Tracie shook her head. “But the bottles are always the same? Every time you transfer Polonium-210 to Speransky you use an identical one?”
“Da. We contracted for several dozen bottles when the project began almost four years ago. It seemed the wisest thing to do.”
Several dozen.
“And these custom-manufactured bottles have just one purpose? To carry around this deadly radioactive poison?” The Soviets had used Polonium-210 on a half-dozen U.S. covert operatives and at least one Soviet citizen over the last three-and-a-half years. Tracie pictured Charles Fowler lying in his hospital bed, wasted away and suffering immeasurably before finally—mercifully—dying. Then she envisioned at least eighteen to twenty-four more lead-lined spray bottles stored somewhere inside the Arzamas-16 plant, ready and waiting to cause more suffering and death.
Ryakhin nodded slowly. He wasn’t sure where this conversation was heading but it was obvious he didn’t like it much.
“Show me,” Tracie said suddenly, pushing to her feet and flicking her Beretta toward the closed office door.
“Show you?” Ryakhin shook his head in confusion. “Show you what?”
“The special spray bottles. The containers you’ve been using to allow a murderer to transport lethal radioactivity before using that radioactivity to execute good people. Show me. I want to see them.”
* * *
Ryakhin was moving much more slowly now than he had when Tracie first ambushed him inside his home. The telephone conversation with KGB operative Piotr Speransky seemed to have taken more out of him than had the experience of being threatened with a loaded gun. But he seemed to be doing as he was told, and until she began to suspect he had stopped cooperating she decided not to push it.
Leaving the manager’s office to do anything other than exit the Arzamas-16 plant and drive away was risky, probably more so than Tracie could justify. But she wanted to see the delivery method the Soviets had chosen for their poison.
It was more than just idle curiosity.
Perhaps she could gain an operational advantage.
The corridors remained dimly lit and mostly empty. She wasn’t familiar with the operation of a nuclear plant, especially one inside a Russian ZATO, but she assumed a facility this size and this valuable to the Soviets would require at least a skeleton crew of workers during off-hours to keep things running smoothly.
And if that were the case, the lack of people roaming the corridors led her to believe Ryakhin was leading her away from the operational areas of the plant and deeper into the administrative wing. It was a little surprising.
Eventually Ryakhin stopped in front of another locked door. He fumbled through his keys until selecting the proper one, and a moment later Tracie found herself inside what amounted to a massive storage closet. Row after row of metal shelving stretched into the distance, covered with everything from reams of paper and other office supplies to electrical servos, tools, hardhats and hundreds of motors and replacement mechanical parts, the purposes for which Tracie could not even guess at.
Ryakhin moved to the right and then wandered down a row, rubbing his jaw and muttering softly to himself.
A third of the way down the aisle he said, “Aha!” He stopped in front of three sturdy crates placed side-by-side on a shelf. He reached for one of them and Tracie was beside him in an instant, her weapon trained on Ryakhin’s midsection. It seemed unlikely in the extreme that the plant manager had hidden a gun in here, but there was no reason to take chances, and Tracie wasn’t about to.
“Slow and easy, Comrade,” she muttered. “Slow and easy.”
He had begun to regain a little color, but now it once again drained from his face as the Beretta’s barrel nudged him gently in the side.
“I am only giving you what you wanted,” he whispered.
“Fine. Just be sure you remain focused on what matters to you right now.”
“Do not worry. There is little danger of me forgetting.”
“Open the crate.”
Ryakhin pulled the cover off the top. Lined up inside were small spray bottles, exactly as the plant manager had described back in his office. They were slightly larger than the size bottle of eyeglass-cleaner someone might buy at the pharmacy, but still plenty small enough to slip into a pocket.
And then use to poison someone.
Tracie leaned forward and peered into the box. This storage area was just as poorly lit as the rest of the plant, but she could see empty spaces where the bottles used to murder half a dozen American operatives had once sat.
“Hand me one of them,” she said.
Ryakhin seemed to have anticipated her request. Almost immediately he reached in and withdrew one of the bottles and then dropped it into her open palm. It was heavier than it appeared, which made sense. The lead lining would add considerable weight.
Given the purpose of the lead, though, she doubted Speransky would have complained.
“I’m going to keep this,” she said. She slipped her hand under a flap in her backpack and dropped the little spray bottle into one of the pockets.
Ryakhin watched, his expression one of confusion. And, of course, fear.
“Souvenir,” she said, smiling sweetly. “I want to keep a memento of how much fun this has been.”
That was when the door swung open behind them and a Russian voice said, “Stop right where you are!”
17
January 21, 1988
9:15 p.m.
Moscow, Russia, USSR
It took a few minutes for Evgeny Domashev to regain his bearings after the disturbing—okay, terrifying—phone call from the Arzamas-16 plant manager.
He slammed the telephone handset down on its cradle and sprang to his feet.
Paced his apartment aimlessly.
Attempted to take a slug of vodka and slopped the precious liquid down his shirt, betrayed by his shaking hands.
On his second attempt he held the glass in both hands, and although they were still shaking he was at least able to get some into his belly this time. The liquor slid down his throat with that familiar pleasant burn, and somewhat surprisingly Evgeni found his nerves calming just a bit.
This situation was nothing new, not really. He had been in tight spots before and gotten out of them just fine. Maybe not as tight as this one, maybe none of those spots had threatened the kind of agonizing death sentence he now faced, but still, adversity had a way of hardening a man and Evgeny Domashev had faced plenty.
He paced some more and forced himself to think. There was much to do. The egghead scientist/plant manager Ryakhin had told him to travel immediately to Kremlyov for treatment, which of course meant that Evgeny would have to take a leave of absence from the KGB.
He was not due back to work for a couple of days, but while Ryakhin had not specified how long the radiation-eradication treatment would take—and Evegny had been too shaken up by the unexpected phone call to ask—he had to assume it would be a longer process than that.
This presented a problem.
Evgeny could not simply advise his superiors that he’d been dosed with radiation and must now take time off to (hopefully) be cured. Their first question to him in response to that notification would be a good one: how had he become aware of this radiation poisoning when he hadn’t even begun to feel ill yet?
That was not a question he would be able to answer, at least not to the KGB’s satisfaction. By providing Yuri Ryakhin with his unsecured home telephone number, Evgeny had violated strict Soviet intelligence policies designed to protect his identity.
Not to mention state secrets.
If he admitted to violating those policies, Evgeny would not have to worry about becoming ill. Dying from exposure to Polonium-210 would be the least of his concerns. He would likely be executed behind the KGB’s Moscow headquarters building and buried in a shallow grave before he ever began exhibiting symptoms of radiation poisoning.
He continued to ponder the issue as he moved into his bedroom
and began tossing clothing into a small travel bag. The problem of how to handle his handlers was not an insurmountable one. He would figure out something to tell them that would be believable. One didn’t spend the majority of one’s adult life in the field of covert intelligence operations without becoming a practiced and proficient liar.
Another sip of vodka.
Another warm burn in his throat.
Another calming splashdown in his belly.
Evgeny pushed the KGB problem to the back of his mind as he stopped his manic packing for a moment. He dropped the half-filled bag onto the floor and sat on the edge of his bed.
Thinking.
Now that he had absorbed the first terrifying shock of Ryakhin’s phone call and begun considering what the nuke-plant operator had said over the phone, Evgeny felt an uneasiness settling over him. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what that uneasiness represented, but it wasn’t related to his fear of dying from Polonium-210.
It was more amorphous than that.
Less tangible.
Something about this situation didn’t smell right.
An intelligence specialist learned early on in his career to trust his instincts. It was an important lesson. If it wasn’t learned, and quickly, one of two things happened: either the specialist trusted the wrong people and gathered faulty intelligence, thereby eventually losing his job, or he trusted the wrong people and eventually lost his life.
Evgeny could not deny there was every possibility Yuri Ryakhin was telling the truth. Evgeny was no nuclear physicist, not by a long shot. Studying had not been his strong suit while in school, and he would be the first to admit scientific theories and concepts were mostly beyond his ability to comprehend.
But he wasn’t stupid, either, and Moscow boasted some of the finest libraries in the world. One of the first things Evgeny had done four years ago after being selected for the Polonium-210 Project—also known as Project Kremlyov Infection—was to research the effects of radiation sickness in general and Polonium-210 in particular.
Much of what he read was technical, beyond not just his ability to understand, but the scope of his research as well. However, he’d learned plenty about nuclear radiation and its effects on the human body.
And it was without exception ugly.
And frightening.
Another sip of vodka, another nice burn. Oddly, the alcohol seemed to be focusing Evgeny and allowing him to think clearly when it should be having the opposite effect.
Evgeny had accepted his mission even after conducting his research into the effects of radiation poisoning. He did so partly out of a sense of duty to Mother Russia, but also because once selected for a KGB mission, an operative did not decline to participate. It simply was not done. The operative who made the decision to turn down an assignment from his superiors would disappear in short order, sent to a work camp in Siberia or worse.
But his research had stayed with Evgeny Domashev ever since. He’d thought about it often, especially during those periods when his mission was active, when he was carrying the deadly radiation in his pocket, tucked away next to his internal organs before being used to end the life of another enemy of the Soviet State.
Just because he was an assassin didn’t mean he had no feelings.
But the point was that radiation poisoning—especially the amount of radiation produced by that damned Yuri Ryakhin in his damned Arzamas-16 plant—was not subtle. It did not come on slowly. It did not sneak up on the victim.
It was like a hammer striking the victim in the head.
In fact, Evgeny had always thought of Polonium in terms of the Soviet Union’s iconic hammer and sickle flag when used to eliminate American assets: The hammer was used to stagger the enemy, and then the sickle cut that enemy off at the knees.
But here was the problem, and perhaps the reason for Evgeny’s unease. He did not feel like a man being struck on the head with a hammer, and he did not feel like a man whose legs were being sliced off by a sickle.
He felt fine.
He did not feel weak, or ill, or even the slightest bit tired.
He simply did not feel like a man who had been dosed with nuclear radiation.
He fully admitted to himself that he could be wrong. Ryakhin might be—and probably was—telling the truth about the radiation, that a hairline crack had opened up in the last lead-lined bottle and that even now, poison was attacking Evgeny’s organs.
It was the most likely scenario. He could not imagine a single reason why Ryakhin would lie.
But still, that sense of unease would not go away. It was there, and it was real, and Evgeny trusted in it every bit as much as he trusted in Ryakhin’s superior scientific knowledge and his nuclear acumen.
Maybe more.
And an intelligence officer who wanted to stay alive always developed a backup plan. It was second nature to a man who had worked in the field as long as Evgeny had.
He pushed to his feet and picked up his drink.
Exited his bedroom, the half-filled travel bag forgotten for the moment.
Walked into his tiny living room and plopped down on the couch.
For a long time he stared at the telephone, lost in thought. Then he picked up the handset and dialed a number from memory.
When the call was answered he said, “Hello, Comrade Mineyev, this is Evgeny Domashev. It has been a long time, eh?”
The man on the other end of the line was suspicious, Evgeny could tell. This call to another KGB operative was as unusual as Ryakhin’s call to Evgeny had been. But it could not be avoided.
Evgeny waited, holding his breath, hoping he had chosen the recipient of his call wisely.
After a moment Nikolay Mineyev said, “Da, Comrade, it has been too long. I believe it has been since…what…1983? Ukraine? Am I remembering correctly?”
Evgeny breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t out of the woods yet, but at least Mineyev hadn’t hung up on him or threatened to notify KGB headquarters about the violation of protocol the telephone call represented.
He chuckled. “You are indeed remembering correctly. After the conclusion of the mission, we must have closed a dozen bars. I am still hung over!”
The men shared a laugh and Mineyev said, “I appreciate the memory, Comrade, but something tells me you did not call out of the blue just to relive old times. What can I do for you, my friend?”
Evgeny took a deep breath. Here goes nothing. “I have a bit of a problem, old friend, one that requires the kind of assistance only a fellow operative can provide.”
“The fact that you are contacting me personally tells me this is not an officially sanctioned operation.”
Another deep breath. Evgeny prayed neither man’s phone was being monitored. If one of them were, he had just condemned himself and his old friend to death, probably preceded by an extensive period of torture.
It was too late to worry about that now. “You are correct, Comrade. But the good news is that your assistance would most likely involve only a few hours of your time and a car ride to Kremlyov and back.”
“What is happening, Comrade?”
Evgeny briefed his fellow KGB operative on what he needed, including in his narrative only the barest outline of why it would be necessary to travel to the ZATO. And, more importantly, why he thought he might need backup.
He spoke for several minutes, and Mineyev asked a few questions, but after those first few tension-filled seconds, Evgeny felt himself beginning to relax.
Mineyev was going to do it, he could tell.
When he hung up the phone, Evgeny felt much calmer than he had since before Yuri Ryakhin’s surprise telephone call. He now had his backup plan. It was probably utterly unnecessary, but he would have felt naked and exposed without one.
He sat for a long time on his couch, quietly sipping his vodka and thinking.
Eventually he returned to his bedroom and finished packing.
18
January 21, 1988
9:20 p.m
.
Arzamas-16 Nuclear Plant
Kremlyov, Russia
Tracie froze at the command to stop. The voice came from behind her and Ryakhin and was filled with tension.
It was immediately obvious what had happened. Ryakhin hadn’t fully closed the door when he and Tracie entered the storage area a few minutes ago. A patrolling member of the Arzamas-16 security team spotted the partially open door and decided to investigate. It only made sense. No doors should be open in the administrative wing of the plant after business hours.
Perhaps Ryakhin had left the door ajar intentionally, to draw the attention of security. Perhaps not.
The question was moot at this point. Tracie should have ensured the damned door was closed and she hadn’t.
Now she had problems. It remained to be seen how serious those problems were.
For a long moment nothing happened. The silence was complete. Tracie and Ryakhin stood completely still and the guard seemed uncertain how to proceed. He couldn’t see them from his position just inside the door, but he knew someone was here.
“Walk toward me,” he finally said. “I am armed, so proceed slowly. One move I don’t like and I’ll shoot.”
Well, that’s reassuring. Tracie jammed her gun into the waistband of her trousers at the small of her back. She un-tucked her blouse and allowed it to flutter over her waist. Hopefully that would be enough to hide the damned thing. She’d left her parka in Ryakhin’s office, so it wasn’t like she had many options.
Ryakhin had turned and begun trudging toward the sound of the security guard’s voice, and Tracie grabbed his sleeve.
“Remember our cover,” she hissed. “If you don’t get us out of this, the first bullet is going in that guard’s forehead, and the second in your back.”
He paused but didn’t acknowledge her words.
“Comrade Ryakhin, do not doubt my ability with this gun. I’ll kill both of you before that man has time to squeeze off a shot.”
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 107