Final Epidemic

by Earl Merkel

  “Soo’kin sin,”breathed Alexi.

  For a moment, Putin seemed not to have noticed the vulgarity. “Do not pretend such surprise, General Malenkov. You pressed hard enough for—how did you put it?‘Decisive action,’ I believe you wanted.”

  Alexi stared at his president wordlessly, but with eyes that spoke volumes. The two Russians’ stares dueled for a long moment, before Putin turned to Beck.

  “I have been waiting to hear the sounds of the helicopters,” Putin said, and his voice was remote, distant. “There is a possibility, of course, that my order will not be obeyed.” He suddenly smiled, as if in comradeship with the American seated before him. “Or that they will decide to release their weapons here, over the Kremlin. I have been wondering which choice I would make, were I one of the pilots. In truth, I cannot make up my mind.”

  The smile faded as quickly as it had appeared.

  “I have given Alexi Malenkov my signed authorization to provide you with any information or assistance you need. He will accompany you to Lubyanka. There is an interrogation under way there—a cultist, one of the fanatics the FSB has had under surveillance for some weeks. Since before this virus appeared. I am told he may prove valuable to us.”

  The three men stood. No one offered to shake hands.

  Putin’s voice followed Beck to the door and stopped him there. When Beck turned, he saw that the Russian president was again at the window, looking out at the city.

  “Four days ago, there was no sign of this virus in my country. Now I must sacrifice many lives, with no certainty it will prove successful.”

  “Russians have died for Russia before,” Beck said, and Putin replied without turning.

  “Americans may soon follow our example, Dr. Casey,” he said. “I spoke to your president, to make him aware of what I must do here, to Russians. He is weighing the advice of your own experts even as we speak. This very same option, I believe, had already been suggested to him.”

  Chapter 11

  Moscow

  July 22

  The car carrying Beck entered Lubyanskaya Plaza, past the empty spot once occupied by a massive statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the man tasked by Lenin to create history’s most draconian secret police organization. Until August 22, 1991, Iron Felix had stood in stern bronze vigilance, overlooking the yellow-brick headquarters of the KGB.

  Beck remembered the day. He had been in the midst of the crowd of Muscovites numbering in the thousands who surrounded the monument. They had cheered as cranes toppled both the statue and, they thought, the system of terror it had represented. Some of the crowd—as giddy with vodka as with the prospect of democratic rule—performed various indignities on the statue as it lay facedown on the ground.

  Beck had looked up at the windows overlooking the scene, noting the senior KGB officers who had watched patiently from their office windows. Afterward, pragmatic in their understanding of Russian history, they had had the statue removed to a warehouse and cleaned.

  Many believe it remains in storage, waiting. But Beck, like other professionals who had watched Russia’s subsequent mutation, knew better; like the institution founded by Iron Felix—in its most recent incarnation, now known as the Federal Security Bureau—the statue had been quietly reerected. Lenin’s dark angel again stands proudly, now in a park far from the eyes of the Russian public. Similarly, his legacy to the Russian national character is once again busily engaged in its traditional pursuits.

  It had been a short trip from the Kremlin. Alexi Malenkov had said nothing during the two-block drive; nor had Beck encouraged conversation. Instead, both men stared straight ahead, each pretending not to be listening for the sounds of helicopters in the distance. No one challenged Alexi as he led Beck past the guards and checkpoints inside.

  Only in the small elevator that Alexi had activated with his own key did he begin to speak.

  “Madness,” Alexi said, his voice barely under control. “We are attacked, and the only response our ‘leader’ can devise is to massacre our own people.”

  “Putin has tough choices to make, Alexi. It’s what a leader does.”

  “A leader,” Alexi repeated. “Is that what he is? Perhaps. In Russia, you see, we have created a new ruling class. It is made up of capitalists, our so-called oligarchs. Billionaires, all of them—and advised by your own very capable American public relations firms. These are the people who rule in Russia today, my friend.”

  “Putin was elected, Alexi. As was Yeltsin before him.”

  “Yes, please lecture me on the beauties of democratic government,” Alexi retorted, sarcasm dripping. “Yeltsin was unstable. Even in his occasional lucid moments, he scarcely had the wit to dress himself, let alone provide leadership. A faction of our billionaires’ club tired of his antics; they wanted more stability than could be provided under a manic-depressive alcoholic. So they found Putin.”

  He snorted. “Our wealthy ruling class thought he was merely an ambitious, midlevel KGBapparatchik. Ambitious, he certainly was. I fear they underestimated the rest of his personality—rather badly, no? You have perhaps heard the definition of an honest Russian politician? He is a man who, when you buy him,stays bought.”

  “You didn’t make that up,” Beck said. “I’ve heard it in Chicago.”

  “You know of the very public arrests my president has ordered recently? One was a Russian media baron, I believe you would call him; the second, an industrialist who has perhaps been too open in his views.”

  “They got rich by robbing your country blind,” Beck said. “Come on. They share the blame for what happened in Russia. Maybe Putin does too, but there’s a lot of blame to be shared.”

  “Now they are finding that President Putin is much like other leaders my country has had: disinclined to share anything, especially power.” Alexi fell silent for a few paces, his brow dark with words unsaid. “If there is much of anything to share after this virus has done its work.”

  Beck said nothing.

  “I have always been suspicious of the obvious,” Alexi said after a moment. “The rational person does not wish to die; this is obvious. Who, then, would unleash a disease that kills so efficiently, spreads so rapidly and defies all efforts to discover a cure? What kind of person would be so irrational? Perhaps it is my early education as a good Communist, but to me the answer is obvious.”

  Beck looked at him patiently.

  “A fanatic,” Alexi said. “More specifically, areligious fanatic, who seeks his reward in the afterlife.”

  “And that narrows it down, does it?”

  “As it happens, my friend, we have a number of quite fanatical religious cults in Russia. But I know of only one that has a previous record of chemical and biological terrorist acts.”

  The American frowned. “The Asahara cult? Aum Shinrikyo?”

  “Of course, you would know of these Aum, as they call themselves,” Alexi said to Beck. “Have we not all studied their murderous farce? Please, let me play the professor here: in the not-so-distant past, they released a quantity of nerve gas in the subway of Tokyo. They believed by so doing, they would trigger a worldwide religious uprising. They did not, though they succeeded in killing perhaps a dozen of their countrymen. Do you know why it failed?”

  “The sarin contained impurities,” Beck said, watching his companion closely.

  “Ah, that is what the Japanese authorities announced. But it is not accurate. We have tested samples from that attack—no, do not ask how we obtained it, please. The nerve gas was quite adequately formulated. No, it was the delivery system that was faulty. In the subways, Aum soldiers had simply concealed sealed plastic sacks containing the gas inside briefcases, purses—even paper bags. At a prearranged time, the weapon bearer punctured the plastic and fled the scene.”

  Alexi smiled, grimly. “Even as a kamikaze delivery system, it was spectacularly unsophisticated,” he said. “People died, surely; but only a handful, nowhere near as many as had been hoped for. Still, had the gas been de
livered from pressurized containers in a properly coordinated assault, the results would have been far different.”

  Alexi looked as if he had tasted something foul, and shook his head in disgust.

  “Idiots. After this lethal farce, the Japanese police supposedly arrested those responsible. I say ‘supposedly’ because, after the Japanese government courteously agreed that the peaceful rank and file of the Aum was no longer a public danger, they allowed it to continue in existence. This, despite the fact that sizable quantities of rather dangerous toys were found in their possession. I speak, of course, of the sarin. And also of biological cultures that, upon analysis, were determined to be anthrax.”

  Alexi shrugged, and was not quite capable of keeping his anger from emphasizing the gesture.

  “Certainly, in the case of the anthrax, it was not that growing the organism was exceptionally difficult—early in World War Two, the British succeeded by using five inter-connected metal milk cans and a simple vacuum pump. No, what we found impressive was the sheer energy of these Aum. They appear quite determined, once they have set themselves on a task. Do you know that some years ago they sent—you will perhaps enjoy the irony—a ‘humanitarian mission’ to Zaire? Not by coincidence, it was during an outbreak of Ebola. They wished to obtain a sample of this particularly nasty virus, and failed only because they could not reach the site of the outbreak in time.

  “And so. The cult is Japanese in origin, supposedly formed by a half-blind leader said to have had an exclusive relationship with the Almighty. Since his imprisonment after the botched gas attack, he is now considered by his remaining followers as a god himself. In reality this Asahara was a petty thief, an embezzler who stumbled onto the far greener pastures of religious mysticism. He attracted unstable elements among his people, who made a practice of turning their own property over to their leader. Some of this wealth he decided to use in my country.”

  The elevator stopped and they exited into a subterranean level lighted by modern fluorescent strips. To Beck, it looked much like the windowless clerical areas of a large insurance operation.

  “We have become very good capitalists,” Alexi said. “We sold these fanatics air time on our most powerful transmitters, so the rantings of their insane leader could infect more and more Russian minds. We turned into what Lenin called your countrymen: merchants who would sell the rope to their own hangman.”

  He stopped at a door that looked far too heavy for an office or storeroom.

  “Perhaps twenty or thirty thousand of my countrymen were gullible enough to adopt this Aum foolishness. Allow me to introduce you to one of them.”

  He waved Beck into a large room lit by powerful lights on the upper walls and ceiling. The brightness was dazzling, and Beck’s eyes squinted against it. It took a moment before he could make out the three figures near the far wall. Two of them were in uniform, and their eyes were masked by the dark glasses they wore.

  “I present Il’lych Valeri Davidovich.” Beck heard Alexi sniff at the stench of urine and feces that hung in the air. “Do not stand too close. I believe our guest has become somewhat incontinent.”

  The prisoner was Slavic in his features and complexion—or would have been, had his hair not been matted with dirt and blood and his face not mottled with bruises. His eyes were mere slits, though whether because of the bright lights or the effect of physical abuse Beck could not discern.

  Then Beck noted the curious pattern of angry red blotches, always in pairs, wherever the man’s skin was exposed.

  “What the hell, Alexi?”

  “As a Russian citizen, Mr. Davidovich has constitutional rights that we have honored,” Alexi said with sarcasm. “That is why he is here, rather than at Lefortovo Prison. He is freely assisting us in our investigation.”

  “I know electrical burns when I see them,” Beck said.

  “There is no virus here, and no nerve gas to fall on him from above,” Alexi retorted. “Most of the persuasion we have employed has involved drugs and the deprivation of sleep. He is fortunate.”

  “Ask him if he thinks so,” Beck said.

  Alexi shrugged carelessly, his eyes on the scene.

  The man swayed on his feet, and the inquisitor who stood behind him jabbed his kidney with a balled fist, hard and expertly. When the prisoner staggered, the interrogator to his front seized him by the windpipe and held him up. The uniformed man leaned close to the prisoner’s face and said something sibilant and hard. When he released his grip on the man’s throat, the prisoner sank to his knees.

  He muttered something in Russian that was too low for Beck to hear.

  The response was a vicious kick to the small of his back that sent the man writhing to the floor.

  “Come.” Alexi gripped Beck’s upper arm. They turned and left the room. As they again walked down the corridor, Beck found his own fists were balled.

  “Damn you,” he spat at Alexi. “Why did you show me that?”

  “Because there is no time for anything else,” the Russian said. “Because you must understand that what I tell you now is true. Seven months ago, the man in that room attempted to bribe a senior Army officer, who happened instead to be a patriot. Our guest has been under surveillance ever since. He offered first eight million U.S. dollars, then increased it to ten million. Do you wish to know what he considered worth this vast sum?”

  Beck said nothing, feeling his pulse pound angrily in his temple.

  “He wished to purchase from us a biological weapon,” Alexi said. “A virus.”

  Beck stopped short.

  “You told me it was not one of yours, Alexi.”

  “And it is not. He did not acquire what he sought, not from Russia and not from your country. As a result of the interrogation methods to which you object so passionately, we have ruled this out completely.”

  “Have you?” Beck heard the anger in his own voice. “Then what does he know about the virus? Who engineered it? Where was it acquired?”

  “My friend,” Alexi said, “at this moment it does not matter how they obtained this virus. Perhaps through our old friend Saddam. Or perhaps an organization that has ten million dollars to spend can afford its own biogeneticists, no?”

  “It matters if someone has a vaccine.”

  “Had he known anything about a vaccine, he would have already told us. This, I assure you.”

  “What other evidence do you have,” Beck asked, “aside from the statement of a man under torture?”

  Alexi snorted impatiently.

  “Do you think he is the only member of this murderous cult we have taken into custody? No, my friend—in Russia, a group that engages in chemical warfare does not escape our attention. Certainly not if there are thousands of them inside our borders.”

  “I know how the Federal Security Bureau works, Alexi. People tend to disappear into the system, and many of them never emerge. I’ll ask again: Do you have any hard proof that Aum is behind all this?”

  “Do not play the lawyer with me, my friend. It is not a role that suits you. We have a man who is a member of a cult that has previously tried to wage biological warfare. He attempts to buy a deadly viral weapon. A few months later, people in both our countries begin to die from a virus we know is an engineered weapon. I need nothing more.”

  “It may be a smoking gun, Alexi. But it’s not conclusive.”

  “When we have finished our interrogation,” Alexi said, “we will know all that he does. He will wish only that he had more to tell us.”

  Beck bit off the retort that came to his lips. The two men walked on in silence for several paces before Alexi spoke.

  “Beck, six weeks ago the Japanese convicted this Asahara, this cult leader. He was sentenced to die—a quite reasonable decision for a Russian court, though something of a surprise to come from the Japanese. They are, I fear, far too pliant, far too often.”

  “The Armageddon syndrome,” Beck said. “As a cult, they believe their own annihilation is at hand, and they’ve
decided to take the rest of us with them. This is what you believe has begun?”

  Alexi nodded, and his expression was deadly serious.

  “Report back to your president,” he said. “Tell him that these fanatics, these Aum, are our most obvious—call them suspects, if you must. I would use a much more definitive description. We have gathered some intelligence on this group independently, and will share it with you. They are apparently led now by various people they call teachers—in Japanese,sensei . Who these sensei are, we do not yet know. But your people are much closer to the Japanese government than are mine, is it not so?”

  Alexi reached out and gripped Beck’s arm in a grip that was almost painful. “Understand, please. We must obtain all information on this cult immediately.”

  “What we have, you will have.”

  Alexi smiled coldly. “We cannot afford games in this, Beck.”

  “What are you saying, Alexi?”

  “Your people already know much about this Aum, my friend. Your people infiltrated them some time ago.”

  Beck looked skeptical.

  “And just how would you know this?”

  “The man in the room—the one whose well-being you are so concerned about. He is Aum, certainly. But he is also one of yours. He is CIA.”

  Chapter 12

  Moscow

  July 22

  The first line of the helicopters—thirty Mi-24 Hinds, each adapted with aerosol spraying apparatus that protruded sideways from the landing skids and accentuated their insectlike appearance—swept in low over the target perimeter. They were no more than seventy feet above the street level, and the people below were easily visible as individuals to the two-man crews.

  The words crackled in the headphones of Pilot Officer Yuri Gretnik, who recognized the voice of his squadron commander.

  “Ajax Leader. This will be our orientation pass. Maintain formation throughout. Ajax-Three, tighten up.” Yuri winced at the rebuke. He eased the collective, tweaking his craft back into alignment.