to convey my sincere regrets and deepest apologies for the terrible damage accidentally caused by this catastrophic explosion on board one of our COSMOS-class weather satellites.”
“Do you think the Americans will believe you?”
Nestrenko shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. What is most important is that they cannot possibly launch a replacement for their wrecked radar spy satellite in time. Soon, very soon, we will no longer be forced to care so much about what the Americans believe. Or what they may do.”
It was still early in the morning when a uniformed Secret Service agent ushered Fred Klein into the president’s den upstairs in the East Wing. The room, full of old books, prints of works by Fredric Remington and Georgia O’Keeffe, and photographs of the rugged New Mexico landscape, was all Castilla’s own ?his private refuge from the routine frenzy of the White House’s more public spaces.
The president himself sat in one of the room’s two large recliners, moodily paging through the morning intelligence brief. A tray nearby held his untouched breakfast. He motioned toward the other chair. “Sit down, Fred.”
Klein obeved.
Wearilv, Castilla pushed the pile of papers aside and turned to his old friend. “Has there been any more news from Smith or the others in Moscow?”
“Not yet,” Klein told him. “But I expect another report in a matter of hours at most.”
Tire president nodded somberly. “Good. Because I’m going to need as much information as I can get ?and I’m going to need it very soon. Certainly within the next forty-eight hours.”
Klein raised an eyebrow.
“I’m more and more convinced that whatever the Russians are planning is coining up fast,” Castilla explained. “Which means that our window for heading them off is closing even faster.”
“Yes, sir,” the head of Covert-One agreed. If the rumors Smith and Fiona Devin had picked up about the accelerating tempo of Russian military preparations were accurate, the U.S. and its allies would already be hard- pressed to react in time.
“I’m calling a secret meeting with high-level representatives of some of our closest allies,” Castilla told him. “Those who still pack a respectable military punch ?the UK, France, Germany, and Japan, for a start. I want us to forge a united response to the Kremlin, a series of concrete measures that will force Dudarev to back down before he pulls the trigger on whatever operation he’s planning.”
“When?” Klein asked quietly.
“The morning of February 22,” the president said. “I don’t see how we can afford to wait any longer than that.”
Klein frowned. “That’s a very tight deadline,” he said at length. “I don’t know that I can promise concrete results by then.”
Castilla nodded. “I understand. But that’s all the time we have left, Fred.
Believe me, I’m making the same impossible demands of everyone else. At the NSC meeting last night, I ordered the redirection of every other component of our national intelligence capability?spy satellites, signals intercept stations, and whatever agent networks we still have?onto the same mission.
When our allies show up in the Oval Office, I need solid and convincing evidence of Russia’s aggressive intentions.”
“And if we can’t get it for you in time?”
The president sighed. “Then I’ll go ahead with the meeting anyway, but I won’t kid myself. Without something more than my own fears and a few vague hints of trouble, the odds are very much against anvone else being willing to join us in facing down Moscow.”
Klein nodded tightly. “I’ll relay the critical time frame to Colonel Smith as soon as I can.”
“You do that,” Castilla said softly. “I hate like hell to ask you to expose your people to more danger, but I don’t see any alternative.” He broke off, hearing his secure phone ring. He answered it swiftly. “Yes?”
While Klein watched, the president’s broad, deeply lined face sagged.
Suddenly he looked years older.
“When?” Castilla asked, gripping the phone until his knuckles turned white. He listened to the reply, then nodded his head firmly. “I understand, Admiral,” he said quietly.
The president disconnected and then punched in an internal White House number. “This is Sam Castilla, Charlie,” he said to his chief of staff.
“Round up the NSC pronto. We have an emergency situation on our hands.”
Finished, he turned back to Klein. “That was Admiral Brose,” he said. His eyes were tired and discouraged. “He just received a flash communication from Space Command headquarters out in Colorado. There’s been an explosion in space, and we’ve lost one of our most sophisticated spy satellites? Lacrosse-Five.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
It was pitch-black outside by the time Jon Smith and Fiona Devin reached their next destination, a large dacha once owned by Aleksandr Zakarov, the old man who had been the second victim of the suspicious disease outbreak they were investigating. Before he retired, Zakarov had been both an influential member of the ruling Communist Party and the State manager of a heavy industry complex. During the first, wild years of crony capitalism after the Soviet Union imploded, he had earned a substantial fortune by selling off “shares” in the factories under his control.
The luxurious dacha he had acquired with some of his ill-gotten loot was located over an arduous hour’s drive north of the Outer Ring Road. While grinding slowly along narrow, snow-clogged country lanes through gloomy patches of forest and past tiny villages and abandoned churches, Smith had wondered why on earth Zakarov’s rich widow would choose to live so far outside Moscow?especially during the long, cold, and dark winter months. For most of the city’s wealthy elite, their dachas were chiefly rustic summer retreats, places of escape and relaxation during the sweltering davs and nights so common in July and August. Few of them ever bothered leaving the comforts of the capital once the first snows fell, except perhaps for rare weekends and holidays dedicated to cross-country skiing and other winter sports.
Within five minutes after they were ushered into her elegantly furnished sitting room, neither Jon nor Fiona wondered very much about why the former Part boss’s widow lived in rural isolation. Their reluctant hostess was a woman who neither wanted nor enjoyed the company of others. She preferred a life of essential solitude with only the handful of paid servants necessarv to cook, clean, and otherwise cater to her every petty and eccentric whim.
Madame Irina Zakarova was a tiny woman with a sharp, beaklike nose and small, dark, predatory eyes that seemed always in motion ? observing, judging, and then dismissing with contempt. Her narrow, deeply lined face bore the sour, caustic frown of one who never expects much from anyone, and who almost always finds her abysmally low expectations of her fellow humans fully satisfied. With a jaundiced eye, she finished examining Smith’s forged World Health Organization credentials and handed the papers back with an indifferent shrug. “Very well. You may ask your questions, Dr. Strand. I do not promise many useful answers. Franklv, I found the whole matter of my husband’s last illness a great bore.” I ler mouth turned downward even more sharplv. “All those ridiculous doctors and nurses and health ministry officials asking the same dreary questions: What did he eat last? Had he ever been exposed to radiation? What medications was he taking? On and on they went, in a never-ending interrogation. It was all so absurd.”
“Absurd in what way?” Smith asked carefully.
“For the simple reason that Aleksandr was a walking catalogue of ill health and bad habits,” Madame Zakarova replied coolly. “He smoked and drank and ate far too much all his life. Anything could have killed him ?a heart attack, stroke, some kind of cancer … anything at all. So the fact that his body gave out in the end was hardly a matter of special surprise, or of much real interest, to me. I really don’t understand all the fuss these doctors made over his death.”
