The Coward's Way of War (29 page)

He looked across at General Zaitsev, who was watching the FSB men as they manhandled the female doctor.  Zaitsev had cooperated completely, as far as Nicolas could tell, but it would be easy for the Russians to conceal at least part of their program from prying eyes.  What Nicolas
had
seen had terrified him, terrified him enough to suggest that the United States force the Russians to disarm, even if there was a threat of nuclear war.  He doubted the President would agree, unless some of the nastier bugs got loose…and then it would be too late.  The Russians had created and stored enough weapons to wipe out the entire human race, several times over.

And their level of security was not high.  Some of the facilities had secure storage rooms comparable to the CDC in Atlanta, but others were barely guarded, vulnerable to terrorist attack or insurgents from the south.  Combined with a dazzling array of deployment methods, from tiny hidden aerosols to missile warheads that preserved the bugs and protected them from the heat of re-entry, the Russians had a biological weapon for every possible contingency.  The only one they didn’t seem to have prepared for was one of their weapons getting out of their hands and being deployed by terrorists against the United States.  They hadn’t even bothered to build up a significant supply of vaccine. 

It was that, Nicolas knew, that would make the difference between successfully surviving the pandemic and losing an entire country.  The United States had enough immunised people to keep society ticking over, as had Europe and some of the more advanced states.  The Third World, on the other hand, was not so lucky.  Henderson’s Disease had been reported in Africa, East Asia and Indonesia.  Wherever it touched, it brought death and social collapse.  Even if there had been enough vaccine on hand to inoculate the entire population of the world, the logistics would have precluded getting it to everyone before it was too late.  No matter what they did, as he’d told the President, people were going to die.

“Doctor,” the interrogator said, “we know what you have done.  We have traced the lost sample to you.  We have traced the money to you.  We know that you are guilty.  Your only hope of survival lies in doing your patriotic duty and cooperating with us to limit the damage.  If you do not cooperate, you will not enjoy the consequences.”

Nicolas frowned.  Combining Russian and American investigation tactics had paid off, although he knew that most of the evidence they had gathered was circumstantial.  The Russians didn’t give a damn about due process, not with the might of America's military machine pointed right at their heartland and, once they had a number of suspects, had started interrogating them with brutal efficiency.   Even so, the interrogator was exaggerating; statistically, there was a very good chance that they’d got the wrong person.

”
Talk to me, Nadya,” the second interrogator said, gently.  He had a voice that would be the envy of most movie stars, one that would send shivers down the spine of any woman.  “I cannot help you unless you talk to me.”

“She isn’t going to talk,” the first one snapped.  His voice was harsher, threatening everything from torture to imminent death.  “The unpatriotic bitch will not cooperate…”

Without warning, he slapped Nadya right across her face.  Nicolas heard her cry out in pain, a trickle of blood appearing from her mouth.  He blanched as the doctor was slapped again, this time on the other side of her cheek.  Her face started to turn red, tears streaming down her eyes as she tried to avoid a third blow.  The kindly interrogator looked away, affecting an unconcerned pose as the nasty interrogator clenched his fist in front of her face.

“Did you like that, bitch?”  He demanded.  “It will get worse if you refuse to share what you know.”

Nicolas braced himself as Nadya cried out again.  Once, years ago, he had attended a course on Conduct after Captivity and the lecturer, a former SEAL, had explained that the male mind was not designed to remain unmoved by sounds of female pain.  He’d illustrated the point by playing them recordings of women being hurt, from simple slaps to outright rape, and explained that it was sometimes used to break a suspect.  An American serviceman who had been taken prisoner had been broken, not by torture or starvation, but by watching a young girl being raped in front of him.  No matter what Nadya had done, Nicolas couldn’t remain unmoved.

He tried to push his feelings aside and concentrated on the scene playing out in front of him.  Torture, despite the media’s hysterical claims, was rarely used by American interrogators, for it was not always reliable.  If a person’s claims could be verified, it could be made to work, but otherwise a person who was being tortured would eventually say anything, just to make the pain stop.  The Russians, on the other hand, had no scruples about using it and there would be no comeback, no lawyers suing the government, no political leaders throwing the interrogators to the rules to save themselves.  He told himself that if it worked - that if it broke Nadya - it was worthwhile.  Millions of people were threatened with death.  Somehow, it didn’t make it any easier.

“He’ll do worse if you don’t help me,” the kindly interrogator was saying.  His voice remained calm and composed, even as he rested a fatherly arm on Nadya’s shoulder.  Her head seemed to be lolling from side to side.  “Please help me save you and your family.  They will all be tarred with your crimes against the state if you don’t help us.”

The first interrogator pushed his arm away and slapped Nadya again.  “You will talk,” he said, angrily.  “I promise you that you will talk.”

Nicolas looked over at the Russian General.  “How long is this going to take?”

“It will take as long as it takes,” Zaitsev said, flatly.  “I do not believe that she will hold out for long.”

Nicolas tended to agree.  Nadya was the closest thing that the Russian Biological Warfare Program had to royalty, the daughter of two scientists who had worked at the centre and followed her parents into the family business.  She had grown up as the Soviet Union was collapsing and had graduated, only to discover that she wouldn’t receive anything like the perks her parents had received, over the years.  There would be no fancy car or holidays for her, yet she was too important to be allowed to emigrate or even to seek employment in the civilian sector.  In hindsight, such a person was an obvious security risk, but so were most of the Russian scientists.  Since the end of the Cold War, Russian weapons scientists had been turning up in the oddest places, including Iran, North Korea and Iraq.  Nicolas’s predecessor from Wildfire had urged President Clinton to invite them to come live in the USA, where they could be debriefed and kept out of trouble, but the President had refused.  He’d been too busy arguing over the details of presidential fellatio and hadn’t had the time to worry about a danger that might manifest in the future.

He watched as a third interrogator wheeled in a tray of devices and started to talk about them, explaining at great length what each of them would do to a person’s body, when they were used by a man experienced in making people hurt.  One would remove teeth without anaesthetic; another, a simple pair of tweezers, would remove nose hairs one by one.  One, looking rather like a spiky dildo, would do unspeakable things to a person’s vagina and rectum.  Nicolas felt a sudden urge to be sick as the interrogator picked up one of the tools, just as Nadya burst into a high-speed torrent of Russian.  Nicolas spoke Russian fluently, but the girl was speaking so fast it was impossible for him to follow her.

“A confession,” Zaitsev said, with heavy satisfaction.  He grinned and slapped Nicolas on the shoulder, a blow heavy enough to make him stagger.  The General seemed to be fond of acting like a bumpkin half the time, even though Nicolas knew better than to underestimate him.  “I trust that this will please your superiors.”

Nicolas shrugged, mentally plotting to edit out the details from his report.  Even with Henderson’s Disease carrying away hundreds of people per day, there was bound to be someone who would make a fuss over how the information had been obtained.  It would have to be checked and verified, of course, just in case the girl was so scared that she’d made up a story on the spot, but it had the ring of truth.  Combined with the report about the discovery of the Index Case in New York, it all added up to a terrifying picture.

The interrogation dragged on for hours.  Now that she’d broken, Nadya couldn’t stop talking and had outlined everything she’d done to make money, from sleeping with some of her fellow scientists to offering several of the most dangerous biological weapons for sale to the highest bidder.  Nicolas couldn’t believe his ears – it defied belief that someone could be so irresponsible, no matter their upbringing or the details of their life – yet it too had the ring of truth.  He looked over at the General and shook his head.  What kind of country created such dangerous people and then refused to treat them well?

Once the interrogation was complete, at least for the moment, Nicolas rode with the prisoner van back to the airport.  One of the unmarked aircraft would hold her prisoner until she was flown back to the states, where she would be interrogated and drained dry, before she was charged with mass murder and terrorism.  The Russians had made noises about charging her themselves, but they’d backed down when Nicolas had flatly refused to allow them to keep her.  They knew that she could tell the United States far too much about their program, quite apart from the details of Henderson’s Disease.  It still defied belief.  Who in their right mind would allow someone to just walk out of the building with a vial of smallpox?

He returned to Air Force Two, passed the Marine guard on duty and entered the secure communications room.  An ELINT scan checked that he hadn’t picked up any Russian surveillance devices – the Russians had been largely behaving themselves, but two of the team had gone out to paint Moscow red and had come back with several bugs affixed to their persons – before he activated the secure link to Washington.  It took only five minutes before he was connected with the President.

“I think that we now know most of the truth,” he said, once he had given a brief rundown of their findings.  They’d been making reports back every day, but there hadn’t been anything so significant.  In the long term, the details of the Russian program were important, yet it didn’t help with the crisis.  “And, Madam President, I think we know who to blame.”

His eyes narrowed.  “We know who did this to us,” he added.  “And, now, we can prove it in any court of law.  We can go get them.”

Societies exist in a precarious state between oppression and anarchy, where the government runs everything and there is no law,
but the rule of the strong.  Our society has been falling towards a strange combination of the two, where the federal government is all-powerful, yet anarchy is rising on the streets.  When the law becomes a tool for political advantage, the underlying basis of the law is weakened and swept away.  The surest way to do this is to allow the politicians to evade the laws that they have created.

-Jim Revells

Near Mannington VA, USA

Day 22

“Fucking niggers.”

Jim looked over towards Fran Revells in surprise. Fran was his brother’s wife, a middle-aged woman with spectacles and something of a squint.  She certainly was not the kind of person one would expect to come out with something like that, although he understood where she was coming from.  Fran had grown up in a multicultural area and had boundless contempt for the inhabitants and the politicians who coddled them, rather than admit that decades of social engineering had failed to produce a stable society.

“That’s enough of that,” Brian said, firmly.  “There are children present.”

Fran nodded, but refused to apologise.  Almost all of the farm’s population was gathered in the living room, watching television.  The trial of the Reverend Johnston – although Jim would not have willingly given the man any religious title – was in its second day.  Johnston was trying to defend himself against charges that he had deliberately spread Henderson’s Disease and impeding the vaccination program, which the effect – the prosecutor claimed – of infecting over two hundred additional people with Henderson’s Disease.  The long-term impact of his actions might remain impossible to calculate.

Jim shot his two sons a glare when they started to chatter away, before turning his attention back to the television set.  The two boys had been acting up ever since the remainder of the family had arrived, going slowly stir crazy cooped up on the farm.  It felt large to Jim, even though he knew their farm was tiny compared to some of the others in the area, but the younger children found it restrictive.  They wanted to go off and explore the local area as they had during holidays to the farm, yet Jim had forbidden it, warning them that if they got out of the farm, they might not be let back in.  God alone knew what they would bring with them.