Covert One 6 - The Moscow Vector (18 page)

“You seem very confident of that,” she said quietly.

“I am confident,” the billionaire agreed. “Remember, I know President Dudarev personally. He is no saint, but I believe that he is a man determined to give this countrv the law and order it craves. To restore a sense of discipline

and decency. To break the power of the Mafiya and make the streets of Moscow and other cities safe again.”

He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I would have thought that you, of all people, would appreciate the vital importance of that, Ms. Devin. Your husband’s untimely death was a great tragedy. It would not have occurred in a society better able to safeguard the lives and property of its citizens —the kind of society I believe Russia’s new leaders honestly hope to build here.”

For a moment, Fiona stared back at Malkovic without speaking, aware of a wave of cold anger rising behind her tightly controlled features. Even after two years, the memories of Sergei’s murder were still very much a raw wound in her psyche. To hear the subject raised so casually, especially as a rhetorical

prop for Dudarev’s growing tyranny, seemed a kind of grotesque sacrilege.

“I helped bring my husband’s killers to justice myself,” she said at last, speaking with a calm, even voice that masked her true feelings. For months, she had hunted those who ordered her husband’s death, piecing together evidence of their crimes at considerable risk to her own life. In the end, the public outcry she raised by her articles had forced the authorities to take action.

The men most responsible were now serving long prison sentences.

“So you did,” Malkovic agreed. “And I followed your courageous crusade against the Mafiya with great admiration. But even you must admit that your task would have been easier if the police here were less corrupt, more efficient, and better disciplined.”

Fiona hid a frown. Why was the billionaire suddenly throwing her husband’s murder back in her face? This man never said anything without a purpose, so what was his goal in trying to force her off-balance now? Was this his way of warning her off the uncomfortable subject of Russia’s gradual slide back to a police state? Was he trying to distract her from asking any more inconvenient or embarrassing questions about his business connections to the Dudarev regime?

If so, she would have to move quickly, before he decided to cut this interview short on one pretense or another. “There may be worse things than police corruption and incompetence,” she told him. “This growing cult of official secrecy, for example—secrecy I consider to be obsessive, unnecessary, and even dangerous. Especially when it concerns a serious matter of public health and safety.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not quite following you, Ms. Devin. To what ‘cult of secrecy’ are you referring?”

Fiona shrugged. “What else would you call trying to hide the news of a deadly new disease, not only from the Russian people themselves, but also from the world’s public health agencies?”

“A new disease?” Malklovie leaned forward, suddenly wholly intent. His eyes were troubled. “Go on,” he said quietly.

He listened carefully while she ran through the gist of what she and Smith had learned separately from Kiryanov and Petrenko, though she concealed her knowledge that the two doctors had been murdered. Or that this mysterious ailment was now spreading outside Russia itself. When she finished, he pursed his lips in dismay. “Do you have any evidence to confirm these rumors of a strange new illness?”

“Evidence? Not yet. None of the other doctors involved will talk to me and all of the important records are under lock and key,” Fiona said, shaking her head. She frowned again. “But you see the danger, I hope. One way or another the word is bound to leak out. If the Kremlin —or even just an official in the Ministry of Health —is covering up the beginning of a new epidemic in a foolish attempt to avoid public panic or international embarrassment, the con-sequences could be catastrophic.”

Malkovic grimaced. “Indeed. The economic and political costs could be horrendous. The world community and the financial markets would not easily forgive a nation caught hiding something that might turn out to be another epidemic as bad as AIDS—or worse.”

“I was thinking more of the possible cost in human lives,” Fiona said softly.

A wintry smile touched his lips, “‘louche, Ms. Devin,” he said. “I stand, or rather, sit rebuked.” He looked at her with a new measure of respect. “So what is it that you really want of me? I assume all of your questions earlier were simply window dressing, a means of maneuvering our conversation onto the question of this apparent medical cover-up.”

“Not entirely,” she said, blushing very slightly. “But yes, I am hoping that you’ll exert your influence with the appropriate ministries to shed some light on this mystery disease.”

“So you expect me to help von break open this story, this news scoop of yours?” Malkovic asked drily. “Out of the pure goodness of my own heart?”

Fiona smiled back at him, intentionally matching the billionaire’s wry expression. “You are famous for vour philanthropy, Mr. Malkovic,” she said.

“But even if you were not, I suspect that you are quite adept at measuring the value of good publicity.”

“And the cost of bad publicity, too,” he said with a brief, sardonic laugh.

Then he shook his large head slowly in a gesture of surrender. “Very well. Ms.

Devin, I will do what I can to pry open a few official doors for you, even if only

in my own best interests.”

“Thank you,” she told him, closing her notebook and rising gracefully to her feet. “That would be most kind. Your staff knows how to contact me.”

“No thanks are necessary,” Malkovic said, politely standing up with her. A dour expression settled on his face. “If what von have told me this morning is true, we may both be acting in time to remedy a terrible, almost unforgivable mistake.”

Jon Smith followed a path heading deeper into the quiet, tree-lined square called Patriarch’s Pond. His shoes crunched softly on the icy snow still covering the walkway. There were very few other sounds. This far in among the trees the roar of traffic from the busy Sadovaya Ring road was muted, reduced to a faint hum. In the distance, children laughed and shouted, busy building forts and hurling clumps of snow at each other among the white-covered shapes of playground equipment. Strange sculptures, distorted images of creatures popular in nineteenth-century Russian fables, peered out at him from between tree trunks and bare, twisted branches.

He reached the edge of the large, shallow ice-covered pond at the center of the square and stopped for a moment, standing with his hands in his pockets as some protection against the below-zero temperatures. In the summer, this small, secluded patch of parkland was a favorite picnic spot for Muscovites, full of smiling crowds, sunlight, and singing. On this gray, overcast winter day,

it showed a gloomier, more desolate face.

“The devil appeared here once, you know,” a woman’s voice said lightly from behind him.

Smith turned his head.

Fiona Devin stood not far away, framed between two leafless lime trees.

Her cheeks were flushed in the cold and she wore a stylish fur hat atop her dark hair. She drew nearer.

“The devil?” Smith asked. “Literally or figuratively?”

Amusement glinted in her blue-green eyes. “Fictionally, only. Or so one hopes.” She nodded toward the pond. “The writer Mikhail Bulgakov set the first scene of his classic The Master and Margarita at this place. In it, Satan himself arrives right here, ready for a romp through the atheist Moscow of Stalin’s era.”

Smith shivered suddenly, from the cold seeping through the lining of his black wool coat, or so he hoped. “What a great place for a rendezvous, then,”

he said with a quick grin. “Frozen, bleak, and cursed. We’ve hit the perfect Russian trifecta. Now all that’s missing is a sleigh and a pack of howling wolves

hot on our trail.”

Fiona chuckled. “Soulful pessimism complete with gallows humor, Colonel? You may fit in here better than I thought.” She moved closer, coming right up to stand beside him at the edge of the snow-covered pavement. The top of her head came up to his shoulder. “My people have finished vetting that list of doctors and scientists you gave me,” she said abruptly, lowering her

voice. “Now I’m ready to brief you.”

Surprised, Smith whistled tunelessly under his breath. “And?”

‘Tour safest and surest bet is Dr. Elena Vedenskaya,” she said firmly.

Smith nodded slowly. Just as with Petrenko, he had met Vedenskaya at different medical conferences over the past several years. He had a vague memory of a rather plain, prim woman somewhere in her early fifties —a woman whose skill, dedication, and competence had carried her right to the top of her male-dominated profession. Vedenskaya now headed the Cytol-ogy, Genetics, and Molecular Biology department at the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology. Since that was one of Russia’s top scientific institutions for the study of infectious disease, she was sure to have been involved in trying to identify the mystery illness whose origins they were now tracking.

“Is there any particular reason that you think I can trust her?” he asked.

“There is,” Fiona told him. “Dr. Vedenskaya has a good record as a friend of democracy and political reform,” she said quietly. “Going all the way back to her student days when Brezhnev and the other Communist Party bosses ruled the Kremlin roost.”

Smith looked at her sharply. “Then she must have a KGB/FSB security dossier as long as my arm. With the Kremlin keeping tabs on suspect scientists, she’ll be right at the head of their surveillance list.”

“She would be,” Fiona agreed. Then she shrugged her shoulders. “Fortunately, her file no longer reflects reality. As far as the FSB is now aware, Elena

Vedenskaya is a thoroughly reliable and apolitical servant of the State.”

Smith raised an eyebrow. “Somebody cleaned out her dossier? Mind telling me how that little miracle of excision took place?”

“I’m afraid that’s on a strictly need-to-know basis, Colonel,” Fiona told him calmly. “And you do not need to know. For quite obvious reasons.”

He nodded, accepting the mild reproof. “Fair enough,” he said. “How do you suggest I contact her? Through the Institute?”

“Definitely not,” she said. “It’s highly likely that all landline calls into Moscow hospitals and research facilities are being monitored.” She passed him a small slip of paper with a ten-digit number written in a neat, feminine hand. “Fortunately, Vedenskaya has an unlisted cell phone.”

“I’ll call her this afternoon,” Smith decided. “And try to set up a dinner meeting for tonight, at some restaurant well away from her lab. Making this look like a purely social call between old colleagues seems the safest way to approach her.”

“Sensible,” Fiona agreed. “But make the reservation for three.”

“You’re planning on coming?”

“I am,” she said. One side of her mouth tilted upward in an impish smile.

“Unless, that is, you were hoping to woo the good doctor with your masculine charm.”

Smith reddened. “Not exactly.”

Her smile grew wider. “Very wise, Colonel.”

One hundred meters away, two men sat in the front seat of a silver BMW

parked along the side of a narrow street. One, a German named Wegner, leaned forward, taking pictures through the dark, tinted windshield with a digital camera equipped with a high-powered telephoto lens. The other entered a series of commands into the small portable computer perched on his lap.

“I’ve got a connection,” the second man announced. His name was Chernov and he had served as a junior officer in the old KGB. “I can send the images whenever you’re ready.”

“Good,” his companion grunted. He snapped another quick set of pictures and then lowered the camera. “That should do it.”

“Any idea who the man is?”

The cameraman shrugged. “None. But we’ll let someone else puzzle that out. In the meantime, we stick to our orders: Follow the woman Devin and report any and all contacts she makes.”

Chernov nodded sourly. “I know. I know. But this is getting too risky. I thought you’d lost her for good on the Metro this morning. I had to drive like a madman just to pick up your trail and hers.” He frowned. “I don’t like it.

She’s asking too many questions. We should just terminate her.”

“Kill a journalist? An American?” the man with the camera said coldly.

“Herr Brandt will have to make that decision himself—when the time comes.”

Not far away, a tall, barrel-chested man stood, slowly rocking back and forth in the shelter of a doorway. He wrapped his arms around himself, hug-ging his shabby coat tighter for warmth. His pants were faded and patched. At first glance, he seemed to be nothing more than one of the many poverty-stricken old-age pensioners who often wandered Moscow’s streets in an alco-holic daze. But beneath his bushy, silver eyebrows, the tall man’s gaze was clear, even penetrating. He frowned, carefully memorizing the BMW’s license plate. This situation was growing more complicated and dangerous at a dizzying pace, he thought grimly.

Thick clouds rolled west through the slowly darkening skies above the elaborate spires of the Kotelnicheskaya high-rise. A few tresh Hakes of snow spun through the air, brushing gently against the windows of the Brandt Group’s penthouse office suite. Krich Brandt himself stood at the window, looking down through the lightly falling snow at the busy city streets far below.

He could feel the tension growing in his thick neck and powerful shoulders. He had always disliked these periods of enforced idleness —the time spent waiting for subordinates to report or for superiors to issue new orders.

Part of him craved the physical and emotional release of action, reveling in sudden violence as though it were a drug. But years spent stalking enemies, first for the Stasi and then later for his own pleasure and profit, had taught him both the necessity and the means of controlling those cruder instincts.

He swung around at the sound of a rap on his open door. “Yes!” he snapped. “What is it?”