Both plainly abashed, the two men shook hands.
“Now that you and Oleg have decided that you’re both loyal, noble, trustworthy, 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. “My 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 beings 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?”
Chapter Twenty-One
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 Herr. How is Moscow these days?”
“Cold 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. Clearly, 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 bino
culars, 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 eighty kilometers an hour. There is nothing coming west just now.”
His companion, Warrant Officer Pausin, obediently jotted down his findings 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—”
He broke off suddenly, hearing a horse whinny behind them. The Spetsnaz lieutenant and his two men swung round in surprise—and saw a young boy staring down at them in astonishment from the top of the hill.
The boy, no more than twelve or thirteen years old, wore the long wool coat, loose white shirt, and baggy brown trousers tied at the waist of a typical Kazakh herdsman. He held the reins of a shaggy steppe pony, which was busy nuzzling the withered grass. A bedroll, tent, and supplies were piled up behind the pony’s saddle.
Carefully, Timofeyev and his men rose to their feet. “What are you doing here?” the Russian snapped. His hand edged slowly, almost imperceptibly, toward the holster at his side. “Well?”
“My father and I are scouting the land, preparing for the spring,” the boy said quickly, still staring with wide eyes at the three camouflage-smocked soldiers. “When we move our herds out of their winter pens around Ural’sk, we need to know where the best forage and water will be found.”
“Your father is with you?” Timofeyev asked gently.
“Oh, no.” The boy shook his head proudly. “He is riding the land to the west. This stretch of hill country is my responsibility.”
“You are a good son,” the Spetsnaz lieutenant agreed absentmindedly. Smoothly, he drew his pistol—a silenced P6 Makarov—worked the slide to chamber a round, aimed, and pulled the trigger.
Hit high in the chest, the boy rocked back under the impact. His eyes widened even further, now in horror, as he stared down at the blood running down his torn white shirt. Then, slowly, he fell to his knees.
Timofeyev chambered another round and shot him again, this time in the head. The Kazakh boy crumpled and went down. He lay curled up among the tall stalks of dead grass.
His pony whinnied in alarm. Panicked by the hot, coppery smell of fresh blood, the small sturdy horse reared up on its hind legs and then broke free, galloping back over the hill and out of sight. Belukov, the Spetsnaz sergeant, snarled and sprinted toward the crest, followed a second later by his two comrades.
At the top, he tucked the AKSU-74 against his shoulder and sighted down the barrel, drawing a bead on the steppe pony racing away down the reverse slope. He flipped the firing selector to full automatic.
“No!” Timofeyev knocked the submachine gun down before the sergeant could open fire. “Shooting the beast now would make too much noise. Let it go. The farther that horse runs the better for us. This way, when the Kazakhs come looking for the boy, they won’t know where to start.”
Belukov nodded sullenly, accepting the reproof.
“You and Pausin dig a hole over there,” the lieutenant continued, jerking his thumb toward the closest stand of trees. “While you’re burying the body, I’ll signal headquarters that we’re moving to our alternate position.”
“Shouldn’t we head back across the border?” Belukov asked in surprise. “Before the Kazakhs start their search for the kid?”
“We have our orders,” Timofeyev reminded him icily. He shrugged. “One regrettable death makes no difference to our mission. After all, when the balloon goes up, other innocents will die. That is the nature of war.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Berlin
Randi Russell took the steps up to the embassy’s third-floor two at a time. She paused briefly at the landing to clip her Central Intelligence Agency photo ID card to the breast pocket of her navy blue jacket. Then she pushed open a fire door and turned left, marching fast down a wide corridor. Harried-looking embassy file clerks carrying armloads of visa applications and reams of other official correspondence from one busy office to another saw her coming and moved quickly out of her way.
The tall, square-jawed Marine corporal on duty outside the secure conference room stepped forward to meet her. With one hand on his holstered sidearm, he peered closely at her ID and then nodded. “You can go right on in, Ms. Russell. Mr. Bennett is expecting you.”
Inside the conference room itself, Curt Bennett, the head of the technical team sent out from the CIA’s Langley headquarters, barely glanced up when she came in. Red-eyed with fatigue, unshaven, and thoroughly disheveled, he sat hunched over a pair of linked personal computers set up at one end of a long table. He and his team had spent all of last night and the morning so far dissecting the material she had copied from the Bundeskriminalamt archives. Cups of cold coffee and half-full soda cans were scattered around the room, some on the table, some on the floor, and some perched precariously on chairs. Even the air smelled stale.
Randi pulled up a chair and sat down beside him. “I got your page, Curt,” she told the senior analyst—a short, fidgety man with very little hair and a pair of thick, wire-rimmed spectacles. “What can you tell me?”
“That your wild-eyed guess was on target,” he replied, with a quick, toothy grin. “Someone inside the BKA has been a bad, bad boy—at least where Herr Professor Wulf Renke is concerned.”
Randi breathed out, feeling very much as though an enormous weight had been lifted off her shoulders. The more she had studied Renke’s past, the more she had become convinced that someone high up in German law enforcement was protecting him. How else had the biological
weapons scientist so easily avoided capture after the Wall came down? And how else was he able to travel, seemingly at will, to so many of the world’s rogue states—Iraq, North Korea, Syria, and Libya, among others?
Of course, being sure of her hunch was one thing. Risking her career and the Agency’s relationship with its German ally by breaking into the BKA’s archives was quite another. Hearing that her gamble had paid off was a huge relief. If this operation went sour, the CIA brass at Langley could still toss her to the wolves, but at least they could no longer do it while claiming she was wrong on the facts.
Randi leaned forward. “Show me.”
“Most of the files JANUS picked up were innocuous,” Bennett said. His fingers flew over the keyboard of one of the linked computers while he talked, rapidly bringing documents onto its display screen and then just as rapidly whisking them back into virtual electronic oblivion. “Standard stuff, really. Pretty much the same kind of thing we have on Renke in our databases—reports of rumors heard by field agents, mentions of possible sightings that didn’t pan out, routine follow-up queries from senior officials…all that jazz.”
“So what’s different?” she asked.
“What’s different, Randi,” Bennett told her with another big grin, “is that the BKA computer system is full of ghosts.”
“Ghosts?” Randi asked steadily.
“Deleted files and e-mails,” the CIA computer expert explained. “See, most word processing and database management programs have a common flaw, at least from the vantage point of anyone trying to erase incriminating documents or records.”
“Which is?”
Bennett shrugged. “You can hit the delete key and see a file go ‘poof.’ But that doesn’t really mean that it’s gone forever, shredded into unreadable bits and bytes. It’s actually just been shuffled away, ready to be overwritten when the system needs the space. But since e-mails and most files don’t take up that much room—especially on huge, interconnected systems—they’re usually still there, waiting to be retrieved by the right recovery software.”