The Fall of Moscow Station (14 page)

“Footprints,” she said. “Boots by the look of them, but somebody had a pair of dress shoes.” The dust had been disturbed, mostly by shoes with fat treads, but also a pair with a flat sole.

They searched the ground floor and found nothing besides the signs of recent movement across the floor. Kyra used her smartphone to document them with digital pictures before the analysts moved up the stairs to the second floor.

The first two rooms were no different from the ones they'd seen on the ground floor, more entropy at work on the wood and wallpaper, but the third was what they'd come to see. A chair sat in the corner, a wooden stool in the center of the room. Both had only the smallest bits of dust on their seats. A length of cord sat on the floor next to a black hood.

“Bet you ten dollars this is where they arrested Strelnikov,” Kyra offered.

“Sucker's bet. I'll keep my money. The ante is too low to be interesting.”

“You think we should bag that stuff,” Kyra asked, nodding at the hood and the rope.

Jon shook his head. “Just photograph the room. If this is where Strelnikov checked out, then it's a crime scene, technically speaking. I don't think the Germans would be very happy with you tampering with evidence.”

Kyra shrugged, and photographed the room and its contents. She stared around, looking for any missed details. “There's nothing else here. I don't see anything that could tell us what Lavrov is working on.”

Jon's gaze had become unfocused and Kyra recognized the thousand-yard stare that he fell into when he was thinking. “That Syrian officer wouldn't have come all the way out here just to talk with Lavrov,” he said, working the puzzle as he spoke. “They could've done that at the embassy, or just over a secure phone. He must've come to Berlin so Lavrov could show him something . . . or give him something.”

“Maybe Lavrov wanted to show him that he'd caught Strelnikov?” Kyra suggested. “Show him that his operation was secure?”

Jon shook his head. “A photograph would have done that just as well. No need for him to see that in person, or at least not to see
only
that in person. He must've come here for something that Lavrov couldn't just share remotely,” he suggested. “And Lavrov is a technology dealer.”

Kyra saw where his line of logic was going. “You think Lavrov brought him here to demonstrate something, or deliver something? A weapon?”

“Or some other piece of technology.”

“Why not do that in Russia?” Kyra asked.

“Good question. I don't know,” he admitted. “But if the Syrian did come here for a weapons test or a technology demonstration, where would Lavrov set it up?”

Kyra pulled out the base diagram again. “Assuming he wanted to keep the demonstration secure, he wouldn't want to do it around here. The base is enormous. Anyone could stumble in from a dozen different directions. There's no way he could secure the place without bringing in a regiment, and that would be hard to hide from the locals.”

Jon stared at the diagram and put his finger down on a spot to the southwest. “The actual missile base? It would be easier to lock down a smaller group of buildings than this main complex . . . and it had its own living quarters, workshops, and hard storage bunkers where everything could be secured. If Lavrov wanted a self-contained space where he could mount up some actual security, that would be the place, because it probably was the most secure place on the base when this place was actually operational. But that's just me doing some mirror imaging. I'm not a Russian intelligence officer.”

“It sounds logical. Let's hope that Lavrov is a logical man,” Kyra offered in support.

“You think I'm wrong?”

“No, I'm worried that you're right,” Kyra replied. “And I'm
really
worried that his people will still be there.”

“Then we call the Germans and let them clean the place out,” Jon advised. “Maybe everything gets wrapped up nice and neat.”

“You don't believe that.”

“When have I ever been an optimist?” he asked.

•  •  •

They needed almost another hour to walk down to the missile base. The complex was far smaller than the main base they'd just left, but still large enough to be daunting. They reached the tree line, and Kyra stopped short. “Jon,” she said, quiet. “Up there.”

He looked up. Two wooden poles six meters tall rose from the ground with a heavy metal cable strung between them over a concrete slab on the ground, then fastened to the earth on either side like the guidelines of a tent. A steel girder, rust apparent on its surface even from a distance, hung suspended from the wire over the slab, five meters square underneath. More dark wires on each side ran down to enormous metal cylinders topped with gold ports, and several other wires ran into a concrete bunker buried in a hillside beyond.

“Are those power lines?” Kyra asked.

Jon nodded. “Good bet. Look where they run.” He pointed and Kyra followed the invisible line drawn by his hand to the large silver cylinders topped with gold stubs. “Those look like industrial capacitors.”

“No corrosion on them. Those are new,” she said. “Big ones too. They look like the ones you'd see in a power substation.”

Jon twisted his head, listening. “No buzz,” he said.

“Line's dead?”

“Probably, but I'm not going to test it,” he replied.

“If this is where Lavrov was set up, he could've just pulled some generator trucks up and jacked in right there.”

“I don't think so,” Jon countered. “Those wires run over to those buildings. Makes more sense that they'd put up a generator inside. It would be quieter than running it out in the open.”

Kyra scanned the close horizon, looking for movement or other signs of life. She saw nothing. “I don't see anyone.”

Jon nodded, and they walked toward the odd setup. “It's a test rig of some kind, I think.”

“A test rig for what?” Kyra asked. “I don't see any kind of blast or scorch marks on anything. And if they were testing bombs or guns, the locals would've heard it. We're not that far from the village back by the rail station.”

Jon pondered the question for a moment. “We should check out the bunkers.”

Kyra took the lead, scanning their surroundings as she walked. She stopped as they approached the building that was the power line's terminus. “Any idea what this one is?” she asked, nodding toward the building.

“Missile storage silo is my guess,” he muttered.

“Still don't see anyone,” Kyra noted. “The place is locked up . . . but the lock looks new from here. Still shines, no rust.”

The bunker was a concrete slab dug into the earth behind, with a flat roof that angled down into sloping sides. Moss covered the top side and was growing down the front wall toward the doors. The concrete was discolored where some kind of dark gray paint had started chipping loose near the top. The two doors in front were metal, rusting into shades of red and green. Kyra's observation had been correct. The locks on both were silver, free of corrosion.

“Think you can break in?”

“O ye of little faith,” Kyra chided the man. “Wherefore dost thou doubt?”

“As much as I appreciate your talents, you might want to compare your lockpicking skills to someone a little closer to earth.”

Kyra extracted her lockpick set from her pack and set to work. Jon kept up the vigil behind her, scanning the buildings and woods for movement. The woman took less than a minute to pop the lock. She pulled it off, set it on the ground, and opened the door.

“No miracles necessary,” she offered.

“Very nice,” Jon muttered. He stepped inside the bunker and switched on his Maglite.

•  •  •

The bunker's interior was an open cavern, like a miniature aircraft hangar. The floor was concrete, swept clean of debris, with single row of large cement slabs rising up in a line at regular intervals, each with an identical concave arc cut into the center. “They laid the missiles out on those,” Kyra realized. She looked up and saw a pair of rails running along the roof near the corners. “Chain and pulley system,” she noted. “Would've made it easy to lift and lower them when moving them in and out.”

Jon walked toward the far end of the bunker until his flashlight illuminated the back wall. Enormous metal boxes sat on skids, cabled together, with a single power line coming out of the last box on the right and snaking along hooks mounted in the concrete wall toward the entrance. “There are your generators,” he said.

Kyra's light caught a dark shape by a pair of worktables and benches that ran along the wall opposite the power line. A backpack sat on the floor, the flap on the front hanging loose. She knelt down by it, lifted the flap, and pointed her light inside. “Camera . . . water bottle . . . notebook,” she said, moving the contents around. Other odds and ends were gathered in the bottom.

“Longstreet's, I'll wager,” Jon suggested.

“That British hiker?” Kyra realized. “Yeah, I wouldn't bet against that.”

“Anything on the camera?”

Kyra picked up the device, a low-end Canon digital SLR. She searched for the power button, pressed it. “Not working. Battery might be dead. We could take it back to the embassy and get a new one . . . unless you want to preserve the crime scene.”

Jon looked around with his flashlight. “Something tells me that it won't be here that long. If the Russians are done with these generators and the capacitors outside, I can't imagine they'll leave them here. And if they're not done with them, they'll be back.”

“I don't think we want to be here for that.” Kyra swept her light over the worktables and benches. They were free of dust and tools, with only bits of wire and electronic parts sitting on top. She picked up a calculator, a cheap Hewlett-Packard. She fiddled with it, but it refused to go on. What appeared to be a digital voltmeter fared no better, as did a radio that sat on the floor under the table. “Busted junk,” she said.

Jon frowned. “All of them?”

“Yeah.” Kyra took the battery covers off. “Batteries all look fine. No corrosion.”

Jon pulled the batteries out of the devices and began dropping them one by one a short distance from each other, just a few inches off the table. Each made a solid thumping sound, and several remained upright.

“What are you doing?” Kyra asked.

“When a battery is used, the alkaline inside undergoes a chemical reaction that produces a gas that gets trapped inside the casing. The more it's used, the more gas it builds up. Drop a charged battery onto a hard surface and it won't bounce. Drop a dead battery, and the gas trapped in it will make it jump. It'll usually fall over. Sounds muffled when it hits too,” Jon explained. He held up one of the batteries. “These still have a good charge.”

“So why do we care?” Kyra asked.

“The calculator, voltmeter, the radio . . . they all have good power supplies, but none of them work. And I'll bet you that the camera's battery is fine too.” Jon looked away from the battery in his hands to his partner, her face only half lit by her flashlight. “It's just a theory, but think about it. Assume Lavrov is doing something up here, something he shows off to the Syrians. We know it's something that he could transport without drawing a lot of attention. It doesn't make a lot of noise, if any, but draws a fair amount of power.” He held the battery up again. “And it kills electronics.”

Kyra processed the evidence in her mind. “EMP?”

Jon nodded. “Basic physics . . . run enough electricity through metal coil connected to a capacitor and you'll create a pulse that will generate an electrical current inside any computer circuit in range. If there's enough power behind the pulse, it fries everything. Scientists say that one nuclear-generated EMP at four hundred kilometers over Kansas would make the entire continent go preindustrial in a few seconds. The Syrians don't have a missile that could do that, but a Scud could reach Israel in a few minutes. Every time the Syrians face off against the Israelis, they get thrashed because the Israelis have better weapons. We sell Tel Aviv all kinds of high-tech gear that the Syrians can't match, even buying from the Russians. But mount some really powerful electromagnetic pulse bombs on Scud missiles and set them off over the Golan Heights or Tel Aviv, and just maybe the Israeli military gets paralyzed. Same thing could happen to us.”

Kyra looked around. “The lights weren't out in the village when we came through. If they were testing one of those, it must've been a small model.”

“Lavrov wouldn't have needed to test a big one. EMP bombs aren't complicated to build. The only real variables involved are the altitude when detonation occurs and how much power is behind the pulse. Maybe Lavrov's people figured out how to build a more powerful version in a smaller package.”

“What's the altitude ceiling for a Scud?” Kyra asked.

“For a Scud D? A hundred fifty kilometers, more or less . . . but they don't need it to go a hundred fifty kilometers up. If there's enough power behind the pulse, a kilometer or two above the battlefield will do just fine to kill every unhardened piece of gear dead . . . or do the same thing over a major city and kill all of the critical infrastructures in a direct line of sight of the device.”

“Strelnikov's grandfather was Jewish,” Kyra realized. “It was in the file. Maybe he had a soft spot for Israel. He found out Lavrov was sharing EMP tech with the Syrians and came to us.” Kyra pulled out the smartphone and began to photograph everything in sight. Then she picked up the calculator. “Think the Germans would object if I took this?”

“Knock yourself out,” Jon said. “Time to be going, I think.”

•  •  •

They stepped into the daylight. The sun had reached the tops of the Brandenburg woods and the dark would be settling within the hour.