Dan grinned—he couldn’t help himself. Stupid in a long line of stupid.
He kicked out the bigger shard still stuck in the frame and then, hooking his fingers along the upper edge, hopped up onto the frame.
The wind stung his eyes, making it impossible to see what was up ahead. All he needed was a big branch to smash him off.
He slid one hand up the smooth, sooty outer surface of the car. His fingers searched for something to latch on to.
The car tilted as it jerked around a corner and Dan winced, legs shaking to keep balance on the thin frame. There. He felt along a slot. A vent? He squeezed his fingers into the gap and curled them around a narrow, sharp opening.
The doorframe cracked as Melinda, or more likely one of her henchmen, crashed against the car door. One more hit and it would be nothing but splinters.
It was now or never.
Dan jammed his other hand into the vent and hauled himself up, springing halfway out the window.
The door crashed open.
“Quick! Grab him!” yelled Melinda.
A chunky hand grabbed Dan’s left foot, but he lashed out with his right and there was a satisfying, fleshy thump, the kind you might get when a foot meets a face. The man’s grip slipped and Dan hauled himself fully out the window.
This wasn’t just stupid. This was crazy stupid.
The wind pulled and pushed him as if trying to rip him off the train. Dan had to slide himself upward, pressed flat against the metal surface of the car until it leveled out at the top. He slowly got to his feet, poised in a crouch to cut down the wind resistance. Even then he could barely stop from toppling over.
The forest was a blur and the moon shone on the train, lighting a shiny silver path on the roof. The engine ahead roared like an angry dragon.
Now what? Forward or back?
The choice was made for him as Melinda rose up onto the roof behind him. She’d gone out between the cars and climbed up.
Dan knew what was going to happen. If she was behind him, then she’d have sent one of her minions to do the same … from the front.
Dan ran. A head appeared in the gap ahead, and he picked up the pace, ignoring the horrific way the train juddered on the tracks, and leaped across to the next car.
“Dan!” shouted Melinda. “There’s no way off this train!”
There was real fear in her voice, and she was shuffling along, arms outstretched like a tightrope walker.
She was right. If he got into any car, they’d get him. All he was doing was dragging it out. But Dan wasn’t going to just raise his hands and give up.
“Got you!”
A hand clamped down on Dan’s shoulder and he kicked out instinctively.
His heel rammed into the man’s shin and the man buckled. Dan twisted sharply, slamming both fists down on the man’s forearm to break the grip.
The train jerked sideways as it swapped tracks. Dan fought to stay upright, managing to keep on his feet and on the train roof, barely.
The minion wasn’t so lucky. Big, meaty, and not at all quick or nimble, he yelled as he toppled backward and disappeared into a thicket of trees.
Melinda cursed and was edging closer. She drew something out of her jacket pocket—a short metal stub that, with a flick, sprang into a foot-long steel baton.
“Nathaniel wants you alive,” she snarled. “But that doesn’t stop me from breaking a few bones.”
Dan tugged off his jacket and wrapped it around his left arm.
Melinda smirked. “Where’d you learn that? From YouTube?”
Dan blushed. How did she know?
Melinda moved more confidently now, sliding one foot ahead and keeping her eyes on Dan. He had to shuffle backward, not daring to look where he was going in case she attacked.
And then she did.
Dan raised his arm to ward off the hit, but it was a feint; Melinda flipped the weapon and brought it slamming into the side of Dan’s knee. He yelled, but didn’t fall. The next blow was a sharp jab in the gut before a flick into his jaw.
It had only been seconds and Dan was reeling. He punched out, but all that got him was a bruised wrist as Melinda snapped the baton across it.
“Had enough?” she taunted.
There was no overconfidence, just an assurance she was in charge, and Dan knew it.
He needed to get past that stick of hers.
So Dan charged.
Melinda brought both elbows into the back of his neck as Dan rammed her off her feet. They slammed into the hard steel and Melinda gasped. They slid across the roof, gravity pulling them down the curved slope toward the edge. Melinda cried out, then caught her foot on the ridge, holding them both on the top of the speeding train, but only just.
Dan rammed his fist into her, but Melinda hooked a leg around his neck and trapped his arm between hers. She twisted, and it felt as if Dan’s arm was about to be ripped out of his shoulder socket.
Dan sank his teeth into one of her calves and Melinda snarled. He tugged himself free and stumbled back to his feet.
“Biting? Seriously?” Melinda limped to her feet. “What’s next? Hair pulling?”
Dan spat out a few threads of nylon. He had to get away.
A black winding line bisected the track ahead of them. Dan’s photographic memory flashed up an image he’d glimpsed at the train station.
The train dipped as the front cars ran onto a bridge.
We’re crossing the Rhine River.
“Don’t be stupid!” yelled Melinda.
Dan ran forward. The iron bridge was a single span, fifty or so feet over the river itself. The fall might kill him, but it seemed better than being handed over to the Outcast.
The timing had to be perfect. Too soon, and he’d break himself against the steel girders of the bridge arch and too slow, he’d miss the river entirely. So it had to be …
Now!
“Dan!” Melinda screamed as he launched himself off the train.
Dan spun through the air. It was like falling forever. Time slowed, and he was staring at trees and stars and train and rushing water, all tumbling around and around. He gasped for air, pushing against the panic that seized his lungs. How far? How far? There were rocks and girders and the black roaring river and its white rapids rushing up fast to hit him and—
He crashed helter-skelter into the water. Hard.
Down and down he sank, dragged by the tumultuous rapids. He was battered and shoved. It felt as if he was being grabbed, held under, despite how hard he beat his arms and legs. The river had him and didn’t want to let go. He crashed into and bounced off a submerged rock, hitting it with his shoulder.
Dan tumbled into the swirl; he was dragged and shoved, pummeled by the hard, chaotic current. He flailed and kicked, trying to get right-side up. He broke the surface and gasped.
He glimpsed a second figure—a slash of red in the air—then a splash as Melinda hit the water.
He shivered but struck out toward the bank. It was tantalizingly close, but the river still wanted him.
Drooping fronds brushed the water’s surface and Dan stretched up to grab them. They bent, arcing low to the river, but held.
“Help me!” Melinda screamed.
Dan spun to see Melinda sweep by. Their eyes met; he would never forget the look of fear, lit by the heartless moonlight, before Melinda was carried away. She rolled in the rapids and disappeared under.
Dan ached as he hung on to the fronds. He shivered but forced himself to crawl along until his feet touched the pebbly river bottom. Then he stumbled up the riverbank and collapsed.
He felt as if he’d gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. Every part of him had been pummeled until he was one huge world of pain.
The sound of a car engine made him raise his head. Headlights slipped out across the river’s surface as a hulking SUV pushed itself out through the wall of trees along the river’s edge.
“Help … ” Dan muttered, his lungs too tired to raise his voice beyond a whi
sper.
The car stopped, its engine rumbled idly. The passenger door opened and Dan, face still in the dirt, glimpsed a pair of well-polished shoes step out.
“He’s alive, sir.”
“Get him up.”
Hands roughly hoisted Dan to his feet. He peered into the blinding headlights. It hurt to look, but then everything hurt right now.
There were two big men who couldn’t have been more “bodyguard” if they’d worn red T-shirts that said, CALL ME MR. BODYGUARD. They stood on either side of a much frailer figure, hand on a walking stick.
Nathaniel Hartford paused to look up at the bridge so very high above them. “I am most impressed. The fall itself would kill the average man.”
Dan tugged, but he was held firm. He glared at Nathaniel. “Out for some late-night fishing?”
Nathaniel nodded to the man holding him. “Please, make him shut up.”
Dan winced as the needle jabbed his neck. Then a weight, piles of wet sand, pressed down over him and he sank and sank.…
Kiev, Ukraine
Ian sat up front in the Trabant, his knees somewhere up by his chin. Cara was squashed in the back, peering out the window.
They were back in Kiev. Dmitry’s car had decided to have a rest for no mechanical reason at all, so the drive had taken twice as long as expected. Ian had watched Dmitry hit the engine with a wrench, a hammer, and finally his boot, and he’d also learned a few new Russian curses.
Now they were watching Dmitry and a security guard, both men standing outside a grim-looking squat government building, having a friendly chat.
Eventually, Dmitry shook hands and handed over a small paper bag. The man checked its contents, nodded, and wandered off. Dmitry scurried back to the car, grinning. “All good. You have one hour.”
Ian frowned. “For five hundred euros? I thought we agreed a whole afternoon.”
Dmitry tapped the side of his nose. “One hour to see KGB files, best I could do, little prince. All very secret.”
Secret? Ian almost laughed. The security was ridiculous. The cameras weren’t even connected to power. Only the first-floor windows had any bars on them, and the guard at the front looked like Santa’s bigger, older, more-bearded brother.
* * *
“Now, this is old school,” said Ian as he slid the microfiche into the reader. “Keep an eye on the door.”
Ian had a pile of the transparent sheets of film, all in date order and covering a month before the nuclear disaster and five months after.
The sheets contained pages reduced to a fraction of their original size, so a single sheet could hold hundreds of pages of information. Back before the days of computing, this had been the best way to store data.
The reader was really just a backlit magnifying glass, the size of an old-style cathode-ray TV, and Ian had to turn the focus to sharpen the image.
He wasn’t sure what he was looking for as he scanned through the pages. Soviet-era news wasn’t exactly reliable, so governmental files were their best bet, but Ian guessed there were plenty of people in power who’d not be pleased with him and Cara digging through the Chernobyl disaster. Some of them might even call it “spying,” and there were severe penalties for that.
“Do they still have gulags here?” Ian asked. He didn’t fancy a few decades in a Ukrainian prison.
“What?”
“Sorry. Just thinking out loud.” Then he stopped. “Here we go. The death certificates following the Chernobyl disaster.”
“Well?”
“One of them’s for Natalia.”
“What’s it say?”
“ ‘Acute radiation poisoning.’ ” Ian spotted a note tagged on the corner referring to another file. He flipped the reader open and searched the pile until he found it. “There’s more about Natalia on this.”
Ian read the document, testing his fluency reading Russian Cyrillic. “Star of Moscow University’s physics department. Top honors throughout. Then a stint at MIT through a private, unknown sponsor. MIT? Now, that was just up the road from—”
“Grace’s mansion,” said Cara.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Natalia was an Ekat? Yes, I am,” said Cara. “This looks like exactly the sort of thing Grace would have pulled. She spots a talent within the family and nurtures it. Geopolitics be damned.” She leaned over to have a better look at the file. “Then what?”
“Natalia returns to the USSR but lands herself a lowly teaching assistant job. The government at the time would have seen her as spoiled goods, someone tainted by Western ideology. She was probably lucky to be teaching at all. Then, a day after the Chernobyl meltdown, she ferries herself off to Ukraine and offers her services directly to the team. Whoever’s in charge recognizes her value, and in she goes. She was part of the team of engineers who sacrificed themselves to open up the cooling water drains that prevented a second series of explosions. They knew they were going to their deaths, but that didn’t stop them.”
Cara looked thoughtful. “Not many people on the planet would have the courage to do that.”
Ian had to agree. He’d faced gunmen and killers, but that was courage of the moment, a rush of adrenaline and the urge to protect his friends from danger. Allowing yourself to die by radiation poisoning was a whole different level of bravery.
“Natalia Spasky must have been a very special woman,” said Cara. “Any mention of Alek?”
“No,” replied Ian. “But I’m not surprised. He was well in with the KGB by that point. Her relationship with him would have broken all sorts of security rules.” He paused and increased the magnification. “Wait a minute. There’s a handwritten note. It’s referring to another report. Is there a report twenty-seven in the drawer?”
Cara searched and a moment later handed him a folder. “Twenty-seven.”
The papers had yellowed with age and there were plenty of them, a bundle over an inch thick. Ian scanned the first few pages, the report summary. “It’s an investigation into the theft of nuclear materials from the reactor. It seems they were being sold on the black market.”
“Wow. That’s really very bad news.”
“Yes. The USSR was on its last legs and my father said it was a boom time for arms smugglers. As the Soviet Union collapsed, there were generals selling off tanks, ships were disappearing from docks, and even the odd submarine was on the market. Quality-grade plutonium would have fetched millions on the black market from any rogue state wanting to build its own bomb.” He gasped. “It can’t be … ”
“Ian?”
Ian rubbed his eyes and reread the document, not trusting his translation. He had to be wrong.…
But the words were the same. And horrifying in their magnitude.
“This report … ” He hesitated, guts tightening with the implications of the document. “It says the disaster was no accident. It was sabotage!”
Cara stared. “Sabotage? That’s insane!”
Ian forced himself to continue. “Done to cover up the missing plutonium. It talks about an arms smuggler, an American with extensive Russian contacts.” Ian flicked through the folder. “The KGB managed to get a photograph of him while he was here in Ukraine, days after the disaster. Then he vanished.” Ian inspected a sheaf of photographs—and froze. “No.”
It was blurry, a picture snatched in secret of a man getting into a car. He had glasses on and the collar to his jacket turned up. “This is bad, Cara.”
Cara peered over his shoulder at the enlarged image. She gasped as she recognized him.
It was Nathaniel Hartford.
“Time’s ticking, Ian. I think we’ve got enough,” said Cara as she gazed over Dmitry’s apartment.
Every patch of floor was covered with reports and sheets of microfiche they’d taken from the KGB office.
They’d been working all evening, searching through the papers and scanning the microfiches with magnifying glasses.
But the information was gold dust, relating to Nath
aniel’s career after his “death” in 1967. It looked like the Russians had gotten closest to catching him, but he’d used the Chernobyl disaster to cover his tracks. Then the USSR had collapsed and they’d forgotten him. But one thing was for sure: Nathaniel was responsible for one nuclear disaster and now he was planning another.
She was still reeling from that knowledge. How could anyone be so ruthless? And how could anyone be so evil to do it again? She poured out another mug of bitter black coffee. It was cold now, but she hardly noticed. “Ian?”
Ian collected the key documents. “Amy will want to have a look at this.”
Dmitry shook his head. “No flights now. Wait till morning.”
Ian already had his cell out. “We can get a red-eye to Beijing if we hurry. Then we can swap on to a domestic flight that’ll take us to Shanghai.”
“No, little prince,” said Dmitry. “You stay one more day. Much business to discuss.”
“Dmitry, I’ll pay you when I’m back in charge. I promise.”
“Er … Ian,” Cara went still as Dmitry turned to face them. “I think your last check must have bounced.”
“What are you talking about?” Then Ian understood. Dmitry was pointing a gun at them.
Cara raised her hands and sat down.
Ian shook his head. “I’m disappointed, Dmitry. A double cross? I thought we were family.”
How could Ian be so cool?
“Sit down, little prince. We wait.” Dmitry craned his head to look past them, out of the window.
Ian glanced over his shoulder. “Reinforcements?”
Dmitry shrugged. “Not personal, little prince. Mice need cheeses.”
“How much is Nathaniel paying you?” Ian asked. “I’ll double it. I promise.”
Dmitry smiled. It was warm and the sort of smile an uncle might give a favorite nephew. “Ah, little prince. But I need money now. Not promises.”
Cara heard cars pulling up outside. “Ian … ”
Ian collected his briefcase. “We’re leaving, Dmitry. You’ll need to shoot us to stop us.”
“No joking. You sit.”
“No joke.” Ian turned his steely gaze at Dmitry. “I don’t find men pointing guns at me remotely funny. Out of my way, Dmitry.”
Mission Atomic Page 6
