by Dale Brown
Bucharest, Romania
1900
STONER REALIZED HE HAD MADE A MISTAKE SPEAKING OF revenge to Sorina as soon as the words came out of his mouth, but it was too late to take them back. All he could do was brood about it, replaying the conversation in his mind as he struggled to find the key to her cooperation.
Sorina Viorica wasn’t motivated by revenge, nor by money, the two most likely motivations for a spy. She wanted justice, though her sense of it was distorted. She could rail about a woman starving to death in the streets, but not do anything practical about it, like sharing her sandwich.
She’d railed against her movement, now taken over—in her eyes, at least—by the Russians and fools. But was that enough to make her betray them? Because it was betrayal, as she had said.
Certainly as long as she thought of the movement as a just one, she would not move further against it.
The Russians were a different story. But her knowledge of them was limited. Or at least, what she thought she knew was limited.
Stoner spent the day trying to flesh out the tiny tidbits she had given him, running down information on the Russians and their network in the country. The military attaché, like all military attachés, was suspected of being a spymaster. He had worked in Georgia, the former Soviet Republic, possibly encouraging the opposition forces there before coming to Romania eight months before.
Right before the first CIA officer’s death.
A coincidence?
Stoner spent the afternoon with a man who claimed to be the only witness to one of the deaths, a town police chief who had just moved to the capital and claimed to fear for his life. The police chief had been down the street when the car bomb that killed the CIA officer exploded. The American was on his way to meet him to learn about the guerrillas, and the chief was filled with guilt, thinking the bomb had been meant for him. According to the chief, there was no doubt that the guerrillas had planted it. Despite gentle probing by Stoner, he never mentioned the Russians, and when Stoner brought them up directly, the chief seemed to think it was a ridiculous idea.
After the interview, Stoner returned to the embassy. He’d asked for access to NSA taps on Russian communications from the country. This was not a routine request, but the nature of Stoner’s business here facilitated matters. One of the desk people back at Langley had been assigned to help review the information. She’d forwarded some of the most promising intercepts, starting with a year ago. Paging through them, Stoner realized there was little direct evidence of anything. What was interesting was the fact that the number of communications had increased sharply after the new attaché arrived.
Not a smoking gun. Just a point of interest.
There was still considerable information to sort through. Stoner decided to leave it to his assistant in Langley. He emerged from the secure communications room as perplexed as ever, sure that whatever was going on lay just beyond his ability to grasp it.
IT WAS ALREADY DARK, HOURS LATER THAN HE HAD THOUGHT. He caught a ride over to the center of town, then took a cab to his hotel, checking along the way to make sure he hadn’t picked up a tail.
Coming into his hotel room, he caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror opposite the door. His eyelids were stooped over, making his whole face sag. He needed to sleep.
First, a shave and a shower.
Though the room was one of a block that the Agency had under constant surveillance, he checked for bugs. Satisfied that it was clean, he went into the bathroom and started the shower. Hot steam billowing around him, he lathered up and began to shave.
He was about halfway through when his sat phone rang.
“Stoner,” he said, answering it.
“What are you doing for dinner?”
It was Sorina Viorica.
“I don’t know,” he told her. “What do you suggest?”
“You could meet me. There’s a good restaurant I know. It’s near the Bibloteque Antique.”
“Sure,” he said.
“IT IS NOT SO EASY TO TELL YOU WHERE THEY ARE,” SORINA Viorica told him as they waited for their dinners. “You will kill them. Not you, but the army.”
There was no sense lying to her. Stoner didn’t answer.
“They were once good people. Now…” She shook her head. “War changed everything.”
“Maybe you don’t need to be at war. Maybe you have more in common with this government than you think. It’s a democracy.”
“In name only.”
“In more than name.”
She drank her wine. The short hair sharpened her features. She was pretty—he’d known that from the moment he saw her, but here in the soft light of the small restaurant, he realized it again. She’d gone out and gotten herself some clothes—obviously she had money stashed away, wasn’t as poor as he’d thought. She wore a top that gave a peek at her cleavage, showing just a glimpse of her breasts. When they left the restaurant, he noticed how the red skirt she wore emphasized the shape of her hips.
They went near the Sutu Palace, once the home of kings, now a historical museum. It was a cold night and they had the street to themselves. Except for the bright lights that flooded the pavement, they could have been in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, royal visitors come to see the prince.
They walked in silence for a while. He knew she was thinking about what to do, how far to go with it. Eventually, he thought, she’d cooperate. She’d tell him everything she knew about the guerrilla operations.
But maybe none of it would help him fulfill his mission.
“So you come back to Bucharest often?” he asked.
“Not in two years.”
“You seem to know your way around.”
“Do you forget the places you’ve been?”
“I’d like to. Some of them.”
She laughed.
“Do you go back and forth a lot?” he asked her.
“I have been in Moldova for the past year. And on a few missions.”
Stoner wanted information about the missions, but didn’t press. It had grown colder, and the chill was getting to her. He pulled off his jacket, wrapped it around her.
“Are you married, Stoner?”
“No.”
“Would you like to be?”
“I never really thought about it,” he lied.
“Are men really that different from women?”
“How’s that?”
She stopped and looked at him. “I can’t believe you never thought about getting married.”
Stoner suddenly felt embarrassed to be caught in such a simple lie. He was working here, getting close to her—and yet felt ashamed of himself for not telling the truth.
They walked some more. He asked about the missions, but she turned the questions aside and began talking about being a girl and visiting Bucharest. He tried gently to steer the conversation toward the guerrillas, but she remained personal, talking about herself and occasionally asking him questions about where he’d grown up. He gave vague answers, always aiming to slip the conversation back toward her.
After an hour they stopped in a small club, where a band played Euro-electro pop. Sorina Viorica had half a glass of wine, then abruptly rose and said she wanted to go to bed.
Stoner wasn’t sure whether it was an invitation, and he debated what to do as they walked back to the apartment. Sleeping with her might help him get more information. On the other hand, it felt wrong in a way he couldn’t explain to himself.
She kissed him on the cheek as they reached the door of the apartment, then slipped inside, alone.
He was glad, and disappointed at the same time.
Iasi Airfield, northeastern Romania
2100
COLONEL BASTIAN SAT DOWN AT THE COMMUNICATIONS desk in the Dreamland Mobile Command Center and pulled on a headset. He typed his passwords into the console, then leaned back in the seat, preparing to do something he hadn’t had to do in quite a while—give an operational status report to his immedia
te superior.
The fact that he didn’t much like General Samson ought to be besides the point, he told himself. In the course of his career, he’d had to work for many men—and one or two women—whom he didn’t particularly like. It wasn’t just their personality clashes, though. The truth was, he’d had this command, and now he didn’t. Even having known that Dreamland would either be closed or taken over by a general, he still resented his successor.
The best thing for him to do—and the best thing for Dreamland—was to move on. As long as he was here, the friction between him and Samson would be detrimental to the unit and its mission.
“Colonel Bastian, good morning,” Captain Jake Lewis, on duty in the base control center, said to him through the headset.
“It’s pretty late at night here,” said Dog. “Twenty-one hundred hours.”
“Yes, sir. You’re ten hours ahead of us. Soon your today will be our tomorrow.”
Dog frowned. Somehow, the captain’s joke seemed more like a metaphor of his career situation.
“Would you like to speak to General Samson?” asked the captain.
“Absolutely,” lied Dog.
“Stand by, Colonel.”
Dog expected Samson to be connected via the special phone up in his office. But instead the general’s face flashed on the screen. Obviously he’d been in the command center, waiting for Dog to check in.
You couldn’t blame him for that, Dog decided. He would have done the same thing. A lot of what Samson did, he would have done.
Differently. But what was bugging him was the fact that it was Samson doing it, not him.
Jealousy. Yes. He had to admit it.
“This is Samson. What’s going on over there, Bastian?”
“Good morning, General. We’ve completed our first day of working with Romanian ground soldiers. There were some language glitches, but all in all it went well.”
“What kind of glitches?”
“Nothing critical. A little hard sometimes to understand what they’re saying, and I imagine vice versa.”
“That’s it?”
“No. I wanted to alert you to something that should be passed on to Jed Barclay and the White House.”
Samson’s scowl made it clear that he’d be the judge of that.
“While we were up, a flight of Russian MiGs flew over the Black Sea and part of the Ukraine. I believe they were shadowing us. They appear to have been working with one of their Elint planes to get an idea of where we were. I took a hard turn toward them and they vamoosed. I’m not positive, of course, but—”
“What do you mean, you took a hard turn toward them? You went into Moldova?”
“No, General, I didn’t. I stayed inside the country’s boundaries and flew in the direction of the Black Sea. But they were watching me closely, and it seems to me they didn’t want to be noticed.”
“Don’t overanalyze it. What sort of planes?”
“Two MiG-29s, configured for air-to-air intercept. There was a Tu-135 just beyond them. We were too far to get comprehensive details. I didn’t want to go out of Romanian airspace.”
Dog watched Samson step over to one of the nearby consoles in the command center, consulting with one of the men there. Finally he looked back in the direction of the video camera attop the main screen in the front of the room.
“What else do you have?” asked Samson.
“Nothing else. I was wondering when the Johnson will arrive.”
“Englehardt and his crew took off an hour ago,” said Samson. “They should be there tonight, our time.”
“Once they’re here, I expect to start running two sorties a day. We’ll stagger them—”
“I don’t need the details. Carry on.”
The screen blanked. Dog leaned back in his seat. He was sorry now that he’d agreed to take on the mission. He should just have gone on leave—he was more than entitled.
Rising, he took off his headset and pulled back the curtain to call the Whiplash communications specialist. As he did, the console buzzed, indicating an incoming communication.
It was Danny Freah.
“Colonel, we have something up,” said Danny as soon as he punched the buttons to make the connection. “Report of a possible attack in a village southeast of us. We could use some Flighthawk coverage.”
“We’re on our way.”
Allegro, Nevada
1105
BREANNA PULLED UP AGAINST THE SIDE OF THE POOL, catching her breath. Her heart was pumping ferociously, the beats so fast she didn’t count them. Fearing she was far over her targeted pulse rate, she took a deep, slow breath, savoring the oxygen in her lungs. Then she went to the side and pulled herself out.
“Hell of a workout,” said one of the club trainers, a white woman in her mid-thirties with the unfortunate nickname of Dolly, though she didn’t seem to mind it. “You were swimming up a storm.”
Breanna nodded, still catching her breath.
“You OK, girl?” asked Dolly.
“I’m fine.” Breanna forced a smile. She loved to swim, and the water workouts were easy on her knee, but her ribs ached from the vigorous strokes.
“You trying to prove something?” asked Dolly.
“Why?”
Dolly laughed. “I think you just broke the record for the 10K free-style.”
“Just that I’m in good shape.”
“No doubts there.”
Breanna smiled, then grabbed her water bottle and the small towel she always took with her during a workout.
No doubt there.
All she had to do was convince the doc. Maybe she’d bring him along tomorrow.
She’d just reached the locker room when she heard her cell phone ringing. She opened the lock and took out the phone, opening it without looking at the number.
“This is Breanna.”
“I got those tickets. Meet me over at the county airport at four.”
“Tickets?”
“To the Lakers, remember?”
“Oh, Sleek. Um, OK. Sure. Where?”
Sleek Top leased part of a small Cessna that was kept at the Las Vegas airport; they’d take it to L.A., where the Lakers were facing Kings later that evening. He told her where to meet him.
“We’ll grab something to eat at the game,” he said. “I’ll have you back home before midnight.”
“Great,” she said. “I’ll see you then.”
Near Tutova, northeastern Romania
2115
THE ROMANIAN PLATOON TRAVELED IN FOUR 1980S VINTAGE Land Rover III three-quarter-ton light trucks, and a pair of much older UAZ469B jeeplike vehicles. The former were badly dented and the latter were rusted, but their engines were in good order and the troops wasted no time moving out, driving down the highway in the direction of the reported guerrilla sighting. The gas pipeline was about fifteen miles to the northwest, and Danny wondered if the report wasn’t the result of a mistake or perhaps hysteria until he saw the glow of a fire in the distance.
“It’s the local police station,” Lieutenant Roma told him, leaning back from the front seat of the UAZ. “They make these kind of attacks all the time.”
The police station was located across from a church in a cluster of six or seven buildings just off the main road. The station was one of three wooden buildings nestled together, and the flames that had been started by an explosion had set the other two buildings on fire.
The Romanian lieutenant split up his force, using about half to secure the road on both sides of the hamlet. The rest came with him as he went to investigate the attack.
The men leaped out of the trucks as they arrived, shouting at the people in front of the burning buildings and telling them to get back. Everything was chaos. There were a dozen civilians, some crying, some screaming, others stoically using pails in a vain attempt to put out the flames.
A man in a soot-covered police uniform materialized from the right of the buildings, his face burned to a bright red by the heat. He had some
thing in his arms—a doll, Danny thought at first. And then as he stared, he realized the doll was a human child who’d been pulled out of the building too late.
Tears streamed from the policeman’s eyes, and Danny felt his stomach weaken.
Lieutenant Roma was talking with an older man near the steps to the church. The man spoke in almost a whisper, his head pitched down toward the ground, as if speaking to his shoes.
Roma listened for a while, then nodded. He moved away from the church, toward Danny.
“There were twelve,” he told him. “They may have taken a policeman hostage. They blew up the building with no warning.”
“Where’d they go?”
Roma shook his head. “They have the police car, the ambulance, and may have taken a truck as well. Someone heard tires screeching on the back road there.” He pointed to the side street, which ran to the southeast. “It would make sense that they would go that way. They’ll avoid the highway.”
“Let’s get after them.”
The lieutenant frowned. Danny realized he wasn’t hesitating out of cowardice—there was no local fire department, and he was debating whether anything could be done to stop the fire.
It was already far too late. Fed by the wood that had dried for more than a hundred years, the flames climbed into the night sky. The back of one of the buildings crumbled to the ground. The fire flared, but without wind to spread it across the street, it would soon run out of fuel, choked by its own ravenous hunger.
Thicker, heavier parts of the buildings—rugs, appliances—began to melt rather than burn. Acrid smoke spread across the road, stinging everyone’s nose and eyes.
“Yes, let’s go.” Roma turned to the man and told him in Romanian that they would be back. Then he looked at Danny. “Are your people ready to help us?”
“They should be in the air any second.”
Aboard the Bennett
above northeastern Romania
2124
ZEN TOOK OVER THE FLIGHTHAWK AS SOON AS IT WAS launched, juicing the throttle and heading toward the GPS reading from Danny Freah’s radio. The infrared camera in the Flighthawk’s nose showed a docile, almost dreamlike landscape of empty fields broken only occasionally by small clusters of houses. It seemed impossible that there was a war here, but Danny’s voice when he checked in sounded as grim as if he were in the middle of hell itself.
