Yuri Shumakov hurried through breakfast. He was anxious to get on with the meeting Oleg Kovalenko had set up, hopeful that he might at last be near some answers to why his younger brother had died. He found the morning pleasantly mild as he walked briskly along busy streets flanked by blooming chestnut trees. He found his friend waiting at the entrance to the Defense Ministry building. They were promptly ushered to a section that dealt with army operations. Colonel Ivan Oskin beckoned them into his office.
A tall, burly man with a reddish face, Oskin looked like he had just come from a run in the cold, though the cold was barely a memory with summer in full flower. He shook hands with Yuri. "I never had occasion to meet your brother, but I was assigned to the 24th Division. I transferred out before that terrible accident."
"Did you locate the investigative report?" Yuri asked.
Oskin tapped a thick folder on his desk. "It was necessary to get it declassified so I could show it to you. I told them you were the top criminal investigator in Minsk. With the meeting coming up, cooperation with Belarus is officially applauded."
"I trust it wasn't too much of an inconvenience," Kovalenko said.
"Not really. The army has too many other knotty problems to worry about now. This is ancient history, you know. Nobody was very concerned about it."
Just as he'd thought, Yuri reflected as he took the folder from the Colonel. He began to thumb through it as Oskin and Kovalenko turned to rehashing the case that had brought them together in court the day before. When he came to photographs of the disaster area, he was struck by the devastation. Obviously Vadim Trishin was lucky he hadn't been any closer to the building. It looked like the aftermath of an aerial attack.
He found a summary of the interrogation of several witnesses, including Private First Class Trishin. Apparently there had been multiple inspections that day, one by officers from 24th Division Headquarters and another by a KGB team. Trishin and his partner, who were guarding the compound entrance, reported the KGB delegation had left shortly before the explosion.
There was a note about the need to follow up with an inquiry to headquarters of the Committee for State Security in Moscow. If it was ever acted upon, the file contained no evidence of a reply.
He found a brief summary of the earlier theft investigation Trishin had mentioned. It indicated they were unable to find a connection between the supply officer and the sergeants who were convicted in the incident. But the mere fact of its being there gave credence to Trishin's concern.
Then he came across the autopsy report on Captain Anatoli Shumakov.
He felt a churning in his stomach and the skin crawled at the back of his neck as he read how the head had been severed by the blast. It was identified as his brother by dental records. He wasn't sure he really wanted to go on, but since he had come this far, there was no stopping now. Not until he came across an item that stopped him cold — a description of the bullet hole made by a 7.62mm round that had entered the center of the forehead and exited from the back of the head. A diagram of the trajectory showed the bullet traveling straight through Anatoli's brain.
The image of a hapless homicide victim lying in the hallway of an apartment building in Minsk immediately flashed across Yuri's mind. An accident? He hadn't bought it then, and he didn't buy it now.
What were the odds of that occurring from a random shell detonating as the result of a fire and explosion? Infinitesimal, he thought. But why had the military not questioned it and dug into the matter further?
As he leafed through the file, the answer became apparent. There were no conclusions anywhere. The investigation had been shunted aside in the midst of the confusion that had engulfed the military following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The report was never completed, apparently never reviewed by any central investigating authority. Likely part of the problem had been a reluctance to delve further into an incident involving the release of chemical agents, with the risk of undesirable publicity at a critical time. The world was already focused on the monstrous nuclear arsenal that bedeviled the commonwealth governments. The last thing they wanted was something else to muddy the international waters.
Yuri looked for the section dealing with C/B weapons. It was the only part still bearing a "restricted access" notation. He wondered if someone had slipped up and left it in. At any rate, it revealed that there had been four 82mm chemical mortar shells stored in the building. They were loaded with a nerve agent, an organophosphorous compound that was dispersed as a deadly mist on detonation of the rounds. Luckily only one soldier had been a victim of the gas, his body found not far from the building, a look of convulsive terror on his face. Dried vomit was caked on the front of his uniform.
Yuri noted speculation as to why the chemical troops had found only limited evidence of the release of the nerve agent. Considering the strength and direction of the wind present at the time, the concentration of four exploding shells should have sent a cloud of deadly mist toward the camp where the rest of the battalion was housed. But, again, no conclusions had been drawn.
Also stored in the destroyed building were several canisters of an experimental neurotoxin, a small-molecular-weight peptide that would affect the brain in a way to produce fear and erratic physical and mental behavior. Again, little evidence of these toxins was found. There was speculation that they might have been consumed by the intense heat of the explosion and fire.
"Find anything in there to satisfy your curiosity?" Colonel Oskin inquired as Yuri placed the file back on his desk.
"Some hints. Some speculation. But they drew no conclusions. Just left everything hanging." The hints led to some crucial questions, but he did not think this was the time or the place to begin his search for answers.
The colonel nodded and gave a shrug of futility. "Not the first problem the army ever left hanging. And not likely the last."
16
The sleek white executive jet settled smoothly onto the runway at Zurich's Kloten Airport and taxied to the ramp in front of a private hangar. The tail number identified it as American, but there was no display of the Stars and Stripes as found on many similar jets used frequently for overseas travel. The reason was simple. Its owner, the first passenger to descend to the tarmac, considered himself not a mere American but a citizen of the world. A tall, distinguished looking white-haired man, he moved with the easy grace of born wealth and the confident step of one to whom power came naturally. Bernard Whitehurst was heir to one of the nation's most prestigious family fortunes. He also headed one of the top international banks in New York and was chairman of the influential Foreign Affairs Roundtable.
Following him down the steps were Laurence Coyne, president and full-time administrator of the Roundtable, and a muscular man named Adam Stern.
Coyne, a short, stocky man who wore an intense look behind gold-rimmed glasses, had a permanently creased forehead that made him appear always on the verge of displeasure. It wasn't far from the truth. His position required him to deal with the inflated egos of some of the world's richest and most powerful men.
"Where's the damned car?" he muttered, looking around the ramp in vain. "He was to meet us at planeside. Let me go see what the hell… "
As Coyne scurried off toward the hangar, Whitehurst turned to the man whose peculiar talents he had called upon many times over the past few years. He chose to refer to Adam Stern by the term "facilitator," since his job was to smooth out the kinks and simplify accomplishment of the Roundtable's often quite complex tasks. But Whitehurst was aware that some of his colleagues had labeled Stern "the enforcer." It wasn't difficult to accept, considering those piercing blue eyes, a pair of impenetrable diamonds totally without warmth.