Smith thought for a moment. “London, sir. That's where I get off.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
With puffs of blue tire smoke and the stink of superheated brakes, American 1710 touched down at London's Heathrow Airport. Per instructions from the Special Air Service commander, the pilot informed his passengers that a mechanical problem had developed with the jetway assigned to their gate. The control tower was rerouting them to another part of the field where ramps could be rolled up against the hatches.
The flight attendants passed through the first- and business-class cabins, reassuring passengers that they would make their connecting flights.
“What about the continuation to Dulles?” Treloar asked.
“Our time on the ground will be as brief as possible,” the steward replied.
Treloar prayed that he was right. The nitrogen charges inside the canister were good for another twelve hours. The stop at Heathrow was usually ninety minutes; the flying time to Dulles, six hours fifteen minutes. After customs and immigration, he would have a three-hour window to get the smallpox into a refrigerated facility. There was little room for the unforeseen.
Stepping out onto the ramp, Treloar discovered that the aircraft was parked next to a giant maintenance hangar. As he descended the steps, he saw baggage carts being loaded and two airport buses idling near the hangar doors. At the bottom of the steps, a pleasant young customs officer invited him to step into the hangar, which was set up as a temporary processing and in-transit facility.
As Treloar and his fellow travelers shuffled along, they had no idea that hard eyes tucked against sniperscopes were scrutinizing their every move. They could not have guessed that the young men in customs and immigration uniforms, along with the baggage handlers, bus drivers, and maintenance people, were all heavily armed undercover SAS operatives.
Just before Treloar disappeared through the door leading into the hangar, he heard a high-pitched shriek. Turning, he saw a trim, executive jet land gracefully on the runway two hundred yards away. He imagined that it belonged to an obscenely wealthy entrepreneur, or to some sheik, never suspecting that inside the Ilyushin C-22 a man was, at that moment, receiving a detailed description of him from a sniper who happened to have Treloar's forehead in his crosshairs.
“The Brits say that 1710 is clean, sir.”
Klein's voice whistled through the secure link. “I got the same report. You should have heard Kirov when I gave him the news. All hell's breaking loose in Moscow.”
Sitting in the parked Ilyushin, Smith continued to watch the activity around the American 767. “What about St. Petersburg?”
“Kirov's compiling a list of all flights that have left up to now. He's scrambling to get the terminal's departure tapes, as well as putting men on the ground to start interviewing employees.”
Smith bit his lip. “It's all taking too long, sir. With every hour, Beria gets farther and farther away.”
“I know. But we can't hunt until we have a target.” Klein paused. “What's your next move?”
“There's nothing I can do in London. I asked American to get me on 1710 and they obliged. It's scheduled to leave in about seventy-five minutes. That'll put me in Washington sooner than if I were to wait for military transport.”
“I don't like the idea of your being without a secure link.”
“The flight deck crew will know that I'm onboard, sir. If there's any word from Moscow, you can radio the plane.”
“Under the circumstances, that'll have to do. In the meantime, try to get some rest on the flight. This thing is just getting started.”
Anthony Price was in his expansive office on the sixth floor of the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland. As deputy director, Price was responsible for the agency's day-to-day operations. Right now, that meant keeping his staff on top of the situation in Moscow. So far, the Russians were sticking with the story that Chechen rebels were responsible for the massacre ? which suited Price just fine. It gave him a legitimate reason to cover the incident. And the longer the Russians chased the phantom terrorists, the easier it would be for Beria and Treloar to slip through the net.
Price looked up when he heard the knock on his door. “Come in.”
Price's senior analyst, a stout young woman with a librarian's fussy air about her, entered.
“The latest update from our resources on the ground in Moscow, sir,” she said. “Seems that General Kirov is very concerned about some surveillance video out of Sheremetevo in Moscow.”
Price felt a constriction in his chest but managed to keep his voice level. “Really? Why? Who's on the tape?”
“No one knows. But for some reason the Russians red-flagged it. Apparently the video is very poor.”
Price's mind was racing. “That's it?”
“For now, sir.”
“I want you to stay on top of that video. Anyone hears word one about it, I want to know.”
“Yes, sir.”
After the analyst left, Price turned to his computer and called up the flights coming into Dulles. There was only one reason that the Russians would be so interested in the video surveillance tapes: Beria had been seen with somebody. And that person could only be Adam Treloar.
American 1710 was scheduled to arrive in a little over six hours. Russian photo analysis and enhancement was hardly state of the art. It would take their machines hours to float up images. By that time, 1710 should be on the ground and Adam Treloar would be safe.
Price sat back in his executive leather chair, removed his glasses, and tapped a stem against his front teeth. The situation in Moscow had degenerated into a near-fiasco. That Beria had escaped the carnage at the train station was nothing short of miraculous. Equally amazing was the fact that he'd gotten to Sheremetevo in time to hand off the smallpox to Adam Treloar.
But the surveillance cameras had caught a connection between the two men. Kirov had the connection. As soon as he'd reconstructed Treloar's picture, he would run it against the customs and immigration databanks. He would discover exactly when Treloar had entered and left Russia. He would alert the CIA and FBI liaisons at the embassy.
Then we'd start running Treloar to ground, if for no other reason than he was seen with Beria… But does Kirov suspect that Treloar is the actual courier?
Price didn't think so. So far, everything indicated that the hunt was centered on Beria. And the Russians were getting close. The bulletins coming in from NSA assets in St. Petersburg indicated intense counterintelligence activity in there.
Price pulled up another set of arrivals. There it was, the Finnair flight, five hours out of Dulles. Could the Russians pull together their information and confirm that Beria had flown out of St. Petersburg? If they sounded the alarms, how long would it take FBI to throw a net over Dulles?
Not long.
“That's all the time you have, friend,” Price said to the screen.
Reaching for the phone, he punched in Richardson's secure number. The master plan had called Beria's presence in the United States a contingency. But with the exposure of Treloar inevitable, that status was about to change.
Major-General Kirov had been on his feet for the better part of twenty-four hours. Painkillers, Lara Telegin's unspeakable betrayal, and an insatiable desire to find Ivan Beria kept him going.
Staring out his office window at the gathering twilight, Kirov reviewed the situation. In spite of what he had told Klein, the search for Beria was still concentrated in Moscow. He had listened to what the American had had to
