Objekt 825 (Tracie Tanner Thrillers Book 9)

by Allan Leverone

  “Well, don’t be a tease.”

  “Apparently, our man’s left ear was mangled, either at birth or maybe in some sort of accident. He wears very long hair, presumably to cover the deformity. And since he apparently offered money for a look at the device before double-crossing Limington and shooting him, maybe he’s done this sort of thing before. Maybe this scenario is his trademark. If that’s the case, perhaps somewhere in our files at Langley is some actionable intel on this man.”

  It occurred to Tracie that this might be the longest the CIA director had ever let her speak without interrupting or making a snide remark. Now he sat back in his chair, its overstressed metal frame screeching in protest from the sudden shift of his bulk, and regarded her over his glasses, which he’d pushed down his nose.

  “What? Tracie said. “Do I have spinach in my teeth?”

  “This is exactly what I was talking about when I told you that you had to take some time off,” he said.

  She felt her eyebrows furrow in confusion. It was a reflexive action. “What are you talking about?”

  “If I were to send you back into Russia, or any of the Soviet-bloc states, the very method you’re using to try to identify this man would quite likely be used to identify you, given the unique nature of that head injury.”

  She blew out a breath in frustration. “Boss, I’m not in Russia. I’m thousands of miles away from Russia. I don’t think General Gregorovich is busy trying to hunt me down in suburban Virginia.”

  Stallings arched an eyebrow. “I’m not suggesting he is, just acknowledging the irony of our current situation. Life is funny sometimes.”

  “Hilarious,” Tracie said, wondering whether her boss had had one too many martinis before dinner. “But I was lead to believe in our conversation this morning that finding this missing communication device was time-critical.”

  “It most certainly is,” Stallings agreed.

  “Well…” Tracie wasn’t sure how to proceed. She had a habit of inflaming the tension typically present between herself and her handler, and she didn’t want to say the wrong thing and find herself relegated to the bench. Again.

  “You’re wondering why I’m not jumping on your intel—good job, by the way, getting something concrete this quickly—and putting someone to work immediately, searching our files for the Russian with the distinctive ear?”

  “I have to admit the thought had crossed my mind, yes.”

  Instead of answering his own question, Stallings hoisted himself out of his chair and moved to the rear of his study, where what appeared to be a custom-made redwood bookshelf lined the wall. Beneath the shelving, from approximately waist height to the floor, were a series of doors, cabinets the CIA director had never accessed in her presence.

  Now he pulled on one of the doors. It swung open to reveal a metal filing cabinet. She could only guess whether filing cabinets were hidden behind each of the doors or just this one.

  Stallings eased the cabinet out on a rolling track and began picking through it, mumbling to himself as he did. She could not hear his words, but he was clearly thumbing through file tabs, looking for something specific.

  “Ah,” he said after a moment. “Here we go.”

  He lifted something out of the cabinet, then rolled it back into its enclosure and eased the redwood door shut. Then he turned back to his desk and slid an eight by ten photo across the desk toward Tracie.

  On it was a man with a badly mangled ear, an ear that looked exactly as Carson Limington had described it.

  12

  It was a candid shot, a snap of the man walking while looking at something to his left. In the photo his silver hair wasn’t as long as described by Carson Limington, barely reaching the tops of his ears, affording the viewer a good look.

  “This is exactly what Limington described to me,” Tracie said softly. “Except, according to Limington, the man’s hair reached almost to his shoulders, completely obscuring his ears.”

  “That’s because this photo was taken a couple of years ago, before he’d completed the process of growing his hair out to cover the damage.”

  Tracie looked at Stallings quizzically. “You just happen to have a picture of the guy we suspect of stealing classified material and attempting to murder an American citizen stored behind your desk? What else do you have locked up back there, Jimmy Hoffa?”

  “I can’t reveal where Hoffa’s buried, not even to you,” Stallings answered with a sardonic smile. Tracie thought he was kidding but wouldn’t have bet money on it.

  “I’ve kept this picture handy,” he continued, “because I came to suspect within the last few months that you and I might soon be having a conversation about this man.”

  Tracie pursed her lips. “So, he has done it before. This is not the first time the guy with the funky ear has persuaded an American to sell out his country.”

  “Not even close. His name is Andrei Lukashenko, but he’s known in intelligence circles as ‘Laska.’”

  “Laska is Russian for ‘The Weasel,’” Tracie said.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ve heard of this guy, but I wasn’t sure he was real. I thought he might just have been a rumor, a made-up boogeyman.”

  “He’s very much real.”

  “How many times has he done what he did with Carson Limington?”

  “Over a dozen that we know of for sure. The total is probably much higher, as he operates not just in the United States. He’s stolen or purchased classified material in Great Britain, West Germany, France, you name it. Virtually every country outside Soviet control has been victimized by The Weasel, and in all of them he has left a trail of corpses in his wake. To the best of our knowledge, Carson Limington is the first victim he’s left alive.”

  Tracie whistled softly.

  “Again,” Stallings continued, “those dozen are just what we can confirm. As you might imagine, governments are understandably reluctant to share the news they’ve been burned regarding the loss of state secrets. The total could easily be three times higher than the twelve or so that we know about.”

  “How the hell does he manage to do it over and over again? How’s he so successful?”

  “I’m going to take a wild guess and say your new friend Carson Limington described Lukashenko as initially very friendly. He probably compared him to a salesman, easy to talk to and persuasive, a smooth talker.”

  She nodded. “An insurance salesman was the exact comparison he made.”

  “There you go. That’s part of how he does it. He also does his homework. When the Soviets target a piece of classified intel they want, Lukashenko researches the organization in possession of that intel, in this case Marine Technix Corporation. He digs until he finds someone desperate, either with money problems, or alcohol issues, gambling, whatever. Then he approaches the person he’s selected and handles that man or woman like an con man working a mark.”

  “Which is exactly what he is.”

  “Correct. But it’s not just a matter of doing his homework and buttering up his victim. When the time comes to close the deal, The Weasel is ruthless. He never leaves the mark alive, obviously killing in an effort to protect himself. Mr. Limington is extremely fortunate to still be breathing, even if he is doing so in custody.”

  “You said you recently came to suspect we would be having this conversation. I’m guessing you received intel that he was back operating in this country.”

  Stallings nodded. “We’ve been keeping tabs on Lukashenko as much as possible for some time now, but it’s not easy, as you might imagine. We’ll nail down a location on him, keep eyes on him for a while, and then he disappears and goes underground for long stretches of time. About six months ago we learned he was stationed at the Soviet Embassy here in D.C., ostensibly employed as a driver for their diplomats.”

  “Obviously he was doing a lot more than driving.”

  “We knew all along he was working on prying classified intel out of American hands. The obvious
problem is that we had no idea what that intel might be, or precisely where he was operating.”

  Tracie sat silently, thinking.

  Stallings sat silently, watching her do it.

  Eventually she said, “I assume you want me to track down this Weasel character and recover the communication device he liberated from Marine Technix. But if he’s stationed at the Russian Embassy, that presents a number of challenges.”

  “Clearly. But he’s no longer at the embassy.”

  “How do you know? Obviously he hasn’t been under direct surveillance, otherwise we could have stepped in and stopped the transfer before it happened.”

  “No,” Stallings agreed. “He wasn’t under direct surveillance. Even this agency, with its budget and resources, doesn’t possess enough of those resources to follow every bad actor twenty-four hours a day.”

  “That’s my point. If we don’t have eyes on him, maybe he’s still across town, right under our noses. If I work quickly enough, I can probably—”

  “No,” Stallings said firmly. He was shaking his head, making the flap of skin under his chin wave back and forth. “Laska is gone. It’s how he operates, and one of the many reasons he’s so successful. The moment he gets his hands on his prize, he leaves the victimized country behind. He was probably on a plane back to Moscow, with the communications device in his possession, no more than twelve hours after taking it from Limington.

  He blew out an angry breath and continued. “I had hoped I was wrong about this, that maybe another country had taken the device, or at least a different Soviet operative. In that case, there was perhaps the possibility of recovering it before it had left the states.”

  He shook his head. “But no. Not if it was taken by Laska.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you spooked by a Soviet operative before,” Tracie said. “This guy is that bad?”

  “He’s that good,” Stallings answered. “And I’m not spooked, I just know what we’re up against here. Andrei Lukashenko’s involvement greatly lowers the odds we’ll ever recover the device.”

  “Isn’t it now a lost cause, anyway? Assuming the device is already in the Soviet Union, even if I can get there and steal it back, it will likely be too late. The Russians will reverse-engineer it, taking it apart and determining how it works. They’ll unlock its secrets and the damage will be done.”

  “Not necessarily,” Stallings said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ve spoken with FBI Director Steinman at length regarding this case, and according to Matt, the research director at Marine Technix says they were so concerned about industrial espionage, either by the Soviets or one of their competitors here in the states, that they built some red herrings into the prototype that was stolen.”

  “Red herrings?”

  “Yes. The device was never meant to be manufactured exactly as currently configured. Several of the electronic components are not wired as would be necessary to make the unit operational, and a key electronic chip is even missing.”

  “That means…”

  Stallings nodded. “That’s right. If the Russians manufacture their own version of the Extra Low Frequency undersea communication decoder using the device they’ve stolen, it will be worthless.”

  “Marine Technix was that worried about the Soviets?”

  Stallings chuckled. “Not exactly. They were that worried about their competitors in the United States market stealing it.”

  “Jesus,” Tracie said. “And I thought international espionage was brutal.”

  “Apparently it’s a jungle out there in the electronics manufacturing world, especially where defense department contracts are concerned.”

  Tracie sat for a moment, thinking. “So if the device is littered with red herrings, why do we need to recover it at all? Let the Soviets copy it and waste months, maybe even years of their time.”

  Stallings had begun shaking his head before she was even finished speaking. “Because the red herrings would only delay the Soviets. Eventually they would break through the technical issues and replicate the device. Our goal is to make sure that does not happen.”

  “I understand. So, theoretically at least, it’s not too late to get this communication decoder back. If I can recover it before they realize it’s not ready for deployment, it would be like they never had it at all. But if this Laska guy is as good as you say, then—”

  “He is,” Stallings interrupted.

  “Okay. So with a seven-day head start, he will have disappeared by now. That device is probably already in an electronics lab somewhere.”

  “Not necessarily. A week may be just enough time to cut him off at the pass.”

  “How so?”

  “Lukanshenko won’t know exactly what he has in his possession. He’s The Weasel, he’s not a scientist. That being the case, he’ll do what any good Soviet spy would do.”

  “He’ll bring the device to Lubyanka.”

  “Yes,” Stallings said. “Once there, KGB scientists will almost certainly examine it, at least in a cursory manner. That will probably take anywhere from twenty-four hours to a three or four days.”

  “Obviously, you don’t think Lubyanka will be the final stop in its journey.”

  “I don’t,” Stallings agreed.

  “Then where?”

  “Let me ask you a question, Tanner, given what you know about this missing piece of electronics. If you were in the KGB’s shoes, where would you send it to be studied? I’m not looking for a specific facility name, of course, just a general idea.”

  She sat still, her brow furrowed, thinking hard.

  Then she shrugged. “It’s a comm device, but it’s manufactured for a very specific use. Only submarines have any need for it, since its purpose is to decrypt encoded messages deep beneath the surface of the ocean, presumably up to thousands of miles from any transmitter.”

  “Keep going.”

  She’d been staring down at her feet, but now she lifted her head and met Stallings’ gaze. “I’d send it off to a naval base, somewhere my submarines receive their maintenance and equipment overhauls. That’s where the experts would be, so that’s where the device should go.”

  A smile spread slowly across the CIA director’s jowly face. “This, Tanner, this is exactly why I put up with all of your bullshit.”

  “Uhhhh…thanks?”

  “Objekt 825.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Objekt 825 is the name of a secret Soviet submarine base.”

  “If it’s such a secret, how are we talking about it?”

  “For a long time we didn’t know about it, and what we’ve learned is minimal. We’ve never been inside it, never been able to develop any intel regarding its specifics, so in that sense it is still secret.”

  “What do we know?”

  “We know the Soviets began construction in the mid-1950s. We know it took more than half a decade to build. We believe it was constructed under a mountain and is capable of withstanding a direct nuclear attack. We believe it’s massive, capable of docking up to a dozen nuclear subs at any given time.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “So we don’t really know much of anything about this Objekt 825.”

  “Correct,” agreed Stallings.

  “Where is it located? We know that much, I assume.”

  He nodded. “Yes. It’s located on the northeast shore of the Black Sea, due north of Turkey, in a remote section of Sevastopol that used to be called Balaklava.”

  “Used to be?”

  “That’s right. Balaklava was erased from all maps in the 1950s, when construction of Objekt 825 began. It officially no longer exists, and hasn’t for decades.”

  “Okay. But this place that no longer officially exists is where you think they’ll send Lukashenko with the device once the KGB geeks at Lubyanka are finished poking and prodding it.”

  “It would make sense. It’s also where you think they’l
l send it. You just told me so.”

  “And if you’re correct about the timeline, there’s at least the theoretical possibility I could catch up to Lukashenko and recover the device at Objekt 825.”

  Stallings leaned back in his chair, the frame’s agonized screech accompanying his action. “I really don’t want to send you over there. You’re just too damned recognizable right now with that injury, and all the wrong people are sparing no expense looking for you after what you did to General Gregorovich.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Tracie insisted. “I’ll wear hooded sweatshirts. I’ll wear hats. I’ll only work at night. I’ll be extremely careful, I promise.”

  “Oh, don’t give me that line of bullshit. You know as well as I do, you can’t always control when you work or what you wear when you’re in the field. And don’t forget I know you as well as anyone and better than most. The minute you get over there, you’ll be the same ‘damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead’ operative you’ve always been.”

  “Okay, fine,” Tracie said sarcastically. “Well, I know a little bit about you, too. And I know you wouldn’t have called me at my apartment first thing this morning if you weren’t thinking about the long game. You wouldn’t have spent all this time in your office discussing a secret Soviet sub base I have no need to know about unless I’ll be expected to breach it.

  “Let’s face it,” she concluded. “You called me not just to send me to Norfolk to talk to Limington, but to send me to Russia if the situation turned out to be what you feared it was. So I’ll ask you again. When do I leave for Sevastopol?”

  “You’re a pain in the ass, Tanner. Have I ever mentioned that?”

  “Once or twice. During this very conversation, as I recall.”

  “Well, now you can consider it three times. And, yes, I’ll let you work this assignment. But I want to tell you something else.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Your assignment is primarily, but not solely, to recover the communications device. But if the timeline works the way I’ve just laid out, and you have the opportunity to cross paths with Laska, I expect you to take him out. He’s stolen too many American secrets, and murdered too many American citizens, to play games. If you find him, you end him, is that clear?”