Palace of Treason

by Jason Matthews

  When the Red Routes Two, Three, and Four operational exfiltration plans were being formulated three years earlier, Simon Benford had reluctantly agreed to partner with the British MOD and Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) to take advantage of UK satellites’ footprints over Russia’s northern tier and Arctic latitudes. After all, the Brits exfiltrated agents too; allies could share capabilities. But negotiations had stalled in London when Benford demanded nothing less than instantaneous message relays from the Brit satlink, dryly noting that MI6’s performance during previous crisis operations recalled “a dead heat in a dirigible race.” That prompted the patrician Oxonian who looked after operations at “Six” to call Benford a tossbag, but since Benford did not know he was being called a fuckhead, the exchange was forgotten and the liaison negotiations were successfully concluded.

  Skynet 5’s microprocessors received DIVA’s trinumeric blast, read it, reencrypted it, and transmitted a different trinumeric code in 1.6 seconds. The VLF transmission from the satellite arrived simultaneously in the Doughnut—Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham—where automated equipment instantly forwarded the “execute” code to MI6 London Headquarters in Vauxhall Cross and to CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, then to the thirty-five-meter buoyant wire antenna trailed behind the forty-foot US Navy shallow water combat submersible (SWCS) ghosting at a depth of five fathoms, one thousand yards from where Dominika and LYRIC were standing on the beach.

  In two minutes, as if to heighten the drama, the minisub surfaced smoothly, directly in the shimmering path of moonlight. It was motionless on the dead-calm sea: The SWCS looked like the smooth gleaming back of a sleeping baby whale; only two feet of freeboard showed above the surface. Dominika dug into her pack and took out a plastic square the size of a matchbox, flipped a tiny toggle, and set it on the rock. The Pegasus cube began showing brilliant infrared light, invisible to the naked eye, in intermittent green-flashing and steady-on modes. Dominika looked through a short IR spotting scope and saw lightning-bright green flashes from the submarine. She handed the scope to LYRIC, who looked through it at the submersible and grunted, impressed.

  A smaller dark blob separated from the SWCS and silently headed toward them—the inflatable’s bow pushed a white curl of water that chuckled under the raft, the only sound it made over the nearly imperceptible whine of its electric trolling outboard. A single hunched figure sat in the back of the craft. It would take several minutes to reach the beach, so Dominika got busy: She packed the transmitter and the IR scope into the backpack, along with the IR beacon light; all this equipment would go with LYRIC into the submarine. There would be no trace of General Solovyov; the Rusalki would have carried him forever beneath the sea. The little raft was still a ways off, and Dominika had a dread feeling that it was taking too much time. Every minute saved would be critical—she had to dress for the president’s weekend garden party—so she walked back to the trunk of the car, unlocked it, opened her suitcase, shucked off her shoes and socks, yanked off her sweater, and peeled off her jeans. She shivered in the night air, barefoot and in her bra and panties. Then she heard the sound of a helicopter somewhere to the southeast.

  PYRAHI—STUFFED BUNS WITH BEETS

  * * *

  Bring milk, shortening, and butter just to a boil, then cool. Mix sugar and yeast in water and let stand. Beat eggs, salt, and sugar and incorporate with the cooled milk and yeast, then add flour to form a soft dough. Flatten the dough into small rounds, spoon filling (grated beets, sugar, and salt sautéed in butter) into the center, and fold up the four corners of dough and pinch closed, leaving a small slit on top. Bake in a medium-high oven until golden brown, and serve with melted butter, sour cream, or yogurt.

  35

  Zyuganov sat in his office with three officers from the SVR administrative and security sections. The shrouded body of Yevgeny had been carried out on a canvas stretcher a half hour ago, and Zyuganov had foamed at the mouth while describing to the men how Yevgeny had been in league with the CIA mole he, Zyuganov, was minutes away from apprehending. Yevgeny was doubtless a subagent dishing information to the opposition and, when confronted by Zyuganov, had panicked and made a move to attack his boss.

  “Attack? With what?” said one of the security men. Not even Zyuganov’s reputation as a wet-boy executioner, inheritor of the speckled majesty of the Vozhd, the multilimbed monster that lent its name to Uncle Joe Stalin, could confer immunity in the case of unjustified murder committed inside the walls of the Center. To be sure, justification could come in the space of a fifteen-second exculpating phone call from the Kremlin, or in the microsecond after the triumphant arrest of the CIA mole in their midst, thought Zyuganov.

  “With this instrument,” said Zyuganov, holding up a half-inch, curved surgical needle. “He was trying to slash me.”

  “How is it you have such a thing in your office, sir?” said one of the men.

  “What difference at this point does it make?” said Zyuganov, pounding his fist. The white phone on his desk trilled—the secure high-frequency Vey-Che line. It was the SVR chief in Saint Petersburg calling to report that one of the militia helicopters reported a signal to the southeast of the city, in a vector essentially along the line of the M10 from Moscow. Zyuganov checked his watch: four thirty. It had to be Egorova coming up from Moscow; they’d have her in the bag within the hour. Zyuganov barked orders that police and militia vehicles be directed to converge on the M10, setting up on all exits to the A120, the outer ring road just after the town of Tosno. He put the phone down and looked at the three zadnitsi, these three admin assholes, knowing they’d heard every word, and told them to get out of his office. They hesitated, then rose to leave, but one security man mumbled something about continuing the interview at another time. Yes, your dismissal-from-the-service interview when I’m deputy chief, thought Zyuganov, his brain buzzing with excitement.

  He had not considered before now that as deputy of SVR he would be able to compile and maintain a list of people who displeased, angered, or otherwise annoyed him. He could have video feeds from the cellars at Lefortovo and Butyrka piped into his office. He would be driven to the Kremlin to have tea with the president. He shivered deliciously as he recalled the sound of dropped melon and the yielding resistance of bone when he hit Yevgeny with the steel baton. He thought of the sights and sounds that would accompany the upcoming interrogations of Egorova and Solovyov. Then the phone trilled again.

  “Goose chase,” the Petersburg chief said over the phone. “The air unit went right down on the deck as signal strength increased, and almost got sucked into the pressure wave of the Sapsan high-speed train from Moscow. The bastard runs at two hundred and fifty kilometers an hour.”

  Zyuganov swore. “What about the signal?” he said.

  “No cars on the road,” said the chief. “I woke up the Rail Ministry; the engine has a transponder in the nose to track the train. The helicopter was homing in on that. Lucky they didn’t fly into—”

  “What the fuck is the train doing on the track at four in the morning?” raved Zyuganov. “It’s supposed to be in Petersburg at midnight.”

  “I asked about that too,” said the chief. “Five-hour departure delay in Moscow. Something on the tracks in the middle of nowhere. It’s bad luck. The helicopter is returning to the field to check for damage. I can tell you the pilot was really shaken.”

  “Fuck the pilot,” yelled Zyuganov. “I want that bastard to continue to search. Find that car. I know she’s out there.” Zyuganov banged down the phone. Sapsan, a peregrine falcon chasing a Sparrow; eto prosto pizdets, this is totally, elementally, fucked up.

  When Dominika heard the helicopter thrashing around in the night sky somewhere to the south she dropped everything, ran around the car, and stuffed the last of the equipment into the kit bag. She took the docile general by the elbow and helped him over the rocks to the small sandy beach, willing the rubber raft to hurry, hoping that the old man would get off this beach,
willing the helicopter to stay away. According to the exfil drill, Dominika helped the general off with his topcoat, which she also stuffed into the kit bag. In Athens there had been discussion of leaving LYRIC’s shoes and coat on the beach, eventually to be found and to suggest that the desperate fugitive had committed suicide by walking into the sea, but Dominika had convinced Benford that this would be inostrannyy, too foreign, un-Russian. Better that he should dematerialize without a trace.

  The rubber raft grounded on the beach, the man stepped over the rubber gunwale, and Gary Cooper walked toward them—at least that’s what the six-foot-two Navy SEAL looked like to Dominika. Petty Officer Second-Class Luke Proulx of SEAL Team Two was dressed in black Nomex overalls and carried a stubby matte black MP7 submachine gun across his chest on a one-point sling. As he approached Dominika and the general he pulled a knit watch cap off his head. Of course he would have blond hair, thought Dominika. And a red halo that turned the color of chilled rosé in the moonlight. Naturally.

  “General. Ma’am,” said Proulx in unaccented Russian. “Good morning.” Perfect Russian, and of course he would also have blue eyes, thought Dominika, only then realizing she was in her underwear—Simone Perele from Paris, but still . . . The SEAL didn’t give the faintest indication that he saw her nakedness.

  “I heard a helicopter a minute ago,” said Dominika, resolved not to be embarrassed. “You must leave immediately.” Petty Officer Proulx nodded, put his cap back on, and took the kit bag from Dominika.

  “Ready, sir?” he said, shifting his weapon and moving to the rubber raft. Without his coat, General Solovyov was shivering in the cool night air. He turned to Dominika, stood straight, and saluted. He silently mouthed Spasibo, thank you, then turned and climbed into the raft, which the SEAL had pushed off the sand and was holding steady in shallow water. Luke Proulx looked back at Dominika, smiled, and whispered Udacha, good luck. He bounded into the raft, started the silent motor, and headed out for the wallowing black log of the submarine in the moon path. Dominika was shivering now too as she watched the silver bow wave spread in a vee across the flagstone sea. She was astounded to register a “Hey, wait for me” stuck behind her lips, but knew she would never be able to go.

  “Stupay s Bogom,” she whispered. Go with God. She turned quickly and clambered over the rocks, then dove into her suitcase in the open trunk of her car. Dress over her head—a gray scrunched tunic-drape cocktail number—pointed toe Fendi stilettos onto her feet—she had to wipe her soles clean of sand—a string of onyx stone beads around her neck. She slammed the trunk and got inside the car, smoothing her upswept hair and putting on a touch of lipstick. She wanted the effect of arriving at the Strelna mansion as if she had been driving all night, dressed somewhat inappropriately for a breakfast buffet, or whatever beastly Fall-of-Rome entertainment these kabany, these tusker boars who ran her country, who lounged and ate and drank and stole Russia’s wealth out of the mouths of her people, had in mind—provided, of course, that the Tsar approved.

  She looked out at the empty ocean; the silver sea was flat. The vessel had slipped beneath the waves; the Rusalki mermaids had gotten their man. Perhaps now the spirits of Udranka and Marta and Hannah could rest—how Hannah would have enjoyed this early-morning operation on this pebbly beach. Dominika gripped the steering wheel and fought fatigue, emotion, longing. She longed for Nate, to see him and talk to him, and to have him take her in his arms and just hold her—at least for a while before they fell into bed. The sound of helicopter rotors was audible somewhere in the distance, growing louder, and Dominika started moving fast down the beach road—headlights out, Don’t clip one of the boulders, I hope it’s too dark to see a dust plume—and squealed onto the A121 back toward Petersburg, past the dark palaces, no traffic at 5:00 a.m. and her mirrors were clear.

  The rotor noise was louder as she pulled into the entrance to the Constantine Palace and Strelna conference facility. The gate guard looked into the sky as he walked around to her window and shined the light in her eyes.

  “Get that light out of my face,” snapped Dominika. “Captain Egorova of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, SVR. I’m expected.”

  Sitting in the SWCS was like being a fragile and somewhat insignificant component in a cramped steel tube stuffed with conduit and pipes and cable ties and digital displays. Petty Officer Proulx had helped LYRIC squeeze through a hatch on the dorsal surface of the SWCS and eased him into a nylon webbing seat, buckled a harness over his shoulders and across his stomach, then released a latch and slid the seat on tracks backward to click and lock against stops in the third position. After pulling the sea cocks on the raft—once inflated it could not possibly fit back into the submersible—and watching it settle underwater by the heavier stern, Proulx slipped through the hatch and into the second seat, putting the MP7 on safe and stowing his weapon in a scabbard beneath his seat. He stuffed the bag with the exfil equipment in a side locker, then hit a toggle to close the hatch, which he then manually dogged with a hand crank. Their ears popped as the hatch sealed shut and the cabin pressurized.

  Proulx turned in his seat—no easy feat in the cramped space—and took a pair of headphones off a small hook and handed them to the general. He put on his own headset and adjusted the bud mike across his cheek.

  “You okay, sir?” said Proulx. The general nodded and whispered “Da” into the mike. Proulx passed a plastic squeeze bottle he took out of a becket on the side of the seat. “Here, sir, drink this. It gets pretty hot and dry in here.” The mildly fruit-flavored water had a low dose of benzodiazepine to reduce anxiety, relax the muscles, and make sleep possible. The “benzo cocktail” was standard kit for maritime exfil ops.

  “Better than the motherfucking wet-pig boats we had to drive before,” said Master Chief Petty Officer Mike Gore over the headset, sitting ahead of Proulx in the nose. The hulking and dyspeptic Chief Gore was at the controls. “C’mon, let’s get out of here; shallow water gives me the shits,” he said. The men were sitting like a three-man bobsled crew, in single file, legs slightly bent, knees against the backs of the seats ahead. There was a sound of gurgling water that enveloped them, and a slight sensation of sinking. The only ghostly light in the stuffy compartment came from LED displays.

  “General, you want to listen to a little music?” said Proulx into his mike. “How about some Tchaikovsky?” It had been Benford’s suggestion that they have Russian classical music on hand, music that could be silenced if the boat’s sonar detected surface units anywhere nearby. The SWCS perceptibly started moving forward, a small hum came from the engine compartment bulkhead behind their seats, and the entire submersible suddenly banked like an aircraft and took a steep vertigo-inducing downward angle. Fifteen minutes later, Proulx glanced at a small piece of polished metal attached to the overhead like a rearview mirror and saw that LYRIC’s head was back against the padded headrest, his eyes closed. Proulx switched off LYRIC’s headset and reached forward, tapping Master Chief Gore on the shoulder.

  “So the landing zone is clear and this angel in her underwear is on the beach with the old guy—I mean Ingrid Bergman meets Jane Russell. Couldn’t be true, Master Chief; shit, I expected Spetsnaz to come out of the sea grass.” Gore grunted into his mouth mike.

  “Proulx, the next hop, you sit offshore, and I’ll take the inflatable in. Fucking CIA running porn stars in Russia. I gotta get a job with them.” The two SEALs were silent for a few minutes. “The old guy okay?” said Gore. Proulx nodded.

  “Yeah, he’s out,” said Proulx.

  “Okay,” said Gore. “Enough of Pyotr Ilyich; give me some ZZ Top.”

  Five hours later the SEAL SWCS eased up astern of the US Navy amphibious landing ship LPD-24, the USS Arlington, which was participating in a US Sixth Fleet antisubmarine warfare exercise with the Estonian and Latvian navies. The Arlington was slowly steaming in a racetrack ASW course west of Suursaari Island in the Gulf of Finland, 120 kilometers west of the exfil beach. The SWCS was floated into the Arling
ton’s flooded well deck during a prolonged squall that reduced visibility to zero. LYRIC was out and safe.

  Dominika followed the guard jeep with the rotating yellow light down a broad avenue, the palace looming to the left, then in a wide curve past administrative buildings and the multistory hotel that accommodated conference attendees, through a park of trees and well-tended lawns, a fountain, a baroque gingerbread house with a double-eagle medallion on the peak of the roof and through another gate with the candy-cane barrier already raised. They passed modern, boxy two-story mansions with light-green mansard roofs, one after another. Dominika counted ten or twelve, and there were others behind these, all of them dark and sitting naked in a park devoid of trees and crisscrossed with cement walkways. These were the VIP cottages reserved for heads of state during international gatherings at the Palace of Congresses State Complex, right on the shore. The Gulf of Finland was visible in the growing light, and Dominika wondered what President Putin would say if he knew there was a US Navy minisubmarine out there under the surface, carrying a Russian military officer to safety in the West, a two-star general who had been a reporting source of CIA. Would he break a bloodstained canine gnashing his teeth?

  They pulled into the circular drive of the last of the cottages—it was brightly lit. A dozen other cars were parked in a small contiguous lot. Of the eighteen mansions, this was the closest to the sea. A butler in white coat came out of the house to take Dominika’s pitiful suitcase inside. Another attendant stood to park the car. Dominika dully realized that the ripple-soled shoes in her bag most likely had beach sand on them, as surely did the floor mats of the car. Nothing she could do about it now. As they climbed the shallow steps of the mansion a stubby blue helicopter roared overhead, the range lights on its belly flashing, then banked sharply over the water and came back to buzz the mansion.