Goliath by Steve Alten

scarred. The head is cleanly shaved, the skin along one side showing evidence of numerous grafts. A thick auburn mustache and goatee cover most of the burn marks located along the mouth.
    “Simon Bela Covah. Born in Russia in 1956, the oldest of six children. Covah’s father was a submarine commander who served in the Soviet Navy during World War II. The mother was left to raise six children in a small farming village while her husband was at sea. Young Simon, who possessed an IQ of 182, was enrolled in Moscow State University at the unheard-of age of fourteen. Three years later, he graduated at the top of his class and received a high-ranking position at the Sevmash Naval Yard in Severodvinsk, where he served as an apprentice and aide to Sergey Nikitich Kovalev, the chief designer for the Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarines. Covah’s interest turned to computers, and his eventual expertise helped the Soviets close the technological gap between their submarine force and ours. The Company first took an interest in him several years later, during the design phase of Russia’s new Borey-class missile submarine.”
    Secretary Nunziata looks peeved. “Are you saying Covah was recruited by the CIA?”
    “CIA tried. Covah disappeared for a while, then showed up working in secret for Toronto’s biggest biotech corporation, Cangen. Dr. Goode eventually recruited him at Keyport.”
    Rocky turns to Nunziata. “Without Covah, Dr. Goode could never have completed Sorceress’s biointerfacing silicon microcircuitry, or her genetically engineered computational bacteria. The man really is a genius. Unfortunately, none of us had a clue about the man’s real intentions … with the possible exception of Gunnar Wolfe.”
    Pertic nods. “Covah exhibited all the telltale signs of being the perfect defector. The breakup and financial collapse of the Soviet Union brought with it massive chaos in Russia’s naval yards, which were overwhelmed with a logjam of nuclear subs waiting to be decommissioned. Covah became disgusted
with the dismantling and disposal procedures and began providing us details regarding the storage and reprocessing of the boomers’ spent nuclear fuel cells as early as 1987. CIA recruited him a short time later. As a precaution, he had his wife, Anna, a Chechen woman, move their family to her parent’s home in Zitinje. Turned out to be a fatal mistake. As preparations were being made to bring the entire family to the States, the Serbs invaded Kosovo. Covah hurried to Zitinje, only to find the village destroyed and his in-laws’ house burned to the ground. Anna had been raped and beaten. Simon was captured and tortured in front of his wife and daughters. The Serbs set him on fire and left him for dead, then murdered the remaining members of his family, burying the bodies in the neighbor’s backyard.”
    Rocky stares at the hologram and the hideous facial deformities of the computer expert who had worked under her command for nearly two years. An act of hatred, fueling a thousand more …
    Pertic continues. “How Covah actually survived the trauma is a medical wonder in itself. As you can see, the right side of the man’s face was burned clear down to the bone. Doctors had to replace the temporal section of his skull with a steel plate, which runs along his mangled earhole and right cheekbone. Covah refused to cover the plate with a skin graft—”
    “He told me he always wanted to be reminded of the butchery,” Gunnar mumbles, a bit too loud.
    Pertic gives him a long look. “Yes, well perhaps it was that internalized rage that gave him the strength to endure. Whatever the case, he spent four months in a NATO hospital before getting himself prematurely released. By that time, the United Nations had intervened in the Balkans and the pendulum had swung the other way. Covah joined the Kosovo Liberation Army, and the hunted became the hunter. Ethnic Albanian refugees returned to Kosovo from Macedonia and