by Mark Terry
“I read Erica’s report. Run it by me.”
Derek did.
“Okay. We’re running out of time before the rest of them come in. We’re sending in an FBI team especially to investigate this. Do I need to know anything before everyone else shows up?”
Derek told him what he knew. He could see the muscles in Mandalevo’s jaws clench. “I’m going to have to talk to the president about this. What a mess. I need an initial report from you on my desk in two hours.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me. You’re the expert and you were on scene. Then I want you and Agent Kirov to go to Novosibirsk and look into Dr. James McGill’s death.”
“Do you think his death and this attack are related?”
“Yes. And it might be related to what you just told me. Now get the rest of them in here and you can brief everyone else.”
“I’ll see if I can fit it in,” Derek said.
Mandalevo’s glare could have melted plastic. “I was expecting ‘yes sir.’”
Derek took a bite of his bagel and chewed thoughtfully, not moving. Finally he said, “Is this the favor I owe you? Because I don’t remember applying to work at the State Department.”
“I’ve asked you to be temporarily assigned to State. Ross was good with it.”
“I’m sure he was. But you’re sticking me in the midst of a full-blown terror attack investigation in return for opening a door—a door, which I might add, blew up in my face. The FSB and Russia doesn’t want me here.”
“When has that ever stopped you?” Mandalevo asked, voice mild.
“Sir—”
“I know you went through this shit with Jim Johnston all the time. He warned me about it. Said you always threatened to quit, regularly turned in your letter of resignation, but always rose to the challenge and lived up to your responsibilities. We need you. I need you. Stop whining and just do it.”
“Fuck you. Sir.”
Annoyance flashed across Mandalevo’s narrow face. “Feel better?”
“No.”
“Call them back in, Derek. Thanks for the favor.”
“One thing. Can I trust Kirov?”
“Absolutely.”
“She claims she’s a foreign policy specialist.”
“She’s INR. You can trust her.”
INR, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. She was a spy.
Ambassador Gary Whitcomb stood a shade over six-three and wore a very expensive blue suit clearly tailored for his lean body. Both his shirt and tie were silk and Derek didn’t like him on sight; Derek smelled career politician from a mile away. Whitcomb shook hands with Derek before glancing at the monitor. “Robert, your intel proved to be true.”
Derek raised an eyebrow. Erica shook her head ever so slightly at him.
Mandalevo said, “We’re always hearing things about terror attacks, Gary. The traffic about Russia Station just got louder. Then things got complicated with the FSB’s problems.”
To Derek, Mandalevo said, “Russia’s been dealing with a series of terrorism incidents the last couple months, but by and large they haven’t been making the international media. And they’ve been scattered around the country. A railroad bridge was blown up, but nobody was hurt. A bus in St. Petersburg was bombed and three people died. There were a couple other incidents. But they’ve been escalating.”
Derek nodded. He was still pissed off at Mandalevo. He hated being manipulated, but it seemed that he wasn’t able to bluff Mandalevo. If Mandalevo had talked to James Johnston, former Secretary of Homeland Security, then Mandalevo probably knew that if he just ignored Derek’s protestations, Derek would go ahead and do what he needed to do.
Derek wondered, not for the first time, if it wasn’t time to retire for good, go find a teaching position somewhere and settle down.
The door opened and a hard, muscular black man who looked like a professional boxer stepped into the room. Broad shoulders, thick neck, skin the color of toffee, shaved skull. He took in everyone in the room and said, “Are you Dr. Stillwater?”
Derek stood up and shook hands with the man, who introduced himself as the Director of Security at the embassy. Embassy security was run by the Bureau of State Security, the State Department’s version of the Secret Service.
Someone walked on camera behind Mandalevo and whispered to him. Mandalevo nodded. “I have to brief the president and the national security advisor. Derek, tell them what you know. You’ve got your orders.”
The video screen went blank.
Derek finished off his bagel and washed it down with coffee. Sighing, he said, “Somewhere around 1990, maybe a year or two earlier, the Russians were testing an intercontinental ballistic missile—they launched it from Kamchatka, I believe. We—the U.S., anyway—were watching the test. It had a MIRV, that’s a multiple independent reentry vehicle, which separates into, you know, individual warheads. Everybody following so far?”
Randall said, “What’s this got to do with what happened today? This is practically Cold War stuff.”
“It is. I’m working up to it, but you need to have some background. And I’m not an expert on missiles, but I know a lot about this subject, it relates to my area of expertise. They call the MIRV a bus. Anyway, the bus broke up into ten warheads and fell into the ocean. We pulled in as much data as we could and analysis revealed some strange things. The shape was unusual, it spun, which nuclear warheads don’t do, and our infrared satellites showed that the warhead had a fin that was glowing—it was dumping heat. That’s just plain weird, because it meant the inside of the warhead was cold. You don’t need that for a nuclear warhead.”
Randall interrupted. “I still don’t—”
“Shut up,” Derek said.
“Hey!”
Hall put a finger to his lips and shook his head. “Let the man talk. But Dr. Stillwater, the clock is ticking.”
“I’d be glad to go see my son, then get on a plane and head back to the states if that’s what everyone wants. But Secretary Mandalevo has personally assigned me to help with this—drafted me—so why don’t you guys either cut me some slack or take it up with him.”
Ambassador Whitcomb said, “Please continue.”
“The damned things also parachuted down. What this all came together to suggest was the Russians were developing ICBMs that were armed with some sort of biological weapon. The bomblets parachute down, then release their biological payload to spread over the target area. At the time Margaret Thatcher was the British PM and George HW Bush was president of the U.S. and they both leaned on Gorbachev to allow teams of outside inspectors in to look at their biowarfare facilities.”
Whitcomb said, “This was before the breakup of the USSR.”
“Right. Anyway, I was fairly recently out of the military and doing some work for the CIA and I went in with a British-American weapons inspection team. It was a joke, but the gist of it was they stalled and lied to us, but by the time we were done it was obvious they had a huge biological weapons program. Then about a year later, the first deputy chief of research and production for Biopreparat, the bioweapons program, Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, defected to the U.S. He spilled the beans. As a matter of fact, I was one of the people who debriefed him.”
“Okay,” Whitcomb said, “but what does this have to do with today’s attack?”
“Their program was huge. Among other things Alibekov said they had twenty tons of weapons-grade smallpox.”
“I thought that was eradicated,” Kirov said.
“As a disease, yes. And samples were officially being held in two locations—the CDC in Atlanta and in the Vector facility outside Novosibirsk. But the Russians decided to play around with it and grow more as possible weapons. And they didn’t stop there, although that’s bad enough. They had an extensive biological and chemical weapons research program. Our treaties called for about 40,000 tons of chemical weapons to be destroyed, but the USSR was believed to have anywhere from 150,000 to 400,000 t
ons of it. And then the USSR fell apart and a lot of that stuff went missing.”
“Until now,” Erica said.
“As far back as the late 1980s they had chemical weapons programs dubbed Foliant and Novichok.”
Erica made a little grunt of surprise.
Derek nodded. “Which was probably what was scrawled on that piece of shrapnel. GD designates Soman, but GDX might be a new designation. Novichok was always described as a program to develop new nerve agents.”
Hall said, “So you think today’s attack was from some stolen chemical weapons.”
“A good possibility, and I wanted that piece of evidence in our possession so if Mandalevo needs to stick it up the Russian government’s ass, he can.”
Hall ran a hand over his smooth skull. “We’ve got it and I imagine the Ambassador and Secretary Mandalevo will come up with a way to use it. Now, you’re going to Novosibirsk?”
“Maybe.”
Hall sighed. “I believe that’s what the Secretary wants you to do. I’ll be directing the investigation here until the FBI team arrives, probably tomorrow. I’m sure we’ll have a pissing match with the FSB over this, but—”
“I’m not done,” Derek said.
Everyone looked at him. He said, “Like I was saying, smallpox was basically eradicated, but it was clear the Russians had stockpiled it and grown it—a really stupid treaty violation.”
Randall said, “What’s this got to do with—”
“The FSB agent who they carted off in an ambulance just a few minutes ago? Yassen? I met him yesterday. He and a couple other guys more or less kidnapped me and warned me to get out of the country ASAP and not go looking into Irina Khournikova’s death.”
Randall said, “What?”
Hall nodded. “I heard about it. Go on.”
“He said something to me. He recognized me. He said he thought Irina was alive. What he said was: ‘Message … India …’ Then he said, ‘Tracking … bus … India … one….’”
“Gibberish,” Randall said.
Derek nodded. “Maybe. The man was just exposed to a binary nerve gas, was dying, and was speaking in a second language, so yeah, it could be bullshit. Just like most intelligence, you have to sort it out and put it into context, then you have to try to figure out if it makes sense.”
The ambassador said, “And you think it makes sense?”
“Let’s assume that one of those MIRVs I was talking about—”
“From twenty years ago?” Randall interrupted.
Derek shrugged and kept talking. “—got into the hands of some bad people. Maybe recently. When the Soviet Union broke up they lost control of a lot of stuff. Some of those Soviet satellite countries just wanted to get rid of it, others wanted to use it as a bargaining chip. But a lot of it was still in storage in various locations, including Novosibirsk and probably somewhere around Moscow. But let’s just for a minute assume that somebody got hold of a bunch of experimental weapons, like a souped-up nerve gas. Russia’s been notorious about the holes in their facilities’ security. Anyway, it’s dangerous stuff to mess around with if you don’t know what you’re doing. The FSB knows about it, they’re going after it, something blows up in their face in Novosibirsk, one of their teams ends up dead.”
“That’s consistent,” said Erica. “So maybe he was referring to a ‘bus’ as one of those payloads for missiles. A missile full of nerve gas?”
“No,” Derek said. “He said India-1.”
“The country?” Hall said.
Derek shook his head. “The strain of smallpox the Russians and the U.S. have in storage is called India-1. And everything we know about those MIRVs was they were developing heated-up viral strains of weaponized smallpox to be used in missiles. And Yassen’s ramblings suggest that what the FSB was going after is still out there.”
Everyone was quiet for a moment. Finally Erica said, “Heated up?”
“Genetically manipulated to make it more lethal and more resistant to treatment. As if it wasn’t bad enough on its own. We always believed the Russians had developed a weaponized smallpox strain that would be resistant to the known vaccines.”
“So…” Randall said.
“So it’s possible Russia’s got a terrorist group that’s gotten hold of smallpox that if let loose has the potential to wipe out millions of people and there isn’t a damn thing we could do about it if they did.”
The headquarters of the FSB are in Lubyanka Square, what up until 1990 was called Dzerzhinsky Square. It is a large, yellow building that squats on the square only four blocks from the Bolshoi Ballet and Opera. In truth, Lubyanka was three buildings, and the yellow building headquartered the Border Troops as well as one Federal Security Service Directorate. FSB headquarters was actually a gray building, as dour and depressing as the service it represented. Across the square from Lubyanka is Dyetsky Mir, Children’s World, the largest toy store in all of Russia, an irony even members of the FSB noted.
Konstantin Nikitinov didn’t pay attention to any of this as he entered, passed through security and headed to the third floor. Derek Stillwater would have recognized Nikitinov immediately as the man who spoke to him in the dacha outside Moscow, the balding one with the beard and broad shoulders. Very few called him by his last name, but referred to him as Konstantin. Although Konstantin was a common name, within the FSB, if someone said, “Ask Konstantin” or “Konstantin ordered a raid,” everybody knew who was being referred to. Konstantin had a reputation as a bright and hard-working agent who valued his team members. It was also recognized that he could be a first-class sonofabitch.
Nikitinov pushed into the outer office of Commander Pietr Titov. Titov’s aide was speaking hurriedly on the phone while looking at two TV monitors, one that was airing CNN and another tuned to Channel One. Both were covering the bombing outside the U.S. Embassy. Titov’s aide nodded to him and pointed back over his shoulder.
Konstantin went into his boss’s office. Commander Pietr Titov sat hunched behind his desk, growling into the phone. Titov was a huge man, not muscular, but fat, well over four hundred pounds. He stood six-foot-six and at one point in his earlier life had been a champion at Greco-Roman wrestling. Konstantin, who battled his diet daily and worked out religiously, couldn’t look at his boss without worrying that he would be present at Titov’s fatal heart attack.
“… I know, sir, yes, we’ll… yes sir.”
Titov delicately hung up the phone, his blue eyes clouded. “Do you know who that was?”
Konstantin thought he did, but shook his head and said, “No, sir.”
“That was the president.”
“Yes sir.”
“He wants to know why we were not able to stop this attack.”
“We were very close, sir. Yassen was only minutes behind them. And he paid for it.”
“He is dead?”
Konstantin nodded. Yassen had been a good agent. He had lost too many people lately, starting with Irina Khournikova and Grigori Sidorov and the rest of the team at Novosibirsk, a memory that still made him angry enough to want to break something.
Titov waved a huge hand, glowering. “Sit. I’m told that the death count has risen to fifteen and there are perhaps hundreds sick. The Americans are already jumping down our throats about this. An FBI team is coming in tomorrow to investigate. We are to be very delicate with them and give the appearance we are being fully cooperative.”
It was an old drill and Konstantin was fully aware of it. “Will I be liaising with them?”
Titov rubbed his three chins. “There is another problem, actually. This Stillwater thing has gotten complicated. Now he is acting officially on behalf of the U.S. State Department.”
“And investigating today’s attack?”
“I do not know yet. Khournikova thought highly of him.”
To say the least, Konstantin thought drily. Not everyone knew Stillwater was the father of Irina’s child. He supposed some thought that he, Konstantin, was the father of the
child. Irina had not talked about it. In fact, aside from a brief maternity leave, it was barely known she had been pregnant.
He leaned back in his chair and contemplated the American troubleshooter. Titov did not know exactly what he and Yassen and Ivan had done to Stillwater the day before, only that they had met with him and discouraged him from meddling in Russian affairs. But now Stillwater was in the country officially.
“What would you like me to do?” Konstantin asked.
Titov cocked his head. “You have thoughts? This attack gives us a black eye, Konstantin. We need to find those stolen weapons.”
It was one of Konstantin’s teams that had died in that warehouse in Novosibirsk, pursuing those stolen weapons. He was all too aware of what their mission was. “I’m going to reassign the B team to continue where Yassen and Ivan left off. I will have Ivan supervise.”
“Very well. Liaise with the American FBI team when they come in tomorrow.”
“Sir…”
“Da, Konstantin?”
“I suggest Dmitri for that.”
Titov studied him, his dark eyes almost buried in folds of flesh. “And you?”
“I wish to deal with Stillwater.”
Thoughtfully, Titov nodded. “As you see fit, Konstantin. Keep me posted.”
Derek and Erica followed Hall to the embassy’s security center. An army of specialists spoke into phones or typed at computers. There was an air of frenzied concentration. On the walls hung flat-screen monitors, many of them showing the view from video cameras around the compound.
Hall tapped a short, angry-looking woman on the shoulder. Her hair was red, shorn close to her scalp, her complexion freckled, eyes pale blue. “Maggie, we need to see the event.”
“Got it.”
She jabbed at the keyboard before pointing to a phalanx of monitors. “Three different angles.”
Derek said, “Give us a couple minutes before the event.”
“Something in particular you’re looking for?”
Shaking his head, Derek leaned forward to study the images that sprang into life. “What’s the street?”
