Death Wave (15 page)

They were waiting for her in the hotel lobby. As promised. Two men stood up as she clicked into the atrium on her heels.

“You have it?” one asked.

She held up the white keycard for the room. “Right here. Room 225. You have the rest of the money?”

One of the men reached into a jacket pocket and extracted a roll of bills. He peeled off three hundred and handed it to her.
“Bintilkha-ta,”
the man growled. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

“Whatever,” she said. “Nice doin’ business with ya.”

The two turned and walked toward the elevators. They looked foreign—Arab, maybe, but they
might
be Sicilians with that olive skin. Or Greeks. Thea watched them go, wondering if they were enforcers for the mob. Maybe Mr. Pender hadn’t kept up with his payments.

She shrugged. Too bad for him. The goddess walked out into the bright New Jersey afternoon.

She didn’t see the third man waiting for her in the parking lot.

NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL BRIEFING ROOM
WHITE HOUSE BASEMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C.
WEDNESDAY, 1315 HOURS EDT

“Mr. Rubens,” Catharine Tognetti said slowly, “just how powerful
are
these so-called suitcase nukes?”

“We don’t know the exact designs, of course,” Rubens replied. “In particular, we don’t know if the warheads have been fusion-boosted. But our best technical evaluation suggests that each device would have a yield of between one and ten kilotons—that’s one to ten thousand tons of TNT.

“The nuclear device exploded over Hiroshima in 1945, by way of comparison, was between fifteen and twenty kilotons. We’re not talking about city-busters here. A one-kiloton blast would wreck downtown Washington, D.C., but most of the city would remain more or less intact, except for the windows, maybe. However, these smaller devices also tend to be rather dirty. Lots of radiation, lots of fallout, at least if they’re detonated at or above ground level.”

The room was quiet after that, as each attendee considered the possibility of a one-kiloton nuclear blast in the heart of an American city.

There were more questions, and some discussion after that, but the meeting finally broke up. Rubens decided he would check in with the Art Room as soon as he got back to street level and could get a signal on his cell phone.

As he was packing up his briefcase, however, he was aware of a movement beside him.

“Hello, Debra,” he said, not looking up.

“That was damned unprofessional of you, Bill. You made me
and
the Agency look bad.”

He sighed, straightening up and turning to face her. “Debra, you should know me by now. I despise politics, and I do not play these silly turf games. The only thing I’m concerned about here is getting the job done the best, quickest, and most efficient way possible.”

“You could have come to me personally,” Collins said.

“I submitted the usual requisitions through the usual channels,” he told her, “
and
e-mails,
and
phone messages. My people also talked to the NRO directly. The data was Agency-encoded.” He smiled. “It seems Langley has been tying up both USA-202
and
Crystal Fire since yesterday. You were hogging our two best orbital assets. Wouldn’t it be better if we shared?”

“There … may have been an oversight,” Collins admitted. “Or a delay putting your request through. But we were not ‘hogging’ those satellites, as you put it.”

“Of
course
you weren’t.”

Rubens knew all too well how it worked. There would be no policy, no actual directive put out to exclude the NSA from the intelligence loop—but requests to expedite key requests, clearances, director approvals, and the like might accidentally be left in an electronic in-basket, or conveniently ignored for a few hours while other and more pressing matters were addressed.

Such a delay might give the Agency’s analysis teams an extra few hours to develop important intelligence before the NSA had a chance to look for the same hidden gems. And if Agency teams turned up the goodies, it would be the Agency that got the credit—and the funding at the next round of budgetary meetings.

“Don’t patronize me, Bill,” Collins told him.

“I’m not. Don’t
you
play cute political games with me.”

“At the director’s level, politics is a part of the job description. You know that as well as I do. And the only one playing games here this morning was you, sabotaging me in front of the ANSA to build up your own position.”

“Debra, it was not my intent to make you look bad this morning—no more than it was
your
intent to sequester that data. We need access to that imagery, though, and we need it
now
. I have people on the ground over there. Their lives, and the success of this operation, both depend on what we can turn up from those satellites,
especially
Crystal Fire. It is my intent to talk to ANSA personally if I have to—I have his attention now, don’t you think? I’ll take it to the Oval Office if I have to.”

She stared into his face for a long moment, as though testing his resolve. Rubens didn’t have direct access to the President, but the President’s advisor on national security did.

Then she looked away. “I’ll authorize transmittal as soon as we get out of here,” she told him.

“Thank you, Debra.
Together
I think we can crack this.”

She was already walking away.

FORT LEE INN
FORT LEE, NEW JERSEY
WEDNESDAY, 1319 HOURS EDT

The two men used the stolen keycard to let themselves into room 225. One held an automatic pistol at the ready as the door swung open, but the room’s occupant was still in the shower. They could hear the rush of water, taste the steam in the air. Quietly, they walked into the room and moved the desk chair to an open space near the foot of the king-sized bed.

Both wore thin disposable gloves. The one with the keycard wiped it carefully with his handkerchief and placed it on the bureau; then the two of them sat down in the remaining chairs over by the closed curtains to wait.

Soon the sound of the water cut off, and a few minutes later Jack Pender walked out of the bathroom, rubbing himself with a hotel towel. In the darkened room, he didn’t see his visitors, not until they grabbed him from either side.

“What the fuck—”
he yelled, and then one of the men jammed a rolled-up sock into his mouth. Pinning his arms, they slammed him into the desk chair.

“I am sorry, Mr. Pender,” one of the intruders said. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a knife. Pender’s eyes opened wide, fixed on the blade, which flashed once in a gleam of light from the curtains at his back. He started to struggle, but the man holding him was strong, too strong, his grip on his wrists like steel. Pender tried to kick the guy with the knife, but the man sidestepped the attempt, reached down, and pulled Pender’s left arm from behind his back.

“I really do dislike doing this,” the man with the knife said. He dragged Pender’s arm forward and down until it was pinned against the chair, palm up. “I actually am one of your big … what is the American word?
Fans
. Yes. I am a big fan. It is really too bad you decide to suicide.”

The intruder slipped the point of the knife into Pender’s wrist and sliced deep, dragging the blade up the struggling man’s arm, rather than across. Blood welled up from the sudden wound, dark and slick. Pender screamed through the sock, thrashing violently now, but the big man behind him kept him pinned as the other made a second deep slice up his wrist … a third …

On the fourth cut, the knife hit the artery, and blood splattered across the unmade bed, across a wall, across white ceiling tiles.

After a time, the intruder began cutting the other wrist; by then, Pender was so weak he could barely struggle.

Ten minutes more, and Pender was no longer moving. The man with the knife felt for a pulse at his throat with a gloved finger, peeled back an eyelid, then nodded.
“Taiyib!”
he said.

They released Pender, letting him slump back in the chair, naked, his arms, legs, and torso sheathed in blood. The killer pulled the sock from the man’s mouth, then carefully wrapped the fingers of his right hand around the handle of the knife. When the man let go, the knife dropped from limp, blood-gloved fingers and fell beside the chair. The sock went back on the floor by the bed, next to Pender’s shoes. Very carefully, then, the intruders stepped past the body, watching where they put their feet, careful not to step in the blood now soaking into the cheap hotel room carpet. There was a
lot
of blood …

They were as careful about footprints as they’d been with fingerprints. Bloody gloves were peeled from their hands and went into their pockets, and they wiped the doorknob clean behind them as they let themselves out.

8

NSA HEADQUARTERS
FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
WEDNESDAY, 1510 HOURS EDT

Rubens came awake with a start.

He’d driven back out to Fort Meade as soon as the NSC meeting was over, grabbing a fast-food burger on the way for lunch. He’d spoken with Marie by cell phone, gotten an update on the op in Dushanbe, and learned that Dean and Akulinin were at the safe house—with a stray.

He approved transport for the stray—if Charlie and Ilya were vouching for Alekseyevna, he would do his best to help her—then rattled off a string of orders. He didn’t want the boys
immediately
leaving Dushanbe but wanted them to pull a quick black bag job first, and Marie should expect a
large
download over the secure line from the CIA.

Once back at Fort Meade, he decided he
had
to get some sleep. He’d been on his feet now for more hours than he cared to think about, and he’d caught himself nodding at the wheel as he drove up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway out of the city.
Not
good.

So when he’d finally reached his office at a bit past two thirty, he’d pulled off his shoes and collapsed into the cot in the back room off his office, facedown in the pillow.

Thirty minutes later, Ann Sawyer, his secretary, was shaking him awake. “Sir? Sir!”

“What is it?”

“Sorry to wake you, Mr. Rubens, but they say there’s something you should see on C-SPAN.”

“If this is not the end of the world, Ann …”

“Sir, I—”

“Never mind, never mind. I’m coming.”

He rolled out of the cot and made his way to the office. Ann had already switched on the monitor mounted within one wall.

He recognized the face of Rodney C. Mullins, giving an address.

“… that it is
critically
important that we provide timely funding for our surveillance satellite system. As I said before, we have
people on the ground
in places like Astana, Dushanbe, and Karachi, and they cannot do their jobs defending this great nation from the threat of rogue states or terrorists quite possibly
armed with nuclear weapons
if they do not have adequate technical support!

“And so I move, Mr. Speaker, that my amendment to the military appropriations bill be voted on without delay …”

Rubens stared at the screen in disbelief. “Jesus fucking H.
Christ
!”

AYNI AIRFIELD
SOUTHWEST OF DUSHANBE, TAJIKISTAN
THURSDAY, 0415 HOURS LOCAL TIME

Charlie Dean took another look around the dark compound, then lay down on the ground.

“Tell me again why this is a good idea, coming back in here like this?” Akulinin asked.

“Because it’s the one place in Tajikistan they’re
not
looking for us,” Dean told him.

“And because Mr. Rubens suggested that you might want to try it,” Vic Klein added in their implanted speakers. Vic had taken over the Art Room’s part of the mission for Dean and Akulinin at the end of Jeff Rockman’s shift some hours ago.

“Right. You ready, Charlie?”

Dean closed his eyes and nodded. “Let’s do it.” His right hand closed a little tighter around the pen he was holding cupped there, out of sight. He heard the faint crunch of gravel as Akulinin hurried away.

The nap at the safe house had been all too brief. He’d been able to sleep for perhaps two hours before the promised messenger had shown up with new plates for the car and new ID cards and papers, both for the two Desk Three operators and for Maria Alekseyevna. Now, her blond hair tucked up inside a black wig, she was Ruqiya Nazarova, and she was listed as Sergei Nazarov’s Tajik wife.

Dean wondered if the Art Room wizards had been aware of Ilya’s tryst with Masha a few hours ago when they created their new legends.
Probably
not … but with them and their high-tech magic at listening in, you never knew. The two had been back in their separate rooms by the time Mrs. Konovalova had come up the stairs to wake them, and
that
at least had worked out well. Dean had the feeling that the old woman would not have approved.