Day of Wrath

CHAPTER EIGHT TERMINATIONS

The muffled pop brought Colonel General Feodor Mikhailovich Serov fully awake. What the devil was that?

He opened his eyes and started to reach for the bedside lamp.

He froze — suddenly aware of the cold metal cylinder pressed hard against his mouth.

“Very good, General,” a dry voice commented. “You show sense.”

A gloved hand reached past him and flicked the lamp on — flooding the bedroom with light.

Serov blinked rapidly, staring down the enormous muzzle of a silenced 9mm Makarov pistol. Sergeant Kurgin — his orderly and Reichardt’s watchdog — looked back at him, stony indifference written across his narrow face. He was dimly aware of another man, blondhaired and broken-nosed, standing close by the side of the bed.

“Do not move, General,” Kurgin ordered calmly. “This won’t take long.”

Dazed by the sudden reversal of his fortunes, Serov obeyed, lying rigid while Kurgin’s companion quickly and efficiently strapped his wrists and ankles together with tape. Leaving him trussed like a hog readied for slaughter, the broken-nosed man stepped back.

Kurgin pulled the pistol away and stood waiting, still staring down at him.

Something wet and warm trickled off the headboard and dripped onto Serov’s forehead — something that smelled oddly like heated copper.

He flinched, remembering the muffled sound that had first wrenched him into this waking nightmare. Elena!

He turned his head sideways and moaned aloud.

His wife lay dead in bed beside him. Her eyes seemed closed in peaceful sleep, but the neat, puckered hole in her forehead told him they would never open again. Powder burns etched her fair skin black around the wound. The exit wound was messier. Bright red blood and gray brain matter had sprayed across her pillow and onto the headboard.

He retched suddenly, desperately turning his own head away as his stomach heaved.

When the shivering fit passed, Serov looked up at Kurgin. His mouth felt as though it were filled with sand and ashes. “Why?” he croaked.

“Why are you doing this? I don’t understand. Reichardt promised me I would be safe once Koniev and the two Americans were dead.”

Kurgin shrugged his shoulders. “It seems someone else made a small mistake this time. The Americans are still alive.” His lips twitched into the ghastly parody of a smile. “And so Herr Reichardt must sacrifice another pawn to fend them off for a while longer.”

Serov swallowed hard, staring death and utter disaster squarely in the face. Kurgin’s bad news spelled out his own death sentence.

Reichardt had used him to bait the hook for Koniev and the Americans.

But by pointing them toward the trap waiting for them in Pechenga, he had left himself vulnerable to further interrogation if they lived. So now that Reichardt’s ambush had failed, he was of no further use and of considerable potential danger to the German and his mysterious employer.

“And my wife? Why kill her? She knew nothing of all this,” he said bitterly.

His onetime orderly shook his head and smiled in mock amusement. “Now how could we be sure of that, General?” He stroked the silenced pistol in his hand gently. “In any event, you should be grateful that Herr Reichardt ordered me to kill her quickly. He is not ordinarily so gracious and forgiving.”

Serov winced. He tried to moisten his dry lips and failed. “And what of my daughters?”

“Them?” Kurgin shrugged again. “I have no orders concerning them.”

For the first time since opening his eyes, Serov felt a small measure of hope — though none for himself. Perhaps Reichardt would leave his children unmolested at their schools in France and Germany. They might be left penniless and alone, but at least they would be alive.

He nerved himself one last time to stare up at Kurgin, fighting hard not to show the panic bubbling up inside. As a younger man, he had flown high-performance Migs to the edge of the envelope and beyond — cheating Death to win praise and promotion.

Now Death had come in a different guise. He had lost his final gamble.

Well, so be it, he thought wearily. At least a bullet in the brain would be quick. Perhaps it would even be painless.

Serov hawked, turned his head, and spat toward the floor in one last, futile gesture of defiance. “All right then, damn you!

Get on with it!” He nodded toward the silenced pistol in Kurgin’s hand. “You have your weapon. Use it.”

“This?” Reichardt’s agent glanced down at the pistol in surprise.

He laughed softly. “No, no, General! This is not for you.

After all, we do have appearances to maintain.”

Before Serov could move, Kurgin’s companion gripped his right arm in a vise grip and tore the pajama sleeve up above his elbow.

Gasping now, Serov rolled his eyes toward Kurgin.

The sergeant had set his pistol aside. Moving with deadly precision, he reached into his tunic and took out a hypodermic needle and a length of surgical tubing. He held the needle up to the light, tapped it gently, and then smiled cruelly. “No bullet for you, Colonel General.

Nothing so easy, no. I’m afraid you will be taking a long and painful trip to hell.”

Serov started screaming even before the needle touched his skin.

Grateful for the air conditioning that kept the blast furnace heat of the Saudi summer at bay, Anson P. Carleton, the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arab Affairs, strode forward to a podium inside the King Khalid Airport’s official reception area. His aides, U.S. Secret Service agents, and Saudi security personnel trailed after him and then filed off to either side.

Outside, the honor guard and band that had greeted him on his arrival began dispersing. Heat waves distorted their figures as they marched away under a merciless sun that baked the tarmac like pottery in a kiln.

Carleton noted the brandnew mural decorating the wall behind the podium — a stylistic rendition of a map of Saudi Arabia, its flag, and a verse from the Koran. It hadn’t been there on his last visit to Riyadh. The Saudis must be sprucing up their airport — yet again. He shrugged mentally. His hosts always seemed to have the money for bold and lavish interior decorating. Now it was his job to persuade them to move boldly in other, more important areas — to continue the process of making a full peace with Israel.

He looked down at the notes of his prepared arrival remarks.

His words would be carefully chosen and indirect, as was usual when dealing with sensitive political issues in Arab countries.

But they would leave his real audience, the ruling Saudi elite, in no doubt that the United States was committed to yet another serious and sustained effort to reconcile Jerusalem and its Arab neighbors.

Carleton cleared his throat, looked straight up into the unwinking lenses of the dozen or so television cameras assembled to record his statement, and opened his mouth — The mural behind him erupted in flame.

The fiery blast enveloped Carleton a millisecond before the fragments thrown by the explosion tore him to pieces and then sleeted outward-killing or maiming dozens of the aides, security guards, and reporters clumped near the podium.

Two rooms away, Yassir Iyad, an airport maintenance worker, felt and heard the short, sharp concussive thump that told him the explosive charge planted inside the new mural by the Radical Islamic Front had detonated. He smiled broadly and then wiped the smile off his face.

Working swiftly, the young Palestinian guest worker detached a small controller from the piece of wire hanging out of an electrical conduit inspection plate. He concealed the controller in his pocket. Next, he tugged on the wire — pulling it out through the conduit. Since the wire had only been attached to the bomb’s trigger mechanism, it came out easily. If it had hung up on the wreckage, Iyad had come prepared to cut it off and conceal it in place. Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary.

Instead, the Palestinian simply reeled the wire in — all twenty meters of it — gathering it up on the same spool it had come from.

Then he clipped off the scorched, twisted end and dropped that in his pocket beside the controller. He planned to drop both pieces of incriminating evidence somewhere deep in the desert outside the Saudi capital.

After replacing the access plate, Iyad left the storage room — locking the door behind him.

Then, donning a look of anguished concern like a mask, the Palestinian hurried, along with everyone else, toward the scene of the tragedy.

“Officials have characterized this as the most serious terrorist attack on the United States in two years — pointing out that Undersecretary of State Carleton is the highest-ranking U.S. official ever assassinated on foreign soil. The White House is preparing a statement … Prince Ibrahim al Saud snapped the television off. A slight smile graced his lips. Carleton’s death was only a fraction of what he hoped to accomplish, of what he planned to accomplish but the Americans had suffered today.

The MVD holding area at Sheremetevo-1 showed signs of hard usage. Its black-and-white checkerboard linoleum floor was scarred, scuffed, and still showed mud and other stains tracked in during the last spring rainstorm. Several of the overhead fluorescent lamps were burned out, and some of those that were left flickered at irregular intervals.

Puke-ugly, lime-green plastic chairs bolted around the walls provided the room’s only seating.

Colonel Peter Thorn sat stiffly upright in one of those hard plastic seats, studiously ignoring the young MVD private standing nearby. The kid looked barely old enough to shave, and Thorn earnestly hoped he’d been given enough training to know how to work the safety on the AKSU submachine gun he held cradled in both hands. From the way the private twitched whenever Thorn so much as shifted in his chair, he seemed to think he was guarding Bonnie and Clyde.

Thorn looked across to where Helen Gray sat. Another soldier stood watching her, and a burly, hardfaced MVD captain occupied the chair right next to hers.

She looked pensive, sad, and utterly weary. There were shadows under her blue eyes — shadows that had darkened in the two days since Alexei Koniev had died.

He sighed inaudibly. Losing a partner was one of the toughest things that could ever happen to anyone in law enforcement or the Special Forces. It was something you never really got over.

He knew that only too well. One of his closest friends, his old sergeant major, had been killed in the Delta Force raid on Teheran. He still had occasional nightmares about that — nightmares that lingered on in a sadness that was hard to shake when he woke up.

Thorn shook his head somberly. This investigation had already exacted a bitter price from the woman he loved — and they still weren’t much closer to the truth they’d been seeking. He leaned toward her, hoping he could find the right words to tell her how sorry he was. “Helen, I—”

“Silence!” the MVD captain barked in heavily accented English.

“No talking! It is forbidden.”

Thorn bit down on a savage curse. Damn it. This was ridiculous.

He rubbed angrily at his wrists, fiercely massaging the abrasions left by handcuffs that had been locked down too tight for too long.

He hadn’t been very surprised when the first militia units arriving on the scene at the Star of the White Sea put them under arrest. That had been a reasonable precaution for any policeman faced with a shipload of corpses and two armed foreigners. But what followed next hadn’t been reasonable. Not by a long shot.

They’d been held under lock and key at the Pechenga militia headquarters for hours, denied any contact with the American embassy, and ignored whenever they demanded information on the state of the investigation down at the docks. When this MVD captain and his men showed up earlier today, Thorn had at first thought the wheels of Russia’s ponderous bureaucracy were finally starting to spin in the right direction.

Big mistake, boyo, he thought bitterly. If anything, their situation had gone from bad to worse. He and Helen had been hustled out of militia custody, handcuffed like common criminals, and plopped onto a military transport plane bound for Moscow.

And now they’d been left sitting in this dingy, godforsaken waiting room for more than two hours. He grimaced. What kind of game was the MVD playing here? Somebody, probably that smug son of a bitch Serov, had set the three of them up, and every minute that passed gave whoever it was more time to either cover his tracks or vanish.

Thorn swiveled slightly in his chair as the door to the holding area swung open.

A young man cautiously poked his head through the opening.

Wary brown eyes blinked owlishly behind his horn-rim glasses.

“Captain Dobuzhinsky?”

“Da.” The MVD captain lumbered to his feet. “You are from the American embassy?”

“Yes.” The young man nodded rapidly. He strode forward. “My name is Andrew Wyatt. I’m with the administrative affairs section.”’ It was about time the pinstriped cavalry rode over the ridge, Thorn thought sourly.

Wyatt turned toward them. “Special Agent Gray? Colonel Thorn? I’ve been sent to bring you back to the embassy.” He glanced at the MVD officer. “I assume that’s all right, Captain?”

Dobuzhinsky nodded dourly. “First, you must sign for them.”

The captain held out a clipboard and watched impassively while the young embassy staffer hurriedly read through the official form attached to it — moving his lips as he sounded out some of the Russian legal jargon.

Once Wyatt scrawled his signature across the bottom of the form, the MVD officer uncuffed them — first Helen and then Thorn. He scowled at them and then nodded abruptly toward the door. “Very well. You are free to leave. But only to go with this man from your embassy. Nowhere else. You understand?”

Thorn restrained his anger until they were outside the terminal and on their way to the embassy car waiting at the curb for them. Then he swung around on Wyatt. “What the hell is wrong with the Russians? First, we’re almost aced by some of their frigging Mafiya types and then they throw us in the slammer! Don’t they give a damn about why one of their best officers was murdered?”

The young embassy staffer spread his hands apart. “I’m afraid that’s out of my bailiwick, Colonel. My orders were to bail you out and get you back to the embassy — pronto. The Deputy Chief of Mission wants to see you in his office ASAP” Partly mollified, Thorn pulled open the rear door on the embassy car and held it for Helen. “Fine.” He slid in beside her and said, “Maybe the State Department can light a fire under those idiots in the Kremlin.”

Helen simply shook her head and stared out the window of the car as they sped out of the airport-heading southeast for Moscow.

Randolph Clifford was the Deputy Chief of Mission, the number two man at the American embassy in Moscow. His office, richly furnished with carefully selected czarist-era and American colonial antiques, was meant to endorse his authority, to remind visitors of his position as a high-ranking representative of the U.S. government. It was not meant to serve as the setting for a shouting match.

Colonel Peter Thorn supposed that Clifford, a portly man with a thick mane of white hair, might be called distinguished under less stressful circumstances. Right now, though, the badtempered twist of the diplomat’s mouth and the vein throbbing dangerously on his temple ruined his image as an urbane shaper of American foreign policy.

“Look, Special Agent Gray,” Clifford said in exasperation. “As far as Washington is concerned, the only thing that happened aboard the Star of the White Sea is that two of our citizens stumbled onto a Russian Mafiya drug buy that went sour. It was just an unhappy coincidence that you, the colonel here, and Major Koniev went aboard the ship at that particular time and got caught in the crossfire.” His tone was final, almost dictatorial, but then he was used to having the authority to back up his dictates.

“Is that the story the MVD’s trying to peddle?” demanded Helen angrily, glaring back at the red-faced diplomat with unblinking eyes. “If so, only a moron would even pretend to believe it!”

Thorn hurriedly tamped down a wry grin. He’d wondered what it would take to shake Helen out of her depression over Alexei Koniev’s death.

He should have guessed it would be contact with one of the State Department’s “best and brightest” at his most obnoxious. Now Thorn was just glad she didn’t still have the Tokarev automatic she’d picked up aboard the Russian freighter. If she’d been armed, he had the feeling Randolph Clifford might already have been on the receiving end of a full eightshot magazine.

Clifford bristled, and then visibly relaxed his facial muscles.

He adopted a more soothing, almost fatherly, tone. “I’ll overlook that unfortunate comment, Miss Gray. You’re overwrought. And I know you’ve been through hell—”

“Don’t patronize me, Mr. Clifford!” Helen interrupted. “What I’m overwrought about, if anything, is the way we, the U.S. government that is, seems to be papering this whole thing over.”

Evidently too mad to sit still, she got up and started pacing the room.

Thorn leaned forward. It was time to stick his own oar in.

“What happened in Pechenga wasn’t an accident, sir. It was a cold-blooded ambush. They were waiting for us.”

“Perhaps so,” the embassy official replied, and clearly glad to talk to him while Helen cooled off. “But the MVD claims that the ambush could have been set up in thirty seconds when one of the Mafiya lookouts spotted you coming down the pier.” He shook his head. “Given the odds against you, I’m still amazed you managed to escape at all.”

Helen snapped, “I’m sure that whoever planned all this is even more amazed!”

Clifford ignored her remark and went on. “You have to view this matter from the Russian perspective, Colonel. The evidence the MVD found aboard that tramp freighter seems quite clear.”

He tapped the bulky manila folder he’d told them contained the official Russian government crime scene report. “First they discover nearly fifty kilos of what looks like heroin in one of the ship’s storage lockers. Then they find out that these drugs are really just milk sugar laced with a small percentage of the real stuff. And finally, they stumble across all nineteen of her crew, including the real Captain Tumarev, gagged and bound with duct tape, shot in the back of the head execution-style, and then dumped in a cargo hold!”

The diplomat shuddered involuntarily, evidently remembering the photographs he’d said were included in the MVD report.

He was a bureaucrat, not a man of action.

Helen, who’d seen worse sights in her tour with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, stopped pacing and shrugged. “All of which proves nothing.” She leaned over the diplomat’s desk. “Except that whoever arranged that ambush was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to put an end to our investigation before we got any closer to the truth. And now you and the MVD are giving the bad guys what they want on a silver platter!”

Clifford turned red with anger. “Listen, Miss Gray, your investigation has done more to strain U.S.-Russian relations than you can possibly imagine.” He scowled, speaking plainly and candidly for a change.

“Somebody in the Pechenga militia already blabbed to the Moscow press corps. And only Undersecretary Carleton’s murder yesterday has kept this off the front pages in the States. But the local boys are running wild, and they’re embarrassing the hell out of the Kremlin. The press is playing every angle it can dream up — Russian organized crime, lousy Russian aircraft safety, Russian drug smuggling, corruption in the Russian military …”

“I don’t give a damn about the press, Mr.. Clifford or the Kremlin,” Helen said forcefully. “My job is finding out the truth about what happened in Kandalaksha and why my partner was killed.”

Clifford shook his head just as firmly. “That’s where you’re wrong, Miss Gray.” He included Thorn in his baleful gaze. “As it stands, you two have managed to anger almost every faction in the Russian government. Most of them were never very happy with the idea of Americans investigating crimes on Russian soil. Now they’re furious!”

“Your original charter covered the O.S.I.A plane crash only,” the diplomat continued. “But once you started poking around into Mafiya drug cartels and their ties to the Russian Air Force, the MVD claims you crossed the line into ‘impermissible interference.’”

That was too much for Thorn. “That’s bullshit,” he growled.

“Alexei Koniev had permission from his higher-ups every step of the way.”

“And Major Koniev is dead,” Clifford reminded him brutally.

“Which brings me to another problem. The MVD is having trouble believing that one of their best men was killed in that ambush while you two walked away without a scratch — even if the major did die a hero.” He shrugged. “Not everyone believes your story about what happened aboard the Star of the White Sea.”

Helen glared and Peter opened his mouth to protest, but the diplomat held up a conciliatory hand. “Don’t worry. I believe you. At least I think I do. I’ve read both your personnel files.”

Clifford sighed and turned to face Thorn directly. “But your Special Forces background makes you very hot, diplomatically, Colonel.” He gestured vaguely toward the window. “There are a lot of people here in Moscow who don’t see you as a simple soldier, Colonel. To the Russians, the closest thing to Delta Force is the old Soviet Spetsnaz. And that means you’re a trained assassin in their eyes — a paid U.S. government killer. So your presence here makes them nervous. They were willing to let it lie as long as things stayed relatively quiet, but you’re in the spotlight now.”

Thorn tensed. He knew that what Clifford said was true. Officially, he’d been on very thin ice from the beginning, and now the ice had cracked. He looked over at Helen, hoping she was on firmer ground.

As if on cue she sat down in the chair next to him and crossed her arms. “Colonel Thorn’s background has proved an extremely valuable asset during this investigation,” she said steadily.

Clifford snorted. “That depends on your perspective, I suppose. Others might reasonably argue your whole effort has been an unmitigated disaster from beginning to end. This Pechenga fiasco is simply the last straw.”

Jesus. Thorn shook his head, trying desperately to think of a way out of the bureaucratic box he saw being built around them.

“I don’t accept that, Mr. Clifford. As far as I can see, we’ve made substantial progress. We’ve established beyond a shadow of a doubt that the O.S.I.A transport plane was sabotaged. And we know that this Captain Grushtin carried out the sabotage — though we don’t know yet why, or on whose orders.”

“That’s no longer any of your concern,” Clifford said bluntly.

“What?” Helen exploded.

The diplomat drew a deep breath, then stood up and walked around his desk to face them. “All right, I’ll spell it out for you. Your role in this investigation is over. This is now solely a Russian matter, involving Russian nationals on sovereign Russian territory. As a result, any further inquiries will be handled by the Russian government and only by the Russian government. Is that understood?”

Helen’s eyes blazed. “No, it is not understood, sir,” she ground out through gritted teeth. “As an FBI legal attache, this case still comes under my jurisdiction. Or have you forgotten the Americans who also died when that plane went down?”?

Clifford rounded on her, his patience evidently at an end.

“That’s the second part of my message, Special Agent Gray. As of now, you’re no longer a legal attache at this embassy. The FBI is transferring you back to Washington — at the request of the Russian authorities and the ambassador as well.”

Oh, hell, Thorn thought, watching the color drain from Helen’s face. That’s torn it. These sons of a bitches have just flushed her career down the toilet.

“It’s for your own good, Miss Gray,” Clifford explained, more calmly now that he’d dropped his bombshell. “Your usefulness as an investigator here is now nil. No official will ever talk to you.”

He spread his hands. “Besides, there’s the matter of your own physical safety. After what you did aboard the Star of the White Sea, the Mafiya may come after you personally.”

“I can take care of myself, Mr. Clifford,” Helen said tightly. “And I can find people who’ll talk.”

The Deputy Chief of Mission shook his head. “You have your orders, Miss Gray. I suggest you obey them.”

He turned toward Thorn and arched an eyebrow. “As for you, Colonel, you’ve been ordered back to D.C too. You’ll be assigned to temporary duty at the Pentagon — pending your imminent retirement.”

Thorn sat motionless. He told himself he wasn’t surprised — not really.

Egged on by a White House still angry at him for disobeying the President, the brass hats had been looking for a chance to toss him out of the Army for two years now. Only his old commander’s pull had kept them at bay for this long. Well, he’d been living on Sam Farrell’s nickel ever since Teheran and it looked like he’d just spent it. The one thing he hadn’t expected was to pull Helen down with him.

Clifford turned his back and looked out the window. “You both have forty-eight hours to get your personal affairs in order, to pack, and do whatever else you need to do. But you will not leave Moscow. And you will check in here at the embassy by phone at 0700 hours and 1900 hours each day. Finally, you will keep your contacts with Russian nationals to the absolute minimum necessary to prepare for departure.”

“In other words, we’re under house arrest,” Helen muttered.

Clifford looked over his shoulder at her. “On the contrary, Miss Gray,” he countered. “I’ve given you the freedom of the city. And you should be damned grateful to follow. I’d be within my rights and authority to confine you to the embasy grounds and ship you out on the evening flight — with within my the embassy grounds or your personal effects to.” Then he shook his head. “But I won’t do that. You’ve created a nasty incident-one that my staff and I are going to have to bend over backward to smooth over. But you’ve committed no crime, per se — no matter what some of the MVD’s hardliners are claiming. So for God’s sake stay low, keep your mouths shut, and steer clear of any more trouble!”

Without waiting for any further argument, Clifford turned back to the window in a clear dismissal.

Thorn stopped in the hallway outside Clifford’s office, aware that he still felt numb, almost completely disconnected from his own body. No matter how many times he’d told himself his days in the Army were numbered, the diplomat’s cold announcement that he was being forcibly retired had still hit him with the force of a hammer-blow. He’d spent most of his adult life in uniform.

What could the civilian world offer him now?

Thorn frowned, remembering friends who’d opted out of the Special Operations Command during the Army’s recent waves of downsizing. Two or three had joined defense firms as managers.

A couple had tried to set themselves up as security consultants.

One was a teacher at some high school in the Midwest. They were making a living, supporting themselves and their families, but they all missed the Army’s close-knit camaraderie, excitement, and sense of a larger purpose.

He glanced at Helen. Her face mirrored his own stunned disbelief.

She clearly didn’t harbor any illusions about her own long-term prospects in the FBI. The legal attache job had been a plum assignment — one that had put her in the running for further promotion.

But the FBI hierarchy was notoriously unforgiving and notoriously touchy about bad publicity. Screw up once and you’d find yourself in hot water. Screw up once, in the public eye, and you were likely to spend the rest of your career either in some podunk town in the middle of nowhere, or, worse yet, trapped in the drearier confines of the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

Without thinking, Thorn slipped his arm around her shoulder.

Normally Helen was prickly about public displays of affection, especially on her professional turf, but she welcomed his touch now.

She sighed deeply and half leaned against him as they headed back toward the elevators that would take them to her office.

“Jesus, you two sure don’t look like the superhuman Amerikanski secret commandos I’ve been reading about in the afternoon paper! More like folks who’ve been caught out in a tornado.”

Thorn stiffened and swung around toward the short, balding man who’d come around a corner behind them. He’d taken just about enough crap from the U.S. State Department for one day … Helen laid a cautionary hand on his arm. She tried smiling and almost made it. “Hello, Charlie.”

The newcomer looked ready to embrace Helen, but he settled for pumping her hand. “Christ, Helen! I’m sure glad to see you alive and well. When we heard about that business in Pechenga, we were all horrified.”

He turned to Thorn and extended his hand. “And you’re Peter Thorn. I’m Charlie Spiegel. I work here at the embassy.”

Helen explained. “Charlie and I worked together on a couple of cases. I can’t tell you who he works for, but he’s good at his job.” The implication was obvious: Charlie Spiegel worked for the CIA.

“She’s too kind, Colonel,” Spiegel said. He flashed a quick grin. “Mostly I just sit around and file reports claiming credit for whatever paydirt Helen digs up.”

“But not this time,” Thorn said quietly.

Spiegel’s grin faded. “No, not this time.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “Man, I’m afraid you two have taken one hell of a long walk off a short pier. I hate to say it, but I think the ambassador’s right to get you out of Russia before anything else hits the fan — and the quicker the better.”

He saw the surprise on Thorn’s face and shrugged. “Helen said I was good, and it’s my job to keep plugged in. Look, why don’t you come to my office? While His Nibs in there gave you the forty lashes with a wet tongue, I’ve been keeping my ear to the ground. There are some new developments I think you should know about.”

The CIA agent’s office was on the floor above Helen’s, and it was just as cramped and a lot messier. Books, periodicals, and printouts cluttered Spiegel’s battered desk, every shelf, and much of the floor space.

Thorn shook his head wryly as he and Helen cleared stacks of reference works off chairs so they could sit down. This guy seemed to live on paper.

Spiegel didn’t wait for them to get settled. He flopped into his own swivel chair and started explaining. “First, I don’t think you folks fully understand the flap your gun battle in Pechenga has created. You’re both front-page news here. Hell, Clifford’s people had to do some pretty fast footwork to keep the media away from you. That was part of the reason for that little covert handoff out at Sheremetevo Airport.”

Thorn considered that grimly. The only thing worse than sitting in MVD custody would have been getting caught by a mob of eager-beaver reporters and cameramen. Everything in his nature and his Delta Force training taught him the importance of staying out of the glare of TV lights.

“The forty-eight hours you’ve been given isn’t just to let you pack, it’s mostly to give the story time to cool off,” Spiegel said confidentially. He lowered his voice. “You didn’t hear it from me, but the embassy is even making sure you don’t arrive home at a commercial airport. You’ll take a regular flight to Germany, but then they’re transferring you to a military passenger flight to Andrews Air Force Base.”

“Arriving in the dead of the night, I suppose?” Helen asked bitterly.

“You got it,” Spiegel confirmed. “And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you’re listed on the manifest as PFCS John and Jane Doe. The last thing anyone wants is more news coverage.”

Thorn nodded. He agreed with the precautions the State Department was taking on that score, if on no other.

“What about our work, Charlie?” Helen asked. “Can you or your people dig any further? I don’t want this investigation to fall through the cracks once they’ve shipped us off. We’ve paid too high a price to let it go so easily.”

Spiegel looked blank. “Jesus, Helen. That’s gonna be a problem. I mean, the word’s come down from on high: Steer clear of the Kandalaksha mess. It’s a Russian-only situation. If my people start asking too many questions, I’m going to trip all kinds of alarm bells all over the damn place — both here and in D.C.”

Then he shrugged. “Besides, with this Grushtin character dead and that freighter a bust, I wouldn’t really know where to start looking. Seems to me you’ve run this thing into a dead-end no pun intended.”

Thorn frowned. He wasn’t going to let this guy off the hook so easily.

He claimed he was a friend of Helen’s. Well, let him prove it. He shook his head. “Not true. We know one of the people who set us up. Have somebody put the squeeze on Colonel General Feodor Serov. That son of a bitch knows a hell of a lot more than he told us.”

Spiegel sighed. “That’s one of the new developments I mentioned. Somebody took out both Serov and his wife yesterday-probably very early in the A.M. Whoever did it was a pro. The wife took one bullet to the brain. Serov went a little harder. Somebody pumped him so full of heroin that the stuff was practically pouring out his eye sockets.”

Thorn felt his jaw muscles tighten. Every time he thought they were close to the inner core of this mystery, somebody got there first and cleared out all the evidence and witnesses. He looked hard at Spiegel.

“I suppose Serov’s murder is all over the evening papers, too?”

The CIA officer shook his head. “Not a peep. Nada. The MVD and the Russian Air Force have clamped down a complete security blackout around Kandalaksha. Nothing’s getting in or out. They’re damned serious about it, too. Finding out one of their highest-ranking officers was involved in drug trafficking has them rattled.”

“Oh?” Helen looked skeptical. “Then how did you find out about it?”

“Well …” Spiegel smiled slyly. “Let’s just say that Russian counterintelligence isn’t as good as they’d like to think.”

“All right, so Serov’s dead,” Helen said slowly, thinking aloud. “That still leaves one more trail you could follow.”

“Oh?” Spiegel said. “Fill me in. I’ve never claimed omniscience.”

“Arrus Export,” Helen said. “Both Serov and the customs agent at Pechenga claimed they were dealing with a man named Peterhof.”

“Yeah,” Spiegel said. “I read your report.” Then he shook his head again. “That’s another dead-end, I’m afraid.”

“Why?”

The CIA man shrugged. “We checked with the Arrus office here in Moscow. They’ve never had anyone named Peterhof working for them. And they claim they’ve never run an Su-24 engine acquisition program like the one you described.”

“What makes you think they’d admit something like that so easily?”

Thorn challenged. “Christ, we’re talking about blackmarket arms sales here!”

“I understand that, Colonel,” Spiegel said. He checked to make sure the door was completely closed, then lowered his voice slightly.

“Look, Arrus is a clean operation, okay? It’s on the side of the angels.”

Helen stared at him. “Are you telling us that Arrus Export is a Company asset? That it’s a front organization for the CIA?”

“Not exactly,” Spiegel said hastily. “But Arrus has done some significant favors for us in the past. And it’s very well connected back in the States. The owners are fair-haired boys in Langley’s books.”

Helen looked forward, her eyes glittering. “I’m going to ask you one more question, Charlie.” Her lips thinned. “And I expect a straight answer.”

“If I can,” Spiegel temporized.

“No ifs, Charlie,” Helen said coldly. “And no screwing around with maybes. or other covert op double-talk. You owe me. Remember?”

The CIA officer flushed. “Ask your question.”

“Is this engine smuggling operation tied into the Agency somehow?” Helen said carefully. “Or to some other U.S. government outfit?”

“You’re sure?” Thorn asked skeptically. Spiegel’s denial meant nothing if he was out of the loop. All covert operations were run on strict need-to-know principles.

“I’m sure, Colonel,” the CIA man said. He looked Thorn squarely in the eye. “I went straight to the top of the Operations Directorate when I saw Helen’s preliminary report from Kandalaksha. I even asked about the drug angle. Hell, I know this wouldn’t be the first time someone’s tripped over one of our ops, but I’m telling you this was not one of them.”

Spiegel shook his head yet again. “Look, I don’t know who the hell was buying Su-24 engines on the sly, or running heroin, or whatever the real story is. But I do know the CIA is clean. We’re not involved here.”

He glanced at Helen and frowned. “Christ, Helen, I know what you’re going through. Hell, I liked Alexei Koniev, too! But face facts: You’ve pushed this thing as far as you can. You’ve already put your whole career on the line, and you were damned lucky to get out of Pechenga in one piece. So let the Russians sort out their own messes!”

Thorn knew Spiegel was offering them good advice, but he didn’t need to see the stubborn set of Helen’s shoulders to know that she wasn’t prepared to let the matter drop so easily. Unfortunately, he didn’t see what choice either of them really had. Once they were out of Russia their ability to pin down the truth of what had happened at Kandalaksha would drop to precisely zero.

Helen Gray surrendered any hope that she could persuade herself to sleep. Her body was tired — beyond tired, in fact. Every muscle ached. And whenever she moved, she could feel every separate scrape, cut, and bruise she’d collected during the desperate firefight aboard the Star of the White Sea. She could have ignored the pain. Training and sheer exhaustion would have allowed her to do that.

But now her mind and memory betrayed her.

The image of Alexei Koniev lying dead rose before her, and then fled back into the darker recesses of her mindchased away by old ghosts and new fears. All her life she’d pushed herself hard — striving always and everywhere to be the best, to win every game and every contest. Now it looked as though she’d finally met a puzzle she couldn’t solve and an unknown enemy she couldn’t beat.

Helen opened her eyes in the darkness and lay staring up at the ceiling of her small bedroom.

When she was just thirteen, she’d set her heart on becoming an FBI agent. Her parents, her brother and her sisters, and even some of her teachers had tried to convince her that she was on a wild-goose chase.

But she’d persisted. She’d weighed every class, every hobby, and every interest by how far it moved her toward her goal — the FBI Academy at Quantico.

Once in the FBI itself, she’d clawed her way up and into the elite Hostage Rescue Team by sheer ability and hard work — disdaining the various affirmative-action shortcuts that had been dangled in front of her. To Helen, the way to smash the sexist bias of the Bureau’s old boy network was to prove it flatout wrong — not to give them a chance to fall back on the tired, old cop-out that women couldn’t make the grade without special help.

Her jaw tightened. There would be celebrating in some corridors of the Hoover Building once the news that she’d been yanked out of Moscow filtered through the rumor mill. And there were plenty of others like Mcdowell scattered throughout the FBI.

Of course, Helen knew that she had friends and mentors in the Bureau’s hierarchy, too. Men who trusted her. Men who would stand by her. But what could they do for her now? Incurring the wrath of the Russian government while solving an important case might have been acceptable.

Pissing off the Kremlin just to come up with a jumble of unintelligible clues — all leading nowhere — was another story.

On the surface, Charlie Spiegel was right. Their investigation had reached a dead-end. Every witness and every potential suspect they’d turned up had been murdered — first Grushtin, then the entire crew of that Russian tramp freighter, and now Serov.

And, with Alexei Koniev dead, she and Peter had not only lost a partner and friend, they’d also lost their access to anybody they could trust in Russian law enforcement. So what else could they do but slink home to America with their tails between their legs?

Helen sat bolt upright in bed and thumped her fist onto the mattress with a muttered, “No way!”

“Thought you were awake,” Peter Thorn said softly, pushing himself up to sit beside her.

Peter had visited the broom-closet-sized room offered him as temporary accommodations by the embassy staff just long enough to drop off his travel kit. Then he’d come straight to her own cramped quarters to help her pack. Several hours of steady work had left her life in Moscow jumbled up in cardboard boxes all over the floor. At her invitation, he’d stayed for the night.

Both of them were too drained and exhausted to make love, but neither wanted to leave the other’s side. And neither of them gave a damn anymore about the gossip that might race through the chancery building.

Helen turned her head toward him, seeing his eyes gleaming in the dark.

“You can’t sleep, either?”

“Nope.” Peter sighed. “I just keep running things over and over in my mind — trying to see where we screwed up.” Then he shrugged ruefully.

“And trying to avoid thinking about what happens next. Once we’re home, I mean.”

Helen sat silent, struck by a sudden sense of shame. She’d been thinking too much about herself. No matter where they stuck hen-whether in Mudville or the Hoover Building’s basement records office — she would still carry a badge. She would still be an FBI special agent. But Peter … Peter had lost everything.

The United States Army had been his home — his real family, in fact for all of Peter Thorn’s life. His father had been a career soldier, a highly decorated senior sergeant in the Special Forces.

Peter’s boyhood had been spent on military bases around the country and around the world. And, after his wayward mother abandoned them when he was eleven years old, he and his father had grown still closer — closer to each other and closer to the Army they both loved.

Now he was forty and faced with the prospect of … what?

Helen wondered. Retirement? Shuffling papers as a manager in some corporate hive? Living hand-to-mouth as a freelance counterterrorism consultant in a world crowded with other ex-soldiers chasing the same degrading contracts?

She felt tears well up in her eyes and turned toward him. “Oh, Peter …” she whispered brokenly.

His arms tightened around her. One strong hand softly stroked her hair. He kissed her forehead gently, brushing his lips across her skin. “It’ll be all right, Helen,” he promised. “We’ll see this thing through together. No matter what happens.”

“Side by side?” she asked.

“Come hell, high water, earthquake, or congressional committee,” Peter said flatly.

Helen felt her fatigue, her pain, all her doubts, and all her fears fly away — vanishing in a single, convulsive instant. Her lips met his fiercely and parted. Her body molded to his in a flowing, moving, pulsing rhythm that swept time and trouble aside.

Sometime later, exactly how long she wasn’t sure and didn’t really care, she lay still in the comforting circle of his arms. She ran her fingers through the hair on his chest, feeling her eyelids growing heavier by the second. “Wow.”

“Wow, yourself,” Peter agreed gladly. But then he shifted slightly beneath her. “Who knows? Maybe retirement won’t be so bad, after all.”

Helen heard the worried undertone in his voice and felt sleep fade out of her reach again. She raised herself up on one elbow and tapped him on the ribs. “You don’t mean that, Peter, do you?”

He sighed. “No, not really.” His eyes looked over her head — off toward a horizon she couldn’t see. “I know what I am, Helen.

I can’t dodge it. I was born to follow the LIFE and the drum — not the lute and the tambourine. If I can’t be a soldier …” He fell silent.

“Then we have to find a way to beat these guys. To win our honor back.

To prove we were right to chase after Grushtin and Serov, and whoever murdered them,” Helen said angrily, feeling her mind starting to come fully alive for the first time since she’d left Randolph Clifford’s ornate office.

“Nice sentiment in theory. But probably impossible to carry out in fact,” he said reluctantly. “I think we’re licked, Helen.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“No,” Peter said finally. Then he shrugged. “But I really don’t know where the hell we go from here.”

“Back to the basics,” Helen suggested.

“Okay,” he said. He sat up in bed again. “The basics being: What’s worth sabotaging a passenger plane, murdering a high-ranking Air Force officer, and slaughtering an entire ship’s crew to keep secret?”

“Heroin?” she speculated. “Bulk quantities of heroin? Stashed inside one or more of those Su-24 engines Serov and his officers sold?”

“Maybe. It fits most of what we know,” Peter said slowly. “And the Russians and our own people have sure bought that as the motive behind all this.”

She heard the doubt in his voice. “But you haven’t?”

He shook his head. “Christ, Helen, I don’t know. Not for sure.” He grimaced. “All I do know is that I’m really tired of having heroin smuggling shoved in my face as a motive at every possible opportunity.”

She nodded. The same thing had been bothering her. The ambush aboard the Star of the White Sea made it clear that the bad guys had been one step ahead of them all the way. If that were so, and they were smuggling drugs, why hadn’t they tried harder to clear away the evidence?

When she asked that question aloud, Peter nodded himself.

“Good point. God knows those guys had plenty of time to themselves aboard that freighter-once they murdered the crew.” He leaned back against the pillow. “No, the more I think about it, the less I believe this whole thing is really about heroin smuggling.”’ “But what about the stuff we found in Gasparov’s suitcase?” Helen asked.

“Coincidence?” Peter suggested. “It could be a coincidence that the bad guys have been running with ever since — leading us down a bunch of blind alleys.”

Helen thought that over. “Maybe. The only real link we had between Captain Grushtin and Colonel Gasparov was that suicide note …”

“Which they forced Grushtin to write under torture,” Peter finished for her.

Helen grimaced. “Well, then, if we’re not chasing smuggled heroin — what the hell are we looking for?”

“Something else kept at Kandalaksha. Something valuable.”

“Su-24 bombers, maybe?” Helen wondered. “What if General Serov wasn’t just selling engines? What if he was selling whole aircraft?”

Peter shook his head. “I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“Because Avery and his team weren’t there to count planes.

They’d have no reason to go anywhere near the flight line or the hangars. If Serov and his commanders were selling off their aircraft inventory, John and his inspection team would never have spotted it.”

“So there’d be no reason for Serov to have Captain Grushtin sabotage their transport plane,” Helen concluded.

“Exactly.”

“Then what do you think the inspection team could have uncovered that spooked Serov?” she asked again.

Peter hesitated for several seconds and then said, “Well, I keep thinking about that circle in John Avery’s inspection logbook.”

Helen remembered the strange notation they’d seen scrawled around one of the nuclear weapon identifier codes. She shivered suddenly.

“Jesus, Peter. You think we might be tracking a loose nuke?”

He nodded, slowly at first and then more decisively. “Yeah. It’s possible. Maybe John spotted something during his inspection — something he wasn’t supposed to see.”

“But he and his team signed off on the Kandalaksha storage site before boarding that plane,” Helen pointed out. “Why not call a treaty violation right then and there?”

Peter shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe he wasn’t sure.” His voice sharpened. “Or maybe he thought it would be too dangerous to say anything at Kandalaksha. Even in Russia, nobody can just back a truck up to a weapons bunker for a quick pickup.

What would you do if you suspected the base commander and some of his top officers had sold one of the bombs in their care?”

“My God.” Helen swallowed hard. It sounded crazy at first — until you realized that nuclear weapons were the only commodity at Kandalaksha more valuable than a shipment of drugs.

“Would anyone believe us if we tripped the alarm?”

“Now? After Pechenga?” Peter asked. He shook his head grimly. “Not a chance. Between the MVD, our own government, and whoever set us up, we’ve been pretty thoroughly discredited.

We’d need hard evidence to set the nuke-hunting teams in motion not just some doodles in a notebook.”

His shoulders slumped. “And there’s the rub. We can’t get that kind of evidence. Once we’re on that flight to Andrews, we’re out of the picture.”

Helen knew he was right. Whether the people who’d tried to kill them in Pechenga had been smuggling drugs or a nuclear weapon, she and Peter needed more information, and they weren’t going to get it if they kept playing by the rules. She lay awake for hours, long after Peter had slipped into a fitful sleep, trying to decide just how far outside the regulations and the law she would be willing to go to discover the truth.