Day of Wrath

Wearing his full Russian Air Force dress uniform — right down to his polished brown boots — Captain Nikolai Grushtin dangled from the rafters of his own ceiling. His face bulged out over the noose tied tight around his neck. Dark stains down the back of his uniform trousers showed where he had voided his bowels in death.

Thorn sighed. “Oh, hell.”

“Hell, indeed,” Koniev echoed him. He turned away and snapped out a question to the ranking SOBR trooper in the room. The commando stiffened to attention, hurriedly replied, and then carefully handed him a folded piece of paper.

“A suicide note?” Helen asked grimly, turning away from the body dangling above them.

“So it seems,” the MVD major said cautiously. “The assault team found it on the desk over there. Right by the computer.”

Holding it by the edges, he carefully unfolded the piece of paper.

Thorn looked over his shoulder. Scrawled Cyrillic characters filled the page above a signature. The writing looked shaky, uneven.

There were splotches where the ink had run. Were they tear stains? Or sweat?

Koniev frowned. “It’s dated yesterday.” Still holding the note, he began translating. ““I, Nikolai Grushtin, write this last testament and confession in great turmoil of soul and mind. Once a loyal officer in our noble Air Force, I end my days as a murderer, a drunkard, and a peddler of drugs. I accuse Colonel Anatoly Gasparov of leading me down this evil path. It was he who played on my weaknesses until at last I succumbed — selling my honor for money and the things money could buy.

Together, we conspired to smuggle heroin into our beloved motherland — auctioning it off to the highest bidder among Moscow’s many criminal gangs.

““But then the devil named Gasparov played me false,’” Koniev continued reading out loud. He could not hide the contempt in his voice. ““He told me he no longer needed me. That he had other men who would do what I had done — and for less.

Enraged, I resolved to take my revenge. So I sabotaged his aircraft by installing contaminated fuel filters and by ensuring the fuel itself was impure. I cared nothing for the others whose lives I took.

““Now, however, I am haunted by their ghosts and by the knowledge that my crimes must soon come to light. I am ashamed of what I have done, and of what I have become. I cannot live with that shame … ”” Koniev’s voice tapered off. He looked up. “It ends there.”

Thorn swung away and stared up at the corpse suspended from the rafters. Was this it? Had John Avery and all the others died simply because of a falling out between two greedy drug smugglers?

He’d seen enough combat to know how thin the line between life and death really was — and how often survival depended more on sheer luck than on skill or virtue. But the deaths of the O.S.I.A arms inspection team members now seemed especially meaningless.

He tore his eyes away from Grushtin’s body and turned to Helen. “What do you think?”

She looked equally troubled. “It seems plausible. At least on the surface.” She glanced at Koniev. “We need other samples of Grushtin’s handwriting, Alexei. And an autopsy. As soon as possible.”’ The MVD officer nodded rapidly. “I will arrange it.” He snapped out another string of orders to the senior SOBR trooper and then rejoined them.

“The commandos will touch nothing until a crime scene unit arrives.”

Thorn nodded toward the personal computer on Grushtin’s desk. “You should also have somebody take a close look at the files on that machine, Major. If we’re lucky, this bastard may have been keeping track of their suppliers and maybe even their customers.”

“Good idea, Peter,” Helen said quietly. Her hand rubbed at her left leg, unconsciously tracing the faint scar left by the bullet that had severed her femoral artery two years before.

He knew what she was thinking and remembering. A partially wrecked laptop computer had been the only real prize they’d netted from the raid where she’d been so badly wounded. But her sacrifice had not been in vain. The captured computer had yielded encryption software that had allowed them to tap into a deadly terrorist group’s e-mail communications network.

Almost against his will, Thorn found himself staring back up at the grotesquely bloated face of Captain Nikolai Grushtin. Had the dead man told them the truth in his apparent suicide note?

Or had he taken other, darker secrets with him to the grave?

JUNE 2

_{Criminal Investigation Morgue, Militia Headquarters, Moscow}

Helen Gray took a shallow breath and looked away from the stainless steel autopsy table — refocusing her attention on cracks in the room’s green wall tiles and then on the bright fluorescent lights overhead.

She had witnessed many autopsies in her years with the FBI — first as a student at the academy and later as a field agent. But she’d never been able to get used to the cold, clinical butcher’s work required to extract useful information and evidence from a corpse.