The Fifth Man

by James Lepore

Chris handed Valentina Petrov two photographs, the first a close-in image of an amoeba-shaped birthmark on a woman’s right shoulder, a portion of a diamond necklace appearing at her neck; the second a full view of the lounge of the National Hotel’s bar with Marko Dravic sitting in the center and a partial rear view, slightly blurry, of a woman in a strapless black cocktail dress on the far right. He watched as the beautiful Russian spy took them in. They were sitting in his penthouse, drinking a special vintage Cristal Champagne that he had ordered for the occasion. “Let’s toast,” he said, lifting his glass, when she looked up at him.

  “To what.”

  “To our joining forces.”

  “Chris…”

  “Yes?”

  Valentina shrugged her lovely shoulders.

  “I’ve had the photograph enhanced,” Chris said.

  “I’m afraid I can be of little help.” Another shrug.

  Submission, Chris thought. “Was there a drop that night at the National?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t know. A piece of paper I was told I would find in the lobby by the house phone. I didn’t read it.”

  “Do you know Dravic?”

  “No.”

  “Marchenko?”

  “No.”

  “Who gave you the icon?”

  “It was in a drop here in Prague, with instructions.”

  “Which you burned.”

  “Yes.”

  Chris sipped his champagne, relieved that he did not have to kill Valentina Petrov.

  “You have saved your life,” he said, “and your brother’s.”

  “He is not part of this.”

  “I believe you but he can help.”

  “How?”

  “I would like access to the underground passages between the Kremlin and Christ The Savior.”

  “Access?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your people?”

  “Yes.”

  Chris noticed the slightest change in Valentina’s composed face, a deadening of the eyes that lasted a fraction of a second, the time it took for her to lower and lift her lush lashes. She knew that such access meant only one thing.

  “You will live, your brother will live,” Chris said. “And perhaps you will both be able to get away. The GRU is nowhere near as good as the KGB was in tracking down traitors, and you will have my help.”

  Silence.

  “Shall we toast?”

  Valentina Petrov raised her glass, nodded to Chris, and sipped. Chris did the same.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  “Whoever gave you your ultimate orders.”

  “Do you want the name of my contact?”

  “Of course not. He’s a drone that would only lead to other drones. He may even be dead.”

  “How did you get these pictures?”

  “I have people there,” Chris said. “The same people who will kill you and your brother if you betray me.”

  “One last question.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  “Twice. To my ex-wife and to a heroin addict.”

  “What happened to her, the heroin addict?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Did she betray you?”

  “No, she overdosed.”

  35.

  Moscow, September 6, 2012, 8:00 p.m.

  “I assume we are aborting,” said Marko Dravic.

  “You are correct.”

  “And the meeting as well.”

  “No, that must go forward. And I want the photograph.”

  Dravic paused. This was insane.

  “Our friends will certainly balk.”

  “They are not our friends. They are the enemies of our enemy. There is a difference.”

  And who, then, are our actual friends? Dravic thought, then, out loud, “What shall I tell them?”

  “That Fallen Heroes is off but that I want the meeting to take place. Tell them again, no meeting, no oil products, no UN cover.”

  “They may still refuse. They are exposing one of their masterminds.”

  “I will keep my word. They will both be starved to death.”

  “Or start World War Three. The Japanese started World War II because of an oil embargo.”

  “If they do, we will not be on their side. You can tell them that.”

  “And Massi, shall I tell him that the operation is off?”

  “You can tell him, but he will have surmised it from the botched raid on Ruska Street.”

  “What if he won’t meet with us?”

  “We will think of something else. But he will. He smells a rat, he is curious.”

  “What about the fifth man?”

  “I will take care of him.”

  “I must ask, who is Chris Massi? Why are you doing this?”

  “Do you know why Don Marchenko is in our pocket?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think he cut us in on all those credit card millions out of the goodness of his heart?”

  “No.”

  “I did him a favor once in America. I killed his only rival. Massi happened to be there at the time, probably trying to get a piece of our skimming machine business in the U.S. I thought he was dead too, that I had gotten lucky and killed two birds. But I was wrong. He saw my face. He is the only person in the world, besides you, who can identify me.”

  “You went alone?”

  “No, one of our American agents joined me, but he’s dead now, of course.”

  “Does that mean I’m next?”

  “We have been friends for forty years. I am Uncle V to your two beautiful children. I cannot imagine you would betray me.”

  “That will not happen,” said Dravic, the message loud and clear that if it did, his children would die. And the Wolf had no children, no friends, no lovers, no one that could be killed in return.

  36.

  Prague, September 7, 2012, 8:00 p.m.

  “Heydrich lived here during the war,” Chris said. He and Max French and Anna Cavanagh, his Operations Chief and Administrative Assistant, respectively, were seated on plush easy chairs in a quiet room at the rear of the Jiri Popper House.

  “Heydrich?”

  “The head of Reich security,” Chris said. “Hitler called him the man with the iron heart.”

  Two of the men seated across from Chris looked at him with blank faces. The third, Marko Dravic, frowned, but then smiled. “Mr. Massi is an amateur historian,” he said. “World War Two seems to be his area of special interest.”

  “We are trying to win a war ourselves,” said the man sitting on Dravic’s right on a richly patterned damask-covered couch. He had been introduced as Abdo Halevi, an assistant to Syria’s oil minister.

  “This was probably Heydrich’s study,” Chris said. “He probably came up with the final solution here. To the Jewish Question, as the Nazis liked to put it. The mass murder by gas was his idea.”

  Now Dravic stopped smiling as silence filled the room. After a beat or two, Max French, seemingly unaware that anything untoward had been said or done, rose from his seat next to Chris and went to a rolling bar near an oversized marble fireplace. “Anyone?” he said when he got there, turning to the men seated across from each other in the center of the large room. No one answered. Chris had a glass of water on a lamp table next to his comfortable, heavily cushioned chair. His reply was to pick it up and sip from it. Anna, gorgeous in a black cocktail dress buttoned low at one side, slung over the opposite shoulder, simply shook her head no. As she did, wisps of her long yellow hair fell over her bare shoulder. Like strands of liquid gold, Max thought. Christ.

  While Max was pouring himself a drink, he kept an eye on t
he group, noticing that Halevi was saying something in Russian, sotto voce, to Dravic, who was smiling warmly to his Syrian friend. This is just a lighthearted exchange. Of course, Marko. Seated again, he held out his glass of clear liquid, just water, to each of the men sitting across from him, nodding amiably to each. The amethyst stone on his University of Washington class ring caught the light from the crystal chandelier glittering above them as he did this. Then he drank and placed his glass on the same table as Chris’s water.

  “Where were we?” Max said.

  “We were simply introducing Mr. Halevi and Mr. Behzadi to their new business partner,” Dravic said. “Before we got sidetracked.”

  “And what will your role be?” Chris asked Behzadi, who had been introduced as the security liaison between the Oil Ministry and Syrian Military Intelligence. He had clasped both of his hands around Chris’s right hand when they shook hands earlier.

  “My people will be present,” Behzadi answered, “to ensure that only oil products are off-loaded from your tankers.”

  “Will my ships be searched?”

  “Without doubt.”

  “Then I’m afraid we can’t do business.”

  Behzadi, more Persian-looking than Syrian, smiled, or grimaced in a way that passed for a smile. “Good, we are done,” he said.

  Chris got to his feet and Max and Anna followed suit. Everyone was stony-faced as Dravic led them out of the room and then returned, shutting the room’s large oak door softly behind him.

  ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

  Back in the reception hall, with its thick carpets and glittering chandeliers, Chris turned to Anna and said, “Was that him?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “That was him.”

  “What did he say to Halevi?”

  “You have been insulted. I apologize, but this will not be forgotten.”

  “I have spoken to a friend in Czech intelligence,” Chris said, nodding. “He tells me that a man matching Dravic’s description, a Russian, worked in Prague for the Adamec Interior Ministry from 1985 to 1989. He was probably KGB. His name was Marko Dravnova.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He hunted down members of the resistance.”

  “And then tortured and killed them.”

  “Yes. Many good people, men and women.”

  Anna’s face brightened. “He is here,” she said. “They can arrest him.”

  “No, I need Dravic to be free.”

  “Free? Why? He is a murderer.”

  “If he is killed, or disappears, it will raise an alarm that I don’t want raised.”

  Silence. Max had slipped away. They were alone.

  “Anna,” Chris said, taking her gently by the arm and leading her to a small arched alcove where they were in shadow but could see the long rectangular room in all its splendor.

  “Yes?” Anna replied.

  “Matt has told me what you’ve been thinking.”

  “Would not you be thinking the same thing?”

  They were staring at the crowd, which included Matt and Tess under a similar archway across the room, and Max, who was standing next to them sipping a drink.

  “Yes,” Chris said, “but you must not.”

  “Why? He’s here. I feel it is inevitable that I kill him. It is my fate.”

  “He is heavily guarded. You would be detected, captured and interrogated. You will not last long under interrogation. You will implicate me. This cannot happen.”

  “So he goes unpunished. Again. He stays alive and happy.”

  “I have to have your word.”

  “That’s all? Just my word?”

  “Yes.”

  Anna sighed. “You will not let Matt help me?”

  “No.”

  “What about you? You could do it.”

  “I need your word.”

  “So be it. You have my word.”

  “Thank you. And please, Anna, don’t fret. I will take care of Dravic.”

  37.

  Prague, September 11, 2012, 10:00 a.m.

  “I spoke to Christina,” Anna said, “while you were in the shower.”

  “On Skopelos?” Matt replied.

  “Yes.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes. She said the children were on the beach with Michaela. She is one of the servants, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she young?”

  “In her twenties.”

  “Does she speak English?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “Not well, but if Christina hired her, there is nothing else to know about her.”

  Anna nodded. They were sitting at an outdoor café on the perimeter of Old Town Square, watching the people streaming by under a blue sky. A few clouds high above drifted westward, making their way from Moscow to London. A teacher was standing, talking to a high school class sitting on the ground in front of the equestrian statue in the center of the square.

  “What are you thinking, Anna?” Matt asked.

  “It cannot be, Teo.”

  “Anna…”

  Anna turned away from the picture-perfect scene before her and looked at Matt, tears in her eyes.

  “It cannot be,” she repeated.

  “Anna. I thought we went through all this.”

  “You think love is enough, Teo, but it’s not. It’s not enough.”

  “Last night it was enough.”

  Anna said nothing. Tears were streaming down her face. She picked up the linen napkin on the small table and wiped them away. More came, which she ignored. To have found love and to have to give it up, this was a reason to cry. Could she do it?

  “We’ll get the kids and come back here,” Matt said. “Like we said last night.”

  “Teo. It cannot be.”

  “Yes, it can,” Matt said. “And it will.”

  38.

  Moscow, September 11, 2012, 2:30 p.m.

  (Prague, 11:30 a.m.)

  The plaster on the walls and ceiling of the passageway that ran underground from the Kremlin to Christ The Savior Cathedral was perhaps two hundred years old and the thickness of a man’s outstretched arm. This plaster was laid on a succession of hand-made laths that only an archeologist would find interesting. Notwithstanding the mocha-colored streaks at random intervals that revealed areas of poor workmanship or poor-quality gypsum, it was a complete barrier to all sound from the world above. A person not accustomed to the silence could easily be startled by the sound of his own breath exiting his nostrils. The main corridor was paved with smooth gray limestone quarried in the nineteenth century. A footstep on one of these ancient blocks could be heard a hundred yards away. Naked bulbs in wire cages on the ceiling threw off the dimmest of light. Narrow side passages intersected the central tunnel every hundred feet or so. These were completely dark. At one of these intersections stood, one on each side of the main artery, two young men in the black, narrow-sleeved cassocks and black, two-buttoned dog collars of Russian Orthodox priests. A third, similarly dressed, sat with Father Nicolei Petrov in his small study, a nine-millimeter pistol aimed at his abdomen.

  The two priests had removed the simple components of short-barreled AK 47s from the briefcases they carried, screwed them together, and stood, their backs against their respective walls, weapons loaded and held at their chests, waiting for the sound of the Wolf’s footsteps.

  39.

  Ephesus, September 11, 2012, 11:00 a.m.

  (Prague, 12:00 p.m,)

  Behind Elias Vasiliou was the crumbling stone foundation, perhaps two feet high, of a long abandoned shepherd’s cottage. Behind this decaying stonework lay the bodies of two men, both sharpshooters who had never even unslung their rifles. Elias had fifteen minutes ago slit the throat of the first and five minutes ago the seco
nd. In the scope of his long-range rifle he now had Don Viktor Marchenko’s head. He could not wait long. There would be other guards. They would have two-way radios as the two on the ground did. They would be checking in and moving this way if there was no response. Elias had not yet heard the staccato buzz indicating someone was trying to make contact. When he did, that would mean they would be coming. You may die, his father had said.

  Marchenko had not moved. He was not sleeping. His eyes were open, but he sat as still as a perched hawk searching the ground for prey. The rifle’s laser-guided rangefinder read 1802 yards. A mile plus. At the school in Idaho where Elias had trained in long range shooting, he had hit targets at two miles. He was nineteen then and his eyesight had deteriorated slightly since—perhaps it was now twenty-sixteen instead of twenty-fifteen—but his hands were rock steady, as was the rifle as it rested on its matte-finished platinum alloy bi-pod. The rifle’s wind velocity meter read SSE/5k. Elias hoped it wouldn’t change. If he missed, he would try again, but then, successful or not, he would almost certainly die, as the first thing Marchenko’s people would do would be to seal off all exit routes, first and foremost the sea. He looked at his watch: noon. In a second or two the cell phone in his breast pocket would tell him what to do: one buzz, yes, two buzzes, no. Then he returned his cheek to the rifle’s smooth barrel and his right eye to its twenty-five-thousand-dollar German-made sight, making sure that the old man’s right temple was still in his crosshairs and the wind the same. He knew in his bones that it would be one buzz, that in a few seconds Marchenko’s head would be severed from his body, and he would be scampering like a goat down to the launch that was tied up behind some rocks in a cove along the beach below.

  40.

  Prague, September 11, 2012, 12:00 p.m.

  The triple-paned wall-to-ceiling windows in Chris’s penthouse were not just bulletproof. The inner pane contained an electro-magnetic barrier against any and all parabolic listening technology. The outer pane was black to the exterior eye. In addition, Chris’s devices—his cell phone, his tablet and his laptop—contained “architecture” that, according to Max and Mr. White, guaranteed that any data he transmitted or received was encrypted “everywhere at all layers of the technology stack.” “We can’t send smoke signals,” Max had said. “We have to be able to communicate instantly and with one-hundred-percent reliability. Assuming everything else is equal, which I don’t, that’s where the edge is. We’re listening to them and they’re listening to us all the time.” Chris would prefer to convey important information in person, the way the old-school Mafia dons and their underlings did. Search, drink wine or annisette, talk. Then people died or made fortunes.