Checkmate

by Tom Clancy

  Like a flywheel.

  And then another thought: Humiliated and hunted, his empire in ruins and his family dead, Zhao wouldn’t be satisfied by letting his revenge happen. His ego would demand that he do it. . . .

  That he be the one to push the button.

  Fisher pushed himself to his feet. Pain shot through his chest, doubling him over. He straightened up and stumbled down the aisle, fighting the incline of the floor. He reached the door, threw it open.

  Across the coupler platform, he saw Zhao sitting in the doorway to the second car, legs splayed out before him. At least one of Fisher’s bullets had found its mark. The side of Zhao’s neck and face were bloody and his right arm hung limb at his side. With his eyes locked on Fisher’s, Zhao reached his left arm across his body and into his jacket.

  Fisher lurched forward, but he lost traction on the sloped platform and fell to his knees. He got up, tried again. He grasped the hand railing and dragged himself forward.

  Zhao’s hand came out holding a cell phone. He flipped it open, starting working the keypad with his thumb. Fisher drew the Sykes from its sheath and plunged it into Zhao’s thigh. Fisher felt the blade hit bone. Zhao screamed and dropped the phone, which slid toward the edge of the platform. Fisher reached out, snagged it with his fingertips, drew it back. On the screen was a nine-digit number. Underneath it, the words “Send? Y/N?”

  He punched “No” and flipped the phone closed.

  Zhao lay curled into a ball, his face twisted with pain. With his good arm he was reaching feebly for the knife jutting from his thigh. Fisher knocked his hand away. He grabbed the haft and gave it a twist. Zhao screamed again and arched his back. Fisher jerked the knife free and resheathed it. He stood up and looked down at Zhao.

  “I think it’s time you and I say good-bye,” Fisher said.

  Zhao didn’t respond, but turned his head and glared up at him.

  “No arguments,” Fisher said. “Better we part company while we’re still friends.”

  He grabbed Zhao by the foot and dragged him farther out onto the platform. Using a pair of flexi-cuffs, he first secured Zhao’s left arm to the railing, and then his right, which made a sickening grating sound as Fisher manipulated it. Zhao set his jaw and said through gritted teeth, “Go to hell.”

  “Maybe someday,” Fisher replied, “but not today.”

  He leaned out over the railing and looked forward. Ahead he could see the locomotive was almost at the top of the grade. Fisher knelt down, reached between the platform joint, and grabbed the release lever. He jerked it upward. There was a steel clank-clank.

  “What are you doing?” Zhao said.

  Fisher didn’t answer. He stepped to the other side of the platform and knelt down. He grabbed the second release lever.

  “Tell me what you’re doing!” Zhao screamed.

  “To tell you the truth,” said Fisher, “I don’t know what they call it in China.” He felt the locomotive lose momentum ever so slightly as it topped the grade, then lurch forward as it started down the opposite slope. “But in this country, it’s called checkmate.”

  He pulled the lever.

  EPILOGUE

  KIEV, UKRAINE—SIX WEEKS LATER

  FISHER stopped before the seven-foot-tall figure. Above a hawkish nose and long bushy beard, his narrowed eyes gazed implacably over what Fisher imagined were the barren Russian steppes. In his left hand the giant carried a ruby-encrusted war club, twice as big around as a baseball bat and topped by a spiked steel globe the size of a miniature soccer ball.

  Beside the wax figure a plaque displayed a lengthy description in Cyrillic, but in English at the bottom, it simply said, “18th Century Slavic Warrior.” Behind him was a mural depicting a village in flames with women and children fleeing before horse-mounted soldiers.

  Another day in the life of your typical eighteenth-century Slavic Warrior, Fisher thought.

  The Kiev Museum of Wax Figures was a far cry from Madame Tussaud’s of London. There were no figures of Prince William or Brad Pitt or Richard Nixon, but plenty of Ukrainian and Russian historical figures, most of which the owners had classified as either a “Slavic Warrior” or a “Saint.” Whatever their avocation or history, Fisher had yet to see a smile, either from a wax figure or a patron—most of whom looked like locals. Apprently, the museum did not cater to many tourists.

  For all that, though, he was enjoying the downtime. It had been hard won.

  AFTER Fisher had lifted the second release lever, the coupler had given another metallic clank-clank. Then the caboose and the third car had begun sliding away from Zhao’s car. Fisher had timed it well. Now free of the third car and the caboose, and without a brakeman to control its descent, the locomotive rapidly picked up speed, hurtling down the slope. Spread-eagle on the platform of the second car, with his legs dangling in space and his wrists bound to the railing, Zhao never took his eyes off Fisher, even as Fisher’s car slowed at the top of the slope, paused, then began rolling backward.

  Fisher rushed down the length of his car, across the next platform, and into the caboose, where he found the brake controls. He leaned on the lever with his full body weight. The caboose continued rolling down the slope, but slowly the brake started to work, slowing the descent. The caboose filled with smoke and the lever grew hot in Fisher’s hand, but finally, two minutes later, the caboose slowed and came to a rest at the bottom of the slope.

  THIRTY minutes later, he heard the chopping of helicopter rotors echoing down the pass. A pair of Black-hawks swooped in and stopped in a hover above the track. Men in standard-issue blue FBI windbreakers jumped down and rushed toward Fisher, guns drawn.

  An hour after that, a fourth Blackhawk arrived and disgorged a NEST team, which cordoned off the car and the caboose and took charge of Zhao’s container.

  When it was opened two days later at a secure facility, they found 245 pounds of nuclear debris.

  A Blackhawk was dispatched down the track to look for Zhao’s locomotive and the first two cars. They had jumped the track at the bottom of the slope and tumbled down the mountainside. Zhao’s arms were found still bound to the platform’s railing. The rest of him lay two hundred feet away, crushed under one of the locomotive’s wheels.

  IN the Persian Gulf, the fragile truce between U.S. and Iranian forces continued to hold as the Reagan Battle Group withdrew farther into the Arabian Sea and the Iranian Air Force and Navy continued to stand down units. A week after the Saudis had delivered the President’s message to Tehran, alert levels on sides were back to normal.

  As analysts and anchors for round-the-clock news channels pondered and speculated how and why the two countries had pulled back from the brink of war, both governments continued talking through the Saudis. The U.S. was not anxious to admit it had been duped into nearly starting a third war in the Middle East, and Iran wasn’t anxious for the world to know that one of its own zealots had not only been instrumental in the scheme, but had also been directly responsible for the deaths of the 5,289 Americans at Slipstone. More importantly, for both Presidents the near-war had been a preview of sorts, and neither man had liked what he saw.

  According to Lambert, an argument was raging in the Oval Office about when and how the details of the near war would be revealed to the world. There was no one left alive to blame, which, Fisher knew, would not sit well with the American public. Predictably, the Iranians and Chinese had moved quickly to paint Abelzada and Zhao as rogue criminals, who had acted with neither the support nor the knowledge of their respective governments. Fisher suspected in the end the crisis would be portrayed as a “fine example of a multi-national, cross-culture cooperative effort that defeated a massive terrorist plot.” From there, the media would do the rest, filling in the gaps and assuaging the public’s curiosity with a slew of books, movies, and documentaries.

  Fisher couldn’t care less. He’d done his job and come out the other side. The rest was trivia.

  FISHER glanced to his left and saw a man en
ter through an arch and stop beside the dwarfish figure dressed in Eastern Orthodox garb, one hand carrying a giant Bible, the other a bronze censer. Fisher had already read the figure’s biography. He was an “18th Century Saint.”

  The man who had just entered stopped before the saint, studied him for a few seconds, then sat down on the bench before it. After a few minutes he got up and walked away, leaving behind his brochure. Fisher walked over and took the bench. The man’s brochure had been folded in half, with the upper left-hand corner turned down twice. If it had been folded any differently, it would have been the “wave off” signal for Fisher. Not safe; leave.

  Whether the man was an agent or a CIA case officer Fisher didn’t know, but he’d done his job, which was all that mattered. Their target had been tailed and found clean of surveillance. Fisher unfolded the brochure. Written on the inside cover in block letters were two words: COSSACK ROOM.

  FISHER saw her seated on a bench before what he assumed was a Cossack: knee-high leather boots, handlebar mustache, mouth frozen in mid-scream as he charged toward nothing.

  Fisher walked up behind her and stopped. “If you ask me, he looks angry at being fed substandard borshch,” he whispered.

  Elena turned in her seat. Her eyes went wide and her mouth worked several times, but nothing came out for a few seconds. “What . . . ? What are you doing here?”

  “Taking in the wax figures, what’s it look like?” He sat down next to her.

  “I was told to meet my . . . friend here.”

  “He couldn’t make it. Asked me to fill in for him.”

  Elena’s brow furrowed with worry. “What’s happening? I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  Fisher pulled an envelope from his pocket on the bench between them. “Open it.”

  She did, and stared at the contents for a few moments, then said, “It’s a passport.”

  “Not just any passport,” Fisher corrected. “Your passport. You did say you wouldn’t mind coming to the U.S., didn’t you?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “Our plane leaves in two hours.”

  Elena frowned, then sighed. She laid the envelope back on the bench, hesitated for two beats, then snatched it up again. “I can’t just leave.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just . . . just . . . I don’t know.”

  “It’s your choice, Elena. I have a few connections; I’m sure there’s a job somewhere in the government for a biologist slash borshch connoisseur.”

  They sat in silence for five minutes, during most of which Elena seemed to be having a whispered argument with herself. Abruptly she turned to him and said, “Okay.”

  “Yeah?”

  She nodded firmly. “Okay.”

  Fisher smiled. He extended his hand. “I’m Sam, by the way.”

  “Not Fred.”

  “No.”

  Elena clasped his hand. “Nice to meet you, Sam.”