Ten minutes on the treadmill and already Carver was exhausted. Dr. Geisel was sympathetic, too, which made it even worse.
“Don’t worry-this is normal,” he said, standing beside the apparatus, as calm and immaculate as ever. “You have been sick for many months. You cannot expect to be fit right away. The main thing is, you are making great progress.”
Carver just about managed to speak between gasps for breath.
“How much longer before I’m ready to be discharged? I’ve got to find out what happened to her.”
“I understand, Mr. Carver, but you must appreciate that you are a long way from being cured. When you were admitted, you had suffered a very serious psychological trauma, a rift cutting you off from your own identity. Normally, in a case such as this, I would expect an additional trauma, such as Miss Petrova’s departure, to have set you back, maybe worse than ever. And yet now, Mr. Carver, it is as if the shock has dislodged some kind of obstacle. The boulder has rolled away, the cave is open, your consciousness is free. Really, it is a kind of psychic resurrection.”
“Well, if I’m so much better,” Carver wheezed, “why won’t you let me out?”
“Because nothing in psychology is ever that simple. Yes, you are recovering your long-term memory, but chaotically, randomly, and traumatically. Your prognosis is still unclear. You might, indeed, continue this remarkable progress. But, equally likely, the shock of these recovered memories could push you back over the edge, even deeper than ever before.”
“So when is it safe for me to leave?”
“When the odds are not so equal. Now enjoy the rest of your work-out. I strongly recommend physical fitness as an aid to your mental recovery.”
When Geisel had gone, Carver stepped off the treadmill. His thighs were quivering, his legs barely able to support him as he walked across to the weight machines. He managed forty pounds on the lat pull-down and sixty on the bench press, low reps and feeble weights on the leg extensions and curls, sit-ups in sets of six.
Carver could now remember when he possessed the extreme levels of fitness required of an officer in the Special Boat Service. For him to be struggling with a routine like this was like a professional soccer player getting beaten in a kids’ scrimmage. But just to sweat, to feel the burn, and to keep driving himself onward, made him feel alive again.
He accepted that his mind was still balanced on a knife edge between recovery and relapse, just as Geisel had warned. He had a feeling some of his mental doors would stay firmly locked for a while yet. But after the terrible nonexistence of the past few months, he refused to countenance the prospect of failure.
“Come on,” he panted, stepping back onto the treadmill. “Go faster.”
And so he ran, and the memory came to him of another time he had run, a dash down a street in Geneva, late one night. In his mind’s eye he saw a white van, painted with the logo of the Swisscom telephone company. He could not see the man at the wheel, but he knew who he was: Kursk, one of the Russians. Carver felt his stomach tighten with tension at the memory of that name. He knew, too, who had been in the back of that van. Alix had been Kursk ’s prisoner. The Russian had driven her away. But Carver had gone after her, though he still could not recall precisely what had happened.
He knew one thing, though. He’d got her back. How else could she have been sitting by his bedside for all those months?
With his awakening had come a profound conviction of his love for her, and hers for him. Carver was certain that Alix would never willingly have left him without even saying good-bye. Wherever she had gone, it had not been her choice. He would not rest until he had found her and made her his again.
One of the gymnasium staff was walking toward the treadmill, a look of concern on his face as he ran his eyes over Carver’s scarlet face, his heaving chest, and his pale-gray T-shirt, darkened with puddles of sweat under his armpits and down the small of his back.
“Maybe you should stop now,” he said.
“No,” said Carver. “I want to keep running.”
Across town a man was steeling himself to make a difficult call. He was way over six feet tall and beanpole-thin. His milk-skinned, freckled face, illuminated by gentle blue eyes, was topped by a starburst of red-blond dreadlocks.
Thor Larsson took a deep breath and started pressing the buttons. He waited a few moments until the clinic’s switchboard had answered and then said, “Monsieur Marchand’s office, please.”
He paced up and down, waiting to be put through to the finance director.
“It’s about Monsieur Carver’s account…” Larsson began. “Please, can you just give me another few days? I think I may be able to get some money. Maybe not all the bill, but a lot of it, I assure you.”
To his amazement, the voice on the other end of the line was reassuring, almost obsequious.
“Monsieur, please, do not derange yourself,” said Marchand. “There is no need to be concerned. Monsieur Carver’s account has been settled in full and instructions have been left for any future expenses. He is welcome to stay as long as he likes.”
“What? When did that happen?” asked Larsson.
“Pah! Let me see… it must have been two days ago, I suppose.”
“Who is paying the bill, then?”
“I am sorry, monsieur, that I cannot say. We have simply received instructions to pass any outstanding invoices to a lawyer acting on behalf of a client. Who that client might be, well… this is Switzerland, monsieur. We respect people’s privacy here.”
The moment she walked into his office, Kurt Vermulen knew that Natalia Morley would be his new assistant. He’d already been impressed enough by her résumé. She was thirty years old, born in Russia, but carried a Canadian passport, thanks to her marriage (now dissolved) to an investment banker, Steve Morley. They’d met in Moscow, where they both worked for a Swiss investment bank-she was his boss’s assistant and she’d taken another high-level P.A. job when Morley had been posted to the bank’s head office in Geneva. They’d moved again to the States, where the marriage had broken up. Now she was looking to start a new life on her own. It didn’t look as if she would have too much trouble doing that. Her letters of recommendation were outstanding, and when he called the men listed as her references, they all sang her praises. Then he saw her, and he understood why.
Natalia Morley was a head-turning, jaw-dropping beauty. Over the past few weeks, Vermulen had been on a couple of pleasant, but unexceptional dates with Megan, the lawyer he’d met that night at the Italian restaurant in Georgetown. Megan was a fine-looking woman. Natalia was in a totally different league.
Even so, looks will get you only so far. Kurt Vermulen had the same basic instincts as any other heterosexual male, but he was also an intelligent, thoughtful man. What really hooked him was a deeper quality, something that suggested vulnerability, and even sadness, as though life had wounded her in some way. It could have been the divorce, he guessed, although, in Vermulen’s experience, that was more likely to induce anger or even bitterness in a woman. All he knew was that he sensed a personal loss in Natalia Morley that echoed his own bereavement.
At one point in their first meeting he even found himself talking about Amy and her death. It was, he realized, an inappropriate subject for a job interview. But it happened so naturally, and Natalia was so gracious in her response, that he found himself wanting her to be in his life. The job offer was really just a means, even an excuse, to have her near him. She’d started the following Monday.
Since then, her work had been impeccable. His appointments, correspondence, and travel arrangements were organized with flawless efficiency. The brutal murder of a general’s secretary, right in the heart of the capital, had attracted a fair amount of media attention, but Natalia had been adept at keeping even the most persistent reporters at bay. Knowing that there was no one at home to look after him, she saw to his dry cleaning, found contractors for his household chores and garden maintenance, and arranged for deliveries of fresh produce and deli items from the D.C. branch of Dean & DeLuca to his townhouse near Dumbarton Oaks. The rest of the staff at Vermulen Strategic Consulting seemed to like her, too, including the other women. That struck Vermulen as quite an achievement. He’d have expected them to resent her looks and her closeness to their boss.
Then again, she’d never got that close. Natalia Morley was perfectly friendly. She laughed at his jokes, listened to his problems, and charmed any client who set foot in the office. If she ever had a bad mood, Vermulen never saw it. But neither did he see any evidence that she was as interested in him as he was in her. Her manner was always entirely proper. She didn’t flirt with him at all, and while her elegant clothes could not help but show off her figure, her skirts were knee-length and her blouses demure. If anything was going to happen, he would have to make the first move.
Meanwhile, he still had a business to run and, most important of all, a false-flag operation to organize. Vermulen had persuaded himself that if he was right about the threat from Islamist terrorism, then it would be inexcusable to sit back and do nothing. Even if his actions were questionable, they were better than the alternative.
His plans were beginning to form now. He was going to take a couple of months off from the business. If anyone asked, he’d tell them he was taking a break by traveling around Europe, combining a spell of R & R with the opportunity to make new contacts. He would not mention, however, that the contacts were those required to procure a nuclear bomb. His itinerary would take him to Amsterdam, Vienna, Venice, and Rome, to start with. After that, he’d see how things panned out. Natalia could book him transportation and hotels as he needed them.
And then a thought struck him. If he was in Europe and she was back in D.C. it would always be tricky keeping in touch and ensuring that everything ran smoothly. It would really be much more efficient if she was with him, right there on the spot, looking after him day to day. Obviously he couldn’t tell her who the people he was meeting really were, and he’d have to send her home well before the final phase of the operation. In the meantime, though, they’d be thrown together in some of the world’s most romantic cities. If nothing happened then, it never would.
Vermulen could simply have ordered Natalia to accompany him, but that wasn’t the best way to go if he wanted her to feel good about him. He’d be asking her to spend several weeks away from home, on call 24/7, with only him for company. If she didn’t want to do that voluntarily, he wasn’t going to gain anything by forcing her.
When he asked her to come into his office, his heart was pounding. He felt like a nervous kid summoning up the courage to ask for a prom-night date.
As always, Natalia looked poised and imperturbable as she awaited his instructions.
Vermulen reminded himself that he was a decorated combat veteran who had faced enemy fire on three separate continents and had commanded thousands of fighting men. How tough could it be to face one beautiful woman?
“As you know,” he said, adopting what he hoped was a relaxed but businesslike air, “I will be spending some time in Europe this spring. I need a break, need to get away-it’s been a tough few years.”
“Of course,” she said. “I quite understand.”
“Good… good… Anyway, as you know, I will be doing some business while I’m away, taking meetings and so forth, so there’ll be a fair amount of administration required, which would best be handled on the spot. I was wondering, therefore, whether you would be willing to accompany me on the trip. It would be in a purely professional capacity, of course, and I would compensate you financially for the loss of weekends and free time while you were away. Does that sound, ah… agreeable to you?”
She looked at him for a moment, frowning slightly.
“Do you want me to arrange separate tickets for myself, coach class?”
“Oh, no, that wouldn’t be right. You can travel first class, like me.”
She seemed surprised.
“That’s very kind, sir, thank you. And accommodation?”
“We’d stay at the same hotels. So, are you interested?”
She thought for a second.
“I will have to change some personal arrangements. And I would need to arrange for someone to cover for me here while I am away. But that should be possible, so, yes, I would be happy to travel with you, sir.”
“Outstanding,” said Kurt Vermulen.
That evening, Alix Petrova met the FSB agent who was her Washington handler on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
“The assignment is proceeding as planned,” she said. “Vermulen is clearly infatuated. He has asked me to go with him on a trip to Europe. He is telling everyone, including me, that he is taking an extended vacation, but I am certain that there is more to it than that.”
She handed over a plain white envelope.
“The itinerary for the first three weeks is in there, including flight numbers and hotels. It should not be difficult to arrange meetings and drops at any of the places we will be visiting.”
“Excellent,” said her handler. “So, what is he like, this General Vermulen?”
“If you want to know,” she replied, “he is a very fine man. I like him, which only makes me despise myself even more for what I am doing to him.”
The handler raised an eyebrow.
“I think I will leave that last observation out of my report to the deputy director.”
“No,” said Alix, “please don’t. It will make her happy to think that I am suffering.”
A week later, Kurt Vermulen was in Amsterdam. He’d given the woman he knew as Natalia Morley the day off. Now he was standing on a piece of scrubland down by the docks, where weeds grew between the boats pulled up onto the shore, and an old barge rusted in the water at the end of the plot. He was about to put a face to a name he’d known for a decade or more, an old Defense Intelligence Agency case file transformed into a live human being.
A car turned off the road, drove past him, and pulled up about fifteen yards beyond. A thin man in a black suit, lank hair falling over the collar, emerged, smoking a cigarette. He threw the stub onto the damp, gravelly earth and crushed it with his heel, immediately lit another, then walked toward Vermulen. They didn’t bother to shake hands.
“Jonny Koolhaas?” asked Vermulen.
The man shrugged. He angled his head and blew a plume of smoke into the air, away from Vermulen, still looking at him from the corner of his eye.
“So what do you want?”
“A supplier of untraceable weapons and equipment, accessible at short notice. I’ll need pistols, submachine guns, grenades, plastique. Nothing fancy. Also vehicles. Untraceable, of course.”
“And why would a respectable American officer want all that?”
There was a glint of amusement in Koolhaas’s eye. It always pleased him to watch upright, law-abiding citizens having to trade in his criminal world.
“Well, perhaps you will tell me when it is over,” he said, when Vermulen had not answered. “But yes, I can arrange for those goods to be available at any time.”
“That’s good. Does your network cover Eastern Europe?”
“I have associates in the East, yes.”
“How about the former Yugoslavia?”
Koolhaas stubbed out the cigarette.
“Possibly, yes.”
The following day, Vermulen transferred the first installment of Koolhaas’s payment to an account in the Dutch Antilles. Natalia Morley had accompanied him to the bank, where he made the transfer.
He took her arm as they walked away.
She didn’t seem to mind. Maybe he was making progress.
Another three days had passed, and they were taking their places in the magnificent white-and-gold horseshoe of boxes that rings the auditorium of the State Opera House, Vienna. The performance that night was Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Vermulen, however, hadn’t come for the music.
Vienna was the city where Pavel Novak conducted his business, trading people, weapons, and information. It was no coincidence at all that Vermulen and Alix happened to bump into Novak and his wife, Ludmilla, in the bar before the performance. After introductions had been made, while the ladies were complimenting each other on their dresses, Novak stepped close to Vermulen and spoke into his ear, the way you do when you’re middle-aged and it’s getting harder to make out what someone’s saying over a background roar of conversation. Or when you’re passing on secrets about weapons of mass destruction.
“The sale of documents has been confirmed. The vendor is a Georgian, Bagrat Baladze. He is paranoid, out of his depth. He refuses to put his goods in a bank, insists on having them in his possession at all times. He is also terrified that another, bigger gangster will find out what he has and take it from him. So I have arranged for him to go into hiding at a series of locations while the sale is arranged. In four weeks’ time, he will arrive at a converted farmhouse in the South of France. That will be your best opportunity. I will give you exact details nearer the time…”
Novak glanced back at the ladies with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye.
“You are a lucky man, Kurt. I love my Ludmilla, of course. But to have a woman like that in my bed, well… I envy you.”
Vermulen shook his head.
“No need-she’s not in my bed.”
“You’re joking!”
“Kid you not…”
He gave Novak a hearty pat on the back.
“But believe me, pal, I’m working on it.”
In the first interval, Alix walked to the nearest ladies’ room. A line had already formed. In front of Alix stood a silver-haired Viennese matron, plumped up by a lifetime of chocolate cakes and whipped cream. Alix gave her a polite smile, then took up her position, idly looking around at the operagoers in their dinner jackets and evening gowns.
She was wearing a simple, floor-length column of pearl-colored satin, with a matching sequined evening purse in her hand. Suddenly, something or someone caught her eye. Her eyes lit up and she turned to wave, lifting the hand that held the purse, just at the exact moment that a slender brunette in her early forties, her cheeks hollow with dieting and nervous energy, arrived in the line behind her. Alix’s arm swept into the woman, whose own bag, a silver metallic-leather clutch, was knocked to the floor. It was a total accident, but Alix was overwhelmed by embarrassment. As the other woman hissed with irritation, she dropped to the red carpet, picked up the clutch, which had fallen open, and, having snapped it shut, returned it to its infuriated owner.
“I’m so sorry,” Alix said, her eyes pleading for forgiveness. “I really didn’t mean to-”
She was met by a volley of incomprehensible German insults that had the portly matron, her ears burning, barely suppressing a squeal of delighted horror: Here was a story to tell her companions when she got back to her seat! Then the brunette turned on her stiletto heel and stalked off in search of a more civilized place to pee.
But Maria Rostova, whose diplomatic accreditation listed her as a first secretary in the trade and investment section of the Russian Federation Embassy, Vienna, did not stop when she came to the next facility. Instead, she went down the stairs and out through the magnificent arched loggia to the Opernring outside. A car pulled up as she reached the side of the road. Rostova got in and, as the car moved away, opened her bag. She rummaged around inside it and removed a small tube of rolled-up paper, about the size of a cigarette, stuck in place by a small square of adhesive tape. She prized open the tape and unrolled the tube, which revealed a page torn from a onetime code pad, covered in rows of numbers written in three-digit groups.
Rostova put the paper back in her bag, then took out a mobile phone and dialed a Moscow number. When she got through she simply said, “I have this week’s delivery.”
It was shortly before five-thirty in the afternoon and Clément Marchand was about to leave his office at the Montagny-Dumas Clinic when he received a call from a man with a Russian accent. Marchand was informed that his wife was being held hostage. By way of confirmation, the receiver was held up to her face just long enough for him to be certain that the few sobbed words he heard had come from his Marianne.
“Please, don’t hurt her,” he stammered. And then, “What do you want?”
Marchand was given a very simple set of instructions. First, he was assured that this was not a conventional kidnapping. His wife’s captors did not want any money. As a consequence, they had no incentive to keep her alive. If he refused to do as they told him, at exactly the specified time, or made any attempt to contact the authorities, they would kill her.
“Anything!” he pleaded. “Just tell me what I must do.”
“Work late,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “Invent an excuse. At precisely half past eleven tonight, you will call the duty nurse on the third floor of your clinic. You will tell her that you need to see her. If she protests, you will insist. Say that you have uncovered an irregularity in the records of drugs administered to patients. Say anything you like. All that matters is this: The nurse must be in your office, in your presence, away from her station, between eleven-thirty and eleven forty-five. After that time, she can return to her post. At midnight, you may leave the clinic and drive home. If all goes well, your wife will be waiting for you, unharmed.”
“Thank you, thank you.” Marchand was almost weeping with relief.
“Do not thank us until you have completed your task,” said the voice. “And one more thing. If you should ever decide to tell anyone about this conversation, or what has happened to your wife, we will know. And you will both be killed.”
Marchand put down the phone, wiped the sweat off his brow, and told his secretary he would be working late. She, however, was free to go home at the normal hour.
Carver’s recovery had not gone unnoticed in Moscow, nor its possible consequences. Deputy Director Olga Zhukovskaya had made it plain to her staff that she wanted the matter dealt with at once. Now they were obeying her orders.
Carver awoke and found to his surprise that he had not been asleep for half the night, as he’d imagined. The clock by his bedside read 23:35-he’d been out for less than an hour. He rubbed his eyes and then frowned. Something was wrong, something out of place, but he couldn’t work out what it was.
Then it struck him. He couldn’t hear the TV. The night nurse on duty this week was a kid called Sandrine, and she always had a late-night movie on in the staff room when she thought the patients were asleep. So why would tonight be any different?
Carver got out of bed and, keeping the light off, padded across his room to the door. He opened it a fraction and paused, listening for any unusual sounds outside. He thought he could hear footsteps down at the far end of the floor. Very slowly, he eased the door open another few degrees, just enough for him to lean around and catch a glimpse down the corridor. He saw the shape of a man, bending over the nurses’ reception desk, running his finger down the top sheet on a clipboard. He was checking the list of rooms and their occupants.
He might have been looking for someone else, but Carver wasn’t going to take that chance. He closed the door and looked around the room, giving himself no more than a couple of seconds to make his decision. Then he went to the bathroom, switched on the light, and turned on the tap, letting it run in a steady dribble that sounded like a man taking a leak. When he quit the bathroom, he left the light on and the door half open, before going to stand to one side of the bedroom door, his back to the wall between him and the corridor.
Steps came pacing down the corridor. The man’s rubber soles squeaked against the vinyl tiled floor. They paused outside the door to Carver’s room and he saw the handle move as it was twisted from outside. The door opened. It was now between Carver and the other man, whoever he was, blocking each of them from seeing the other.
Carver’s bathrobe was hanging on a hook on the back of the door, a cord strung around its waist. Carver gently slid the cord from the robe, then held it in both hands, forming a loop like a lasso. He knew he had only meager reserves of strength and stamina. Whatever he did, it would have to be fast.
The man closed the door behind him. His attention was focused on the bathroom, unaware of Carver behind him. There was something in his right hand, a thin tube that protruded a few inches from his fist. At first glance Carver thought it might be a small flashlight, but then the man’s hand moved and caught the light from the bathroom door. The tube was a plastic injector pen, the kind used by diabetics for their daily doses of insulin.
Now he understood. An overdose of insulin, given to a sleeping patient, would swiftly induce hypoglycemic coma as the neurons in the brain were starved of glucose. Death would follow if the condition was left untreated, and if the injection site itself were not spotted, there’d be no reason to suspect foul play. Insulin was one of the most effective murder weapons a hospital could offer.
Carver had no intention of being its latest victim. He came up behind the intruder, slipped the bathrobe cord over his head, and pulled it tight around the neck.
The man reacted instantly. He brought his left hand up to the cord, trying to pull it away from his throat. At the same time he jerked his head back, hard, hoping to catch Carver on the face.
Carver anticipated the move and swayed back, his own movement adding to the tension on the cord. But now he had another problem to deal with-the man swung his right arm around behind him, jabbing the injector pen at Carver like a deadly snake, with insulin as its venom.
Carver twisted to one side to avoid the pen. The movement shifted his balance and gave his opponent the chance to push backward. Carver was sent crashing into the wall between his room and the one next door. The breath was knocked from him by the impact, but he forced himself to hold on to the cord. Ten or fifteen seconds’ pressure on the carotid artery would be enough to bring on unconsciousness, but fifteen seconds was an eternity when two men were fighting to the death.
They lurched around the room, their bodies linked like two drunken dance partners as they collided with a chair, knocking it over; then the bed; then a side table, sending a glass of water flying. And all the while the injector was jabbing at Carver, searching for his flesh and the moment when it could finally release its deadly cargo.
Groggy calls of complaint started coming from the patients on either side of Carver’s room. One of them started banging on the wall and calling for a nurse. It would not be long before someone came to see what was happening.
As the seconds passed, the fight was becoming a test of endurance between Carver’s enfeebled muscles, desperately hanging on to his improvised noose, and his enemy’s oxygen-starved brain. Whoever gave in first would die. And then came a stroke of luck. The assassin’s flailing hand struck against the iron frame of Carver’s bed and the injector was knocked from his grasp. Desperately, he tried to bend down to pick it up, but that only gave Carver the opportunity to plant his feet and give one last heave of the cord.
He felt the other man slump into unconsciousness and let the cord play out through his hands, lowering the lifeless body to the floor.
Suddenly there was a hammering on the door.
Carver dragged the body into the bathroom, then opened the door. Christophe, the crack-addicted son of a prominent local banker, was standing in the corridor in shorts and an old T-shirt, his usually pallid features inflamed with indignation.
“What the hell have you been doing in there?” he whined, making no attempt to keep his voice down.
Other heads began peering out of doors up and down the corridor.
“It’s okay-I’m sorry,” said Carver, turning to one side and then the other, holding his hands up in apology and surrender.
“I must have been sleepwalking or something. I had one of my nightmares, then I woke up and I was in the middle of my room and it was all smashed up. I don’t know what happened. But I’m really sorry if I woke you guys up, okay?”
He looked around in feigned bewilderment. “Has anyone seen a nurse? I could really use some meds…”
The others shook their heads and retreated back into their rooms, like crabs scuttling back into holes, not wanting to get involved. Carver watched them disappear, then went back into his room. Wherever the nurse had got to, she’d be back at any second. He heard a groan from the bathroom. His assailant was coming to.
Carver’s eyes darted around his room until he found the injector lying on the floor by his bed. He picked it up, strode into the bathroom, sat astride the man’s body, forced his head down with one hand, then jabbed the injector at his carotid artery with the other. As soon as the plastic tube hit skin, Carver pushed the trigger button, sending a dose of insulin straight into the bloodstream. Then he pressed it again, twice more, just to make sure the maximum possible dose had been administered and the injector was completely empty. The man gave a barely audible moan. He wasn’t dead yet. But he was heading that way fast.
Now that the fight was over and his adrenaline levels were plummeting, Carver felt shattered, but he couldn’t afford to let up. He righted the bedside table and put the chair back in its place. Somehow, he found the strength to drag the comatose body back out of the bathroom and across the floor to the bed.
The man had been wearing a heavy overcoat. Carver pulled his arms from the sleeves, then heaved him up onto the mattress and covered him with a blanket and top sheet, leaving just the top of his head exposed on the pillow. The subterfuge would survive only the most cursory look into the room. But it might buy Carver time to get out.
He put on some clothes and shoes, followed by the dying man’s overcoat. There were car keys in one of the side pockets, along with a phone. The inside pocket held a wallet. Carver opened it. He found money, credit cards, and an I.D. in the name of Dr. Jean Du Cann, consultant psychiatrist. That would have got the would-be killer past the guard at the gate. He must have used it again at the front desk or slipped in through a service entrance. Those doors were all locked, but they wouldn’t pose any barrier to a professional. They wouldn’t stop Carver getting out, either.
He was about to leave the room when he heard more footsteps: the slightly sharper patter of a nurse’s footsteps. Sandrine had returned. There was a distinct, familiar pattern to the noise she was making: a few paces, then a pause as she looked into the patients’ rooms, through the windows in the doors, just a routine check to make sure they were all okay.
Carver rolled under the bed as her footsteps drew near. He held his breath and remained perfectly still as she stopped outside his room, then exhaled in blessed relief as she walked on. A couple of minutes later, he heard one last, uninterrupted walk down the corridor, followed by the sound of the TV being turned on again. He waited a few minutes, giving the nurse time to fix herself a cup of coffee, kick off her shoes, and relax in front of the box.
He used the time to sort out the dying man’s possessions. Carver kept the coat, the phone, the car keys, and the cash. The wallet, with the doctor’s I.D. still inside, he placed on the bedside table, along with the injector. That would give the police plenty of material to go on when they tried to figure out what had happened-material that should make it obvious that the victim was far from innocent. Finally, Carver slipped out through his door, turned away from the nurses’ room, crept down the corridor, and made his way to the emergency staircase.
Less than a minute later, he was sitting behind the wheel of his attacker’s car. He turned up the collar of his overcoat, then drove toward the barrier, giving the guard a little wave of thanks as he passed. As the barrier closed behind him, he pressed the accelerator to the floor and sped away toward Geneva.
At a quarter past midnight, Clément Marchand came through his front door, an eager, expectant look on his face. “Marianne? Chérie? ” he called out.
Then blood blossomed on his shirt front and spattered his forehead as he died just as his wife had.
The killer let himself out of the apartment without any fuss. As he drove away he called his boss, reporting the situation at the apartment and requesting his next instructions.
Carver kept checking the rearview mirror to see if he was being followed. He found himself getting jittery if he saw the same set of lights for more than a mile or two. Whenever a car behind turned off the main road, or overtook him without incident, his shoulders slumped with relief and gratitude, only to tighten up again when another vehicle pulled into view.
He told himself not to be so stupid. He had almost always worked alone. Why shouldn’t the man now lying on his bed have done the same? But his head was filled with fears of pursuit. His body, meanwhile, was exhausted. He’d forgotten how draining a fight could be. It might only have lasted a few seconds, but the fear and tension that preceded it, the intense physical strain of the battle itself, and the release that came with survival had overwhelmed him. His muscles ached. His brain felt sluggish and unfocused. He had reached the outskirts of Geneva when another thought hit him: What if the car had been fitted with a tracking device?
He cursed his sloppiness. It should have been automatic: Check an unknown car for a tracker or booby traps. But that hadn’t even crossed his mind until it was far too late. No wonder he wasn’t being followed. They didn’t need to bother. They already knew where he was.
Then he thought of the killer’s phone, still sitting in his coat pocket. As long as it was on, anyone with access to the local networks could use that to locate him, too. He reached inside the coat and switched off the phone. After one last look in the mirror, he pulled over to the side of the road, stopped the car, got out, and looked around. He was somewhere in the ribbon of suburbs and small towns that sprawled northeast from the city and ran right around the northern shore of the lake to Lausanne and on to Montreux. The road he was on ran parallel to a railway line. Up ahead he could see a sign for a station, barely more than a halt on the line, called Creux-de-Genthod. The name rang a bell. He’d been there before.
He started jogging along the road toward the station and had almost reached the entrance when he remembered that there was a restaurant on the far side of the road, down by the lake. He’d taken women for lazy meals by the water. Sometimes he’d hire a boat for the day and sail there, mooring at the jetty just along from the terrace where they put out tables in the summertime. He had a vivid impression of walking up to the place and seeing blue parasols and striped awnings, the girl he was with squeezing his arm, happy to be arriving for a meal by boat. Then he remembered something else, the way he’d felt at times like that: not sharing the other person’s pleasure, but cut off, his mind still processing the death he’d just inflicted, or planning the one to come.
Carver thought about going down to the restaurant to use the phone. It was past midnight and they’d be closing up, but he’d say his car had broken down. He wanted to get in touch with Thor Larsson. He felt badly in need of an ally. But then he saw a flash in the corner of his eye, the gleam of a train’s headlights coming down the track. If he ran, he could catch it and go all the way into town. The journey would take less than fifteen minutes. He’d call Larsson when he arrived.
On the train, he found a seat at the far end of a carriage, from which he could easily monitor anyone who came in through the sliding door beside him, or moved down the aisle between the rows of seats. This probably was the last train of the night; there weren’t too many other people onboard. Still, he couldn’t relax. He stared at the other passengers, trying to work out which of them might pose a threat. He told himself to stop-they’d think he was a nutcase. But he kept doing it anyway. It had been months since he’d been out in the world, surrounded by strangers. It was hard to fit back in.
As he left the train at Geneva, he kept darting glances at the other people walking down the platform. A teenage boy, out with his mates, caught his eye.
“What are you looking at?” the kid shouted.
One of his friends, made bold by the presence of his gang, joined in. “You some kind of pervert or something?”
“He’s a pedophile,” said one of the others, and they broke into a jeering chorus: “Pedo! Pedo!”
Carver turned away from them, his shoulders hunched. By the time he reached the public phones, he was sweaty with embarrassment and shame. He called Larsson.
“Carver?” Larsson sounded like he’d just heard a ghost. “That’s not possible. I mean… how… what happened?”
“I got better. Look, we need to meet. My flat, soon as possible.”
“Hold on,” said Larsson. “Where are you calling from? How come you’re not at the clinic?”
“Had a bit of trouble there. I’m in town now. I need to leave tonight, get right away from here. But there’s a couple of things I’ve got to do first.”
“What kind of things?”
“Nothing dramatic. I just need to start looking for Alix. Look, can you get to the flat or not?”
“I guess so.”
“Great. And bring the keys. You’ve still got them, right?”
“Yeah. Alix had the original set, but I’ve got copies.”
“See you there.”
Carver took a cab, looking out of the window all the way, getting used to the sights of the city again. He made the cabbie drop him off a couple of blocks away from his apartment, started walking off in the wrong direction, then corrected himself and made his way through the warren of narrow, twisting streets at the heart of the Old Town. He was constantly looking back over his shoulder, checking out the parked cars, twitching with nerves at every unexpected movement or sound.
A few doors down from his destination, Carver stopped for a moment outside a small café whose front door was set a few feet below ground level, just down a short flight of steps. The building looked familiar, but there was something out of place. It was the sign over the café door-he was sure it had been changed. He tried to recall what had been there before, or what the significance of the café had been, but this time the image wouldn’t come. He stood there for a second, frowning in concentration, trying to get at the memory that was still so tantalizingly out of reach. He wondered what had happened here that was so bad his brain still refused to acknowledge it. Then he turned away and walked on, cursing himself for standing like that, stock-still, out in the open, where anyone could get at him.
On the other side of the city, a Russian FSB field agent named Piotr Korsakov, the man who had just killed Marianne Marchand and her husband, Clément, hailed a taxi. He gave the driver precise directions to his intended destination: a place to which, his superiors had decided, Carver would most likely head. His next target was on the move. There was no time to waste.
On the shores of Gull Lake, Minnesota, with the last traces of daylight fading from the iron-gray sky and the trees on the far side of the lake barely visible, Dr. Kathleen Dianne “Kady” Jones got ready to meet her first live nuclear bomb.
A research scientist at the Los Alamos nuclear facility in New Mexico, Kady was one of the volunteers on call to a unit of the U.S. government’s Department of Energy known as NEST. The initials stood for Nuclear Emergency Search Team and they precisely described the unit’s task, which was to cope with national security’s worst nightmare: a bad guy with a nuke.
Since NEST had been founded in 1975 there had been more than one hundred reports of possible threats. Of these, around thirty had been investigated. They were all hoaxes. Homemade portable nukes made great storylines for movies. A team of seventeen government scientists even tried to build a bomb as an experiment, just to see if it could be done. But in actual fact, there had been no unauthorized nuclear weapons of any kind on U.S. soil.
Until now.
The call had come in from the FBI in Minneapolis-St. Paul to the Department of Energy’s Emergency Operations Center in Washington, D.C. From there, it was routed to the NEST headquarters at Nellis Air Force Base northeast of Las Vegas. Within minutes, Kady had been assigned to lead a seven-person NEST team. Within the hour, they had taken off from Los Alamos County Airport, on the way to Minneapolis.
The team’s destination was a waterside vacation property on the shore of Gull Lake, a popular destination for city dwellers seeking fresh air, good fishing, and fun on the water. The FBI had cordoned off the area with the help of local police. Floodlights had been brought in to light up the modest timber cabin. The special agent in charge was named Tom Mulvagh.
“So what’s the story?” Kady asked, as her team began unloading gear from one of the two black Econoline vans that had transported them to the site. She was holding a gloved hand across her brow to keep the rain out of her eyes. A bright-red fleece hat was jammed down over her chestnut hair.
“The owner here, name of Heggarty, bought the place four years ago,” said Mulvagh, his face half in shadow beneath his hooded parka. “Now he’s looking to convert the loft space, fit in an extra bedroom. Anyway, he’s measuring up and he can’t figure it right. The interior dimensions of the loft space don’t match the exterior dimensions of the building. He keeps coming up three feet short. Then he realizes that the end wall of the loft is really a partition, with space behind it. So he knocks it down and that’s when he sees a large, brown leather suitcase-he described it as kind of old-fashioned, not like a modern style. He looks closer and there’s an electric cable coming from this sack, connected to a power supply in the wall.”
Kady grimaced. “Tell me he didn’t open the case.”
“Sure he opened the case-human nature. That’s when he saw a metal pipe, a black box with a blinking red light, and what he called, and I quote, ‘That damn towel-head writing.’ ”
She frowned. “Arabic?”
“Don’t think so. From his description, we concluded it was Cyrillic script-Russian.”
“Okay, so now did he keep his hands off the pipe and the box?”
The special agent grinned. “Yeah, he was smart enough to get scared at that point. He called up the PD in Nisswa, and they passed him on to the Crow Wing County sheriff ’s office in Brainerd. They contacted us, and here we all are.”
“Better check it out, then.” Kady looked around. “We’re going to be wearing protective suits. I guess we can change in the vans.”
“Sure,” said Mulvagh, “but do it quick. Makes me nervous standing around here, thinking about what’s in there.”
She gave him a reassuring pat, as if she were his protector, even though Mulvagh looked a decade older than she, and was six inches taller and probably fifty pounds heavier.
“Trust me-it’s okay. If that device really is some kind of Soviet bomb, it’s almost certainly got a permissive action link-that’s a specific code to be entered before it’s armed. Without that, nothing’s going to happen. My guess is it’s been in position for a decade, probably more. And if it hasn’t gone off in all that time, why’s it going to blow now?”
“Because it doesn’t like being disturbed?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be extra polite.”
Larsson’s battered Volvo station wagon was already waiting outside Carver’s building when he finally arrived. The Norwegian got out and looked Carver up and down appraisingly, looking for any visible signs of trouble.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Get us inside,” Carver replied. “I don’t like being stuck out on the street-too exposed.”
His voice was tense, strung out.
“You all right, man?” asked Larsson. “You don’t sound so good.”
“I’m fine.”
“Whatever you say.”
Carver hurried into the apartment building and started making his way up the stairs to his top-floor flat. Larsson let him get ahead a few paces, watching him skeptically, then followed on up the old wooden staircase that wound up through five stories, creaking under his feet with every step. When he got to Carver’s flat, the door was already open. Carver was standing in the living room, looking around, aghast at what he saw-or, rather, didn’t see.
“Where is everything?” he asked.
The room had been stripped bare of furniture.
“We sold it,” said Larsson. “We had to.”
Carver calmed down for a moment as he accepted the truth of what Larsson had said. Then a look close to horror crossed his face, and he dashed off into the kitchen.
“Christ, you didn’t…”
Larsson hurried after him. “Didn’t what?”
“It’s okay…”
Carver was standing by the kitchen island. The wine racks were empty. The low-level built-in fridge had been taken from its housing. All that was left was the carcass. But he didn’t seem too bothered by that.
“I suddenly thought you might have sold the kitchen units,” he said.
Larsson grinned for the first time that night.
“Who’d buy that shit?”
Now it was Carver’s turn to smile, if only for a moment. He leaned down and reached inside the wine rack, in the middle of the second row, three spaces along. He grimaced for a second as his fingers groped blindly, and then his smile reappeared as they found their target.
“Watch,” he said.
There was a barely audible humming sound. Larsson looked in amazement as the center of the granite work surface rose from the island. Its smooth ascent revealed a metal frame, within which was fitted a large plastic toolbox, arranged in half a dozen clear plastic-fronted trays of varying depths.
“Unbelievable!” Larsson gasped.
“Looks like my kit is still in one piece then,” said Carver. He was calming down, reassured by familiar surroundings and the presence of the toolbox.
“Okay, the top two trays should be filled with regular gear…”
He opened it up to reveal a thick pad of charcoal-gray foam, within which a series of custom-cut openings housed a selection of immaculately shiny wrenches, screwdrivers, saws, and hammers. The second tray was devoted to miniature power tools and soldering irons.
“It’s all there,” he said. “Next two trays, I think, are gadgets, electronics, that kind of stuff.”
Larsson sighed contentedly as a selection of timers, detonators, brake and accelerator overrides, and radio remote controls were presented to view.
“Oh, yeah, I recognize some of these babies. Nice to know you gave them such a good home.”
“Okay, next down there should be…”
Larsson was confronted with blocks of plastique and thermite.
“And finally…”
Carver slid open the last, deepest tray. It contained a Heckler & Koch MP5K short-barreled submachine gun, with a suppressor and three magazines, plus a SIG Sauer P226 with the same essential accessories. Larsson gave a knowing nod. Both weapons were standard equipment for British Special Forces.
“There’s something else,” said Carver.
He pulled the toolbox out of its housing and placed it on the floor in front of him. Then he got down on his haunches. The lid of the toolbox was a couple of inches deep. He lifted it to reveal another compartment, inside the lid itself, accessed via a hinged plastic hatch. He opened that to reveal a fat, padded brown envelope, roughly twelve by eighteen inches.
“Little did you know…” he said.
Carver took out the envelope and shut the hatch again. Then he removed the SIG, the suppressor, and two magazines from the bottom tray. He closed up the toolbox, keeping it on the floor as he pressed the button inside the wine rack again. The empty housing disappeared back down into the island. Carver put the envelope and the gun back on top of the work surface.
“That got money in it?” asked Larsson, nodding at the envelope. Suddenly he didn’t feel quite so cheery.
“Yeah.”
“Enough to pay the bills?”
“Easily.”
“And you remembered about it when, exactly?”
There was a bitter, sarcastic edge to the words.
“A few weeks ago, pretty soon after I started coming around.”
“So you didn’t need her money at all, then?”
“Sure I did. As long as it was coming through, I knew she was still alive.”
Larsson was forced to accept the logic of Carver’s argument. But he had a legitimate grievance of his own.
“You owe me, too. More than twenty thousand bucks.”
Carver nodded silently. He reached in the envelope and took out an ornately engraved document. It was a fifty-thousand-dollar bearer bond, registered to a Panamanian corporation and signed by him on the reverse. Effectively, it was as good as cash. He gave it to Larsson.
“Thanks, but that’s way too much,” the Norwegian said.
“It won’t be,” said Carver dryly. “Not in the long run. Look, I’ll pay Alix back, too… but first I’ve got to find her. We should start at the last places she’d have been seen. I know she was working at some late-night place. Do you know where it was?”
“The bierkeller? Of course-I used to give her a lift to work sometimes.”
“Fine-you can give me a lift, too. I just need a couple of minutes to get fixed up.”
Carver picked up the envelope, the gun, and the magazines and left the kitchen. Walking through the living room, he saw the picture of Lulworth Cove on the wall, the only one of his most valuable possessions that hadn’t yet been sold. He remembered talking to Alix about it. She’d been wearing his old T-shirt, curled up in the chair, her body fresh from the shower. He could happily have stood there, eyes closed, just wallowing in the thought of her, but not tonight. He had to keep moving.
In his bedroom, he opened up his closet. His gear was still hanging there, pushed over to one side to make way for Alix’s pathetically small collection of clothes. He picked out a jacket from her end of the clothing rod and held it up to his face, catching a faint trace of her scent, savoring it like a dog about to be let loose on a trail. Then, quite unexpectedly, something clicked inside his brain-an automatic, unbidden reflex that switched off the emotional, indulgent, inefficient side of his consciousness and left him suddenly cold and clearheaded.
The panic and uncertainty had gone. There was no heavy, sickening ache of fear in the pit of his stomach, just a strong sense of urgency and purpose.
He reached up to a shelf above the rod and pulled down a leather traveling bag. Then he strained his arm farther into the shelf and extracted a shoulder holster and a broad money belt. It took him barely thirty seconds to pack the bag with two plain white T-shirts and two pairs of socks and underpants, followed by one pair of jeans and a lightweight fleece, both black. Another minute was spent getting dressed in a set of clothes identical to the ones he had packed, except with a charcoal-gray, V-necked pullover instead of a fleece. He chose a pair of plain black lace-up shoes, with thick cushioned soles.
The money belt went around his waist. From the envelope he took a block of one-hundred-dollar bills and another two bearer bonds, identical to the one he had given Larsson. He also extracted two passports, one Australian, the other Swiss. They were both in different names but bore his photograph. He peeled a few of the bills off the top of the block and stuffed them in a trouser pocket, along with the Swiss cash he’d taken from the hitman at the clinic. Everything else went into the belt. Then he closed the envelope, which was still more than half full, and placed it in his bag.
He strapped on the shoulder holster. When the SIG went in, it felt entirely familiar, the holster already adjusted to fit it and him perfectly. There was a short black wool coat hanging in the closet, and he put that on last. The coat covered the holster without any apparent bulge. The spare magazines slipped right into its pockets. It was elegant enough to get him into any hotel or restaurant, but sturdy enough to keep out the cold. There was another coat exactly like it still hanging there, along with more black jeans and three apparently identical dark-blue suits. The drawers from which he’d taken the T-shirts, underwear, and tops had been equally repetitive. So this was how he had been: methodical, functional, finding something that worked and sticking to it.
Other drawers held watches, dark glasses, mobile phones, again with minimal variations. He took one of each, not needing to waste time choosing between styles, plus a couple of spare SIM cards for the phone. Then he noticed a photograph in a frame by the bed. It showed Alix by his chair in the clinic’s dayroom. She had a hopeful smile on her face. He just looked bewildered. He couldn’t remember the photo being taken. He spared it no more thought, but removed it from the frame, folded it in two, splitting himself from Alix and stuffed it in his inside coat pocket. If he wanted to find the woman, a picture would come in handy.
Larsson was waiting for him by the door of the apartment, carrying the toolbox. When he saw Carver, he said, “Hey, you look like a guy I used to know.”
“Yeah-what was he like?” asked Carver.
Larsson was deadpan. “Total bastard.”
Dr. Geisel had warned Carver he was a long way from being cured. There was always the possibility of a relapse. Short of that, he could expect sudden, violent changes of mood.
He was beginning to understand what the shrink had meant. It was barely a five-minute drive from his flat to the bierkeller, but as soon as the Volvo got moving, the glorious sense of confidence and self-assurance began to fade and his uneasiness returned, his guts tightening, shoulder muscles tensing. Carver took a series of long, deep breaths and slowly rotated his head, lifting his chin up, then coming around and down till it was almost resting on his chest, breathing out as his head came down, then back in as it rose again.
“You all right?” asked Larsson from the driver’s seat.
“Yeah, just trying to get myself level, you know.”
“You’d better tell me what happened at the clinic.”
Carver sighed deeply as he lowered his head, eyes shut. He remained like that for a second, screwed his face up in a grimace, then turned his head toward Larsson.
“Someone tried to kill me.”
“And…?”
“And someone else will be discovering the body any time now, so just shut up, keep driving, and help me get on with finding Alix.”
Larsson brought the car to a sudden halt. He sat quite still as Carver snapped, “What the bloody hell are you doing?”
Without warning, Larsson shot out his right arm and grabbed Carver by the throat, pushing him back until he was forced against the side of the car.
Carver struggled to free himself, his body impeded by the seat belt, his feet stuck in the passenger footwell.
“I don’t like people who are rude to me,” Larsson sounded like he was explaining a misunderstanding, getting things straight. “So just stay cool, all right?”
He let go his grip and gradually brought his arm back, never taking his eyes off Carver.
“Okay,” said Carver. “I apologize. I just want to get Alix back.”
“Maybe, but you’re not going after her now.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not in shape. Look at yourself-you let me grab you one-handed. Your mood’s up and down like a yo-yo. You can’t climb the stairs to your apartment without getting out of breath. You’re weeks away from being fit.”
Carver’s eyelids drooped in tacit acknowledgment.
“Okay-maybe you’re right… maybe. But I can’t just sit around on my arse doing nothing. If I can work out what she was doing, where she was before she disappeared, at least that’s something. Look, this beer place will be closing any minute and I can’t come back tomorrow, because I’ve got to be out of town. I’ll just go in, have a drink, ask a few questions, nice and easy. Trust me-I won’t start any fights.”
“Thank God for that,” said Larsson as he started up the engine again.
In that Minnesota loft, Kady Jones felt like an explorer finally about to cast eyes on a mysterious animal species, often written about but never seen. To a scientist from Los Alamos, the suitcase nuke was as potent a myth as Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster, and just as irresistible a lure.
She climbed up the ladder in her inflatable plastic suit, looking like the mutant spawn of a human being and a bouncy castle, buzzing with anticipation and nervous tension. Despite her confident words to Tom Mulvagh, she was only too aware of all the things that could go wrong. If the device was genuine, it could be booby-trapped. Even if it wasn’t, an accidental detonation was not totally out of the question. The likelihood was infinitesimal, but it existed nonetheless, so the protocol was clear: Look but don’t touch. And stay as far away from the device as possible.
Her head poked through the hatch. The loft was illuminated by a single, bare bulb, whose harsh light revealed the case, lying by the far end wall, wide open, daring her to come and take a closer look. She clambered up onto the floor, dragging an air hose behind her. Then she leaned back down to grab a video camera, passed to her by one of the team. A tripod followed, and a bright orange metal box, with a black handle extending two thirds of its length. A cable ran from the box back down through the hatch.
She set up the video camera on the tripod, switched it on, and focused on the case. “Are you getting that?” she asked, speaking into the microphone mounted in the headpiece of her suit.
Her deputy, Henry Wong, was sitting in one of the vans outside, facing a rack of electronic equipment, dials, and screens.
“Yeah, and it sure looks real to me.”
“Only one way to find out,” said Kady.
Leaving the camera, she picked up the orange box. At one end of it were a numeric keypad and a small backlit screen. The box was a handheld gamma-ray spectrometer, an instrument designed to measure and analyze the radiation emitted by whatever objects it was investigating.
The various nuclear materials that can be used in bombs all decay at specific rates, giving off particular quantities of gamma rays. Some of them, like plutonium, emit enough radiation to be detectable over a considerable distance. Others, however, register only at very short range. Standing by the camera, Kady wasn’t getting a reading on her spectrometer. That immediately ruled out most of the possible suspects, but not all. That case could contain a dummy weapon, yet another false alarm. Or it could be armed with weapons-grade uranium. Kady had no choice. If she wanted to find out the truth, she was going to have to get up close and personal.
She crept across the floor toward the case, hardly daring to breathe, starting at every creaking board. As a little girl she had loved playing Grandmother’s Footsteps, sneaking up on her dad when his back was turned, her heart thumping as she dared herself to take just one more step before he sprang around and caught her. Now there was a bomb where her father had been, and one wrong move could make it spring into action, too. She was perspiring inside her plastic bubble, unable to wipe away the drop of sweat that was trickling down her forehead.
She could feel her pulse racing, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. The spectrometer was quivering in her hand. The way she was now, she might easily trip on a loose floorboard, or drop her gear. If she knocked into the case, and it was booby-trapped… She didn’t finish the thought. She knew she had to calm down. She stood still, her eyes half shut, arms down by her side, trying to regulate her breathing and slow her heartbeat. Gradually the frenzied drumming of blood in her ears slowed to a more regular rhythm.
When she got near the case, she spoke to Henry Wong once again.
“Okay, here we go.”
“Be careful, Kady.”
“You think?”
She stepped right up to the open case, which was maybe thirty inches long, rectangular, with reinforced corners. The contents were nestled within a thick polystyrene base. The main unit was a metal pipe, which ran for most of the length of the case. One end was thicker than the other, as if ringed by an additional reinforcing band of metal. A wire extended from the other end, and ran to a black control unit, with a series of switches, a keypad, and a digital timer. There were no numbers showing on the timer, no dramatic countdown, just a bunch of controls with Russian markings. A single, small red bulb glowed, to indicate that the unit was receiving power from its electric cable.
Kady pointed the spectrometer at the unit. A series of digits and letters appeared on its display, and, via the cable, on a screen in front of Henry Wong. There was a low, awestruck whistle in her ear.
“Weapons-grade uranium-two thirty-five. You just found a genuine suitcase nuke, Kady. Man, that is cool.”
She smiled, the tension momentarily broken. “That’s not the word I’d have chosen. It looks to me like Alexander Lebed was telling the truth. The Soviets really did cache portable nukes all over the Western world. But if this is one of them, where are the rest?”
“Not our problem,” said Wong. “And nothing we can do till this one’s deactivated. Why don’t you get on down here, we can recheck those readings?”
“Sure. But not till I get a close-up of this thing on video. We need to have a record of exactly what we’re dealing with.”
She made her way back to the camera, still taking care over every step, but feeling a fraction more secure now, having faced the weapon once and survived. Now that she knew what she was dealing with, she felt as if she were more in control of the process. As she unscrewed the video from its tripod and carried it back toward the case, she told herself she’d worked on far more powerful warheads, both Russian and American, and never come to any harm. Why should this be any different?
She didn’t notice the loose nail protruding from the floor till the boots of her suit snagged against it. Her hands were gripping the camera, so she had no way of using her arms to regain her balance or break her fall as she tripped.
“Kady!” shouted Wong, as she fell on top of the case, becoming hopelessly entangled in her air tube as the light on the control unit began flashing and the bomb emitted a rapid series of high-pitched beeps.
Like a warning.
A booby trap activated.
The tension she had felt since she clambered up into the loft was blown away in an instant by a nauseating, heart-pounding, flop-sweating rush of pure terror. The fear seemed to blur her vision her as she thrashed her limbs, frantically trying to scramble away, as though that would do any good.
In her ears she could hear Wong’s voice, “Oh, shit…”
The beeping stopped.
There were no more words in her headphones.
She lay stock-still, unmoving, unable to breathe in the absolute silence of the loft.
From somewhere inside the case there came the noise of a feeble detonation, no louder or more powerful than a Christmas cracker. Then silence once again.
Kady scrambled back onto the floor, trying to get her breath back. Then she noticed the electric plug, sitting at the end of the cable that led from the case. It had been jerked from its socket by the impact of her fall. The flashing and beeping were simply a warning to the bomb’s users that its power had been cut. There was no booby trap.
But there were Soviet suitcase nukes loose in the world. And neither Kady nor anyone else in America had any idea where they were.
The staff of the bierkeller weren’t too anxious to let Carver and Larsson in. A waitress tried to tell them the place was about to close. Carver took out a hundred bucks.
“We’ll only be a few minutes,” he said.
The waitress took the banknote and nodded toward the empty tables. “Help yourself.”
They ordered a couple of wheat beers, an authentic taste of Germany, right in the heart of French Switzerland. Carver looked around. There was only one other customer in the place, a bland-looking man in his thirties or forties, sitting in a corner of the room, nursing a glass of whiskey. He was thinning on top, wearing a mass-produced gray suit, just one more lonely salesmen on another solitary night.
Carver turned his attention to the phony Bavarian decor and the two waitresses in their wigs and costumes, both tired and short-tempered at the end of a long shift. He felt ashamed to think of Alix working in this dump, into the early hours every night. She’d always been at the hospital first thing in the morning-she must have been exhausted. Maybe that’s why she’d run away. She needed a decent night’s sleep.
He finished his drink and went up to the bar.
“How much for two beers?”
“Ten francs,” said the barman.
Carver paid with a fifty and told him to keep the change.
The barman thanked him, then regarded Carver, an eyebrow raised, lips pursed, as if to say, “There has to be a catch.”
Carver caught the look. “You’re right,” he said, slipping into French without a second thought. “I do want something.”
He slipped his photo of Alix across the table.
“Do you know this woman? Her name is Alexandra Petrova. She used to work here.”
The barman said nothing.
“Look,” said Carver, “I’m not a cop. I’m just a friend of hers. She’s disappeared and I’m trying to find out what happened to her, that’s all.”
Finally the barman spoke. “You English?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Been in the hospital lately?”
Carver unfolded the photograph and showed him the other half.
“Okay,” said the barman. “I heard about you. But I don’t know where Alix went. One night she was here, the next… poof!”
He shrugged and lifted up his hands to emphasize his bafflement, then pulled out a cloth from behind the bar and started wiping the countertop in front of Carver.
“But maybe Trudi can help you. She was a friend of Alix’s.”
The barman gestured at one of the waitresses-the one Carver had met at the door.
“Hey, Trudi! He wants to buy you a drink.”
The waitress made a show of looking Carver up and down.
“Do I get another hundred dollars?” she asked and sauntered over.
The balding man in the corner, attracted by the sound of conversation, watched her as she walked toward the bar. Carver saw him and just for a second thought he caught something in the man’s eye, a way of looking that suggested intense concentration, a kind of professional curiosity. But then Trudi was standing next to him, cheerful, busty, the classic barmaid-her costume laced extra-tight to make her cleavage all the deeper-and the thought vanished.
“So, are you going to get me that drink?” she said.
“Sure,” said Carver. “What are you having?”
“Double vodka and tonic.”
The drink appeared. Trudi downed half of it in one gulp and gave a contented sigh.
“I needed that. So, what can I do for you?”
“It’s Alix. I’m trying to find her.”
Trudi looked at him for a moment, then a sly smile crossed her face.
“So you’re her mystery man, huh? She talked about you a few times. Not often, though-it upset her to say too much. I thought you were sick in the hospital.”
“I was. Now I’m not. What happened to Alix?”
“I don’t know-she just… well, she just vanished.”
“When? The last time she came to visit me was around the middle of February.”
Trudi considered for a moment. “Yes, that sounds right. She walked out just before our big Valentine’s Day party. I was cross with her, leaving the rest of us to fill in. It never occurred to me she wasn’t coming back.”
“Had she been worried about anything?”
“Sure,” said Trudi. “Paying your hospital bills. She really loved you.”
“Tell me about the bills. What did she say about them?”
“Just that she didn’t know where she was going to find twenty thousand francs. It was really on her mind.”
“And the last time you saw her, the night you say she walked out: Do you remember what happened?”
Trudi took another sip of her drink.
“Okay, I remember. I’d been working a couple of hours before Alix arrived, and I was waiting for her to start work, so that I could take a break. I saw her come out from the dressing room, just over there…”
Trudi pointed toward a door set into the wall not far from where they were talking. There was a sign on it forbidding entry to customers.
“Then what happened?” asked Carver. “How did Alix seem to you?”
Trudi gave a quizzical little pout. “I don’t know, normal, I suppose-at first, anyway. But then suddenly she stopped completely still, right in the middle of the floor. She was staring at one of the tables, like she’d seen a ghost, you know? Then she turned and walked really fast, right out of the bar, toward our dressing room. I thought it was kind of odd, but I didn’t have time to think about it because I was serving customers. There was a problem because two men got up and left without paying and Pierre, the barman, was giving me shit for letting them do that, but in the end it didn’t matter because a woman paid their bill. Weird, huh?”
“Yeah, maybe,” said Carver impatiently. “But concentrate on Alix. When did you know she’d left the building?”
“About ten minutes later. She hadn’t come back and I still hadn’t had my break and I just thought she was being a selfish cow, so I went to look for her. But when I got to the dressing room, she wasn’t there, and her bag and coat were both gone. And that was the last time I saw her.”
“Go back to when you last saw Alix. She came out of the door. She saw something. What did she see?”
Trudi thought for a moment. Then she got up and said, “Come with me.”
She led Carver across the room till they were standing in front of the door from which Alix had emerged. Behind them, the man in the cheap suit had come to the bar and was settling his account with Pierre. From time to time, he glanced up to check out the pantomime being acted out by Trudi.
“Right,” she said. “Alix was looking over… there!”
She pointed across the room. Directly in her sight line there was a single small table.
“Who was sitting there?” asked Carver.
Trudi puffed her cheeks. “Oh, monsieur, it was many weeks ago-how can I remember one customer?”
“Start with the basics: Was it a man or a woman?”
“I don’t know!”
Carver could feel frustration rising inside him. He was close to losing his temper, but that would serve no purpose at all. As much to calm himself as Trudi, he spoke as gently as possible, coaxing her like a stage hypnotist.
“Take your time. Just close your eyes, relax, and try to go back to that night. There’s someone sitting at the table. Tell me about them.”
Trudi did as she was told. Her eyes had been shut only for a few seconds when her face suddenly came alive again.
“Of course!” she cried. “I remember now. It was the woman, the one who paid the bill for the two men I was talking about, the ones who ran out without paying.”
“That’s great,” said Carver. “Well done. Now, this woman, what did she look like?”
“Well, she had very dark hair, cut short, in a bob.”
Trudi framed her face with her hands to illustrate what she meant.
“How old was she?”
“Oh, quite old, maybe fifty. But quite chic… you know, for a Russian.”
“Hold on-this woman was Russian?”
“Yes, I think so. Her accent, it was a bit like Alix’s, and she is Russian, right?”
Carver nodded distractedly, no longer paying attention to Trudi. His mind was fully occupied trying to make sense of the Russians: the woman and the two men. Who had they been? What did they want from Alix? He had a strong sense that the answer was in him somewhere. He had the information he needed to solve the problem if only he could retrieve it. Like Trudi, he needed to close his eyes, relax, and think. He couldn’t do that now.
“Is that all?” Trudi asked, sounding disappointed that her information had not been met with more enthusiasm.
“Yeah,” said Carver. “Thanks. You’ve been great. But you’d better clear up.”
The other waitress was placing chairs upside down on top of the tables, banging them down hard, just to let the world know she wasn’t getting any help. Larsson had got up from their table and was standing by the main exit, waiting to go. The barman was trying to disentangle himself from the solitary drinker’s attempts at conversation. Carver heard him say, “You’ve got to leave now, my friend.”
Carver nodded farewell at the barman and gave Trudi a short, brisk wave as he started to walk out.
She called out, “If you find Alix, send her my love,” and he forced a smile to show that he’d heard.
He was feeling edgy again, just as he had on the train. It was the drinker, who was now turning away from the bar and following Larsson and Carver as they walked out. Carver didn’t like the look of him. Ever since he’d walked into the bierkeller, he’d felt that the man had been looking at him and trying to listen in on his conversations. He was being kept under surveillance-he was sure of it. He had to take action before it was too late.
As he walked through the main exit to the street, Carver slowed his pace, waiting for the sound of the door swinging open again behind him. He heard the footsteps of the man in the suit. Then, without any warning, he turned around, swiveling on his toes, then he took one strong, quick stride back the way he had come and punched the man full in the face.
He caught him right on the bridge of the nose, which crumpled under his fist.
The man gave a muffled cry of pain, held his hand up to his face, and staggered back through the door. Carver followed him, grabbing him by the collar and throwing him to the ground.
“What are you looking at?” he snarled.
The man’s eyes widened. He had been caught totally unawares. He was in pain. He was frightened, and he was baffled.
“Why did you hit me?” His voice was as plaintive as a bullied child. “What have I done?”
Carver could not answer him. He did not know what to say. He had attacked an innocent man for no reason other than his own paranoia. He looked up and saw Pierre running toward him, the waitresses looking on in horror.
Pierre stopped beside the wounded man, uncertain what to do next. He turned his head toward the women and said, “One of you, call the police.” Then he reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out the handle of a knife. He pressed a button and the blade flicked open.
He looked at Carver. “I know how to use this,” he said.
The man at Carver’s feet moaned in pain. Blood was seeping through his fingers and spattering his clothes.
Now the door crashed open again and Larsson was there, grabbing Carver and dragging him away from the scene.
“Get out!” he shouted and Carver’s legs started pumping, his feet scrabbling on the floor until he got some purchase, and he dashed out of the bierkeller after Larsson.
Pierre hesitated, not knowing whether to follow the two fleeing men or attend to the wounded victim. Then he hurried to the man on the floor, who was making a groggy, disoriented effort to get to his feet. The man let himself be led away from the exit, under a low stone arch, into a small, deserted office.
“Wait here,” said Pierre, lowering him onto a chair.
The man groaned. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Seconds later, the door opened and Trudi walked toward him. “You poor thing,” she said.
He winced as she dabbed some cotton soaked in disinfectant over his face, gasping in pain when she touched his broken nose.
“Look at what that bastard did to you,” she said. “I’m not surprised Alix ran away if that’s what he’s like.”
She paused, the cotton dripping in midair, as she suddenly realized what she’d done.
“Oh, my God. I’ve helped him find her! I just hope the police-”
The man gripped her arm with surprising force. “No police,” he mumbled. “Don’t want police. No time. Too busy.”
“But, m’sieur, we must…” Trudi pleaded. “I mean, they’re already on the way.”
“No!” the man exclaimed, spitting blood.
He got up, pushing Trudi out of his way, as he half ran, half stumbled from the room, through the bierkeller, and out onto the street.
“My God, what a night,” muttered Trudi, ripping off her wig and heading for the dressing room.
In the Volvo, Carver was racking his brain, trying to make the connection between Alix and the woman. “That waitress, Trudi, said she was Russian, age about fifty. I’m sure I know who she is. I just can’t get at it…”
“I think I know,” said Larsson. “Alix and I used to talk a lot, when you were sick. She told me a lot about her past, what happened between you two…”
He paused. “She told me what happened in Gstaad that night.”
“And?”
“The woman in the bierkeller, I don’t know her name-not her first name. But I think I know who she was: the woman who first found Alix, when she was just a kid, and trained her to… umm…”
Larsson’s face twisted in embarrassment.
“Yeah, I know what she trained her to do,” said Carver.
“Right,” said Larsson, visibly relieved. “And this woman’s husband was another KGB officer. He ran Alix’s operations and then when that all ended, Alix was… look, I’m sorry, man… she was his mistress. Until she went to Paris and met you, right? The guy was called Yuri Zhukovski. He was the one you killed in Gstaad…”
“Jesus,” said Carver. “Alix slept with this woman’s husband and I killed him. Well, that explains why Alix got the shits when she saw her at the bierkeller.”
“It probably explains why someone tried to kill you tonight, too,” agreed Larsson.
“Okay, but what about the bit in the middle? Alix does a runner. The woman sends two guys after her. The next thing we know, Alix has money and is paying my bills. How does that add up?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Larsson. “But we’ve got a couple of weeks to work it out.”
“What do you mean?”
They’d crossed the river and were driving through the residential areas between the lake and the international airport on the edge of town, passing smart, modern apartment blocks.
“That’s how long it’s going to take to get you into shape. I’d like twice as long, but I know you won’t wait. Hold on…”
He pulled up outside one of the blocks. Carver looked around. This was where Larsson lived. He’d been here before. He’d been surprised-just as he was now-to find a guy like Larsson living in such a bourgeois location. With his wild hair, torn jeans, and vintage rock-band T-shirts, the Norwegian looked as though he should be sitting in some funky warehouse, surrounded by computer parts and empty pizza boxes. But Geneva didn’t do funky warehouses.
Larsson patted him on the shoulder. “Wait here, okay? I’m just going to get some cold-weather gear and my laptop.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
Larsson grinned. “The end of the world, Carver. My world. I’m going to make your life hell. And you just paid me a lot of money for the privilege.”
Barely a mile away, Piotr Korsakov was sitting in an FSB safe house, while a doctor tended to his nose. His cell phone rang. He checked the number- Moscow, calling on a secure line-and motioned to the doctor to leave the room.
“You had a bad night, Korsakov.” The voice was cool, female, authoritative.
“Yes, Madam Deputy Director.”
“You lost a partner and a target.”
“Yes.”
“Matov paid the price for his incompetence. What happened to you?”
“I was taken unawares. I did not believe that the target, Carver, had spotted me as a potential threat. I was wrong. He assaulted me. I could have retaliated, of course. Doubtless I would have killed him. But there were several witnesses. I felt it more prudent to play the innocent victim.”
“That may have been the correct judgment. We will have a hard enough time covering up the deaths of Matov and the couple you terminated. We do not need any further complications. Did you see where Carver went?”
“No, ma’am. He left the building while I was still inside and I was unable to follow him. But he was not alone. There was another man, very distinctive, almost six and a half feet tall, with long hair. He would be easy to identify again.”
“That will not be necessary. I am already aware of his identity.”
“So what would you like me to do now?”
“Return to Moscow. I will decide what we shall do about Mr. Carver… and his hairy friend.”
She hung up the phone.
And in the meantime, we must get a message to Alix, she thought. The assassination has failed, for now, but there is no reason she should know that. Let’s see how well she does her job when she’s not distracted by thoughts of another man…
Thirteen hundred miles away, alone in her hotel room, Alix was looking across the waters of the Canale della Giudecca toward the lights of Venice. Here she stood, in one of the most romantic cities in the world, and right there in the next-door room was a man who yearned to be her lover. For weeks she had been keeping him at bay, but all her training and professional expertise told her these stalling tactics were rapidly outliving their usefulness. Denying a man what he most desired was an excellent way of keeping him on tenterhooks, but beyond a certain point even the most lovesick male would eventually decide that the effort wasn’t worth it.
If Olga Zhukovskaya could see what was happening now, her orders would be simple: “Sleep with Vermulen, immediately.”
So what was stopping her?
Loyalty to Carver, and a refusal any longer to whore in the service of the state: Those were the obvious answers, but she knew they were just phony self-justifications. The real reason Alix was not in Vermulen’s room right now was precisely the fact that part of her wanted to be there just as much as he did.
She did not love Vermulen the way she loved Carver, or had loved the man he once was. But the general was present in her life, and Carver was now just a memory that seemed to fade a little more into the distance with every passing day. Vermulen was a good, kind man, whose feelings for her were unmistakably real. Just as important, he had money, influence, and a degree of power. He offered her the possibility of protection, some refuge at least if she should ever defy Zhukovskaya, and walk away from the FSB.
Sooner or later, that promise of security would be impossible to resist.
There were eight men sitting at the mahogany table in one of the meeting rooms that form part of the five-thousand-square-foot complex known to its users as the Woodshed, but to the rest of the world as the White House Situation Room. One of them was the President’s national security adviser, Leo Horabin. The other seven were senior representatives of federal agencies, including the FBI and CIA. These were men who had made it to the commanding heights of the establishment. They exuded a common aura of power. But they had all come to listen to Dr. Kady Jones.
She began the meeting by describing the discovery and analysis of the device found in Minnesota. A photograph of the inside of the case filled a screen on one of the Situation Room walls.
“The best way to describe this bomb is to say that it’s a classic piece of Russian military design: basic, but effective. What they did was essentially the same concept as Little Boy, the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima more than forty years ago. It’s what’s known as a gun-type design. This here”-she pointed at the metal pipe filling most of the case-“is the gun barrel. It’s fired by a signal sent from the control box, here, in the form of an electric charge. It passes down this wire into one end of the barrel and ignites a conventional explosive charge. Right next to the charge is a fifteen-kilogram mass of weapons-grade uranium.”
She brought up another slide. One side of the barrel had been cut away, revealing the contents.
“Exactly like a charge of gunpowder propelling a cannonball, the explosive fires the uranium down the barrel, where it hits a second fifteen-kilo slug of uranium, at the far end. Now, a total of sixty pounds would not normally be enough to create a critical mass of uranium-two thirty-five-that’s the amount needed to create a nuclear chain reaction. But the Russians were smart. They put a ring of beryllium around the end of the barrel-see how it thickens there, at the end? That beryllium acts as a reflector, concentrating the forces released by the impact, so that the reaction takes place at a lower mass. That creates a nuclear explosion, which we’d estimate in the range of one to five kilotons. That’s nothing compared to a strategic nuclear-missile warhead, but it’s still enough to devastate the heart of a major city, take out a military base, or flatten an oil refinery.”
“Dear God…” Horabin’s sagging, downcast face-all drooping jowls, double chins, and baggy eyes-was ashen. “And you’re sure this thing is Russian?”
“Well, it was certainly manufactured from Russian components, using their uranium. And we believe it’s at least a decade old, dating back to Soviet days, when the state still had total control of all its stocks of weapons-grade nuclear materials. So it was made either by a Soviet government agency or by someone with very, very high-level access.”
“And it’s still in working order?”
“Well, thankfully it didn’t detonate when… ah”-she hesitated for a moment, hoping that no one could see the blood she felt flushing her cheeks-“when struck by a heavy falling object. But we couldn’t find anything wrong with the basic bomb. Anyone with the correct arming code could have set it off.”
“Excuse me, Dr. Jones…” The speaker was Ted Jaworski, the CIA representative. “When we investigated the Lebed claims at Langley, our analysts told us that if the bombs really did exist, they would most likely be inactive by now. But you’re saying that’s not the case. How come?”
Kady felt the atmosphere in the room crackle with anticipation. Jaworski was making a play, pitching his agency against hers. The people around the table were Washington veterans. They seemed to lean forward a fraction, anxious to see if the newcomer could defend herself.
“That’s simple,” she said, letting the room know that the question hadn’t fazed her. “Your people would have made the same assumption we did at Los Alamos before we’d actually seen this thing. We all figured the Soviets would use plutonium for any small-scale weapon, because that’s what we would have done. Plutonium is far more efficient than uranium. You get a much bigger bang per kilo. But it also decays a lot faster. Much beyond a decade, it’s lost its explosive power, so the whole unit needs servicing and updating. But uranium lasts for hundreds of thousands of years. It’s crude. It’s inefficient. But it keeps right on working.”
Kady saw Jaworski give her a slight nod of the head, an acknowledgment that she’d passed his test.
“All right,” said Horabin. “I get it.”
He looked at the agency representatives around him. “I have to brief the President on this, and I don’t want to walk into the Oval Office with nothing but bad news. We know there are bombs out there. Now we’ve got to get to them-all of them-before our enemies get there first. I need a strategy. What have you got for me?”
The agencies had all received preliminary briefings prior to the meeting. As a matter of institutional pride they had already drafted action plans. Five of the men reached for their cases and withdrew their documents. Only Jaworski remained motionless, indifferent to the activity around him.
“Don’t you have anything, Ted?” asked Horabin.
“Yes, I have one very strong piece of advice.”
“Great. Let’s hear it.”
“Do nothing.”
There was a murmur of disapproval around the table.
Horabin glared at him: “Is that all you have to offer?”
The CIA man seemed unruffled. “It’s all I recommend right now, in public, at least. The only thing we have going for us is that no one knows what we’ve found. If we start mounting search operations, people will want to know what we’re looking for. And, believe me, they will find out. So then we’ll have a major diplomatic incident with the Russians. We’ll have the TV news telling folks there could be nukes in their backyards. And we’ll have every terrorist leader in the world trying to figure out how he can get one of these things for himself.
“That means we’ve got to be discreet. I suggest a small, dedicated team, backed by the full resources of all our agencies. This team must be tasked to search for any clues to who’s got these bombs, where they are, and who still knows how to make them explode. But they’ve got to do this quietly-and I mean really, really quietly.”
The first morning, Carver stumbled over the finish line of his three-mile course like a newborn foal on an ice rink, unable to control the skis and poles on the end of his thrashing, twitching, uncoordinated limbs. He lay facedown in the snow, his chest heaving, his throat gagging until Thor Larsson reached down, grabbed the collar of his windproof jacket, and dragged him, coughing and wheezing, to his feet.
“Keep moving,” growled Larsson. He hit Carver hard across the backside with a ski pole, just to underline the order.
“I said move,” he repeated.
Carver raised his goggles onto his forehead and stared at Larsson with an expression that combined exhaustion and loathing in equal proportions.
“Thought this was the end,” he finally croaked, dragging icy air into his lungs between each word.
Larsson shook his head.
“Move,” he said for a third time, wielding his stick again. “Now!”
Carver spat emphatically into the snow, just inches from Larsson’s skis. He yanked his goggles back down and set off again along the municipal trail that snaked through the countryside around Beisfjord, a small town near Narvik on the northwest coast of Norway, inside the Arctic Circle. Spring might be blooming across the rest of Europe, but up here winter had yet to relax its deep-frozen grip.
They barely hit walking pace past stands of stunted, bedraggled birch trees. Carver struggled for rhythm as he lifted his heels and slid his metal-edged, military-specification Asnes mountain skis forward, all the while driving his poles into the hard-packed snow.
Larsson had been cross-country skiing since he was in kindergarten. He’d received winter training during his national service as an intelligence officer in the Norwegian Army. He effortlessly glided ahead, always ensuring that no matter how hard Carver tried to catch up, he was always tantalizingly out of his reach.
They’d gone about another half-mile when they came to a rifle range, located by the trail so that biathletes could practice their shooting and skiing in competition conditions. Carver followed Larsson into the range, pulled off the Anschütz Fortner target rifle strapped across his back, and flopped down on his belly by one of the firing positions.
“Five shots, quick-fire,” said Larsson. “You have twenty-five seconds.”
Carver tried to aim his gun at the target: five white discs set against a black background. His muscles were overloaded with lactic acid, making his aching arms shake in protest as they tried to hold the weapon still and straight. Sweat was pouring into his eyes. It took him forty seconds to get his shots away. By the last one, he barely had the strength to pull the bolt back to load the next round. And the only target he hit was next to the one he was aiming at.
“Not good enough,” said Larsson. “Fire another clip.”
There were three more five-shot magazines in a holder on the right-hand side of the gun, a few inches in front of the trigger. Carver reloaded, fumbling like a new recruit.
“Twenty seconds,” said Larsson. “And this time, get your shots away inside the limit or you do another course.”
Larsson’s voice made it plain that he was utterly indifferent to the prospect of Carver’s suffering if he had to go around again. It reminded Carver of other voices, at another time and place. He remembered the twenty-mile runs he’d endured at Lympstone Commando Training Centre, on the way to his marines beret, and the ferocious workouts amounting to institutional sadism that were handed out by the instructors who supervised his selection for the SBS.
They’d not broken him, and he wasn’t going to let this overgrown computer geek make him look like a noddy now.
He got off the next five shots in a fraction over nineteen seconds. He hit two more targets.
Carver rolled over onto his back to take the weight off the elbows and biceps that had been supporting his upper body and the gun.
Larssson looked down at him with a contemptuous curl of the lip. “You have another twenty seconds to get back into position, reload, and hit the remaining two targets. Same deal. You fail, you ski.”
Ten years earlier he could have done it in five seconds. Throughout the Cold War the Royal Marines had been the U.K. armed forces’ Arctic-warfare specialists. As a young lieutenant, Carver had been up to Beisfjord for winter training with 45 Commando. Even now, he was wearing his old leather ski march boots, as unyielding as iron when they’d first been issued, but gradually worn in to fit the exact contours of his feet and ankles. Carver had even tried out for the marines’ Olympic-standard biathlon squad before the SBS came calling. But now…
“Go!” shouted Larsson, looking at his watch.
Carver heaved himself back onto his front, grabbed the gun, ripped out the empty magazine, and groped for its replacement. Actions that had once been second nature now seemed entirely foreign. It all used to be automatic. Now he had to think everything through, one agonized motion at a time. His hands were quivering with cold as well as exhaustion. He could barely focus his aching, sweat-stung eyes on the target.
“Fifteen seconds left,” Larsson intoned.
Not one shot fired.
Carver gathered himself and aimed at the first standing target. He fired as he was breathing out, to help steady his aim.
And missed.
“Come on!” he muttered to himself as he pulled back the bolt.
“Ten seconds.”
Carver felt his stomach tense. That was good. Somewhere his body had found a last shot of adrenaline-fueled energy. There was no time left to think. He just had to go for it.
Pull… aim… breathe… fire.
A hit. One left.
“Five seconds.”
He shot again. Another miss.
Shit!
Pull… aim… breathe…
“Two.”
You bastard!
Fire.
Carver blinked, trying to clear his vision. He couldn’t see what had happened. He rolled over again in despair.
“Get up,” said Larsson. “Move it out.”
Carver was muttering under his breath, repeating like a mantra, “Don’t let him beat you… don’t let him beat you…”
Larsson looked at him as he slowly got to his feet. And this time there was a smile playing around the corner of his mouth.
“You hit the target,” he said. “So we’d better get back to the farm. Ebba will have lunch ready by now. And, Carver?”
“Uh?”
“Stop talking to yourself. She’ll think you’re totally crazy.”
“She won’t be wrong,” wheezed Carver, following Larsson as he skied away down the track.
Carver’s recovery had caused almost as much discomfort in MI6’s London headquarters on the south bank of the Thames as it had in Moscow. The thought of a renegade assassin alive, well, and in full command of his senses gave Jack Grantham cold sweats. This new situation could easily turn into a disaster. Somehow he had to make it work for him.
“What’s the news from this bloody clinic?” he asked, not bothering to disguise his irritation.
His deputy, Bill Selsey, was unruffled by Grantham’s bad temper. He’d long since learned to let it wash over him. He asked nothing more from life than a secure job, a modest home in the south London suburbs, and a guaranteed pension at the end of his career. He knew the pressure his boss was under and he didn’t envy it one bit.
“Carver’s done a runner, leaving a body behind,” Selsey replied. “The corpse in question had a fake I.D., some bogus psychiatrist, but I’m pretty sure he is, or was, Vladimir Matov, known to his chums as Vlad the Impaler. He’s an experienced FSB hitman, used to work for the KGB back in the good old days. Bulgarian by origin, like a lot of their best killers.”
“So friend Matov was sent to sanction Carver, only to find himself on the wrong end of the operation?”
“Looks like it.”
“And there’s no one else who could have sent him-he doesn’t freelance for anyone?”
Selsey shook his head. “Not as far as we know. He’s a state employee, no moonlighting.”
“So why does Moscow want Carver dead? Specifically, why do they want him dead now? He’s been a sitting duck for months for anyone who wanted revenge for Zhukovski’s death.”
“Like his dear wife,” Selsey interjected.
“Right. But Mrs. Z. doesn’t do anything for six months until suddenly she, or someone equally high up, feels the need to take action. And then, how the hell did Carver beat this man? I thought he was supposed to be bonkers, no bloody use to anyone. What’s he doing taking out a pro like Matov?”
“Apparently, he got better.”
“You don’t say.” Grantham’s voice was drenched with acid sarcasm. “I managed to work that out for myself, thanks, Bill. But when did this miracle cure happen, and why?”
“I’ve got people looking into that, talking to doctors and nurses at the clinic. Should have the answers later today. But I think I may have a lead on why the Russians want him dead.”
“Do tell.”
“There’s a Romanian in Venice, name of Radinescu, does some low-level work for the FSB, basic courier stuff, nothing fancy. We’ve been tossing him a few bob to copy us in on anything he gets.”
“And?”
“And he just passed on a message to Moscow from an agent who happened to be passing through Venice, a female agent. The woman in question was a bit of a looker, so Radinescu followed her for a while…”
“Bloody perv.”
“Maybe, but while he was stalking this woman, he took a couple of photos and when he sent us a copy of her message, he chucked in a picture of the girl, hoping we might pay him a bonus for uncovering a Russian spy.”
“He’s got a nerve.”
“Don’t be so sure. You might think this is worth standing Radinescu a drink.”
A plasma screen at one end of the room sprang into life. A series of color images appeared, showing two women-one black, the other white-wandering the crowded Venice streets.
“Good Lord, that’s the Petrova girl,” said Grantham. “But what’s she doing in Italy?”
“Well, she’s staying at the Cipriani with a man called Kurt Vermulen-separate rooms, before you ask.”
Grantham frowned.
“Vermulen? That name’s familiar…”
“American, ex-army, did some time in the DIA, and spent a couple of years in Grosvenor Square as their defense attaché. You probably bumped into him then. Anyway, Moscow seems to have taken an interest in him. Presumably Petrova’s been told to get as close to him as possible.”
“Who’s the woman with her?”
“Her name is Alisha Reddin. She and her husband, Marcus Reddin, are staying at the same hotel as Vermulen and Petrova. And here’s an interesting thing: Reddin served under Vermulen in the U.S. Army Rangers.”
“Could just be a couple of old comrades meeting up,” Grantham observed.
“Could be, yes,” agreed Selsey. “But presumably the Russians think there’s more to it than that. Why else have they inserted Petrova?”
For the first time, Grantham’s mood seemed to lift a fraction. The merest hint of amusement crossed his face.
“So she’s gone back to her old trade, for her old employers. Dear, oh dear… Carver won’t like that. He’s convinced she’s a good girl, really.”
“He may not know what she’s up to,” Selsey suggested.
“I’m sure he doesn’t have a clue. And you’re right: That explains what Matov was doing-making sure Carver died in blissful ignorance. After all, if there’s one thing we know about Carver, it’s that he’ll do anything to get his bird back. The Russians know that, too; they learned it the hard way. So the last thing they want is Carver setting off after his one true love and blundering into Petrova’s mission, whatever that is.”
“Which means they’ll have another go at killing him.”
“If they can find him, yes. Meanwhile, we need to know what was in that message Petrova sent Moscow.”
“We’re working on it,” Selsey assured him. “Should have it decrypted by close of play today.”
Grantham looked a lot more cheerful than he had at the start of the meeting.
“See if you can hurry it up-there’s no time to waste. We need to find out everything there is to know about Vermulen. Where else has he been, with whom, and why? Keep tabs on him. And find Carver. We have to get to him before the Russians do. Then we’ll suggest that he find out what his blessed Alix is doing, tell her to stop it, and cause the maximum havoc to all concerned while he’s about it.”
“The Russians won’t like that.”
“I certainly hope not.”
“What about our cousins across the water? Should we keep Langley informed?”
“I don’t see why-not yet, at any rate.”
“Really? They are supposed to be our colleagues.”
“And so they are, Bill,” said Grantham. “But only up to a point.”
In the corps they’d have called it an “up-homer”; bunking with a local family, instead of roughing it with the rest of the company in one of the disused caravan sites hired by the Ministry of Defense. Carver and Larsson were staying with one of the Norwegian’s cousins, Ebba Roll, who was married to a local farmer. Six feet tall and strappingly built, Ebba was the kind of woman who could just as easily stick a child under her arm as a sack of animal feed. She had powerful maternal instincts, but she didn’t show them through gushing affection or teary-eyed concern. Instead they were expressed by the no-nonsense efficiency with which she made sure that her menfolk and offspring (all of whom she treated as lovable but essentially hopeless) were kept clean, warmly dressed, and well fed at all times.
The two men had developed a routine. They got up no later than five-thirty and ate a breakfast that set them up for the day: porridge and fruit, boiled or scrambled eggs, cold meats and cheese, toast and jam-sometimes all of them-washed down with gallons of orange juice, coffee, and (Carver insisted) strong, sweet tea.
While the food was digested, Larsson worked on Carver’s mental fitness: memory tests, spot-the-difference puzzles, anything that boosted his ability to take in information fast, notice patterns or anomalies, and recall what he had just seen. Next time he checked out his surroundings, or walked into a new environment, he’d have his wits about him.
Midmornings were spent on the ski trails and rifle range. In northern Norway, the winters are dark, with only a few hours a day of gloomy blue light before the sun finally rises over the mountains at the end of January. But by the last week in March the sun rises at 5 A.M. and doesn’t set until 7 p.M., and the light on the snow can be dazzlingly clear and intense. The landscape is raw, but spectacular: the white snow, blue skies, gray-black rocks, and deep-green sea all colliding as the mountains plunge into the fjords, where the waters of the North Atlantic mount their eternal, erosive assault.
As time went by, Carver realized that although there was never a ski session that did not involve a steadily escalating quantity of pain, inevitably building up to a grand finale of tortured muscles and burning lungs, it took longer every day for the agony to kick in. Little by little he actually began to enjoy the process. He took pleasure in his increasing fitness and pride in his rediscovered proficiency on the rifle range. He was able to appreciate the majesty of his surroundings. Some days, he even managed to complete an entire course without once wishing to kill Thor Larsson.
That, though, was never a good sign. Larsson always noticed any lessening of Carver’s hatred. The next day, he would go that little bit further, pressing harder and faster, just to crank the pain and the fury back up to the proper level.
Lunchtimes, they replaced lost energy with pasta, potatoes, or brown bread. Protein came from chicken, fish, or, if Ebba was feeling indulgent, lean, intensely flavored cuts of moose and reindeer. His stomach full and his body shattered, Carver collapsed into bed for a couple of hours’ rest, only to be raised again for an afternoon of weights, weapons training, and unarmed combat in one of the farm’s outbuildings. Guns are legal and relatively easy to come by in Norway, compared with much of Europe. Within ten days, Carver was stripping and reassembling a rifle and pistol as fast as Larsson, and easily outsparring him. His body was gradually returning to its natural shape: 175 pounds of muscle and bone, a balance of endurance and strength. He felt like a fighting man once again.
Three weeks in, the temperature was regularly several degrees above freezing, and down on the lower ground the snow had started to melt. Finally, at the end of an eighteen-mile ski, Larsson told him, “Okay, now you are ready. Tomorrow we prepare our equipment. The day after, we leave.”
“Leave for where?” Carver asked.
Larsson turned to his right and pointed up into the mountains. “Up there, four nights. We’ll carry everything we need. Now we find out just how fit you really are.”
The customer-relations executive could barely contain his enthusiasm as they walked toward the aircraft. A fortnight beforehand, Waylon McCabe had asked for some unusual modifications to be made to one of his executive jets, for a charitable project he had in mind. The corporation’s Special Missions Department thought about it for a couple of days, just to see if his requests were technically feasible, but there was only ever going to be one answer. For the past five years, having switched his supplier after the Canadian disaster, McCabe had bought all his jets from their range. They keenly appreciated his business. They had no intention of losing it.
“I just want to say, on behalf of our whole team, that we think what Mr. McCabe is doing is just great,” said the suit, pausing at the foot of the stairs that led up to the cabin. “Airlifting medical supplies to the starving people of Africa -you know, it’s a privilege to be able to contribute to something like that. It sure is a pity we couldn’t tell Mr. McCabe in person.”
McCabe had sent his lawyer to take care of the handover.
“Sadly, he’s a little indisposed at this time, but I’ll pass on your good wishes,” said the lawyer, who didn’t know what his boss planned to use the plane for, exactly, but it certainly wasn’t Africa.
He glowered at the executive, who didn’t seem to be moving.
“So, can we take a look at the plane?”
“Sure, sure, of course, my pleasure. Our chief engineer will show you around.”
The executive stepped aside, and the engineer led the way up the stairs, bending his neck as he stepped into the cabin. Take out the fancy decorations and the high-tech accessories, and the main body of the plane was nothing but a metal tube with an internal diameter of less than six feet. There wasn’t a lot of room. The men formed a single line, the engineer leading, as they made their ungainly way through the cabin.
“You gentlemen are all familiar with one of these, right?” asked the engineer rhetorically. “Okay then, up ahead of us, at the rear of the cabin, there’s a closet and a restroom, and aft of that a small baggage hold. The regular bulkhead at the back of that hold offers structural support to the rear of the aircraft. Well, we took that bulkhead out and moved it forward, right up against the side of the restroom. That opened up the whole of the rear section of the fuselage, so’s to make more space for loading up whatever it is you’re going to be dropping. As you can see, we’ve put a hatch, kind of like on a submarine, right there in the bulkhead.”
He stood by the crude undecorated wall that now blocked off the end of the cabin, with the oval hatch beside him.
“We didn’t want to compromise the strength of the bulkhead, so we had to make the hatch kinda snug, but there’s just about room to step through into the new, bigger hold we made there.”
The engineer opened up the hatch. Through it, the empty rear end of the aircraft was dimly visible.
“It’s pretty tight, so you gents might want to take a look one at a time. You’ll see, in back, on the floor of the new hold, there’s a door. It’s hinged at the front, so that it opens downward, like a ramp, with the open side at the rear. It’s hydraulically operated from the pilot’s cockpit, or you can see a handle, like a pump, right there on the floor next to it. That’s the manual option. We fixed up a rig you can put your load in, so’s it can be dropped when the door is opened. Or there’s just room for one person to be in there, do the job himself. We fixed up a safety line there, so he won’t fall out.”
“Glad to hear about that,” said the lawyer. “Wouldn’t want a lawsuit from a grieving window.”
There was a peal of sycophantic laughter from the executive, more of a grunt from the engineer.
“Hope that’s what you were looking for, anyway,” the engineer concluded. “Mr. McCabe gave specific instructions. I believe we were able to follow them pretty much to the letter.”
“Yes,” said the lawyer. “I believe you did.”
Back home in Texas, McCabe now knew that he had a plane capable of dropping a bomb over Jerusalem. Even now, despite everything, when he thought about what he had in mind, McCabe still asked himself if he was really doing the Lord’s will. He wasn’t too sure how you could be certain about a thing like that, but he decided it would soon be clear enough. The doctors had told him the tumors were getting worse. They were begging him to undergo chemotherapy, but McCabe had said no. He knew what those chemicals did and he didn’t see the point in buying a few extra weeks if it meant puking like a dog after every treatment and watching his hair fall out. He’d rather be his real self when he came to face his maker. If he lived to see Armageddon, he’d know that God had been on his side. If he died before then, he’d expect a warm welcome in hell.
Either way, it was going to be soon.
Carver was feeling like a normal human being again. He wanted to act like one, too. The night before their four-day trek, he and Larsson skipped the training diet and went into Narvik for a few cold beers, hefty portions of steak and chips, and some flirtatious banter with the waitresses.
Driving home, Larsson asked, “What if she doesn’t want you back?”
Carver laughed. “She’d have me back, all right. Not sure about yours, though.”
“Not her,” said Larsson. “Alix. What if you go to all this trouble, and you find her, and it turns out she didn’t want to be found?”
Carver frowned. The possibility hadn’t occurred to him. But maybe Larsson was right. Maybe Alix had left because she couldn’t stand being around him anymore.
“Christ, that’s a depressing thought,” he said, his good humor suddenly vanishing. “I don’t want to think about that. Anyway, you’re wrong. She’d want me to come after her. She did last time. Why would it be any different now?”
“I don’t know,” Larsson admitted. “I mean, she was definitely still crazy about you the last time I spoke to her.”
“Right-so why do you think she’d change her mind?”
“I don’t. I was just asking a question. Hypothetically.”
“Well, don’t,” said Carver. “I’ll assume she wants me to come get her, until she tells me otherwise. And bollocks to hypothetical.”
“Oh, shit!”
Larsson was looking in the rearview mirror. He shook his head in disgust and pulled over to the side of the road. Only then did Carver notice the white Volvo with the flashing lights pulling in behind them and the cop getting out of the driver’s door.
Larsson wound down his window and started talking to the policeman in Norwegian. Carver couldn’t understand a word they were saying, but it didn’t sound good. He knew from his Royal Marines days that Norwegian cops could be tough, unforgiving buggers, a million miles removed from the British image of Scandinavians as laid-back, liberal types.
Larsson was asked to leave the car and escorted around to its rear, where another brief exchange took place. Then he was made to take a Breathalyzer test. The policeman entered Larsson’s details in a handheld terminal, then finally waved them on their way with an irritated look on his face.
“What got him so pissed off?” Carver asked.
“I was under the limit,” Larsson replied. “He couldn’t bust me for drunk driving, so I’ll keep my license. But he got me on a broken rear light; I’ll have to pay a fine.”
They drove back to Ebba’s farm. And as they did, a computer trawling ceaselessly through the world’s network systems came across a name to which it had been programmed to respond, and flagged the data to which that name was attached. And a few hours later, at the start of the working day, a man walked into his boss’s office and said, “Guess who just turned up in Norway.”