Black Wolf (2010) (12 page)

16

Approaching Chisinau, Moldova

D
anny Freah stared out the window of the Fokker 50–100 as the aircraft approached the airport at Chisinau. While Moldova shared a border with Ukraine and in some ways had a similar history, relations between the two countries were cool. Moldovans seemed to resent Ukrainians almost as much as they resented Russians. The flight he had taken was the only scheduled daily flight between the two countries. Even so, the aircraft was only half full, and its age indicated that the line wasn’t particularly profitable.

Danny tightened his seat belt for the landing. After so many years in military jets, the smooth, unhurried descent felt almost like a car ride. He waited as the plane left the runway for the taxi strip, then got up and grabbed his things as soon as he could see the small terminal in the window. He was the first one off, practically running for the open terminal door.

Relax,
he told himself.
Slow down.
Nothing was going to be gained by haste.

The white-haired customs agent who checked his passport was impressed that he was an American. His English, though heavily accented, was very good.

“You’re here on business?” said the man.

“I have some appointments,” Danny told him.

“This is very good—you will like Moldova. A very good climate for making money. I studied in U.S. of A. myself.”

“Really?” said Danny.

“Nineteen seventy,” said the man proudly. “Amherst. But I returned. We always return to our home.”

“True.”

“A good place for business,” said the man, handing his passport back.

“Maybe you should open a business yourself,” suggested Danny.

“Too much to do,” said the man. He looked down at the floor, as if lamenting decisions he had made long ago. But then he immediately brightened. “Good luck to you.”

“Thanks,” said Danny.

Danny’s ostensible goal in Moldova was to visit the Russian bank branch in Chisinau, where he would plant some bugs and attempt to gather more information about accounts associated with the Wolves. But he also intended to check out the crash site. And to do that, he had to head north to Balti. He decided he’d get that out of the way first; not only was MY-PID still pulling together information on possible connections to the account, but Nuri and Flash were due to arrive in the morning; they could bug the banks as easily as he could.

Balti was something he preferred doing on his own.

H
is flight to Balti in the north, barely eighty miles by air, was in a brightly painted former Russian army helicopter. To get in, he and his fellow passenger had to squeeze past the copilot’s seat, buckling themselves into the tandem seats in the cabin. The engines whined ferociously as they took off, and the noise hardly abated as they flew, the cabin vibrating in sync with the three-bladed prop above.

The Balti International City Airport had a long runway, but was used so rarely there were no car rental or other amenities there. The terminal building was deserted and locked, and the grass around the infield of the airstrip overgrown.

Danny had arranged for a driver and car to take him to the bus station, where a small car rental shop promised to rent him a car. But the driver wasn’t there when he got off the plane. He called the company twice and got no answer; after a half hour he decided he had no choice but walk into town, a six or seven mile hike. He took his bag and started down the long concrete access road.

Weeds grew through the expansion cracks. Danny pulled his earphones from his pocket and connected to MY-PID, asking the computer if there were any other taxis in town.

There weren’t.

“There is a bus route along the highway to the airport,” advised the computer. “The next run is in three hours.”

“I can walk there in that time.”

Just then, a small red Renault came charging off the highway down the access ramp. Danny stopped, hoping it was the taxi. But it sped past.

Gotta be for me, thought Danny. He stood waiting. Five minutes passed. Ten. Finally, he started walking again.

He’d just reached the highway when the car sped up behind him, braking hard and just barely missing him though he was well off the road. A short, skinny man not far out of his teens leaned across the front seat and rolled down the window.

“You American, yes?”

“That’s right,” said Danny.

“I am your ride.”

“Where have you been?” Danny asked.

“Trouble,” said the driver, sliding back behind the wheel.

Danny opened the door, pushed up the seat and put his bag in the back. Then he got in next to the driver, who grabbed the gearshift and ground his way toward the highway. “This your first day?” Danny asked.

“Oh no—I drive since fourteen.”

“You’re older than that now, huh?”

“Twenty-two. Legal.” The driver grinned at him. “You like my English?”

“Better than my Moldovan,” said Danny. He could, of course, use the MY-PID to translate for him if he wanted.

“I learn Internet. School, too.”

“Great.”

The highway was straight and there were no other cars—a good thing, because not only did the driver keep his foot pressed to the gas, he treated the lane markings as if they were purely theoretical.

“So—you need bus?” said the driver.

“I have to rent a car.”

“Car?”

“Like Hertz,” said Danny. “Eurocar?”

The driver seemed confused.

“I’m picking up a car,” said Danny.

“No.”

“No?”

“When are you renting car?”

“Today. I made the reservation myself.”

“No car.”

“How do you know?”

“My name is Joe,” said the driver. He held out his hand. As he did, the car veered slightly but decidedly toward the shoulder.

Danny shook hands quickly. “The road,” he said, pointing.

The driver pulled them back toward the center of the pavement. He explained that his family owned the city’s largest gas station, which doubled as its largest, and only, car rental facility. And their two cars had been rented out three days before. Neither was due back for a week.

“You only have two cars?” Danny asked.

“Official, five,” said the driver. One had been wrecked months before and never repaired; the other two were waiting for repair parts.

“I have fix,” said the driver.

“You can fix one of the cars?”

“No—I drive.”

“I have a better idea,” said Danny, grabbing the dashboard as the driver turned off the highway, wheels screeching. “I’ll rent this car.”

“It’s my sister’s car,” said Joe.

“If she lends it to you, I’m sure she’ll rent it to me.”

“But then what will we have for a taxi?”

“Do you do that much taxi business?”

“We are the largest taxi service in all Balti.”

“Then missing one car isn’t going to be that big a deal.”

“We have only two,” said Joe. “One crashed, and two cannot get parts.”

“A hundred bucks for the day,” said Danny.

“One thousand. But we give you lunch, too. Biggest restaurant in Balti.”

D
anny worked the price down to seven hundred dollars, with lunch and breakfast in the morning, assuming he was still in town. Joe also promised to give him a ride to the airport, no charge.

Whatever family member was cooking did a much better job at the stove than Joe did behind the wheel. Under other circumstances, Danny might even have stayed for dessert. But he had a lot to do before dark.

Besides the possible DNA match, there was circumstantial evidence of a link between the area where Stoner had crashed and Russian experiments with various physical “enhancements.”

The Soviet Union had run a sports clinic in a small town two miles away during the 1970s and early 1980s. The clinic had specialized in a number of techniques for athletic enhancement, including training in special aerobic chambers and rigorously supervised diets.

It hadn’t been secret—there were several stories about it in the Western media. It closed quietly sometime in the 1990s or early 2000s, never officially linked to the controversies then swirling about steroids and various stimulant use, but it wasn’t much of a stretch to make a connection. Anyone looking back would conclude that while those techniques were never mentioned in the press coverage, they were surely being practiced there as well.

It was rumored to be the site of other experiments as well. MY-PID located an article in
Le Monde
published in 1987 about the site that stated there were a number of rumors that the plant was aiming at producing “super athletes” and was investigating “genetic techniques.” They weren’t detailed in the story, but the hints were tantalizing enough for Danny, who asked MY-PID if it could track down the writer.

He’d recently retired from the French newspaper. When Danny, driving in the car, called the number MY-PID had discovered, the man answered on the second ring. Danny told him he was working on a book about old Olympic stars and had come across the article.

A white lie compounded by exaggeration, but harmless all around.

Flattered to be contacted, the former reporter told Danny what he could remember of the trip to the facility, describing what looked to him like a horse farm that had been “gussied up” with a pair of massive gyms in the old barns. He’d seen perhaps fifty athletes altogether, and interviewed a dozen. All spoke in glowing terms of the various methods that were used.

“A lot of emphasis on mental techniques,” said the man, whose English was heavily accented but fluent. “Positive thinking, we called it at the time. Of course, now we know they were probably just using many steroids. It was part of the culture of deception. So many athletes ended up doing this. My report was in the very beginning of the time.”

“Do you remember when it closed?”

“I wouldn’t know. We were invited—it was while the Eastern Europeans were winning all those medals, you understand. People thought the success was something to do with the mind. A fantasy.”

“So they did it with drugs?”

“Steroids, certainly. Now I realize what I should have looked for. They claimed they took a vitamin regime. Of course. And positive thinking. Well, you believe what you want to believe, as you Americans would say.”

MY-PID couldn’t locate any records showing whether the facility was operating when the helicopter went down in 1998, though the Frenchman’s account made it seem likely that it had. As of now, satellite reconnaissance appeared to show that it had been abandoned.

Danny decided to check for himself.

He followed the computer’s directions, taking a slight detour from the highway that led to the crash site. Dotted with small farms and houses built two or three centuries before, the countryside seemed almost idyllic, more a backdrop for a movie than an actual place.

A small village sat two miles from the complex. Dominated by a small church that hugged the road, it was home to less than two hundred people. Aside from the church, its central business section held only a pair of buildings; between them they had five shops: a bakery, tobacco shop, small grocery, clothing store, and a store that sold odds and ends.

A few local residents stood outside the tobacconist, watching Danny as he passed. He smiled and waved, and was surprised to see them wave back.

A mile and a half out of town, he turned to the right to head toward the facility. An abandoned house stood above the intersection, its siding long gone and its boards a weathered gray. A horse stood in a rolling pasture on the left, quietly eating unmowed grass as Danny passed.

The double fence that surrounded the place during its heyday was mostly intact, though weeds twined themselves through the links. The gates were pushed back, still held in place by large chains, now rusted beyond use.

Danny drove up the hill into the complex, feeling as if he was being watched.

He was: a large hawk sat serenely on the cornice of the main building at the head of the driveway, its head nestled close to its chest. Its unblinking eyes followed him as he got out of the car and walked across the small parking lot to the building. The
Le Monde
story fresh in his mind, he walked to the large gym building on the right. This was a steel structure, more warehouse than traditional gym. It had large barnlike doors on the two sides facing the rest of the complex. Both were locked, as was a smaller steel door at the side.

Danny walked back along the building, looking for the other gym, which according to the story, sat catty-corner behind the first.

It had been razed, replaced by an empty field. There were no traces of it.

A set of old dormitory buildings sat at the very rear of the site. Danny went to the closest one. The door gave way as he put his hand on the latch.

He stepped into a small vestibule. There were posters on the wall, faded but still hanging perfectly in place. The words were in Russian. He activated the video camera on the MY-PID control unit and had the machine translate them for him: