Day of Wrath

CHAPTER TWO EARLY WARNING

Colonel General Feodor Serov slid the pile of brochures and bank transfers into a special file folder and nodded to himself. Cuba would serve as the ideal shelter for his family and his newfound wealth.

His lips thinned into a mocking smile.

Some of his old comrades-in-arms might attribute his decision to a liking for one of the world’s few remaining communist states. Despite his professed fondness for “the U.S.S.R.“s good old days,” they would be wrong.

Ideology was a younger man’s luxury, he thought. Socialism was dead or dying. The mighty Soviet state he had served all his life was gone — leaving only a pale, shrinking ghost in its place.

His lopsided smile turned into a sneer. Yeltsin’s Russia could not even maintain its grip on Chechnya — a piss-poor region inhabited only by ignorant Muslim bandits. Four centuries of Russian and then Soviet imperial conquest were being thrown away by the quarreling fools in Moscow.

No, Serov had far better reasons for settling in Cuba.

Hard currency was king in Castro’s island nation. Land was cheap.

Wages were low. And Fidel’s hard-pressed government didn’t ask inconvenient questions when wealthy expatriates brought their resources to its aid. He and his family could blend in with the growing colony of other newly rich Russians who had already moved there — drawn by the sunny, warm climate, and by the chance to spend ill-gotten gains safely outside the reach of their own country’s law enforcement agencies.

His watch beeped. It was time to attend to more routine matters. He grabbed the folder off his desk and jammed it into a leather valise as he headed for the door. His military aide looked up as he hurried through the outer office. “I’ll be on the flight line for the next hour, Captain, and then I’ll be at Maintenance.”’ Serov clattered down the steps, still mentally organizing his afternoon.

With his relief due in two weeks and his retirement slated for the week after that, his days were crowded. Kandalaksha was a large, complex base, and he wanted — no, needed — the turnover to go smoothly.

Especially with the secret venture he knew only as “the Operation” so close to completion. The ongoing An-32 air crash investigation was bad enough. He couldn’t afford any more slipups that might draw even closer official scrutiny.

His staff car and driver were waiting, with the engine running.

Serov yanked the back door open and slid inside. He snapped out a brusque order: “Let’s get to the flight line, Sergeant.”

Only then did the Russian general realize he wasn’t alone.

The other man in the back seat was slightly smaller than Serov and thinner. He wore a perfectly tailored olive-green Italian suit, and his stylishly cut hair was more gray than black. His face was commonplace, much like that of any anonymous bureaucrat or businessman.

Only his steel-gray eyes betrayed his intensity and ruthlessness.

Rolf Ulrich Reichardt waited for the car door to close behind Serov, then nodded at the driver. “Go.”

Serov scowled. “What the devil are you …?” His voice faded when he realized the sergeant sitting behind the wheel was not his regular driver.

They accelerated away from the curb in response to Reichardt’s order.

At the end of the headquarters building, the driver turned left instead of right. Serov’s blood turned to ice.

He licked his lips nervously and glanced at Reichardt. This man had been his primary contact throughout the Operation.

Some of the other man’s subordinates had made the necessary transportation arrangements; still others had handled payment and security concerns outside Kandalaksha. But Reichardt had supervised every step. He sometimes referred to “his employer,” but Serov had never asked who that employer might be. The enormous sums of money he was being paid made such information unnecessary.

Now Reichardt sat impassively, with his eyes fixed on Serov as they drove past the base administration buildings. The Russian didn’t bother asking him what was going on. He knew the other man would only ignore him.

Serov knew little about Reichardt’s background, but he could make several educated guesses. From his appearance, Reichardt was probably in his late forties. Since he spoke fluent Russian with a German accent, Serov also guessed he had grown up in the DDR, East Germany.

Reichardt’s behavior, his mannerisms, also marked him as a former member of the Stasi, the DDR’s feared secret police agency. Members of the Stasi were cut from the same arrogant, thuggish cloth as the old Soviet KGB. The Russian general hid his distaste. The Stasi had been a necessary evil under the old system. Now they were shadows — dangerous shadows, but shadows nonetheless. Most had gone underground — assuming new identities to avoid arrest after German reunification.

Serov knew more about Reichardt’s methods. The German was a meticulous organizer. He paid almost obsessive attention to every detail. He was also utterly ruthless. One of Serov’s junior officers, officially listed as a deserter from Kandalaksha’s engine maintenance facility, actually lay buried in a swamp a hundred kilometers outside the base.

Reichardt had “removed” the young man simply because he was a potential threat to the Operation’s cover story.

They’d driven for almost five minutes before Reichardt broke the increasingly uncomfortable silence. He nodded toward the driver.

“This is Sergeant Kurgin, Feodor Mikhailovich. He’s just been assigned to Kandalaksha. He will be your driver and orderly until you retire and leave Russia. Do you understand?”

Irked, Serov nodded. So this Kurgin was one of Reichardt’s spies.

Given the German’s predilection for holding all the reins of power, it wasn’t surprising that he would keep Serov under close surveillance for as long as possible. Not surprising, perhaps, but insulting. And worrying, too. Exactly how far did Reichardt’s arm reach?

“And where are we going now?” Serov asked quietly.

“For a private discussion,” the German replied flatly. “A very private discussion.”

They drove in silence for several more minutes before coming to a large, two-story building. Serov recognized it immediately.

Big enough to be a factory, it had housed a jet engine rework facility before being abandoned a few years ago. Other deserted buildings and equipment yards surrounded the building — making it the perfect spot for a covert enterprise. He and a few carefully selected subordinates had used the site for just such a purpose in recent weeks before stripping it again.

The car paused only long enough for Kurgin to hop out and open a heavy metal sliding door before getting back in and pulling the car inside.

Serov and Reichardt stepped out of the car into the abandoned building’s chilly, damp interior. Rusted metal fittings jutted up from the stained and spotted concrete floor, marking where machinery had once been mounted. Dirty windows lined the galvanized metal and bare concrete walls. They admitted just enough light to let them pick their way across the debris-littered floor.

Sergeant Kurgin left the car, walked outside, and pulled the door shut behind him. The sound of the door closing echoed through the building’s cavernous interior.

Serov and Reichardt were left alone inside.

Reichardt dropped any pretense of civility, his face suddenly clouded with cold fury. “Very well, Serov. I have a number of questions for you. And you will give me the right answers to those questions. if you want to leave this place alive.”

Shaken by the explicit threat, the Russian general fought hard not to show his fear. He knew the German well enough to know that he never made idle threats. “You cannot afford to have me disappear, Herr Reichardt. That would only draw more unwanted attention to this base.”

Reichardt laughed derisively. “More attention? How could we possibly get any more publicity? “Arms Inspection Team Crashes After Visiting Russian Bomber Base,’” he quoted. “Your blunder is now front-page news!”

Serov hesitated for a moment, marshaling his arguments carefully now.

“We had no choice in the matter. We could not let them return to Moscow — not with what the American had discovered.”

“You mean, after the American had detected your foolish mistake!”

Reichardt’s voice was low and menacing — like the growl of a lion closing in on its prey. “So now the Americans or the MVD will send more people to probe your activities here. And this time they will sweep Kandalaksha from one end to the other!”

Serov nodded stiffly. “Yes, that is a possibility.” With an effort, Serov tried to regain his composure and put himself back on an equal footing with the German. “But I have taken additional steps to ensure that any official investigation will find nothing of interest. After all, the American, Avery, only stumbled across our operation by chance. We can withstand additional scrutiny.”

“So you hope,” Reichardt replied icily. He paused a moment, considering. “But if you are right, then this crash investigation is our biggest remaining problem.”

Serov felt himself starting to relax. The phrase “our problem” reinforced his growing belief that the other man had decided against liquidating him — at least for the time being. He leaned forward.

“They should find nothing incriminating in the wreckage. Captain Grushtin is an efficient officer. He does not make mistakes.”

Reichardt frowned. “A purely Russian investigation of this air crash would not trouble me, Serov. Such an investigation could be controlled.”

He scowled, thinking aloud now. “But I find the American presence worrying. Managing them will require activating special assets I had hoped to preserve for another day.”

Serov kept quiet. The German had already made it very clear that security arrangements beyond Kandalaksha were not Serov’s concern.

Reichardt shrugged. “That is another matter.” His voice sharpened.

“You are quite sure there are no more ‘mistakes’ waiting to be found at your end of the Operation?”

Increasingly confident, Serov nodded. “My officers and I have taken every possible precaution, Herr Reichardt.”

He froze, suddenly aware of Reichardt’s cold gray stare boring into him., “Do not try my patience, Serov. You promised me perfection once before. You failed. And your failure placed this entire operation in jeopardy.”

Reichardt paused, then took two steps closer to the Russian, bringing them only an arm’s length apart. He lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “Let me be very, very clear, Feodor Mikhailovich. One more error. One more accident. Anything. Anything at all. If this transaction is compromised in any way by your actions or those of your men, you will die.”

The German smiled cruelly. “And I promise you that your death will be painful, as will be the deaths of your wife and daughters.” He let that sink in, watching the horror spread across Serov’s face with satisfaction. “Sergeant Kurgin is not my only agent on this base. I will be watching you, Feodor Mikhailovich. Remember that.”

Reichardt turned abruptly and strode toward the door. Serov followed him, moving slowly on legs that felt shaky.

At the door, the German issued one final warning. “Your only chance of survival is to keep this operation secure and secret.

And you had better hope to God the investigators find nothing incriminating at that crash site.”

He rapped on the door twice, and it slid open. Kurgin came in and walked over to the staff car. Another car was waiting outside.

Without another word, Reichardt turned his back on Serov and climbed into the second car. Moments later it sped off, leaving the Russian general and his new orderly alone.

Stunned, Serov shuddered.

Then, aware that Sergeant Kurgin was watching him, he fought for control over his expression. You knew what you were undertaking, he told himself sternly. He was not a child who could run home crying because the game had suddenly turned sour.

As a fighter pilot, Serov had developed a reputation as a skilled gambler — as a man always willing to push his aircraft to its limits in pursuit of victory. Nothing in his personality had changed with increasing age and rank. And, despite Reichardt’s threats, the Operation still appealed to him. The risks, even now, were manageable, and the rewards-he allowed himself to visualize a vast estate perched above sunlit Caribbean waters — the rewards were dazzling.

No, Serov told himself again, nothing had changed. Not really.

Nothing except that he now knew with absolute certainty that Reichardt would kill his entire family without remorse — should he fail. Well, he should have anticipated that. The stakes were high, very high, both for winning and for losing.

Prince Ibrahim al Saud’s country estate covered several hundred acres of rolling hillside south of Taif. Located in the foothills of the Asir mountain range paralleling the Red Sea, the town was a popular summer getaway for many Saudis. It provided a restful contrast to the bustling cities of Jedda and Riyadh. The higher elevation made it marginally cooler, and irrigation held the sun-baked brown rock of the surrounding landscape at bay.

Entirely surrounded by a low rock wall, Ibrahim’s estate was almost a small town in its own right. Marble from Italy, wood from Turkey, and coral from the Red Sea merged in a series of buildings that were more than a mansion but less than a palace. Outbuildings for the servants and security staff, a garage for a small fleet of luxury automobiles, a helicopter pad and hangar, and a private mosque all surrounded the central residence.

Ibrahim al Saud knelt in the mosque now, facing northwest, toward Mecca. His entire staff, save only the security guards actually on duty, knelt and prayed beside and behind him. By Islamic law, only the noon prayers on Friday required attendance at a mosque, but Ibrahim carefully cultivated his public image as a man of deep religious faith.

As a member of the vast Saudi royal family, he felt it important to maintain the proper appearances in this intensely conservative Islamic land. His various business and other enterprises ran smoother without attracting the unwelcome attention of the Kingdom’s fanatical religious monitors.

He finished the rakat — the cycle of prayer — and stood. Tall and slim, Ibrahim’s dark hair and complexion framed a pair of even darker, penetrating eyes. None of his staff liked to attract his attention, because that meant being pierced by those eyes, searched for flaws, and studied as an object to be used — or discarded.

Barefoot like the rest of the worshippers, the prince turned and watched his staff quickly disperse. He moved toward the door outside, retrieved his own sandals, and walked the fifty meters to the south wing of his residence.

The mansion’s white marble walls reflected the fierce sun, but stepping into the shady portico that surrounded the singlestory building brought instant relief from the glare and the noonday heat. Ibrahim sat down at a small table facing an immaculately landscaped garden — a fantastic mix of flowers and shade trees that would never have survived the Arabian peninsula’s harsh climate without massive irrigation and constant care.

He had never asked how much maintaining this garden cost.

Whether a hundred thousand or a million dollars, the figure was immaterial — a tiny droplet from the boundless sea of his personal fortune.

Like all the Saudi princes, Ibrahim had been born to wealth.

And like them, he had been well educated, schooled first in Cairo, then in Oxford, and finally at Harvard. Unlike most of his royal peers, however, he had demonstrated an uncommon flair for organization and finance.

Over the past thirty years, he had painstakingly built an international business empire that now ranked second to none in Saudi Arabia — Caraco.

Most of the corrupt and foolish members of the Saudi royal family had only parlayed their vast oil wealth into still vaster debts — mortgaging their kingdom to the West for fancy automobiles, aircraft, showcase cities, and other baubles.

But Ibrahim and his allies had carefully diversified their own holdings before the worldwide slump in oil prices. Now Caraco’s yellow-and-black corporate logo flew over banks, engineering firms, transportation companies, and import-export enterprises around the globe.

By blood, he was merely one of several thousand princes — a minor member of Saudi Arabia’s sprawling elite. But when money and personal power were thrown into the equation, Ibrahim al Saud could walk as proudly as any of the great kings of antiquity.

A servant appeared with lunch followed by Hashemi, his personal secretary, bearing the usual thick sheaf of faxes and phone messages.

Ibrahim studied the first and most important: “Mr. Lahoud of the Persian Gulf Environmental Trust will arrive in Taif at one o’clock this afternoon. He requests the honor of an appointment with Prince Ibrahim al Saud — at the prince’s convenience.”

Ibrahim looked up at Hashemi. “Arrange for Mr. Lahoud to be brought to the estate as soon as he arrives in Taif. I will meet with him as soon as he has refreshed himself.”

“You have appointments at two and three this afternoon, Highness,” the other man gently reminded him.

“Reschedule them,” Ibrahim said.

Hashemi nodded silently and glided away to obey his orders.

Ibrahim was still at work an hour later when Hashemi reappeared.

“Mr. Massif Lahoud,” the secretary announced.

The prince rose to greet his visitor, a shorter, darkerskinned, and older man. He noted the armed guards hovering in the background and dismissed them with a wave of his hand. Their presence was customary when he met men who were not members of his personal household, but he would dispense with custom whenever it interfered with operational security.

Ibrahim smiled thinly. He trusted no one absolutely, but he considered Lahoud levelheaded and discreet.

An Egyptian by birth, Lahoud had been handpicked to head the Persian Gulf Environmental Trust by Ibrahim himself — as had all the trust’s personnel. It was a separate company, privately held by Ibrahim. Its public charter proclaimed a determination to counter the rampant pollution in the Gulf by funneling a fixed percentage of Caraco’s corporate profits into worthy environmental efforts.

“You found your trip a pleasant one, Mr. Lahoud?” Ibrahim asked, signaling Hashemi for coffee.

Lahoud nodded. “Both pleasant and speedy — thanks to your generous assistance, Highness.”

A Caraco helicopter had been waiting at Taif when Lahoud’s plane landed — bringing him directly to the estate.

“And your family? They prosper?” the prince continued.

“They do, by the grace of God,” Lahoud answered.

Ibrahim let the conversation drift through the pleasantries that always preceded any meeting in the Middle East for several more minutes before turning to more serious matters. “I assume the trust has been approached to fund another special endeavor, Mr. Lahoud?”

“Indeed, Highness.” The Egyptian handed him a slim manila folder. “A most worthy venture in my judgment.”

Ibrahim flipped it open. A single cover sheet moved straight to the heart of the matter.

Ibrahim turned to the detailed proposal attached to the cover sheet.

He studied it intently in silence and then nodded. The Radical Islamic Front was a small group — a breakaway faction of the much larger and more loosely organized Hizballah. They were known to have good intelligence sources, and it looked as though they’d scored quite a coup this time.

The Front’s plan was a clever one — simple, direct, and with only a minimal chance of detection by the Saudi security services.

And he agreed wholeheartedly with their choice of target.

He’d followed this American’s activities closely now for a number of months. Carleton had apparently dedicated himself to restarting the perennially stalled Middle East peace process once again.

The thought of instigating Carleton’s assassination intrigued Ibrahim.

The man was one of the U.S. State Department’s rising stars, and his official visit would naturally be made under tight security. Killing such a high-ranking diplomat would not only embarrass the Americans and the Saudi security services, it would also make them afraid — unsure of where the next terrorist blow would land. It was also guaranteed to paralyze American policy-making in the region for weeks or months — at least until a new undersecretary was appointed to fill the dead man’s shoes.

All of which would dovetail rather nicely with his own larger plans, Ibrahim decided.

He smiled thinly, imagining again the horror that environmental scientists with Persian Gulf Trust grants would feel if they ever learned they shared funding with some of the world’s most ruthless terrorist organizations. Not that they ever would. He had spent most of a lifetime living and working in two very separate worlds — one the world of international business and finance, and the other the armed struggle against Israel and its allies in the West.

Only a handful of men still living — all of them his most trusted servants knew that Prince Ibrahim al Saud, the chairman of Caraco, was also the hidden financier of international terrorism. For year after year, he had funneled money into carefully selected terrorist operations — always laundering his contributions through a labyrinthine maze of front organizations and other cutouts. And, as other sources of funding for terrorism had dried up, the prince had gathered more and more of the reins of power into his own carefully concealed hands. His word was fast becoming law for terrorist groups as diverse as Hizballah, Hammas, ‘the Radical Islamic Front, Japan’s Red Army, and Colombian’s M19 guerrillas.

Month in and month out, year in and year out, the cycle continued.

Proposals for major terror actions percolated their way upward through his networks until they reached his desk. And then orders issuing the necessary funds filtered back down to the men carrying the guns or bombs. Sometimes Ibrahim felt as though he had been fighting his covert war with America, Europe, and Israel forever — that the long, weary struggle stretched from the moment of his birth and would last until his death.

But he knew that was not so.

Ibrahim could pinpoint the instant, the very second almost, that his hatred for the West had first flared to life.

His eyes closed briefly. Even now the memories were painful.

He had been just seven years old. His father, a farthinking man in many ways, had seen the outside world fast encroaching on Saudi Arabia’s isolation — run by the oceans of oil beneath the Kingdom’s desert sands. Oilmen from Texas, Great Britain, and other Western countries were pouring money into the once impoverished land at a fantastic clip — altering age-old patterns of life in the span of just a few years. To prepare his oldest son to meet the challenges of this new age, Ibrahim’s father had arranged for him to be taught English and schooled in the ways of the modern world.

But his father, so wise in many things, had been so weak and so foolish in others.

The memory stabbed at Ibrahim yet again.

It had been early in the evening. He had come into the room his father used to entertain his prized Western guests — eager to show off the top marks he’d just received from his tutor. Two American executives were there. Americans who worked for one of the major oil companies. Both of them stood looking down at his father with expressions of utter contempt on their faces.

And his father? His once-loved father lay in a drunken stupor on a divan, still clutching the bottle of forbidden whiskey his “guests” had plied him with.

Ibrahim’s stomach churned. It was almost as if he could smell the smoky reek of liquor still hanging in midair.

He remembered one of the Americans glancing quickly toward him, then swinging back to his companion with a harsh, muttered laugh. “No problem. It’s only the sand nigger’s boy.”

From that moment, Ibrahim’s path — his duty — had been clear to him.

His formal education gave shape, form, and purpose to his hatred.

During his years at university in Cairo and Oxford, he gravitated toward fellow students and teachers who preached the need for radical change — first by words and then by violence. Their creed was simple, strident, and seductive. Israel, its American and European backers, and those Arabs and Muslims corrupted by Western money were the source of all that was wrong in the Arab world. Only by armed struggle could the peoples of the Middle East throw off the shackles of their Western exploiters and regain their true place in the world order.

Determined to play a leading role in this new war, Ibrahim had even spent a summer training at one of the new terrorist camps springing up across the Middle East. The men masterminding the resurgence of Arab radicalism had been delighted to find a scion of the House of Saud among their disciples. But they had quickly made it clear to him that he was too valuable an asset to be used as a gun-or bomb-carrying foot soldier. Instead they had given him special skills and training — teaching him how to organize self-contained terrorist cells, intelligence networks, and moneylaundering operations. He had been schooled in the arts of command and deceit and then sent back to Saudi Arabia to put those lessons into practice.

Well, Ibrahim thought coldly, he had repaid their investment in him a million times over.

He returned his attention to the task at hand. The Radical Islamic Front’s plan to destroy the American undersecretary of state contained a single, troubling flaw — a flaw that would have to be mended before it was put into action.

Ibrahim glanced up from the document in his hands. Massif Lahoud sat across the table, watching him closely.

“Do you approve this venture, Highness?” Lahoud asked carefully.

Ibrahim nodded, then held up a single finger. “On one condition.

The Front must first agree to work with Afriz Sallah. You know this man?”

Lahoud shook his head. Usually it was not wise to admit ignorance in front of the prince, but in matters like this there was always much hidden.

“Sallah is a demolitions expert — one who has handled such matters before, usually in Egypt. And the Front lacks the necessary explosives expertise to carry out this operation on its own. I don’t want Carleton walking away unscathed because they bungled the mission. Tell the Front we will cover their expenses and Sallah’s fee — if they can work effectively with him.”

Ibrahim tore off a piece of paper, wrote an address on it, and showed it to Lahoud. “Contact Sallah at this address and arrange a meeting.

Understand?”

The older man read the address, committed it to memory, and then handed the paper back. “I will attend to it immediately, Highness.”

Ibrahim nodded again. “Good. Hashemi will arrange for your transportation back to Taif.”

The meeting was over.

Ibrahim turned his attention back to his paperwork. He had more important matters to manage.

Colonel Peter Thorn left the tent being used as a makeshift morgue more shaken than he’d expected. He wiped off the dab of menthol rub from under his nose and took a deep breath of the fresher air outside. The menthol had helped make the nauseating smells inside the tent bearable — but only by a slim margin.

“Jesus, God,” he muttered, trying to push the grim sights he’d just witnessed to the back of his mind.

“That was a bad one,” agreed a quiet voice from beside his shoulder.

Thorn turned. Helen Gray looked ghostwhite, and so did Koniev. The MVD major was busy dabbing at his mouth with a balled-up handkerchief.

Thorn didn’t blame the younger man for getting sick. He still felt ill himself.

Two teams of Russian doctors were busy in the tent behind them — racing against the clock to positively identify the dead, and to find out what precisely had killed them. They were operating under extremely primitive conditions — forced to conduct autopsies by lamplight on folding tables, with only boiled riverwater at hand to wash off the tables between corpses. There weren’t enough diesel generators available to provide refrigeration yet, so the medical teams were also fighting the rapid decay of the bodies they were trying to examine. Bacteria and other microorganisms were erasing vital physical evidence with every passing hour.

Thorn grimaced. Death was never pretty, but what he’d seen laid out on those autopsy tables was appalling. He sought refuge in routine and turned to Koniev. “So where exactly do we stand, Major? I got lost pretty fast in there. I’m afraid my Russian language skills are limited.”

“Dr. Panichev is fairly confident that he and his subordinates will be able to identify everyone aboard the plane,” the MVD officer replied slowly. “They’ve been able to take fingerprints from most of the bodies recovered so far. They may also need dental records, of course.

I assume you can provide such information for the Americans on the inspection team?”

“Of course.” Helen nodded. The color was just starting to return to her face.

“What about causes of death?” she asked. “My Russian’s a little better than Colonel Thorn’s … but not that much better — especially when it comes to technical terms. And Dr. Panichev is, well. he’s …”

“Cryptic?” Koniev finished for her. He forced a wan smile.

“Plain words are not so impressive to laymen, perhaps. Of course, I suspect the good doctor would even use medical jargon to propose marriage.”

Helen chuckled. “Probably.” She shook her head. “Not like you, I suppose, Alexei?”

“Oh, no.” Koniev’s smile perked up. “I would be extremely eloquent — even poetic.”

Thorn felt faint stirrings of jealousy. Helen and this Russian policeman sometimes seemed entirely too close for his comfort.

Especially when the MVD major’s honesty was still an unknown factor.

Down, boy, Thorn told himself quickly. Helen and Koniev had been assigned together for several months. It was only natural that they would have established a friendly working relationship by now. Still, he had to admit that he would feel far easier in his mind if the MVD officer was not quite so determinedly charming and good-looking.

“In any event, I fear the autopsy results are slim so fan-despite Panichev’s best efforts to dazzle us,” Koniev continued. He shrugged.

“From what I gathered, the predominant cause of death seems to be impact trauma.”

“Oh?” Thorn countered. “What about the burns we’ve noted on every body recovered so far?”

“Mostly postmortem,” the younger man answered.

“And the other injuries we observed?” Helen asked. “The puncture wounds and gouges?”

“Panichev says they appear consistent with a crash. There was a lot of torn metal flying about when the plane hit the trees.”

Koniev frowned. “But the good doctor won’t rule out the possibility that some of them might have been inflicted by shrapnel from a bomb or missile.”

The Russian officer nodded toward the helicopter landing pad — barely visible through the trees. “He’s sent tissue samples to the labs in Moscow so they can be tested for explosive residues. But getting conclusive results will take several days at least.”

Thorn and Helen nodded their understanding. They headed toward a large tent adjacent to the landing pad. Maybe the NTSB and Russia’s Aviation Authority teams had found something new. Maybe.

Pieces of twisted metal and heaps of twisted, fireblackened control and electrical cabling covered the tarp floor inside the tent. The piles of wreckage were scattered in separate sections corresponding to different areas of the aircraft — each marked by painted outlines on the floor and signs in both the Russian and English alphabets.

Technicians wearing gloves and sterile surgical garb crouched beside different pieces of debris — intently examining them and taking detailed notes of their findings. Others stood conferring beside large worktables set up along one wall of the tent.

The tall, gaunt head of the NTSB investigative team, Robert Nielsen, was in one of those small groups. Nielsen turned his head when Thorn and the others came in. He immediately broke away from his colleagues and came over to meet them.

Nielsen looked tired and irritated. The higher-ups in Washington and Moscow were all over the investigation, demanding answers instantly.

Thorn, Helen, and Koniev had been careful not to joggle his elbow, because they understood the difficulties the crash team was operating under. Distant bureaucrats were not as understanding — or as patient.

Still, Thorn and the others needed something, if only a status report.

“Do you have any theories about what went wrong yet?” Helen asked softly.

“Theories, yes. Proof, no.” Nielsen hesitated. “The pilot’s Mayday calls show he lost both props — one right after the other before the plane augered in. So right now we’re looking pretty hard at some kind of catastrophic engine or fuel system failure. That seems the most likely scenario anyway.”

“But you don’t have any hard data that would confirm that?”

Koniev pressed.

Nielsen shook his head wearily. “No, Major, we don’t.” He pointed to two marked sections on the floor. Both were nearly empty. “That’s where we’re going to reconstruct the engines … when we find them. So far we’ve only recovered twenty to thirty percent of the wreck.”

Thorn cut in with a question of his own — one that had been bothering him ever since he’d read the English-language transcripts of the An-3”-s last radio calls. “What are the odds of something going wrong with both engines like that? Accidentally, I mean?”

Nielsen chewed his lower lip for a moment, plainly reluctant to give them a hard and fast answer. Finally, he said slowly, “If this were an American plane flying from an American airport, I’d tell you the odds against losing both props accidentally were high — very high.”

Then the NTSB chief glanced quickly at Koniev and said quietly, “But a Russian aircraft? With Russian maintenance? Well, that puts us in a whole new ballpark, Colonel. I can’t rule anything out. Not a thing.”

Colonel Peter Thorn slid the contents of yet another black plastic bag out onto a folding table and began carefully sorting through the pile.

Scorched wallets. Broken watches. Torn clothing.

Razors. Other toiletries. Mangled paperback books. They were all personal effects recovered from the crash site — the belongings of the dozen men who had died when the doomed An32 fell out of the sky.

He sighed. Cataloging the victims’ possessions was a necessary and important part of any investigation. But that didn’t make it any easier. It raised too many ghosts. He flipped one of the wallets open and stared down at the happy faces of a man and woman surrounded by four smiling children — three adolescent boys and a much younger girl.

It was a picture of Marv Wright, one of John Avery’s team members, and his family.

Thorn shut the wallet and closed his eyes for an instant. He’d met Wright just before the ex-Navy diver shipped out for Moscow. The man had been eager and willing — ready for a new start, a new adventure.

Now what was left of him was lying on a slab inside the morgue tent … “Peter?”

Thorn looked across the tent to where Helen Gray sat sorting through her own pile of personal effects. “Yes?”

“Can you take a look at these for a second?” She held up a pair of battered leather-bound notebooks.

Thorn was at her side in seconds. He leaned over her shoulder and gently touched the front cover of one of the notebooks. Despite the scorch marks and mud stains, he could still make out the gold embossed seal of O.S.I.A. It was an arms inspection team logbook.

He nodded. “You just hit the jackpot, Helen.”

Helen opened the other logbook, carefully peeling torn and charred pages away from each other. She scanned one page and then another.

Her eyes narrowed.

“What’s up?” Thorn asked, leaning closer.

She showed him a page filled with row after row of eightdigit numbers.

All of them had a check mark beside them. “Are these what I think they are?”

“Bomb identifier codes? Yeah, they are,” Thorn agreed.

“Then what do you make of this?” Helen asked, turning the page.

Thorn stared down at more rows of serial numbers. Again, all were checked off. But this time one of the bomb ID codes was also circled boldly. Why? He looked at Helen. “Whose logbook is this?”

“It belonged to John Avery, Peter.”

Avery.

Thorn frowned. He’d known the inspection team leader for years — long before either of them wound up working for O.S.I.A.

As one of the Special Forces’ top nuclear weapons experts, Avery had briefed Thorn and other Delta Force officers on bomb types, security measures, and effects several times. He remembered the former Green Beret’s absolute precision his almost manic attention to detail. Hell, the man had practically charted his own blood/alcohol ratio over drinks at the Fort Bragg Sport Parachute Club. Why would Avery circle a weapon’s serial number after he’d already checked it off?

Thorn leafed through the second logbook and stopped on the same page.

Again, all the bomb codes were checked off. But none of them were circled. He silently showed it to Helen.

She shook her head in confusion. “What does it mean, Peter?”

“I’m damned if I know, but I’d sure like to find out—”

“Special Agent Gray? Colonel Thorn? I think you need to see this. Immediately!”

Alexei Koniev’s voice broke their concentration.

He sounded strained.

They turned around. The Russian major was on the far side of the tent they’d been assigned as a work space. He’d been going through the larger pieces of luggage recovered so far. Now he stood staring down into an open suitcase.

When they joined him, they could see that Koniev was looking at two clear plastic bags nestled carefully among folded clothes.

Both were full of a white, granular powder. He pulled out a penknife and made a small incision at the top of one of the bags.

The MVD major silently offered the bag he’d sliced open to Helen. She dabbed one finger in the powder and studied it closely.

Her face wrinkled. “Christ, Alexei! I think that’s pure heroin!”

Koniev nodded slowly. “Yes, I think so, too.”

Thorn looked down at the bags and then back up at the Russian policeman. “How much is this stuff worth?”

“Two kilos of heroin? On the street?” Koniev grimaced. “Perhaps six billion rubles. Roughly one million of your American dollars.”

“Whose suitcase is that?” Helen demanded.

Koniev looked as though he’d swallowed poison. “Colonel Anatoly Gasparov,” he said reluctantly. “The chief Russian liaison officer to your O.S.I.A inspection team.”

Helen Gray looked up at Thorn, worry written all over her face. “What do you think, Peter?”

He frowned. “I think our lives just got a whole lot more complicated.”’