Chapter Twenty-Five
Jon Smith reacted instantly to the sound of a soft knock on the apartment’s front door. Rising from the sofa where he had been trying to catch up on his sleep, he scooped up the 9mm Makarov from the coffee table, thumbed the safety off, and yanked back on the slide to chamber a round. Then he swung around with the pistol extended in both hands, ready to fire. He breathed out, calming himself as he steadied his aim. The Makarov’s front and rear sights settled on the center of the door and stayed there.
With her own weapon held at the ready, Fiona Devin came ghosting in from the bedroom, moving cat-quiet on her bare feet across the scuffed hard-wood floor. “Who is it?” she called out in Russian, altering the tenor of her voice to imitate the quaver of an old woman.
A man answered her, his voice muffled by the heavy wood door. “It’s me, Oleg.”
Smith relaxed slightly. He recognized Kirov’s voice. More important, by using only his first name the Russian had signaled them that it was safe. If he had identified himself fully, he would have been warning them that he was acting under duress, as a prisoner of either the Moscow militia or of anyone else who might be hunting for them.
Slowly, Smith lowered his Makarov and put the safety back on. Fiona did the same with her weapon and then went forward to unlock and unbolt the door.
The tall, barrel-chested Russian came in quickly, carrying a pair of heavy suitcases. His silver eyebrows rose when he saw the pistols in their hands. “You are nervous?” he asked. Then he nodded grimly. “And so you should be.”
“What’s up?”
Kirov set the suitcases down and moved to the nearest window. He pulled back the drapes a bit. “Come and see for yourselves,” he suggested, nodding at the street below.
Smith and Fiona joined him.
Cars and delivery trucks were backed up all along the bridge across the Vodootvodny Canal. Militiamen in gray overcoats and peaked caps were moving in pairs from vehicle to vehicle, bending down to examine papers and ask questions of each driver. A squad of soldiers armed with assault rifles and clad in winter-pattern camouflage uniforms stood guard at the nearest intersection.
“Ministry of the Interior troops,” Kirov said coolly. “From what I’ve seen, there are checkpoints going up at most of the key intersections and outside the more important Metro transfer stations.”
“Damn,” Smith muttered. He glanced at the other man. “What’s the official reason they’re giving?”
Kirov shrugged. “According to the news, this is just part of a routine security sweep for suspected Chechen terrorists. But I managed to get close enough to one of the checkpoints to see what they were using to sift through the crowds.” He looked back at the two Americans. “The militia have copies of your passport photos.”
Fiona sighed. “It was only a matter of time, I suppose.”
“Yes,” Kirov said soberly. “And now we must face facts. We cannot delay any longer. Both of you need new papers?with new faces and new names.”
Smith stared back at him, struck by something the other man had just said.
A faint possibility stirred far back in his mind, something that was more the vague hint of an idea than anything really solid. But then, as other small fragments of evidence started tumbling neatly into place, this new theorv of his began taking on a dazzling form and substance, like a smoldering ember whipped into flame by the wind.
His eves widened. “Names,” he said abrupt!}’. “That’s the link we’ve been missing. We’ve all been wondering why so many people were killed to prevent us from getting our hands on those case notes. Well, maybe the answer has been staring us right in the face all along.”
“Exactly what are you talking about, Colonel?” Fiona asked quietly.
Kirov’s face mirrored her incomprehension.
On fire with his new theory, Jon led them back to the coffee table.
“Names,” he said again, fanning out the sheaf of typed papers and their scrawled translations. With a red pencil, he swiftly circled certain sections of the papers. “See for yourselves. That’s what Elena’s notes contain … the names of the victims of the first outbreak. And their families. And their addresses. Right1”
The other two nodded slowly, still clearly unsure of where he was leading them.
“Look,” Smith explained. “Somehow, somewhere, there has to be a connection between those who died and between their families. A connection that could give us a better understanding of how this new disease works and where it comes from.”
Fiona frowned. “I don’t see it, Colonel.” She shook her head. “You’ve already pointed out that there isn’t anv clear link between those poor people-no friendships, no family ties, nothing that would explain why thev fell ill and died so horribly.”
Smith nodded. “That’s true. Elena, Valentin Petrenko, and the other Russian scientists studying the outbreak were completely unable to identify any ordinary connection between the four victims.” He tapped the notes again. “But what if the link between them is something more subtle, maybe a shared genetic or other biochemical trait?some weakness or preexisting condition that made them especially vulnerable to this new disease?”
“Do you really believe it might be possible to discover this shared trait?” Kirov asked. “Even now?”
Smith nodded again. “Yes, I do.” He looked at the other man. “But it won’t be easy. First, we’ll have to find a way to interview the families of the victims.
If we can persuade them to let us take blood, tissue, and DNA samples, a series of lab tests ought to be able to pinpoint any areas of similarity.”
“And somehow you plan to do all of these things while you and Ms. Devin are on the Kremlin’s Most Wanted list?” Kirov commented drily.
“Yep, that’s about the size of it.” Smith forced a grin onto his lean face.
“What’s that old saying? Something like ‘If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have signed on to be a soldier’? Well, we all signed on the dotted line, so I guess this is where we start earning our pay.”
Set in and around a forest and several small but beautiful lakes, the Grunewald district was one of Berlin’s most elite and expensive suburbs. The older houses here were set far apart from each other, surrounded by immaculately landscaped grounds, stone walls, hedges, and patches of woodland.
A small utility truck in the red-and-white colors of Deutsche Telekom, the German telephone company, was parked along Hagenstrasse, one of the wider residential streets in the Grunewald. It was very late in the afternoon and the pale winter sun, already low on the horizon, threw long black shadows across the road. It was bitterly cold and very few people were out and about in the frosty air. A paunchy jogger, wrapped up in the rhythms of the music pulsing through his headphones, puffed across the street in front of the truck and kept going, grimly focused on finishing his doctor-ordered exercise. He soon vanished in the growing darkness among the trees. An elderly couple, out for an afternoon stroll, tottered past, tugging their unhappy, shivering terrier behind them. Then they too turned a corner and were gone.
Inside the truck cab, Randi Russell sat slouched behind the steering wheel.
She wore thin leather gloves, a plain black baseball cap to hide her short blond hair, and drab gray workman’s coveralls that concealed her slender figure. She checked her watch impatiently. How much longer was she going have to wait?
One side of Randi’s generous mouth twisted upward in a wry grin as she looked down at her gloves. If she had to sit here idly much longer, she might just be tempted to start chewing through the leather just to get at her finger-nails.
“The servants are on the move,” a young woman’s voice reported suddenly in her headset. “Looks like they’re finally heading out for the day.”
Randi sat up straighter, watching an old, dented Audi pull slowly out of the driveway not far ahead of her. The pair of illegal Slovak immigrants that Ulrich Kessler paid to clean his house, cook his meals, and maintain his garden were on their way home to their own flea-ridden flat on the far side of Berlin.
The Audi turned left on Hagenstrasse and drove off past her truck. Her eyes followed its taillights in her side
