Long Shot

by Sgt. Jack Coughlin

  Anneli wore a set of headphones attached to the man-pack acoustical surveillance device that she had hauled in. The simple device designed for field use emitted an invisible and narrow laser beam that bounced back to a small parabolic dish and delivered signals so clear that she could pick up individual voices. During the formation, an officer addressed the men, and she listened carefully, her face scrunched in concentration as she simultaneously translated word for word. It was all routine housekeeping assignments until the end.

  “This evening at eighteen hundred hours, Lieutenant General Victor Mizon will arrive by helicopter. He has been our commander as deputy chief of the Border Service here, and has recently been promoted. The general is making a farewell inspection of all Kaliningrad facilities before his reassignment to Moscow. Our camp is on the agenda because he once was posted here when he was just a lieutenant.” When the briefing officer paused, so did Anneli. When he continued, so did she.

  “This is also the general’s birthday and we will honor him with a celebration.” She added as an aside that some of the men in ranks quietly cheered that news.

  The briefer continued. “Most of today will be devoted to preparing for this inspection. We want our camp to be immaculate by the time his helicopter arrives. At his request, there will be a reception line at eighteen thirty hours so he can personally greet each soldier and officer here. Afterward, General Mizon will have dinner in the officers’ mess, and our cooks will prepare special dishes for everyone. The men on duty will eat on a rotation schedule. He will spend the night here. His departure is scheduled for ten hundred hours tomorrow morning. Look sharp, men. One of our own is ascending to high rank!”

  Anneli removed the headset and rubbed her ears. “Was that okay?” she asked Kyle.

  “Finest kind,” he said, astonished at her literal and immediate translation. “You boys hear all that?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Corporal Perry. “We have him right down to the minute. He is coming in right at six o’clock. No guesswork. Good job, Anneli.”

  22

  KOEKELBERG, BELGIUM

  IVAN STRAKOV SHOWED NO surprise when the door of the private conference room opened at nine o’clock on Friday morning and a tall colonel of the U.S. Army entered. There was instant recognition of the long face with the brown eyes and brown wavy hair, and it was confirmed by the man’s name tag. The Russian stood and offered a hand. “Tom Markey. Good to see you again,” he said with a touch of respect. “I haven’t seen you since that conference down in Istanbul. About two years, right?”

  “Something like that. The world has changed a lot since then, Ivan.” Markey shook the hand, then they both sat down.

  “A lot of change, Tom,” agreed the Russian. “We have slaved away our best years on government salaries, doing cutting-edge research and development, only to see young techies came along and use our discoveries to become filthy rich.”

  “I hear you’re becoming a bit on the wealthy side yourself, Ivan.” He loathed the man with whom he was having this quiet conversation. Strakov was a dangerous genius and could not be taken for granted. If this was a game, it was a very serious one.

  Strakov shrugged. “I should have left the army long ago. So how are tricks over at the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence? Who thought up that name anyway?”

  “We have developed a nuclear death-ray wristwatch app for our soldiers. Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

  The Russian did not waver. “Fine. However, my rule is that I talk only with Kyle Swanson about the good stuff. No exceptions, I fear, not even for you, Tom.”

  Colonel Tom Markey’s voice remained soft but was emphatic. “Swanson thinks you are a fake and a fraud, so there is no use having him in the conversation any longer. I was given the job because nobody—nobody, Ivan—is more familiar with your work than me.”

  “So where is Kyle?”

  “Gone. Totally in the wind as far as you are concerned.”

  “Humph. After I gave up the Armata, he bails on me? And the troop movements? What an ungrateful asshole.” His face screwed up and he bent forward for a moment, then straightened. “Sorry,” he said. “Stomach problem last night. Now, about Kyle. He does not get to decide whether to do the interview. I do.”

  “He had a good reason to stop. I told to him about your playacting back when you were pretending to be a sniper to infiltrate his course and make your bones as an intelligence officer. He was not very happy about that.”

  Strakov did not react. He actually had expected Colonel Markey to intervene at some point. It was logical. “I still want Swanson.”

  “Here’s the deal,” Markey continued. “I am going to give you until noon today to think things over. If you choose not to cooperate, then your entire lucrative CIA deal falls off the table. You lose your celebrity status, your money and your freedom. From this moment, you are to be treated as a common criminal who might very well spend the rest of your life in a maximum-security prison.”

  Ivan Strakov did not blink. “That’s a pretty harsh deal, Tom.”

  “It is the only bargain in town, Ivan. You are cold out of options. I will be back at noon.”

  “Could you please send me a couple of Tylenol in the meantime? I have a headache coming on.”

  When Markey left, two muscular men in blue suits took his place. He had never seen them before. “Stand up,” the bigger one snapped. When Strakov did as he was told, the second agent clamped on the handcuffs.

  BRUSSELS

  The unexpected visit from Freddie Ravensdale had played hob with her sleep, and Arial Printas had not found slumber until she resorted to a little white pill washed down with a taste of champagne. The dark curtains in the bedroom shielded her from the morning light, and she slept until almost eleven o’clock. She lay still when her eyes finally opened and she remembered that it was a special day.

  Since Arial had been at university, her passions had been art and architecture and, as an adult, she had traveled the world to visit the lasting treasures made by artists with oil, canvas, stone and iron. Her husband happily paid the bills. Now, being a wealthy and attractive widow allowed her advantages unavailable to ordinary tourists. Arial liked that. Today was her long-anticipated art nouveau walking tour of nearby Sint-Gillis, then, after returning to the city, a private visit to the Amerikastraat studio and home of architect Victor Horta, the master of stained glass.

  With a burst of enthusiasm, she threw off the soft white duvet, was out of the big bed and into the tiled bathroom, which she considered rather plain and utilitarian. She shed the pajamas, did a quick body check in the mirrors, approved of herself, then luxuriated beneath a steamy hot shower. Skirt or pants? Walking would be tiring, so she opted for designer jeans, a Parisian top and a light jacket. Comfortable white tennis shoes for the hard streets and sidewalks.

  Breakfast was just tea, fresh fruit slices and a scone while she skimmed through two newspapers and studied a map of the coming walk. Finally, she pulled out her tablet and linked to the hotel Wi-Fi for a couple of laps around the Internet. It was important to hit a number of IP addresses, whether or not they were needed, for she was wary of possible surveillance and the extra IPs were good cover.

  She logged onto Facebook and her mail and responded to a few posts. Buried deep in the electronic addresses was a dead drop that she shared with another Russian operative. One could draft a message but not transmit it, and the other could log on to the same account to read and erase it. Since it was never actually filed, it would not show up to electronic snoopers.

  This morning’s information was somewhat silly, she knew, but she had been instructed to pass along whatever Ravensdale told her. Since she had not taken notes, and knew nothing of artillery, she recollected what she could, did a basic letter-and-number transposition code and wrote:

  FIRE BASE 8351 KALININGRAD DANGER RAID EX POLAND TO KILL OFFICER.

  The recipient would take care of whatever was necessary. She didn’t know who it w
as, nor the location, nor did she care. She looked at the time and was shocked to see that her tour was scheduled to start in fifteen minutes. Arial scribbled her name on the restaurant bill and hurried out to catch a taxi.

  ROOSTER CAP NOWAK, KALININGRAD

  Kyle Swanson jotted a midday status report in his sniper notebook: temperature 72 degrees F, sporadic breeze from north reading less than one mile an hour. The flags in the Russian camp hung like rags, and Kyle and the SAS guys had zeroed their weapons on the central pole. All guns were ready.

  They took turns watching the camp through the strong telescopes in thirty-minute rotations to lessen eyestrain. Anneli lay on her side, resting her head on the soft earpiece of the listening probe and filtering out most of what was being said. It was routine soldier talk, with no sense of urgency. At the checkpoint, cars and trucks came, stopped, papers were checked and the vehicles were sent along their way.

  “Baldwin. You read?” Swanson broke the silence. He had been thinking about the next steps.

  Stanley Baldwin clicked his microphone twice in acknowledgment. He was only thirty feet away, but whisper-level noise, not normal conversation, was the rule in enemy territory.

  “One of you guys take off in about an hour and set up on that guard shack we passed. That vehicle that went out at oh-eight-hundred was probably his relief, because two men went down and two came back. A new shift will start this afternoon if they are pulling eight-hour posts. We most likely will execute at about eighteen thirty during the reception line. When you hear that, take the guard down and clear the position. We will rendezvous there as soon as possible. Be ready to lay down suppressive fire for us.”

  Baldwin and Perry exchanged looks, and Perry pointed at himself. The sergeant nodded. “Affirmative,” he told Swanson.

  “I’m getting hungry,” said Anneli.

  Swanson reached into a pocket and handed her a package of peanut butter crackers.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s all.” He did not mention that the snack would help gum up her intestinal tract to prevent bathroom breaks. She had already had to go twice, sneaking back to a thick grove for privacy and scared to death that she would be jumped by a Russian soldier while dropping her suit.

  She bit the cracker, following it with a sip of water. Her directional surveillance ears had allowed her to become familiar with some voices and start identifying specific people. One enlisted man down there really hated his lieutenant, and sounded off frequently to his buddies about the officer’s shortcomings. A guard at the checkpoint was a friendly guy who joked with the motorists. She hated them both equally.

  MOSCOW

  FIRE BASE 8351 DANGER RAID EX POLAND TO KILL OFFICER.

  The message from Arial Printas dumped into the system of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, and was pulled up by a clerk in a large room of men and women located in individual cubicles and monitoring computer terminals. The room was busy all day long and the clerks were the first to receive messages that poured in from agents around the world. There was a lot of traffic. This one came from Brussels.

  The man called it up and read it a few times to decide where to send it next. It contained no supporting details. Was that a coding or translation problem? He had no idea of the location of any Fire Base 8351, but that was military, so he would forward it to the GRU. The mention of “Poland” meant he should also get it over to the Foreign Ministry. The phrase that an attack was coming did not earn it a higher priority, for the very idea that Poland was about to attack Russia was ludicrous, and the bureaucrat decided that the agent who gathered the information was exaggerating.

  He punched the appropriate keys and sent the message on its way, then secured his terminal and took a break.

  KOEKELBERG, BELGIUM

  Ivan Strakov spent his alone time in the CIA cells preparing for the next meeting. He had to waste a little more time. He scrubbed some dirt in his eyes to make them red and watery. Then he stuck his finger down his throat and vomited.

  When the beefy guards came to collect him, they noticed the vile puddle on the floor and radioed the information ahead: the prisoner looked sick. With handcuffs in place, they marched him to a different room in the building. The new location was larger than the usual little conference room, and there were several other people around a long table. Normally, the space was used for meetings by groups of lawyers and diplomats, but this afternoon, the spooks had taken over, and they looked grim.

  The Russian had anticipated that there would be an escalation in the questioning as time wore on after the defection. Kyle Swanson had been just his opening move, to show that he possessed information the allies wanted and needed. In fact, they had allowed Strakov to go much longer than he would have if the situation had been reversed. Defectors were supposed to talk and he was never above using force or blackmail: whatever worked.

  Well-placed leaks had led the media to discover his existence, and requests for interviews had arrived at the CIA. All were denied. The burst of notoriety meant all of the men and women at the table were under stress, feeling public and private pressure to pull more sensitive intel from him. Again, he had expected that, just as he had anticipated a meeting with Tom Markey. Strakov had already turned over some interesting tidbits, and these people needed to get even more to make their superiors happy. He rubbed his wrists in a show of exasperation, restoring blood circulation, and thinking that he still held the upper hand, and had a lot of leverage in the negotiations.

  “Decision time, Ivan,” said Colonel Markey, at the far end of the table. He noticed that the defector did not look well.

  “Who are all of these people, Tom? Can we speak freely before them?”

  Markey folded his hands on some papers. He was tired of playing mind chess with this guy. “Stop it, Ivan. Don’t even think of stalling any longer. What is your decision?”

  “Change is the light at the end of the tunnel,” Ivan quoted from memory. “That’s from a Welsh poet named Jack Harris.” In contrast to the rigidity of everyone else, Strakov slouched a bit into his chair. “I have decided that Kyle Swanson is no longer necessary for further conversations. Does that mean that our earlier agreements remain in place?”

  Markey shot a look at a pudgy woman in a gray suit halfway down the table. She looked over the top of her half-rim glasses and said, “We agree.”

  Ivan thought to himself: lawyer. Everything stayed the same, including his freedom to go outside when accompanied by security. “So who will be my primary contact now, Tom. You?”

  “I will be it for a while. After that, various others will be chosen according to their expertise, to tackle specific subjects. You know a lot about many things, Ivan. No one questioner could get it all.” Markey felt good about this. He wanted to turn this guy over to the CIA as soon as possible and go back home.

  “So we have a deal. That’s good,” said Ivan. “For now, I ask to be excused for the rest of the day, Tom. I need to go back to my room and rest, and be examined by a doctor. My stomach is raging and this headache is pounding. I suggest that we pick this up again in the morning, when I promise to be ready to do some real work.”

  MOSCOW

  A woman left her one child, a six-year-old boy, with her mother and took the purple metro train out to the Polezhaevskaya station at the Khodynka Airfield. She was running a little late for work, and looked up with weary eyes at a massive, ill-maintained building that contained so many windows that it was known as “the Aquarium.” She hurried to her desk and checked in with her supervisor, who scowled and reminded her that she was fifteen minutes overdue. She apologized, promised that it would not happen again, and settled in for her long evening shift as one of hundreds of cipher clerks in the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, which was better known by its acronym, the GRU.

  One item waiting in her queue was from an agent in Belgium, who gave bare details that Fire Base 8531 in Kaliningrad had be
en targeted for an enemy military raid out of Poland. It disturbed her enough that she summoned her supervisor, who was still upset about her tardiness.

  He read it carefully, and they agreed that the agent perhaps had filed erroneous information. Some unreliable field people on government expense accounts drank too much with their sources and produced cow dung. Any chance that Poland was poised to attack Russia seemed remote in the extreme.

  “Kaliningrad is in the Western Military District,” said the supervisor, who was tempted to delete the message entirely, but the idea of taking on such responsibility frightened him. “Send it over to St. Petersburg for headquarters attention, low priority,” he told the clerk.

  23

  ROOSTER CAP NOWAK

  ANNELI THOUGHT IT ODD that she was not frightened at all. She was wearing commando garb, was illegally inside of Russia and was about to be part of a deadly attack on a military base. A normal person should be scared to death, while she lay almost at ease in the sniper hide listening to the voices coming over her powerful electronic ears. The three men who would do the actual fighting had fallen silent except for an occasional swap of information about changing conditions. She trusted them all. Anneli had seen Kyle Swanson work before and was totally confident in him. Sergeant Baldwin was a very polite Englishman who carried the same dangerous aura as Swanson. And Gray Perry had slithered out of the other sniper hide some time ago with such stealth that she did not even know he was gone until he called in from his new position overlooking the guard shack on the trail.

  She was picking up increased activity down at the base and noted the time on the thick olive-green wristwatch she had been given. It was fifteen minutes before six o’clock in the evening. She added twelve to that to figure the military equivalent. It was almost 1800, and the early spring sky had dimmed from bright blue to an overcast slate as the sun set beyond the huge trees in the west, below strings of low clouds. It had glared into their eyes late in the afternoon, then slowly fell out of sight and was replaced by the early shades of darkness. The camp lights had been on for an hour, for the general’s helicopter was due soon. Things were getting busy down there.