That was a fatal problem. He’d seen it happen to a very good captain in Vietnam, early in his tour there. The man led them into an L-shaped ambush, tried to flank the enemy through the thick jungle, lost a quarter of the force in a crossfire.
Time to quit.
Karr and Stephen Martin stood against the side of the helicopter, peering through the smallish windows. Karr had just finished grilling Martin about what had happened, how he had escaped the plane, how he had been captured, what he had said.
Dean hadn’t heard it all, but he could piece together the highlights. Martin had crawled through a small access hatch with a parachute he wasn’t supposed to have and left the plane after pressing the destruct sequence. He assumed the others had gone out as well. He hit his head when he landed but apparently managed to walk some distance before two men with guns appeared in the darkness not far from a road. He’d spent some time in a police station or military office — he believed it was the former — before being blindfolded and taken to the base where he had been rescued. He’d been questioned every day since but hadn’t told them anything.
Even Dean knew that must be a lie. Martin’s fingers shook and he kept blinking; the Russians had obviously broken him.
“OK,” said Karr, turning back from the door. “We’re landing.”
The Hind dropped precipitously a few seconds later; Dean thought his head would hit the ceiling. Karr slammed the door open, then prodded Martin out. Dean, legs shaky, felt like he was falling to the doorway. He jumped lightly onto the ground; the shock reverberated up his side, jostling his ribs so badly he winced.
“Go,” Karr ordered, pointing toward the riverbank a good distance away. Then he jumped back into the helicopter, leaving Martin and Dean alone.
“They leaving us?” asked Martin.
Dean shook his head, though in truth he wasn’t sure. He started walking through the high grass. Martin eventually followed.
Just as they reached the shore the Hind’s engine roared. Dean turned and saw the helicopter jerk upward into the air — and then burst into fireball. It skittered about fifty feet ahead, then, still burning, keeled over and went into the ground.
“Jesus,” said Martin. He took a step toward the black smoke of the wreckage, then stopped. “What the hell?”
Dean stared at the fuselage, feeling as if he’d been hit in the back of the head. He checked his gun, took the safety off — whoever had shot the Hind down was nearby.
Three figures came out of the smoke, running toward them. Dean started to level his gun.
“Is it them?” said Martin.
The question probably saved their lives. Belatedly Dean realized that the NSA ops had blown up the helicopter, rigging it hastily to look like it had crashed. The wreckage probably wouldn’t fool an expert, but the odds were that no one would care enough to send an expert to investigate.
Why didn’t he realize that’s what they were doing?
“Get the lead out,” said Karr, trotting up like a maniacal JV football coach on the first day of practice. “We got to get moving.”
Martin fell into a jog, but Dean, his hip burning and his ribs aching, simply walked. A small boat was hidden about fifty yards farther up the riverbank. It was very small and settled near the gunwales as the first four members of the group boarded. Dean looked at it doubtfully.
“Come on, baby-sitter, there’s room,” said Karr. “Sit next to Lia in the stern.”
Dean’s boots sank into the mud as he reached for the boat.
“Push us off first or we’ll be stuck.” Lia was holding the engine up out of the muck at the shore.
Dean splashed clumsily into the water as he leaned against the side of the Vessel. He managed to get in without swamping it, falling to the bottom with his pants sodden, while Lia slapped down the engine. She cursed and pulled the rope starter, getting a few coughs but no ignition.
“Choke it,” said Karr.
“Yeah.”
“Come on, like you’d do to your boyfriends.”
“Fuck off,” said Lia, wrapping the starter string around her wrist and pulling harder. The motor ripped to life, then died. It took three more pulls before she got it going.
“What happened to your leg?” she asked Dean as they began slowly moving against the current.
“Bullet got my hip.”
She put her hand down on it. Dean winced, trying not to cry out with the pain.
“Bullet’s in there?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you look?”
Dean shook his head. “I don’t think it went in. It didn’t feel that bad.”
“You’ve been shot before?”
“Not really.”
He was lying, actually; he’d been hit twice in Vietnam but for some reason now didn’t care to admit it. Old news — or an admission of being old, washed-up.
“Let me see it,” said Lia.
“It’s OK.”
“How do you know?”
“I do.”
“If you haven’t looked, and you’ve never been shot—”
“I suppose you have,” said Dean.
“Three times,” she said.
“She has that effect on men,” said Karr.
“Screw yourself, Karr,” snapped Lia.
Karr threw up his hands as if he’d touched a hot plate, then went back to scouting the riverbank. “Don’t beach us, Princess.”
“Screw yourself.” She looked down at Dean. “I’ll look at it in the van.”
“Is that where we’re going?” asked Dean.
“We have a van — or should have a van — about two miles up the river.”
“It’ll be there,” said Fashona behind him.
“We requisition vehicles in case we need them,” said Lia.
“What do we do if it’s gone?”
“It’ll be there,” said Fashona.
“Karr will carry us,” said Lia.
* * *
The van was waiting, as Fashona had promised, and unlike the outboard engine, it started on the first try. They drove it about five miles to the outskirts of a village, where a Mercedes truck sat near the road.
Dean, sitting on the floor next to the rear door, heard Karr tell Fashona to keep going.
“What’s wrong?” asked Lia, leaning over the space between the driver and passenger seat.
“Tire marks in the dirt,” said Karr.
“We can scan it,” suggested Lia. “Probably it was just someone looking to steal it.”
“Not worth the risk,” said Karr. “We’ll just drive this to Surgut.”
“Fuel tank is just a regular tank,” said Fashona.
“So we stop,” said Karr.
“A long haul,” Lia said.
“Well, you can click your ruby slippers anytime you want,” he told her.
Lia slid around and plopped down on the floor. “How’s your hip?” she asked Dean.
“It’s all right.”
She frowned at him, then pushed along the metal floor to look at it.
“Pull down your pants,” she ordered.
“Yeah, right.”
“Oh, don’t be a sissy,” she said, reaching for his waist.
Dean let her undo the button at his waist and leaned over to make it easier for her to slide the top of his pants down. Her hands felt warm.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore, really,” he said.
“You’re burned and cut up a bit,” she said. “You’ll live.”
“Gee, thanks, nurse.”
She let go of his leg abruptly. Now that he had it exposed, Dean figured he might as well clean it and asked if they had anything to do so. She seemed almost reluctant to get the first-aid kit, which was under the passenger seat. Dean took it from her, using the hydrogen peroxide to clean the wound. It burned and frothed immediately, which he took as a sign that the stuff was doing something. Then he daubed Mercurochrome on the wound.
“That shit doesn’t do anything,
you know,” said Lia.
“It’s an antiseptic,” said Dean.
She waved at his hand. “You’ll be fine.”
“Thanks for the sympathy.”
“I didn’t know you wanted sympathy.” She seemed genuinely puzzled. “You don’t seem like the type.”
“You guys might as well try and get some sleep,” said Karr from the front. “As soon as we get to Surgut, we’re taking a plane to Moscow.”
“Then home,” said Dean. He lay back on the truck floor, feeling very old and very tired, glad the mission was over.
52
A metal desk dominated the office, sitting precisely in the center of the small space. The desk itself measured no more than a meter and a half across; its shallow bank of drawers barely accommodated a full pad of paper. Photographs and citations had once covered the walls of the office, but now only their shadows remained, spots of cream against the dull yellow mass. It had been years since the office was occupied; its last owner had reviewed farm reports for a defense secretary, his identity now as obscure as his job had once been.
The bank of offices here was regarded as unlucky by some of the building staff, not because they were small and had limited electrical and phone services, but because a jilted lover had tried to commit suicide by setting herself on fire in the hallway. She had not succeeded, but even so, there were rumors that her ghost walked here at night.
The assassin did not care for such rumors, nor did he contemplate the size of the room or the simplicity of its furnishings. He cared only for the window, which looked over the courtyard of the building where his target would be two days hence.
The room connected to the hallway via another room the exact same size. The hallway door and most of this outer room could not be seen from the room with the window the assassin needed. This was a problem; it made it possible for someone to enter the outer room and ambush him while he was at his post. The glass panel on the door made a dead bolt impractical; it would be child’s play to cut through the glass. Keying the dead bolt would delay his escape, and besides, the glass panel was large enough for someone to climb through.
Difficult, surely, but then, the assassin was himself an expert in difficult things.
There was a solution. From one of the two large bags he’d brought, he removed a large oval lock that looked precisely the same as the others on the hallway. Five buttons made a circle around a central switch; the buttons had to be pressed in a certain order to open.
Except that here, pressing any of the buttons would ignite a small C-4 charge in the lock. As would breaking the thin wire tape he placed around the window. The only way to safely open the door was with the inside latch.
Door secured, the assassin went back into the room with the window he wanted. He climbed on top of the desk and sat with his legs crisscrossed. He did not think about his task; the job was simplicity defined and did not require thought. He did not think about his surroundings; they were not worthy of thought. He gave himself over entirely to thinking about his young son, who was now five.
He had not seen the boy for nearly a year. As he stared now at the light patches on the wall, he reviewed the boy’s entire life, or at least what he had known of it. He smiled at the mischief, berated himself for losing his temper three times. It occurred to the assassin, as it had occurred to him before, that his outbursts of anger were his own fault and not the boy’s; he regretted yelling at him. He could take solace in the fact that he had never spanked the little one in his entire life — though perhaps many would see that as a personal flaw. The assassin did not mind such opinions; to him, being known as an indulgent father was hardly a disgrace.
When his reverie reached the boy’s last birthday, the assassin began to laugh. He remembered how his son tried in vain to push a large piece of cake into his mouth. The as sassin laughed, remembering the little boy’s tears when he finally realized he could not have it all.
And then, for a moment, the assassin cried as well.
He sat on the desk a few minutes longer. Then he slowly unfurled his legs and began setting up his post. He would now think of nothing except his mission for the next two days, or as long as it took.
53
Sherlock Holmes once used the absence of a dog’s bark to solve a crime. One of Bib’s teams had used the absence of communications to provide another list of possible ringleaders of the coup, presenting it to Rubens on his return to Crypto City.
Unfortunately, the technique worked better on the page than in real life. The analysis pegged two possible military leaders as the top choices. But neither had made the earlier lists of likely conspirators — Oleg Babin, the equivalent of an American four-star general in the Far East command, and Ilya Petrosberg, a defense ministry official who had been with the Marines.
Rubens still favored Vladimir Perovskaya, the defense minister himself. So did the CIA and nearly everyone else who had an opinion.
They could plan to freeze out all of the top suspects, but that would spread their resources. And there was always the problem of inadvertently freezing out loyalists who might be useful.
Rubens stared at the paper on his desk. As so often in intelligence, the problem wasn’t so much getting information — there were reams and reams of it. The problem was sorting through and analyzing it, then making the right guess on what to do about it.
He had no choice. He’d freeze everyone on both the main list and this new one. In the meantime, he’d give Bib another push. Had they looked for patterns in the use of ciphers or communications devices? Something had to stand out.
There were other developments. British MI6 was starting to make discreet inquiries. The damn Brits were always sticking their toes in where they didn’t belong.
The direct line to the Art Room buzzed. Rubens picked up the phone.
“Boss, we got him,” she said. “Martin. Tommy and his guys are bringing him back.”
“I’m glad he’s alive,” said Rubens, though of course the exact opposite was true. However, if he had to have survived the crash, it was far better that they had him than the Russians. It would be easier to assess the damage to the program with his account.
“He claims he didn’t tell the Russians anything about Wave Three,” added Telach.
Even Rubens had an extremely difficult time stifling a laugh of derision. Of course Martin had been broken; it was absurd to think otherwise. It was just a question of how much time the Russians had had to interview him.
“I will be down shortly,” he told Telach. “Have Karr and his people arrived in Moscow yet?”
“They’re en route.”
“Tell them to move more quickly.” Rubens hung up and glanced at his watch. There were seven minutes left until the scheduled hourly update on Bear Hug. The update involved a secure conference call with the NSC, agency, and military leaders connected with the operation. While he could take the call in the Art Room, he’d never make it through the security chamber in time. He’d have to take the call here, then go downstairs.
He thought again of the things that needed to be cared for at his home. The African violets must be watered, and he should change the thermostat and phone settings. He’d also want to put on the random lighting pattern that made it seem as if the house were occupied.
Rubens picked up the gray phone and called home, where the house’s central computer system could be accessed through its phone mail system. He hated using the gadget. The phone menu was exasperating, and not too long ago he’d managed to tell the lawn sprinkler system to keep itself on 24/7; he returned home just in time to prevent a mud slide.
The machine answered on the first ring, indicating he had a message. Rubens hit his code to check. The machine greeted him and then began playing a message from his cousin Greta.
“Hi, Bill, I hope you’re well. Call me, OK?”
It had been left a few hours before.
Call her?
She never, or almost never, called to chat. It had to be the inves
tigation. Was something going to come out?
Was that what Brown had been getting at earlier?
There were no other messages. Rubens hung up, then punched his cousin’s number. The phone rang three times, four — he started to hang up, not sure what sort of message to leave. He couldn’t tell her to call him here.
“Hello?”
“Greta?”
“Bill?” Her voice sounded tentative, very un-Greta-like.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Oh yes, I’m OK. Have you heard the news?”
“What news?”
“There’s going to be an inquiry into Congressman Greene’s death. There’s a special congressional committee.”
That was it?
“I had heard that, yes,” said Rubens. “Are you concerned?”
“Concerned? Of course I’m concerned. I’m worried.”
Maybe she did do it, he thought. Perhaps she felt pressure to confess.
That would end the rumors and contain the potential damage. A good solution.
“I’m sure you have nothing to worry about,” he said in his most soothing voice. “If you need anything, I’ll help any way I can.”
“Thanks.”
“You expect to be called as a witness before the committee?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I guess.”
Rubens thought of the scene playing on Fox. They’d cut from the live feed to the studio, where one of the commentators would point out that her cousin was William Rubens, the most important spymaster since…
He was not a spymaster.
Most important since whom?
“They’re all grandstanding,” said Greta. “They have their own agendas.”
She stopped speaking, probably on the verge of tears. As Rubens thought of what to say next — as he considered what formula might get her to gush out a confession — something odd occurred to him, something unprecedented.
He felt sorry for her.
“I feel like I’m in a vise,” she said.
“Washington is like that,” Rubens told her. He glanced at the small clock on his desk — it was almost time for the conference call.
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