Lomax studied his prisoner on the security monitor. She was sitting up in her hospital bed, still in the secure medical wing of St. Elizabeth’s. Each compartment in her dinner tray had been cleaned out. He understood. She was replenishing supplies, a soldier preparing for battle.
Beside Kalnikova’s bed, Dr. Mars stood with a tablet, apparently asking her questions, tapping in her replies. Lomax decided not to intrude, to give her a few moments of respite.
Finally, the doctor’s questions came to an end and he closed the cover of his tablet, held it at his side. But he didn’t leave. Instead, he seemed to ask her another question, and she seemed puzzled by it. But Mars must have cleared up any confusion, because after he spoke again, she gave a quick nod, and the doctor had left.
Lomax met him in the corridor outside the major’s room. “Patient recovering?”
Dr. Mars appeared to misread his intent. “You don’t have to be concerned. In her condition, she can’t get out of her restraints.”
“The only reason she’s not out of her restraints is because it doesn’t suit her purposes. Yet.”
“Are you getting what you need from her?”
Lomax held up a laptop, two years old, basic. “I got what she promised. But it’s no good to me.”
“The sedation might be interfering with her ability to pass on useful information,” the doctor said.
Lomax wondered how someone so naïve had ever come to work here. “The drugs may slow her reflexes so she can’t fight her way out of here effectively. But that mind of hers is sharp. Now I have to find out if she’s playing me, or just negotiating for a better deal.” He was looking forward to the challenge.
Mars told Lomax to contact him if he had any other questions about the major’s prognosis, headed down the corridor.
Lomax entered the prisoner’s room on his own. His prisoner wasn’t surprised to see him, but she seemed puzzled by the laptop.
“That is not computer I told you about.”
Lomax cleared her dishes, put the laptop on the bed tray, switched it on. “We thought we’d keep the original to ourselves. So we cloned the hard drive. Everything you told us about should be here.”
“Should be?”
She’s suspicious. Good, Lomax thought. We’re even.
A password screen appeared.
“Famous NSA was stopped by this?”
Lomax gestured to the keyboard. “In the interests of time.”
Kalnikova raised her left hand, making a point of tugging against her restraint. It was just loose enough to allow her to use a plastic spoon for meals. She’d need the laptop moved so she could reach all the keys.
He slid the computer closer, and Kalnikova pecked out a long string of letters and numbers. She smiled at him. “Fully random. Fortunate I remember.”
Lomax put a slip of paper beside the computer. The passcode she had just entered was printed on it, courtesy of the NSA. It had taken less than three minutes to crack. “In case you hadn’t,” he said.
The desktop appeared on-screen, and Kalnikova called up a directory of applications. “There.” She opened a program, sat back. “Just as I told you. What is problem?”
“Wait,” Lomax said.
A few seconds later, a window opened to a map of Missouri. A red line stretched across the middle of the state, following Highway 70, then ended outside St. Louis.
“So there he is. My half of deal.”
“Look at the date.”
Kalnikova looked annoyed, but she maneuvered a cursor arrow over the red line, clicked at the end point, read the tag that opened. “Two days ago.”
“Borodin’s turned off the GPS tracker.”
“I took laptop from garage after he stole van. He couldn’t know tracker was there. Obviously, he found it.” She moved her fingers like scissors. “Disconnect. Bad luck.”
It was time to push. “That leaves you with no deal,” Lomax said.
The Russian major’s face became a mask, no sign whatsoever of sedation diminishing her capabilities. “I told you what I know. I gave you…” She hesitated, searching for a word. “Actionable intelligence. Your response was too slow.”
“The date, Major. The tracker was already off when we made our deal. Maybe it’s bad luck. Or maybe you already knew that because you’re working with the general, and you made the deal with us to retrieve the laptop from Colorado just to slow us down.”
Kalnikova’s eyes were cold. “Major Lomax, you have lost men in battle?”
Lomax didn’t know why she asked the question, but accepted it at face value: the respect of one soldier to another despite their different uniforms. “I have.”
“General Borodin killed two of my men. You understand?”
Lomax knew of one dead Russian national recovered from the firefight in Colorado Springs. That there might be a second somewhere was a revelation.
“I can’t be sure of that,” he said.
Kalnikova lay back against her angled mattress and stacked pillows with an exaggerated air of fatalistic acceptance, which Lomax did not believe for a second. Though he did admire her performance.
“You know how general entered your country. I have told you he stole white van with GPS tracker. So he turned it off. You have satellites and traffic cameras. How far can a white van have traveled in two days?”
“Well, that’s the thing, now, isn’t it?”
Kalnikova gave him a long-suffering look. Lomax got the sense that she was enjoying her side of the challenge as much as he was. “As I have said, I do not know why he is here.”
“Why’d you come after him?”
“I was told he stole new weapon technology he planned to sell to you. My orders: to stop him, return with weapon. But … he’s not here to sell after all. Otherwise, you would have it and him already and I would be going home.”
“And you don’t know what the weapon is?”
She held up the bandaged stump of her right wrist. “Obviously yes, and no. They shot something at me. My gun exploded. And … was very painful.”
Lomax didn’t believe that the Russian major had told him all she knew, but what he didn’t doubt was her frustration, and her determination to complete her mission.
“One more chance,” he said. “You help us stop the general before he uses his weapon, we send you home. We don’t stop him, and the weapon gets used, it’s—”
“Supermax,” Kalnikova said. “What do you want me to do?”
* * *
They began with photographs. Kalnikova was correct. The DHS was monitoring thousands of traffic cameras in the northeastern quadrant of the country, responding in real time to sightings of any white Ford E-Series van. But the Russian general wasn’t careless, and Lomax took it as a given that the stolen van was now hidden inside a truck, or otherwise disguised. Thus, the department’s priority was to confirm facial data for the general and his men, so the cameras could begin looking for individuals.
But the first revelation Kalnikova provided Lomax was that none of the photographs the NSA had of General Borodin were actually of him.
“He is very important asset,” she said, almost proudly. “We don’t, what would you say, advertise him.”
The identity of the general’s senior officer—Captain Konstantin Korolev—was also shrouded. But for two others in the general’s team, Yegor and Gulin Dronov, the NSA’s photographs were accurate. It was a start.
“What next?” Kalnikova asked.
“Battle space,” Lomax said. He placed three files on her bed tray. “There’s a chance he’s going to attack a soft target, almost at random, just to cause civilian casualties. Though, if that were his intention, he would have done it by now. So, we also have to consider the possibility that Borodin has a specific agenda. One that might point him to a higher-value target.” He touched the files for emphasis. “Is there anything in these files that would appeal to him, connects to him, to his politics?”
Kalnikova leaned forward to check the top sheet of each file, seemingly intrigued by the challenge. “United Nations? With Russian ambassador and ambassadors of friendly states in attendance?” She gave a short laugh. “Anti-terrorism Conference? Maybe he do world a favor. Russia was not invited, but all countries the west is reaching out to there, a lot of Russian allies. No sense to attack friends. And US Capitol? All your politicians? How could that not trigger nuclear holocaust?”
“Could that be his plan?”
“A war that can’t be won? That’s no soldier’s plan.”
“Then read the full files,” Lomax said. “What are his politics? Is there a topic of discussion with significance for him? Is a rival due to achieve something he feels should be his? Anything that might justify an attack.”
Kalnikova’s remaining hand assessed the thickness of each file. “I suppose vodka is out of the question.”
“I’ll get coffee,” Lomax said.
The major rolled her eyes. “Land of the free. Ha.”
* * *
“I think I’ve got something,” Arlo said.
Caparelli looked up from his desk, guessed his distraction was evident because Arlo then asked if he should come back another time.
“No, no.” Caparelli closed his laptop. “I was, uh, writing a letter to Norma’s grandson … her only family.…” And what exactly do I say when I’m the one responsible? “What is it?” he asked.
Arlo closed the office door, held a tablet close. “I got a hit on the general’s son.”
“Misha.”
“Right. It’s the diminutive for Mikhail. And, well, there’s this.” He handed over the tablet.
Caparelli studied the web page on-screen. “The Moscow Times?”
“English-language newspaper in Russia.”
Half the page was taken up by an advertising photograph of a luxury SUV. The caption below it read: The model of the vehicle involved. “So?”
“Sorry.” Arlo leaned over, scrolled the page down to reveal the headline. “Just over three years ago.”
NO PROSECUTION IN HIT-AND-RUN KILLING.
“Check the victim’s name.”
Caparelli read it aloud. “Mikhail Borodin. Is it a common name?”
“It’s not uncommon. But here’s the thing. There’s almost no other mention of the accident. Nothing in the Russian-language press, and no follow-up story on this site.”
“So?”
“Reminds me of how we handled Laura’s accident. Blocked the traffic cam records. Kept it out of the news.”
Caparelli thought it over. The news blackout over Laura’s death was a standard procedure when active agents died. Their deaths would be reported eventually, though with altered details. The idea was to keep potential enemies off guard, never sure that if they had had a hand in the death, that it had taken place as planned.
“You’re thinking the general’s son was in the business? FSB agent? Something like that?”
“Anything’s possible. But Russians play by different rules. If the general was involved in some domestic conflict, say a turf war in their intelligence community, well, they’re not shy about going after family members.”
“The sins of the father…” For Caparelli, the whirlwind of puzzle pieces began to collapse into a single image, no longer fractured. There was no evidence to prove the connection, but it felt right. “You’re thinking Borodin might not have a political agenda. That he might just be after the person who killed his son?”
“Like I said. Right now, anything’s possible.”
Caparelli could understand the general having a personal motive for revenge. But the scale of his undertaking, the number of deaths he’d already caused—it all seemed too big, too complex.
“Did the police ever find out who was responsible?”
“Fortunately, they didn’t wipe the official files. The driver’s name was Josiah Oliver. An American. And they had to release him.”
Caparelli knew the reason before Arlo could state it. “Diplomatic immunity.”
“Exactly. He was in charge of security at the US embassy. Recalled.”
“So maybe it’s not just a father’s sorrow, a father’s rage.” But still … it has to be something else than just wanting to kill one man for revenge. Something more.
“For now, we’ve got nothing else.”
“Do we know where this man is today?”
“We’re looking.”
* * *
It took the major two hours. Lomax looked up from a text message on his phone when she swore in Russian.
“What is it?” he asked.
She held up a file. “Is not politics. Is not mass terror.”
Lomax got up from his chair, went to her side. “He’s got a smaller target?”
“In here.” She held out the file.
The Joint Anti-terrorism Conference. Lomax took the file from her, a pulse of anticipation heightening the moment. He flipped through to the list of participants, arranged by country, so many names and faces familiar, the leaders of the most powerful countries on the planet, with the exception of Russia. If only a quarter of the people on that list were killed in some terrible attack, the repercussions could devastate governments around the world, destroy the global economy. Even Russia would not escape that kind of collapse.
“Is it one particular country he’s targeted?”
“Nyet—no,” Kalnikova said. She tried to take the file back, but her tethered arm couldn’t reach it. “Not country. Back to beginning.”
Lomax put the file back on the tray so she could see it. “Who?”
She paged back to the second sheet in the file, and for a moment, Lomax was confused. The page she turned to wasn’t a list. It was a general note of introduction, broadly describing the approach to security undertaken by the DHS.
“A man.” Kalnikova put a finger on the bottom of the page, on the name of the man who had signed the introduction as Operations Chief, National Protection and Programs Section, Department of Homeland Security. “This man.”
Lomax read the name. “I don’t know him.…”
“Twenty-four hours,” Kalnikova said, “whole world will know his name. And the people who died because of him.”
* * *
The freshly painted Ford van was in the motel’s parking lot where it attracted no attention because it was such a common sight, especially with all the news crews arriving to cover the anti-terrorism conference. The van’s microwave transmitter mast had been reinstalled and was folded flat along the roof, though it was no longer connected to anything. All the electronics and video equipment that had once been inside had been removed and left in the Winnebago, replaced by the five VEKTOR containment units.
Borodin’s men were in their motel rooms, sleeping through the day, the general hoped. They were excited. Proud to think they were patriots, doing battle in service to their country. Borodin envied them that. He felt no pride in what he would do tomorrow. Only righteousness. Because what he would do was what he understood he must do.
Tonight, his squad would make their final preparations—Korolev had told him it would take almost seven hours to make everything ready. But after that, the containment units would be in place, and all that would be left would be the waiting for tomorrow’s sunset.
And vengeance.
Borodin, though, didn’t sleep. It was the price of command. His plan had brought him this far, almost perfectly, and certainly on schedule, but he felt compelled to run through the remaining stages again and again, searching for weakness, for any opportunity in which the unexpected might arise.
So he sat in the van, on the operator’s chair that was bolted to the floor, smoking American cigarettes that weren’t as tasteless as the others complained, staring at the steady status lights of the units, thinking.
They were a two-hour drive from the staging area. This far from the small town of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, there was no indication of increased security measures. Local news presented nonstop updates detailing the arrival of delegations from more than twenty nations. The reports also emphasized the unprecedented security arrangements in place. But security wasn’t a concern. His squad and the containment units wouldn’t have to penetrate any form of security perimeter—the shadow warriors would do that.
Borodin blew out a slow, perfect smoke ring that floated in the van’s still air. It seemed to glow in the status lights on the units’ control pads. All green, at peace.
He looked at Unit One. Not the first by any means. But the first to be successful.
“Misha,” he said, and the name hung like smoke in the stillness.
* * *
It had rained that night. Summer rain, relief from the heavy heat of a Moscow summer. He had been at dinner with Sergei and Ivana, old friends with little to do with his new assignment, a rare chance to escape for an hour or two.
There was tension at the project—when was there not? Always the pressure to perform. The theory was solid, but where were the results? Borodin felt he had pushed his scientists and technicians as hard as he could. He’d begun to suspect the theory was not as complete as the director believed. He’d read the equations, and his intuition told him there was an element missing, perhaps one that hadn’t yet been quantified. So he was preparing to request the work be stepped back, to rethink, reconsider, choose another angle of attack. He knew the stakes: Succeed in his request or be reassigned. He was ready to accept either outcome. He was Russian. He could only do what he could do, and that would be the end of it.
So he drank and he laughed with his old friends, and the call had come just after ten, as the setting sun stained the summer rain clouds bloodred.
He’d rushed to the street, ready to drive, but a car was already there to meet him, the driver grim, a member of the project. They didn’t go to Burdenko, or any hospital. Instead, they went to the clinic, a private one, where Misha had been taken. For one brief elated moment, he’d thought it was because his son’s injuries were not severe, that hospital facilities weren’t required.
But as he’d passed through the old wooden doors, into the marble-lined reception area that reeked of disinfectant, he’d seen Evgeny Gorokhov—the ancient, scarred and hulking bear who ran the project—waiting for him. A dour-looking doctor with blood on her white smock, a surgical mask dangling from her neck, was with him.
“The project is providing all possible assistance to the police to track down the criminal responsible,” Chief Administrator Gorokhov said. “But for your son, there’s no time. It’s a tragedy, no doubt.”
Borodin only heard half the description of the injuries: the broken spine, shattered pelvis, internal bleeding from dozens of lacerations, and even if he could be stabilized, to never walk, to never use his hands, his arms … There was more, but the room was already spinning too quickly.
Gorokhov’s powerful hand gripped his arm to steady him, draw him close. “You know there is another way,” he whispered. “The project has facilities here. If you love your son, he does not have to die. You just have to answer one question.”
If you love your son …
So he’d answered the question that three years on was keeping him from ever sleeping peacefully again, that had brought him to an American motel, sixty miles from the leaders of great nations who knew nothing of that night in Moscow.
There’d been no paperwork, no authorization. The chief administrator was there. The technicians. Even doctors from the project. He hadn’t questioned that level of coordination.
When the preparations were almost complete, they’d brought him to an operating chamber. No sheet had covered Misha’s mangled body, only thin bandages bright orange with antiseptic. Half his face was scraped raw; his scalp had been shaved; one eye lost in swollen tissue, the other staring, horribly aware.
Misha …
Twenty years old, and his son’s life was over.
Through shattered teeth, from a mouth trickling blood and spittle, his son had spoken to him. “The pain … Papa … stop it…”
Misha’s IV drips were saline only. The project’s researchers had long ago determined that the chemical cascade of neurotransmitters fueled by pain was a necessary element—as necessary as a father’s love.
“Soon,” Borodin had promised.
His son’s breathing was ragged, labored. He flinched at the noises the technicians made with their machines as they finished winding their coils of copper, attached them to his son’s limbs and started up the generator in the next room so there’d be no interruption of power. Gorokhov himself had brought the copper-lined lockbox that held a shard of the remarkable mineral that somehow made the process possible, every time. The einstone.
Then the gurneys rolled in with the bags of dirt. Potting soil, they were labeled. So mundane.
Borodin looked at the director. The preparations were complete. They both knew what he had to do.
Borodin leaned in close to his son, placed his hand on one bare shoulder, perhaps the only part of him undamaged. “Look at me, Misha.… Look at me, my son.”
The one good eye trapped in the ruins of a dying body looked up at him. Trusting in a father’s love.
“The pain will end, you’ll see. Right now, because I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
A twitch, perhaps a nod, a desperate sign that he would agree to anything, say anything, if only his father would make this end.
“I love you, Misha. Keep looking at me. Let me be all that you see, all that you know.”
He heard the bags ripped open, the struggle of the technicians. Saw the fear in his son’s eyes. Had only love for him.
Misha gasped as the dirt poured down on him.
Borodin felt love, and thought only of the director’s one question.
What does your son fear most?
Misha realized what was happening. His lips parted, but he had no strength to scream, only to whimper as the soil spilled up over his face, into his mouth, and covered, finally his one staring eye.
The mud of the battlefield filling his lungs, Borodin had answered. Being buried alive.
And so that was what they had done to his son.
Because fear was a necessary element. As necessary as a father’s love.
No one spoke then. There was the growl of the generator, the hum of capacitors. The smell of blood and fresh dirt and disinfectant.
And then it was done, and the director clapped a hand on his back. “Now he will always be with you. We have him.”
Borodin broke down then, sobbing, and they all thought it was in relief.
* * *
“Fools,” Borodin said to the still air and the smoke in the van.
He lit another cigarette, staring at the steady green lights on his son’s containment unit. He went over his plan, again and again.
It was perfect.