The colonel-general nodded calmly. He picked up the red phone again. “This is Nestrenko,” he said calmly. “Connect me with the United States Space Command.”
He looked across at Baranov with a slight smile while waiting for his hot-line call to go through. “I will have to convey my sincere regrets and deepest apologies for the terrible damage accidentally caused by this catastrophic explosion on board one of our COSMOS-class weather satellites.”
“Do you think the Americans will believe you?”
Nestrenko shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. What is most important is that they cannot possibly launch a replacement for their wrecked radar spy satellite in time. Soon, very soon, we will no longer be forced to care so much about what the Americans believe. Or what they may do.”
The White House
It was still early in the morning when a uniformed Secret Service agent ushered Fred Klein into the president’s den upstairs in the East Wing. The room, full of old books, prints of works by Fredric Remington and Georgia O’Keeffe, and photographs of the rugged New Mexico landscape, was all Castilla’s own—his private refuge from the routine frenzy of the White House’s more public spaces.
The president himself sat in one of the room’s two large recliners, moodily paging through the morning intelligence brief. A tray nearby held his untouched breakfast. He motioned toward the other chair. “Sit down, Fred.”
Klein obeyed.
Wearily, Castilla pushed the pile of papers aside and turned to his old friend. “Has there been any more news from Smith or the others in Moscow?”
“Not yet,” Klein told him. “But I expect another report in a matter of hours at most.”
The president nodded somberly. “Good. Because I’m going to need as much information as I can get—and I’m going to need it very soon. Certainly within the next forty-eight hours.”
Klein raised an eyebrow.
“I’m more and more convinced that whatever the Russians are planning is coming up fast,” Castilla explained. “Which means that our window for heading them off is closing even faster.”
“Yes, sir,” the head of Covert-One agreed. If the rumors Smith and Fiona Devin had picked up about the accelerating tempo of Russian military preparations were accurate, the U.S. and its allies would already be hard-pressed to react in time.
“I’m calling a secret meeting with high-level representatives of some of our closest allies,” Castilla told him. “Those who still pack a respectable military punch—the UK, France, Germany, and Japan, for a start. I want us to forge a united response to the Kremlin, a series of concrete measures that will force Dudarev to back down before he pulls the trigger on whatever operation he’s planning.”
“When?” Klein asked quietly.
“The morning of February 22,” the president said. “I don’t see how we can afford to wait any longer than that.”
Klein frowned. “That’s a very tight deadline,” he said at length. “I don’t know that I can promise concrete results by then.”
Castilla nodded. “I understand. But that’s all the time we have left, Fred. Believe me, I’m making the same impossible demands of everyone else. At the NSC meeting last night, I ordered the redirection of every other component of our national intelligence capability—spy satellites, signals intercept stations, and whatever agent networks we still have—onto the same mission. When our allies show up in the Oval Office, I need solid and convincing evidence of Russia’s aggressive intentions.”
“And if we can’t get it for you in time?”
The president sighed. “Then I’ll go ahead with the meeting anyway, but I won’t kid myself. Without something more than my own fears and a few vague hints of trouble, the odds are very much against anyone else being willing to join us in facing down Moscow.”
Klein nodded tightly. “I’ll relay the critical time frame to Colonel Smith as soon as I can.”
“You do that,” Castilla said softly. “I hate like hell to ask you to expose your people to more danger, but I don’t see any alternative.” He broke off, hearing his secure phone ring. He answered it swiftly. “Yes?”
While Klein watched, the president’s broad, deeply lined face sagged. Suddenly he looked years older.
“When?” Castilla asked, gripping the phone until his knuckles turned white. He listened to the reply, then nodded his head firmly. “I understand, Admiral,” he said quietly.
The president disconnected and then punched in an internal White House number. “This is Sam Castilla, Charlie,” he said to his chief of staff. “Round up the NSC pronto. We have an emergency situation on our hands.”
Finished, he turned back to Klein. “That was Admiral Brose,” he said. His eyes were tired and discouraged. “He just received a flash communication from Space Command headquarters out in Colorado. There’s been an explosion in space, and we’ve lost one of our most sophisticated spy satellites—Lacrosse-Five.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
North of Moscow
It was pitch-black outside by the time Jon Smith and Fiona Devin reached their next destination, a large dacha once owned by Aleksandr Zakarov, the old man who had been the second victim of the suspicious disease outbreak they were investigating. Before he retired, Zakarov had been both an influential member of the ruling Communist Party and the State manager of a heavy industry complex. During the first, wild years of crony capitalism after the Soviet Union imploded, he had earned a substantial fortune by selling off “shares” in the factories under his control.
The luxurious dacha he had acquired with some of his ill-gotten loot was located over an arduous hour’s drive north of the Outer Ring Road. While grinding slowly along narrow, snow-clogged country lanes through gloomy patches of forest and past tiny villages and abandoned churches, Smith had wondered why on earth Zakarov’s rich widow would choose to live so far outside Moscow—especially during the long, cold, and dark winter months. For most of the city’s wealthy elite, their dachas were chiefly rustic summer retreats, places of escape and relaxation during the sweltering days and nights so common in July and August. Few of them ever bothered leaving the comforts of the capital once the first snows fell, except perhaps for rare weekends and holidays dedicated to cross-country skiing and other winter sports.
Within five minutes after they were ushered into her elegantly furnished sitting room, neither Jon nor Fiona wondered very much about why the former Party boss’s widow lived in rural isolation. Their reluctant hostess was a woman who neither wanted nor enjoyed the company of others. She preferred a life of essential solitude with only the handful of paid servants necessary to cook, clean, and otherwise cater to her every petty and eccentric whim.
Madame Irina Zakarova was a tiny woman with a sharp, beaklike nose and small, dark, predatory eyes that seemed always in motion—observing, judging, and then dismissing with contempt. Her narrow, deeply lined face bore the sour, caustic frown of one who never expects much from anyone, and who almost always finds her abysmally low expectations of her fellow humans fully satisfied. With a jaundiced eye, she finished examining Smith’s forged World Health Organization credentials and handed the papers back with an indifferent shrug. “Very well. You may ask your questions, Dr. Strand. I do not promise many useful answers. Frankly, I found the whole matter of my husband’s last illness a great bore.” Her mouth turned downward even more sharply. “All those ridiculous doctors and nurses and health ministry officials asking the same dreary questions: What did he eat last? Had he ever been exposed to radiation? What medications was he taking? On and on they went, in a never-ending interrogation. It was all so absurd.”
“Absurd in what way?” Smith asked carefully.
“For the simple reason that Aleksandr was a walking catalogue of ill health and bad habits,” Madame Zakarova replied coolly. “He smoked and drank and ate far too much all his life. Anything could have killed him—a heart attack, stroke, some kind of cancer…anything at all. So the fact that his body gave out in the e
nd was hardly a matter of special surprise, or of much real interest, to me. I really don’t understand all the fuss these doctors made over his death.”
“Others were killed by the same strange illness,” Fiona pointed out tersely. “Among them, an innocent little boy who did not share your husband’s bad habits.”
“Really?” the other woman asked casually. “An otherwise healthy child?”
Smith nodded, doing his best to hide his own dislike for this cold, remarkably selfish, woman.
“How odd,” Madame Zakarova said, with yet another emotionally detached shrug. She sighed languidly. “Well, then, I suppose I must do my best to help you, regardless of the inconvenience to myself.”
Patiently, more patiently than he would have supposed was possible, Smith led her through the same set of health-related questions he had already asked the Voronovs. As before, Fiona carefully took down her answers, maddeningly incomplete though they were.
At last, when the old woman began to show unmistakable signs that her own limited patience was wearing thin, Jon decided it was time to shift his line of questioning to their chief area of interest—the European Center for Population Research and its DNA sampling around Moscow.
“Thank you for your time, Madame Zarkova. You have been extremely helpful,” Smith lied, sitting back in his chair and beginning to gather up his papers. But then he stopped and sat forward again. “Oh, there is just one other small matter.”
“Yes?”
“Our records show that you and your husband participated in a major DNA survey last year,” Smith said casually, mentally crossing his fingers. “Is that correct?”
“The big genetic study?” The older woman sniffed quietly. “Oh, yes. Swabbing out our mouths for perfect strangers in the name of science. A disgusting ritual, if you ask my opinion. But Aleksandr was very excited about the whole grotesque process.” She shook her head in contempt. “My husband was a fool. He actually believed that this so-called Slavic Genesis project would prove one of his own silly pet theories—that we Russians are the pinnacle of European racial and ethnic evolutionary development.”
Jon forced himself to smile noncommittally, hiding his own elation. He was now sure that they had uncovered an important part of the origins of this deadly disease.
After he and Fiona Devin finished talking to the Voronovs that morning, they had gone back to their Zamoskvoreche District safe house. Then, while he reviewed his notes and made the careful phone calls necessary to arrange this interview, Fiona had spent several hours on-line digging up whatever she could about the ECPR and its Slavic Genesis project. Since it was too risky for her to contact her regular news sources, the detailed information they needed was hard to come by. Nevertheless, two important pieces of the puzzle had become clear.
First, although Slavic Genesis was a very large, expensive, and ambitious scientific undertaking, its researchers had collected DNA from just one thousand of the roughly nine million people living in the greater Moscow region. For the purposes of evaluating historical shifts in Slavic populations, this sample size was sufficient—especially when combined with the thousands upon thousands of other samples taken in other countries in Eastern Europe and across the former Soviet republics. But it also meant that this link between seven-year-old Mikhail Voronov and seventy-five-year-old Aleksandr Zakarov was more than the blind operation of random chance. The odds against such a coincidence were something on the order of eighty-one million to one.
Second, Konstantin Malkovic’s name had popped up yet again. Corporations and foundations that he controlled provided a substantial share of the ECPR’s funding. Few specifics of the Center’s budget were in the public domain, but Fiona was fairly sure that the billionaire’s money was directly underwriting the Slavic Genesis project.
Smith grimaced. One potential connection to Konstantin Malkovic, the ambulance from the Saint Cyril Medical Center, might be dismissed as a fluke. Two could not. Malkovic was involved in this conspiracy, along with his pal in the Kremlin, Viktor Dudarev.
In the woods outside the dacha, Oleg Kirov lay propped up behind a log half-buried in the snow, keeping a careful eye on the deeply rutted track that led up from the nearest country lane. Surplus army-issue night vision goggles turned the surrounding darkness into green-tinted monochromatic day. Twenty or so meters behind him, covered in branches and boughs to break up its sharp, boxy silhouette, lay the squat bulk of his GAZ Hunter, a vehicle that was the rough Russian equivalent of the American Jeep Wrangler.
Kirov had driven to the Zakarov dacha ahead of Smith and Fiona Devin. His first task had been to quickly scout the area for signs of possible danger. His second had been to establish this hidden observation post, concealing himself in a spot where he could keep an eye on the most likely approach to the dacha while Jon and Fiona asked their questions. The sides of his mouth turned down. He hoped they would hurry.
The broad-shouldered Russian shivered, chilled to the bone despite the protection offered by his heavy winter coat, hat, and gloves. The temperature, already below zero, was falling fast as the night wore on.
He understood his friends’ need to confirm the information the Voronovs had given them, but he had deep misgivings about coming so far outside Moscow. Here in this harsh and forbidding landscape, they were all terribly exposed. There were no convenient crowds to mingle with. There were no handy Metro stations or packed department stores to duck into for evasion and escape. There were just the trees and the snow and a few winding roads that were completely empty once the sun went down.
Sighing, the Russian focused his gaze on the car parked next to the front door. Madame Zakarova kept her Mercedes in a heated garage attached to the house. Her infrequent guests were forced to make do with a small patch of icy gravel. Nothing seemed to be stirring near the dark blue Volga sedan he had obtained for the two Americans.
Then, suddenly, Kirov stiffened. He heard powerful engines echoing among the trees. The sounds were still some distance away, but they were unmistakably drawing nearer. He rose higher to get a better look and then dropped flat, reaching into his pocket in a tearing hurry.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Smith’s cell phone rang suddenly.
“Excuse me,” he told the widow. He flipped the phone open. “Yes?”
It was Kirov. “You’ve got to leave, Jon. Now!” the Russian said urgently. “Two unmarked cars just turned off the main road. They’re heading straight for the dacha. Go now! Out the back!”
“We’re on our way,” Smith said grimly. He shut the phone and stood up, grabbing his winter coat in the same motion. He felt the bulge of the 9mm Makarov pistol concealed in one of the pockets. For a moment, Jon was tempted to make a stand here in the house, fighting from cover instead of fleeing out into the open. But then he shoved the idea away. With the widow and her servants inside, he could not risk provoking a gun battle. If bullets started flying, too many innocents could easily be hurt or killed.
“Trouble?” Fiona asked quickly, in English. She rose at the same time, already gathering up her coat and gloves.
“We’ve got company,” he murmured in the same language. “We’re abandoning the car and bugging out. Oleg will meet us outside.”
Pale and tense, she nodded her understanding.
The older Russian woman looked up at them in confusion. “Your questions are finished? You are going?”
Smith nodded. “Yes, Madame Zakarova, we’re going. Right now.” Ignoring the widow’s startled protests, he steered Fiona out of the sitting room and into the dacha’s wide central passage. There, they ran into a stout, middle-aged maid carrying a tray with the tea and small cakes her mistress had grudgingly offered when they first arrived. “Where’s the back door?” Jon demanded.
Startled, the maid nodded her head down the hallway to their left, back the way she had just come. “It’s there,” she replied, plainly bewildered by his question. “Through the kitchen.”
The two Americans slid around her an
d moved rapidly down the hall. Behind them, someone began pounding loudly on the dacha’s solid front door. “Militsia!” a loud voice boomed. “Open up!”
Jon and Fiona walked on even faster.
The kitchen was quite large and equipped with every modern convenience—a gas range, refrigerator, freezer, microwave oven, and all the rest. Mouth-watering smells hung in the warm air. In the corner, another of Madame Zakarova’s servants, a young, strongly built man, sat finishing his dinner, a bowl of pelmeni—meat dumplings smothered in sour cream and rich butter. He looked up in astonishment as they came hurrying past him. “Hey, where are you—?”
Smith waved him back to his chair. “This lady is not feeling well,” he explained. “She needs some fresh air.”
Without hesitating, he pulled the heavy wood door open. Light and warmth spilled out into the icy darkness, illuminating a narrow expanse of deep, white snow. The dacha occupied a small clearing in the forest, and the closest trees were only a few meters away. A small trampled path through the snow led off toward a collection of trash cans set against the rear of the house.
“Quick now,” Smith whispered to Fiona. “And once we’re in among the trees, run like hell. Circle to the left. Don’t stop for anything or anyone until we reach Kirov. Got it?”
Grim-faced, she nodded.
Together, the two Americans headed out toward the forest, crunching up to midcalf in the icy powder. Smith took a quick breath, feeling the clean, arctic bite deep into his lungs. Just a few seconds more, he thought. That’s all we need to get clear.
Suddenly three armed men stepped out from among the trees. All three wore snow camouflage parkas and carried Russian-made AKSU submachine guns. Two were shorter than Smith, but they were powerfully muscled and moved with the quiet confidence of trained soldiers. The third man was an inch or so taller than Jon and his eyes were a wintry slate-gray. There were matching strands of gray in his pale blond hair.
The Moscow Vector Page 29
