Covert One 6 - The Moscow Vector Read Online Free PDF Page B

afford the rents on luxury flats that ran several thousand American dollars a month. The very highest floors, those immediately below a towering central needle topped by a giant gleaming gold star, commanded prices beyond the reach of all but the richest and most powerful men. To bring in even more money, several apartments at the very top had been converted into high-prestige corporate offices.
    A tall, powerfully built man stood at a window in one of those renovated penthouse office suites. There were strands of gray in his pale blond hair, a color matched by his ice-gray eyes. He frowned, staring out across the darkened city. The long winter night still held Moscow in its freezing grip, but the sky overhead was turning faintly paler.
    A secure phone chirped suddenly on the desk next to him. A digital read-out attached to the phone blinked to life, identifying the caller. He swung round and picked it up. “This is Moscow One. Go ahead.”
    “This is Prague One,” a muffled, nasal-sounding voice said. “Petrenko is dead.”
    The blond-haired man smiled. “Good. And the materials he stole from the hospital? The case files and biological samples?”
    “Gone,” Prague One reported grimly. “They were in a briefcase that went into the river along with Petrenko.”
    “Then the matter is closed.”
    “Not quite,” the caller said slowly. “Before we caught up with him, Petrenko had arranged a rendezvous with another doctor, an American attending the same conference. They were talking together when we jumped them.”
    “And?”
    “The American broke free of our ambush,” Prague One admitted reluctant]}. “The Czech police have him in protective custody.”
    The blond-haired man’s eyes narrowed. “How much does he know?”
    The man known as Prague One swallowed hard. “I’m not sure. We think Petrenko managed to tell him something about the deaths before we arrived.
    We’re also fairly sure that the Russian was planning to hand over the medical files and samples to him.”
    Moscow One tightened his grip on the phone. “And just who is this interfering American?” he snapped.
    “His name is Jonathan Smith,” the other man said. “According to the conference records, he’s a military doctor—a lieutenant colonel—assigned to one of their medical research institutes as a disease specialist.”
    Smith? The blond-haired man frowned. He had the fleeting impression that he had heard that name before, but where? Somehow it seemed to ring a faint warning bell far back in his mind. He shook his head impatiently. He had more immediate concerns. “What are the Czech police doing now?”
    “Dragging the river.”
    “For the briefcase?”
    “No,” Prague One replied. “We have an informant inside the police headquarters. They’re only looking for Petrenko’s corpse right now. For some reason the American is keeping his mouth shut about what he was told.”
    The blond-haired man stared back out the window. “Will they find either one?”
    “The body will turn up sooner or later,” the other man admitted. “But I am confident that the briefcase is gone forever. The Vltava is wide and its current is swift.”
    “For your sake, I sincerely hope you are right,” the blond man said quietly.
    “What about this man Smith?” Prague One asked after a moment’s uncomfortable silence. “He could become a serious problem.”
    The blond-haired man frowned again. That was true enough. The American doctor might not yet have told the Czech authorities what he had learned, but eventually he would report Petrenko’s claims and the news of his murder to his nation’s intelligence services. If so, the CIA and others were likely to begin paying entirely too much attention to new reports of other mysterious illnesses. And that was something he and his employers could not risk.
    Not yet anyway.
    The man code-named Moscow One nodded to himself. So be it. Acting openly against this man Smith would be dangerous. If he