by Saul Herzog
“Of course,” Sofia said. “Major General Yevchenko, this is doctor Vasily Ustinov.”
“You look familiar,” Yevchenko said.
Sofia held her breath. Vasily’s record was problematic to say the least. It seemed he’d taken part in every campus demonstration there was while in university. It had all been thoroughly investigated during the vetting process, but there was still a risk it could come back and bite them on the ass.
“Doesn’t he look familiar?” Yevchenko said, turning to his officers.
Sofia stole a glance at Vasily.
“You ever been on TV?” Yevchenko said.
Vasily didn’t respond.
“Yeah,” Yevchenko said. “I know you. You’re that fighter. You beat Conor McGregor.”
The officers began to laugh.
“Very funny,” Vasily said.
“Khabib,” Yevchenko said grinning. He was very pleased with himself. “Khabib Nurmagomedov. The face, not the hair. Do you see it?” he said to his officers.
The officers nodded. They were very amused.
Sofia had no clue what they were talking about, but it seemed the tension was lifting.
“How about some tea?” she said, nodding to her secretary.
The general and his men took seats and Sofia breathed a sigh of relief.
“I’d like to see you in a papakha,” Yevchenko said.
Vasily let out a brief chuckle.
“The sideburns,” Yevchenko added.
Sofia shook her head. She knew what a papakha was, the hat worn by shepherds in Vasily’s region, but she wasn’t getting the joke.
“Am I missing something?” she said.
“He’s teasing me,” Vasily said.
“I see,” she said, looking from him to Yevchenko.
“He’s all right,” Yevchenko said. “I read his file. He’s lucky he’s from Dagestan and not Chechnya.”
Sofia’s secretary brought in a tray of tea and Sofia began to pour.
“So,” Yevchenko said, adding sugar to his cup, “Sibirskaya Yazva. What have we got?”
Sofia and Vasily sat down. Sibirskaya Yazva, Siberian Ulcer. It was the traditional name for anthrax.
This was the moment Sofia had been dreading since the first day the GRU approached her.
“I guess we all thought those years were behind us,” she said.
Yevchenko smiled. “Some things never change.”
She nodded.
“I trust your team is progressing on schedule.”
“Well,” Sofia said, “I think what we’ve achieved will speak for itself.”
“The bacillus from the mammoths?”
“Yes, sir. The bacillus.”
“And it’s ready for delivery?”
“Delivery, sir?”
“We’re not just here to talk science, doctor. We’re here for a weapon.”
“Yes, of course, sir. But …”.
“But nothing, Sofia. The General Staff has ordered me to begin production.”
Sofia always knew this day would come. The General Staff wanted a weapon, and a weapon meant production. If they were to arm warheads, create stockpiles, equip units, it required product. A lot of product. Until now, she could sleep at night telling herself she was only a researcher, that her findings could be used as much to protect against disease as to cause it. Once they started production, that myth would be over. They would be creating a form of the bacillus that had only one purpose.
Killing.
On an industrial scale.
“Is that wise, sir?” Sofia said.
“Wise?” Yevchenko said, shaking his head. “You know what I think is wise?”
Sofia said nothing.
“Following orders.”
“But production, sir.”
“The order for production came straight from the top,” Yevchenko said, nodding toward the mandatory photo of the president on the wall.
Sofia felt the strength draining from her body. Fighting the military was the most exhausting thing she’d ever done in her life. It was like trying to hold back a glacier. It moved slowly, but when it did, the weight of it could reshape entire continents.
“Preparing for production will take time,” she said.
“You let us worry about that.”
“What do you mean?”
“The military is going to take over.”
This was not good news. Making a weapon was one thing. Making it badly, in a poorly run military facility, was about the only thing she could think of that was worse.
“Production like this is very complicated, sir.”
“I’m not here to debate this with you,” Yevchenko said. “Production will begin at a military facility and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.”
“What type of quantities are you talking?”
“We’re talking tons,” Yevchenko said.
She felt the blood drain from her face.
“Tons?”
“Tons.”
“Sir, that’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible, my dear.”
“Sir, this strain, I don’t think you understand.”
“I understand perfectly.”
“This is more deadly than anything the Fifteenth Directorate has ever had to work with before.”
Yevchenko smiled. “Orders are orders, my dear.”
“Rushing this into production is asking for disaster.”
“There will be no disaster. The facilities necessary, the tanks, the vats, they’re already under construction.”
“It’s not just tanks and vats, sir. It’s filters. It’s safeguards. It’s procedures.”
“We have it all under control, my dear.”
Sofia felt a shudder run through her. This wasn’t just some tactical point she was trying to make. Lives were at stake. A lot of lives.
“Where?” she said.
“Chkalovskaya industrial area.”
“Chkalovskaya. Sir, that’s inside the city.”
“Everything’s being built to the highest standards, Sofia. You have nothing to worry about.”
“But sir, respectfully, please listen to me. This bacillus, once it’s aerosolized, the number of spores, if even a single gram…”.
Yevchenko stood. “Enough, Sofia. Need I remind you what’s at stake for you personally? For your team?”
Vasily was getting restless. She put a hand on his arm to stop him from speaking.
“This is madness,” she said.
“That may be,” Yevchenko said. “But orders are orders. Now, please don’t make this any more difficult than it needs to be. Is the bacillus ready for delivery?”
Sofia looked at Vasily, then back at Yevchenko.
“We’ve come a very long way,” Yevchenko said. “It would be a terrible shame to have to go back to Moscow empty handed.” He turned to his officers. “Terrible shame,” he repeated, grinning.
Sofia looked at them. She knew what this was. The life of every single person in the institute was in her hands.
“I can have the lab prepare it for you now,” she said.
Yevchenko nodded to his men and Sofia turned to Vasily.
“Do as they say, Vasily. Take them to the lab and make sure the sample is secured properly. The last thing any of us want is a leak on these fine officer’s flight back to Moscow.”
It was her turn to look smug.
The officers went with Vasily, leaving Sofia and Yevchenko alone in the office. Yevchenko went to the door and locked it. Sofia took a deep breath. She knew her ordeal wasn’t over. It was just beginning.
“Now that we’re alone,” Yevchenko said, “perhaps you’d like to give me an update on our little side project.”
“The virus?” Sofia said, her heart pounding in her chest.
“The virus,” Yevchenko said.
“Sir, this goes beyond the dangers of the bacillus.”
“I’m aware of that, doctor.”
“Anthrax is a
bacteria,” she said. “It’s extremely deadly, but it’s not contagious. If it’s spread on a battlefield, it will kill only the soldiers on that battlefield.”
“And if it’s poured over a city,” Yevchenko said, “it will kill only the inhabitants of that city.”
Sofia had to take in a deep breath just to calm herself. She thought she was going to throw up.
“We’d never do that, would we?” she said.
“Have you no faith in your own government, Sofia?”
She looked into his gray eyes. For a moment she wasn’t sure if he was actually being sincere.
Then she said, “Anthrax won’t spread, sir. It will kill the target it’s used against, and then it will stop.”
“I’m aware of that,” Yevchenko said.
“But a virus is different,” she said. “A virus spreads like dye in water. It spreads from person to person with the least contact. You can’t control where it goes.”
“I know what a virus is, doctor,” Yevchenko said. “And I can assure you, the president would not have asked for one if it was not what he wanted.”
“A virus has no legitimate military purpose,” she said.
“Why don’t you leave the military planning to the experts?”
“The Geneva Convention, sir.”
“Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?” Yevchenko said.
“Sir, I’m only saying that a virus spreads. A virus like the one you’ve requested, it’s unstoppable. It will spread and spread and we’ll have no ability to control it. Like a genie, sir. Once it’s out of the bottle, it will never go back in.”
“Why don’t you just tell me if you managed to isolate it,” Yevchenko said.
Sofia shook her head. She couldn’t say the words.
“Sofia,” Yevchenko said. “Did you do it, or did you not?”
She remained silent. She’d always been good at reading people. She thought about the GRU agent, Tatyana Aleksandrova. Everything depended on her now. Sofia knew next to nothing about her. A single meeting, when they’d ordered her to work at the institute. Just a hunch. A feeling. And now, she was the only hope.
Yevchenko stepped forward and slammed his hand on the table. The sound roused her from her thoughts.
“I did it, sir.”
Yevchenko smiled. “And it’s effective?”
“Effective sir?”
“Effective, Sofia. Virulent. Lethal.”
“Lethal?”
“Doctor,” Yevchenko said, drawing his gun. “I’m here on orders from the president of the federation. I’m not playing games.”
“Sir, this is like nothing we’ve ever seen. COVID-19, Ebola, Marburg, plague, Q fever, Junin, glanders, even smallpox. They pale in comparison.”
“So you’ve done it?” Yevchenko said. “You’ve given him what he asked for?”
“I have a deliverable,” she said. “Yes, sir.”
“A virus?”
“Taken from the same mammoths as the anthrax.”
“And it’s stable?”
“It’s a fucking time bomb,” Sofia said. “It should be destroyed immediately.”
Yevchenko smiled. “Now, now. Let’s leave that for the president to decide.”
Sofia had a safe under her desk and she bent down to unlock it.
“I trust I don’t have to tell you how sensitive this is?” she said.
“This isn’t my first day on the job, my dear.”
“This vial,” she said, holding it up for him to see, “contains possibly the most virulent substance on the planet. Certainly the most dangerous thing ever to come out of a Russian lab.”
“I would expect nothing less,” Yevchenko said.
“Under no circumstances should it be tampered with,” she said, placing it inside a sealed, titanium transportation case. “Under no circumstances should this case be opened. You must deliver it intact to directorate scientists in Moscow.”
“I’ll be careful with your little package,” Yevchenko said.
Sofia held it out to him, but as he took it, her fingers resisted letting go.
“You don’t trust me?” Yevchenko said.
“When it comes to something like this,” she said, “I trust no one.”
“Well, surely you can trust the president of the Russian Federation.”
Sofia looked at him wryly. “If we can’t trust him, who can we trust?”
8
Laurel Everlane was good at her job. It was her entire world. At thirty, getting recruited into the CIA’s Special Operations Group was the singular achievement of her life. She’d given up everything to be there, friendships, romantic relationships, the chance to start a family.
She’d given up who she was, her very identity.
And this was the pay off, this corner section of the sixth floor of the CIA’s new headquarters building at Langley.
The space was considered prime real estate. Its large windows overlooked a leafy section of the Potomac River and the George Washington Memorial Parkway.
She sat at the conference room table, her papers and pen arranged neatly in front of her, and gazed across the office.
He was late. He was always late.
The group was small, but punched above its weight in terms of authority and access. The bigwigs in congress rarely said no to them. Its field agents, known officially as Paramilitary Operatives, but within the group as assets, were secretly acknowledged to be the most elite units in the nation. They were recruited exclusively from Navy’s SEAL Team Six, Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron, Marine Corps’ MARSOC, and Army’s Delta Force.
It was a team that actually did something, struck back at the enemy, hit them where it hurt, and that was what Laurel liked about it.
She was a girl with an ax to grind.
When she was sixteen, she’d appeared in a music video for a local rapper dressed in a bikini and holding a machine gun. At her insistence, the video ended up including footage of her shooting the gun at targets with the faces of all the men on the Bush Administration’s card deck of most wanted terrorists.
She meant business.
She grew up in Dale County, Alabama within sight of Fort Rucker. She’d been an only child and her mother died during childbirth. Her father died when she was fourteen. He was an army colonel, killed at Camp Qargha in Kabul when a soldier in the Afghan National Army shot him in the back during an inspection tour.
Laurel didn’t attend the funeral. She now lived less than fifteen minutes from his grave at Arlington Cemetery, but never visited.
She had issues with the old man.
There was a wound there.
But also a need. A need to prove herself. A need to show the world it couldn’t shoot her father in the back and get away with it. Not on her watch.
After high school, she attended Harvard on full scholarship and specialized in psychiatry. She graduated top of her class. She could have gone anywhere from there. She could have earned a million dollars a year at some specialist clinic.
But she chose to join the army.
She spent four years in military hospitals treating post-traumatic stress disorder and combat trauma before going overseas.
It was there Roth found her. He saw her treat a soldier in the back of a Chinook helicopter. The soldier had just seen his entire squad blown up and Laurel handled him like a horse whisperer with a wild stallion.
Levi Roth was a man who knew it when he saw it, and when he saw her with that soldier, he took notice.
When she saw him, she thought anyone who wore a tailored Tom Ford suit and horse-bit loafers around Fallujah was out of his mind.
Soldiers on the base called him the rabbi because of his beard, but there were also rumors he was the only person in the CIA with a weekly face-to-face with the president.
That got Laurel’s attention.
She remembered standing in front of his desk at their first meeting, his secretary handing her a plastic cup of ice-water.
&
nbsp; “Are you ready to be all you can be?” he said.
The meeting was a blur now, but she remembered learning that the operatives under Roth’s command were the four most valuable assets the nation possessed, and that he wanted her as handler for one of them.
She wondered now if she was still the person he’d seen on that helicopter. She looked at her reflection in the glass conference table and wondered, if he asked her now, would she still say yes?
He offered her the job of handler without saying what it entailed and she accepted.
She later learned what an asset was, and that her job was to keep hers on task, to make sure he achieved his objectives, came back after missions, and didn’t go off the deep end in the lulls between assignments.
And it was the lulls they worried about.
Those were the times when alcohol, drugs, and sex threatened to overtake the men who had nothing, and no one, to come home to. By the time a new asset completed his first few missions, his handler was the only person he could speak to. She was the one who knew what he’d done. The risks. The dangers. The sacrifices he made. The sins he committed.
She heard him.
She saw him for who he was.
She cared.
Or at least it was her job to appear that way.
Assets were a special breed, and they required a special breed to handle them.
Laurel didn’t envy them. Everything she’d experienced was a drop in the ocean compared to what they went through.
They were selected based on combat performance, and sent to a facility at Camp Peary, Virginia, where they went through a grueling two-year program that, if the rumors were true, killed as many candidates as it graduated. They received training in advanced aspects of modern weaponry, explosives, foreign and domestic firearms, hand-to-hand combat, tactical driving, escape skills, surreptitious entry, vehicle hot-wiring, extreme survival, wilderness training, field medical training, tactical communications, cyber skills, and tracking.
They went on to receive the highest valor awards in the CIA, the Distinguished Intelligence Cross and the Intelligence Star, and most also found their way onto the agency’s memorial wall, where a gold star represented every agent killed in the line of duty.
Not that the honors did them any good.