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MANHATTAN

B orodin sipped his after-dinner Armagnac and thought of lost worlds and worlds to come.

A generation ago, he and a group of other young KGB officers had seen the handwriting on the wall, though none of them in that long ago summer and fall of 1989 could ever have imagined how great the loss would actually be. All they knew was that that weakling Mikhail Gorbachev was undermining the Motherland and they had to do something about it.

At the time, all their hopes had been pinned on the great closed city of Chelyabinsk, one of an archipelago of Naukograd , science cities. The rest of the Soviet Union was going to hell, the situation even worse than the idiots of the Politburo realized, but in the Naukograd, things held. Orderly and wealthy and elite, great things were coming if only the country could hold out.

The greatest invention, what was going to change the world forever, was being slowly pieced together by a genius level nuclear physicist named Nikolai Darin in Chelyabinsk, a Naukograd specialized in nuclear weaponry. Darin was working on man-portable nuclear weapons, called Deti, Little Ones, and they were going to change Russian history. World history.

Borodin had seen the specs of the nuclear weapons. They could fit into a backpack. He had no idea how Darin could do it, but the end result would be nuclear bombs that were shielded and could be carried in on foot and manually set with a timer. The backpacks were light enough to be easily carried and would pass unnoticed.

Borodin had trained with backpacks heavier than the bombs.

Small powerful bombs that could be carried to the target instead of fired at the target were game changers. As Darin worked to perfect them, it was a race against time whether that traitor Gorbachev could bring the country to ruin before Borodin and his group could save it.

In the end, Gorbachev won.

The KGB plan had been to deploy six man-portable nuclear weapons in America, one for each of the great cities: New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami. All the great military deterrents America could deploy would be useless. They were bombs that had no trajectory, could not be destroyed mid-air. The bombs would suddenly, without any warning, and with no known source, explode. The President of the United States couldn’t counter attack because no one would claim the bombs.

Six cities destroyed, radioactive deserts until the end of time. America plunged into another great depression or worse. The Soviet Union finally ready to soar after having lost Afghanistan.

That still baffled him. Still, after all these years. The glorious country that had defeated the Nazis, that had withstood a siege of three years in Stalingrad, brought low by Stone Age goatherds. It still burned. Gorbachev had simply pulled the troops out and that was when Borodin and his colleagues had all understood that the Soviet Union could not stand for long.

A game changer was necessary.

When pressed, Darin could give no deadline for completion of the bombs.

At the time, there had been huge tumults, rebellion in the streets. Stalin would have thrown a million men in the labor camps to quell the rebellion, but Gorbachev bleated about glasnost and perestroika.

The KGB was putting enormous pressure on Darin’s team. The Deti were necessary.

The Soviet Union pulled back from Afghanistan in February, 1989. The Berlin Wall fell in November. In December, Darin was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. The evening of the ceremony, he and his wife were killed in a car accident.

Hearing the news, Borodin and three other KGB officers rushed to Chelyabinsk only to find…nothing. The Deti were not there. Darin’s colleagues swore that the Deti were years from reality.

Two years after that, the Soviet Union was no more, and the country plunged into chaos. Tanks, weapons, RPGs—gone. Entire missile silos were lost. No one ever mentioned man-portable nukes ever again.

Borodin and his co-conspirators, now that there was no Soviet Union to save, scattered to the winds. Like everyone else, Borodin plundered the state that was falling apart before his very eyes, grabbing mineral rights to natural gas fields in Siberia. Though he’d loved the KGB, he found he had a head for business. He founded Intergaz, which grew to be one of the largest energy companies in the world.

He made his peace with being on the losing side of history by becoming a very very rich man.

Yet history has a way of bouncing back into the present.

Borodin kept in close touch with colleagues in the successor to the KGB, the FSB. He made of point of hiring former or retired FSB agents at very lucrative salaries in Intergaz. Everyone at the FSB knew they could count on Borodin and in return he used FSB resources often.

And then—and then. Borodin’s world turned upside down.

Maybe he could wipe out the last three decades in one stroke.

The American government had been peppered with spies and moles put there by the KGB for decades. An entire machine had been built for this, children in remote locations trained from a young age to be infiltrated into America. Special English-only schools, growing up watching videotaped American TV programs specially air lifted into the Soviet Union. Access to the finest dentists because the one thing the Amerikanski did well was dentistry. The program had been a wild success and spies had been seeded everywhere, a battalion of them. The program was code named Operation Yankee.

Borodin had felt so proud every time one of his Russian kids who could pass for an American got sent off to college to begin the work of sapping America from within.

And then—disaster struck. Nobody could have predicted that the country they had sworn allegiance to, the country that had given them a lifetime journey to fulfill, would disappear, almost overnight.

Suddenly these kids, many of them graduates of American colleges, placed at entry level jobs in the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, law enforcement agencies throughout the land, kids destined to rise through the ranks and even someday run the agencies—suddenly they had no one to report to.

The KGB office running the moles melted away. The KGB itself disappeared and reappeared as the FSB with an entirely different staff. The KGB’s name had been spoken in utter fear for the seventy years of the existence of the Soviet Union. The FSB was essentially just another bureaucracy.

The moles aged, rose up through the ranks, and most of them had forgotten the Motherland. After all they’d been raised to be Americans from the age of 10 onward.

Borodin had forgotten all about the program, busy building Intergaz into one of the largest corporations in the world.

And then a report crossed his desk. Later, he was able to reconstruct the jagged path it took to him.

A Russian double agent recruited in 1987 into the FBI under the auspices of Operation Yankee. Career FBI, now retired with a very nice pension. In the early years he’d faithfully filed reports but in the end, with no one to read them or even accept them, he’d simply gone native. Had a great career in three major metropolitan areas, won several commendations, and had forgotten a lot of his Russian. Yuri Grigori had permanently become Roy Gregory.

During the runup to his retirement Gregory come across some reports from the Domestic Terrorism desk, Russian subsection, which after 9/11 had become a dusty backwater. He’d spent his last years at the FBI overseeing the transferral of paper documents to hard disk.

He’d found what he considered something of minor interest and as a last volley of his truncated career as a Russian mole, had sent it on to his masters at the FSB.

Knowing that Borodin had always been interested in the object of the report, someone faithful to him in the FSB forwarded it to him. It took three weeks for Borodin to open it, since he was busy negotiating the construction of a gas pipeline through Kazakhstan, but when he did all thoughts of energy prices and contracts fled from his head.

This changed absolutely everything. Everything he thought he knew had been wrong.

Nikolai Darin was alive.

Or rather, he was dead but he’d died in 2008.

He hadn’t died after receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics, he’d defected .

Borodin then made a second, more thorough visit to Chelyabinsk, now a deserted town with only a few aging functionaries guarding essentially nothing. Again, no one knew anything of the small nukes, though this time they admitted that there had been rumors. But it had all been a long time ago and most everyone who knew anything was dead.

A sharp encrypted email to Roy Gregory to gather more intel had spooked the man and only the promise of a substantial payment ensured his cooperation.

Borodin was going to have Gregory eliminated just as soon as the project was complete. But in the meantime he needed Gregory to dig further.

The FBI files were classified, of course. But a lot of time had gone by and Russia wasn’t a priority. They were hard to get but not impossible. Certainly not for someone who had a hundred thousand incentives like Gregory did.

Nikolai Darin and his wife Irina defected to the CIA in Sweden, right after the Nobel Prize ceremony on December 10th. The CIA faked their death, debriefed them and then passed them on to the FBI, who debriefed them and then they were finally settled by the US Marshal’s Office in their new identity.

Nikolai Darin didn’t die the night after receiving the Nobel Prize. He defected.

When Borodin read that, he had to sit back in his comfortable chair, looking out over the Kremlin from his corner office as CEO of InterGaz, and still his pounding heart.

To his shame the first thought that ran through his mind was not that the Deti might exist somewhere. Rather, his first thought—his first emotion—was pure rage at Darin. Fucking rat deserting the sinking Soviet Union! Defecting to his country’s enemies! He’d been working on something that could straighten the uneven balance of power, that could place Russia at the head of the world, and he’d chosen to defect.

Borodin was a well educated man and he knew that Dante had placed traditori , traitors, on the lowest circle of hell. Damn straight. Darin should burn for all eternity. Instead, Darin had had a perfectly pleasant life in a small town outside Chicago, with a cover as Estonians for himself and his wife. He’d even worked as an engineer in a factory. They’d had a child, a girl.

If Borodin could, he’d kill Darin but he was too late. They died in a car accident.

Reading between the lines, Borodin could almost feel the frustration the Americans felt with Darin. Because it was clear he was supposed to deliver…something. Something he never did deliver.

Borodin knew exactly what that something was.

Six somethings. Six tiny but powerful nuclear bombs that could destroy a country with no payback.

Darin hid the six bombs and the codes. The Deti were somewhere in America, Borodin was sure of it. Darin and his wife were dead, but there was a daughter.

It took another fucking hundred thousand dollars to get Gregory to dig further into the files but he finally came up with the current identity of the daughter, who’d changed her name. Her birth certificate said Katrin Valk but she changed her name when she turned eighteen. She was now Felicity Ward.

Felicity Ward, mid twenties, graduate of MIT, lived in Burlingham, Vermont.

There was a photo taken of her upon graduating the technical university and Borodin, who had eyes to see, could see Mother Russia in every line of her very pretty face. She looked like her mother, who had been a famous beauty.

It was as if the world had been slumbering, just waiting for Borodin to push the levers of the world and move it in a new direction. Suddenly, the pace of events picked up.

Via a roundabout route, Borodin contacted a Vor , head of one of the great Mafiya clans, who in turn had strategic alliances with the Chechens, who in turn had connections to their terrorist brethren. Borodin was delighted not to have contact himself because he could never hide his distaste for the kind of men who’d delivered the first nearly fatal blow blow to the Soviet Union. But via the Vor he was able to send a clear message.

What was the going price for a ‘small’ nuclear weapon, that did not require a missile launch.

Twenty million dollars was the price. Each.

Borodin was very rich but one hundred twenty million dollars was one hundred twenty million dollars. And someone else was willing to set them off. The goatherds hadn’t even asked if it would be possible to detonate them remotely which had been a big big problem in Borodin’s day. How to deliver without sacrificing the deliverer.

Luckily, the Islamists didn’t have that problem. They had plenty of kretin lining up to sacrifice themselves for the cause, stepping instantly into paradise after blowing themselves up.

Perfect. Absolutely perfect. A whole worldwide movement willing to bring America down. They’d happily take the blame should a devastated America still have some resources left for retaliation. Russia would watch America implode, take revenge with what resources they had left on the wrong people, and happily scoop up Europe and bring its traitorous breakaway provinces back into the fold. Ukraine finally Russian again. Russia would become the indispensable country.

And Borodin himself would be one hundred twenty million dollars richer.

Doing well by doing good.

Of course, he needed the girl. Darinova.

He checked his Patek Philippe and frowned. Anatoli should have reported in by now. He’d sent one of his ambitious young managers to intercept the girl. Anatoli Lagoshin. He’d volunteered, hoping it would further his career.

So where was he?

In that very instant Borodin’s cell phone rang and he smiled. Yes. Yes, perfect. He was moving with the very tides of history. He could feel it in his bones.

He was still smiling as he checked the caller and accepted the call. He wasn’t smiling ten seconds later.

“I’ve lost her,” Anatoli said.

Portland, Oregon

Sean ‘Metal’ O’Brien took over.

Lauren was shocked and his teammate Jacko put his arms around her. Lauren was Jacko’s priority but that was okay. Jacko wasn’t trained as a medic and he was.

The woman had fallen into his arms, like a wounded comrade. She was his.

Her eyes fluttered shut, then she forced herself to open them. She didn’t want to let go, was afraid to.

She needed care but she needed reassurance more. He peeled back the coat, pulled up the sweater, examined the wound.

Thank God. She’d lost a lot of blood. God only knew when she’d been knifed and the wound hadn’t been dressed. But though the wound was about an inch deep and was going to require a lot of stitches, it hadn’t nicked any arteries or organs.

He stopped for a second, overwhelmed with rage, willing his hands to stillness. The wound itself wasn’t that serious—the main danger was blood loss. With a blood transfusion and antibiotics it would be just a question of healing time.

He’d seen far, far worse in battle. Teammates who had been blown up, who’d been gut shot. This was nothing like that.

But they had been warriors, trained for battle, ready and willing to inflict worse on the enemy. Not this.

He looked at the slice, gaping slightly open, sullenly bleeding. It was an abomination on the smooth pale skin of this beautiful young woman. She was lovely, delicately built, scared at what had happened to her.

What had happened was some fucker took a knife to her. Sliced her open. Probably willing to do even more to her if she hadn’t managed to get away. He didn’t know the story but if she managed to get away from a man with a knife she must be smart and resourceful. What the fuck? In the world as it should be, she shouldn’t have to worry about men with knives.

Metal was all about making the world a safer place, a place where beautiful young women didn’t have to dodge knife-wielding fuckheads.

“Metal?”

Jacko’s low voice jerked him back to reality. He wrestled his emotions back into his combat box. No place and no time for emotion when dealing with wounds.

His kit was well organized and he got what he needed without looking.

Felicity’s eyes hadn’t left his once. He was her lifeline and he wasn’t going to let her down.

“Okay honey,” he said. “I’m going to disinfect the wound and bind it up, then we’re going to a place where we can reinfuse you and stitch that slice up. Okay?”

She grasped his wrist with both hands. Her hands were ice cold. He kept a frown off his face as he held her hand, surreptitiously putting a thumb on her pulse. A thready 50 beats per minute. Blood pressure very low. They had to get going.

“No…hospitals,” she gasped. “Can’t…leave a trace.”

“No hospitals,” he agreed, putting on latex gloves. “No trace. Now hold still just a second, this might sting.”

Her face scrunched when he disinfected the wound, but she didn’t make a sound. Good girl.

“So, Felicity,” he said calmly, “It is Felicity, isn’t it? That’s what Lauren called you.”

Try to keep the patient engaged, try to ask simple yes or no questions.

She nodded.

“That’s a pretty name. Felicity. Sort of means happiness, doesn’t it?”

She nodded again, huge sky blue eyes unblinking.

“Well here’s the deal, Felicity. I’m going to apply some coagulating powder on the wound and then bind it up. I understand you don’t want to go to a hospital, you’re afraid the guy who attacked you might find you. He will not find you. And even if he does, Jacko—that’s the mean-looking guy over there—and I have your back. You’re safe with us, I promise. But we need to take you somewhere where you can get a blood transfusion because you’ve lost blood. Do you know your blood type?”

“A positive,” she whispered.

“Good girl,” he said. “If we know your blood type we don’t need to use plasma, we can use blood directly. And you know? I happen to be A positive too, so if where we’re going is low on your blood type I can donate. I’m really healthy, don’t worry about anything.”

She was watching him so very carefully. Listening hard with every organ she had, it seemed. Not just her ears but through her skin and eyes. She nodded. “Okay,” she whispered. “No worries. No worries at all.” Then she rolled her eyes and tried to grin at him.

Oh God. Beautiful and brave. With a sense of humor.

He taped gauze over the wound then wrapped it, the best he could do if she didn’t want to go to an official hospital. It would hold until they got to where they were going.

“I’m going to carry you to my vehicle, is that okay?”

She nodded, blue eyes big with fear.

Metal slid his arms under her and rose easily. She weighed nothing, certainly less than the heavy rucksack plus heavy medic bag he carried into battle.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “Promise. You’re safe now.”

“No such thing as safe.” She closed her eyes.

Lauren had her coat on. “Where are you taking her?” she asked.

This was tricky. Jacko knew, but nobody else in the company did. Manuel’s clinic was a secret. Manuel wasn’t going to appreciate having outsiders brought along. However, Felicity would be reassured by Lauren’s presence so Lauren was coming.

Metal made his voice hard. He liked Lauren, but this was serious. “We’re going to a place you are going to forget about as soon as we leave. Am I clear?”

Jacko narrowed his eyes at the tone Metal took with Lauren, but tough shit. This was important.

Lauren merely nodded. “Yes, of course. If they can help Felicity without notifying the authorities, which is what she is frightened of, then great. But I want to stay with her.”

Metal nodded, walking out the door with Felicity in his arms. She was conscious but kept her eyes closed. Her energy was draining minute by minute.

“We’ll go in separate vehicles,” he told Jacko, who immediately steered Lauren to his SUV.

Metal put Felicity in the back seat, lying down.

“Okay,” he said softly. She’d opened her eyes again and looked at him. It was dark outside, the only light coming from the streetlight and the lamp over Lauren’s porch. Felicity’s sky blue eyes reflected the little light there was, making it look like her eyes glowed in the dark. “I’ll drive as fast as I can but without any sudden stops or fast curves. I can’t put the seat belt on you, but you should hold onto it. Okay?”

She nodded silently. In the dim light he could barely make out her features, the streetlight illuminating only the pale blade of her nose and outlining high cheekbones. The urge to kiss her on the forehead was so great that he scrambled out fast and climbed into the driver’s seat.

The weather was really bad but Metal was a good driver. Rain or shine, he could get just about any vehicle smaller than a tank to where he wanted to go. Though it was tricky driving as fast as he could while making the ride as comfortable for her as possible.

Pity she couldn’t go to St. Vincent’s which wasn’t far. Instead they were going to La Clìnica.

It was a clinic for illegal aliens who didn’t dare go to the hospital for medical care because they had no documentation. No health insurance, either. It was run by Manuel Gomez, a former Marine Metal had bonded with on a cross training exercise in Somalia. Gomez had had an illustrious career in the military and no one had known that he was illegal. His parents had crossed the border, desperate to flee from the first of the cartel drug wars, when Manuel was eight. He’d enlisted with fake documents but he’d been such an outstanding soldier that even if someone suspected, they’d turned a blind eye. He’d trained as a medic and had gone on to medical school afterward. Manuel was one of the best doctors Metal had ever seen.

He’d set up the clinic that ran with volunteer doctors and on the basis of donations, which were generous. Many legal immigrants had relatives who were undocumented but needed care. The clinic saved lives daily.

Metal had phoned ahead and Manuel was waiting for them. Metal carried Felicity in, careful not to jostle her. Jacko and Lauren trailed behind.

The clinic was in a warehouse carefully disguised from the outside to look abandoned. Lucky thing Felicity was unconscious as he carried her in because she might have balked. Lauren and Jacko followed him in. Lauren was muttering darkly until Jacko shushed her.

They went through two rooms, dusty and dark, with broken machinery and rusted parts scattered over the bare concrete flooring before they came to big double doors and, when Jacko reached past him and opened them, Metal heard Lauren gasp.

It was a small, immaculate clinic, capable of dealing with everything from broken bones to minor surgery. Jacko contributed money to the clinic and Metal contributed money and time.

No one asked for documentation or insurance papers.

When Metal got Felicity on a gurney, Manuel wheeled her into a side room and started infusing her. Metal stayed with her while Jacko and Lauren remained in the small entrance that served as a waiting room. There was a row of chairs and they sat, Jacko’s arm around a pale Lauren.

Felicity regained consciousness while being infused. After about twenty minutes, Metal gently took Felicity’s hand and pinched the nail of her right index finger, hard. The nail bed turned white then immediately turned pink as blood pressure reinfused the nail. Metal looked at Manuel, who nodded.

He’d injected a local anesthetic and had started stitching her up. Metal stayed by his side. They’d worked together often, but here Metal wasn’t assisting. He was holding Felicity’s hand. She clutched his, silently asking him not to leave her.

No, no he wasn’t going to leave her. You wouldn’t be able to pull him from her side with bolt cutters and a crane.

Manuel had a delicate hand with stitches, which Metal didn’t. It was the reason he was happy to have Manuel do the honors. Metal was used to battlefield stitches and nobody gave a shit what kind of scar they’d leave. Manuel’s stitches were small, precise, delicate. They’d leave a scar that in time would fade to a thin white line. It would barely mar that smooth, pale, perfect skin. Metal would have left a big Frankensteinian ladder-backed scar.

When Manuel finished stitching her up, Metal checked her out. Her hand in his was warmer, not cold and clammy like before. His thumb at her wrist revealed a faster, stronger pulse. Manuel would measure her blood pressure but Metal could measure BP without instrumentation. He pegged it at 120 over 70 and he was never wrong.

Manuel pumped up the cuff and looked at the dial. “120 over 70,” he announced. “Pretty good.”

Felicity’s face had more color in it, lips no longer with a blueish cast. Her eyes were losing that bruised look.

She was on her way to recovery.

Her eyes had never left his as Manuel stitched her up. He started dressing the wound. “So, Miss?—”

“Felicity,” Metal answered at the same time Felicity did.

Manuel laughed. A patient who didn’t want their last name known was nothing new to him. “So, Felicity, then.” He had a pleasant voice, with the faintest of Hispanic accents. “I’m leaving you in Metal’s care. He’s good, he knows what he’s doing. I’m going to give you a blister of antibiotics and Metal knows how to change your dressing. You’re good to go.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, rolling her head on the gurney to smile faintly at Manuel.

Manuel laughed. “I don’t want to say ‘any time’ because I sincerely hope never to see you here again. But in any case—you’re welcome. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have a gunshot wound to see to. Bad guys are busy tonight.”

With a cheery wave, he disappeared.

No mention of money had been made but Metal made a note to up his monthly contribution and to donate a few extra hours.

An hour after carrying Felicity in, Metal wheeled her back out again. Lauren jumped up and ran to Felicity’s side. Lauren blinked and smiled. “Oh my gosh, you look so much better!” Lauren shuddered. “I’ve been—we’ve been so worried!”

“Nah.” Jacko placed a heavy arm around around Lauren’s shoulders and smiled down at Felicity.

It was so fucking weird to see Jacko smiling. Metal had been Jacko’s teammate for eight years and they’d both worked together at ASI for the last couple of years and he’d seen Jacko smile more in the past week than in the past decade. Smiles looked strange on his face. “I wasn’t worried. I knew you were in good hands.”

Lauren gave him a sharp look but then smiled back down at Felicity. “So, let’s get you back home and?—”

“No.” Metal and Jacko spoke at the same time. Lauren looked at them, confused.

“Whoever this guy is who is after her, we can’t know if he is aware that she was coming to you.” Metal gave the logical explanation because he couldn’t give the illogical one. Which was that he wasn’t letting Felicity out of his sight.

Lauren blinked. “ I didn’t know she was coming to me. How could anyone else possibly know?”

Felicity opened her mouth to talk, but coughed instead. It pulled her stitches and she grimaced.

“Look,” Metal said reasonably, though he was perfectly prepared to be unreasonable. Felicity was going home with him. No question. “She’s slightly sedated and in no condition to give us a rundown on what people could know about her movements. If she came here for you, there is probably some trace of that somewhere. It’s not likely, but you have Jacko to protect you and he will, but he can’t protect two people. So we’re splitting it up. Not to mention the fact that my house is more secure than yours. Speaking of which, I’d recommend you spend the next few days at Jacko’s. At least until we find this asshole.”

“Yeah,” Jacko growled.

Lauren bit her lips. Everything Metal said was true. Jacko hadn’t had time to make Lauren’s house secure, certainly not as secure as his own and Jacko’s. The two of them had security built into their DNA and Lauren sure as hell didn’t. She was an artist and a good one. But clueless in terms of securing her safety.

He and Jacko weren’t clueless. In fact, they were fucking good. Good luck to anyone trying to attack them in their homes. So yeah, Lauren was going to stay with Jacko for a while.

And Felicity was going to stay with him.

Because his home was secure and he was one further step away from Lauren.

Because he was a trained medic and could take care of her medically.

Because…because.

Metal bent over Felicity so all she’d see was his face.

“Felicity?” She licked her lips and nodded. Her beautiful eyes shifted left to right as she watched his eyes. She opened her mouth and closed it. Talking took too much energy. That was okay. She didn’t have to talk. She just needed to be informed. “I’m taking you home with me. If the guy after you somehow knew where you were headed, he won’t find anyone at Lauren’s. But we’ll have cameras running so if he stops by we’ll catch him on film. Lauren will be staying with Jacko and you’ll be staying with me. My home is secure and I can look after you. You’ll be just fine. I’ll be there if infection sets in or you need anything. Nod if you understand me.”

She nodded, eyes huge.

“Nod again if this is ok with you.”

She hesitated a second and his heart sank. Because the hard truth was she was coming home with him whether she liked it or not. Someone was after her and was not going to get a second crack at it. After a second or two she nodded her head.

“Good girl. I’m going to carry you to my vehicle. Is that okay?”

That earned him a small smile and a nod and something in his chest gave a hard thump.

She was staying with him.

Yeah.