Harry's Rules

by Michael R. Davidson

  He listened a moment then said, “Harry, I don’t give a damn what you think is best. It’s a miracle your ass is still attached to your tail bone. We can’t risk losing track of you and whatever the hell is on that disk. This thing, whatever it is, has long since passed the point where we can continue to play it close to the chest. I’ve got to bring the Seventh Floor in now. They won’t be happy with me for sending you out there, but I’ll get over it, and you’ll be safe. Now tell me where you’re staying?”

  After another two minutes on the line, Liebowitz left the restaurant and sat in his car for a long time, his brow furrowed with thought, as he formulated his plan. This was not going to be easy, but it was manageable. He just wished he did not have to depend upon others to do what needed to be done now.

  CHAPTER 32 – Judgment

  I left the rank of public phones in the WestBahnhoff and exited the building in the direction of the Opern Ring. The temperature had dropped again, and Vienna’s semi-permanent drizzle had been replaced by a light snow that danced in the headlights of on-coming cars.

  It was against my rules to let anyone know where I could be located, and I had at first resisted Jake’s entreaties. But there was no arguing that my situation had become precarious and extraction was the smartest option. This was, after all, Jake’s operation, and the decision meant that he would bring Agency resources into the operation.

  I had not mentioned the Israelis to Liebowitz because I didn’t want anyone to know of Volodya’s involvement, not even Jake, if it could be prevented. The old Russian’s life could be jeopardized were his name in any way attached to this operation, and there was no reason to break another of my personal rules, even less so given the certainty that the Russians had a mole in the Agency. Enough had gone wrong, fatally wrong, already without the bosses at Langley pissing themselves over an elderly Russian’s and Mossad’s involvement before they had any facts. As long as the Israelis did not get their hands on the disk, it made no difference anyway.

  I also had omitted the part about having been assaulted and the capture of the ape that I hoped was sweating bullets in the cellar of the Israeli Embassy. If I was not going to tell Jake about the Israelis, I sure as hell couldn’t explain how I had survived an attack by a professional assassin. For now, all Jake needed to know was that Stankov had been killed and that I had retrieved the disk. There was plenty of time to decide what to say and what not to say, and I was leaving the Agency anyway. Screw them.

  Jake had warned that it would take a while to clear things with the Seventh Floor and set up Vienna Station contact for the extraction. The plan was for me to be escorted by air directly back to Washington. I would miss seeing Volodya again, but securing the information on Stankov’s computer disk was paramount. I didn’t intend to repeat Thackery’s mistakes.

  I slipped into the Sacher Hotel for a quick meal and a slice of torte before settling into my room with my cigars and what remained of Stankov’s cognac to wait it out. The room, shabby as it was, had become a warm cocoon of safety compared to the madness that lurked on Vienna’s streets.

  CHAPTER 33 – Breaking

  Spetsnaz training is as tough as any in the world and includes incredibly cruel sessions designed to inure men to torture. But there is a limit to any man’s resistance. Drozhdov was in a very dark place, and despite his determination to hold out, in the end he failed. He had lost two more fingers and had soiled and pissed himself somewhere along the way, adding to his discomfort and humiliation.

  Ronan’s field interrogation technique was brutal and effective. The initial questions meant nothing, but served only to demonstrate that lack of an acceptable response would ALWAYS result in punishment – in this case loss of some part of his prisoner’s anatomy. It was quick and very dirty, but it almost always worked.

  Drozhdov’s resolve finally crumbled when the jaws of the bloody steel pincers were placed around his penis. His experience with this fiend had conditioned him to know that there were no second chances, no pity, and no hesitation to carry out threats. Drozhdov was prepared to die, but he wanted at least to die still a man.

  Nauseated by the stench of his own filth, demoralized by his own weakness, a thoroughly broken Drozhdov at last told Ronan that he was a Captain in the SVR’s elite Directorate S. He revealed his Spetsnaz military history, his assignment to Munich as an SVR Illegal, where he lived as a German citizen and carried out assignments on behalf of Moscow Center. The more he talked, the easier it became.

  Ronan wearily climbed the stairs leaving behind the broken man and the noisome atmosphere of the basement interrogation cell. He desperately needed a long, hot shower to rid himself of the stench of blood, excrement, and fear that lingered in his nostrils even after he closed the basement door. He had conducted field interrogations before, and the sickness in his gut afterwards was always the same.

  Finally standing naked beneath a steaming flow of hot water, he could reflect clearly on the operational situation.

  The water flowed over a body that carried its share of battle scars, including not a few from bullets. At 55, Ronan was still in excellent physical condition, and he was one of the men the Mossad relied upon to get the “hard” things done as leader of the Kidon unit. This was far from the first time that circumstances had required that he view a human being as nothing more than a piece of meat that concealed information somewhere inside.

  What should he do now with the captive Russian? One option was simply to kill him and dump the mutilated body into the Danube. He decided against this, however. A field interrogation had its limits. Because of the sensitivity of the present mission and the probability that a lengthier and more sophisticated interrogation in Tel Aviv might yield more information about Voskreseniye activities and personnel the Russian would live a while longer. It was a rare event for a Directorate S operative to be captured, but it would be impossible and dangerous in the end to keep him alive. He would never leave Israel.

  The following day Drozhdov would be drugged, strapped tight, fitted with an oxygen tank, and packed into a specially designed crate for shipment via diplomatic pouch on an El Al flight to Tel-Aviv.

  The American, Connolly, was a more pressing concern. The two local surveillants Ronan had assigned to follow him lost his trail inside of thirty minutes. The man apparently had an intimate knowledge of the city, and his counter surveillance and evasion skills were superb. Ronan cursed the fact that time had been limited, and in his own arrogance he had underestimated the American.

  Drozhdov’s revelations made it clear not only that the SVR’s interest in Stankov had been at the highest levels, but also that Connolly’s contact plan had been betrayed to them. That much had been evident from Drozhdov’s presence at the meeting site, but Ronan was even more disturbed by the rapidity and accuracy of Moscow Center communications with Drozhdov concerning Connolly’s final rendezvous with the Russian. Ronan was convinced that Connolly was still in extreme danger, no matter how talented he might be. With no way to get in touch with the American, there was no way to warn him. Hopefully, Connolly’s skill at eluding Israeli surveillance would not lead to his ultimate destruction.

  CHAPTER 34 – Alarm in Moscow

  The object on Arkadiy Yudin’s desk looked like a laptop computer and would even function as such. Concealed within, however, was complex circuitry not to be found in any normal computer. A second hard drive contained software that worked with a set of complex algorithms to encrypt messages. Other specially built solid state nodes would then compress the encrypted message and separate it into discrete bundles to be forwarded via isochronous burst transmissions.

  Having typed his message, he slid open a panel in the side of the instrument to reveal a cable connector and linked the device to a plug concealed in the woodwork of his desk that led to a satellite dish on the roof of his villa. His message was transmitted to a Russian satellite in geosynchronous orbit and then downloaded to Moscow Center in less than twenty seconds.

  He nee
ded to prod Shurgin into action. The computer disk Drozhdov had handed over to him in Madrid a little over a week earlier had confirmed his worst fears. That damned little clerk had hacked into the mainframe, accessed extremely sensitive files, and copied them. Then the miserable son-of-a-bitch had erased all the data on the mainframe. The disk Drozhdov had delivered therefore was the only known copy of the files Stankov had stolen. In the wrong hands this information could be used to access Voskreseniye funds dispersed in various accounts around the world, something only Yudin should be able to do.

  Unfortunately, the equipment Yudin had for communications with Moscow Center could only accept manual input and message length was limited. Moscow, therefore, would be unable to re-construct the mainframe files until the disk could be couriered there – a job Drozhdov was supposed to handle. But where there was one computer disk there could be another. Yudin knew that until Stankov had been found and eliminated, the secret accounts Voskreseniye maintained in the West would be vulnerable to exposure or worse.

  *****

  At the SVR’s “Forest” headquarters, General Morozov was at his desk despite its being Sunday. The pleasant week-end he had planned at his dacha with his wife and son was forgotten, and his mood matched the gloomy winter weather that gusted fitfully against his window. The duty officer had notified him of the receipt of urgent communications early in the morning, and he now re-read the two yellow sheets of paper, both marked “COBEPШEHHO CEKPETHO,” top secret. The messages they contained confirmed that something had gone very wrong with the Vienna operation. Both of the messages were from Russian agents in the West. One was from Marbella, Spain - mounting panic could be read between the lines. The other was from Washington, D.C.

  Immediate action was demanded.

  He called Shurgin.

  An hour later the two were shuttered in Morozov’s office. Shurgin, upon reading the messages, had lost his normal glacial façade and now prowled back and forth across the room in front of Morozov’s desk. “Drozhdov failed to report, and yet Stankov is dead, and the American razvedchik has a second computer disk.” Shurgin’s sharp mind, usually so adept at separating fact from fiction, was having trouble processing this information.

  From behind his desk Morozov looked up from the documents, his thoughts tracking those of Shurgin. “If Drozhdov killed Stankov, he should have killed the American, as well. Those were his orders. It is certain that something happened to Drozhdov. We should never have sent him in solo.”

  “Your hindsight is excellent, Yuriy Ivanovich,” snapped Shurgin. “But I’m more concerned about what we do next. Your source in Washington says the damned American has a copy of the original disk, and we don’t have much time to get it back. We have heard nothing from Drozhdov and so I agree that we must assume he is out of the picture. What do you suggest?”

  Morozov had no doubts about what they must do next. “Where the scalpel failed the axe may be needed,” he said. “It’s time to employ a blunt instrument, and I don’t think we have the luxury of waiting for the next scheduled satellite communications window.”

  Shurgin inclined his head in reluctant assent. He knew precisely what Morozov intended.

  The General lifted the receiver of one of the four telephones arrayed across his spacious desktop. This instrument was a special untraceable encrypted line that connected him directly to its twin in an expensive villa on the outskirts of Zurich, Switzerland.

  CHAPTER 35 – Zhenya

  The hand that lifted the receiver in Zurich was well manicured and belonged to an impeccably dressed man with longish blond hair. He was of medium height and unremarkable in appearance except for his ice blue eyes and the fact that he wore a $5,000 bespoke suit, a cream colored hand sewn shirt of Egyptian cotton, and handmade shoes. He sat behind an antique desk facing an enormous window that provided a spectacular view of the University of Zürich campus and the Zürichsee. His study was lined with books, many of them rare volumes. He had read none of them, but image was quite important to him.

  The impression he contrived to impart was one of privilege and culture, but he had in fact spent years in the Soviet gulag system and his body beneath the tailored finery was covered with crude prison tattoos identifying him as a vor v zakonye, a “thief in the code.” Yevgeniy Lomonosov, known as “Zhenya,” led the largest and most vicious criminal gang in Russia, “The Brotherhood.”

  The gang had a deservedly fearsome reputation and was responsible for numerous murders, some of prominent individuals – businessmen who would not cooperate, politicians, and troublesome television and newspaper reporters. They had had Wild West shootouts in the streets of Moscow and waged bloody war against rival Chechen gangs. The Brotherhood controlled all the concessions at many major airports in Russia, as well as major railway stations. Zhenya’s brother, Ruslan, remained at the gang’s headquarters in Moscow’s southern district while Zhenya, whose superior business acumen had long been recognized, lived in the West, where he could control the Brotherhood’s far flung activities. In all, the gang counted over five thousand members in a criminal enterprise stretching from Moscow, to Miami, to Geneva, and as far distant as the Near East.

  The fall of the Soviet Union made it possible for the organization to flourish in the lawless, every-man-for-himself atmosphere that had set in after 1989. Zhenya himself had travelled to Israel where he established relations with the new criminal class of that nation, composed largely of newly arrived Russian immigrants, many of whom were fugitives from the law and hardly religious. These new Russian Israeli acquaintances provided Zhenya with “clean” travel documents and put him into contact with Colombian drug cartels and Italian networks.

  Finally, in 1991 he set up his headquarters in Switzerland where much of his time was taken up with laundering huge amounts of dirty money, literally billions of dollars, through far-flung semi-legitimate business enterprises and protected bank accounts.

  Zhenya assiduously cultivated his image of respectability. A family man, his wife and two children lived with him in Zürich where the children were enrolled in the best schools to which they were driven daily in a sumptuous Rolls Royce, accompanied by an armed guard. The family hobnobbed with the “best” people in a country where wealth counted for more than character.

  Despite some quixotic efforts, the Swiss authorities were incapable of gathering proof of Zhenya’s illegal activities or penetrating the phalanx of expensive attorneys that surrounded his operations. Zhenya and the Brotherhood were bulletproof, and their involvement in legitimate businesses and illegal operations, especially narcotics, both in the West and inside Russia prospered.

  Unbeknownst to the majority of its members, the Brotherhood was largely controlled by Voskreseniye and liberally salted with loyal former KGB officers and Soviet era military personnel. Shurgin used the Brotherhood to keep “independent” businesses, “oligarchs,” and the Chechen criminal gangs under control inside Russia and as an investment vehicle and espionage operation in the West. In exchange the Brotherhood enjoyed the privileges and advantages that only official and unquestioned government support could offer to a criminal enterprise. It was a perfect symbiosis.

  “Don’t worry, Yuriy Ivanovich, I understand. I’ll have someone in Vienna immediately,” Zhenya replied to Morozov’s urgent request.

  *****

  In Moscow, the SVR General replaced the phone in its cradle and turned back to Shurgin. “It’s done. They should be on a plane to Vienna within the hour.”

  Shurgin ceased his pacing. “The American will be waiting for a contact from his own people, but he won’t wait more than a very few days before going to ground again. If that disk falls into the wrong hands we won’t have much time to take more corrective measures, if there should be any we can take at all. Send a reply to Yudin. Tell him to be ready to travel on short notice. If Zhenya should fail, Arkadiy Nikolayevich will have to move very fast.”

  CHAPTER 36 – Quiet Sunday in Vienna

  Day had long since s
lipped into night, but now there was a distant clatter.

  I was working on the week-end International Herald Tribune crossword when the reverberation of loud voices reached me. Not long after heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. I followed their progress and soon was in little doubt that, whoever it was, they were heading toward my door.

  It was the day after my talk with Jake, and there still had been no contact from Vienna Station. It took time to set these things up, and I could only imagine the grilling my friend had been subjected to after his revelations to the Seventh Floor brass.

  Stankov’s computer disk was a magnet that attracted trouble and death, and I had grown weary of the dingy walls of the pension. The Courvoisier and a rapidly dwindling supply of Habanos were my only surcease. I hated going to ground, and hated waiting even more. The charm of the pension room had worn off quickly.

  As the footsteps drew nearer, I judged there were at least two men, and they were in a hurry. This definitely sounded like cavalry, but intuition told me they were charging rather than coming to my rescue.

  There were only seconds to act. The pistol was on the table next to the chair. I had removed the silencer so it would be easier to carry.

  With no time to rise, I grabbed the gun and aimed, two-handed, at the door just as it was slammed back from its frame with a crack of splitting wood. A very large foot clad in steel studded boots, apparently the instrument used to break open the door, appeared and two men in dark clothing rushed inside. The first to enter waved a pistol in an outstretched arm searching for a target. My chair was at an oblique angle from the door, and that probably saved my life.

  The explosion of the pistol inside the small room was deafening. The first intruder grunted and stumbled when the slug caught him mid-mass, but his momentum carried him farther into the room before he sprawled face down on the floor next to the metal shower stall. The second attacker, likewise charging pell-mell through the door, tripped over his partner and fired blindly as he went down. The table lamp shattered beside me as I hurled myself sideways out of the chair and returned fire. The first shot was high and buried itself in the doorframe, but the second found its mark, and the intruder screamed in pain. He had been hit in the left bicep, and I was at once surprised and gratified to see that his arm was all but severed. Screaming, he rolled to his right to try another shot, but collapsed before he could squeeze the trigger.