Jack in the Box

by John Weisman

  6:28. It was still dark, but rush hour was definitely under way. There was traffic. Pedestrians, bundled up against the numbing cold, moved briskly on the pavement. Sam waved off the five taxi drivers stomping to keep warm, turned left, and strode south on Tverskaya, the thick soles of his brown suede boots scrunching on snow.

  Because he’d measured the distance, Sam knew it was just under five hundred meters from the hotel to the Tverskaya metro stop. The canopied entrance sat at the opposite side of the street, roughly two hundred meters of some of the most heavily traveled sections of the four-lane Boulevard Ring. Sam crossed Tverskaya Street opposite the Stanislavski Theater, walked quickly into the northernmost section of the big Pushkin Plaza, slipped into the entrance, dashed down the stairs, turned onto the topmost gallery, and walked east, then north, then pushed onto one of the crowded escalators and descended toward the platform.

  Tverskaya was one of Sam’s favorite metro stations when he was running a cleaning, or countersurveillance route. It was a three-line interchange with intersecting passages that ran hundreds of meters under the streets between the No. 2, or Green Line, the No. 8, or Gray Line, and the No. 6, or Violet Line. Tverskaya was a No. 2 Line station. A passage running vaguely north took you to the No. 6 Line’s Pushkin-kaya station, and from there another two-hundred-meter underground tunnel led to Chekhovskaya and Line No. 8.

  As Sam stood on the escalator, he kept his hands below the rail and shed his brightly colored gloves. Then he used his bare right hand to pull the big tweed cap from his head. As he did so, his left hand worked a release cord hidden in his coat pocket. By the time he’d reached the bottom of the escalator and stepped off. He was no longer wearing a car coat, but what looked like a knee-length, zipper-front lined raincoat. No one noticed. The tweed cap he’d been wearing, turned inside out as he held it out of sight, had metamorphosed into a round, brimless Russian fur hat. He waited until he’d stepped off the escalator and turned into a new passageway to replace the headgear. From his pocket, he pulled a second pair of gloves—thin brown leather.

  Two of the benchmarks for any successful surveillance include paying careful attention to the opposition’s color and Silhouette. In the space of half a minute, Sam had changed both—in plain sight, and without attracting attention. He walked up to the ticket booth, laid a fifty-ruble bill on the counter, and in flawless Russian bought a one-month trans-ortnaya karta, ignoring the rude stare of the clerk who was visibly inconvenienced to have to make so much change.

  Quickly now, Sam headed for the Green Line platform. He slipped the karta into the turnstile slot, watched as the red light turned green, retrieved the ticket from the upper slot, and pushed through. A rush of air told Sam a train was coming into the station. He loped to the escalator and charged ahead. He reached the platform and, moving as nimbly as a running back working the tires during spring training, picked his way through the crowd and made it onto a northbound train just as the doors smacked themselves closed.

  Sam elbowed his way into the crowded car. He’d always been fond of the Moscow subway. The cars themselves were often carpeted, and the seats covered in plush, patterned fabrics. He pulled his coat off—between the crush of bodies jammed cheek by jowl and the heaters going full blast, it was warm—and hung it over his left arm. His sonar swept the subway car. Nothing. Then Sam relaxed, looking like just another Russian worker in the former workers’ paradise. He hung on to the tubular handrail above his head, peered down, and snuck a glance at the back page of the newspaper being read by a chubby little man in a pair of greasy overalls and short black leather jacket who moved his lips, silently mouthing every syllable of copy.

  Sam rode the Green Line two stops, got off, and waited on the platform until the train had pulled out. Then he made his way through the passageway to the No. 4—or Brown Line—which he rode for one stop. Abruptly he left the car, bounded up the escalator, and changed trains for an incoming southbound Gray Line train.

  He left the Gray Line train at Chekhovskaya and walked north through the passageway to the Violet (No. 6) Line station, where he pulled on his overcoat and rode the escalator up to the street. But it wasn’t the same coat he’d worn when he entered Tverskaya station.

  During his Odyssey, Sam had nonchalantly flipped the tan raincoat inside out as it lay over his arm, refolding it in stages. So, what Sam wore as he exited Pushkinskaya was a blue, calf-length wool overcoat with a half belt in back and sloping, raglan shoulders—another change of shape. The fur hat had grown a short leather brim, altering his silhouette. And during his transit from the Brown to the Gray Line, he’d stopped in the crowded passageway just long enough to retie his boot laces—and simultaneously peel off the brown suede “skin” that covered them. Now Sam sported a pair of what looked to be shiny black leather boots that could have been bought in London, Paris, or the Dr. Martens store one block south of the Marriott on Tverskaya Street.

  7:22. Sam emerged into gray light and the subzero cold of Pushkin Square, roughly two hundred meters from where he’d originally entered the metro. The Boulevard Ring was clogged in both directions, the sidewalks bustling with pedestrians. Quickly, he crossed Tverskaya Street, passed through one of the arched facades of the imposing Soviet-era building facing the metro, and scampered up a narrow side street.

  His sonar was working overtime. But Sam hadn’t picked up a single ping so far. He turned south and walked past a small police station. Two half-frozen OMON Special Unit soldiers from the Interior Ministry stood outside, plainly miserable, AK74 submachine guns in their mittened hands, cigarettes dangling from painfully chapped lips. Washington wasn’t the only city with a heightened threat level. It hadn’t been two weeks since Chechen terrorists had taken hundreds of hostages at a theater in northwest Moscow. Ministry of Interior SWAT teams had used knockout gas during the rescue—and killed more than a hundred of the hostages in the process.

  On the corner, Sam stepped into a small store. Under the watchful eye of a babushka wearing an Order of Lenin medal on her stained sweater, he plucked a Moskovsky Komsomo-lets from the display rack, pointed at a tin of Cuban cigarritos on the shelf, and lifted a box of wooden matches out of ajar on the counter. “Pazhalsta?” He laid two ten-ruble notes on the scratched glass.

  She picked the bills up and held them to the light, rubbed the surface with her thumb, finally dropped a handful of change into his outstretched palm, and only muttered “spaciba” as he was going out the door.

  Sam dropped the tin of small cigars and the matchbox into his pocket. He rolled the newspaper so only its masthead was visible and tucked it like a football under his left arm, scrunched his neck into his collar, and walked south until he reached the boulevard. There, he turned east, crossed back over Tverskaya Street, and descended into the maze of underground passages that splayed out beneath the grass-covered expanse of Pushkin Square.

  7:56. There were no hostiles blips on Sam’s sonar screen as he passed the crimson and gold-crested, colonnaded facade of the five-story, eighteenth-century building that housed the mayor’s office. Beyond him to the south, the wide expanse of Tverskaya Street ran downhill all the way to the Duma—the Russian legislature—and just beyond it, to the Kremlin walls. But he wasn’t going there. One block below the mayor’s office Sam turned west, walking through a huge granite arch, into a wide lane on both sides of which sat blocks of identical houses. Four decades ago they’d been handed out to high-ranking Communist Party officials. To day, they were co-ops and condos, bought for suitcases of hundred-dollar bills by oligarchs, entrepreneurs, and Mafiyosi.

  The lane angled north, then took a shallow dogleg southwest. Sam ambled past a small, seventeenth-century orange-and-white church with a gold onion dome. Just past it was a small, deserted square. Sam turned north into the square. As he did, he applied an appearance-changing prosthetic by. 18

  7:58. Sam walked purposefully past a school, cut through a narrow alley, then backtracked south again, crossed the lane, turned west, then sout
h, into Bolshaya Nitikskaya Street. He walked fifty feet, then immediately turned left in a narrow, unmarked alley. Twenty yards in, the alley took a ninety-degree tum to the right. Ten yards beyond, on the right side, Sam saw the steam-streaked window of the sort of neighborhood joint Muscovites call a stalovaya, or canteen. He pushed through the door, grunted a greeting to the sweating, bald man in a grease-stained white chef's jacket behind the counter, and looked around.

  There were six tables in the narrow room. The three closest to the door were occupied. As Sam turned to the counterman he took the rolled newspaper from under his right arm and stuck it under his left. “White coffee and symiki, please.” He made his way to the rearmost table, shed his coat, and took a seat against the back wall. Then he reached into his trouser pocket, pulled out the tin box of Punch cigarritos, slit the seal with his thumbnail, took one out, and lit it, leaving both cigars and matches on the scarred marble tabletop.

  The counterman smacked a cup of coffee with milk in front of him. When he’d left, Sam unrolled his newspaper, flattened it with his hand, and spread it out. That was the “okay to make contact” signal. If he’d left the newspaper rolled, or taken it off the table unread, it would have meant “abort.”

  He slid the coffee to the side and concentrated on the front page, which told him that right-wing fascists had regained power in the United States, endangering the good relationship between President V. V. Putin and President Bush Jr.

  “That smells good. Would you mind to give me one?”

  Sam looked up. It was Irina—Edward Lee Howard’s Russian wife. She was six years older than the surveillance photographs Michael O’Neill had managed to snag from Langley, but she hadn’t changed much. She was thin but attractive. Dark hair. Her accent wasn’t Moscow, but somewhere east and south. Ukraine? Georgia? Sam hadn’t heard enough to decide. Obviously, Howard had provided her with the language to use—the same phrases Sam had employed with Pavel Baranov for this onetime handoff site, known as G.

  Irina wore a purple nylon down-filled overcoat that came almost to her ankles. She was nervous. Sam could hear it in her voice. He hoped her tradecraft had been adequate. If she’d been followed, this whole morning would turn out to be nothing more than a charade—and a dangerous one for her.

  ‘They’re Cuban, so they’re very strong,” Sam said, reciting the opening sequence.

  “I wouldn’t bother you, but I taught Russian in Spiriti Sanctus Province fifteen years ago and developed a taste for them.”

  “Then it is my pleasure.” Sam flipped the tin open. “Please.”

  “Would you mind? My hands are cold.”

  The password sequence complete, Sam took a small cigar and offered it. “Would you care to sit down?”

  She smiled and complied. “Thank you.”

  The counterman brought Sam’s syrniki. He asked for sugar. Sam looked across the table. “Coffee?”

  “No, thank you—the cigarrito is enough.” She reached for the matches. “Do you mind?”

  Sam lifted a forkful of the sweet cheese fritter. “Be my guest.”

  She smiled, took the matches, fumbled for one, struck it against the box, and lit the small cigar. Her head went back as she drew the smoke in.

  Sam watched as she struggled not to cough. Her face went red. But she maintained control. She exhaled. “Good. Stronger than I remembered.”

  “But rich. Tasty in the mornings—especially with coffee.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Very rich and tasty.” She pushed the box of matches back across the table, picked up her coat, and stood. “Do you think I could have another one—to smoke later?”

  “Of course.”

  “You are very generous. Thank you.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want a coffee? Some breakfast?”

  Her hands made a dismissive gesture. “I’m already late.” She brandished the cigarrito between thumb and forefinger. “This was enough. You’ve been awfully kind.”

  “Then you’re welcome.” He resumed reading his newspaper, his eyes following her as she left. She disappeared into the cold without looking back and Sam’s full attention returned to the headlines. He polished off his breakfast and his coffee, had a second cigarrito, dropped a handful of coins on the table, then stood up and pulled his coat on.

  To anyone observing him, it would have appeared that Sam took the matchbox almost as an afterthought. He started to leave, remembered the matches, swept them off the table-top, and pocketed them.

  CHAPTER 14

  8:56. Sam plunked himself down on a granite bench in a small park a few blocks off the Arbat and reached into his coat pocket for the cigarritos and matches. He lit one of the small cigars and, hiding his actions, unfolded the slip of paper that the woman in the canteen had slipped into the box, concealed it in his palm, and glanced down.

  In small, precise Cyrillic handwriting was the message

  I. Alexandrova, 31,2.pr. Mar’inoj Rošci, 1130.

  II?- Code 826.

  It wasn’t an address Sam was familiar with. But there was no way he was going to check his map while sitting in plain view. Sam rolled the message into a ball between the fingers of his left hand and, as he took the small cigar from between his lips, rolled the paper into his mouth and swallowed it.

  He checked the street. There was a bar about a hundred meters away. He finished his cigar, then rose, and made his way there. The door was painted wood. It was a neighborhood joint that smelled of old beer and stale cigarette smoke, similar to the Irish bars on Second and Third Avenue when Sam was growing up in New York. Sam pulled the door open and stepped inside the smoky gloom.

  It was just like walking into a Blarney Stone. Four regulars hunched over the stained wood bar, their right feet raised on the bar rail. All were drinking vodka in the tall, narrow shot glasses that held a tenth of a liter. Three of the four chased the vodka with beer—Baltika—drunk straight out of halfliter bottles.

  In 1950s New York it would have been Three Feathers or Four Roses, chased with draft Knickerbocker or Ballantine.

  Sam ambled up to the bar and slapped three coins on the sticky surface. “Baltika tri”

  The bartender swept the change off the bar and threw it in an antique cash box sitting on the back bar. Then he reached down, unlatched the door of an old wooden cooler, extracted a half-liter bottle of lager, flipped the top off, and slapped the beer in front of Sam. “Pazhalsta”

  “Spacibo” Sam wiped the mouth of the bottle with his hand, picked it up, and gulped. It was good, even at this hour. “Ahh.”

  He pulled out his cigars and lit one. The rich tobacco balanced the cool beer nicely. Sam glanced around. He probably had a little time to kill, although he wanted to check the map in order to see where the hell Mar’inoj Rošci was located. For all he knew, it could be in one of the suburbs. No—it couldn’t. If it had been, Irina would have added the information.

  He sipped the beer, then rapped on the bar. “Where’s the toilet?”

  The bartender looked up from his newspaper and indicated with his chin.

  “I’ll be back.” Sam walked to the rear and found the toilet. It was empty. There was the usual pissoir, and a single stall. Sam was happy to see it had a working door. He took it, closed the thin metal behind him and latched it, then turned to discover there was no commode—only what he knew as a Turkish toilet: two size-sixteen concrete footprints flanking a hole in the floor. There was a half-filled ancient bucket with no handle, and a dripping spigot.

  God help those whom nature calls. Sam pulled the street map out of his pocket. Quickly he checked the street index, found what he was looking for, and unfolded the map. He located 2 Mar’inoj Rosei. The street was in the northern part of the city—at least a mile from the closest metro stop. But it was close to a couple of trolley-bus lines. From Arbat, Sam guesstimated it was a thirty-minute trip.

  He had just refolded the map when the toilet door opened with a thump and there was a rude pounding on the thin sheet-metal doo
r of the stall. “Get out, goddammit, I have to take a huge dump.”

  Sam smiled in spite of himself. Direct, these Muscovites. “Keep it in your pants another ten seconds, comrade.” He tossed the bucket of water down the hole, adjusted his clothes, opened the door, and stepped out. “Bucket’s empty.”

  A large, red-faced man in a black sheepskin coat lurched by him, his shoulder bumping Sam’s. “I’ll piss it clean, asshole.”

  9:37. Sam climbed aboard a boxy, red-and-cream-colored No. 13 trolley bus heading north. The old-fashioned vehicle reminded him of the buses he’d ridden in New York as a kid. The seats were covered in the same rough, hardy velour as metro cars. In Washington, which was a graffiti-rich environment, there was nothing used on public transportation that couldn’t be power-washed or steam-cleaned.

  He’d walked from the Gray Line’s Zwetnoi Bulewar metro stop, using tradecraft to make sure he wasn’t being surveilled. His appearance had changed once again, too. Now Sam sported a thick brush of a mustache on his upper lip, and the fur hat had metamorphosed back into a tweed cap.

  Sam checked his watch, an anonymous stainless steel Rolex with an adjustable bezel. The trolley bus would take eight or nine minutes at the most. He knew he’d be early at Mar’inoj Rošci by almost two hours. But he wanted the time to do countersurveillance just in case Irina had been careless.

  The trolley bus lurched up Olimpiskij Prospekt, then took a hard left that bounced Sam against the door guardrail. He peered through the dirty window only to be rudely bumped again, when the trolley bus swerved right and slammed to a stop.

  The doors swung open. The street sign caught Sam’s eye. It readULITSA DUROVA. That was the street Howard mentioned in connection with a dead drop. Impulsively, Sam swung through the rear doors just before they smacked shut with a pneumatic hiss.