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.
Chapter Sixteen
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?”
One of his subordinates, like him a former Stasi officer, came in carrying a file folder. The slim, hatchet-faced man looked worried. “I think we have a new security breach,” he said tightly. “A serious one.”
Brandt frowned slightly. Gerhard Lange was not ordinarily a man prone to a show of nerves. “In what way?”
“These were transmitted by the team conducting surveillance on that American reporter,” Lange told him, opening the folder and fanning out a set of black-and-white images across his desk. They showed the American woman talking animatedly with a lean, dark-haired man. “Those pictures were taken roughly two hours ago, during what appeared to be a clandestine rendezvous at Patriarch’s Pond.”
“And?”
“See for yourself.” Lange slid another document across the desk. “This was just faxed by one of our informants.”
The sheet was a summary of a U.S. Army service record?that of Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith, M.D. It included a blurry, slightly-out-of-focus photograph.
Brandt stared down at the picture. Silently, he compared it to the images taken by his surveillance team. He scowled. There was no possible doubt. This was the same man. Smith was in Moscow?and he was in contact with the freelance journalist whose persistent inquiries were causing them concern.
The blond-haired man shivered slightly. Despite his solemn pledge to Alexei Ivanov, HYDRA’s operational security was continuing to fray around the edges.
He looked up from the damning pictures. “Where is Smith staying?”
Lange shook his head wearily. “That is our first problem. We don’t know.
We’ve checked the passenger manifests from every airport and railway station in the Moscow region. His name does not appear on any of them.”
Brandt sat down behind his desk. “So Smith arrived here under a cover identity,” he mused. “And he is using forged documents that were solid enough to deceive the Russian immigration authorities.”
“Almost certainly,” Lange agreed. “Which makes him a spy, either for the CIA or for one of the other American intelligence organizations.”
The blond-haired man nodded grimly. “So it seems.”
“The FSB could help us,” Lange suggested tentatively. “If we had access to the Interior Ministry’s passport registration forms for the past couple of days, we could run a search program to cross-index Smith’s picture with ? “
“And hand our Russian friends the excuse they need to take over this end of the HYDRA operation?” Brandt shook his head. “No, Gerhard. We’ll manage this matter ourselves. I do not want the FSB, especially Ivanov’s Thirteenth Directorate, involved in any way, shape, or form. Not yet. Clear?”
Lange nodded reluctantly. “Clear enough.”
“Good.” Brandt glanced through the photos taken by his surveillance team again. He tapped one showing the two Americans deep in conversation. “This journalist, Ms. Devin, is the key to finding Smith. He’s contacted her once.
He’s almost sure to do so again. Where is she right now?”
The other man shrugged gloomily. “That’s our second problem. We’ve lost her.”
Brandt stared back at him. “Lost her? How?”
“After meeting Smith, she led Wegner and Chernov on a merry chase across half of Moscow,” Lange reported. “First by doubling back on different Metro lines a couple of times, and then finally by ducking into the shops inside the Petrovskiy Passage. They think she may have changed her hat or coat to alter her appearance and then slipped away unnoticed in the crowds.”
Brandt nodded stiffly. In a city this size, there were any number of ways to shake off a tail ?if you knew you were being followed and if you knew what you were doing.
“They’re headed back to her flat, hoping to regain contact,” Lange went on carefully. “But she may have gone to ground.”
“Quite probably,” Brandt growled. He frowned. “Two years ago, she managed to elude several Mafiya hit teams, all while operating on her own. This woman may be an amateur, but she is most assuredly not a fool. She probably spotted Wegner and Chernov following her. By now, she’s undoubtedly safely tucked away in a hotel somewhere, or staying with friends.”
Lange sighed. “If so, we’re left with no effective way to track down Smith.
Whether you like it or not, we will have to request assistance from the Thirteenth Directorate.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” Brandt said, thinking hard. “We have an alternative.”
The other man looked puzzled.
“Smith is here for a purpose,” Brandt reminded him. “And we know what that purpose must be, correct?”
Lange nodded slowly. “He’s trying to learn what Petrenko wanted to tell him in Prague. Or worse, gather evidence to verify what Petrenko did tell him.”
“Exactly.” Brandt showed his teeth. “Tell me, Gerhard, what is the best way to hunt a wild animal, especially a dangerous predator?”
His subordinate said nothing.
“Water is the key,” Brandt told him. “All animals must drink. So you find its watering place and then yon wait, with your rifle at the reach, for the creature to come to yon.”
I le pushed aside the surveillance photos and Smith’s service record and paged through the materials stacked neatly on his desk, looking for a printout of the most recent message from Wnlf Renke. The scientist had sent him the list he had asked for at their last meeting ?the names of the other doctors and scientists in Moscow whose knowledge of the first HYDRA onthreak could prove dangerous.
Brandt handed Renke’s list to Lange with a thin-lipped smile. “Somewhere on here is the American’s watering hole. Focus first on anyone who attended international conferences where they might have met Colonel Smith. Sooner or later, he will have to contact one of those men or women. And when he does, we’ll be there ahead of him, waiting to make our kill.”
Located on the shared border of the New Arbat and Tverskaya districts, the Kafe Karetny Dvor occupied a charming older building, a rare survivor ot the drab concrete excesses of Soviet-era urban redevelopment. The Moscow Zoo and another of Stalin’s mammoth “Seven Sisters,” the Kudrinskava apartment high-rise, were close by, just on the other side of the wide Sadovaya Ring road. On hot summer evenings, the restaurant’s patrons sat outside in its shaded interior courtyard, eating salads and drinking wine or vodka or beer.
In colder weather, customers savored the spicy Azerbaijani cuisine served in its intimate, warm, and cheerful dining rooms filled with green, hanging plants.
