by Mark Terry
“Some time ago.”
Vector was the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology. It was located outside of Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia, and was pretty much the center of the Russian military’s research into chemical and biological weapons in the same way that the U.S.’s was at Fort Detrick’s USAMRIID facility in Maryland.
“It probably hasn’t changed much.”
“Too bad. It was a nightmare—”
Derek was interrupted by the sound of a huge explosion, close enough to rattle the tables and shatter windows. Both he and Kirov jumped to their feet, rushing to the door. Not far away a cloud of smoke rose into the sky. Sirens already pierced the air.
Erica Kirov clutched his wrist. “I think it’s the U.S. Embassy!”
6
No taxis were to be found, but in Moscow that wasn’t really a problem. Kirov flagged down a passing Fiat and the driver pulled over. She spoke rapidly to him, pointing toward the pillar of smoke rising in the near distance. Derek stood next to her, antsy, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Adrenaline surged through his body and a metallic taste filled his mouth. Finally she said, “Come on,” and jumped into the back of the Fiat. Derek slid in after her. The driver peeled out as Kirov sorted ruble notes.
“He said he can’t get too close.”
“That’s fine. We’re not that far away.”
Their Russian driver, a heavy-set, bearded man with ruddy skin wearing a fur cap and a wool coat, drove like a mad man, weaving in and out of heavy traffic, fist slamming regularly on the horn, although no one seemed to pay attention. The Moscow River slid by, Red Square and the Kremlin over one shoulder. Derek only had eyes for the cloud of smoke.
As they drew closer, traffic ground to a halt. Their driver continued to bang on the horn. Erica tossed him money. She and Derek jumped out of the car, running toward the embassy. The U.S. Embassy compound was surrounded by a brick wall, the gate guarded by Marines. Nobody drove in and out without permission. In front of the security gate wreckage burned—a car bomb. Bodies lay haphazardly on the street. Police and fire vehicles were just pulling up to the building. There were shattered windows in the Embassy, but no other damage to the building.
Derek wrinkled his nose, reached out and caught Erica’s arm. “What do you smell?”
“Smoke. Come on.”
“No. Stop. What do you smell? Besides smoke? What do you smell?
Erica squinted at him, face twisted in impatience and anger. “We don’t have time for this.”
“Stop and smell,” he snapped. “Carefully.”
She did. Erica twitched. “What is that? Something like rotten fruit?”
“Or camphor.”
“What’s that mean?” But she was shouting at Derek’s back as he ran toward the nearest red and white fire truck, waving his arms and shouting. She sprinted after him.
“Do you have hazmat suits?” he shouted. “Hazmat suits?”
She caught up to him. “They don’t speak English, Derek.”
“Translate. Quickly.” The fireman was young and skeptical, wearing heavy fire gear.
She rattled off something in Russian. Derek said, “I don’t think this was a regular explosion. I think it’s a chemical weapon. Possible Soman. Because of the smell—camphor or rotten fruit. It’s a nerve gas. It will dissipate very quickly in open air, but—are you keeping up with this?”
“Yes.”
The fireman was paying close attention now.
“But it can linger on clothing for half an hour or longer. Everyone should wear hazmat suits if you have them. I can help. Do you have any spare hazmat suits?”
The Russian fireman spat back a torrent of Russian at Erica. She said, “He wants to know if you’re crazy.”
“Tell him I’m an American government expert on biological and chemical terrorism. Tell him.”
She did. The fireman still looked skeptical, but got on a radio and started talking to someone. Within seconds he waved Derek and Erica to follow him.
“He says he’s got a spare suit you can use.”
“Ask him if he has two. I need a translator.”
Erica’s already pale skin went even paler. “You are shitting me.”
“I wish. Suit up, Foreign Policy Specialist. You’re coming with me.”
The head of the Russian firefighting unit was an older man with blue eyes, a gray crew cut, and red veins visible in his large, bulbous nose. A guy, Derek thought, who liked his vodka. But as soon as Erica told him about the possible nerve gas, he became all business, peppering Derek with questions that she translated. Within minutes the Russians had set up a staging area for hazmat suits.
Derek climbed into one. Erica held the bulky suit in her hands. He said, “Get rid of the boots, strip down as much as possible. It’s going to be hot in the suit despite how cold it is out here. I need a translator.”
“I don’t think I can do this. I’m claustrophobic.”
Derek caught her by both arms and pulled her close. In a quiet voice he said, “This is the goddamn American embassy that was under attack. I need a translator and you’re it. Put on the fucking suit.”
She slapped him. Wincing, he turned back to her. “Feel better now?”
“Don’t ever talk to me like that.”
“Put on the damned suit.” Shucking his jacket, he slid off his shoes and stepped into the suit, pulling it up around his armpits. “I need your help. Hurry up.”
Erica reached out and lifted a medallion Derek wore around his neck. “St. Sebastian?”
“Patron saint of plagues.”
She touched another one. “Four-leaf clover. And these?” He wore beads.
“Ju-ju beads.”
“You’re superstitious?”
“I believe in luck, both good and bad.”
She studied him. “You look pale.”
“Just a second.” Derek took two steps away and vomited on the pavement. He closed his eyes. Sweat poured down his face, even in the bitter cold. The acid-metallic taste of adrenaline had been the first sign of an oncoming panic attack. Hello old friend, been a while.
“Hangover?” Erica asked.
“Yeah, hangover. From a couple dozen firsthand experiences with scenes of mass murder and WMD. I really should have gone to school to be an accountant.”
Once the suit was on, she helped him check the seals and turned on the oxygen
tank. Then, teeth clenched, eyes tight, Erica climbed into her suit. Derek checked her seals, waved to the fire captain, and strode toward the burning car. Two Russian firefighters in hazmat suits went with them.
The first body Derek came to lay crumpled on the sidewalk about forty feet from the bombed car. It was a woman, about thirty years old, in tight black jeans, leather boots, and a black leather jacket. Long black hair fanned out around her head like a halo. There was no blood and no apparent broken bones. Moisture dotted the woman’s mouth. The skin of her face and her lips were slightly blue. Derek picked up her limp hand and studied her fingernails, also slightly blue.
He had to shout for Erica to hear him. “No signs of trauma. Either cyanide or nerve gas. She was cyanotic, but Soman causes respiratory failure. It also causes increased salivation, almost like foaming at the mouth.” He pointed to the moisture around her lips. “I think that’s what happened here.”
Derek saw that Erica was breathing heavily. He said, “Translate for them.” He waved at the Russian firefighters. Derek hoped that giving her something to do would fend off any panic. Panic was not uncommon in a hazmat suit.
Taking a deep breath, she shouted to be heard outside the suit. The Russians nodded and asked her a question. To Derek she said, “They want to know if you think it was Soman.”
“Da!” he yelled. “Soman.”
One of them trundled back to the staging area. A moment later Derek saw American responders approach through the embassy gate. About goddamned time, he thought. Three of them wore hazmat suits. He didn’t know if they
were following the Russians’ lead or they had chemical agent sensors in place around the embassy. He guessed both. What he didn’t know was if they were with FBI, the State Department, the Department of Defense, or the CIA. If he had to guess, he’d say FBI or DoD.
He moved on to another body, this one an older man in a fur hat, what he remembered was called an ushanka. Probably in his fifties, he was dressed like a businessman.
An arm pulled him around. It was an American in a hazmat suit. “Who the hell are you?” the man shouted at him. “They said you’re an American.”
Derek shouted right back at him, introducing himself.
“Never heard of you.”
“Tough shit. Contact Mandalevo. He sent me here.”
The guy turned to Erica. “You vouch for him?”
She nodded.
“You’re the expert, then. What do you recommend?”
Derek hesitated. “Figure out who’s liaising with the Russians, convince them it’s ultimately our show, get them set up for removing the bodies in bags that can be sealed against the gas. It’s probably mostly dissipated, but it might still be on the clothes. The FBI will probably want to take over the investigation. Let them.”
“Yes sir.”
He disappeared, heading for the Russians.
Derek moved toward the wreckage, but stopped and leaned down, not an easy thing to do in the suit. Twisted and charred chunks of metal, and flaming and smoldering debris—plastic and vinyl—littered the road in a loose circle around the blast point. He shouted to Erica, “Watch where you step. You don’t want to puncture your suit on this crap.”
He picked up a ragged scrap of metal roughly four inches square. Cyrillic lettering was etched onto it. Holding it up to Erica, he said, “What’s it say?”
She studied it for a moment through the faceplate of her hazmat suit. ”It says GDX, and then RF, for Russian Federation. Then there’s part of a word, it almost looks like it’s handwritten, but it doesn’t make sense. It’s Novic, and then it’s cut off.”
Derek, heart hammering, sweat now running down his forehead, said, “Probably Novichok.”
Through her faceplate Erica looked confused. “’New guy?’ Novichok means ‘new guy.’ Why would it say ‘new guy’?”
“I’ll tell you later. Tell everybody that it might not be Soman. It might be something like Soman, only much, much worse.”
While Erica talked to the Russians, Derek carefully stepped his way through the debris to the vehicle. He still clutched the shard of metal in his gloved hand, unwilling to let it go.
The car was still in flames, black oily smoke filling the sky. He didn’t know if it had been a suicide bombing or something else. It’s possible that the car had been parked or stalled in the road. A timer might have been set off and the perpetrators ran or were picked up by a second vehicle. He stopped twenty feet away, the heat pulsing at him even through the hazmat suit.
He paused and scanned the crowds that were now gathering. The Russian emergency response had been very fast, the embassy response a little slow, although that may have been because they were deciding whether they were under attack. There may have been some concern that the first explosion was designed to bring embassy workers out of the building, then follow-up with a secondary explosion to take out more people.
Derek made a slow circle, looking around at the people who were gawking. He wished they weren’t there, wishing the Russians would evacuate the area. He counted seven dead.
If the people on the sidelines weren’t sick yet, they were okay.
Skirting around the flaming car, he went from body to body, confirming that they were dead. The sixth was a man. He was furthest from the vehicle. Bending down, Derek jumped when the figure moved, looking up at him through bloodshot eyes.
Derek’s stomach roiled. He knew this man. It was Yassen, one of the men who had kidnapped him. Bending down, he said, “Yassen. Can you move?”
He groaned and muttered in Russian.
Standing up, Derek shouted, waving. “This one’s alive! This one’s alive!”
Two of the Russians started his way. Derek felt a hand on his leg. Looking down, Yassen was tugging on his suit. Derek knelt down. “They’re coming.”
“Still … water?”
“Yes. Hang on. We’ll get you help. Keep breathing.”
“Irina … may … still be … alive…”
“What?”
“May still … “
“Where?”
Yassen shook his head, almost as if having a seizure. “Message … India …”
“Irina’s in India?” Derek didn’t know if Yassen was hallucinating or raving or having problems with English.
“Tracking … bus … India … one…”
Derek’s blood went cold. He fought off a wave of nausea. Vomiting in a hazmat suit was a very bad, very dangerous thing to do. He sucked in a lungful of the canned air. “Say that again! Repeat that!”
Then the Russian firefighters were there, slipping an oxygen mask over Yassen’s face, shifting him to a stretcher, rushing him away. Derek shouted, “Atropine! He needs an injection of atropine!”
Derek stood and watched them load Yassen into the back of an ambulance. His stomach churned, chills running up and down his spine.
Lurching away from the burning car, he caught Erica by the wrist. “Let’s get out of these suits.”
The Russian fire department had set up a staging tent where they could hose down the suits and change into street clothes. Five minutes later Derek was outside the tent and two minutes after that he was joined by Erica, who looked exhausted.
“Who’s in charge of the embassy efforts out there?”
“Kevin Randall.”
“Let’s go.” He’d put the shard of twisted metal into a plastic bag he’s gotten from one of the firefighters.
They found Kevin Randall standing by the embassy gates, talking into a cell phone in one hand, a walkie-talkie in the other. Not tall, Randall was burly with a reddish beard and wire-rimmed glasses. His hair was thinning, complexion freckled. He clicked off the phone and looked at them.
“Who’re you?”
“Derek Stillwater. I’m officially with Homeland Security, but apparently Secretary Mandalevo has temporarily attached me to the State Department.”
“Oh yeah, you. Your timing is impeccable.”
“You have a sealed evidence bag of some sort?”
Randall leveled a steady gaze at Derek. “Hang on.” He glanced around, switched on the walkie-talkie and said, “I want Fitzgerald at the front gate with a biosecure evidence container. We’ve got a couple, right?”
“Be right there.”
Looking back at Derek, Randall said, “Something interesting?”
“Something we don’t want the Russians disappearing.”
A moment later Fitzgerald jogged up with what looked like a small metal canister. Derek took it, opened the seal, dropped in the plastic bag containing the scrap of metal and shut it. Fitzgerald took a label and pasted it over the container and handed Derek a pen. Derek filled out the label and handed it over to Fitzgerald, who added his signature to it.
“Do not lose that,” Derek said.
“What is it?” Randall asked.
Derek hesitated. “I’m not sure I can even tell you. Can you get me a secure channel to Secretary Mandalevo ASAP?”
Randall stared, hands on hips. “Who do you think you are?”
“The bearer of bad news, pal. Make this happen. The evidence in that container is a political time bomb.”
7
Randall led Derek and Erica into the embassy where he left them in a waiting room. It was small, but had comfortable chairs and several flat-screen TVs, one of which was playing CNN. They were covering the embassy bombing, although it was clear that the CNN reporter didn’t have a lot of information to work with. Erica said, “Coffee?”
“Please.”
“I’m going to drop by my office. I’ll be back
in a minute.”
She disappeared and Derek leaned back and closed his eyes for a minute, not believing how screwed up this trip had gotten so quickly. He might have dozed off, because Erica came in and nudged his hand, handing him a mug of black coffee. She also had a plate of bagels and donuts. “We didn’t get to eat.” Taking the coffee and a bagel gratefully, he sipped the steaming brew.
Erica said, “You got a little freaked out before you suited up.”
“So did you.”
“Yeah, but I managed to hold down my breakfast. You do that a lot?”
“All the time. I didn’t get any of my breakfast. My body clock is completely messed up.”
Randall appeared, his gray suit looking wrinkled, his skin taut from stress. “Come with me.”
He led them deeper into the bowels of the embassy, passing through half a dozen sections of the embassy that required security passcodes and badges. They stepped into a room with no windows and a teleconference hookup, a large plasma screen on the wall. Derek said, “I need to talk to the Secretary alone for a moment, but I’ll probably call one or both of you—”
“Now wait a minute,” Randall said. “I’ve got high enough security to hear anything you have to say.”
“Maybe,” said Derek, “but I don’t know that. And I never did get your title.”
Randall leaned in close. “Look, Stillwater, I’m the Deputy Director of the BSS here, I’m number two for security. Jim Hall’s in with the Ambassador right now, but he’ll want to talk to—”
Secretary Mandalevo appeared on the monitor. “I see Derek’s pissing everybody off already. It’s okay, Mr. Randall. Give me a couple minutes alone with Dr. Stillwater and then please get Ambassador Whitcomb, Jim Hall, and Erica Kirov in. Say ten minutes. Thank you.”
“Yes, Mr. Secretary.”
Both Erica and Randall left and Derek sat down in a chair. He held up the bagel. “Do you mind if I eat while we talk?”
Mandalevo sighed. “Not one for formalities, are you, Derek?”
“You wouldn’t believe what a shitty trip to Russia this has been so far.”
“Seen your son?”
“No. I got kidnapped right out of the airport.”