Christopher Reich - Rules of Vengeance

“Get in.” Kate jumped into the driver’s seat and sped down the road, negotiating two switchbacks until she reached the spot where Ransom had crashed through the guard rail. She slid down the hillside, her eyes searching for a sign of life. Suddenly there was a flash, a deafening blast as the gasoline tank exploded. She fell to the ground, singed by the wave of heat.

She got up slowly and neared the car, stopping when the heat forbade her. It was as close as she needed to be. From her position, she had a clear view of the man slumped over the wheel. He was badly burned by then, but there was no mistaking the dark shirt or the cropped hair.

She turned her back to the flames and climbed the hillside. Gazing down at the wreckage, she took her phone from her jacket and called Graves.

“Yeah,” he said. “What’s the latest?”

“Jonathan Ransom is dead.”

The end of the cold war did not bring about an end to spying between the East and the West. After an initial thaw, relations between the United States and its NATO allies and the former Soviet Union grew as chilly as ever. Efforts to sow democratic reform in Russia failed. Plans to restructure the economy proved disastrous, resulting in the meltdown of the ruble in the late summer of 1998. Humiliated, broke, and smarting from its loss of international power, Russia vowed revenge. A new president was elected, a man from its security service who looked to history for inspiration. Russia had always needed a firm hand, and he was the man to provide it. Domestically, he quashed dissent. Abroad, he sought to win back his country’s prestige. But this time there was something different, a serrated edge to relations that had been absent in the past. To quote an American expression, “This time it was personal.”

No one noticed more than Charles Graves and his colleagues at MI5. In 1988 the Russian embassy registered two hundred employees. It was Five’s guess that of these, seventy were graduates of the FSB Academy at Yasenevo. “Moscow Center hoods,” in the parlance. By 2009 the number of employees at the new Russian embassy in Kensington Gardens had skyrocketed to over eight hundred, of which more than four hundred were thought to be trained spies. The sheer number made it difficult, nigh impossible, to identify who among them counted as ranking officers. And despite seeing its own numbers nearly triple in the same time, Five’s internal shift toward domestic counterterrorism operations precluded it from conducting the degree of in-depth surveillance necessary to keep tabs on its former enemy.

So it was no surprise to Graves that he had never heard the name David Kempa, listed as a second secretary for cultural affairs at the Russian embassy, or to learn that he was in fact the FSB’s ranking agent posted to London station. It was further news that the quaint townhome located at 131 Prince’s Mews was actually an FSB safe house.

“Drink?” asked the Russian.

“No,” said Graves. “I’m in a bit of a rush.”

Kempa poured himself a tumbler of Stolichnaya, which he ruined by adding half a can of Red Bull. He was a youthful, kinetic man, with a direct gaze and shaggy brown hair. Dressed in a vintage Sex Pistols T-shirt and pencil-leg jeans, he looked more the diehard rocker than a government agent. Raising the glass in a toast, he said, “Chagalinsky tells me you know who detonated the bomb.”

Chagalinsky . At least the old regime’s anti-Semitism was firmly back in place.

“That’s correct,” said Graves.

“A name would be nice.”

“In due time. Why did you pass Russell the message about Victoria Street? ‘Victoria Bear’ came from you, didn’t it? What do you know?”

“Not much more than you. ‘Victoria Bear’ came from some notes scribbled on a paper we got out of Shvets’s trash. The same paper had a list of active nuclear facilities in Western Europe. From that and other chatter we’d picked off the ether between Shvets and his soldiers, we surmised he was putting together some kind of attack against a nuclear plant. From all indications, it’s going to happen soon. In fact, I’d wager we’re too late. If we could have stopped them before the attack on Ivanov, we might have had a chance.”

“Them? You just said it was Shvets’s doing, and I believe you fall under that category.”

“Yes and no. I’m FSB, but I had nothing to do with the operation. This one is Shvets’s baby. Run by a splinter faction he controls himself. Something called Directorate S.”

“Never heard of it.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Do you know where the attack is going to take place?”

“If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say France. There’s been a lot of activity moving through Paris in the last few days. Money. Vehicles. Residences taken out of circulation. I asked some questions, but I was shut down by Shvets’s soldiers.” Kempa swallowed another mouthful of his drink and chomped on an ice cube. “But if I were Shvets, I’d want to take out something new. Someplace everyone thinks is fail-safe. I’d do something to scare the pants off the entire world.”

“What’s the goal?” asked Graves.

“For Shvets? Everyone knows he has his eyes on the presidency. It looks to me like he’s making his play. Lev Timken died yesterday. They say he had a heart attack while screwing his mistress. Mikhail Borzoi’s plane went down this afternoon. That leaves Ivanov and Shvets as the only serious contenders for the throne.”

“That may be Shvets’s long-term goal, but I mean now. Today. What does he hope to get out of this?”

“To protect the goose that lays the golden egg.”

“Oil?”

“Oil prices. They’re already low, and everyone is worried about the West reembracing nuclear power. Shvets wants to stop this movement dead in its tracks. One accident is all it will take. The West will never build another nuclear plant.”

“Another Chernobyl?”

“If you’re lucky,” said Kempa. “If you’re not, something worse. Far worse.”

“You’re a barrel of good news, aren’t you?” said Graves.

“No one ever came to a Russian for good news.” Kempa gave a world-weary shrug before beckoning Graves closer. “If I were you, I’d look at how they might get in. To cause an accident, it will be necessary to physically penetrate one of the plants.”

“You mean slip an operative inside?”

“Precisely.”

“But the entire point of attacking Ivanov’s motorcade was to find a way to steal the override codes.”

Kempa scoffed at the suggestion. “The codes can do nothing, especially if the plants are on alert. Even if Shvets could manipulate the reactor controls, it would take an hour to create an accident. The control room would light up like a Christmas tree. There would be plenty of time to take back control of the commands.”

“What are you suggesting?” asked Graves.

“If it were me, I’d take a shorter route. I’d use a bomb. It’s cleaner that way-everything’s tied off. When the plant goes up, no one’s going to be able to get close enough to look for twenty years, give or take.”

“But you can’t get high explosives anywhere near a plant. They’d pick up the signature a mile away.”

The Russian shook his head. He wasn’t buying. “There’s always a way.”

Graves knew he was right. There had yet to be a security system created that couldn’t be circumvented. Emma Ransom had skirted Russell’s system, then devised a method to get into 1 Victoria Street. That was two strikes right there. Graves made a note to check how nuclear plant personnel were vetted. If Kempa was correct, there had to have been something on the stolen laptops’ hard drives that made such surreptitious entry not only possible but undetectable.