Phoenix Read online

  Beatrix remembered the file. A Group Fifteen quartermaster had established a small arms cache in a lock-up garage on the west of the city.

  “What do you have?”

  “Pistols,” he said. “There’s more in the cache if we need it. It’s well equipped. SMGs, grenades, tons of ammo. I didn’t think we’d need to go big.”

  “No,” she agreed. “We do it quiet. You have a pistol for me?”

  “A Glock 26,” he said. “That okay?”

  “There wasn’t anything else?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “Not a big fan of polymer frames.”

  “There’s plenty of choice. I could go back and—”

  “Forget it. It’ll do.”

  “It’s in the car.”

  She nodded. “What’s the inside of the cache like?”

  “It’s a garage. If you’re asking because you want to take him there, I’d say it’d be fine for that. You can drive the car inside and close the door. If he’s down in the back, no one would see him.”

  Beatrix nodded her approval. “That’s what we’ll do, then. We pick him up, take him to the garage, and have a chat with him.”

  “A chat?”

  “Use your imagination, Major. There are some questions I need him to answer. He might not like all of them.”

  “I’m sure you can be very persuasive,” Milton said.

  Beatrix ignored that. “Then we take him to the coast and get him out of the country.”

  “And then?”

  “And then you go home, with my gratitude and the pride that you can take from a job well done.”

  Milton stood. He reached down for the beer and took a long draught of it. “If it’s all right with you, I’m going to go for a run. Clear my head. You want to get dinner afterwards?”

  “No,” Beatrix said. “We need to be up early.” She pointed at the bottle. “So make that the last one. I do not want you nursing a hangover tomorrow morning.”

  Milton grinned at her. “No, ma’am.”

  7

  Beatrix was awake with the dawn. She showered and dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a black T-shirt with sleeves that were cut off just below the shoulders. She chose a pair of boots and a light jacket that would hide a pistol if she carried it in her waistband.

  Beatrix had gone to bed at nine. Milton hadn’t returned to the room, but he had been there when she had risen for a drink in the early hours. He was asleep on the sofa, lying on his back with the covers pulled back to reveal a tattoo of an angel’s wings across his shoulders. She had paused close to him; she thought that she could detect the faint smell of alcohol, and his breath was deep and even, a rattle in his throat that was close to snoring. She couldn’t tell if he had been out drinking, but, if she had been asked to guess, she would have said that he had. He made no reference to it when he awoke, and, after a shower, he was fresh and ready to work.

  He had hired a Opel Vivaro from an agency in Caracas. It was new, and he still hadn’t removed the tag that hung down from the stem of the rear-view mirror. It had a sliding door in the side that offered access to a generous cabin. It was a good choice. They would easily be able to get Koralev inside, assuming that Milton’s report about his routine—and particularly the assumption that he didn’t have close protection—proved to be accurate.

  Beatrix sat in the back as Milton drove them out of the city. It was half past six in the morning and the roads were quiet. Beatrix had the Glock on the seat next to her. She made sure that it was unloaded and then disassembled it so that she could check its workings and ensure that everything was clean.

  “How long?” Beatrix said.

  “Twenty minutes,” he said.

  The sun was almost all of the way above the horizon now, and the early warmth promised a hot day. Beatrix put the weapon back together again and then tested the trigger. The Glock needed a long trigger pull, with a heavier weight to trigger a round than she preferred. Her favoured weapons employed crisp and clean triggers, and the Glock did not offer that. It wasn’t ideal, but that would only become a factor if they needed to fire and, from what Milton had suggested, that shouldn’t be necessary.

  She pushed the magazine into the grip, racked the slide to load a live round into the chamber and holstered the weapon. She leaned back in the seat and waited.

  * * *

  They drove through Cortada de Maturín. It was a sleepy village with a collection of buildings gathered on either side of the road. Milton drove on to the private track that he had mentioned, paused there for Beatrix to assess it, and then turned around and retraced their route. They stopped again to the south of the hamlet, on the other side of a sharp bend that would give Koralev very little time to react once he realised that the way ahead was blocked.

  Beatrix had conducted these types of snatch operations many times during her service with the Group. If done properly, they were simple: taking someone off a city street was as easy as clicking your fingers, and doing it on a road like this—with very little chance of being observed—was easier still. The trick was to be quick and efficient. There was no need to make a show. With most targets, the surprise of an abduction rendered them immobile for the small window of time where there would be something that they could do about it.

  There was a farmer’s field to the left, and it rose to a ridge that offered a view of the surrounding countryside, including the road out of the village. Milton had climbed the ridge with a pair of binoculars that he had taken from the back of the people carrier. They each had a radio and, just a little after eight, Beatrix heard his voice.

  “He’s coming. Two minutes.”

  “Copy that.”

  She glanced up at the ridge and saw Milton making his way down. He picked his way carefully down the steeper sections and then fell into a quick jog so that he would be at the road in time to make the snatch.

  Beatrix moved the big Vivaro out into the centre of the road, blocking the way ahead, and left the engine running. She stepped outside. The Glock was shoved in the waistband of her trousers, hidden beneath the back of her loose jacket. A car came around the bend. It was a sharp turn, and the driver had taken it carefully. He was doing only twenty or thirty miles an hour, and he had ample space to stop safely.

  Beatrix looked: the sun was reflecting off the windshield, making it difficult for her to see inside. She waved a hand and put a big smile on her face.

  The car slowed to a stop.

  Beatrix walked forward and stopped before it. If the driver wanted to talk to her, he would have to get out.

  Milton closed in, approaching from the rear.

  The driver’s door opened and a man stepped out.

  She could see him now. It was Igor Koralev.

  “Hola?” he said. “Puedo ayudarte?”

  His Spanish was atrocious. Beatrix shrugged that she didn’t understand, her hand reaching around to the gun and pulling it just as Milton turned the corner around Koralev’s car and grabbed him, his own gun pressed to the side of the old man’s head. Milton wrapped his left arm around Koralev’s neck and half-pushed, half-dragged him to the Vivaro.

  Beatrix ran to Koralev’s car and moved it into a space at the side of the road. She returned to the Vivaro and got in, drawing the Glock and training it on Koralev.

  “Stay on the floor between the seats,” she said. “Don’t move. Don’t talk. If you do what I tell you to do, you’ll be fine.”

  Milton opened the driver’s door, put the people carrier into drive, and released the brake.

  They set off.

  It had taken less than twenty seconds, and no one had seen a thing.

  8

  Milton drove them to the arms cache in Casalta. The location was an outdoor facility on the fringes of the city that offered long-term storage. There were small- and medium-sized sheds going all the way to larger garages and, as they rolled in off the road, Beatrix saw to her satisfaction that the place was deserted. Koralev was on the floor of the Viv
aro. Beatrix had cuffed his wrists behind his back and hooded him with her jacket. She had the muzzle of the gun against the back of his head to persuade him that it was in his best interests to stay where he was. Milton pulled up next to one of the larger units, went outside and unlocked the door. He rolled it up, the metal slats clacking as they folded away, and then reversed the Opel inside. He killed the engine, pulled down the door and switched on a strip light.

  Beatrix got out, leaving Koralev on the floor.

  The garage was, effectively, an arms dump. The quartermaster had equipped it well. Racking had been screwed to the walls on both sides, and an array of weapons was laid out there. Beatrix saw long guns and pistols, automatic rifles, shotguns, packages of plastique, grenades, and numerous boxes of ammunition. Group Fifteen had caches like this all around the world. Some were smaller: metal crates that were buried in out-of-the-way locations. Others, like this, were established on an ad hoc basis as the need arose. The equipment had most likely been air-dropped or smuggled onto a secluded beach and then transported here. The quartermaster was available to assist should the need arise, but, in most cases, they maintained a scrupulous cover and did little to jeopardise that.

  “Not bad,” Beatrix said as Milton joined her.

  “How do you want to play this?” he asked quietly.

  “We’ll double-team him,” Beatrix said.

  “Good cop, bad cop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who am I?” Milton asked.

  “You frighten him,” she said. “And then I’ll tell him everything will be okay.”

  “I can do that,” he said, and Beatrix saw those icy blue eyes again and believed that he could.

  “We need information on what he’s been doing here,” she said. “He was tempted to leave the States by an offer from someone—we need to know who that is. We need to know where he’s been working, what he’s been working on, what he’s offered to sell.”

  “And then?”

  “We’ll see. It depends what he says. But we’re still going to repatriate him. The Navy has a frigate waiting twenty miles off shore. They’re going to send a vessel to transfer him. There’s a smuggler’s beach at Puerto Cumarebo. We’ll take him there.”

  “Fine,” Milton said. He turned and looked back to the people carrier. “Shall we get started?”

  9

  They took Koralev out of the Vivaro and dragged him to an old roller chair that had been left at the side of the space. They dumped him on it, his hands still cuffed behind his back and his head still covered by Beatrix’s jacket. Milton removed it. Koralev looked up, blinking a little as his eyes adjusted to the light. He was frightened, as well he ought to be; he looked left and right, shooting furtive glances at his surroundings.

  “Hello, Igor,” Milton said.

  The old man didn’t speak.

  Milton made a show of taking off his jacket, folding it over his arm and then going back to the Vivaro to leave it on the hood. He undid his shirt cuffs and rolled the sleeves up to his elbows.

  “I’m afraid you’ve put yourself in an awkward situation. I work for the British government. Our friends in the Central Intelligence Agency were very upset that you decided to run out on them. They said you were disloyal. Ungrateful, too—that was another word they used to describe you. They invested a lot of money in you and your work, didn’t they? I can see why they might be annoyed when they found out that you were trying to sell it to someone else.”

  “Who are you?” Koralev said in a voice stretched thin by tension.

  “My name’s not important. All you need to know is that this operation is unofficial. And that’s not good for you. It means I’m not constrained by British law. I have a free hand to do whatever I want when it comes to you. Anything.”

  “I’m an old man, sir,” Koralev said. “You don’t need to threaten me. I won’t fight.”

  Milton looked over at Beatrix; perhaps this would be easier than they had anticipated. She took out the small voice recorder that she had in her pocket and pressed record. She put the recorder in her pocket and walked around so that she was in front of Koralev’s chair. Milton nodded to the door, indicating that he would go and stand watch. Beatrix nodded back and waited for him to push up the door and duck outside.

  She turned to Koralev. “Why don’t we have a chat? This doesn’t need to be unpleasant.”

  “I am a scientist,” he said. “I’m just a scientist.” He jerked his head at their surroundings. “None of this is necessary. Just let me go. I just want to go home.”

  “We both know that I can’t do that. The CIA has invested a lot of money into your work. They want you back again.”

  Koralev slumped farther down into the chair. He had no fight in him at all. “I knew this would happen,” he said. “You will take me back?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew they would never let me go. I can’t run. I’m too tired.”

  Beatrix felt a flutter of sympathy for him. “Are you thirsty?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  There was a bottle of water in the back of the Vivaro. She collected it and, after removing the cuffs, gave it to him. He drank heartily.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “I have some questions for you,” she said.

  Koralev nodded wearily. “I have nothing to hide. Ask me whatever you want.”

  “Why did you run?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Have you heard of the Soviet Biopreparat program?”

  Beatrix had never heard of it. “No,” she said.

  “It goes back years. All the way back to Stalin. The Red Army was crushed in the First World War; then the Nazis killed millions more in the Second. My father died. My mother could barely find the food to feed me and my sister when we were growing up. Stalin wanted to make sure that the motherland was better prepared should a similar conflict arise in the future. He wanted to develop soldiers with advantages that would make them more efficient than the men they faced.”

  “What kind of advantages?”

  “Metabolic ones. Faster. Stronger. More endurance.” He coughed and then blew his nose into a handkerchief he took from his pocket. “He started with an embryologist. His name was Vladimir Ivanosky. He had been experimenting on chimpanzees. It didn’t work. Then he started working on monkey sperm, trying to impregnate volunteers. That didn’t work, either. But they didn’t give up.”

  Beatrix had no idea where Koralev was going with this. She let him talk.

  “Biopreparat is a bioweapons program. Chemical weapons. Diseases. Research into all of it. Vladimir worked there for many years, as did his son and then his grandson. The grandson is Nikita Ivanosky—he is also an embryologist. Nikita started to look at monkey DNA, examining how it could be changed.”

  “How do you know this?” Beatrix asked.

  “I am a scientist, as I have said. My own specialism is molecular biology and biophysics. It was the area that Nikita needed the most help with. He was aware of my work, so he recruited me. I say he ‘recruited’ me—what I mean to say is that he recommended me, and, the next day, two KGB agents visited my university and told me that I had to go with them. I didn’t see my family for six months. Nikita and I started to work together. Our program was installed on an island in the Aral Sea, where bioweapons were tested. It lies between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Do you know the area? Do you know what it’s like?”

  “No,” Beatrix said, although she had been there and she did know.

  “It is cold and bleak and barren. The island is called Vozrozhdeniya. They tested anthrax there. They tied horses and donkeys to concrete posts and then released the spores to see what would happen. It was not a pleasant place to work.”

  He took a moment. Beatrix waited for him to go on.

  “I became close to Nikita. I persuaded him that we should take our research to the Americans. I was greedy—I make no excuses for myself. The chaos caused by the Wa
ll coming down meant Moscow was distracted. It made it easier for us to leave. We contacted the CIA and they took us to America. I expect you know what happened next? They gave us money and facilities and let us carry on with our work.”

  “This was Daedalus?”

  “Yes,” Koralev said. “A front for the work we were doing. A distraction.” He drank again. “We made significant progress,” he said. “We had more money than before. An excellent team to help us. World-class facilities. We were able to develop a somatic treatment that produced permanent genetic changes in the subjects. The difficulty was in keeping the subjects alive. They developed cancer and died. The Americans did not give up. They gave us more and more money. And, eventually, we found our success.”

  “So why did you leave?”

  “It’s not money,” he said. “I have learned my lesson about greed. I have more than I could ever spend. It is…” He paused. “Nikita and I have developed a philosophical difference of opinion. It’s fundamental—it means that we can no longer work together. We have been successful beyond our wildest dreams. The work that Daedalus has done will change the way we think about genetics forever. But as we became more successful, it became more obvious to me what our work would mean. I was naïve. I ignored the money they poured into the company. Millions and millions of dollars. I persuaded myself that it was for the good of science, that we would have an influence on how the research was put to use. But…” He paused again and cleared his throat. “But they wanted a return on their investment. They would not listen to me. As soon as we had viable test subjects, the company was pushed in a different direction. The Department of Defense became heavily involved. You have heard of DARPA? The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”

  “Yes,” Beatrix said.

  “And Manage Risk? Do you know them?”

  “The private military contractors?”

  He nodded. “Daedalus was hidden within it. DARPA increased the funding, but the work was buried. They took sixty years of research and they weaponised it. They sent our children into the world to work for them and I decided that I had had enough.”