The Hidden Vector: A Spy Thriller

by Mathew Snyder

  The Hidden Vector

  A Spy Novel

  Mathew Snyder

  Riverwords Press

  Copyright © 2020 Mathew Snyder

  Riverwords Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7355793-0-6

  First Edition: October 2020

  For James V. Snyder,

  my father and steadfast lover of adventurous tales

  “He that dies pays all debts.”

  –The Tempest, William Shakespeare

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue: Debts Paid

  Part I

  Chapter 1: Chasing Phantoms

  Chapter 2: Tidal Echo

  Chapter 3: Tangled Web

  Chapter 4: Other Plans

  Chapter 5: Novel Strain

  Chapter 6: Long Shot

  Chapter 7: Outside Involvement

  Chapter 8: Critical Weakness

  Part II

  Chapter 9: Sleeper Element

  Chapter 10: No Coincidences

  Chapter 11: Needed Intelligence

  Chapter 12: Strictly Controlled

  Chapter 13: Without Tether

  Chapter 14: Tainted Messenger

  Chapter 15: Desperate Void

  Chapter 16: Ride Along

  Part III

  Chapter 17: Revolution Peddler

  Chapter 18: Hidden Message

  Chapter 19: Loyal Dog

  Chapter 20: Shed Blood

  Chapter 21: Deep Wounds

  Chapter 22: Infernal Revelation

  Chapter 23: Killing Stroke

  Chapter 24: Bad Habits

  Chapter 25: No Reservations

  Acknowledgement

  Prologue: Debts Paid

  Tbilisi Airport, Georgia

  7:33 p.m., Sunday, May 4

  Kamran Khorasani sat in a first-class seat, awaiting his escape down the nearby runway while the sickness hiding in his blood threatened to devour him from the inside. He glanced at his watch and counted again the time past departure, just as he had while waiting for takeoff in Novosibirsk, then Yekaterinburg, then Moscow. With each race down those runways, the tension in his chest lessened, only to return like a vice around his heart when he handed over his passport to the dour and suspicious Russian border guards who rifled through his medicines and asked crude questions about his health.

  Why must it take so long? He tugged at the loose gold watch band around his wrist and glanced again at the dragging minute hand.

  A pretty Georgian woman sat next to him tapping notes on her phone to someone. She wore American blue jeans and a bright shirt with splashy slogans he couldn’t understand. When she had taken the seat beside him, she had smiled but said nothing. He shifted as close to the window as possible giving her every centimeter of room. He knew he looked frightful and disheveled. He smelled worse. That morning in Moscow, he had splashed water on his face and arms. His face was haggard and dark with patches of stubble, and his shirt bore clumsy stains and spots of sweat. He had checked his eyes for the first traces of blood. Exhaustion weakened his immunity, but he saw no symptoms of the Marburg virus he had injected into his bloodstream at the lab in Koltsovo.

  It was a desperate measure, but he had no choice. The Russians could not find what he did not carry. Only his treatment, which looked like aspirin tablets, in a vial prescribed with his name. He had created the antivirus himself, but it wasn’t sufficiently tested. It was a risk, but he could wait no longer. A woman journalist who spoke exquisite French would meet him in Istanbul. He would tell her his story, and he would be free of them. Free from the guilt. From everything.

  Out the window he hoped to see the flight crew waving the jetliner away from the gate. There was no commotion, no more thumping as the crew tossed bags into the belly of the plane. To the east, night crept behind the mountains far beyond, and he longed to hide in that coming darkness.

  The girl spoke to him in Georgian. He looked at her and wondered about the French journalist he would meet soon. Kamran shrugged meekly and wondered why someone as lovely as she would speak to him. His seat mate tried again in Russian.

  “Are you from Istanbul?” she said.

  He shook his head. “Iran.”

  She seemed surprised. “Is that so? I thought you might be going home.”

  He could never return home. Not with what he had done to the Russian lab where he worked until two days ago. Now the virus within him was his only insurance, but going home would never be part of any deal.

  “No. I am visiting.”

  “Me, too. I’m Ana.” She smiled at him and made a timid wave with her hand.

  “Is it always like this, Ana?” he asked, tapping his watch.

  “Yes, yes. Always.” She sighed and rolled her eyes.

  He checked his watch. A minute passed, then another while he fidgeted with the slack gold band. Perspiration beaded in the small of his back. He closed his eyes and breathed, hoping to pass the time peacefully. He felt his face and forehead for any sign of fever. No, it was only his ragged nerves.

  Chatter erupted from the rear of the plane, racing among the passengers to his seat near the front. Georgians and Turks and a half-dozen others barked to one another about a commotion out on the tarmac. Kamran leaned forward to peek through a sliver of window far on the left side of the plane.

  Bearded men with rifles poured out the side door of a Russian armored carrier—an eight-wheeled beast that looked like a great steel caterpillar. The turret spun leftward, then froze menacingly at the Tbilisi terminal. Pieces of a mangled wire fence hung from the front of the monstrous vehicle from where it had burst through the airport perimeter.

  A pair of armed men raced beneath the plane and up the steel stairs to the gangway.

  Screams erupted around Kamran. Some passengers jumped from their seats and clawed at overhead bins in a panic.

  The attendants shouted at the frantic passengers. “Sit down! For the love of god, do not move!” One raced to the open cockpit door to alert the pilots. The other moved to the aircraft’s exit and pulled it shut in a panic.

  Kamran remained silent in his seat, frozen in terror as the chaos tumbled around him. Time moved slower still for him as his pulse pounded in his ears. He felt sick, but he lost all thought of the virus. How could they know? The border guards seemed too suspicious. They are not coming for me, he assured himself. But the thought faded, and he sank into his seat. He didn’t want to die.

  Beside him, Ana whimpered a mute phrase. A prayer perhaps. Her hand trembled, and then she gripped his arm in white-knuckled fright. Her strength surprised him—hurt him, even, and shook his senses.

  At the front of the cabin the flight attendant stared through the closed door’s window at the pair of armed men. One of them held a young man, a member of the ground crew he’d dragged up from the tarmac. The other man pushed the barrel of his rifle to the man’s temple, then pointed at the attendant, motioning for her to open.

  “Do not open the door!” her fellow flight attendant screamed from the cockpit door. The pilots echoed her as they leaned out the cockpit shouting.

  The flight a
ttendant screamed. A splatter of blood hit the window as the young man fell away from the window.

  More armed men appeared on the gangway. They brought with them another crewman. Again, the man pushed his rifle’s scalding barrel to the young man’s head and motioned through the bloody window for her to open the door.

  “Do not open! Don’t do it,” said the pilot. He stepped back into the cockpit and murmured something into his headset.

  Kamran leaned forward and saw the men press the crewman against the aircraft door, their rifles now aimed at the back of his head and into the cabin. The attendant stared at the crewman, and their eyes locked in terror for a moment. She reached out, first at the crewman’s face, then with a shudder of hesitation at the door latch. Kamran wanted to shout to her, to plead with her along with the crew. He could see it was too late. She wished to save the man, but it would doom everyone on board. Resigned, the weeping attendant opened the cabin door.

  The men moved quickly. Six of them entered, shuffling past the attendant, who had pressed herself against the forward wall, loathe to touch the killers. They blocked Kamran’s view, standing in a huddle with the attendant now between them and the open door.

  Kamran heard the unmistakable crack of a Kalashnikov rifle. He had heard it enough over the years. In his home in Iran, even for a wealthy family like his, it was a sound as familiar as thunder. Ana dug her nails into Kamran’s left arm. The flight attendant lay bleeding, abandoned on the gangway next to the dead crew man. The cabin door shut.

  One of the men grabbed the intercom transmitter and spoke in rumbling Russian.

  “We commandeer this plane for the Chechen nation. Remain calm, and there will be no more problems.”

  Nervous chatter died down in seconds to a tense calm of tiny gasps and whimpers. The speaker scanned the cabin as his men spaced themselves down the aisle, rifles tucked under their arms. He wore camouflage fatigues with no insignias and a short-brimmed hat. His beard was neatly trimmed, and the shape of it lengthened his pudgy, weathered face and squat nose.

  The Chechens gave Kamran little to hope for. Surely, they are not here for me, he thought again. This was not how the Russians would take their revenge on him. But he would die just the same. The vice in his chest tightened again. He felt like crying, but the thought of it shamed him.

  Behind the bearded Chechen near the cockpit door he saw another man dressed unlike the others. He wore a long, dark jacket and carried no weapon that Kamran could see. He dropped a bulky duffel bag, which he unzipped and from it removed a black harness. When he turned slightly to whisper to the leader, Kamran saw his face, clean shaven and sallow, his scalp cropped close with blond stubble. He was no Chechen. That much Kamran knew from his Slavic steel eyes and paler face and hair. He was subtler and more unassuming than the rugged Chechens, his movements quick and precise. Kamran’s unease deepened, and at that moment he sensed this was no ill fortune interrupting his escape. That man had come for him.

  The bearded leader entered the cockpit with his rifle at the ready. “Take off. Immediately.”

  The pilots raised their hands and talked over one another, protesting his command.

  “I have just given you all the clearance required,” the leader said. “Now.”

  Defeated, the pilot adjusted his headset and argued with the airport’s controllers. Behind him, the Chechen stood in the doorway motionless, his head cocked back, his eyes fixed on the frantic pilot. The engines whined, and the plane lurched and rollicked, then rolled backward.

  Kamran watched from his window seat as the concrete rolled beneath the plane. Small crowds of people had gathered outside the fence to watch while a pair of policemen waved helplessly to herd them out of danger. Their faces faded, and the world pulled away with them. Kamran felt locked in place, at the center of a whirlwind that pushed everything from focus. In a crescendo of keening engines, the earth and dry grasses sped by ever faster and then fell away from below, disappearing in terrible minutes under the dark wisps of clouds.

  With the cabin leveled after takeoff, the crouching Chechens in the aisle stood upright. One let out a cheer praising Allah, and the others joined. They seemed to relax, becoming at once more jovial and more brutish. The men tossed bottles of water to one another from the rear of the plane. One old Georgian man’s disapproving glare won him sharp strike to his head with a rifle butt. A trickle of blood dripped down the man’s forehead, and he ducked lower into his seat, hands raised.

  The whimpers died down, and the passengers’ whispers quieted too low to hear. Many minutes passed with only the grind of the engines in the cabin. Beside him, Ana said nothing. She released her grip and curled herself into her seat. She pulled her arms within her colorful shirt sleeves and wrapped them about herself in a futile cocoon. Kamran wished he could say something to her and allay her fears. But what could he say? Every doubt crept in his mind as it did always with women. They wanted nothing to do with any man like him. They thought him too strange or weak willed. He manufactured every reason to avoid those women who drank champagne from the bottle and laughed in the chill night air at Koltsovo.

  A voice spoke Russian, interrupting his anxious thoughts. “Dr. Khorasani?”

  The Slavic man stood before him. He held a crumpled piece of paper, a printout of Kamran’s face from a security photo taken years ago. In his other hand dangled the black harness he had pulled from the bag, similar to the one the man now wore himself. “You are Kamran Khorasani?”

  Kamran could barely speak. “What is this? Who are you?”

  “Get up. Come with me.” He motioned to the rear.

  Kamran hesitated, then stood. Ana sat up, wide-eyed. How he longed for her easy smile now to allay his own terror. They had come for him alone. He anticipated the pain, and that itself was a kind of agony that drained him of any will to resist. His father would be ashamed of him. But he would not be surprised.

  “It is all right,” Kamran said to Ana. “It will be all right.”

  It wouldn’t, but he thought of nothing else to say. At least he had said something to her.

  Kamran maneuvered down the aisle with his captor close behind. He squeezed past the leering Chechens and climbed over panicked passengers’ legs to the rear near the bathrooms and drink cart.

  “Put this on.” The man shoved the black harness into his chest. “Like this.” He motioned with his legs.

  “Are you insane? I’m not doing that. What is this?”

  The man shrugged. In a blur his hand reached out and clutched Kamran’s throat. The crumpled photo fell to the floor as he tightened his grip.

  “Listen to me, doctor. I don’t fucking care what you will and won’t do. You’re putting this on and will do what I say. You can go willingly, or I can beat the life out of you and drag you instead. You should be so lucky to leave,” he said as he tossed his head back toward the other passengers.

  Kamran gasped for air as he stared at the man’s face. He nodded in a panic. He stepped through the straps of the harness. While he did, the man pulled a band of explosive charges from a satchel and pasted it on the rear door. He signaled to the Chechens, who passed word to each man down the aisle up to the cockpit. Moments later, the engine’s pitch whined lower and lower. Kamran’s ears popped. His stomach lurched into his aching throat as the plane descended.

  “This can’t be right. We’ll die,” Kamran said.

  No response came. The man tugged at Kamran’s harness and pulled the straps snug. He shoved Kamran back into the aisle and followed, ducking behind the rear bulkhead. The bearded Chechen met them and crouched to speak.

  “Andrei, my old friend, we are ready. The plane is ours, yes? As agreed. With old debts paid, it is time to say goodbye.”

  “Do svidaniya, dukhi,” Andrei said.

  The Chechen let out a belly laugh and slapped Andrei on the shoulder. He shouted something to his men, and they all crouched low in the aisle.

  From behind him, Andrei lowered a pair of goggles over Ka
mran’s eyes, then snapped several carabineers locking the two men together. The man’s breath heated the back of Kamran’s neck. It reeked of tobacco.

  “Hold on to something, doctor.”

  Kamran gripped the seat in front of him. A sharp crack compressed the cabin air and ripped into his ears. The sudden burst shook the cabin with less force than he expected, but it was no less terrifying. The plane shuddered and dipped leftward. Air rushed through the cabin toward the rear. He fought his heaving stomach.

  “Move,” Andrei shouted into his ringing ears.

  Kamran trudged to the rear again, half carried by Andrei. The door was mostly intact, though the window had cracked and a smoking hole no larger than his fist smoldered near the center. With a violent tug, Andrei pulled the lever and heaved the door outward.

  The rushing air knocked Kamran from his feet. Air sucked from his lungs in a scream that never reached his ears. He tried to stand. With another shove, Andrei pushed them both out into the night air.

  Somewhere behind and above him the engines pealed in a steady roar. Below him yawned only bleak darkness. There were no pinpricks of light or signs of civilization. Together the two men tumbled through a windy void, invisible and silent. He was too terrified to scream anymore.

  Andrei tugged the ripcord, and the harness holding them together snapped tight against Kamran’s chest and groin. The upward gale ceased, and they glided through the quieted air, spiraling slowly downward.

  Behind him, Andrei reached into a chest pocket and pulled out a small transmitter. He waited, scanning the sky above, then pressed the button. Aboard flight PC463, now almost fourteen kilometers away, a canvas suicide vest laden with explosives lay hidden in Andrei’s duffel bag. The signal from the device triggered an electric charge to a detonator, and the daisy chain of explosives ignited. The plane and its occupants disintegrated.