“Tell Gearing to proceed, Bill.”
“Okay, John.” Henriksen stood and headed back to his office.
“Yes, Bill,” Colonel Gearing said.
“No big deal. Proceed as planned, and call me to confirm the package is delivered properly.”
“Okay,” Wil Gearing replied. “Anything else I have to do? I have plans of my own, you know.”
“Like what?” Henriksen asked.
“I’m flying up north tomorrow, going to take a few days to dive the Great Barrier Reef.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, don’t let any sharks eat you.”
“Right!” was the laughing reply, and the line cut off.
Okay, Bill Henriksen thought. That’s decided. He could depend on Gearing. He knew that. He’d come to the Project after a life of poisoning things, and he, too, knew the rest of the Project’s activities. If he’d ratted to anybody, they would not have gotten this far. But it’d have been so much better if that Russian cocksucker hadn’t skipped. What could he do about that? Report Hunnicutt’s murder to the local cops, and finger Popov/Serov as the likely killer? Was that worth doing? What were the possible complications? Well, Popov could spill what he knew however much or little that might be-but then they could say that he was a former KGB spy who’d acted strangely, who’d done some consulting to Horizon Corporation but, Jesus, started terrorist incidents in Europe? Be serious! This guy’s a murderer with imagination, trying to fabricate a story to get himself off a coldblooded killing right here in Middle America . . . Would that work? It might, Henriksen decided. It just might work, and take that bastard right the hell out of play. He could say anything he wanted, but what physical evidence did he have? Not a fucking thing.
Popov poured a drink from a bottle of Stolichnaya that the FBI had been kind enough to purchase from a corner liquor store. He had four previous drinks in his system. That helped to mellow his outlook somewhat.
“So, John Clark. We wait.”
“Yeah, we wait,” Rainbow Six agreed.
“You have a question for me?”
“Why did you call me?”
“We’ve met before.”
“Where?”
“In your building in Hereford. I was there with your plumber under one of my legends.”
“I wondered how you knew me by sight,” Clark admitted, sipping a beer. “Not many people from your side of the Curtain do.”
“You do not wish to kill me now?”
“The thought’s occurred to me,” Clark replied, looking in Popov’s eyes. “But I guess you have some scruple after all, and if you’re lying to me, you’ll soon wish you were dead.”
“Your wife and daughter are well?”
“Yes, and so is my grandson.”
“That is good,” Popov announced. “That mission was a distasteful one. You have done distasteful missions in your career, John Clark?”
He nodded. “Yeah, a few.”
“So, then, you understand?”
Not the way you mean, sport, Rainbow Six thought, before responding. “Yeah, I suppose I do, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich.”
“How did you find my name? Who told you?”
The answer surprised him. “Sergey Nikolay’ch and I are old friends.”
“Ah,” Popov managed to observe, without fainting. His own agency had betrayed him? Was that possible? Then it was as if Clark had read his mind.
“Here,” John said, handing over the sheaf of photocopies. “Your evaluations are pretty good.”
“Not good enough,” Popov replied, failing to recover from the shock of viewing items from a file that he had never seen before.
“Well, the world changed, didn’t it?”
“Not as completely as I had hoped.”
“I do have a question for you.”
“Yes?”
“The money you gave to Grady, where is it?”
“In a safe place. John Clark. The terrorists I know have all become capitalists with regard to cash money, but thanks to your people, those I contacted have no further need of money, do they?” the Russian asked rhetorically.
“You greedy bastard,” Clark observed, with half a smile.
The race started on time. The fans cheered the marathon runners as they took their first lap around the stadium, then disappeared out the tunnel onto the streets of Sydney, to return in two and a half hours or so. In the meantime, their progress would be followed on the Jumbotron for those who sat in the stadium seats, or on the numerous televisions that hung in the ramp and concourse areas. Trucks with remote TV transmitters rolled in front of the lead runners, and the Kenyan, Jomo Nyreiry, held the lead, closely followed by Edward Fulmer, the American, and Willem terHoost, the Dutchman, the leading trio not two steps apart, and a good ten meters ahead of the next group of runners as they passed the first milepost.
Like most people, Wil Gearing saw this on his hotel room TV as he packed. He’d be renting diving gear tomorrow, the former Army colonel told himself, and he’d treat himself to the best diving area in the world, in the knowledge that the oceanic pollution that was harming that most lovely of environments would soon be ending. He got all of his clothing organized in a pair of Tumi wheeled suitcases and set them by the door of the room. He’d be diving while all the ignorant plague victims flew off to their homes across the world, not knowing what they had and what they’d be spreading. He wondered how many would be lost to Phase One of the Project. Computer projections predicted anywhere from six to thirty million, but Gearing thought those numbers conservative. The higher the better, obviously, because the “A” vaccine had to be something that people all over the globe would cry out for, thus hastening their own deaths. The real cleverness of it was that if medical tests on the vaccine recipients showed Shiva antibodies, they’d be explained away by the vaccine-“A” was a live virus vaccine, as everyone would know. Just a little more live than anyone would realize until it was a little too late.
It was ten hours later in New York, and there in the safe house Clark, Popov, Sullivan, and Chatham sat, watching network coverage of the Olympic games, like millions of other Americans. There was nothing else for them to do. It was boring for them all, as none were marathoners, and the steps of the leading runners were endlessly the same.
“The heat must be terrible to run in,” Sullivan observed.
“It’s not fun,” Clark agreed.
“Ever run in a race like this?”
“No.” John shook his head. “But I’ve had to run away from things in my time, mainly Vietnam. It was pretty hot there, too.”
“You were there?” Popov asked.
“A year and a half’s worth. Third SOG-Special Operations Group.”
“Doing what?”
“Mainly looking and reporting. Some real operations, raids, assassinations, that sort of thing, taking out people we really didn’t like.” Thirty years ago, John thought. Thirtyyears. He’d given his youth to one conflict, and his manhood to another, and now, in his approaching golden years, what would he be doing? Was it really possible, what Popov had told him? It seemed so unreal, but the Ebola scare had been real as hell. He remembered flying all over the world about that one, and he remembered the news coverage that had shaken his country to its very foundations-and he remembered the terrible revenge that America had taken as a result. Most of all, he remembered lying with Ding Chavez on the flat roof of a Tehran dwelling and guiding two smart-bombs in to take the life of the man responsible for it all, in the first application of the president’s new doctrine. But if this were real, if this “project” that Popov had told them about were what he said it was, then what would his country do? Was it a matter for law enforcement or something else? Would you put people like this on trial? If not, then-what? Laws hadn’t been written for crimes of this magnitude, and the trial would be a horrid circus, spreading news that would shake the foundations of the entire world. That one corporation could have the power to do such a thing as this . . .
Clark had to admit to himself that his mind hadn’t expanded enough to enclose theentire thought. He’d acted upon it, but not really accepted it. It was too big a concept for that.
“Dmitriy, why did you say they are doing this?”
“John Clark, they are druids, they are people who worship nature as though it were a god. They say that the animals belong in places, but people do not. They say they want to restore nature-and to do that they are willing to kill all of mankind. This is madness, I know, but it is what they told me. In my room in Kansas, they have videotapes and magazines that proclaim these beliefs. I never knew such people existed. They say that nature hates us, that the planet hates us for what we-all men-have done. But the planet has no mind, and nature has no voice with which to speak. Yet they believe that they do have these things. It’s amazing,” the Russian concluded. “It is as if I have found a new, mad religious movement whose god requires our deaths, human sacrifice, whatever you wish to call it.” He waved his hands in frustration at his inability to understand it.