Peter Sasgen - War Plan Red

“This isn’t Moscow. They knew to mind their own business.”

“I don’t understand,” Scott said.

“I think what he means, Jake,” said Alex, “is that old habits from the Soviet era die slowly.”

“I see,” Scott said. “After it was all over, who fixed the door?”

“A man who does odd jobs for the hotel. He does carpentry and fixes plumbing and electricity. He’s also an exterminator.”

“When did he fix it?”

“The next day, after the police had finished.”

“And before Colonel Abakov arrived?”

Nikita shrugged again. “We needed to rent the room.”

Scott gave Nikita six hundred rubles for his trouble and watched him depart.

“He’s lying,” Scott said. “He couldn’t have kicked in that door. He couldn’t kick his way out of a paper bag.”

Abakov said nothing. He tested the lock from both sides of the newly installed door with a shiny brass key tied with sturdy twine to a piece of wood with the number 312 burned into it like a brand. Satisfied that it worked properly, he stood with arms folded across his chest and sniffed, perhaps picking up the faint scent of mistaken assumptions.

“Someone kicked the door in and shot them,” Scott said. “Then they told Nikita to make up a story, to get the door fixed, and to keep his mouth shut. Everyone in Murmansk knows to keep their mouths shut. As you heard Alex say, Colonel, old habits from the Soviet era die slowly.”

Abakov looked shaken, as if his investigative skills had suddenly been proven worthless. The vein in his neck started throbbing impatiently. “Are you trying to make a fool of me, Captain? What do you know that you’re not telling me? Who is this person you think killed Admiral Drummond?”

“Alikhan Zakayev.”

Abakov stared at Scott in icy silence.

Before Abakov could speak, Scott said, “Drummond was sent to Russia to find Zakayev. That’s all I can tell you. Zakayev probably knew Drummond was looking for him and he probably knew Drummond was going to meet Radchenko—not to buy sex but something else. Information. That’s why he killed him or had him killed.”

“What kind of information?” Abakov said with a hint of skepticism.

“There’s only one kind of information Radchenko could possibly have had that would interest Frank. Information that someone, probably Zakayev, was planning to steal fissile materials from Olenya Bay.”

“How would Radchenko, a seaman, have that information?” Abakov said.

“I don’t know, Colonel. Perhaps he overheard something.”

“Are you telling me that if Zakayev had fissile material, he could build a nuclear bomb?” He rounded on Alex. “Is that possible, Dr. Thorne?”

“Theoretically,” she said, “but it would be very difficult to build a bomb. He’d need U-235 or Pu-239. But recycled naval reactor plutonium is not easily made critical; plus, he’d need a trigger and a pusher of, say, lithium deuteride and—”

“Are any fissile materials missing from Olenya Bay?” Abakov demanded.

“Not so far as I know. But one can never be one hundred-percent sure. There’s a lot of garbage laying around up there and it wouldn’t be hard to steal.”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Scott said. “Alex, did Frank ever talk to you about the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on fissile material and building a nuclear device?”

“Only in the abstract. Sure, we discussed what it would take, the techinical means and all, but we concluded it would be almost impossible to do without resources that terrorists are not likely to have, like metallurgy labs, that sort of thing. Actually, the weapon that it might be possible for them to build is a radiation bomb: a device that would spread radioactive material over a wide area and contaminate people and cities.”

Abakov, stripped of skepticism, said, “How many people would die if radiation was spread over a population center by one of these bombs?”

“Depends how much radiation was released, the prevailing winds, et cetera. Under the right conditions, perhaps thousands.”

“And if he were to target Moscow…?” Abakov said.

“Colonel, the whole idea is pretty much impossible.”

“Dr. Thorne, please believe me when I say that I know Zakayev, and for him nothing is impossible. He has contacts all over the world with men who would not hesitate to kill millions of people.” Abakov’s brusque manner had given way to solicitation. He was clearly shaken by what Alex had said.

Scott pictured Zakayev the terrorist assembling the raw materials needed to make a radiation bomb. He pictured a grubby clandestine workshop in some back alley in Chechnya and a group of terrorists busy putting the parts together: explosive, wiring, timers, outer explosive shell. The only thing missing might be the fission product, a highly dangerous radioactive nuclide such as strontium, cesium, or cobalt. But there was another way for them to attack their enemies that didn’t require the making of a crude radiation bomb. What it required was stealing a nuclear bomb already built, but he didn’t say what he was thinking.

Scott’s rumination was interrupted by Abakov’s chirping cell phone. An excited voice leaked past Abakov’s ear planted on the phone. He went to the window blind, opened the slats with two fingers, and peered out at the red glow in the sky. “I’m looking at it now,” he said to his caller. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Abakov hung up and said, “There’s been a shoot-out and car bombing in the harbor area. Several men were killed and the Murmansk police think that one of them may be Ivan Serov.”

“The Russian mafiya chieftain?” Scott said.

“Yes,” Abakov said.

“What was it you said in Moscow, Colonel? ‘Where you find Serov, you often find Zakayev.’ ”

The car was a smoking hulk. A sickening smell hung in the air. Two corpses covered with plastic sheeting had been burned beyond recognition, their arms and legs charred stumps reaching skyward, the bodies twisted into grotesque shapes. A third corpse had been burned only below the waist, the internal organs trailing away to a black, unrecognizable mass.

Abakov pointed his foot at the corpse. “This one is a Serov lieutenant.”

“How do you know?” Alex said, a hand over her nose and mouth.

The dead face was jowly and a gray tongue protruded from a wide-open mouth from which, it seemed, a scream had escaped before the man’s brain died.

“There’s this….” Abakov squatted and pointed with a ballpoint pen to a pair of crossed daggers dripping blood tattooed on the man’s biceps. The tattoo had been exposed when the man’s jacket and sweater had been ripped off by the blast that destroyed the car. “We know that Serov’s men wear this tattoo as proof of their blood loyalty. It means they will render their blood for him.”

“Yuck.”

“I’m willing to bet a week’s pay that one of these other two beauties is Ivan Serov himself. It’s not like him to get involved in something as crude as a shoot-out. But now I am thinking he was also involved in the shoot-out in St. Petersburg. Whatever the reason, he must have felt it had to be finished on his terms, here.”

“Was it a feud with Zakayev?” Scott said.

Abakov grunted. “Anything is possible.”

In his element now, Abakov shouldered between firemen rolling up hoses and stowing gear. He greeted Murmansk police officers and spoke to them in rough, clipped argot while they sifted through burnt rubble looking for evidence. Scott and Alex followed in his wake, stepping carefully over burnt wreckage from the car.

“Used to be a BMW,” Abakov said over his shoulder.

He stopped to confer with an officer who then led them to the concrete steps outside the charred warehouse. Inside, a powerful beam from a flashlight played over walls and support beams as the owner of the warehouse assessed damage.