Covert One 6 - The Moscow Vector (7 page)

“What about the Russians?” she asked. “There are still lots of native Russians living here in Tbilisi, right? If serious fighting broke out in and around the city, would the Kremlin send in troops to stop it?”

The diplomat shrugged again. “As to that, Ms. Rousset, your guess is as good as mine.”

The White House, Washington, D.C.

President Samuel Adams Castilla led his guest into the darkened Oval Office and flipped on the lights. With one hand, he loosened his carefully knotted bow tic and then unbuttoned his formal dinner jacket. “Take a pew, Bill,” he said quietly, motioning toward one of the two armchairs set in front of the room’s marble fireplace. “Can I get you a drink?”

His Director of National Intelligence, William Wexler, shook his head quickly. “Thank you, but no, Mr. President.” The trim, telegenic former U.S.

senator smiled fulsomely, evidently hoping to take the sting out of his refusal.

“Your wine stewards were very generous at dinner tonight. I rather think that one more glass of anything might tip me right over the edge.”

Castilla nodded coollv. Some members of the White House social staff seemed to harbor the unexpressed conviction that guests at state dinners should always be offered enough rope to hang themselves —or, in this case, enough alcohol to put a whole regiment of U.S. Marines under the table.

Guests who were wise resisted temptation and pushed away their wineglasses before it was too late. Guests who were not wise were rarely invited back, no matter how influential or popular or powerful thev might be.

He glanced at the ornate eighteenth-century clock ticking softly on one curved wall. It was well past midnight. Again he waved Wexler into a chair and then sat down across from him. “First, I appreciate your willingness to stay on so late tonight.”

“It’s really no trouble, Mr. President,” Wexler said in a rich, professional politician’s baritone. He smiled again, this time revealing a set of perfect teeth. Although he was in his early sixties, his deeply tanned face showed very few lines or wrinkles. “After all, sir, I serve at your pleasure.”

Castilla wondered about that. Stung by a series of damaging and very public failures, Congress had recently enacted the first major reorganization of America’s intelligence-gathering apparatus in more than fifty years. The legislation had created a new cabinet-level post—the director of national intelligence. In theory, the DNI was supposed to be able to coordinate the U.S.

government’s complex array of competing intelligence agencies, departments, and bureaus. In practice, the CIA, FBI, DIA, NSA, and others were still wag-ing a fierce bureaucratic war behind the scenes to severely limit his powers.

Overcoming so much powerful institutional resistance would take a very shrewd and strong-willed man, and Castilla was beginning to have serious doubts that Wexler had either the will or the mental dexterity. It was no real secret that the former senator would never have been his first choice for the position, but Congress had dug in its collective heels and refused to approve anyone but one of its own. With even nominal control over a total intelligence budget of more than fortv billion dollars, the Senate and House of Representatives were very interested in making sure the DNI post went to someone they knew and trusted.

Wexler had served as a senator from one of the smaller New England states for more than twenty years, compiling an earnest, if relatively undistin-guished, legislative record, and earning a reputation as a decent, hardworking member of the various Congressional committees overseeing the armed forces and intelligence agencies. Over his years of service, he had accumulated a great many friends and very few serious enemies.

A solid majority of the Senate had believed he was the perfect choice to head the U.S. intelligence community. Privately, Castilla was convinced that Bill Wexler was a painfully polite, well-intentioned pushover. Which meant that the reforms intended to streamline and strengthen the management of U.S. intelligence operations had only added yet another layer of red tape to the whole system.

“What exactly can I do for you, Mr. President?” the national intelligence director said at last, breaking the small silence. If he was at all puzzled by Castilla’s decision to pull him aside at the state dinner to arrange this unusual

and highly irregular late-night conference, he hid it well.

“I want you to redirect our intelligence-gathering and analysis efforts,” the president told him flatly. Like it or not, he realized, he had to try working through this man—at least for now.

Wexler raised a single quizzical eyebrow. “In what way?”

“I want more focus on political and military developments inside Russia, and on events in the smaller countries around its borders,” Castilla said. “And that’s going to require extensive shifts in the allocation of satellite time, SIGINT translation priorities, and analyst assignments.”

“Russia?” Wexler was astonished.

“That’s right.”

“But the Cold War is over,” the intelligence director protested.

“So they tell me,” Castilla said drily. He leaned forward in his chair.

“Look, Bill, for anv number of overriding geopolitical reasons we’ve cut our good friend Viktor Dudarev a lot of slack over the past couple of years, right?

Even though that’s meant turning a blind eye to some of the nasty moves he’s made against his own people?”

Wexler nodded reluctantlv.

“Well, the trouble is that while we’ve been tied down in Afghanistan, Iraq, and a dozen other hellholes around the globe, Dudarev has been busy building a new autocracy in Russia, with him sitting on top of the heap as the supreme ruler of all that he surveys. And I don’t like that. I don’t like it one little goddamned bit.”

“The Russians have been extremely useful allies against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups,” the intelligence director pointed out. “Both the CIA and the Pentagon report that we’ve obtained a substantial amount of action-able intelligence from their prisoner interrogations in Chechnya.”

Castilla shrugged his big shoulders. “Sure.” He gave the other man a lopsided grin. “But, hell, even a two-bit thug will help you kill a rattlesnake—so long as you’re both stuck at the bottom of the same canyon, that is. That sure doesn’t mean you should turn your back on him.”

“Are you suggesting that Russia is again becoming an active enemy of the United States?” Wexler asked carefully.

Castilla made an effort to hold his temper in check. “What I’m suggesting is that I don’t like flying blind around a guv like Viktor Dudarev. And right now the intelligence analysis I’m getting from the CIA and the other agencies pretty much reads as though they’re just clipping newspaper articles.”

The DNI smiled weakly. “I’ve made the same comments to my staff,” he admitted. “I’ve even passed those complaints along through the various appropriate interagency coordinating committees.”

Castilla scowled. The “appropriate interagency coordinating committees?”

Leadership by memo and committee? And this was the guy who was supposed to be cracking the whip over the CIA and the other intelligence organizations? Wonderful. Just wonderful. He gritted his teeth. “And?”

“Apparently, there are … well … problems in some of the analysis sections,” Wexler said hesitantly. “I don’t have all the details myself yet, but I’ve

been told that several of our best Russia specialists have fallen seriously ill over

the past couple of weeks.”

Castilla stared hard at him for several seconds. “Maybe you had better fill me in, Bill,” he said grimly. “From the top, and starting right now.”

Moscow

It was full daylight now. Pallid rays cast by the weak winter sun winked off the ice-choked Moscow River and sent back dazzling reflections from the windshields of the cars and trucks grinding slowly in both directions across the bridges visible from the windows of the Kotelnichcskaya high-rise. Even twenty-four floors up, their blaring horns could be heard faintly. The Russian capital’s morning rush hour was in full swing.

The blond-haired man sat at his desk, again rapidly skimming through the set of highly encrypted e-mails sent to his computer over the past several hours. Most were short, usually containing only a name and title, a location, and a single-line status report:

MARCHUK, A., CINC, NORTHERN COMMAND, UKRAINE -

INFECTED. CONDITION: TERMINAL.

BRIGHTMAN, H., SIGINT SPECIALIST, CCHQ, CHEL—

TENHAM, UNITED KINGDOM-INFECTED. CONDITION:

DEAD.

YASHVILI, M., PRESIDENT, REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA—

INFECTED. CONDITION: TERMINAL.

SUNDQUIST, P., SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST, CIA, LANG-LEY, U.S.A.-INFECTED. CONDITION: DEAD.

HAMILTON, J., MANAGER, A2 (RUSSIA GROUP), NSA, FORT MEADE, U.S.A.-INFECTED. CONDITION: TERMINAL.

The list of those now ill and dying or already dead ran on and on, more than thirty men and women in all. He read to the end with growing satisfaction. It had taken years of painstaking research to perfect the biological weapon called HYDRA—the ultimate, precision-guided silent killer. Months of preparation had gone into selecting targets for the first HYDRA variants and then finding ways to deliver them undetected to the chosen victims.

Months more had been spent in secretly acquiring the necessary materials to build each specialized variant of the weapon. At last, all of that intricate planning and dangerous work was coming to fruition.

In retrospect, he thought dispassionately, those preliminary tests in Moscow had been largely unnecessary, a waste of resources and a breach of operational security, but HYDRA’s creator had insisted on running them.

Controlled experiments in the sterile confines of a laboratory were no substi-tute for field tests on real people, he had said. Only by setting HYDRA loose on random targets could they be sure that other doctors and hospitals, those outside the secret, would not be able to detect his creation, or to cure those infected by it.

The man code-named Moscow One shook his head. Wulf Renke was brilliant, ruthless, and, as always, utterly determined to have his own way. In the end, those sponsoring the HYDRA Project had yielded to his will, eager to see for themselves that the weapon’s performance matched his extravagant claims. Well, it had, but only at the cost of alerting Doctors Kiryanov and Petrenko and sending them haring off to warn the West.

Then he shrugged. What did it really matter? Kiryanov and Petrenko were both dead. And soon the only Westerner with whom they had shared their fears would join them.

He reached out for his phone and dialed a local number.

A cold, clear voice answered on the first ring. “Well?”

“The first phase is largely complete,” the blond-haired man said quietly.

“Have you informed Ivanov?”

“I gave him a preliminary report late last night,” he confirmed. “Before he left to join Dudarev for the WINTER CROWN maneuvers. I’ll brief him more fully once he returns to Moscow.”

“I assume our friend from the Thirteenth Directorate was pleased?” the voice said.

“I suspect Alexei Ivanov would be far more pleased if he filled my shoes—

or yours,” the man known as Moscow One said sardonically.

“No doubt,” the voice said. “Fortunately, his master is more sensible and more accommodating. Now, how soon can we begin the next phase? Our friends need to know when they can ramp up their military preparations.”

The blond-haired man checked the last status report on his computer screen, one sent by Wulf Renke himself. It would be best to confer personally with the scientist before deploying the next variants by courier. “I’ll need a plane out of Sheremetevo-2 later tonight.”

“I will arrange it.”

“Then I should be at the HYDRA lab early tomorrow morning.”

Prague

With his overnight bag and laptop slung over one shoulder, Smith pushed through a crowd of patrolmen and traffic wardens coming back to work from their midmorning coffee break. Cold air rushed in through the open front doors of the Konviktska station, bringing with it the cloying reek of gasoline and diesel fumes trapped in the Old Town’s maze of narrow streets.

Jon stepped outside onto the pavement and immediately felt the frigid Prague winter climate wrap itself around him. He stopped and blew on his hands, already regretting the loss of his leather jacket, torn and soaked beyond repair. Before signing out of the police station, he had changed into a pair of jeans and a black turtlencck sweater, but the thin gray windbreaker he wore over the sweater offered little real protection against the piercing cold. Over his cupped hands, his eyes were busy scanning the surrounding environment.

There, he thought.

Just across the street from the police headquarters, a big, beefy, bearded man leaned casually against the side of a parked taxi, a Czech-made Skoda sedan. Beneath the caked-on grime and mud, the cab had so many dents and scrapes from minor accidents that it was hard to tell where its original paint job left off and the primer began. The driver looked Smith up and down, hawked once, spat to the side, and then slowly straightened up to his full height. “Hey, mister!” he called out in heavily accented English. “You need a taxi?”

“Maybe,” Smith said cautiously, crossing the street. Was this huge bear of a man his promised contact? “How much would you charge me for a ride to the airport?”

It was a natural question. Prague’s independent cabdrivers were notorious for doubling and even tripling their regulated fares for unwary or naive tourists. Even on the short run to Ruzyne, the city’s only international airport,

that could add up to serious money.

The big man grinned broadly, revealing a mouthful of tobacco-stained teeth. “For a rich businessman? I would charge a thousand crowns.” He lowered his voice. “But for a scholar like you? A poor professor? Nothing. You will pay me nothing.”

Smith allowed himself to relax slightly. Scholar was the recognition word Klein had selected for this rendezvous. Against all appearances, that meant this rough, boisterous taxi driver was the Covert-One asset activated to help him get out of the Czech Republic in one piece. He nodded quickly. “Okay.