The Cassandra Compact

  He turned to Kirov. “There aren’t enough passengers. These must be coming from the last cars. Whoever was riding up front is already in the station!”

  Ivan Beria was standing in front of a newsstand that had just opened for business. He threw down a few kopeks and picked up a newspaper. Leaning against a pillar, he positioned himself so as to have an unobstructed view of the entrance to the men’s washroom.

  Given Yardeni’s size and the dose of slow-acting poison that had been in the brandy, Beria estimated that the big guard would not make it out of the washroom alive.

  Any second, he expected someone to run out screaming that a man inside was having a seizure.

  But no, there was Yardeni, strolling out of the washroom, looking considerably happier, checking—like a peasant—to make sure that his zipper was done up.

  Beria slipped his hand into his coat pocket, to his Taurus 9mm, when his eyes registered the anomaly: a man wearing overalls, like a sanitation worker, was in the process of emptying a bin into his push cart. The only problem was that as soon as he saw Yardeni, he forgot all about the garbage.

  Where there’s one, there are more.

  Beria slipped around the pillar so that Yardeni wouldn’t spot him and quickly surveyed the station. Within seconds he picked out two more men who were out of place: a deliveryman hauling bread, and one who tried to pass himself off as an electrician.

  Beria knew a great deal about the Federal Security Service. He was aware that the interest was both reciprocal and intense. But he could not believe they were there for him. Clearly the object of their attention was Yardeni.

  Recalling what Yardeni had told him about his clean getaway from Bioaparat, Beria cursed. The guard would pay dearly for his lies.

  Beria watched him stroll among the benches toward the kiosks. The three plainclothes agents trailed, forming a rough triangle behind him. One was speaking into a wrist mike.

  Then Beria noticed a tall, rangy man come through the doors to the platforms. This was no Russian, though the one following him certainly was. The face of Major-General Kirov was indelibly printed in Beria’s memory.

  Beria noted that the foot traffic in the station had picked up. Good. He would need as much cover as possible. Beria stepped out from behind the pillar just long enough for Yardeni to catch a glimpse of him. He didn’t think that Yardeni’s shadows could have discerned exactly what Yardeni had seen to make him move in that direction, but they would surely follow.

  Beria counted off the seconds, then slipped out from behind the pillar again. Yardeni was less than fifteen feet away. Beria had his hand on his gun, ready to draw it, when, without warning, Yardeni stumbled, teetered, then crashed to the floor. Immediately, the shadows closed in.

  “Help me…”

  Yardeni had no idea what was happening to him. First his chest had felt like it was on fire; now it seemed to be caught in the jaws of a giant vise that was mercilessly squeezing the life out of him.

  As he thrashed on the cold marble floor, his vision began to blur. But he could still make out the features of the man who had brought him this far. Instinctively, he reached out to him.

  “Help me…”

  Beria didn’t hesitate. Putting on a concerned expression, he moved directly to the stricken man and the undercover agents.

  “Who are you?” one of them demanded. “Do you know this man?”

  “We met on the train,” Beria replied. “Maybe he remembers me. God, look at him. He’s delirious!”

  The poison was causing Yardeni to foam at the mouth, cutting off his speech. Beria was very close now, kneeling.

  “You’ll have to come with—” one of the agents began.

  He got no further. Beria’s first shot tore away his throat. His second caught another agent in the temple. The third found the remaining man’s heart.

  “Shoot him!”

  The booming words startled Beria. He rose to discover travelers lying on the floor, hiding as best they could under the benches. But at the doors was Kirov, pointing at him, shouting to a young woman who had come up on Beria’s blind side.

  “Lara, shoot him!”

  Beria whipped around to face Lara Telegin, who had her gun leveled at him. His peripheral vision caught three more figures racing toward them.

  “Go!” she called out softly.

  Beria didn’t hesitate. He ducked behind the woman and raced for the exits.

  After making sure that Beria was safely away, Telegin braced herself in the shooter’s classic stance. As calmly as if she were on the practice range, she shot the remaining members of the undercover team. Then, without pause, she wheeled around to face a disbelieving Kirov.

  It took Smith only a split second to realize that Telegin’s treachery had frozen the general in her crosshairs. Without thinking, he launched himself at the Russian an instant before he heard the shot. Kirov cried out once as he and Smith went down.

  Smith scrambled to his feet and squeezed off two quick shots. Telegin screamed as the bullets tore into her, slamming her body against a pillar. For an instant, she hung like that, her head lolling to one side. Then her gun clattered to the floor, her knees gave way, and she slid down, lifeless as a broken marionette.

  Smith turned to Kirov, who had propped himself up against a door. He ripped open his jacket, pulled down the sleeve, and saw the bloodied flesh where Telegin’s bullet had struck his upper arm.

  Kirov clenched his teeth. “It’s a through-and-through. I’ll live. Get over to Yardeni.”

  “Telegin—”

  “To hell with her! I just hope that you aren’t a good shot. I have a lot of questions for her.”

  Smith zigzagged through the cowering crowd, making his way around the bodies of Kirov’s fallen men. When he reached Telegin, one look told him that she would never be answering any more questions. Quickly, he turned to Yardeni and realized that the same was true for him.

  Militiamen and police were flooding the station. Kirov was on his feet, unsteady and in pain, but strong enough to bark out orders. Within minutes, travelers were being herded out of the area.

  Brushing aside a medic, Kirov went over to Smith and knelt down by the two bodies.

  “The foam around his mouth…?”

  “Poison.”

  Kirov stared at Lara Telegin’s glassy eyes, then reached out and closed the lids. “Why? Why was she working with him?”

  Smith shook his head. “With Yardeni?”

  “Him, too, probably. But I meant Ivan Beria.”

  Then Smith remembered the man in the black overcoat, nowhere to be seen now. “Who is he?”

  Kirov winced as the medic firmly sat him down and went to work on his wound.

  “Ivan Beria. A Serb freelance operator. He has a long and bloody history in the Balkans.” He hesitated. “He was also a KGB favorite. Most recently he’s been contracting out his skills to the mafiya and certain Western interests.”

  Smith caught something in Kirov’s tone. “It’s personal, isn’t it?”

  “Two of my best undercover agents in the mafiya were murdered in a particularly brutal fashion,” Kirov replied flatly. “Beria’s fingerprints were all over that job. I’m going to put an alert—”

  “No, don’t touch him!” Smith yelled as the medic was reaching for Yardeni’s body. Stepping over to the corpse, he felt gently along the inside folds of the parka.

  “Travel documents,” he said, producing Yardeni’s passport and air tickets.

  His fingers continued to work inside the parka. Suddenly, something very cold brushed his fingertips.

  “Get me some gloves!” he called to the medic.

  Seconds later, Smith eased out the shiny metal container and carefully laid it on the floor.

  “I need ice!”

  Kirov moved in for a better look. “It’s intact, thank God!”

  “Do you recognize the container design?”

  “It’s standard issue for the transport of ampoules from the Bioaparat safe
to the laboratories.” He spoke briefly into his mike, then looked at Smith. “The biohazard unit will be here in a few minutes.”

  While Kirov issued orders for the station to be cleared, Smith placed the container into a bucket of ice that the medic had managed to find. The nitrogen in the thermal layer kept the container at just above freezing, rendering the virus inactive. But Smith had no idea how long the charge would last. Keeping the canister on ice would provide some measure of safety until the biohazard team arrived.

  Suddenly Smith realized how quiet the station had become. Looking around, he discovered that all the militia had pulled back, taking the last of the travelers and station workers with them. Only he and Kirov were left, surrounded by bodies.

  “Have you been in combat, Dr. Smith?” Kirov asked.

  “Call me Jon. And yes, I have.”

  “Then you’re familiar with this silence…after the gunfire and screaming are over. It’s only the survivors who get to see what they’ve wrought.” He paused. “It’s the survivor who can thank the man who saved his life.”

  Smith nodded. “I know you would have done the same. Tell me more about Beria. How does he fit in?”

  “Beria is not only an executioner, he is a facilitator. If you want something delivered or spirited out of the country, he’s the man who’ll guarantee it gets done.”

  “You don’t think that he and Yardeni—with Telegin’s help—planned and executed the theft themselves, do you?”

  “Executed, yes. Planned, no. Beria’s forte is not in strategy. He is—how would you put it?—a hands-on operator. His job would have been to shepherd Yardeni after he got out of Bioaparat.”

  “Shepherd him where?”

  Kirov held up the Canadian passport. “The American-Canadian border is porous. Yardeni wouldn’t have had any problem smuggling the smallpox into your country.”

  The idea made Smith’s flesh crawl. “You’re saying that Yardeni was a thief and a courier?”

  “A man like Yardeni does not have the wherewithal to provide himself with a new passport, much less pay for the services of Beria. But someone did. Someone wanted to get his hands on a smallpox sample and was willing to pay mightily for the privilege.”

  “I’m sorry I have to ask: where does Telegin fit in?”

  Kirov looked away, feeling torn by her betrayal.

  “You don’t strike me as a man who believes in coincidence, Jon. Consider this: Yardeni has been in place for some time. But his masters choose this particular moment to activate him. Why should it have coincided with your arrival in Moscow? Did they know you were coming? If so, they would have deduced that they had one last chance to steal from Bioaparat. And why was Yardeni told to proceed with the theft? Because someone tipped him off that the Special Forces were on their way.”

  “Telegin warned Yardeni?”

  “Who else could it have been?”

  “But she wasn’t acting on her own….”

  “I think Lara was the eyes and ears of whoever planned this. As soon as she knew you were in Moscow she contacted her principals, who told her to go ahead and have Yardeni execute the theft. They could not afford to risk the access that Yardeni provided them.”

  He paused and glanced at the body of his lover. “Think about it, Jon. Why would Lara have risked everything—her career, future…love—if the rewards were not overwhelming? She would never have found such bounty in Russia.”

  Kirov looked up as the station doors opened and the biohazard team, dressed in full antiplague suits, came through. Within minutes, the container that Telegin and Yardeni had died for was being sealed in a stainless-steel box and wheeled to a vaultlike truck, ready to be removed to Moscow’s premier research facility, the Serbsky Institute.

  “I’m going to initiate the search for Beria,” Kirov said as he and Smith walked out of the station.

  Smith watched the virus hunters’ truck pull away from the station, escorted by motorcycle outriders.

  “Something you said, General. About Beria being a facilitator. What if Yardeni wasn’t his primary responsibility?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yardeni was important—pivotal—in that he was the inside man. He was the one who actually had to go in and get the sample. But how valuable was he to anyone after that? A liability is more like it. Yardeni didn’t die from a gunshot wound. Beria poisoned him.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “That Beria’s directive was to protect the smallpox, not Yardeni.”

  “But Yardeni was carrying the samples. You saw the container.”

  “Did I, General? All I saw was a container. Don’t you want to know what’s inside?”

  The shuttle bus from the train station rolled through the thickening Moscow traffic. Because of the hour, Ivan Beria was one of only six passengers on board. Sitting by the rear exit doors, he watched a stream of militia cars wail down the boulevard to the station and listened as the other passengers speculated about what was happening.

  If they only knew…

  Beria was not concerned that the bus might be stopped. Not even Major-General Kirov, the man who had placed a hundred-thousand-ruble reward on his head, could organize so thorough a search in so short a time. Kirov’s first act would be to check with the taxi dispatchers. Police at the train station would be shown a photograph and asked if anyone answering that description had gotten into a private car. Kirov might eventually think about the bus, but not soon enough to do him any good.

  The bus clattered across streetcar tracks, then struggled up a ramp onto the circular highway that rings the city. He checked to make sure that the container he’d taken from Yardeni was secure in his pocket. Confusion and misdirection were his allies: they would buy him the time he needed. As soon as Kirov checked Yardeni’s corpse, he would discover the container Beria had given the Bioaparat guard. Kirov would believe that it held the smallpox samples stolen from Building 103. His first thought would be to get them to a secure location, but he would have no reason to check them. By the time that was done, the smallpox would be safely in the West.

  Beria smiled and turned to the windows as the sprawling complex of Sheremetevo Airport came into view.

  The outriders peeled away as the truck carrying Yardeni’s container turned into the underground garage of the Serbsky Institute. The sedan with Kirov and Smith pulled up close enough to the truck for the two men to observe the unloading of the stainless-steel biohazard safe.

  “It’ll be taken to the Level Four labs two stories below,” Kirov told Smith.

  “How long before we know what we have?”

  “Thirty minutes.” Kirov paused. “I wish it could be faster, but procedures must be followed.”

  Smith had no quarrel with that.

  Accompanied by a squad of newly arrived Federal Security Service agents, they took an elevator to the second floor. The institute’s director, a thin, birdlike man, blinked rapidly when Kirov informed him that his office was now a central command post.

  “Let me know the instant the test results are available,” Kirov told him.

  The director snatched his lab smock off the coat rack and beat a hasty retreat.

  Kirov turned to Smith. “Jon. Under the circumstances it’s time you told me exactly why you came here and who you’re working for.”

  Smith considered the general’s words. Given the possibility that the Russians had not been able to contain the smallpox theft within their borders, he had no choice but to contact Klein immediately.

  “Can you set me up with communications?”

  Kirov gestured at the telephone console on the desk. “All the lines are secured satellite links. I’ll wait out—”

  “No,” Smith interrupted. “You need to hear this.”

  He dialed the number that magically always connected him to Klein. The voice on the other end was crisp and clear.

  “Klein here.”

  “Sir, it’s me. I’m in the director’s office at the Serbsky Ins
titute. Major-General Kirov is with me. I need to bring you up to speed, sir.”

  “Go ahead, Jon.”

  It took Smith ten minutes to give a complete account of events. “Sir, we expect to have test results in”—he checked his watch—“fifteen minutes.”

  “Put me on the speaker, please, Jon.”

  A moment later, Klein’s voice flooded the room. “General Kirov?”

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Nathaniel Klein. I do the same work that Valeri Antonov does for your government. In fact, I know Valeri quite well.”

  Smith watched the color drain from Kirov’s face.

  “General?”

  “Yes, I’m here. I…I understand what you’re telling me, Mr. Klein.”

  Kirov understood all too well. Valeri Antonov was more a shadow than a man. Rumored to be Potrenko’s most trusted adviser, he was never seen at council meetings. In fact, few people had ever seen him. Yet his influence was undeniable. That Klein knew of Antonov’s existence—that he knew him quite well—spoke volumes.

  “General,” Klein said. “I recommend that until we have more information, you do not alert any of your state security organizations. Mention plague and you’ll have a panic on your hands that Beria will use to his advantage.”

  “I agree, Mr. Klein.”

  “Then please take what I’m about to say in the spirit it’s offered: is there anything that I or any U.S. agency can do to help you?”

  “I appreciate the offer—sincerely,” Kirov replied. “But right now, this is an internal Russian matter.”

  “Are there any standby measures you’d suggest we take?”

  Kirov looked at Smith, who shook his head. “No, sir. Not at this time.”

  A second line on the console buzzed. “Mr. Klein, please excuse me for a moment.”

  Kirov picked up the other call and listened intently. After speaking a few words in Russian, he turned to Smith.

  “The test results on the contents of the first ampoule are complete,” he said tonelessly. “It is tea, not smallpox.”