Days of Rage (25 page)

S
eeing Vlad at a corner table, Yuri ignored the hostess and moved straight to him, whispering to his men as he did so. Although the restaurant was filling up, it wasn’t nearly as crowded as it would be in a few more hours, when this place became a hot spot for young, upwardly mobile Turks hell-bent on partying through the night.

The security broke off, two moving to check the outside deck, and two back toward the stairs. Before he even reached the table, Vlad stood.

Yuri said, “Did you have time to read my report?”

“Yes, I did. And I’m not very impressed. You failed again. It’s becoming somewhat of a tradition.”

Yuri glared at him in silence, then sat, not waiting on Vlad to give him permission. He was growing a little impatient about Vlad’s superiority. And nettled by his barbs. After all,
he
was the one in the line of fire. His men were getting killed.

He said, “You never said anything about the Americans. I was supposed to interdict a single Israeli agent—not a platoon of commandos.”

“So the Vympel no longer plan for contingencies?”

Yuri held back what wanted to come out, saying, “We are only as good as the intelligence we operate with. How did you know where the thumb drive was located, but not who was going after it?”

“That is none of your concern.”

Yuri studied him for a moment, then said, “You have someone on the inside of the American intelligence architecture. That’s how you knew about Boris in the first place. But you didn’t know about the surveillance against Akinbo. We had to confirm the action for ourselves. So your source has some access, but isn’t very powerful.”

Vlad leaned back and smiled. “Very good. Mistaken, but good. Maybe you aren’t as prone to mishaps as I thought. He—or she—is very well placed, but whatever forces interdicted the meeting with the Syrian are not part of the normal US intelligence architecture.”

“You mean the team that killed my men.”

Not a question. A statement.

“Yes. It’s something new. A group like the Vympel. My source just learned about them.”

“So he can track them now, and they have the drive. Get him to give me a thread, and I’ll get it back for you.”

“No reason to bother. The US already had the drive. Like you said, it’s how I knew to get you on Boris in the first place. When the CIA gleaned the first copy, my source informed me about it. Why the Americans went out of their way to prevent the Israelis from getting the second copy I don’t know, but they did our work for us. The damage with the US had already been done.”

“But what about my men?”

“Casualties of war. Anyway, the Americans are going home with their tails between their legs, taking the drive with them. Your attack was enough. I don’t need you to worry about the drive anymore. I need you to get back on Akinbo.”

“I don’t get that. Why? We don’t have the chemical munitions. Why did you send him to Berlin?”

“You remember planning for Barbarossa II? Before the wall fell?”

“Of course. That’s what the Vympel existed for. After a full-scale invasion from NATO, I would infiltrate Western Europe.”

“And what would you do? Once you were there?”

“Sabotage, guerrilla warfare, that sort of thing.”

“You mean with sticks and rocks? Or with an RA-115s? Thor’s Hammer?”

Yuri was unsure what to say. Vlad was the head of all of the FSB, but the program he mentioned was classified at the highest order, and he’d never breathed a word of it since the USSR had disintegrated.

Vlad waited a bit, then said, “It’s okay. Remember I have your file. I know you were on the team that practiced parachuting with the device, and I’m not going to ask you what your target was. All I need to know is that you can put it into operation.”

Yuri nodded, unsure what to say. Afraid to open his mouth.

Vlad said, “A device such as that will still accomplish our mission. We can’t lay the blame on the Syrians with the chemical weapon, so we’ll lose the chance to embroil the US in that country, but we can still cause them to sink in the quagmire of Nigeria.”

Yuri found his voice. “But they’re all gone. Destroyed when we were afraid of them falling into enemy hands during the riots and coups of the nineties. Long gone.”

“Not all. There’s one that we couldn’t get out. It was cached in a very delicate location, and when the Berlin Wall began collapsing we couldn’t react fast enough. Actually we didn’t think to act at all, since we were worrying about other things. The rest of the devices were in Soviet control. This one was simply hidden.”

“You think it’s still there?”

Vlad scoffed. “You think if someone would have found an RA-115s it wouldn’t have made worldwide news? Yeah. It’s still there.”

Yuri felt his phone vibrate. He pulled it out, seeing nothing but a text advertisement from Vodafone.

Vlad said, “I’m sorry to inconvenience you. Please, by all means, play with your phone.”

Yuri said, “Sir, my men are conducting a security sweep. It might have been an alert.”

“And is it?”

He set the phone on the table and said, “No.” Then Vlad’s words sank in. “You want to give a nuclear bomb to a savage like Akinbo? Even a small one like Thor?”

Vlad said, “No. You remember your training? Remember how delicate those devices were? How they had to have constant power and all the other restrictions? The device is still there, but it’s degraded by now. It’ll just be a small explosion of radiological waste. What the West calls a dirty bomb. It may not be a nuclear explosion, but the radiation poison will be just as effective. It’ll cause the United States to react in a frenzy. Make no mistake, they’ll end up invading Nigeria because of Boko Haram.”

“We’ll be blamed. Nobody else had a program like Thor’s Hammer.”

“Not true. Any nuclear power can be blamed. Once it goes off, the only thing they’ll know is that radiological material was blown apart by conventional explosives. Material they could have gleaned from a multitude of places.”

Yuri considered his words, then moved on to the next problem. “You have a detailed description of the location? Berlin is a big place.”

Vlad slid across a sleeve of papers, yellowed with age. “These are the original cache instructions. Of course, that was close to thirty years ago, so you’ll have to improvise once you get there. The place is now a museum.”

“And the arming, timing, and PAL control for the weapon? I’ll need those as well.”

“They’re in the cache instructions.”

Yuri leaned back and asked, “What’s the target?”

Vlad slid across a brochure. When Yuri saw the first page, he said, “Here? Not in America?”

“No. Much easier to get the device into that country, especially with Akinbo. You’ll have to get him new documents, but you have that capability in Berlin, correct? I mean, you were called the Berlin group for a reason.”

“Yes, sir. I can do that. Why here, though? This is global, not American-centric.”

Vlad tapped the page. “Read the specific target. You’ll see why it was chosen.”

Yuri studied the package, then began to smile. Vlad said, “So you see. It’s poetic.”

Yuri said, “Well, I don’t know if it’s poetic, but it’ll get the US going, no doubt about that. Anytime you include their little Jewish lapdogs you’ll get an exponential reaction.”

H
earing that two men were coming down the stairs was the last thing I wanted. I knew Yuri or Vlad would be worried about security, but didn’t figure they’d do some sort of
Check all the mailboxes and pull up the manhole covers
security review. Which is why I’d manipulated the lock to an old storage room next to the kitchen, right below the meeting site.

Just great.
Every second I wasted hiding was a second I wouldn’t have of the conversation.

Jennifer was already breaking out a cattail, a pencil-thin flexible cable with a camera on the end. It was no more high-speed than a multitude of cable cameras on the market, with the exception that it mated to our smartphones via Bluetooth, giving us a built-in monitor without having to plug a USB cable into a computer.

She slid it under the door, rotating the lens to get the view right side up while I killed the small lamp we’d found. In the glow of her phone I saw the pair turn the corner from the stairwell and hold up, staring down the darkened hallway at the row of doors presented. This would be the key, no pun intended. If they tried the lock of the first door they found and kept moving, we’d be good. If they attempted to disable the lock and enter the room, we were in for a world of hurt.

I said, “Keep watching them,” and went to explore the back of the storage room. I’d cleared it earlier, but that had been just to make sure we weren’t interrupting some waiter stealing a nap. Now I needed to find an alternate exit.

At the right corner was a collection of tables, one overturned on top of another. Above the stack the ceiling tiles had been moved, showing an iron rib holding up the roof. I climbed up and flashed my pen light inside, seeing we could plug ourselves there, but we’d definitely be cornered.

I heard Jennifer hiss.

I went back out front and said, “We can get into the ceiling. If they check further than that, we’re screwed.”

She said, “Don’t worry about it. All they did was rattle that door and keep moving. We’re good. They’re two doors down and still coming.”

Whew
.

I called Daniel. “I have an idea. I’m going to suck in everyone’s phone, then isolate all with a Russian country code. I’ll send a text to those phones, one at a time, basically duplicating an ad for the local cell service here. You see who looks at their phone. If it’s Vlad or Yuri, we’re good. If it’s someone else, we keep going. You copy?”

Jennifer withdrew the cattail and held a finger to her lips. I watched the doorknob go left and right, an irrational fear spiking that the lock would fail and they’d fling it open.

They did not.

She stuck the cattail back under, then gave me a thumbs-up. I said into the radio, “Daniel, you copy?”

He said, “Roger. Standing by.”

I fired up the Goblin and it began to do its work. Within fifteen seconds, it held six phones with Russian country codes. I pulled up the text messaging on my smartphone, scrolled until I found the Vodafone ad I’d received earlier, then typed the exact same message into the Goblin. I targeted the first phone and hit “send,” knowing the message would register with some weird number like 404-05. It would look real.

Daniel said, “Security man at the other table just looked at his phone.”

“Roger.” I targeted the next one on the list. Daniel said, “Nothing.”

Might be the guys walking around down here.

I hit the third, and Daniel said, “Yuri just looked at his phone and set it on the table.”

Bingo
.

I rejected the other phones, and kept his. I said, “You’re a go. That’s the phone we want.” I read off the number, and he went to work. A minute later I was getting Russian over Wi-Fi, all of it recorded for posterity. I was proud of myself for solving the problem, right up until the conversation ended a mere minute later.

That was quick.
I said, “What’s going on? I have no more voice.”

Daniel said, “Vlad’s stood up. He’s leaving. Yuri’s still in his seat.”

Damn it
. “Okay. We stay until Yuri clears the area. Once that’s done, we can break down.”

I wanted some ability to target Yuri, some clue in their conversation, but the meeting hadn’t gone on very long. I wondered if I’d recorded enough information to facilitate future operations.

V
ladimir Malikov exited the elevator, nodded at the lone security guard, and entered the mass of people on Istiklal Caddesi. The crowd split around him as they fought to reach a tram running down the middle of the street, people hopping on and off as it rolled along.

He pulled a felt hat down on his head and began weaving through the throng, walking back to the Russian consulate. He passed the Church of Saint Anthony of Padua, now locked up to prevent the revelers from invading and defacing the stone with graffiti. He paused to listen to a man and woman sing a cappella in the foyer of the front gate, a mass of people listening.

He joined them, blending into the throng. He pretended to enjoy the entertainment as if he gave a shit about their voices, but really used the pause to conduct a quick surveillance check. He saw nothing. He began walking again, reflecting on his conversation with Yuri. Before, the man had been obsequious to the point of embarrassment, but tonight he had been more forceful. More prepared to rebut what Vlad had said.

On the one hand, it was to be expected. Vlad’s reputation had always preceded him, and it was larger than life, to the point that people who had not met him compared him to some boogeyman from a nightmare. When the men saw that he really
was
a human, they tended to lose their abject fear. But allowing even a hint of insubordination was unacceptable.

When this mission was done, he might have to make an example of Yuri. Rekindle the “Impaler” reputation, as it were.

What most concerned him now was Yuri’s quest to leverage Vlad’s source in the United States, the asset known as Angus. Clearly, he wanted vengeance for the loss of his men, and he wanted the asset to set the Americans up for him. He would push for access again, Vlad was sure, and such prodding might cause issues if it piqued the interest of the wrong men. Such knowledge was a valuable commodity, and not something to be shared.

Vlad had been coy when discussing Angus, as if he was in complete control as the primary case officer, but in truth, he knew little about the man. Vlad hadn’t even known he existed until two years ago, when he’d been directly handed the communication methods by the president of Russia. At that time he’d been given strict orders not to initiate any contact whatsoever; his only job was to respond and report. Since that time, he’d learned of Angus having facilitated Snowden/Calypso’s escape to Russia, the collapse of the US-planned military strikes on Syria, and a host of other national strategic intelligence priorities, but he still didn’t know where the asset worked.

It had to be somewhere very high up, since the president of Russia was the one who had passed the connection, but if so, how is it he didn’t know about this new US team? Yuri’s question had been spot-on. How could Angus know the location of the thumb drive—meaning he had direct access to a Mossad leak, which would be very, very sensitive—and yet not know an American team was on the hunt for it?

It either meant the team was something above Angus’s clearance—which, given what he’d already accomplished, just didn’t seem possible—or someone suspected him and had cut him out deliberately.

The thought hit Vlad hard.

Had someone kept Angus out in the cold on purpose?

It was something to explore, but he’d have to get permission to initiate contact. The last thing they needed was Angus getting turned and facilitating their own security disasters.

He passed by the Swedish consulate and approached a crowd, all listening to a man playing a guitar. He threw some money into a pot and circled around behind him, not wanting to walk into the street with the mob of half drunks.

He skirted along the building’s wall until it disappeared, an alley snaking off in the gloom, no more than four feet across. A woman with a small cart appeared, selling handmade goods. Before Vlad could protest, she draped what looked like a flower on a ribbon around his neck.

Aggravated at the sales tactic, he started to pull it off and saw it wasn’t a flower. It was a plastic medal that looked like Olympic gold. He heard a minibike coming down the alley, and his fate crystallized.

The hunters had found his secret.

Holding the toy medal in one hand, eyes wide, he turned to the woman and saw the black tunnel of a barrel capped by a large suppressor aimed at his chest. The assassin bared her teeth.

He said, “Wait, wait—”

And she pulled the trigger, two short coughs drowned out by the guitar player and the clapping crowd. He hit the ground backward, the blood from his destroyed heart leaking into the cobblestones. He screamed as loud as he could, hearing a whimper escape like air from a hole in a balloon.

The woman yanked the toy medal from his neck and stuck something in his shirt, wiping his blood with it. She got on the back of the motorcycle and turned, looking back at him.

As the life drained out of his body, he thought he saw compassion. He held his hand out to her. It hung in the air for one second, then fell to the ground.

She tapped the driver of the minibike, and in the waning glow of his brain he understood it wasn’t compassion. It was the opposite. She wanted to ensure he would die.

With her eyes still on him, she placed a helmet on her head and snapped down the visor. He saw his body in the reflection, a twisted, cracked thing. It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t remember what.

The motorbike left, and he couldn’t remember anything at all.