The Cassandra Compact

  “My compliments on your makeover, General,” Smith said. “Even I had to look twice.”

  “Let’s hope the same is true for Beria,” Kirov replied somberly.

  Smith was glad to have the burly Russian by his side. After the debacle at Bioaparat and Moscow, Kirov had convinced the Russian president to send him to the United States to help with the hunt for Ivan Beria. Klein had thought that Kirov, who had spent a year in Washington and knew the ethnic districts well, would be invaluable. He had argued as much to the president, who had concurred with Potrenko and allowed Kirov to come over.

  But in Kirov’s hard, bright eyes Smith saw the real reason why the general was here. Kirov had been betrayed by a woman he’d loved and trusted, who had been corrupted by unknown forces linked to a killer he’d let slip away. Kirov badly needed to make amends, to regain his honor as a soldier.

  “How do you want to proceed, Jon?” Kirov asked.

  “I need to stop at home,” Smith replied. “After you get settled in, we can go to Dupont Circle.”

  Since no one at the Russian embassy was aware of Kirov’s presence in the city, Smith had suggested that the general stay with him and use the Bethesda house as the base for their hunt for Beria.

  “Are you sure you don’t want long-range cover?” Klein asked.

  As much as Klein trusted Kirov’s abilities and instincts, he was still reluctant to put both men out in the field without cover. True, Smith had gone to Houston to find a trail that Treloar might have left behind. But his real intention had been to touch the tendrils of the web that still linked Treloar to the conspirators, his controllers. By letting them know that he was ready to investigate the very heart of where Treloar had lived and worked, Smith hoped to provoke a response that would force the controllers to come after him…. Which meant bringing Beria out of his hole.

  “We can’t take the chance that Beria would spot the cover, sir,” Smith replied.

  “Mr. Klein,” Kirov said, “I understand—and share—your concern. But I promise you I will not let anything happen to Jon. I have a distinct advantage over any cover you might provide. I know Beria. If he’s wearing a disguise, I’ll see through it. There are characteristics and mannerisms that he won’t be able to hide.” He turned to Smith. “You have my word. If Beria is out there, if he comes for you, he is ours.”

  Ninety minutes later, Smith and Kirov arrived at Smith’s ranch-style home in Bethesda. As Smith walked him through the house, Kirov noted the paintings, wall hangings, and objets from cultures around the world. The American was indeed a well-traveled man.

  While Smith showered and changed, Kirov made himself comfortable in the guest bedroom. They met in the kitchen where, over coffee, they pored over a large-scale map of Washington, focusing on the multiethnic neighborhood around Dupont Circle. Since Kirov was already familiar with the area, a plan came together quickly.

  “I know we didn’t talk about this with Klein,” Smith said as they got ready to leave. “But…” He held out a SIG-Sauer pistol.

  Kirov looked at it then shook his head. He went into the bedroom and came back with what looked like an ordinary black umbrella. He held it at a forty-five-degree angle, moved his thumb along the handle, and suddenly, a one-inch blade popped out of the tip.

  “Something I brought along from Moscow,” Kirov said conversationally. “The blade has a fast-acting animal tranquilizer—Acepromazine. It can bring down a hundred-kilo boar in seconds. Besides, if for some reason your police were to stop me, I could explain away an umbrella. A gun would be much harder.”

  Smith nodded. He might be the bait, but Kirov would be the one doing the close-in work. He was glad that the Russian wasn’t going to face Beria unarmed.

  Smith slipped the SIG-Sauer into his shoulder holster. “All right, then. I’ll give you forty minutes’ lead time, then follow you in.”

  Moving along the streets like a wraith, Kirov studied the human traffic swirling around him. Like other areas close to Washington’s core, Dupont Circle had undergone a revival. But tucked in between trendy cafés and designer boutiques were the Macedonian bakeries, Turkish carpet shops, Serbian emporiums filled with beaten brass and copper planters, Greek restaurants, and Yugoslav coffeehouses. Kirov knew how strong the pull of the familiar would be to a man operating in an unfamiliar environment, even if that man was a vicious killer. This ethnic mix was just the kind of environment that Ivan Beria would gravitate to. There he could find familiar food, listen to music he had grown up with, overhear accents he recognized. Kirov, who could eavesdrop in many Slavic languages, was also perfectly at home there.

  Turning into an open-air quadrangle bordered by shops and stalls, Kirov took a seat in the shade of an umbrella-topped table. A Croat woman who spoke only halting English took his order for coffee. The Russian held back a smile as he overheard her running invective at the proprietor.

  Sipping the thick, sweet coffee, Kirov surveyed the foot traffic, noting the women’s colorful blouses and skirts and the men’s baggy pants and leather jackets. If Beria came here, he would wear the rough, practical clothing of a Yugoslav working man—maybe a cap, too, to cast a shadow over his features. But Kirov had no doubt that he would recognize him. In his experience, the one aspect of his appearance an assassin could never disguise was the eyes.

  Kirov understood there was a good chance that given the opportunity Beria would recognize him as well. But Beria had no reason to think that Kirov was in the United States. His primary concern would be to avoid the police, as sparse as the patrols were in the area. He wouldn’t expect a face from the past, so far from home. By the same token, Kirov did not expect to see Beria strolling up to the nearest pastry shop to buy a snack. He might know where the assassin was likely to venture out, but he had no idea where he was at that moment.

  With hooded eyes, Kirov surveyed the changing scene around him. He also scanned the entrances and exits to the quadrangle, where people appeared from and disappeared to. He noted the signs posted in the shop windows indicating the business hours, and made a mental note to check the alleys and the delivery bays.

  If Beria had to come out to perform his wet work, this was an area he would feel comfortable in. This might cause him to feel that he had the upper hand, and a confident man could sometimes be a blind one.

  Three-quarters of a mile from where Kirov was contemplating the possible takedown zone, Ivan Beria opened the door to his two-bedroom apartment on the top floor of a building that specialized in short-term leases to the city’s white-collar transients.

  Facing him was the driver of the Lincoln, a big, silent man with a nose that had been broken at least several times and a deformed left ear that resembled a tiny cauliflower. Beria had met such men before. Comfortable with violence and unerringly discreet, they were the perfect messengers for the principals who hired him.

  Motioning the driver inside, Beria locked the door and accepted the proffered envelope. He tore it open and quickly read the contents, written in Serb. Stepping away, he smiled to himself. The principals always underestimated the number of people who had to be eliminated. In this case, Beria had already been paid for the Russian guard and the American scientist. Now he was being asked to remove one more.

  Turning to the driver, he said, “Picture.”

  Silently, the driver took back the letter and handed over a picture of Jon Smith, taken by a security camera. The subject was facing the lens, his face free of shadows. The resolution was very good.

  Beria smiled thoughtfully. “When?”

  The driver held out his hand for the picture. “As soon as possible. You must be ready to go the minute you’re called.”

  The driver raised his eyebrows, silently asking if there was anything else. Beria shook his head.

  After the driver left, Beria went into the bedroom and removed a digitally encrypted satellite phone from his pack. A moment later, he was speaking to a Herr Weizsel at the Offenbach Bank in Zurich. The account in question had just been
fattened by two hundred thousand American dollars.

  Beria thanked the banker and hung up. The Americans are in a hurry.

  Naked, Dr. Karl Bauer stepped out of the final decontamination room. On the bench of the changing room were underclothes, socks, and a shirt. A freshly pressed suit hung on the door hook.

  A few minutes later, Bauer was dressed and on his way to the glass-enclosed mezzanine where his chief of staff, Klaus Jaunich, waited.

  Jaunich gave a slight bow and held out his hand. “Magnificent work, Herr Direktor. I have never seen anything like it.”

  Bauer shook his hand and acknowledged the compliment. “Nor are we likely to witness something like that ever again.”

  After resting, Bauer had returned to the laboratory. Even though he had worked through most of the night, he felt elated and full of energy. He knew from experience that this was only the adrenaline flowing through his system and that fatigue would inevitably catch up to him. Nonetheless, Jaunich was right: it had been magnificent work. Using his laserlike concentration, he had applied a lifetime of knowledge and experience into taking the first steps that would transform an already deadly virus into an unstoppable, microscopic firestorm. Now he felt almost cheated because he would be unable to take those last few steps toward completion.

  “We knew from the beginning, didn’t we, Klaus?” he said, voicing his thought. “That we would never be able to see this creation through to the end. The physics of this earth deny me my ultimate triumph. To complete it, I must give it away.” He paused. “Now it will be up to Reed to go where we cannot.”

  “So much trust in one man,” Jaunich murmured.

  “He will do what he’s told,” Bauer replied sharply. “And when he returns, we will have what, until now, we’ve only dreamed of.”

  He patted the big man on the shoulder. “It will be all right, Klaus. You’ll see. Now, the transport?”

  “The sample is ready for shipment, Herr Direktor. The aircraft is standing by.”

  Bauer clapped his hands. “Good! Then you and I must have a celebratory drink before I leave.”

  Chapter 20

  Beneath the blaze of lights, she looked like a sculpture heralding in the new millennium. From her vantage point three miles away, Megan Olson stared in awe at the space shuttle, mated to the giant external tank and the two slightly smaller solid rocket boosters.

  It was two o’clock in the morning on a windless, moonlit night at Cape Canaveral. Megan’s nose tingled from the briny air and her nerves trilled with anticipation. Usually, the crew was up and about by three o’clock, but Megan had been unable to sleep much past midnight. The thought that in less than eight hours she would be onboard the shuttle, boring into space, left her breathless.

  Megan turned and walked the length of the path that ran by the ground floor of the building where the crew was quartered. A hundred yards away, razor wire glittered atop the Cyclone fence surrounding the compound. She heard the distant cough of a security Jeep as it ground its way around the perimeter. The security at the Cape was both impressive and unobtrusive. The uniformed air police were the most visible, always a magnet for the television cameras. But beyond them were the plainclothes detachments that roved the entire facility twenty-four hours a day, making sure that no one and nothing interfered with the launch.

  Megan was about to head back to her room when she heard footsteps nearby. Turning, she saw a figure move from the shadows of the building into the light.

  Dylan Reed?

  It was a standing joke that not only did Reed not hear his alarm clock, but that he could sleep through liftoff if allowed to do so. So what was he doing up and about an hour before roll call?

  Raising her arm, Megan was about to call out to him when a bright headlight appeared around the corner. Instinctively, she drew back as a sedan with the NASA logo on the door slipped close to where Reed was standing. Staying in the shadows, Megan watched an older man get out of the car and approach Reed.

  Someone he was expecting. Who? And why break the quarantine?

  Quarantine was a vital part of the launch process, although this time its duration had been reduced, of necessity, from the usual seven days. Allowing an outsider to come into direct contact with a crew member at this late stage was unheard of.

  As the visitor and Reed moved away from her and into a pool of light, Megan saw something around the man’s neck: a health stabilization card, indicating that whoever he was, the visitor had been given a clean bill of health by NASA doctors.

  Satisfied that Reed’s guest was cleared to be in a restricted area, Megan started to move away. But something in the back of her mind resisted. She’d always relied on her intuition and instinct; listening to both had saved her life more than once. They whispered to her now that she should not do the polite thing and walk away, giving Reed his privacy.

  Megan hung back. Because the two men stood facing each other, she couldn’t hear what they were saying. But there was no mistaking that something passed from the visitor to Reed: a shiny, metallic cylinder about four inches long. Megan saw it only for a split second before it disappeared into the pocket of Reed’s overalls.

  Megan watched the visitor grip Reed’s shoulder, then get back into his car and drive away. Reed seemed to gaze after the taillights until they were reduced to two pinpricks, then he turned and began walking toward his quarters.

  He has preflight jitters, just like the rest of us. Someone close to him came out to see him off.

  But the explanation rang hollow. Reed was a veteran of six shuttle missions, almost nonchalant about the process. Nor could it have been a relative. Once the quarantine was in effect, family members had no contact with the crew. They were relegated to a special viewing area three miles from the launch.

  Someone in the program. Someone I never met.

  Before heading for the mess hall where the crew would have their last real meal until they returned, Megan stopped off at her room. She considered her options, one of which was to casually broach the subject with Reed. After all, he had been her supporter ever since she had arrived at NASA; over time, she’d come to think of him as a friend. Then she remembered Adam Treloar, the missing smallpox, and the desperate search that was secretly under way. Klein’s directive had been unequivocal: she was to report anything suspicious. Although Megan was certain that there was a perfectly innocent explanation for Reed’s behavior, she nonetheless reached for the phone.

  At six-thirty, the crew entered the clean room to suit up. Since Megan was the only woman on the mission, she had a cubicle to herself. Closing the door, she cast a critical eye over her launch/entry suit or LES. Made to measure and weighing a hefty ninety pounds, it was comprised of more than fifteen individual pieces, including a flotation device, gravity pants, and a diaper. Megan had questioned the need for the latter until Reed had explained to her exactly how much pressure was exerted on the body during the entry into orbit. It was virtually impossible for the bladder not to void.

  “Looking very stylish, Megan,” Frank Stone, the mission pilot, commented when she stepped into the men’s changing area.

  “I like the patches best,” Megan replied.

  “Tell my wife that,” Bill Karol, the commander piped up. “She designed them.”

  Each mission had a unique patch, designed either by the crewmembers or their relatives. This one depicted the shuttle racing into space. Inside the round borders were stitched the names of the crew.

  The crew paired off to check each other’s suits, making sure that every piece was snug and secure. Then one of the mission specialists, David Carter, led the group in a brief prayer. The moment helped lift the pall created by Adam Treloar’s untimely death.

  With a little over three hours to liftoff, they trooped out of their quarters and into a blaze of camera lights. The walkout was the last chance for outside observers, all carefully screened and wearing special passes, to see the astronauts. Passing through the gauntlet, Megan waved briefly for the media.
When she smiled, a reporter called out, “One more! Just like that.”

  The ride to the gantry in the UPS-style van took only a few minutes. Once there, the crew boarded an elevator that took them up 195 feet to the white room, the final staging area where they put on their parachutes, harnesses, communications hats, helmets, and gloves.

  “How are you holding up?”

  Megan turned to see Reed beside her, dressed and ready.

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “Preflight butterflies?”

  “Is that what’s going on inside my stomach?”

  He leaned closer. “Don’t go spreading this, but I get them too.”

  “Not you!”

  “Especially me.”

  Maybe it was the way she was looking at him that brought out his next words: “Is anything wrong? You look like you want to ask me something.”

  Megan brushed the air with her hand. “It’s the moment, I guess. You dream and train and work for it, and then one day, it’s there.”

  Reed patted her shoulder. “You’ll do fine. Just remember what Allenby said: we’re all counting on those experiments you have scheduled.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s that time,” one of the prep crew called out.

  Megan breathed a sigh of relief as Reed turned away. During her telephone conversation with Klein, the head of Covert-One said that he would immediately check on Reed’s mysterious visitor, try to establish a solid ID, and get back to her. Since she hadn’t heard from him, Megan assumed that Klein was either still checking or that he had come up with a perfectly satisfactory answer that he hadn’t been able to relay to her.

  “Showtime,” Reed announced. He gestured at Megan. “After you, ma’am.”

  Megan took a deep breath, crouched, and ducked through the flight-deck hatch. Making her way to the ladder, she descended to the mid-deck where, in addition to the sleep stations, food and storage lockers, and the bathroom, were three special liftoff chairs for her, Randall Wallace, another mission specialist, and David Carter, the payload specialist.