The Moscow Vector Read online

  Bells tolled somewhere close by, probably those of the Church of St. Ursula, calling the devout to early morning mass and young children to classes at the adjoining convent school. As if on cue, the door opened and a lean, pale-eyed police officer, immaculate in a neatly pressed uniform, came in. His light gray slacks, blue shirt, carefully knotted black tie, and darker gray jacket marked him as a member of the Prague Municipal Police—the more powerful of the two rival law enforcement agencies operating in the Czech capital. The ID badge clipped to his jacket identified him as Inspector Tomas Karasek. He dropped easily into the chair directly across from Smith.

  “Good morning, Colonel,” the police officer said casually in clear, comprehensible English. He slid a pair of police artist sketches across the table. “Please tell me what you think of these drawings. They are based on the statement you gave my colleagues last night. Do they match what you remember of the man who you claim killed Dr. Petrenko?”

  Smith took the drawings and examined them closely. The first showed the face of a man with long, tangled hair, dark, brooding eyes, and a small skull earring. The second was identical, except that the artist had added a bandage over what appeared to be a badly broken nose and sketched in bruising all around it. He nodded. “That’s him. No question about it.”

  “Then he is one of the Romany,” Karasek said coolly. He tapped the pictures with one forefinger. “I believe you would call him a Gypsy in your country.”

  Smith looked up in surprise. “You’ve already identified this guy?”

  “By name, no,” the Czech police officer admitted. “No one matching his precise description appears in our files. But the earring, the hair, the clothing…these are all signs which tell me that he is one of their people.” He grimaced. “By their very nature, the Romany are criminals. Even their youngest children are raised to be petty thieves, pickpockets, and beggars. They are nothing but troublemakers, scum, and vermin.”

  With an effort, Smith concealed his distaste for this expression of unthinking bigotry. For all their very real faults, the Romany, a poverty-stricken and rootless people, were commonly used as scapegoats by the richer, more settled societies in which they roamed. It was an old game and all too often a deadly one.

  “Dr. Petrenko’s death was not exactly an act of petty theft,” he said carefully, reining in his temper. “More like cold-blooded murder. These guys knew his name, remember? That’s pretty goddamned personal for a simple bunch of muggers.”

  Karasek shrugged. “They may have followed him to the Charles Bridge from his hotel. These Romany street gangs often prey on tourists, especially if they scent rich pickings.”

  Something in the way he said it sounded false to Smith. He shook his head. “You don’t really believe any of that crap, do you?”

  “I don’t? Then what should I believe?” the other man asked quietly. The pale-eyed Czech policeman looked narrowly across the table. “Do you have some theory of your own, Colonel? One that you would like to share with me, perhaps?”

  Smith stayed quiet. This was dangerous ground. There were limits to what he could safely tell this man. He was sure that Petrenko had been killed to stop him from handing over the medical files and samples he had smuggled out of Moscow, but there was no real evidence left to back that up. Both the briefcase and the Russian had vanished in the Vltava. In the meantime, pushing the idea that this was a political murder was too likely to entangle him in an investigation that could drag on for weeks, and risk revealing skills and connections he had sworn to keep secret forever.

  “I’ve read your statement over quite carefully,” Karasek went on. “Frankly, it seems curiously incomplete in several important respects.”

  “In what way?”

  “This rendezvous of yours with Dr. Petrenko on the bridge, for example,” the Czech police inspector said. “It seems rather an odd place and time for an American military officer and a Russian scientist to be meeting. You see my point, I hope?”

  “My work for the U.S. Army is purely medical and scientific in nature,” Smith reminded him stiffly. “I’m a doctor, not a combat soldier.”

  “Naturally.” Karasek’s thin-lipped smile stopped well short of his pale blue eyes. “But I envy you your American medical training, Colonel. It must have been exceptionally thorough. I’ve met very few doctors who could survive hand-to-hand combat with three armed men.”

  “I was lucky.”

  “Lucky?” The Czech police officer left the word hanging uncomfortably in the air for a few moments before continuing. “Nevertheless, I would still like a more reasonable explanation of what you and Dr. Petrenko were doing together on the Charles Bridge.”

  “There’s no great mystery,” Smith told him, regretting the need to lie. “After two days of lectures and symposia, I needed a short break from the conference. So did Petrenko. And we both wanted to see a bit more of Prague. The bridge just seemed a reasonable starting point.”

  Karasek raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You were sightseeing? In the fog?”

  The American said nothing.

  The Czech policeman stared hard at him for a while longer and then sighed. “Very well. I see no reason to detain you here any longer.” He stood up smoothly, moved to the door, and pulled it open. Then, abruptly, he turned back. “One thing more, Colonel. I should tell you that we have taken the liberty of collecting your luggage from the conference hotel. It’s downstairs waiting for you at the main desk. I imagine that you will wish to shave and change your clothes before making your way to the airport. The next connecting flight to London and New York leaves in a few hours.”

  Smith eyed him narrowly. “Oh?”

  “In these unfortunate circumstances, I am sure that you will wish to cut short your stay in my country,” Karasek explained. “This is regrettable, of course, but entirely understandable.”

  “Is that an order?” Smith asked quietly.

  “At an official level? Not at all,” the other man said. “Our two governments are close allies, are they not?” He shrugged. “Consider it instead a strong unofficial suggestion. Prague is a peaceful city, one whose prosperity depends largely on tourism. We try not to encourage Wild West–style shoot-outs on our scenic streets and historic bridges.”

  “So you’re the sheriff and I’m the gunslinger you’re running out of town before there’s more trouble?” Jon said with a rueful grin.

  For the first time, a hint of genuine amusement flashed across the inspector’s face. “Something like that, Colonel.”

  “I’ll need to contact my superiors,” Smith said pointedly.

  “Certainly.” Karasek turned toward the hallway and raised his voice slightly. “Antonin! Please give our American friend here his phone.”

  A taciturn sergeant brought in the cell phone they had found securely fastened inside the waterproof inner lining of his leather jacket.

  With a brisk nod of thanks, Smith took the compact phone, flipped it open, and hit the power button. A small color display blinked on. Small icons flashed across the miniature screen as the machine ran a quick self-diagnostics check, making sure that it was undamaged and that no one had tampered with its special subroutines and codes.

  “A very intriguing piece of equipment,” Karasek said coolly from the door. “Our electronics experts were quite puzzled by several of its more advanced features.”

  Smith made sure his face stayed blank. “Really? That’s a shame. They’re the hottest thing in the States right now. Next time, I’ll be sure to bring the user’s guide with me.”

  With a slight smile, the Czech shrugged his shoulders, conceding defeat. “I earnestly hope there will not be a next time, Colonel Smith. For now, I wish you a safe journey.”

  The American waited until the door clicked shut and then punched in a preset code. He lifted the phone to his ear. There was a short delay before it began ringing on the other end.

  “Hold one moment, please,” a woman’s soft voice said politely. Then, after a musical tone ch
imed twice, confirming that both ends of this call were being encrypted, she said, “We’re clear. Go ahead.”

  “This is Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith calling from Prague,” Jon said carefully. “Look, I realize that it’s very late there, but I need to speak to General Ferguson. This is important. Fully urgent, in fact.”

  Anyone listening in would be able to confirm that Brigadier General Daniel Ryder Ferguson was the director of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. However, the number he had auto-dialed was not associated with any office at USAMRIID. Instead, his call was passed through an automated relay—one equipped to detect attempts to intercept the signal—before arriving at the Washington, D.C., headquarters of Covert-One.

  Jon Smith led a double life. Most of his work was done out in the open, as a scientist and doctor assigned to USAMRIID. But there were also times when he took on special missions for Covert-One, a top-secret intelligence outfit, one that reported directly to the President of the United States. No one in Congress even knew it existed. Nor did anyone in the broader military and intelligence bureaucracy. Loosely organized around a small headquarters group, Covert-One relied on a clandestine network of operatives, professionals in a number of different fields with a wide range of skills and expertise. Like Smith, they were largely free of family ties and other personal obligations that might hamper their secret work.

  “General Ferguson has already gone home for the day, sir,” Maggie Templeton, the woman who ran communications for Covert-One, said without missing a beat, playing along with the fiction Smith was weaving. The phrase he had used—“Fully urgent”—was a piece of voice code, a shorthand way for a field agent to report that he was in serious trouble. “But I can patch you through to the duty officer.”

  “The duty officer?” he repeated aloud. He nodded. “Yes, that would be fine.”

  “Very good. Wait one moment.”

  The phone went dead for a brief moment and then a familiar voice spoke in his ear. “Good morning, Jon.”

  Smith sat up straighter. “Good evening, sir.”

  The chief of Covert-One, Nathaniel Frederick Klein, chuckled drily. “You’re not usually so formal, Colonel. I assume that the walls around you have ears. Maggie told me you were in hot water of one sort or another.”

  Smith hid a smile. He was fairly sure that at least one hidden microphone was busy recording his end of this conversation. Inspector Karasek was clearly suspicious of him. “I’m calling from a police station in Prague,” he said simply. “Three men tried to kill me yesterday afternoon. They did kill a colleague of mine, a Russian research scientist named Valentin Petrenko.”

  There was a short silence on the other end.

  “I see,” Klein said at length. “You were quite right to report in. This is serious. Extremely so. You had better brief me, Jon.”

  Smith obeyed, recounting the attack on the bridge. For the moment, he was careful to stay within the framework of the story he had already told the police. If they were listening in, it made sense not to give them any more reasons to interrogate him further. And Fred Klein was smart enough to fill in the obvious gaps for himself.

  “The men who attacked you were professionals,” Klein said flatly after Smith had finished. “A hit team, with training in close-quarters combat and small arms.”

  “No question about it,” Smith agreed.

  “Were they Russians?”

  Smith thought back, mentally replaying what he could remember of the long-haired man’s voice. Once the lead attacker had dropped the beggar act and started speaking English, there had been some kind of faint, underlying accent, but Jon was not sure now that he could pin it down. He shrugged. “Maybe. But I wouldn’t swear to it.”

  Klein was silent for another few moments. “And where did Dr. Petrenko work in Moscow?” he asked.

  “He was a disease specialist attached to the Central Clinical Hospital,” Smith told him. “A top-notch guy. One of the best in his field.”

  “The Central Clinical Hospital? That is interesting,” Klein mused. “Very interesting, indeed.”

  Smith raised an eyebrow. From his position in the shadows, Klein had unhindered access to an incredible range of information and analysis. Were other U.S. or Western intelligence organizations already probing the disease outbreak in Moscow?

  “All in all, I would have to say that you have been extremely fortunate,” the older man continued. “By rights, you should be lying dead on that bridge.”

  “Yes, sir,” Smith agreed. “By the way, the police here share your assessment of the situation.”

  Klein snorted. “So I imagine that the Czech authorities have been asking awkward and inconvenient questions about just how you managed to survive this melee?”

  “You could say that,” Smith said wryly. “Add the words non grata to my persona and you’ll get a pretty clear picture of my current status. They’re shipping me out on the next available flight to London.”

  “Which is embarrassing, but not fatal. Either to your career or your cover,” Klein commented. “More to the point: Are you still at risk from these men?”

  Smith considered the question carefully. It was one he had been chewing on for most of the past night. Just how far would the agents who had murdered Petrenko go? Had eliminating the Russian scientist himself satisfied their orders or were they expected to silence anyone Petrenko had contacted? “It’s possible,” he admitted. “Not likely, maybe, but possible.”

  “Understood,” Klein said quietly. The line went dead again. He was back in less than a minute. “I’m going to arrange some backup for you. It won’t be much, not given the tight time frame, but I don’t want you hanging out there all on your own. Can you sit tight for an hour or so?”

  Smith nodded. “No problem.”

  “Good. Call me back before you leave that police station.” Klein hesitated briefly. “And do try your best not to get killed, Jon. Filling out all the paperwork involved is pure hell on my end.”

  Smith grinned. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he promised.

  A middle-aged man wearing a thick brown overcoat, gloves, a fur hat, and mirrored sunglasses hurried out the front entrance of the Konviktská police station. Without looking back, he walked briskly away, heading southwest toward the river.

  Not far off, a black Mercedes sedan with tinted windows sat waiting for him in a narrow side street. Although the Mercedes was parked illegally, the diplomatic tag displayed prominently on its windshield had so far kept Prague’s notoriously overzealous traffic wardens at bay. Despite the overcast day, sunshades were drawn down across the sedan’s rear windows.

  Still moving quickly, the man pulled open the driver’s-side door and slid inside behind the wheel. He took off his hat and sunglasses and tossed them onto the leather seat beside him. With one gloved hand he nervously smoothed down spiky tufts of newly cropped brown hair.

  “Well?” asked a grim voice from the rear seat. “What did you find out?”

  “The municipal police are still holding the American,” the driver, a Romanian whose name was Dragomir Ilionescu, replied, looking up into the rearview mirror. He could just barely make out the shape of the man sitting behind him. “But not for much longer. As you anticipated, they have arranged a flight out for him later today. First to London and then on to New York.”

  “With what official security?”

  “None, apparently. The Czechs expect him to make his own way to the airport.”

  “How far can we trust our informant?” the voice asked.

  Ilionescu shrugged. “He has always been reliable in the past. I have no reason to doubt him now.”

  “Excellent.” Teeth gleamed in the shadowed interior as the man in the rear seat smiled coldly. “Then we will be able to provide Colonel Smith with a most exciting journey. Signal the rest of the unit. I want everyone ready to move immediately. They know their parts.”

  Obediently, Ilionescu reached for the car phone. He flicked
the switch that activated its scrambler. But then he hesitated. “Is taking this risk necessary?” he asked. “I mean, Petrenko is dead and the material he stole is gone forever, washed away in the river. We have accomplished our primary mission. Given that, what real difference does the life of one American doctor matter one way or the other?”

  The man in the rear seat leaned forward out of the shadows. Pale light streaming in through the tinted windshield danced off his shaven skull. Gently, very gently, he touched the thick bandages covering his shattered nose. They were stained with patches of brown, dried blood. “Do you think the man who did this to me was only a doctor?” he said softly. “Just a simple physician?”

  Ilionescu swallowed suddenly.

  “Well, do you?”

  Sweating now, the Romanian shook his head.

  “You show some sense, then. Good. So, whatever this man Smith really is, let us make an end of him,” the other man went on. His voice was now dangerously low. “Besides, our recent orders from Moscow were quite specific, were they not? No witnesses. None. You do remember the penalties for failure, I trust?”

  A muscle around Ilionescu’s left eye twitched at the memory of the gruesome photographs he had been shown. He nodded urgently. “Yes. I remember.”

  “Then carry out my instructions.” With that, Georg Liss, the man who bore the code-name Prague One, sat back again, hiding his ruined face in the darkness.

  Chapter Four

  Near Bryansk, Russia

  Four twin-tailed Su-34 fighter-bombers roared low over the rolling, wooded hills west of Bryansk. Advanced onboard radar systems allowed the attack aircraft to fly just high enough to clear the tallest trees and power pylons in the area. Streams of incandescent flares designed to decoy heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles blazed in their wake, wafting slowly downward toward the snow-covered ground.

  Suddenly the Su-34s popped up, briefly gaining altitude while their onboard systems acquired multiple targets, transferred the data to their weapons, and calculated release points. Seconds later a cloud of precision-guided bombs and missiles fell away from beneath their wings and plunged onward toward the distant forest below. Instantly the four jets broke hard right, again diving for the deck to shake off any hostile radars as they exited the strike area and vanished to the north.