That Time in Moscow Read online

  Wolfgang pinched his eyebrows together. “Seriously? How is this even a question? You want to quote protocol and—”

  Megan held up a hand. “Wolfgang, chill. You’re right . . . we’re not leaving.”

  Wolfgang nodded a couple times, too wound up to calm himself down. “Damn right, I’m right! Lyle, hand me that computer.”

  He sat down again and fumbled in the pocket of Edric’s coat, producing the flash drive a moment later and accepting the computer from Lyle.

  “What’s that?” Lyle asked. “It could have a virus! Don’t put it in my—”

  Wolfgang ignored him and jabbed the drive into the side of the laptop, then navigated to the files application while everybody else leaned in.

  “Where did you get that?” Megan asked.

  “Sparrow brought it for Edric. He left it behind. I guess he knew he was gonna get caught.”

  The group grew quiet as the files populated. There were over a dozen, all PDFs, all titled in Cyrillic. Wolfgang double-clicked on the first one, then expanded it to fit the screen. It was a diagram depicting what looked like a scuba diver’s backpack. Wolfgang zoomed in on it, then panned from one end to the other. The schematics detailed pipes, wires, and various electronic components, but all the notes were in Russian. Wolfgang clicked out of the file and opened the next four. All the designs were similar to the first, detailing different types of machinery. Wolfgang couldn’t make heads or tails of it. The sixth PDF, however, was a drawing he’d have recognized anywhere.

  “Is that a football stadium?” Megan asked.

  Wolfgang’s blood turned cold. “It’s Soldier Field, in Chicago.”

  “Oh shit . . .” Kevin said. “So, these drawings—”

  “Are for a chemical weapon deployment system,” Megan finished. “Big enough to take out sixty thousand people.”

  The room fell silent as they all processed what they were looking at. It took Wolfgang a minute to fully appreciate the gravity of the situation, but then his mind clicked into gear again, quickly unfolding the path of dominos that led into the future.

  “The Bears are playing well this year,” he said. “Imagine a playoff game. A full stadium. Thousands of tailgaters in the parking lot.”

  “But . . . why?” Lyle asked. “You can’t seriously think the Russians want to bomb a football stadium. I mean, come on!”

  Wolfgang clicked out of the drawing of Soldier Field, then navigated to the next document. This one featured pencil notes in the margins—rough English translations of more Cyrillic text. Seconds after scanning the page, he looked up. “They don’t. The Russians know nothing about this.”

  Everybody crowded in around the screen, leaning down to read the compact document on view. It was blurry, probably photocopied multiple times, but the pencil notes were legible, alongside photographs in the main body.

  Wolfgang set the laptop on the coffee table, then drained what remained of his lukewarm coffee. “The Russian Ministry of Defense has been infected by the same anarchist organization that we encountered in Paris. We asked ourselves before—why would the Russians develop illegal chemical weapons? They’re a modern, civilized nation. The answer? They aren’t developing them. A group of radical terrorists has infected the Russian government and is operating in secret in the heart of Moscow. They’re the ones who recruited Koslov and forced him to design these weapons. The CIA has been tracking him for months, thinking the Russians are going rogue on the Chemical Weapons Convention, when in reality, the Russians don’t have a clue.”

  “Or maybe they do,” Megan said. “Maybe that’s what this SVR guy—Ivan—is doing. He was in Paris, remember, sniffing out the same terrorists. Maybe he was at the club tonight because he thinks Sparrow, and now Edric, are part of the network. Maybe he’s heading up an investigation into his own government.”

  Wolfgang made a noncommittal rock of his head. “Maybe, but Sparrow works for the CIA. Sparrow must have just found out about the Soldier Field attack, which is why she called the emergency meeting tonight and brought the flash drive to Edric. She’s under pressure, probably from Ivan. She thinks Ivan is part of the terrorist ring.”

  “He could be,” Lyle said. “Maybe that’s why he wanted to stop Sparrow. How could we know?”

  Wolfgang pictured Ivan in all his brutish glory—the look on his face when he saw Wolfgang—the delight and lust for blood. Then he remembered his conversation with Ivan back in the hotel bathroom in Paris, where they joked about beating each other to death.

  Wolfgang opened his eyes and shook his head. “He’s not one of the terrorists. If he was, his men would’ve shot Sparrow and Edric, not arrested them. As prisoners, they have the potential to talk—to tell stories he wouldn’t want told if he were a terrorist. He’s true SVR, and he arrested them because he’s investigating them.”

  “This is huge,” Kevin said. “We have to get this back to corporate right away. They can use the files to uncover the whole thing.”

  “We can’t do that,” Wolfgang said.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because if we give them to corporate, they’ll give them to the CIA. The CIA will use them for leverage against the Russians, which will inflame tensions. That’s exactly what these anarchists want. My guess is, they planned to attack Soldier Field, then leave behind evidence that points to the Russians. For all we know, they’re the ones who clued the CIA in on the chemical weapons program in the first place so that the Soldier Field attack would eventually lead to a war between the world’s superpowers. It’s an anarchist’s dream. Meanwhile, Edric will spend days, if not weeks, in Russian custody. Remember, Ivan thinks Edric is a terrorist. What do you think he’s doing to him right now? Cuddling? Edric doesn’t have weeks, and he doesn’t have days. We have to get him out, now.”

  “I follow your logic,” Megan said. “But we can’t just ignore a planned terrorist attack. We have to address that.”

  “We will,” Wolfgang said. “We deal with the terrorists by giving the Russians a chance to clean up their own mess, thereby avoiding a standoff between our countries.”

  “So, we trade the flash drive for Edric?” Lyle asked.

  “Ivan will never bite,” Megan said. “If we show up with that flash drive, he’ll be more convinced than ever that Sparrow and Edric—and us, for that matter—are part of the organization.”

  Kevin tapped his knee with one hand. “There’s got to be a way.”

  Wolfgang looked up from the laptop. “There is.”

  7

  Wolfgang leaned over Lyle’s shoulder, watching as his fingers flashed across the keyboard. Three laptops on the table were all linked by cables, and Lyle’s attention turned from one to the next as he set up various programs, then waited for them to execute.

  “What do you think?” Wolfgang asked.

  Lyle shook his head, taking a sip of water before returning to the keyboard. “I don’t know.”

  “Can you hack it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Isn’t there, like, a back door or something?”

  Lyle stopped tapping and looked up, his dark eyes blinking behind the ever-smudged glasses. Wolfgang took the hint and backed away as Megan walked into the room.

  “I’ve got the tickets, and I coordinated with our pilots. Timing is tight, but he should be in Minsk on time.”

  “What about Kevin?” Wolfgang asked.

  “Haven’t heard back from him. Give him another few minutes before you call.”

  Wolfgang walked into the sitting room, leaning over the coffee table and the spread of maps that covered it. He picked up a pen and circled the headquarters for the Ministry of Defense, a giant block building on the bank of the Moskva River in the Khamovniki District. There was very little data about the structure available on the internet, but you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that it was probably one of the most secure structures in that part of the world. It was heavily guarded and littered with enough surveillance and secur
ity equipment to detect a mouse sneezing. Not ideal.

  Megan leaned in next to him, lowering her voice. “Are you sure about this?”

  “We can’t break inside. It’s impossible with the time and resources we have available. We have to be invited.”

  “I don’t mean about the building. I mean the other thing . . . Ivan.”

  “Not really,” Wolfgang said. “It’s still possible he’s a terrorist, or in league with the terrorists.”

  “And if he is, you’ll never make it out. You understand that, right? You’ll die.”

  Wolfgang met her gaze, surprised to see a new depth of honesty there. Her usual wall opened for a moment, exposing a glimpse of genuine concern.

  “We can’t leave Moscow without exposing this plot,” He said. “Too many lives are at stake. This is our best shot.”

  “Let me go with you, then,” Megan said. “You’ll need backup.”

  Wolfgang shook his head. “No, Ivan will get spooked. I have to do it myself. If anything goes wrong, I need you on the outside to clean up and get in touch with the CIA.” He turned back to the map, tracing the outline of the streets leading away from the Ministry of Defense building. They were a complex maze of typical inner-city, two and four lanes, connected with roundabouts and traffic lights, with bridges leading across the river. It wouldn’t be easy to navigate them under an emergency situation, but without an emergency, it would be impossible.

  “Wolfgang?” Megan played with the end of her sleeve, then licked her lips and looked away.

  “Yes?” The world slowed around him, and he couldn’t hear Lyle’s incessant typing anymore. The only person on the planet sat right in front of him.

  “I thought I should say . . .”

  The front door of the hotel blew open, and Kevin burst in, carrying two oversized duffel bags in one hand and a sack of carryout food in the other. Both items hit the floor, and Megan sat up, folding her arms and turning away from Wolfgang.

  “Food? Really?” Megan said, not even trying to disguise the disgust in her tone.

  “I’m hungry. Besides, if this hairbrained plan of his ends like I think it will, I want a last meal.”

  Wolfgang pointed to the bags. “You find what we need?”

  Kevin kicked the nearest bag, and the flap fell open, exposing the contents. Two heavy-duty firemen’s uniforms, complete with helmets, boots, and face masks.

  Wolfgang knelt and sifted through them, checking one jacket against his own torso. He nodded. “That’ll do.”

  The sun broke over Moscow, bringing light but not much heat. A fresh snowfall had blanketed the city during the night, and snowplows ran up and down the streets, followed by salt trucks. Wolfgang’s shoes crunched on the frozen sidewalks as he departed the hotel and turned north. He sucked in a deep breath of icy air, and his stomach growled. He’d skipped breakfast and also passed on Kevin’s takeout. It was an uncomfortable decision, but probably best. Should things turn nasty, he didn’t want to puke under torture.

  He walked four blocks from the hotel, then slid his replacement earpiece into his right ear and adjusted it until it was comfortable. “Com check. This is Sunshine.”

  Lyle said, “Charlie Eye, I’ve got you, Sunshine.”

  “Charlie One, online.”

  “Charlie Two, live and ready.”

  Wolfgang yawned twice, trying to clear the pressure in his ears. His heart thumped, and a strange tingling sensation ran up his fingers. Nervousness? Stress? Or a physiological warning that what he was doing equated to suicide? Probably the third option.

  “What can you see, Charlie Eye?” Wolfgang asked.

  “Your jacket,” Lyle said.

  Wolfgang looked down, realizing that after leaving the hotel, he’d put on Edric’s coat, oblivious to the fact that it blocked the camera now built into the third button on his button-down shirt. The previous night, Lyle had removed the camera from Wolfgang’s watch and fit the compact electronic unit into the thick folds of the flannel shirt. The camera now blended into the middle of an oversized black button, pointed outward only a couple inches above Wolfgang’s belly button.

  “Right,” Wolfgang said. He unbuttoned the jacket and opened it, shivering as a fresh blast of wind ripped him straight to the bone. “How about now?”

  “All clear, Sunshine.”

  Wolfgang steeled his mind against the next step. In his head, the night before, this seemed like such a good idea. Now it felt like volunteering to feed himself to a lion.

  He stepped to the curb and held out his hand, waving down a cab. The car squealed to the curb, and Wolfgang ducked into the back seat, then produced a notecard from his pocket and passed it to the driver. Charlie Team had copied the address, in Cyrillic, off of the internet, but Wolfgang wasn’t sure how good his Russian penmanship was.

  The cabby squinted at the card, then shot Wolfgang a look through the mirror that said he recognized the address. He rattled off a string of surprised Russian, but Wolfgang waved him down and pointed to the card. “Take me there. This address. Da. This address.”

  The driver shrugged, then shifted into gear and took a sip from a thermos. Wolfgang caught a whiff of something that wasn’t coffee and rolled his eyes.

  Starting out great.

  “Charlie Eye, do you have me?” he whispered.

  “Copy that, Sunshine. We have you en route.”

  Lyle had implanted a GPS tracker into Wolfgang’s shoe, which would be helpful so long as he kept his shoes. He wasn’t sure what the protocol was in Russian prisons, but he was pretty sure that at some point, you lost your shoes.

  Wolfgang couldn’t help but admire the Russian landscape under the blanket of fresh snow. Before the white turned to grey, and the grey turned to black, Moscow was actually a beautiful place. Still not the winter wonderland he hoped for, but in a way, it was more striking than that. It was real, with old brick buildings burdened by snowcapped roofs and icicle-lined eaves, frozen streets with occasional cars rolling in and out of them, and a parking lot covered in ice now populated by kids on skates. Parents stood next to the lot, taking pictures and calling out encouragement to struggling youngsters, then hurrying to pick them up when they crashed down.

  Wolfgang recalled Sting’s classic song about the Cold War, and it brought a whimsical smile to his face.

  The Russians love their children, too.

  He turned to face the front of the cab and drew a long breath. The Russians loved their children, and so did the Americans and the Parisians, and every parent scattered around this crazy world who wanted nothing more than to raise their offspring in peace and safety amid an ordered society—a society that these anarchists, by any means possible, wanted to rip down. Wolfgang closed his eyes, and for the first time in weeks, allowed himself to think of Collins—his bedridden sister back in New York. He saw her tiny body wracked with disease and the loneliness in her eyes as she clutched her teddy bear and watched Sponge Bob on loop, with nobody but tired nurses to talk to. He remembered his own cowardice standing in front of that facility and not having the courage to go upstairs—not having the courage to look his own sister in the eye.

  Instead, he ran. He waited by the phone for Edric’s next assignment, even though the dust had barely settled over Cairo, and when that assignment didn’t come for months, Wolfgang went to Kansas City and bought a needlessly expensive car because the silence in his apartment and the guilt in his soul needed to be blocked by the loudest distraction he could find.

  Are you sure about this?

  The voice in his head pressed into his weary thoughts, and Wolfgang sank his fingers into the armrest, forcing himself to picture Collins again. Her beautiful, childish face, so full of life, and so crushed by the brokenness of her body.

  Nobody cared about Collins. She was a disabled orphan girl. A forgotten inconvenience of society. Nobody cared about her dreams or her birthday or what her favorite color was. Nobody cared that she didn’t have friends at school and couldn’t remember her
mother.

  Nobody cared, but Wolfgang did, and he cursed himself for not being there. Yet, on the far side of the world, he was taking actions that were for Collins as much as any child who hoped to grow up in a peaceful, safe world. He may not be leaning next to her bed, but he was still there for her . . . wasn’t he?

  “Are you sure about this?”

  Wolfgang opened his eyes. This time, Megan’s voice rang through his earpiece. He looked out the window to see the cab pulling up in front of the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense, and the fear in his mind evaporated. Now, all he felt was anger and resolve.

  “Copy that, Charlie One,” Wolfgang said. “Never been more sure.”

  He paid the driver and stepped out of the cab, then looked down the sidewalk and up the steps toward the perimeter fence that encircled the giant block building directly ahead. Security cameras poked out from the top of the wall at regular intervals.

  This is it.

  “Okay, Charlie Team,” Wolfgang said. “Sunshine going offline. Don’t leave me hanging, guys.”

  Wolfgang pretended to run his hand through his hair as he flicked the earpiece out of his ear. It landed on the sidewalk, and he crushed it with his heel, then turned toward the guardhouse. The camera and the GPS unit were risks enough—the Russians would find the earpiece immediately, and that would wreck his entire plan.

  As Wolfgang turned off the sidewalk and followed the concrete path to the guardhouse, he saw the two guards straighten, then one of them stepped out and held up a hand. He carried an assault rifle, and his face featured the hard lines of a man who wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

  “Ostanovka!”

  Wolfgang offered his most disarming smile. “Good morning, gents. I’m here to see Ivan Sidorov. Can you tell him the Amerikos has arrived?”

  8

  Wolfgang wasn’t sure if the guard recognized the name of Ivan Sidorov, but he shouted something at his companion, then placed both hands on his rifle and pointed it at Wolfgang.