“Tell me about the second shot,” asked the man, who was on the left. He wore thick glasses and was nearly bald, a horseshoe of close-cropped hair above his ears. His mouth seemed set in a terminal pout, and his accent was eastern, probably Irkutsk. The sergeant had never liked Siberians.
Having spent much of his life waiting for targets to appear, he was an inordinately patient man. Indeed, the trait had been integral to his meteoric rise in the army. Regrettably, when it came to suffering post-mission debriefings with engineers, his forbearance was more akin to that of a hyperactive child. Today there were two to deal with, the man joined by a woman—a severe-looking matron wearing what looked like a burlap housecoat. God help me, he thought, as he said curtly, “The range was roughly twelve hundred meters. I estimated the target to have been moving at roughly sixty kilometers per hour. Right to left at a fifty-degree angle across the slope of the hill.”
“Exactly fifty degrees?”
The sergeant quelled an impertinent response for, “He was skiing. It is a fluid act, not a straight line.”
“How much higher was your position?” asked the woman.
“I had no way to calculate the precise elevation. I can tell you the tracking unit displayed a declination of twenty-one point three degrees—I remember that much.”
“Did you not write these numbers down?” she asked.
The sergeant held steady. “Twenty-one point three degrees.”
They asked more questions. Atmospheric conditions, the serial number of the gun he’d used, the tracking performance of the targeting pod. With each answer the Siberian scribbled on a diagram he’d been building. From where he sat, the sergeant could see the man had not drawn the mountain, but rather variables and vectors and angle measurements. The three of them had done this dance once before, after the kill in Capri. That had taken four hours. The man began scrawling equations, and referenced a calculator. The housecoat watched him and nodded.
In that computational interlude, the sergeant lost any regrets for his poor academic showing as a schoolboy. Growing up in the wilds of Kamchatka, the business of putting meat on the table had always taken precedence over algebra. Ammunition was not to be tested and experimented with, but utilized as a means to forestall hunger. How simple it had all been then.
As he sat in silence, a discomforting thought recurred. If this new weapon was perfected, would it not undermine the very qualities that had brought him here? With a gun stock on his shoulder the sergeant was the best in the Russian army—a raptor’s eye and steel coolness had lifted him above his peers. Yet could this new gun not be used just as well by the two engineers facing him? Might their technical adeptness and analytical minds prove superior behind the new superbullet? He smiled inwardly, knowing the answer.
No. They could never do what I do.
He forced his attention away from the man with the pencil. The room they’d chosen for the debriefing was essentially a laboratory. He saw benches and test stands, and a chart with the periodic table of elements adorned one wall. The adjacent room was the industrial end of the operation—machines for milling and production, and freshly rifled gun barrels lined up for testing. The entire building seemed tainted by an acrid smell, something between electrical solder and burning plastic. The facility was nested coyly in an industrial park on the western outskirts of Moscow. Its parent company was a well-known arms manufacturer, yet this particular outpost was perhaps its most secretive subsidiary, an off-the-books operation that existed in some administrative eddy between the state and private sectors.
The calculations ended. “Yes,” said the man, “very impressive. Can you tell us where the projectile struck its objective?”
The sergeant groaned. In his own view they were talking about a bullet that was damned good. To them it was a rocket aimed at Mars. “Somewhere fatal. He didn’t get up.”
The man looked crestfallen.
“Enough—you are all geniuses! The damned thing worked, and I can’t tell you any more. Now give me what I came for!”
His flare of temper had the desired effect. The man and woman pressed back perceptibly in their cushioned chairs. A look was exchanged. “Of course,” said the Siberian cautiously. He nodded to his partner.
The woman got up and went to an industrial safe on the far side of the room. She typed a code into a keypad, and after a mechanical clunk she pulled open the door and removed a metal ammo box.
She brought it to the table. “Here you are. The last three cartridges of the prototype production run.” She presented it with something near reverence. The sergeant noted that the box itself looked as though it had never been used—most ammo boxes he’d seen in his day had more dents than a Moscow taxi. Inside, he knew, were the last three special cartridges, each cradled in foam and a custom-fit plastic case. When he’d seen those trappings with the first batch, it had struck him as a ridiculous way to pamper a bullet.
“As you know,” the man interjected, “our project is in a precarious position at the moment. The initial bench tests did not perform as expected. There were spin and stabilization issues, and the guidance software showed faults in certain atmospheric conditions. But you have brought renewed success.” He smiled a Cheshire smile. “Two-for-two. Should these final rounds succeed, we’ll have a good case for having fixed the problems. Continued funding would be almost guaranteed. But I implore you … please record every condition. Altitude, humidity, temperature, light conditions. Write everything down.”
The sergeant took the plastic case. “I’ll be sure to bring my sharpest pencil.” He departed the room without further comment. No one offered best wishes until they met again.
He made his way through the utilitarian halls, and was ignored entirely by at least a dozen workers on his way out. No one had any idea who he was, nor that the future of their employment in this place rested completely on his proficiency with the contents of the box in his hand.
He reached the exit and paused in the portico between the inner and outer doors. The exterior doors were glass, and he saw a nasty winter blow outside—snow was sweeping sideways in a fierce wind. In the long Russian dusk he saw a young woman scurrying in from the parking lot. She was practically skating over the sidewalk. He set down the box and reached into his pocket. Pulling out his phone, he turned it on and checked for messages. The one he’d been waiting for had finally arrived:
Target #3 arrived as expected. Proceed Casablanca.
He put away his phone and donned his gloves. He pushed open the door just as the woman arrived, and she came inside in a rush, a gust of bitter air swirling through with her. The door closed and they exchanged a cordial smile. The sergeant thought she might have been pretty, although it was hard to say with her hair disheveled and her face furrowed against the cold. But she did smell nice—that much he knew. Something light and floral that somehow overpowered the maelstrom. The sergeant wanted to say something, but before any clever words came together the woman was gone.
He stood there for a moment, still and dispirited. He then picked up the ammo box, tilted his head down, and reached for the door a second time.
Casablanca.
It sounded warm and wondrous.
* * *
Slaton reconnected with his family for the best part of an hour. He began by making only passing mention to Christine of his digressions in Davos and Milan, explanations that must have come off as stilted and rehearsed. He was silence itself on the matter of what was brewing on the Red Sea. Only when Davy was sitting on the courtyard patio, engrossed in a box of toy cars and trucks Bella had brought in, did Christine force the issue.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He looked at her over the round patio table that separated them, on it a sweating ice bucket and bottles of water.
“What makes you think something’s wrong?”
She stared at him.
“Right.”
In trying to consolidate his scattershot thoughts, Slaton knew his only refuge was honesty. He told her what he’d learned in the last day, including the events on the Red Sea. Much of the information was likely classified at the highest levels in Langley and Tel Aviv, but once again Slaton enjoyed the freedom of his own system. As had been the case regarding Capri, his wife had a need to know. He left nothing out, and ended with the invitation, jointly issued by the CIA and Mossad, to become involved. It took nearly twenty minutes. In that time Davy never lost his focus—he had the toy cars set up in static lines on the stone terrazzo that reminded Slaton of the traffic from the airport. It was all done with remarkable precision, the bumpers of the cars lined up perfectly. Slaton wondered if he had been so exacting as a child, but quickly drove the thought away for the extrapolations it introduced.
“They want to bring you in on this operation?” Christine asked.
“Yes.”
“Will it be dangerous?”
“On the face of it, there’s no reason to think so. We’re not talking about an interdiction. The objective is simply to get a look. That said, I’m not sure what this ship is carrying—there’s always a degree of uncertainty.”
She seemed to consider it. “I remember once you explained a term to me—mission creep. I feel like that’s what’s happening. First Capri, then Davos, now this. With each incremental move you get more involved.”
“Yeah, I’d say that’s a fair label. But I haven’t committed to anything. I told them I wanted to talk to you first.”
“My opinion aside—do you want to do it?”
“Want to? Hardly. But I can’t ignore the big picture. My name is still getting linked to these shootings. Anna mentioned today that Inspector Giordano, the policeman in Capri, called this morning asking about me. He wanted to know who I was and why she’d brought me into the investigation. He’s heard rumblings that a Mossad assassin gone rogue might be responsible for Ivanovic’s death.”
“Any idea where that came from?”
“I don’t know the exact channel, but the network had to be Russian.”
“Which only gives a thicker smokescreen to whoever is responsible.”
He nodded. She was looking at him intently now, trying to read what he was thinking. He kept to the truth.
“To answer your question,” he said, “yes, I’d go. I think something dangerous is on the horizon, and I’m in a good position to do something about it. Maybe a unique position. What’s going on in the waters around Saudi Arabia, the death of these two wealthy Russians … it’s all connected.”
“When we talked about this earlier, I made an accusation. I said I thought your involvement, at least in part, was ego driven. I implied you were bothered by the idea that there might be somebody out there who’s better than you.”
“I remember.”
“That’s not the case anymore.”
He looked at her questioningly.
“Don’t you see?” she went on. “You figured out how he did it—this guy cheated.”
Slaton couldn’t contain a grin.
She remained serious, and her next words were delivered with the caution of a technician defusing a bomb. “This may surprise you … but I think you should go.”
His head tipped ever so slightly. “You’re right, I am surprised. And your reasoning?”
“For one thing, because Israel is involved now. In spite of the rough relationship you and I have had with Mossad, there’s no denying it’s your homeland. I think you’re right that something ominous is going on, and that you’re in a better position to uncover it than anyone. Also, as much as I hate to say it … you’re good at this kind of thing. There’s also the fact that the Russians keep pushing your name into this mess. The only way to put a stop to that is to figure out what’s going on. Figure out who’s really responsible.”
He nodded.
“But when all is said and done,” she said, “there’s one reason that’s more compelling than any of those others.”
“What’s that?”
“If I asked you to drop it right now … I know that you would.”