by Tom Cain
“But, m’sieur, we must…” Trudi pleaded. “I mean, they’re already on the way.”
“No!” the man exclaimed, spitting blood.
He got up, pushing Trudi out of his way, as he half ran, half stumbled from the room, through the bierkeller, and out onto the street.
“My God, what a night,” muttered Trudi, ripping off her wig and heading for the dressing room.
39
In the Volvo, Carver was racking his brain, trying to make the connection between Alix and the woman. “That waitress, Trudi, said she was Russian, age about fifty. I’m sure I know who she is. I just can’t get at it…”
“I think I know,” said Larsson. “Alix and I used to talk a lot, when you were sick. She told me a lot about her past, what happened between you two…”
He paused. “She told me what happened in Gstaad that night.”
“And?”
“The woman in the bierkeller, I don’t know her name-not her first name. But I think I know who she was: the woman who first found Alix, when she was just a kid, and trained her to… umm…”
Larsson’s face twisted in embarrassment.
“Yeah, I know what she trained her to do,” said Carver.
“Right,” said Larsson, visibly relieved. “And this woman’s husband was another KGB officer. He ran Alix’s operations and then when that all ended, Alix was… look, I’m sorry, man… she was his mistress. Until she went to Paris and met you, right? The guy was called Yuri Zhukovski. He was the one you killed in Gstaad…”
“Jesus,” said Carver. “Alix slept with this woman’s husband and I killed him. Well, that explains why Alix got the shits when she saw her at the bierkeller.”
“It probably explains why someone tried to kill you tonight, too,” agreed Larsson.
“Okay, but what about the bit in the middle? Alix does a runner. The woman sends two guys after her. The next thing we know, Alix has money and is paying my bills. How does that add up?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Larsson. “But we’ve got a couple of weeks to work it out.”
“What do you mean?”
They’d crossed the river and were driving through the residential areas between the lake and the international airport on the edge of town, passing smart, modern apartment blocks.
“That’s how long it’s going to take to get you into shape. I’d like twice as long, but I know you won’t wait. Hold on…”
He pulled up outside one of the blocks. Carver looked around. This was where Larsson lived. He’d been here before. He’d been surprised-just as he was now-to find a guy like Larsson living in such a bourgeois location. With his wild hair, torn jeans, and vintage rock-band T-shirts, the Norwegian looked as though he should be sitting in some funky warehouse, surrounded by computer parts and empty pizza boxes. But Geneva didn’t do funky warehouses.
Larsson patted him on the shoulder. “Wait here, okay? I’m just going to get some cold-weather gear and my laptop.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
Larsson grinned. “The end of the world, Carver. My world. I’m going to make your life hell. And you just paid me a lot of money for the privilege.”
40
Barely a mile away, Piotr Korsakov was sitting in an FSB safe house, while a doctor tended to his nose. His cell phone rang. He checked the number- Moscow, calling on a secure line-and motioned to the doctor to leave the room.
“You had a bad night, Korsakov.” The voice was cool, female, authoritative.
“Yes, Madam Deputy Director.”
“You lost a partner and a target.”
“Yes.”
“Matov paid the price for his incompetence. What happened to you?”
“I was taken unawares. I did not believe that the target, Carver, had spotted me as a potential threat. I was wrong. He assaulted me. I could have retaliated, of course. Doubtless I would have killed him. But there were several witnesses. I felt it more prudent to play the innocent victim.”
“That may have been the correct judgment. We will have a hard enough time covering up the deaths of Matov and the couple you terminated. We do not need any further complications. Did you see where Carver went?”
“No, ma’am. He left the building while I was still inside and I was unable to follow him. But he was not alone. There was another man, very distinctive, almost six and a half feet tall, with long hair. He would be easy to identify again.”
“That will not be necessary. I am already aware of his identity.”
“So what would you like me to do now?”
“Return to Moscow. I will decide what we shall do about Mr. Carver… and his hairy friend.”
She hung up the phone.
And in the meantime, we must get a message to Alix, she thought. The assassination has failed, for now, but there is no reason she should know that. Let’s see how well she does her job when she’s not distracted by thoughts of another man…
Thirteen hundred miles away, alone in her hotel room, Alix was looking across the waters of the Canale della Giudecca toward the lights of Venice. Here she stood, in one of the most romantic cities in the world, and right there in the next-door room was a man who yearned to be her lover. For weeks she had been keeping him at bay, but all her training and professional expertise told her these stalling tactics were rapidly outliving their usefulness. Denying a man what he most desired was an excellent way of keeping him on tenterhooks, but beyond a certain point even the most lovesick male would eventually decide that the effort wasn’t worth it.
If Olga Zhukovskaya could see what was happening now, her orders would be simple: “Sleep with Vermulen, immediately.”
So what was stopping her?
Loyalty to Carver, and a refusal any longer to whore in the service of the state: Those were the obvious answers, but she knew they were just phony self-justifications. The real reason Alix was not in Vermulen’s room right now was precisely the fact that part of her wanted to be there just as much as he did.
She did not love Vermulen the way she loved Carver, or had loved the man he once was. But the general was present in her life, and Carver was now just a memory that seemed to fade a little more into the distance with every passing day. Vermulen was a good, kind man, whose feelings for her were unmistakably real. Just as important, he had money, influence, and a degree of power. He offered her the possibility of protection, some refuge at least if she should ever defy Zhukovskaya, and walk away from the FSB.
Sooner or later, that promise of security would be impossible to resist.
41
There were eight men sitting at the mahogany table in one of the meeting rooms that form part of the five-thousand-square-foot complex known to its users as the Woodshed, but to the rest of the world as the White House Situation Room. One of them was the President’s national security adviser, Leo Horabin. The other seven were senior representatives of federal agencies, including the FBI and CIA. These were men who had made it to the commanding heights of the establishment. They exuded a common aura of power. But they had all come to listen to Dr. Kady Jones.
She began the meeting by describing the discovery and analysis of the device found in Minnesota. A photograph of the inside of the case filled a screen on one of the Situation Room walls.
“The best way to describe this bomb is to say that it’s a classic piece of Russian military design: basic, but effective. What they did was essentially the same concept as Little Boy, the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima more than forty years ago. It’s what’s known as a gun-type design. This here”-she pointed at the metal pipe filling most of the case-“is the gun barrel. It’s fired by a signal sent from the control box, here, in the form of an electric charge. It passes down this wire into one end of the barrel and ignites a conventional explosive charge. Right next to the charge is a fifteen-kilogram mass of weapons-grade uranium.”
She brought up another slide. One side of the barrel had been cut away, revealing the contents.
“Ex
actly like a charge of gunpowder propelling a cannonball, the explosive fires the uranium down the barrel, where it hits a second fifteen-kilo slug of uranium, at the far end. Now, a total of sixty pounds would not normally be enough to create a critical mass of uranium-two thirty-five-that’s the amount needed to create a nuclear chain reaction. But the Russians were smart. They put a ring of beryllium around the end of the barrel-see how it thickens there, at the end? That beryllium acts as a reflector, concentrating the forces released by the impact, so that the reaction takes place at a lower mass. That creates a nuclear explosion, which we’d estimate in the range of one to five kilotons. That’s nothing compared to a strategic nuclear-missile warhead, but it’s still enough to devastate the heart of a major city, take out a military base, or flatten an oil refinery.”
“Dear God…” Horabin’s sagging, downcast face-all drooping jowls, double chins, and baggy eyes-was ashen. “And you’re sure this thing is Russian?”
“Well, it was certainly manufactured from Russian components, using their uranium. And we believe it’s at least a decade old, dating back to Soviet days, when the state still had total control of all its stocks of weapons-grade nuclear materials. So it was made either by a Soviet government agency or by someone with very, very high-level access.”
“And it’s still in working order?”
“Well, thankfully it didn’t detonate when… ah”-she hesitated for a moment, hoping that no one could see the blood she felt flushing her cheeks-“when struck by a heavy falling object. But we couldn’t find anything wrong with the basic bomb. Anyone with the correct arming code could have set it off.”
“Excuse me, Dr. Jones…” The speaker was Ted Jaworski, the CIA representative. “When we investigated the Lebed claims at Langley, our analysts told us that if the bombs really did exist, they would most likely be inactive by now. But you’re saying that’s not the case. How come?”
Kady felt the atmosphere in the room crackle with anticipation. Jaworski was making a play, pitching his agency against hers. The people around the table were Washington veterans. They seemed to lean forward a fraction, anxious to see if the newcomer could defend herself.
“That’s simple,” she said, letting the room know that the question hadn’t fazed her. “Your people would have made the same assumption we did at Los Alamos before we’d actually seen this thing. We all figured the Soviets would use plutonium for any small-scale weapon, because that’s what we would have done. Plutonium is far more efficient than uranium. You get a much bigger bang per kilo. But it also decays a lot faster. Much beyond a decade, it’s lost its explosive power, so the whole unit needs servicing and updating. But uranium lasts for hundreds of thousands of years. It’s crude. It’s inefficient. But it keeps right on working.”
Kady saw Jaworski give her a slight nod of the head, an acknowledgment that she’d passed his test.
“All right,” said Horabin. “I get it.”
He looked at the agency representatives around him. “I have to brief the President on this, and I don’t want to walk into the Oval Office with nothing but bad news. We know there are bombs out there. Now we’ve got to get to them-all of them-before our enemies get there first. I need a strategy. What have you got for me?”
The agencies had all received preliminary briefings prior to the meeting. As a matter of institutional pride they had already drafted action plans. Five of the men reached for their cases and withdrew their documents. Only Jaworski remained motionless, indifferent to the activity around him.
“Don’t you have anything, Ted?” asked Horabin.
“Yes, I have one very strong piece of advice.”
“Great. Let’s hear it.”
“Do nothing.”
There was a murmur of disapproval around the table.
Horabin glared at him: “Is that all you have to offer?”
The CIA man seemed unruffled. “It’s all I recommend right now, in public, at least. The only thing we have going for us is that no one knows what we’ve found. If we start mounting search operations, people will want to know what we’re looking for. And, believe me, they will find out. So then we’ll have a major diplomatic incident with the Russians. We’ll have the TV news telling folks there could be nukes in their backyards. And we’ll have every terrorist leader in the world trying to figure out how he can get one of these things for himself.
“That means we’ve got to be discreet. I suggest a small, dedicated team, backed by the full resources of all our agencies. This team must be tasked to search for any clues to who’s got these bombs, where they are, and who still knows how to make them explode. But they’ve got to do this quietly-and I mean really, really quietly.”
42
The first morning, Carver stumbled over the finish line of his three-mile course like a newborn foal on an ice rink, unable to control the skis and poles on the end of his thrashing, twitching, uncoordinated limbs. He lay facedown in the snow, his chest heaving, his throat gagging until Thor Larsson reached down, grabbed the collar of his windproof jacket, and dragged him, coughing and wheezing, to his feet.
“Keep moving,” growled Larsson. He hit Carver hard across the backside with a ski pole, just to underline the order.
“I said move,” he repeated.
Carver raised his goggles onto his forehead and stared at Larsson with an expression that combined exhaustion and loathing in equal proportions.
“Thought this was the end,” he finally croaked, dragging icy air into his lungs between each word.
Larsson shook his head.
“Move,” he said for a third time, wielding his stick again. “Now!”
Carver spat emphatically into the snow, just inches from Larsson’s skis. He yanked his goggles back down and set off again along the municipal trail that snaked through the countryside around Beisfjord, a small town near Narvik on the northwest coast of Norway, inside the Arctic Circle. Spring might be blooming across the rest of Europe, but up here winter had yet to relax its deep-frozen grip.
They barely hit walking pace past stands of stunted, bedraggled birch trees. Carver struggled for rhythm as he lifted his heels and slid his metal-edged, military-specification Asnes mountain skis forward, all the while driving his poles into the hard-packed snow.
Larsson had been cross-country skiing since he was in kindergarten. He’d received winter training during his national service as an intelligence officer in the Norwegian Army. He effortlessly glided ahead, always ensuring that no matter how hard Carver tried to catch up, he was always tantalizingly out of his reach.
They’d gone about another half-mile when they came to a rifle range, located by the trail so that biathletes could practice their shooting and skiing in competition conditions. Carver followed Larsson into the range, pulled off the Anschütz Fortner target rifle strapped across his back, and flopped down on his belly by one of the firing positions.
“Five shots, quick-fire,” said Larsson. “You have twenty-five seconds.”
Carver tried to aim his gun at the target: five white discs set against a black background. His muscles were overloaded with lactic acid, making his aching arms shake in protest as they tried to hold the weapon still and straight. Sweat was pouring into his eyes. It took him forty seconds to get his shots away. By the last one, he barely had the strength to pull the bolt back to load the next round. And the only target he hit was next to the one he was aiming at.
“Not good enough,” said Larsson. “Fire another clip.”
There were three more five-shot magazines in a holder on the right-hand side of the gun, a few inches in front of the trigger. Carver reloaded, fumbling like a new recruit.
“Twenty seconds,” said Larsson. “And this time, get your shots away inside the limit or you do another course.”
Larsson’s voice made it plain that he was utterly indifferent to the prospect of Carver’s suffering if he had to go around again. It reminded Carver of other voices, at another time and place. He remembered
the twenty-mile runs he’d endured at Lympstone Commando Training Centre, on the way to his marines beret, and the ferocious workouts amounting to institutional sadism that were handed out by the instructors who supervised his selection for the SBS.
They’d not broken him, and he wasn’t going to let this overgrown computer geek make him look like a noddy now.
He got off the next five shots in a fraction over nineteen seconds. He hit two more targets.
Carver rolled over onto his back to take the weight off the elbows and biceps that had been supporting his upper body and the gun.
Larssson looked down at him with a contemptuous curl of the lip. “You have another twenty seconds to get back into position, reload, and hit the remaining two targets. Same deal. You fail, you ski.”
Ten years earlier he could have done it in five seconds. Throughout the Cold War the Royal Marines had been the U.K. armed forces’ Arctic-warfare specialists. As a young lieutenant, Carver had been up to Beisfjord for winter training with 45 Commando. Even now, he was wearing his old leather ski march boots, as unyielding as iron when they’d first been issued, but gradually worn in to fit the exact contours of his feet and ankles. Carver had even tried out for the marines’ Olympic-standard biathlon squad before the SBS came calling. But now…
“Go!” shouted Larsson, looking at his watch.
Carver heaved himself back onto his front, grabbed the gun, ripped out the empty magazine, and groped for its replacement. Actions that had once been second nature now seemed entirely foreign. It all used to be automatic. Now he had to think everything through, one agonized motion at a time. His hands were quivering with cold as well as exhaustion. He could barely focus his aching, sweat-stung eyes on the target.
“Fifteen seconds left,” Larsson intoned.
Not one shot fired.
Carver gathered himself and aimed at the first standing target. He fired as he was breathing out, to help steady his aim.
And missed.
“Come on!” he muttered to himself as he pulled back the bolt.