envelope. Although it had been shipped well before dawn, somebody still had to have been really hustling to get this package to Berlin so early in the morning.
Jon sat down on a comfortable blue sofa next to the window, ripped open the security seals, and spread the documents it contained across the surface of an ornate 1920s-style coffee table. One was a Canadian passport, also made out in the John Martin name with his picture. Scuffed, travel-stained, and well worn, it included smudged exit and entry stamps showing that he had visited a number of different countries in Europe?Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania?over the past several years. A packet of business cards identified him, in the Martin persona, as a resident scholar at an organization called the Burnett Institute, a privately held public-policy think tank based in Vancouver, British Columbia. A single piece of paper headed DESTROY AFTER READING held a brief biography of the fictional John Martin.
The envelope also contained a valid business visa for Russia, attesting that he had been invited to Moscow by a private firm for “consultations on comparative national health and social insurance systems.” And an enclosed itin-erary showed that he was booked on a Lufthansa flight to the Russian capital later that morning.
For a moment longer, Smith sat staring at the array of forged travel documents spread before him. Moscow? They were sending him to Moscow? Well, Daniel, old pal, he thought wryly, how do you like your first look at the lions’ den? Then he flipped open his cell phone.
Klein answered his call on the first ring. “Good morning, Jon,” the head of Covert-One said. “I assume that you’ve just received your new identity package?”
“Sound assumption, Chief,” Smith said drily. “Now, do you mind telling nie exactly what the hell is going on?”
“Not in the least,” Klein replied. His voice was deadly serious. “Consider mis a mission briefing. But before we begin, you should know that your orders come straight from the highest level.”
Meaning the president himself, Smith realized. Unconsciously, he sat up straighter. “Go ahead.”
He listened in growing astonishment while Klein ran through the list of dead or dying intelligence specialists, military leaders, and politicians in the U.S., its Western allies, and the smaller countries surrounding Russia. “My God,” he said when the other man finished. “No wonder my meeting with Petrenko stirred up such a hornet’s nest.”
“Yes,” Klein agreed. “That’s our evaluation, too.”
“And now you want me to dig into the first cases of this disease?the ones Petrenko told me about,” Smith guessed.
“Correct. If possible, we need hard data on its origin, mechanics, and methods of transmission,” Klein said. “And we need it soon. I have the unpleasant sensation that events are moving very fast just now.”
“That’s a pretty tall order, Fred,” Smith said quietly.
“I realize that. But you won’t be alone on this mission, Colonel,” Klein promised. “We already have a team in place?a very good one. They’re standing by for your arrival.”
“How do I make contact with them?”
“You have a reservation at the Hotel Budapest, not far from the Bolshoi Theater,” the head of Covert-One told him. “Check in and be at the bar there by seven this evening, local time. You should be approached before seven-thirty.”
“And how do I spot my counterpart?” Smith asked.
“You don’t,” Klein replied softly. “This will be a strictly one-way RV. You sit tight and wait. Your contact will identify you. The recognition word is tangent”
Jon felt his mouth go dry. A one-way rendezvous meant that he would fly into Russia without the names, covers, or even physical descriptions of the Covert-One agents based there. Klein was not taking any chances?even though Smith would be using the John Martin cover identity and not his own name. That way, if the Russian security services arrested him at the airport, he could not be forced to betray any other operative. In the circumstances, the procedure was a sensible precaution, but that somehow struck him as rather cold comfort.
“How solid is this Martin cover?” he asked tersely.
“Pretty solid under the circumstances,” the other man said. “If things go sour, it might hold up under pressure for around twenty-four hours, given decent luck.”
“So I guess the real trick is to avoid giving the boys in the Kremlin any reason to start chipping away at Mr. Martin’s fake Canadian resume?”
“That would be best,” Klein agreed levelly. “But remember that we’ll be standing by, ready to provide you with as much help as we can from this end.”
Smith nodded. “Understood.”
“Then good luck, Jon,” Klein said. “Report from Moscow as soon as possible.”
Captain Carlos Parilla, U.S. Army, kept his face carefully blank as he listened intently to the troubled voice on the other end of the phone. “Yes, yes, I understand, Vitaly,” he said when the caller finished speaking. “I will relay the news to my superiors at once. Yes, you’re absolutely right, this is a horrible development.”
He hung up and exhaled. “Jesus!”
His boss in the U.S. Embassy’s Defense Attache Office, a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, looked up from his computer in surprise. The straight-laced Parilla was known throughout the Kiev-based embassy staff for his refusal to swear or blaspheme, even under extreme stress. “What’s up, Carlos?”
“That was Vitaly Chechilo from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry,” Parilla reported grimly. “He says General Engler is in the hospital up in Chernihiv? in intensive care. It looks as though he’s contracted the same unknown bug that killed General Marchuk yesterday.”
The Marine colonel’s eyes widened. Brigadier General Bernard Engler was the head of the Special U.S. Military Mission, a team of American officers assigned to assist Ukraine in modernizing and reforming its defense forces.
Still worried by the scattered intelligence reports they had been receiving of unusual Russian military maneuvers near the border, Engler had gone up to Chernihiv yesterday to try to prod Marchuk’s lackluster successor, Lieutenant General Eduard Tymoshenko, into taking sensible precautionary measures.
The colonel picked up the phone and punched in a number. “Patch me through to the ambassador. Now.” He put one hand over the receiver and looked across the room at Parilla. “Contact the hospital in Chernihiv directly and get a confirmation on the general’s condition. Then pass the word along to the duty officer in Washington. We’re going to need a replacement out here pronto!”
Parilla nodded. With its commander ill and possibly dying, the American military mission here would be largely paralyzed. As a one-star general, Engler commanded a significant level of attention and respect inside Ukraine’s government and armed forces. His subordinates, mostly junior officers, did not carry the same amount of clout with their rank-conscious counterparts.
With potential trouble brewing along the Russo-Ukraine frontier, it was imperative that the Pentagon send someone else to fill the general’s post as soon as possible.
The Army captain frowned, checking the time in Washington, D.C. It was still the middle of the night there. Even under the best possible circumstances, the Pentagon bureaucracy might take days to sift through all the can- didates and name a replacement for Bernard Engler. Even a successor of the same rank and skill would need days, perhaps even weeks, to begin absorbing all the ins and outs of this country’s complicated military and civil affairs.
And until the new man found his feet, the job of coordinating U.S. and Ukrainian defense policies would be significantly more difficult.
Chapter Twelve
CIA officer Randi Russell sat wearily at the head of a large table deep inside the fortified U.S. Embassy in the Iraqi capital’s Green Zone. She fought down the sudden urge to rub her tired eyes. A secure satellite-link videoconference with the top brass at Langley was not a wise time to reveal ordinary human frailty. Phil Andriessen,
