The Moscow Vector

Chapter Nineteen

The Bundeskriminalamt (BKA)—the Federal Criminal Police—served as the German equivalent of the American FBI. Like the FBI, its several thousand law enforcement officers and forensic experts provided assistance and coordination for the separate police forces of the sixteen individual German states.

And like the FBI, the BKA was also responsible for investigating a wide range of high-level crimes, among them, international arms and narcotics traffick-ing, money laundering, and terrorism.

The agency was in the middle of a large-scale reorganization. The bulk of its personnel and facilities were being gradually relocated to Berlin, with the predictable result being a certain amount of chaos and confusion as BKA units settled into unfamiliar locations around the city.

The State Security Division—charged with investigating high-level political crimes that threatened the Federal Republic—was no exception. Its Berlin-based officers and clerical staff now occupied a five-story building in the Nikolaiviertel, St. Nicholas’ Quarter, a labyrinth of crowded streets, alleys, restaurants, and small museums along the brick-lined banks of the River Spree. The building itself was a modern reconstruction of a centuries-old structure that had once housed medieval merchants and artisans.

Inside the foyer. Otto Fromm sat behind a long counter, manning the front desk at the beginning of the long, dull night shift. He yawned, already bored with the tabloid newspaper he’d brought to keep himself occupied. As a young man straight out of technical school, he had joined the BKA as a lowly uniformed security guard, imagining himself one day promoted to chief detective on the basis of sheer merit. Twenty years later, he was still trapped in the same dead-end position, though at least with substantially higher pay and six weeks of vacation time.

The door from the outside opened in a quick gust of clean, cold air.

He looked up from his paper. A tall, long-legged young woman with fashionably short, almost spiky, auburn hair, a straight nose, firm chin, and very bright, deep blue eyes crossed the foyer, coming straight toward his desk. She was already unbuttoning her long winter coat, revealing a slender figure with small but firm breasts that set his pulse racing.

Fromm’s eyes brightened at the sight of such an attractive woman, especially one without a wedding band on her left hand. His last live-in girlfriend had kicked him out of her apartment just six months ago and now his drinking pals were all urging him to “get back in the hunt.” Unconsciously, he sat up straighter and smoothed back his unruly, thinning hair. “Yes, Fraulein?” he asked politely. “Can I help you?”

She handed him her Bundeskriminalamt identity card with a dazzling smile. “I’m sure you can. My name’s Vogel. Petra Vogel. I’m with the Information Technology Division in Wiesbaden.” Then she swung her leather attache case lightly onto the top of the counter and unsnapped its flap, revealing an array of CD-ROMs nestled in separate compartments. “I’m here to install new software upgrades for your local-area network.”

Fromm looked up at her, unable to conceal his bewilderment. “Now? But almost everyone here has already gone home for the night.”

“That’s precisely the point,” the young woman said pleasantly, still smiling.

“You see, to run the upgrades, it’s possible that I’ll have to shut down parts of your system for an hour or two. This way nobody is seriously inconvenienced or loses too much valuable computer time.”

“But you still need an official authorization for that,” Fromm muttered, fumbling quickly through the papers piled on his desk. He looked up at her in confusion. “And I don’t see any approval for this software upgrade. There’s nothing listed here. Plus, Herr Zentner, our IT specialist, is away on vacation for the next three weeks. Somewhere on the beach in Thailand, I think.”

“Lucky for him,” the auburn-haired woman said enviously. “I wish I could get away to the sun and sand, too.” She sighed. “Look, I don’t know why you don’t have the right paperwork. Someone, somewhere, must have fouled things up. Wiesbaden was supposed to have faxed all that here yesterday.”

She rummaged through one of the inner compartments of her attache case and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “Here’s my copy. See?”

Chewing his lower lip nervously, the security guard got up from his chair.

He read quickly through the copy that she handed him. Written on official letterhead and signed by the director of the Information Technology Division, it ordered Computer Specialist Petra Vogel to conduct a systems software upgrade at the Bundeskriminalamt’s Nikolaiviertel office.

Fromm’s eyes brightened as he saw a discrepancy. “Here’s the problem!” he said, pointing to a telephone number appearing at the top of the document. “This was sent to the wrong place. Our fax number here ends in 46 46.

But your office in Wiesbaden sent this to 46 47 instead. That’s probably the number of a local bakery or a flower shop or something.”

The young woman leaned forw ard to take a look herself, bringing her face very close to his. He swallowed hard, suddenly feeling as though his shirt collar and tie were choking him. The fresh, clean floral scent of her perfume wafted into his flared nostrils.

“Unbelievable,” she murmured. “They muffed it. And now the office in Wiesbaden is closed until tomorrow morning.” She sighed. “So now what am I supposed to do? Go back to my hotel and kick up my heels while waiting for my director’s slow-witted secretary to untangle the mess he’s made?”

Fromm shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I don’t see what else you can do.”

The auburn-haired woman sighed in regret. “That’s a shame.” With a slight pout, she began closing her attache case. “You see, I really wanted to finish this project tonight, so that I could take a day’s leave tomorrow, to explore more of Berlin.”

Fromm caught what he thought might be a subtle nuance in her words. He cleared his throat. “You have friends here to visit? Or family, perhaps?”

“As a matter of fact, no.” She looked meaningfully up at him from under her long, half-lowered eyelashes. “I had hoped to find a new friend. Someone who knows all the ins and outs here in Berlin. Someone who could show me around … maybe even take me to the most exciting new clubs.” Then she sighed. “But I guess I’ll be tied up here instead, just trying to finish the job before my train leaves—”

“No, no, Fraulein,” Fromm said in a strangled voice. “That won’t be necessary.” He held up her authorization letter. “Look, it’s simple enough. What I’ll do is make another copy of this for our records. Then we’ll just pretend it arrived by fax, as it should have. And then you can go ahead and finish your work this evening, as planned.”

“You could do that? Bend the rules that way for me, I mean?” the young woman asked.

“Oh, yes,” Fromm said expansively, puffing out his chest. “Absolutely. I’m the senior security officer on duty. So it’s not a problem. Not a problem at all.”

“That would be wonderful,” she said delightedly, smiling directly at him in a way that made his mouth go dry.

Twenty minutes later, at a landing on the building’s deserted fifth floor, the woman who called herself Petra Vogel stood watching Fromm clomp heavily back down the central staircase running all the way to the ground level. Once he was well out of sight, CIA officer Randi Russell wrinkled her nose in disgust. “What an idiot,” she murmured. “Luckily for me.”

Then she took a deep breath, mentally preparing herself for the risky work ahead. Now that she had vamped her way in through the castle gates, it was time to storm the inner keep. She dipped her hand into her coat and came out with a pair of skintight surgical gloves.

She slipped the gloves on, then turned and entered the room unlocked for her by the ever-helpful Otto Fromm. She carried a set of lockpicks that would have done the job, but it was nice not to have needed them. Even the most sophisticated picks left small scratches inside locks that would show up under close investigation. This operation depended on her getting in and out of the Nikolaiviertel building without leaving hard evidence behind that could tie the CIA to the strange and unexplained actions of the phony Petra Vogel.

Randi closed the door firmly behind her and then carefully examined the layout of the room. Humming and clicking softly, various pieces of compact electronic equipment—sophisticated servers, a modular hub, and routers-lined the walls, connected by a maze of cabling. This was the heart of the State Security Division’s local-area network. Every workstation, printer, and personal computer in the building was tied together by the hardware contained in this one room. Also from here, high-speed, high-security connections linked each office to the main computer systems, databases, and archives inside the BKA’s Wiesbaden headquarters.

She nodded in satisfaction. Phis was exactly where she needed to be. With Karl Zentner, the division’s IT specialist, still off on his long holiday in Thailand, it was unlikely that anyone else here in Berlin would waste much time poking around inside the computer network that he was responsible for maintaining. In the meantime, thanks to her forged ID card, fake paperwork, and Fromm’s over-inflated sexual ego, she had a free pass to try some in-depth digging of her own.

Randi checked her watch. At best, she would only have an hour or so before the balding BKA security guard took his next coffee break and came tramping up the stairs to pester her. It was time to get busy. She moved quickly to a workstation set up in one corner. Rows of well-thumbed software and hardware tech manuals stuffed full of yellow Post-It notes indicated that this must be where Zentner spent most of his time. She pulled up the nearest swivel chair, sat down at the machine, and opened her attache case.

Three of the six CD-ROMs it contained stored legitimate variations of the same information management, access, and retrieval programs used by the Bundeskriminalamt. Two were blanks. The sixth disc held something very different indeed, a piece of highly specialized and extremely advanced software prepared by the CIA’s Office of Research and Development.

Humming quietly to herself, she tapped the keyboard space bar, kicking Zentner’s flat-screen display out of sleep mode. A page topped by the BKA’s logo—a stylized German heraldic eagle with outstretched wings—appeared, welcoming her to the State Security Division’s local-area network. She slid the special CD-ROM into the appropriate drive. The computer whined softly, rapidly transferring information from the disc to its main hard drive. The default screen vanished.

For nearly a minute, Randi held her breath, waiting. Suddenly a small text box flashed onto the blank screen in front of her: DOWNLOAD COMPLETE. SYSTEM READY.

Her shoulder muscles tightened. Her eyes narrowed. Now to find out whether the Agency programmers who had written this code were worth more than their very modest government salaries and pensions. If not, what she was about to do would set off top-level computer security alarms from here to Wiesbaden and back again.

Frowning now as she concentrated, Randi leaned forward and carefully typed in a command of her own: ACTIVATE JANUS.

JANUS, code-named for the Roman god of gates, doors, and beginnings was a top-secret program devised by the CIA’s technical experts to surreptitiously break past or bypass the defenses and alarm systems of a targeted computer network. Once inside those defenses, it was designed to identify, retrieve, and decrypt all of the user identities and passwords stored in the system. And then, by allowing her to masquerade as any BKA staffer—from the lowliest file clerk right up to the agency director himself—the JANUS software should make it possible for Randi to snoop through any file contained in the Bundeskriminalamt’s most secret archives.

Or so ran the theory anyway.

But to the best of her knowledge, this was the program’s first operational test. If there were any bugs in the JANUS code, Randi Russell knew she was about to find out about them the hard way.

For what felt like an eternity, the machine only seemed to whir and click and beep softly to itself. JANUS was busy spreading itself through the entire BKA computer system, rummaging first through the servers and workstations in this building and then rippling outward to those in the rest of Berlin, to Bonn, and the headquarters complex in Wiesbaden.

Randi fought the urge to stand and pace off some of the nervous energy she felt building up inside her. Though she understood the need in this case to rely on the competence of the CIA’s technical people, she did not enjoy the sensation of dependence. She had always resented not being fully in control of her own fate and this was not a personality trait she had been able to hide. There were several memos to that effect in her Agency personnel file noting, with appropriate bureaucratic concern, both her “lone wolf” tenden-cies and willingness to bend rules and regulations whenever she believed it to be necessary.

A new text box flashed onto the display: SECURITY PENETRATION COMPLETE. ALL FILES ACCESSIBLE. NO ALARMS DETECTED.

She sat back with a soft sigh of relief, feeling her shoulders and neck starting to unkink. She was safely inside the BKA system. Then she leaned forward again, intent on the necessary next step in this operation. Her fingers flashed over the keyboard, sending her next commands to JANUS. She ordered the program to retrieve every single report, dossier, and piece of correspondence that so much as mentioned Wulf Renke’s name.

Again, she was forced to sit waiting for JANUS to work its black magic, matching the required passwords to classification levels and then sifting through hundreds of thousands of archived files, some of them digitized copies of paper records dating back as far as thirty years. One-line summaries of the relevant documents began crowding the screen, scrolling upward at a faster and faster pace. Most were from the BKA itself, but others appeared to be classified East German government documents obtained after German reunification.

Randi waited until the enormously long list came to an end and then punched in another order: COPY ALL TO DISC. Controlled by the imperatives laid down in JANUS, the Bundeskriminalamt computer system complied, obediently duplicating every file involving Renke onto the blank CD-ROMs she inserted one after another. With that done, one last command purged the system of the CIA spy program, effectively erasing the most obvious traces of what she had done.

As soon as the BKA default screen popped back up on Zentner’s display, she stood up, slid the various discs into her case, and headed for the door.

Once she was away from this building, she could head to an Agency-owned safe house and get out of this disguise. The man-hungry Computer Specialist Petra Vogel would vanish forever, to the certain dismay of the unfortunate Otto Fromm.

Randi would then take the discs to the CIA’s Berlin Station, where intelligence analysts would begin hunting for anomalies or for other clues. For anything that might explain Wulf Renke’s mysterious ability to evade arrest by the German authorities.

One hour later, a small subroutine hidden deep inside the software which managed the Bundeskriminalamt’s computer systems began its regular daily scan through certain tagged files, examining them for any signs of tampering or unexpected access. Almost immediately, the scan detected significant anomalies and began recording them. The information it collected activated previously unused sections of code within the concealed subroutine, triggering an emergency alert that was e-mailed to a personal computer outside the official BKA network.

From there, the encrypted e-mail went racing eastward, shunted through a succession of Internet servers until it reached its final destination—the Moscow offices of the Brandt Group.

Gerhard Lange read through the auto-generated report in worried silence.

He pursed his thin lips, thinking through the implications of the information it contained. Coming as it did right on top of tonight’s total failure to capture

Smith and Fiona Devin, this latest development was deeply disturbing.

The slim ex-Stasi officer picked up his phone and dialed Brandt’s direct cell number.

“Yes?” Erich Brandt snapped, answering on the first ring. “What is it now?”

“Someone is sniffing around the Renke files,” Lange warned him quietly.

“Who?”

Lange sighed. “That is the difficulty. According to the sentry subroutine we planted inside the BKA computer system, several hundred separate files concerning Herr Professor Renke were just accessed by more than twenty different users, including the director himself, and all within a ten-minute period. What is more, all of those document requests were made from the same workstation, one assigned to the system administrator for a local-area network in Berlin.”

For a moment, there was silence on the line. Then Brandt growled, “That’s impossible.”

“So I would think,” Lange said softly.

“You believe this is the work of the Americans,” Brandt said.

“That seems the likely answer,” Lange agreed. “Certainly both the CIA and the NSA possess the technological means to conduct such a large-scale penetration of the Bundeskriminalamt archives.”

“And the Americans have a motive,” Brandt realized, speaking slowly and reluctantly.

Lange nodded. “Yes. If, that is, one accepts the probability that our security for HYDRA has been compromised to a much greater degree than we had first assumed.”

“So it appears,” Brandt said through gritted teeth. “Well, then, let us hope this latest news escapes the Russians.”

Lange chose his next words very carefully. “If the Americans are probing Renke’s past history, thev could begin tracing our clandestine sources and assets inside the German government—”

“I am well aware of what they may learn,” Brandt interrupted. “Listen closelv, Gerhard. I want vou to assemble a hunter-killer team and fly to Berlin.

Leave tonight, if possible.”

“And my orders?”

“You and your team will find and close this new security breach,” Brandt said icily. “At any cost.”

Chapter Twenty

Located on Lafayette Square across from the White House, the Hay-Adams Hotel was a Washington landmark. For nearly eighty years, American movers and shakers of all kinds—powerful politicians, federal cabinet officers, top White House aides, famous actors, and wealthy corporate executives among them —had been drawn to its beautifully decorated private rooms and public spaces.

The hotel’s premier restaurant, the Lafayette Room, was famous for its award-winning cuisine and superb wine list. For nearly a year, it had also been the favorite haunt of a group of senior staffers for the House and Senate intelligence and armed services committees. Once every week, they met in the Lafayette Room for a “working lunch” with ranking analysts and advisors from the Pentagon, CIA, and State Department. These regular gatherings were seen as an opportunity to exchange information, hash through policy disputes, and smooth over occasional personality clashes in a friendlier, more collegial setting, one far removed from the usual political posturing up on Capitol Hill.

Inside the restaurant’s pristine kitchen, one of the Lafayette Room’s newest sous-chefs, a Romanian immigrant named Dragos Bratianu, worked deftly, swiftly combining snow peas, asparagus, and fresh green beans in a large, shallow bowl with several tablespoons of freshly minced chives and tarragon. He was putting the finishing touches on the special salad ordered by one of the State Department’s most highly regarded experts on Russian foreign policv.

Bratianu risked a cautious, sidelong glance over his shoulder. The other white-coated men and women crowding the kitchen were all busy preparing their own dishes for the weekday lunch crowd. No one was paying close attention to him. This was his opportunity.

Dry-mouthed now, the short, stocky man dipped his right hand into a pocket of his apron and pulled out a small clear glass vial. With one quick, decisive gesture, he unsealed the vial and poured the clear, colorless liquid it contained into the salad he had just made. With that done, he lightly drizzled fresh walnut oil dressing over the bowl, tossed the ingredients to blend their flavors together, and then tapped a bell.

A waitress appeared at the summons. “Yes, Chef?”

“Tour Salade de Printemps for Table Five,” Bratianu told her calmly.

Without demur, she slid the salad bowl onto her silver tray, picked it up, and made her way out through the swinging doors into the elegant dining room beyond. The Romanian-born sous-chef breathed out in relief as the waitress disappeared. He had just earned another twenty thousand American dollars—tax-free money that would appear in his private Panamanian bank account as soon as he reported this latest success to his controller. Meanwhile, yet another deadly HYDRA variant was moving toward its intended victim.

The Vodootvnodny Canal curved through a great arc from east to west before rejoining the Moscow River just a kilometer or so south of the Kremlin. The canal also marked the northern boundary of the Zamoskvoreche district, home to a growing population of foreigners, mostly European and American businessmen and their families. A row of pale yellow three-and four-story buildings lined the southern bank of the frozen canal. First built as luxurious town homes, they had long since been divided up into smaller flats.

Inside the living room of one of those apartments, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith turned away from the window. It was very late, near midnight, and the darkened streets outside were almost completely empty. A blue-and-white militia car drove slowly past and then turned left onto a bridge that ultimately ran straight to the Kremlin. Its glowing red taillights vanished in the solid winter blackness. He let the heavy drapes fall back behind him and looked narrowly at Kirov. “You’re sure this place is safe?”

The Russian shrugged. “Absolutely safe? No, I cannot promise that. But this is certainly the most secure shelter I could find at such short notice.” He smiled. “The landlord is an old friend of mine, a man who owes me many favors —including his life and freedom. Best of all, most of his other tenants are corporate executives rotating through Moscow on short-term assignments, so at least you and Fiona will not stand out as strangers.”

Smith nodded. Kirov had a good point. In a city as crowded as Moscow, neighbors seeing anything or anyone out of the ordinary grew suspicious easily, and they were likely to report strangers to the authorities. But if the other residents in this apartment building were newcomers themselves, he and Fiona were less likely to draw unwanted attention. “So how long can we stay here without causing too much trouble for you or for your friend the landlord?”

“Certainly for two or three days,” Kirov replied. “Perhaps longer. After that, it might be wise to move you to another safe house —possibly one outside the city.”

“And what about you?” Fiona asked quietly. Pale and drawn-looking after the bloody close-quarters melee in the ambulance, she was sitting on a sofa, watching the two men closely. Elena Vedenskava’s case notes were spread out across a coffee table in front of her, along with a pad of notepaper she and Smith had been using to jot down rough translations of the obscure medical jargon and terminology thev contained. Their work had been interrupted when the silver-haired Russian returned from a quick trip to purchase food, a few other staples, and some necessary toiletries. Acquiring new clothes would have to wait until the next morning.

“Me?” Kirov shook his head. “I am in no real danger. I’m quite certain that the men hunting for you and Jon never got a real look at my face.” His eyes were bleak. “At least none of those who are still alive.”

“But what about that SUV vou abandoned? Can they trace it back to you?”

“No,” Kirov told her confidently. “I bought the Niva for cash, through a series of go-betweens. The registration will not lead anyone to me.”

“There’s still a problem,” Smith broke in.

Kirov raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“You and I have a past history of working together, both here and in Washington during the Cassandra smallpox crisis,” Jon pointed out. “And these people, whoever they are, know my name and at least some of my background. They might start asking awkward questions about Oleg Kirov, formerly a general in the Federal Security Service.”

“That is extremely unlikely,” the Russian said simply. His teeth flashed in a quick, wry grin. “You see, before I left the FSB, I made sure that certain top-secret files were … erased. I can assure you that no one searching the records at the Lubyanka headquarters will find any information connecting me to the notorious Colonel Jonathan Smith.” He shrugged his large shoulders again.

“If you recall, even then the details of our temporary association were kept hidden from all but a select few.”

Smith nodded, remembering.

Suddenly aware of his own enormous fatigue, Jon crossed the room and dropped into a battered old armchair across from Fiona. The adrenaline surge during their escape had faded away, leaving him feeling weak and weary. It was a relief to get off his feet, even if only for a few brief moments. He glanced back at the other man. “Okay, so you’re in the clear for now. That’s a relief and a big one. But I’d still like to know exactly what role you’re playing in all of this mess.” He grinned tiredly. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you —not after you saved both our necks. I’m just kind of curious about how you just happened to show up in the nick of time. Especially armed and driving a conveniently untraceable vehicle.”

“Fiona asked me to provide distant cover for her during your rendezvous with Dr. Vedenskaya,” the Russian said quietly. “I was glad to oblige her.”

“Oleg runs a private security consulting firm, mostly advising companies interested in doing business here in Moscow,” Fiona Devin explained. For the first time since their capture and narrow escape, her large eyes twinkled with mild amusement. “But he has a rather wide range of clients.”

“Including your mysterious Mr. Klein,” Kirov interjected calmly. He smiled broadly at Jon. “So once again we are colleagues.”

Smith nodded slowly again as the pieces began falling into place. The retired Russian officer was one of Fiona Devin’s Moscow assets, a member of her handpicked Covert-One team. Pensioned off or not, it was a safe bet that Kirov still had reliable friends and trusted colleagues at every level of the Russian government. No wonder she had been so confident that she could vet his list of potential sources so quickly. And no wonder she had been so sure that Elena Vedenskaya’s FSB security file had been scrubbed clean of any damaging information. How many other files had Kirov doctored before allowing himself to be purged by the Dudarev regime?

Jon studied the taller man silently for a few moments, wondering how he squared working for an American intelligence organization with the lifetime he had already spent as a faithful high-ranking officer in Russia’s army and security services. Cases of divided loyalty all too often turned sour. Men, even the best men, cracked under the strain of deciding between abstract ideals and the closer ties of blood and nationality. Without thinking about how that might sound, he said as much out loud.

“I am still a Russian patriot, Doctor,” Kirov shot back. The muscles around his jaw visibly tightened. “But I am not a blind or unthinking patriot. Dudarev and his supporters are leading the Motherland back into darkness, down an old, tyrannical path that will only bring us to disaster. So long as that is true and so long as the real interests of my country are not damaged, I see no harm in doing what I can to help you in this matter.” He looked steadily at the American, and when he spoke again there was a distinct edge in his voice. “In the past, we have fought side by side and shed blood together, Jon. And now I ask you to put your trust in me one more time. Is that too much to expect, after all I have already risked for you—and for Ms. Devin?”

“No, it’s not,” Smith admitted, realizing abruptly that he had pushed the other man too hard. He rose to his feet so that he could look Kirov directly in the eyes. “I’m sorry, Oleg,” he said quietly, offering his hand. “It was wrong of me to doubt either your honor or your integrity.”

“In your place, I, too, would have such questions,” the Russian assured him. “Suspicion and doubt are inherent perils in this game we play—the game of spies.”

Both plainly abashed, the two men shook hands.

“Now that you and Oleg have decided that you’re both loyal, noble, trust-worthy, and paragons of all the other virtues, do you think you could finish helping me with Dr. Vedenskaya’s notes?” Fiona asked Smith, unable to hide a bemused half-smile. She indicated the papers scattered across the coffee table. “My Russian is very good. But my knowledge of high-tech medical terminology is almost nonexistent. So unless you can explain what all these phrases mean, I’m not going to get very far in turning this material into comprehensible English.”

Smith grinned back ruefully, acknowledging the justice of her complaint.

Still faintly red with embarrassment, he sat back down on the sofa and picked up the next set of case notes. “You may fire when ready, Ms. Devin,” he told her. “Mv brain is at your service.”

With a barely suppressed chuckle, Kirov moved into the apartment’s tiny kitchen to stow their supplies. He poked his head back into the living room only long enough to ask whether anyone wanted him to make tea to help them stay awake. Both did. Once that was done, he joined them, and together they fought their way through small, dense columns of Cyrillic typescript, struggling to make sense out of the various abbreviations and bits of medical shorthand Vedenskaya and the other doctors on her team had used.

This dreary, painstaking work took hours, lasting until well into the early morning. Though difficult to read and occasionally cryptic, Vedenskaya’s notes were remarkably thorough. She had listed every conceivable particular of the first four victims—their names, ages, sex, socioeconomic status, and significant physical and mental characteristics. She had included detailed observations on the course of this mysterious disease in each person, from the first moment they were admitted to the hospital up to the very second they died.

Every test result and autopsy report was there, with all the relevant data broken out and analyzed in dozens of different ways.

At last, Smith sat back with a discouraged sigh. His reddened eyes felt as though he had been rubbing them with sandpaper, and his neck and shoulders were so sore and stiff that they ached at the slightest movement.

“Well, what do you think?” Fiona asked softly.

“That we’re no closer to understanding this puzzle than we were when we started,” he said bluntly. “These notes essentially confirm everything Petrenko told me before he died. None of the victims knew each other. They all lived in widely separated sections of Moscow or the outer suburbs. They didn’t have any common friends or acquaintances. Hell, they didn’t seem to even share any of the same kinds of life or work experiences. There’s absolutely nothing here that I can see operating as a natural vector for this illness.”

“A vector?”

“A vector is any person, animal, or microorganism that transmits a given disease,” Smith explained.

Kirov looked at him closely. “And that’s important?”

Smith nodded. “It could be very important, since it strongly suggests this disease does not have its origins in nature. Which means that whatever killed those people could have been something cooked up in a lab, either accidentally or intentionally—”

He broke off suddenly, thinking hard. His mouth compressed into a thin, grim line.

“What is it, Colonel?” Fiona asked.

“A very ugly thought,” Smith said quietly. He frowned. “Look, those affected by this outbreak seem to have been as different as any four human be-ings could possibly be, right?”

The other two nodded, puzzled.

“Well, it’s almost as if they were selected as experimental subjects—chosen to test the action of some deadly organism or process on humans of varying ages, genders, and metabolisms.”

“That is an ugly thought,” Fiona agreed soberly. Her eyebrows rose.

“You’re thinking of that rumor Vedenskaya repeated, the one about that East German scientist, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am,” Smith said. “If Wulf Renke is still alive, this first outbreak is just the sort of gruesome bioweapons test that sick son of a bitch would love to conduct.” Then his shoulders slumped. “But even considering that possibility doesn’t get us much further. I still haven’t been able to zero in on a useful pattern in these case notes. They don’t seem to contain any data that would give us a clearer idea of exactly where this illness comes from, or how it kills its victims, or even how the damned thing is transmitted.”

“Which confronts us with a disturbing paradox,” Kirov pointed out quietly.

His eyes were cold. “If these records are so useless, then why have so many been murdered to prevent you from studying them?”

Chapter Twenty-One

Eighteen kilometers south of the city center, Berlin’s Brandenburg International Airport was still shrouded in early morning fog when a small corporate jet touched down on Runway Twenty-Five-R. Its twin engines howled as the aircraft decelerated smoothly, rolling past rows of paired red and green lights that bordered the long strip of concrete. Halfway toward the brightly-lit terminal buildings, the jet turned off the runway, taxied to a freight apron near a huge Lufthansa maintenance hangar, and then rolled to a stop.

A black BMW sedan sat parked close by on the gleaming, wet tarmac.

Four lean, fit men wearing heavy overcoats and fur hats disembarked from the aircraft and strode quickly toward the waiting automobile. Each of them carried a lightweight overnight bag, but no other luggage. Their cold, hard eyes were constantly in motion, checking and rechecking their surroundings for potential threats or any other signs of trouble.

A fifth man, this one shorter, heavier-set, and somewhat older, came forward from the BMW to meet them. He offered their leader a cool, correct nod. “Welcome to Germany, mein Hen. How is Moscow these days?”

“Gold and dark,” Gerhard Lange said bleakly. “Just like here.” He looked down at the older man. “Have our immigration and customs clearances been granted?”

“Everything is arranged. The authorities will make no difficulties,” the other man assured him.

“Excellent.” The slim, ex-Stasi officer nodded in satisfaction. “And the special equipment we will need? You have it?”

“In the trunk,” the heavyset man told him.

“Show me.”

The older man led Lange and the three members of his team around to the back of the BMW. He unlocked the large trunk with a flourish and stood aside, allowing them to examine the contents of the five metal cases stacked inside.

Lange smiled grimly as he noted the array of lethal weaponry secured in four of the five carrying cases: Heckler & Koch submachine guns, H&K and Walther-manufactured pistols, spare ammunition, blocks of plastic explosives, detonators, and timing devices. The fifth contained sets of body armor, communications gear, black jumpsuits, assault vests, and forest-green berets similar to those worn by Germay’s elite GSG-9 antiterrorist detachment. Glearly, Brandt was taking no chances. His hunter-killer team would be equipped for almost every conceivable contingency.

“Do you have a target yet?” the heavyset man asked curiously.

Lange’s thin mouth tightened. “Not yet.” Frowning, he closed the trunk and stepped back. “But I expect to receive our next set of orders from Moscow very soon.”

Near the Kazakhstan-Russo Border

A range of low, barren hills rose north of the Derkul River. There were a few scattered stands of stunted trees crowning the heights, but most of the shallow slopes were open ground, covered only by a carpet of long dry grass. Across the river, the terrain flattened out, spreading south and east beyond the distant horizon. This was the northwestern edge of the vast steppes that made up so much of Kazakhstan.

Spetsnaz Senior Lieutenant Yuri Timofeyev lay concealed in the tall dead grass just below the crest of one of the low hills. The muted tan and brown patterns of his camouflage smock and hood blended almost perfectly with the natural cover, rendering him effectively invisible to anyone more than twenty meters away. He peered through his binoculars, again scanning the highway and railroad running parallel to the river below them.

After a minute, he lowered his binoculars and glanced at the man next to him. “Time: 0700 hours. I see two ten-ton trucks, both civilian, and one bus, mostly full. There is also a black Volga sedan, probably an official vehicle of some sort. They are all moving east toward Ural’sk at around eight}- kilometers an hour. There is nothing coming west just now.”

His companion, Warrant Officer Pausin, obediently jotted down his find-ings in a small notebook, adding them to the long list detailing the vehicle and rail traffic they had observed over the past forty-eight hours. “Got it, sir,” he muttered.

“How much longer do we have to sit on our asses here, counting goddamned cars and locomotives?” groused a third Spetsnaz soldier, this one concealed a few meters off to the side. He cradled a short-barreled AKSU-74 submachine gun, a cut-down variant of the standard Russian assault rifle.

“As long as I say so, Ivan,” Timofeyev told him bluntly. Then he shrugged.

“And I say we stay here until headquarters sends me new orders on this little machine.” He gently patted the long-range portable radio set up beside him in the withered grass.

The three Russian commandos, all hard-bitten veterans of the endless fighting in Chechnya, were members of a special long-range reconnaissance group. They had slipped across the border with Kazakhstan two nights ago and established this hidden observation post overlooking the junction of two major roads and the only major stretch of railroad along the northwest Kazakh frontier. Their orders were to monitor all traffic moving on those lines of communication, paying special attention to any military or border patrol units. So far they had seen very few. Most of Kazakhstan’s small, poorly equipped army was stationed far to the east, along its border with the People’s Republic of China.

“It’s still a waste of time,” the third soldier, a sergeant named Belukov complained, still clearly unhappy and bored.

“Would you rather be out chasing after the Mujs?” Pausin asked with a grin, referring to the tough Chechen guerrilla fighters.

“Christ, no,” Belukov admitted with a shiver. Their last combat tour in Chechnya had been a prolonged nightmare, full of sudden, vicious ambushes and costly hit-and-run raids by both warring sides. “But I don’t see the point of this reconnaissance. The only way this crap makes sense is if we’re going to invade. And why should we bother fighting over this dump?” He waved a hand over the desolate, empty steppe stretching off into the gray, half-lit distance.

“Because Kazakhstan once was ours. Nearly half of those who live here are ethnic Russians, people of our own kindred,” Timofeyev said quietly. “And because it is sitting on huge deposits of oil, natural gas, bauxite, gold, chrome ore, and uranium —all the precious stuff President Dudarev’s dreams are made of—”

He broke off suddenly, hearing a horse whinny behind them. The Spetsnaz lieutenant and his two men swung round in surprise —and saw a voung boy staring down at them in astonishment from the top of the hill.

The boy, no more than twelve or thirteen years old, wore the long wool coat, loose white shirt, and baggv brown trousers tied at the waist of a typical Kazakh herdsman. He held the reins of a shaggy steppe pony, which was busy nuzzling the withered grass. A bedroll, tent, and supplies were piled up behind the pony’s saddle.

Carefully, Timofeyev and his men rose to their feet. “What are you doing here?” the Russian snapped. His hand edged slowly, almost imperceptibly, toward the holster at his side. “Well?”

“My father and I are scouting the land, preparing for the spring,” the boy said quickly, still staring with wide eyes at the three camouflage-smocked soldiers. “When we move our herds out of their winter pens around Ural’sk, we need to know where the best forage and water will be found.”

“Your father is with you?” Timofeyev asked gently.

“Oh, no.” The boy shook his head proudlv. “He is riding the land to the west. This stretch of hill country is my responsibility.”

“You are a good son,” the Spetsnaz lieutenant agreed absentmindedly.

Smoothly, he drew his pistol —a silenced P6 Makarov — worked the slide to chamber a round, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

Hit high in the chest, the bov rocked back under the impact. His eyes widened even further, now in horror, as he stared down at the blood running down his torn white shirt. Then, slowly, he fell to his knees.

Timofeyev chambered another round and shot him again, this time in the head. The Kazakh boy crumpled and went down. He lay curled up among the tall stalks of dead grass.

His pony whinnied in alarm. Panicked by the hot, coppery smell of fresh blood, the small sturdy horse reared up on its hind legs and then broke free, galloping back over the hill and out of sight. Belukov, the Spetsnaz sergeant, snarled and sprinted toward the crest, followed a second later by his two comrades.

At the top, he tucked the AKSU-74 against his shoulder and sighted down the barrel, drawing a bead on the steppe pony racing away down the reverse slope. He flipped the firing selector to full automatic.

“No!” Timofeyev knocked the submachine gun down before the sergeant could open fire. “Shooting the beast now would make too much noise. Let it go. The farther that horse runs the better for us. This way, when the Kazakhs come looking for the boy, they won’t know where to start.”

Belukov nodded sullenly, accepting the reproof.

“You and Pausin dig a hole over there,” the lieutenant continued, jerking his thumb toward the closest stand of trees. “While you’re burying the body, I’ll signal headquarters that we’re moving to our alternate position.”

“Shouldn’t we head back across the border?” Belukov asked in surprise.

“Before the Kazakhs start their search for the kid?”

“We have our orders,” Timofeyev reminded him icily. He shrugged. “One regrettable death makes no difference to our mission. After all, when the balloon goes up, other innocents will die. That is the nature of war.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ranch Russell took the steps up to the embassy’s third-floor two at a time. She paused briefly at the landing to clip her Central Intelligence Agency photo ID

card to the breast pocket of her navy blue jacket. Then she pushed open a fire door and turned left, marching fast down a wide corridor. Harried-looking embassy file clerks carrying armloads of visa applications and reams of other official correspondence from one busy office to another saw her coming and moved quickly out of her way.

The tall, square-jawed Marine corporal on duty outside the secure conference room stepped forward to meet her. With one hand on his bolstered sidearm, he peered closely at her ID and then nodded. “You can go right on in, Ms. Russell. Mr. Bennett is expecting you.”

Inside the conference room itself, Curt Bennett, the head of the technical team sent out from the CIA’s Langley headquarters, barely glanced up when she came in. Red-eyed with fatigue, unshaven, and thoroughly disheveled, he sat hunched over a pair of linked personal computers set up at one end of a long table. He and his team had spent all of last night and the morning so far dissecting the material she had copied from the Bundeskriminalamt archives.

Cups of cold coffee and half-full soda cans were scattered around the room, some on the table, some on the floor, and some perched precariously on chairs. Even the air smelled stale.

Randi pulled up a chair and sat down beside him. “I got your page, Curt,” she told the senior analyst—a short, fidgety man with very little hair and a pair of thick, wire-rimmed spectacles. “What can you tell me?”

“That your wild-eyed guess was on target,” he replied, with a quick, toothy grin. “Someone inside the BKA has been a bad, bad boy—at least where Herr Professor Wulf Renke is concerned.”

Randi breathed out, feeling verv much as though an enormous weight had been lifted off her shoulders. The more she had studied Renke’s past, the more she had become convinced that someone high up in German law enforcement was protecting him. How else had the biological weapons scientist so easily avoided capture after the Wall came down? And how else was he able to travel, seemingly at will, to so many of the world’s rogue states —Iraq, North

Korea, Syria, and Libya, among others?

Of course, being sure of her hunch was one thing. Risking her career and the Agency’s relationship with its German ally by breaking into the BKA’s archives was quite another. Hearing that her gamble had paid off was a huge relief. If this operation went sour, the CIA brass at Langley could still toss her to the wolves, but at least they could no longer do it while claiming she was wrong on the facts.

Randi leaned forward. “Show me.”

“Most of the files JANUS picked up were innocuous,” Bennett said. His fingers flew over the keyboard of one of the linked computers while he talked, rapidly bringing documents onto its displav screen and then just as rapidly whisking them back into virtual electronic oblivion. “Standard stuff, really.

Pretty much the same kind of thing we have on Renke in our databases-reports of rumors heard by field agents, mentions of possible sightings that didn’t pan out, routine follow-up queries from senior officials … all that jazz.”

“So what’s different?” she asked.

“What’s different, Randi,” Bennett told her with another big grin, “is that the BKA computer system is full of ghosts.”

“Ghosts?” Randi asked steadilv.

“Deleted files and e-mails,” the CIA computer expert explained. “See, most word processing and database management programs have a common flaw, at least from the vantage point of anyone trying to erase incriminating documents or records.”

“Which is?”

Bennett shrugged. “You can hit the delete key and see a file go ‘poof.’ But that doesn’t really mean that it’s gone forever, shredded into unreadable bits and bytes. It’s actually just been shuffled away, ready to be overwritten when the system needs the space. But since e-mails and most files don’t take up that much room —especially on huge, interconnected systems—they’re usually still there, waiting to be retrieved by the right recovery software.”

“Gee, Curt, let me guess,” Randi said drily. “That’s something you included in JANUS.”

“Yep. That we did.”

“But aren’t there programs designed to wipe deleted files permanently?” she asked after a moment’s thought.

Bennett nodded. “Sure. And a lot of private companies and government agencies use them routinely these days. But almost no one ever bothers going back through their systems to scrub out all the old, supposedly deleted, material that’s been accumulating in various nooks and crannies.”

“Like these ghost files you discovered,” Randi realized.

“Exactly,” the CIA technical expert confirmed. “And that’s how we spotted the way someone inside the BKA has been shielding Wulf Renke. Check out some of his early handiwork.” With a few quick commands, he pulled up a file on one of the computers.

Randi studied the displayed document in silence for a few moments, watching as Bennett clicked from page to page. It was a digitized version of Renke’s official East German government personnel dossier, complete with a black-and-white photograph of the scientist’s face, his fingerprints, a detailed physical description, and brief records of his birth, education, and research.

The picture showed a jowly, round-faced man with wavy, dark hair and thick, bushy eyebrows.

“That’s the one the Bundeskriminalamt has in its current archives,” Bennett said flatly. “The data they send out whenever some other law-enforcement or intelligence agency—say us, or the FBI, or MI6 —gets interested in tracking down Renke and requests information from the German government.”

“But there’s another version of the dossier?” Randi guessed. “An earlier copy of the original that someone erased?”

Bennett nodded. “Watch this.” Again, his fingers danced across the keys.

Another set of digitized images from Renke’s East German personnel file appeared on the second computer screen.

Randi glanced from one to the other, comparing them. Her eyebrows rose in dismay. “Jesus,” she muttered.

The original version of the file showed a different photograph of a very different-looking man, this one much slimmer, with short white hair, and a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. The typed physical description matched this photograph, and it was clear, even on a quick inspection, that the fingerprints in this dossier were not the same ones appended to the newer file.

“No wonder no one ever lays a glove on Renke,” Randi said bitterly.

“Thanks to that forged dossier, we’ve been looking for the wrong guy, probably somebody who’s been dead since at least 1989. Meanwhile, the real Wulf Renke can waltz in and out of just about any country he chooses, confident that his fingerprints and face won’t set off any warning bells.”

“Yep,” Bennett agreed. He gently patted the side of one of the computers.

“And the more we dig into the material you swiped, the more we find evidence of a continuing pattern of protection for Herr Professor Renke. For pretty much the past fifteen years, any genuine sightings of Renke have been routinely altered by the same BKA source. And anyone trying to follow up on those forged reports must have found themselves tearing off on a series of really wild-goose chases.”

For a moment, Randi eyed the shorter man carefully. Then she grinned.

“Okay, Curt. I know you’re itching to dazzle me with your knowledge. So spill it. Who is the traitor inside the Bundeskriminalamt? Who’s been covering up for Renke all these years.”

“His name is Ulrich Kessler,” Bennett said matter-of-factly. “Basically, the guy’s electronic fingerprints—his network user ID and his passwords—are all over those deleted files. Plus, he was perfectly positioned to help Renke evade arrest when the Wall went down.”

“How so?”

“Kessler was the ranking BKA officer in charge of the original investigation,” Bennett told her bluntly. “The Renke case was almost entirely his show, right from its promising start all the way to its inglorious and frustrating finish.”

“Swell. Just swell.” Randi stared at the “ghost” dossier for a few seconds more and then shook her head in disgust. “And where is this son of a bitch Kessler stationed now?”

“Right here in Berlin,” Bennett replied. “But he’s been promoted a long way up through the ranks.” He smiled cynically. “Probably as a reward for his first big failure, at least if the Germans work the same way we do.”

Randi snorted. “Go on. Give me the bad news.”

“Ulrich Kessler is one of the BKA’s most senior administrators,” Bennett said quietly. He shrugged. “In fact, he’s basically one of the right-hand men for Germany’s Minister of the Interior.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Strike Force Lead, 164th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment The twin-tailed Su-34 fighter-bomber raced low over the gently rolling countryside, roaring southwest through the pitch-black night at nearly eight hundred kilometers an hour. The aircraft shuddered and bounced sporadically, buffeted by turbulent currents of warmer and colder air.

The Su-34’s two-man crew sat side-by-side in its large cockpit, with the pilot/commander on the left and the navigator/weapons officer on the right.

Both crewmen were sweating now in their G-suits, intensely focused on the mission at hand. Softly glowing multi-function displays allowed each man to monitor the critical systems under his control. But the pilot, a sturdy, middle-aged Russian Air Force major, spent almost every moment peering intently through his infrared heads-up display, or 11UD, carefully scanning the sky and ground ahead.

To help avoid detection by enemy radar, they were flying at an altitude of less than two hundred meters —and at this speed that left no room for pilot error or inattention. Small pools of white light, signs of isolated villages and lone farm compounds, streaked toward them out of the green-tinted darkness and then vanished just as quickly astern.

“Twenty kilometers to primary target,” the navigator, a younger captain, announced quietly at last. He pushed a button on one of the displays set at his right knee. “Cue up.”

“Understood,” the major muttered, impatiently blinking away a small droplet of sweat that stung his right eye. A small box appeared on his HUD, above and just a few degrees to the left of the Su-34’s current flight path. The box was a navigation cue supplied by their onboard computer—a visual guide to their primary ground attack target. He pulled back on the stick, climbing steeply to two thousand meters or so and turning slightly until the target box was centered on his display.

The brighter glow of city lights appeared ahead, spreading across the horizon as they closed in. A web of roads and rail lines converged on the growing sea of lights, cutting straight across the darkened landscape. The darker ribbon of a wide river, the Dnipro, came into view to the east. Days and weeks of intensive map study paid off as he recognized the outer eastern suburbs of Kiev, Ukraine’s capital.

“Fifteen kilometers,” the Su-34’s navigator reported. He touched another set of buttons. “Ordnance guidance systems active. Coordinates downloaded.”

Suddenly a warning tone sounded in the major’s headset.

“Search radar spike!” the navigator snapped, scanning his defense displays frantically. “Detection alert! Right rear quadrant!”

“Jam it,” the major growled. They had been picked up by Ukrainian radar, probably those sited at the large air defense complex outside Konotop. He snorted softly in disgust. According to the mission brief, covertly inserted Spetsnaz teams were supposed to have destroyed those radars fifteen minutes ago.

So much for the Army’s arrogant, fawned-over commandos, he thought coldly.

Then he shrugged. Even in these days of high-tech combat, of satellites and precision-guided weaponry, the old adage that no plan ever fully survived contact with the enemy was still true. War was always the province of random chance, uncertainty, and human and machine error.

Beside him the navigator was busy with the controls on his console, trying to jam the powerful Ukrainian search radar with the Su-34’s built-in electronic countermeasures systems. It would be a miracle if he managed it, but every extra second he bought them was valuable. The range-to-target indicator on the HUD now showed twelve kilometers. The target cue box flashed red.

They were almost in range of their primary target, the wartime headquarters for the Ukrainian Defense Council.

A new, shriller tone sounded in the major’s earphones.

“Weapons radar lock-on!” his crewmate warned. “SAM launch detected!

Two missiles inbound. Pattern indicates they are S-300s. Commencing active and passive defense measures now!”

“Shit,” the major said under his breath. The S-300 was one of the most modern long-range surface-to-air missiles in the Ukrainian arsenal, the equivalent of the American Patriot missile.

The Su-34 shuddered briefly as onboard chaff dispensers fired. Cartridges popped out and detonated behind the speeding fighter-bomber. Within a second, clouds of thousands of tiny Mylar strips blossomed in the air. Each ultra-thin strip of chaff was precisely cut to match the wavelength used by the enemy radar locked on to them. With luck, the rapidly widening chaff blooms would decoy the incoming SAMs awav from them.

“Come on. Come on!” the major heard himself muttering under his breath, still grimly holding his aircraft on course despite the temptation to begin immediate evasive maneuvers. The target box turned green. They were in range.

“Weapons away!” he snarled, punching the release button on his stick. Immediately, the Su-34 jolted upward, several thousands of kilos lighter as four precision-guided bombs tumbled away from under its wings. Without waiting any longer, the colonel yanked the stick hard left, rolled the aircraft upside down, and dove for the ground in a tight, hard, multiple-G turn.

He rolled out of the dive barely a hundred meters off the deck—so close to the ground that trees, barns, houses, and electric power pylons appeared out of the darkness and disappeared almost before they even registered as solid objects in his vision. The warning tone in his headphones fell silent.

“Radar lock broken!” his navigator confirmed, breathing easier. “We’re below their horizon.”

The major yanked his head around, craning his neck to look through the clear canopy behind them. A succession of dazzling white flashes cascaded across the horizon, momentarily turning the black night into brilliant day.

“Bomb impact,” the navigator said quietly. “The computer predicts that all weapons hit the designated target.”

Suddenly everything outside the Su-34’s cockpit went black.

A new voice sounded in their headsets. “Attack simulation complete. Stand-by.”

With a shrill hydraulic whine, the canopy swung up, revealing a cavernous hangar filled with several other large boxlike Su-34 flight simulators. The other machines were still in motion, twisting and tilting rapidly while computer-driven displays provided crews with realistic views of the sky and ground outside their wildly maneuvering aircraft.

The major frowned, thinking back over the events of the past hour. “Reset the mission, Controller,” he said, speaking into his throat mike. “This time I want to try a slightly different flight path to see if we can avoid detection from Konotop when we pop up to drop our bombs.”

His navigator glanced across the cockpit at him with a wean grin. “That was our fifth time through this attack run today, Sergei Nikolayevich. We’ve been in the simulators twelve hours a day for three days now, running through every possible permutation and wrinkle. Couldn’t we take a break for a bit, at least just to stretch our legs?”

The major shook his head. “Not yet, Vladimir,” he told the other man firmly. He shrugged. “You’ve seen the warning orders from Moscow. We’ve only got two more days to train here before the whole regiment deploys to Bryansk. And I don’t buy any of the nonsense about this being just a so-called emergency readiness exercise.”

The Su-34 squadron commander looked seriously at his subordinate. “Remember, if we do wind up carrying out this air strike on Kiev, there won’t be any room for serious mistakes or miscalculations. There won’t be any second chances if we screw up during the real mission. We’d better be damned ready, or we’re going to end up dead.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Russian President Viktor Dudarev maintained his private office in the central section of the triangular, yellow-and-white Senate building. In sharp contrast to the incredibly ornate ceremonial audience chambers that were scattered throughout the other Kremlin palaces, this small, rectangular room was furnished simply and practicallv, with only a few touches of classical elegance.

The elaborate coat of arms of the Russian Federation hung on the wall behind Dudarev’s malachite-topped desk. Two flags flanked the desk —on the left, Russia’s white, blue, and red national banner, and on the right, the more intricate and colorful Presidential Standard. These banners were the only traces of bright color in the entire office, which was otherwise marked by dark oak paneling, a high molded ceiling painted in muted yellows and eggshell whites, and the faded green, red, and ochre geometric designs of a centuries-old Astrakhan rug. Along the interior walls stood bookcases filled with rare volumes and up-to-date reference works. Between the room’s two windows stood a long oak table surrounded by straight-backed chairs.

Konstantin Malkovic occupied one of those chairs. He glanced across the table at Dudarev and then quickly at the stocky, gray-haired man seated next to the Russian president. The Serbian-born billionaire hid a frown. The unexpected presence of Alexei Ivanov, the dour head of the FSB’s Thirteenth Directorate, at this critical meeting disturbed him.

He sensed the same uneasy mood in the man sitting on his own right, Erich Brandt. Before they arrived at the Kremlin, the former Stasi officer had notified him that Ivanov was likely to make trouble for them over HYDRA’s unfortunate security lapses. Studying the Russian spy chiefs sternly impassive face, Malkovic decided Brandt was probably correct. Something about Ivanov’s hooded look reminded him of a big cat—a tiger or a leopard —lazily eyeing those whom it considered potential prey.

It was an image he found unsettling.

When he had first opened negotiations with the Russians, the German had warned him of the potential dangers, reminding him that, “When you try to ride the tiger, sometimes the tiger eats you.” At the time, Malkovic had dismissed Brandt’s concerns, judging them far too pessimistic. Now, sitting across the table from the grim head of the Thirteenth Directorate, the billionaire began to understand his subordinate’s warnings.

With an effort, Malkovic forced those unwelcome thoughts away. Perhaps his nerves were only playing tricks on him. This was a moment of imminent triumph, the payoff for years of risky, expensive research and intricate planning. This was not a time to fret. He turned his attention back to the large screen set up at the head of the table. Colonel Piotr Kirichenko, Dudarev’s military aide stood there, using a handheld controller to display the different map slides and charts that comprised this Most-Secret briefing.

“The tank, motor rifle, Spetsnaz, and combat aviation units earmarked for Operation ZHUKOV continue to deploy from their peacetime bases to their designated war concentration areas,” Kirichenko said, using the controller to highlight key points along Russia’s borders with Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. “So far, there are no indications that the United States or its allies have detected the magnitude of these troop transfers. Or that they understand their real significance.”

“The West’s ignorance is thanks largely to HYDRA, the special weapon I have supplied,” Malkovic interjected. Whatever Ivanov’s purpose here today, it was always best to remind these Russians of just how much they owed him.

“By killing so many of their best intelligence analysts, my agents have made it almost impossible for the CIA, MI6, or any of their counterparts to pierce the more conventional veil of secrecy you have drawn over these movements.” He smiled pleasantly. “Naturally, the same holds true for the countries which are your intended victims. Once HYDRA has run its course, too few of their key military commanders and political leaders will remain alive to coordinate any effective opposition to your operations.”

“Yes, it is quite clear that this viral assassination weapon of yours has proved its worth … thus far,” Dudarev agreed coolly.

Ivanov simply shrugged. His broad face showed no real emotion.

The Russian president nodded to Kirichenko. “Continue, Piotr.”

“Sir.” The colonel obeyed. “Once ZHUKOV commences, our long-range aviation regiments will conduct simultaneous strikes against a wide range of targets—command and control facilities, air defense sites, airfields, and enemy troop concentrations.” He touched a button on the controller. Dozens of red stars appeared on the map, identifying targets scattered widely across the former Soviet republics slated for reconquest.

“At the same time, our tanks and motorized infantry units will advance, moving rapidly to secure their designated objectives,” Kirichenko went on enthusiastically. Arrows slashed across the map, driving hundreds of kilometers deep into hostile territory to secure important cities, bridges, road and rail junctions, and vital industrial areas. Whole swathes of the map turned red, indicating their planned occupation and forcible return to Russian control—all of Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, and the entire eastern half of Ukraine.

Malkovic nodded, paying less and less attention as Dudarev’s aide began a detailed appreciation of the precise units involved, their strengths and equipment, and their specific orders. To his way of thinking, these were mere tactical details, important only to the generals and other military men involved.

He was more interested in the bigger picture, in contemplating how this operation would shift the balance of power around the globe.

The ZHUKOV plan made excellent strategic, political, and economic sense. For Russia, it meant securing more defensible borders, reclaiming vast regions rich in natural resources and heavy industry, and bringing tens of millions of ethnic Russians back under the Kremlin’s authority and protection. In the long run, it would mark the beginning of a grand effort to reclaim Russia’s rightful place as one of the world’s great powers, as an imperial nation whose strength would someday again rival that of the United States. In the short term, crushing the most successful of the new democracies surrounding Russia was vital to Dudarev’s own political survival. For now, a majority of Russia’s citizens supported his authoritarian rule, but there were signs of rising discontent—discontent he blamed on the democratic examples set by its onetime subject peoples.

For Malkovic himself, ZHUKOV represented the opportunity to become one of the richest and most powerful men in all of human history. That was a dream he had nurtured from his childhood as a despised, poverty-stricken refugee drifting around Europe. As he grew older and began to realize the extent of his skills—especially his uncanny ability to predict the future movements of financial and commodities markets—the dream had turned into a burning desire, a driving passion above all others.

Now fantastically wealthy, he exercised a substantial measure of influence over several governments in Europe, Africa, and Asia—both through his overall economic clout and through direct bribes to susceptible politicians and bureaucrats. His enormous holdings also allowed him to subtly manipulate the operations of banks, brokerage houses, investment firms, pharmaceutical labs, oil companies, arms manufacturers, and other industries around the world. Through the Brandt Group, he commanded a force of hired killers and spies, enabling him to act clandestinely and violently if necessary against his personal enemies and business rivals. But, of late, he had discovered there were still limits to his power. To his dismay, there were politicians he could not bribe or threaten, corporations he could not buy, and laws and regulations he could not yet overturn or safely ignore.

And so Malkovic had begun scheming to find a way to increase his personal wealth and power at least ten-fold. Long ago, in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, he had secured the services of various Soviet-bloc weapons scientists—Wulf Renke among them. At the time he had only imagined developing a discreet side venture for one of his shell companies, the business of supplying unconventional armaments to the world’s richest rogue states in return for huge sums of thoroughly illegal cash.

But when Renke came to him with the HYDRA breakthrough —the ultimate precision-guided assassin’s weapon —the Serbian-born billionaire had seen its potential in a single shattering instant. Control over this undetectable, unstoppable, and incurable weapon would give him the power he had long desired. With it, he could break nations whose leaders opposed him, and reward those who allied themselves with his purposes.

Under Viktor Dudarev, Russia had chosen the path of wisdom.

As payment for use of the HYDRA weapon to soften up their enemies in the West and the former Soviet republics, Dudarev and his allies in the Kremlin had signed solemn and secret agreements with Malkovic, sealing a bargain that benefited both sides. By crippling the West’s intelligence services, HYDRA was making it possible for Russia to plan, organize, and conduct its military campaign without interference from America and its allies. Once the shooting started, the Europeans and Americans were sure to protest fiercely, but if they were caught by surprise it was extremely unlikely that they would risk a wider war by intervening. Presented with the hard fact of Russian troops on the ground and firmly in control, the Americans would blink, reluctantly accepting reality.

In turn, when Russia’s conquests were complete, the billionaire would own the lion’s share of the captured oil, natural gas, mining, armaments, and other industries. Within a short time, the profits from these new holdings would make him the richest man in the world, far eclipsing any possible rival.

Malkovic gloried in that approaching prospect. Fools argued that wealth was the root of all evil. Wise men knew better: Money was only a lever, a tool that could be used to remake the world as one saw fit.

“When will you attack?” he heard Brandt ask.

Kirichenko looked at Dudarev, received a brief nod, and answered the question. “ZHUKOV will commence in less than five days,” he replied. “The first Spetsnaz raids and air strikes will begin a few minutes after midnight on February 24. Our tanks and other troops will cross the frontier shortly after that.”

“Without prior provocation?” Brandt said cynically. “Forgive me, Colonel, but that seems somewhat… unsubtle.”

Ivanov leaned forward in his seat with a thin, humorless smile. “There will be ample provocation, Herr Brandt.” His eyes were cold. “For example, in Ukraine, special intelligence strongly suggests there may soon be a regrettable terrorist incident, one that will kill a great many innocent ethnic Russians.”

Brandt nodded coolly. “I see. That is certainly convenient. And naturallv this terrorist attack would demand an immediate military response by your forces.”

“Naturally,” Ivanov agreed laconically. “If the Kiev government cannot protect our people from its own Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, then we must do it for them.”

Listening, Malkovic snorted. He turned to Dudarev. “And what excuse will you find to intervene in Georgia and the other countries?”

The Russian president shrugged. “In Georgia and the rest of the former republics, there are already signs of growing political instability.” He inclined his head toward the billionaire with a dry, ironic smile. “Thanks, of course, to the civilian and military leadership deaths inflicted by your HYDRA virus.”

Malkovic nodded.

But now Ivanov pounced. “Unfortunately, Mr. Malkovic, HYDRA itself may now present the greatest threat to our success.” Coldly, the head of the Thirteenth Directorate looked across the table at Brandt. “Herr Brandt’s failure to eliminate Dr. Petrenko before he talked was a serious mistake. But his continuing failure to capture or kill this Colonel Smith and his associates is a potential disaster. The longer Smith runs free here in Moscow, the greater the chance that he will penetrate the HYDRA secret. Put bluntly, that is a chance we cannot take.”

“Very true, Alexei,” Dudarev agreed. The Russian president pointed to the screen depicting armored spearheads thrusting deep into Ukraine, Georgia, and the others. “ZHUKOV’s success depends entirely on our achieving almost complete surprise. But if the Americans learn of our involvement in the deaths caused by your viral weapon, everything we hope to achieve is put at risk.”

“What do you propose?” Malkovic asked stiffly.

“First, that my directorate assume full control over the search for Smith and the American journalist, Ms. Devin,” Ivanov told him. He turned back to Brandt. “But I want total cooperation this time. Nothing must be held back or concealed from me. Nothing. Is that clearly understood?”

For a moment, the former Stasi officer said nothing. His jaw tightened as he tried to hide his anger. Then he shrugged elaborately, feigning almost total indifference. “As you wish.”

Malkovic kept his gaze fixed on Dudarev. For all his ruthlessness, Ivanov, like Brandt, was merely a servant. The Russian president was the man who pulled the strings. He raised a single eyebrow. “Well, Viktor, is that all?”

Dudarev shook his head. “Not quite, my friend.” His fingers drummed softly on the table. “This American intelligence effort troubles me. Despite its real successes, so far, at least, it appears that HYDRA has not yet sufficiently blinded Washington. I also worry that President Castilla may prove more stubborn than wise. If, in the end, he proves unwilling to accept our conquests, the risk of an unwanted direct confrontation with the United States grows exponentially. Given our strategic advantages in Ukraine and central Asia, we should still prevail, but the costs, in troops, equipment, and money, might be excessive.”

The other men in the room nodded slowly.

“For that reason,” Dudarev continued, “I have decided to make sure that this particular American president no longer threatens us.” He focused his eyes on Malkovic. “You will instruct your people to hand over the appropriate HYDRA variant to one of Ivanov’s couriers as soon as possible.”

Malkovic stiffened in surprise. “But the risks of killing Castilla are — “

“Manageable,” the Russian leader said calmly. He glanced at Ivanov.

“Correct?”

The head of the Thirteenth Directorate nodded coldly. “We have a mole in place, inside the White House,” he confirmed. “Deploying HYDRA successfully should present no particular problems.”

Malkovic felt cold. “There will be hell to pay if the United States ever suspects what we have done,” he said tightly.

Dudarev shrugged. “Let the Americans suspect what they will, so long as they cannot prove anything.” He smiled thinly. “Which brings me to another concern. In the circumstances, with American agents on the prowl, have you considered the possible dangers to your HYDRA facility?”

“The lab is secure,” Malkovic told him flatly. “The Americans will not discover it.”

Beside him, Brandt nodded in agreement.

Dudarev eyed them both with amused cynicism. “That is good news,” he said after a moment, delaying just long enough to make it clear that he did not believe them. “Still, it might be safer for all of us if Dr. Renke and his scientific team were transferred here —to one of our special maximum-security Bioaparat complexes, for example. Don’t you agree?”

Malkovic grimaced. Now he could see the game the Russian president was playing. Complete control over HYDRA and the secret of its creation was his high card in this high-stakes gamble. The unique viral weapon created by Renke made the billionaire an irreplaceable ally, a man with whom Dndarev must deal as an equal. But if he ever lost his monopoly on this lethal technology, the men in the Kremlin would be free to act as they saw fit. For that reason, he had kept all knowledge of Renke’s whereabouts a closely guarded secret, especially from the Russians.

“The facility is safe,” he repeated coldly. “Of that you have my most solemn word.”

Dndarev nodded slowly. “Very well, I am willing to accept your pledge.”

Then, quite abruptly, his seemingly mild, half-amused expression hardened.

“But one thing must be made absolutely explicit, Mr. Malkovic: Since you will not allow us to protect the secret of this weapon ourselves, we will hold you personally responsible for any further failures. Five days remain before we can launch ZHUKOV. Five short clays. But until our soldiers and combat aircraft are in action, the Americans must not learn of HYDRA’s existence. If they do, your life is forfeit. Remember that fact.”

Later, during the brief limousine ride back to his Pashkov House office, Malkovic moodily considered the Russian president’s threat. So the tiger has shown me its teeth and claws, he thought grimly. He scowled. All the more reason then to make sure that he kept a firm grip around its throat.

He looked across at Brandt. The tall, blond-haired German was sitting on the rear-facing seat, staring blindly out the window.

“Will Ivanov succeed in capturing or killing the Americans?” Malkovic asked quietly.

Brandt snorted. “I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“Because the militia and the security services are fundamentally unreliable,” the German explained slowly through gritted teeth. “For all of Dudarev’s vaunted purges, both still contain too many officers who are either corrupt and willing to sell information or protection to fugitives with enough money—or else who are tainted by so-called ‘reformist’ ideals. The chances are too great that Smith and Devin will find officials willing to help them, or at least to turn a blind eye while they escape. If Ivanov thinks otherwise, he’s a fool.”

Malkovic pondered his subordinate’s bitter, cynical assessment in silence.

With his own neck very much on the line, hearing Brandt’s low opinion of the FSB and militia was deeply worrying.

The billionaire came to a decision. “Then you will continue your own hunt for Smith and Devin,” he told Brandt. “I want them found, and found quickly. Preferably by your men, and not by the Russians.”

“What about the Thirteenth Directorate?” the other man wondered. “You heard Ivanov. He’ll want every scrap of information we dig up. It will be hard enough tracking down the Americans without tripping over FSB agents at ever\: turn.”

Malkovic nodded. “I understand.” He shrugged. “Give the Russians enough of the data you have obtained on this man Smith to keep them happy.

In the meantime, press your own search as far and as fast as possible.”

“Capturing the two Americans under Ivanov’s nose will be difficult,”

Brandt warned. “But I promise you that my men and I will.”

“I am not paying you to try, Herr Brandt,” the billionaire said ieilv. “I am paying you to succeed. I strongly suggest that you remember the difference.”

“And if I take Smith and Ms. Devin alive?” the German asked calmly, ignoring the implied threat. “Without Ivanov finding out, I mean. What are your orders then?”

“Squeeze them dry,” Malkovic said brutally. “Find out who they’re working for and how much information on HYDRA they have already relayed to the United States — “

“And after that?”

“Kill them,” Malkovic snapped. “Quickly, if necessary. But slowly, if possible. Colonel Smith and Ms. Devin have caused me a great deal of trouble and anxiety. That is something I would dearly like them to regret.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Jon Smith reacted instantly to the sound of a soft knock on the apartment’s front door. Rising from the sofa where he had been trying to catch up on his sleep, he scooped up the 9mm Makarov from the coffee table, thumbed the safety off, and yanked back on the slide to chamber a round. Then he swung around with the pistol extended in both hands, ready to fire. He breathed out, calming himself as he steadied his aim. The Makarov’s front and rear sights settled on the center of the door and stayed there.

With her own weapon held at the ready, Fiona Devin came ghosting in from the bedroom, moving cat-quiet on her bare feet across the scuffed hard-wood floor. “Who is it?” she called out in Russian, altering the tenor of her voice to imitate the quaver of an old woman.

A man answered her, his voice muffled by the heavy wood door. “It’s me, Oleg.”

Smith relaxed slightly. He recognized Kirov’s voice. More important, by using only his first name the Russian had signaled them that it was safe. If he had identified himself fully, he would have been warning them that he was acting under duress, as a prisoner of either the Moscow militia or of anyone else who might be hunting for them.

Slowly, Smith lowered his Makarov and put the safety back on. Fiona did the same with her weapon and then went forward to unlock and unbolt the door.

The tall, barrel-chested Russian came in quickly, carrying a pair of heavy suitcases. His silver eyebrows rose when he saw the pistols in their hands. “You are nervous?” he asked. Then he nodded grimly. “And so you should be.”

“What’s up?”

Kirov set the suitcases down and moved to the nearest window. He pulled back the drapes a bit. “Come and see for yourselves,” he suggested, nodding at the street below.

Smith and Fiona joined him.

Cars and delivery trucks were backed up all along the bridge across the Vodootvodny Canal. Militiamen in gray overcoats and peaked caps were moving in pairs from vehicle to vehicle, bending down to examine papers and ask questions of each driver. A squad of soldiers armed with assault rifles and clad in winter-pattern camouflage uniforms stood guard at the nearest intersection.

“Ministry of the Interior troops,” Kirov said coolly. “From what I’ve seen, there are checkpoints going up at most of the key intersections and outside the more important Metro transfer stations.”

“Damn,” Smith muttered. He glanced at the other man. “What’s the official reason they’re giving?”

Kirov shrugged. “According to the news, this is just part of a routine security sweep for suspected Chechen terrorists. But I managed to get close enough to one of the checkpoints to see what they were using to sift through the crowds.” He looked back at the two Americans. “The militia have copies of your passport photos.”

Fiona sighed. “It was only a matter of time, I suppose.”

“Yes,” Kirov said soberly. “And now we must face facts. We cannot delay any longer. Both of you need new papers—with new faces and new names.”

Smith stared back at him, struck by something the other man had just said.

A faint possibility stirred far back in his mind, something that was more the vague hint of an idea than anything really solid. But then, as other small fragments of evidence started tumbling neatly into place, this new theorv of his began taking on a dazzling form and substance, like a smoldering ember whipped into flame by the wind.

His eves widened. “Names,” he said abrupt!}’. “That’s the link we’ve been missing. We’ve all been wondering why so many people were killed to prevent us from getting our hands on those case notes. Well, maybe the answer has been staring us right in the face all along.”

“Exactly what are you talking about, Colonel?” Fiona asked quietly.

Kirov’s face mirrored her incomprehension.

On fire with his new theory, Jon led them back to the coffee table.

“Names,” he said again, fanning out the sheaf of typed papers and their scrawled translations. With a red pencil, he swiftly circled certain sections of the papers. “See for yourselves. That’s what Elena’s notes contain … the names of the victims of the first outbreak. And their families. And their addresses. Right1”

The other two nodded slowly, still clearly unsure of where he was leading them.

“Look,” Smith explained. “Somehow, somewhere, there has to be a connection between those who died and between their families. A connection that could give us a better understanding of how this new disease works and where it comes from.”

Fiona frowned. “I don’t see it, Colonel.” She shook her head. “You’ve already pointed out that there isn’t anv clear link between those poor people-no friendships, no family ties, nothing that would explain why thev fell ill and died so horribly.”

Smith nodded. “That’s true. Elena, Valentin Petrenko, and the other Russian scientists studying the outbreak were completely unable to identify any ordinary connection between the four victims.” He tapped the notes again. “But what if the link between them is something more subtle, maybe a shared genetic or other biochemical trait—some weakness or preexisting condition that made them especially vulnerable to this new disease?”

“Do you really believe it might be possible to discover this shared trait?” Kirov asked. “Even now?”

Smith nodded again. “Yes, I do.” He looked at the other man. “But it won’t be easy. First, we’ll have to find a way to interview the families of the victims.

If we can persuade them to let us take blood, tissue, and DNA samples, a series of lab tests ought to be able to pinpoint any areas of similarity.”

“And somehow you plan to do all of these things while you and Ms. Devin are on the Kremlin’s Most Wanted list?” Kirov commented drily.

“Yep, that’s about the size of it.” Smith forced a grin onto his lean face.

“What’s that old saying? Something like ‘If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have signed on to be a soldier’? Well, we all signed on the dotted line, so I guess this is where we start earning our pay.”

Set in and around a forest and several small but beautiful lakes, the Grunewald district was one of Berlin’s most elite and expensive suburbs. The older houses here were set far apart from each other, surrounded by immaculately landscaped grounds, stone walls, hedges, and patches of woodland.

A small utility truck in the red-and-white colors of Deutsche Telekom, the German telephone company, was parked along Hagenstrasse, one of the wider residential streets in the Grunewald. It was very late in the afternoon and the pale winter sun, already low on the horizon, threw long black shadows across the road. It was bitterly cold and very few people were out and about in the frosty air. A paunchy jogger, wrapped up in the rhythms of the music pulsing through his headphones, puffed across the street in front of the truck and kept going, grimly focused on finishing his doctor-ordered exercise. He soon vanished in the growing darkness among the trees. An elderly couple, out for an afternoon stroll, tottered past, tugging their unhappy, shivering terrier behind them. Then they too turned a corner and were gone.

Inside the truck cab, Randi Russell sat slouched behind the steering wheel.

She wore thin leather gloves, a plain black baseball cap to hide her short blond hair, and drab gray workman’s coveralls that concealed her slender figure. She checked her watch impatiently. How much longer was she going have to wait?

One side of Randi’s generous mouth twisted upward in a wry grin as she looked down at her gloves. If she had to sit here idly much longer, she might just be tempted to start chewing through the leather just to get at her finger-nails.

“The servants are on the move,” a young woman’s voice reported suddenly in her headset. “Looks like they’re finally heading out for the day.”

Randi sat up straighter, watching an old, dented Audi pull slowly out of the driveway not far ahead of her. The pair of illegal Slovak immigrants that Ulrich Kessler paid to clean his house, cook his meals, and maintain his garden were on their way home to their own flea-ridden flat on the far side of Berlin.

The Audi turned left on Hagenstrasse and drove off past her truck. Her eyes followed its taillights in her side mirror until they disappeared.

“What about our boy Kessler himself?” she asked, speaking softly into the mike clipped to her coveralls.

“Still in his office,” another voice, this one male and older, reported. It belonged to the CIA officer assigned to keep an eye on the BKA building in which Kessler worked. “But he’s definitely confirmed as one of the guests for a big shindig the Chancellor is throwing at the Staatsbibliothek this evening.

According to our file, Kessler is a champion brown-noser. He won’t miss the chance to mingle with the Who’s Who of German politics, so you should be clear to go in.”

“On my way,” Randi said coolly. Now that she was free to act, her nerves were noticeably steadier. “I’m moving onto the grounds now.”

Without waiting any longer, she put the utility truck in gear and turned into the driveway that curved through the tall trees surrounding Kessler’s villa.

The house itself, built in the early 1900s, was a replica of an Edwardian-era English country manor, all the way from its gleaming white, ivy-cloaked walls to the wide veranda running the length of its second story.

Randi pulled around to the side of the house and parked next to a large garage that must have once served as both a carriage house and stables. She slid out of the truck and stood still for a moment, watching and listening.

Nothing stirred either inside the house or outside among the trees.

Reassured, she quickly fastened an SAS-pattern assault vest over her gray coveralls. This vest’s Velcro-sealed pouches and pockets contained a collection of small tools and electronics gear, not the usual assortment of weapons and spare ammunition. With that done, she walked back around the house, heading straight for the front door. It was the only way in that she could be sure was not on a security latch or a deadbolt.

Randi stopped, knelt down to briefly examine the lock, and then fished the appropriate set of lockpicks out of one of her vest pockets. She slipped them into the tiny opening and stopped. “I’m at the door, Carla,” she murmured into her radio, speaking to her lookout. “Once I give you the word, I want to hear a running thirty-second countdown. Clear?”

“Understood,” the younger woman answered. “The thirty-second clock is set.”

“You with me, Mike?” Randi asked, this time addressing the electronics specialist assigned to her forced-entry team.

“Standing by, Randi,” the technician replied calmlv.

“Good.” She risked a quick glance over her shoulder. Anyone passing bv on the street would be able to spot her, though only if they looked carefully.

All the more reason to stop fussing around, Randi told herself sternly. She took a deep breath, felt the crisp, clean oxygen flood her system, and then breathed out. “Here goes.”

Using both hands, she delicately maneuvered the picks into the lock mechanism. After several seconds of careful jimmying, she felt it click open. With a soft sigh of satisfaction, she slid the pick set back into her vest and stood up.

“Listen closely, guys,” Randi said quietly. “My forced-entry is commencing … now!”

Without hesitating any longer, she pushed the door open, walked inside Kessler’s house, and immediately pulled the door closed behind her. She was in a broad entry hall lit by a chandelier high overhead. Doors opened off the hall on either side, leading into other rooms—a lounge or sitting area on the left and what might be a formal living room on the right. A wide, curving staircase swept up to the second floor.

“Thirty seconds,” the lookout’s voice said through her headset, distinctly and steadily repeating the numbers flickering past on her digital stopwatch.

Randi swiftly scanned the hallway, searching for the burglar alarm control panel. There it was! She spotted a small gray plastic box fixed at eye level, just to the right of the door. A tiny red light blinked on the front face above a ten-digit keypad, indicating that the alarm had been triggered as soon as she came through the front door. Her eyes narrowed. At best, she had thirty seconds while the alarm system cycled through a hold period designed to give the homeowner enough time to enter his security code on the keypad. After that, the alarm would go off, immediately alerting the closest Berlin police unit that a breakin was in progress.

Instantly, she tugged open another Velcro pocket and brought out a small power screwdriver. With the quick press of a button on the side, it whirred into motion, swiftly spinning in reverse to pull out the first of the two screws holding the front plastic panel closed.

“Twenty-five seconds.”

The first screw dropped into Randi’s gloved hand. She shifted the screwdriver to the next. It spun hack out easily. She popped off the front panel and peered inside past a tangle of colored cables connected to a circuit board, looking for the tiny printed strip that would identify the alarm system.

“Twenty seconds.”

Randi felt her mouth drying out. Where was that damned ID tag? She was running out of time here. At last, she spotted the small box of text, glued to the rear wall of the control box. “Mike! The system is a TURING 3000.”

“Understood, Randi,” the CIA technician told her. “Go with Card Five.

Detach the green cable you see and plug it into the new card at Position One.

Then do the same with the black cable at Position Two. Got it?”

“Got it,” she confirmed, pulling a specially preconfigured system card out of one of her vest pouches.

“Ten seconds.”

Moving rapidly, Randi followed the directions she had been given, shifting cables from the old circuit board to the new one she had brought with her.

Her pulse was racing now, thudding wildly in her ears. A fear-filled voice inside her own head began complaining that she wasn’t working fast enough, that the alarm was about to go off no matter what she did. She did her best to ignore it, concentrating instead on the task at hand.

“Five seconds. Four. Three — “

The second cable snapped into the card held in her gloved hand. New commands flowed immediately from the card to the alarm control box, mimicking instructions that would have been sent remotely by Kessler’s security company to reset the system after any false alarm. The red light shifted to green.

Randi breathed out in relief. Now, when she was finished inside the house, she could simply reverse the process, replace the panel, and exit through the front door, without leaving any obvious evidence that the alarm had ever been tampered with.

“I’m clear,” she reported quietly. “Commencing my recon now.”

Moving confidently, Randi began a thorough search of Kessler’s villa, starting with the rooms at ground level and then continuing up the stairs to the second floor. One thing struck her right away. Ulrich Kessler was an art collector, a serious collector with a taste for extremely expensive original works of modern art. Unless she missed her guess, he had pieces by Diebenkorn, Kandinsky, Klee, Pollock, Mondrian, Picasso, and several other famous twentieth-century painters hanging in places of honor on the walls of various rooms.

She paused at each one and took a digital picture. “Not bad for a simple civil servant, Herr Kessler,” she murmured, recording the image of what looked very much like an original de Kooning. Although it was difficult to pin down precisely how much these paintings were worth, she was willing to bet their total value was somewhere well above ten million dollars. No wonder he was so widely known for his unwillingness to invite work colleagues to his home.

Randi shook her head in disgust. From all appearances, the Bundeskriminalamt official had been remarkably well paid for his role in protecting Professor Wulf Renke. Close examination of the images she was photographing for CIA-retained art experts should provide an intriguing look at the details of Kessler’s finances. And those were details that she knew he would be very, very unhappy to have dragged out into the open.

Replacing the camera in her vest, she moved on, prowling carefully first through the German’s bedroom and then through a connecting door into what appeared to be his private study. Set at the very back of the villa, this was a large, lavishly furnished room with windows that looked out over the surrounding trees toward the bright lights of Berlin’s husveitv center.

From the doorway, Randi surveyed the study through narrowed eyes, quickly noting the computer and telephone sitting on an elaborately carved antique desk, the walls lined with bookcases, and another expensive painting—one that she strongly suspected concealed a small safe. She resisted the urge to begin rummaging through desk drawers or trying to break into the safe.

The BKA official was corrupt, but he was not an idiot. The odds were very much against discovering any hidden document conveniently labeled “My Secret Life and Wulf Renke.” She was also sure that Kessler would have set hard-to-find telltales and possibly even other electronic alarms to protect his most prized information. Disturbing those would only put him instantly on his guard.

Instead, Randi began pulling open various pouches on her equipment vest, revealing an assortment of miniaturized listening devices. She smiled coldly.

Suspicious or not, Herr Ulrich Kessler was about to discover that there were other ways to learn his most closely held secrets.

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was the evening rush hour and hundreds of Muscovites worn out after a long day’s work packed the steep escalators serving the Smolenskaya Metro Station. Among them were three people, one of them a tall, strong-looking man in his mid-fifties. He carried a heavy canvas duffel bag slung over one shoulder and wore a martyred expression as he patiently shepherded his doddering, elderly mother and his equally ancient father off the escalator.

“We’re almost outside, little mother,” he said gently. “Just a little farther now.” He looked back over his shoulder at the older man. “Come now, Papa.

You must do your best to keep up.”

Up at the top, a growing crowd of increasingly unhappy Metro riders were pressing up against the barriers leading to the street, restlessly waiting for a chance to run their magnetic tickets through the machines and leave the station. But most of the ticket-readers were shut down, forcing everyone in the crowd to funnel through the three barriers that were still in service. Exasper-ated murmurs swept through those milling in line when they saw the reason for the slowdown. Squads of gray-coated militiamen were deployed at every entrance and exit. They were busy carefully checking the faces of everyone entering and leaving the Smolenskaya station. From time to time, they pulled people away in ones and twos for closer questioning—often, but not always, lean, dark-haired men or slender and attractive, black-haired women.

After scrutinizing the identity papers of the most recent pair hauled before him, Militia Lieutenant Grigor Pronin tossed the cards back and then waved the worried-looking man and woman away. “Fine,” he growled. “Everything’s fine. Now move along!”

He grimaced. He and his entire unit had been tied up in this ridiculous manhunt for hours, stuck here on pointless, glorified sentry duty on orders from the Kremlin. No Chechen terrorist had ever looked anything like the photographs he had been shown. Meanwhile, he thought bitterly, Moscow’s real criminals must be having a field day—mugging, shoplifting, and stealing cars to their black hearts’ content.

Pronin swung round in irritation at a sudden outbreak of loud cursing and swearing from the barrier. People were pushing and shoving one another near one of the ticket machines. He scowled. What the devil was wrong now? The militia officer stalked closer, angrily laying one hand on his holstered sidearm.

The crowd at the barrier saw him coming and fell silent. Most stepped back a pace or two, leaving three people still gathered around the machine.

One, a tall, silver-haired man, seemed to be trying to gently urge a plump, much-older woman through the narrow opening. Stooped over a cane, an elderly man with long whiskers and dirty, matted white hair leaned heavily against the railing on the other side, feebly motioning the woman on. Two medals pinned to his dirty coat proclaimed him a veteran of The Great Patri-otic War against Fascism.

“What’s the trouble here?” Pronin demanded grimly.

“It’s my mother, sir,” the silver-haired man said apologetically. “She’s having trouble with her ticket. She keeps sticking it in the wrong way round.” He turned back to the woman. “Now see what you’ve done, little mother? The militia have come to see what the fuss is about.”

“Never mind that,” Pronin said brusquely. He reached across the barrier, grabbed the magnetic card from the old woman’s shaking hand, and inserted it himself. The barrier slid aside, allowing her to hobble through, followed soon after by her son. Almost immediately, a horrid odor assailed the militia lieutenant’s nose, a rank, acrid stench that made him gag.

He stepped back, astonished by the smell. “Good God,” he muttered in shock. “What’s that stink?”

The other man shrugged sadly. “I’m afraid it’s her bladder,” he confided.

“She doesn’t have very much control over it these days. I try to get her to change her diaper more often, but she’s very stubborn, you see —much like a little child, really.”

Disgusted, Pronin waved the trio through his waiting men. So that was what old age could be like, he thought darkly. Then he turned back to survey the crowds, already dismissing the depressing incident from his mind.

Once they were safely outside the Metro station, the old woman painfully made her way over to a bench and sat down. The two men followed her.

“I swear to God, Oleg,” Fiona Devin muttered crossly to the tall man masquerading as her son. “I’m going to be sick all over myself if I don’t get out of these foul-smelling clothes and all this damned padding … and soon!”

“I am sorry,” Kirov said ruefully. “But it is necessary.” One of his bushy eyebrow s rose in wry amusement. “On the other hand, my dear, you must admit that a bit of vomit would add a very nice touch of authenticity to your disguise.”

Leaning hunched over on his cane, Jon Smith tried hard not to laugh. The glued-on theatrical whiskers and wig he was wearing itched abominably, but at least his coat and worn trousers were only stained with machine oil and ground-in dirt and not anything worse. Fiona, swaddled in layers to make her look fat and then stuffed into horribly soiled garments, had it a lot worse.

Smith noticed other shoppers and pedestrians giving them a wide berth, quickly walking away with wrinkled noses and averted eyes. Even in the open air, the smells emanating from them were still pungent. He nodded. These get-ups, uncomfortable and demeaning though they were, were proving remarkably effective.

“Come, Fiona,” Kirov urged. “We’re almost there. It’s only a hundred meters or so farther on, just down that next little side street.”

Still grumbling under her breath, Fiona forced herself back onto her feet, which were stuffed into boots that were at least a size too small for her, and shuffled off in the direction Kirov indicated. Together they hobbled and limped east along the Ulitsa Arbat and turned into an alley lined with small shops selling books, new and used clothing, perfumes, and antiques.

Patiently, the Russian led them to a narrow door halfway down the alley.

Next to the door, a dirty window displayed a poorly lit selection of antique samovars, matryoshka dolls, lacquer boxes and bowls, crystal, Soviet-era porcelain, and old lamps. Faded gold lettering above the window read ANTIKVAZ-AVIABARI.

If anything, the tiny shop behind the door was even more of a jumble, full of items heaped together on dusty shelves and counters without any apparent rhyme or reason. There were replicas of famous religious icons, Red Army belt buckles and fleece-lined fabric tanker’s helmets, gold-plated candle sticks, chipped China tea sets, costume jewelry, and framed and faded Soviet propaganda posters.

When they came in, the proprietor, a large, ponderous man with just a fringe of curly gray hair around his bald pate, looked up from the cracked teacup he was gluing back together. His dark eyes brightened at the sight of Kirov and he came lumbering around the counter to greet them.

“Oleg!” he boomed, in a baritone voice that carried the hint of a Georgian accent. “I assume these are the friends of whom you spoke on the phone?”

Kirov nodded coolly. “They are.” He turned to Fiona and Smith. “And this overfed villain is Lado Iashvili, the self-described bane of Moscow’s legitimate antique dealers.”

“What the general here says is very true,” Iashvili admitted with a tolerant shrug. He grinned widely, revealing a worn set of tobacco-stained teeth. “But then I have my poor living to make, and they have theirs, eh? We each prosper in our own way.”

“So I hear,” Kirov agreed.

“But now to business, correct?” Iashvili said expansively. “Do not worry, Oleg. I think you and your friends will be very pleased by the quality of my merchandise.”

“Will we?” Fiona said carefully, eyeing the clutter around them with barely concealed disdain.

Iashvili chuckled. “Ah, Babushka, there you misunderstand the nature of my business.” He waved a dismissive hand at the bric-a-brac scattered around his shop. “These things are largely for show. They are only a hobby, something to deceive the curious policeman or the occasional nosy tax inspector.

Come! I will show you my true passion!”

With that, the burly Georgian swung round and ushered them through another door at the back of his shop. It opened into a storeroom piled high with the same mix of genuine antiques and useless junk. Off in the far corner, a steep flight of stairs led down into the basement. This staircase ended at a locked steel door.

Iashvili unlocked the door and pushed it open with an extravagant, sweeping gesture. “Take a look for yourselves,” he said grandly. “Here you see my studio, the little temple of my art.”

Smith and Fiona stared around them in wonder. They were standing in a large, brightly lit chamber. It was filled with expensive photography equipment, computers, several different types of color laser printers and photo-copiers, engraving machines, and rack upon rack containing what appeared to be almost every imaginable kind of paper, inks, and chemicals used to artificially age documents. One whole side of the room was set up as a photo studio, complete with different backdrops, a wash basin with soap, shampoos, and towels, and a privacy screen.

With another broad grin, the Georgian patted himself on the chest.

“Speaking with all due modesty, of course, I, Lado Iashvili, am the very best in my chosen profession — certainly in Moscow, and perhaps in all of Russia. The general here understands this fact, which is why he has brought you to me.”

“You are definitely a gifted forger,” Kirov agreed tersely. He shot a glance at Smith and Fiona. “In the old days, the KGB held a monopoly on Iashvili’s rather unique services. But now that he’s branched out into the private sector, he has proved himself quite the entrepreneur.”

The Georgian nodded matter-of-factly. “I do have a wide range of clients,” he admitted. “Those who would like to leave their unfortunate pasts behind for any number of reasons have learned to rely on me for help.”

“Including members of the Mafiya?” Fiona guessed. Her face was expressionless, but Smith could hear the anger in her voice. She had no love for anyone who aided members of Moscow’s criminal underworld.

Iashvili shrugged. “Who knows? It may be so. But I never ask awkward questions of those who pay me.” He smiled drily. “For that, I think you two should be grateful, eh?”

Fiona looked back at Kirov. “How far can we trust this man?” she asked bluntly.

The Russian smiled coldly. “Quite far, actually. First, because he is a man whose livelihood depends entirely on his reputation for absolute discretion.

And second, because he values his own skin.” He turned toward Iashvili. “You know what will happen if news of the work you’re going to do for my friends leaks out?”

For the first time, the effusive Georgian seemed at a loss for words. His fleshy face turned pale. “You will kill me, Oleg.”

“So I will, Lado,” Kirov said quietly. “Or, if I could not, there are others who would do it for me. In either case, your death would not be quick. Do you understand me?”

Iashvili nervously licked his lips. He nodded quickly. ‘Yes, I understand.”

Satisfied, Kirov dumped the canvas duffel bag he was carrying on a nearby table and began quickly removing items from it. Within moments, the table was covered with shoes and sets of clean, stylish clothing in sizes that would fit the two Americans, different-colored wigs and hairpieces, dyes, and a kit containing other items that would help them alter their appearance in any one of several ways.

“And you still want all of the documents we discussed earlier?” Iashvili asked tentatively, watching the growing piles of clothing and gear through narrowed eyes.

Kirov nodded. “My friends will need new foreign passports … Swedish, I think. Also, photocopies of appropriate business visas and immigration cards—ones issued at St. Petersburg would probably be best. Plus, they’ll need paperwork confirming their employment by the World Health Organization.

They’ll also want a set of local identity papers as a fallback, documents with good, solid Russian names on them. Will any of that present a problem?”

The Georgian shook his head rapidly, beginning to recover his customary poise. “Not a bit,” he promised.

“How long will you need?”

Iashvili shrugged. “Three hours. Maybe four at the outside.”

“And the price?” Kirov asked.

“One million rubles,” the other man said flatly. “In cash.”

Smith whistled softly. At the present rate of exchange, that came to more than thirty thousand U.S. dollars. Still, it was probably a fair price for the high-grade forged papers he and Fiona Devin would need if they were stopped at a militia checkpoint.

Kirov shrugged. “Very well. Half now.” He pulled a large stack of Russian bank notes out of the duffel bag and handed them to Iashvili. “And half later, when the work is finished to my friends’ satisfaction.”

While the suddenly much-happier Georgian forger took the money upstairs for safekeeping, Kirov spoke quietly to Smith and Fiona. “Join me when Iashvili is done here. The rest of his money is in the bag,” he said. “Ill wait for you in the bar in the Hotel Belgrade, just on this side of the Borodinsky Bridge.” He grinned at them. “With luck, of course, I won’t recognize either of you.”

“You’re not staying?” Fiona asked in surprise.

Kirov shook his head regretfully. “I have a rendezvous I must keep,” he explained softly. “A private meeting with another old friend. A man who may have some of the answers we need.”

“An old friend in uniform?” Smith guessed.

“Perhaps from time to time, Jon,” the other man agreed with a slight smile.

“Though senior officers in the Federal Security Service often prefer a simple business suit for social occasions.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It was well after ten at night when Smith and Fiona Devin entered the Lobby Bar at the Hotel Belgrade, but the place was still hopping. Men and women in business attire, mostly Russians, though with a scattering of foreigners, occupied most of the booths and tables or stood elbow-to-elbow at the bar. Soft jazz played in the background, but the music was almost completely drowned out by the clamor of loud conversation. Although the Belgrade was a big, boxy hotel without much architectural charm, its convenient location, close to the Metro and the Arbat, and its reasonable prices kept its occupancy rates high even in the winter.

Oleg Kirov sat by himself in one corner of the noisy room, silently smoking a cigarette. Two shot glasses and a half-empty bottle of vodka stood on the table in front of him. He had a pensive look about him.

Together, Smith and Fiona made their way over through the crowds. “May we join you?” Jon asked in accented Russian.

Kirov looked up at them with a grave, welcoming nod. “Of course. It would be a pleasure.” He stood up, pulled out a chair for Fiona, and then signaled a waitress to bring fresh glasses. “Shall I ask your names? Or would that be considered rude on so brief an acquaintance?”

“Not at all,” Smith answered smoothly. He sat down and slid his new Swedish passport across the table. True to his boasts, Iashvili had done superb work. The forged passport looked as though he had carried it around for several years and it included entry and exit stamps for a number of different countries. “I’m Dr. Kalle Strand, an epidemiologist assigned to the World Health Organization.”

“And my name is Berit Lindkvist,” Fiona said with an impish grin. “Dr.

Strand’s personal assistant.”

Kirov arched an eyebrow. “With the emphasis on personal?”

She wagged a stern finger at him. “Not all Swedes are sex-crazed, Mr.

Kirov. My relationship with Dr. Strand is strictly business.”

“I stand corrected, Ms. Lindkvist,” the Russian replied with an answering smile. He sat quietly a while longer, studying their changed appearance.

Then he nodded. “A good job. It should suffice.”

“Let’s hope so,” Smith said. He resisted the urge to rub at his eyebrows. A blond wig covered his dark hair, but he’d had to bleach his eyebrows to match and now they were itching like crazy. A pair of cheek inserts broadened his face, and padding around his waist added fifteen or twenty pounds to his apparent weight. And a pair of heavy black-frame eyeglasses with clear lenses should draw attention away from his blue eyes. None of it was very comfortable, but, taken together, the various changes altered his looks enough to give him a decent shot at passing through any militia checkpoint without being spotted.

Fiona Devin had undergone a similar transformation. She had cut her shoulder-length hair shorter and dyed it a dark red. Heels added an inch to her height while new undergarments changed her figure subtly, but enough so that she seemed a very different woman.

Jon fell silent while the waitress cleared away the old vodka glasses and replaced them with new ones. Then he asked, “Did your friend in the FSB give you any information worth sharing?”

“He did,” Kirov said heavily. His eyes were troubled. “First, he confirmed that the manhunt for you was set in motion by orders from the very highest levels of the Kremlin. The militia and Ministry of the Interior units involved have instructions to report directly to Alexei Ivanov.”

“Ivanov?” Fiona repeated with a frown. “That’s not good.”

Smith leaned forward. “Who exactly is this Ivanov character?”

“He’s the head of the FSB’s Thirteenth Directorate,” Kirov told him. “He takes his orders from President Dudarev and no one else. For all practical purposes, his section operates independently of the regular FSB command structure. It is said that his men violate the law and our constitution with total im-punity. And I believe those rumors.”

Fiona nodded. “The man is ruthless and completely amoral. But he’s also extremely competent.” Her face darkened. “Which leaves me wondering how we managed to escape that first ambush at all. Why murder Vedenskaya on the street and then try to kidnap us using a fake ambulance crew? Win not just call out the militia and have them snap us up?”

“Because that was not Ivanov’s show,” Kirov said quietly. “At least not completely. My former colleague managed to get a look at the first militia reports of the incident—before the Kremlin ordered a halt to any further investigation.”

“And?” Smith asked.

“The militia managed to identify two of the dead men,” Kirov said. ‘Both were former KGB, men who were used chiefly for ‘wet work’ against dissidents and suspected traitors.”

Smith nodded grimly. “Wet work” was a euphemism for State-sanctioned murder. “You said ‘former’ KGB?”

“Correct,” Kirov said. “For the past several years, they have been employed by the Brandt Group.” He shrugged. “The same people who tried to eliminate you in Prague.”

“But Brandt and his thugs work for the highest bidder, not on their own whim,” Fiona pointed out. “So who was paying the bills to have us kidnapped? The Kremlin, through Ivanov? Or someone else?”

“That is still unclear,” Kirov admitted. “But my colleague did learn that the ambulance was registered to the Saint Cyril Medical Center.”

Fiona saw Smith’s questioning look and explained. “The center is a sort of joint Western/Russian teaching hospital set up to improve the standard of health care in this country.” She turned to Kirov. “Was the ambulance stolen?”

“If so,” the Russian said flatly, “the theft does not seem to have been reported to the authorities.”

“How very curious,” Smith said drily. “And who funds this medical clinic?”

“It’s a public-private consortium,” Fiona told him. “Roughly a third of its budget comes from the Ministry of Health. But the rest of its money comes from a network of foreign charities and foundations — ” She stopped abruptly, apparently deep in thought. Then her jaw tightened. She looked up at them in dismay. “Including a very substantial percentage from a foundation controlled by Konstantin Malkovic.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Smith said, contemplating the chain of events over the past two days from a new perspective. An ugly possibility now reared its head, one they could not afford to ignore. He gestured toward Fiona. “Consider this: You tell Malkovic about this disease outbreak and the official cover-up. He says that he’s horrified and promises that he’ll do whatever he can to help you learn the truth. But hey, presto, within just a couple of hours, you’re under close surveillance by a professional tag team. Are you with me so far?”

She nodded.

“Okay,” Smith continued. “You manage to shake the tail, but probably not until after they spot us together at the Patriarch’s Pond. Right then all sorts of alarm bells must have started going off in various places. Later that same night, the Brandt Group swoops in to nail us both. And now it turns out that the ambulance they used just happens to belong to a hospital that gets a ton of money from good old Konstantin Malkovic.”

“You believe that he may be involved in this conspiracy, together with Dudarev?” Kirov asked, frowning.

“Beyond a shadow of a doubt?” Smith said. He shook his head. “No. All of this stuff could be just pure coincidence. But there sure seems to be a hell of a lot of smoke drifting around Mr. Malkovic, doesn’t there?”

“So there does,” Fiona agreed bitterly. “Enough to imagine there may well be some very bright flames dancing about beneath the smoke.” Her face was flushed with anger as she recalled the details of her interview with Malkovic and put a new spin on what he had said to her. She gritted her teeth in frustration. “Not that we stand much chance of pinning anything on him right now.”

“That is so,” Kirov said, equally grimly. “If this billionaire is in league with the Kremlin, he will take every conceivable precaution so long as you and Colonel Smith are still alive. No one unknown to him will be allowed anywhere near his person, let alone near any incriminating evidence. Pursuing Malkovic directly would only mean putting our own heads in a noose.”

Smith nodded. “You’re right. It still makes more sense to contact the families of the victims while we can. Obtaining solid data on this new disease is our first priority. But we should brief Fred Klein on what we suspect before we make our next move.”

“There is one more thing I think Mr. Klein should know,” Kirov said slowly. “According to my colleague in the security service, there are signs of an even greater danger stirring in this country, a danger that may well be connected in some way to this mysterious illness, but eclipsing it in size and scope.”

As he talked, Smith and Fiona sat silently, listening with growing concern while Kirov recounted the rumors of intensive military preparation that were beginning to circulate through the upper levels of the FSB headquarters at Lubyanka Square. There were whispers of secret troop movements and military exercises, the movement of vast stockpiles of ammunition, food, and fuel to camouflaged supply dumps on Russia’s borders, and ever-tighter security around the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense. And they all seemed to point toward the unthinkable —a campaign of conquest aimed at the former Soviet republics.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Mr. Klein, sir,” Estelle Pike said tartly, ushering the pale, long-nosed man into the Oval Office. “He insists on seeing you.”

With a wry, welcoming smile, President Sam Castilla looked up from the pile of briefing folders crowding his pine table desk. There were shadows under his eyes, showing the effects of several long days and as many sleepless nights. He nodded toward one of the chairs in front of the desk, “lake a seat, Fred. I’ll be with you in a second.”

Klein obeyed, watching in silence while his old friend finished skimming a memo. Large, bold red letters stamped across the top indicated that it included top-secret intelligence obtained from U.S. spy satellites. Castilla came to the end, snorted in disgust, and stuffed the document back into one of the folders.

“More trouble?” the head of Covert-One asked carefully.

“In spades.” Castilla ran his big hands distractedly through his hair and then indicated the folders stacked in front of him. “Our satellites and signals intercept stations seem to be picking up signs of Russian military moves and increasing readiness in several frontier districts —those bordering Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. But the intelligence is damned sketch), and no one in the Pentagon or the CIA seems willing to place any bets on what may be going on.”

“Because of problems with the data?” Klein wondered. “Or because they’re having trouble analyzing the facts they’ve got?”

“Both,” Castilla growled. He shuffled through the various folders, picked one out, and shoved it across the desk. “There’s an example of what I’m getting. Take a look for yourself.”

It was a Defense Intelligence Agency report on the possible buildup of Russian divisions stationed in Chechnya and along the Caucasus Mountains.

Relying largely on satellite photos showing large amounts of military equipment moving by rail into the areas around Grozny, some analysts speculated that the Russians were building up forces for yet another all-out offensive on the region’s Islamic rebels. Others disputed this conclusion, claiming the rail shipments were only part of a normal troop rotation. A small minority claimed that the tank and motor rifle formations ostensibly being transferred to Chechnya were actually being diverted to other areas, though no one could say exactly where.

Klein flipped through the folder quickly, reading with growing disapproval.

By its very nature, intelligence analysis was an imperfect, imprecise business.

But this report was fuzzier than most. The competing theories were couched in remarkably vague terms, loaded down with so many qualifiers that they lacked any semblance of conviction, and were presented in a jumble, without making any attempt to rank them in order of probability. From the standpoint of a senior policymaker, especially one at the president’s level, the analysis was essentially useless.

He looked up in dismay. “This is second-string material, Sam.”

“Try third-string,” Castilla said grimly. “Our best Russia analysts are either dead or running scared that they’re next. The folks who are next in line just don’t have the same level of experience … and it shows.”

Klein nodded. Sorting out the wheat from the chaff of modern intelligence—garbled fragments of intercepted communications, satellite photos that were difficult to interpret, stray rumors passed along by agents and embassy staffs, and all the rest—was a skill that took years of training and practice to fully develop.

Still frowning, the president took off his reading glasses and tossed them onto his desk. He looked across at Klein. “Which brings us to Covert-One’s assignment, pinning down the cause of this illness. What have you learned so far?”

“Less than I would like,” the other man admitted. “But I have just received an urgent signal from Colonel Smith and Ms. Devin.”

“And?”

“They’ve definitely run into something very nasty going on in Moscow,”

Klein said quietly. He grimaced, resisting the temptation to fiddle with the battered briarvvood pipe tucked away inside his suit coat. “Some of their news ties into those reports you just showed me. Unfortunately, precisely what it may all mean is not yet completely clear to me.”

Castilla listened intently while Klein summarized what his team had reported, including their suspicions about the possible involvement of Konstantin Malkovic and the rumors of impending military action passed on by Oleg Kirov’s contact inside the Russian security service.

The lines on the president’s face grew deeper. “I don’t like the sound of this, Fred. Not one little bit.” He sat back in his chair. “So there’s no doubt that what killed those people in Moscow two months ago is the same disease we’re confronting now?”

“No doubt at all,” Klein told him bleakly. “Smith confirms that the symptoms and test results he saw correlate perfectly with those reported by the CDC and other researchers. But…” His voice trailed off.

“But what?”

“Without solid evidence of official Russian involvement in spreading this mystery illness as a weapon, we can’t expect anyone else—whether in NATO or in the other countries around Russia —to agree to any serious countermeasures,” Klein continued. He shrugged his narrow shoulders apologetically.

“The Kremlin’s efforts to cover up an epidemic may be regarded as criminally stupid, but our European allies are not going to see that as a justification for possible economic sanctions or for raising NATO’s alert status.”

“No kidding,” Castilla said drily. “I can just imagine the howls of anguish from Paris or Berlin or Kiev if I asked them to take a serious stand against Dudarev and his regime on the basis of one dead doctor’s notes. And they’re sure not going to be convinced by seeing a few iffy satellite photos or hearing second-hand gossip about a possible Russian military mobilization.”

He sighed. “Damn it, Fred! We need facts. Right now we’re just punching at shadows.”

Klein nodded silently.

“I’m going to call an emergency meeting of the National Security Council when we’re through here,” the president decided at last. “We’ve got to tighten our surveillance of the Russian armed forces. At a minimum, we can retarget our satellites and conduct more reconnaissance missions along the border areas.”

Unable to sit still any longer, Castilla pushed back his chair and strode over to the tall windows overlooking the South Lawn. The capital’s evening rush hour was in full swing. In the gathering darkness, the cars inching along distant Constitution Avenue looked like small, crawling beads of brightly colored light. He glanced back over his shoulder. “Have you ever met Konstantin Malkovic?”

“No, I haven’t,” Klein admitted. He smiled slowly. “Hobnobbing with billionaires is well above my pay grade, Mr. President.”

“Well, I have,” Castilla said quietly. “He’s a powerful man. A forceful man.

An ambitious man.”

“How ambitious?”

Castilla smiled thinly. “Ambitious enough to be sitting at this desk in my place —if he had been born here in the United States instead of Serbia.”

Klein nodded soberly. “We’ll start digging into Malkovic and his business empire. If he is secretly working with the Russians, we might be able to find connections between them that would give us a lead on what they’re planning.”

“You do that, Fred,” the president agreed. Then he shook his head. “But I’m not sure how far you’ll get. The IRS tried to go after him a few years ago —

on some question of possible tax evasion as I recall. They ran into a solid wall and had to back off. Apparently he’s arranged his finances as an incredible labyrinth of offshore holding companies and private foundations. The Trea-sury and Commerce departments suspect that he also controls a large number of other businesses on the sly, using third-party surrogates to avoid any overt ties that might prove embarrassing or illegal. The trouble is that no one seems able to prove anything.”

Klein frowned. “It sounds like a perfect set-up for running deniable clandestine operations.”

“Doesn’t it just,” Castilla agreed sourly. He swung away from the windows to face his old friend directly. “Let’s talk about your team in Moscow.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, now that their cover is blown, I assume you’ve ordered Colonel Smith and Ms. Devin out of Russia?”

Klein chose his words carefully. “I have strongly suggested that they leave as soon as possible.”

Castilla raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Only suggested? Hell, Fred, from what you’ve told me, every cop in Moscow is out chasing after them. What on earth can they hope to achieve in those conditions?”

The head of Covert-One shot him a lopsided grin. “You’ve met Jon Smith before, Sam. You haven’t yet met Fiona Devin. But I can assure you that they are both remarkably stubborn.” He shook his head slowly. “In fact, almost as stubborn as you are sometimes. And right now, neither one of them is willing to admit that they’re licked.”

“I admire guts and persistence,” Castilla said quietly. “But do Smith and Ms. Devin understand that if they are arrested, we’ll throw them to the wolves?” His face was deadly serious. “That we’ll deny any knowledge of them and wash our hands of any responsibility for their actions?”

“Yes, they do, Mr. President,” Klein said somberly. “That’s part of working for Covert-One and both of them knew the risks when they signed up. Should it prove necessary, I’m confident they will pay any price that is demanded of them.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Ripped unwillingly from the bleary depths of a bad night’s sleep, Ulrich Kessler first tried to ignore the phone ringing by bis bed. Then he opened one eye a slit. The luminous numbers on his alarm clock told him it was just after six in the morning. Appalled, he groaned, rolled over, and tried to muffle the maddening, chirping noise the phone made by pulling his pillow over his head. Let the damned answering machine get it, he told himself drowsily.

There would be time enough at a more reasonable hour to handle whatever crisis needed his attention.

Crisis. His eyes opened again. Even thinking the word was enough to force him all the way back to full consciousness. His position inside the highest circles of the Ministry of the Interior depended on his being seen by his superiors as the hardworking, ever reliable, indispensable man —the senior Bundeskriminalamt official they could trust with any predicament.

Groaning again with the effort, Kessler pushed himself up into a sitting position. He winced at the stabbing pain in his temples and the horrid taste in his mouth. He had drunk too much at the Chancellor’s reception the night before, and then made things worse by drinking cup after cup of thick Turk-ish coffee in a failed bid to fully sober up before he drove home. B\ the time his sour, heaving stomach had finally settled itself, it must have been well after three.

He fumbled blindly for the receiver. “]a? Kessler hier.”

“Good morning, Herr Kessler,” a woman said to him in crisp, clear German, sounding almost obscenely cheerful considering the early hour. “My name is Isabelle Stahn. I’m a special prosecutor for the Ministry of Justice, working in the public corruption division, and I’m calling to request an immediate appointment with you to discuss a special case — “

Kessler’s headache flared up. He had been woken up before dawn by some overzealous underling from the Ministry of Justice? He gripped the receiver tighter in irritation. “Look, what the devil are you doing calling me at home like this? You know the normal procedures. If your ministry wants Bundeskriminalamt assistance on some investigation, first you need to apply through the proper channels! Fax whatever paperwork you have to our liaison office and the appropriate officer will get back to you in due time.”

“You misunderstand me, Herr Kessler,” the woman said, now with a hint of open amusement in her voice. “You see, you are the target of the official corruption case I’m calling about.”

“What?” Kessler snapped, suddenly wide awake.

“Some very troubling allegations have been made about your conduct, Herr Kessler,” the woman continued. “Allegations concerning the escape of Professor Wulf Renke sixteen years ago—”

“That’s utter nonsense!” Kessler blurted out angrily.

“Is it?” the woman asked. Her voice grew colder, taking on a tone filled with contempt. “Then I look forward to hearing your explanation for the following purchases of very expensive works of art—purchases made strictly in cash, it seems—which we have, with some difficulty, traced to you. First, in 1990, a painting by Kandinsky, bought from a gallery in Antwerp for the sum of 250,000 euros at today’s rates of exchange. Then, in 1991, a collage by Matisse — “

Listening in mounting horror, Kessler broke out in a cold sweat while she ran through a painstakingly accurate list of the paintings so dear to him, paintings acquired with the money he had been paid for keeping Renke safe for so many years. He swallowed hard, trying desperately not to throw up. How could this investigator from the Ministry of Justice know so much? He had been so careful, always buying through a different agent and always using a different name and address. It should have been impossible for anyone to follow a paper trail from the various art dealers and galleries back to him.

His mind raced. Could he apply pressure to block this investigation? His own boss, the Minister of the Interior, owed him many favors. Instantly, he discarded the notion. The minister would never compromise himself by trying to conceal a scandal of this magnitude.

No, he realized desperately, he would have to flee, abandoning the possessions for which he had mortgaged his integrity and his honor. But to do so safely, he would need assistance from another source.

Inside a dark green Ford panel van parked several blocks away from Kessler’s villa, Randi Russell finished her call and hung up. “That ought to send a well-deserved chill down the bastard’s spine,” she said, with a satisfied grin. “Ten-to-one he screams for help right away.”

One of the two CIA audio-operations technicians sitting beside her in the van’s cramped equipment-filled interior shook his head. “I’m not taking that bet.” He nodded toward a display that showed the stress patterns they had recorded in Kessler’s voice during the call. “The guy was skating right on the edge of total panic as soon as you started talking about his paintings.”

“Stand by,” the second technician said suddenly, holding up a hand for quiet while listening carefully to the sounds coming through her earphones.

She flicked through a series of switches on the console in front of her, pausing just long enough to listen briefly to the signals transmitted by each of the listening devices Randi had planted in Kessler’s house during her breakin the day before. Then she looked up. “The subject is on the move. He’s left his bedroom. I think he’s heading for the study.”

“He’ll use the telephone in there,” Randi predicted. “The one in his bedroom is cordless and he won’t want to risk inadvertently broadcasting anything he’s about to say.”

Her companions both nodded. All cordless phones acted as small radio transmitters, allowing the easy interception of conversations made using them. No one in his or her right mind ever used a cordless phone to discuss anything confidential.

The first CIA tech entered a series of commands on the keyboard in front of him. “I’m linked into the Deutsche Telekom network,” he said calmly.

“Ready to initiate a trace.”

Still sweating, Kessler sat slowly down at the beautiful antique desk in his study. In silence, he contemplated the phone for a moment. Did he dare make contact? The number he had been given was for emergency use only.

Then he laughed harshly. An emergency! he thought bleakly. Well, what else was he facing?

With a shaking hand, he picked up the receiver and slowly and carefully-punched in the long international telephone code. Despite the early hour, the phone on the other end rang only three times before being answered.

“Yes?” a cold voice said brusquely. It was a voice from which he had taken occasional orders for nearly two decades.

The BKA official swallowed before speaking. “This is Kessler.”

“I am well aware of who is calling me, Ulrich,” Professor Wulf Renke replied. “Do not waste my time with pleasantries. What is it that you want?”

“I need immediate extraction and a new identity.”

“Explain.”

Trying his best to sound calm, Kessler quickly relayed the substance of the call he had received. “So you see, I need to get out of Germany as soon as possible,” he said. “I’ve bought a few hours by agreeing to meet with the Ministry of Justice prosecutor later today, but she already knows far too much about my financial affairs. I cannot risk appearing before her.”

“You believe this woman Stahn was genuine?” Renke asked icily.

Kessler was bewildered. “What else could she be?”

“You are a fool, Ulrich,” the other man said flatly. “Did you even bother to confirm her story before you came running to me in fear?”

“What difference does it make?” Kessler asked. “Whoever she may be, she knows too much. I am not safe here.” He felt a flicker of resentment ripple through him. “You owe me this, Herr Professor.”

“I owe you nothing,” Renke said coldly. “You have already been amply rewarded for your services. The fact that others have learned of your transgres-sions is unfortunate, but it gives you no special claim on me.”

“Then you will do nothing for me?” Kessler asked, appalled.

“That was not what I said,” Renke retorted. “As it happens, I will honor your request for my own purposes. Now, listen carefully and follow my instructions to the letter. Stay where you are. Do not make any more calls—for any reason. When the arrangements for your escape are complete, I will telephone you with further instructions. Is that clear?”

Kessler nodded his head rapidly. “Yes, yes, that’s clear.”

“Good. Are you alone?”

“For now,” Kessler glanced at the clock on his desk. “But my handyman and cook will be here in an hour or so.”

“Send them away,” Renke told him. “Tell them you are ill. There must be no witnesses to your disappearance.”

“I will make sure of that,” Kessler said quickly.

“I am very glad to hear it, Ulrich,” Renke said, sounding genuinely pleased. “It will make everything much easier in the end.”

Inside the CIA surveillance van, the first tech turned to Randi with a rueful look on his face. He took off his headset and held it out to her. “This is what we picked up from our tap on the phone line during Kessler’s call.”

Randi slid the earphones on and listened closely while the tech replayed the signals they had intercepted. She heard only a shrill, high-pitched whine broken by patches of static. One eyebrow rose. “Encrypted?”

“Highly encrypted,” the tech told her. “At a guess, whatever encryption software these guys are using is more sophisticated than anything I’ve ever heard before—with the possible exception of our own stuff.”

“Interesting.” Randi commented.

He grinned. ‘Yeah, isn’t it, though? I suppose the NSA might be able to break that noise apart into the clear, but doing it could take weeks.”

“Did you at least manage to trace the telephone number Kessler called?”

Randi asked him.

The tech shook his head. “Nope, I’m afraid not. Whoever set up the communications network he dialed into sure knows how to play the game. Every time we started getting close, the signal skipped over to a new number, automatically resetting our trace.”

Randi frowned. “Could you set up a system like that?”

“Me?” He nodded slowly. “Sure.” Then he shrugged. “But I’d need several weeks, a ton of money, and almost unlimited access to the proprietary switching software for several different telecom corporations.”

“Which means our Professor Renke has some other very influential friends watching his back,” Randi said slowly.

The second CIA technician glanced at Randi with a wry smile of her own.

“I guess you knew what you were doing when you planted all those other bugs in Kessler’s study.”

Randi nodded easily. “Let’s just say I had a hunch that it would be useful to have a fallback when dealing with these people —whoever they are.”

“Well, the audio-pickups worked beautifully,” the second tech assured her.

“I’ve got recordings of the whole call from Kessler’s end. And once I clean up some of the ambient noise and enhance the sound, we’ll be able to hear everything the other man said, too.”

“Can you isolate and play back the sounds you picked up when he punched in that first telephone number?” her male colleague asked.

“No sweat.”

“Outstanding.” He swiveled back to face Randi. “Then we’re in business.

See, every time Kessler pushed one of the buttons on his phone it generated a unique tone. Once we put all those tones together in the right order, we’ll know that first number he called.”

Randi nodded her understanding.

“And that gives us a little piece of string that we can follow through the telecommunications maze these guys have created,” the tech went on seriously. “It’ll take some time, but by using that first number we can start tracking back through that maze, eventually tracing all the way to the real number hidden at its core.”

“Which must belong to a telephone line tied directly to Wulf Renke,”

Randi said coolly. Her eyes hardened. “And then the professor and I will have a private little chat about these powerful backers of his, right before we toss him into a cell for the rest of his miserable life.”

“What about Kessler?” the second CIA technician asked.

Randi smiled thinly. “Herr Kessler can sit and stew a while longer. He’s already hit the panic button. Now we’ll wait and see just who shows up on the doorstep to collect him.”

Impatiently, Erich Brandt prow led back and forth across his office. He was on a secure line to Berlin. “You have your orders, Lange,” he snapped. “Now cam them out.”

“With respect,” the other man said quietly, “my men and I did not come here to commit suicide.”

“Go on.”

“The Americans are surely watching Kessler’s house,” Lange explained.

“And as soon as we make our move, they w ill close in on us.”

“You are convinced this is a CIA operation?” Brandt asked, forcing himself to restrain his anger.

“I am,” Lange said. “As soon as I received your alert, I began checking with some of our other sources inside the government here.”

“And?”

“There is a real Isabelle Stahn and she is a special prosecutor for the Ministry of Justice,” Lange said. “But Frau Stahn is currently on maternity leave and not expected back for duty until sometime next month. Nor is there any record of an internal investigation with Kessler as the focus.”

“So you think the Americans tricked him into pleading for our help,”

Brandt said grimly.

“Yes,” Lange agreed. “And by now they will be trying to trace that call he made to Renke.”

Brandt stopped pacing. If the Americans found Renke, they would also discover the HYDRA facility. And if that happened, the length of Brandt’s own life would be measured in hours at best. “Will they succeed?”

“I do not know,” Lange said slowly. Brandt could almost hear the other man shrug. “But that is precisely the sort of technical intelligence task at which both the NSA and CIA excel.”

Brandt nodded reluctantly, knowing that his subordinate’s assessment was accurate. As a rule, Americans made pitiful field agents, but their skill with machines and electronics was almost unsurpassed. His gray eyes turned ice-cold. “Then you must destroy this CIA surveillance unit before it is too late.”

“We cannot destroy what we cannot find,” Lange told him bluntly. “The Americans could be working from a vehicle or building anywhere within a mile radius of Kessler’s villa. My team and I do not have the time to drive aim-lessly all over Grunewald in the hopes of stumbling across them. To focus on a valid target, we must have more information on the CIA operations here in Berlin, and we must have it soon.”

Brandt nodded. Again, Lange was right. “Very well,” he said coldly. “I will contact Malkovic immediately. Our patron has a special contact in Cologne, a man who should prove most useful in this matter.”

Chapter Thirty

Huge housing projects lined Moscow’s Outer Ring Road, surrounding the city with row after row of drab gray blocks —soulless hives built by Communist bureaucrats as lodging for the faceless masses drawn to the Soviet capital in search of work. Nearly two decades after the death of the system that created them, these housing projects were still home to hundreds of thousands of Moscow’s poorest citizens.

Jon Smith and Fiona Devin made their way carefully up the interior stair-well of one of these apartment buildings. A few bare lightbulbs dangled from wiring, providing small, irregularly spaced patches of wavering light in the darkness. The concrete stairs were cracked and chipped and horribly stained.

In several places along the staircase, whole sections of rusty iron railing had sheared away from their supports.

The air was thick with unpleasant smells—the eye-stinging odor of cheap disinfectant, the scent of boiled cabbage from apartment kitchens, and the odor of urine and dirty diapers from darker corners piled high with sacks of uncollected garbage. Over everything there hung the sour reek of far too many people forced to live cheek-by-jowl without enough hot water to stay truly clean.

The tiny two-room flat they were seeking was on the fourth floor, at the far end of the building, past row upon row of identically grimy and battered doors. Smith and Fiona were here to visit the parents of Mikhail Voronov, the seven-year-old boy who had first contracted the terrible disease they were tracking.

At first glance, Jon found it difficult to believe that the silent, withdrawn woman who opened the door at their knock could possibly be the boy’s real mother. She seemed far too old, more a grandmother than the comparatively young woman she must be. Her hair had gone gray. Her face, probably already thin, was now horribly gaunt and deeply lined. But then he saw her eves, full of ever-renewed sorrow and left raw and red by constant weeping. They were the eyes of a woman, always poor, who had now been robbed of her one real treasure —her only child. Even two months later, she was still clad all in black, still in mourning.

“Yes?” she asked, plainly surprised to find two well-dressed foreigners standing on her doorstep. “How can I help you?”

“Please accept our deepest sympathies on your tragic loss, Mrs. Voronova.

And please accept our most sincere apologies for intruding in this difficult time,” Smith said quietly. “If it were not absolutely necessary, we would not dream of bothering you this way.”

He showed her his forged UN identity card. “My name is Strand, Dr. Kalle Strand. I’m with the World Health Organization. And this is Ms. Lindkvist.”

He indicated Fiona. “My assistant.”

“I do not understand,” the woman said, still puzzled. “Why are you here?”

“We’re investigating the illness that killed your son,” Fiona explained gently. “We’re trying to find out exactly what happened to Mikhail, so that others may someday be saved.”

Slowly, comprehension dawned on the woman’s grief-ravaged face. “Oh!

Of course. Come in! Come in! Please, enter my home.” She stepped back from the door and motioned them inside.

It was a bright winter morning outside, but the outer room she showed them into was only dimly lit, illuminated by a single, overhead fixture. Thick drapes blocked the lone window. A single-burner electric stove and a wash-basin occupied one corner of the tiny room, while a threadbare sofa, a pair of battered wooden chairs, and a low table took up most of the rest.

“Please, sit down,” the woman said, indicating the sofa. “I will bring my husband, Yuri.” She reddened. “He is trying to sleep. You must excuse him.

He is not fully himself. Not since our son — “

Clearly unable to say anything more without weeping, she turned and bustled away through a door into the flat’s only other room.

Fiona silently nudged Smith, indicating the framed picture of a small, smiling bov propped up on the low table. It was wreathed in black ribbon.

Two small candles flickered on either side of it.

He nodded tightly, regretting the need to deceive these poor, sad people in any way—even for a good cause. But it was necessary. From what Fred Klein had said last night, it was more urgent than ever that they obtain hard evidence about the origins of this cruel disease. One by one, the props were being knocked out from under the West’s intelligence services right at a time when their best work was most needed. And one by one, the new republics surrounding Russia were being fatally weakened by the loss of their most talented political and military leaders.

The dead boy’s mother came back into the room, now accompanied by her husband. Like his wife, Yuri Voronov was more a shambling grief-ridden shadow than a living being. His bloodshot eyes were sunk deep in their sockets and his hands trembled constantly. His clothes, smelling of stale sweat and alcohol, hung loose on a stooped frame that seemed to be visibly wasting away.

Seeing Smith and Fiona waiting for them, Voronov slowly straightened up.

With an embarrassed smile, he smoothed down his sparse, spiky hair and made a painfully correct and polite effort to welcome these two foreigners to his home, offering them tea in lieu of anything stronger. While his wife began heating water in a kettle on their small stove, he sat down across from them.

“Tatvana has told me you are scientists,” Voronov said slowly. “With the United Nations? And that you are studying the illness that took our little boy?”

Smith nodded. “That’s right, sir. If possible, we would very much like to ask you and your wife questions about your son’s life and about his overall health. Your answers may help us learn how to fight this disease before it kills other children in other parts of the world.”

“Da,” the other man said simply. “We will do whatever we can.” He blinked back tears and then went on. “No one else should have to suffer as Mischka did.”

“Thank you,” Smith said quietly.

Then, while Fiona took detailed notes, Jon led the two Russians through a painstaking inquiry into their son’s past medical history and theirs, trying to find some angle that Petrenko, Vedenskaya, and the others might have missed.

For their part, the hov’s parents answered patiently, even when most of Smith’s questions turned out to duplicate those they had already been asked a dozen times.

Yes, Mikhail had suffered the usual childhood ailments in Russia, measles, mumps, and occasional bouts of the common flu. For the most part, though, he had been a healthy, reasonably happy child. Neither of his parents had ever used illegal drugs, although his father shamefacedly admitted to drinking too much “now and then.” No, no one in the Voronov’s immediate or extended family had a history of serious chronic illness —no strange cancers or birth defects or other crippling disorders. One grandfather had died relatively young in a tractor accident on a collective farm. But the other grandparents had lived well into their late seventies before finally succumbing to a mixture of common, garden-variety ailments among the elderly —a heart attack, a stroke, and a case of severe pneumonia.

At length, Smith sat back feeling completely frustrated. So far, he could see nothing that might explain how or why Mikhail Voronov had contracted the previously unknown disease that had killed him. What linked this boy to the others who had also fallen ill in Moscow?

Jon frowned. He strongly suspected that the answer, if there was one, lay buried somewhere in their genetic makeup or in their biochemistry. Checking his theory meant obtaining DNA, blood, and tissue samples from the victims’ surviving relatives. It would require unfettered access to sophisticated science labs capable of running the necessary tests. Although Oleg Kirov was sure he could safely smuggle anything they collected back to the United States, doing so would take time. And conducting those tests would require even more time —time they might not be given.

Smith sighed. If you’ve only got one shot left, he told himself, you’d better take it while you can and hope for the best.

To his relief, both of Mikhail Voronov’s parents were eager to give him the blood and other samples he wanted. Somehow he had feared more resistance to the idea of being poked and prodded by needles.

“What else can these poor people do now that would give more meaning to their lives?” Fiona murmured softly, while she helped him sort out the test kits, syringes, Dacron-tipped swabs, and other pieces of medical equipment provided by one of Kirov’s contacts in the black market. She looked up at Smith w ith a serious expression. “You’re offering them another chance to fight back against the disease that murdered their child. Most parents I know would gladly walk through fire for that opportunity. Wouldn’t you?”

Smith nodded slowly. Humbled, he turned back to the Voronovs. “Let’s start by obtaining samples of your DNA.” He offered them each a long swab.

“Now, what I’d like you to do—”

To his surprise, before he could give them any instructions, both Russians began using the swabs to scrape away at the insides of their mouths, collecting the soft tissue cells that were the most useful for DNA analysis. Jon stared at them in astonishment. “Have you done this before?” he asked quietly.

Both of them nodded.

“Oh, yes,” the boy’s father told him. He shrugged. “For the big study.”

“And so did little Mischka,” his wife recalled softly. Tears welled up in her eyes. “He was so proud that day.” She looked across at her husband. “Do you remember, Yuri? How proud he was?”

“I do.” Voronov wiped at his own eyes. “Our boy was a brave little man that day.”

“Pardon me?” Fiona said carefully. “But which study was this?”

“I will show you.” Voronov rose to his feet and went into the back bedroom.

For a moment, they heard him rummaging around among some papers, and then he returned, holding out a large, handsomely embossed certificate of appreciation. He offered it to Smith.

With Fiona reading over his shoulder, Jon scanned the ornate script. Essentially, the certificate thanked the Voronov family for their “vital participation in the Slavic Genesis study conducted by the European Center for Population Research.” It was dated the year before.

He exchanged a startled glance with Fiona. She nodded slowly in dawning comprehension. So someone had been collecting DNA from these people; and collecting it only months before the Voronov’s seven-year-old son contracted a previously unknown disease—a fatal disease that destroyed systems and organs throughout the body.

For a moment longer, Smith sat still, staring down at the certificate in his hands. His eyes narrowed. Now, at last, he knew what they might be looking for.

Nikolai Nimerovsky paused briefly at the door to the Alpenblick Bar, looking for his contact. His gaze roved over the mostly solitary business travelers seated at different tables and stopped when he saw a pale, gray-haired man sitting with a copy of yesterday’s International Herald Tribune conspicuously open before him. He moved closer, noting the man’s black leather briefcase—virtually identical to the one in his own hands—and the small, double-helix lapel pin in his plain blue sport coat.

The Russian drew even nearer, conscious that his pulse was speeding up.

Years of service as a clandestine agent for Ivanov’s Thirteenth Directorate had taught him caution. He stopped in front of the gray-haired man and motioned to the empty chair. “Do you mind?” he asked in American-accented English.

The other man looked up from his newspaper. His eyes were appraising.

“Not at all,” he said slowly. “My flight is almost ready to leave. I’m only in transit.”

Sign, Nimerovsky thought, hearing the slight emphasis on the last word.

He sat down and set his briefcase on the floor next to its counterpart. “So am I. My flight has only a short layover here in Zurich. The world grows ever more connected, does it not?”

Countersign.

The gray-haired man smiled slightly. “So it does, friend.” He folded his newspaper, stood, picked up one of the two briefcases, and then left with a polite, disinterested nod.

Nimerovsky waited a few moments more before retrieving the briefcase the other man had left behind from under the table. He opened it quickly. It contained a sheaf of papers, business magazines, and a small gray plastic box marked “SC-1.” Inside that heavily insulated box, the Russian knew, nestled a tiny glass tube. He closed the briefcase.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a woman’s voice said politely over the public-address system, speaking first in German, then French, Italian, and English.

“SwissAir announces that its Flight 3000, with nonstop service to New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport, is now ready for passenger boarding.”

The Russian stood up and left the bar, carrying with him the unique HYDRA variant destined for President Samuel Adams Castilla.

Chapter Thirty-One

It was midmorning. Sheets of freezing rain spattered against the towering twin spires of Cologne’s massive Gothic cathedral, hiding them from the view of people hurrying along the paved streets far below. Inside the cathedral, a few hardy tourists milled around the enormous nave, staring in awe at its many priceless treasures —among them, beautiful stained-glass windows, finely sculpted stone and marble statues, and an ancient wood-carved crucifix, the Cross of Gero, which dated back more than a thousand years. Here and there, lone worshippers either knelt in private prayer or paused briefly to light small candles on their way back out to take up the ordinary burdens of the workaday world. Otherwise, the vast, shadow-filled space was almost deserted, seemingly frozen in an ethereal, eternal silence.

Gray-faced with fear and wearing a gray raincoat, Bernhard Heichler genuflected before the high altar. He crossed himself, entered one of the nearby pews, and then laboriously went to his knees. He bowed his head as though deep in meditation.

Footsteps echoed across the stone floor, drawing ever closer. Heichler closed his eyes, feeling his heart pounding wildly in fear. Please, God, he thought desperately, let this cup pass me by. Then he bit his lip, suddenly appalled by the grotesque blasphemy of his own thoughts. Of all men in this sacred place, he had no right to echo the agonized plea made by Christ in the Garden. He was a Judas, a betrayer.

And Bernhard Heichler knew that he had much to betray. He was a senior officer in the Bundesamtes fur Verfassunsschutz, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The BfV was Germany’s principal counterintelligence agency, its equivalent of the British MI5. His security clearances gave him unfettered access to some of his government’s most closely held secrets.

Someone slid into the next pew behind him.

Heichler raised his head.

“Do not turn around, Herr Heichler,” a man’s voice said quietly. “You are prompt. I congratulate you.”

“I had no choice,” Heichler replied stiffly.

“That is true,” the other man agreed. “You became our man the moment you took our money. You will remain our man until the day you die.”

Heichler winced. For six long years he had waited in fear for his benefac-tors to collect the debt he owed them. For six long years he had hoped that horrible day would never come.

But now it had.

“What is it that you want of me?” Heichler muttered.

“A gift,” the other man replied. He sounded amused. “The Shrine of the Magi lies just behind that altar, correct?”

The BfV official nodded uneasily. The Shrine, a golden box encrusted with precious gems, was said to contain relics of the three Magi, the wise men who had come from the east bearing gifts for the Christ child. Brought from Milan in the twelfth century, the reliquary was the cathedral’s greatest treasure, the very reason it had been built.

“You can rest quietly,” the other man told him. “You need not bring us gold or frankincense or myrrh—only that which is already yours to command.

Information, Herr Heichler. We want information.”

A missal thudded onto the pew beside Heichler, startling him.

“Open it.”

Trembling, he obeyed. The prayer book contained a single slip of paper bearing a twelve-digit telephone number.

“You will fax the information we require to that number. And you will do so within the next two hours. Is that clear?”

Heichler nodded. Reluctantly, he took the slip of paper and tucked it away inside his raincoat. “But what is this information you need?”

“The registration and license numbers of all vehicles currently operated by the Berlin Station of the American Central Intelligence Agency.”

Heichler felt the blood drain from his face. “But that is impossible!” he stammered.

“On the contrary,” the man behind him said coldly, “it is perfectly possible—for a high-ranking officer in Section V. For someone like you, in fact, Herr Heichler.” With implacable precision, the man went on. “Section V oversees all foreign intelligence organizations operating on German soil, including those of allied countries like the United States. Liaison officers from these organizations provide your staff with regular updates on the equipment they are using, the names of their field agents, and other aspects of their clandestine work within our borders. Isn’t that so?”

Slowly, the BfV official nodded.

“Then you can obtain the data we need, and you will follow our instructions.”

“The risk is too great!” Heichler whined. He was ashamed to hear the note of panic’ in his voice and desperately fought to regain some measure of control over himself. “Accessing the information you require so quickly will inevitably mean leaving traces that might incriminate me. And if the Americans ever find out what I have done — “

“You must choose which you fear more,” the other man said harshly. “The Americans or us. A sensible man would weigh the odds carefully.”

Heichler squirmed under the awful knowledge that he had no real choice.

He must obey these orders, or pay the terrible price for his earlier crimes and betrayals. His shoulders slumped in surrender, and he nodded drearily. “Very well. I will do what I can.”

“You have chosen wisely,” the other man commended him sardonically.

“Remember, you have just two hours. And failure will not be tolerated.”

Professor Wulf Renke ran a magnifier slowly over the printout of the results of his most recent DNA sequencer run. Carefully, he studied the intricate patterns the printout showed, hunting for the unique patches of the genetic sequence —rare single-nueleotide polymorphisms — that were needed to continue sculpting this next HYDRA variant. But then his watch beeped insistently, reminding him that it would soon be time to inspect the next batch of E. coli cultures. He had only a few more minutes to complete an analysis that should take at least another hour.

The German weapons scientist frowned, irked by this latest evidence of excessive haste. Constant demands from Moscow for faster production were forcing him to run the lab, his staff, and their equipment at a dizzying, break-neck pace. Each HYDRA variant was a miniature work of art, one ideally requiring ample time to design and craft with loving precision. Instead, Malkovic and Viktor Dudarev expected him to churn out new lethal strands on an assembly-line basis, as though this facility was only an old-fashioned armaments factor)’ mass-producing high-explosive artillery shells.

Renke thought it would have been wiser to wait longer before unleashing his creation on the world. With only a few more months of preparation, none of this rushing about would have been necessary. He could have had all the necessary HYDR\ variants stockpiled and ready for use on command. Unfortunately, his employers were impetuous and angry men. Worse, from his viewpoint, the men in Moscow were still wedded to an outdated belief in the power of massed armor, infantry, and bombers. As a result, their timetable for ZHUKOV revolved entirely around considerations of the weather, Russia’s ability to deploy military forces by rail and road, and how long it might take those Russian troops to capture their objectives once the shooting started.

He sniffed in contempt. Neither Malkovic nor the Russian president had any real appreciation of the subtler and more lasting power conveyed by their control over a weapon like HYDRA. His creations could have been used to terrify prospective opponents, frightening them into toeing the Russian line without the need for any wasteful, large-scale violence. But instead, his employers saw HYDRA as just one more means of killing. Typical Slavs, Renke thought derisively. They understood the application of power only in its most brutal and obvious guise.

Renke shrugged. Error compounding error. And folly feeding on folly. It was an old story in his career—whether in East Germany, the Soviet Union, or in Iraq. One could never trust laymen to think and act with clarity. Their greed and basic ignorance always interfered with rational decision-making.

Fortunately, he was immune to such weaknesses.

“Professore?” one of his assistants called, holding out a phone. “Signor Brandt is on the secure line.”

Impatiently, Renke yanked off his face shield, surgical mask, and gloves.

He tossed them into a bin and then took the phone. “Yes?” the white-haired scientist snapped. “What is it, Erich?”

“An update on our two most troubling security problems,” Brandt said tersely. “The ones we face in Berlin and here in Moscow.”

Renke nodded to himself. In this case, the other man was right to interrupt him. “Go ahead.”

He listened intently while Brandt filled him in on recent events. The news from Berlin reassured him. Once Lange and his hit team had the information they needed, their success seemed certain. The news from Moscow was far less pleasing. “There’s still no sign of these Americans?” he asked in disbelief.

“None,” Brandt said. “None of Alexei Ivanov’s vaunted militia checkpoints have turned up so much as a hint of their whereabouts. He believes Smith and Devin may have gone to ground at a safe house outside the city—or that they have already escaped from Russia.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think Ivanov is too optimistic,” Brandt replied. “Ms. Devin may only be an amateur spy, but Colonel Smith is most certainly a hardened professional.

He will not abandon a mission so easily.”

Renke contemplated that. The former Stasi officer’s evaluation of his opponent seemed accurate. “So? What is your next move, then?” he asked coolly.

Brandt hesitated. “I am not sure.”

The scientist raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “Come now, Erich,” he snapped. “Smith and Devin are not fools. Surely you know what they will find in Vedenskaya’s notes?”

“Herr Professor,” the other man said through gritted teeth, “you forget that I am not a scientist. My skills lie in other directions.”

“The names,” Renke said in exasperation. “The Americans will learn the names of those we used as the first test subjects for HYDRA. Whatever else Colonel Smith is, he is also a scientist, a medical researcher. Faced with a strange disease, he’ll try to determine the vector. Now, all you have to do is bait the proper trap, and then wait for them to walk right into it.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Deep in the interior of a multistory public parking garage a few kilometers from the Grunewald district, Gerhard Lange heard a static-laden voice squawk over his radio. Between the interference and the man’s obvious excitement, it was impossible to make out what he was trying to report. Frowning, Lange straightened up slowly and pushed the tiny receiver deeper into his ear.

“What was that, Mueller?” he demanded. “Say again.”

This time, Mueller, the heavyset man who had met his team at the airport the day before, spoke more slowly and clearly. “I have your targets,” he said.

“Repeat: I have your targets confirmed.”

Lange breathed out. The waiting game was over. He leaned in through the open driver’s side window of their black BMW and retrieved a copy of the faxed list they had received two hours ago. “Read them back to me.”

While Mueller fed him the license plates and makes of vehicles he had spotted during his reconnaissance, the ex-Stasi officer checked them against the list of CIA-registered cars and trucks in Berlin. They matched perfectly.

The folded the fax and slid it inside his jacket. Then he unfolded a detailed map of the local streets. “Excellent work. Now, where exactly are these Americans deployed?”

Lange listened closely, using a red pen to circle the positions given to him by the heavyset man. He studied them briefly, noting relative distances and alternate approach and escape routes. A plan began taking shape in his mind.

Quick and dirty, he thought coldly. And the quicker, the better.

He turned to his companions. “Pripremiti. Nama imati jedan cilj!” he growled in Serbian. “Get ready. We have a target!”

At his command, the three hard-faced men, all veterans of Serbian State Security and of the brutal ethnic cleansing campaigns in Bosnia and Kosovo, put out their cigarettes and scrambled to their feet. Lange opened the BMW’s trunk and swiftly handed out equipment and ammunition. When he was through, the ex-Stasi officer and the members of his handpicked hunter-killer team began donning their gear and checking their weapons.

Although it was only midafternoon, it was growing dark fast. Solid masses of leaden clouds covered the sky. Whipped up by a strong wind from the east, occasional flurries of fresh snow danced across the Grunewald’s nearly deserted streets and sidewalks. The rising wind howled through the nearby woods and sent more snow sliding off the steep slate roofs of houses nestled among the trees.

To keep warm, Randi Russell walked at a brisk pace, heading south along Clayallee. This wide avenue, which ran here along the urban forest preserve’s eastern border, was named for the American general, Lucius Clay, who had ordered the Berlin Airlift to save the city from starvation during the opening rounds of the Cold War. Wearing a fashionable ski jacket, black turtleneck sweater, and jeans, she was returning to the CIA surveillance van after making a cautious prowl through the quiet neighborhood around Ulrich Kessler’s villa.

So far, nothing much was happening. Her lookout outside the villa reported only normal traffic through the area. The BKA official himself was still inside his home. As the day wore on without further contact from Wulf Renke, though, Kessler was growing increasingly edgy. The listening devices she had planted earlier were picking up sounds of constant pacing, sporadic cursing, and the frequent clink of bottles and glassware from around his well-stocked liquor cabinet.

Ranch thought again about this strange silence from Renke. Had the renegade weapons scientist decided to cut his losses and leave Kessler to his fate?

The more time that went by without any sign of movement in or out of the house, the more likely that began to seem. Above all else, Renke was a survivor. He had never demonstrated real loyalty to any other person, country, or ideology. The scientist would save Kessler only if he saw some advantage to himself in doing so. And by now, Renke must suspect that his longtime protector inside the BKA was under close surveillance. If so, Randi wondered, was it worth snatching Kessler herself? Could she squeeze any useful information out of the guy before Langley got nervous and ordered her to hand him over to his own people?

She grinned, imagining the likely reaction of the risk-averse CIA bureaucrats if one of their field officers kidnapped a German federal criminal police official. No, Randi decided wryly, grabbing Kessler was not going to fly. Instead, her best bet might be to back off for now. Later she could look for a discreet way to let his superiors know about his criminal conduct. Of course, she would also have to manage that without revealing that she had hacked into one of their high-security computer networks.

In the meantime, her audio-operations technicians were busy trying to trace that first emergency number Kessler had dialed. So far, they had linked it to a cell phone registered in Switzerland. Where the trail would lead from there was still anyone’s guess.

A big yellow BVG transit bus roared past with only a handful of passengers on board. Randi looked up, getting her bearings. On her right, to the west, lay the quiet, snow-cloaked forest. On her left, across the road, there were houses and a row of small shops. There were more vehicles moving on this stretch of the avenue—a few private cars and a couple of delivery trucks out making their rounds despite the slowly worsening weather. A block ahead, she could see the surveillance team’s Ford panel van parked between an older Audi and a brand-new Opel station wagon.

She tapped a button on what looked like a silver iPod hooked to her belt.

Designed for undercover operations, this iPod actually contained a sophisticated tactical radio set with several secure channels. “Base, this is Lead. I’m coming in.”

“Understood, Lead,” one of the techs working in the van replied. Suddenly his voice sharpened. “Wait one, Randi. We’re picking up an incoming call to Kessler’s house. Someone’s telling him to be ready to leave, that an extraction unit is on its way!”

Yes! Randi enthusiastically pounded her clenched right fist into the open palm of her left hand. It was about time. “Okay, Base. Get ready to saddle up.

When these guys swoop in and scoop Kessler up, we’ll tag along behind to see where they take him.”

“Got it,” the CIA tech said. Over the radio link, she could hear him awkwardly clambering from the back of the windowless van into the driver’s seat.

Still walking toward the Ford, Randi switched frequencies to speak directly to the young Berlin Station field officer posted down the street from Kessler’s villa. “Watcher, this is Lead. Did you copy that?”

Silence.

She frowned. “Carla, this is Randi. Come in.”

There was no answer. Only the faint hiss of static over dead airwaves.

Randi swung round in alarm, feeling a cold chill run down her spine. Something was going wrong. Very wrong. She unzipped her jacket just far enough so that she could draw the 9mm Beretta pistol in her shoulder holster without snagging it on her clothes—in case she needed the weapon out in a hurry.

At that moment, she saw a black BMW sedan racing down Clayallee at high speed, with its powerful engine revving as it wove in and out around slower-moving cars and trucks. Instinctively, her hand dove inside her jacket, reaching for her pistol. But the speeding car drove on past her surveillance van. She breathed out in relief.

Then, suddenly, the BMW braked hard. The black sedan slewed around through a tire-squealing, rubber-burning, 180-degree turn, and rocked to a full stop just a few meters away from the parked Ford.

Three of the BMW’s four doors flew open, and three lean, cold-eyed men jumped out onto the street. They moved rapidly, fanning out in an arc around the CIA-owned van. Each man held a submachine gun —Heckler & Koch MP5SDs equipped with integral noise suppressors —tucked against his shoulder in a shooting stance. Randi’s eyes widened as she recognized the black jumpsuits and dark green, eagle-badge berets worn by Germany’s elite coun-terterrorist unit, GSG-9, Grenzschutzgruppe-9.

“Oh, shit,” she muttered. One of the area residents or local shopkeepers must have spotted her surveillance team, started getting suspicious, and then called the authorities with a warning. After 9/1I and the horror of the Madrid commuter train massacre, Germany, France, Spain, and others now kept elements of their rapid-reaction forces on permanent alert. Randi quickly took her hand off the butt of the Berretta. There was no point in spooking these heavily armed commandos. If they thought they were going up against terrorists, their nerves and reflexes were sure to be set on a hair-trigger.

Instead, carefully reaching inside her jacket for her Agency identity card, she started walking even faster, heading straight for the GSG-9 unit. Maybe she could intervene before these overeager German soldiers blew her whole clandestine operation sky-high. Once they rousted her people out onto the sidewalk in full view of every curious onlooker, there would be no way to keep the story off the airwaves. And the local media would have a field day running breathless updates about the foolhardy American intelligence agents caught spying on peaceful German citizens.

“Lead, this is Base,” one of the two technicians inside the van radioed, sounding rattled. “What should we do?”

Randi switched back to her primary channel. “Just sit tight, guys. I’m coming. Let me handle this.”

She was still at least fifty meters away when the three black-clad gunmen suddenly opened fire, shooting without any warning or provocation.

Their submachine guns stuttered on full automatic, raking the van from back to front at pointblank range. Showers of sparks cascaded high in the air as dozens of 9mm rounds ripped through the vehicle, puncturing metal, shattering fragile electronics gear, and shredding human flesh. Most of the bullets punched straight through and came out on the other side still moving at close to the speed of sound. But enough hit home to turn the interior of the Ford into a blood-drenched slaughterhouse. Through her earphones, Randi heard agonized screams that were mercifully cut short as the hail of submachine gun fire went on and on.

These must be Renke’s men, she realized in horror. They had not come to rescue Kessler. Instead, they had come to kill those who were keeping watch on him.

Snarling in rage, Randi drew her Beretta, aimed rapidly at the nearest gunman, and squeezed off two shots. One round missed. The other hit the man high in the chest. But instead of dropping him, the impact only knocked him backward a couple of paces. He grunted, doubled over for a brief moment, and then straightened back up. She could see the hole torn in his clothing, but there was no sign of any blood.

Christ, she realized suddenly, these bastards are wearing body armor. Her survival instincts kicked in and she threw herself sideways, diving for cover behind a Volvo parked along the side of Clayallee.

The man turned fast in her direction, bringing his submachine gun up in the same, whirling movement. He fired a long burst, spraying bullets toward the Volvo.

Lying prone behind the parked car, Randi buried her head in her hands as the Volvo shuddered and rocked above her, hit repeatedly at close range. Bits and pieces of shredded metal, glass, and plastic spun away across the street.

Ricochets and near misses cracked by low overhead. They tore into other parked vehicles or spun away off the pavement, hurling shards of shattered concrete in all directions. Karsplitting car alarms began going off up and down the avenue, triggered by the barrage of sudden impacts.

The shooting stopped suddenly.

Breathing hard, Randi rolled back out onto the sidewalk with her Beretta held out in front of her and ready to fire. She saw two of the black-clad gunmen scrambling back into the BMW. The third had slung his submachine gun across one shoulder and stood hunched over, fiddling with what looked like a small green canvas bag.

This time, she took careful aim, extending the Beretta in a two-handed marksman’s grip. She waited until her pistol’s sights settled on the third gunman and held steady. Then she squeezed the trigger. The Beretta barked once, recoiling back against her tight grip. Nothing. A miss. Randi’s eyes narrowed, focusing on her target. She steadied the pistol again and took another shot.

This 9mm round slammed into the gunman’s upper right leg, shattered his femur, and exploded out the other side in a spray of blood and bone fragments. He sat down suddenly, staring in disbelief at his mangled leg. The canvas bag tumbled out of his hands and fell to the street.

A look of desperation flashed across the wounded man’s face. He lashed out with his left foot, kicking the bag away from him. It spun wildly across the ground and ended up under the bullet-riddled CIA surveillance van.

Randi heard the crippled gunman shout a panicked warning in what sounded like some kind of guttural Slavic language. Immediately, one of his comrades leaned out of the BMW, grabbed him under the arms, and hauled him inside, leaving a pool of bright red blood smeared across the street.

Without waiting any longer, the driver of the black sedan hit the gas pedal and peeled out, accelerating back up Clayallee the way thev had come. Pistol in hand, Randi scrambled to her feet. She swung the Beretta through a wild, wide arc, leading the BMW as it flashed past her at well over eighty kilometers an hour. She squeezed the trigger repeatedly, trying to fire as many shots as she could at the fast-moving target.

One of her rounds smashed the car’s rear window. A second hit punched a hole in the trunk. But the others went wide. Cursing under her breath, she stopped shooting, not willing to risk hitting innocent bystanders by mistake.

The BMW kept going, heading north along the avenue until at last it disappeared in the gathering twilight.

For a moment longer, Randi stood staring along the street in sheer disbelief. She felt stunned by the magnitude of this unhesitating and utterly murderous assault on her surveillance team. How in God’s name had this happened? she wondered bitterly. How could Wulf Renke’s men have zeroed in on them with such unerring precision?

Slowly, she lowered the Beretta and forced herself to flip the safety catch on. It was not easy. Her hands were starting to shake as the wild exhilaration of close combat ebbed away, leaving only sorrow and a deep, abiding anger in its place. Then Randi glanced back over her shoulder at the bullet-shattered Ford van.

The small canvas bag was just visible. It was lying on its side beside one of the rear wheels.

A bag, her mind said. Then, a split-second later, her mind corrected itself.

No, she thought coldly. That’s a bomb—a satchel charge.

Run, Randi told herself. Run away now! Her mind suddenly in overdrive, she turned and fled, sprinting away from the van as fast as she could move.

Gun in hand, she raced past stalled cars whose drivers were still staring in shock at the mangled van.

“Get out! Get out!” she yelled at them in German, gesturing with the Beretta. “There’s a bomb!”

And then the satchel charge exploded.

A sudden flash of blinding white light ripped through the darkness behind Randi. Still running flat-out, she hurled herself down, curling up for protection just as the shock wave, roaring outward from the very center of the powerful blast, rolled over her. The massive wall of superheated air bounced her high off the pavement and then tossed her tumbling end over end across the ground. At the same time, a giant fist—the overpressure caused by the blast-seemed to squeeze every ounce of oxygen out of her lungs.

Slowly, the flaring white light faded. Everything went piteh-black. The world around her vanished as she fell out and away from consciousness.

She came to only seconds later, lying curled up against the side of a car thrown sideways across the road by the blast. Half deafened, with her ears still ringing, Randi forced herself first to sit up and then to climb back to her feet, wincing unwillingly at the pain from tortured muscles and bruised and bleeding patches of skin.

All around her on the street, other dazed and injured people were pulling themselves out of vehicles that had been hammered by the shock wave or hit by flving debris. Others, streaked with blood or cradling broken limbs, were stumbling blindly out of their bomb-damaged homes and businesses. The enormous explosion had torn open roofs, toppled chimneys, and shattered Every window facing the street, sending shards of broken glass sleeting through living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and storefronts.

Slowly, Randi turned and stared back at the place where the surveillance van had been.

The Ford was gone, replaced by an ugly tangle of twisted, burning wreckage. All of the other cars that had been parked within fifty meters of the shattered van now lay canted across Clayallee— crumpled, smashed, and wreathed in billowing orange and flame. Thick black smoke drifted across the road.

Randi blinked away tears. There was no time now for sorrow, she decided coldly. If she lived long enough, that would have to come later.

Forcing herself to focus, she quickly checked over her equipment. Her radio was dead, probably wrecked beyond repair when the explosion sent her skittering across the pavement. Well, it doesn’t really matter, she thought bleakly. After all, she had no one left to contact. She spotted her Beretta lying on the sidewalk a few meters away and awkwardly limped over to pick it up.

Frowning in concentration, Randi carefully examined the pistol. Although the Beretta’s grip and barrel were scraped and scarred, its firing pin, trigger spring, hammer, and slide all appeared undamaged. One side of her mouth twitched upward in a bitter, self-mocking grin. From the look of it, the 9mm weapon was in better shape than she was.

She hit the magazine release catch, dumped out the half-empty clip, and dropped it into one of her jacket pockets. Then she slapped in a fresh fifteen-round magazine, pulled back on the slide, and lowered the hammer. She was ready.

Randi slid the pistol back into her shoulder holster and took one last, grim look at the burning wreckage scattered across Clayallee. She could hear police, fire, and ambulance sirens warbling louder and louder as the German authorities began reacting to the disaster.

It was time to go.

She turned away and hobbled to the west, pushing deeper in among the trees of the Grunewald forest preserve until she was well out of sight from the road. There, Randi turned north and forced herself into a painful loping run, moving faster and faster among the shadows and the silent, white-cloaked woods.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Colonel-General Leonid Averkovich Nesterenko, the tall, dapper commander-in-chief of the Russian Federation’s military space forces, marched briskly down the corridor connecting his quarters with the Operations Control Center. Bright fluorescent lighting overhead and a constant flow of fresh-smelling, cool air from ventilation shafts made it difficult to remember that this massive installation was buried hundreds of meters below ground, shielded from attack by massive slabs of steel-reinforced concrete. Its heavily guarded entrance and exit tunnels were concealed in the dense birch forests north of Moscow.

The two armed sentries on guard outside the Operations Center stiffened to attention as he approached. Nesterenko ignored them. Ordinarily a stickler for the finer points of formal military courtesy, he was far too pressed for time just now.

Nesterenko pushed quickly through the door and hurried into the vast chamber beyond. As his eyes adjusted to this huge room’s subdued lighting, he could see row upon row of control consoles. The officers at each console were either busy monitoring the satellite and early warning radar systems in their charge, or conferring quietly via secure communications equipment with colleagues at launch sites, ground stations, and local command posts across Russia.

At the far end of the Center, an enormous, wall-sized screen showed the world and the key spacecraft and satellites orhiting around it. Bright yellow dotted lines depicted each object’s predicted orbital path, while small green vector arrows indicated their current positions.

The duty officer, a much shorter, square-jawed man named Baranov, hurried to Nestrenko’s side. “The Americans are maneuvering one of their Lacrosse radar-imaging reconnaissance satellites, sir,” he reported.

Nestrenko frowned. “Show me.”

The shorter man turned and snapped an order to one of his subordinates at the nearest control console. “Bring up the data on Lacrosse-Five.”

One of the blinking arrows on the huge wall screen changed color, flashing from green to red. At the same time, a new dotted line began slowly di-verging from the satellite’s previously observed orbital track.

“We detected the burn approximately five minutes ago,” Baranov told him.

Nestrenko nodded, glowering as he studied Lacrosse-Five’s new predicted course. “What are our American friends up to?” he murmured. He turned back to Baranov. “Show me a close-up of that projected track where it first crosses our borders. And put up overlays showing the locations where we can expect the Americans to gain significantly better reconnaissance capability from this new orbital path.”

The image on the wall screen flickered and then expanded rapidly, zoom-ing in to focus on a much smaller area —the Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia. Glowing boxes marked out huge swathes of territory along a diagonal running northeast from Kiev to Moscow and beyond. The assembly areas for the tank and motor rifle divisions slated to invade the Ukraine were right in the middle of one of those boxes.

“Damn,” Nestrenko muttered. The Lacrosse satellite carried a powerful synthetic aperture radar imaging system, one that could “see” through clouds, dust, and darkness. The ZHUKOV assembly areas were hidden beneath layers of radar-absorbent camouflage netting, but no one could be sure that this experimental material would successfully deflect such close scrutiny.

“We have a Spider in position,” Baranov reminded him quietly, pointing at another vector arrow blinking on the display. “Our targeting computers predict that it will be in effective range for another thirty minutes.”

Nestrenko nodded tightly. The Spider was one of Russia’s most secret space weapons systems. Disguised as ordinary civilian-use communications, weather, and navigation satellites, each Spider also contained anti-satellite weapons for use against enemy space platforms in low earth orbit. In theory, such an attack could be carried out covertly. But in practice? If detected, any Russian effort to destroy an American spy satellite could easily be construed as an act of war.

Then he shrugged. This decision was beyond his authority. He stepped forward to the nearest console and picked up a red secure phone. “This is Colonel-General Nestrenko. Patch me through to the Kremlin,” he told the operator on the other end firmly. “I must speak with the president immediately. Inform him that this is a war priority communication.”

Four hundred kilometers above the earth’s sun-flecked seas and its great brown, green, and white masses of land, a Russian meteorology satellite officially registered as COSMOS-8B swung through its regular elliptical orbit, moving at twenty-seven thousand kilometers an hour. In reality, the counter-feit satellite was a weapons-carrier code-named Spider Twelve. Now, as it flew high over the coast of Africa, the spacecraft’s high-frequency data-relay antenna began receiving coded transmissions containing new programming for its onboard computers.

Within sixty seconds of receiving the last transmission, Spider Twelve went active.

Small altitude rockets fired, spewing small puffs of vapor into space.

Slowly, the long cylinder-shaped satellite spun through an arc until its blunt nose aimed at a point in space above the earth’s distant curved horizon. When Spider Twelve reached the desired angle, the rockets fired again, arresting its rotation. A relay closed and hatches popped open at the base of the nose.

Six smaller space vehicles —cone-shaped anti-satellite warheads —drifted out through the hatches and slowed slightly, braked by clusters of tiny maneuvering thrusters firing in a preprogrammed sequence. As they decelerated, the warheads began falling toward the earth, arcing downward through a great curve that would bring them within striking range of that distant, precisely calculated point.

When the six warheads were several kilometers away, Spider Twelve performed its last programmed act. Self-destruct charges placed at key points throughout the ten-ton satellite exploded in short, sharp, blinding flashes that were bright enough to be picked up by both American and Russian early-warning sensors orbiting high above the globe. The detonations ripped Spider Twelve to pieces, shearing antennas, solar arrays, and puncturing fuel tanks.

Spewing water vapor and fuel, the tangled wreckage began tumbling through space, shedding smaller fragments as it fell slowly toward the upper fringes of the earth’s atmosphere.

Covered by the brighter explosions behind them, the six anti-satellite warheads also detonated. Each burst sent a hail of thousands of small, razor-edged pieces of titanium into space. Together, they formed a giant cloud of shrapnel, a deadly cloud flying onward at more than seven kilometers a second.

Forty-five seconds later, and more than three hundred kilometers down-range, the shrapnel cloud intersected the orbital track of Lacrosse-Five, one of only two U.S. radar-imaging reconnaissance satellites circling the globe.

“Our tracking radar confirms multiple shrapnel impacts on Lacrosse-Five,”

Baranov said jubilantly, listening closely to a report relayed by one of his watch officers. He turned his head toward Nestrenko. “Preliminary damage assessment shows that the American spy satellite has been totally destroyed.”

The colonel-general nodded calmly. He picked up the red phone again.

“This is Nestrenko,” he said calmly. “Connect me with the United States Space Command.”

He looked across at Baranov with a slight smile while waiting for his hot-line call to go through. “I will have to convey my sincere regrets and deepest apologies for the terrible damage accidentally caused by this catastrophic explosion on board one of our COSMOS-class weather satellites.”

“Do you think the Americans will believe you?”

Nestrenko shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. What is most important is that they cannot possibly launch a replacement for their wrecked radar spy satellite in time. Soon, very soon, we will no longer be forced to care so much about what the Americans believe. Or what they may do.”

It was still early in the morning when a uniformed Secret Service agent ushered Fred Klein into the president’s den upstairs in the East Wing. The room, full of old books, prints of works by Fredric Remington and Georgia O’Keeffe, and photographs of the rugged New Mexico landscape, was all Castilla’s own —his private refuge from the routine frenzy of the White House’s more public spaces.

The president himself sat in one of the room’s two large recliners, moodily paging through the morning intelligence brief. A tray nearby held his untouched breakfast. He motioned toward the other chair. “Sit down, Fred.”

Klein obeved.

Wearilv, Castilla pushed the pile of papers aside and turned to his old friend. “Has there been any more news from Smith or the others in Moscow?”

“Not yet,” Klein told him. “But I expect another report in a matter of hours at most.”

Tire president nodded somberly. “Good. Because I’m going to need as much information as I can get —and I’m going to need it very soon. Certainly within the next forty-eight hours.”

Klein raised an eyebrow.

“I’m more and more convinced that whatever the Russians are planning is coining up fast,” Castilla explained. “Which means that our window for heading them off is closing even faster.”

“Yes, sir,” the head of Covert-One agreed. If the rumors Smith and Fiona Devin had picked up about the accelerating tempo of Russian military preparations were accurate, the U.S. and its allies would already be hard-pressed to react in time.

“I’m calling a secret meeting with high-level representatives of some of our closest allies,” Castilla told him. “Those who still pack a respectable military punch —the UK, France, Germany, and Japan, for a start. I want us to forge a united response to the Kremlin, a series of concrete measures that will force Dudarev to back down before he pulls the trigger on whatever operation he’s planning.”

“When?” Klein asked quietly.

“The morning of February 22,” the president said. “I don’t see how we can afford to wait any longer than that.”

Klein frowned. “That’s a very tight deadline,” he said at length. “I don’t know that I can promise concrete results by then.”

Castilla nodded. “I understand. But that’s all the time we have left, Fred.

Believe me, I’m making the same impossible demands of everyone else. At the NSC meeting last night, I ordered the redirection of every other component of our national intelligence capability—spy satellites, signals intercept stations, and whatever agent networks we still have—onto the same mission.

When our allies show up in the Oval Office, I need solid and convincing evidence of Russia’s aggressive intentions.”

“And if we can’t get it for you in time?”

The president sighed. “Then I’ll go ahead with the meeting anyway, but I won’t kid myself. Without something more than my own fears and a few vague hints of trouble, the odds are very much against anvone else being willing to join us in facing down Moscow.”

Klein nodded tightly. “I’ll relay the critical time frame to Colonel Smith as soon as I can.”

“You do that,” Castilla said softly. “I hate like hell to ask you to expose your people to more danger, but I don’t see any alternative.” He broke off, hearing his secure phone ring. He answered it swiftly. “Yes?”

While Klein watched, the president’s broad, deeply lined face sagged.

Suddenly he looked years older.

“When?” Castilla asked, gripping the phone until his knuckles turned white. He listened to the reply, then nodded his head firmly. “I understand, Admiral,” he said quietly.

The president disconnected and then punched in an internal White House number. “This is Sam Castilla, Charlie,” he said to his chief of staff.

“Round up the NSC pronto. We have an emergency situation on our hands.”

Finished, he turned back to Klein. “That was Admiral Brose,” he said. His eyes were tired and discouraged. “He just received a flash communication from Space Command headquarters out in Colorado. There’s been an explosion in space, and we’ve lost one of our most sophisticated spy satellites— Lacrosse-Five.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

It was pitch-black outside by the time Jon Smith and Fiona Devin reached their next destination, a large dacha once owned by Aleksandr Zakarov, the old man who had been the second victim of the suspicious disease outbreak they were investigating. Before he retired, Zakarov had been both an influential member of the ruling Communist Party and the State manager of a heavy industry complex. During the first, wild years of crony capitalism after the Soviet Union imploded, he had earned a substantial fortune by selling off “shares” in the factories under his control.

The luxurious dacha he had acquired with some of his ill-gotten loot was located over an arduous hour’s drive north of the Outer Ring Road. While grinding slowly along narrow, snow-clogged country lanes through gloomy patches of forest and past tiny villages and abandoned churches, Smith had wondered why on earth Zakarov’s rich widow would choose to live so far outside Moscow—especially during the long, cold, and dark winter months. For most of the city’s wealthy elite, their dachas were chiefly rustic summer retreats, places of escape and relaxation during the sweltering davs and nights so common in July and August. Few of them ever bothered leaving the comforts of the capital once the first snows fell, except perhaps for rare weekends and holidays dedicated to cross-country skiing and other winter sports.

Within five minutes after they were ushered into her elegantly furnished sitting room, neither Jon nor Fiona wondered very much about why the former Part\r boss’s widow lived in rural isolation. Their reluctant hostess was a woman who neither wanted nor enjoyed the company of others. She preferred a life of essential solitude with only the handful of paid servants necessarv to cook, clean, and otherwise cater to her every petty and eccentric whim.

Madame Irina Zakarova was a tiny woman with a sharp, beaklike nose and small, dark, predatory eyes that seemed always in motion — observing, judging, and then dismissing with contempt. Her narrow, deeply lined face bore the sour, caustic frown of one who never expects much from anyone, and who almost always finds her abysmally low expectations of her fellow humans fully satisfied. With a jaundiced eye, she finished examining Smith’s forged World Health Organization credentials and handed the papers back with an indifferent shrug. “Very well. You may ask your questions, Dr. Strand. I do not promise many useful answers. Franklv, I found the whole matter of my husband’s last illness a great bore.” I ler mouth turned downward even more sharplv. “All those ridiculous doctors and nurses and health ministry officials asking the same dreary questions: What did he eat last? Had he ever been exposed to radiation? What medications was he taking? On and on they went, in a never-ending interrogation. It was all so absurd.”

“Absurd in what way?” Smith asked carefully.

“For the simple reason that Aleksandr was a walking catalogue of ill health and bad habits,” Madame Zakarova replied coolly. “He smoked and drank and ate far too much all his life. Anything could have killed him —a heart attack, stroke, some kind of cancer … anything at all. So the fact that his body gave out in the end was hardly a matter of special surprise, or of much real interest, to me. I really don’t understand all the fuss these doctors made over his death.”

“Others were killed by the same strange illness,” Fiona pointed out tersely.

“Among them, an innocent little boy who did not share your husband’s bad habits.”

“Really?” the other woman asked casually. “An otherwise healthy child?”

Smith nodded, doing his best to hide his own dislike for this cold, remarkably selfish, woman.

“How odd,” Madame Zakarova said, with yet another emotionally detached shrug. She sighed languidly. “Well, then, I suppose I must do my best to help you, regardless of the inconvenience to myself.”

Patiently, more patiently than he would have supposed was possible.

Smith led her through the same set of health-related questions he had already asked the Voronovs. As before, Fiona carefully took down her answers, maddeningly incomplete though they were.

At last, when the old woman began to show unmistakable signs that her own limited patience was wearing thin, Jon decided it was time to shift his line of questioning to their chief area of interest—the European Center for Population Research and its DNA sampling around Moscow.

“Thank you for your time, Madame Zarkova. You have been extremely helpful,” Smith lied, sitting back in his chair and beginning to gather up his papers. But then he stopped and sat forward again. “Oh, there is just one other small matter.”

“Yes?”

“Our records show that you and your husband participated in a major DNA survey last year,” Smith said casually, mentally crossing his fingers. “Is that correct?”

“The big genetic study?” The older woman sniffed quietly. “Oh, yes.

Swabbing out our mouths for perfect strangers in the name of science. A disgusting ritual, if you ask my opinion. But Aleksandr was very excited about the whole grotesque process.” She shook her head in contempt. “My husband was a fool. He actually believed that this so-called Slavic Genesis project would prove one of his own silly pet theories —that we Russians are the pinnacle of European racial and ethnic evolutionary development.”

Jon forced himself to smile noncommittally, hiding his own elation. He was now sure that the}’ had uncovered an important part of the origins of this deadly disease.

After he and Fiona Devin finished talking to the Voronovs that morning, they had gone back to their Zamoskvoreche District safe house. Then, while he reviewed his notes and made the careful phone calls necessary to arrange this interview, Fiona had spent several hours on-line digging up whatever she could about the ECPR and its Slavic Genesis project. Since it was too risky for her to contact her regular news sources, the detailed information they needed was hard to come by. Nevertheless, two important pieces of the puzzle had become clear.

First, although Slavic Genesis was a very large, expensive, and ambitious scientific undertaking, its researchers had collected DNA from just one thousand of the roughly nine million people living in the greater Moscow region.

For the purposes of evaluating historical shifts in Slavic populations, this sample size was sufficient —especially when comhined with the thousands upon thousands of other samples taken in other countries in Eastern Europe and across the former Soviet republics. But it also meant that this link between seven-year-old Mikhail Voronov and seventy-five-year-old Aleksandr Zakarov was more than the blind operation of random chance. The odds against such a coincidence were something on the order of eightv-one million to one.

Second, Konstantin Malkovic’s name had popped up vet again. Corporalions and foundations that he controlled provided a substantial share of the ECPR’s funding. Few specifics of the Center’s budget were in the public domain, but Fiona was fairly sure that the billionaire’s money was directly un-derwriting the Slavic Cenesis project.

Smith grimaced. One potential connection to Konstantin Malkovic, the ambulance from the Saint Cyril Medical Center, might be dismissed as a fluke. Two could not. Malkovic was involved in this conspiracy, along with his pal in the Kremlin, Viktor Dudarev.

In the woods outside the dacha, Oleg Kirov lay propped up behind a log halt-buried in the snow, keeping a careful eye on the deeply rutted track that led up from the nearest country lane. Surplus army-issue night vision goggles turned the surrounding darkness into green-tinted monochromatic day.

Twenty or so meters behind him, covered in branches and boughs to break up its sharp, boxy silhouette, lay the squat bulk of his CAZ Hunter, a vehicle that was the rough Russian equivalent of the American Jeep Wrangler.

Kirov had driven to the Zakarov dacha ahead of Smith and Fiona Devin.

His first task had been to quickly scout the area for signs of possible danger.

His second had been to establish this hidden observation post, concealing himself in a spot where he could keep an eve on the most likely approach to the dacha while Jon and Fiona asked their questions. The sides of his mouth turned down. He hoped they would hurry.

The broad-shouldered Russian shivered, chilled to the bone despite the protection offered by his heavy winter coat, hat, and gloves. The temperature, already below zero, was falling fast as the night wore on.

He understood his friends’ need to confirm the information the Voronovs had given them, but he had deep misgivings about coming so far outside Moscow. Here in this harsh and forbidding landscape, they were all terribly exposed. There were no convenient crowds to mingle with. There were no handy Metro stations or packed department stores to duck into for evasion and escape. There were just the trees and the snow and a few winding roads that were completely empty once the sun went down.

Sighing, the Russian focused his gaze on the ear parked next to the front door. Madame Zakarova kept her Mercedes in a heated garage attached to the house. Her infrequent guests were forced to make do with a small patch of icy gravel. Nothing seemed to be stirring near the dark blue Volga sedan he had obtained for the two Americans.

Then, suddenly, Kirov stiffened. He heard powerful engines echoing among the trees. The sounds were still some distance away, but the) were unmistakably drawing nearer. He rose higher to get a better look and then dropped flat, reaching into his pocket in a tearing hurry.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Smith’s cell phone rang suddenly.

“Excuse me,” he told the widow. He flipped the phone open. “Yes?”

It was Kirov. “You’ve got to leave, Jon. Now!” the Russian said urgently.

“Two unmarked cars just turned off the main road. They’re heading straight for the dacha. Go now! Out the back!”

“We’re on our way,” Smith said grimly. He shut the phone and stood up, grabbing his winter coat in the same motion. He felt the bulge of the 9mm Makarov pistol concealed in one of the pockets. For a moment, Jon was tempted to make a stand here in the house, fighting from cover instead of fleeing out into the open. But then he shoved the idea away. With the widow and her servants inside, he could not risk provoking a gun battle. If bullets started flying, too many innocents could easily be hurt or killed.

“Trouble?” Fiona asked quickly, in English. She rose at the same time, already gathering up her coat and gloves.

“We’ve got company,” he murmured in the same language. “We’re abandoning the car and bugging out. Oleg will meet us outside.”

Pale and tense, she nodded her understanding.

The older Russian woman looked up at them in confusion. “Your questions are finished? You are going?”

Smith nodded. “Yes, Madame Zakarova, we’re going. Right now.” Ignoring the widow’s startled protests, he steered Fiona out of the sitting room and into the dacha’s wide central passage. There, they ran into a stout, middle-aged maid carrying a trav with the tea and small cakes her mistress had grudgingly offered when they first arrived. “Where’s the back door?” Jon demanded.

Startled, the maid nodded her head down the hallway to their left, back the way she had just come. “It’s there,” she replied, plainly bewildered by his question. “Through the kitchen.”

The two Americans slid around her and moved rapidly down the hall. Behind them, someone began pounding loudly on the dacha’s solid front door.

“Militsia!” a loud voice boomed. “Open up!”

Jon and Fiona walked on even faster.

The kitchen was quite large and equipped with every modern convenience —a gas range, refrigerator, freezer, microwave oven, and all the rest. Mouth-watering smells hung in the warm air. In the corner, another of Madame Zakarova’s servants, a young, strongly built man, sat finishing his dinner, a bowl of pelmeni—meat dumplings smothered in sour cream and rich butter. He looked up in astonishment as they came hurrying past him.

“Hey, where are you —?”

Smith waved him back to his chair. “This lady is not feeling well,” he explained. “She needs some fresh air.”

Without hesitating, he pulled the heavy wood door open. Light and warmth spilled out into the icy darkness, illuminating a narrow expanse of deep, white snow. The dacha occupied a small clearing in the forest, and the closest trees were only a few meters away. A small trampled path through the snow led off toward a collection of trash cans set against the rear of the house.

“Quick now,” Smith whispered to Fiona. “And once we’re in among the trees, run like hell. Circle to the left. Don’t stop for anything or anyone until we reach Kirov. Got it?”

Grim-faced, she nodded.

Together, the two Americans headed out toward the forest, crunching up to midcalf in the icy powder. Smith took a quick breath, feeling the clean, arc-tic bite deep into his lungs. Just a few seconds more, he thought. That’s all we need to get clear.

Suddenly three armed men stepped out from among the trees. All three wore snow camouflage parkas and carried Russian-made AKSU submachine guns. Two were shorter than Smith, but they were powerfully muscled and moved with the quiet confidence of trained soldiers. The third man was an inch or so taller than Jon and his eyes were a wintry slate-gray. There were matching strands of gray in his pale blond hair.

Smith and Fiona froze in their tracks.

“Put your hands up, please,” the tall man ordered quietly in English. “Otherwise my men and I will be forced to shoot you here and now. And that would be regrettably messy, would it not?”

Slowly, Smith raised his arms, keeping his palms out to show that he was unarmed. Out the corner of his eye, he saw Fiona doing the same thing. All the color had drained out of her face.

“A sensible decision,” the blond man approved. He smiled coldly. “I am Erich Brandt. And you are the notorious Colonel Jonathan Smith and the lovely, though equally notorious, Ms. Devin.”

“Smith? Devin? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jon said stiffly. “My name is Strand, Dr. Kalle Strand. And this is Ms. Lindkvist.

We are scientists working for the United Nations.” He knew it was a futile gesture, but he wasn’t willing to concede everything so easily to the other man. Not yet anyway. “Who are you exactly? Criminals? Thieves? Kidnap-pers?”

Still smiling, Brandt shook his head. “Come now, Colonel. Let’s not play such silly games. You’re no more a Swede than I am.” He took one step closer. “But I do congratulate you. Very few men have ever evaded me for so long.

Smith said nothing, trying hard to tamp down his anger at having been herded into this trap so easily. The cars coming up to the front of the dacha had mostly been a feint, he realized bitterly—a means of prodding them out here into the open.

Brandt shrugged. “Stoicism is also a trait I admire. But only to a degree.”

He jerked the barrel of his submachine gun toward the dacha. “Inside.

Move.”

Slowly, Smith and Fiona backed up.

There were three other gunmen inside the house now. They were holding Madame Zarkova and her three servants—the maid, the young man from the kitchen, and an older man with a few strands of hair plastered across his bald scalp—as prisoners in her sitting room.

Still seated regally in her high-backed armchair, the older woman stared in outrage at Brandt. “What is this nonsense?” she demanded angrily. “How dare you invade my home!”

The former East German secret policeman shrugged. “A regrettable necessity, Madame,” he said smoothly. “Unfortunately, these people” —he indicated Smith and Fiona—”are spies. They are enemies of the State.”

“Ridiculous,” Zarkova scoffed.

Brandt smiled again. “You think so?” He turned to his men. “Bind their hands. And then search them. Be very thorough.”

Conscious of the several weapons pointed straight at him, Smith stood still, reluctantly submitting as his hands were roughly bound behind his back with a length of plastic cable—flex-cuffs of the same kind used on insurgents and terrorists captured by U.S. troops in Iraq. He heard Fiona hiss in pain through her clenched teeth as the same thing was done to her.

Once they were tied up and helpless, Brandt’s men frisked them expertly, checking every place a weapon or any other piece of useful equipment might be hidden. Smith bristled, angrier and angrier inside, both with them and at himself, as the search went on, growing ever more intrusive. The blond wig came off, revealing his dark hair, and he was forced to spit out the cheek inserts that had altered the shape of his face. He knew it must be far more humiliating for Fiona than it was for him.

Brandt stood watching without visible reaction as his men first found Jon’s 9mm pistol, then Fiona’s 5.45mm Makarov PSM, their elements of disguise, their forged passports and other papers, and, finally, their high-tech Covert-One-issue cell phones. They set the weapons and other equipment on a coffee table in front of him. Only when one of the men pulled Fiona’s concealed switch-blade out of her right boot, did the blond-haired man show any serious interest.

He picked up the knife, touched the button on its slender black hilt, and saw the long, deadly blade flick out. One pale eyebrow went up in surprise.

He turned to Fiona with a dry smile. “I saw the gruesome wound this little toy of yours inflicted on one of my men, Ms. Devin. And Dmitri was a trained assassin. Clearly, you are something more than a mere journalist.”

She shrugged defiantly. “Think what you like, Herr Brandt. I’m not responsible for your fevered imagination.”

Brandt chuckled. “Brave words, Ms. Devin. But empty words, I suspect.”

He turned back to Madame Zakarova, who sat watching the proceedings with a fierce scowl. “You see?” he said, still smiling. “Weapons. Disguises. Forged passports. And sophisticated communications devices. Tell me, Madame, are these the normal accoutrements carried by Swedish medical researchers—or are they devices better suited to foreign spies?”

“Spies,” the older woman admitted quietly, turning paler.

“Just so,” Brandt said calmly. He reached into a pocket inside his camouflage smock, took out a pair of thin latex gloves, and then began slowly and methodically putting them on. Everyone in the room watched him in silence, unable to pull their eyes away. “Your late husband was a high-ranking member of the Party in the old days, Madame. You are not a simple member of the uneducated masses. Tell me, what was the penalty for espionage and for treason?”

“Death,” she whispered. “It was death.”

“Exactly right,” the German told her. He finished donning the gloves and then glanced toward the visibly frightened servants sitting lined up on one of the sofas—a slim-legged nineteenth-century antique richly embroidered in a bright fabric of blue and gold. “Which of you is Petr Kliinuk?”

The older, bald-headed man hesitantly raised one hand. “I am, sir,” he muttered.

Brandt smiled thinly. “And you are the one who contacted us, when you heard that your mistress was going to meet with these foreigners?”

Klimuk nodded, more eagerly now. “That’s right,” he said. “Just like you asked me to do earlier today. You promised that if I reported anyone snooping around asking questions about her husband, I would get a reward.”

“So I did,” Brandt admitted coolly. “And so you shall.”

Then, without hesitating, the gray-eyed man took Smith’s Makarov off the coffee table in front of him, thumbed off the safety, aimed, and shot Klimuk in the forehead at pointblank range. Blood splashed across the back of the sofa, staining its richly colored fabric an ugly red.

While the other servants were still staring at their dead colleague in horror, Brandt swung the pistol slightly and fired two more times. The maid and the younger man both slumped back against the sofa, each killed by a single shot.

The former Stasi officer turned away. There was no expression whatsoever on his face.

Madame Zakarova sat motionless in her high-backed chair, looking at her murdered servants with an ashen face. “Why?” she spat out furiously. “Why kill them? They were not spies. Yes, Klimuk and the others were ignorant and foolish, but they had done nothing to deserve death.”

Brandt shrugged. “Very few people ever do.” He raised the Makarov and fired again.

Shot through the heart, the older woman fell back in her chair. Her eyes stared up at the ceiling, forever locked in an expression that mingled anger, contempt, and the first horrified realization that she too was marked for death.

Carefully, Brandt set the pistol down on the floor and then kicked it away under the sofa. He glanced at Smith. “When the militsia arrive, they should find the fingerprints on that weapon of great interest, don’t you think? Your fingerprints, naturally.” He shook his head in wry amusement. “You Americans are so violent, so trigger-happy. No wonder you are so widely disliked throughout the world.”

“You’re nothing but a black-hearted, murdering bastard!” Fiona told him fiercely, speaking through gritted teeth.

‘Yes, I suppose that I am,” Brandt said calmly. Then he stared back at her with his cold gray eyes. “And now you are my prisoner, Ms. Devin. Think about that, why don’t you?”

He swung back to his watching men. “Bring them,” he snapped. “Let’s go.”

I With gunmen prodding them from behind and others watching warily from the front, Smith and Fiona were hustled out through the door and shoved into the backseat of one of the three vehicles parked outside the dacha—an all-wheel-drive Ford Explorer. Brandt and one of his men climbed into the front seat. One of the remaining gunmen scrambled into the Volga brought by the Americans, while the others got into the third car, another big four-wheel-drive Ford.

In convoy, with the Explorer transporting Brandt and the two Americans in the lead, the three vehicles turned across the patch of gravel and drove away from the dacha, bumping slowly down the rutted track leading back to the road. Once on the road, they turned right, not left, and sped up.

Ignoring the pain from his abraded wrists, Smith sat up a little straighten They were heading west through the darkness. Trees, high, mounded snow-banks, and brush-choked turnoffs to old logging tracks appeared briefly in their high beams and then vanished behind them into the night.

He glanced at Fiona to see if she had noticed. She nodded slightly. Brandt and his men were not taking them back to Moscow.

Why not? Smith wondered. If the former Stasi officer was working for Malkovic, and the billionaire was working with the Kremlin, why not simply hand them over to the Russians for interrogation? Were Brandt and his wealthy employer playing a double game of some kind?

Vladik Fadayev lay perfectly still among the clumped birch trees lining the road. Thanks to his snow parka and twig-laced camouflage netting, anyone looking at the lean, hollow-cheeked sniper from more than a couple of meters away would only have seen one more snow hummock among many in the woods.

Despite the bitter cold, Fadayev was content. As a younger man he had spent two years in combat in Afghanistan’s rugged mountains and foothills, killing mujahideen warriors at long-range with his much-loved SVD rifle. The experience had taught him to enjoy the difficult and dangerous game of hunting other men. After the Red Army abandoned its long war against the Afghans, peace had come as a tremendous letdown. All in all, the sniper reflected, he was fortunate to have found employment with a man like Erich Brandt—a man who appreciated his special skills and found many different ways in which to employ them.

One by one, the taillights of Brandt’s three vehicles disappeared around a bend. The sound of their engines faded into the night.

Fadayev stayed motionless, waiting.

His patience was rewarded.

A big boxy GAZ Hunter lumbered out of the woods ahead of him. Gears shifting noisily, the Russian-made jeep swung sharply west onto the narrow road and accelerated. Snow and broken boughs and branches slid off its roof and hood, tumbling across the lane in its wake.

The sniper smiled. He spoke quietly into his radio mike. “This is Fadayev.

You were quite right. The Americans had company. And now you are being followed.”

Smith fought to control his expression when he heard the report crackling over the tactical radio hooked to the Explorer’s dashboard. Beside him, he heard a soft, in-drawn breath from Fiona. They both knew Oleg Kirov had been spotted. And now they were powerless to warn the Russian that he was in danger.

Brandt leaned forward and took the mike. “Understood, Fadayev. We’ll deal with the situation from this end. Out.” He looked over his shoulder at the two Americans. “That will be your colleague, I imagine.”

Neither moved a muscle.

Brandt smiled at the sight of their carefully impassive faces. “I am not a fool,” he said calmly. “You are both professionals. I knew that you would never go into a danger zone without support.”

To hide his sudden feeling of despair, Smith stared out the window. In the dark, it was difficult to see much of anything, but he thought they were just coming up a little rise, following the road as it wound along a low, densely wooded hill. Off on their left, the ground fell away in a gentle, tree-covered slope, cut here and there by steeper-sided ravines that were choked with boulders, brush, and scrub timber.

In the seat ahead of him, he heard Brandt using the radio again. “All vehicles, halt,” the tall man said flatly. “Deploy for action to our rear.”

Immediately, the big car they were in slowed, pulled over to the side just past a blind curve, and stopped. Hie Volga and the second Ford Explorer did the same, pulling up right behind them. Doors slammed open, and Brandt’s men spilled out onto the narrow road, rapidly fanning out among the trees with their automatic w eapons ready.

In the silence, Jon and Fiona heard the noise of another car coming up the hill behind them. Awkwardly, they swung round in the seat to stare through the back window.

Smith felt his jaw tighten. What could he do? Grimly, he ran through possible courses of action. But, with his hands bound behind his back there seemed very little he could achieve. Sure, he might be able to hurl himself across the front seat at Brandt and the driver, but would that create the kind of distraction needed to give Kirov a real fighting chance? He shrugged mentally. Though the action seemed futile, it was his only real option. Furtively, he flexed his arms and legs, trying to loosen stiff muscles before he made his move.

“Be still, Colonel,” Brandt said coldly. “Or I will put a bullet into your brain.”

Warily, Smith glanced over his shoulder.

The gray-eyed man sat there staring straight at him, aiming a pistol squarely at his head.

Suddenly, sooner than any of them had expected, the oncoming GAZ-manufactured jeep came racing around the corner. It was moving fast in a blaze of headlights.

Brandt’s men opened up instantly, firing their submachine guns on full automatic. The stuttering, clattering roar of gunfire shattered the frozen hush of the winter night. Bullets hammered the speeding jeep, punching enormous holes through its chassis and sending pieces of torn metal flying. Its windshield blew inward, shattered into a thousand separate bits by 9mm rounds fired at close range.

Without slowing at all, the bullet-riddled jeep veered sharply off the road and plunged wildly down the wooded slope. Still skidding downhill at high speed, the Hunter slammed into a birch tree with an earsplitting crash, spun away, and then slowly toppled sideways over the edge of a ravine. The pale beam of one headlight lit the overhanging trees and brush for a few seconds longer and then winked out, again leaving the hillside cloaked in absolute darkness.

When the light vanished, Jon and Fiona exchanged horrified glances. Neither of them had any real hope that Kirov could have survived the murderous ambush and crash they had just witnessed.

Brandt waited until the two Americans turned away in sorrow. Still holding his pistol on Smith, he picked up the radio mike. “Fadayev? This is Brandt.

We’re finished here. Listen, get back in your car and come up the hill after us.

I want you to investigate the wreckage of that jeep and to retrieve any documents carried by the driver. See if you can learn the name of the man we just killed. Understand?”

A flat, emotionless voice crackled back across the radio. “I understand.”

Brandt nodded. “Good. When you’re finished, report back to Group headquarters in Moscow. The rest of us will proceed to the monastery.”

He listened for the sniper’s acknowledgment and then signed off.

Tie gray-eyed man looked across the seat at Smith and Fiona. He shrugged. “So much for your friend.” Then he smiled coldly. “And soon we can begin the painful process of finding out just who employs you and how much you have already told them — “