by Saul Herzog
They were arriving now, and Kirov dried his feet and pulled on the coarse, woolen socks he’d borrowed from the army commander. They were horrid things, with a texture closer to that of a Brillo-pad than anything resembling a textile.
But they were warm.
He left his tent, and the cadets, as they got off the bus, stood at attention in a row, awaiting his inspection.
What a waste, Zhukovsky thought when he saw them. They were the cream of the crop. The best of the best. Hand-selected from all over the country to be trained as special-action GRU assets.
Men that could, and more importantly, would do anything for their country.
“So young,” he said when the last of them had joined the line. “So very young. Like lambs in spring.”
The men stood deathly still. They were trained killers all. And all had at least one kill on his file. It had been a criterion for selection.
They were not kills in action.
They had been performed in training, in front of superiors, usually of a hooded prisoner from some far-off battlefield.
The recruit didn’t know who he was killing.
He didn’t know why.
But he did it. And that was what counted. It was what separated men like these, Recruit-Classification-Red, from those who failed the test, Recruit-Classification-Green.
“By the time I’m done with you,” Zhukovsky barked, “no one will ever question your readiness again, do you hear me. This is your initiation, gentlemen. This is your ticket to the big leagues.”
Zhukovsky had never been one for pep talks, but this mission was going to require a lot of things that ordinarily he would have dispensed with.
He had to prepare them for one of the most important and difficult missions there was.
He had to prepare them for a close-range, face-to-face massacre of civilians. The reason it had to be close-combat was that it was going to be recorded. It was a false-flag operation, and there had to be a record of it. It was to form the pretext for the entire invasion that was to follow and, in Kirov’s view, was essential to avoiding a war with NATO immediately following the occupation of Riga.
“If all we get out of this is a war we can’t win,” Kirov had said, “then we’d be better to pack up now and go home.”
Packing up and going home was probably the smart thing to do, but that wasn’t an option. The president had set his sights on the Baltic, on reclaiming all the glory lost by his predecessors, and so, this action was essential.
On paper, it was simple enough, Kirov had sold it on the basis of its simplicity, but Zhukovsky foresaw a number of technical challenges. These men were young. They were, despite their Recruit-Classifications, as green as they came. And they were going to be marched into a small village, not unlike the towns most of them had grown up in, and kill people who looked exactly like the people most of them had grown up with. The villagers they were to kill were all ethnic-Russians.
That was what, in Kirov’s view, made it such a compelling pretext.
But that meant their screams, their pleas for mercy, the tears of mothers clutching their children, would be in Russian.
Getting this batch of recruits to carry out such an operation, to pull it off without a hitch, to get in and out according to Kirov’s extremely strict schedule, was going to require preparation.
He would have to pull these men into an alternate universe, a universe in which all the laws of God and man ceased to exist.
There was a sound of barking in the distance, the preparations for Zhukovsky’s first training exercise, and he continued his speech.
“In a moment,” he said, “some soldiers are going to bring up a pack of dogs. Nice dogs. Good dogs. These dogs are not rabid. They are diseased. They have done nothing wrong.”
He looked at the men.
“And we’re going to do something extremely painful to them. Something that some of you might object to. But I want you to swallow those objections. There’s a part of you that will revolt to what we’re going to do, and I want you to let that part of yourselves die, here and now, in this forest, today.”
The men were not going to be told the nature of the operation that awaited them until much closer to the time. For now, all they needed to know was that it was important. Gradually, they would realize that it was a false-flag operation. They would be issued Latvian army uniforms and told to try them on. Then they would be shown maps of the village of Ziguri and told to study them. Gradually, as the training proceeded, it would dawn on them what was going to be done, and by then, it would be too late for them to do anything about it.
Of course, there would be some who rejected the mission. It was not every recruit who could go through with orders like these. It was only to be expected.
But, if Zhukovsky did his job properly, enough of them would do as ordered that the mission would be a success.
Three soldiers walked into the clearing, leading a pack of about twenty trained army service dogs. The dogs yelped and barked and jumped playfully.
Zhukovsky watched the men. This operation was like the old days.
The very old days.
Days that predated even Zhukovsky.
They’d been conducted before. These very forests had seen such operations before. World War Two had been lost and won for Russian in these forests. Rounding up villages, evacuating ghettos, lining up families, and shooting every man, woman, and child, all of it had been done before.
And if it had been done before, it could be done again.
It would be done.
And it would be caught on tape for the whole world to see.
“You,” Zhukovsky said to the first man in the row.
The man stood at attention, and Zhukovsky stepped up to him and handed him a twelve-inch hunting knife. The man took the knife.
“What you’re going to do,” Zhukovsky said, and he figured he might as well just shock the men now.
If any of them balked, he would have them killed in front of the others. If they were to descend into hell, then the sooner it started, the better.
Before they had time to get their bearings.
“You’re going to choose a dog, and you’re going to skin it alive.”
The man’s eyes flicked to Zhukovsky, just for the briefest of seconds, just to see if what he was saying was serious, then returned to looking directly in front.
“The things we’re going to do here, gentlemen, they may seem barbaric, but I assure you, it is not the first time Russian soldiers have been asked to do such things. And it surely will not be the last.”
He watched as the man stepped forward with the knife. He walked to the dogs and grabbed one of them by the collar.
Zhukovsky knew he was crossing a Rubicon, but missions like this required extreme measures.
And the truth was, the hardest part of it all, the most dastardly, if that was the correct word, was not the job that would be given to these men, but the part Kirov had hoisted onto Zhukovsky himself.
“The men,” Kirov had said, “as soon as the mission is complete, must be liquidated also.”
“Kirov,” Zhukovsky had said, his objection purely a reflex.
“Accept it, Oleg,” Kirov had said, using a phrase they both remembered all too well from their days in Soviet special forces. “It’s a thing that must be done. It’s a thing that will be done.”
Oleg Zhukovsky was a confirmed atheist. It had been a requirement of becoming an officer in the Soviet Army, of course, but had come naturally to him. His grandmother had prayed. He remembered watching her as a boy, watching her gnarled old fingers fumbling over a necklace of knots while she muttered the prayers her grandmother had taught her.
And there was a piece of Oleg that knew, or rather felt, that what she’d been doing was important, more real than he liked to think.
But other than that, he never thought of God. He never thought of heaven. He never thought of hell.
Until, that was, he’d been ordered to carry
out this operation.
A massacre was always tough to swallow, but killing his own men just to ensure their silence, that was pushing it, even for him.
He’d only just started planning the details of their deaths. It required care. He couldn’t just pass it down the chain as a normal order. The Army wouldn’t carry it out. And besides, these men were trained GRU killers. It could get messy.
The solution he was looking at wasn’t quite Zyklon B, but it might as well have been.
For a man like Oleg Zhukovsky, indeed for anyone his age who’d grown up in post-war Saint Petersburg, a city that had survived years of famine and siege at the hands of the Nazi Army, the things Hitler had done were the epitome of evil.
They were the ultimate abyss of depravity.
They were, in a word, Satanic.
And now, Kirov had ordered him to plumb those depths himself.
He would do it.
He knew what would happen to him if he didn’t. But also, in truth, there was a part of him that had always yearned to push the envelope. To go beyond the pale. To indulge, so to speak, in the Satanic.
There would be no atonement for this.
There would be no redemption.
But the president said it had to be done, Kirov said it had to be done, and so, it would be.
Zhukovsky went through the group, one by one, and forced each of them to carry out his grizzly order. Out of the thirty-six men assembled, only twenty-seven of them were able to do it. Only they could skin a live dog.
Some of them threw up. Some of them simply got back on the bus and took their seats. There would be consequences for them. They would be punished. For Zhukovsky, they were of no more use than the quivering, whimpering dogs that were huddled behind a fence at the far end of the camp, waiting for death.
The last man had just finished his task, and Zhukovsky was about to leave them with some parting words, but an orderly approached.
“Sir,” he said, “there’s an urgent call for you.”
“From Saint Petersburg?” Zhukovsky said.
“Riga, sir.”
Zhukovsky went back into his tent and saw the light flashing above the phone on his desk. He sighed and slumped down into his chair. He knew it would be Kuzis, calling to confirm that their little problem had been taken care of. He looked at the phone and then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
Let him wait, he thought.
He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it with a match. There was an old heater by the desk, fed by a twenty-pound propane tank, and he pressed the button to light the pilot. The damn thing didn’t start, and he had to get up and check the tank. It was empty.
“Fuck this place,” he muttered.
The light was still flashing.
He sighed and picked up the receiver.
“Zhukovsky,” he growled into the receiver.
“Sir,” Kuzis said, his voice frantic, “there’s a problem.”
“Don’t tell me we have a problem, Kuzis.”
“The assassin in Warsaw.”
“Smolov.”
“He’s dead.”
Zhukovsky said nothing. He brought the cigarette to his mouth absently and sucked on it, allowing the news to sink in. “This is not good,” he said.
“No, sir,” Kuzis said.
“How did he die?”
“She executed him. Shot him through the forehead in the middle of the Warsaw train station.”
“I see.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“It will be on the news then,” Zhukovsky said.
“It will, sir.”
“I better call Kirov.”
“We think she got on a train to Berlin Hauptbahnhof,” Kuzis said.
“Has the train arrived?”
“Not yet.”
Zhukovsky sighed. “I don’t think I need to remind you what happens if this gets out.”
“Of course not, sir.”
Zhukovsky hung up the phone and then dialed the secure line at Kirov’s hotel.
It was scarcely dawn, but Kirov picked up instantly.
“Oleg,” he said. “Is it done?”
Zhukovsky swallowed before speaking. “She got away, sir.”
“Again?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who did you send?”
“Smolov, sir.”
“Mikhail Smolov?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What the fuck happened?”
“He’s dead, sir.”
“You’re telling me this Latvian police officer, a woman, killed Mikhail Smolov?”
“There may be more to her than what we’ve been told, sir.”
Kirov was silent a moment, then said, “Do we know where she’s headed now?”
“She’s on a train to Berlin, sir.”
“All right.”
“I can activate my assets in Berlin,” Zhukovsky said.
“No,” Kirov said. “You’ve done quite enough.”
“What are you going to do, sir?”
“Fuck,” Kirov snapped.
“Sir,” Zhukovsky said, his voice sounding increasingly panicked.
“Shut up, Zhukovsky. Just shut up. I’m calling in my personal asset list. It’s time we called in the professionals.”
19
As the Warsaw suburbs thinned and gave way to open fields, Agata felt her pulse slow.
She’d been watching the door of the carriage like a hawk, waiting in dread for police officers to file in and arrest her at any moment.
That hadn’t happened. Not when the train pulled out of the central station, and not when it stopped at the few suburban stations on its way out of the city. It was now at full speed, flying across the Polish countryside toward the German border, and once they crossed that, she felt she’d be able to breathe easier.
She needed a plan. That much was clear. Kuzis, or the Russians, or someone, had made it very clear they were trying to kill her. They were trying to keep their secret, and until she passed what she knew to someone powerful enough to do something about it, she knew she wouldn’t be safe.
Sitting on the train, she went over in her head everything that had just happened in Warsaw.
The assassin had been waiting for her.
Buying the ticket with a credit card had been a mistake, but she hadn’t expected Kuzis, or whoever he was feeding information to, to have real-time access to secure financial data.
She had a sinking feeling that she was on the Kremlin’s high-priority radar. She’d seen it before. She knew what her chances were. When the Kremlin decided to kill someone, there was no outrunning the assassins.
She kicked herself for not seeing Kuzis for what he was. Thinking back, there’d been signs. He was blatant about his wealth, living well beyond the means of a man in his position. The lake house alone was worth millions. Because he was so open about it, Agata had just taken it for granted. She’d assumed, without ever looking into it, that his family was wealthy.
That, and she’d been distracted by his sexual advances.
The truth had been right in front of his eyes all along. Of course, the Russians were laying the groundwork for an invasion. Paying off people like Kuzis was probably the tip of the iceberg. For all she knew, they could have members of parliament, judges, the Latvian president himself on their payroll.
Russia was a country that was two-hundred-sixty times the size of Latvia. How could any country hope to maintain its independence in the face of such an overwhelming foe?
She had to accept that there was no one, at least no one in Latvia, who she could trust.
The train passed through Konin and Poznań before crossing the border into Germany at the Oder River.
In the town of Fürstenwalde, about twenty miles outside central Berlin, she disembarked.
It was a clear, crisp morning, and she looked up and down the platform carefully before proceeding into the terminal.
The station was clean and orderly in th
e typical German-style, and she bought a coffee in the concourse. Then, she left the station by the main entrance and got in a cab.
“Where to?” the driver said in German.
He had on a thick, blue duffel coat, like a sailor, and Agata found herself gauging whether or not there was anything suspicious about him.
She’d decided to get off the train at the very last minute, and as far as she was aware, even the Kremlin couldn’t yet read minds, so they couldn’t have known she’d be here, at this station, getting in this cab.
She told herself that, but after what had already happened, it was hard not to be paranoid.
“The Brandenburg Gate,” she said to the driver.
It was close to the American Embassy, and if there was one place she should be able to deliver her information, it was there. The Latvian embassy was out of the question, and she didn’t know who she could trust in the German government.
The Americans, though, did have one person she believed she could trust. She didn’t know how she’d get a message to that person specifically, it wouldn’t be straightforward, but if she could reach her, she was certain she wouldn’t be sold out.
It wasn’t that she was a friend, exactly.
But there was a trust.
They shared a common enemy.
As the cab made its way through the city traffic, Agata thought of the woman she’d met in a bar in Riga all those months before. Never in a million years would she have thought she’d be calling on her so soon.
She’d been out on a date. She’d felt it was going well, some guy who seemed to be the full package. According to his dating profile, he’d never been married, had a good job, was handsome even.
Very handsome.
He had an air of vulnerability about him, like something bad had happened in his past, but that he hadn’t let it get the better of him.
The dating game in Riga was no cakewalk, Agata knew that from experience. She should have known the second he entered the room that he was too good to be true.
She’d had a glass of wine, then an appetizer of shrimp drizzled in butter, then a second glass of wine, and as she made her way to the lady’s room to touch up her makeup, she was fairly certain she was going home with him.
