ODESSA, UKRAINE
When the ambulance finally picked up Yuri Tvchenko’s body, Jake still wasn’t completely certain what had happened. The Odessa police had assumed the most obvious affliction. A stroke or a massive heart attack. But Jake knew better. Tvchenko had been murdered right in front of a hundred witnesses. He even suspected the cause of death, for Jake had seen nerve agents tested on animals before, and while with the CIA, watched confiscated Soviet films where they had conducted research on prisoners. Even worse had been when Jake had entered the small Iraqi village after it had been bombed with chemical weapons by its own air force. He could never erase that from his conscience. Somehow, someone had injected an agent into Tvchenko’s system right before his eyes.
Jake rubbed his right hand. Where there had been a spot of blood earlier, just after Tvchenko collapsed, there was now a red puffy area a few millimeters wide, like he had been prickled by a rose thorn and it was now infected.
Jake scanned the room for Chavva. She was the last to have direct contact with the scientist before he crashed to the floor, but she was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t imagine her killing the scientist, yet she might have seen him talking with someone else. Although he was officially in Odessa to protect MacCarty and Swanson, he could never stand by when something like this dropped in his lap.
Standing at Jake’s side were MacCarty and Swanson. They seemed to be in shock. Neither had ever seen a man die in front of them, and the violence of a nerve agent death had been a most brutal initiation for them.
“That was disgusting,” Swanson said. He looked at his drink, uncertain if he should finish it.
“Death is rarely pretty,” Jake said. “Listen, I’m going to head back to my room.”
MacCarty nodded and started to drink his champagne. He was closer to drunk than sober.
“I wouldn’t drink that if I were you,” Jake said. “We don’t know for sure how Tvchenko died. Whatever entered his body could have come from an airborne agent. Something could have sunk down into your drink.” He knew this wasn’t the case or more people would have been afflicted. Yet, just to be safe, it was a good idea to keep the two of them on their toes.
MacCarty slowly set the drink on a table. “Well, we’ve got a shitload of meetings tomorrow anyway. We can always grab a drink at our hotel. Bill and I will be along shortly.”
“I should probably accompany you. That’s what I’m here for,” Jake said.
Swanson smirked as if to say he could handle himself.
MacCarty slapped Jake on the shoulder. “We’ll be all right, Jake. We’ll take a cab.”
The three of them were staying six blocks away in the Chornoye Hotel off Primorski Boulevard. Jake figured they couldn’t get into too much trouble with a short ride like that. As he drifted off across the room, he continued searching for Chavva, but she was definitely not there. In fact, neither were any of the Israeli businessmen.
Out in the lobby, Jake made a quick phone call. When a man answered the phone, he excused himself in Ukrainian and hung up. It was his signal for the Odessa station chief to meet him immediately at a predetermined spot.
Jake stepped out onto Primorski Boulevard and started walking east. Tall trees lined the wide promenade, yet he could still see the lights from the harbor below. With such a warm evening, many others were out walking. Young couples, groups of girls and boys, and the frequent drunken old men staggering here and there. After three blocks, he turned south on Pushkinskaya down along a narrow park. Two blocks later the Volga sedan pulled up to the curb and a door opened. Jake slipped in.
Soon, Tully O’Neill turned left and headed toward Shevchenko Park. Neither said a word.
Jake had never worked for Tully O’Neill, since Tully had only recently taken over in Odessa. He had heard that Tully had worked for years in Bucharest, Sofia and Kiev as an operations officer. Odessa was his first assignment as station chief, which made him a late bloomer to the old agency, having first worked as a bureaucrat in Defense and the State Department. He believed he got a break with the new Agency because he wasn’t one of the good old boys. In fact, at fifty, he would have normally been in charge of a much larger operation. The years showed in his receding hairline, long gray hair, and reddened eyes that drooped from lack of sleep and too much alcohol each night.
Yet, Jake had heard through the grapevine that Tully was a man to be trusted. He would put everything, including his life, on the line for a friend. Jake hoped that wouldn’t be necessary.
Tully finally pulled over on a secluded street on the north side of the vast park with a view of the large ocean cargo vessels, and he cut the engine.
“Well, what’s up?” Tully asked.
“You didn’t hear?”
Tully gave Jake a blank stare.
“Someone just killed Tvchenko.”
Tully smashed his hands against the steering wheel. “God dammit. How?”
“At the dinner tonight,” Jake said. “A nerve agent pellet or something. I’m not positive.” He shook his head.
Pulling a cigarette from inside his coat, Tully offered one to Jake, who refused. He lit a Marlboro and inhaled deeply. “You know this town as well as I do, Jake. What do you think?”
Jake shrugged, and then rubbed his hand again. The puncture was stinging now.
“What’s that?” Tully asked.
“I’m not sure. I got it when I shook hands with Tvchenko just before he died.”
“Let me look closer.” Tully pulled Jake’s hand toward him and turned on the dome light. In a moment he said, “Son of a bitch. It’s a message.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Here, look.” Tully pulled a small Swiss army knife from his pocket and opened a tiny, pointed blade that looked extremely sharp. He started toward Jake’s hand with it.
“Wait a minute,” Jake protested. “What do you plan on doing with that?”
“Trust me. It won’t hurt much.”
Right. Famous words spoken by dentists to patients and young boys to virgins. Jake slid his hand back toward Tully, reluctantly. But Tully was right; it didn’t hurt. It was much like removing a sliver from a puss-filled wound; the pressure was removed as Tully extracted something minuscule from his palm.
“What the hell is that?” Jake asked.
“Wait. I’ll show you.” Tully set the object in his cupped palm and spit on it. Then he removed a tiny, clear item that resembled a piece of rice from his pocket, along with a jeweler’s eyepiece. He lined the three items up and peered into them closely. He slowly raised his head with a puzzled look. “Tell me what you see,” he said to Jake.
Jake shifted his head over. “Halabja,” he muttered. That’s all it said. Just one word scribbled hastily, as though the writer were jotting down milk or eggs on a shopping list.
“Does that make sense to you?” Tully asked.
Jake settled back into his seat. “Just the obvious reference to the Iraqi village.” Obvious indeed. Tvchenko had to be referring to Halabja, Iraq, the city bordering Iran that was bombed with nerve gas and mustard gas by Saddam Hussein’s own forces in March of 1988. As many as five thousand Kurds—men, women and children—were killed within hours. Jake not only knew about the devastating events of that day, he had actually seen the bombing while working on special assignment in Kurdistan during the height of the Iran-Iraq War. He was there to confirm or deny the use of chemical and biological weapons. He would never forget the faces. Especially the children.
Tully tucked the tiny message into a plastic Ziploc.
“What does Iraq or the Kurds have to do with this?” Jake asked.
“Maybe Tvchenko planned on selling his new weapon to Iraq.”
“We’re not even sure he had a new weapon,” Jake reminded him.
“He was still into nerve agents.” Tully took a long drag on his cigarette and let the smoke out in one quick stream. “We need to get to his apartment before the police.” Tully cranked over the car and sped off.
“Where does he live?” Jake asked.
“The Russian Quarter.”
It was nearly midnight. The residential streets that Tully took were almost deserted. Jake realized that for Tully being in Odessa for less than a month, he already knew his way around the city quite well. In ten minutes, they were parked along a tree-lined boulevard, with old brick apartment buildings on both sides.
“Which one is his?” Jake asked.
Tully snubbed out his cigarette and pointed toward the second floor across the street. “You still have the Makarov?”
Jake patted under his left arm.
“Let’s go.”
They got out quietly. The street was lit only by a few short lamp posts. Many of the lamps were burned out. They slipped inside and made their way upstairs.
At the top of the stairs, Tully drew his gun and pointed toward apartment 2A. Jake followed his lead. The door was unlocked.
Inside, the two men scanned the darkness for any movement. Nothing. Then Tully, who had been in the apartment one other time, closed the curtains and clicked on a small table lamp. The room was completely destroyed. There was sofa stuffing scattered about the floor, desks overturned, lamps stripped of bulbs, and papers blanketing an area near a far wall.
“Who the hell did this?” Tully whispered.
Jake sniffed the air. “Something’s not right here.” He moved toward a small kitchen off to one side, clicked on the light, and peered inside.
“What’s the matter?” Tully was right at his side.
“I’m not sure.” Jake moved back into the living room and then saw a door at the far end of the apartment. There was a black cord, a telephone line perhaps, leading under the door. “Where does that lead?”
“A small lab,” Tully said. “Tvchenko did some research here.”
Tully was about to open the lab door when Jake grabbed his arm. “Do you smell that?” Jake asked.
Tully shook his head. “Smells like old books or something.”
“Not that. There’s something else. I’ve smelled it before, but I can’t place it.”
Frowning, Tully started to shift the door lever downward.
“No,” Jake screamed. “Let’s get the hell out of here, now.”
“We’re not done yet.”
“That’s my point,” Jake said, pulling Tully out of the room by his arm.
They had just gotten to the outside hallway and closed the door, when they heard the phone ring. A second later, the door blasted outward into Jake and Tully, as the entire room exploded in flames.
On the ground, Jake shook his head and looked at Tully at his side. He was unconscious. Jake grabbed him by the coat collar and dragged him to the stairs. Then he hoisted him over his shoulder and carried him downstairs.
Outside, Jake stuffed Tully into the passenger side, pulled the keys from his pocket, and hurried to start the car. By now, other residents of the apartment building were making their way out of the front door and through windows.
As Jake drove off, he heard the sound of fire engines and police cars making their way to the fire. Jake drove only a few blocks, turned up a side street, and parked between two cars.
Tully was finally coming out of a groggy rest. “What the hell happened?” He reached inside his jacket for his cigarettes and retrieved a crumpled package. “Shit.” He found one that was bent but not broken, and lit it.
“The place blew up,” Jake said. “I realize what I smelled now. It was isopropyl alcohol, combined with ammonium fluoride. The cord under the door was the trigger. Someone had to be watching the place, saw us go in, and waited a few minutes to make the phone call. We were pretty damn lucky, because the air would have surely been toxic—probably with Sarin, a nerve gas. Or something like that.”
Tully puffed on his cigarette, his hand shaking uncontrollably. “You saved our ass.” Then he thought for a moment. “We’ve got to go back.”
“Are you nuts?”
“We’ve had the place bugged for two weeks with a remote, sound activated tape. Our tape machine is across the street in another apartment. Armstrong changes the tape twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. We might have caught who did this on tape. Drive.”
Jake started the car and headed off.
Tully directed Jake to round the block and end up across the street and behind the building where Tvchenko’s apartment was burning. They could both see the smoke, white and puffy now, streaming over the building roofs. The Odessa station kept a room on the second floor with a direct view of Tvchenko’s apartment. The officers never entered the building from the same street that the scientist would, but instead from a side door, parking on an entirely different street. That way they could come and go without anyone noticing.
“Stay here,” Tully said, as he got out and slid a watch cap over his head. With his dark wool coat, his hands stuffed into his pockets, and now the cap, he looked like a merchant marine just off a ship.
Jake kept his eyes open, scanning the rearview mirrors, and continually peering toward the door Tully had entered. He wondered if someone had hung around after calling Tvchenko’s apartment, and then followed them there.
In a few minutes, Tully exited the building carrying an old leather suitcase. He shoved it into the back seat and got into the front. “We’re off.”
Jake started driving, checking the mirror every few seconds. So far, they were alone. “Did you close down the place?” Jake asked.
“Yeah.” Tully searched for another good cigarette, but not finding one, he threw the pack to the back seat.
“Those things will kill you anyway,” Jake said, smiling.
Tully laughed. “Yeah, like this job won’t do a number on our ass first.” He pulled a cassette tape from his pocket, shoved it into the player, and hit rewind. When it stopped, he pushed play.
The first thing they heard was a door opening and closing and the sound of footsteps on a wooden floor. Then the sound of things flying, ripping, tearing. And finally whispered words.
“What was that?” Jake asked.
Tully stopped the tape and rewound it slightly. He played it again, only louder. “What language is that?”
Listening carefully, Jake cocked his ear toward the speaker. Then there was a louder sentence, and it became clearer to him what was being said. He smiled.
“What is it?”
“It’s Kurdish,” Jake said. “I only understand a little. It’s sort of a cross between Farsi and Arabic, with a little Turkish thrown in. I learned some working in Kurdistan during the Iran-Iraq War.”
“Halabja?”
“Exactly,” Jake said. “The Kurds must have something to do with the message Tvchenko passed me.”
“What do you suppose they were looking for?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Tvchenko was about to sell them something. A new nerve gas. Or even a biological strain. But he was killed before the deal went through. So they go to his place, look for the formula, and set a bomb.”
“Why bomb the place?”
Jake shrugged. “Maybe they figured if they couldn’t have it, nobody would.”
It made some sense. But Jake was still confused as to why Tvchenko had passed him the message, and what the Kurds wanted with Tvchenko’s information.
One thing was certain. He’d make it his business to find out what was going on.