Black Wolf: A Dreamland Thriller

by Dale Brown

  Breanna overslept, and by the time she woke, Zen had already left to take Teri to school and then go to work.

  Her body felt raw from the fight, as if it had been physical. She took a shower, feeling drained of blood, even trembling a little. Coffee helped get her awake, but it only reinforced the jitteriness. She left for work without checking the news or looking at her version of the morning briefing. Her BlackBerry had a dozen messages, but none were from Zen, so she didn’t bother opening them.

  Breanna generally split her days between the Pentagon and Room 4. Today she was scheduled to spend her time at the Pentagon, where, among other things, she was supposed to make sure arrangements for the Tigershark demonstration test flight were set. But she headed to the CIA campus instead, anxious for an in-depth update on the operation.

  And considering, in the back of her mind, what to tell Danny about the Wolves.

  To her great surprise, she found Reid in the bunker. Not only did he spend the bulk of his time in his office in the main building, he was famously known as a late riser, often grumbling about meetings that began before 10:00 A.M.

  “Extra strong this morning,” Breanna told the automated coffee unit. “Very strong.”

  “You saw the e-mail?” Reid asked her as the coffee began to brew.

  “No. I just had an instinct that something was up.”

  Reid was an old-school CIA hand, both figuratively and literally. Sometimes it seemed to Breanna that he had been with the Agency back when it was the OSS.

  “MY-PID has arranged all of the data from the mobster’s computer,” said Reid. “There’s one possible lead through a bank account. And some interesting connections. Most of the information on the drives pertains to his business interests. The FBI will be interested. And there’s plenty more for the Italian antimafia commission.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  “Here.”

  Reid turned to the wall, then told the computer to display the data summary. Several windows of information appeared, long lists of files arranged in treelike fashion. A window on the left showed correspondence between Moreno and other members of his organization, translating them from Italian as well as decrypting them. They indicated that he was having some conflicts with upper level associates, or fellow mob bosses. There was personal animosity and friction as well. Based on what Nuri had observed, that was more than understandable.

  The profile the information drew was of a man whose empire was slipping away from him. If they were in America, the authorities might even attempt to pressure him and get him to turn against the rest of the mob. But the Italians didn’t work that way.

  “He does seem to be losing his grip,” said Reid. “Which is perhaps another reason he didn’t use his own people for the strike in Berlin. In any event, the matter that concerns us is here, a pair of transactions that switched money from a Naples bank to Egypt, then to Russia.”

  “Does that say three million dollars?” asked Breanna.

  “They don’t come cheap,” said Reid. “But he can afford it.”

  “Have you traced the accounts?”

  “They were opened and closed the same day. The Russian bank has a branch in Moldova.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I thought you’d find that interesting. I have a list of transactions on the day the money hit the Russian account. We have five different accounts where we think the money went, but the transfers aren’t recorded as transfers. Someone withdrew the money, in theory as cash, then placed it into these accounts. If that happened. Most likely it was only on paper. And we’re guessing at the match-ups, because the amounts don’t match exactly. There’s about ten thousand dollars missing.”

  “Pocket money.”

  “Maybe. Or just diddling with the numbers to throw off programs designed to look for suspicious transactions.”

  “But it was done in Moldova?”

  “Likely. Again, this could all be manipulated,” admitted Reid. “The records. I don’t trust the Russian banking system. It’s always been full of holes.”

  “Where is the bank?”

  “In the capital, Chisinau. It has some dealings with other Russian banks in Tighina. Tighina is a provincial capital, near the area under dispute with Russia. Good-sized city, at least for Moldova. Those banks are pretty small and don’t seem to have been involved. There’s a big dispute between that region and the rest of Moldova; no other banks deal with them—or with the Russians.”

  “Other links?”

  “Already looking for them.”

  “I have to tell Danny.”

  “That would make sense. There are a few other loose ends. The FBI agent Nuri took with him wants to use some of the information we developed on Moreno for her own case against him.”

  Breanna nodded. They had been counting on the FBI to do just that. Anyone watching would think that Moreno, not the Wolves, was the focus of the investigation.

  “Nuri also found this information. Oddly.”

  A list of websites relating to Moldova came up.

  “Was he planning to go there?”

  “That might be a possibility,” said Reid. “They’re all recent—just the other day. After the murder.”

  “Trying to see where his money went?”

  Reid shrugged.

  “Maybe he’s dissatisfied with the job,” he said. “Or maybe he’s looking to provide a bonus.”

  “Was the break-in discovered?”

  “Apparently not. Nuri had to drug a dog, but he covered that up. In any event, the mobster has been using the computer quite prolifically since he got up a few hours ago.”

  “Since we’re in their system, maybe we can watch and see what happens,” said Breanna.

  “We think more and more alike with each passing day,” said Reid.

  “Scary.”

  “Very.”

  Breanna sat at her desk staring at an old photo of Mark Stoner for nearly a half hour before putting the call in to Danny.

  Part of her hoped he wouldn’t pick up; she wanted to put off talking to him for as long as possible. The other part wanted to get past this as quickly as possible.

  Danny answered on the first ring.

  “Can you talk?” she asked.

  “I’m at the hotel,” he told her. “It’s fine.”

  “We have more information on the Wolves.” She heard her voice crack. “And I have—there’s something I didn’t give you earlier. Because—for a couple of reasons.”

  “All right.”

  Breanna took a deep breath.

  “We think that the people involved with the Wolves have been altered—enhanced is the better word,” she said, correcting herself. She remembered her conversation with Zen the night before, how he had initially dismissed it all as science fiction nonsense. “It sounds incredible, but we think they’re the result of experiments—that their bodies have been genetically altered, with drugs and in some cases biomechanical devices.”

  “They’re supermen?” said Danny.

  “That would be an exaggeration. The sorts of enhancements we’re talking about, we think, would increase lung capacity, say, metabolic recovery rates. Strength might be increased through implants, bone replacements, or the exoskeleton devices, the things that you were involved in testing—”

  “You mean the wing?” said Danny.

  “Exactly.”

  Dreamland had helped develop a device that allowed soldiers to literally fly across the battlefield. Called by various names—Rocketman was more popular than Wing, which was the Whiplash nickname—the gear was used by special operations troops for select missions. The research involved in constructing it had found a much wider application, affecting everything from parachutes to the jacks that helped ordies load bombs and missiles onto aircraft. A civilian company had used the technology to create one-man cranes and lifts, which it planned to introduce to the market in a few months.

  “The truth is, we don’t have a lot of details,” continued Brea
nna. “We’re making guesses based on some eyewitness accounts which, as you know, aren’t always credible. But we have a video showing one of the Wolves moving with incredible speed while another puts his fist through the side of a car.”

  “Wow.”

  “The video is very sketchy. It’s some sort of laboratory piece. Very low resolution.”

  “Not a sales brochure, huh?”

  “Danny, this is serious. The sources are sensitive. Highest code word.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “There’s something else. Something that affects us both.”

  Breanna paused. Danny didn’t say anything, and the silence immediately struck her.

  Does he know what I’m going to say? Has he somehow intuited it?

  “I think—there’s some evidence,” she started, losing her steam, “that—one of the Wolves may be Mark Stoner.”

  Danny still didn’t say anything.

  “The— There’s a visual similarity in the video. I noticed it right away,” Breanna continued. “It’s eerie, if it’s a coincidence. It may be a coincidence. But…”

  The phone line was so silent, Breanna almost wondered if she had lost the connection. But the computer would have told her if that was the case.

  “The… there is other evidence,” she said. “I don’t know—it’s not conclusive, but here’s what it is. The killer on the assassination in China was drinking from a Coke bottle immediately before the murder. The Chinese gathered it and got a sample from it. They have saliva, and some drugs—he wasn’t drinking cola, it was some sort of maintenance drink we think, it had enzymes and amphetamine in it. In any event, the Chinese analysis of the DNA material has something like a seventy-three percent chance of matching Mark’s.”

  The percentage had to do with the original sampling technique used in recording Stoner’s DNA in the 1990s, as well as the quality of the material the Chinese had collected and the process they used to analyze it. Breanna told Danny about the doubts some of the scientists had mentioned, and the arguments that placing an actual number on the odds of a direct match were difficult and misleading.

  “Do you think it’s him?” asked Danny when she finished.

  “I don’t know. I simply don’t know.”

  “Wow.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I—I wasn’t—I’m not sure that it’s him.”

  “It’s all right Bree. I understand.”

  She could have kissed him right then. She would have, if he were there. He was taking the news a lot better than she had when she first heard about the possibility of Stoner being alive.

  “The Moldova connection,” Danny prompted. “What do you make of that?”

  “That may be important,” she said. “I mean—it is where Mark was shot down. On the other hand, it could be a coincidence. It is a good place if you’re looking to have some quiet banking transactions.”

  “I think I ought to look into it.”

  “So do I.”

  16

  Approaching Chisinau, Moldova

  Danny Freah stared out the window of the Fokker 50–100 as the aircraft approached the airport at Chisinau. While Moldova shared a border with Ukraine and in some ways had a similar history, relations between the two countries were cool. Moldovans seemed to resent Ukrainians almost as much as they resented Russians. The flight he had taken was the only scheduled daily flight between the two countries. Even so, the aircraft was only half full, and its age indicated that the line wasn’t particularly profitable.

  Danny tightened his seat belt for the landing. After so many years in military jets, the smooth, unhurried descent felt almost like a car ride. He waited as the plane left the runway for the taxi strip, then got up and grabbed his things as soon as he could see the small terminal in the window. He was the first one off, practically running for the open terminal door.

  Relax, he told himself. Slow down. Nothing was going to be gained by haste.

  The white-haired customs agent who checked his passport was impressed that he was an American. His English, though heavily accented, was very good.

  “You’re here on business?” said the man.

  “I have some appointments,” Danny told him.

  “This is very good—you will like Moldova. A very good climate for making money. I studied in U.S. of A. myself.”

  “Really?” said Danny.

  “Nineteen seventy,” said the man proudly. “Amherst. But I returned. We always return to our home.”

  “True.”

  “A good place for business,” said the man, handing his passport back.

  “Maybe you should open a business yourself,” suggested Danny.

  “Too much to do,” said the man. He looked down at the floor, as if lamenting decisions he had made long ago. But then he immediately brightened. “Good luck to you.”

  “Thanks,” said Danny.

  Danny’s ostensible goal in Moldova was to visit the Russian bank branch in Chisinau, where he would plant some bugs and attempt to gather more information about accounts associated with the Wolves. But he also intended to check out the crash site. And to do that, he had to head north to Balti. He decided he’d get that out of the way first; not only was MY-PID still pulling together information on possible connections to the account, but Nuri and Flash were due to arrive in the morning; they could bug the banks as easily as he could.

  Balti was something he preferred doing on his own.

  His flight to Balti in the north, barely eighty miles by air, was in a brightly painted former Russian army helicopter. To get in, he and his fellow passenger had to squeeze past the copilot’s seat, buckling themselves into the tandem seats in the cabin. The engines whined ferociously as they took off, and the noise hardly abated as they flew, the cabin vibrating in sync with the three-bladed prop above.

  The Balti International City Airport had a long runway, but was used so rarely there were no car rental or other amenities there. The terminal building was deserted and locked, and the grass around the infield of the airstrip overgrown.

  Danny had arranged for a driver and car to take him to the bus station, where a small car rental shop promised to rent him a car. But the driver wasn’t there when he got off the plane. He called the company twice and got no answer; after a half hour he decided he had no choice but walk into town, a six or seven mile hike. He took his bag and started down the long concrete access road.

  Weeds grew through the expansion cracks. Danny pulled his earphones from his pocket and connected to MY-PID, asking the computer if there were any other taxis in town.

  There weren’t.

  “There is a bus route along the highway to the airport,” advised the computer. “The next run is in three hours.”

  “I can walk there in that time.”

  Just then, a small red Renault came charging off the highway down the access ramp. Danny stopped, hoping it was the taxi. But it sped past.

  Gotta be for me, thought Danny. He stood waiting. Five minutes passed. Ten. Finally, he started walking again.

  He’d just reached the highway when the car sped up behind him, braking hard and just barely missing him though he was well off the road. A short, skinny man not far out of his teens leaned across the front seat and rolled down the window.

  “You American, yes?”

  “That’s right,” said Danny.

  “I am your ride.”

  “Where have you been?” Danny asked.

  “Trouble,” said the driver, sliding back behind the wheel.

  Danny opened the door, pushed up the seat and put his bag in the back. Then he got in next to the driver, who grabbed the gearshift and ground his way toward the highway. “This your first day?” Danny asked.

  “Oh no—I drive since fourteen.”

  “You’re older than that now, huh?”

  “Twenty-two. Legal.” The driver grinned at him. “You like my English?”

  “Better than my Moldovan,” said Danny. He could, of
course, use the MY-PID to translate for him if he wanted.

  “I learn Internet. School, too.”

  “Great.”

  The highway was straight and there were no other cars—a good thing, because not only did the driver keep his foot pressed to the gas, he treated the lane markings as if they were purely theoretical.

  “So—you need bus?” said the driver.

  “I have to rent a car.”

  “Car?”

  “Like Hertz,” said Danny. “Eurocar?”

  The driver seemed confused.

  “I’m picking up a car,” said Danny.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “When are you renting car?”

  “Today. I made the reservation myself.”

  “No car.”

  “How do you know?”

  “My name is Joe,” said the driver. He held out his hand. As he did, the car veered slightly but decidedly toward the shoulder.

  Danny shook hands quickly. “The road,” he said, pointing.

  The driver pulled them back toward the center of the pavement. He explained that his family owned the city’s largest gas station, which doubled as its largest, and only, car rental facility. And their two cars had been rented out three days before. Neither was due back for a week.

  “You only have two cars?” Danny asked.

  “Official, five,” said the driver. One had been wrecked months before and never repaired; the other two were waiting for repair parts.

  “I have fix,” said the driver.

  “You can fix one of the cars?”

  “No—I drive.”

  “I have a better idea,” said Danny, grabbing the dashboard as the driver turned off the highway, wheels screeching. “I’ll rent this car.”

  “It’s my sister’s car,” said Joe.

  “If she lends it to you, I’m sure she’ll rent it to me.”

  “But then what will we have for a taxi?”

  “Do you do that much taxi business?”

  “We are the largest taxi service in all Balti.”

  “Then missing one car isn’t going to be that big a deal.”

  “We have only two,” said Joe. “One crashed, and two cannot get parts.”

  “A hundred bucks for the day,” said Danny.