Plague Bomb Read Online Free PDF Page A

we’re strictly on our own on this one. Now let’s get moving, I’ve a gut feeling tells me the Reds are going to be looking for those civvies as well, and they won’t be wasting any time ...’

    THREE

The hall was magnificent, as was every room in the Kremlin that Rozenkov had been led through, but the only feature of it that he took any real note of was the brilliant light from the many crystal chandeliers flooding into every corner of its vast interior.
    It was a wry interest, founded only on a comparison of the lavish use of light bulbs here, and the difficulty he’d experienced in getting even a single forty-watt for his desk lamp at the Lubyanka, let alone the special electrical apparatus they’d been unable to obtain for the Intensive Treatment wing of the interrogation block.
    He was not quite alone in that huge apartment. At its far end, flanking carved and inlaid double doors, were immaculate soldiers of the elite Kremlin Guard.
    Rozenkov had done the best he could with his appearance, but he knew that when he passed between those two men he would by comparison be little better than a uniformed scarecrow. Their boots had walked no other surface than these highly polished floors, their jackets and trousers and caps had never been exposed to the elements. It was not security nor ceremony alone that put them there in that condition. The colonel recognized a contrived situation when he saw one; he should, he arranged enough for prisoners, in order to instil uncertainty, and inflict fear.
    It was for the same reason, to over-awe and unsettle him, that he’d been ushered to the only chair in the surprisingly spartanly furnished Czarist showpiece. To stand would have betrayed nervousness, sitting removed the risk of giving that impression but meant his jacket would become creased, and so he sat forward, just a little, to keep his back from contact with the seat’s elaborate embroidery.
    Like chess, for every move there was a counter-/ move, and he was good at chess. Under pretence of smothering a slight cough with the back of his hand he glanced at his watch. One hour and forty-nine minutes. Not much of a wait set against the years he had spent working to get here.
    The doors swung silently open. Colonel Yuri Nikolai Rozenkov stood, tugged straight the hem of his jacket and started forward. He realized he was sweating; he, who had killed a hundred men himself and signed away the lives of countless thousands more, he was experiencing fear.
    As he approached and passed between them he could have sworn he saw the guards’ blank expressions animate for the merest fraction of a second in sardonic smiles before instantly reverting to their previous immobility. They knew what he was going through. Rozenkov let his camera-sharp eye snap memory of them both and file the images in the ‘retribution pending’ section of his mind. Should they ever find themselves within the reach of his power, he would take great satisfaction in prompting their recollection of this moment before making their lives unpleasant, and shorter.
    There was more furniture in the side room. Much smaller than the hall, it was no less sumptuously decorated. If anything its ornamentation was a trifle richer, with gold leaf glinting from every corniche.
    Eight men stood in a formal semi-circle in the centre of the enormous Persian carpet that dominated the room. They in turn dominated it, in Rozenkov’s eyes.
    Several of the group were members of the Politburo, including two rumoured contenders for the shortly to become vacant position of foreign minister, but senior among them was Ivan Forminski, a squat gorilla of a man whose political clout was the match of his reputed physical strength, and who was said, though only ever in whispers, to be within reach of the absolute pinnacle of power, the Presidency itself.
    The stakes were suddenly much higher. At most Rozenkov had expected one, perhaps two tired old members of the Politburo, their presence