“Karl Berg,” he answered.
“Mr. Berg, I have a priority, encrypted call from Stockholm. Source station confirms Emily Bradshaw originated the call.”
“Stand by. I’ll call you right back from an encrypted terminal,” Berg said. “Call from the Stockholm station chief,” he said to Manning and Bauer.
“Shit,” Bauer mumbled.
He pulled his crypto card from his front pocket and inserted it into a slot on the front of the STE desk set next to Manning. After entering his PIN into the set, he dialed the operations center and the call was connected.
“Is Ian in a secure location?” Berg asked.
“We have a situation,” Bradshaw responded.
“How bad?”
“I tried to contact Ian via cell phone and landline immediately after your call, but he didn’t answer. I tried a few more times before heading out to his flat myself,” Bradshaw said.
“You went out there alone?” he said.
“What choice did I have? Send the police to investigate a CIA officer’s residence? Wake up one my officers and burn another CIA employee?” she said and paused. “I found his apartment door damaged and half of the apartment in disarray. He put up quite a struggle,” she said flatly.
“Jesus. I’m sorry, Emily. I called you as soon as they hit the safe house.”
“I know. They either had a second team on Ian, or they drove straight to his flat from the safe house. I was at his place within the hour. I should have gone straight over.”
“Based on what I saw in the digital feed from the safe house, your presence might have complicated matters even further,” Berg said.
He looked up at Manning and Bauer and shook his head.
“Is there anything we can do?” Bradshaw said.
“No. We can’t afford to let this spiral out of control, and I can’t imagine any scenario leading to Ian’s recovery. You’ll have to treat Ian’s disappearance like any other embassy employ—”
“I understand what’s required,” she interrupted.
Berg paused before speaking again. “I’m really sorry, Emily. This is a shitty situation made worse by the politics.”
“How bad will it be for him?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” Berg said.
“You know exactly what I mean,” she hissed.
“The worst,” he said.
“I need to recall all of my people to the embassy. Frankly, I don’t trust your assessment that the rest of us are off limits. Let’s hope nobody else has disappeared.” She hung up.
Berg removed his crypto card and looked up at Bauer and Manning, who appeared speechless.
“Not good. Ian Reese disappeared. Bradshaw found signs of forcible entry and a struggle at his apartment. We can assume that the Russians will strip the information out of him in a short period of time,” Berg said.
“Beyond Erin Foley’s involvement as a surveillance asset during the raid, he really doesn’t know anything,” Manning said.
“Yes and no. In terms of raw data, both the station chief and Reese were kept in the dark. The only damning thing they could confirm is the timeline for the raid. He knew that our team arrived in Stockholm the day before and that the team didn’t learn the address until the next morning. They’ll connect the dots pretty quickly.”
He had never divulged any information regarding Kaparov, nor would he ever betray that trust in any way. If Manning or Bauer knew Kaparov’s position, they would immediately try to leverage the Russian for information regarding Vektor. As director of the Bioweapons/Chemical Threat Assessment Division, Kaparov should have detailed information regarding the operations and physical security of Russia’s premier virology and biotechnology research center.
Vektor, or the Vektor Institute, served as Russia’s equivalent to the U.S.’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Army’s Chemical Biological Defense Command. In fact, the World Health Organization recognized the Vektor Institute as one of the world’s premier virology research centers. Vektor and the CDC were the only WHO-authorized repositories of the smallpox virus, which indicated the significant level of trust and prestige bestowed on the institute.
Like the CDC, other infectious diseases would be kept at Vektor for “research” purposes, representing a possible biological threat to Russia that would fall under Kaparov’s sphere of concern. When and if the time was right, he would ask his friend for help, but until then, Berg had no intention of exposing this secret.
“Obviously, I’ll let you decide how to handle your source. Let me know if a warning isn’t enough,” Manning said.
“Extraction?” Berg said, clearly surprised by Manning’s suggestion.
“I’d support something like that in this case. Your source has more than paid his or her dues. Keep it in mind. Give me until tomorrow to redline your presentation and get it back to you with more detailed thoughts. Until then, you have some preliminary notes to work from. I’ll schedule a meeting with Director Copley for the late afternoon.”
“Sounds like a plan. We’ll be on standby,” Bauer said.
“Thomas?” Berg said, stopping the National Security Branch director in his tracks at the door. “I think we might want to consider bringing Emily Bradshaw back to the States. The Russians aren’t likely to be satisfied with Ian’s level of information.”
“There’s absolutely no way they would abduct a station chief,” Manning said.
“I sense the rules changing. I’d strongly consider it,” Berg said.
Manning stared at him for a few seconds and opened the secure conference room door, disappearing from sight. Bauer gathered her materials and packed her briefcase.
“I’ll talk to you later. Sounds like you have a call to make and some slides to fix.”
“Not fix, modify. None of them were broken,” he said, closing his laptop.
“That’s because I helped you with them. I’ll be by tomorrow morning to fix the rest of them,” she said, walking toward the door.
“Your office or mine?”
“Mine, of course. Your office is still a pit. As deputy director, I get to have someone unload all of my boxes,” Bauer said.
“Sifting through the boxes is half the fun,” Berg said.
“Then I suggest you schedule some time to have fun. Catch you tomorrow,” she said and vanished.
“Yep,” he said to no one.
Berg glanced at his watch. It would be nearly midnight in Moscow. He’d call Kaparov later tonight and hopefully catch him at the office. This would make it impossible for the CIA or NSA to use their magic and find him. If they could somehow triangulate Kaparov’s cell phone, nobody would be surprised to learn that his office was at Lubyanka Square. He seriously doubted that his own agency would attempt such a backhanded trick, but he’d take the steps to minimize the risk on Kaparov’s end. It was the least he could do for an old enemy turned wary friend.
Chapter 5
Berg sat at a modest kitchen table in his townhouse and dialed the latest number provided by his friend in Moscow. He’d purchased several new prepaid Tracfones recently and activated them using dummy email accounts through an untraceable laptop at Wi-Fi hotspots located across the D.C. area. Prior to entering Kaparov’s cell number, he had dialed the CIA’s phone redirect service, which would send Berg’s call through a random, unencrypted phone number, usually a business, within the same Moscow call area. Caller ID on Kaparov’s phone would show a local call, instead of a Virginia area code that would immediately raise eyebrows.
“This must be important. It’s past your bedtime,” said a thickly accented, Russian voice.