"Good, thank you," Popov said, watching him walk out of the room. This would be useful. There was a strange, institutional quality to this place, almost like a secure government facility… like a Russian facility, Popov thought. It seemed to have no soul at all, no character, no human dimension that he could identify. Even KGB would have hung a photo of Lenin on the huge, bare, white walls to give the place some human scale. There was a wall of tinted windows, which allowed him to see out to what appeared to be wheat fields and a road, but nothing else. It was almost like being on a ship at sea, he thought, unlike anything he'd ever experienced. The former KGB officer worked through his breakfast, all of his instincts on alert, hoping to learn more, and as quickly as he could.
"Domingo, I need you to take this one," John said.
"It's a long way to go, John, and I just became a daddy," Chavez objected.
"Sorry, pal, but Covington is down. So's Chin. I was going to send you and four men. It's an easy job, Ding. The Aussies know their stuff, but they asked us to come down and give it a look-and the reason for that is the expert way you handled your field assignments, okay?"
"When do I leave?"
"Tonight, 747 out of Heathrow." Clark held up the ticket envelope.
"Great," Chavez grumbled."Hey, at least you were there for the delivery, pop."
"I suppose. What if something crops up while we're away?" Chavez tried as a weak final argument.
"We can scratch a team together, but you really think somebody's going to yank our chain anytime soon? After we bagged those IRA pukes? I don't," Clark concluded.
"What about the Russian guy, Serov?"
"The FBI's on it, trying to run him down in New York. They've assigned a bunch of agents to it."
One of them was Tom Sullivan. He was currently in the post office. Box 1453 at this station belonged to the mysterious Mr. Serov. It had some junk mail in it, and a Visa bill, but no one had opened the box in at least nine days, judging by the dates on the envelopes, and none of the clerks professed to know what the owner of Box 1453 looked like, though one thought he didn't pick up his mail very often. He'd given a street address when obtaining the box, but that address, it turned out, was to an Italian bakery several blocks away, and the phone number was a dud, evidently made up for the purpose.
"Sure as hell, this guy's a spook," Sullivan thought aloud, wondering why the Foreign Counterintelligence group hadn't picked up the case.
"Sure wiggles like one," Chatham agreed. And their assignment ended right there. They had no evidence of a crime for the subject, and not enough manpower to assign an agent to watch the P.O. box around the clock.
Security was good here, Popov thought, as he rode around in another of the military-type vehicles that Dawson called a Hummer. The first thing about security was to have defensive depth. That they had. It was ten kilometers at least before you approached a property line.
"It used to be a number of large farms, but Horizon bought them all out a few years ago and started building the research lab. It took a while, but it's finished now."
"You still grow wheat here?"
"Yeah, the facility itself doesn't use all that much of the land, and we try to keep the rest of it the way it was. Hell, we grow almost enough wheat for all the people at the lab, got our own elevators an' all over that way." He pointed to the north.
Popov looked that way and saw the massive concrete structures some distance away. It was amazing how large America was, Dmitriy Arkadeyevich thought, and this part seemed so flat, not unlike the Russian steppes. The land had some dips and rises, but all they seemed to do was emphasize the lack of a real hill anywhere. The Hummer went north, and eventually crossed a rail line that evidently led to the grain silos-elevators, Dawson had called them? Elevators? Why that word? Farther north and lie could barely make out traffic moving on a distant highway.
"That's the northern border," Dawson explained, as they passed into non-farm land.
"What's that?"
"Oh, that's our little herd of pronghorn antelopes." Dawson turned the wheel slightly to go closer. The Hummer bumped over the grassy land.
"They're pretty animals."
"That they are, and very fast. We call 'em the speed-goat. Not a true antelope at all, genetically closer to goats. Those babies can run at forty miles an hour, and do it for damned near an hour. They also have superb eyesight."
"Difficult to hunt, I imagine. Do you hunt?"
"They are, and I'm not. I'm a vegan."
'What?"
"Vegetarian. I don't eat meat or other animal products," Dawson said somewhat proudly. Even his belt was made of canvas rather than leather.
"Why is that, David?" Popov asked. He'd never come across anyone like him before.
