Eves of Destruction

by Roy Berelowitz

  Campbell responded with a quick smile. “We had people checking all the airports, interviewing all the security staff doing carry-on baggage inspection. It took a long time because there are three shifts of people and someone decided it would be logistically easier to interview them all as they returned to duty. So it took a while.” He paused before continuing. “As it happened Al Rahman was stopped at random just before boarding by a security officer who did one of those quick handheld metal detector checks. She found nothing on him but when she made him raise his arms from his sides she noticed that all the fingers on his right hand were missing. Apparently she is squeamish about these things so it stuck with her. We also pulled up the CCTV tapes from that terminal and Kosnar confirmed it.”

  Campbell grinned at Casey as he finished talking. “I told you and Kosnar we would find him. It’s tough to leave an island without someone noticing.”

  “Have they traced his name? Do they know what name he is traveling under? Casey asked.

  His cell phone rang before he could answer. He pulled it out of the belt holster and put it to his ear.

  “Campbell.”

  He listened intently for a few moments and then muttered a few words of affirmation and then clicked the clam shelled phone shut.

  “Well, I guess the powers that be are working overtime today. It seems the custody transfer has already been authorized and I am to take you directly to the airport. Kosnar is already on his way there with a police escort.”

  CHAPTER 24

  CASEY WAS LEAFING distractedly through a magazine. She glanced over at Kosnar who was sitting, arms folded across his chest staring at the back of the seat in front of him.

  “May I ask you some questions about your sister?” Casey asked turning in her seat to face him.

  Vladimir discretely glanced around him before he answered. The flight to San Francisco was completely full, but the hum of the engines made it difficult to hear other people’s conversations. No one seemed to be paying them any attention. Still, he kept his voice low as he spoke.

  “Yes,” Vladimir replied softly, “but I don’t know if I will be able to answer them. I really don’t know much about her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the last time I saw my sister was thirty eight years ago.”

  “Thirty eight years!” Casey exclaimed. “You must have been just children.”

  “I was about eight or nine years old and she was five or six. We were in an orphanage together. One day, they came and took her away. Until a few months ago, I was not sure if she was alive or dead.” Vladimir looked down at his hands for a moment, then back at Casey with a pained expression. “Unfortunately, now that I have found her, she might be dead before I can see her again.”

  Casey dropped her eyes for a second then looked back directly at Vladimir. “I’m sorry. I wish I could offer you more encouragement.”

  Vladimir ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “Usually, my assignments left me quite cold,” he said. “I was given a mission, I executed the mission. I returned to await orders for the next one. Mostly my job was quite boring, sometimes exciting, occasionally terrifying. But this…” He shook his head slowly and looked away from her as he spoke. “This is simply painful.”

  “How?” said Casey. “How did it happen that your sister ended up in this program?”

  “Well, according to the documents the FSB used to get me to accept this assignment, my sister was taken from the orphanage because they believed she had unusual athletic ability. My memory of this is vague, but apparently some visitors did tests on all the children to determine athletic potential. The tests included running and jumping, but also more sophisticated blood and muscle response tests. My sister must have tested well because they came back for her a few weeks later. That was the last time I saw her.”

  “Do you know where they took her?” asked Casey.

  “They sent all the other children selected from around the country to special training facilities. There they began a program of athletic training, trying to work out which sport suited each child. Some were assigned to swimming, others to track, and so on. Most were eventually rejected and sent back to their parents or orphanages or wherever they had been found.”

  “What was the purpose of this? To create super athletes?”

  “I suppose so,” Vladimir replied as he shrugged his shoulders. “You must remember this was just after the 1956 Olympics. The Soviet Government decided that we would prove the superiority of the Communist system by developing the world’s best athletes. It makes sense when you think about it. Athletics were becoming a much more important part of the national pastime in Europe and America. The Olympics were a great stage to compete against each other as nations.”

  “Do you remember your sister from the orphanage?”

  “Vaguely,” said Vladimir. “Unfortunately, all I can really remember is her leaving. She kept saying my name over and over again when they took her away. I…I…” Vladimir’s voice broke and he closed his eyes and laid his head back against the headrest, his jaw working, clenching and unclenching. Casey placed her hand on his arm and squeezed it firmly as she looked at his strained face. She held her grip for a few moments and then removed her hand.

  “Had you ever tried to find her since then?” Casey asked, breaking the awkward silence.

  “Many times. I tried when I became a junior officer in the Soviet army, but I was unsuccessful. The orphanage had long since closed and I was unable to find any record of her anywhere. Later on, when I was in the KGB, I even enlisted the help of some of my superiors, but it was hopeless. I did locate one clue that she might still be alive, but was never able to confirm it.”

  “What was that?”

  Vladimir reached into his wallet and pulled out a carefully folded newspaper clipping and handed it to Casey, who held it delicately with both hands. She looked carefully at the happy face in the picture for a few moments, then back at Vladimir. “Is this her? Is this your sister?”

  “When I saw this picture in the paper, I was convinced it was her. I could not confirm it, you understand. The caption gives her name, but it was not the right last name. I just thought she looked very familiar. At the time, I tried to find out more about her, but I was unable to discover much. Even for a KGB officer, it was not good for me to ask too many questions in the Soviet Union. The woman in the picture was the national champion that year, but she never competed again after that, never made it to the Olympics. At the time I wondered why. Now I know.”

  “And you are quite sure she is definitely one of these women?” Casey asked, referring to the assassins.

  “Oh, yes. The information I was given before I left Moscow was comprehensive. There were records on my sister going back to the day she was taken away from the orphanage. There was even a copy of her original birth certificate with her birth name.”

  “So you being selected for this mission was not coincidental?”

  Vladimir looked over at Casey and smiled sadly. “It turns out my own last commanding officer, the one who asked me to take this mission, had known about her for years.”

  “Why didn’t he tell you?”

  Vladimir sighed. “I think we often to tend think people in high places are there because they are intelligent or capable. Unfortunately, something always comes along that demonstrates their human failings.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Casey, furrowing her brow.

  Vladimir sighed before answering. “General Victor Siminov, former KGB general, today a senior officer in the new Federal Intelligence Service, had the opportunity eight years ago to have all the titanium hip replacements containing explosive material replaced again with normal regular ones.”

  “How could he have done that?” Casey asked

  “Apparently hip replacements tend to loosen every ten or twelve years so the recipients need to be hospitalized so they can be tightened. There was some consternation in the KGB in 1989 when one of the athlete
s checked herself into a hospital because she was having trouble walking. Just in time, the KGB found out and quickly had her transferred to a KGB hospital. The orders were to remove the explosive hip joint and install a normal one but unfortunately, those orders were countermanded.” Vladimir stopped speaking for a moment and slowly shook his head, still apparently not quite able to grasp what had transpired next. He looked back over at Casey and said, “Instead of removing the explosives, they had the battery system replaced with a new and much more sophisticated power system. Then they tracked down and called in all the remaining women and did the same to them.”

  “What was different about the new power system?”

  “I don’t know the details but the new system is biomechanical. It charges up automatically every time the women walk.”

  “You mean it never needs to be replaced?” Casey asked, incredulously. She continued without waiting for him to answer. “So how long will it work?”

  Vladimir shrugged his shoulders. “Until they stop moving, I suppose.”

  Casey shook her head and swore under her breath. “You mean they are now basically perpetual time bombs that can never be turned off?”

  He nodded before responding. “Yes, unless the hip joints are removed and replaced.”

  “And they reactivated the entire assassination group?”

  “Yes,” said Vladimir. He looked down at his hands, murmured “Stupid, stupid,” under his breath a number of times.

  “But surely it was recognized that these women were getting too old to be used as angels. They were in their late thirties by then.”

  Vladimir just shrugged. “They still seem to be quite effective now, twenty years later, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “That’s true,” said Casey, her mind flashing back to the headless body of Gerald Rifkin on the slab in the morgue and her dead colleague David Green lying in her arms.

  “So, what you are telling me is the KGB had the opportunity to remove the explosive hip joints and replace them with normal ones, deactivate the assassination capability, and make this awful idea go away.”

  “No,” said Vladimir, as he slowly shook his head. “It’s worse than that. These women were already deactivated. The battery packs in the hip joints had a life span of about ten years, but by 1988, the batteries were dead or dying anyway. The group was being deactivated by default. If the KGB had not inserted biomechanical systems, this whole thing could not have happened.”

  Casey sat quietly for a moment, pondering what Vladimir has just said. Now she understood his comment about people in high places eventually demonstrating their failings.

  “And the person who ordered the new power unit to be installed was General Siminov?”

  Vladimir did not answer. He just looked at Casey with a sad smile on his face and nodded slowly. They sat quietly for a few minutes.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Are you married? Do you have children?”

  Casey looked away for a moment before turning back to him to answer the question.

  “I was married but my husband died before we had any children,” her voice breaking slightly as she spoke.

  “I’m very sorry,” Kosnar responded. “I did not mean to intrude.”

  Casey dismissed his concern with a wave of her hand. “That’s alright,” she said as she cleared her throat. “My husband died four years ago and I still miss him so much.” She looked away towards the window as she spoke, embarrassed that she could not control her emotions. “What happened to him?

  “He was killed by a drunk driver while out jogging. The guy just drove straight over him and kept on going. They told me he was killed on impact.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kosnar said again.

  The hum of the engines droned on behind them as they sat quietly, alone in their thoughts.

  * * *

  Abd Al Rahman sat on the king sized bed in the plain and dark hotel room with a map of San Francisco spread out in front of him. With a fine tipped felt pen he had drawn a circle around the Moscone Center, the site of the upcoming Democratic National Convention. He had already reconnoitered the area earlier in the day for hours and had familiarized himself with the different streets leading into and out of the convention area.

  His arrival in San Francisco had been uneventful. The airport was very crowded and there were banners in the arrival terminal welcoming all the delegates to the convention. The immigration officer had glanced at his passport and then stamped it without saying a word.

  Leaving the airport, Al Rahman deliberately avoided traveling to the City and instead took a shuttle bus to the East Bay in Oakland and rented a room in a small nondescript hotel in the downtown area. He was relieved when the desk clerk had not asked him for identification as is typical at European hotels when he filled out the registration form with a false name, but he had an anxious moment when the clerk asked for a credit card. He quickly solved the problem by paying in cash for a week in advance plus a couple of hundred dollars in deposit.

  More then ever he intended to remain incognito. Traveling to the United States he had been forced to use his nom de guerre and name on his passport, Philippe Métier, but once in the country his plan was to disappear, using only cash to pay for everything and never declaring his name, real or otherwise. He assumed his real identity had already been compromised by Kosnar and it was just a matter of time before his false identity was also determined. In a country of three hundred million people he would become a ghost, only manifesting himself with his attacks on the infidels.

  He reviewed the list of the women’s names and locations Devskoy had given him. Half were split between New York and California. The ones in New York he would leave for phase two. Now he needed to concentrate all of the women based in California in the bay area. He was formulating a plan and he intended to use them all.

  Having witnessed the bombing in London Al Rahman understood that used singly the women could cause limited destruction but could be very useful against a high profile target. But used as group, deployed throughout the City and exploded in a carefully crafted sequence, the affect would be devastating. The death toll might be relatively small but the chaos and terror that would follow would have the desired affect.

  He pushed the map away and laid back on the bed running through the sequence of events in his mind’s eye. The first explosion would take place as close to a high value target as possible. He would wait a few minutes as the first responders, police, fire and ambulance arrived to secure the area and treat the wounded. Then he would initiate the second attack with two to three women simultaneously all targeted at groups of police officers and firemen.

  Then he would pause. In his mind he could see the events play out, dead bodies laying in the street, the wounded screaming and crying for help. Chaos would erupt as the police fought to maintain order, forcefully driving a larger a perimeter to secure the Moscone Center and themselves. They would be harsh and aggressive seeing themselves as the intended targets and exacerbating the situation while they acted to try and control it. The crowds would be pressed and confined in the narrow streets around the convention center and panic would ensue as people desperately sought safety.

  Then he would strike again, maybe this time at the back of the crowds at the very periphery, pushing them back toward the police and forcing waves of panic to roll through the crowd as the terror ratcheted up.

  A small smile crested Abd Al Rahman’s lips as he intoned a supplication.

  “Inshalla,” he said and then repeated twice, “Inshalla, Inshalla.”

  Eyes still closed, he admonished himself to think carefully about the operation, to consider problems that might arise such as keeping the women sufficiently apart so that killing one would not kill them all. It was vital to stagger the attack, the maximum terror being the wave of small attacks instead of one large one.

  Communication and identification would also be critical. He would have to be ready to call them at the right time to move them into place. I
t occurred to him he should have them wear shirts of different colors so each wave of attackers would be easier to spot in the crowds.

  He stood up and placed the map on the small desk in the room. Leaning over it he carefully began to familiarize himself with street names, routes and distances and the best spot to place each woman. Then he began to meticulously go through the things he needed to do, jotting down notes in a small cryptic script. The first and most urgent task was to move the women from Los Angeles to the Bay area. Flying was not an option as security was so tight and because he was concerned the hip joints would set off the metal detectors. The women would have to travel by train or bus. The conference would begin in two days and it would take the women at least a day to arrive if he got them started right away.

  He began to practice speaking in Russian, trying to imitate as best he could Devskoy’s accent. He would keep the conversation with each woman very brief just providing the necessary instructions to get them all moved. Once they were in position in the next few days he would give them their final instructions.

  Using one of the three pre-paid cell phones he had purchased at the airport he began to make his calls.

  CHAPTER 25

  GORDON LEWIS SLOWLY closed the binder holding the detailed security plan for the Democratic National Convention and took in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. He had spent the better part of the past two hours of the flight to San Francisco on an FBI executive jet carefully reading the plan and was pleased to see it was very well thought out. Close cooperation between all the relevant agencies—local police and fire, California Highway Patrol, the FBI, Secret Service and Homeland Security had been arranged. Common communication systems had been configured and a Command and Control Center had been set up at FBI headquarters in San Francisco.

  Representatives from each agency had been working at the control center for three weeks conducting dry runs on various emergency scenarios including a major earthquake, anti-globalization riots and terrorist attacks. Lessons had been learned and they had improved the system to the point where he could find no significant fault with it.