"What's the extended weather forecast?"
"Hot and dry, old boy. I hope the athletes are fit. They'll need to be."
"Well, then, this fogging system will be a lifesaver," Gearing observed. "Just so the wrong people don't fool with it. With your permission, I'll have my people keep an eye on this thing."
"Fine," the senior cop agreed. The American was really fixated on this fogging system, but he'd been a gas soldier, and maybe that explained it.
Popov hadn't closed his shades the previous evening, and so the dawn awoke him rather abruptly. He opened his eyes, then squinted them in pain as the sun rose over the Kansas plains. The medicine cabinet in the bathroom, he found, had Tylenol and aspirin, and there were coffee grounds for the machine in the kitchen area, but nothing of value in the refrigerator. So he showered and had his coffee, then went out of the room looking for food. He found a cafeteria-a huge one-almost entirely empty of patrons, though there were a few people near the food tables, and there he went, got breakfast and sat alone, as he looked at the others in the cavernous room. Mainly people in their thirties and forties, he thought, professional looking, some wearing white laboratory coats."Mr. Popov?" a voice said. Dmitriy turned.
"Yes?
"I'm David Dawson, chief of security here. I have a badge for you to wear"-he handed over a white plastic shield that pinned to his shirt "and I'm supposed to show you around today. Welcome to Kansas."
"Thank you." Popov pinned the badge on. It even had his picture on it, the Russian saw.
"You want to wear that at all times, so that people know you belong here," Dawson explained helpfully.
"Yes, I understand." So this place was pass-controlled, and it had a director of site security. How interesting.
"How was your flight in last night?"
"Pleasant and uneventful," Popov replied, sipping his second coffee of the morning. "So, what is this place?"
"Well, Horizon set it up as a research facility. You know what the company does, right?"
"Yes." Popov nodded. "Medicines and biological research, a world leader."
"Well, this is another research-and-development facility for their work. It was just finished recently. We're bringing people in now. It will soon be the company's main facility."
"Why here in the middle of nothing?" Popov asked, looking around at the mainly empty cafeteria.
"Well, for starters, it's centrally located. You can be anywhere in the country in less than three hours. And nobody's around to bother us. It's a secure facility, too. Horizon does lots of work that requires protection, you see."
"Industrial espionage?"
Dawson nodded. "That's right. We worry about that."
"Will I be able to look around, see the grounds and such?"
"I'll drive you around myself. Mr. Henriksen told me to extend you the hospitality of the facility. Go ahead and finish your breakfast. I have a few things I have to do. I'll be back in about fifteen minutes."
"Good, thank you," Popov said, watching him walk out of the room. This would be useful. There was a strange, institutional quality to this place, almost like a secure government facility… like a Russian facility, Popov thought. It seemed to have no soul at all, no character, no human dimension that he could identify. Even KGB would have hung a photo of Lenin on the huge, bare, white walls to give the place some human scale. There was a wall of tinted windows, which allowed him to see out to what appeared to be wheat fields and a road, but nothing else. It was almost like being on a ship at sea, he thought, unlike anything he'd ever experienced. The former KGB officer worked through his breakfast, all of his instincts on alert, hoping to learn more, and as quickly as he could.
"Domingo, I need you to take this one," John said.
"It's a long way to go, John, and I just became a daddy," Chavez objected.
"Sorry, pal, but Covington is down. So's Chin. I was going to send you and four men. It's an easy job, Ding. The Aussies know their stuff, but they asked us to come down and give it a look-and the reason for that is the expert way you handled your field assignments, okay?"
"When do I leave?"
"Tonight, 747 out of Heathrow." Clark held up the ticket envelope.
"Great," Chavez grumbled."Hey, at least you were there for the delivery, pop."
"I suppose. What if something crops up while we're away?" Chavez tried as a weak final argument.
"We can scratch a team together, but you really think somebody's going to yank our chain anytime soon? After we bagged those IRA pukes? I don't," Clark concluded.
"What about the Russian guy, Serov?"
"The FBI's on it, trying to run him down in New York. They've assigned a bunch of agents to it."
One of them was Tom Sullivan. He was currently in the post office. Box 1453 at this station belonged to the mysterious Mr. Serov. It had some junk mail in it, and a Visa bill, but no one had opened the box in at least nine days, judging by the dates on the envelopes, and none of the clerks professed to know what the owner of Box 1453 looked like, though one thought he didn't pick up his mail very often. He'd given a street address when obtaining the box, but that address, it turned out, was to an Italian bakery several blocks away, and the phone number was a dud, evidently made up for the purpose.
"Sure as hell, this guy's a spook," Sullivan thought aloud, wondering why the Foreign Counterintelligence group hadn't picked up the case.
"Sure wiggles like one," Chatham agreed. And their assignment ended right there. They had no evidence of a crime for the subject, and not enough manpower to assign an agent to watch the P.O. box around the clock.
Security was good here, Popov thought, as he rode around in another of the military-type vehicles that Dawson called a Hummer. The first thing about security was to have defensive depth. That they had. It was ten kilometers at least before you approached a property line.
"It used to be a number of large farms, but Horizon bought them all out a few years ago and started building the research lab. It took a while, but it's finished now."
"You still grow wheat here?"
"Yeah, the facility itself doesn't use all that much of the land, and we try to keep the rest of it the way it was. Hell, we grow almost enough wheat for all the people at the lab, got our own elevators an' all over that way." He pointed to the north.
Popov looked that way and saw the massive concrete structures some distance away. It was amazing how large America was, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought, and this part seemed so flat, not unlike the Russian steppes. The land had some dips and rises, but all they seemed to do was emphasize the lack of a real hill anywhere. The Hummer went north, and eventually crossed a rail line that evidently led to the grain silos-elevators, Dawson had called them? Elevators? Why that word? Farther north and lie could barely make out traffic moving on a distant highway.
"That's the northern border," Dawson explained, as they passed into non-farm land.
"What's that?"
"Oh, that's our little herd of pronghorn antelopes." Dawson turned the wheel slightly to go closer. The Hummer bumped over the grassy land.