by Allan Topol
After Kuznov had heard Craig’s story from Daud, he summoned Dimitri and asked him to see if it checked out.
An hour later, Kuznov received the answer: an Israeli undercover agent, Amos Neir, posing as Ahmed Hussein, had been murdered in Paris on August 2. His body had been pulled from the Seine, and the suspected murderer was Omar Basayev.
If in fact that was why Craig had gone to Grozny and he was trying to kill Omar, Kuznov would gladly let him leave. It would be wonderful if somebody other than Kuznov killed Omar. That way Kuznov wouldn’t face another insurrection from the Chechens.
Kuznov still had some nagging doubts as to whether Craig was somehow involved in the plot Toth had set in motion, and he had one other way to get some information. He decided to delay calling Daud until he saw how that turned out.
That evening, Craig had another disappointing dinner alone in the hotel dining room, this time accompanied by a dismal bottle of Romanian wine.
After dinner, he returned to his suite. His plan was to shower, go to bed, and hopefully get on an 8:00 a.m. plane to Moscow, where he would connect to Paris.
While he was drying himself after his shower, he heard the doorbell ring. What now, Craig wondered as he slipped on a terrycloth robe and walked into the living room. He looked through the peephole and saw a gorgeous blonde woman in a room service uniform—a white skirt and tight fitting white blouse that accentuated her ample bosom. She was standing in the corridor with a cart holding a bottle of Taittinger Comtes de Vogue in an ice bucket and a platter of caviar and blinis.
Craig opened the door, and she wheeled in the cart.
“Hi, Mr. Marino,” she said. “My name is Olga.”
“I didn’t order anything from room service.”
“This is compliments of the hotel management. They understand that you had some trouble during your stay, and they don’t want you to have an unfavorable view about Grozny.”
“Well, that’s very nice.”
“Why don’t you sit down? I’ll pour you a glass of champagne and fix some caviar.”
“That sounds wonderful,” said Craig, sitting on a sofa.
She opened the bottle, poured a glass, and handed it to him. It was excellent and perfectly chilled. As he sipped, she spread caviar on a blini and held it in front of his mouth. He ate it.
“Would you like another?”
“Sure.”
She returned to the cart, but instead of working with the caviar, she unbuttoned her blouse, exposing her full breasts. Then she unzipped her skirt, letting that fall to the floor. She wasn’t wearing any underwear.
Who sent her and what the hell is going on? Craig wondered. He was determined to find out.
“Why don’t you pull up a chair and join me for a glass,” he suggested. “It’s a shame for me to drink alone.”
“Excellent idea,” she agreed, pouring herself a glass before sitting down close to Craig.
She raised her glass. “To your good health, Mr. Marino.”
“And yours, too,” said Craig.
They both took a sip.
“Now for some more caviar,” she said.
She returned to the cart, but this time instead of spreading it on a blini, she placed some caviar on each of her breasts, around the nipples. Then she walked over and stood in front of Craig.
“I thought you’d like to eat it this way.”
“What a good idea.”
As he licked off the caviar, she reached down and placed her hand between his legs. She played with his penis until it stiffened.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” she said. “You’ve obviously recovered from your ordeal.”
“For sure. But I think we’d be more comfortable in the bedroom.”
Once in the bedroom, she stretched out on the bed and raised her legs, opening herself up to him.
Craig turned on the radio next to the bed to a station playing classical music. Then he climbed on top of her, but didn’t enter her. Instead, he swiftly grabbed a pillow and placed it over her face, pressing down firmly. He had no intention of harming her, but he needed answers and frightening her was the only way he could get them.
She tried to scream, but the pillow muffled the sound. She twisted, thrashed, and kicked to no avail. Craig was too strong. After a couple of minutes, he pulled the pillow away. She was gasping for breath.
“Listen Olga, you’re going to answer some questions or I’ll suffocate you. It’s your choice.”
Though he was bluffing, from the look of terror on her face, he was sure she believed him.
“What questions?” she asked, panting.
“I want to know who sent you and what you were told to do.”
She gnashed her teeth, struggling to get away from him. “I’ll tell you nothing, you bastard,” she hissed.
“What a shame,” he said, “for a beautiful woman to die so young.”
Then he plastered the pillow over her face again, keeping it there for a full minute.
When he pulled it away this time, the color was gone from her face.
“Last chance, Olga. Tell me now or you’ll die.”
“I’ll tell you,” she stammered.
“I’m listening.”
“President Kuznov sent me. He told me to find out why you came to Grozny. That’s the truth. I swear.”
“Where are you from?”
“Moscow.”
“When did you fly to Grozny?”
“This afternoon. I flew from Moscow in President Kuznov’s private plane.”
Craig believed her. It made sense that once Kuznov knew Craig was coming to Grozny he would try anything to find out what Craig wanted.
He got up from the bed and said, “Get dressed. We have to talk. Let’s go into the living room.”
Once Craig had his robe on and Olga had dressed, he turned on the television in the living room. Then he dumped the two glasses of champagne into the ice bucket and poured two fresh ones.
“One thing I don’t like is warm champagne,” he said.
He handed her a glass. She looked worried now, and he understood why.
“You have a problem,” he told her. “If you tell Kuznov what happened, he might kill you for failing him. I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” she stammered.
“So I have to give you a story that Kuznov will believe.”
She nodded.
“Here’s what you should tell him. You came into my suite with champagne. We had wonderful sex twice and we drank lots of champagne. After the second time while we were drinking champagne and talking, I told you that I came to Grozny to find Omar the Chechen and to kill him because he murdered a good friend of mine, Amos Neir.”
He paused. “Do you understand what I said?”
“Yes,” she said weakly.
“Good. I promise you,” he added, “that if I am arrested by Kuznov’s men after you leave here, I will tell them the exact same story. Our lives are both on the line. We’re in this together, joined at the hip, whether we like it or not. We can save each other, but only if we stick to this story.”
“I understand,” she said, now with conviction.
“Good.”
He walked over to the desk, where he had a pile of euros. He counted out five thousand and gave them to her.
“This is for your service tonight,” he said. “And if Kuznov asks, you can tell him that you were so good in bed I wanted to reward you.”
She smiled as she stuffed the money in her pocket.
“Can I go now?”
“No. I want you to go into the bedroom and moan for a couple of minutes as if we’re having really good sex. Then come out here and watch television for an hour. After that, go back into the bedroom and make the moaning noises again. Can you do that?”
“Of course.”
“Good. After that you can go.”
The first time she went into the bedroom her cries sounded so real that Craig wondered what she was doing. From the door of the
bedroom, he watched. She was naked lying on her back. With one hand she was playing with her breasts and with the other, she was stroking her vagina. Her eyes were closed; her body was writhing in ecstasy while she moaned. She clearly wasn’t pretending. She obviously took her assignment seriously.
After she returned from her second trip to the bedroom, an hour later, Craig said, “Okay, Olga. I’ve had a very long couple of days and I’m tired. You should leave and let me get to sleep.”
When she was gone, he wondered whether Kuznov would now send some thugs to test the veracity of the story Olga told by torturing him. Though the story she would tell was credible, it was about fifty-fifty, whether they would attack him, he decided. Nothing he could do about it now. Security men would almost undoubtedly stop him if he tried to leave the hotel.
No sense worrying about what I can’t control, Craig thought, and he really was tired. He went into the bedroom and climbed into bed with the scent of Olga still in the air and on the sheets, where he fell into a sound sleep.
Kuznov had told Olga to call him as soon as she left Craig’s hotel room, regardless of the hour. He was sleeping when the phone rang at 3:35 a.m.
“What took you so long?” he asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“He’s a virile man. He wanted to keep going. I couldn’t tell him no.”
“Sounds like you enjoyed yourself. What did you learn?”
“Enrico came to Grozny to find and kill Omar the Chechen because he murdered a friend of Enrico’s in Paris last week, a man named Amos Neir.”
“You think he was telling you the truth?”
“Yes, I made sure he drank a lot—it was clear his defenses were lowered.”
“Did he pay you for your services?”
“Five thousand euros.”
Kuznov laughed. “With the ten I paid you, not a bad day’s work. Unfortunately, I needed my plane so it’s back in Moscow. My secretary reserved a seat for you on the 8:00 a.m. Aeroflot to Moscow. So get a couple hours sleep and head to the airport.”
Kuznov paced, thinking about what he had learned. It was possible that Craig had been telling the truth—that his mission to Grozny was unrelated to Peter Toth. Certainly in his CIA days he might have developed a relationship with a Mossad agent. He could be pursuing this separate from his help to Elizabeth with Nicholas Toth. In that case, torturing Craig to get him to talk would be a waste of time. It would make far more sense to let him fly back to Paris, have people follow him there, and hope that he found and killed Omar. Even if he was working to stop the ceremony in Budapest from taking place, Kuznov would find out about it beforehand and stop him.
Kuznov picked up the phone and called Daud. “Let Enrico Marino take the first plane out to Moscow.”
Then he went back to bed, but he couldn’t sleep. He had been reluctant to kill Omar himself for fear of risking another uprising in Chechnya, which he didn’t want right now. But if Craig killed him, that would be perfect.
Kuznov could still remember Omar’s attack on the concert hall in Moscow twenty-two years ago. Omar and his accomplices had taken more than fifty hostages. When Russian troops burst in, they killed thirty-four of the fifty, and all but one of the Chechens. But somehow Omar slipped way.
Craig Page killing Omar would be a stroke of good fortune. With that thought in mind, Kuznov fell back to sleep.
Budapest
At six in the morning, Omar walked out of the front door of the castle into the cool morning air with a cup of tea in hand and a Glock holstered at his waist. The castle was perched on a crest in the rolling Buda hills west of the city center in Pest.
Omar looked eastward toward the Danube, with its beautiful bridges crossing into Pest, the commercial and business center of the city, and to the Great Hungarian Plains and farmland beyond where the sun was rising.
He was grateful to EU’s free movement rule under the Schengen Agreement, which permitted him, along with the four men in his entourage, to cross freely without any border checks from France to Germany, Austria, and finally to Hungary, in their van loaded with weapons. He knew those were the rules, but he still breathed a sigh of relief when he crossed the border into Hungary.
Once they approached Budapest, it was easy to reach the deserted castle Peter Toth had told him to use during their planning session. Peter had given him keys both to the castle and to his office abutting Parliament Square. From his vantage point in the early morning light, Omar had a perfect view of the stately neo-Gothic parliament building, one of the largest in the world, its spires shooting up into the sky.
Today was only Friday morning. According to Peter, the ceremony was set for Wednesday at noon. Omar hated waiting.
The castle, complete with turrets, had been built in the nineteenth century by a nobleman whose descendants had been murdered by the Nazis—supposedly an ally of Hungary. Omar, once a professor of European history, knew that Hungary had the distinction of being on the losing side of almost every war in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
A few years ago, the castle had been refurbished inside and it was comfortable. Shamil brought in food and other supplies, but Omar refused to let the other three leave the building.
Though the nearest neighbor was a hundred yards away, he didn’t want to risk raising suspicions that might bring a visit from the authorities.
As Omar looked out over the city, he heard the sound of footsteps from behind. Hand on his gun, Omar wheeled around. It was only Shamil.
“I have news,” Shamil said.
“What’s that?”
“I just learned that Peter Toth died in a fire in Washington.”
Omar pulled back with a start. “How did you find out?”
“On the internet. I was trying to get information about the parliament building when I stumbled across a speech given by Janos Rajk, the Hungarian justice minister, at a memorial service for Peter Toth in Maryland.”
Omar wasn’t surprised they hadn’t been aware of Peter’s death. Neither Omar nor Shamil regularly read newspapers, looked at television, or checked news online.
While processing the information, Omar reached a conclusion: Peter’s death could hardly be a coincidence. Kuznov must have found out what Peter was planning and arranged the fire. The Russian president had used arson to dispose of his political opponents in the past.
“You never received the second ten million euros that Peter Toth promised,” Shamil pointed out. “You could simply take the ten million he already paid you and abandon the operation. Nobody is alive to care now, and that way we can avoid the serious risks in proceeding.”
Omar rubbed his beard thinking about what Shamil had said. The castle was dark. He imagined the three men he had recruited were still sleeping. It was tempting to follow Shamil’s suggestion. He could go back to Grozny and use the ten million euros to finance terrorist operations against Russia.
Omar would have done that if Hungarian Prime Minister Szabo were the only target. But Peter Toth had hired Omar to kill Kuznov as well as Szabo. The plans Omar had developed were airtight. He might never get a chance to kill Kuznov again and repay the Russian for what he had done to Omar’s wife and children. And as long as he was killing Kuznov, he might as well take out Szabo as well. Of course, he’d never get the second ten million, but he didn’t care.
“No, we keep going,” Omar said with an air of finality.
He waited to hear whether Shamil would push back and argue with him, but instead he heard another man’s voice coming from behind the castle. Did they have an intruder? Omar pulled out his gun, motioning to Shamil with a finger over his lips. With Shamil trailing behind, he walked softly toward the back of the castle and the sound of the voice.
A thick wooded area was in the back, and as he looked around the corner, Omar couldn’t believe what he saw. One of the three Frenchmen—Rachid—was squatting down in a clump of trees, talking on a cell phone.
Omar was livid. He had told them they couldn’t have cell phon
es. That fucking Rachid. He knew he would be trouble, even in Clichy. He should have never brought him along.
Omar heard Rachid say, “Don’t worry,” as he approached, white with rage.
“I told you not to bring cell phones,” he hissed, aiming his gun at Rachid.
“Please don’t kill me,” Rachid cried out, holding his hands up.
“Who were you talking to?” Omar demanded.
“Only my sister, Ayanna. No one else, I swear,” Rachid said in a terrified voice. “I won’t make any more calls. I promise.” Rachid raised his arm and threw the cell phone into the woods. “See? It’s gone.”
Omar ignored his plea, firing three shots, even though he knew Rachid was dead after the first.
Rachid collapsed to the ground in a pool of his own blood.
“Wake the other two,” Omar told Shamil in an irate voice. “Order them to dig a hole and bury their buddy, that liar and sneak. Then have our friends in Clichy kill Ayanna as well. We don’t know what he told her. We can’t take any chances.”
Grozny and Paris
At six thirty in the morning, Craig walked through the revolving door of his hotel in Grozny and looked for a cab to take him to the airport. Horrified, he saw a military transport parked at the curb. Standing next to it were two soldiers.
One of the soldiers told Craig, “Our president is personally providing you with transport to the airport. Our taxis are not always dependable, and he doesn’t want anything to happen to you.”
Craig climbed into the vehicle. Kuznov must have not only accepted his story, Craig thought, but decided Craig could be valuable in finding and even killing Omar. That was fine with Craig.
The soldiers accompanied him to the boarding area where he was permitted to board first and given a seat in first class. At the end of the boarding process, he saw Olga get on the plane. She paused next to him, leaned over, and kissed him on the lips. “Great evening,” she said. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a card and handed it to him. “It has all of my contact info. Call me when you’re in Moscow. I travel, too.”
Then she made her way to the back of the plane. He wondered whether she meant it or if she was still playing the role he had given her.
