Soul of the Assassin - [First Team 04]

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Soul of the Assassin - [First Team 04] Page 7

by Larry Bond


  The President had therefore decided to force the issue—he would offer aid to Iran and a full normalization of relations if they dropped the project. If they didn’t, he would destroy the infrastructure that supported it.

  Estimates by the CIA indicated that the program was still vulnerable to coordinated air strikes but would only remain so for a few more months; the President had set an internal deadline for an agreement at the end of the month, a week away. He’d asked Corrine to draw up a legal argument supporting a first strike. “Something a little more thoughtful than might makes right,” he’d said. McCarthy greatly preferred a peaceful settlement, since an attack would bring very serious and not necessarily predictable repercussions; nonetheless, a nuclear arms race in the Middle East was an even worse choice.

  “I can have the draft on your desk in an hour,” Corrine said.

  “No, no. I only want to make sure it’s ready.” Ever the poker player, McCarthy was thinking about using the finding as a way of forcing the Iranians to ante up—if they balked at Steele’s proposal, he’d have the finding leaked to convince them he meant business.

  And if that didn’t work, then he’d have no alternative but to go ahead with the attack.

  “Have you been following the situation in Iran?” McCarthy asked.

  “Not as closely as I should,” said Corrine. It was a defensive answer; she had actually been reading every report and briefing available.

  “There continues to be resistance to the agreement, especially among the Revolutionary Guard. Talk of a coup.”

  “No one seems to think that’s serious.”

  “Difficult to assess,” said McCarthy.

  He wasn’t sure himself how seriously to take the rumors. Iran and its myriad political players remained largely an enigma.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, Miss Alston,” he said, glancing at his watch. “It appears I am running late for my next appointment.”

  Already out of her chair, Corrine followed him to the door. The President reached for the handle, then paused.

  “Your father was asking about you the other day, Corrine. He wanted to make sure you were getting your proper allotment of sleep. I told him you were, but I do not think he believed me.”

  “I’m getting plenty of sleep, Tom. He’s just—you know Dad.”

  “Longer than you.” McCarthy winked. “But perhaps we would do a better job of convincing him if the e-mails you sent to him did not bear time stamps indicating they were sent at three a.m. It weakens our case considerably, Counselor.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. President. I’ll try to remember.”

  ~ * ~

  2

  BOLOGNA, ITALY

  Ferguson took a walk alone around the block after the conference call ended, working off some steam. The gas theory was a crock. Worse, they’d drifted into decision-by-committee territory; he wasn’t supposed to do anything now until he heard from Corrine Alston.

  Undoubtedly, she’d convince the President to notify the Italians, who would probably go apeshit and shut the whole town down. There’d be some cockeyed arrangement with the First Team acting as “consultants” or some such crap. T Rex would be smirking somewhere in the shadows.

  Not only would he be tipped off here, but he’d realize that his operation had been compromised. If he was smart—and his track record suggested he was a genius—he’d tear it down and start from scratch. Arna Kerr would be out of work, and they’d spend years trying to find another lead.

  Ferguson stopped into a café, and after a quick shot of espresso— for some reason the caffeine calmed him down—got back to work. The first thing to do was check out the university buildings Arna Kerr had gone to. They’d already planted video bugs in the foyers; he was interested in something else, something less obvious. He hoped he’d realize what it was when he saw it.

  The art building was a large onetime mansion about a block off the Via Rizzoli. The place was being used as a temporary university building, but the choice was hardly haphazard. Though from the outside the building’s dull brown blocks and gray cornices were overshadowed by the bright bricks of its neighbors, inside the place was as ornate as any palace. The walls of the entrance hallway were covered with marble; baroque-era statues flanked the thick red carpet that brought students and visitors inside. A large double stairway made of marble sat at the far end; its bronze banister was inlaid with gold. On the ceiling above, a bright faux sky featured cherubim amid its puffy clouds.

  A security guard looked at Ferguson cross-eyed from a nearby archway as the op scouted around. Ferguson saw him and ambled over in his direction to ask, in English, if the man knew where Professore Pirello’s classes were to be found. The guard told Ferguson in Italian that he was a security guard and not a member of the staff. Ferguson pretended not to understand and repeated the question. When he got roughly the same answer he thanked the guard profusely before walking past him into the main hallway.

  Even in the corridor, the building’s proportions gave it a regal feel. The walls had been recently restored and painted, their blue and gold pattern so vivid that it seemed to glow. The hall opened into another wide reception area, this one just as ornate as the one near the front entrance. A set of arched doorways led to a room decorated with late-Renaissance frescoes that ran all the way to the ceiling three stories above. Rather than a faux sky, the ceiling was covered in panels of what looked like gold leaf. It was actually a relatively new coat of paint, carefully applied within the lines of the original paper-thin panels; the genuine gold had been replaced sometime during the nineteenth century, when the owners had fallen on hard times.

  Large carts of chairs were being wheeled into the room, and a crew was setting up a stage to the right. Ferguson wandered over and asked two of the workers what they were setting up for.

  “They never tell us,” said one of the men.

  “Oh, I know what it’s for,” said another. “The genetics conference. Frankenstein will be here.”

  The man, an art student in his early twenties who moonlighted as a roustabout to support himself, began a diatribe about genetic mutation and man’s inevitable decline. A large number of scientists from across the world were gathering to talk about using bacteria for man’s good, said the student. It was clearly a disaster in the making.

  “I thought this was an art school,” said Ferguson.

  The young man, himself an art student, sensed an ally, and gave Ferg a long diatribe in response, claiming that the school and the country were not serious about supporting its artists. His coworker rolled his eyes and went back to work.

  “And the conference starts tonight?” asked Ferguson.

  “There’s a brochure on the bulletin board in the second-floor lounge,” said the student. He saw his supervisor coming and decided to get back to work. “Read it, brother,” he said, walking away. “You’ll be surprised what they’re up to. Frankenstein in a test tube.”

  ~ * ~

  3

  CIA BUILDING 24-442

  When Jack Corrigan had first been offered the position with Special Demands, he’d seen it as a shortcut in his overall plan to advance to the upper levels of the intelligence establishment, where he hoped to become the boss of either the Defense Information Agency—his preference—or the CIA itself. He still thought Special Demands was a wise career move, but now realized it was not without its thorns.

  Bob Ferguson being the main one.

  “Ferguson can’t accept anything I tell him,” Corrigan complained when Lauren DiCapri briefed him when he returned to work. “Why would T Rex be going after a scientist?”

  “Ferg didn’t say he thought that was the target,” said Lauren. “He just said this conference might be significant and we should get the list.”

  “And who’s going to be paying T Rex? Greenpeace?” Corrigan scanned the information on the conference. The topic was bacteria in the food chain and how they could be bred to combat spoilage.

  “No fricking way anyone he
re is going to be important enough to spend a million bucks on bumping off,” Corrigan told Lauren, sliding the folder Lauren had given him back across the desk top. “I’m with Ciello. It’s some sort of gas attack. Tell Ferguson this is a dead end.”

  “Ciello went ahead and did some background on the people attending the conference,” said Lauren, pushing the papers back. “There’s one person that’s interesting. Check the last page.”

  Frowning, Corrigan leafed through the documents. The final page contained a single paragraph on a man named Artur Rostislawitch. Until three years before, he had been a top scientist with the Russian Federal Research Administration, on loan to a quasi-private laboratory outside of Moscow known to be used by the government for research into germ warfare. There had been some sort of internal shake-up; supposedly Rostislawitch no longer conducted primary research.

  “All right, so big deal,” said Corrigan, handing the briefing paper back. “He’s not working with them anymore. This says he’s teaching.”

  “Ferg thinks that may be a cover,” said Lauren. “He wants more information on him.”

  “You discussed this with Ferguson already?”

  “Of course.”

  “What do you mean, ‘of course’? You should have waited until I came in.”

  Lauren clamped her teeth together. Corrigan was efficient and generally reasonable, but he had a very strict interpretation of the chain of command. He was the lead desk officer; she was relief—which to him meant he was the boss, she was whale shit.

  “Really, Lauren, you should have told me.”

  “The conference starts with a reception in two hours. I didn’t know when you were getting in,” she told him.

  “You could have called me at home.”

  “Right,” said Lauren. She took the briefing paper. “I have to get back to the desk.”

  ~ * ~

  4

  BOLOGNA, ITALY

  Artur Rostislawitch frowned at himself in the mirror, turning his chin slowly as he inspected the whiskers he’d just shaven. Even as a young man, he’d never had a particularly smooth face, but the worries of the past few years had dug deep lines around his chin, and pulled out his cheeks so that he looked like an emaciated walrus. That made it difficult to shave closely, and there were still a few lines of hair caught in the furrows. He turned on the water and refilled the basin, deciding to try again. He wanted to look good tonight, even though he wasn’t meeting the Iranian until tomorrow.

  What if someone believed the story the Iranian had told him to tell, and really did offer him a job—a real job doing research?

  He fantasized about it, thinking he might actually be offered a job. He saw himself leaving the city and immediately setting up somewhere—Switzerland, maybe, or even Taiwan, slightly away from the mainstream but still in a legitimate position. It could still happen, he told himself as he lathered on the foam; a scientist with his knowledge was a valuable commodity.

  But Rostislawitch knew the truth. He was fifty, and Russian, and even the people who didn’t know the specifics of his past weren’t likely to take a chance on a scientist whose resume was nebulous—let alone knowingly hire a scientist who’d worked with weaponized bacteria. The public hysteria about genetic engineering would make him a positive liability to any big company that hired him, even as a janitor: he’d be proof positive that they were out to poison the food chain.

  The world was an ironic place—very Russian, Rostislawitch thought. One’s past channeled him into a difficult future.

  Twenty-five years ago, Artur Rostislawitch had been the equivalent of a superstar in his field, a young prodigy who had found a way to easily induce mutations in a select group of bacteria. His work for the Defense Ministry had earned him not just an apartment in Moscow and a dacha on the Black Sea but his own research lab about fifty miles outside of the capital. Two years later, his work had progressed to the point where a special bunker had been built to contain it; completely underground, the facility had elaborate protocols and security equipment not so much to keep people out but the bacteria being developed there in. The only unfortunate thing about the facility was its location in northeastern Chechnya, a vile place in Rostislawitch’s opinion, though the lack of any real possibility of culture or entertainment did help focus him on his work.

  He’d celebrated his thirtieth birthday alone, toasting himself in his lab room with a large cake and a bottle of vodka. He’d felt a bit sorry for himself. His wife was at the dacha, but a pending visit by Gorbachev to the lab meant Rostislawitch couldn’t get away long enough to visit her. He’d gotten pretty drunk that night—so drunk in fact that he had spent the next day in bed, trying to overcome his hangover.

  Little did he know that that would be the highlight of his career.

  The discoveries that had come so easily in his twenties had already started to thin out. The strands of bacteria that he had produced— members of the same family as those that cause botulism—proved insufficiently hardy; slight variations in temperature killed them, making them unsuitable for use in weapons. And since his work was designed to produce bacteria that could be used as weapons in a war against the U.S., this was a major problem.

  Still, he persevered. He found a family of bacteria that seemed promising—B589-A. It was uncharacteristically difficult to replicate, unfortunately, because of a quirk in its genetic structure. That took even longer to solve.

  In the meantime, the Soviet Union ceased being the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was replaced by Yeltsin—a boob who had Rostislawitch’s dacha and apartment taken away. Biological weapons, never as glamorous as nuclear bombs or energy rays, fell further out of favor.

  The war in Chechnya was an utter disaster; at the end, Rostislawitch and his staff fled barely twelve hours ahead of a rebel assault. As a safety precaution, he had ordered that the bunker be blown up, along with all the stores of B589-A. Tears came to his eyes as the ground reverberated with the first explosion; he watched as the earth rolled with the shock waves, dust rising like steam as the plastique did its work sixty feet below. By the time he boarded the canvas-topped UAZ jeep the military had sent to evacuate him, Rostislawitch was bawling like a baby.

  For eight months, he did absolutely nothing. He and his wife had moved to St. Petersburg and lived with his brother and his family. Ironically, he looked on that period as now one of the happiest of his life. He and his wife had renewed not so much their marriage but their friendship; Olga went everywhere with him, to all of the ministries as he applied for funds to resume his research. She remained faithful and encouraging, supportive in a way that she’d had little chance to show in his years of success.

  An image of her came to him now—Olga with his two nephews, minding them while his brother and sister-in-law went out to the store. The boys were three and four, a handful but in a good way. They called Rostislawitch “Uncle Baboon” because he could pretend to be one so well. Olga would hide her grin as they begged him to play.

  It was only after Yeltsin died that Rostislawitch had found his way back to the research. The lab was a poor one, outside Saratov. The security was a joke, and the equipment was worse. He was lucky, however, to have two decent assistants, and slowly began re-creating his original research.

  And then, five years ago, after a long, long struggle, they had made a breakthrough with B589-A, creating a mutation that allowed the bacteria to breed five times as fast as other members of the family. This made it virtually impossible to stop. Anyone infected would begin to die within twelve hours; by the time the symptoms were seen, it would be far too late to treat.

  Several problems remained to be solved before the bacteria could be actually used as a weapon, but they were mechanical things, in Rostislawitch’s opinion. He stood on the brink of a great success, one that would revolutionize warfare.

  And then the roof caved in.

  One afternoon, Rostislawitch was summoned to Moscow without explanation. He was driven to the Kremlin, and surprised—stunned
, really—to be brought into the presence of the Premier, Mikal Fradkov, the second most important man in the Russian government after the President. Rostislawitch felt flattered, and stood trembling. When Fradkov began to speak, Rostislawitch was so nervous that he didn’t comprehend the Premier’s few sentences.

  Suddenly Rostislawitch realized that Fradkov was very angry.

  “What kind of man are you?” Fradkov demanded.

  Rostislawitch looked at him in amazement. “Just a Russian.”

  “A Russian who wishes to doom mankind.”

  Rostislawitch had long considered the consequences of his work; he knew very well that his creation was designed to kill indiscriminately and in great numbers. But he considered it nothing more than what a nuclear bomb would do. The Americans, he was sure, were working along much the same lines. Russia needed its own weapon as a defense.

 

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