Death Wave

“This is IAF Wing Commander Salman Patel,” Akulinin told him, “and I am Major Golikov. We are on Air Vice Marshal Subarao’s staff, and we need to speak with Colonel Vasilyev immediately!”

“I … that is … he …”

“Stand at attention when a superior addresses you!”

Akulinin barked.

“Sir! Yes, sir!” The senior sergeant snapped to attention, but with the rifle at port arms across his chest.

“Guard this door, Senior Sergeant. Make certain that no one comes through!”

“Yes, sir!”

Unlike their American counterparts, Russian enlisted personnel were trained not to think, to follow orders immediately and unquestioningly. By playing the role of a Russian senior officer, with bluster, anger, and a hefty dose of stage presence, Akulinin forced the noncom into his accustomed role — that of an automaton that did not ask questions, did not make waves.

The morgue was a large and cluttered room, with several metal tables under cold fluorescent lights, concrete-block walls lined with filing cabinets, and a central area taken up by a huge refrigeration unit cooling the morgue slabs behind massive, sealed doors. Half a dozen soldiers were gathered around three tables just around the corner of the refrigerator. Lieutenant Colonel Vasilyev was engaged in an intense discussion with a young, blond, white-smocked woman, presumably the morgue attendant.

Dean and Akulinin joined the group, moving unobtrusively into the rear of the group. One soldier glanced at Dean’s Indian uniform curiously. Dean grinned back and winked, and the soldier shrugged, then turned away; if the guard at the door had let an Indian Air Force officer in, obviously he was permitted to be there.

Far more often than not, Dean had learned, a person could get into nearly any restricted area without being questioned so long as he acted as though he had a perfect right to be there.

“I want these bodies examined thoroughly,” Vasilyev was telling the attendant. “In particular, I want them inspected for radiation.”

“Do you mean a Geiger counter?” the woman asked Vasilyev. “To scan them for radiation? Or do you want a pathology workup, looking for cellular damage from radiation?”

“Both.”

“We do not have Geiger counters at this facility, Lieutenant Colonel,” she told him. “As for tissue sampling and microscopy — that requires a pathologist, and Dr. Shmatko is not here.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t see that that is any of your concern, sir.”

“Young woman, you will cooperate with me! Where is this Shmatko?”

She looked angry. “Gone until tomorrow. An autopsy in Tashkent.”

“There will be radiation detectors at the air base,” Vasilyev told her. “I will have one sent here, with a trained operator. You will send a message to Shmatko and tell him he is needed here at once. Do you understand?”

“I understand, sir — but that won’t get the man here one minute sooner. Tashkent is three hundred kilometers away.”

“Just do it!” Vasilyev looked around, angry. He saw Dean, saw Dean’s uniform, and his eyes widened. “What are you doing here?”

“Sir! Wing Commander Patel, special liaison to the Russian forces in Tajikistan.”

“That tells me who I am about to put under arrest,” Vasilyev growled, “but it does not answer my question. What is an Indian Air Force officer doing in a restricted Russian military facility?”

“Sir! Group Captain Sharad Narayanan, at the Ayni Air Base, sent me to find you. There are reports of Pakistani infiltrators at Ayni, at Farkhor, and at Dushanbe! He told me to deliver the message verbally, since our electronic lines of communication may be compromised!”

“Pakistanis! What Pakistanis?”

“He didn’t tell me, sir,” Dean replied, “but Group Captain Narayanan is a relative of India’s national security advisor. A nephew, I believe. He may have intelligence passed on from the IB that has not yet reached your desk. Sir.” The IB was the Intelligence Bureau, India’s equivalent of the CIA.

Vasilyev scowled. “You Indians see Pakistanis behind every rock!”

“Yes, sir. The problem is that Pakistanis hiding behind rocks may have nuclear weapons, and they hate India. A certain amount of paranoia is called for, wouldn’t you say?”

Dean hoped his Russian was getting through clearly enough. Was “paranoia” really paranoia in Russian, a borrowed word identical to the English? He wasn’t sure, and down here in the basement he didn’t have Desk Three’s linguists online to help him out.

He thought it was right, though. The word was so quintessentially Russian.

In any case, any minor slipups in grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation could easily be blamed on the fact that he really was a foreigner — one reason they’d created this particular legend for him back at Fort Meade.

As he answered Vasilyev’s questions, he glanced past the man’s shoulders and across the room at Akulinin. His partner was standing next to one of the autopsy tables, his left hand cupped around an unseen device. No one else was paying him any attention. As they’d planned, while Dean played the decoy, Akulinin was surreptitiously photographing the bodies.

“The IB,” Vasilyev said with an unpleasant smile, “is run by naive and easily excited children.”

“Sir!” Dean snapped back. “The Intelligence Bureau is the oldest and best- established intelligence service in the world!”

It was a somewhat dubious claim, one based on the idea that the IB had been created by Major General Sir Charles MacGregor in 1885 to monitor a possible Russian invasion of India through Afghanistan. Still, the Indians believed it — and the IB was widely believed to be one of the five best intelligence services in the world.

“If you say so, Wing Commander.” Vasilyev’s unpleasant smile widened. “Right now, however, I need to see some identification from you.” He nodded at an aide, a captain, who stepped forward, his hand out.

Dean reached into his pocket and produced his wallet, extracting his Indian military ID card, a second card issued by the Tajikistan Military Authority, and a third card giving the phone number of Air Vice Marshal Subarao’s headquarters office. Any call going to that number would be rerouted to Desk Three, as had happened to that unfortunate watch stander at Ayni a few hours before.

“Air Vice Marshal Subarao will vouch for me, sir,” Dean said, handing the cards over. He reached into another pocket and pulled out a folded-up sheet of paper, covered by close-spaced Hindi characters. “And my orders, sir.”

“You will come with us,” Vasilyev told him. “You are not the only one around here afflicted by a certain amount of healthy paranoia.”

“Yes, sir.” He was relieved to hear the Russian use that word.

ILYA AKULININ

MORGUE, RUSSIAN MILITARY HOSPITAL

DUSHANBE, TAJIKISTAN

WEDNESDAY, 1910 HOURS LOCAL TIME

Akulinin stepped back behind the shelter of the central refrigerator unit and watched the gaggle of Russian soldiers crowd out through the door leading to the alley at the back of the hospital. One of them had Charlie Dean in tow, practically at gunpoint.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot he could do about that at the moment, and, in any case, the mission always came first.

Always.

The last of the soldiers banged out through the swinging doors, and Akulinin stepped out from his hiding place. As Dean had predicted, they’d paid no attention to him whatsoever once they’d spotted Dean’s IAF uniform.

“Excuse me,” a woman’s voice said at his back. “Aren’t you supposed to be going with the rest of them?”

He turned and found himself looking down at the pretty, blond morgue attendant. Her hands were on her