25

Chisinau, Moldova

The Black Wolf had considered this job many times. He hadn’t wished for it but sensed that someday it would come. And now it had.

He didn’t like Nudstrumov at all. In the beginning he was neutral, but over the years he had come to despise him. He had a certain haughty way of acting. Like the other day, when he kept him waiting. He had made it seem as if it was nothing, undeliberate, but the Black Wolf knew better. He knew.

He would take him leaving his office, going from the door to the car. It was easier than the house, where there would be some inconvenience getting in. The office, though, was all routine. Nudstrumov parked in the same place, left at the same time, always at ten past three. He was a most punctual man.

The Black Wolf chose his weapon—a Dragunov SVD-S with a folding butt, very common and untraceable. Technically not a sniper rifle, but he would be shooting from only across the street. The semiautomatic gun and its lead core bullets were extremely accurate.

He had already scoped the roof of the building across the street. Getting away would be as easy there as anywhere else.

It was all a matter of planning.

He checked his watch. It was past one. He had less than two hours to get into position.

26

Chisinau, Moldova

Two doctors worked at the clinic on Thursdays. One was a woman. The other was a man in his sixties named Andrei Nudstrumov.

Nudstrumov had an extensive medical background that did not intersect with Dr. Ivanski’s at all. He had come to Romania from Russia five years before, applying for medical certification. His background was extensive and he was granted “all honors,” as the registering agency called it.

He was an endocrinologist. Ivanski had been a general practitioner.

Still, Nuri was sure the two men were the same. Danny remained unconvinced, even when the short fat man who’d driven the Mercedes didn’t come out of the clinic after an hour. In the meantime, MY-PID trolled across the Internet, picking up data on Nudstrumov. He’d used a credit card a few months before, not far from the town Danny had visited. He’d bought gas, eaten breakfast and dinner, and purchased merchandise, all in a small town about seven kilometers south of the town Danny had visited.

MY-PID then correlated that series of purchases to a somewhat similar set by a third man—or at least a third name. This man had been making regular visits to the area over the past seven years. The match was not perfect—there were a few additional charges in the mix—but several things immediately jumped out at Nuri as he looked at the pattern: the visits were only once a year, at the same time of year, and the card was only used for those visits.

The man’s name was Rustam Gorgov. According to the records, he owned property in the area—a large farm about two kilometers outside of town.

So why did he stay at a motel?

“Maybe he’s got his mother-in-law at the farm,” said Flash. “That would do it.”

Flash and Danny were sitting together in the front seat of the rented Dacia, five blocks east of the building where the clinic was. Flash’s car was parked right behind him. Nuri was several blocks away in the opposite direction. They were waiting to follow the doctor out of the clinic.

“You sure these are all the same person?” Danny asked Nuri.

“Of course not,” said Nuri. “But here’s what I think. Ivanski stayed in Moldova after the camp was closed. But he didn’t practice medicine, for whatever reason. At some point either he got antsy or needed money. He adopted Nudstrumov’s identity.”

“Or he was Nudstrumov, and living in Russia,” offered Danny.

“Exactly. He buys the property under the Moldovan name, but for some reason decides he can’t practice as Ivanski. He already had his credentials, but maybe it’s the connection to the place he didn’t want known. In any event, Ivanski more or less disappears, and we have Nudstrumov.”

“And Rustam Gorgov?” asked Danny.

“Totally fictitious—the computer hasn’t found any other data on him at all. I’m sure there’s more. We just haven’t found it.”

“Where’s the connection to the assassins?” asked Flash.

“We don’t know yet,” said Nuri. “That’s why we keep looking. But there’s definitely enough that’s suspicious.”

“Maybe he’s just trying to keep an affair quiet,” said Flash. “Or he’s a drug dealer on the side.”

“He may grow marijuana on that farm,” said Nuri. “It’s a cash crop in Moldova. We have to check it out.”

“Man, I wish we’d do something more than check things out,” said Flash. “I’m getting—stale, I guess.”

Danny turned and looked at Flash. Like him, Flash was action oriented—give him a clear-cut assignment, and he was good to go. This was far more nebulous—this was like wandering through a fog and hoping to come out on the other side. There was no clear-cut path to the right door.

God, he thought, we’re miles and miles away from getting a real handle on this.

“The doctor may take us to some other connection,” said Nuri. “We have to be a little patient.”

“The problem is time,” answered Danny.

“I can follow the leads here,” answered Nuri. “You can get back to Kiev.”

“We may do that.” Danny glanced at his watch. It was five to three. The doctor should be leaving soon.

Nuri checked the signal on the tracking device, to make sure it was working. The radio signal was being sent through a commercial GPS satellite system, and was accurate to within roughly a third of a meter. Adapted from a commercial design used to track trucks over the highway, the device worked extremely well in open areas. Inside cities it could be problematic, however, as the larger buildings and other obstacles occasionally shielded the signal.

Nuri was sure they were tantalizingly close to figuring this out. All they needed was one more strategic bit of information and they’d know where and who these guys were.

They might already have it. He had originally thought the doctor was an unlikely choice to be the leader of the assassin group, but the fact that he had at least two other aliases gave him some hope. Underlings, he reasoned, had no need for multiple names.

Nuri didn’t buy most of the speculation about the human experiments. He thought Stoner was probably involved, but wondered if the helicopter crash hadn’t somehow been arranged. That wasn’t something the Agency would be too ready to admit or even investigate—it implied that whatever intelligence they’d gathered in the Revolution operation—Danny’s name for it—had been tainted, fed to them by a double agent.

Stoner.

Maybe Stoner had felt the Agency was closing in. Maybe he just wanted a change of venue. Or occupation.

Becoming an assassin, Nuri thought—well, there was a money-making retirement option he had never thought of.

His watch beeped. It was 3:00 P.M.

At exactly 3:05, MY-PID announced that Dr. Nudstrumov was coming out of his clinic and heading toward the elevator.