In a basement utility room of the Greenbrier resort hotel, Laura took Matt’s hand and said—
—“I like it here. Ever since you helped me.”
Gentle waves on the lake rippled molten silver in warm rays of sunshine in a cloudless sky of blue. She was on the beach, bare feet, waves lapping, almost at her toes. But—
Matt resisted, fought it off. “No! The hotel—we have to get back before—”
They were beside the door with its German flag in a polished brass frame. But it was already too late.
BALDUR had arrived first.
He was standing at the end of the corridor, motionless, except for the heaving of his chest as he breathed deeply in, and slowly out.
“What’s he done?” Matt asked. “What’s he done?”
Across the hall from the German minister’s suite, there was nothing.
Matt’s physical body was gone.
* * *
“Is it true?” Borodin asked.
Kalnikova looked mildly indignant. “Of course not. I’ve never seen this man.”
Oliver laughed in derision. “I got her into the country.” He looked up at Borodin. “The FSB, they never let me go. They still have me do ‘little things’ for them.” He glared at Kalnikova. “False visas for her, Colonel Yuri Vasilyev, Captain Gregor Malkov. Contact codes for her and her contact at the DHS. Her doctor.” Back to Borodin. “How else would I know that?”
“CROSSWIND perceivers,” Kalnikova said.
Borodin continued with his exploration of this man’s guilt or innocence as if she hadn’t spoken. “Did you also prepare supplemental documents for the major and her team to leave the United States?”
“You mean, for different identities, in case the authorities were after them?”
“Yes.”
Kalnikova betrayed her growing impatience. “We’re running out of time, General. You have to call them back.”
“In a moment, Major.” He turned back to Oliver. “For whom did you prepare the supplemental documents?”
The American blinked, puzzled. “Kalnikova, Vasilyev, and Malkov.”
Borodin weighed the truth in the man as he studied Kalnikova.
“You said you wanted me to go back with you. No reprisals. Even now you called me a hero. And yet you had no plans for me to leave with you. Alive.”
She shrugged. A hard look in her eyes. “What else would you expect me to say?”
“I expect you to apologize. For deliberately manipulating me into sacrificing Misha to become the first of the shadow warriors.”
“You were slowing down the project. Creating obstacles. You needed to be … encouraged. But by all means then, I apologize.”
“No, not to me. To my son.” With his left hand, Borodin gestured to the door behind Kalnikova. “I called him to me while we talked. He’s waiting outside that door.”
Kalnikova’s eyes widened. She turned to the door, sweeping her gun around to cover it, as if the weapon could possibly save her.
With his right hand, Borodin swiftly drew and threw one of the exceptional knives he had taken from the kitchen, and this time he did not permit the weakness of his arm to interfere.
But Kalnikova was a different breed of soldier. Younger. Faster. Perhaps not as strong. But even more ruthless.
The knife lodged in the side of the thickly bandaged stump of her wrist.
She slowly lowered her right arm. Shook the knife loose to clatter on the floor. She held her gun steady with her left hand. Didn’t take her eyes off Borodin and his startled expression.
“Recall your berserkers,” she said evenly.
Borodin felt numb. All the planning, the sacrifice, the horror to get to this moment, and now to find that nothing was as he believed it to be. He looked at the savagery on the screens. It had to mean something. It had to.
“General?”
Borodin shook his head at her. “No.” Little more than a whisper.
Kalnikova stared into his eyes. He felt her judgment.
“Then we go to the next contingency,” she said.
Borodin didn’t know what she meant.
“We let the brave Americans kill you, let them recover your body while we express our deep regret that in your madness, you were able to defeat our safeguards and carry out such an atrocity by means that have no official status in our country. A rogue operation that we will help the Americans investigate.”
“Their perceivers will know the truth.”
Kalnikova disagreed. “Not all of it. And by the time they do, it will be too late.”
Borodin was confused. “You said if they recover a containment unit, they could develop countermeasures.”
“Americans love their secrets even more than the Kremlin. Their agencies don’t share what they know. Yes, maybe CROSSWIND could develop countermeasures, but not if we destroy them first, make them the first target of Scythe. Then there will be no one else who would even begin to understand the concepts and technology in so short a time.”
Borodin saw the logic in that strategy, but doubted the Kremlin would dare take such drastic steps until Scythe was fully operational. “Taking out CROSSWIND would be too provocative. An act of war.”
“But that’s what’s coming, General. The war you’ve started. The war you will take the blame for.” She smiled. “And this time, it won’t be a cold one.”
Borodin lowered his head as he contemplated how everything was spinning out of control. He heard a metallic click.
When he looked up, he saw the door closing.
Kalnikova was gone.
Borodin looked over at Oliver.
The American was ashen with fear. “I am sorry.”
“So you said.”
Borodin went to him with the knife clutched in his hand trembling with restrained anger. Oliver tensed, eyes closed. The general cut off the restraints.
Long moments later, Oliver opened his eyes.
“Leave now,” Borodin said.
Oliver stood up, unsteady, uncertain.
“My mission,” Borodin said, “was to make the person responsible for Misha’s death atone for that crime.” He looked at the screens, felt rage building. “And now, I find … that I am that person.”
Oliver hesitated, suspicious. “What about me?”
Borodin didn’t care. Struggled to control himself. To keep the knife from slashing through this worthless man’s throat in an explosion of blood. “What about you? You were a pawn, just as I was. Our game is over.”
Oliver rubbed at his wrists, looked again at the security monitors, the bodies. “What about those things? They’re still killing anyone they can find.”
Borodin shrugged. “Let them kill everyone. I don’t care.” He looked at the savagery playing out on the monitors, wanted to be in the middle of it, to lose himself in the fire of battle. To become a berserker himself. “All I want is to find what remains of my son. All I want…”
Without thought, he drove the knife into Oliver’s neck, slashed again and again as blood sprayed and covered him with its dying heat.
There was no reason for it. No reason for anything anymore.
And he feared there never had been.
* * *
The odds were fifty-fifty.
The berserker advancing on Caparelli either drew its power from one of the two containment units twenty feet away at the concrete barricade, or from one of the two units in the alcove directly across the tunnel. The grenade he’d loaded into the launcher barrel could destroy one pair or the other, but not both. Not that it mattered which target he chose. The explosion in this tightly confined space would kill him as well.
The berserker paused, its dark eyes fixed on him intently, as if it understood his dilemma, and its own.
Caparelli whipped his rifle to the side as if to fire into the units by the barricade.
The berserker didn’t react.
Caparelli whipped the rifle back as if he were to fire at the closer units.
The berserker blurred sideways to position itself between the units and the rifle launcher.
That gave Caparelli the answer he needed.
“Go to hell,” he said, and fired the grenade directly at the berserker, surprised by how at peace he felt, knowing he had less than a second to live.
The grenade streaked into the berserker and—
—didn’t come out.
A heartbeat later, spikes of fiery light burst from the apparition, like lightning from deep inside a storm cloud. But nothing else.
For a fleeting moment, Caparelli thought how excited Arlo would be to see what had just happened, but then realized his own death was still imminent, though now he would have nothing to show for his sacrifice.
The berserker seemed to grin at him, its features distorting into a travesty of the humanity it used to have.
Caparelli didn’t care. He had a new plan.
He lunged at it.