Rules of Vengeance (46 page)

With a hard-earned discipline, she laid out possible reasons for the elevated security presence. Pierre Bertels at the International Nuclear Safety Corporation had discovered she was not Anna Scholl but an impostor. The British police had tracked down Russell’s source. Papi’s plan had been uncovered inside the Kremlin and he had admitted everything. They all came down to the same thing: the operation was blown.

Applying the same cold logic, she parsed each possibility and discarded it in turn. Given Pierre Bertels’s desire to bed her, it was doubtful that he had questioned her identity even for a second. Anna Scholl was safe. Second, even if the British police had tracked down Russell’s source, they would have obtained no more information than Russell had. An attack was imminent, but the location was unknown. It could be anywhere in the world. And even if Papi’s enemies in Moscow had discovered the plan, they would be unsure how to act, effectively paralyzed.

Emma studied the military vehicles and realized that they were there simply as a precaution because of the stolen laptops. If anything, the presence of armored vehicles with no supporting troops was proof that the plan was intact. If anyone had known, or even
suspected
, for that matter, that La Reine was the target, there would have been twenty armored personnel carriers at the guard post, not two, and an entire brigade of soldiers armed to the teeth.

Emma pressed her foot on the accelerator, harder this time.

She passed the armored vehicles and stopped at the guard post. “Anna Scholl,” she said, handing over her credentials. “IAEA.”

“Who are you here to see?”

“Flash inspection. Phone M. Grégoire, your chief of security.”

“Wait here,” said the guard, with more hostility than she would have liked. He took the identification card issued the day before by the International Nuclear Safety Corporation into his shed and phoned the main security building. Emma glanced to her left. The turret gunner was staring at her through a pair of reflective sunglasses. Emma nodded, but did not smile. The gunner’s gaze never left her.

Several minutes passed. Emma lifted her hand an inch off the stick shift and held it steady. Her fingers hovered without the slightest tremor.

Finally the guard returned. “Continue three hundred meters and park in the visitor lot on your left. Go into the central processing facility. M. Grégoire hasn’t come in yet, but there will be someone else to look after you.”

“I do hope so.” Emma returned her identification to her purse, waited for the gate to open, then drove at a leisurely pace to the parking lot. On the way she glimpsed the paramilitary barracks to her left. Besides the jeeps and the trucks, there was a single police car belonging to the local gendarmerie. More proof that they had no idea La Reine was her target.

She parked and walked briskly to the central processing facility. Once inside, she showed her INSC “passport,” and placed her hand on a biometric scanner to confirm her identity. The scanner confirmed her identity as Anna Scholl and she was directed to a metal detector, while her purse was placed on a conveyor belt and X-rayed. When the purse emerged, a guard sifted through its contents, examining the pliers and screwdriver and clips, along with her iPod, cell phone, lipstick, and other makeup.

“You’re an engineer?” he asked, holding up the pliers.

“Inspector,” replied Emma.

The guard replaced the pliers, handed her the purse, and wished her a good day.

An intense-looking middle-aged man wearing rimless glasses and sporting a 1950s brush cut waited on the other side of the barrier.

“Good morning, Miss Scholl. My name is Alain Royale, and I am M. Grégoire’s assistant. He hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m sure he’ll be here any minute. He’s never late. You can wait in his office while I have your site badge and key card made.”

Emma followed the man upstairs into Grégoire’s office. There were a large desk, some chairs for visitors, and a couch. Behind the desk was a bank of monitors showing two dozen locations inside the power plant. Emma recognized the main entrance, the control room, the reactor vessel, the outdoor loading docks, and, of particular interest, the spent-fuel pond.

“I’d like to get started right away,” she said. “I’m sure you know why.”

Royale nodded. “We received the alert at three this morning. Have you heard anything more?”

“Nothing. Naturally, you’ll be the first to know when we do,” replied Emma briskly. “Our security team is on top of the matter. What’s important is that the individual plants take appropriate measures. I have some paperwork to do before I begin my physical inspection. Would you mind if I use M. Grégoire’s office?”

“Be my guest.”

Emma set down her purse on Grégoire’s desk. “To get started, I’d like a delivery manifest of all fuel assemblies entering the plant and spent-fuel assemblies shipped out during the last powering-down cycle. I’ll also need a list of where the spent fuel was sent and signed proof of its receipt.”

Royale nodded again, his suspicious eyes never leaving her. “Coffee?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

Again the hard stare. “It will be ten minutes.”

Emma nodded and Royale left the office. She sat down in the visitor’s chair facing the desk and took out her phone. She counted to thirty seconds. On the dot, Royale opened the door and popped his brush-cut head into the office. “If the spent fuel was sent overseas, do you need customs forms?”

“That won’t be necessary. Just the receipt showing time and date the delivery was made. Thank you, M. Royale.”

Emma returned her attention to her phone. As soon as the door closed, she stood and placed her ear to it, listening as Royale’s footsteps echoed down the hallway. She opened her purse, took out the pliers, screwdriver, and alligator cables, and slipped into the corridor. The door to her right was marked “Sécurité Visuele.” She slid a graphite pick from her hair and jimmied the door.

Inside was rack upon rack of audiovisual equipment and DVD recorders. The room was unusually cool, with a steady current of air conditioning preventing the equipment from overheating. Two walls were taken up by a multiplex of monitors broadcasting live pictures from 150 locations inside the plant complex. Closer examination revealed that the monitors on each wall broadcast the same pictures. Or nearly the same. In fact, two cameras were positioned at every location. One belonged to Électricité de France, the company that managed the plant. The other was the property of the IAEA and served as an independent backup. As with every other system governing the safe function of a nuclear plant, redundancy was the watchword.

Using her phone, Emma accessed the schematic drawings showing the visual feeds into the central processing facility. One fiber optic delivered all the images from the IAEA’s cameras. Another delivered the pictures from the plant’s own cameras. It was essential that no one see her on her rounds inside the complex. To that end, she cut the cable delivering the feed from the plant’s own cameras and spliced it onto that delivering the feed from the IAEA’s cameras. A check of the monitors confirmed that the pictures mirrored each other perfectly.

Next she froze the image processor so that the pictures were no longer being broadcast live but showed only a single static moment. Emma ran her eyes over the monitors for telltale signs indicating that the picture was a snapshot. In only two of the monitors were there human beings. One camera was aimed at the security guard manning the post at the outer perimeter fence. As usual, he was seated inside his booth. He might sit like this for long periods at a stretch. Nothing odd there.

The other feed showed the reactor control room, where four men stood in front of a giant bank of instruments. This was more problematic. One only needed to study the picture for ten seconds to begin willing them to move. It wasn’t natural for four individuals to stand frozen like mannequins. Still, there were 148 other monitors to study.

It came down to time. Emma couldn’t risk resetting the pictures. It would have to do as it was.

Emma opened the door and returned to Grégoire’s office. Hurriedly she dumped her tools back into her purse. A moment later the door opened and Alain Royale returned, carrying a pair of notebooks under one arm. “The manifests,” he said.

“Put them on the table,” said Emma.

Royale did as he was told.

“Still no word from M. Grégoire?” asked Emma.

Royale shook his head.

“I hope you understand that I’m not allowed to wait,” said Emma, in a sufficiently authoritative voice. “I like my inspections to begin promptly at shift change. I can’t have word getting out that I’m on site.”

“I’m sure he’ll be in any moment. I know he would want to say hello.”

“We’ll have ample opportunity to discuss my findings once I complete my inspection. In the interim, I’m sure he knows how to find me should he be so inclined.”

Alain Royale handed Emma her site badge, instructing her to wear it around her neck at all times. “And here is your key card. Swipe it downward quickly and the doors will unlock. Is there anything else?”

“No, thank you,” said Emma, slipping the key card into her pocket. Out the window, she had a clear view of the large reactor dome, and beyond it the Atlantic Ocean. “This will be more than enough.”

   In London, sunrise came two minutes earlier, at 5:40 Greenwich Mean Time. In room 619 of the intensive care floor of St. Catharine’s Hospital, the first shaft of light dodged the drawn curtains and fell squarely upon the brow of the sleeping patient. He was a hard-looking man, with tousled black hair, a Roman nose, and a dense stubble darkening his hollow cheeks. In repose he maintained a formidable presence, a coiled animal-like tension that gave the impression that at any moment he might leap from the bed and attack. Everyone on the floor knew of the man and his reputation. They were right to be frightened.

But the patient did not move. Even as the minutes passed and the sunlight grew brighter and slanted across his eyes, he did not stir. For almost ninety-six hours, Russian Interior Minister Igor Ivanov had lain in a coma. Though he bore no visible wounds, the examining neurologists all agreed that he had suffered a terrible trauma caused by the concussive wave of the bomb blast that had killed a number of his countrymen. By now the patient’s vital signs had returned to normal. His blood pressure measured an admirable 120 over 70. His heart rate was an athlete’s 58 beats per minute. His bloodwork showed his cholesterol to be below average and his testosterone to be far above it. The same physicians concurred that it was the patient’s excellent level of fitness that had allowed him to survive such a heinous injury in the first place and kept him alive ever since.

A nurse entered the room and began her daily ministrations. She drew the curtains, lifted the patient’s head and plumped his pillow, then checked his urine bag and made sure that his catheter was properly in place. As usual, she lingered on this last task a second or two longer than was necessary. She was a devout Catholic girl, and though she had worked in the hospital for over a year now, she had rarely seen such a gifted endowment. She smiled, ashamed of herself, but only a little.

It was then that the frighteningly powerful hand grasped her arm and she cried out meekly.

“Next time,” said Igor Ivanov, his voice remarkably strong despite the hours of sleep, “please knock before you enter. And if you want to have a look, just ask.”

The nurse covered her mouth and fled the room.

Ivanov set his head on the pillow and closed his eyes. The mild exertion had left him with a headache and surprisingly fatigued. Still, he could already feel strength returning to his limbs. In a few hours he would be bristling with impatience. He decided that by six o’clock that evening, he would be on a plane to Moscow.

The doctors were wrong about what had kept him alive and prevented him from drifting ever after in a coma’s eternal netherworld. It was not his fitness. It was anger.

Igor Ivanov knew well and good who had done this to him.

And he wanted payback.

   They formed lines on both sides of the hallway, each with six policemen clad in assault gear, backs to the wall, with Graves and Ford pulling up the rear. Black Panthers were permitted to carry weapons of their own choosing. The first man in line clutched a Benelli semiautomatic twelve-gauge shotgun. The second followed with a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. The strategy was blast and spray. And God help whoever was on the receiving end. The rest of them held pistols at the ready to fire on more precise targets.

The captain gave the signal to go forward. A policeman carrying a Remington Wingmaster ran down the hall and aimed the rifle at the door. The captain raised his gloved hand. His fingers counted down: five… four… three… two…

“Ready?” whispered Kate.

Graves nodded.

An earsplitting bang rent the hallway. The door careened off its hinges and slammed to the floor. There was a flash and a concussive change in the air pressure as the stun grenades exploded. One, then another. Smoke flooded the hallway. By now Graves was running into the apartment, his pistol extended, eyes watering. Someone was shouting, first in French, then in a language he couldn’t understand.

“Arrêtez! Arrêtez! Bougez pas!”

Shotgun blasts fired in rapid succession. Graves’s ears rang painfully. He registered the apartment in static frames. A run-down kitchen. A living room with threadbare furniture. The crate of machine guns. And another larger crate next to it, with the words “Property of Italian Armed Forces. Semtex-H. 50 kg.” It was the Semtex that Emma Ransom had stolen from the barracks near Rome. He heard a scream. He turned a corner to see a slew of black uniforms tackling someone to the ground. It was a man with gray hair, and he struggled fiercely, shouting something in a language Graves recognized but at first did not understand.

A staccato burst from an automatic weapon forced Graves to spin and look behind him. Pieces of drywall scattered through the air, clipping his face and neck. He ducked instinctively. The policeman next to him went down, half his face blown away. Graves leveled his gun at a woman who stood facing him, an AK-47 held in her hands. He squeezed the trigger, but before he could get off more than one round, there was another blast and another, and the woman was blown across the room and slammed high onto a wall. Graves looked and saw the French police captain, the Benelli shotgun pressed to his cheek.