The Roswell Conspiracy Read online

  “And I’ll double check the security plan for moving the Killswitch to the test range. If someone’s planning to steal it, the likeliest scenario would be during transport, because that will be the first time the xenobium will be with the weapon outside of a secure facility.”

  Vince went silent and sighed. After two more sighs, Morgan took pity on him and lent him her laptop so he could watch his DVD.

  With Vince plugged in and tuned out, she went back to reading her novel. Though she tried to immerse herself again in the machinations of nineteenth-century British landed gentry, Morgan couldn’t keep her eyes from flicking to the crate holding the Killswitch.

  TWELVE

  Colchev sat at a metal desk in the Alice Springs warehouse office and watched the news report from Queenstown for a second time. The laptop’s streaming video cut from a view of Fay Turia’s smoldering house to the overturned jet boat lying behind a body covered in a sheet. Colchev’s lip curled in anger at the thought of his men being killed on what should have been a routine operation.

  As the anchor continued her narration of the events, the video showed two men exiting the police station. The first was a huge black man dressed in the brightest orange parka Colchev had ever seen. Bald, with a neck as thick as a telephone pole, the man was identified as Grant Westfield, an electrical engineer and former professional wrestler who was known as “The Burn” before he left the sport to join the Army.

  The slightly taller white man who followed Westfield was identified as Dr. Tyler Locke, another engineer with a company called Gordian Engineering. Though not as bulked-up as Westfield, Locke in his leather coat didn’t conform to the doughy awkward lab denizen that Colchev had worked with in the past. They both looked like men who could take care of themselves in a fight. Colchev had been surprised his men could be defeated by civilians until he saw Locke and Westfield.

  The two men ducked into a silver Audi and left without responding to questions shouted by the journalists. Colchev found Gordian’s website and read the short bios for each of them. As he suspected, both were decorated combat veterans. Locke was a mechanical engineer skilled in forensic investigation and explosives while Westfield specialized in system failure analysis and demolition.

  It wasn’t mentioned on the Gordian site, but Colchev found several news reports connecting Locke and Westfield to the discoveries of Noah’s Ark and King Midas’s tomb. Apparently, these men were gaining a reputation for finding ancient artifacts. Perhaps they were working with Fay Turia to interpret the map on the wood engraving.

  That thought gave him renewed confidence that he’d been right to seek her out. She’d come to his attention through a blog from a Roswell conspiracy theorist. Colchev had standing web searches in place for any spelling variation of xenobium connected to Roswell, and her video had come back as a match. When he saw Fay talking about her experience at Roswell, he was sure she had a link to the xenobium that he needed.

  His mole within the Lightfall program thought the xenobium that Australia possessed was the last remaining specimen in existence, but Colchev knew otherwise. Colchev’s research indicated that another sample of it had been hidden by the ancient Nazca civilization of Peru somewhere amongst their colossal desert drawings, but until he’d discovered Fay’s Roswell UFO convention video three days ago, he had no idea how to find it.

  Zotkin knocked on the office’s open door. “We’re ready for you.”

  Colchev closed the laptop and followed Zotkin to the closest trailer backed up to the warehouse’s loading platform.

  Four barrels had been anchored to the trailer’s floor and filled with loose ANFO pellets. Two blocks of C-4 plastic explosive lay next to each barrel. In addition to Zotkin, four other men watched as his electrical expert, Gurevich, crimped wires together.

  Colchev inspected the work. Everything seemed to be connected properly, but he had to be sure this setup would function as intended.

  “Let’s test it,” he said.

  While he waited for Gurevich to hook up a temporary extension to his wiring, Colchev thought it apt that yet another explosion would complete a mission that had begun at the site of the Tunguska blast in Siberia over a hundred years ago.

  According to reports Colchev dredged up long ago from dusty archives, explorer Vasily Suzdalev had been the first to the disaster area in 1916, eight years after the explosion. When he came back two months later, he carried with him an unusual metal he’d dubbed xenobium for his speculation that it had come from space. During the return journey to Moscow with his prize, Suzdalev became extremely ill, not realizing then that he’d been suffering from radiation poisoning while carrying the postage stamp-sized specimen in his pocket. The elemental structure of xenobium would remain a mystery because scientists who were testing its electrical properties applied a power surge that detonated it, resulting in the complete destruction of a five-story-tall brick building.

  When the fledgling Soviet government realized the potential of such a compact explosive, the Reds sent a now-recovered Suzdalev back to Tunguska in 1918 to find more of it, this time with a leaded case to carry any samples he might find. But a spy told the White forces of his mission, and they dispatched their own representative, a scientist and former soldier named Ivan Dombrovski, to track down Suzdalev and retrieve the weapon that might lead to the defeat of the communists.

  It was only much later, after the tsar had been executed and Dombrovski fled to America, that Suzdalev’s corpse was found in the swampy tracts of Siberia by some native tribesmen. The Soviets assumed Dombrovski gave whatever he found to the United States in return for asylum. A new search of the Tunguska area revealed no more samples of the xenobium. The secret of its source location died with Suzdalev.

  The Soviet Union sent spies to the US to discover if Dombrovski had gleaned any info about where to find more of the precious metal. Unfortunately, an attempt to steal back the Tunguska sample from the US went horribly wrong, leading to Dombrovski’s death and the destruction of the xenobium he’d spirited out of Russia. Instead of a victory for the Soviets, the operation had been a catastrophe.

  The one piece of useful intelligence had been that Dombrovski explored the world for years trying to track down another source and apparently found two strong leads: a map and proof that more of the xenobium existed. Somehow, Dombrovski had used the map to find a huge sample in the Nazca region of Peru, even taking a photo to document that it was real. But for unknown reasons, Dombrovski did not take the specimen, leaving it in South America. With Dombrovski dead and most of his records burned in a lab fire, the failed Soviet operation had destroyed any possibility of following his trail, and it was thought that the xenobium was lost forever.

  Then Colchev had had a stroke of luck. For many years he had cultivated a source within the American military weapons development community, and during their communications the mole claimed that the Australians had some xenobium of their own. It matched all the properties of the Tunguska material, and the Americans were designing a weapon to take advantage of its unique nature, paying the Australians a hefty sum to use xenobium as its explosive trigger.

  Tomorrow the Killswitch weapon system would land in Australia, and with the detonation of the truck bomb it would be Colchev’s. Four days after that, July twenty-fifth would become a day to remember for Russia.

  Gurevich unspooled the temporary cable to the center of the warehouse and connected it to a tiny detonator. He stood and said, “It’s set.”

  All of them stepped back from it as far as they could. Colchev removed a small state-of-the-art signaling device that operated on a coded spread-spectrum frequency. It had a wireless range of twenty miles, far greater than required for his purposes.

  Zotkin and the rest of the men looked at Colchev expectantly, the validation of their hard work over the last nine months held in the palm of his hand. He knew how they felt. This moment represented years of Colchev’s life.

  His specialty in the SVR had been recruiting and
handling foreign intelligence resources. He’d received four commendations for the information he’d gathered. Obtaining the Killswitch prototype would have been his greatest achievement, but the capture of Anna Chapman and her comrades had caused his fall into disgrace before he could accomplish his goal. His superiors were so shortsighted and timid that they abandoned the mission to obtain the Killswitch technology to avoid any chance of further embarrassment.

  Since they lacked the conviction to follow through, Colchev would show them what could be accomplished with the proper will and expertise. They would see how Russia could be a great country again, no longer under the heel of America’s mighty capitalist domination.

  Colchev went to university during the Glasnost years, watching his country’s steep decline in global stature. He had never known insecurity until the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Certainly there were indignities to be suffered during the communist regime—long lines for bread and toilet paper, tight restrictions on travel, the omnipresent gaze of the internal intelligence apparatus. But the people knew what it was to be safe back then. Colchev’s father, Yuri, had a steady job at a factory and there was always food on the table.

  Perestroika ripped all that away. When the Soviet Union crumbled, it was the collapse of an empire that had ruled a quarter of the Earth’s land area. He hated America for claiming victory in the Cold War and laughing at his nation’s woes.

  The economy fell off a cliff when Boris Yeltsin became president, and Colchev’s father lost his job. Crime in Moscow grew rampant. Yuri tried to open a little store with the paltry savings he had, but the fledgling Russian mafia exacted revenge when he refused to pay the protection money they demanded. On the way home from work late one night, Yuri was shot dead in the street.

  His mother never recovered. Vodka became her medicine, and she took ample doses. Colchev could have turned to the mafia himself, but he vowed never to join those pigs, who he felt were destroying his country and turning it into a kleptocracy. He wanted to help restore Russia to its former greatness, and he had an aptitude for languages, so when the foreign intelligence community recruited him, he knew it was his calling.

  He rose quickly through the ranks, focusing on his career so tenaciously that he stumbled through two failed marriages. As a fellow agent, Nadia Bedova had understood him. She knew, more than either of Colchev’s ex-wives, that the job was everything. The Chapman debacle was grievous but not insurmountable. In the end he would prevail.

  Colchev smiled and pressed the button on the handheld device. The isolated detonator went off with a bang, and his men cheered in unison. Neither of the sounds were loud enough to draw undue attention in this industrial district of town.

  He congratulated each man with a traditional Russian bear hug, finishing on a hearty backslapping embrace with Zotkin. Gurevich unclipped the temporary wires inside the trailer and began inserting detonators into the bricks of C-4, which would be buried in the ANFO barrels.

  Colchev stood quietly and admired the work of his team. In less than a week, his sacrifice would be rewarded and his reputation restored. After July twenty-fifth, he would return to his country a hero for devastating their greatest enemy, the United States of America.

  THIRTEEN

  Nadia Bedova stood patiently as the bodyguard frisked her. With a touch that was quick and efficient, he showed he was a pro by not lingering on her breasts or rear. She had come unarmed to the Sydney office tower knowing that she’d never be allowed to enter with her weapon.

  Satisfied that she was clean, the guard led her down the hall to the penthouse suite of Mulvey Gardner Trading. Andrew Hull, the company’s owner, had established the innocent-sounding firm to provide a front for his arms deals; it was one of the biggest such organizations on the Pacific Rim. Bedova had used his services herself many times. If Colchev were conducting some kind of operation in Australia, Hull would have information about it.

  Inside the corner office was a portly man in his forties who strode over to her with an outstretched hand. As he got closer, she could see evidence of the Australian’s recently implanted hair plugs.

  “Ms. Bedova,” he said with a smile. “It’s always a pleasure to see you.”

  “Mr. Hull.” She shook his hand and sat.

  “May I offer you a drink?”

  “No, I don’t have time.”

  “Ah, business only. Unfortunate. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

  “You’ve spoken to Vladimir Colchev recently.”

  Hull didn’t look away, but his smile faltered ever so slightly.

  “I’m afraid I can’t discuss my business with other customers.”

  “Even if that business was conducted with money stolen from Russian coffers?”

  “It’s no matter to me where the money comes from,” Hull said. “Surely you can see that having to worry about the source of the funds would be bad for business.”

  “I need to know what you got for Colchev.”

  Hull laughed. “There’s nothing to tell. Besides, even if there were, I wouldn’t stay in business very long if my clients felt that their trust in me could be violated so easily.”

  “Your business will be even more short-lived if my superiors feel that you are dealing with our rogue agents behind our backs.”

  The smile vanished. “My understanding was that Mr. Colchev resigned and is now operating independently.”

  “Oh, he’s operating independently. With funds he stole from the SVR. How much business do you conduct with Russian arms suppliers?”

  Hull remained silent at the rhetorical question. She already knew that more than half his income came from supplying Russian arms to rebel groups across Asia. If her country were to turn off the spigot, he would be hammered by other dealers vying to take his place.

  “What are you offering?” Hull said.

  “Besides your continued good standing with the Russian state? If the lead you give me results in the capture or death of Colchev, you will be paid five hundred thousand Australian dollars.”

  Hull shook his head. “If you fail and Colchev finds out I led you to him, he’ll come after me. That would also be bad for business.”

  In addition to the phalanx of guards she’d come through, Bedova could see that the penthouse was clad in glass thick enough to withstand an RPG blast.

  “All right. I’m authorized to make an upfront payment of a half million.”

  “Plus a bonus? Double, say?”

  Bedova paused, then nodded. “That should pay for your security for quite a while.”

  “Hmmm. One million dollars. You must want him badly. Why?”

  “His departure didn’t go well, and he had a high-level clearance. If one of your key employees suddenly left and took your greatest secrets to a competitor, what would you be willing to pay to stop him?”

  “I see your point.” He pursed his lips in thought, then said, “All right. I agree to your terms. But I require the deposit before I tell you what I know.”

  Bedova nodded confidently. She made a call and had the $500,000 wired to Hull’s account. In reality she was authorized to pay only a total of half a million dollars. She’d figure out what to do about the bonus payment later. When he was satisfied with its completion, he turned from his computer.

  “Now tell me what you know,” Bedova said.

  “Three weeks ago, Colchev came to me with an urgent request. He’d had difficulty securing some materials he needed.”

  “What materials?”

  “ANFO. Detonators. Primer cord.”

  “How much of the ANFO did he buy?”

  “Forty tons of it.”

  Bedova eyes widened. “Did he say what he planned to do with it?”

  Hull laughed again. “No, and I didn’t ask.”

  “If he’s plotting a terrorist attack, weren’t you afraid of it being traced back to you?”

  “That’s a risk we always take in this line of work, but my involvement was merel
y as a facilitator. I simply paired him with a seller, a treasurer at a mining company in the Northern Territory who had a surplus that he was trying to get rid of.”

  “Where is the attack taking place?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  “Where did he tell you to have the ANFO shipped?”

  “To a warehouse in Alice Springs.” He gave her the address. “The last shipment arrived yesterday morning.”

  “So the attack could happen at any time?”

  “I suppose so.” He paused. Bedova could see he was trying to decide whether to tell her something else. “It’s obviously in my best interests for you to succeed.”

  “You know more?” she asked.

  “Colchev may be gone when you arrive.”

  “If we miss him in Alice Springs, we may lose him for good, so you better share what you know.”

  “I don’t think his ultimate objective is in Alice Springs.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he asked me to put him in touch with someone in the Baja cartel.”

  Now Bedova was even more confused about Colchev’s intentions. “The Mexican drug gang?”

  Hull nodded. “And before you ask why, I don’t know.”

  Bedova had her suspicions why. If Colchev needed something smuggled into the US, no one had a better system than drug runners.

  She leaned forward in her chair. “Did he mention Wisconsin Ave?”

  “No.”

  This wasn’t making sense. Why would Colchev need Icarus for any of this?

  “If you’re lying to me,” she said, “I will find out. Your suppliers will dry up, and your customers will know you are persona non grata.”

  Hull put up his hands in acquiescence. “I assure you that’s all I know. If you can’t find him, I think that says more about the Russian intelligence forces than it does about me.”

  Bedova looked at him for several seconds. Hull was a skilled liar. If he was holding back, she would never know. But she didn’t think he would give her a false lead.