Rogue Strike (A Troy Stark Thriller—Book #6), page 10
"Sorry. That was insensitive."
Dubois picked up a can of Coke and examined it. "No bottled water in there?"
"No. It doesn't matter. Soda is plenty hydrating. Plus, it has sugar and caffeine. People give soda a bad rep, but it'll keep you alive and moving for a while."
“And the meat?”
Troy nodded. "Great stuff. It's like SPAM, only better. We've got beef," he said, as he held up the can he was eating from. "And pork." He held up an as-yet-unopened can for her inspection.
She sighed. "This is what we're having, eh?"
He shrugged. "Unless you can find an open diner."
She sat next to him on the table, removed her personal protection gear, and took a few of the saltine crackers from the pouch. She picked up one of the Coke cans. She made no move to eat or drink any of it.
They were both facing the river. Near the shore, the surface shimmered with the early daylight. Further out, the water was wedged with ice. The view was deceptively serene.
“Something's not right,” Dubois said.
“Besides the obvious?” Troy said.
Dubois shook her head. "It's too quiet. I understand that all the people are gone. But where are the birds? Isn't there any wildlife here? None at all?"
There were no wild birds calling - no crows, no hawks, no owls - nothing. There wasn't a single dog barking, not right here, and not in the distance. There were no roosters. There were no rodents or rabbits rustling through the undergrowth.
The only sound, anywhere, was that decrepit fountain.
“I doubt all the animals are dead,” Troy said.
But he couldn't be sure about that. The silence was a testament to the scope of the disaster, a warning sign not easily ignored.
“Then where are they?”
Troy dipped a cracker into the last of his greasy, fatty meat. The thought of all the animals, in an entire region, dead of cholera sent a shiver down his spine. It couldn't be.
“I don’t know.”
It was time to try Jan. There wasn't much evidence to compile here. There weren't any townspeople to interview about strangers lurking around just before the disease hit. If this was an attack, and it almost certainly was, then the attackers probably left immediately. They would have known what was coming and would have wanted to get far away from it.
The only way they would have stayed here was if they became trapped. If that happened, they were probably dead, their bodies burnt on a pile. Troy supposed it was just barely possible that they were holed up inside a cabin somewhere in this vast region, trying to wait for the crisis to pass. Finding them would be next to impossible.
Maybe Jan had some news.
Troy picked up the satellite phone. "I'm going to call the office."
***
The phone made several beeps as it looked for a connection, shook hands with a passing satellite, then bounced a signal across Europe to Spain.
A voice came on the line. "Agent Stark?"
"Good morning, Jan," Troy said. "How are you doing?"
“A better question is how are you and Agent Dubois?”
Troy glanced at Dubois, focused on her food, eating daintily with her tiny hands.
“We’re alive.”
“What is it like there?” Jan said.
"We're in Romania, inside the restricted zone. Not exactly sure where, but I can tell you we're in a village that appears to be on the River Prut."
"I have your location," Jan said. "Or something close to it. I show you very near the border, within a hundred meters of it."
"Oh, that's right," Troy said. "My partner is half-robot now. You're probably tracking her."
"Yes, I am," Jan said. "I've been tracking Agent Dubois all night. Can you tell me what you're seeing? There's very little news coming out of the quarantined zones in Romania, and none at all coming from Moldova. Satellite imagery overnight was showing almost no one on the roads except military and aid convoys. Anecdotally, we know that thousands of people are moving overland, away from the roads, but it can be difficult to get that level of detail. Now they're jamming the satellites. We're probably lucky to even complete this call."
Troy took a few seconds to gather his thoughts and think of a way to express them.
"Uh… Everyone's dead, Jan. The reason there were only military and aid convoys is because no one else seems to have survived. Also, the bodies of the dead are infectious, so both military and medical personnel have been burning them in large bonfires."
"I saw the fires," Jan said. "I was concerned about that."
"We interviewed a Romanian doctor who ran a small local hospital. By last night, nearly all the patients he had seen were dead. He estimated about a thousand dead at his facility, which only has 200 beds. Any of his staff who were exposed also died. About a third of his staff, by his count, abandoned their posts and left. When we saw him, he was operating with a skeleton crew. There were a handful of patients left alive, all of whom he suspected would be dead by morning. There was a bonfire on the hospital grounds, burning the corpses. There were dozens more bodies lined up in the halls, waiting to be cast onto the fire."
“Terrible,” Jan said.
"It was chaos at the airport when we came in. Hundreds of refugees had managed to arrive there and were attempting to rush the tarmac. The police were firing water cannons."
"The airport was overrun in the night," Jan said. "Several thousand people walked overland, away from the roads and the checkpoints. They came in from a direction the police and military weren't expecting. There's also been a disease outbreak there, by several accounts. No one seems to know the severity. But the airport is closed. Local people appear to be in control there now, and have looted the aid that had come."
Troy looked at Dubois. "Good thing we didn't take that hotel room."
"I'm sorry?" Jan said. "The connection…"
“Where is the plane?” Troy said, almost shouting.
"It's in Bucharest," Jan said. "Not far at all by air. The outbreak and unrest haven't reached there, at least not yet. I can give you directions to a different airport, and the plane can meet you. Given the circumstances, it might just be best to use a local airfield if it seems safe enough to you. There are massive delays getting out of the restricted zones. Camps have been set up at the frontiers, and thousands of people are stuck in them. It looks like it will take days or weeks for all the people to be processed."
"We're the police," Dubois said. "We can't leave?"
"You can leave, just not by the normal avenues. They'll want to hold you to see if you develop symptoms, and we need you out of there. They're burning everyone's clothes and belongings at the checkpoints. People are living in tents and wearing smocks."
"Jan, the symptoms appear in minutes or hours. People are dead before medical personnel even get a chance to look at them."
"Even so. This is what's happening."
“Jan, you said you need us out of here,” Dubois said.
For a moment, Jan seemed to be talking to someone in the room with him. Then he came back on. "Yes. We may have had a break. I was awake all night, scanning communications worldwide, arrests, deaths, rumors, everything. I built an algorithm to scan massive amounts of information, searching for certain criteria and combinations of criteria. I stumbled on a very obscure piece of data, which Miquel believes is worth following up."
“What is it?”
"About seven months ago, a Frenchman died in Belgrade, Serbia. He was a petty criminal, a thief, and a break-in man, but over a period of years he had aligned himself with radical environmentalists. The Serbian Security Intelligence Agency arrested him for the arson of an animal experiment research facility, which is considered an act of terrorism, and which killed perhaps 200 rhesus monkeys. Rather than put the man in prison for 20 years, the Serbians turned him - probably through torture - and set him loose among his former comrades as an informer."
“How did he die?” Troy said.
"He just seemed to seize up. He was found in an alleyway, not far from the Danube River, based on an anonymous tip. He was very stiff, but not from rigor mortis. At first, it was a suspected heart attack, possibly drug-related. But the policeman who arrived first on the scene became sick within a few hours. He had touched the corpse without taking any precautions. He was immediately quarantined, and died violently the next morning, of cholera, with all the typical symptoms, only more extreme. When they checked the Frenchman's corpse, it was still brimming with live cholera bacteria, 12 hours after his death."
Troy and Dubois just listened. Neither said anything.
"They were fortunate there was no wider outbreak in Belgrade at that time. Or perhaps the disease wasn't as virulent then. Maybe it wasn't fully developed yet. This was more than half a year ago. The very interesting thing was that in the day before he died, the Frenchman sent a message to his Serbian handlers."
“Which was?” Dubois said.
“He said, ‘I think they suspect me.’”
There was a pause over the line.
"His friends killed him," Troy said. "To test what they had."
Troy flashed to the madman who had infiltrated the runway last night.
“They’re going to kill everyone on Earth.”
"Possible," Jan said. "At the time, there was an unusual heat wave across Europe, and it was hot in Belgrade, the hottest since the 1800s, when somewhat accurate records began being kept. There were heavy rains, and the aging sewer system backed up into the drinking water. The citizens were told to boil water before use. The medical examiner determined that the Frenchman caught an especially deadly dose of cholera from contaminated water. An aberration, but not completely unheard of. These things happen. Then, as the months moved on, he and the policeman were largely forgotten."
“What do people think about it now?” Dubois said.
"I doubt many people are thinking about it. As I indicated, the algorithm picked it up. It's an obscure piece of information."
“Do you think this is environmentalists?” Troy said.
“It appears so, but it’s not guaranteed.”
Troy didn't love that about Jan. He often equivocated about what the information at his fingertips meant. Jan was a guy who did not go with his gut.
“So a man was sent undercover to spy on radical environmentalists,” Troy said.
“Yes.”
"And he died of a virulent, possibly weaponized form of cholera. The same or similar to the one that is killing thousands of people here in Romania and Moldova."
“That’s right.”
“His handlers were Serbian intelligence.”
"Yes. Which is why Miquel would like you to go to Serbia and investigate."
“What are we investigating, exactly?” Dubois said.
“The group, and their headquarters.”
“I guess it wouldn’t make sense to contact the police in Belgrade?” Troy said, already knowing the answer.
"No," Jan said. "Certainly not. There's somewhat more to this than I've told you. Interpol has had a surveillance presence in Belgrade for at least a decade. There is a flat, a safe house of sorts, in a very old residential building. Agents have been stationed there from time to time. As far as I can determine, the reason for an Interpol presence has been to watch the office building where this organization is located. It's three blocks away."
“You don’t know for a fact?”
"I know it's the same building. I just don't know why they've been watching it. I need a higher level security clearance to know. That's the reason Miquel isn't here with me right now. He is contacting his superiors, trying to obtain that clearance."
Troy smiled. "Waking them up, huh?" It was about 7:30 in Western Europe.
“Believe me when I say everyone he’s calling is awake.”
“Anyway, we’re going in secret?” Dubois said.
“Miquel would like our interest in this building, and the companies there, to come as a surprise to everyone.”
“We’ve just been talking about it on a satellite call.”
"End-to-end encryption," Jan said. "My mouth to your ears."
“So we’re going to monitor a building that’s already been monitored?”
"Yes," Jan said. "I hope to know more by the time you get there."
Troy looked at Dubois. She nodded.
"And guys?" Jan said. "I just want to tell you I'm very glad you survived the night."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
3:35 pm Central European Time
Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport
Belgrade
Serbia
“Looks cold,” Troy said.
The wheels of the small Interpol jet scraped the tarmac. The plane bounced, then came down a second time and slowed on the long runway, the engines winding down.
Outside the window, there was a sheen of ice or snow along the side of the runway. After a few moments, he and Dubois stepped out into the stinging air of winter in Belgrade. Troy's breath formed ghostly trails as he surveyed the airport. There were two modern terminals, glass and steel buildings. The closest, their arrival terminal, was 50 meters away.
“No welcome party,” Dubois said.
Troy shrugged. "I'm sure there's one inside."
Inside the terminal, security was tight. Soldiers in bulletproof vests and carrying machine guns or shotguns lingered in groups of three and four. In a few cases, they had dogs with them, the handlers walking large German Shepherds through long lines of waiting travelers.
“Bomb dogs, probably,” Troy said.
Drugs were no longer important at this moment. A major terrorist attack had taken place one country away, and thousands were dead. TV screens above their heads silently showed scenes of empty Romanian villages, and tent camps full of refugees waiting to exit the quarantine zones.
They reached an Immigration desk.
The officer behind the desk glanced up at Troy and Dubois, his face covered in a paper mask, his expression unreadable. He pointed a laser thermometer at both of their heads, checked the readouts, and then gestured for their passports with a curt motion. Troy handed them over without a word.
The officer scrutinized the documents, flipping through the pages with gloved fingers.
“You’ve just come from Romania?” he said in a thick accent.
“Yeah.”
“Where is the exit stamp?”
Troy shook his head. "There was a problem at the airport. They ran out of supplies, so they just sent us through. Everything is out of control over there."
Nothing was true except the last sentence. After waiting hours for the plane, he and Dubois had taken off from an abandoned airstrip Jan Bakker had found in the Romanian hinterlands. They had left the country, and the quarantine zone, without talking to anyone. They didn't wait in a quarantine camp at all. For they knew, they could have a slow motion version of the disease, and be vectors, infecting everyone they met.
Troy figured probably not, but on the other hand, anything was possible. They had just witnessed a warm weather disease wipe out a cold weather countryside.
“Why are you here?” the officer said.
“Business.”
“Occupation?” the man said.
Troy hesitated for a brief moment before answering. "Medical consultant."
"Symptoms? Headache? Chills? Fever? Vomiting? Diarrhea?"
“Buddy, if we had symptoms, we’d already be dead. We would have died on the plane.”
The man stared at Troy, eyes hard.
“Symptoms?” he said again.
“None. We’re fine.”
The officer stared at Troy for another long moment, then nodded curtly and stamped the two passports without another word. Dubois followed close behind Troy, the man saying nothing to her at all.
As they made their way through the terminal, Troy couldn't shake off the feeling of unease that lingered in the air. The place was electric, packed with people, everyone on edge. The tension was palpable.
A group of armed men in dark suits entered the terminal, their expressions grim and determined. The crowd parted before them like a wave, whispers rippling through the air.
Troy's hand instinctively went to the concealed weapon inside his jacket, which of course was not there. This job as an Interpol investigator required him to go far too many places without a gun. It wasn't natural, and he was tired of it.
“Do you see the driver?”
Their contact was supposed to meet them near the currency exchange counter, but as Troy scanned the area, he saw no one who fit the description they were given.
Dubois nudged him subtly and nodded towards a man in a dark overcoat standing alone by a pillar, away from the swarms of greeters and drivers holding up signs with hand-lettered names on them. The man's eyes were hidden behind sunglasses despite his being indoors.
They approached him, and he produced a sign like it was a magic trick. It simply appeared in his hands.
DUBOIS.
“Well, someone spelled it right,” Dubois said.
The man smiled.
"People are watching you," he said, by way of a greeting. His accent was lower-class English. The guy was maybe 30 years old, unshaven, his hair scruffy and shoulder length.
“Everyone knows you came in on that small jet, and everyone knows you’re Interpol, or maybe some kind of intelligence operation.”
Troy glanced around at the throngs of people, the heavily-armed soldiers standing around, and slowly working their way through the crowds.
“Everyone knows that?”
The man shrugged. "Everyone who matters. You guys should have hung signs around your necks. That would have made it more obvious. But only a little bit."
“Why do they care?” Dubois said.
"Why does anyone care about anything?" the man said. "Maybe they have something to hide. Or they think you do."
He glanced at the bags Troy and Dubois had over their shoulders. He gave an especially long look at Troy's green rucksack. The man made no move to help with the luggage.
