The Moscow Vector c-6

by Robert Ludlum

  “That won’t be necessary, Ms. Pike,” a quiet voice said from behind her.

  Startled, she froze and then slowly turned around toward the door into the Oval Office. Nathaniel Frederick Klein stood there, framed in the open doorway. His narrow, long-nosed face was impassive. Two uniformed Secret Service agents stood reach on either side of him, both with drawn weapons.

  “What is the meaning of this, Mr. Klein?” Estelle Pike demanded icily, trying to brazen it out.

  “The meaning, Ms. Pike,” Klein said bluntly, “is that you are under arrest.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “The attempted assassination of President Samuel Adams Castilla will do for a start,” he replied. His eyes were cold. “No doubt other charges will arise as we dig deeper into vour conduct and background.”

  * * *

  Later, sitting across from a visibly shocked Castilla, Klein slid the glass vial across the president’s big pine table desk. “We’ll have what remains of the contents analyzed, but if Jon Smith’s suspicions are accurate, I doubt that we’ll find much of use inside.”

  Grimly, Castilla nodded. His mouth turned downward. He shook his head in disbelief. “Estelle Pike! She’s been with me for years, ever since I came to the White House.” He looked up at the head of Covert-One. “What made you suspect her?”

  Klein shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Suspicion is too strong a word, Sam. Once we learned how easily this targeted biological weapon might be administered to its victims, I had a quiet chat with the head of your Secret Service detail. They’ve been monitoring every aspect of White House food preparation ever since. Ms. Pike’s domain was the only potential gap in our security, so it was one I’ve had closely ohserved. When she started finding reasons to send her people awav after vou called down to the kitchens for that salad. I thought it would he a good idea to see what she might he planning.”

  Castilla tapped the vial gently. His eyes were still troubled. “But why? Why would she do this?”

  “I rather think we will find that your Ms. Pike has a great many hidden depths,” Klein said flatly. “I’ve sometimes wondered about her. Her position here at the White House gave her access to an enormous range of secret information. And her background —widowed at an early age, no family, no real friends—well, it just seems too convenient, too perfect. If I wanted to create a legend, a cover, for a deep-penetration mole, that’s exactly the sort of thing I would work toward.”

  “You think she’s a Russian spy?” the president asked.

  Klein nodded again. “Almost certainly.” He stood up. “But we’ll find out for sure. You can count on that.”

  “I do, Fred,” Castilla said with a grateful smile. “I always do.” Then his smile slowly faded. “Just as I am counting on Colonel Smith and the others.”

  Near Orvieto

  Konstantin Malkovic stared down at the decoded message on his laptop in dismay. “Impossible!” he muttered. He turned to Brandt, who was standing at his shoulder. “How could this be?”

  “The Americans are closer to us than we realized,” Brandt snapped, reading through the urgent warning sent by the financier’s agent in Germany.

  “That’s all.”

  “But what can we do?” the other man asked. His voice, usually a deep baritone, now sounded shrill.

  Brandt stared at his employer in disgust. Malkovic was crumbling in front of him. All of the rich man’s bluster, all of his famous self-confidence, was largely a charade, the gray-eyed man realized coldly. Oh, the Serbian-born financier was brave enough when he was winning, or when he speculated in abstractions —like currencies, or oil and natural gas, or other men’s lives —but he was a physical coward, a man who flinched when his own life was in peril.

  Like mam greedy men, always hungry for more power or for more money, he was fundamentally hollow inside.

  “We must evacuate at once,” Brandt said carefully. “Professor Renke’s DNA databases and his design files are ready to go. We’ll take them, and Renke, and leave now.”

  Malkovic stared back at him in confusion. “But his equipment—”

  “Can be replaced,” Brandt said brutally.

  “What about Renke’s assistants? His lab team?” the financier stammered.

  “The helicopters won’t arrive until it is too late, and we don’t have room for them in the cars.”

  “No,” Brandt agreed coolly, looking out into the main lab where the scientists and technicians were still working hard, preparing their expensive machines for a move that would now never be made. He shrugged his powerful shoulders. “We’ll have to leave them behind. Along with the Italian security guards.”

  Malkovic paled. “What? Are you mad? When the Marines storm this building, they will be captured and then they will talk.”

  “No,” Brandt said bluntly. “They won’t.” He drew the Walther pistol from his shoulder holster and inspected the weapon quickly. As a last measure, he checked that he had a full fifteen-round magazine, and then slid the clip back in.

  The financier looked sick under the lab’s bright fluorescent lights. He sat down heavily, staring at the sterile tile floor between his feet.

  Turning slightly, Brandt waved one of the bodyguards over.

  “Yes, Herr Brandt?” the man said, sounding bored. “What is it?’

  “Order the staff to assemble in the lounge, Sepp. Everyone, without exception.” The former Stasi officer lowered his voice slightly. “Then tell Karl and the others that we have some necessary killing ahead of us. And ask Fyodor to bring his cases from the car trunk. We will need his explosives after all.”

  For the first time, the bodyguard’s dull eyes flickered to life. “It will be a pleasure.”

  Brandt nodded coolly. “I know. That is why I find you and your comrades so useful.” For a few seconds, he watched the man move away and begin herding the fatigued scientists and technicians out of the main lab.

  Renke came over. A slight tightening around his mouth betrayed his supreme irritation at seeing his assistants ushered away, leaving their work un-finished. “What are you playing at, Erich?” he demanded.

  “Read that,” Brandt told him flatly, nodding toward the message still displayed on Malkovie’s laptop.

  The scientist skimmed through the warning of an imminent American assault. One thin, white eyebrow slid up in mild, annoyed surprise. “Unfortunate,” he murmured. Then he looked back over his shoulder at Brandt. “We’re leaving?”

  “Correct.”

  “When?”

  “Within minutes,” the gray-eyed man said. “Retrieve what vou need from your office as quickly as you can.” He nodded coolly toward Malkovic, still sitting slumped over in his chair. “Take him with vou. And keep an eye on him, Merr Professor. His resources and connections are still of use to us.”

  With that, Brandt swung away, stalking toward the lounge with his pistol out and ready.

  Renke watched him go for a moment and then looked down at the shaken billionaire. “Come, Mr. Malkovic,” he snapped. “This way.”

  Numbly, the taller man got to his feet, grabbed his briefcase and laptop, and followed the w eapons scientist down the central corridor.

  Inside his windowless office, Renke crossed quickly to the bookcases concealing his combination wall safe and freezer. After entering his code, he pressed his thumb to the built-in fingerprint scanner. Cold vapor puffed out as the door swung open.

  Cunfire erupted inside the building, muffled by thick, soundproofed walls. There were high-pitched wails and shrieks. When the quick fusillade ended, only a few agonized moans broke in the sudden, eerie silence, along with the sound of a man weeping in sheer terror. A pistol barked three times.

  The silence became absolute.

  “ly Cod!” Malkovic groaned. “The Marines are here already!” He shrank back against the nearest wall, clutching the briefcase containing information on Dudarev’s military plans and the Russian leader’s involvement in HYDRA to his chest as though it would
protect him from American bullets.

  Renke snorted. “Calm yourself. That was only Brandt eliminating my unfortunate assistants.” He donned a heavy glove and pulled out the rack of vials inside the freezer. Carefully, he lowered them into an insulated cooler.

  He smiled down at the rows of his specially crafted HYDRA variants in satisfaction. Labels on each clear glass tube bore different names, many of them Russian. In less than forty-eight hours, the material inside Malkovie’s briefcase would be useless as a means of pressuring Viktor Dudarev. Once Russian troops and tanks crossed the border, the Kremlin leader would no longer fear the exposure of his plans. He would be free to act against the trembling financier as he saw fit.

  Still smiling to himself, the scientist shut and sealed the container.

  Malkovic was doomed, whether or not he realized it yet. But the undetectable and incurable weapons in those vials would give Wulf Renke a firm grip on Dudarev and his cronies for the rest of their lives.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith crouched low behind the front end of the car rented by Randi Russel, a dark green Volvo four-door. It sat sideways across the two-lane road, blocking the main route running around the base of Orvieto’s rugged volcanic plateau. The road, the Strada Stratale No. 71, split here, with one fork heading toward the train station, the lower town, and then on eastward toward the foothills of the distant Apennines. The other climbed gradually up the side of the massive rocky outcropping and entered the cliff-top city of Orvieto itself.

  Smith looked to his left. The plateau loomed there, a huge black shadow against the starlit sky. Just beyond the intersection, the ground rose steeply in a grassy slope dotted with stands of small trees and withered bushes. It ended abruptly in a sheer wall of cracked and crumbling tufa, a type of limestone, and basalt.

  He glanced to his right. Kirov was a couple of meters away, kneeling behind the Volvo with a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun gripped in both hands. The Russian saw him looking and gave him a cool nod to show that he was ready. Beyond the road there, the ground descended in a gentle slope covered in barren fruit trees and vines. Small lights from distant farmhouses glowed here and there across the valley.

  “Here they come,”Randi Russell whispered over the radio. The CIA officer was stationed in cover a little bit farther down the road, on a low rise that offered a view of the well-lit ECPR compound, roughly a kilometer away. She was their forward observer. “I count two cars. Both black Mercedes, moving fast.” She hesitated and then went on. “Looks like you were right, Jon. Maybe you’re getting better at this soldier stuff.”

  “Understood,” Smith said softly.

  Despite the knowledge that he was facing imminent action, part of him relaxed slightly. Randi had argued vehemently for setting up their ambush much closer to the Center. She had wanted to make sure that Malkovie, Renke, and their subordinates couldn’t slip past them by taking one of the other, smaller country lanes that crisscrossed the vallev. But Jon had vetoed her idea, pointing out that hitting the enemy too close to that fortified lab building only offered them the chance of retreating back into its impenetrable protection. And then, once Malkovie and the others realized the U.S. Marine assault they had been warned about was only a gigantic bluff, they would be free to follow their original scheme and fly out to safety.

  Instead, Smith had gambled that Brandt would lead his employers this way, since this road offered the fastest means of putting distance between them and the ECPR. And once they crossed the north-south autostrada near the Orvieto train station, the fugitives would be able to cross the Apennines on little-used secondary roads and make for Italy’s Adriatic coast.

  He tensed, hearing the noise of powerful car engines drawing nearer. He yanked back on the cocking handle of his MP5, forcing a 9mm round into the chamber. One hand made sure that the weapon’s firing selector was set for three-round bursts. He crouched lower, staying out of sight behind the heavy Volvo.

  The approaching engines grew louder.

  Headlights suddenly washed over the Volvo, throwing its strangely distorted shadow farther up the slope. Tires squealed sharply as the lead Mercedes braked hard to avoid crashing into their improvised roadblock. A second later, more brakes squealed as the second black sedan swerved abruptly and stopped in the middle of the road to avoid slamming into the first.

  Immediately, both Smith and Kirov stood up from behind the Volvo, level-ing their submachine guns at the lead car, just fifteen meters away. There was more movement higher up the slope. Fiona Devin jumped up from her own hiding place, a half-buried limestone boulder that must have tumbled from the cliff face centuries before. Peering intently through her dock semiautomatic’s front and rear sights, she took careful aim at the second car.

  “Come out of the car!” Smith shouted, with his eyes narrowed against the glare of the headlights. “Now! With your hands up!”

  His pulse roared in his ears. This was the critical moment. Their need to take prisoners if possible outweighed every other consideration, even their own safety.

  The two Mercedes sedans just sat there, angled awkwardly across the road.

  He could not see any movement through their darkly tinted windows.

  “This is your last warning!” Jon snapped loudly. “Get out of the damned cars! Now!” His finger tightened on the trigger.

  One of the lead car’s back doors popped open. Slowly, a man, one of Malkovic’s bodyguards, climbed out and stood facing them. He kept his empty hands spread carefully apart at shoulder height. “I am unarmed,” he said, speaking in heavily accented English. “What is it that you want? Are you with the police?”

  “No questions,” Kirov growled. “Tell Malkovie and the others to get out!

  They have ten seconds before we open fire!”

  “I understand,” the other man said quickly. “I will tell them.”

  The bodyguard half-turned, just as though he was going to lean back in through the open door and talk to those inside. But then, moving with incredible speed, he whirled back around. One hand darted inside his heavy wool coat and came out gripping a pistol-sized Uzi submachine gun.

  Smith and Kirov fired at the same time.

  Hit by several rounds that tore right through him, the bodyguard toppled backward. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  But in that same instant, the driver of the lead Mercedes stamped down hard on the accelerator. The black sedan roared ahead, aiming straight for the front end of the Volvo. The second Mercedes swung back behind the first and accelerated, too.

  Too late, Smith realized his mistake. Those bastards had sacrificed a man to decoy him out of position. He swung the barrel of the MP5 through a short arc and fired again, this time aiming straight into the first oncoming car’s engine compartment. His bullets punched huge holes though the hood. Sparks and pieces of shredded metal danced up under the series of impacts.

  Beside him, Kirov started shooting, aiming for the tires. Further uphill, Jon could see flame jetting from the muzzle of Fiona Devin’s Glock as she fired at the second sedan, pulling the trigger as fast as she could. Like the Russian, she was aiming for its wheels, trying to immobilize their enemies before they could break past the roadblock and race off into the night.

  Jon stood his ground behind the Volvo for a split second longer, seeing the speeding Mercedes loom up out of the darkness in front of him like a maddened elephant. He fired one more three-round burst. More torn metal flew away from the black sedan’s engine compartment.

  But then it was time to go.

  Smith dove away from behind the parked car, landed on the hard surface of the road with a teeth-rattling jolt, and then rolled frantically off into the grass. Behind him, the Mercedes slammed into the Volvo’s front end with an earsplitting crash. Locked together for a brief moment by the impact, the two cars slid up the road in a grinding spray of broken glass, shattered fiberglass, and crumpled metal. Slowly, the Volvo spun away from the crash, opening up the right-hand fork of
the Y-intersection.

  With a scream of rending steel, the first Mercedes scraped past and rattled away, heading uphill toward Orvieto. Chunks of torn tread from three blown tires scattered behind it, bouncing and tumbling across the road in what looked like slow motion. Sheets of glowing sparks whirled across the gravel and asphalt surface. And then the second black sedan, also running on its metal wheel rims roared past the mangled Volvo, grinding slowly after the lead car.

  Smith rose to one knee. He opened fire again, walking bursts up the road toward the fleeing vehicles. Kirov stood close by, shooting calmly, still aiming low. Fiona came sliding down the slope toward them, snapping a new magazine into her pistol. Her face was a mask of frustration.

  “They’re getting away,” she yelled.

  Kirov fired another burst, holding the submachine gun on target as it sprayed copper-jacketed rounds uphill. Then he shook his head. “No,” he told her. “Look.”

  With a final, coughing roar from its dying engine, the first Mercedes sputtered to a stop about two hundred meters up the road. Four men scrambled out and sprinted uphill, still fleeing toward Orvieto. One of them had a shock of thick white hair and ran awkwardly, clutching a briefcase in both hands.

  Another, taller, had hair that glowed pale blond in the moonlight. “Malkovic and Brandt,” Smith realized. He jumped up. “Let’s go!”

  Ahead of them the second sedan careened off the road, trying to pass the stalled first car. Instead, it bottomed out in the soft soil, lurched forward a few

  more meters, and then ground to a halt. Four more men jumped out of this one. Two fanned out across the road, weapons in hand, evidently intending to act as a rearguard for their retreating comrades. The last two, one of them a slender man with a white beard carrying another case, hesitated for a moment while looking up the long, open stretch ol road leading to Orvieto. Then they turned instead and faded uphill off the road, moving in among the trees and bushes growing at the base of the cliffs.