by Ward Larsen
It was, he was quite sure, a face he’d seen before.
* * *
President Petrov sat fidgeting behind the desk in his Kremlin office. He looked at the secure phone as he had done a hundred times in the last day. Or so it seemed. After so many years in power, he was not a man used to waiting.
As far as he knew, his plan was going well. Yet things would move quickly now. He spun a half turn in his chair and gazed out the window. Red Square was lost to the gloom, winter ahead of its cruel schedule. He thought acidly of the infernal Paris Accord, the climate agreement he’d signed, but had no intention of honoring. Try to convince a Russian the world is getting warmer.
The square was quiet now, yet there had been a protest two days earlier. Kremlin security had stamped it out quickly, but such outbreaks had been materializing more often. More spontaneously. Something had to change, and very soon.
His musings were interrupted when his secretary announced a visitor.
“Send him in immediately!” Petrov said.
He spun to face the door, but remained in his seat to receive Sergei Durov—the man he’d anointed as director of the FSB.
“What news from Saudi Arabia?” the president asked, knowing Durov wouldn’t be here for any other reason. Not today.
“Our source there tells us everything is operating on schedule.”
“Is he sure?”
“He is only a mid-level man in the National Guard, but very conveniently placed. He’s never been wrong before. Our staff from the Riyadh post have also been keeping their eyes open—everything they’ve seen correlates. The royals will be under way soon.”
Petrov nodded, relieved. “Good. And what of our attribution plan?”
“That is why I came. We finally managed it—the phone intercept we were working on.”
“You can influence our target as hoped?” asked Petrov.
Durov, who was relatively new to his position, said confidently, “Our man will be in place soon. Everything is lining up perfectly.”
Petrov almost relaxed, but saw fit to add a bit of incentive for his latest FSB head. “For your sake … let’s hope that it does.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
The sergeant set out from his little house on the cliffs shortly after nightfall. He had spent the day under the pergola, sipping tea and using his shooter’s optic to scout out a path along the high ledges by which he could reach the southern peninsula. There was nothing nearing a trail, but the terrain just below the crest appeared less sheer than that of lower levels. It was time to put his work to the test.
He brought with him one of the large shipping cases and a standard set of army-issue night-vision goggles. He started out slowly, glad to have the night optics and stepping carefully with the big case strapped to his back. He found the footing difficult, the scrub near the top of the cliffs more dense than he’d expected. He had seen worse, of course, most notably in the Caucasus with its swampy broadleaf forests. Fortunately, tonight the sergeant was in no hurry.
He bypassed the lone house at the foot of the peninsula, and was encouraged to see no signs of occupancy—as had been the case since his arrival. From that point, the promontory that was his objective extended roughly two hundred meters seaward and was perhaps half that in width. In the greater coastal scheme of things, it was a minor outcropping that he supposed was not even worth a name. That might change in thirty years, when developers worked their way south and gave it one. Today, however, it was merely a blunt finger of land jutting into the Atlantic, barren and isolated, no different from a thousand others on the left-hand shores of Africa.
He kept on through the dark, relying on the NVGs, and his pace slowed fifty meters short of the seaward tip of the point. There the sergeant turned left, toward the opposing southward-facing cliff, and made his way through thickening brambles. Burrs collected on his clothing, and dry branches snapped under every step. Then, all at once, the vegetation fell away and he saw the ocean again, a theater of black raked by moonlit whitecaps.
He saw Ovechkin’s place right away, even without the optics. Far down the coastline, it lay under the dome of stars on its own stunted outcropping of rock, a lone villa reaching out to the sea like a wary handshake. It was a decent-sized place with multiple balconies, a complex roof, and a terrace that was lit like a carnival.
He spent ten minutes scouting the area before settling on a pad of firm ground in a depression between stands of trees. He shrugged off the equipment case and set it near a jagged stump where a seaward tree had long ago given way. The case was watertight, and he didn’t bother with any kind of camouflage—he doubted that more than a handful of people visited this clearing in any given year. All he needed was a few hours.
He looked once more at the distant villa, more a matter of introspection than reconnaissance. The sergeant had already done his homework. He knew that the difference in elevation between the two points was thirty-one meters, and that the prevailing offshore winds swirled up the cliffs with a vengeance that defied any measurement. All inconsequential. In another scenario, he might have used some kind of optic to see if anyone was on the expansive patio at that moment. Ovechkin himself, cocktail in hand? A security detail fighting to stay alert? Tonight such musings were irrelevant.
The most essential detail, of course, was that of range, and this the sergeant had predetermined. Four thousand one hundred eighty-four meters—plus or minus a few, depending on where he set up shop.
That was the distance between the patch of dead grass upon which he stood and Vladimir Ovechkin’s terrace. The distance across which the next faultless bullet would fly.
* * *
If the sergeant’s deliberations along the coast had the benefit of forethought, Slaton’s were far more extemporaneous. He watched closely as the man who’d gotten off the jet strolled across the tarmac. While his facial features seemed familiar, the distance was too great for that to be the sole arbiter. In a long-honed practice, Slaton studied the man in his entirety: the way he carried himself, the set of his thick shoulders and squat legs, the military-inspired haircut.
As a sniper, he had learned, exercised, and even lectured on the art of identifying people from a distance. It was among the most essential tasks for a shooter in the field—in a sense, even more important than marksmanship itself, because a target that could not be identified wasn’t a target at all.
The case before him had arrived with supporting evidence. The CIA, who’d recently dispatched Slaton beneath a ship in the Red Sea, had also sent him here. The nexus between those assignments was increasingly clear. Altogether, Slaton was convinced. He was looking at the same man he’d seen two days earlier, on the deck of a ship that had since gone to the bottom of the sea. Only hours ago Sorensen admitted that the CIA had lost track of the saboteurs who’d sent Argos and the other ships down. Apparently they’d recovered spectacularly, at least with regard to this suspect.
But of all places, why has he come here? Slaton wondered.
As he watched the man approach the hangar, there was a part of him—a very small and righteous part—that wished the lens he was using was attached to something more persuasive than a camera. His trigger finger depressed, but touched only the camera’s shutter button. He held it down for a sequence of shots, the whirring click circulating in the early night air. It could never be heard half a mile away, but even so Slaton admonished himself for not wrapping the camera’s body in a cloth. His aversion to sound was hardwired.
When the man disappeared inside the hangar, Slaton got a good shot of the business jet, one that included its registration number. He then snapped images of the MiGs inside, the hangar itself, and each of the surrounding buildings. Two vehicles also got his attention: a small van and a larger truck, both topped by gear and antennas. In the end he had nearly fifty digital shots. That done, he weighed whether to call the mission complete. If he stayed a few hours, he might get better pictures. More likely, sand flea bites and a deficit of sleep tomorrow.
It was an easy decision—until one new thought occurred to him. Could the man he’d just seen be the sniper he was chasing? The fact that he’d arrived in Morocco, where Ovechkin was bunkered up, fit the scenario. Yet Slaton was nearly certain that this man had been on Argos. When he crosshatched the timing of the deaths of Ivanovic and Romanov, it seemed impossible that this could be his shooter. No one could have made all that happen, even with a private jet at his disposal.
Still, there was a proven connection between Argos and Ovechkin, and by extension the man who’d just arrived. That being the case, Slaton considered following him. Might the man lead him to Ovechkin? Or was Langley’s technology the more reliable method?
Slaton decided the odds favored the CIA.
He backtracked through the desert and reached the bike. After one careful survey of the area, he went to work. He used the camera’s Bluetooth function to upload the pictures to his CIA-issued phone. Seconds later they were uploading into the sky, and then back down to Langley. He was just pocketing the phone when it vibrated with a message. He looked, expecting a confirmation that the photos had gone through. What he saw was better. A message from a new number confirmed that the CIA had the information he wanted. A meeting was requested: ASAP in Marrakesh, a particular street address. A map was included, and Slaton committed the route to memory. It was roughly a one-hour ride from where he stood.
Things were happening quickly.
After that meeting, Slaton would find a place to rest. While he slept, the machine that was Langley would process the photos he’d sent, spin them through whatever digital gears were necessary. Perhaps by the time he woke, they would find something useful in them. Yet Slaton had already gotten the best possible news. Ovechkin had been located, and the assassin he was after might well be nearby.
The bad news? The very same things.
He stowed his gear, fired up the bike, and was soon accelerating in a spray of gravel and dirt into the empty westbound lane.
* * *
Slaton’s photos arrived in Langley with little fanfare.
The operations center there was focused on certain remote quarters of the Saudi peninsula. A particularly heavy zoom lay over a village called Tubarjal, where a detachment of U.S. SEALs was helping the SANG wrap up two carloads of small arms. Three suspects had been killed in the raid, and the survivor, who was speculatively deemed a young Shiite insurgent, had not yet offered anything of intelligence value. That would likely change in coming days as he endured the persuasions of the Mahabith, the kingdom’s secret police, yet it was doubtful one shocked teenager had any revelations to share.
The SEALs had been the only Special Operations detachment in country when things kicked off. With Langley’s strong encouragement, however, the DOD was now on board: every available SOG unit in theater was currently en route to join the hunt. Because Director Coltrane himself was deeply immersed in the fray, he was not informed of the arrival of Slaton’s photographs from the high deserts of Morocco. Thankfully, in an ode to raw manpower, a mid-level analyst on the third floor, whose name was Dobbs, did look at Slaton’s pictures.
It was here, as fate would have it, that a ninety-six-year-old dementia patient in a suburban Fredericksburg nursing home made an indelible impression on the balance of power in the Middle East. It began when she launched a spoonful of peas at her regular dinner tablemate. The unprovoked barrage instigated a flat-out food fight, two other tables joining in with glee. Soon cornbread was flying and mashed potatoes plastered the walls. The exchange was soon tamped down, but the facility’s staff were greatly displeased—it wasn’t the woman’s first transgression. That being the case, her daughter, the wife of a third-floor CIA analyst named Dobbs, was asked to come in for a word. This dominoed to the cancellation of dinner plans with her husband, who in turn was faced with two options. He could go home to a frozen dinner, or stay late and work the photographs, then sleep in tomorrow morning.
In what would weeks later be characterized as a commendable example of diligence, Dobbs chose the latter.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Marrakesh, like any city, puts on display its most prominent districts. Websites and brochures celebrate La Palmeraie with its sparkling villas and energetic Club Med. Gueliz stands apart for its distinctly European heritage, sporting wide boulevards, trendy shopping areas, and a span of verdant gardens. Mouassine is famously endowed with grand riads and resplendent mosques. The shadowed warren called Rue Essebtiyne finds no such promotions.
In a town renowned for tight streets and frenetic crowds, the web of shops and markets compressed within Rue Essebtiyne is nothing short of claustrophobic. The neighborhood seems to pulse in the way of a failed urban arterial system, alternately clogging and leaking, in a constant state of arrhythmia. Taking the place of any master plan are generations of winding streets, some allegedly paved and others left to dirt, that curve and loop and seize, all of it lined by patternless walls that give no suggestion as to where one shop ends and the next begins. The scents of competing street vendors whirl through the air, lamb on one gust, spices the next, all of it intermittently overcome by pungent black clouds of diesel exhaust.
It was here that Slaton arrived with great expectations.
He stood up the BMW five streets from the address he’d been given, concealed behind a wall amid a group of smaller motorcycles and scooters. The big German bike was an outlier among the lighter machines, but having seen much of the neighborhood, Slaton doubted he would find a less conspicuous place to leave it. As if to amplify the point, fifty feet to his right a disinterested mule stood lashed to a bicycle rack.
He removed the backpack from the bike’s saddle case, slung it over his shoulder, and resisted an urge to relock the empty case—any petty thief, of which he supposed there were many in residence, wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of breaking in to learn it was empty.
It took ten minutes and two polite questions to locate the correct door—which in fact was no door at all. A gap in the earthen wall beside a trellis-covered alley was covered by a tattered blue curtain. The curtain served little purpose, and he looked past it on either side to see a long-neglected dirt courtyard. Weeds predominated, and the ground was striped with slatted shadows that implied lights and some kind of structure overhead. A plastic chair lay on its side, and trash had accumulated in one corner, a mongrel nosing through hopefully. After briefly wondering if he had the right place, Slaton knocked on the wooden frame at the threshold.
The dog ignored him, but a man appeared almost instantly. He regarded Slaton with not a trace of uncertainty.
He could only be CIA.
* * *
His name was Smith, or so he said. He was ten years older than Slaton, three inches taller, with gaunt features and a dismal smile that gave him the countenance of a gravedigger on holiday.
He thanked Slaton for coming in a voice that was surprisingly rich and mellifluous, then pulled aside the curtain and invited him inside. This in itself had implications. It told Slaton the man had probably been issued his photograph as a means of identification. Which, in turn, meant his photograph was on file with the CIA. Not terribly surprising in this day and age, but a previously unknown fact. And yet another chink in his off-the-grid armor.
With the gait of an arthritic giraffe, Smith led Slaton through the courtyard and into a shambles of an apartment. If the courtyard had been rundown, the tiny efficiency was positively derelict. The walls seemed held together by peeling paint, and a filthy shag carpet was covered in crumpled food wrappers. The ceiling above had a massive yellow stain adjacent to the bathroom—presumably where the bathroom was situated in the apartment above. Slaton weighed taking a picture for Christine, just to convince her that spies didn’t always reside in embassy suites.
He noticed right away that there were no windows in the room, and when Smith closed and bolted the door to the courtyard things fell improbably quiet. A safe house, perhaps, whose appearance belied its robustness.
“It serves its purpose,” replied Smith as if reading Shakespeare from a stage.
The light inside was dim, which Slaton reckoned was intentional. Hovels had their place in any intelligence agency’s portfolio of properties. Chosen carefully, they could be both practical and discreet, and were often close to the action.
Smith diverted into what might have been the kitchen: in one corner was a tiny table, and next to it a mini-refrigerator with a microwave balanced on top. The glass door of the microwave had scorch marks.
“Can I offer you a drink?” Smith inquired. He pulled a pint-sized bottle of something amber from one jacket pocket, and from another produced two small plastic cups. “I’m afraid on-the-rocks is out of the question,” he added, gesturing to the silent mini-fridge.
“No,” Slaton said. “I’m good. But thanks.”
Smith tilted the bottle to pour a decent bracer, then, as an apparent afterthought, tilted it a second time. Screwing the cap back on his bottle, he said. “We’ve located this Russian you been looking for.”
“Ovechkin?” Slaton asked, wanting to be clear.
“That’s right. I’ve been given a file to pass on.” Smith produced a folder from the only drawer in the small counter. He cracked it open and removed a handful of photos. Each was numbered, one through five, and Smith spread them out on the table like a cardplayer laying down a winning straight. “We should start with these.”
Slaton looked down to see a series of overhead images. They ranged from very high-resolution to a ten-mile-square panorama. The tight shots looked too good for satellite footage, implying that a drone had been tapped for the job. Slaton kept the thought to himself, not caring from what altitude or platform his help was taken.
“We’ve tracked Ovechkin here,” Smith continued. He dragged a bony finger across the wide-angle shot and settled on a particular villa. Slaton tried to place it from his scenic tour with Omar, but having covered so many miles of coastline it was hopeless.
