Her smile grew wider. “Very wise, Colonel.”
One hundred meters away, two men sat in the front seat of a silver BMW parked along the side of a narrow street. One, a German named Wegner, leaned forward, taking pictures through the dark, tinted windshield with a digital camera equipped with a high-powered telephoto lens. The other entered a series of commands into the small portable computer perched on his lap.
“I’ve got a connection,” the second man announced. His name was Chernov and he had served as a junior officer in the old KGB. “I can send the images whenever you’re ready.”
“Good,” his companion grunted. He snapped another quick set of pictures and then lowered the camera. “That should do it.”
“Any idea who the man is?”
The cameraman shrugged. “None. But we’ll let someone else puzzle that out. In the meantime, we stick to our orders: Follow the woman Devin and report any and all contacts she makes.”
Chernov nodded sourly. “I know. I know. But this is getting too risky. I thought you’d lost her for good on the Metro this morning. I had to drive like a madman just to pick up your trail and hers.” He frowned. “I don’t like it. She’s asking too many questions. We should just terminate her.”
“Kill a journalist? An American?” the man with the camera said coldly. “Herr Brandt will have to make that decision himself—when the time comes.”
Not far away, a tall, barrel-chested man stood, slowly rocking back and forth in the shelter of a doorway. He wrapped his arms around himself, hugging his shabby coat tighter for warmth. His pants were faded and patched. At first glance, he seemed to be nothing more than one of the many poverty-stricken old-age pensioners who often wandered Moscow’s streets in an alcoholic daze. But beneath his bushy, silver eyebrows, the tall man’s gaze was clear, even penetrating. He frowned, carefully memorizing the BMW’s license plate. This situation was growing more complicated and dangerous at a dizzying pace, he thought grimly.
Chapter Sixteen
Thick clouds rolled west through the slowly darkening skies above the elaborate spires of the Kotelnicheskaya high-rise. A few fresh flakes of snow spun through the air, brushing gently against the windows of the Brandt Group’s penthouse office suite. Erich Brandt himself stood at the window, looking down through the lightly falling snow at the busy city streets far below.
He could feel the tension growing in his thick neck and powerful shoulders. He had always disliked these periods of enforced idleness—the time spent waiting for subordinates to report or for superiors to issue new orders. Part of him craved the physical and emotional release of action, reveling in sudden violence as though it were a drug. But years spent stalking enemies, first for the Stasi and then later for his own pleasure and profit, had taught him both the necessity and the means of controlling those cruder instincts.
He swung around at the sound of a rap on his open door. “Yes!” he snapped. “What is it?”
One of his subordinates, like him a former Stasi officer, came in carrying a file folder. The slim, hatchet-faced man looked worried. “I think we have a new security breach,” he said tightly. “A serious one.”
Brandt frowned slightly. Gerhard Lange was not ordinarily a man prone to a show of nerves. “In what way?”
“These were transmitted by the team conducting surveillance on that American reporter,” Lange told him, opening the folder and fanning out a set of black-and-white images across his desk. They showed the American woman talking animatedly with a lean, dark-haired man. “Those pictures were taken roughly two hours ago, during what appeared to be a clandestine rendezvous at Patriarch’s Pond.”
“And?”
“See for yourself.” Lange slid another document across the desk. “This was just faxed by one of our informants.”
The sheet was a summary of a U.S. Army service record—that of Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith, M.D. It included a blurry, slightly-out-of-focus photograph.
Brandt stared down at the picture. Silently, he compared it to the images taken by his surveillance team. He scowled. There was no possible doubt. This was the same man. Smith was in Moscow—and he was in contact with the freelance journalist whose persistent inquiries were causing them concern.
The blond-haired man shivered slightly. Despite his solemn pledge to Alexei Ivanov, HYDRA’s operational security was continuing to fray around the edges.
He looked up from the damning pictures. “Where is Smith staying?”
Lange shook his head wearily. “That is our first problem. We don’t know. We’ve checked the passenger manifests from every airport and railway station in the Moscow region. His name does not appear on any of them.”
Brandt sat down behind his desk. “So Smith arrived here under a cover identity,” he mused. “And he is using forged documents that were solid enough to deceive the Russian immigration authorities.”
“Almost certainly,” Lange agreed. “Which makes him a spy, either for the CIA or for one of the other American intelligence organizations.”
The blond-haired man nodded grimly. “So it seems.”
“The FSB could help us,” Lange suggested tentatively. “If we had access to the Interior Ministry’s passport registration forms for the past couple of days, we could run a search program to cross-index Smith’s picture with—”
“And hand our Russian friends the excuse they need to take over this end of the HYDRA operation?” Brandt shook his head. “No, Gerhard. We’ll manage this matter ourselves. I do not want the FSB, especially Ivanov’s Thirteenth Directorate, involved in any way, shape, or form. Not yet. Clear?”
Lange nodded reluctantly. “Clear enough.”
“Good.” Brandt glanced through the photos taken by his surveillance team again. He tapped one showing the two Americans deep in conversation. “This journalist, Ms. Devin, is the key to finding Smith. He’s contacted her once. He’s almost sure to do so again. Where is she right now?”
The other man shrugged gloomily. “That’s our second problem. We’ve lost her.”
Brandt stared back at him. “Lost her? How?”
“After meeting Smith, she led Wegner and Chernov on a merry chase across half of Moscow,” Lange reported. “First by doubling back on different Metro lines a couple of times, and then finally by ducking into the shops inside the Petrovskiy Passage. They think she may have changed her hat or coat to alter her appearance and then slipped away unnoticed in the crowds.”
Brandt nodded stiffly. In a city this size, there were any number of ways to shake off a tail—if you knew you were being followed and if you knew what you were doing.
“They’re headed back to her flat, hoping to regain contact,” Lange went on carefully. “But she may have gone to ground.”
“Quite probably,” Brandt growled. He frowned. “Two years ago, she managed to elude several Mafiya hit teams, all while operating on her own. This woman may be an amateur, but she is most assuredly not a fool. She probably spotted Wegner and Chernov following her. By now, she’s undoubtedly safely tucked away in a hotel somewhere, or staying with friends.”
Lange sighed. “If so, we’re left with no effective way to track down Smith. Whether you like it or not, we will have to request assistance from the Thirteenth Directorate.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” Brandt said, thinking hard. “We have an alternative.”
The other man looked puzzled.
“Smith is here for a purpose,” Brandt reminded him. “And we know what that purpose must be, correct?”
Lange nodded slowly. “He’s trying to learn what Petrenko wanted to tell him in Prague. Or worse, gather evidence to verify what Petrenko did tell him.”
“Exactly.” Brandt showed his teeth. “Tell me, Gerhard, what is the best way to hunt a wild animal, especially a dangerous predator?”
His subordinate said nothing.
“Water is the key,” Brandt told him. “All animals must drink. So you find its watering place and then you wait, w
ith your rifle at the ready, for the creature to come to you.”
He pushed aside the surveillance photos and Smith’s service record and paged through the materials stacked neatly on his desk, looking for a printout of the most recent message from Wulf Renke. The scientist had sent him the list he had asked for at their last meeting—the names of the other doctors and scientists in Moscow whose knowledge of the first HYDRA outbreak could prove dangerous.
Brandt handed Renke’s list to Lange with a thin-lipped smile. “Somewhere on here is the American’s watering hole. Focus first on anyone who attended international conferences where they might have met Colonel Smith. Sooner or later, he will have to contact one of those men or women. And when he does, we’ll be there ahead of him, waiting to make our kill.”
Located on the shared border of the New Arbat and Tverskaya districts, the Kafe Karetny Dvor occupied a charming older building, a rare survivor of the drab concrete excesses of Soviet-era urban redevelopment. The Moscow Zoo and another of Stalin’s mammoth “Seven Sisters,” the Kudrinskaya apartment high-rise, were close by, just on the other side of the wide Sadovaya Ring road. On hot summer evenings, the restaurant’s patrons sat outside in its shaded interior courtyard, eating salads and drinking wine or vodka or beer. In colder weather, customers savored the spicy Azerbaijani cuisine served in its intimate, warm, and cheerful dining rooms filled with green, hanging plants.
Seated in a booth in a far corner of the main room, Smith saw Fiona Devin come through the front door. She stood poised there for a moment, brushing the snow off her coat while gracefully turning her head, first in one direction and then another, obviously looking for him. Relieved, he rose to his feet. With a casual nod, she headed in his direction, striding nimbly through the crowded, smoke-filled restaurant.
“I presume this is your companion, at long last,” Elena Vedenskaya said calmly, watching this attractive, elegantly dressed woman approach with dark, expressionless eyes. She stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray and stood up to greet Fiona just as she joined them.
In appearance, the Russian research scientist was as plain as Smith had remembered. Her narrow, lined face, pallid skin, and stiff, iron-gray hair pinned up in a tight bun made her look at least ten years older than she really was. Her drab skirt and blouse were clearly chosen more for comfort and convenience than for style. Still, her mind was just as sharp and incisive as he had recalled, and here in her home city she showed few traces of the reserved shyness he had observed at their last encounter—a molecular biology conference in Madrid.
“Ms. Devin, this is Dr. Elena Borisovna Vedenskaya,” Smith said, carefully introducing them formally.
The two women nodded to each other coolly, but politely, and then sat down, choosing opposite ends of the semicircular booth. After a brief hesitation, Smith slid into the side closest to Vedenskaya. Without demur she moved over to the middle, making room for him.
“I’m sorry I’m late, Jon,” Fiona said quietly. “I ran into a few…complications. Somewhere along the way I picked up a pair of unwelcome guests—door-to-door salesmen, I think—that I wanted to avoid.”
Smith raised an eyebrow. In Covert-One voice code the term “door-to-door salesmen” was used to describe a hostile surveillance operation aimed at the agent. “These guys weren’t selling anything you were interested in?” he asked, choosing his words carefully to avoid spooking the Russian doctor sitting beside him.
“No. At least, I don’t think so,” Fiona told him. Her voice betrayed just the slightest hint of uncertainty. “It’s possible they were only paying me a routine visit. There are a lot of pushy salesmen around Moscow these days.”
Smith nodded his understanding. As Dudarev and his cronies tightened their control over Russia, journalists, especially foreign journalists, were increasingly subject to random, and often painfully obvious, police and FSB surveillance. It was a method the authorities used to distract and intimidate the media without imposing more overt restrictions that might draw protests from the outside world.
They all fell silent as a youthful pair of smiling waiters arrived, each bearing a tray of plates and bowls heaped with food. Working with practiced efficiency, the servers set these dishes out across the table and departed. A third waiter, older than the others, followed right on his companions’ heels bringing their drinks: a bottle of slightly fizzy Moskovskaya vodka and another containing sweetened apple juice.
“To save time, we ordered before you arrived,” Dr. Vedenskaya told Fiona. The gray-haired woman raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I hope this was all right?”
“Quite all right,” Fiona replied with an answering smile. “I don’t know about anyone else, but personally I’m absolutely famished.”
Delicious aromas wafted up from the array of dishes laid before them. Suddenly ferociously hungry, the three of them took turns serving themselves, choosing from a wide assortment of Azeri specialties. Some plates held steaming slivers of satsivi, chicken breasts marinated in a creamy garlic sauce. Others were piled with sweet peppers stuffed with a mixture of minced lamb, mint, fennel, and cinnamon. There were also small bowls of dovgra, a thick, hot soup made with yogurt, rice, and spinach. While they were finishing these starters, more dishes arrived, mostly various shasliks, skewers of lamb, veal, and chicken soaked in onion, vinegar, and pomegranate juice, grilled over glowing embers, and served with thin sheets of lavash, a form of unleavened bread.
With the edge taken off their appetites, Elena Vedenskaya held up a glass of vodka. “Za vashe zdarov’e! Your health!” she said and downed the clear, cold liquor in one large gulp, following it immediately with a chaser of apple juice.
Smith and Fiona followed her example, savoring a combination of sharply contrasting flavors that perfectly complemented the highly spiced food they were eating.
“So now,” the Russian scientist said quietly when they set their empty glasses down. “To business.” She looked narrowly at Fiona. “Our mutual friend here,” she nodded at Jon, “tells me that you are a journalist.”
“I am.”
“Then let us understand one another, Ms. Devin,” Vedenskaya said firmly. “I do not wish my name to appear splashed across the front pages of some lurid tabloid.” She smiled thinly. “Or even a respectable newspaper.”
Fiona nodded easily. “That’s perfectly reasonable.”
“Although I do not like the government that pays my salary, I am very good at my job,” the gray-haired woman continued. “And it is important work. Work that saves lives. So I have no great desire to lose my position unnecessarily.”
Fiona looked across the table at the scientist. “Then I give you my word that I will leave your name out of any story I write,” she said seriously. “Believe me, Dr. Vedenskaya, I’m far more interested in learning the truth about this mysterious disease than I am in selling the story to a newspaper or magazine.”
“If so, we have at least one thing in common,” the Russian woman said drily. She turned back to Smith. “On the telephone you said that you believed this same illness was now spreading outside Russia.”
He nodded grimly. “Without more data on the first outbreak here, I can’t be absolutely sure, but the symptoms appear identical. And if it is the same unidentified disease, this news blackout ordered by the Kremlin is essentially killing people.”
“Fools! Dolts!” Vedenskaya swore acidly. She pushed her half-filled plate to the side and lit another cigarette, plainly trying to buy a few moments to regain her composure. “This cover-up is an act of criminal folly. I warned the government about the dangers of its decision to keep these strange deaths a secret. So did my colleagues.”
She scowled. “We should have been allowed to consult with the other international health authorities as soon as the first four cases were recognized.” Her narrow shoulders slumped. “And I should have said something, or done something, to pass the warning on myself. But, then, as weeks passed without anyone else falling ill, I allowed myself to hope that my ini
tial fears of a larger epidemic had been exaggerated.”
“There haven’t been any new cases here in Moscow?” Fiona asked.
The Russian research scientist shook her head firmly. “None.”
“You’re sure?” Smith asked, surprised.
“Quite sure, Jonathan,” Vedenskaya said. “True, the government has forbidden us to reveal the facts of the outbreak to the outside world. But we remain under explicit instructions to continue our own research. The Kremlin is still deeply interested in learning more about this disease: what causes it, how it is transmitted, the methods by which it kills its victims, and for some way to slow or reverse its cruel and inexorable progression.”
“But Valentin Petrenko told me that he’d been ordered to call off his probe into those first four deaths,” Smith said with a frown.
“Yes, that is so,” Vedenskaya agreed. “The hospital investigative teams were shut down, probably to control the flow of information. Instead, all research work surrounding this illness is being conducted in other, higher-level facilities, my BIO-CGM section at the Institute among them.”
“Including the Bioaparat labs?” Smith asked quietly, referring to the collection of heavily guarded science complexes that were said to be the center of Russia’s top-secret biological weapons research. If, as Klein and President Castilla suspected, the Russians were using this strange disease as a weapon, the scientists and technicians working for Bioaparat had to be involved in some way.
The gray-haired woman shook her head gravely. “I do not know what goes on behind the barbed wire at Yekaterinburg, Kirov, Sergiyev Posad, or Strizhi.” Her mouth tightened. “My security clearances do not reach that high.”
Smith nodded his understanding. He frowned, trying vainly to make these new pieces of information fit into the puzzle. If this new illness was a Russian-made weapon, and it was already being used against important people in the West and other countries, why was the Kremlin so insistent that its own top civilian scientists continue their research?
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