She choked and spluttered, leaning back against the chair in a vain effort to avoid the deluge of freezing water. After a
few seconds, she slowly opened her eyes. Noticing Smith looking at her with evident concern, she forced a wry, painful grin. “The service here is really rather awful. Next time, I’ll choose different accommodations.”
Brandt snorted. “Very amusing, Ms. Devin.” He turned back to Smith.
“Now, Colonel, let me try being reasonable one last time.” His voice hardened. “Who do you work for? The CIA? The Defense Intelligence Agency?
Some other organization?”
Jon braced himself for the blow he knew was coming. He raised his head, staring the former Stasi officer straight in the eyes. “I’ve told you before,” he said tiredly, surprised at how shirred his voice sounded. “My name is Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, M.D. I work for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute ? “
But instead of hitting him, Brandt spun around and slapped Fiona hard across the face. Her head rocked back. Blood from a new cut inside her mouth spattered off into the darkness. The sound of the blow echoed like a gunshot in the damp silence of the cellar.
“You’re a dead man,” Smith growled through his clenched teeth, shocked by what he had just seen. He strained uselessly against the wide leather strap holding him in place.
Brandt swung back with a sly, satisfied grin on his face. “Oh, didn’t I tell you, Colonel? The rules have changed. From this moment on, Ms. Devin will suffer for each of your lies, not you.” He shrugged. “The pain she endures ‘n the process will be on your conscience, not on mine.”
Christ, Smith thought bleakly, feeling light-headed. The big, gray-eyed bastard had read him perfectly. He had been tortured before, and he knew the limits of his own endurance. But how long could he sit helpless and watch another person being brutalized to satisfy his own stubborn pride?
“Pay me no mind, Jon,” Fiona Devin said quietly, spitting out a mouthful of blood. “This murdering bastard will kill us both no matter what we tell him, or don’t tell him ? “
Yet another open-handed blow from Brandt’s hard hand rocked her head to the side.
“You will be silent, Ms. Devin!” he said coldly. “My conversation is with the colonel here, not with you. You had your chance to tell me what I wished to know. Now it is his turn.”
Smith raged inwardly, maddened by his inability to stop this devilish game. If he could just get free, even for a second, he thought desperately… but realistically he knew there was no chance of that. He also knew that Fiona was right. They were both going to die here in this dark, dank cellar, this place already haunted by the ghosts of hundreds of others murdered by men like Brandt and his thugs. The only real question remaining was whether or not they could win at least one small last victory by denying the Stasi officer the information he demanded.
He closed his eyes briefly, steeling himself to endure the long, pain-filled, and bloody hours to come. Then he opened them and looked up again at Brandt in front of him. “My name is Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, M.D.,” he repeated steadily, in a stronger voice than he would have thought possible.
“And I work for the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases…”
Brandt stared down at the lean, dark-haired American in frustration. He had been sure that Smith was on the edge of breaking. He had sensed it. But now he could see the man’s resolve stiffening. Meanwhile, time was moving on. Sooner or later, a militia patrol would discover the carnage inside the Zakarov dacha. And sooner or later, they would find the wreckage of that bullet-torn GAZ jeep lying in a ravine by the side of the road. Once either of those things happened, Alexei Ivanov would start asking some very awkward questions.
He rubbed his jaw. At least Fadayev had finally called into the Group’s headquarters, reporting that the driver was definitely dead and that he had retrieved the dead man’s identity papers. If nothing else, Brandt thought, that would make it slightly more difficult for Ivanov to connect the two incidents.
But only slightly.
His phone rang suddenly.
Scowling, Brandt yanked the device out of his pocket. “Yes?” he snapped irritablv, walking back toward the stairs out of the cellar, moving out of earshot of the two prisoners. “What is it?”
“Your man Lange has bungled his assignment,” Malkovie told him bitterly.
“And by now the CIA must have penetrated very deeply into our communications network.”
Brandt listened in stunned disbelief while his employer ran through what he had learned about the disaster in Berlin. Lange dead? Along with all of his handpicked team? It scarcely seemed possible.
“We have no choice now,” Malkovie said flatlv. “We must transfer the key elements of the HYDRA lab to a new location?without further delay. I intend to oversee the work myself, and I want you there, too. Both for security purposes and to make sure that Professor Renke appreciates the need for immediate action.”
Brandt nodded, understanding what the other man really wanted. He wanted personal protection against any danger. The billionaire was frightened to death of what the Russians might do once thev learned that all of his fine promises to them about HYDRA’s operational security were worthless.
His jaw tightened. Malkovie was right to be afraid. “When do we leave?” he asked harshly.
“My personal jet is scheduled to take off in just under three hours,”
Malkovie said. “But first I want you to shut down all of your operations in Moscow. Make arrangements for your key people to rendezvous somewhere °utside Russia. Dump the communications system. And wipe your files, all of tnem. Understand?”
Yes.” Brandt considered the work necessary to implement those orders.
He nodded again. “It can be done.”
“Make sure of it,” the other man told him coolly. “I will not tolerate any Mlore mistakes.” The phone went dead.
Brandt spun on his heel. “Yuri!” he growled. “Over here!”
Openly curious, the brawny, shaven-headed man ambled over. “Yes?”
“We’ve got new orders,” Brandt told him brusquely. “I’m heading back to Moscow straight away. Close up shop here, sanitize the area, and follow me when you can.”
“What about the Americans?”
Brandt shrugged. “They’re useless to us now. Finish them.”
Chapter Forty-Two
With their hands still tied behind them, Jon Smith and Fiona Devin were hustled up the stairs and out of the cellar at gunpoint. They came up into the ruins of the church, a square stone building topped by the broken remains of a central onion-shaped dome. Gray light from an overcast sky streamed in through empty windows and gaps in the dome. Small patches of weathered, fading paint on the moss-covered walls were all that was left of the bright frescoes of saints and scenes from the Old and New Testaments that had once decorated the church interior. Everything else of value?the marble altar, the golden taberna-cle, chandeliers and candelabras?had long since been carted away.
Brandt wheeled at the main door to the church and sketched an ironic salute. “And here I will say farewell to you, Colonel. And to you, too, Ms. Devin.” His teeth flashed white in the gloom. “I will not see either of you again.”
Jon said nothing, staring back at him with an impassive face. Show no fear, he told himself. Don’t give the bastard any satisfaction. He noticed that Fiona had the same faintly bored look on her bruised face. She glanced at Brandt with no more interest than she might have shown if he were a common house buzzing against a window.
Visibly irked by their lack of reaction, the gray-eyed man turned on his heel and left. Not long afterward, they heard the engine of his Ford Explorer roar into life and listened to its thick tires go crunching away across the snow and ice.
“Go on!” one of the two gunmen still guarding them growled. He gestured with his pistol, a 9mm Makarov, pointing toward a smaller, arched doorway at the side of the church. “Out through there!”
Smith glanced at him, not hothering to hide the contempt he felt. “And if we refuse?”
