The Moscow Vector c-6

by Robert Ludlum

  Brandt had been watching him closely. The blond man smiled coldly. He nodded to the other men standing unseen behind Jon. “Our American friend here is ready. Help him back into his seat.”

  Two pairs of rough, callused hands grabbed Smith under the arms as Brandt’s underlings hauled him bodily upright out of the icy puddle of water.

  They shoved him back into a chair and then again looped a leather strap around his chest, binding him to the sharp-edged wood frame. The strap tightened unmercifully.

  Jon gritted his teeth. He glanced to his left.

  Fiona Devin was strapped into a chair next to him. Her hands and feet were also bound. Her head lolled. Blood trickled out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Like you, Ms. Devin has been … uncooperative,” Brandt said easily. A humorless smile appeared on his face and then vanished swiftly without leaving a trace on his lips or in his eyes. “But I am a forgiving man, so I will grant you both another chance to save yourselves more of this unnecessary pain.”

  He snapped an order over his shoulder to one of his men. “She looks fhirstv, Yuri. Give her another drink!”

  His subordinate, a brawny, shaven-headed man, obeved, tossing a bucket full of cold water into Fiona’s face. She choked and spluttered, leaning back against the chair in a vain effort to avoid the deluge of freezing water. After a

  few seconds, she slowly opened her eyes. Noticing Smith looking at her with evident concern, she forced a wry, painful grin. “The service here is really rather awful. Next time, I’ll choose different accommodations.”

  Brandt snorted. “Very amusing, Ms. Devin.” He turned back to Smith.

  “Now, Colonel, let me try being reasonable one last time.” His voice hardened. “Who do you work for? The CIA? The Defense Intelligence Agency?

  Some other organization?”

  Jon braced himself for the blow he knew was coming. He raised his head, staring the former Stasi officer straight in the eyes. “I’ve told you before,” he said tiredly, surprised at how shirred his voice sounded. “My name is Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, M.D. I work for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute — “

  But instead of hitting him, Brandt spun around and slapped Fiona hard across the face. Her head rocked back. Blood from a new cut inside her mouth spattered off into the darkness. The sound of the blow echoed like a gunshot in the damp silence of the cellar.

  “You’re a dead man,” Smith growled through his clenched teeth, shocked by what he had just seen. He strained uselessly against the wide leather strap holding him in place.

  Brandt swung back with a sly, satisfied grin on his face. “Oh, didn’t I tell you, Colonel? The rules have changed. From this moment on, Ms. Devin will suffer for each of your lies, not you.” He shrugged. “The pain she endures ‘n the process will be on your conscience, not on mine.”

  Christ, Smith thought bleakly, feeling light-headed. The big, gray-eyed bastard had read him perfectly. He had been tortured before, and he knew the limits of his own endurance. But how long could he sit helpless and watch another person being brutalized to satisfy his own stubborn pride?

  “Pay me no mind, Jon,” Fiona Devin said quietly, spitting out a mouthful of blood. “This murdering bastard will kill us both no matter what we tell him, or don’t tell him — “

  Yet another open-handed blow from Brandt’s hard hand rocked her head to the side.

  “You will be silent, Ms. Devin!” he said coldly. “My conversation is with the colonel here, not with you. You had your chance to tell me what I wished to know. Now it is his turn.”

  Smith raged inwardly, maddened by his inability to stop this devilish game. If he could just get free, even for a second, he thought desperately… but realistically he knew there was no chance of that. He also knew that Fiona was right. They were both going to die here in this dark, dank cellar, this place already haunted by the ghosts of hundreds of others murdered by men like Brandt and his thugs. The only real question remaining was whether or not they could win at least one small last victory by denying the Stasi officer the information he demanded.

  He closed his eyes briefly, steeling himself to endure the long, pain-filled, and bloody hours to come. Then he opened them and looked up again at Brandt in front of him. “My name is Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, M.D.,” he repeated steadily, in a stronger voice than he would have thought possible.

  “And I work for the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases…”

  * * *

  Brandt stared down at the lean, dark-haired American in frustration. He had been sure that Smith was on the edge of breaking. He had sensed it. But now he could see the man’s resolve stiffening. Meanwhile, time was moving on. Sooner or later, a militia patrol would discover the carnage inside the Zakarov dacha. And sooner or later, they would find the wreckage of that bullet-torn GAZ jeep lying in a ravine by the side of the road. Once either of those things happened, Alexei Ivanov would start asking some very awkward questions.

  He rubbed his jaw. At least Fadayev had finally called into the Group’s headquarters, reporting that the driver was definitely dead and that he had retrieved the dead man’s identity papers. If nothing else, Brandt thought, that would make it slightly more difficult for Ivanov to connect the two incidents.

  But only slightly.

  His phone rang suddenly.

  Scowling, Brandt yanked the device out of his pocket. “Yes?” he snapped irritablv, walking back toward the stairs out of the cellar, moving out of earshot of the two prisoners. “What is it?”

  “Your man Lange has bungled his assignment,” Malkovie told him bitterly.

  “And by now the CIA must have penetrated very deeply into our communications network.”

  Brandt listened in stunned disbelief while his employer ran through what he had learned about the disaster in Berlin. Lange dead? Along with all of his handpicked team? It scarcely seemed possible.

  “We have no choice now,” Malkovie said flatlv. “We must transfer the key elements of the HYDRA lab to a new location—without further delay. I intend to oversee the work myself, and I want you there, too. Both for security purposes and to make sure that Professor Renke appreciates the need for immediate action.”

  Brandt nodded, understanding what the other man really wanted. He wanted personal protection against any danger. The billionaire was frightened to death of what the Russians might do once thev learned that all of his fine promises to them about HYDRA’s operational security were worthless.

  His jaw tightened. Malkovie was right to be afraid. “When do we leave?” he asked harshly.

  “My personal jet is scheduled to take off in just under three hours,”

  Malkovie said. “But first I want you to shut down all of your operations in Moscow. Make arrangements for your key people to rendezvous somewhere °utside Russia. Dump the communications system. And wipe your files, all of tnem. Understand?”

  Yes.” Brandt considered the work necessary to implement those orders.

  He nodded again. “It can be done.”

  “Make sure of it,” the other man told him coolly. “I will not tolerate any Mlore mistakes.” The phone went dead.

  Brandt spun on his heel. “Yuri!” he growled. “Over here!”

  Openly curious, the brawny, shaven-headed man ambled over. “Yes?”

  “We’ve got new orders,” Brandt told him brusquely. “I’m heading back to Moscow straight away. Close up shop here, sanitize the area, and follow me when you can.”

  “What about the Americans?”

  Brandt shrugged. “They’re useless to us now. Finish them.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  With their hands still tied behind them, Jon Smith and Fiona Devin were hustled up the stairs and out of the cellar at gunpoint. They came up into the ruins of the church, a square stone building topped by the broken remains of a central onion-shaped dome. Gray light from an overcast sky streamed in through empty windows and gaps in the dome. Small patch
es of weathered, fading paint on the moss-covered walls were all that was left of the bright frescoes of saints and scenes from the Old and New Testaments that had once decorated the church interior. Everything else of value—the marble altar, the golden taberna-cle, chandeliers and candelabras—had long since been carted away.

  Brandt wheeled at the main door to the church and sketched an ironic salute. “And here I will say farewell to you, Colonel. And to you, too, Ms. Devin.” His teeth flashed white in the gloom. “I will not see either of you again.”

  Jon said nothing, staring back at him with an impassive face. Show no fear, he told himself. Don’t give the bastard any satisfaction. He noticed that Fiona had the same faintly bored look on her bruised face. She glanced at Brandt with no more interest than she might have shown if he were a common house buzzing against a window.

  Visibly irked by their lack of reaction, the gray-eyed man turned on his heel and left. Not long afterward, they heard the engine of his Ford Explorer roar into life and listened to its thick tires go crunching away across the snow and ice.

  “Go on!” one of the two gunmen still guarding them growled. He gestured with his pistol, a 9mm Makarov, pointing toward a smaller, arched doorway at the side of the church. “Out through there!”

  Smith glanced at him, not hothering to hide the contempt he felt. “And if we refuse?”

  The gunman, the shaven-headed man Brandt had called Yuri, shrugged carelessly. “Then I will shoot you here. It makes no real difference to me.”

  “Do as the man asks,” Fiona murmured. “If nothing else, we buy a little more time. And at least we get the chance to breathe a bit of clean air.”

  ]on nodded slowly. In the end, resisting here would make no real difference to their fate, and perhaps it would be better to die outside —under the open sky—than here in this musty pile of stone.

  Of course, not dying would be even better, he thought wryly. Cautiously, he tried again to loosen his bonds, straining his wrists hard against the length of heavy-duty plastic cable binding him and then relaxing, trying to stretch them out slightly. Over time, the constant expansion and contraction might create a point of weakness that would let him break free. He sighed. It was a technique that might succeed, but only if he were given an uninterrupted ten or twelve hours to spend working awav at the cable. Unfortunately, his remaining life span was probably measured in minutes at best.

  “Come!” the gunman snapped again. His comrade, shorter and with a mop of coarse brown hair, prodded them forward from behind with the muzzle of his submachine gun.

  Smith and Fiona stumbled out through the little door, down a few cracked stone steps and out across a snow-covered patch of waste ground. It was largely overgrown with weeds and brambles and little clumps of saplings. A few paths wandered off through the old and gnarled trees, heading for darker heaps or broken stone —all that was left of a small hospital, a school, a refectory, cells for the monks, and other buildings. The remnants of a stout stone wall could be seen rising beyond those ruins.

  They were pushed and shoved down a path running off to the left, one that led through an open gate in the monastery wall and out into a small, equally neglected, and overgrown graveyard. Many of these markers had fallen over and lay half-buried in the snow. Others were pockmarked with old bullet scarv probably made decades ago by NKVD execution squads amusing themselves while off-duty. All were surrounded by clumps of tall dead grass and Leeds.

  Looming up on the far side of the graveyard, Jon could see a shallow open pit, probably once used to burn rubbish. Cans of gasoline and a collection of dirtv, oil-soaked rags were stacked at the rim of the pit. He stopped abruptly, digging in his heels. Their planned fate was clear. He and Fiona were going to be herded down into that pit, shot to death, and then their bodies would be doused in gasoline and burned.

  From somewhere behind him, he could hear the two gunmen murmuring to each other. By the sound of it they had dropped back several meters behind Iheir two captives.

  Smith grimaced. They were out of time and out of options. And if they were going to die anyway, it was better to go down fighting. In that same moment, he heard a muffled gasp from Fiona and knew that she, too, had seen the waiting pit and the gasoline. Jon glanced across at her. “Are you with me?” he said quietly, jerking his head slightly to indicate Brandt’s thugs coming up behind them.

  Now there were tears in her eyes. But she lifted her chin and nodded bravely, ‘“lb the bitter end. Colonel.” Then she actually managed a very slight smile.

  Smith grinned back appreciatively. “That’s the spirit. Let’s see if we can lure them in within reach. I’ll take the guy on the left. You take the one on the right,” he murmured under his breath. “Trip yours if you can. Otherwise just kick the hell out of him and then keep kicking. Okay?”

  She nodded again.

  “No talking!” the shaven-headed man snapped. “And keep moving!”

  Smith refused to move. He stood still with his back to the two gunmen, waiting. His skin crawled, anticipating the sudden smashing impact of a bullet. Jnst come a little closer, he thought grimly. Just a bit closer.

  He heard footsteps crunching across the snow, drawing nearer. He tensed, preparing himself to spring. A shadow fell across his shoulder.

  Now!

  Jon whirled around, lashing out with his right foot in a lightning-fast kick.

  Out the corner of his eye, he saw Fiona making the same move.

  It was no good.

  Brandt’s men must have been waiting and watching for one last desperate escape attempt. With contemptuous ease, they evaded the kicks wildly aimed in their direction. Both quickly stepped back well out of range, grinning cruelly.

  Thrown off balance by his sudden movement, Smith stumbled. With his hands still tied behind his back, he could not recover and wound up falling forward onto his knees. Panting, Fiona dropped to the snow at his side.

  The shaven-headed man slowly wagged a mocking finger at them. “That was very stupid.” Then he shrugged. “But it doesn’t really matter, I suppose.

  Nothing does—in the end.” He signaled to his colleague. “Kill them here, Kostya.”

  Nodding coolly, the brown-haired man moved forward, raising his submachine gun.

  Surprised at his own calmness, Smith forced himself to stare straight into the other man’s narrowed eyes. He had fought the good fight. What else could he do but take what was coming as bravely as he could? He could hear Fiona murmuring words softly under her breath, possibly a prayer of some kind.

  The gunman’s finger tightened slowly on the trigger. A breath of wind ruffled through his mop of coarse brown hair.

  Crack.

  And the gunman’s chest blew apart in a spray of blood and bone, blown open from front to back. The submachine gun fell out of his nerveless hands.

  His body swayed and then crumpled sideways, collapsing in a clump of brush between two grave markers.

  For a split second, no one moved.

  The other man stared in absolute astonishment at the mangled corpse of his comrade. Recovering suddenly, he threw himself down.

  Crack.

  A second high-velocity round smashed the snow-covered cross right behind where Brandt’s bald henchman had been standing. Snow and shattered pieces of marble flew away from the point of impact.

  Smith rolled to the left, into the shelter offered by a headstone that appeared on the verge of toppling over but that was somehow still standing-A sculptor had carved the likeness of a sleeping mother and child deep into its surface. Fiona followed him. Together, they crouched low on their knees, being very careful to keep their heads well below the top of the monument.

  “What the devil is going on?” Fiona whispered. Her eyes were wide and her face had gone very pale. The red handprints, welts, and cuts left by Brandt’s crueltv were plain on her smooth clear skin.

  “Damned if I know,” Smith said softly, putting his mouth close to her ear.

  An eerie silence de
scended across the weed-choked cemetery. Cautiously, Smith turned his head, studying the terrain more closely. The graveyard lay at the bottom of a little bowl, with gentle slopes rising all around. The ruins of the monastery crowned one of those shallow hills. Groves of birch and pine trees covered the other elevations.

  i He heard the sudden crackle of dry brush not far off, the sound of someone slithering closer through the dead weeds and grass. Brandt’s surviving gunman was stalking them, Jon realized coldly, inching carefully from cover to cover to avoid drawing fire from the marksman lurking somewhere among the trees.

  From the noise, Brandt’s man was swinging wide to their left, crawling through the crowded tangle of crosses and grave markers that still separated them from him.

  Smith leaned closer to Fiona. “You go off that way,” he muttered, jerking his chin to the right, away from the ominous, crackling sounds coming steadily and stealthily closer. “Go a few meters. Once you’re behind another big marker, make some noise. As much noise as you can. Understand?”

  Wordlessly, Fiona nodded back. Without waiting any longer, she rolled rapidly away across the hard-packed earth and snow.

  And Jon moved himself, rolling to the left as quietly as he could. He crossed a small gap and readied the next pair of headstones over, one leaning Irunkenly against the other. He stopped behind the largest, a solid slab of dark-colored stone, and listened intently. More weeds rustled. The shaven-headed gunman was coming closer, creeping slowly through the snow and tall grass.

  Quickly, Smith twisted around onto his back, lying with his legs drawn up to his chest, coiled and ready to strike. With luck, he might get one chance, he knew. But only one. If he muffed it, he was a dead man.