The common touch was leavened by his family’s belief that Russia needed a new tsar, and Andrei had more than a bit of imperial arrogance. He intended to not only make a name for himself, but to make history.
Once through the old crimson walls, Ivanov braked to stop against a curb where two people were waiting; his chief of staff, wearing a neat dark suit, and an efficient-looking, beautiful woman in a conservative dress, who was his personal secretary. He switched off the ignition and got out, taking off the black Prada sunglasses that shielded his startlingly light green eyes and flashing the blazing smile that was so familiar to television viewers.
He trotted up the broad granite stairs that had been laid down hundreds of years ago by craftsmen working for Peter the Great. The aides followed. In contrast to their careful choice of wardrobe, Alexei wore a parka of soft black leather, a dark blue turtleneck sweater, black trousers and hiking boots.
“Is the old gentleman in today?” He would have been surprised if Putin had shown up, but it was best never to underestimate the old KGB chief.
“No, sir. Not today,” replied Veronika Petrova. His secretary, known as Niki, had once been a professional fashion model and was frequently Andrei’s escort to evening functions. With both the personal and professional links, she also had become one of his few confidants.
“Well, Niki, please send him my warmest regards and ask if we can have lunch or dinner together soon.” He winked at her. I want to know if the old fart is dying yet.
“Yes, Mr. President.” She made a note on her pad.
All three went through a broad door into his office, Andrei threw his parka onto a sofa and settled into the soft chair behind the big desk. His assistant, Sergei Petrov, placed a leather folder before him. “The initial operation in Scotland was a success, as you know, sir. Now the unrest is taking shape within Saudi Arabia. This information before you is fresh as of thirty minutes ago.”
“How did Prince Abdullah survive? I don’t understand how he got away unscathed.”
“Luck. He actually was well protected in a bathroom when the attack hit. The prince has been taken to a private clinic, and the SVR already has a follow-up strike underway. We’ll get him.” The SVR, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, had succeeded the old KGB and was firmly in Ivanov’s pocket.
Ivanov flipped through the pages. “Good, then. It’s a good start. Now get Dieter Nesch on a secure call for me. I want his personal read on how things are going.”
“Very good. Would you like some lunch?”
“Not yet. Any important appointments this afternoon?”
“Nothing immediate, sir. I thought it best that you have today free. Another SVR briefing is scheduled in two hours.”
Niki and Petrov left Andrei Vasiliyvich Ivanov alone in his big office, with a news channel chattering away on a TV set. Andrei poured a tumbler of vodka from the carafe on his desk, took a deep drink, and settled back to watch the news. He smiled and put his boots on the desk. By the time his plan was accomplished, Andrei would have brought Saudi Arabia to heel in a masterful coup accomplished without the use of a single Russian airplane, soldier, or tank. Once that was done, Ivanov could proceed to toppling some other Middle East regimes with the ultimate goal of wringing the oil out of those places-every last drop-and bringing the riches home to Mother Russia.
10
T HE PLANE SMOOTHED IN for a faultless landing at a private air terminal in northern England and Kyle and Sybelle had no trouble spotting their next ride. A young man dressed just like them, in a white polo shirt and tan slacks, met them at planeside and reluctantly handed Kyle a set of keys. “Ms. Tabrizi insisted on sending her personal car for your use.”
Sybelle snatched the key ring. “I’m driving. You’re too tired.”
“No way. She sent the car for me. You’re just a passenger.” He reached for the keys.
She playfully dangled them just out of his reach. “Stop whining, gunnery sergeant. You don’t even know how to drive on the wrong side of the road.”
The young man did not know these two people, but couldn’t blame them for arguing over who was going to drive the lynx yellow Saab 9-3 Bio-Power convertible, a car that looked as if it were grinning. “Ms. Tabrizi has nice taste in motorcars,” he said. “This has a top speed over 150 miles per hour. I just wish I had been able to try it over on an autobahn with no speed limit. Instead, my instructions were to deliver it to you, then go home.”
“Jeff must be paying her pretty good. What was the price tag on this thing?” Kyle asked.
“This one, with all of the extras, goes for about £40,000.”
“Awright, girlfriend!” Sybelle laughed. “That’s about $80,000 in real money.” She was already in the comfortable leather driver’s compartment. The five-speed stick shift on her left console would control the 2.8V6 engine. She arched an eyebrow at the young man. “Now, if we only knew where we were going.”
He pointed to the compact flat display screen in the dashboard. “I’ve programmed the voice control navigation system. A map will show on the touch-screen monitor when the ignition comes on, and Linda will guide you from here to there, every turn of the way as soon as you clear the airport. It will take a little more than an hour if you do the speed limit.”
“Linda?”
“That’s what Ms. Tabrizi calls the female voice imbedded in the avionics of the car. Linda gets quite peeved if you do not mind her.”
Sybelle turned the key and the big engine thrummed. “So do I,” she said. She had no intention of doing the speed limit, no matter how peeved the Linda machine might get.
Kyle adjusted the passenger seat and belted in, and the young man handed him a plain cardboard box. “I am also to give you this, and here’s my business card in case you need anything else,” he said, stepping away.
In five minutes, they were out of the airport and the soft, polite voice of Linda instructed Sybelle to turn left. A colorful map on the screen pinpointed their exact position. Kyle opened the box and found a pair of black leather identification holders with Federal Bureau of Investigation shields and identity cards and a Glock 17 for Sybelle. He took the heavy Colt.45 semiautomatic for himself. After checking out the weapons, he returned them to the box and wedged it between his feet.
“Please, do not exceed the speed limit,” Linda reminded in a pleasant tone. The top was down, the day was pleasant, and the wind whipped over their heads. Sybelle adjusted her dark glasses and punched the accelerator.
K YLE SOON TIRED OF watching the countryside. He would see Jeff soon, but what would he say? The man was more of a father to him than his real father, whom Kyle never knew. The fact that Jeff was badly wounded filled Swanson with worry. And what of Pat? She had seen Kyle at all of his many extremes and somehow kept bringing him back to believing that life was worth living.
Now there was Delara, she of the hot car. Kyle had led a raid on an Iranian bioweapons laboratory and saved her life, then she helped on another raid that brought down an even bigger lab. The former schoolteacher was beautiful and brave and was branded as an outlaw in her home country. She never wanted to return to the nation that had slaughtered her family and where she and all women were second-class citizens. He figured that this fast yellow sports car was most likely a gift from Jeff, an in-your-face insult to the religious zealots who controlled Iran.
Kyle knew he was falling in love with Delara, but would not admit it. He could hardly wait to hold her again, and knew she felt the same. The idea that the three people he cared for the most having been in jeopardy filled him with a seething rage. Sir Jeff had tried to bring some old enemies together to see if a new peace could be forged, and had been repaid with disaster.
Loud rock music brought him out of his reverie. “I’m trying to drown out Linda’s constant bitching,” Sybelle explained. “Make yourself useful and see what else is on that CD player.”
He worked the buttons on the console, the map replaced by the names of available albums of mus
ic. When he leaned forward to hunt for the CD controls, he heard a sudden sharp curse by Sybelle and was thrown violently against the seatbelt straps. He looked up and saw the checkerboard dark and light green side of a boxy East of England ambulance flash across his spinning vision. It had pulled onto the road right in front of them, and Sybelle was doing about 90 miles per hour. She hit the brakes and swerved sharply to the right, cutting the front tires back into a controlled skid. Sliding rubber screamed against the road.
Kyle grabbed the dash for support as the belt held him tight against the centrifugal force that threatened to fling him from the open car.
Sybelle worked the gears, accelerator, and the emergency brake, pulling the Saab through a complete 360-degree turn before it steadied and stalled out. “Motherfucker!” she said, exhaling hard and her hands gripping the wheel so tightly that the knuckles were white. “He damned near T-boned us. Missed us by inches.” She got the Saab running again and spun the steering wheel. “I’m going to catch that fucker and kick his ass!”
“Wait!” Kyle said, reaching a hand to the steering wheel to stop her. Something had caught his eye. “Hold on for a minute.” He switched the computer screen back to the voice navigation system. “Linda, how far are we from the hospital clinic?”
“You are now exactly ten and one-half kilometers from our destination,” said the warm voice. “Have you had an accident? I can notify the proper authorities.”
“No. We are fine. Do not do anything.”
“Please slow down,” Linda said.
“Shut up,” Sybelle responded. “What’s going on, Kyle?”
“Up there. Straight ahead about a half-mile. Check out that jumble of junk off the edge of this side road. Some metal gleaming in the sun? Let’s take a look. Something weird is going on.”
As they drove forward, Kyle saw the dark blue, square rear-end of a minivan disappearing in the distance, speeding away from them, raising a layer of dust. Why? He picked up his Colt.45 and tucked the Glock beneath Sybelle’s thigh as she coasted to a halt. Kyle stepped from the car, and Sybelle moved out to his right and a little to the rear, both of their guns ready. He stepped over a shallow roadside ditch and into the thick bushes and she followed.
The polished rails of an ambulance gurney were reflecting the flare of the sun. A dead woman, small and old, and frail, was strapped to the mobile stretcher, with an oxygen mask still on her face. Uniformed ambulance attendants lay on each side of her. All had been shot twice in their heads. Kyle and Sybelle hastily checked for vital signs. All of them were dead.
Without exchanging a word, they ran back to the Saab. Sybelle did a three-point turn on the narrow road and gunned the big engine. By the time they regained the main road, there was no sign of the green ambulance.
“Get him, Sybelle.” Ten and a half klicks to the clinic, only about six miles, and the ambulance had a good head start and was probably hauling ass. Kyle studied the console map and Linda continued to complain until he turned down the audio voice. “It’s a straight road all the way and there will be signs for the hospital. Damn, we can’t call this in because we don’t even know who to call.”
The speedometer needle climbed to one hundred miles per hour without any engine strain, then higher as the Saab flashed around a delivery truck and a few cars. Kyle turned the audio back on. “Distance to destination!”
“Three kilometers. Please slow down and drive safely!” Insistent. Strident. Kyle turned it down again.
“I see him!” Sybelle called, and Kyle picked up the tight square edges of the ambulance. The driver was unsteady behind the wheel, whereas a real ambulance driver would have been smooth at even a high rate of speed. When the vehicle slowed for the hospital turnoff, the driver for the first time turned on the flashing lights and the shrill beep-burp of the siren. By the time he was coming out of the turn, Sybelle was screaming into it, neatly flattening the skid and gaining ground. The brick clinic and its rows of shiny windows loomed on the right. “See any guards?”
“A couple of civilian cops out front, and one is waving the ambulance into that entrance to the underground parking. Get me up beside him, Sybelle!”
The yellow Saab lunged for the final distance like a big leopard and blew by the startled policeman. Kyle unbuckled the belt and took a knee in the soft seat to gain some height, gripped the edge of the convertible’s front windshield with his left hand and brought up his Colt with his right. Sybelle swerved and drew alongside the beefy green ambulance, which had to slow to get beneath the low roof of the parking garage.
They went into darkness. Swanson pointed the weapon at the head of the surprised driver, squeezed the trigger and the big pistol roared in the cavernous basement. Three bullets pulverized the driver’s head, and the ambulance swerved into the Saab, the collision ripping Kyle’s hand from its brace on the windscreen and flinging him over Sybelle, who stomped the brakes. The vehicles slid along the concrete ramp in a tangle until the ambulance rammed a concrete column and tore free.
Swanson was moving as soon as he regained his balance, levering himself up as Sybelle pushed him from behind and below, trying to free herself. He leaped from the wreckage, ran to the far side of the ambulance, jerked open the door and emptied the rest of the Colt’s clip into the dead driver, just to make sure.
Police guards were running toward them, yelling, their bright yellow-green warning vests almost glowing in the gloom.
Sybelle held up the badge. “FBI!” she called. “We’re both FBI! Americans. Kyle, drop the gun!”
Swanson tossed the empty weapon over his shoulder but scrambled into the cab and grabbed the hand of the dead driver to keep it away from a red-button pressure switch attached to a bulky vest of explosives around the waist. He fished out a knife and started hacking at wires. Sybelle yanked open the doors in the back. Cylinders of gas and boxes of TNT had been thrown about by the collision and lay scattered at cockeyed angles.
One policeman grabbed his radio from his belt, ready to transmit a message but Sybelle screamed for him to stop, that using the radio might set off the weapon. He ran back up the ramp to find a landline telephone as she climbed into the back of the ambulance and began pulling out wires and detonators.
For two full minutes, Kyle and Sybelle worked feverishly to disarm the makeshift suicide bomb. “Clear back here!” she finally called.
“Clear up here,” he replied, and backed slowly out of the cab. They stood together, taking deep breaths and looking at the Saab, which had been smashed and torn by the bigger truck.
“Delara is going to be pissed,” Kyle said.
“Linda, too,” Sybelle answered.
“Let’s get inside. This may not be over,” he said, and bent down to retrieve his pistol.
11
JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA
G ERMAN FINANCIER D IETER N ESCH hung up his telephone to end the call from Moscow, shook his head slightly, then shrugged away the call. His client, Andrei Ivanov, was checking in still again. The young man’s normally confident voice betrayed a sense of nervousness. Nesch considered it to be just a normal reaction for anyone who backed such schemes, which were very expensive to fund and risky to pursue. Nesch had seen it before, when other men with other dreams suddenly found themselves in an unsteady boat with their fates in the hands of others. The tendency to micromanage the situation was overwhelming.
His pale blue eyes moved to the calming scene beyond the window of his villa beside the Red Sea. Tall and skinny palm trees and broad manicured grounds spread toward the nearby beach, and small pleasure boats and sailing craft danced about on the water. Nesch was not nervous at all, and had counseled Ivanov to remain calm. Everything was going fine. The peace process had been utterly destroyed by the attack in Scotland, and that was only the lighting of the fuse. There was much more to come before Saudi Arabia plunged into the abyss.
Dieter Nesch was a most unlikely terrorist, and actually did not view himself that way. It was just another form of business, be
cause somebody had to specialize in handling the money in these situations. He decided to have a bite to eat, and summoned his chef to fix a small plate that would tide him over until dinner. Nesch, in his forties, was only about five foot six and was slightly overweight because of his love for good food and wine. He was always neat and always calm.
That serene ability to remain unflappable usually worked to his advantage. Novices in the game, like the Russian president, usually bordered on panic. Part of his job was to keep them calm. Trust the plan. Trust the man. Nesch had hired the best of the best to handle this coup. They had worked together on numerous occasions in Europe. For now, he must stand back and allow this mad genius to work. From where Nesch stood looking out at the Red Sea, things seemed perfect. The storm was coming soon enough.
INDONESIA
The person whom Dieter had hired to run the show wore only a blue printed batik sarong that reached from his hips to his ankles as he stood barefoot on an immaculate floor of dark teak wood. He used the remote control to surf television news channels: American, Canadian, British, French, and Arab. Things were simmering nicely.
The old castle in Scotland lay in rubble, the historic peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel scuttled, and a number of diplomats dead. The first step was complete. Without sitting, he used the remote and replaced the chattering news people with the web site of a private Swiss financial institution that served only very wealthy customers. The agreed sum of a million euros had been deposited to his private account.
He had never met his benefactor, who had argued for a quick and final strike against the Saudi ruling family, wanting to get it all done in a single day. They were fools. With Dieter Nesch acting as intermediary, he had told them that to achieve permanent changes on such a scale, they had to give up any idea of a temporary upheaval or one day of headlines.
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