Game Changer (34 page)

54

Dmitri Kovonov pulled away from the
brick house in a black Ford sedan, rented under the name Randy Bork. This was
the last time he planned to ever be in Princeton, and it wasn’t lost on him
that he was less than twenty miles away from where that despised Secret Service
agent, Kevin Quinn, had failed to terminate a president who had doubled down on
a twisted and dangerous US policy of sucking up to enemies and alienating allies.
 
 

Kovonov pushed this failure from
his mind as Carmilla Acosta’s home receded in his mirror.

His visit couldn’t have gone
better. Surprisingly
—
although
he shouldn’t be surprised by this sort of thing anymore
—
he had found himself enjoying every minute.

For most of his life it had been
sheer agony to break up with a woman. He would stay with them and suffer for
months before he finally could take no more, and then he would blame himself
and apologize to them over and over, twisting himself into a pretzel to soften
the blow. Even so, the guilt he felt at having to lower the boom, no matter how
gently, would stay with him for weeks.

Not this time. He was a new man, a
better man.

And this time his goal hadn’t been
to soften the blow, but to do just the opposite
—
to generate maximum anguish
—
and he doubted he could have done this any better. Instead
of wiping his existence from Carmilla’s memory to protect himself, or having
her killed, he had decided to try an experiment. To see if he had such a
stranglehold on her psyche that he could push her into a state of despair and suffering
that only suicide could remedy.

What a test this would be of his neurotech
capabilities. Could he take a brilliant, well-adjusted scientist, a woman who was
the personification of level-headedness and rationality, self-confident and
self-possessed, and send her into a tailspin from which she would never
recover?

Losing the object of one’s
obsession during early stages of romantic love was already debilitating, more jarring
psychologically than a cold turkey cessation of heroin was physically. But when
the love of one’s life ended things in such a cruel and brutal fashion, the
effects on the brain were even more devastating.

Even so, Kovonov hadn’t left it at
that. He had directed the nanites to trigger high enough levels of depression
and despair within her brain to cause a squad of
cheerleaders
to commit suicide. He would be astonished if this
didn’t work.

Not that there still wasn’t a chance
of failure. It was an experiment, not a certainty. And he had been shocked and disappointed
that his tampering with Mizrahi’s brain hadn’t had the effect he was after. He
had turned the man into a loyal slave, but it was apparent that certain moral
principles could trump loyalty and devotion in some cases, despite what the
results of the Stanley Milgram experiment would suggest.

If he was wrong and Carmilla hadn’t
ended her life in two days, he would come back and remove all traces of himself
from her memory.

He had been driving for an hour when
a call came in. He hit,
accept
as
virtual
presence,
on his dashboard and a virtual image of Yosef Mizrahi materialized
in the passenger’s seat beside him, although he was actually in a hotel room on
the east side of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where Kovonov had left him.

“Hello, Dmitri,” said Mizrahi in
Hebrew, “I have to say, you look content.”

Mizrahi had quickly returned to
being an adoring and slavish follower once the memories of Kovonov’s disclosure
in the Cockaponset cabin and his execution of Daniel Eisen had been expunged.

“I am. My errand went well.”

“How long until you arrive?”

“I’m almost to Philadelphia now,”
said Kovonov. “Say another few hours.”

“Great. I’ve found another property
I want you to see. I think you’ll like it.”

Kovonov nodded. They had spent
almost four days familiarizing themselves with the deep woods and farmlands of
Pennsylvania, looking for a cabin or farmhouse for sale that fit Kovonov’s
needs.

It was annoying not to be able to
share and discuss his true plans with Mizrahi, but Kovonov had learned his
lesson. Mizrahi would follow all orders well and blindly, and wouldn’t ask
questions, but rubbing his nose in what he was planning was a mistake.

He had explained that they were
looking for a place to lie low, to hunker down for a few days to a few months.
Somewhere in a cabin deep in the woods, or a farmhouse, surrounded on multiple
sides by woods. A place that surveillance could ensure could not be surprised,
where food could be stockpiled so they could keep to themselves until they were
ready to return to their home base in Switzerland.

When Mizrahi had asked why they
weren’t ready to return now, Kovonov had simply said that they had more work to
do, and reminded him that he was now being hunted by the US military and
couldn’t risk international travel. Being captured now would ruin everything.

What he didn’t tell him was that
once his plan had succeeded, and commercial flights had resumed, he would
become such a low priority he could walk through an international terminal on fire
and not get any notice.

“Farmhouse or cabin?” asked
Kovonov.

“Farmhouse.”

“Let’s plan to visit it right after
I arrive. You can tell me why you like it so much when I get there.”
 
 

There were six properties within a
hundred-mile radius of Lancaster, Pennsylvania—Amish country—that had made
their short list, and they had nine more they still wanted to inspect. Given
that they had plenty of time, at least until they found the terrorist Kovonov
was after, it paid not to leave anything to chance.
 

“I have more good news,” said
Mizrahi enthusiastically. “I think I’ve found the guy you’ve been looking for.”

Kovonov stopped at a red light and
turned to study his virtual subordinate. He had also tasked Mizrahi with
monitoring the various fly drones still in operation at sensitive intelligence
facilities within the US, continuing the hunt for the man he needed. A number of
their precious drones had been found and destroyed, but he had changed the
settings on the rest, and many of these had yet to be discovered.

“Tell me about him,” said Kovonov.

“I don’t have perfect information. He’s
a high-ranking lieutenant with ISIS. Haji A
hmad al-Bilawy
. Don’t know what he was planning in the US, or how
he was captured. But I do know he’s been taken to a secret detention center in Knoxville,
Tennessee, which has been disguised as a civilian facility.”

Kovonov raised his eyebrows. Tennessee
was the last place he would expect to house a secret detention facility, which
is probably why it did.

“Knoxville?” he said. “Is that one
of Tennessee’s major cities, or in the middle of nowhere?”

“Both,” replied Mizrahi with a
smile. “Population of about two hundred thousand. Near the Great Smokey
Mountains.”

Kovonov shook his head. “That
doesn’t help,” he said. He now possessed fifteen PhDs worth of knowledge and
expertise, but US geography hadn’t been on the menu.

“It’s in the northeast corner of
the state. Just to the west of North Carolina.”

This still didn’t help him, but he
would go online and come up to speed the way Mizrahi had obviously done. “Tell
me about this detention facility,” said Kovonov.

“It’s being run, temporarily, by a PsyOps
lieutenant colonel named Stephen Hansen, an expert interrogator. He’s been
assigned to squeeze intel out of al-Bilawy, but he has a three-day leash. After
that al-Bilawy will be transferred to a Black site out of the country for further
handling.”

“Perfect!” said Kovonov.

Mizrahi beamed, a dog whose master
had patted its head.

Kovonov couldn’t believe how well
everything was coming together, and how quickly. He had gone from having all
the time in the world to having no time at all. Now he had to squeeze a week’s
worth of activities into a few days.

First, he would make a final
decision on a property and acquire it. Then he would finalize the hiring of numerous
mercenaries he would soon need as security and extra muscle. And this was only
the beginning.

“Great work, Yosef. But given this
discovery, I need to change plans. Leave me the info on this property you’ve
identified and I’ll check it out myself. I want you to leave now and get your
ass to Tennessee. Learn everything you can about Colonel Hansen and this
detention facility, starting with a search through Mossad databases.”

Kovonov had copied almost the
entirety of Mossad’s electronic files before he had left for Switzerland, and someone
like Hansen rated his own dossier if anyone did. Wortzman had once boasted that
the fly drone and hack-ware programs at the Mossad were so good they had better
files on American agents than did the Americans themselves.

“I want Hansen’s background,
habits, tendencies, whatever you can find. And why he’s with PsyOps and not
their High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group. Since it’s not a military base
he probably mingles in the community as a civilian when he isn’t on duty. Find
him. Follow him. Study him. I want to know how the facility is set up, how
prisoners are transferred, the chain of command, security
—
everything.”

“I won’t disappoint you, Dmitri,”
said Mizrahi.

You
already have!
he thought bitterly.
You
just don’t remember.
“I know you won’t, Yosef,” he said aloud. “I’ll join
you in, ah . . . Knoxville, as soon as I can. Probably before noon tomorrow.”

As soon as the call ended, Kovonov
dialed up a covert communications expert he had identified weeks before. A
freelancer whose work was as good as his price was high. He would have him go
to Knoxville immediately and purchase a home within a two-hour drive of the
city, on the secluded and defensible side if possible. But given that the man would
need to complete the transaction within a day or two, Kovonov couldn’t afford
to be choosy.

Then this freelancer would work his
magic on the site, setting up phone and video lines in such a way that they
would remain untraceable, thwarting even the most sophisticated military technology.

Kovonov felt electrified. He was in
the home stretch now.

He had been painstakingly twisting
and turning the faces of a Rubik’s cube this way and that since he had fled
Israel. But in less than a week, perhaps much less, all of the faces would have
uniform colors, the complex cube finally aligned to perfection, finally solved.

55

Carmilla sobbed for almost three
hours until she couldn’t sob any longer. She struggled to think clearly but
couldn’t push out the overwhelming despair that engulfed her like a Dementor
from a Harry Potter movie, draining her of all hope, happiness, and will to
live.

She told herself she was one of the
most accomplished scientists in the world, destined for a Nobel Prize. But this
didn’t help. She felt worthless, suffering wounds so deep they were beyond
healing, disillusionment the only possible reprieve.

But why was the chilling touch of
the Dementor so effective? Dmitri had revealed himself to be a monster. She had
done nothing to bring this on herself. He had used her like a dishrag and
disposed of her with utter malice. Wasn’t she better off that she had learned
his true nature? Hadn’t she dodged a bullet? Didn’t she still have
everything
to live for?

But somehow the answer to these
questions was
no
. Hope had been
drained from her, and along with it, all interest in life. She had to end it
all. It was the only way.

A memory of a train ride she had
taken with her parents as a little girl found its way into her consciousness.
They had been headed to New York, a city she had never visited before. Halfway
there the train had stopped on the tracks for seemingly no reason. After
fifteen minutes the conductor had finally come on the loudspeaker, explaining
they would soon be on their way and asking passengers not to look out of the
windows on the left side of the train.
 

Carmilla had been astonished by how
quickly every passenger on the train stampeded to the left side to do exactly what
they had been told not to do. It was a wonder the train didn’t capsize.

Carmilla had learned two important
lessons about human nature that day. The first was that curiosity was
overwhelmingly powerful, and by leaving his instructions vague, by creating an
unanswered mystery, the conductor had guaranteed a response that was the exact
opposite of what he was trying to achieve.

When Carmilla had looked out her
window, she had learned the second lesson. That suicide happened. That
sometimes human beings could lose so much hope, could so drown in despair, they
would put themselves in the path of a moving train.

Out of her window she had seen
police cars and an ambulance, and a gurney on which pieces of bloodied roadkill
were being assembled, only the shape of a pulverized head indicating that this
mass of flesh had once been a human.

The enormous power of the train
would not be denied. The rare man could survive a fall from a great height, a
gunshot wound to the head, or a stomach full of pills.

But no one who had picked a fight
with a train had ever lived to tell about it.

Carmilla’s thoughts returned to the
present and she asked the AI program on her phone for the most lightly traveled
road in the area with a railroad crossing, and the next train scheduled to
traverse it.

Her phone indicated that the train she
was after would arrive in thirty-five minutes, and she could make it in twenty.
She waited ten minutes and then shuffled to the garage like a zombie, hopeful
for the first time as she imagined the release that suicide would finally give
her.

She drove to the indicated intersection,
an access road through farmland, and noted that no one else was in sight. She
heard the faint sound of the train off in the distance, and decided she didn’t
have the strength to face it by herself the way the man in her youth had done.
She could only bring herself to do so inside the illusory protection of a steel
cocoon.

But this was an acceptable
alternative, she knew, as recent advances had come about that prevented
derailments except in the most extreme of circumstances.

She allowed herself to be
mesmerized by the steel behemoth racing along the tracks, bellowing louder and
louder as it approached. Finally, even though the train was still twenty
seconds away, she pulled across the main track and cut the engine. She knew
that at this point the millions of pounds of steel hurtling toward her could
not be stopped in time, even if she were spotted immediately,

She closed her eyes tightly. It
would be over soon.

The train had become so loud it
seemed to be charging through her head, and this was now mixed with an
ear-shattering screech of metal on metal as the conductor braked in a futile
effort to avoid a collision.

She braced herself for impact.

Her car was slammed into with bone-jarring
force.

But this had come almost ten
seconds too soon. And from an entirely unexpected direction.

Instead of the train goring the
side of her car, lifting it with its horns and sending it flying,
 
she had been rammed from
behind
.

Her car lurched forward from the
impact and her head slammed into the side window with a loud crack, missing the
now-deployed air bag entirely.

In her last instant of
consciousness her mind held only curiosity.

What would death be like?

And why would someone try to kill
her seconds before she managed to kill herself?