He didn’t like these gatherings. Once, Rubens had tried to keep them small and informal. Things went a lot faster that way. Cleaner. More efficient. Lately, though, these sessions had begun resembling the dog-and-pony shows put on at the Pentagon, with staffers, officers, and assistants all trying to grab face time with the Deputy Director. There was even an Air Force general at the table this morning, a man named Blakeslee, who was a Pentagon liaison because of the presence of the F- 22 in Operation Magpie. Several of the people present, Dean knew, were lawyers, there solely to present opinions on any legal risks the Agency might be facing.
Black ops, espionage, electronic eavesdropping. Hell, everything Desk Three did was illegal in one sense of the word or another. What was the point of having lawyers at a briefing, for Christ’s sake?
A number of low-voiced conversations were taking place as people continued trickling into the Green Room and taking their seats. Voices in the chamber took on an oddly muffled quality. Like similar spaces within the CIA headquarters at Langley and in the Pentagon subbasements, the room was electronically isolated from the outside, with armor plating thick enough to shield the occupants from a near miss by a small tactical nuke.
“Before we begin,” Rubens said, standing at the head of the table, “I have some news. We’ve confirmed that Ghost Blue went down in the Gulf of Finland last night as a result of enemy action. We believe the pilot ejected, but so far, search efforts have been unsuccessful. We’re continuing the search through the daylight hours over there, of course, but as of oh-three hundred this morning, the pilot has been logged as missing, presumed dead.”
Dean leaned back in his chair, a sigh escaping as he sagged. Damn…
“Has there been any word from the Russians?” Greg Paulson asked. He was chief of staff for the current Director of the NSA and would be especially sensitive to possible political repercussions.
“I gather a protest was filed this morning with our embassy in Moscow,” Rubens told him. “I’ll be going in to talk with… people about the situation later this afternoon.”
“People,” Dean thought, meant either the National Security Advisor or the President himself. There would be brutal questions, perhaps a formal investigation. Dean did not envy his boss.
“We can always blame UFOs again,” John Jacobin, one of the lawyers, pointed out.
There was a subdued chuckle from several of the men and women seated at the table. More than once, going back to the years of the Cold War, NSA and CIA incursions over Russian territory had been spotted but remained unidentified. The long-running popular mania over supposed alien spacecraft in the airspace of both the United States and Russia had on several occasions proven surprisingly useful.
“We don’t yet know if the opposition got a good look at our aircraft,” Rubens said mildly. “It’s not really important, one way or another.”
But Dean knew it was important. A critical failure on an intelligence op inside Russia would inevitably spawn serious interagency trouble down the line. The CIA, especially, didn’t like the fact that the NSA was trespassing on what it considered its turf, its particular area of responsibility. Hell, they’d been trying to shut down Desk Three or get it transferred to their Directorate of Operations ever since its inception.
“What is important,” Rubens continued, “is that we secure our people over there, get them out safe, resolve Operation Magpie, and follow through with Operation Blue Jay. Miss DeFrancesca has provided us with a vital link between Magpie and Blue Jay. We need to take advantage of this before the trail goes cold.” He nodded to one of the men at the table. “Mr. Ryder, if you please?”
Tom Ryder was the designated briefing officer for the morning’s meeting, a small and fussy analyst from the Russian Section. He stood up, took his place behind a lectern at the front of the room, and used a handheld remote to bring up an image on the large flat-panel screen on the wall behind him.
The man’s face was shown full-front and profile, with numbers and Cyrillic lettering on a board in front of him. Two more photos showed what appeared to be surveillance photos of the same man-on a street corner and at a table in a restaurant. The face was lined and heavily scarred. The photo taken in the restaurant showed him with his mouth open, displaying black and uneven teeth.
Ryder cleared his throat, then launched into his presentation without preamble. “Victor Mikhaylov,” he said. “Agent DeFrancesca positively identified him as the leader of the gunmen at the warehouse. Mikhaylov, we believe, is the number-one enforcer for this man, Grigor Kotenko.”
Kotenko’s photographs replaced those of Mikhaylov. Where Mikhaylov had the look of a street rat, a thug, Kotenko looked smoother, more urbane, a businessman, perhaps, or a lawyer, with a thick walrus mustache and a cold-eyed squint.
“This guy’s a real piece of work,” Ryder said. “When he was eighteen, he was sent to a gulag for armed robbery, kidnapping, and rape. While there, he made some important contacts within the Leningrad criminal underworld, and when he got out four years later-with the help of a wealthy uncle in the Organizatsiya-he went to work for Vladimir Kumarin as an enforcer. We believe he was the triggerman in a particularly brutal murder-of Peter Talbot, an American hotel entrepreneur who was shot ten times at point-blank range on a metro platform… while surrounded by six hired bodyguards, no less. Seems Talbot had refused to ‘share’ his partnership in a new hotel chain over there.
“Since then, however, Kotenko has gone from enforcement to administration, working his way all the way up to the top echelons of the Tambov organization. After Kumarin’s arrest by Moscow officials in 2007, Kotenko may have moved up to the number-two or -three position in the gang’s leadership, though reports indicate that Kumarin is still running things from prison.
“So if Kotenko is involved, it means we’re dealing with the Tambov Gang.”
“This is the so-called Russian mafia you’re talking about?” an Air Force colonel in Blakeslee’s entourage asked.
“One branch of it, sir,” Ryder replied. “And there’s nothing ‘so-called’ about it. The Russian Mafiya is an extraordinarily large and complex organization made up of many groups, some in alliance, some mutually hostile, all more or less in competition with one another.
“The Tambov Gang was formed in 1988 by two men from the Tambov Oblast, Vladimir Kumarin and Valery Ledovskikh. They started out by providing protection to businessmen in what was then Leningrad. Today, the Tambov Gang is the most powerful organized-crime element in St. Petersburg, numbering at least six hundred hard-core members, and thousands of occasionals. They are known to control outright over one hundred of the city’s industrial enterprises, including the Petersburg Fuel Company, which maintains a monopoly on all fuel bought and sold within the city. Their membership roster includes members of both the state Duma and the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly.”
“Nice to have friends in high places,” Dean murmured.
Ryder ignored the interruption. “Desk Three became concerned with Kotenko’s activities when one of our sources reported that he had sold some five hundred kilograms of beryllium sheeting to an agent of the Iranian government. The beryllium sheets had been discarded by a nuclear reactor facility at Rybinsk, and were mildly radioactive when they were stolen. Reportedly, they were destined for a freighter of Liberian registry, which would have taken them to Bandar ’Abbas.
“Currently, Desk Three is running two distinct operations in Russia aimed at the Tambov Gang-designated Magpie and Blue Jay. Magpie was intended to track the stolen beryllium to Iran. Our agents would plant a small transponder chip on one of the sheets-a device the size of a postage stamp, colored and textured to be indistinguishable from the beryllium itself. It would have given us some insight, we hoped, into the Iranian nuclear program… especially insofar as their attempt to manufacture fission weapons is concerned.
“Yesterday, our agents succeeded in planting the tracker. However, they were discovered, and we don’t yet know if the opposition h
as found the tracking device, or if they’ve guessed what we were up to.
“Grigor Kotenko, we believe, is behind not only the beryllium sale to Iran but another major Tambov operation… which is the target of Operation Blue Jay. We have learned that they are attempting to gain control over Russia’s oil and natural gas industries.”
“Just a minute,” General Blakeslee said, interrupting. “Where’s the Russian government in all this? Where’s the military?”
“That, General, is part of the problem.” Ryder held up his hands, clasping them together with fingers intertwined. “Government and organized crime are like this. Over there, the Organizatsiya is how things get done. It was that way under the Soviets. It was probably that way under the czars. It’s much, much worse now. As for the military… many of the Organizatsiya’s members are ex-military or -KGB. A lot of military personnel were cut loose when the Soviet government fell, remember. As a result, there’s a kind of oldboy network in modern Russia that includes the military, the government, and the organized-crime syndicates. We believe that over eighty percent of all Russian businesses either are controlled outright by organized crime or, at the very least, pay a cripplingly large percentage of their profits to the syndicates for ‘protection.’
“This has had a terrible effect on the Russian economy. People over there are actually yearning for the good old days when the Soviets had everything controlled and orderly. Of course, the criminals were active under the Soviets as well, but in a state-run economy, the problem was pretty well hidden. Now, it’s out in the open and clearly out of control.”
Ryder continued his presentation, but Dean listened with only half an ear. He knew most of this already. He’d seen the moribund state of the Russian economy firsthand… the poverty, the hopelessness on the faces of people in the streets and on the subways, the dead factories and boarded-up shops, the crumbling facades in a state without enough free money to rebuild the infrastructure, to say nothing of launching into new business ventures.
Ryder spoke for another ten minutes on the threat of the Russian mafia, touching on the sales of weapons to terrorist groups, the suspected theft of nuclear weapons and materials, the destabilizing effect the Organizatsiya was having globally. He mentioned, to a few chuckles, the sale of a Russian Tango-class diesel submarine to a Colombian drug cartel in the late nineties. The sale had fallen through, thank God, when the Colombians, thinking the plan just a bit too ambitious, had backed out. Had the sale been completed-just $5 million would have purchased the submarine and a trained crew of twenty for a year-the Cali Cartel would have been delivering multi-ton loads of cocaine and heroin to the California coast, completely eluding the web of land-, sea-, and air-based radar guarding the southern approaches to the United States.
“But we know the Russian mobs have been delivering other military hardware to Colombia for over a decade,” Ryder continued. “Thousands of automatic weapons, millions of rounds of ammunition, at least two military helicopters, and a number of advanced surface-to-air missiles that are going to make our interdiction efforts in South America extremely difficult. The point is… the Russian Mafiya thinks big, very big, they have more money than God, and they don’t give a damn who they deal with or what the consequences might be.”
The Russian Mafiya, Dean thought, had an overly developed sense of drama. He found himself thinking about various supervillain groups in spy fiction-Ian Fleming’s SPECTRE or even Thrush in the old Man from U.N.C.L.E. TV series, comic-book criminal organizations bent on world domination.
The Organizatsiya, evidently, was coming uncomfortably close to matching those fictional villains in the real world in the sheer scope and scale of their ambitions.
An hour later, the briefing over, Dean was ushered into Rubens’ office. “Well, Mr. Dean, you now know more about the Russian mafia than you really cared to know.”
“It still seems a bit odd, sir,” Dean replied, “going up against a bunch of criminals instead of a government.”
“In this case, it’s tough to draw a line between the two,” Rubens said, booting up the computer on his desk. “In any case, we have you booked on a flight to London this afternoon, Dulles, fourteen thirty.”
“And then on from there to St. Petersburg,” Dean said, completing the thought.
“No,” Rubens said. “There’s been a change in plans.”
Dean felt an unpleasant tickle, centered in his gut. “I thought I was supposed to join Lia and her partner in Russia.”
“DeFrancesca and Akulinin are safe enough for the moment, and our organization inside St. Petersburg is arranging to smuggle them out of Russia within the next twenty-four hours. Right now we’re more concerned about the potential threat to another of our assets. An entirely different operation.”
Rubens turned his monitor so Dean could see the screen, which displayed a grainy and slightly out-of-focus photograph of a laughing, half-naked blonde, Grigor Kotenko, and another man, lean, his hair buzz-cut short, his shirt open to reveal a number of blurry tattoos.
“The man on the right,” Rubens said, “is Sergei Braslov, former Red Army, GRU, and later MVD. A Russian working for the CIA snapped this photo through a telephoto lens at a Black Sea resort last summer. Our agent on Operation Sunny Weather encountered Braslov a few hours ago in London. He appears to have infiltrated an environmental activist group, Greenworld.”
“Excuse me,” Dean said. “This Braslov… is he still MVD? Or is he with the Tambov Gang? Who’s he working for?”
“That,” Rubens said dryly, “is what you are going to find out. As Mr. Ryder pointed out at the briefing, it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether an individual over there is with the government or with the crooks, and where their loyalties lie. However…” He touched a lectern control, dragging a square around Braslov’s upper torso in the photo, then enlarging the picture, in effect zooming in for a close-up of the man’s partly revealed chest. Dean could just make out the blurred blue shapes of several tattoos on the man’s skin.
Rubens used his mouse to bring up an overlay of straight lines, resolving and clarifying the tattoos. “Within the Russian Mafiya,” Rubens said, “tattoos comprise a rather complex symbolic language, a code, if you will. This image isn’t clear enough for a complete translation, but computer enhancement allows at least a partial reading.
“Here-” A pointer darted across the screen, indicating a large tattoo over Braslov’s solar plexus. “A crucifix. It signifies a ‘prince of thieves,’ someone with a high ranking within the organization. Above the crucifix… a crown. That means the wearer is a pakhan, the leader of a thieves family. Think of a Sicilian Mafia don, the head of one of the Five Families.
“And above the crown…” The pointer shifted to a blurred mark beneath Braslov’s throat. “An eight-pointed star, sometimes called a chaos star. Another rank insignia. It means Braslov is a member of the very highest levels of Russian organized crime.
“From this, we can infer that Braslov is a member of the Russian Mafiya, most likely one of the Moscow families. If he’s socializing with Kotenko at a Black Sea dacha, it’s possible that we’re seeing evidence of some sort of alliance. Braslov’s direct involvement with Greenworld suggests some sort of disinformation campaign, but we’re not sure of that yet. Braslov may be there in his official capacity as an officer of Russian Internal Security… or he may be there as a key player with the Mafiya… or he may be there for both.
“You, Mr. Dean, are going to make contact with Braslov in London. You’ll have Mr. Karr already there, as backup. ‘L’ Section will provide you with a small bugging device and remote transmitter that will allow us to eavesdrop on Braslov’s conversations. We’re particularly interested in what he is doing as an agent inside of Greenworld.
“I can’t stress this strongly enough, Mr. Dean. The Russian Mafiya is an extraordinary threat in today’s world. It has already demonstrated its potential for destabilizing nations and economies worldwide, and might well do so on a globa
l scale. We need to know what’s going on over there-if there is an alliance between the St. Petersburg and Moscow gangs, if the Russian government is in on such an alliance, and just what it is that they’re up to.”
Dean slouched back in his chair, then nodded. “Yes, sir.”
He was worried, frankly, about Lia. From the little he’d heard so far, Lia and Akulinin had come up against the St. Petersburg mob and bounced. It hardly seemed credible. Desk Three routinely took on national governments-China, North Korea, Syria, Russia-and emerged victorious. It didn’t seem possible that a gang of common criminals could best the Agency’s field operators.
And that thought, Dean decided, highlighted the problem. Members of the Russian Mafiya, whatever else they might be, were not “common criminals.” They were smart, they were wealthy, they were powerful, they were as well armed and as well equipped as some small countries, and they were well connected with members of their own government and with powerful people in the governments of other countries.
Underestimating these people, Dean decided, could have decidedly lethal consequences.
7
“London’s Living Room” GLA Building, London 1420 hours GMT
TOMMY KARR WALKED OUT onto the broad observation platform that encircled the uppermost floor of London’s City Hall.
The Thames lay spread beneath him, gray-green and dotted with pleasure craft and barges. An ancient light cruiser, the HMS Belfast, now a museum, lay tied up to the City Pier to the left, on the near bank almost at his feet. Beyond her, the clean, modern lines of the new London Bridge spanned the river, in front of the thrust and bustle of London’s business district and the far-off blue dome of St. Paul’s. To his right, downstream, rose the Tower Bridge, older and more conventional beneath its twin supporting caissons and towers that looked like the squared-off steeples of Anglican churches.
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