Kill Switch (9780062135285) (21 page)

27

March 18, 8:00
A.M.

Istanbul, Turkey

Tucker followed the embassy aide into the conference room. The space looked ordinary enough: white walls, burgundy carpet, maple table. Someone had set out glasses and pitchers of ice. He also smelled coffee, one of life's necessities at this early hour after such a long night.

Bukolov and Anya joined him as he settled into one of the leather chairs. They all squeaked heavily into place for this private meeting.

Anya's left arm was in a cast from midforearm to her knuckles. She had broken two bones in her wrist as a result of the plane crash. Her eyes were still glassy from pain relievers.

For this meeting, it would just be the three of them, seated around a speakerphone.

“Your call is being routed,” said the aide, a young man in a crisp suit. He promptly left, sealing the door behind him.

Despite the unassuming decor, Tucker knew this room in the U.S. consulate was soundproofed and electronically secure. No one else would be listening in.

Tucker stared across the table at the other two.

Anya looked haunted.

Bukolov defeated.

They'd flown straight from the Caspian Sea to Turkey, arriving well after midnight. They'd been given rooms here, but it looked like none of them had slept well. Tucker had left Kane behind to give the shepherd some extra downtime.

The conference phone on the table trilled, and a voice came over the speaker. “Your party is on the line. Go ahead.”

After a series of beeps, followed by a burst of static, Ruth Harper's voice came on the line.

“Tucker, are you there?”

“Yes.” Again he felt the comfort of her familiar soft twang. “I have Doctor Bukolov and Anya here also.”

“Very good.”

In Harper's usual brusque manner, she got right down to business. “Let's start with the most pressing concern of the moment. Stanimir Utkin. How much information do you believe this mole shared with his superiors? With this General Artur Kharzin?”

Tucker had already given Harper a condensed version of the last twenty-­four hours, including the betrayal and ultimate redemption by Utkin.

Bukolov answered angrily. “How much information? How about
all
of it? He had access to all my research material. I never suspected him in the slightest.” He glanced over to Anya, his voice dropping further into defeat. “I never suspected anyone.”

Tucker stared between them.

Anya looked down at the table. “I told Abram last night. About my involvement with Russian SVR. About my assignment. I thought he should hear it from me first.”

“Anya
Averin,
” Bukolov muttered. “I didn't even know your real name.”

Harper spoke into the awkward silence that followed. “I made some discreet inquiries. As far as I can tell, Anya's story checks out. She
was
falsifying intelligence to her superiors.”

Anya glanced to the doctor. “In order to protect you, Abram, to protect your research, so it wouldn't be abused.” She reached her right hand to him. “I'm sorry. I should have told you sooner.”

Bukolov turned slightly away from her. “Does she need to be here? She's of no use to me now. I have all of De Klerk's diary. I can handle the rest on my own.”

“Not your decision to make, Doctor,” Tucker replied.

“Not my decision? How can you say that? She betrayed me!”

Anya said, “Abram, please. I gave them nothing of your work. I protected—­”

“I am done with you! Mr. Wayne, I refuse to allow her to accompany us.”

Harper cleared her throat. “Let's put a pin in this, Doctor, and get back to Stanimir Utkin. For now, we must assume he gave Kharzin everything. Including the information from Paulos de Klerk's diary. Is that correct, Doctor Bukolov?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Then let's move on to the threat posed by that information, about the danger of LUCA falling into the hands of Kharzin?”

Bukolov took on a defensive tone. “You must understand, that if handled properly, LUCA could be an unprecedented boon to humanity. We could turn deserts into—­”

“Yes, I understand that,” Harper said, cutting him off. “But it's the phrase
handled properly
that worries me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but even if we're able to find a viable specimen of LUCA, we still have no way of controlling it—­not you, not Kharzin's ­people. Is that right?”

Bukolov hesitated, frowned. “Yes,” he said slowly. “No one has developed a kill switch. But I am convinced the mechanism for controlling LUCA
does
exist. So is Kharzin convinced. The general would only have to introduce a few ounces of LUCA in a handful of strategic locations, and without a kill switch in our possession, the organism would spread like wildfire, destroying all native plant life. There would be no stopping it. But the larger threat is
weaponization
.”

“Explain, Doctor,” said Harper.

“Take smallpox, for example. It's one of the most feared biological weapons known to man, but that threat alone is not enough. To be sure of infecting the maximum number of victims, smallpox must be weaponized—­it must be deliverable over a wide area in a short period of time, so it overwhelms the population and the medical infrastructure. Kharzin will see LUCA in the same light. He's a military man. It is how they think. Weaponized LUCA, delivered strategically, could reach critical mass in hours. Yes, yes, LUCA in its raw form is dangerous, but not necessarily catastrophic. There would be a chance we might be able to stop it. If he weaponizes it . . . it's an endgame move.”

“End?” Harper asked. “As in end of the world?”

“Without a kill switch, a way of controlling what's unleashed, yes. We're talking about the fundamental destruction of the earth's ecosystem.”

Harper paused, digesting the information. Tucker pictured her removing her thick set of librarian glasses and rubbing her eyes. Finally she spoke again. “How confident are you about this kill switch, Doctor?”

“I'm sure I can develop it. Even De Klerk hinted at the possibility in his diary. I just need a sample.”

“From some lost cave in South Africa?” Harper added.

“Yes.”

“And you think you can find this cave?”

“I believe so. Before I burned the page that explained its location, I set it to memory. But De Klerk plainly feared this organism, even bestowing it with the ominous title
Die Apokalips Saad
. He was so frightened that he encrypted his words, couching the route to the cave in obscure terms.”

“Can you recite it now? Give us an example?”

“Here is how it starts.” Bukolov formed a steeple of his fingers as he concentrated. “ ‘
From Grietje's Well at Melkboschkuil . . . bear twenty-­five degrees for a distance of 289,182 krags . . . there you find what is hidden beneath the Boar's Head Waterval
.' ”

Harper didn't speak immediately. Tucker could almost feel the frustration coming through the speakerphone. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Not a damned thing,” Bukolov said. “I tried for a solid week after finding this page. None of the locations are on any map. Not Grietje's Well. Not Melkboschkuil. Not that Boar's Head Waterfall. And as far as I could ascertain, there is no unit of measurement called a
krag
.”

Bukolov tossed his arms in the air. “It's one of the reasons I called out to you all. Surely you've got cryptographers and map experts who could decipher it. Get us on the right path to that cave.”

“I will see what I can do,” Harper said. “Give me a ­couple of hours—­let me do some research—­and we'll reconvene here.”

The line went dead.

As they all headed out, Anya reached an arm toward Bukolov, clearly wanting to talk, to smooth matters between them. When he ignored her, Tucker read the pain in her face, the crush of her posture. She stood in the hall for a long breath, watching the man stalk off.

When she turned away, he caught a glimpse of a single tear roll across a perfect cheekbone.

It seemed betrayal wore many faces.

10:22
A.M.

Tucker used the break to walk Kane amid the courtyards of the embassy. He had been ordered not to venture beyond its gates. The multilevel compound—­with its industrial white walls and rows of cell-­like windows—­looked more like a maximum-­security prison than a consulate.

Still, the small gardens inside were handsome, blooming with purplish-­pink crocuses and tangled with roses. But best of all, the warm Turkish sun helped melt the residual Russian ice from his bones and thoughts.

Even Kane had more of a dance to his step as he sniffed every corner and bush.

But soon Tucker was back inside, back at the conference table.

“I may have a ­couple pieces of the puzzle worked out,” Harper announced as she came back on the line. “But I fear until we have boots on the ground in South Africa, the location of the cave will remain a mystery. From these obscure references, I believe De Klerk was trying to hide some meaning or significance that would only make sense to another Boer of his time.”

Bukolov leaned closer. “Understandable. The Boer were notorious xenophobes, suspicious of other ­people and races, and especially paranoid about the British. But you said you had a ­couple of the clues solved. What did you learn?”

“It took consulting with a handful of Smithsonian historians, but we may have figured out De Klerk's reference to
krag
as a unit of measurement.”

“What is it?” Anya asked.

“During the fighting back then, a common weapon used widely by Boer troops was a Norwegian rifle called an M1894 Krag-­Jørgensen. Over time, it became simply known as a
krag
. The rifle was thirty-­nine inches long. If we assume that was De Klerk's unit of measurement, the distance he described is around 178 miles.”

Bukolov sat straighter, some of his normal spunk returning. “So we now know the distance from Grietje's Well to the Boar's Head Waterfall!”

“And not much else,” Harper added, quickly popping that balloon. “I suspect the Boar's Head Waterfall—­where this cave is hidden—­is not so much a
name
as what the place
looks
like, some local landmark that you have to see to recognize.”

“So obviously something that looks like the head of a boar,” Tucker said.

“And that's why we'll need boots on the ground. We need someone scouring that location, likely on foot or horseback.”

“To view the place from the same vantage as De Klerk did in the past,” Anya said.

“Exactly.” Harper shifted the topic. “But to even get there, we need to know where to
start,
where to set out from. Without that information, we're nowhere.”

Bukolov nodded. “We must figure out what De Klerk meant by
Grietje's Well at Melkboschkuil
.”

“Which brings me to the
second
piece of the puzzle we've solved. The historians determined that there once was a farm called
Melkboschkuil,
owned by the Cloete family, located in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. It's historically significant because the farmstead eventually prospered and grew into the present-­day city of Springbok.”

“Then that's where we must go!” Bukolov slapped a palm on the table. “To Springbok . . . to find this Grietje's Well. Then it's a simple matter to measure out 178 miles at a compass bearing of twenty-­five degrees, like De Klerk wrote, and look for this Boar's Head near a waterfall. That's where we'll find the cave!”

Is that all we have to do?
Tucker thought sourly.

Harper also lacked the good doctor's confidence. “The only problem is I could find no reference to a place called Grietje's Well. It's likely a place known only to the locals of De Klerk's time. All we've been able to determine is that
Grietje
is Dutch for ‘Wilma.' ”

“So then we're looking for Wilma's Well,” Tucker said.

“That's about it,” Harper conceded. “Like I said. We need boots on the ground.”

“And I intend to be a pair of those boots,” Bukolov said. “My knowledge of De Klerk may prove the difference between success and failure out there.”

Anya stirred, too, clearly wanting to go. Like the doctor, she was also well versed in De Klerk's work—­and if anything, more stable.

“Understood,” Harper said. “But all this presents one other problem.”

Tucker didn't like the note of warning in the her tone; even her southern lilt grew heavier.

“If you draw a line from Springbok along De Klerk's bearing, it puts you squarely into the Groot Karas Mountains—­in the country of Namibia.”

Tucker took a deep breath and let it out audibly.

“What?” Anya asked. “What's wrong?”

“Namibia is in the middle of a bloody war,” Tucker explained. “Between government forces and guerrillas.”

“And those guerrillas,” Harper added, “hold those mountains. They're particularly fond of kidnapping foreigners and holding them for ransom.”

Bukolov puffed loudly, clearly frustrated. “There has to be a way. We cannot abandon the search now.”

“We're not, but if you go, I wanted you to understand what you could be facing out there. I'll arrange some local assets to assist you in Africa, but it'll be far from safe.”

Bukolov shook his head. “I must go! We must try! Before Kharzin finds some other means to discover that cave. Utkin only saw that map page briefly before I burned it, but I don't know how much he retained or shared. And maybe I inadvertently mentioned something to him. I simply don't know.”