According to reports Colchev dredged up long ago from dusty archives, explorer Vasily Suzdalev had been the first to the disaster area in 1916, eight years after the explosion. When he came back two months later, he carried with him an unusual metal he’d dubbed xenobium for his speculation that it had come from space. During the return journey to Moscow with his prize, Suzdalev became extremely ill, not realizing then that he’d been suffering from radiation poisoning while carrying the postage stamp-sized specimen in his pocket. The elemental structure of xenobium would remain a mystery because scientists who were testing its electrical properties applied a power surge that detonated it, resulting in the complete destruction of a five-story-tall brick building.
When the fledgling Soviet government realized the potential of such a compact explosive, the Reds sent a now-recovered Suzdalev back to Tunguska in 1918 to find more of it, this time with a leaded case to carry any samples he might find. But a spy told the White forces of his mission, and they dispatched their own representative, a scientist and former soldier named Ivan Dombrovski, to track down Suzdalev and retrieve the weapon that might lead to the defeat of the communists.
It was only much later, after the tsar had been executed and Dombrovski fled to America, that Suzdalev’s corpse was found in the swampy tracts of Siberia by some native tribesmen. The Soviets assumed Dombrovski gave whatever he found to the United States in return for asylum. A new search of the Tunguska area revealed no more samples of the xenobium. The secret of its source location died with Suzdalev.
The Soviet Union sent spies to the US to discover if Dombrovski had gleaned any info about where to find more of the precious metal. Unfortunately, an attempt to steal back the Tunguska sample from the US went horribly wrong, leading to Dombrovski’s death and the destruction of the xenobium he’d spirited out of Russia. Instead of a victory for the Soviets, the operation had been a catastrophe.
The one piece of useful intelligence had been that Dombrovski explored the world for years trying to track down another source and apparently found two strong leads: a map and proof that more of the xenobium existed. Somehow, Dombrovski had used the map to find a huge sample in the Nazca region of Peru, even taking a photo to document that it was real. But for unknown reasons, Dombrovski did not take the specimen, leaving it in South America. With Dombrovski dead and most of his records burned in a lab fire, the failed Soviet operation had destroyed any possibility of following his trail, and it was thought that the xenobium was lost forever.
Then Colchev had had a stroke of luck. For many years he had cultivated a source within the American military weapons development community, and during their communications the mole claimed that the Australians had some xenobium of their own. It matched all the properties of the Tunguska material, and the Americans were designing a weapon to take advantage of its unique nature, paying the Australians a hefty sum to use xenobium as its explosive trigger.
Tomorrow the Killswitch weapon system would land in Australia, and with the detonation of the truck bomb it would be Colchev’s. Four days after that, July twenty-fifth would become a day to remember for Russia.
Gurevich unspooled the temporary cable to the center of the warehouse and connected it to a tiny detonator. He stood and said, “It’s set.”
All of them stepped back from it as far as they could. Colchev removed a small state-of-the-art signaling device that operated on a coded spread-spectrum frequency. It had a wireless range of twenty miles, far greater than required for his purposes.
Zotkin and the rest of the men looked at Colchev expectantly, the validation of their hard work over the last nine months held in the palm of his hand. He knew how they felt. This moment represented years of Colchev’s life.
His specialty in the SVR had been recruiting and handling foreign intelligence resources. He’d received four commendations for the information he’d gathered. Obtaining the Killswitch prototype would have been his greatest achievement, but the capture of Anna Chapman and her comrades had caused his fall into disgrace before he could accomplish his goal. His superiors were so shortsighted and timid that they abandoned the mission to obtain the Killswitch technology to avoid any chance of further embarrassment.
Since they lacked the conviction to follow through, Colchev would show them what could be accomplished with the proper will and expertise. They would see how Russia could be a great country again, no longer under the heel of America’s mighty capitalist domination.
Colchev went to university during the Glasnost years, watching his country’s steep decline in global stature. He had never known insecurity until the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Certainly there were indignities to be suffered during the communist regime — long lines for bread and toilet paper, tight restrictions on travel, the omnipresent gaze of the internal intelligence apparatus. But the people knew what it was to be safe back then. Colchev’s father, Yuri, had a steady job at a factory and there was always food on the table.
Perestroika ripped all that away. When the Soviet Union crumbled, it was the collapse of an empire that had ruled a quarter of the Earth’s land area. He hated America for claiming victory in the Cold War and laughing at his nation’s woes.
The economy fell off a cliff when Boris Yeltsin became president, and Colchev’s father lost his job. Crime in Moscow grew rampant. Yuri tried to open a little store with the paltry savings he had, but the fledgling Russian mafia exacted revenge when he refused to pay the protection money they demanded. On the way home from work late one night, Yuri was shot dead in the street.
His mother never recovered. Vodka became her medicine, and she took ample doses. Colchev could have turned to the mafia himself, but he vowed never to join those pigs, who he felt were destroying his country and turning it into a kleptocracy. He wanted to help restore Russia to its former greatness, and he had an aptitude for languages, so when the foreign intelligence community recruited him, he knew it was his calling.
He rose quickly through the ranks, focusing on his career so tenaciously that he stumbled through two failed marriages. As a fellow agent, Nadia Bedova had understood him. She knew, more than either of Colchev’s ex-wives, that the job was everything. The Chapman debacle was grievous but not insurmountable. In the end he would prevail.
Colchev smiled and pressed the button on the handheld device. The isolated detonator went off with a bang, and his men cheered in unison. Neither of the sounds were loud enough to draw undue attention in this industrial district of town.
He congratulated each man with a traditional Russian bear hug, finishing on a hearty backslapping embrace with Zotkin. Gurevich unclipped the temporary wires inside the trailer and began inserting detonators into the bricks of C-4, which would be buried in the ANFO barrels.
Colchev stood quietly and admired the work of his team. In less than a week, his sacrifice would be rewarded and his reputation restored. After July twenty-fifth, he would return to his country a hero for devastating their greatest enemy, the United States of America.
THIRTEEN
Nadia Bedova stood patiently as the bodyguard frisked her. With a touch that was quick and efficient, he showed he was a pro by not lingering on her breasts or rear. She had come unarmed to the Sydney office tower knowing that she’d never be allowed to enter with her weapon.
Satisfied that she was clean, the guard led her down the hall to the penthouse suite of Mulvey Gardner Trading. Andrew Hull, the company’s owner, had established the innocent-sounding firm to provide a front for his arms deals; it was one of the biggest such organizations on the Pacific Rim. Bedova had used his services herself many times. If Colchev were conducting some kind of operation in Australia, Hull would have information about it.