your pick.”

Jonathan stared at her, seeing her for the first time as she really was. “What kind of monster are you?”

The words ricocheted off Emma, and despite a sudden tic pulling at the corners of her mouth, she might not have heard them. “Get out of here. You still have time. Do you know what will happen when the water dips below the rods? The second the uranium is exposed, it will cook off and bombard this place with gamma radiation. You’ll be roasted like a Christmas goose inside a minute.”

“And what about that one?” said Jonathan, pointing at the box at Emma’s feet.

“That one takes everything up with it. The exposed rods, the building. Everything. Now go.”

But Jonathan stayed put. He looked at his wife and realized that she was a stranger. “Help me, Emma. You can turn off that device. I know you. I know you don’t mean to do this.”

“No, Jonathan, you don’t.”

And then Emma turned and ran away from him, pushing open the nearest door. For a moment he caught her silhouette in the sunlight, and then, without looking back, she was gone.

Jonathan got down on his knees beside the black box. An LED timer on its cover read
1:26. 1:25
. He ran his fingers around its sides, but he was unable to feel any hinges or see any screws. No one had bothered searching him since he’d left Paris, and he still had the Swiss Army knife he’d carried for twenty years in his left pocket. Freeing the main blade, he tried to slip it beneath the LED panel. At first it resisted, but he gave the knife an angry shove and the blade slid in. He hammered the knife with his fist, but instead of the LED panel flipping open to reveal its controls, the entire panel popped free of the box, revealing three wires—one red, one blue, one green—running into the interior of the device.

Years ago he’d accompanied a UN team on a mine-clearing operation in Angola. He’d paid close attention as the engineers had located the mines, cleared the dirt, then carefully unscrewed the base plates. They were Russian antipersonnel mines, and each time the engineers had disarmed them simply by snipping the yellow wire connecting the pressure pad to the detonator. But Emma’s bomb had none of those things. No yellow wire, no pressure pad, and no detonator.

His eyes rose to the pool. The water had descended a full 2 meters from the lip of the tile. At most, another 2 meters of water covered the tips of the fuel rods. The blue glow radiated stronger, more malignant than ever.

He looked back at the bomb.

:45
.

Jonathan removed the scissors from the body of the knife. He probed each wire, unsure what would happen if he cut any of them. Detonators functioned by delivering a charge to a blasting cap, which in turn ignited the explosive, resulting in a blast. The idea was to cut the wire that delivered that initial charge, thus rendering the blasting cap inert. He didn’t know if cutting any of them would result in an instantaneous detonation.

:20

He placed the scissors around the blue wire, then changed his mind and positioned them around the red wire.

:10

He snipped, but the wire did not cut. He pressed harder, but still the blades did not penetrate the plastic sheathing.

:05

Using both hands, he tried again, harnessing all his strength in his fingers. The wire began to give. He watched as the numbers ticked down, pressing the scissors harder still until the hard metal cut into his fingers. He glimpsed a filament of copper and mustered a final effort.

:00

The scissors sliced through the wire.

Jonathan collapsed on his haunches, staring at the LED’s glaring red digits, at the black metallic box that had not exploded. Or had he in fact beaten the clock? He was too lightheaded to know either way.

He looked at the pool. The crystal-clear water had descended below the level of the titanium holding racks to the very tips of the fuel rods. As if sensing the presence of oxygen, the rods appeared to pulsate.

And there the water stopped.

The water level fell below the jagged hole made by the first bomb. Thirty centimeters, no more, remained above the uranium rods, but 30 centimeters was enough. No more water could escape the cooling pond.

The door through which Emma had fled opened. Colonel Graves and DCI Ford entered the building, followed by a dozen commandos and the plant manager. Jonathan counted at least ten machine guns pointed directly at him and decided it might be wise to stay where he was.

Graves took in Jonathan and his bloody hands and the partially dismantled bomb situated between his knees. Then he extended a hand and helped Jonathan to his feet. “We saw everything from the monitors in the reactor control room.”

“I thought I could talk her out of it,” said Jonathan.

Graves considered this, but offered no comment.

Kate Ford stepped forward, put an arm across Jonathan’s back, and guided him toward the exit. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” she said.

Jonathan halted. “Where is she?” he asked.

Graves looked at Ford, then back at him, and Jonathan braced himself for the news. But Graves just shook his head. “We haven’t found her yet. But don’t worry. We’re searching the complex. She can’t have gotten far.”

Jonathan nodded. She was gone, and they all knew it. He looked over his shoulder at the gaping hole torn out of the wall of the stainless steel pool. “It wasn’t low enough,” he said, almost to himself. “The water never exposed the rods.”

“What’s that?” asked Graves. “Didn’t catch what you said.”

But Jonathan didn’t answer. Suddenly he felt too tired to explain.

“Let’s go,” said Kate. “We have a plane to catch back to London.”

“Do I have a choice?” asked Jonathan.

“Hell, no,” said Graves. “If you think this clears you of anything, you’re sorely mistaken.”

   One hour later, Sir Anthony Allam, director general of MI5, picked up the phone and called Frank Connor. “Your girl just turned up.”

“Where?”

“The La Reine nuclear power plant in Normandy. She tried to bring off some kind of incident to paralyze the country’s nuclear grid. Wanted to blow the place to the high heavens. Damn near succeeded, too.”

“Do you have her in custody?”

“No,” said Allam. “She escaped.”

“Dammit,” said Connor.

“The French police have issued a nationwide alert for her arrest. Interpol is cooperating as well.”

“Little good it’ll do them. She’s a ghost, that one. They’ll never find her.”

“Perhaps,” said Allam. “But we do know that she was working for Sergei Shvets of the FSB. Turns out she was Russian, but then, you must have known that all along.”

“Of course I knew. I brought her into the fold eight years ago. Hard to believe she went back to them.” Connor sighed. “The whole thing is my fault. If only my men hadn’t botched the job in Rome. I don’t like leaving a mess.”

“French intelligence has Shvets in custody. Apparently he was supervising the operation himself. We managed to track him to a safe house in Paris and nabbed him there. We’re keeping the news quiet until the prime minister speaks to the Kremlin.”

“I wouldn’t give two nickels for his chances back home.”

“Be that as it may,” continued Allam, “your actions these past days in London have been nothing short of disgraceful.”

“Emma Ransom betrayed Division,” said Connor. “I did what needed to be done. My apologies if I stepped on any toes. You don’t have to worry any longer. I’m flying out tonight.”

“Safe travels. I’ll let you know how things turn out in France.” Allam paused, staring at the clock on his wall. He’d been on an unscrambled line for over two minutes now. He hoped it would suffice. “Oh, Frank, any idea where she might have gone?”

“Who knows? Like I said, she’s a ghost.”

   Frank Connor hung up the phone. The connection wasn’t bad, considering he was kilometers from the nearest tower. A wave lifted the schooner and he grabbed at the wheel to steady himself.
One hand for the boat
, his father had taught him. The cardinal rule of sailing. Off the port bow, the coast of France was still visible, and, far off in the haze, La Reine’s massive white dome.

“So,” he said, handing Emma Ransom a towel. “Where
are
you going?”

“I don’t know yet,” she answered, drying her hair. “It all depends on what happens now, doesn’t it?”

Connor patted her on the back. “Yes, Lara, I suppose it does.”

“My name is Emma,” she said. “Emma Ransom.”

Connor nodded. He knew better than to argue. It was natural for agents to grow emotional at the end of an assignment, and this one had been tougher than most. “You won’t try to reach him.”

Emma looked at Connor, then quickly away. “No, I won’t.”

“He can never know.”

“I understand.”

Connor smiled, and said some words about duty and country and the price that they in their profession had to pay. They were trite, and he’d said the same things a hundred times before, but still he believed them. Every word.

Emma Ransom shook her head and gazed at the distant shoreline. “Hey, Frank, shut up and drive the boat.”

   It was late September and a chill wind swept down from the Arctic Circle, blanketing Moscow and sending temperatures plummeting into the thirties. Everywhere people donned heavy coats and wrapped their necks in woolen scarves. In Gorky Park, the ice rink froze and was opened two weeks ahead of schedule. Weather forecasters were quick to predict another long and bitter winter. But nowhere was it colder than in the basement of the Lubyanka, the century-old granite fortress that was home to the country’s most notorious political prisoners.

“You have left us in an embarrassing position, Sergei,” said the Russian president. “The evidence is compelling, and that is without taking into account your capture in Paris.”

Shvets sat at the bare wooden table, his head held high. “I expect it is,” he said. “After all, they planted it.”

“Ridiculous,” said Igor Ivanov. “Next you’ll be claiming that the Americans planned the operation. Tell me, was it Frank Connor who suggested you kill me?”

“That was my own idea,” said Shvets defiantly.

The three men sat in a small, dank room two floors belowground. There were no windows. Walls, ceiling, and floor were of the most rudimentary concrete and without adornment. A stuttering fluorescent bulb provided the sole light.

An immaculate leather dossier bearing MI5’s seal sat in the center of the table. With ceremony, the president untied it and examined the documents one by one. “A hospital bill for twenty-five thousand euros paid on behalf of one of your agents and traced back to an FSB shell company.

Five kilos of Semtex identical to that used in the London car bombing found in a Paris apartment loaned to the FSB by our Iranian allies. And the pièce de résistance, a laptop containing confidential files indicating ties to the same agent, as well as a step-by-step breakdown of the operation. It goes on and on.” The president replaced the documents and meticulously retied the dossier. Clasping his hands, he said, “You leave our government no choice but to admit to it all.”

Ivanov leveled his darkest glare at Shvets. “We’ll be kissing the Brits’ asses for a decade because of this.”

“You’re their man,” said Shvets, holding Ivanov’s eyes. “The whole thing was a plan to eliminate me. A setup. Ask her. She’ll tell you.”

“We have. Many times,” said the president. “I for one am convinced that Larissa Alexandrovna Antonova is telling the truth, and that she is a selfless, brave citizen. Viewing the circumstances of her recruitment, she had no choice but to show her loyalty to you. We have forgiven her and hope to make use of her many talents in the future.”

Shvets lowered his head. “My God,” he said. “They’ve done it.”

“That will be enough,” said the president. “Rise. We will accompany you back to your cell.”

Shvets stood, his knees strong, his posture that of the soldier he had once been. He left the table and opened the door to the corridor. As he walked, he kept his head held high.

He did not feel the barrel of the pistol touch the nape of his neck or the bullet crash into his skull. He saw a brief flash of light, and then there was nothing.

   The president lowered the gun.
“I
told him that if I discovered that a Russian had tried to have you killed, I would personally execute him.”

Ivanov looked at the corpse. “Good riddance.”

The president suddenly cocked his head, eyeing Ivanov with suspicion. “You aren’t, are you?”

“What?” asked Ivanov.

“An American agent.”

Ivanov looked at the president. A smile broke on his lips and he began to laugh. A moment later the president joined him, and for a long time the laughter echoed off the cold stone walls.