Brandt stared down at the lean, dark-haired American in frustration. He had been sure that Smith was on the edge of breaking. He had sensed it. But now he could see the man’s resolve stiffening. Meanwhile, time was moving on. Sooner or later, a militia patrol would discover the carnage inside the Zakarov dacha. And sooner or later, they would find the wreckage of that bullet-torn GAZ jeep lying in a ravine by the side of the road. Once either of those things happened, Alexei Ivanov would start asking some very awkward questions.
He rubbed his jaw. At least Fadayev had finally called into the Group’s headquarters, reporting that the driver was definitely dead and that he had retrieved the dead man’s identity papers. If nothing else, Brandt thought, that would make it slightly more difficult for Ivanov to connect the two incidents. But only slightly.
His phone rang suddenly.
Scowling, Brandt yanked the device out of his pocket. “Yes?” he snapped irritably, walking back toward the stairs out of the cellar, moving out of earshot of the two prisoners. “What is it?”
“Your man Lange has bungled his assignment,” Malkovic told him bitterly. “And by now the CIA must have penetrated very deeply into our communications network.”
Brandt listened in stunned disbelief while his employer ran through what he had learned about the disaster in Berlin. Lange dead? Along with all of his hand-picked team? It scarcely seemed possible.
“We have no choice now,” Malkovic said flatly. “We must transfer the key elements of the HYDRA lab to a new location—without further delay. I intend to oversee the work myself, and I want you there, too. Both for security purposes and to make sure that Professor Renke appreciates the need for immediate action.”
Brandt nodded, understanding what the other man really wanted. He wanted personal protection against any danger. The billionaire was frightened to death of what the Russians might do once they learned that all of his fine promises to them about HYDRA’s operational security were worthless.
His jaw tightened. Malkovic was right to be afraid. “When do we leave?” he asked harshly.
“My personal jet is scheduled to take off in just under three hours,” Malkovic said. “But first I want you to shut down all of your operations in Moscow. Make arrangements for your key people to rendezvous somewhere outside Russia. Dump the communications system. And wipe your files, all of them. Understand?”
“Yes.” Brandt considered the work necessary to implement those orders. He nodded again. “It can be done.”
“Make sure of it,” the other man told him coolly. “I will not tolerate any more mistakes.” The phone went dead.
Brandt spun on his heel. “Yuri!” he growled. “Over here!”
Openly curious, the brawny, shaven-headed man ambled over. “Yes?”
“We’ve got new orders,” Brandt told him brusquely. “I’m heading back to Moscow straight away. Close up shop here, sanitize the area, and follow me when you can.”
“What about the Americans?”
Brandt shrugged. “They’re useless to us now. Finish them.”
Chapter Forty-Two
With their hands still tied behind them, Jon Smith and Fiona Devin were hustled up the stairs and out of the cellar at gunpoint. They came up into the ruins of the church, a square stone building topped by the broken remains of a central onion-shaped dome. Gray light from an overcast sky streamed in through empty windows and gaps in the dome. Small patches of weathered, fading paint on the moss-covered walls were all that was left of the bright frescoes of saints and scenes from the Old and New Testaments that had once decorated the church interior. Everything else of value—the marble altar, the golden tabernacle, chandeliers and candelabras—had long since been carted away.
Brandt wheeled at the main door to the church and sketched an ironic salute. “And here I will say farewell to you, Colonel. And to you, too, Ms. Devin.” His teeth flashed white in the gloom. “I will not see either of you again.”
Jon said nothing, staring back at him with an impassive face. Show no fear, he told himself. Don’t give the bastard any satisfaction. He noticed that Fiona had the same faintly bored look on her bruised face. She glanced at Brandt with no more interest than she might have shown if he were a common housefly buzzing against a window.
Visibly irked by their lack of reaction, the gray-eyed man turned on his heel and left. Not long afterward, they heard the engine of his Ford Explorer roar into life and listened to its thick tires go crunching away across the snow and ice.
“Go on!” one of the two gunmen still guarding them growled. He gestured with his pistol, a 9mm Makarov, pointing toward a smaller, arched doorway at the side of the church. “Out through there!”
Smith glanced at him, not bothering to hide the contempt he felt. “And if we refuse?”
The gunman, the shaven-headed man Brandt had called Yuri, shrugged carelessly. “Then I will shoot you here. It makes no real difference to me.”
“Do as the man asks,” Fiona murmured. “If nothing else, we buy a little more time. And at least we get the chance to breathe a bit of clean air.”
Jon nodded slowly. In the end, resisting here would make no real difference to their fate, and perhaps it would be better to die outside—under the open sky—than here in this musty pile of stone.
Of course, not dying would be even better, he thought wryly. Cautiously, he tried again to loosen his bonds, straining his wrists hard against the length of heavy-duty plastic cable binding him and then relaxing, trying to stretch them out slightly. Over time, the constant expansion and contraction might create a point of weakness that would let him break free. He sighed. It was a technique that might succeed, but only if he were given an uninterrupted ten or twelve hours to spend working away at the cable. Unfortunately, his remaining life span was probably measured in minutes at best.
“Come!” the gunman snapped again. His comrade, shorter and with a mop of coarse brown hair, prodded them forward from behind with the muzzle of his submachine gun.
Smith and Fiona stumbled out through the little door, down a few cracked stone steps and out across a snow-covered patch of waste ground. It was largely overgrown with weeds and brambles and little clumps of saplings. A few paths wandered off through the old and gnarled trees, heading for darker heaps of broken stone—all that was left of a small hospital, a school, a refectory, cells for the monks, and other buildings. The remnants of a stout stone wall could be seen rising beyond those ruins.
They were pushed and shoved down a path running off to the left, one that led through an open gate in the monastery wall and out into a small, equally neglected, and overgrown graveyard. Many of these markers had fallen over and lay half-buried in the snow. Others were pockmarked with old bullet scars, probably made decades ago by NKVD execution squads amusing themselves while off-duty. All were surrounded by clumps of tall dead grass and weeds.
Looming up on the far side of the graveyard, Jon could see a shallow open pit, probably once used to burn rubbish. Cans of gasoline and a collection of dirty, oil-soaked rags were stacked at the rim of the pit. He stopped abruptly, digging in his heels. Their planned fate was clear. He and Fiona were going to be herded down into that pit, shot to death, and then their bodies would be doused in gasoline and burned.
From somewhere behind him, he could hear the two gunmen murmuring to each other. By the sound of it they had dropped back several meters behind their two captives.
Smith grimaced. They were out of time and out of options. And if they were going to die anyway, it was better to go down fighting. In that same moment, he heard a muffled gasp from Fiona and knew that she, too, had seen the waiting pit and the gasoline. Jon glanced across at her. “Are you with me?” he said quietly, jerking his head slightly to indicate Brandt’s thugs coming up behind them.
Now there were tears in her eyes. But she lifted her chin and nodded bravely. “To the bitter end, Colonel.” Then she actually managed a very slight smile.
Smith grinned back appr
eciatively. “That’s the spirit. Let’s see if we can lure them in within reach. I’ll take the guy on the left. You take the one on the right,” he murmured under his breath. “Trip yours if you can. Otherwise just kick the hell out of him and then keep kicking. Okay?”
She nodded again.
“No talking!” the shaven-headed man snapped. “And keep moving!”
Smith refused to move. He stood still with his back to the two gunmen, waiting. His skin crawled, anticipating the sudden smashing impact of a bullet. Just come a little closer, he thought grimly. Just a bit closer.
He heard footsteps crunching across the snow, drawing nearer. He tensed, preparing himself to spring. A shadow fell across his shoulder.
Now!
Jon whirled around, lashing out with his right foot in a lightning-fast kick. Out the corner of his eye, he saw Fiona making the same move.
It was no good.
Brandt’s men must have been waiting and watching for one last desperate escape attempt. With contemptuous ease, they evaded the kicks wildly aimed in their direction. Both quickly stepped back well out of range, grinning cruelly.
Thrown off balance by his sudden movement, Smith stumbled. With his hands still tied behind his back, he could not recover and wound up falling forward onto his knees. Panting, Fiona dropped to the snow at his side.
The shaven-headed man slowly wagged a mocking finger at them. “That was very stupid.” Then he shrugged. “But it doesn’t really matter, I suppose. Nothing does—in the end.” He signaled to his colleague. “Kill them here, Kostya.”
Nodding coolly, the brown-haired man moved forward, raising his submachine gun.
Surprised at his own calmness, Smith forced himself to stare straight into the other man’s narrowed eyes. He had fought the good fight. What else could he do but take what was coming as bravely as he could? He could hear Fiona murmuring words softly under her breath, possibly a prayer of some kind.
The gunman’s finger tightened slowly on the trigger. A breath of wind ruffled through his mop of coarse brown hair.
Crack.
And the gunman’s chest blew apart in a spray of blood and bone, blown open from front to back. The submachine gun fell out of his nerveless hands. His body swayed and then crumpled sideways, collapsing in a clump of brush between two grave markers.
For a split second, no one moved.
The other man stared in absolute astonishment at the mangled corpse of his comrade. Recovering suddenly, he threw himself down.
Crack.
A second high-velocity round smashed the snow-covered cross right behind where Brandt’s bald henchman had been standing. Snow and shattered pieces of marble flew away from the point of impact.
Smith rolled to the left, into the shelter offered by a headstone that appeared on the verge of toppling over but that was somehow still standing. A sculptor had carved the likeness of a sleeping mother and child deep into its surface. Fiona followed him. Together, they crouched low on their knees, being very careful to keep their heads well below the top of the monument.
“What the devil is going on?” Fiona whispered. Her eyes were wide and her face had gone very pale. The red handprints, welts, and cuts left by Brandt’s cruelty were plain on her smooth clear skin.
“Damned if I know,” Smith said softly, putting his mouth close to her ear.
An eerie silence descended across the weed-choked cemetery. Cautiously, Smith turned his head, studying the terrain more closely. The graveyard lay at the bottom of a little bowl, with gentle slopes rising all around. The ruins of the monastery crowned one of those shallow hills. Groves of birch and pine trees covered the other elevations.
He heard the sudden crackle of dry brush not far off, the sound of someone slithering closer through the dead weeds and grass. Brandt’s surviving gunman was stalking them, Jon realized coldly, inching carefully from cover to cover to avoid drawing fire from the marksman lurking somewhere among the trees. From the noise, Brandt’s man was swinging wide to their left, crawling through the crowded tangle of crosses and grave markers that still separated them from him.
Smith leaned closer to Fiona. “You go off that way,” he muttered, jerking his chin to the right, away from the ominous, crackling sounds coming steadily and stealthily closer. “Go a few meters. Once you’re behind another big marker, make some noise. As much noise as you can. Understand?”
Wordlessly, Fiona nodded back. Without waiting any longer, she rolled rapidly away across the hard-packed earth and snow.
And Jon moved himself, rolling to the left as quietly as he could. He crossed a small gap and reached the next pair of headstones over, one leaning drunkenly against the other. He stopped behind the largest, a solid slab of dark-colored stone, and listened intently. More weeds rustled. The shaven-headed gunman was coming closer, creeping slowly through the snow and tall grass.
Quickly, Smith twisted around onto his back, lying with his legs drawn up to his chest, coiled and ready to strike. With luck, he might get one chance, he knew. But only one. If he muffed it, he was a dead man.
Off to his right, he heard a sharp thud, then another, and another, and finally what sounded like someone weeping in sheer terror and frustration. Fiona was playing her part well, he realized, mimicking the noises that might be made by a frightened woman desperately crawling away through the cemetery in a panic.
Jon held his breath, waiting.
Flat on his belly, Brandt’s man wriggled out from around the weathered edge of the tall stone slab, moving faster now that he thought he had pinpointed the position of the two Americans, with the 9mm Makarov pistol held ready in his right hand. His head swung sharply toward where Smith lay watching him.
Jon saw the other man’s eyes widen in utter dismay. In that instant, he kicked out with both feet, smashing them as hard as he could straight into the gunman’s face. He felt a sickening crunch and saw the man’s head snap backward under the force of the blow. Droplets of blood spattered across his boots.
Smith kicked out again.
The shaven-headed man writhed backward, away from the American’s second attack. Below his glaring eyes, his face was a gruesome mask of fractured bone and shattered teeth. Enraged and in agony, he rolled up onto his feet, taking careful aim at Smith’s head.
And a third rifle shot rang out, echoing sharply across the little hollow.
Hit in the back, the man screamed once, clawed desperately at the huge hole torn through his stomach, and then folded over, hanging limp across the tall stone slab. His head and hands trailed in the weeds. More blood slid down the marker and pooled on the ground, staining the white, ice-crusted snow a sickly pink.
Slowly, painfully, Jon sat up. He inched away from the dead man and leaned his head back gratefully against the ice-cold stone of another grave marker, waiting for his nerves to stop twitching.
“Colonel?” a soft voice called out. It was Fiona Devin. “Are you still in one piece?”
“I seem to be,” he called back, not bothering to conceal the relief in his own voice. He caught a flicker of movement among the trees on the slope rising above them and sat up straighter. The movement resolved itself into the figure of a tall, silver-haired man, striding down the little hill toward them with a Dragunov SVD rifle cradled casually in his arms and a wide grin wreathed across his broad, large-nosed face.
Jon stared in total disbelief. He was looking at a man who should be dead. He was looking at Oleg Kirov.
“How in hell…?” he asked, when the other man drew nearer.
For an answer, the Russian pulled open the torn winter coat he was wearing. Underneath, he wore a bulky black vest. It was pockmarked and stained with what appeared to be smears of once-molten copper. He patted it affectionately. “British-made body armor, Jon,” Kirov said with satisfaction. “Some of the best in the world.”
“Which you just happened to decide to wear last night?”
Kirov shrugged. “Before I became a spy, I was a soldier. And what
soldier in his right mind would go out on sentry duty without the proper equipment?” He grinned again. “Old habits die hard, my friend, and old soldiers die even harder.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Rural Maryland
Ten minutes after turning off the Beltway that ringed Washington, D.C., Nikolai Nimerovsky glanced down at the odometer of his rental car, a plain white Ford Taurus, checking how far he had come. Five miles. He was getting close to his destination. He looked back up at the little country road stretching ahead of him. On either side, thick stands of trees choked by underbrush were lit by the car’s headlights and then disappeared in the predawn darkness. A small signpost loomed up out of the blackness on the right, marking a turn-off that his map indicated meandered deeper into this state park until it came out a few miles away in a new housing subdivision.
He pulled off onto the shoulder and got out, holding the briefcase he had been given in Zurich. Following the instructions given to him in Moscow, he found the dead drop easily enough. It was a hollow tree just a few yards from the signpost. Acting quickly, he slid the briefcase into the tree trunk, made sure it was not visible from the road, and then walked unhurriedly back to his car.
Along the way, he punched in a local phone number on his cell phone. It rang three times before someone answered.
“Yes?” a voice snapped, sounding irritated at being woken up so early in the morning.
“Is this the Miller residence at 555-8705?” Nimerovsky asked carefully.
“No,” the person on the other end said tartly. “You’ve dialed the wrong number.”
“I’m very sorry,” Nimerovsky said. “My apologies.”
There was a sudden click as the person he had called hung up.