The docent turned and gestured to the opposite marble wall. “The general has a very large extended family, so this wall was built to house the remains of any other family members, friends of the general, or fellow general officers who wish to be inurned here,” he went on. “It contains crypts as well, but until the first wall is filled, this beautiful carved limestone diorama covers the face. The diorama will be removed and relocated when . . .” It wasn’t until then that the caretaker noticed that the Lithuanian man had set his bag down on the bench seat in between the marble walls and had slid the aircraft model boxes out. “What are you doing there, sir? Remember, no pictures.”
“We are not here to take pictures, my friend,” the woman said behind the caretaker. A fraction of a second later a cloth was pressed against the caretaker’s mouth and nose. He struggled to get free, but the woman was surprisingly strong. The caretaker gasped as he inhaled a lungful of a very harsh chemical that smelled like mothballs. Within seconds he felt as if the columbarium were spinning, and his vision blurred, switching from color to black and white, and then began exploding in bursts of color. In thirty seconds the man’s legs could not support his body, and he slumped to the ground.
He was awake long enough to see the Lithuanian man removing what looked like metal tools from the airplane-model boxes!
“Eta shtuka prekrasno rabotayet,” the man said in Russian. “That stuff works great.”
“Ya poluchayu nemnogo golovokruzheniye sebya,” the woman said, also in Russian. She used a moist towelette to wipe the residue of the nerve agent from her fingers. “I am starting to get a little dizzy myself from the dimethyltryptamine.”
In seconds the man had assembled two crowbars and a tool resembling a lug wrench from parts in the boxes. While he assembled the tools, the woman went out of the columbarium and returned a moment later rolling back a large ornate concrete planter. The man climbed onto the planter, the woman handed him a crowbar, and he began prying off the engraved marble stone covering the crypt of Lieutenant General Patrick Shane McLanahan.
“Kamery videonablyudeniya vezde,” the woman said. “Security cameras are everywhere.”
“It does not matter,” the man said. After breaking off several pieces of the thin stone, he finally managed to pop the engraved stone off the crypt, revealing a steel panel with two very large bolts that attached it to the marble. Using the lug wrench, he started loosening the bolts. “Notify the sleeper teams that we will be on the move shortly.” The woman made a call using a disposable cell phone.
It did not take long to open the crypt. Inside they found a simple cylindrical aluminum urn, along with several letters sealed in see-through airtight containers, and several military decorations. The man picked one up. “Proklyatiye!” he swore. “I did not know the ublyudok received an Air Force Cross with a silver star!” The star signified receiving the Air Force Cross, the Air Force’s highest award except for the Medal of Honor, five times. “One of them had to be for killing President Gryzlov. I guess they do not give Medals of Honor out to criminals.”
“Let’s get out of here,” the woman said. “The network has been alerted.”
It was over moments later. The contents of the crypt were loaded into the shopping bag, and the two Russians departed the cemetery, walking briskly back to their rental car but not running so as to not attract attention. They drove just a few blocks away, in an area already scouted out as having no security or traffic cameras nearby, and transferred to a different vehicle driven by a young man. Careful not to hurry or run any traffic lights or stop signs, they drove out of the city across the Tower Bridge into West Sacramento. They changed cars three more times in various areas around the city before stopping at a deserted fruit-stand gravel parking lot west of Davis, California, a place unlikely to have security cameras. The man approached a large dark sedan that had diplomatic license plates. A window rolled down; the man put the bags in through the window and returned to his car. The black sedan drove down an access road until reaching an onramp that took them onto Interstate 80 heading west toward San Francisco.
“Ty polnyy durak, Colonel,” an older man in the front seat said. He had long white hair carefully styled in waves, a thick neck, wore a dark expensive-looking suit and designer sunglasses, and he spoke without turning around to address the persons in the backseat. “You are a complete fool, Ilianov,” the man, named Boris Chirkov, said. Chirkov was the envoy in charge of the Russian consulate in San Francisco, coordinating all trade matters between the Russian Foreign Ministry, the American State Department, and businesses in the western United States. “You risk too much.”