Cauldron

CHAPTER 32 Knife Edge

For hundreds of years, the vast primeval forest of Bialowieza had served as a kind of sanctuary — a refuge for the endangered European bison during times of peace and for Polish and Russian partisans during times of war. Now a new armed force laired beneath the forest’s thick leafy canopy, seeking shelter from American spy satellites orbiting hundreds of miles above the earth.

As sunlight filtered through to the forest floor, the sound of thousands of murmuring voices, the clanking noises of metal and machinery, and the smell of thousands of small cook fires all wafted skyward. The soldiers of Russia’s 25th Tank Division were stirring to life after another night spent camped beneath the camouflage netting covering their T-80 tanks and BMP-2s.

Near the center of the sprawling encampment, alert sentries, tents, and a circle of parked command vehicles signaled the presence of the division headquarters. Inside the headquarters itself, the telephone wire strung from tree to tree to tent identified the main communications center — a canvas roof covering two eight-wheeled BTR-80 APCs, a radio van, and tables piled high with radios, field phones, cryptographic gear, and scrambling equipment. A portable electric generator thumped noisily in one corner, supplying power to save valuable batteries.

A tall, black-haired man stood near one of the tables, talking into a secure field phone. The ragged scar running diagonally from his forehead down across his nose and left cheek ruined what would otherwise have been a handsome face. Years before, while serving as a battalion commander during the Afghan War, Major General Sergei Rostopchin had been seriously wounded — badly disfigured by fragments from a mujaheddin mortar shell. “Yes, Colonel. I understand completely. You may tell the general staff that the 25th will be ready to move on time.”

Rostopchin was young for his post as a division commander, especially in Kaminov’s purged and restructured Russian Army. The marshal, an old man himself, had a notorious penchant for equating age with competence. Rostopchin had earned his command, in spite of his age, through a varied set of converging circumstances — his family’s long record of military service, his own exemplary war record, and, perhaps most important of all, a complete lack of interest in politics. The leader of the 25th Tank Division adhered to one, unswerving principle: he obeyed orders from those above him without question, without exception, and without reservation. That made him valuable in a time when loyalties seemed to change with every shift in the political wind.

Now Rostopchin hung up and turned to find his chief of staff waiting anxiously close by. “That was Colonel Soloviev, Mikhail. We can expect the authorization to launch our attack sometime in the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”

The colonel nodded abruptly, ready for further instructions.

“Contact all regimental commanders,” Rostopchin continued. “I want them here for a final briefing by 1600 hours. And move the division supply trains forward. I want all our vehicles fully topped off with fuel before sunset.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rostopchin left the communications tent, striding briskly toward his personal trailer. He had competent subordinates who were perfectly able to handle the purely mechanical, last-minute details involved in readying the division for combat. Instead, he wanted to spend the next several hours going over his plans one more time.

Not that he expected much trouble when the time came. Far from it.

With eight divisions already on the border and another four en route, Russia’s invasion army should crush the lone Polish division facing them in a matter of hours. Rostopchin shrugged. Given the existing correlation of forces in the region, the campaign against Poland and its allies would be more a maneuver exercise than a real war.

Colonel General Vasiliy Uvarov, commander of the First Aviation Army, looked down from Grodno’s central tower with undisguised satisfaction and a growing sense of fierce anticipation. Thousands of hours of staff work and intricate preparation were paying off as the last elements of Russia’s aerial strike force touched down.

The shelters lining the air base’s runways were already crowded with newly arrived aircraft, and other planes were still flying in from bases further back in Russia. Long-range, swing-wing Su-24 Fencer strike aircraft taxied past pairs of smaller, more heavily armored Su-25 Frogfoots — the counterparts of America’s A-10 Thunderbolt tank-killers — parked between the massive concrete structures.

All across the giant base, flight crews and maintenance technicians hurried to their posts, dodging trolleys hauling bombs, air-launched missiles, and gun ammunition to the flight line and aircraft shelters. In the distance, barely visible among low hills and stands of trees, weapons crews worked feverishly to ready the SA-10 and SA-15 SAM batteries deployed along the base perimeter.

Uvarov knew the scenes he was watching were being duplicated at dozens of other air bases along the frontier. Whole regiments of strike aircraft and MiG-29 and MiG-23 fighters, held back to deceive Western spy satellites for as long as possible, were flying in — marrying up with ground support personnel deployed days ago by truck and by train. Once Marshal Kaminov reached agreement with the French, the First Aviation Army would be ready to hurl nearly a thousand warplanes into the skies over Poland.

The colonel general nodded, pleased by the prospect. As a pilot and then a commander in the Soviet Air Forces, he had spent his adult life preparing for a war that was lost without ever being fought. Now, by serving under the Russian tricolor, a flag that was both new and old at the same time, he and his pilots would have a welcome opportunity to show the world their power and their skills.

Several hundred feet beneath the earth’s surface, General Viktor Grechko watched the status lights on his missile control boards change color, moving from amber to green as individual SS-24 crews reported full readiness. After years spent in a kind of politically imposed stasis, his solid-fueled ICBMs were being brought back to operational status. Originally slated for deployment aboard special, mobile rail launchers, the SS-24s under his command had instead been fitted inside fixed silos first built for much older SS-11s. In his view, that was a mistake. Silo-based missiles were vulnerable missiles. The U.S. air strike against the French weapons on the Plateau d’Albion proved that beyond all doubt. Nevertheless, each of his ICBMs had a range of more than five thousand nautical miles and carried ten highly accurate 550-kiloton nuclear warheads. And this far inside Russia, even in their silos, they would be vulnerable to American attack only if the Americans fired their missiles first.

When the last lights turned green, the general picked up his direct line to Moscow. “This is General Grechko. The Teykovo field is active. Our systems checks are complete. All crews are on alert. All enable and launch code lists and launch keys have been distributed. Standing by.”

If the United States or Great Britain tried to fend off Russia’s move into Poland with nuclear threats or nuclear weapons, Russia would be ready to respond in kind.

Ten-year-old Christian Petersen stood on a low, grassy hill, peering out to sea — transfixed by the sight of the long, silent parade of gray ships steaming east past Bornholm. His school-books lay tumbled at his feet, forgotten in his sudden excitement. A brisk wind ruffled the small boy’s fair hair and tugged at the blue and yellow windbreaker his mother always made him wear to ward against the early morning chill.

Ten. Twelve. Fifteen. Christian’s eyes widened as he counted aloud. There were dozens of ships out there! More vessels than he had ever seen at one time, and all of them bigger than the interisland ferries that usually plied these waters. Most were rust-streaked freighters, massive oil tankers, or big new container ships, but he could see smaller, antenna-studded warships prowling beyond the merchantmen.

Gray-painted helicopters, with the sunlight flashing off their rotors, probed ahead and behind the enormous formation. High overhead, tiny specks orbited — U.S., British, and Norwegian fighters ready to fend off any EurCon air attack.

The Danish schoolboy didn’t know it, but he was watching the first convoy carrying substantial reinforcements from the United States to Poland. The ships carrying the tanks, APCs, and artillery pieces belonging to the U.S. 24th Mechanized and 1st Armored divisions were just two hundred miles from Gdansk.

Major Paul Duroc leaned over a desk in one of the DGSE’s windowless, electromagnetically shielded offices, studying the photographs his surveillance team had taken of Colonel Valentin Soloviev talking with a striking auburn-haired woman. He looked up at tall, powerfully built Michel Woerner. “Foret and Verdier are sure this was a rendezvous and not just a chance encounter?”

The big man nodded. “Very sure. The Russian left his car in the Defense Ministry parking lot, went straight to this part of the Arbat, encountered this woman, and then went straight back to the ministry.”

“Yes…” Duroc’s fingers drummed briefly on the desk while he considered that assessment. He nodded to himself. His operatives were right. Soloviev’s behavior fit the classical pattern of a man making a clandestine contact. But with whom? He looked up at Woerner again. “And we still have no identification of this woman?”

“No, Major.” The other man shook his head. “We’ve run her picture through the files both here and over the satellite link to Paris. They weren’t able to make any matches with any known intelligence agent of any country.”

“I’m not terribly surprised,” Duroc said caustically. After years on the operational side of the French intelligence service, he had very little respect left for those in the administrative and analytical sections — men he considered little better than glorified file clerks.

He studied the woman shown standing next to Soloviev again. Who the devil was she? She didn’t look Russian, but then who could really tell? Even with the old Soviet Union’s outlying provinces stripped away, this damned country was still a polyglot mishmash of different ethnic groups. Still, everything about her — the shape of her face, her clothes, her posture — shouted “foreigner” to him. But a foreigner from which country? Britain? America? Germany?

“Perhaps we should ask the Russians,” Woerner offered. “The FIS might have a file on her.”

Duroc snorted. “Them? Not likely.” His eyes narrowed in thought. “In any case, Michel, running to the FIS could prove a huge mistake. What if this Soloviev’s actions are sanctioned by Kaminov himself? What if that old Russian bastard is playing a double game with us, eh? Bargaining with us and with the British and Americans at the same time?”

“Then should we alert Paris?” Woerner asked.

“No.” Duroc scowled. He tapped the photos. “Not until we have something more conclusive than these.” He doubted that his unimaginative higher-ups would see anything very wrong or suspicious in a Russian colonel meeting publicly with a beautiful woman. If anything, a cable to Paris at this point would probably only earn him another reprimand for straining at the procedural leash they’d looped around his neck.

No, he would need a lot more than unsubstantiated supposition to convince his superiors that something was very wrong in Moscow. He would need hard proof of Soloviev’s treachery — evidence that would either prompt the Russians to move against the colonel themselves or expose Kaminov’s own duplicity.

Duroc stood up straight and shoved the surveillance photos aside. From what he could see, the negotiations with the marshal and his fellow hard-liners were at a critical stage. Ambassador Sauret expected a major breakthrough sometime in the next several hours. And, with time at a premium, there was only one sure and certain way to break Soloviev’s clandestine link and obtain the necessary proof before it was too late. Direct action. Violent action.

Moscow’s citizens were out in full force — enjoying the last few hours of a warm summer day. Couples strolled through the park hand in hand or sat on benches soaking up the welcome sunshine. Stripped to their shirt sleeves in the heat, bureaucrats and businessmen paused on their way home to play chess, to skim the afternoon editions of the government-controlled newspapers, or to down vodka or beer with friends and colleagues at one of Gorky’s cafés. Others stood in groups shouting encouragement to the schoolchildren booting soccer balls up and down the park’s sports grounds. A few madcap youths wearing in-line roller skates imported from the West raced each other down the winding paths, narrowly dodging slower-moving pedestrians. Halfhearted curses and shaken fists trailed after the grinning teens.

Erin McKenna stepped lithely aside from one howling, laughing pack, and paused in the shade of one of Gorky Park’s two giant Ferris wheels. She swore a few times herself, but not at the skaters. Her curses were directed at Kaminov, the French, the Germans, and all the other idiots who were leading the world into another general war.

She’d just come from another hastily arranged meeting with Valentin Soloviev, and none of the news she was carrying back to Alex Banich and the others was good. According to the Russian colonel, his masters were within inches of reaching agreement with the French envoys. Kaminov had already issued preliminary war orders to the army and air force units poised on the Polish border, and even Russia’s remaining ICBMs were on a higher state of alert.

Erin closed her eyes briefly, feeling the beginning of a tension headache knotting her temples. War and the threat of nuclear war between the United States and Russia, for God’s sake! It was like reliving her worst childhood nightmares all over again. So much for the shortsighted, protectionist politicians who had bought votes by appealing to isolationism, raising barriers to foreign trade, and slashing defense and foreign aid, she thought angrily. They and the other opportunists like them around the globe had sown a bitter harvest — one that millions of innocents caught in the fighting were reaping now.

After the last of the long-haired roller skaters swooped past, she stepped back out onto the walking path and headed for the gray delivery van parked near the tall, towered Museum of Paleontology at the park’s southern end. She knew that Banich, Hennessy, and the other CIA field agents covering her would want to report back to the embassy as soon as possible.

The footpath joined the sidewalk paralleling Kaluga Road a hundred meters short of Banich’s van. There were even more people there, flowing into Gorky Park from the offices and high-rise apartments lining the other side of the busy street. Erin brushed past the small crowd watching a street performer juggling three balls and a kitchen knife and lengthened her stride. She was almost safe.

Two plain black sedans veered out of traffic and pulled up right beside her, brakes squealing sharply. Their rear doors popped open before they even stopped moving. Two men jumped out and rushed toward her — hard-faced, expressionless men wearing dark, look-alike suits.

Erin froze, horrified.

Before she could recover, they grabbed her, shoving her toward one of the waiting sedans.

A big, brutal-looking man standing near the second car motioned impatiently.

“Vite! Vite!”

They were French! The realization shook Erin awake. Her diplomatic immunity might offer some small measure of protection against the Russians, but it offered none against kidnapping by French intelligence agents. Instincts honed by years of life in a big city and by the self-defense courses she’d taken came fully alive.

Now! She tore her arms loose from their grip, slammed an elbow into one man’s stomach, then pivoted and drove her heel down hard on the other Frenchman’s instep. They fell away. Momentarily free, she whirled and ran, angling away from the street — heading deeper into the wooded park.

“Merde!”

Major Paul Duroc swore violently. He leaned out the window of the first car, motioning toward the fleeing woman. “Woerner! Foret! Verdier! Chase her down!”

Humiliated by their first failure, the three men nodded abruptly and ran in pursuit.

Duroc pulled his head back inside the sedan, still seething. He’d counted on surprise and their semiofficial appearance to cow the woman long enough to get her inside and out of public view. It should have been both quick and reasonably discreet. Now everything was about to get a whole lot messier. He leaned forward and rapped on the clear partition separating him from the driver in the front seat. “Head south and turn right past the museum. Then take the Pushkin Quay north. She can’t stay in the goddamned trees forever.”

“Yes, Major.” The sedan pulled out into traffic and accelerated.

Intent on their prey, neither man noticed the delivery van pulling out right behind them.

Erin ran blindly onward, dodging people coming the other way or moving too slowly in the direction she was going. She could hear feet pounding after her and startled shouts as the people who’d stopped to stare were shoved out of the way. The French weren’t giving up, but she couldn’t risk glancing behind to see how close they were.

Beneath her mounting terror, she realized she’d made a fundamental mistake by running away from Banich’s security team. Damn it, she thought, I’m supposed to be smarter than that. She’d let panic lead her down the path of least resistance. Now it was too late to try doubling back. She had to keep heading for the Moscow River — looking for a chance to shake her pursuers and reach one of the Agency’s safe houses or find some other kind of help.

She flashed past a group of laughing children skipping rocks across the still waters of a weed-choked pond, hurtled through a cluster of their wide-eyed, astonished mothers, and plunged into the stand of trees beyond them. She heard a splash and shriek as a child went into the water. But nobody made a move to intervene.

Maybe that wasn’t really very surprising. Decades of life under dictatorship had taught Muscovites when to look the other way. Especially when they saw a foreign-looking woman being chased by men who were obviously Chekists, secret policemen of some kind.

Erin lengthened her stride again, running faster now as she neared the river. Should she turn north or south once she reached the quay? South would take her closer to where she’d last seen Banich and the others. But north would take her back toward the bulk of Gorky Park, the Crimea Bridge, the giant Hotel Warsaw, and, most important of all, a Metro stop. That cinched it. She would go north. Moscow’s intricate subway system offered her the best chance to evade pursuit and make her way to safety.

Still sprinting at top speed, she broke out of the woods and saw the sunlight sparkling on the river. Tall apartment buildings, the Frunze Quay housing complex, lined the opposite shore. She slanted north, flying down a gentle grassy slope to the edge of the road. An angry shout, more a bull roar than a human cry, told her that the three Frenchmen, breathing hard now, were falling behind.

She was outrunning them!

Her own labored breathing steadied as new energy surged through her body — the same burst of strength and endurance she’d always relied on to win distance races. As she opened the gap, pulling away from her pursuers, Erin felt the exhilaration she always experienced in victory.

And then her euphoria turned to despair.

A black sedan zoomed past her, braked wildly, and skidded sideways to a stop right in her path.

Erin tried to twist away, but she was running too fast and the car was just too close. Her ankle gave way when she tried to turn. She stumbled, lost her balance, and slammed into the side of the sedan while still moving flat out.

Pain flared red and the world went away for several seconds.

When the pain receded slightly, she found herself firmly held, her arms pinioned behind her back. Her captor, a short, narrow-faced man with pale blue eyes and a reptilian gaze, wasn’t taking any chances. From the sound of the short-tempered orders he snapped out to the three sheepish men who’d been chasing her on foot, he was in charge of this whole operation.

Operation, Erin thought numbly. Now, there was a ridiculously neutral term to describe her own kidnapping. Her escape attempt had failed. She was a French prisoner.

The sound of another engine snapped her head back up in time to see a battered gray delivery van pull up beside the black sedan. The van’s side door slid open and Alex Banich jumped down onto the grass, his face carefully blank. Hennessy and another CIA agent named Phil Teppler appeared over his shoulder.

Banich stepped forward, addressing the man who held her in slurred, uneducated, working-class Russian. “Is there a problem here, friend? Don’t you think you should let go of that poor lady’s arms?”

Duroc watched the three men climb down out of the van with increasing irritation. First that ridiculous, comic-opera chase through the park, and now this interference by a few grubby Russian passersby — workmen by the look of their filthy coveralls. He scowled. What should have been a smooth, professional snatch was rapidly deteriorating into a bloody farce.

The first one out of the van, a short, brown-haired man about his own height, said something in Russian — something that sounded hard-edged and menacing despite his soft tone.

“He wants you to let the lady go, Major,” rat-faced Foret translated.

“Does he now?” Duroc sneered. Then he shook his head angrily. They didn’t have time for this chivalrous nonsense. By now, even Moscow’s sleepy militia must be on their way here.

The DGSE agent transferred his grip to the woman’s neck, reached inside his jacket, and pulled the 9mm Makarov automatic out of his shoulder holster. Then he pointed the pistol at the man, sighting on his midriff. “Tell this goddamned peasant to back off, Foret. Tell him this is official business.”

Incredibly, despite the warning and the pistol pointing in his direction, the man took another step forward. His hands hovered near his side.

Exasperated, Duroc flipped the Makarov’s safety catch off and raised his aim. Maybe the sight of death staring him right in the face would knock some sense into this pig-ignorant Russian’s thick skull. “He’s got three seconds to live, Foret. One… two…”

Suddenly the red-haired woman writhed out of his grasp, trying desperately to grab his gun hand.

“Bitch!” Furious, Duroc yanked her back by the hair and then cuffed her out of the way with a single backhanded blow.

“Look out, Major!” big Michel Woerner shouted suddenly.

Alarmed, Duroc whirled around.

Too late. He felt something cold and sharp lancing into his own stomach, ripping up under his ribs. Then the pain hit — a tearing, flaming wall of agony that darkened the whole world around him. His lungs were on fire. Major Paul Duroc stared down in appalled astonishment as the brown-haired man stepped back a pace, still holding a wide-bladed workman’s knife stained red to the hilt.

Knife held ready to strike again if the Frenchman tried to use his pistol, Alex Banich watched the man he’d stabbed sag, slump to his knees, and then pitch over onto his side. The DGSE agent twitched a few times, coughed wetly, and died. Rich, red, arterial blood pooled on the grass beneath his gaping, slack-jawed mouth. The pistol fell out of his unclenched hand and lay at Banich’s feet.

Without thinking further, he knelt down and scooped the Makarov up. Just in time.

The tallest of the four surviving Frenchmen snarled something guttural and ugly, clawing for his own holstered weapon. Banich saw the pistol come clear and turn toward him.

“Alex!” Erin screamed.

Damn it. He squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession, firing at point-blank range. The first 9mm round caught the Frenchman in the chest and threw him backward. The second blew the top of the man’s head off. The third missed.

Banich swiveled rapidly, bringing the rest of the DGSE operatives into his sights. Stunned by the sudden carnage and their leaders’ deaths, they paled and carefully raised empty hands.

“Watch ‘em!” At his command, Hennessy and Teppler moved closer to frisk the captive Frenchmen, holding their own unsheathed knives at the ready. Their choice of weapons made sense for agents working under cover. If they were stopped and searched by the Moscow militia or security services, carrying firearms would sign their death warrants, but many Russian workers carried knives.

The French, all fight beaten out of them by the unexpected turn of events, willingly submitted to being searched. One by one, three more pistols were found and confiscated.

“That’s it, they’re clean,” Hennessy said over his shoulder.

Banich nodded. “Good. Okay, here’s what we’ll do…”

“Hold it! Hands up! Get your hands up!” The shout came from higher up the slope, near the edge of the woods.

Banich turned slowly and saw a group of very young-looking Russian militiamen cautiously advancing toward them — emerging from the trees with their weapons out and aimed. Red and blue lights flashed in the distance. Militia squad cars were closing in from both sides of the quay, sealing off any hope of escape.

“Do as they say,” Banich said quietly. He dropped the pistol and raised his hands in surrender. He saw the horrified look on Erin McKenna’s face and felt sick. He’d killed two men to save her from captivity and he’d still failed. Now he couldn’t save any of them.