Joe Rush 02: Protocol Zero (34 page)

“Death-bed confession, sir. He’s gone.”

A pause. He understood what I was saying. “You’re in Norway now?”

“I am.”

“If what you’ve told me is true, if we can connect the lodge and the deaths and him, believe me, something will happen. The president won’t accept it otherwise. I swear to you. I’ve never lied to you. Come home, Joe. First chance.”

I slept soundly, waking only once after hearing footsteps in the hallway.
Police,
I thought. But no knock sounded at the door.

I caught the first flight out in the morning. At Oslo, at immigration, the man opening my passport was curious as to why, after arriving yesterday, I was leaving so quickly.

“Finished my business early,” I told him.

He wagged a finger at me. All work is no good. “Next time, plan to stay and have some winter fun,” he said.

They came for him just as dessert was delivered.

Dmitri Turov—nicknamed “the angry man” in the company he owned—sat with his wife, in his favorite restaurant, Khachapuri, on the southern outskirts of Moscow. It was her birthday. She was twenty-eight. She did not like Georgian food, but he did, and he wanted it tonight.

Not a fancy place, but a great one. They sat at his favorite table under the blackboard menu. They started with mouthwatering
mujuji
, cold jellied pork, and plates of chopped, minced vegetables, and a terrific walnut dipping sauce for tasty breads . . .
satsivi
.

“This food,” his wife said, “is too spicy.”

“Fine. More for me,” he said, mouth full, eating fast.

After that, the
karcho
soup—beef, rice, and plum puree—and
chalchokhabili
—a hot soup with stewed chicken. And, of course, no Georgian dinner would be complete without
plov
, rice cooked in broth, smothered by delicious fish.

He was in a good mood, in superb spirits, actually, because he’d learned that very day that his lawyer in the United States had managed to obtain the letter written by Bruce Friday, stored in an Anchorage bank safe-deposit box. Bruce Friday was dead, in Norway, killed by a Norwegian robber. A few payouts, a little blackmail, a quiet trip into a bank vault, and the incriminating letter was now burned to ashes, floating through some Alaskan sewer drain.

With the letter gone, there was nothing to connect Dmitri Turov with the disaster in Barrow that had panicked the world, humiliated a U.S. president, caused massive expenditures, and left many dead, and the American Congress howling about secret U.S. military programs.

A big mystery that made the Yanks look stupid!

Ha!

He was watching a waiter approach carrying a large copper tray on which sat plates of baklava, and small cups of sweet coffee, when he noticed the front door of the restaurant open and immediately understood that the three men wearing dark suits—men who were not smiling, men whose eyes swept the tables, men whose walk was economic, military—were there because someone was in big trouble among the noisy patrons packing the restaurant.

Hmm,
he thought, like a happy gossip.
Who?

The men walked toward his table.

The angry man’s heartbeat sped up.

The lead man walked right up to the table and said, “You are Dmitri Turov, president of Dalsvix Group?”

It had to be a mistake. The leader produced a card identifying himself as Colonel Nicholas Azamat of the Federal Security Service, modern successor of the KGB, Russia’s equivalent to the American FBI’s National Security Branch, except in Russia, it reported directly to the president. Dmitri looked around for his bodyguards and saw that the table behind him was empty. His wife was gaping. She was not used to him being bossed around.

Dmitri told Colonel Azamat that there must be a mistake, but Azamat insisted that they all leave together. There wasn’t really an option to refuse.

Dmitri accompanied the men outside, and entered the back of their armored Mercedes G550. No one spoke. No one answered when Dmitri asked the cause of this visit.

He expected a ride into Moscow proper—where he’d confidently clear up whatever the problem was—but they left the city and rode beyond Moscow’s outer-ring road, and onto a newly constructed highway, northwest. Apartment buildings fell away. They passed woods on one side, farms on the other.

Colonel Azamat said, quietly, “Some people are very angry with you. They don’t mind what you did. They mind that you got caught. Now you have embarrassed them.”

Dmitri thought,
It can’t be Alaska. No one knows!

Colonel Azamat said, “Now we must do some things to keep the Americans from releasing the story which would hurt us.”

Dmitri grabbed for the door handle, tried to struggle. But it was one thing to beat up a twenty-eight-year-old woman, and another to try to overcome four agents of the FSS. He hinted about offering money. He threatened their careers. He let them know that his cousin Natasha was close to the president.

At length they left the highway, and continued on a narrow, excellently maintained road through thick birch woods, and pulled through a spiked gate and into a walled compound with a sign identifying the four-story nineteenth-century structure ahead as a private clinic.

The escorts got him out of the car as easily as if they were moving a television. They force marched him across a white gravel driveway and up to the thick wooden doors and into what had probably been a duke’s country home once, then some prominent communist party member’s weekend
dacha
, and now, from the smell and white uniforms and hushed attitude of hurrying nurses, was some kind of clinic, all right.

The angry man began to shout for help.

Ten minutes later he was in a small, very well-lit, well-appointed operating room, clothes cut away, boxer underwear torn off, hairy ankles strapped in, like a monkey’s, his wrists restrained by manacles as well.

It was insane. They weren’t even asking questions. The suited men arrayed themselves in the corners of the room, and everyone just waited. Just fucking waited.

The angry man begged for a chance to explain. He begged to be interrogated. He begged for a lawyer. For a general he knew. For one of the president’s aides, a friend.

But the man who walked toward him in doctors’ scrubs was a stranger, tall, broad shouldered, and he moved with a slight limp, as if something was wrong with his left foot. As the doctor bent over him Dmitri tried to explain. Whatever was going on was an error. A fixable error.

The doctor just shook his head as if he had no idea what Dmitri was saying. Then, surprise, the words that he spoke came out in English.

Colonel Azamat materialized beside the doctor, and translated, in an efficient, unemotional voice.

“My name is Colonel Joseph Rush, of the United States Marines.”

What? The FSS had kidnapped him out of a restaurant and delivered him to an American? It was insane! It was an insult.

Colonel Azamat continued, “Despite the tension between our two nations, I am here thanks to the gracious cooperation of your president. My country is very grateful for this favor. But we are very angry at you.”

Dmitri Turov struggled, but the straps held him tight.

“You killed my fiancée. You almost started a war. You carried out an attack on our soil. In order to make this all go away, your people and mine made a deal. Included in this is that your company will not be making any medicines. Your company is being closed.”

Dmitri Turov was apoplectic.

The Marine watched as a Russian doctor produced a small syringe. At the sight, the angry man’s blood went cold.

Colonel Rush said, “I bet you can guess what this is.”

“You must not give that to me!”

Colonel Azamat translated as Colonel Rush said, “You’ll have a nice room. In the syringe is the rabies that your scientists modified in 1974, that your company took charge of later, and stored.”

The angry man had been prepared for pain. For hitting. For a steel rod. If he could hold out for a while he’d be rescued and things would be okay, for him, but not for Colonel Azamat, he’d told himself. But this was different. There was no way to stop the shiny long needle that was inserted into his arm, while he looked on, bulge-eyed.

He watched in horror as the plunger went down.

He watched the amber-colored liquid inside disappear.

There was a mild stinging in his arm, accompanied by some small heat. Then the needle was withdrawn.

The Marine said, “My president said I could ask him for anything. In the end, your people said okay, as long as they made the arrest and administered the shot. I am only permitted to watch. Favor for favor. To avoid worse.”

Joseph Rush removed his medical gown and let it drop to the floor, and then, one by one, everyone filed out, to leave Dmitri on the table, shouting that they could not do this to him. Not him!

He awoke in a different room, an observation room, with padded walls and furniture, no window, high ceiling, a vent spewing forth lukewarm air that smelled of diesel fuel and cinnamon.

His shackles were off. There was a single cot. The steel door had a slot, through which, three times a day, healthy meals were delivered. He pounded on the walls. He begged someone for the antidote. He offered money. Whatever they wanted. A job. A car. A girl. A boy.

And every time he looked at the glass, the Marine was there, iron straight, emotionless. He never seemed to need sleep. He never moved in the big chair.

It took two days, then water began to taste funny.

Then the light started to hurt.

At the end, his screams were loud and hideous, and he barked like a dog and foamed at the mouth. No one heard him, because of soundproofed walls. On the far side of the thick glass sat the lone Marine, not eating, not drinking, just watching. Once, only once, Dmitri saw a tear roll down the man’s face. Other than that, the expression never changed.

After it was over, the Marine went home.

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