Текст книги "Independence Day "

Автор книги: Ben Coes

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

72

ELEKTROSTAL

Cloud watched the news reports on his computer, volume turned down. The plane had crashed near the airport, in a town called Tolstopaltsevo. The scene was pandemonium.

A low beeping noise sounded from Sascha’s computer. Cloud looked up. Sascha was waving him over.

“There’s something happening,” he said.

“Move over.”

Cloud took over the keyboard, sitting down in the seat, quickly scanning the screen. It showed signals intelligence activity over the past day originating at the CIA. The activity had virtually ceased the evening before, then started back up.

The analysis was displayed as a long list. These were precise nodes of activity, fed back to them via the virus infecting Langley. Next to each entry, electronic activity was represented by percentages, over time.

It was clear that Langley had shut down everything following the failed attempt to extract him. That was expected. What he hadn’t expected was the resumption of activity. It could mean only one thing: they were hunting for him. Langley would attempt to find him in the same way he’d found them, via the Internet.

Cloud’s entire network was protected by several levels of state-of-the-art encryption. The only way to find him was for someone to find the encryption key, then break it. Breaking the key itself would require months. More important, someone would first have to find an instance of the algorithm itself just to have a chance to break it. As of now, Langley was clueless.

Yet, theoretically, it was possible for them to use the trapdoor to find the encryption layer. It didn’t mean they could get through it, but even giving Langley that glimpse of his line of defense made Cloud nervous.

He sat back, crossed his arms, and shut his eyes. After a few moments, he opened them. He leaned forward and started typing.

“Go to access four,” Cloud said without looking up.

“And do what?” asked Sascha.

“Destroy it.”

“If I do that, the trapdoor will be gone,” protested Sascha.

“If they find access four, they will be able to find us. Shut it down immediately.”

73

BANCHOR COTTAGE

SCOTLAND

Chalmers stepped through the back door of Banchor Cottage, then down a flight of stairs that led to a locked door. He inserted a key and pushed into the windowless basement.

Few who’d been to Banchor had seen this part of the rustic fishing camp.

Behind the door, an intimate, low-ceilinged room looked like an old-fashioned hospital room. On one side, communications equipment was stacked on shelves, all of it tied to MI6 headquarters in London. At the back of the room was medical equipment, including heart and life monitors. A beat-up leather sofa was pushed against the wall to the left. Two hospital beds occupied the right side of the room.

A closet next to the sofa, out of view, held a mysterious-looking device that could be used by an interrogator to elicit information through the moderated application of electricity. For all of the publicity surrounding waterboarding, it was electricity that worked best at getting terrorists to talk, and Banchor, despite England’s stated dislike of torture, had heard its share of screams over the years.

Smythson was seated on the leather sofa, reading a magazine. Robbins, the MI6 physician, was standing against the back wall, back turned, inspecting the contents of a drawer filled with pharmaceuticals.

Robbins turned when he heard Chalmers enter.

“Hello, Derek,” he said.

Chalmers nodded but said nothing. His eye went to one of the beds. Katya was strapped to it, a variety of sensors attached to her neck, arms, head, chest, and legs. If necessary, her heart, blood, and breathing patterns could be run through MI6 computers in order to assess her level of honesty.

“Give us a few minutes, will you?” Chalmers said.

“Yes, of course. I’ll be upstairs.”

Chalmers looked at Smythson, who was still seated. She met his look.

“Me too?” she asked.

Chalmers nodded.

Katya had not moved since being strapped to the bed. She lay beneath a flannel blanket, her clothing having been removed except for panties and a bra. Her head was facing the wall, eyes shut.

What played through Chalmers’s mind, as he prepared to interrogate Katya, were the choices before him.

In Chalmers’s storied intelligence career, he’d been subjected to a multitude of enhanced interrogation techniques. As a KGB prisoner in 1979, Chalmers wasn’t allowed to sleep for extended periods of time. In 1982, the IRA locked him in a Belfast warehouse for almost a month. There, he was waterboarded and electrocuted, though the memory he hated most was of the time they made him kneel in front of a concrete wall for five days with a lightbulb dangling down in front of him. He remembered crying when they finally turned the lightbulb off, as if it had become his only friend, or a god. To this day, Chalmers never changed a lightbulb, an idiosyncratic remnant of his time in that basement.

Chalmers thus had a view of enhanced interrogation techniques that was less theoretical than that of most others in the intelligence community. He’d been there. He knew what worked and what didn’t. The challenge was that there was no way to know until the sessions began. Chalmers believed all torture could be effective if there was something there in the first place. If there weren’t secrets to be found, however, a prisoner could lead an entire operation down a rat hole simply to stop the pain.

Chalmers could understand Katya having a relationship with someone who had a secret. The question was, did she have real knowledge? It seemed a practical impossibility. How could someone who had to travel all the time, to practice every day for hours on end, be shielding someone with such dark intentions?

The problem for Chalmers was, if he spent the next day trying to get her to confess, he might end up in the exact same place he was now. If she knew nothing, he would get lies in order to stop the interrogation, lies that might misdirect the CIA at a time it needed to be sharpening its focus. He would also destroy any chance he had of eliciting passive but still vital information. If he broke trust with Katya by inflicting pain, she would shut down. He’d been there, and that is exactly what happened. The KGB wanted information he simply did not have. By beating him, his tormentors lost the opportunity to drag other key information out of him.

Chalmers went to a cabinet above the sofa and took out two glasses and poured each half full with scotch. He walked to the bed and lifted the blanket. Gently, he removed the sensors from her body, then unstrapped the bands from around her arms and legs. She remained with her eyes closed, her head facing the wall, motionless.

“Katya,” Chalmers said.

He waited for her to turn her head and look up. After more than a minute, she turned and opened her eyes. The aniline blue of her eyes, against the backdrop of dark skin and jet-black hair, was slightly jarring. She stared up at him.

“Would you like to try some single malt?” Chalmers asked. “It’s made just down the road. It’s quite good. It will calm you.”

Chalmers extended the glass. Slowly, Katya sat up. She took the glass, held it beneath her nose, sniffed it, then chugged it down in two large gulps. She held the glass back out to him.

“More,” she whispered very softly.

Chalmers smiled. He returned to the cabinet, poured her another glass, and brought it back.

“There,” he said as he handed it to her.

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

Chalmers walked to the sofa and sat down. He took a sip.

“I saw you perform,” he said. “Paris.”

“Paris. When was this?”

“Five or six years ago, if memory serves. Coppélia.”

Katya nodded.

“Franz,” she said.

“Franz?”

“My lover.”

“Ah, yes, in the ballet.”

She sipped from her glass.

“Cloud is not a terrorist,” she said. “I know him. He’s a child. He has the heart of a child. A computer geek.”

“And yet he caused the deaths of a boat full of fishermen. He killed American soldiers.”

“No, I don’t believe it. You showed me pictures, but they could be from anywhere.”

“So I’m lying to you? Those men who took you, they did it why?”

“I don’t know. Ask them.”

“I did. You’re engaged to a terrorist.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head back and forth. “No, I don’t believe it.”

“You seem quite sure,” said Chalmers. “Which makes me wonder is there anything that would convince you?”

“No.”

“So if he himself told you he intended to detonate a nuclear device on the U.S., even that wouldn’t convince you?”

Katya stared at Chalmers across the room.

“You see what I’m getting at, don’t you, Katya? People have secrets. They end up doing things that are quite at odds with what we expect. Secrets. Swanilda has secrets. Franz has secrets. Everyone has secrets. Isn’t that right?”

Katya continued to stare at Chalmers.

“I want to ask you a question. Do you like the United States? I assume you’ve performed there, yes?”

Katya nodded.

“I love the United States. I’ve performed there many times. I would say perhaps fifty or sixty times.”

“New York?”

“Yes, of course, but also other places. Do you know what my favorite place is?”

“No, I don’t. Please tell me.”

“Kansas City. It was my first tour, when I was only fifteen years old.”

“So let me ask you a question. How many people do you think would die if a nuclear bomb went off in Kansas City?”

Katya took a sip.

“I don’t know.”

“I do. If the bomb Pyotr acquired were to detonate in Kansas City, at least a hundred thousand people would die. Of course, in New York or Boston, cities that are more likely to be the target, that number would be dramatically higher. You, just to be clear, will be forever known as the girlfriend, the fiancée, actually, of the man who did this. If you truly were unaware, and you’re lucky, you’ll likely spend time in jail, perhaps a decade or so. You’ll never dance again. And, to be quite honest, if you are stubborn during this particular time period, when every second matters, when every minute is a precious commodity, when the plot could have been thwarted, even if you don’t know anything … if you’re stubborn now, my guess is you will not live to reach the age of thirty. The American government, if a bomb goes off, will erase anyone involved.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean. It will happen in the jail itself, most likely. They’ll hang you, then report it as suicide. Or it will happen afterward. You’ll be walking down a street somewhere and a car will pull up, and you’ll be dead. It might even happen in the weeks immediately after the bomb goes off. After all, don’t forget that you’re a ghost now. Nobody even knows you’re alive.

“The time for patience, for discussion over a nice glass or two of scotch, that will be gone. You don’t need to know what he’s doing. You don’t need to have been knowledgeable of his activities. But you must help. If you don’t, and that bomb goes off, you’ll die, and far too young. Moscow, Saint Petersburg, London, Kansas City—you’ll never see them again. All for not being willing to simply listen.”

“You’re threatening me.”

“I’m telling you the truth. It’s not a threat. It’s fact. And you would deserve it. I could torture you, Katya, but I don’t want to. I want you to trust me.”

“How can I trust anyone? If what you say is true, the only person I have ever loved is a monster.”

“You’re thinking too much,” said Chalmers. “Right now, your singular objective should be survival. What I’m telling you is that if you want to live, cooperate. Do whatever you can to help.”

“I want to see your evidence.”

“There’s a folder on the shelf behind you. Read it.”

Chalmers leaned back on the sofa. Katya reached for the folder. For the next twenty minutes, as Chalmers sipped his scotch, she read through it.

When she finished, she stood and walked to the cabinet, poured herself another glass. Then, instead of walking back to the bed, Katya sat down next to Chalmers.

“I will help,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

74

ELEKTROSTAL

“There’s something we’re missing,” said Cloud. “I want the Langley transcripts again.”

“From when?”

“Everything from the explosion on.”

“They’ll be on your screen in a few seconds,” said Sascha.

A green icon appeared, indicating the file from Sascha had arrived. Cloud double-clicked it, then read through the transcripts of conversations from the CIA operations room. His eyes ripped left right with astonishing speed.

“There it is,” he said to himself, seething. “I knew it.”

706

remember johnnys wounded

707

he has a bullet in his leg

708

how bad is it

709

he has a fever and hasnt left the bedroom

“How could I have been so sloppy?” he shouted. “There are other agents. They must be the ones who took Al-Medi. Did we track him?”

“Yes,” said Sascha. “We know where they took him. It’s near Pobedy Park.”

Cloud stood up. He grabbed his raincoat from the floor.

“I need the address.”

“What if they moved him?”

“One of them is injured. Perhaps they’re still there.”

Cloud zipped up his raincoat, then looked at Sascha.

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t you understand what’s happening?” Cloud screamed. “There are two more agents. We need to remove them.”

Cloud turned and moved to the door.

“Stop!” yelled Sascha. “Don’t be a fool. You can’t go.”

Cloud turned around.

“And why not?”

“You’re the only one who knows where the bomb is going. If they catch you, they’ll dig it out of your head like a peach pit.”

“They won’t catch me.”

“But if they do—”

Cloud shook his head, finally releasing his grip on the doorknob.

“Then you have to go.”

Sascha nodded.

“It’s raining,” said Cloud. “Take the Mercedes. Park a few blocks away. There’s Semtex in the trunk.”

“Semtex?” Sascha asked, anxiety in his voice. “It will—”

“Level the building,” interrupted Cloud. “That’s the idea. You don’t even need to do anything except stick it near the house. The detonator is already wired. Set it, get at least two hundred meters away, detonate it.”

75

MOSCOW

Dewey parked the station wagon on a quiet side street near Moscow University, on the opposite side of the city from the safe house. If FSB was tracking the car, they would find it. When they did, he wanted to be far away.

He grabbed the pistol and cell phone, then climbed out into the pouring rain.

Scanning the street, he put his right hand in the coat and clutched the pistol, finger on the trigger. He took out the cell phone and turned it on, then dialed.

“Hi, Dewey,” said Calibrisi.

“I’m in Moscow.”

“We’re getting closer on Cloud’s location.”

“What about the team you were sending in?”

“They didn’t make it. You have two agents at the safe house. One of them is a case officer, and she’s smart. The other is an operator, but he’s badly injured.”

He walked several blocks, limping slightly, then ducked into a subway station.

“You mentioned someone else,” said Dewey as he moved through the brightly lit station, calm, eyes low to the ground, looking for signs of trouble, hand on the gun, ready, if necessary, to kill again.

“Alexei Malnikov.”

“Have him meet me at the safe house.”

Dewey hung up.

It was late and the station was empty but for a gray-haired woman behind bulletproof glass, waiting to sell tickets. He needed a ticket but didn’t want to risk the chance of being identified. He passed the ticket booth and walked to the turnstile and climbed over it. Looking back, he saw nothing to indicate she’d seen him break the law—or at least nothing to indicate she gave a damn.

On a bench near the tracks, he found a newspaper someone had left behind. It was in Russian, but there, above the fold, was his photo, next to a photo of Katya Basaeyev.

The train to Pobedy Park arrived a few minutes later. The car was empty. At the Pobedy Park station, he got out, then climbed the station stairs back into the driving rain.

The neighborhood was quiet and tree lined. Large stucco and brick homes were set back from the sidewalk, behind small gardens. Halfway down the block, across the street, he saw a white stucco town house with black shutters, four stories tall.

He scanned the quiet street. Except for a lamppost at the corner, it was completely dark. The rain had let up slightly. He waited beneath a large tree for several minutes, studying the house. Just as he was about to cross the street, a taxicab turned onto the road. Dewey flinched and stepped back behind the tree. He placed his hand inside the coat pocket, gripping the gun, finger on the trigger. He watched as the cab approached, then sped by.

In the quiet aftermath, he felt his heart beating fast.

Cool off.

Dewey’s eyes returned to the safe house. That was when he noticed a man. He was across the street, walking by the safe house.

How long had he been there? Was it Malnikov?

The man had a backpack and long hair. He walked quickly, with a slouch, down the block, away from the safe house.

At the corner, the stranger looked back at Vernacular House. He stared at it for several moments, then turned and kept walking.

Instead of crossing the street, Dewey followed him. When Dewey reached the corner, he crossed the street, just as the man jerked around and looked back. Seeing Dewey, he started to run.

Limping, Dewey charged after the man.

A block in the distance, he watched as car lights went on.

Dewey pulled the gun from his pocket, just as, from somewhere behind him, he heard a horrible explosion. A moment later, he sensed the ground tremor beneath his feet, then felt a violent wall of air kick him from behind. He was thrown instantly forward by the savage blast of air, the red taillights of the escaping car his last sight as he shut his eyes and braced himself for the fall.

76

PRESNENSKY DISTRICT

MOSCOW

Malnikov was seated on a leather sofa in his office. It was hot inside the windowless room. He was in a tank top and jeans, and was barefoot. He could’ve turned on the air-conditioning, but he didn’t. Not for any reason. The truth is, he wasn’t thinking about how uncomfortable it was. He was thinking about the conversation with Hector Calibrisi.

In his hand, he held a glass of 1986 Henri Jayer Richebourg, a Burgundy from the Côte de Nuits region of France that cost Malnikov €24,000.

Malnikov didn’t like being threatened. It was humiliating. What had started with the meeting with Cloud had only gotten worse. He knew Calibrisi was cutting him a wide berth, and yet there was no mistaking who controlled things. Langley did. He’d done something very wrong, but Calibrisi had laid down a sharp gauntlet.

Find Cloud or die.

“Fuck him,” he said, not for the first time, as he replayed his conversation with the CIA director.

Malnikov could take his chances. It would require a heightened level of security. If Cloud did succeed in detonating a nuclear bomb on U.S. soil, Malnikov would have a target on his head. Yet Calibrisi and everyone else in American government would be distracted for years to come.

His head ached. The internal struggle between love and loyalty to his father and absolute hatred at the feeling of being threatened tortured him.

He winced at the memory of Cloud’s words: I knew your father would never be stupid enough to acquire a nuclear bomb, and you would.

It was true. His father wouldn’t have done it. But if he had, Malnikov’s father wouldn’t shy away from responsibility for his actions.

“You made your bed,” Malnikov said aloud. “Lie in it. Be a man.”

He felt a vibration in his pocket. Pulling out the cell, he read the caller ID:

:: CALIBRISI H.C.::

“Hello, Hector.”

“I need you to go to our safe house and meet our guy.”

Calibrisi gave Malnikov the address of the safe house.

“Is this the guy all over the news?”

“Yes.”

Malnikov downed the rest of the wine, then stood up and walked to his desk. From on top of the desk, he took the gun, a Desert Eagle .50 AE, and tucked it into a concealed holster at the front of his pants. He pulled a leather coat from the back of the chair and pulled it on.

“What’s his name?”

“Dewey Andreas.”

77

GEORGES BANK

ATLANTIC OCEAN

80 MILES EAST OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, CANADA

Four hours later, a boat appeared on the southwestern horizon.

Faqir raised the mike to his mouth: “Is that you, Dogfish?” he asked. “Over.”

“Yeah. We see you. We’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

“Roger that,” said Faqir. “Thank you.”

“By the way, you guys see anything?”

A small burst of anxiety hit Faqir in the spine. What did he mean? Was there a warning out for them?

He hit the mike.

“Come again.”

“Any bluefin? We’re headed north.”

“No,” said Faqir.

“Where you guys sailing out of?”

Faqir took a map of the eastern seaboard. He’d already studied it, but now he realized he could inadvertently get himself in trouble. If the Dogfish was from whatever port town he said, he could be fucked.

Faqir felt his stomach tightening.

“Portsmouth, New Hampshire,” he said, naming a bigger city where, theoretically, one ship captain might not be aware of another.

“Nice place. We’re out of Halifax. See you in a few.”

Faqir hung up the mike, then leaned over and threw up in a trash can beneath the console.

He walked down the stairs that led belowdecks. He went to Poldark’s cabin. Poldark was unconscious, though still breathing. Faqir tried to wake him, reaching his hand out and gently shaking his shoulder, but there was no response. Faqir covered Poldark with a blanket, then moved down the hall. He opened a door to the bunkroom.

“Let’s go.”

The approaching boat was smaller, less than half the size of the Lonely Fisherman, a purse seiner with a forward wheelhouse. It was dark blue, with long stripes of white along the hull. It was a neat-looking boat, with fresh paint and well maintained.

Faqir stood in the wheelhouse, looking out the window at the approaching boat. His eyes moved to his own deck, and he saw two of the Chechens. They were seated in between piles of ropes, slumped over, hidden by the side of the hull. Each man clutched a submachine gun. They sat in silence, still, watching for Faqir’s signal.

The Dogfish chugged slowly aft of the ship, then puttered abreast, coming up along the Lonely Fisherman’s port side. As it moved across the final few feet of water separating the two vessels, Faqir made eye contact with MacDonald, captain of the Dogfish, who stood at the helm. He was balding, with gray hair along the fringes of his scalp and a tan face. Two other men stood behind the wheelhouse on the deck of the boat, both dressed in yellow all-weather fishing gear, creased in stains and wear. One of the men from the Dogfish tossed a rope line onto the deck of the Lonely Fisherman, just as Faqir nodded to the two gunmen.

Faqir stepped through the door of the wheelhouse onto the deck of the ship, waving at the men on the smaller boat.

“Hello,” he yelled.

Faqir stepped to the rope line and picked it up.

Suddenly, both of the Chechens stood up, turned to the Dogfish, and opened fire.

The unmuted rat-a-tat-tat of submachine gun fire erupted above the sound of ocean and boat engines.

Slugs ripped through both men at the same time; a streak of bullets cut red across one man’s chest, spraying blood down his chest and torso as he was kicked backward. The other man was struck in the head; the slugs tore the top of his skull off as he dropped to the deck.

The Dogfish made an abrupt lurch as MacDonald jammed the throttle forward, then ducked.

Both Chechens opened fire. But the captain was shielded.

Faqir sprinted toward the bow of the Lonely Fisherman. He leapt to the rail, then jumped out into the air. He landed on the back transom of the Dogfish, clutching the transom as his feet touched water, now churning in the wake of the boat’s engines.

Faqir pulled himself aboard. He sprinted across the deck toward MacDonald. MacDonald turned, saw him, and reached for a knife. As Faqir entered the open-back wheelhouse, MacDonald thrust the blade at him. Faqir ducked, then kicked out MacDonald’s legs. MacDonald fell to the ground, screaming. Faqir stepped on the back of his neck and grabbed his forehead with both hands and yanked back, snapping his neck.

He stepped to the bridge and turned the boat around, bringing it back to the Lonely Fisherman. He steered the Dogfish alongside it, then stopped and moved to the deck.

“Tie us off,” he barked to the gunmen. “Give me a gun.”

Faqir searched the Dogfish for other men but found none. He went back to the bridge of the Dogfish and ripped the VHF radio from the wall. He returned to the bigger ship and climbed aboard.

“Are they packed up?”

“Yes, Faqir.”

“Get rid of the dead men, then come below.”

Over the next hour, the six Chechens, along with Faqir, carried both bombs slowly up the stairs and placed them aboard the Dogfish.

Faqir tore the VHF radio from the Lonely Fisherman and handed it to one of the Chechens.

“Put it aboard the boat.”

Faqir went belowdecks to Poldark’s room. He lifted the blanket to carry the old man up the stairs, but Poldark was dead. Faqir sat down for a moment and closed his eyes.

“A prayer for you, Professor,” Faqir whispered. “May you find your peace and may the heavens thank you for your bravery.”

In the engine room, he grabbed a gas container. He took it up to the deck, then poured it on the deck.

In the wheelhouse, he picked up the mike from the Dogfish VHF radio. He moved the dial to channel 17, the international channel for distress calls.

“Mayday, Mayday,” he shouted. “This is the Dogfish. Mayday. We have a fire in our engine room. We are taking on water and need immediate assistance. I repeat, Mayday.”

“Dogfish,” came a faint voice.

Faqir stepped from the bridge and threw the Dogfish’s radio into the sea. He lit a lighter and touched the flame to the deck. Fire shot out along the wood, quickly spreading out. By the time he climbed aboard the Dogfish, the entire deck of the Lonely Fisherman was aflame, with clouds of black smoke rising into the sky above.

“Cast off!” he barked.

He stepped to the bridge and pushed the throttle forward, aiming for the East Coast.

“Find the paint,” he yelled. “Get rid of anything with the name on it. Hurry up.”