“Please help yourself. They just showed up with all of this. Can you believe it? Only in America. I should have come to your country earlier. Maybe I wouldn’t have turned out so bad,” he said. He poured two full shots of vodka and set one of the glasses in front of Berg, then took a seat across the table.
“A toast. To taking down VEKTOR Labs.”
Berg hesitantly raised his glass. He eyed Reznikov warily as the Russian downed his glass of clear liquid. Berg followed suit, grimacing at the sharp burn. A few seconds later, he felt a little less worn out from the previous day’s travels.
“Where did you stash your beautiful assistant? I had hoped she would be part of the package. I didn’t notice any women here.”
“I’m sure they keep a few blow-up dolls on hand for the guests,” Berg said, placing the shot glass down on the table.
Reznikov’s jovial smile flattened. “Such hostility. Not exactly the kind of environment that makes me want to share the intimate details of my former employer.”
The Russian reached behind him to retrieve the vodka bottle from the countertop.
“Perhaps you’d rather have your head stuffed into a diarrhea-filled toilet bowl three stories below the surface of the earth?” Berg raised his hands to simulate a balanced scale. “Fresh mountain air, nice view, gourmet food, spa-like amenities,” he said, raising one hand and lowering the other. “Or…daily beatings, concrete pavement sleeping arrangements, one meal a day, and toilet bowl scuba lessons. Don’t fuck with me here.”
“Easy, my friend. I get it,” Reznikov said, pouring another shot.
He started to move the bottle over to Berg’s side of the table, but Berg grabbed it from his trembling hand. On closer inspection, Reznikov didn’t look as robust as he was acting. Mention of a permanent prison cell underground had quickly flushed the color from his face.
“I’m not your friend, and you’ll get this bottle back after we’ve made considerable progress.”
Berg placed the bottle on the floor and retrieved a legal pad from his satchel, along with a digital recording device.
“Don’t put the bottle on the floor. Radiant heat, you know. Feels wonderful, but you almost have to wear socks,” Reznikov said.
Berg removed the chilled bottle from the floor, placing it on the table, shaking his head. Radiant fucking heat? What was next? Daily massage therapy?
“So…where do you want to start?” Reznikov asked.
“From the beginning. How did you become involved with Vektor?”
“The roots of that decision reach back to my childhood. Are you in the mood for a story?”
“As long as it has something to do with Vektor,” Berg said.
“It has everything to do with Vektor and how Russia’s bioweapons program long ago eclipsed their nuclear weapons program,” he whispered.
Three hours later, Berg emerged from the villa with a distant look on his face. He followed the gravel path through the forest to the main clearing, hardly paying any attention to his footing. The warm late afternoon sun barely registered on his face. If Reznikov had told the truth, the United States and its allies faced the greatest threat to world stability since the Cold War. A secret race to develop bioweapons of mass destruction, and the Russians had a thirty-year head start. The reckless plan that he’d suggested to Sanderson didn’t feel so outlandish anymore. The bioweapons program at Vektor Labs had to be destroyed.
Anatoly Reznikov peered through the shades of his front window at the vanishing shape of Karl Berg, the enigmatic CIA agent that had miraculously rescued him from a quick death at the hands of his former masters. The past week had been confusing, hazy, and punctuated by severe fluctuations in his mental state. He’d spent most of the time feeling utterly helpless, certain that he would be brutally interrogated and discarded. His pessimistic side had taken full control of his emotions, which didn’t surprise him. He’d tried to drink himself to death in Stockholm, and failing that had put a gun to his head to finish the job. And that had just been the beginning of a two-day roller coaster ride through Hell, marked by repeated cardiac arrests, torture and beatings while strapped helplessly to a bed.
Only a sheer miracle could explain his sudden moment of clarity on the jet ride back to the United States. It had probably just been a natural fluke. A random release of chemicals, possibly dopamine, to relax his anxiety long enough for him to wrestle control of his mind. Maybe the sight and smell of Karl Berg sipping scotch had triggered it. It didn’t matter. Within the short span of time it took for Karl Berg to walk down the business jet’s aisle, he had formulated a plan that was guaranteed to set him free.
Earning a transfer to this facility was just the first step in a plan so perfect that he considered the possibility that it had been his fate all along to fall into Berg’s lap. Now that his mind had cleared enough to see the bigger picture, he couldn’t think of a better scenario. He’d been despondent about Al Qaeda’s betrayal and his subsequent failure to recover more of the virus canisters, but this new turn of events would take his original scheme to the next level. He just needed to place a single phone call to activate part two of his plan.
He hadn’t lied to Berg. On the contrary, he had told the agent everything, except the part about how he had successfully stolen samples of every weaponized virus and bacteria created at Vektor. He hadn’t been dismissed from Vektor for attempting to steal viral encephalitis samples. By that point, he had already stolen samples of everything he had seen in the bioweapons division. He had been fired for trying to access a section of the laboratory off limits to everyone except for three scientists. Rumors started circulating that the small group had created something nobody had seen before. He took the bait and attempted to sneak into the lab.
At that point, security features at Vektor relied more on humans than technology, and large sums of money helped him circumvent most of the security surrounding the isolated laboratory cell. Or so he had thought. Seconds from crossing the point of no return, he was warned off by the only security guard not infiltrated by FSB agents. Without stepping foot in the off-limits section, they couldn’t shoot him on the spot like they had planned. Instead, FSB agents backed off and allowed him to continue to work at the lab, under close supervision.
A week later, he received an offer to lead a lab group at their sister institute in Kazakhstan. He knew it was a setup, and the rest was history. He’d barely escaped with his life and bioweapons samples worth millions of dollars. Fate had given him one more chance and he didn’t intend to waste it. One call to some very nefarious “friends,” and he could take leave of this place, free to sell his weapons to the highest bidder.
And the icing on the cake? Berg’s people would target Vektor’s bioweapons division and key personnel. He’d finally avenge his parents’ murder at the hands of Russian security forces. Revenge was sweet, especially when it required no effort on his part.
Chapter 2
Mihail Osin stared at the glowing windows of 14 Värtavägen and considered his options. Interior lights had greeted them upon their silent arrival at the edge of the property’s thick evergreen screen, but he hadn’t detected any movement inside the one-story house. Still, he couldn’t ignore the possibility that someone had remained in the house. Even snagging one of the safe house’s “keepers” could put them back on the path to finding Reznikov. Unfortunately, his own experience with the use of foreign safe houses didn’t leave him optimistic. Reznikov’s abduction had occurred over two weeks ago, which was an eternity to keep a high-value target in such an exposed, but well-concealed location.