Plague Bomb

by James Rouch

  ‘You’re on. How about a hundred marks.’ Their driver’s too ready acceptance of the bet made Dooley deeply suspicious, and he hesitated. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’

  ‘Lots, and especially that our civvy friends may have turned off the main road, but they’re still heading east. Stubborn lot of sods, aren’t they.’

  ‘Maybe they’ve an extra reason now.’ Hyde climbed in, handed a bundle of papers to the major and took his place on the bench by the rear door. They’ve lost one of their number already, and we know they’ve got at least one more in a bad way. There were all those bandage wrappings at the inn. Perhaps they’re thinking that their best chance is to get medical help from the Reds.’

  ‘Translate these, Boris.’ Revell handed the stained documents to their Russian radio man.

  Boris turned the pay books over in his hand. They were sticky, many of the pages were stuck together by congealing blood. ‘Are these from the crew of the helicopter?’

  ‘Crew or passengers, it’s impossible to tell.’ With a scrap of cloth Sergeant Hyde scrubbed his fingers. ‘The way that crate piled in there’s hardly anything left that’s identifiable. Took those from bodies that had been thrown clear, those still in the wreck are partially buried with it. Metal and meat, all tangled together, very messy, and smelly.’

  ‘I want to know if there’s any clue to be got from them as to why commie gunships have started bouncing their own ground troops.’ Revell waited impa- tiently as the pages were carefully peeled apart.

  By the poor light of a single low powered red bulb, Boris examined the cryptic entries that gave details of the slab faced men whose pictures were pasted inside the stiff front covers.

  ‘This one belongs to a KGB major, a political officer; this to a member of a KGB film unit, a cameraman.’ He opened the last. ‘And this was taken from a KGB medical officer. In the back there is a list of courses he has attended. The last mentions chemical and biological warfare.’

  Taking the papers, Hyde fanned them like a hand of cards. ‘That’s a pretty high powered outfit, not the sort you’d expect to find stooging about in a chopper at night, over the quietest part of the Zone, using the rest of the Red Army for ground attack practice.’

  ‘Don’t make no sense to me neither.’ Ripper was taking a chance. Playing on his wound he’d managed to avoid being allocated any work, so far. By butting in he risked that, but he hadn’t spoken for ten minutes, and couldn’t resist the temptation. ‘Hell, if the KGB are figuring on barging in on someone else’s show, all they had to do was land and tell the poor shits to bugger off. They always get their own way, don’t they, so why toast the creeps.’

  ‘Perhaps they could not be sure of getting their own way, and that was their method of ensuring they did.’ It was the first time Boris had seen super napalm in use. What made it even more terrible than in the instance he had witnessed, it had been used by Russians on Russians. ‘Often there is intense rivalry between the KGB and other specialist units, like Military Intelligence, the GRU. Always they are at each other’s throats. Fights are common in the bars and brothels when they meet.’

  ‘There’s a heck of a difference between a rough house over a whore, and dumping liquid hell on a whole parcel of your own people.’

  Boris dismissed Ripper’s objection. ‘Not to men of their type, dedicated communists. The headquarters of both the KGB and GRU are in Moscow. As much as they must strive to succeed themselves, they must work to see that others don’t. If the prize is big enough, of sufficient importance then they will not hesitate to do what you have seen tonight.’

  In the absence of any more plausible theory Revell had to accept that. ‘Okay, if that’s how it is then maybe it’s a break for us. If they’re scrapping among themselves it could mean their effort is going to be halved.’

  ‘If they’re both searching for the civvies,’ a thought struck Ripper, ‘could mean their effort is gonna be doubled instead ...’ He had to duck, shielding his arm as an assortment of equipment was hurled at him.

  ‘I tell you, you got to stop.’

  Webb wrenched the wheel over and the power steering sent the Range Rover in a tight tire-scrubbing turn off the road.

  ‘What for?’

  Jabbing his foot hard on the brake pedal he brought the vehicle skidding to a gravel-scattering halt beside a picturesque log cabin. Several more were spaced out among the trees, linked by a network of rambling paths to a large two story building of similar construction that formed the centre of the holiday complex.

  Sherry didn’t answer, throwing open the door, gulping air and then walking unsteadily to sit on the steps leading to a raised veranda that ran the length of the front of the cabin. ‘Jesus, I ain’t ever been travel sick before. Oh god, I think I’m going to throw up.’

  ‘I’ll join you.’ Gross tumbled and lurched from the back of the Rover to spew noisily beside it, coughing and spitting loudly when he’d finished. ‘Must be all the fucking bubbles that do it for me. How those bloody chinless wonders can swill that champagne muck all night and day I’ll never know.’

  Retching was all that Sherry could achieve, even with that revolting display only yards from her. Unable to prevent them she gave a series of loud belches that the back of her hand only partially smothered, but afterward her stomach felt more settled.

  ‘Better?’ Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Gross plonked down beside her. ‘I knew a fat tart once who did that, not with her mouth though.’ He tried to put his arm around Sherry, but she shrugged him off and got up. Rising unsteadily, Gross joined her in leaning on the balcony rail. ‘And I don’t mean her mouth either.’ From a distended pocket he tugged a bottle, and after a wrestle to extract the cork, took a long pull at it. ‘When we had it off, always in the good old missionary position, I had this trick of almost withdrawing at the end of each thrust. By the time the old juices were ready to flow I’d have her pumped full of air. Soon as I’d finished and climbed off she’d shove her hands down hard on her gut and out it’d all come again.’ Not deterred by the first rebuff, he tried again to put his arm over her shoulders.

  ‘You touch me again and I’ll stomp your balls off.’ ‘Say that again. I like it when you talk dirty. At home I’ve got a video of that scene where the black tries to bugger you in that shop doorway, and you tell him what he can do with his tool. That’s a favourite of mine.’ Offering the bottle, Gross had it pushed back at him.

  ‘Get lost.’

  Impatient at the delay, Webb left the driving seat and brought the woman a drink of water. He carefully peeled the lid from the Tupperware beaker before handing it to her. ‘We are wasting time. Are you ready to go again yet?’

  ‘Oh what’s up, Webby.’ Pouring a drop of wine on the withered stump of a begonia in a window box, Gross peered closely at it, squinting to see it in the dark, as if expecting an elixir quality in the Mosel to immediately restore it to full bloom. ‘Did that little bit of excitement up ahead earlier get you just a teensy bit frightened? Don’t you like bonfires?’

  ‘All I want is to make it safely to our destination. I am worried about Edwards’ condition. We need him alive to retain the maximum credibility of our mission. Our message will be devalued if his name is not on it also.’

  ‘Bollocks.’ Holding the bottle high, Gross jiggled it and then put it to his ear to try to determine how much remained of its contents. ‘The old windbag was devalued years ago, when all his arse-holing chums at university were exposed in the British Sunday press. From what I read it’d seem that when those cap and gowned queers weren’t trying to spawn another commie cell they were frantically trying to spawn each other. Between planting agents with bogus degrees in the British civil service and buggering the piles out of their students I wonder they ever had time to give lectures.’

  ‘Well we still cannot stay here, it might not be healthy.’

  ‘That at least makes more sense than the crap you came out with before.’ With all the force he could muster, Gross
threw the empty bottle through & small window in the chalet door. ‘Come on Kane, stop bloody heaving. Your tits wobble every time you do it and I’m going to spunk in my pants if you don’t stop.’

  Wheezing snores came from the back of the Range Rover. Webb listened before starting the engine.

  ‘Does he sound congested to you? There are some marks on his face, do you think he might have swallowed some?’

  ‘If he has then it won’t matter how soon we get help for the daft old sod, he’s had it.’ Gross sought among the bottles on the floor for a full one. ‘Back in the seventies I did a stint on an industrial injuries tribunal, dealt with a few cases of accidents in chemical plants. Get any of that muck inside you and it rots your insides, especially if it goes into your lungs. Infection sets in and you drown in your own pus.’

  Everything else Sherry Kane had been able to cope with, Gross being violently ill, his filthy stories; but the picture that last information conjured was too much, and she barely got her head out of the window in time.

  The notes Webb had made before starting out told him to expect sunrise at a few minutes after seven. It was nearer nine o’clock before they became aware of a perceptible lightening of the sky ahead, and that was muted by the suspended dust through which the orb of the sun only faintly showed.

  For Sherry it would have been better if it had waited a further hour before shedding its weak light on the ravaged land. They drove into a small town that only needed a wave of a wand to restore it to bustling life again.

  Whatever had struck the inhabitants had struck very fast, without hint of warning. There was nothing to suggest that any warning had been broadcast, any precautions taken or panic started.

  A bus and a few trucks partially obstructed the main street. Some had coasted to a gentle stop, but several had been in collisions, with each other, with shop fronts, with trees. The Range Rover had frequently to be driven onto the pavement to negotiate the enforced slalom course. In every cab they passed they saw the same sight.

  Draped over steering wheels, sprawled across passenger seats were the vehicles’ drivers. Most were miraculously preserved inside their glass and steel mausoleums, others, where windows were down, were decomposed to varying repulsive degrees.

  And there was worse. No vegetation had grown to hide what lay in the streets and playgrounds. The yards of the schools were thick with the skeletal remains of children, rows of larger bones and skulls outside a bakery marked where a food queue had succumbed. Still strapped in a pushchair, mummified and eyeless, the tiny frame of a baby.

  ‘I don’t want to see any more. Tell me when it’s gone.’ Putting her face in her hands Sherry could try to pretend that the town of the dead did not exist, but she knew it was there still, she could hear bones crunching under the wheels, could feel the bumping as they rode over skulls that collapsed under the vehicle’s weight.

  Only slowly did it register that a hand had come over the seat back, on over her shoulder and after a consoling pat in pretence of administering comfort was trying to find a way inside her shirt.

  For a while she made no move to stop its groping progress as it rubbed and pinched and squeezed the contours of her chest, then still in the same trance-like state of shock she reached for it, lifted it gently to her lips, and sank her teeth into it.

  Gross’s screamed obscenity drowned the loud hiss of escaping air as a razor- sharp shard of hip bone pierced a tire.

  FROM MI6 THROUGH CIA LONDON.

  FOR DISTRIBUTION TO ALL SECTIONS:

  STATE DEPARTMENT, PENTAGON. TOP COPY FOR PRESIDENT.

  ROZENKOV. YURI NIKOLAI. COLONEL. KGB.

  JOINED COMMUNIST YOUTH MOVEMENT 1939.

  PARTY MEMBER 1942.

  VOLUNTEERED FOR ARMY SPRING 1943.

  SELECTED FOR NKVD AFTER COMPLETION OF BASIC TRAINING AT CAMP 1094. PROMOTED TO JUNIOR SERGEANT IN JANUARY 1945. MEMBER OF THE RAIDING PARTY SENT INTO BERLIN TO SECURE THE FILES AT GESTAPO HQ BEFORE THEY COULD BE DESTROYED.

  DECORATED TWICE FOR VALOR.

  AFTER THE WAR WORKED ON THE EIGHT FLOOR OF KGB HEADQUARTERS AT 2, DZHERZHINSKIY SQUARE, IN THE OFFICE DEALING WITH THE TRANSLATION AND EVALUATION OF CAPTURED DOCUMENTS.

  PROMOTED TO SERGEANT 1952 ON JOINING 3RD. BATTALION, FIRST DZHERZHINSKIY MOTORIZED DIVISION, RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GUARDING OF GOV- ERNMENT BUILDINGS IN MOSCOW. WAS ON LEAVE WHEN THE ATTEMPTED COUP BY BERIA FAILED IN 1953.

  SURVIVED THE PURGES OF THE UNIT.

  1956/7 WAS ATTACHED TO THE RUSSIAN LIAISON STAFF WITH THE EAST GERMAN INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORATE (HVA) WITH THE RANK OF SERGEANT-MAJOR. ASSISTED WITH THE RUNNING OF AN INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE NETWORK IN WEST GERMANY, USING EX-NAZI’S COOPERATING UNDER THREAT OF EXPOSURE. SPRING 1958 WENT TO OFFICER TRAINING ACADEMY AT KLEV AND FROM THERE TO THE KGB ‘FINISHING SCHOOL’ (CORRECT DESIGNATION UNKNOWN) AT GAGZINKA.

  POSTED TO THE ADMINISTRATION SECTION OF THE STAFF OF THE POLITICAL DIRECTORATE WITH THE RANK OF LIEUTENANT IN SEPTEMBER 1961.

  1968 APPEARED IN CUBA WITH THE RANK OF CAPTAIN, AND WORKING UNDER AMBASSADOR ALEKSANDRE ALEKSEYEVICH SOLDATOV MASTERMINDED THE PURGE OF THE CUBAN SECRET POLICE OF ELEMENTS NOT SLAVISHLY LOYAL TO THE MOSCOW LINE.

  APPOINTED SECOND IN COMMAND OF THE INTERROGATION TRAINING WING OF THE KGB SCHOOL IN ‘69.

  ATTENDED STAFF COURSE AT LENINGRAD DURING 72/73.

  PROMOTED MAJOR IN 1974 AND GIVEN COMMAND OF A KGB SPETSNAZNACHENIYA (SPECIAL DESIGNATION) UNIT WITH UNDEFINED DUTIES, BELIEVED TO BE AN EXECUTION, ASSASSINATION AND ‘DIRTY JOBS’ SQUAD OF PICKED OFFICERS AND NCOS.

  IT IS REPORTED THAT UNDER HIS GUIDANCE THE TECHNIQUE OF ASSASSINATION BY STAGED MOTOR ACCIDENTS WAS PERFECTED. AMONG VICTIMS OF THE METHOD HE DEVISED ARE THOUGHT TO BE THE DISSENT IRINA KAPLUN, EDITOR OF AN UNDERGROUND NEWSPAPER IN ESTONIA AND THE EXILE ANDREI AMALRICK, A SOVIET HISTORIAN, IN SPAIN. ROZENKOV WOULD HAVE BEEN CONSULTED WHEN THE SAME METHOD WAS USED TO ELIMINATE PYOTR MASHEROV, COMMUNIST PARTY CHIEF OF BYELORUSSIA AND A POLITBURO CANDIDATE MEMBER, WHEN HE WAS SUSPECTED OF PLANNING A GRAB FOR POWER IN THE EARLY EIGHTIES.

  APART FROM A BRIEF APPEARANCE IN EARLY ‘82 WHEN HE WAS IDENTIFIED AS ONE OF THE COLONELS FOLLOWING THE COFFIN OF KREMLIN IDEOLOGIST MIKHAIL SUSLOV, HE FELL FROM SIGHT, REAPPEARING IN NOVEMBER 1982 AS GOVERNOR OF THE LUBYANKA PRISON AND INTERROGATION CENTRE. HE HAS HELD THE POSITION, WITH ONE ABSENCE TO ATTEND A FURTHER STAFF COURSE UNTIL HIS RECENT APPOINTMENT AS HEAD OF DEPARTMENT OF THE FIRST CHIEF DIRECTORATE OF THE KGB.

  IT IS BELIEVED THAT HE IS NOT YET CONFIRMED IN THE POST, USUALLY HELD BY A GENERAL, AND AT PRESENT RETAINS THE RANK OF COLONEL. FULL EVALUATION FOLLOWS. SUMMARY.

  ROZENKOV IS AN EXPERIENCED CAREER KGB OFFICER OF PROVEN ABILITY. IT CAN BE EXPECTED THAT UNDER HIS COMMAND THE DEPARTMENT WILL BE HIGHLY ACTIVE.

  THIRTEEN

  Static hissed from the radio. Rozenkov had not bothered to switch it off. He’d heard the pilot’s shouts of alarm and then terror as the helicopters had collided, and then the terrified howling of their crews as they’d plunged to the ground.

  A moment before he’d received the codeword signalling a successful strike, but it wasn’t the loss of the gunships and their crews that had taken the edge from his satisfaction with the destruction of the GRU roadblock. Soon after had come word that the civilians had altered course and were now heading directly toward another Military Intelligence patrol.

  With hindsight Rozenkov could wish he’d put more KGB units into the field, but there was nothing he could do about that now. He would have to accept that he was suddenly reduced to one piece, and that from here on it would be necessary for him to play with every shred of his skill and cunning.

  Major Morkov burst into the room. His face was flushed and sweat stood out on his forehead as he thumped his fist down hard on the desk. ‘The order came from you. It could only have come from you.’

  ‘Calm yourself, Comrade Major.’ Rosenkov pretended ignorance. ‘If you will tell me what you think I have ordered to be done, I shall tell you whether you are correct or not. It is
not possible for me to admit to, or deny any accusation the details of which I am not aware.’

  From a drawer he took a miniature Japanese tape recorder and switched in on. ‘Proceed, feel free to repeat what you have just said, in the same tone if you wish.’ Folding his hands over his stomach and swivelling gently back and forth in his chair, he waited.

  Morkov hesitated. As a matter of course he knew that all conversation in the room would be taped, but the ostentatious use of the personal recorder warned him to be especially on his guard. Word had come from General Mischenko himself that the protest was to be made in the strongest possible manner, with a show of indignation and anger, and in doing that he knew he could count on his chiefs protection, but this was Rozenkov’s home ground, and already he was laying traps.

  Not eager to be the one to spring them and learn and suffer the consequences, Morkov decided to cover himself, make sure that he stayed well within the limits of the extent of that protection. In a deadpan monotone he delivered the gist of the complaint with no more feeling than he would have employed in asking the way to the lavatory.

  ‘I report that field company one-four-nine of Military Intelligence Command, on temporary attachment to Tenth Guards Army, southern sector, Zone, has suffered heavy casualties while operating in conjunction with and under the direction of Department A of the KGB.’

  ‘That is most interesting, Major. Can you tell me, precisely what are the casualty figures?’

  ‘Preliminary reports are vague, but it would appear ... that the unit has ceased to exist, Comrade Colonel.’

  ‘Then it would seem that the casualties are very heavy indeed. I presume in that case that there are no eye witnesses to the attack.’ Getting no response, Rozenkov drove relentlessly on. ‘Would the unit be one of those you have indicated on my map?’ Still there was nothing from the liaison officer. ‘Ah, then their loss will not affect the outcome, the successful outcome, of this KGB operation.’