“A boat if I had no hurry. Trains cross too many frontiers.” She glanced over at the calendar hanging on Voronin’s wall. Although it was almost May, the page was still turned to March. Almost May. May Day. “Monday is the first of May-International Workers’ Day.”
“Most of the Politburo will be atop Lenin’s tomb for the parade.”
“They’re in a hurry. They have to have it in position before Monday morning.”
Voronin stood, but wobbled. “They’ll do it by air.”
“I’d go through Frankfurt. It’s the busiest airport on the continent-too busy to carefully screen anything. Aeroflot, Lufthansa and Pan Am-they all fly nonstop to Sheremetyevo.”
Voronin cleared his throat. “Concentrate your people there. Once you activate the networks, I want you in Frankfurt. Take what you need to stop them. Whatever you need.”
As soon as Nariskii left, Voronin returned the vodka to its cache behind the Lenin library. He felt a rush like back in the old days, before alcohol and the boredom of a small town in Germany had taken such a toll on his career. Voronin was now heading the effort to stop a nuclear terrorist threat to Gorbachev. For the next twenty-four hours, he would be the most important man in the KGB. But no one could be trusted with that knowledge. He swallowed the last gulp of vodka that he’d be having for a while and felt the juices of youth warming his veins. The one person to whom he’d really like to boast wasn’t even in Moscow. Voronin convinced himself his old classmate from the Dzerzhinsky Higher School had to be far enough removed from Lubyanka as not to be involved with the conspirators-if there were any KGB conspirators. What if the CIA were lying?
A call to an old rival wouldn’t hurt. He reached for the phone to dial the Berlin residency. It had been years since Aleksei Voronin had been able to gloat about his importance to his successful comrade. And working to stop a nuclear threat to Gorbachev was indeed reason to rub it in to Gennadi Titov.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Catch a man a fish and you can sell it to him.
Teach a man to fish and
you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.
– KARL MARX
WEST BERLIN
Summer and Faith looked through the half-moon slit in the leather satchel. Four rows of white rectangular bricks stacked two high, each one wrapped in clear plastic. Summer pulled out a package of something that looked like Play-Doh. “You really got this from the East Germans?”
“What is it?” Faith said.
“C.”
“What the hell are the East Germans doing with American explosives? Are you sure that’s what it is?”
“I’ve never actually seen Semtex, but it’s supposed to look a lot like C-3, kinda yellowish, but not as brownish. More orange. But I’d recognize C-4 anywhere, and this is it. They could’ve stolen it from the military or a private firm. We use it all the time-all the EOD units do. Our allies-the Brits, Australians-they all use it. Even civilians with the proper ATF licenses can order it. I think it comes from a place in Texas.”
“And there’s a black market for everything,” Faith said.
“You oughtta know. Whatever this is about, I’d say someone wants it to look like it’s an American job.”
“Can you really tell whether it was Semtex or C-4 after something’s blown up? I thought they were chemically about the same.”
“They both use the same stuff, but lab boys can tell them apart. About ten years ago, the government started encouraging manufacturers to include something called taggant-microscopic chips coded so you can tell where and when it was manufactured. Now I think this was mainly for the stuff they sell to civilians. I’m sure it’s not in what we use in the field in SpecWar-SEALs don’t always want to leave a calling card.”
“Would the East Germans know about taggant?”
“It’s not highly classified.” He dropped the explosive onto the table. “You owe me an explanation, and I don’t think this can wait until a beer.”
“Promise me you won’t get mad and you won’t even think about trying to get involved.”
“At this point, Faith, I can’t promise you much.”
“I’m sorry, then I can’t tell you much, but I do have a craft project I need to tackle after we’re done with this. I’m going to need you to buy some Play-Doh for me in the PX or Exchange or whatever it’s called.”
Summer began packing his tools.
“What are you doing?”
“Pulling my things together because, as much as I care for you, I can’t do this for you unless you’re up-front with me. And I’m going to have to confiscate this and take it to a base to disarm and dispose of it.”
“You can’t do this to me.”
“Or you me.”
Faith sighed. “They’ll kill me if I don’t deliver it on time. I’ve been blackmailed into transporting it.”
“Where? Can’t you do better than that? I’m a naval officer, and that means I can’t stay on the sidelines if this is going to terrorists that might hit a US or allied target.”
“It’s going to an East Bloc capital.”
“Moscow? The East Germans are using you to smuggle C into Russia? You’ve gotta be kidding.”
“I didn’t say Moscow.”
“Well, hell, where else would they bother with? The Germans think they’re better than everyone else, so you don’t think they’d go to such lengths to blow up some frickin’ Romanian, do you? You’re in over your head-and I don’t mean just a couple of inches. I’ve got contacts in the DIA-”
“Don’t even think about Defense Intelligence. The Stasi would think I’d turned on them. They’d kill me if they knew I was meeting with you, personal history aside.” Faith brushed her hair from her face and felt sweat gathering on her forehead.
“So then why did you risk meeting me?”
“They wouldn’t tell me what I was dealing with, and for all I knew they could have been setting me up to carry a bomb on a plane. They made it clear it was booby trapped, but I knew nothing was tamper-proof with you-you proved that when I was sixteen.” She flashed him a smile.
“So why are you going along with them?”
“I told you, they threatened me.” She forced herself to make eye contact with him, but couldn’t; she looked away.
“That’s not good enough. You could get away from here or get help from the government. Why, Faith?”
“I didn’t want to tell you because it’s so far-fetched, but I’ve received information from the Stasi about Daddy. You know how Mama would never say anything about him or about how he passed away?” She blinked rapidly, fighting back tears.
He nodded as he turned a chair around and sat in it backward.
“They claim he’s still alive, and if I cooperate, they’ll help me find him. I’m guessing he’s been held in a gulag or in one of their special psychiatric hospitals, like the dissident physicist Sakharov.”
Summer removed a pair of scissors from the kit and snipped away the leather flap, widening the hole, gradually exposing a metal cylinder wrapped in duct tape. The end of the soup-can-sized container was recessed like the bottom of a wine bottle and its top was cut away. It was stuffed with C-4.
He set down the scissors. Four colored wires disappeared into the plastique; a third set linked everything together. His eyes followed each wire as if he were searching for hidden patterns, decrypting a secret code. “Not good.”
Faith held her breath, afraid to speak. Summer snatched up a handful of X-rays. His eyes darted between the X-ray and the case. He held up one after another to light, all the while shaking his head. He tossed them on the table with enough force that they slid off the other side. Faith crawled under the table and retrieved the film, blowing away the dust.