Fires of Kiev Page 7

  “Maybe not any of those words.”

  “You know no one has been near this silo in months.” He took a swig of vodka. “And I know because I have been here the whole damn time.”

  The guards sat at a table with a small lamp, across the room from the computers. Kostya and Bohdan had gone unnoticed so far on the floor behind some boxes and spools of cable, but they needed to escape either on the ladder or into the lift. The guards, although not diligent, would not be easy to sneak around.

  “But they have delivered the missile now,” the second guard offered while shuffling the cards. Kostya, interested, signaled to Bohdan to wait.

  “We have to be more careful.”

  “What are they going to do with that huge chunk of metal and radiation?” the first guard slurred. “It’s like they think they can go back in time and make all the pieces work together again.”

  That’s exactly what I’m helping them do, Kostya thought.

  Bohdan poked his shoulder, and gestured to the ladder. Kostya saw what he did. The guards were distracted by their card game and bottle of vodka. This was an opening to escape very quietly up the ladder.

  Kostya would have liked to look at the computers and how they were put together, but he knew that these were the systems he had been hacking over the last several weeks. The only thing missing was the last component: the one with the fail-safe chip and the alpha characters on the front.

  They crawled slowly along the far wall of the room, and when they reached the ladder, Bohdan raised himself first. After his success, Kostya pulled himself up rung by rung. The guards did not notice them, but they still had eleven floors to ground level. But first, there was one thing Kostya had to see.

  “Bohdan, wait for me,” Kostya said as he ducked back into the passageway.

  Bohdan sighed but followed as Kostya went down the left-hand corridor and continued past the landing to a hallway filled with ducts, conduits, and wires. The connecting walkway transitioned to thick concrete, circling the area around the center silo. The area glowed with dim lights placed every several feet, and heavy metal doors separating them from the inside storage. Coming to what seemed to be a main access doorway, Kostya pulled on the handle and slid the door over about a foot. Looking in he blew out a breath and shook his head in disbelief. Inside the tall cylindrical encasement of the silo was a massive missile.

  Even in the dim light he could see that although it was completely underground, the missile was at least ten stories high. It was painted dark military green, except for the silver connections between rocket components. He peered down into the silo and saw the huge rocket thrusters and the deep opening below where the rockets would fire if they were ever launched. Just from the size, he knew this was one of the larger missiles from the Cold War Era, maybe even the SS-18 Satan, the largest intercontinental missile ever built, and one of the nuclear missiles the Ukraine had surrendered to the Soviets at the end of the Cold War.

  “Holy shit!” Bohdan exclaimed. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “If you think it’s a Soviet nuclear missile, then yes.”

  “What the hell have you gotten involved in, Kostya?”

  “Whatever it is, I just got a lot deeper,” Kostya muttered.

  While it was common knowledge that stockpiles of various Soviet guns and grenades existed, no one would expect an SS-18 was being prepared for launch. According to the official paperwork, all Cold War missiles had been turned over to the Soviets and accounted for, but corruption, greed, and power were great motivators for leaders to be less than honest in the counts. Now, here was proof. Nuclear missiles were still in the Ukraine, and one was hidden in an abandoned silo in Cherkasy and Kostya was witness to its existence.

  And he had been a pawn in their chess game.

  He reverse-engineered the computers, so they could hook up the rocket.

  He allowed them to manipulate him with not even a question.

  He inspected the missile the best he could from his position. The lights alongside the body of the rocket were active, and the silo itself had been modernized recently. He scanned the surface of the rocket’s shell for markings, finding the expected “CCCP,” the abbreviation for the Soviet Union, and farther down, a Soviet star painted in red. But just over the star, he saw something unexpected. Painted in gold paint was the phrase, “Vohon’ svitanku”—Fire of Dawn—and a stenciled outline of a phoenix rising from flames.

  Fire of Dawn. Kostya felt nauseated recognizing the name. His mind fell back to that cold November morning when Petro Vlasenko, his commanding officer, allowed his brother, Stas, to slaughter the ethnic Ukrainians the Spetnaz-Alfa had detained during their patrol of the Kiev riots. Petro called it a cleansing by fire to clear the way for the new Russia’s dawning—the Fire of Dawn. Kostya, too late to stop it, witnessed the results: a massacre accomplished under the guise of peacekeeping.

  Having been assigned to his command, Kostya knew Petro by sight, but Stas had escaped before anyone saw him. He soon became a ghost, eluding any attempt to capture him. Only the terrorized witnesses and the voices of the dead could identify him.

  Fire of Dawn and the Vlasenkos were more than rebels, though. They gained attention as violent terrorists, intent on fracturing the Ukraine and molding an independent New Russia, Novorossiya, out of the ashes.

  No doubt, Fire of Dawn would use the missile as the means to power. They wanted it so badly they would hijack a Soviet missile and kill to get it.

  And maybe use other missiles as well.

  Kostya backed out of the door and made his way to the main walkway. Stopping to lean against the wall and breathe, he tried to comprehend the implications of what they just found. In the silo, they stumbled upon a secret that had the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of people. Kostya’s actions from this moment were more important than the extra cash for extra work he agreed to when Mik asked him to do the job. This was potentially international politics and terrorism, conflict, and war. This was life and death, and his finger was on the button, so to speak.

  Bohdan was standing down the corridor by the silo’s wall, and he gestured for Kostya to follow him. There was an opening to a zig-zagging set of ladders, with horizontal metal-grate steps and steel handrails, leading to ground level. “I’d go to the lift, but I’m afraid of being discovered by the guys in the control room,” Bohdan said. “We were lucky they didn’t hear it when we came down.”

  Kostya agreed. Each ladder up raised them half a story, so they had climbed twenty ladders by the time they reached a ramp leading to ground level. Exiting through a side door at the top, they squinted at the brightness of the sun.

  “I don’t know what you have gotten involved in, but this is crazy shit.” Bohdan said, out of breath but finally out of the silo.

  “Let’s get back to the bikes and get back before Larissa starts worrying,” Kostya said, wanting to get distance between himself and this place. He didn’t want to discuss this with Bohdan here, maybe not even at his house. Anyone he touched with what he knew about the computers might be in danger.

  Regardless, Kostya knew he now had another move: leverage. Kostya had taken the one chip that made the fail-safe component useless, and the missile could not launch without it. Very few people knew how to access the information off this chip. Once he had the algorithm, he would have something valuable with which to bargain.

  It might just keep him alive.

  Or he might die protecting what he found.

  ****

  Hannigan took off his glasses and cleaned them with a handkerchief from his jacket pocket. “You found a Soviet-era missile in an abandoned silo, and some group, Fire of Dawn, was in the process of reactivating it?” He replaced his glasses. “So the Ukraine didn’t turn over all of the Soviet missiles at the end of the Cold War?”

  “According to the official counts, they did,” Kostya said. “But don’t forget that at the end of the Cold War, the Ukraine possessed the third largest stockpile of nuclea
r weapons in the world, behind Russia and the United States. With all the political changes, some things could be misplaced, mishandled, or simply stolen.”

  “A Satan missile is an awfully big thing to misplace or mishandle.” Hannigan shook his head. “I’ve heard stories of nuclear devices being sold to terrorist groups or unfriendly countries.” He scratched on his notepad. “Do you have any proof that these weapons exist?”

  “I have the GPS coordinates for at least four silos, and if I can still access my workstation in Kiev via the Internet, I can pull up the saved pictures of the work I was doing.”

  “You say you went to the first silo undetected. When did you realize someone knew about your investigations?”

  “Once I got back to Kiev from the weekend, Mik was suspicious, I think.” Kostya leaned his head back and loosened his neck. “I honestly thought he would help me. I had no idea how deep in the plot he was.”

  “What was his advice?”

  “He told me I must have misunderstood. I know he didn’t want to screw up the opportunity, but even he admitted if I said anything, it might put us in a dangerous situation. Kostya rubbed his forehead. “How could I have been so naïve to believe that Mik would want to help uncover what was happening? Mik, the company, and the client were all profiting from the relationship so why would any of them want to change anything?”

  “When did you know you needed to run?”

  “Mik called me. At first he just warned me to keep my mouth shut, to stay loyal to the employer and so forth.” Kostya stared stoically toward the bookshelves beyond Hannigan’s shoulder.

  “And after that?” Hannigan prompted him gently.

  “After that?” Kostya laughed cynically. “Mik was no longer a problem. They murdered him while I listened to him screaming and begging on the other end of the phone.” He put both hands down on Hannigan’s desk and looked at him intently. “If my mind hadn’t been made up before, it was at that moment. I was going to protect myself, and then I was going to make the missile’s existence public.” Kostya remembered his systematic actions after Mik was killed. “Without stopping at my apartment or the lab, I drove downtown, to six different branches of my bank and withdrew money at each one. When I had as much cash as I could withdraw from the bank, I turned my car toward home. After talking to my parents and Bohdan, I planned to disappear. And somehow I was going to do it all without anyone else getting hurt.”

  “Then your parents…”

  “My parents.” Kostya’s mind silently filled with the images from that night, seared into his memories. When he and his brother had smelled smoke, they rushed to his parents’ house. Arriving, the devastation of blackened wood and cement already marked the fire’s hungry path, and tall flames danced on the thatched roof. The house was a shell of what it once was. Both men scrambled to find entry into the house to save their parents, but were horrified when they found the front door and downstairs windows had been boarded up, probably just as the fire was started. His parents had been in the house as the fire started and grew, and their exits were taken from them one by one.

  Leaving the scene of his parents’ death tore his heart out of his chest, but the threat on his life—on innocent peoples’ lives—was too great.

  He escaped while their parents’ home smoldered into ashes.

  Shaking off the memories, his eyes flattened out into the shadows. “Yes,” he answered carefully, clarifying the events for Hannigan. “Apparently, Fire of Dawn believed they had a fail-safe as well.”

  Chapter 7

  “Come on, Mer. Come back to bed for a minute.” Scott kissed Meredith lightly as she bent over pulling her work sneakers on.

  “I’ve got rounds. I’ve got to go.”

  He grabbed her hand and stroked it against him. “Can’t you just stay for a minute?” He pouted while drawing her in toward him.

  “Scott, I don’t have time,” she said emphatically. She gently pulled away. “Maybe I can give you a raincheck?”

  Scott groaned and glowered, sitting up against the headboard. “I guess I’ll just do what I can in the shower.” Meredith rolled her eyes and grabbed her cell phone and purse.

  “Are you all set for tonight?” he called as she made her way out the door. “You’ve got to be amazing, you know. This is a big fundraising opportunity for the Senator.” Meredith took a cleansing breath. There he was, the man who always put his career first. She had wondered when he would arrive. Maybe it would be easier if he didn’t work for her father.

  “I’m always amazing,” she said, turning and fluttering her eyelashes at him. “And the Senator will love me no matter what because I’m his daughter.”

  “Just be aware of your audience as you’re planning your comments,” Scott warned.

  She blew him a kiss and quickly ducked out before he could start reviewing her talking points. Sometimes she wished Scott were just her boyfriend and not her father’s Deputy Chief of Staff. Although it meant her parents totally loved him, at times like this, it was too many degrees of closeness.

  She hadn’t set out to date one of her father’s minions. When Meredith had been accepted into Medical School at George Washington University, her father had made it a point to introduce her to all the young, eligible bachelors on his Washington staff.

  Meredith didn’t want anything to do with it. Her heart and thoughts were still in the Ukraine with a handsome student with sapphire blue eyes.

  But time and family pressure eventually made her question her fading memories, and she agreed to a date—one date—with the handsome Scott Jackson.

  There was no doubt the date was amazing. Dinner and dancing at the Top of the Hay and a private showing at the Smithsonian’s Ukrainian art exhibit. He kissed her goodnight at the door, and she felt goose bumps. It wasn’t anything like the fire that she felt pulsing through her veins when she first kissed Kostya, but she was beginning to think that what she felt then wasn’t real. She hadn’t seen him for years. Surely it was time to move on.

  It was time to find something real.

  And Scott was real. He was real and good-looking, and successful, and loved by her parents, and rich. He was the kind of man that Meredith St. Claire would marry to continue the family legacy.

  She even made excuses when she found out it was one of the Senator’s female interns that planned and coordinated their first date. Well, he’s busy like all ambitious men and women. He should use his resources.

  By the time she heard that he was making bets on when he would nail her, they had already been on two more dates. Just because he wanted it doesn’t mean it would happen.

  As it turned out, she did make him wait—for several months before she slept with him. When she finally gave in, she expected candlelight, roses, and fireworks. She got wham, bam, and a line about “if I hadn’t had to wait so long.”

  A lot of people take a few times to get into the groove, right?

  But what Scott lacked in attentiveness, he made up for with his understanding of Meredith’s roles and responsibilities. He was willing to put up with her crazy schedule as a medical intern. Plus, she had someone to take her to all of her father’s events in Washington D.C. It certainly didn’t hurt his career to have her on his arm.

  And, ultimately, she liked having him around. It was better than being alone. So when the apartment Scott was renting didn’t renew his lease, it just made sense for him to stay in her Georgetown townhome.

  At least that’s what he said made sense. And she honestly couldn’t think of any reason to tell him no. He needed a place to live, she had a place to live, and they were sleeping together. It was logical to take that step. Still, on mornings like today, she hated the extra expectations of having him in her bed. Couldn’t she just get ready without his hard-on demanding attention?

  She quickly stopped at the hospital café for some coffee and made it to the fourth floor just in time to start rounds. A fifth-year medical student, she was officially an MD, but needed residency to finish he
r education. One of her key responsibilities was training the new interns.

  “Okay, kids. What have we got?” she asked the first and second years that were on rounds with her.

  The students rattled off the history and physicals of the patients in their care, and Meredith led a discussion about what steps needed to be taken in each case. As they were finishing, she looked up to see her supervising physician, Dr. Singh. His bushy eyebrows framed his friendly dark eyes. He still carried a slight accent from his home country of India, but it created a song-like cadence to his speech that was soothing to students and patients.

  “Meredith,” he called. “Please come see me in my office.” He smiled to let her know that there was nothing to worry about, but she was concerned because it was uncommon for him to pull her off rounds.

  She followed him into his office and shut the door. “Is everything all right, Dr. Singh?”

  “Yes, but I want to inform you of an interesting phone call we received today.” He leaned back in his chair. “It was from Immigration and Naturalization here in Washington.”

  “Immigration? What did they want?”

  “To speak directly to you.” Dr. Singh folded his hands over his chest and focused on her intently. “The agent did assure me that it had nothing to do with your patients here at GW, but beyond that, he just verified your employment here and left his information for you to call.” He pushed a paper across the desk to her. “Maybe it is a question about your work with Doctors Without Borders?”

  Although she had volunteered during the last five summers, she hadn’t heard of any problems with immigration. “I can’t imagine…” She studied the message. “I don’t think I know a George Hannigan. I can’t even guess what this is about.”

  Dr. Singh was silent for a moment then leaned forward, putting his arms on the desk. “Meredith, this may or may not be relevant, but you should know that Mr. Hannigan was one of the agents who helped my family come into the United States.” Meredith didn’t know the whole story, but remembered that Mrs. Singh had been unable to get papers to come when her husband did because she was born in Iran. “He specialized in difficult cases—refugees, hostile nations, those seeking asylum—you won’t find a better agent.”