The Moscow Vector

  “And?”

  “So far I’ve identified numbers belonging to accounts that are registered in several different countries,” Bennett told her. “Switzerland, Russia, Germany, and Italy—for a start.”

  Randi frowned. “Can you tie any of them to Renke?”

  “Not yet,” the CIA expert said. “Most of those accounts look like fakes to me. Basically, I suspect they’re the electronic equivalents of a post office box rented by someone using a fake name and fake ID.”

  “Damn.”

  “All is not lost,” Bennett reassured her. He raised an eyebrow. “Let’s say you found that real-life post office box. What would you do next?”

  “I’d put a tail on anyone who came to collect mail from it,” Randi said. “And I’d trace any mail forwarded from it.”

  “Exactly.” The CIA specialist grinned toothily. “Well, we can do the same thing electronically. As calls pass through those different numbers, we can track them, following them up the ladder to the next set of accounts and so on.”

  “How long will it take you to zero in on the core numbers?” Randi asked quietly. “The ones connected to honest-to-God phones?”

  “That’s difficult to estimate,” Bennett said. He shrugged. “Maybe a few more hours. Maybe a couple of days. To a large extent, it depends on the traffic through this secure network. Now that we’re inside the outer layer, the more calls the bad guys make using their system, the more information we acquire.”

  Randi nodded. “Then keep on it, Curt,” she said grimly. “I need to know where Renke is hiding out. As soon as possible.”

  She turned away, seeing another CIA staffer hurrying into the conference room. “Yes?”

  “Langley thinks it may have a name for that last man you shot inside Kessler’s house,” the other woman told her quickly. “That scorched passport you grabbed was definitely a fake, but they were able to match what was left of the photograph with one already in the archives.”

  “Show me,” Randi snapped. She took the TOP-SECRET message sent from CIA headquarters. At the top, there was a scan of an old, black-and-white photo, one that showed a thin-faced man with dark hair. He was wearing a military uniform, an East German officer’s service jacket with the four diamonds of a captain on his shoulder straps. She compared this picture with her mental image of the black-clad gunman who had tried so hard to kill her just a few short hours ago. She nodded tightly. It was the same man.

  Her eyes moved down to the text of the message. “Gerhard Lange,” she read aloud. “A former captain in the East German Ministry of State Security. After the fall of the DDR, initially taken into custody by the Bonn government in connection with several political murders in Leipzig, Dresden, and East Berlin. Released for lack of evidence shortly thereafter. Believed to have emigrated to Serbia one month later. Rumored to have worked as an internal security consultant for the Milosevic regime from 1990 to 1994 before emigrating again, this time to Russia. No further information on file.”

  “Well, well, well,” Randi murmured. “It appears that the good doctor Renke prefers working with his fellow countrymen. I wonder how many other former Stasi goons he has at his beck and call.”

  Cologne

  Bernhard Heichler sat numbly at his desk inside the headquarters of the Bundesamtes für Verfassunsschutz, the Bf V. He stared down at the urgent reports from Berlin, reports that could easily lead to absolute disaster for him. He groaned aloud and then stopped abruptly, appalled by how far the sound seemed to carry in this strangely silent building.

  At three o’clock in the morning, the offices of the Bf V were almost completely deserted, inhabited only by a skeletal night shift of counterintelligence officers and clerical staff. His continued presence would undoubtedly draw raised eyebrows and lead to sardonic comments, especially from his own subordinates in Section V. Heichler was widely known as a man who craved routine and who ordinarily despised grandstanding. Seen in that light, his decision to stay so late at the office to monitor new developments in yesterday afternoon’s massacre of three American intelligence officers in Berlin would strike many of his colleagues as evidence that he was angling for yet another promotion.

  No one would guess Heichler’s real reason for wanting to read those classified Berlin police reports first, before anyone else in German counterintelligence.

  He read through them again, still in disbelief. Police forensics teams had managed to connect the weapons used in the murder of the CIA agents with those found—along with six more bodies—in or around the burned-out home of a high-ranking official in the Bundeskriminalamt. Heichler swallowed hard, fighting down the acid taste of bile. What kind of hellish conspiracy was he now caught up in?

  His phone chirped suddenly, frighteningly loud in the unnatural quiet of his office. Startled, Heichler snatched the receiver off its cradle. “Yes? What is it?”

  “An incoming call from America, Herr Heichler,” the operator said. “From Herr Andrew Coates, a senior aide to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He wants to speak to the ranking officer in Section V.”

  “Put him through,” Heichler said harshly. His hands trembled. “Hello?”

  “Bernhard?” a familiar voice said into his ear. Coates was the liaison between the CIA and Germany’s confusing array of foreign and domestic intelligence organizations. He and Heichler met fairly frequently to exchange information. “Boy, am I glad that you’re still there! Listen, I wanted to bring you up-to-date on our investigation, and to let you know that we’ve had some good news. One of our people survived that goddamned ambush. Not only that, but we’re pretty sure that she’s managed to get her hands on some crucial evidence that will lead us to the bastards who ordered the attack—”

  Heichler listened in growing terror while his counterpart in the CIA shattered any hopes he had harbored of easily escaping the noose of treason and betrayal drawn so tightly around his neck. Somehow he managed to make it through the ensuing conversation without screaming. When the American at last hung up, he sat staring into space for several minutes.

  Then, slowly and reluctantly, with hands that shook harder than ever, Heichler picked up his phone one more time. If the Americans captured those responsible for butchering their field officers in Berlin, they were sure to uncover evidence that would lead them right back to the Bf V—right back to him. Once again, he thought despairingly, he had no real choice. None at all.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Moscow

  Konstantin Malkovic sat calmly at the breakfast table in his luxury apartment, which occupied the top floor of a building overlooking the Kitay Gorod financial district. He sipped the last of his morning tea while reading through summaries of the overnight trades made by his commodities brokers in the United States and Asia. For the first time in the past several days, the billionaire felt able to concentrate on the routine operations of his far-flung business empire. Brandt had the two Americans—Smith and Devin—safely in his grip, and last night’s late news reports from Berlin were also extremely satisfying.

  HYDRA was once again completely secure.

  Quietly, one of his servants appeared, holding a phone. “Mr. Titov is on the line, sir.”

  Malkovic looked up in some annoyance. Titov was responsible for managing the Moscow offices in his absence. What was so important that it couldn’t wait until he arrived at Pashkov House a bit later in the morning? He took the phone. “Well, Kirill?” he demanded. “What’s the problem?”

  “We have received an e-mail addressed to you personally,” Titov told him. “It is marked urgent. I thought you should know about it.”

  With an effort, Malkovic suppressed his irritation. Like many Russians who had grown up under the old Soviet system, Titov had difficulty acting on his own initiative, without explicit orders from his superior. “Very well,” he sighed. “Read this e-mail back to me.”

  “Unfortunately, I cannot,” Titov said carefully. “It appears to be coded using the SOVEREIGN encryption pr
ogram.”

  Malkovic frowned. The SOVEREIGN cipher system was one reserved for the most sensitive communications, those involving his most secret and illegal enterprises. Only Malkovic and a few of his most trusted subordinates possessed the ability to decode these messages. “I see,” he said, after a pause. “You were quite right to bring this to my attention. I will handle the matter myself.”

  After breaking the connection with Titov, he rose from the breakfast table and went back into his study. With a few quick keystrokes on his computer, he brought up the e-mail and ran it through his decryption program. It was a frantic report sent by one of his top operatives in Germany, a man who controlled the various puppets and spies Malkovic had planted in several of that country’s most important government ministries.

  Malkovic read through the message in increasing alarm. The hunter-killer team sent by Brandt to Berlin had been wiped out. Worse, this man Lange and his men had failed in their primary mission. The Americans were still hot on Renke’s trail. The HYDRA secret was in greater jeopardy than ever.

  Coldly, the billionaire contemplated the likely reaction to this news by the Russian president. He grimaced. Dudarev’s threats had been explicit. Could the details be kept from him? The Russian leader had his own sources of information, and one way or another, he would soon learn of this disaster. When he did, it would be unwise in the extreme for Malkovic to rely on his forbearance. With his armies already on the march toward their unsuspecting enemies, too much was at stake for Dudarev to easily forgive failure.

  Still scowling, Malkovic deleted the damning message and shut down the computer. For a short time longer, he sat moodily staring at the blank screen, mulling over possible courses of action. HYDRA could still be salvaged, he knew, but the work would be best done personally—and from well beyond Dudarev’s reach.

  Abruptly, with his decision made, he pushed away from his desk and stalked over to a wall safe concealed behind a centuries-old icon of St. Michael the Archangel. Keyed by his fingerprints, the heavy metal door swung open, revealing an assortment of CD-ROMs, folders of photographs, and a small box full of audiotapes of surreptitiously recorded conversations. Together, this material documented his secret transactions with the Kremlin. It also included a detailed summary of everything he had learned about Russia’s military plans.

  Quickly, the billionaire began transferring the contents of the safe to one of his briefcases. Once he was safely outside Russia, he would be able to use this information to renegotiate his agreements with Dudarev, securing iron-clad guarantees of his personal safety in return for bringing HYDRA to completion. Malkovic smiled thinly, imagining the Russian president’s outrage at being blackmailed by his confederate. Then he shrugged. Fortunately, like him, Dudarev was fundamentally a cold-eyed realist. Their alliance had never rested entirely on the basis of mutual trust.

  Outside Moscow

  Jon Smith was drowning, sinking down and down through the waters of a bottomless black pool. His lungs were on fire, straining against the increasing pressure as he tumbled deeper and deeper into the crushing depths. He writhed in a desperate attempt to claw his way back up to the surface. Then, to his horror, he realized that his hands and his feet were frozen, completely immobile. He was pinioned and helpless, falling ever faster headfirst into nothingness. There was no escape.

  “Wake up, Colonel!” a harsh voice demanded suddenly.

  Smith shuddered and gasped, retching as another bucketful of ice-cold water hit him right in the face. He coughed violently and then doubled up in pain. Every nerve ending felt raw. Warily, he forced his eyes open.

  He was lying on his side in a puddle of freezing water. His hands, bound behind his back, were numb. So were his feet, tied together tightly at the ankles. A rough, worn stone floor stretched away into darkness. For a long moment, nothing he could see made any sense. Where was he? What the hell had happened to him? He could hear what sounded like a woman moaning softly nearby. Slowly, wincing involuntarily at the agony it cost him to make even the slightest movement, Jon turned his head to look upward.

  A tall, blond-haired man stood there, staring down at him with an appraising look in his winter-gray eyes. The tall man studied him for a bit longer in silence. Then he nodded in cruel satisfaction. “Now that you are conscious, Colonel, we can begin—all over again.”

  Unwelcome memories rushed back, flooding into Smith’s pain-clouded mind like a rising river bursting through a weakened dam. The gray-eyed man was Erich Brandt. And he and Fiona Devin were Brandt’s prisoners. They had been dragged into this dank cellar not long after the ambush that had killed Oleg Kirov.

  The cellar itself lay below the ruins of a church, part of a Russian Orthodox monastery that had been closed by the Bolsheviks after the 1917 Revolution. Jon remembered seeing hundreds of bullet holes pockmarking the walls and hearing the tall German explain, with grim amusement, that this chamber had been used by Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, as a place of execution for political prisoners during one of the dictator’s brutal purges. Now the monastery’s grounds and its buildings, what was left of them, were wholly abandoned, slowly being swallowed up by the surrounding forest.

  The terrible hours since they were brought here had passed in an endless procession of torment as Brandt and two of his grim-faced henchmen took turns interrogating them. Every question they asked was punctuated by pain, either by a short, sharp punch to the ribs or the head, or an open-handed slap to the face, or by the application of electric shocks. In the brief intervals between these sessions, Jon and Fiona had been drenched with freezing water, and bombarded by a dizzying succession of shrill, earsplitting sounds and blinding strobe lights—all as part of an effort to disorient them and weaken their resistance.

  Brandt had been watching him closely. The blond man smiled coldly. He nodded to the other men standing unseen behind Jon. “Our American friend here is ready. Help him back into his seat.”

  Two pairs of rough, callused hands grabbed Smith under the arms as Brandt’s underlings hauled him bodily upright out of the icy puddle of water. They shoved him back into a chair and then again looped a leather strap around his chest, binding him to the sharp-edged wood frame. The strap tightened unmercifully.

  Jon gritted his teeth. He glanced to his left.

  Fiona Devin was strapped into a chair next to him. Her hands and feet were also bound. Her head lolled. Blood trickled out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Like you, Ms. Devin has been…uncooperative,” Brandt said easily. A humorless smile appeared on his face and then vanished swiftly without leaving a trace on his lips or in his eyes. “But I am a forgiving man, so I will grant you both another chance to save yourselves more of this unnecessary pain.”

  He snapped an order over his shoulder to one of his men. “She looks thirsty, Yuri. Give her another drink!”

  His subordinate, a brawny, shaven-headed man, obeyed, tossing a bucket full of cold water into Fiona’s face. She choked and spluttered, leaning back against the chair in a vain effort to avoid the deluge of freezing water. After a few seconds, she slowly opened her eyes. Noticing Smith looking at her with evident concern, she forced a wry, painful grin. “The service here is really rather awful. Next time, I’ll choose different accommodations.”

  Brandt snorted. “Very amusing, Ms. Devin.” He turned back to Smith. “Now, Colonel, let me try being reasonable one last time.” His voice hardened. “Who do you work for? The CIA? The Defense Intelligence Agency? Some other organization?”

  Jon braced himself for the blow he knew was coming. He raised his head, staring the former Stasi officer straight in the eyes. “I’ve told you before,” he said tiredly, surprised at how slurred his voice sounded. “My name is Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, M.D. I work for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute—”

  But instead of hitting him, Brandt spun around and slapped Fiona hard across the face. Her head rocked back. Blood from a new cut inside her mouth spattered off into the darkness. The s
ound of the blow echoed like a gunshot in the damp silence of the cellar.

  “You’re a dead man,” Smith growled through his clenched teeth, shocked by what he had just seen. He strained uselessly against the wide leather strap holding him in place.

  Brandt swung back with a sly, satisfied grin on his face. “Oh, didn’t I tell you, Colonel? The rules have changed. From this moment on, Ms. Devin will suffer for each of your lies, not you.” He shrugged. “The pain she endures in the process will be on your conscience, not on mine.”

  Christ, Smith thought bleakly, feeling light-headed. The big, gray-eyed bastard had read him perfectly. He had been tortured before, and he knew the limits of his own endurance. But how long could he sit helpless and watch another person being brutalized to satisfy his own stubborn pride?

  “Pay me no mind, Jon,” Fiona Devin said quietly, spitting out a mouthful of blood. “This murdering bastard will kill us both no matter what we tell him, or don’t tell him—”

  Yet another open-handed blow from Brandt’s hard hand rocked her head to the side.

  “You will be silent, Ms. Devin!” he said coldly. “My conversation is with the colonel here, not with you. You had your chance to tell me what I wished to know. Now it is his turn.”

  Smith raged inwardly, maddened by his inability to stop this devilish game. If he could just get free, even for a second, he thought desperately…but realistically he knew there was no chance of that. He also knew that Fiona was right. They were both going to die here in this dark, dank cellar, this place already haunted by the ghosts of hundreds of others murdered by men like Brandt and his thugs. The only real question remaining was whether or not they could win at least one small last victory by denying the Stasi officer the information he demanded.

  He closed his eyes briefly, steeling himself to endure the long, pain-filled, and bloody hours to come. Then he opened them and looked up again at Brandt in front of him. “My name is Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, M.D.,” he repeated steadily, in a stronger voice than he would have thought possible. “And I work for the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases…”