wear and tear on expensive equipment that entails? And all because of a few paranoid whispers about the Russians? Utter madness. I really cannot imagine what Marchuk thought he was doing. The fever must have addled his brain.
Why, the fuel bills alone would be entirely prohibitive.”
With that, the new leader of the Ukrainian army’s Northern Operational Command spun crisply on his heel and strutted off, leaving Major Dmitry Polyakov staring after him in growing dismay.
Corporal Matthew Dempsey of the Pentagon’s police force whistled softly under his breath as he walked his night beat along the massive building’s quiet, labyrinthine corridors. This was his favorite shift. The Pentagon never really shut down and lights still glowed under some office doors, but much of the grinding daytime hustle and bustle faded in the hours right around midnight.
The small radio receiver fitted in his ear squawked suddenly. “Dempsey, this is Milliken.”
Dempsey spoke into his handheld radio. “Co ahead, Sarge.”
“Dispatch reports an emergency call from an office inside the DIA’s JCS
Support Directorate. Somebody in there just punched in 911, and then left the phone off the hook. The operator thinks she can hear someone breathing, but she can’t get anyone to respond. I want you to go check it out.”
Dempsey frowned. The Defense Intelligence Agency’s several Pentagon office suites were incredibly sensitive areas?ordinarily completely off-limits to anyone without at least a Top Secret clearance. He was authorized to override those restrictions if necessary, but doing so was going to raise one hell of a hornet’s nest. Even if this was just a false alarm, he’d be spending the next several hours filling out non-disclosure forms and being interrogated.
He sighed and trotted off down the corridor. “On my way.”
Dempsey paused outside the locked outer doors of the DIA section’s office complex. A light on the electronic security station there shone bright red.
Anyone trying to force their way through would automatically trigger alarms throughout the massive building. With another frown, he dug the shift-issued special police ID card out of his uniform pocket and ran it through the machine. The light shifted to yellow, indicating that he had been granted emergency permission to enter.
He pushed through the security doors and found himself in another hallway, this one leading deeper into the building. Several soundproofed glass doors opened onto this corridor. Silently now, the policeman moved faster toward the office his sergeant had identified as the source of the abortive 911 call, trying very hard not to look too closely at anything in the rooms he passed.
A painted sign on the door he was looking for read DIRECTORATE FOR CURRENT INTELLIGENCE?RUSSIA DIVISION. Dempsey knew enough about the different intelligence outfits to realize that the men and women who worked here were directly responsible for briefing the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs on all significant military and political developments. They were the top analysts charged with pulling together the bits and pieces of information gathered by human agents, from satellite photographs, and from intercepted radio, phone, and computer transmissions.
“Police!” he called out as he went inside. “Is anyone here? Hello?”
The corporal looked around carefully. The room was a tangle of desks, chairs, filing cabinets, and computers. The faint voice of the 91I operator still trying to get a response guided him toward a desk in the far corner.
Dozens of file folders and prints of satellite photographs lay strewn across the desk and the carpeted floor around it. Despite his best efforts, the corporal could not help reading the tags on some of them: 4TH GUARDS TANK DIVISION ? NARO-FOMINSK CANTONMENT, SIGNAL INTERCEPTS ?45TH SPETSNAZ BRIGADE, RIL TRAFFIC ANALYSIS ?MOSCOW MILITARY DISTRICT. Red warning stamps marked them all as being classified TOP SECRET or beyond.
Dempsey winced. Now he was in for it.
The computer on the desk hummed quietly to itself. A screen saver hid the contents of whatever document its owner had been working on and the police corporal was very careful not to touch anything around the machine. He looked down.
There, curled up next to an overturned chair, lay an older man. The skin on his face and neck was strangely mottled. He groaned once. His eyes flick-red partly open and then closed as he drifted in and out of consciousness.
He was still clutching the phone receiver in one hand. Clumps of his thick gray hair were falling out, revealing grotesque bald spots covered in a bright red rash.
Dempsey dropped to one knee, taking a closer look at the sick man. He felt for a pulse. It fluttered rapidly and irregularly under his fingertips. He swore once and grabbed his radio. “Sergeant, this is Dempsey! I need a medical team up here, pronto!”
The ornate pinnacles and towers of the Kotelnicheskaya apartment block soared high above the city, offering an unsurpassed view west across the Moscow River toward the red brick walls and golden domes and spires of the Kremlin. Dozens of satellite dishes and radio and microwave antennae sprouted from every relatively open space on its elaborate facade. Kotelnicheskaya was one of Stalin’s massive “Seven Sisters”?seven enormous high-rises built around Moscow during the 1950s to close what the increasingly power-mad dictator believed was a humiliating “skyscraper gap” with the United States.
Once home to Communist Party officials and heavy-industry bosses, the enormous high-rise now mostly housed wealthy foreigners and members of the new Russian governing and business elite?those able to afford the rents on luxury flats that ran several thousand American dollars a month. The very highest floors, those immediately below a towering central needle topped by a giant gleaming gold star, commanded prices beyond the reach of all but the richest and most powerful men. To bring in even more money, several apartments at the very top had been converted into high-prestige corporate offices.
A tall, powerfully built man stood at a window in one of those renovated penthouse office suites. There were strands of gray in his pale blond hair, a color matched by his ice-gray eyes. He frowned, staring out across the darkened city. The long winter night still held Moscow in its freezing grip, but the sky overhead was turning faintly paler.
A secure phone chirped suddenly on the desk next to him. A digital read-out attached to the phone blinked to life, identifying the caller. He swung round and picked it up. “This is Moscow One. Go ahead.”
“This is Prague One,” a muffled, nasal-sounding voice said. “Petrenko is dead.”
The blond-haired man smiled. “Good. And the materials he stole from the hospital? The case files and biological samples?”
“Gone,” Prague One reported grimly. “They were in a briefcase that went into the river along with Petrenko.”
“Then the matter is closed.”
“Not quite,” the caller said slowly. “Before we caught up with him, Petrenko had arranged a rendezvous with another doctor, an American attending the same conference. They were talking together when we jumped them.”
“And?”
“The American broke free of our ambush,” Prague One admitted reluctant]}. “The Czech police have him in protective custody.”
The blond-haired man’s eyes narrowed. “How much does he know?”
The man known as Prague One swallowed hard. “I’m not sure. We think Petrenko managed to tell him something about the deaths before we arrived.
We’re also fairly sure that the Russian was planning to hand over the medical files and samples to him.”
Moscow One tightened his grip on the phone. “And just who is this interfering American?” he snapped.
“His name is Jonathan Smith,” the other man said. “According to the conference records, he’s a military doctor?a lieutenant colonel?assigned to one of their medical research institutes as a disease specialist.”
Smith? The blond-haired man frowned. He had the fleeting impression that he had heard that name before,
