by Dale Brown
The woman left Nuri sitting there and went back to washing her dishes. He was sure he was right about the connection, but he began to worry that she had somehow tipped off a helper. Finally, he heard the whistle of a teakettle. She stopped doing the dishes; after a few minutes she came out with a tray of cookies and tea. It was an old-world gesture, a show of culture and dignity at a moment of personal despair.
“I knew a day would come when he would end all things,” she said softly, speaking in Russian.
Nuri didn’t understand all the words, but the meaning of what she was saying was clear as she picked up the teacup, her hand trembling slightly. She sipped slowly. The heat from the liquid formed a light cloud of vapor, softening her face. Nuri thought he could see into the past, see what she would have looked like when the Russian first met her, already well past her prime as a dancer.
They drank in silence. Nuri wanted to tell her something to comfort her, but there was nothing he could say. Telling her the doctor was dead would surely not comfort her, and any mention of any sort of money or being taken care of would probably be an even worse insult. He was a voyeur to her pain, powerless to alleviate it.
She drank about half her cup, then abruptly but gracefully put it down and rose. He noticed for the first time that she walked with a slight limp, the product undoubtedly of injuries as a youth.
Was that how they had met? Had the doctor tried to cure her, and failed?
And knowing what he had done to the others — or what he seemed to have done — could he have cured her? If so, had he considered the trade-offs too much of a price for her to pay?
But it was worse than that, or more complicated, at least. She returned with a manila envelope.
“This is what you want,” she told him.
Nuri took it. As he was leaving, she stopped him.
“We met in hospital,” she told him. “A bad omen.”
She continued speaking. Nuri didn’t understand the words but nodded as she talked. MY-PID supplied a translation after he reached the car:
“I was desperate to extend my career. He promised me everything. I didn’t even get six more months.
Vanity has the greatest price.”
The envelope contained a small key that looked like it went to a safety deposit box. But there were no markings on it. Finding what bank it had come from, let alone what the box number there was, would be a long process.
As he drove back toward the guest house, he asked MY-PID for an update on the farm as well as its efforts to turn up more information on the Wolves and the slain doctor. The computer gave him a long list of seemingly trivial connections. Realizing he was starting to tune out, he asked it to tell him what was going on at the farm.
“No material change,” reported the computer.
“Are the Predators still on station?”
“Affirmative.”
“Detail one over to the facility Danny Freah checked out the other day. Have it look for buried bodies.”
“More specific information required.”
Nuri gave it what he could. Then he told the computer to look on the farm property as well. Maybe there had been some accidents there.
“No grave sites at property identified as farm,” answered the computer.
“You checked already?”
“Affirmative.”
The property had been gone over thoroughly by the radar scans; MY-PID had only to take the electronic equivalent of a glance to check.
“Wow,” said Nuri. “Nothing of use?”
“Question not understood.”
“Was there nothing buried on the property?” asked Nuri. “Besides the mines and the tunnel, I mean. And the sensors.”
“Foreign objects buried on the property,” said the computer, beginning a list of items that started with a collection of broken bottles.
Nuri stopped the computer when it mentioned a fireproof strong box.
“Describe the box and where it is located,” said Nuri. “Then direct me to it.”
55
Kiev, Ukraine
What amazed Hera about McEwen was not her knowledge of the city, or even the ease with which she struck up conversations. The impressive thing was that she seemed to know everyone, or almost everyone, from the attendant at the parking lot at the airport to the after-hours security man patrolling the hangar area at the Kiev airport.
The attendant at the parking lot told her that the charter aircraft company whose owner she wanted to talk to had gone out of business six months before. She checked the office anyway — vacant — then took Hera to the terminal bar where the former owner generally hung out and occasionally slept. He wasn’t there, and neither of the two bartenders seemed to know who she was talking about when she asked.
“Damn,” said McEwen. “He knew everything that was going on.”
Her conversation with the security guard sitting at the far end of the bar was more fruitful. McEwen started by asking about the man’s mother, who’d been in poor health the last time they met. She was doing considerably better, thank you, said the man.
The conversation went on from there, the words flying by so quickly that even MY-PID couldn’t keep up.
There was too much of an age difference between them for the relationship to be sexual, Hera was sure. And yet it certainly seemed intimate — McEwen gave him a light kiss on the cheek before taking out some bills to pay the bartender so they could go.
“We’re going to need the car,” she told Hera. “Where we want to go is not far from here, but I’d prefer we weren’t seen.”
Hera drove as McEwen led her around the perimeter of the large airport, driving down empty access roads in the industrial park at the side of the airport. Finally they reached what looked like a dead end.
“Go down this alley to the right, then take a left,” said McEwen. “And turn off your lights.”
“It’s too narrow.”
“You can fit. You want me to drive?”
Hera declined. McEwen drove like a little old lady — who’d just inhaled a half pound of crack cocaine.
Even in the small Fiat they’d rented, she had trouble cutting the turn, but once in the alley there was plenty of clearance along the sides — as long as they kept the mirrors folded against the car.
“We want to check the fifth hangar,” said McEwen as they turned onto a wider street. “But park at the second. We’ll walk from there.”
The hangars were metal buildings dating from the seventies, too small now for anything but private planes. They were being used mostly to store parts and featured rusted padlocks and peeling paint. Hera followed McEwen out around the side of Hangar Two to a narrow back path, approaching Hangar Five from the rear.
“There’s a security camera on the hangar across the way,” McEwen explained. “This one is wide open, but it would be better if we weren’t seen, I think.”
“How do we get in?”
“You can’t pick a lock?”
“I can pick locks.”
Rusted barrels of refuse crowded along the back of the building. Hera had to squeeze over a pair of them and then push them away to get to the back door.
It was so old the lock had rusted in place. She couldn’t get her pick to move the tumblers.
“We’ll go to Plan B,” said McEwen.
McEwen disappeared around the corner. Before Hera could follow, she heard glass breaking.
“What was that?” asked Hera.
“Plan B,” said McEwen, standing in front of the broken window. “Why don’t you go first? It’s a little hard to climb in my dress.”
Hera’s small LED flashlight was just powerful enough to light up the entire interior, but then there wasn’t much to illuminate. A collection of rusted steel garbage cans and drums stood next to the wall near the front. Discarded cardboard boxes were stacked in a semineat pile near the back. Two roofs’ worth of shingles sat on pallets at the exact center of the building.
And that was it.
“Pretty empty,” said Hera, shining the light around.
McEwen leaned in the window. “Give me a hand,” she said.
Hera was surprised at how firm the petite woman’s muscles were. She was light, not much more than a hundred pounds, if that.
“All right then,” said McEwen, straightening her clothes. “Let’s see what we have.”
She walked over to the cardboard boxes, bending and turning a few of them over.
“Toilet paper, handouts for passengers,” she announced, straightening. “Interesting.”
Hera rolled her eyes.
“Let’s see what they’re throwing out,” said McEwen, walking over to the garbage.
Two-by-fours and assorted sticks in the first can. Roofing material in the second.
AK–47s and grenades in the third.
“Bingo,” said McEwen.
* * *
The hangar had been rented by a company named Vleta Servici Ltd. MY-PID quickly determined that Vleta was associated with a company named Duga TEF, which had a small number of dealings in Russia. It found two bank accounts associated with Duga, then began tracking transfers that had been made into and out of the accounts. Within a half hour it had profiled a spidery network in Ukraine and Russia.
By then Hera and McEwen had removed the rifles and grenades from the premises, and planted several video bugs around the interior of the hangar. They’d also cleaned up the glass, removing the shards and the shattered pane. Someone looking at it would realize it had been broken, of course, but it was only one pane and might be overlooked, especially by someone coming in from the front.
“You think they were planning a hijacking?” asked Hera as she prepared to back the car precariously down the alley.
“I think it’s more in the way of a backup plan,” said McEwen. “A cache of weapons in case something goes bad. A group coming into the airport could grab them; someone wanting to leave could take them, and maybe use the boxes as cover to get them aboard an airplane. It’s a contingency.”
“Why just a contingency?”
“Think about it. You do mostly covert action, right? If you were planning something, you’d have your best gear with you.”
“Sure.”
“You might pre-position it, but you’d take critical care of it. No one could just barge in and grab it, or come upon it accidentally. The Wolves are as professional as you are. These weapons were ridiculously easy to get to — they could get in just by breaking a window, like we did.”
“True,” said Hera. “But—”
“They may have been a backup,” said McEwen carefully. “Not their main cache but something they could grab quickly in an emergency.”
She paused, thinking
“Or they may be a blind,” she added. “A misdirection. Either way, we’re not done. Not by a long shot.”
56
Over the Atlantic Ocean, approaching Europe
The C–20B was an Air Force spec Boeing 737. While not nearly as luxurious as the standard corporate configuration of the plane, it was a VIP jet, with a number of features that anyone who ever had to fly in the belly of a C–5A or C–130 would have killed for.
Case in point: Breanna’s seat. It moved back, so it was essentially an inclined bed, about as comfortable as you could get in an airplane cabin without actually having a bed.
Breanna, however, found it uncomfortable. And even when she finally decided she’d be best off taking a nap before landing, had an almost impossible time dozing off. Finally she fell off into a fitful sleep, images flitting through her mind, ideas and arguments.
* * *
“Why didn’t you save me?”
The voice came from across the river. She jumped from the bed — she was still in the tent.
“Why didn’t you save me?” asked Mark Stoner.
She reached over to get Zen, but he was gone.
“Breanna — I saved you.”
“Mark? Are you out there?”
“Where are you?” he said.
She knew it was a dream — it could only be a dream — and yet it felt so real that it wasn’t a dream. It was something between a dream and reality, its own category.
“Where are you?” she asked. She pushed out of the tent, still in the sweats she had gone to sleep in. The air was cold. She felt goose bumps forming on her legs and neck. Her hands were so cold they were hard to move. She clasped them under her arms to keep warm.
“Why didn’t you help me?” he asked. “I saved you.”
“We saved each other,” she said. “Do you remember — we jumped.”
Had they jumped? Or was that with Zen? Now she couldn’t remember — Zen had saved her once, in India, had protected her and gotten them rescued. It was Zen, Zen who had saved her.
But she’d parachuted another time. Stoner was there — who had saved who?
God, she couldn’t remember.
They’d been together in the water.
It was a dream but it felt too real, as if they were there together now.
“Mark? Mark, are you OK?” she asked.
“I have to kill them now,” he said.
She screamed.
* * *
“Ma’am, you OK?”
Breanna opened her eyes and saw the Defense Department aide standing over her, a very concerned look on her face.
“I — just had a very, very bad dream,” Breanna told her.
“Can I get you something? Ambien?”
“No, that’s all right.” Breanna pushed the seat upright. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go back to sleep after that. In fact she was sure of it.
“We still have a long way to go,” said the aide. “We’re stopping in Sicily to refuel. We won’t be touching down in Prague until early morning. It’d be good to try and sleep if you can.”
“Thanks. If I need a pill, I’ll ask.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Breanna thought of calling Zen and Teri. She longed to hear their voices. Zen’s especially.
But she was being silly. The Wolf operation had been smashed, and while Danny thought Stoner might be the man who’d blown himself up in the building, Breanna realized that the DNA match must have been a fluke. Poor Mark had died in the crash fifteen years ago. Very possibly his body had disintegrated immediately.
She was sorry for him, dreadfully sorry. But she’d already grieved his passing.
“Maybe I will take the pill,” she told the aide. “If you can guarantee to have plenty of coffee to wake me when we get to Prague.”
57
Northwestern Moldova
Nuri pushed the spade into the dirt, hammering down with his right heel against the top of the shovel. The box had been buried quite a while ago; the ground was hard.
The radar had reported it was two meters below the surface — six feet. That didn’t sound like much, until you started digging. The first foot or so was tough — a shrub had grown almost exactly over the box, and there were tree roots on the side to contend with. The next foot or so was somewhat easier, though the clay soil only reluctantly gave way.
The rest was hell. It didn’t help that it was after midnight and he’d been awake for a millennium. Or so it seemed.
He pushed downward in a circle, working his way around as he created a funnel. The moon was nearly full, but the sky was filled with clouds, and the only light came from two battery-powered lanterns loaned by the Moldovan police contingent guarding the house.
He’d asked the deputy minister if they had a backhoe. Lacu wasn’t sure, but promised to look into it by morning. Nuri figured he’d be halfway to China by then.
Or maybe not. Five feet deep in the hole, and he was ready to drop his concerns about letting the Moldovans see whatever was in the box. But it didn’t make sense to stop now. He knew he was close. He poked and attacked with the shovel, using it as a pick.
Finally he hit something hard.
He scraped, pried, scrambled up for one of the lanterns.
Back in the hole, he dug at it with his hands.
It was a rock.
Ten minutes later, he pried the rock away and found the box.
Two of the men who were guarding the house came up as he was pulling it from the ground.
“I could have used you guys a half hour ago,” he said in English, pushing it ahead of him as he clambered up the side.
“Moltumesc,” said one of the men, taking the box.
“Give me a hand, would you?” Nuri asked.
“Da,” said the man.
The other smashed Nuri in the back of the head with his rifle, sending him tumbling back into the hole.
58
Kiev, Ukraine
Hera was surprised to find Danny up and sitting at their laptop when she and McEwen returned to the hotel suite.
“I thought you were sleeping,” she said.
“I did.”
“What, for two hours?”
“You going to mother me, too, are you?” he asked, unfurling his bare feet from beneath him and standing. “Do either of you know how to work the coffee machine?”
“It’s busted,” said Hera. “I meant to ask for a new one.”
Danny frowned. “So what’s going on?”
McEwen told him about the guns. Hera, meanwhile, used the laptop to see if MY-PID had gotten any more information about the weapons and the hangar.
The serial numbers on the rifles indicated they were genuine, manufactured in 1953 for the Soviet army. They belonged to a lot that had been declared obsolete by the government more than a decade before. There was no other information about those specific guns, and the type was so common — literally ubiquitous — that trying to correlate them against known gun sales, legal and illegal, was impossible, even for MY-PID.
Information on Duga, the company that had leased the hangar, was far more limited — and therefore considerably more useful. It had leased a similar building at a regional airport in France two years ago; there had been an assassination tied to the Wolves there as well. Following transfers of money from its accounts, MY-PID discovered an HSBC bank account that had been tapped for cash in three different cities near where Wolf murders had taken place.
