Surface to Air
Page 7
“What role will my agency play?” he asked.
“You will brief the counterespionage section about the attempt to penetrate our military,” said Tolkachev. “They are to set up round-the-clock surveillance on all FBI agents. When one of them and the Pakistani meet with our agents to take delivery of the missile, your officers will arrest them both.
“Amritzar will be charged with arms trafficking and imprisoned in Lefortovo.
“Your men will take the FBI agent to your office for interrogation, then turn him over to the attorney general, who will have received his instructions. Once the charge has been formally made, he will be sent to Lefortovo prison pending trial.”
Bortnikov mentally reviewed what he just heard, and raised an important point.
“CIA personnel assigned to Moscow have diplomatic immunity and can’t be taken to court,” he said. “We can only deport them. But that’s not the case with FBI people.”
“Exactly right,” said Tolkachev approvingly. “I checked their status. FBI agents aren’t allowed to conduct intelligence operations on Russian soil. Their activities are aboveboard, in liaison with your or some other Russian federal agency. So they don’t have diplomatic immunity. The operation will therefore have judicial consequences. Is all that clear?”
“Perfectly,” said the GRU chief, getting to his feet. “I’ll make the necessary arrangements.”
Tolkachev looked at him sharply.
“Needless to say, this is a compartmentalized operation.”
“Of course.”
Bortnikov shook Tolkachev’s parchment-dry fingers and made for the door, which opened before he touched it. Walking down the empty hallway, he felt cheerful. Happy days were here again.
The Kremlin obviously had something in mind, he thought. They wouldn’t dream of hauling a Moscow FBI agent into court for something like this. The Americans would go to war over it.
So there was some other reason involved, but Bortnikov didn’t need to know what it was.
—
Amritzar gazed out his hotel window at the looming bulk of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs a hundred yards away. It was one of the monstrous “wedding-cake” buildings put up in Stalin’s time: massive blocks of architecture decorated with towers and thousands of windows.
The Hotel Belgrade itself had hardly changed since his last carpet-buying visit to Moscow. A great white slab, it displayed no indication that it was a hotel. Inside, the common areas were reduced to the strict minimum. It had a tiny lobby with a bar in the back. A red-carpeted hallway served the elevators, watched by a bored hotel staffer.
“Can we go out for a walk?” Benazir asked eagerly. By chance it wasn’t too cold, and the beautiful blue sky seemed to have drifted in from another season.
“Later,” promised Amritzar.
It felt odd to be there, planning an attack.
He turned on his computer and checked his email. One message jumped out at him:
“You will be contacted by a man named Yuri. You can trust him. Mahmud.”
That must be the person who will get me an Igla-S, thought Amritzar. Al-Qaeda really was a powerful, far-flung organization.
Benazir was looking at the décor of their room, which was one of the Belgrade’s renovated ones. It had a real double bed and cost 4,200 rubles a night, not including breakfast. The other rooms retained their depressing Soviet look: yellowing walls with narrow twin beds set head to foot. Very few foreigners stayed at the Belgrade; the guests were mostly Russians from out of town. But the hotel had its advantages: it was cheap and centrally located, right across from the Arbat, Moscow’s famed pedestrian shopping arcade of boutiques and souvenir stores.
Amritzar was feeling at a loss. He didn’t speak Russian and didn’t know Moscow that well. Plus, he would need a car to get to the place where he would fire his missile.
The room phone suddenly rang, and he started. He picked up the old Bakelite handset and heard a man’s voice.
“Parviz Amritzar?”
“Yes.”
“This is Yuri. I’m down in the lobby.”
Heart pounding, Amritzar turned to his wife.
“I have a meeting downstairs. We’ll go for a walk afterward.”
In the lobby, he found a man sitting on a bench facing Smolenskaya Street. He had close-cropped hair and was wearing jeans and a padded leather jacket. He looked a little like the actor Daniel Craig.
“Parviz?” the man asked, getting up.
“Yes.”
“I’m Yuri. Let’s have a cup of coffee.” He spoke good English.
They sat on stools at a high table across from the bar. A sexily dressed blond woman was seated at the next table. She was doing her nails and didn’t glance at them.
After their coffee was brought, Amritzar asked the question that was on the tip of his tongue.
“Are you the person who…?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, I am. But there’s a hang-up. I don’t have what we need yet. You’ll have to wait a little while.”
“How long?” asked Amritzar anxiously.
“Not long. Do you have the money?”
“Yes, I do. Two hundred thousand dollars.” The cash that Mahmud gave Amritzar in New York, just before he left.
“Good.”
Yuri looked at his watch and said:
“I’m going to give you the number of a Russian phone—mine. But you have to watch what you say. The FSB listens to everything.”
“I’ll need your help beforehand,” said Amritzar quietly. “I have to scout the area.”
“Where will that be?”
“I don’t know yet. Can you find out which airport the U.S. president is coming to? I already know the date. Also, I need you to get me a car.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Yuri evasively. “I just sell stuff, that’s all.”
“But you know people who can help me, right?”
“I’ll see.”
“Mahmud must have friends here,” Amritzar said, lowering his voice even further.
Yuri didn’t answer.
Amritzar realized that Yuri spoke English perfectly. He even had an American accent.
“Are you Russian?” he asked, intrigued. “You speak very good English.”
The man looked at him sharply.
“I was born in Ingushetia, but I’ve lived in the United States. I’ll call you when the time comes. Do you have a Russian cell phone?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll call the hotel.”
“What about a car?”
“I’ll let you know,” said Yuri. He put a hundred-ruble bill on the table. The waiter gave him ten rubles change.
As Yuri headed for the exit, Amritzar followed him with his eyes, feeling ill at ease. This wasn’t quite what he’d expected.
He would go back to his room, get his wife, and go for a stroll in the Arbat. For the time being, that was all he could do.
—
Like Aeroflot’s fleet of Airbuses, its Sheremetyevo terminal was brand-new. Malko handed his passport to an immigration officer to be stamped. Thanks to his reservation at the Kempinski Hotel, he’d gotten a tourist visa in three days.
A few minutes later he had retrieved his suitcase and headed outside. He was immediately surrounded by a group of tough-looking men.
“You want taxi, sir?” one asked in English.
Malko turned to the man, who was wearing a long leather jacket.
“How much?”
“Six thousand rubles.”
Malko smiled, and switched to Russian.
“You can cheat a foreigner, but not a Russian.”
The man burst out laughing and said:
“All right, then. Twenty-five hundred.”
The sky was dark, and it was spitting rain. As they drove along the endless Leningradsky Prospekt, Malko felt that Moscow hadn’t changed much. There weren’t any more old Lada 1500s or Volgas to be seen. The cars now were mostly Japanese, Korean, German, and oc
casionally French. But the buildings were still sooty-dark and plastered with gaudy advertisements.
And traffic was insane.
Once past Tverskaya Street, it really began to slow down. I should have brought Alexandra with me, thought Malko. This town is depressing.
Instead of militsiya, the blue-and-white police cruisers now bore the word “Politsiya” on their sides. The streets were lined with posters of the grim face of a right-wing politician, calling for votes for New Russia. They alternated with billboards showing a beautiful blonde in panties and push-up bra, advertising the bra for 499 rubles.
The city was also studded with huge artificial Christmas trees. The one in front of the Ministry of the Interior was taller than its statue of Lenin.
Malko’s orders were simple: he was to stay away from the CIA offices at the embassy. Station Chief Tom Polgar, whom he knew well, would meet him that evening at the Kempinski with instructions.
Malko didn’t quite see what his role was. This Amritzar business was strictly between the FBI and the FSB. If the agency wanted to play a dirty trick on the bureau, they could warn Amritzar that he was walking into a trap, but the FBI would never forgive them.
The taxi pulled up under the Kempinski awning. In a few moments Malko found himself in a fourth-floor suite with a view of the Kremlin towers and the golden domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral at the end of Red Square. It was a magical sight, with red stars gleaming on top of every steeple, and long red-brick walls surrounding the heart of Russian power. Malko remembered the huge Hotel Rossiya that long stood to the right of Red Square.
Malko went downstairs a half hour later, to find Polgar sitting in an armchair in the lobby.
“Hello, Malko. Did you have a good trip? Come on, I’ll buy you dinner at the G.”
A good choice: it was just a hundred yards away, and not crowded. In the dim light, the two men sat at the bar and ordered zakuski and vodka.
“Tom, I have to say that I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to be doing here.”
“Frankly, neither am I,” said Polgar. “I asked you to come to be on the safe side. Maybe for nothing.”
“Do you want to break up the deal between Amritzar and the FBI?”
“Nah, I can’t do that. Even if the guy’s innocent, he’s got a bad attitude.”
“So what are you hoping for?”
“I have a feeling the FSB is going to pull a fast one, but I don’t know what.”
“So what do I do?”
“For the moment, nothing. Maybe check out the Belgrade tomorrow. Scout the terrain.”
“Do you know when the package is supposed to be delivered?”
“No, but it shouldn’t be long. Because we’re not officially involved, I can’t ask the FBI or the FSB.”
“That’s not very encouraging,” said Malko. “I can’t hang around the Belgrade too long. I’ll be noticed.”
“I may have screwed up by asking you to come,” said the station chief with a sigh. “Anyway you’ll have an enjoyable trip.”
“I was just as happy at home in Austria.”
Polgar took a BlackBerry from his pocket and slid it over to Malko.
“Take this—you can use it to communicate with me. It’s encrypted, like mine.” The station chief stood up. “All right, I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“I still have a few friends here,” remarked Malko. “I could look them up. Gocha Sukhumi, for example. He knows lots of people. If he’s still alive, that is.”
“Go ahead,” said Polgar.
—
The first number Malko had for Sukhumi didn’t answer, nor did the second. Gocha must’ve changed his cell phone, he thought.
He decided to try the landline, the one at Sukhumi’s Moscow apartment.
A soft female voice answered, speaking Russian with a heavy Caucasian accent. Malko figured she was the busty Georgian woman who was Sukhumi’s maid and occasional bedmate.
“Nadia?” asked Malko.
There was a brief silence on the phone and then the soft voice asked:
“Do you know me?”
“I’m a friend of Gocha’s. You and I met two years ago. Is he there?”
“Yes, he’s with a woman friend.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“Very well. Just a moment.”
Nadia put the phone down, and Sukhumi’s booming voice rang out a moment later.
“Malko! Where are you? Why don’t you ever call me?”
“I’m here in Moscow, at the Kempinski.”
“Bozhe moy! Come on over! I owe you big-time.”
It was true. Years ago, Malko had given Sukhumi the names of the two men who killed the woman he was going to marry. In revenge, he gunned them both down. Apparently he was still feeling grateful.
“I’m on my way,” said Malko. “Are you still at the same address?”
“Yes, I am.”
The Georgian lived at the famed Dom na Naberezhnoy, the House on the Embankment. This was an imposing twelve-story gray building on the Bersenevskaya Embankment on the south bank of the Moskva River opposite the Kremlin. It had some five hundred apartments, stores, and a theater.
In Soviet times, the Dom was reserved for high-level apparatchiks, and their memory lived on in the bronze plaques with their profile on the front of the building. In a way, these were now memorial plaques, because many of the Dom tenants had come to a bad end, caught in the mad purges of the Stalin years.
When a black NKVD Volga stopped at the building—always at night—it was to arrest another victim, who would wind up shot in the Lubyanka basement. In those days, you sometimes heard screams in the hallways while the other tenants, now thoroughly awake, held their breath, praying that the secret services men wouldn’t stop at their door.
Times had changed.
The apartments had been privatized and were now occupied by foreigners or rich Russian businessmen like Sukhumi.
Malko slipped on his vicuña coat and went out. To get to Sukhumi’s, he just had to walk along Sofiskaya Embankment, passing under the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge.
—
“Malko!”
Sukhumi himself opened the door, and swept Malko up in a lung-crushing bear hug. Then he led him into the living room, whose windows looked out on the Kremlin on the other side of the Moskva.
The apartment hadn’t changed. Bare white walls and little furniture, stacks of crates and cartons everywhere.
Sukhumi opened a bottle of Tsarskaya vodka and filled two shot glasses.
“Na zdorovie!” he cried.
They clinked glasses. Though velvety smooth, the Tsarskaya packed a punch.
Malko looked at Sukhumi. They had known each other for a long time and had betrayed each other at various times. Malko had slept with Sukhumi’s girlfriend Nina and was accidentally responsible for her death, which the Georgian had avenged.
“I was never able to tell you about that fucker Kaminski,” Sukhumi was saying. “I put two bullets in his head.”
“I suspected as much.”
“Same with the other guy. At least those two knew why they were being killed. If you hadn’t tipped me off, I would have never known. So I owe you. Do you need something?”
“I might,” said Malko.
If anyone could find out about the FSB’s plans, it would be Sukhumi.
In the days of the Soviet Union, he belonged to the Georgian KGB, and helped Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze put down the rebellion in Abkhazia in 1993.
Later, a conflict with the regime arose, and Sukhumi resigned from the KGB to go into business. Thanks to his intelligence contacts, he’d managed to snag some of the very few oil export licenses available. Every week a train of tanker cars left the St. Petersburg area, bound for Finland.
The deal was very simple: Sukhumi bought the oil with rubles, but sold it for dollars.
In six months he’d amassed a small fortune by buying gas stations in Moscow, while staying close to the siloviki.
The time had come to revive the relationship.
CHAPTER
9
Parviz Amritzar stood and went to admire the illuminated façade of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. You didn’t see buildings like that even in New York, he thought.
Then he sat back down at the tiny desk where he had spread his downloaded instructions on firing an Igla-S. This was hardly the first time he had read them, but now it was with new eyes. And he’d just noticed something he realized might be a problem. When he was acquiring the target, his hand couldn’t afford to shake. If his aim was off by more than two degrees, the missile would miss its target.
It was the Igla’s only weakness, and he intended to overcome it.
From now on, he would be counting the hours until Yuri called to say that he could take possession of the missile. The U.S. president would be coming to Russia in ten days. That was plenty of time for Amritzar to scout the attack locale and rehearse. It would be easy enough to find where and when Air Force One was landing.
Amritzar decided to go to bed. As he lay down, he reached under the mattress to touch the envelope with the bundle of $200,000 that Mahmud had given him. The room didn’t have a safe, so he always kept the money near at hand.
Benazir had gone to sleep hours before, exhausted by the miles they’d covered walking in the Arbat pedestrian arcade and along Novy Arbat, a wide avenue lined with stores and restaurants.
I should write her a letter explaining why I’m doing this before I go on my mission, Amritzar thought. She had her return plane ticket, and he would leave her his credit cards to pay the hotel bill.
He would never get to see his child, of course….
But the idea of seeing the president’s plane explode would be payment in full, finally avenging the members of his family killed by the American drone.
—
Gocha Sukhumi had already downed a third of the bottle of Tsarskaya along with some herring. His pleasure in seeing Malko again seemed sincere, as was his gratitude to him for fingering the men responsible for his fiancée’s death. Shooting the two men had apparently brought him peace of mind.