The Last Oracle (Sigma Force #5)

Passing one of the scaffoldings stacked with supplies and spare coveralls, Gray grabbed what he needed. He passed a few bundles to Kowalski. He kept what he needed himself: a can of paint and a plastic gallon of paint thinner. He headed into the hallway under the abstract flag. Kowalski read the gallery sign at the entrance and whistled under his breath.

“Pierce, what are you planning on doing?”

Gray led the way into the heart of the museum’s most treasured exhibits. It was the main reason for the entire renovation. They entered a long darkened hall. Seats lined one side opposite a wall of paneled glass on the other. Even the chaos behind them seemed to muffle under the weight of the historical treasure preserved behind the glass, one of the nation’s most important icons. It lay unfurled on a sloped display, a tatter of cotton and wool a quarter the size of a football field. Its dyes had faded, but it remained a dramatic piece of American history, the flag that inspired the national anthem.

“Pierce…?” Kowalski moaned, beginning to comprehend. “That’s the Star-Spangled Banner.”

Gray placed the can of paint on the floor and began to twist open the cap on the gallon of highly flammable paint thinner.

“Pierce…you can’t mean to…not even as a distraction.”

Ignoring him, Gray turned to Elizabeth. “Do you still have your lighter?”

8:32 P.M.

Sitting in the security office of the National Zoo, Yuri felt the weight of his seventy-seven years. All the androgens, stimulants, and surgeries could not mask the heaviness of his heart. A numbing fear had turned his limbs to aching lead; worry etched deeper lines in his face.

“We’ll find your granddaughter,” the head of security had promised him. “We have the park closed down. Everyone is looking for her.”

Yuri had been left in the office with a blond young woman who could be no older than twenty-five. She wore the khaki safari uniform of a zoo employee. Her name tag read TABITHA. She seemed nervous in his presence, unsure how to cope with his despair. She stood, coming out from behind the desk.

“Is there anyone you’d like to call? Another relative?”

Yuri lifted his head. He studied her for a breath. Her apple-cheeked youth…the years ahead of her. He realized he’d been little older than the girl when he’d stumbled out of the rattling truck into the highlands of the Carpathian mountains. He wished he had never found that Gypsy camp.

“Would you like to use the phone?” she asked.

He slowly nodded. “Da.” He could not put it off any longer. He’d already alerted Mapplethorpe, not so much to report to him, as to gain the cooperation of the D.C. policing authorities. But the man had been distracted, busy hunting down what had been stolen. Mapplethorpe had mentioned something about Dr. Polk’s daughter. But Yuri no longer cared. Still, Mapplethorpe had promised to raise an Amber Alert for the missing child. All D.C. resources and outlying counties would be alerted. She had to be found.

Sasha…

Her round face and bright blue eyes filled his vision. He should never have left her side. He prayed she had just wandered off. But among a park full of wild animals, even that best scenario was not without its dangers. Worse yet, had someone taken her, abducted her? In her current state, she would be pliable, easily suggestible. Yuri was well familiar with the number of pedophiles out there. They’d even had trouble at the Warren with some of their early employees. There had been so many children, too many. Mistakes had happened.

But not all of the abuses had been mistakes.

He shied from this last thought.

Tabitha carried over a portable telephone.

Yuri shook his head and took out his own cell phone. “Thank you, but it is a long-distance call,” he explained. “To Russia. To her grandmother. I’ll use my own phone.”

Tabitha nodded and backed away. “I’ll give you your privacy.” She stepped into a neighboring office.

Alone, Yuri dialed the number into his international cell phone. A small chip developed by Russian intelligence would bounce the signal off several cell towers, making it untraceable, along with scrambling the communication.

He had dreaded making this call, but he could wait no longer. The Warren had to be alerted, but it was very early in the morning back there. Not even four o’clock. Still, the phone was answered promptly, the voice curt and sharp.

“What is it?”

Yuri pictured the woman at the other end of the line, his immediate superior, Dr. Savina Martov. The two had discovered the children together, begun the Warren as a team, but Martov’s ties to the former KGB had pulled her above Yuri in command. There was a saying in Russia: No one left the KGB. And despite what Western leaders might think, that did not exclude the current Russian president. The man still surrounded himself with ex-members of Soviet intelligence. Major contracts were still placed in the hands of former operatives.

And Dr. Savina Martov was no exception.

“Savina, we have a major problem here,” he said in Russian.

He imagined her face frosting over. Like Yuri, she had also undergone hormonal, surgical, and cosmetic treatments, but she had fared even better than Yuri. Her hair was still dark, her features hardly blemished. She could pass for forty years old. Yuri suspected why. She did not battle that same knot of guilt that soured his gut. The sureness of her vision and purpose shone out of her face. Only when one looked in her eyes was the deception ruined. No amount of treatments would mask the cold calculation found there.

“You’ve still not found what was stolen from us?” she asked in harsh tones. “I’ve already heard that Polk has been eliminated. So then why—?”

“It’s Sasha. She’s gone missing.”

A long silence stretched.

“Savina, did you hear me?”

“Yes. I just had a report in from one of the dormitory workers. It’s why I’m up so early. They discovered three empty beds.”

“Who? Which children?”

“Konstantin, his sister Kiska, and Pyotr.”

Savina continued her report, how a search was under way across the Warren, but her voice grew hollow, echoing as if out of a deep well as Yuri had fixated on the last name.

Pyotr. Peter.

He was Sasha’s twin brother.

“When?” he blurted out. “When did the three rebyonka go missing?”

Savina sighed harshly. “They were there at the last bed check according to the matron on duty. So sometime in the last hour.”

Yuri glanced to his wristwatch.

Around the time Sasha vanished.

Was it just a coincidence, or had Pyotr somehow sensed his twin sister’s danger? Had it set the boy into a panic? But Pyotr had never shown such talent before. His empathic scores were high—especially with animals—but he’d never shown any of his sister’s abilities. Still, as twins, they were closer than any brother and sister. In fact, they still shared their own special language, an incomprehensible twin speak.

As Yuri clutched the phone to his ear, he suspected something more sinister was happening, that unknown forces—possibly an unknown hand—were manipulating events.

But whose?

Savina barked at him, drawing back his attention. “Find that girl,” she ordered. “Before it’s too late. You know what happens in two days.”

Yuri knew that only too well. It was what they had worked decades to accomplish, why they had performed so many acts of cruelty. All in order to—

A door slammed to the side. Yuri twisted around. The head of zoo security had returned. His tanned face was dour, lined with concern and worry.

Yuri spoke into the phone. “I’ll find her,” he said firmly, but the promise was more to himself than to his icy superior. He clicked off the line and faced the tall man, switching to English. “Has there been any sign of my granddaughter?”

“I’m afraid not. We’ve swept the park. So far no sign of her.”

Yuri felt a sinking in his gut.

A hesitation entered the security chief’s voice. “But I must tell you. There was a report of a girl matching your granddaughter’s description being carried into a van near the south exit.”

Yuri stood up, his eyes widening.

A hand raised, urging patience. “The D.C. police are following up on that. It might be a false lead. There’s not much more we can do.”

“There must be more.”

“I’m sorry, sir. Also on the way back here, I was informed that someone at the FBI has arranged an escort. They should be here any moment. They’ll take you back to your hotel.”

Yuri sensed the hand of Mapplethorpe involved with this last arrangement. “Thank you. For all your help.” Yuri crossed to the door and reached for the handle. “I…I need some fresh air.”

“Certainly. There’s a bench just outside.”

Yuri exited the security office. He spotted the park bench, crossed toward it, but once out of view of the office window, he continued past the bench and strode toward the park exit.

Yuri could not put himself into Mapplethorpe’s control. Not even now. The fool knew only a fraction of what was going on, just enough to keep the interest of United States intelligence organizations whetted. They had no suspicion how the world would change in the next few days.

He had to find Sasha before Mapplethorpe did.

And there was only one way to do that.

As he exited the park through a cordon of police, he dialed his cell phone, again engaging the encryption. As before, it was answered promptly, this time by an answering machine.

“You’ve reached the national switchboard for Argo, Inc. Please leave a message…”

Argo, Inc. was the cover for the Jasons. The pseudonym—Argo—was selected because it was the name of Jason’s ship out of Greek mythology.

Yuri shook his head at such foolishness as he waited for the beep. He had murdered one of their own just hours ago. Now he needed the help of the secretive cabal of American scientists. And he knew how to get it. Going back to the Cold War, the two sides had been waging a clandestine battle for technological supremacy, each side supported by their respective military establishments and intelligence communities. The tools of war were not just intellectual, but also involved more nefarious means: sabotage, coercion, blackmail. But likewise, being men and women of science, each side operated independently of the military. Over the decades, they had come to recognize two things: there was occasionally common ground between them, but more important, there was a firm line neither side would cross.