As a courtesy he had checked in with the tiny one-man CIA station at the embassy in the heart of Old Muscat close to the Sultan’s palace. He never expected to see his CIA colleague again after their friendly drink.
On his third day, having taken too much sun out on the open sea, he elected to stay ashore and do some shopping. He was dating a ravishing blonde from the State Department and went by cab to the souk at Mina Qaboos to see if, among the stalls of incense, spices, fabrics, silver, and antiques he could find something for her.
He settled on an ornate, long-spouted silver coffee pot, forged long ago by some smith high in the Jebel. The antique-shop owner wrapped it and put it in a plastic shopping bag.
Having got himself completely lost in the labyrinth of alleys and courtyards, Monk finally emerged not on the seaward side but somewhere in the back streets. As he came out of an alley no wider than his shoulders, he found himself in a small courtyard with a narrow entrance at one end and an exit at the other. A man was crossing the yard. He looked like a European.
Behind him were two Arabs. As they debouched into the courtyard, each reached to his waist and withdrew a curved dagger. With that they ran past Monk toward their target.
Monk reacted without thinking. He swung the bag with full force, catching one of the assailants full on the side of the head. Several pounds of metal moving at full bore caused him to crash to the ground.
The other knifeman paused, caught between two fires, then swung at Monk. Monk saw the glittering blade high in the air, moved under the arm, blocked it, and slammed a fist into the soiled dishdash robe at solar plexus height.
The man was tough. He grunted, retained his grip on his knife, but decided to run. His companion scrambled to his feet and followed, leaving one knife on the ground.
The European had turned and taken in the action without a word spoken. Clearly he knew he would have been killed but for the intervention of the blond man ten yards away. Monk saw a slim young man with olive skin and dark eyes but not a local Arab, wearing a white shirt and dark suit. He was about to speak when the stranger gave a brief nod of thanks and slipped away.
Monk stooped to pick up the dagger. It was not an Omani kunja at all, and indeed muggings by the Omanis are unheard of. It was a Yemeni gambiah, with its much simpler and straighter hilt. Monk thought he knew the origin of the assailants. They were Audhali or Aulaqi tribesmen from the Yemeni interior. What the hell, he thought, were they doing so far along the coast in Oman and why did they hate the young Westerner so much?
On a hunch he went back to his embassy and sought out the CIA man there.
“Do you by any chance have a rogues’ gallery of our friends at the Soviet Embassy?” he asked.
It was common knowledge that since the fiasco of the civil war in Yemen in January 1986 the USSR had pulled out completely, leaving the pro-Moscow Yemeni government impoverished and embittered. Consumed with rage at their humiliation, as they saw it, Aden had to go to the West for trade credits and cash to keep going. From then on a Russian’s life in Yemen would hang by a thread. Heaven knows no rage like love to hatred turned. …
By the end of 1987 the USSR had opened a full-fledged embassy in the distinctly anti-Communist Oman were wooing the pro-British sultan.
“I don’t,” said his colleague, “but I’ll bet the Brits will.”
It was only a step down the road from the maze of narrow and humid corridors that made up the American Embassy to the more elaborate British one. They penetrated the vast carved wood doors, nodded at the gate-keeper, and headed across the courtyard. The whole complex had once been the mansion of a wealthy trader rand was steeped in history.
On one wall of the yard was a plaque left behind by a Roman legion that marched off into the desert and was never seen again. In the center of the space was the British flagpole, which long ago would guarantee a slave his freedom if he could reach it. They turned left toward the embassy building and the senior SIS man was waiting for them. They shook hands.
“What’s the prob, old boy?” asked the Englishman.
“The prob,” replied Monk, “is that I have just seen a guy in the souk I think may be a Russian.”
It was only a small detail, but the man in the souk had worn the collar of his open-necked white shirt outside his jacket, as Russians tended to do but Westerners avoided.
“Well, let’s have a look at the mug book,” said the Brit.
He led them through the steel filigree security doors, down the cool and pillared hall and up the stairs. The British SIS operation lived on the top floor. From a safe the SIS man took an album and they flicked through it.
The newly arrived Soviet staff were all there, caught at the airport, crossing the street, or at an open café terrace. The young man with the dark eyes was the last, photographed crossing the concourse of the airport on arrival.
“The local chaps are pretty helpful to us about this sort of thing,” said the SIS man. “The Russians have to preannounce themselves to the Foreign Ministry here and seek accreditation. We get the details. Then when they come we get a tip-off so we can be handy with a Long Tom lens. This him?”
“Yes. Any details?”
The SIS man consulted a sheaf of cards.
“Here we are. Unless it’s all a bunch of lies, he’s Third Secretary, aged twenty-eight. Name of Umar Gunayev. Sounds Tartar.”
“No,” said Monk thoughtfully, “he’s a Chechen. And a Moslem.”
“You think he’s KGB?” asked the Britisher.
“Oh yes, he’s a spook all right.”
“Well, thanks for that. Want us to do anything about him? Complain to the government?”
“No,” said Monk. “We all have to make a living. Better to know who he is. They’d only send a replacement.”
As they strolled back, the CIA man asked Monk, “How did you know?”
“Just a hunch.”
It was a bit more than that. Gunayev had been sipping an orange juice at the bar of the Frontel in Aden a year earlier. Monk had not been the only one to recognize him that day. The two tribesmen had spotted him and decided to- take revenge for the insult to their country.
¯
MARK Jefferson arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport, Moscow, on the afternoon flight on August 8 and was met by the bureau chief of the Daily Telegraph.
The star political feature writer was a slight, dapper, middle-aged man with thinning ginger hair and a short beard of the same hue. His temper, it was reputed, was the same length as his body and beard.
He declined to join his colleague and wife for supper, and asked only to be driven to the prestigious National Hotel on Manege Square.
Once there he told his colleague he would prefer to interview Mr. Komarov unaccompanied and if need be would engage a limousine with driver through the good offices of the hotel itself Well rebuffed the bureau chief drove off.
Jefferson checked in, and his registration was handled by the manager himself, a tall and courteous Swede. His passport was retained by the reception clerk so that the appropriate details could be copied out and filed with the Ministry of Tourism. Before leaving London, Jefferson had instructed his secretary to inform the National who he was and how important he was.
Once up in his room he called the number he had been given by Boris Kuznetsov in their exchange of faxes.
“Welcome to Moscow, Mr. Jefferson,” said Kuznetsov in flawless English with a slight American accent. “Mr. Komarov is much looking forward to your meeting.”
It was not true but Jefferson believed it anyway. The appointment was made for seven the following evening, because Komarov would be out of town all day. A car and driver would be sent to the National to collect him.
Satisfied, Mark Jefferson dined alone in the hotel and slept.
On the following morning, after a breakfast of bacon and eggs, Mark Jefferson decided to indulge in what he regarded as the Englishman’s inalienable right in any part of the world, to take a stroll.
“A
stroll?” queried the Swedish general manager with a perplexed frown. “Where do you want to stroll?”
“Anywhere. Get a breath of air. Stretch the legs. Probably go across to the Kremlin and look around.”
“We can provide the hotel limousine,” said the manager. “So much more comfortable. And safer.”
Jefferson would have none of it. A stroll was what he wanted and a stroll he would have. The manager at least prevailed upon him to leave his watch and all foreign cash behind, but to take a wad of million-ruble notes for the beggars. Enough to satisfy the mendicants but not enough to provoke a mugging. With luck.
The British journalist, who despite his eminence in the features department had spent his career in London-based political journalism and never covered the hot spots of the world as a foreign correspondent, was back two hours later. He seemed somewhat put out.
He had been to Moscow twice before, once under Communism and eight years earlier when Yeltsin was just in power. On each occasion he had confined his experiences to the taxi from the airport, a top hotel, and the British diplomatic circuit. He had always thought Moscow a drab and grubby city, but he had not been expecting his experiences of that morning.
His appearance had been so obviously foreign that even along the river quays and around the Alexandrovsky Gardens he had been besieged by derelicts, who seemed to be camping out everywhere. Twice he thought gangs of youth were following him. The only cars seemed to be military, police, or the limousines of the rich and privileged. Still, he reasoned, he had some powerful points to put to Mr. Komarov that evening.
Taking a drink before lunch—he decided to stay inside the hotel until Mr. Kuznetsov called for him—he found himself alone in the bar except for a world-weary Canadian businessman. In the manner of strangers in a bar, they fell into conversation.
“How long you been in town?” asked the man from Toronto.
“Came in last night,” said Jefferson.
“Staying long?”
“Back to London tomorrow.”
“Hey, lucky you. I’ve been here three weeks, trying to do business. And I can tell you, this place is weird.”
“No success?”
“Oh, sure, I have the contracts. I have the office. I also have the partners. You know what happened?”
The Canadian seated himself next to Jefferson and explained.
“I get in here with all the introductions in the timber business that I need, or think I need. I rent an office in a new tower building. Two days later there’s a knock on the door. There’s a guy standing there, neat, smart, suit and tie. ‘Good morning, Mr. Wyatt,’ he says. ‘I’m your new partner.’ ”
“You knew him?” asked Jefferson.
“Not from hell. He’s the representative of the local mafia. And that’s the deal. He and his people take fifty percent of everything. In exchange they buy or forge every permit, allocation, franchise, or piece of paper I will ever need. They will square away the bureaucracy with a phone call, ensure deliveries are on schedule, with no labor disputes. For fifty percent.”
“You told him to take a running jump,” said Jefferson.
“No way. I learned fast. It’s called having a ‘roof.’ Meaning protection. Without a roof you get nowhere, fast. Mainly because, if you turn them down, you have no legs. They blow them off.”
Jefferson stared at him in disbelief.
“Good God, I’d heard crime was bad here. But not like that.”
“I tell you, it’s like nothing you could ever imagine.”
One of the phenomena that had amazed Western observers after the fall of Communism was the seemingly lightning rise of the Russian criminal underworld, called for want of a better phrase “the Russian mafia.” Even Russians began to refer to the “maffiya.” Some foreigners thought it was a new entity, born only after Communism ended. This was nonsense.
A vast criminal underworld has existed in Russia for centuries. Unlike the Sicilian Mafia it had no unified hierarchy and never exported itself abroad. But it existed, a great sprawling brotherhood with regional and gang chieftains and members loyal to their gangs unto death and with the appropriate tattoos to prove it.
Stalin attempted to destroy it, sending thousands of its members to the slave camps. The only result was that the zoks ended up virtually running the camps with the connivance of the guards, who preferred a quiet life to having their families traced and punished. In many cases the vori v zakone, the “thieves by statute” or equivalents of the mafia dons, actually ran their enterprises on the outside from their cabins in the camps.
One of the ironies of the Cold War is that Communism would probably have collapsed ten years earlier but for the underworld. Even the Party bosses finally had to make their covert pact with it.
The reason was simple: It was the only thing in the USSR that ran with any degree of efficiency. A factory manager, producing a vital product, might see his principal machine tool grind to a halt because of the breakdown of a single valve. If he went through the bureaucratic channels he would wait six to twelve months for his valve while his entire plant stood idle.
Or he could have a word with his brother-in-law who knew a man who had contacts. The valve would arrive within a week. Later the factory manager would turn a blind eye to the disappearance of a consignment of his steel plate, which would find its way to another factory whose steel plate had not arrived. Then both factory managers would cook the books to show they had completed their “norms.”
In any society where a combination of sclerotic bureaucracy and raw incompetence has caused all the cogs and wheels to seize up, the black market is the only lubricant. The USSR ran on that lubricant throughout its life and depended utterly upon it for the last ten years.
The mafia simply controlled the black market. All it did after 1991 was come out of the closet to prosper and expand. Expand it certainly did, moving rapidly from the usual areas of racketeering—alcohol, drugs, protection, prostitution—into every single facet of life.
What was impressive was the speed and ruthlessness with which the virtual takeover of the economy was achieved. Three factors enabled this to happen. The first was the capacity for immediate and massive violence the Russian mafia demonstrated if it was frustrated in any way, a violence that would have made the American Cosa Nostra look positively squeamish. Anybody, Russian or foreign, objecting to mafia involvement in his enterprise was given one warning—usually a beating or an outbreak of arson—and then executed. This applied right up to heads of major banks.
The second factor was the helplessness of the police, who, underfunded, understaffed, and without any experience or forewarning of the blizzard of crime and violence that was going to overwhelm them in the aftermath of Communism, simply could not cope. The third factor was the pandemic Russian tradition of corruption. The massive inflation that followed 1991 until it steadied around 1995 assisted in this.
Under Communism the exchange rate stood at two U.S. dollars to the ruble, a ridiculous and artificial rate in terms of value and purchasing power, but enforced within the USSR, where not lack of money but lack of goods to buy with it was the problem. Inflation wiped out savings and reduced fixed-salary employees to poverty.
When a street cop’s weekly wage is worth less than his socks it is hard to persuade him not to take a banknote enclosed in an evidently forged driving license.
But that was small potatoes. The Russian mafia ran the system right up to the senior civil servants, recruiting almost the entire bureaucracy as their allies. And the bureaucracy runs everything in Russia. Thus permits, licenses, civic real estate, concessions, franchises—all could quickly be bought from the issuing civil servant, enabling the mafia to create astronomical profits.
The other skill of the Russian mafia that impressed observers was the speed with which they moved from conventional racketeering (while keeping a firm hold on it) into legitimate business. It took the American Cosa Nostra a generation to realize that legitimate businesses, acquir
ed from racket profits, served both to increase profits and launder crime money. The Russians did it in five years, and by 1995 owned or controlled forty percent of the national economy. By then they had already gone international, favoring their three specialties of arms, drugs, and embezzlement, backed up by instant violence, and targeting all Western Europe and North America.
The trouble was, by 1998 they had overdone it. The sheer greed had broken the economy off which they lived. By 1996, fifty billion dollars’ worth of Russian wealth, mainly in gold, diamonds, precious metals, oil, gas, and timber, was being stolen and illegally exported. The goods were bought with almost worthless rubles, and even then at knockdown prices from the bureaucrats running the state organs, and sold for dollars abroad. Some of the dollars would be reconverted to a blizzard of rubles and brought back to fund more bribes and more crime. The rest were stashed abroad.
“The trouble is,” said Wyatt gloomily, as he drained his beer, “the hemorrhage has just become too much. Between the corrupt politicians, the even more corrupt bureaucrats, and the gangsters, they’ve killed the golden goose that made them all rich. Did you ever read The Rise of the Third Reich?”
“Yes, long ago. Why?”
“Do you remember those descriptions of the last days of the Weimar Republic? The unemployment queues, the street crime, the ruined life savings, the soup kitchens, the quarreling midgets in the Reichstag yelling their heads off while the country went bankrupt? Well, that’s what you’re watching here. All over again. Hell, I must go. Got to meet people downstairs for lunch. Good to talk with you, Mr. …”
“Jefferson.”
The name didn’t ring a bell. Clearly Mr. Wyatt didn’t read the London Daily Telegraph.
Interesting, thought the London journalist when the Canadian had left. All his briefings from morgue clippings indicated the man he was due to interview that evening might be the man able to save the nation.
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