by Greg Wilson
Their sessions were taped so they had to be careful.
Just say, at some future point, the wrong person accidentally ended up reviewing the recordings. If it was apparent those handling the interrogation knew more than they should have then awkward questions might follow. Better to stick with what little they had and allow Nikolai to weave his own noose with the impossibility of his situation. After all, what excuse could there be for a senior FSB officer conducting a clandestine meeting with the CIA’s Moscow Station Chief? What possible explanation for the fact that, when intercepted just hours later, he and his family had been packed and ready to flee?
In the final analysis what could it amount to, if not treason?
At first his refusal to cooperate was met with tolerant smiles, but the longer he held out – the more he insisted there were matters of national security at stake, and that he would speak with no one other than his own superiors – the more impatient his interrogators became.
All this time they kept him isolated, forbidden visitors, forbidden contact with anyone, while between their sessions, when he was led back to his cell, he would always find the latest editions of Pravda and Izvestia waiting, laid out neatly on his small desk as if by an unseen maid, the absence in their columns of any mention of his arrest and detention a deliberate reminder of the complete irrelevance of his existence.
After three days his first inquisitors finally gave up and passed him on to more experienced hands. These were serious, hard-faced men. Prosecutor’s Office special investigators who showed Nikolai their credentials and promised him that he could confide in them with absolute trust. That if there were indeed matters of state security involved, all he had to do was tell them the truth, tell them everything and the whole matter would be quickly resolved. There was no need to fear for his family. They were safe, he could rely on that; under protection and waiting anxiously for his return.
They had played their parts so well that Nikolai had almost believed them. Almost. But by then he’d had enough time to think it all through. By then he understood what was happening and where it was going.
Perhaps somewhere in this building there were honest men – men who may have believed him – but if there were he would never be permitted to speak to them, he knew that now. He had been locked inside a conspiracy. A world within another. A place where powerful but invisible hands were manipulating his destiny to protect themselves. Not Marat Ivankov’s hands, since even he could not reach this far. This was a different sort of power. The power wielded by men like Viktor Patrushev and Aleksey Stephasin. Men who prospered from Ivankov’s existence and who would protect him to protect themselves.
But where did the American fit in? He was part of it, there could hardly be any doubt about that.
Why else the last minute change of the pick-up, brought forward to a time when the streets around Mira would be empty, a time when there would be fewer witnesses and thus fewer questions asked later, the MVD detail waiting outside at precisely the right moment? Surely all that was evidence enough of Hartman’s complicity but even more damning still was the charge on which they had arrested him.
Treason!
His meeting with Hartman at the Rossiya was its only possible basis, yet how could Ivankov’s people have even known about that meeting unless the American himself had told them? Had Ivankov reached him somehow, could that be it? Or had Nikolai stumbled into something bigger than even he had imagined? Some high stakes game between the American and Ivankov’s political patrons in which he had unwittingly become an expendable pawn?
In the end, what did it matter? He had been betrayed, that was enough, and that left only the question regarding the gunman in the park. Who had put him there and why?
It wasn’t beyond Stephasin to have sanctioned a hit, but since the MVD team had been caught completely off guard by the sniper, that seemed to rule out the establishment. After that, as far as Nikolai could calculate, there were just three other possibilities left.
Ivankov was the first. But if his associates could arrange for Nikolai to be disposed of so elegantly by way of arrest, why would he have taken the risk of placing a contract on Nikolai’s life? Double indemnity, perhaps, but it didn’t make sense. Without Nikolai alive – for now, at least – how could Ivankov be confident that he would ever retrieve the missing tapes? Okay, he had disposed of Gilmanov and probably countless others, but Gilmanov’s execution had been a different matter. As Vari had pointed out, there had been a purpose for that. Gilmanov was an insider gone rogue, dealt with in a manner intended to serve as a lesson, but the problem of Nikolai’s investigation was exactly the sort of fallout that Ivankov’s political safety net had been designed to catch.
The second possibility was Hartman, but then what was the motive? What possible reason could he have had for wanting Nikolai disposed of before the MVD took him into custody?
If there was a reason Nikolai couldn’t think of it, but just supposing there was… did that explain why the American had been there? Had he come himself to make sure the contract was carried out?
Well it hadn’t been. It had all gone wrong and turned to shit in front of him and perhaps that explained the look Nikolai had read in the American’s eyes as the Mercedes had flashed past in that last moment before they had bundled him away. But why?
Was there something else? Some piece of the puzzle he was missing; some reason he couldn’t grasp? And if there was, could it be connected to Vari… because, whether he liked it or not, Vari was the third option. The final possibility.
When Nikolai lay alone on his cot churning everything over again and again in his head, that was always the point at which his brain stalled and refused to go any further and when he reached that point he would remind himself of the one and only absolute truth, the single focus of his thinking that kept him sane: the understanding that only Natalia and Larisa mattered now and that everything else was irrelevant.
So finally he told the men from the Prosecutor’s Office everything. Not the entire truth, but everything they needed to hear. They seemed surprised at first, and perhaps they were. Perhaps somewhere deep within themselves, despite the accommodations and compromises they must have accepted to have been chosen for their role, they still clung to some shreds of integrity and couldn’t help wondering how they might have reacted if they had found themselves in Nikolai’s position. Or perhaps it was less noble than that. Perhaps they were now simply afraid of the burden of their own knowledge and where it might lead them. So they listened with guarded uncertainty and when he had finished they began with their own questions.
-Your partner, Vlasenko. How much of this can he confirm?
Careful, Nikolai. Don’t rush to judgment. You don’t know for sure. It’s possible that Vari was betrayed as well.
“He knew of the investigation. He was part of it. He knew of Gilmanov’s death. He warned me that Ivankov was behind it.”
These tapes you claim this Gilmanov gave you… Did Vlasenko see them?
If he is guilty… if he has betrayed you, as well, the answer doesn’t matter. But if he is innocent then pray to God that if they ever question him he has the sense to deny it, too.
“No. He did not see them.”
And that was all that Gilmanov gave you?
They were fishing.
“Yes. That was all. Nothing more.”
-You are absolutely certain?
They knew about the transcripts. Why else would they press the point?
“Absolutely certain.”
Has anyone else seen the tapes?
Would they question Natalia… or if he told them what they wanted to hear would they be content to believe him?
“No. No one”
-Your contact with the American, Hartman. Tell us how that came about.
Hartman has betrayed you. Don’t worry about him. But Vari… for now, at least, he deserves the benefit of the doubt. And this is your chance to lie for yourself, so do your best, Nikolai. Make it credible
.
“The Americans were already running their own investigation into Ivankov and his business affairs. They were concerned that before long he would be trying to extend his interests into the West. Gilmanov was helping them. He used to work for the same American bank I did. Perhaps they recruited him back then, I don’t know. When Hartman heard about Gilmanov’s death he contacted me. Called me on my cell phone. Gilmanov had given him the number and told him he should speak to me if anything ever happened. That he had given me other material for safekeeping. That between what Hartman and I had there would be enough to sink Ivankov and the people associated with him but that we would need to be very careful. Hartman suggested we should meet immediately so I agreed.”
There was an exchange of glances. Confused looks passing between the two men. As if Nikolai’s story was partly what they had been told to expect and partly not. And now they were responding automatically to their training, trying to assess which version of what they had heard might be closer to the truth. They had been told about the transcripts. The oblique manner of their questioning made Nikolai certain of that. But they had no proof that Gilmanov had given them to Nikolai. And Hartman had them now, that was a fact, so even if he was involved with the conspirators he could deny Nikolai’s version of events as much as he wanted, but he could never prove it wasn’t true.
The two investigators struggled back to the plot but the seed of doubt was planted.
- These videotapes. They could prove your whole story. Where are they? Tell us for God’s sake! If they contain what you say they do, we will make sure they go straight to the very highest authority. You have our word on that. You are one of us.
Not too quickly. Pretend to be thinking about it. Pretend to be wrestling with it. Look worried. Look doubtful. Now resigned.
“Alright. I will tell you.”
And he did.
One of the two investigators scratched down the details on a notepad while the other listened with sharp animation. Then they left in a hurry and were gone almost four hours before they returned together, solemnly shaking their heads.
“You were lying, Aven. There’s nothing there. No videotapes behind the stove in the upstairs apartment. Nothing in your apartment. We’ve taken the place apart. There is nothing anywhere.”
After that Nikolai had been returned to his cell and left alone to wonder whether they were lying, or telling the truth. And which might be worse.
They came for him at night, since that was how they operated. Took him from his room and led him back along the corridors to the courtyard, where a black Volga was waiting, a mesh screen fitted between its front and rear seats, the holes where the door handles had once been, crudely patched over with silver duct tape. No one told him where they were going but by the route they took he was able to work it out.
Lefortovo.
While the reforms had seen control of the flamboyantly titled Main Directorate for the Execution of Punishments now handed over to the Ministry of Justice, Lefortovo had remained untouched. The MVD had no intention of surrendering its hold on the infamous former KGB compound on Moscow’s eastern outskirts.
It was what was euphemistically referred to as an investigative jail, a place where the state could hold detainees at its whim, undisturbed by the inconvenience of public scrutiny, while the cases against them were assembled or – often as not it was reputed – manufactured. Lefortovo was a place where uncertainty and dread were cultivated and spread deliberately like laboratory-propagated bacteria.
Lefortovo was an ominous, forbidding place however one luxury it boasted was space. Most Russian jails regularly packed twenty-five or even thirty prisoners into pens intended for six. By comparison Lefortovo’s accommodation was luxurious: two prisoners to a cell usually; three or four at most. There was a reason for this of course. Nikolai was aware of it since it was a matter that had been covered at length in his training. The only conclusion he could draw was that the authorities were aware he knew it and simply didn’t care.
Lefortovo was all about playing mind games to extract confessions. So when, after a day, they brought another prisoner to share his cell, it was reasonable to assume that despite the man’s elaborate tattoos and legend, he was most likely not the minor pakhan he claimed to be; much more likely that he was an undercover agent. A hen, as they were called. Someone to get him talking.
So perhaps the men from the Prosecutor’s Office had been telling the truth. Perhaps they hadn’t found the tapes.
Thanks to Hartman, by now Ivankov would most probably have recovered the transcripts. Even if he hadn’t, the records of the meetings by themselves were of little consequence since they were merely words on paper, words that could have been manufactured by anyone. Evidence of nothing. But it was the tapes that posed the real risk for Ivankov and his associates and if they had been where they should have been, then what further interest would they have now in Nikolai Aven? Why would they need to plant someone in his cell to try and get him to tell them more?
The fact that they had bothered at all could only mean that there was unfinished business and, if that was correct, the figures behind the conspiracy constructed against him now had a major problem. Despite their influence and power, now that Nikolai had been arrested they would have to try to operate within the system since there was always the risk that someone, somewhere, might one day stumble on Nikolai’s file and start asking questions. Questions that had never been dealt with in the interrogation. Questions never asked.
Their strategy had been to use the system against him, to threaten him with the charge of treason and its consequences then to balance their threat with the implied benefits of cooperation. And the tactic had worked, since in the end he had done what he had to in order to try and protect those he loved. Whether they continued with the charges against him now was almost irrelevant since the charges themselves had destroyed his credibility and his career and that would have been part of the plan. Whatever happened to Nikolai Aven now, no one was ever going to believe his side of the story. He was tainted, and so was the truth. They were casualties together. Victims of the same plot.
But if the tapes hadn’t been where they should have been then things may have run badly off course for the men conspiring against him as well. Now they were confined by their own tactics since to accuse him of lying about their existence would be in itself an admission that they did exist.
If the tapes hadn’t been found, in the short term it might work for them. Certainly it would further discredit any accusations he might try to make against Ivankov, Stephasin and Patrushev. Not only that, it would undermine any defense Nikolai could claim for his relationship with Hartman as well. But the benefit was superficial and Ivankov and his associates would understand that. Know it only too well, since as long as the tapes remained unaccounted for they remained a major outstanding liability. A time bomb that might detonate suddenly and without warning, at any time and place.
So now the men who had conspired against Nikolai Aven had a problem. What should they do?
Should they believe him or not? Had he hidden the tapes somewhere else entirely, and if so, where? Or did someone else have them now, and if so, who?
And depending on the conclusions they reached, what did they now do with him? Was he a greater risk to them alive or dead?
By the eighth day they must have made their decision, since that was the day the trial began. They took him from Lefortovo in a windowless van to the Moscow City Court where he was led to a meeting room and given half an hour alone with the attorney appointed by the state to conduct his defense. He was a colorless young man. Pallid-faced, harassed. Probably not himself part of the collusion, Nikolai decided, but rather just inexperienced, overworked and intimidated by the system, wholly convinced through prior briefing of his client’s indefensible guilt. What better choice could they have made for his advocate?
There was no attempt to discuss the case or the evidence, just thirty minutes of persistent persuasion by
the lawyer of the possible benefits to Nikolai of making a full admission of his guilt and throwing himself on the mercy of the court. When that didn’t work, the man regarded him for a moment with grim annoyance then led him out through a side door and into a chandelier-draped chamber where the rest of the cast were waiting. From that point onwards his defense attorney’s presence at Nikolai’s table was purely a matter of sham appearance.
The whole thing was a charade. A carefully orchestrated operetta in which each character took center stage for his individual part then – when it came to the severity of the charges and the certainty of the defendant’s guilt – prosecutor, judges and counsel for the defense all joined together in a chorus of harmonious precision.
Unsurprisingly the courtroom was closed. With no public or press present there could never be any question of publicity. Neither were there any witnesses, since the prosecution’s evidence in chief consisted of a sealed package of affidavits, tendered to the panel of judges by the lead prosecutor with an exaggerated flourish. A half-hearted protest for the record by Nikolai’s attorney – a claim that the defense should be able to see the accusations and have the right to cross-examine any deponents – was met by an instant admonishment from the chief judge and the declaration of a recess while the material was studied. After twenty minutes the three jurists returned to their places at the bench and while his associates at either side pretended pre-occupation with their notes, their president had leaned forward to adjust his microphone and record a statement.
“The three affidavits have been read and are accepted by the court into evidence.”
