George looked at her in the rearview mirror. There wasn't a hint of nostalgia in her voice for her dead lover, nor did he see the loss in her eyes. Maybe she was one of those people who didn't cry in public, or perhaps not at all. He wondered how she would react when they reached the building where Keith had died.
There were at least three thousand people scattered across the large checkerboard of the Palace Square. They were facing a low stage and podium that had been erected in front of the General Staff Arch. Police were directing traffic away from the square, and Peggy told Private George to pull over before they reached them. He parked next to an outdoor cafe with brown umbrellas over every table, each umbrella advertising a different brand of beer or wine.
'The marketers didn't waste any time coming here,' he grunted disapprovingly to Peggy as they stood side by side.
'They never do,' she replied, then noticed that one of the police officers was looking at them.
George noticed him too. 'They'll ID the car,' he said.
'They won't expect us to stay in the area, though,' Peggy said. 'As far as they know, we've completed our mission.'
'Don't you think our friend Ronash has already given them physical descriptions which are being faxed all over St. Petersburg?'
'Not quite yet,' she said. 'But we do have to get out of these uniforms anyway if we're going to leave as tourists.' Peggy checked her watch. 'We've got to meet Volko in an hour and ten minutes. I suggest we go inside. If we get stopped on the way I'll tell them we're from the Admiralty, which is a block to the east. I'll say we're just watching to make sure the crowd doesn't spill over. Once we're inside, we'll change, pose as a young couple in love, and make our way to the Raphael.'
'Finally, a masquerade I can relate to,' George said as they started toward the square.
'Don't like it too much,' Peggy said. 'We're going to have a little spat inside so I can stalk off and strike a conversation with Volko.
George grinned. 'I'm married. I can relate to that too.' The grin broadened. 'Strikers among strikers,' he whispered. 'I like the irony.'
Peggy didn't return his smile as they went around the fringes of the crowd in the Palace Square. George wondered if she'd even heard him as she looked at the orderly mob, at the sculptural grouping over the General Staff Arch, at her feet— anywhere but the Hermitage itself and the river beyond, on whose banks Keith Fields- Hutton had died. He thought he saw dampness in the corners of her eyes and a heaviness in her step that he had not seen before.
And he finally, happily, felt close to the person he had been sitting beside, hip-to-hip, for them better part of a day.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Spetsnaz soldiers were trained to do many things with their chief weapon, the spade. They were left in a locked room with just the spade and a mad dog. They were ordered to chop down trees with them. On occasion, they had to dig ditches in frozen ground with them, ditches deep enough to lie in. At a specified time, tanks were rolled over the field. Soldiers who hadn't dug deep enough were crushed.
With the help of Liz Gordon, Lieutenant Colonel Squires had made a special study of spetsnaz techniques, searching for those that best accounted for the remarkable endurance and versatility of their soldiers. He couldn't adapt them all. Regular beatings to toughen the soldiers would never have been approved by the Pentagon, although he knew commanding officers who would have sanctioned them gladly. But he adapted many spetsnaz methods, including his favorites— their ability to create camouflage in a very short time and to hide in the unlikeliest places.
When he had learned about the soldiers posted on top of the train, he realized they'd be watching the treetops, cliffs, boulders, and snowbanks along the route. He knew that someone in the engine would be watching the tracks for explosives or debris. But he also knew that he had to get under the train unseen, and that the best place to hide would be on the tracks themselves.
The glow of an engine-mounted headlight would be diffused and dull, and the soldiers would be paying careful attention to the rails. So he felt safe using a small hatchet to hack through two of the dry, old crossties, chop a shallow ditch in the railbed, lie on his back, and have Grey cover him and his sack of C-4 with snow— leaving an arm-thick tunnel on the side so he could breathe. After interring Newmeyer nearby, Grey hid behind a boulder, far from the train; when Squires and Newmeyer tackled the two cars and the fireworks started, Grey would move on his target, the engine.
Squires had heard, then felt, the drumming approach of the train. He hadn't been nervous. He was below the surface of the rails where even the cowcatcher, if there was one, wouldn't touch the snow piled on top of him. His only concern was that the engineer see the tree too soon or not see it at all and collide with it. In the latter case, not only would the train be damaged but the wheels would kick the tree back and over him, in which case he would be, as he'd joked to Grey, 'ground Chuck.'
Neither of those had happened. But when the train did stop and Squires was able to burrow a little hole in front of his eyes, he saw that he was under the coal tender. That was one car ahead of where he had hoped he'd be.
At least the camouflage worked, he'd thought as he discreetly began to push the snow from himself. There was something very gratifying and historically fight about Russian troops falling for a Russian scheme— like Rasputin being killed by Czarists and the Czar being killed by Revolutionaries.
As he'd finished brushing away the snow, Squires had heard shouting. Despite the fact that virtually every inch of skin was covered with Nomex garments, he was cold— a chill that seemed deeper, for some reason, because of the flat darkness surrounding him.
No sooner was he free than he heard boots crunch hard in the wet drifts. This was followed by the lighting of flares, which spread rosy circles of light in the snow and caused the dark underbelly of the train to glow devilishly.
Carefully placing his backpack on his belly, Squires began wriggling backward, out of the ditch and along the railbed toward the first car. Soldiers were moving to the right of him, and he stopped for a moment to unbutton the safety strap of the holster he wore low on his right hip. Though Squires didn't want to cause an international incident, he would rather read newspaper accounts of his crimes and misdeeds than have others read about his death on a frozen plain in Siberia.
Squires's backward crawl went quickly, and he was underneath the coupling between the coal tender and the first car just as the Russian soldiers reached the fallen tree. This, despite the fact that he was pushing up mounds of snow with his shoulders and had to limbo over them backward. Opening the ruck flap, the Striker removed the C-4 and gingerly pressed it against the metal as flakes of damp, rusted iron fell like snow. When the explosives were secure, he took out the three-inch diameter timer and, with an insistent push from the heel of his hand, slipped the positive and negative ends into the plastique. There were two buttons above a numeric keypad, and he pressed the button on the left. That turned the unit on, and he used the numeric keypad to enter the countdown. He would give himself one hour. After punching in 60:00:00, he hit the button on the top right to lock it in. Then he hit the left-button, right-button sequence one more time to start the countdown.
Squires pushed his feet against the ruddy snow and wriggled to the middle of the first car. He heard thumping overhead, toward the upper right. The sudden stop must have dislodged the cargo and it was being restacked. Kicking backward another few feet, he stopped directly beneath the noise and put the C-4 there. He plugged in a timer and repeated the process that would cause this larger batch of plastique to explode. Moving under the second car, Squires rigged it to go off with a third slap of C-4 and a timer.
When he was finished, Squires allowed himself to enjoy a long, deep breath. He gazed across his chest toward the front of the train and saw that the men were nearly finished removing the tree. He didn't have much time.
Sliding out from under the ruck, Squires set it gingerly to his right as he sidled to the left. When he was out
