“Did you tell them why you needed it?”
“No. That’s the whole point of a bribe. I pay, they don’t ask.”
She was already irritable about leaving the comfort and security of the plane, and being patronized did nothing to help her mood. “So, two new things I know about Dr. Eugene Browning—he speaks Russian, and he’s a sarcastic git.”
Adam laughed. “Yes, sorry. Sometimes a persona comes through without my meaning it to.”
She regarded him quizzically. “You’re not in total control?”
“Oh, nothing like that, no. It’s more a subconscious influence. Like picking up a local accent after moving to a new town.”
“Or saying ‘I’ instead of ‘he,’ like you did when you were talking about that bribe Browning took in 1985?”
“Just living the part. Less chance of messing up my pronouns in front of the bad guys.” He looked across at her. “Are you warm?”
Despite wearing a thick hooded coat and padded over-trousers, she was hunched tightly in the seat, the medical gear and a case containing a Geiger counter in her lap and gloved hands wedged firmly under her folded arms. “Do I look warm?”
“I’d turn up the heater, but as you can see …” The dial was already as far into the red as it would go.
“Adam,” said Holly Jo through his earwig, “Zykov just reached the town. Looks like he’s going to the docks.”
He looked across the fjord. “It’ll probably take us about ten more minutes to get there. Keep me informed.”
“Will do.”
Bianca gave him a questioning look. There had been no time to fit her with an earwig. “Zykov’s heading for the port,” he told her.
“Like you thought.”
“Yes. Al-Rais is almost certainly aboard the Woden. Two questions: One, where are he and Zykov going to meet Sevnik? And two, how many terrorists has he brought with him?”
“You don’t think al-Rais has come alone?”
“Unlikely.”
“Well, that’s … cheery.” She slumped back in her seat.
The car continued around the inlet. After ten minutes of slithering through the snow, it passed a sign: . Provideniya. Beyond was the town itself, strings of buildings stretched out parallel to the shore. Under the gray sky it looked thoroughly uninviting, even the brightly colored houses providing little cheer.
“We’ve reached the town,” Adam told those in the jet. He looked along the waterfront. Dark cranes rose above the docks. The Woden was visible, lights shining in its wheelhouse. “Heading for the port.”
“Okay,” said Holly Jo. “Zykov and his men just went aboard the ship.”
“No sign of al-Rais?”
“Not yet.”
“Right. Keep watching. We’ll be there soon.” The road into the town had been partially cleared of snow, making progress easier.
Even in such bitter conditions there were still people out and about, moving briskly in heavy fur-trimmed coats and hats. A few regarded Adam and Bianca with curiosity—or suspicion—as they passed, recognizing the car but not its occupants. “Nice place,” said Bianca as she took in the run-down state of the buildings. Several of the apartment blocks were derelict, windows boarded up or broken.
“Now who’s being sarcastic, young lady?” Adam retorted. “The town’s lost more than half its population in the past twenty years. That’s why some of the buildings are abandoned.”
“I’m surprised not all of them are. Who just told me that, by the way? You, or Browning?”
“Me. I researched the town on the flight. But the ‘young lady’ part was Browning.”
“Tell him that if he calls me that again he’ll get a slap. And so will you.”
Adam grinned, then slowed as the car approached a junction. “Okay, that looks like it leads down to the docks.” He turned onto the new road, rounding a large warehouse-like structure.
Bianca pointed ahead. “There’s the … the thing. Whatever Baxter called it.”
“The Vityaz. It means ‘knight.’ ” The DT-10 was parked near some rusting shipping containers. The Woden was moored not far away. “Kyle, any activity on the ship?”
“Not since Zykov and his two guys went aboard,” came the reply.
“Is the driver still in the ATV?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Adam continued past the Vityaz.
“What are we doing?” Bianca asked.
“I want a closer look at the Woden.”
Alarm filled her voice. “You’re not going to go aboard, are you?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not crazy.” He stopped the car behind a row of containers, out of sight of both the Vityaz and the ship. “Wait in the car.”
He was about to switch off the engine when Bianca batted his hand away from the key. “Leave it on!” she protested. “There’ll be no heat otherwise.”
“And I thought you’d be against pollution.”
“I’m against freezing to death even more!”
Amused, he acquiesced. “I won’t be long.”
He got out and quickly surveyed the docks. There was no sign of anybody, the cranes empty and unmoving and the other moored vessels dark. Pulling up his hood, he advanced to the last container in the line and peered around it.
The Woden’s black-painted hull and white superstructure were both scarred by orange streaks of rust. The freighter was at least fifty years old, a privately owned tramp that plied the Pacific on behalf of individual clients, taking their cargo between ports too small for bulk carriers.
And not just cargo. Such vessels sometimes carried passengers. The one he suspected was aboard would have paid very handsomely to travel while avoiding the usual customs checks.
He briefly considered going to look through one of the portholes, but it was entirely possible someone inside the ship was watching the docks. Instead he retreated up the row of containers and slipped between them. A little labyrinth had been formed where several of the metal boxes had been haphazardly dumped. He went through to the far side and glanced out at the Vityaz. A small flare of orange light revealed the driver in its cab, smoking a cigarette. The engine was still running; like Bianca, the Russian wanted to stay warm.
“Adam,” said Tony urgently. “Movement on the ship.”
“Okay,” he whispered, looking back toward the waterfront. One of Zykov’s bodyguards had emerged onto the aft deck. His coat was open, a hand inside. He wasn’t impersonating Napoleon. He had a gun at the ready, surveying the shore for signs of danger. Adam retreated into the shadows.
The other bodyguard came through an open hatch, followed by Zykov. The arms dealer was talking over his shoulder to someone.
Another man appeared. Tall, rangy, with a long dark beard spilling over his coat’s collar. Olive-brown skin, a thin, prominent nose.
Muqaddim al-Rais.
The world’s most-wanted terrorist. The man behind atrocities that had claimed hundreds, even thousands of lives across the globe, including that of the US secretary of state.
And he was here, in a tiny town on the frozen fringes of Russia.
For a moment, Browning’s persona vanished from Adam’s mind. His only thought was a sudden urge for vengeance. From this distance, even his pistol would be more than accurate enough to score a killing shot. His vision seemed to tunnel, locking onto the terrorist leader’s head. One bullet would do it …
His focus widened as more men followed al-Rais onto the deck. The majority looked to be Pakistani or Afghan. None appeared acclimatized to the cold. The mountains of the Hindu Kush were far from hospitable in winter, but subarctic Siberia—Provideniya was only barely south of the Arctic Circle—was something else entirely.
The men kept coming. Five, six, seven in all, each carrying a bag containing something suspiciously similar in length to a Kalashnikov rifle. Two of them also bore suitcases; the seven million dollars? The last man out gave Adam an odd feeling of recognition. It took him a moment to realize why. His name was Qasi
d, one of al-Rais’s lieutenants; Adam had pulled his face from Syed’s memories during the debriefing on the flight from Pakistan. Holly Jo had also found his picture in the USIC database.
But a brief meeting and a single photograph didn’t seem enough to have produced the feeling of familiarity. Was there something more? He wasn’t sure.
He wasn’t sure why he had felt such a surge of anger toward al-Rais either. He was an enemy of the United States, yes, but this had been almost personal. Why? He hadn’t encountered al-Rais before.
Or … had he?
There was no time to consider that. “Tony,” he whispered. “I have eyes on al-Rais. Repeat, Muqaddim al-Rais is here.”
“We see him,” came the reply. “Stand by.”
The two bodyguards came down the gangplank onto the dock. Adam pulled back deeper into cover. Zykov followed his men; then the terrorists filed onto the shore, al-Rais shielded by their bodies at the center of the group. They all marched toward the Vityaz. The two bodyguards, al-Rais, and one of his men entered the cab; the other six clambered into the back compartment of the DT-10’s front half. Presumably the trailer would be used to carry the RTG.
Zykov, however, didn’t get in. Instead he reached into his coat and took out a telephone. Its oversized antenna revealed it to be a satellite unit rather than a cellular.
The Russian started to tap in a number. “Holly Jo,” Adam said, “Zykov’s making a call on a satphone.”
“I’ll try to snag it,” she replied.
Zykov put the phone to his ear. After a few moments he frowned and peered at the unit’s screen, then moved several paces away from the Vityaz and held the phone up to the sky. He turned in place, finally looking satisfied when he was facing south. Satellite phones depended on line of sight to their orbiting relays, and were also susceptible to local interference; the Vityaz, a big metal box housing a powerful engine, would not help reception.
He put the phone back to his head, waiting several seconds before getting a connection and starting to talk. Adam—or rather Browning—could make out most of what he heard, his current persona having acquired a fair knowledge of Russian during his years as an international atomic energy inspector. Zykov was talking to Colonel Sevnik: his seller.
A tension—no, an excitement, the thrill of the hunt—rose in Adam as he realized what Zykov was doing. “They’re arranging the meet,” he told the team. “This is it—they’re going to collect the RTG.”
He was about to ask Holly Jo if she had tapped into the call when Zykov suddenly waved to the driver, who leaned out of the cab. “Put these in!” Zykov called out in Russian. “Sixty-four! Twenty-five! Thirty-three, north! One-seven-three! Four! Thirty-seven, west!” The driver typed each number in turn into a unit on his dashboard.
A GPS. He was entering the coordinates for the rendezvous with Sevnik.
Adam hurriedly relayed the figures. “Where is that?”
“It’s about four and a half miles due east of your current position, up in the hills,” Tony replied. “That’s as the crow flies—it’s a lot farther going ’round the inlet.”
Adam glanced around the container. The desolate snow-covered hills rose steeply and uninvitingly on the fjord’s far side. He guessed the summits to be well over a thousand meters high. “What’s there?”
“Nothing, as far as I can tell. Looks like a glaciated valley.”
Zykov concluded his call, then returned to the Vityaz and climbed into the cab. The driver revved the engine, a plume of dirty exhaust smoke spouting skyward. Wherever they were going, Adam knew he had to follow. But the borrowed Lada would not get far off the road, while the articulated Vityaz could negotiate almost any terrain. So how …
Only one way. He hurried back to the car, pulling Bianca’s door open. She looked up at him in surprise. “Come on. Bring the PERSONA—quick!”
She had not seen the terrorists leave the ship. “What’s happened?”
“Come on, now! They’re moving out.”
Still bewildered, she scrambled from the car. “Who’s moving? Zykov?”
“Yes—and al-Rais.”
“He’s here?”
“Yes, but not for long. Hurry up!” They retrieved the PERSONA cases, taking one each, then ran along the row of containers. Adam cautiously checked the road. The Vityaz was performing its caterpillar trick again, bending at the middle to drastically tighten its turning circle. Snow and gravel spitting up from its tracks, it ground back the way it had come.
Adam waited for the driver’s mirrors to be blocked by the trailer, then broke into a run after it. “Move, quick!”
Bianca followed, confused. “What are we doing?”
“We’ve got to get aboard!” Adam quickly caught up with the crawler. The trailer’s rear entrance was a wide bottom-hinged tailgate with only a canvas flap above it to shield the interior from the elements. He pulled the canvas away and swung the case inside, then clambered in after it. “Come on!”
Bianca was some way behind, weighed down with the second case, the medical kit, and the Geiger counter. “Wait, wait!”
“I can’t, I’m not driving!” He held out his arms. “Give me the case, then take my hand!”
She strained to lift the weighty case up high enough for him to get hold of it. He swept it into the trailer, then reached back to grab her hand. “All right, jump in!”
He pulled her up as she leapt at the tailgate, hooking her free arm over it. For a moment she wobbled, then Adam tugged harder and she rolled into the trailer. “Ow! Bloody hell!” she cried.
“Are you okay?”
She clutched her arms protectively across her chest, grimacing in pain. “No, that really bloody hurt when you dragged me over that thing!”
“Sorry. But I needed you to come with me.”
“Why?”
“That’s a very good question,” Tony said in Adam’s ear. “What the hell are you doing? The UAV can follow Zykov—it’s tracking you right now.”
“Sevnik isn’t just going to hand the RTG over then and there,” Adam replied. “It’s a rendezvous, but I doubt it’s the end of the journey. If Sevnik was bringing the RTG in by helicopter or in another ATV, he could have delivered it straight to the airport. No, it’s stashed somewhere—somewhere protected from the weather, and where some random hunter won’t trip over it.”
“Okay, we’ll see where this takes us,” said Tony, though doubt was clear in his voice. “Not that we’ve got much choice, now that you’ve jumped in the back of Zykov’s truck!”
“It’ll take us to the RTG. I’m sure of it.” Adam pulled the canvas flap back down, then surveyed the trailer’s interior. It was as bare as the landscape beyond the town, plain metal benches running the length of each side and a small mound of dirty tarpaulins and sheets piled at the far end. He gestured to one of the benches. “You might as well sit down,” he said to Bianca. “This could be a long ride.”
Adam had been right. The drive out of Provideniya and up into the hills took some time. While the Vityaz was extremely capable off-road, it was not fast.
Nor was it comfortable. “I feel seasick,” Bianca moaned after a particularly rough series of lurches almost pitched her from the bench. It was taking the pair’s full effort to stop the cases from skittering about like pinballs.
“At least this is as high as we’re going,” said Adam. He pulled back the canvas to look outside. The Vityaz had reached the end of an especially steep climb and was now on more or less level ground as it rumbled across a hilltop. Provideniya was still visible on the far side of the inlet, though the weather was deteriorating, a light snowfall rendering the view hazy.
“Yeah, but I’m getting the horrible feeling we might never go back down.”
“We’ll be okay.”
“Really? Really? We’ve jumped into the back of a snowmobile-tank thing full of terrorists on their way to buy a nuclear weapon, and it’s not as if we’ve got anywhere to hide in here. If they find us, they’ll kill us!”
“Then we’ll have to make sure they don’t find us.” Adam nudged the tarps with one foot. “The only person who knows what’s in here is the driver, and he doesn’t seem to want to get out of his nice warm cab. We can lie under the benches and cover ourselves with these. It’s pretty dark; we should be okay.”
“And if they put the RTG in here, and it has radiation pouring out of an enormous crack in one side?”
“Then we’ll have to hide on the other side.”
It took a moment for her to realize that he was joking. “That’s not very funny.”
“But ‘not very’ still means ‘a little,’ doesn’t it?”
A tiny, reluctant smile appeared on her lips. “A very little.”
“That’s still enough. Browning’s good at reassuring people. He has to be, considering his line of work. He always had to convince his kids that he wasn’t going to come back home radioactive.”
“Browning has kids?” He nodded. “Is that … does that feel weird to you? Knowing all the everyday little details of somebody’s life when it’s so completely different from yours?”
“It does now that you’ve brought it up. Thank you!”
She smiled again. “Sorry. But once you mentioned his kids, what happened in your mind? How does it work for you? Do you just know the details about them, like their names and their birthdays, or do you … feel how he does about them?”
“I feel it,” he replied, after a moment—one filled with a rush of memories that weren’t his. A summer afternoon in the garden, whooping as he jumped into the paddling pool with his son and daughter and the sluice of displaced water sent a plastic duck whirling across the lawn, Janey and Bobby squealing and giggling at the sight …
Not his daughter, or his son. Browning’s. It took a conscious mental effort to stop the flow of images and sounds and smells—
“Adam?”
“Yeah,” he said, snapping back. “It’s strange. When I’ve got someone’s persona in my head, some memories bring back emotions. Sometimes really strong ones. But once the persona’s gone, it’s different. I still have the memories I accessed, but … they’re just facts. I was at a place, I was with a particular person, I did this or that—but I don’t remember how it felt.”