at aerial reconnaissance? We have radar-equipped aircraft. Can’t we fly them near the Russian border?”
“Physically, yes,” Secretary of State Padgett said abruptly. “Diplomatically, no. With so many of their key political and military leaders dead or dying, the governments of the Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and the other former Soviet republics are increasingly fragile. In the present circumstances, none of them will risk provoking the Kremlin by allowing us to use their airspace for reconnaissance flights. So far, every request we’ve made, through every channel, has been rebuffed.”
Again Castilla nodded. The nightmare scenario he and Fred Klein had been worrying about over the last few days seemed to be moving closer to reality. If the Russians were behind this new disease, as seemed increasingly likely, they were using it very effectively to sow confusion and chaos. The big question was: How far was Dudarev willing to push his present advantage?
Would he be content to weaken the fledgling democracies around Russia? Or did he have something far more ambitious in mind?
The door to the Situation Room opened and an aide, a young, serious woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses, hurried in, moving quickly to where William Wexler sat making notes. She leaned over and whispered something in the intelligence director’s ear. His tanned face turned pale.
“Is there something I should know about, Bill?” Castilla asked sharply.
Wexler cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. “Quite possibly, Mr.
President,” he admitted. “I’m afraid that the CIA has just lost one of its clandestine action teams, a group of field officers operating in Berlin. The first reports are very sketchy, but it appears that gunmen armed with automatic weapons and explosives ambushed our people on a public street. The head of the CIA’s Berlin Station is on his way there right now, but things look very bad. Very bad, indeed. There don’t appear to be any survivors.”
“Jesus,” Charles Ouray whispered.
“Amen, Charlie,” Castilla said softly. His shoulders bowed slightly, momentarily feeling the weight of more deaths, of more gold stars for the marble memorial wall at CIA headquarters. Then he frowned. First the Lacrosse satellite and now this vicious massacre of American intelligence officers. Were they connected in some way? He turned back to Wexler. “What was this clandestine action team’s mission?”
The national intelligence director looked baffled. “Their mission, Mr.
President?” he repeated uncertainly. He shuffled through the papers in front of him, clearly trying to buy time.
An awkward silence followed. No one else sitting around the Situation Room conference table had much respect for the former senator. At best, they considered him a nonentity. At worst, they viewed him as a liability, as one more bureaucratic obstacle for the already-fettered U.S. intelligence community to overcome.
“I’m not sure I have the details of their assignment,” Wexler admitted at last, reddening in embarrassment. He turned to his aide, the woman who had first brought him the news. “Did Langlev ever relay any of that information to us, Caroline?”
They were tracking a former East German biological weapons scientist, sir,” she said quietly. “A man named Wulf Renke.”
Castilla sat back in his chair, feeling as though he had been pole-axed.
Renke! Good God, he thought in astonishment. Renke was the renegade son of a bitch that Fred Klein’s Moscow-based Covert-One unit suspected of having created the strange illness they were investigating.
Quickly, the president excused himself, put his chief of staff in charge of the meeting, and left the Situation Room. As the door closed behind him, he heard more wrangling break out. He frowned deeplv, but kept walking. Taken as a whole, his national security team was remarkably competent, but their tempers and patience were definitely beginning to fray as they faced the nightmare of being forced to act blindly, without adequate intelligence. And right now, he simply could not afford to spend any more time riding herd on them.
Upstairs in the Oval Office, Castilla picked up one of the phones on his desk and punched in a special number known only to himself.
“Klein, here,” the head of Covert-One said somberly, answering the call on the first ring.
“Have you heard the news from Berlin?”
“I have,” Klein replied grimly. “I’m scanning the first CIA and local police reports right now.”
“And?”
“The link with Wulf Renke is highly significant,” Klein agreed slowly. “As is the extremely violent reaction to the CIA probe.”
“Meaning the Russians are afraid of what we may learn about him?”
Castilla asked.
“Or from him,” Klein pointed out. “If Renke was working safely under lock and key in one of their own Bioaparat facilities, they would have far less reason to fear our learning that he is still alive and on the loose.”
“You think he’s running his own operation at a laboratory outside Russia?”
“Let’s say that I consider it a very strong possibility,” Klein replied. “I’ve been studying Renke’s file. He strikes me as a man who would never willingly put himself in a position where others held too much power over him. If he is creating a weapon for the Russians, I believe that he will be working for them at a safe distance.”
“Have you passed this theory of yours on to Colonel Smith?” Castilla asked.
“No, sir,” Klein said quietly. “I’m sorry to say that I have very bad news of my own to report. Sometime over the past hour, we’ve completely lost contact with our team in Moscow. For all intents and purposes, Jon Smith, Ms.
Devin, and Oleg Kirov all seem to have dropped off the face of the earth.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The street in front of Ulrich Kessler’s villa was deserted. Set at regular intervals, wrought-iron lamps cast pools of soft light across the snow-covered sidewalks and illuminated a handful of silent cars parked along the empty street.
Off in the darkness on either side of Hagenstrasse, more lights glowed among the pine, oak, and birch trees, marking the location of other houses that were set well back from the road.
About one hundred meters down the street from the driveway to Kessler’s home, CIA officer Randi Russell stood motionless in a patch of deep shadow between two large oak trees. She breathed out slowly and gently, letting her pounding heart settle down after her long, painful sprint through the Grunewald forest. Her pupils were adjusting to the dim light, expanding as she carefully scanned her surroundings, looking for any signs of watchers posted to observe the immediate area. Nothing moved. Nothing stirred. There were no suspicious silhouettes or shapes lurking between the parked cars or among the trees and shrubs bordering the quiet street.
Good enough, she thought coldly. Sometimes even the bad guys made mistakes.
Randi slid the Beretta back inside her concealed shoulder holster. This time, she left her ski jacket almost completely unzipped. Then she stepped out of the shadows and strolled up the sidewalk, walking fast and making no effort to hide her movements. With a bit of luck, anyone sporting her would think she was just another local coming home after work, some light shopping, or a late afternoon walk.
Not far up the street, she passed a silver-colored Audi. It was parked beside the pavement in a spot that offered a good view of the entrance to Kessler’s property. From a distance, the car appeared undamaged. It was only when Randi got close that she spotted the small, neat hole blown through the rear window. As she walked past, she used her peripheral vision to check out the interior. Inside the Audi, a brown-haired young woman sat folded over the steering wheel, not moving. Dark smears of dried blood streaked the dashboard and the inside of the windshield.
Randi carefully averted her eyes, pushing away her feelings of sorrow and regret. The dead woman was her lookout, a bright, perky, just-graduated CIA trainee whose name was Carla Voss. From the look of things, the young woman must have died without ever spotting her killer.
The back of Randi’s neck tingled, anticipating the impact of a bullet. The muscles around her right eye
