“I already have,” said Collins.
Would Marcke really give it to her? Rubens momentarily felt a wave of nausea.
“In the past few days, we harvested communications via an E-mail network used, at least until now, strictly by diplomatic personnel.” Rubens explained that the odd thing about the E-mails wasn’t the information — that was fairly routine — but the fact that they were so heavily encrypted in a back-channel or even off-channel communications line. He then ticked off indicators — fuel, leaves allowed, even the assignment of medical personnel to sick call — that showed all of the units were getting ready for some type of campaign.
As he spoke, he inserted his memory device into the keyboard in front of him and punched up the data on the screens.
“And it’s not a fresh move against the southern rebels?” asked Blanders.
“The units are mostly near Moscow and in Siberia,” said Rubens. “Two armored battalions have been moved within a twelve-hour drive of Moscow, and there’s another about the same distance outside of the dachas south of—”
“The southern units are also within range for an offensive in the Caucasus,” noted Blanders.
“True,” said Rubens. The defense secretary was a potential ally, and so Rubens made sure to concede the point graciously. “If it were just those units, I’d agree.”
“There is overlap with the units we tagged,” said Collins. “Of course, we have additional humint.”
She said “humint”—short for human intelligence, or old fashioned “spy information”—as if it were potting material for an exotic houseplant.
Rubens brushed aside her attempt to steal back the spotlight. The CIA might have made the first guess, but the NSA had done the hard work to show what was really going on. “Most interestingly,” he said, “they’ve killed Laci Babinov.”
“Babinov is who?” asked the president.
“The leader of the riot police in Moscow,” said Hadash.
“Actually, the number two man, but he’s really the one in charge,” said Rubens. “He was on the aircraft shot down by the unmarked MiG.”
They all knew which plane he was talking about, so Rubens didn’t have to explain. Collins took another shot at bringing the attention back to the CIA by saying that two colonels who worked as military attaches in the Kremlin were missing from their posts, but the others ignored her.
Rubens had clearly supplied the key.
“It does line up,” said Hadash. “But who’s behind it?”
“Perovskaya,” said Collins. “Has to be.”
The defense minister was an obvious choice, and Rubens would have suggested Perovskaya himself if she hadn’t. But now he made a face. “No intercepts support that.”
“Who else could it be?”
“I don’t know, Christine, but until I have evidence, I can’t say.”
Using her first name was a slip and he knew it; Rubens went silent.
“What about the shootdown?” asked the secretary of state. “The plane was similar to yours. Maybe they simply thought it was another.”
“Doubtful,” said Rubens. Lincoln should not have known that the planes were similar. Who leaked that to him? Collins? But she shouldn’t have known, either.
Hadash? Blanders? The president?
“The Russian media are playing it as if it were an accident, and there were no intercepts at all about it,” said Rubens, subtly changing the subject. “No transmissions at all. Highly unusual. As far as we can tell, the MiG that shot it down didn’t even get a tower clearance to take off.”
“So the consensus is that the military, or part of the military, is planning to revolt,” said the president. “Do we know when the coup is planned for?”
“Impossible to know,” said Rubens.
“Within a week,” said Collins.
“What do we do?” asked the president. He pushed back in his seat.
“We should tell Kurakin,” said Lincoln. “Head it off.”
“That might not be enough,” said Collins.
“We should squash it,” said Rubens.
They all looked at him.
“You have a plan?” asked Hadash.
“No,” said Rubens. He saw Collins’ mouth twist — she did, or at least was going to claim she did. “Not a specific plan. But if we’re concerned about a coup, obviously we could interfere with it. Desk Three has the capability.”
Rubens knew he was overreaching, but he felt he had to stake out the ground quickly. Desk Three was supposed to be the country’s preeminent covert intelligence organization — it couldn’t afford to sit on the sidelines.
He wasn’t overreaching. Desk Three could disrupt communications among the different military groups quite easily. Providing the Russian president with real-time intelligence would be child’s play — they did it all the time for their action teams on the ground. The Russian president would have to do the heavy lifting himself, of course — but with judicious assistance, surely he would prevail.
“A coup would be disastrous,” said the secretary of state. “But we can’t get directly involved.”
“True,” said Hadash. “On the other hand, it would be very risky. We still don’t know exactly who’s behind the coup.”
“We’re working on it,” said Rubens.
“So are we,” said Collins.
“I can’t see helping Kurakin, or any Russian,” said Blan-ders. “It’s galling.”
“I don’t necessarily disagree on an emotional level,” said Rubens. “But of course, it may be to our advantage.”
“Maybe,” conceded Blanders, still clearly reluctant.
“Billy, put together a plan,” said the president.
Rubens let himself bask in the rarefied air of presidential approval for a few seconds, then turned his mind toward a plan that would justify it.
27
The weapon was simplicity itself. A stainless steel barrel, an aluminum frame, a plastic stock. The bolt eased bullets into firing position, treating them like the perfectly selected hand-prepared rounds they were. The sight itself was not particularly powerful at 6X42, but it was more than adequate and perfectly matched to the weapon. With the proper preparation, the assassin could guarantee a hit at 600 meters. Even at that range, the 7.62mm bullet would slice through a man’s skull as easily as if it were an overripe cantaloupe.
Once, the assassin’s commander had objected to the fact that he preferred the British gun — an L96A1, procured at a ridiculous cost that included two lives — to the more readily available and homegrown Snaiperskaya Vintivka Dragunov. The SVD was not, in fact, a poor weapon and, depending on the circumstances, might surpass the L96A1. If the assassin still did his work in the field, for example, he would perhaps have preferred the SVD for its reliability.
But he did not do his work in the field. He was stationed now in the second story of a hotel in Doneck on the Black Sea, waiting for his target’s limousine to appear on the street. He had waited here in fact for two days. Another man might think, after so long a wait, that the information that had been provided to him was incorrect. Another man might have sought other instructions.
But the assassin did neither. This was, in large part, his great value. He did not need to sleep — a bottle of blue pills, one every six hours, took care of that. He kept a large chamber pot and never drank or ate while waiting. He had been at his post for eighteen hours straight and could stay for at least another twelve, if not eighteen or twenty-four. He had waited three entire days to kill a leader of the Chechnya criminals, so this was nothing.
The assassin had killed twenty-three people, not counting the men he had slain as a paratrooper. Besides the L96A1 zeroed in on the entrance to the hotel across the street, the assassin had a submachine gun at his feet. This was not intended for his target — the L96A1 was more than adequate. But the assassin did not trust his employers — for good reason, he knew — and in fact much of his preparation had involved finding an acceptable escape route
.
The phone on his belt began to vibrate. Still watching the window, he reached down and pressed the talk button.
“Yes?” he said.
“It is postponed,” said the voice on the other end. “Go to Moscow. Be there the day after tomorrow.”
Without saying another word, the assassin punched the end button and began to take down his weapon.
28
When they returned to the highway, Lia and Dean went back in the direction they’d come for about ten miles, finding another highway running to the southeast. Just after turning off they stopped and refilled the truck’s gas tank, hand-pumping it. They had passed at least two gas stations, but Lia told him the gas sometimes couldn’t be trusted.
“Everybody’s out to make a ruble,” she said. “Country’s going to hell.”
With the girl out of the truck, Lia told him where they were going. All three locations they had to check were near the Kazym River, the first about a half hour’s drive. Dean looked at the map on the handheld. They were more than two hundred miles north of where they had left the Hind and well to the east; they’d followed a rather twisted route to get here.
“How do you know the helicopter’s still there?” he asked.
“May not be,” said Lia. “We’ll just scout around, see what we see. Kind of your job description, isn’t it?”
“It wouldn’t have been able to get to any of these spots without refueling,” he told her. “And if it refueled, it could have gone anywhere.”
“The Art Room coordinates all kinds of data, Charlie. Eavesdropping, signal captures, satellite pictures. Just relax.”
“Garbage in, garbage out.”
“Gee, that’s original.”
“Well, your gadgets and gizmos haven’t done too well so far.”
“Sure they have.”
Dean scoffed. “Why don’t we look for the MiG?”
“That’s not our job.”
“Somebody should.”
“Did you do this in the Marines?”
“Which?”
“Question every stinking thing.”
“All the time.”
“Good.”
Surprised by her answer, Dean pulled himself upright in the seat.
“The girl will be OK,” said Lia, as if they’d been discussing her. “Really, she’ll be OK.”
“You told her to go become a prostitute.”
“I did not.” Her face lit red. Then, in a much lower voice, a voice close to a whisper, she repeated herself. “I did not. She’ll be OK.”
As Lia shook her head, Dean noticed two very small creases near her eyes, aging marks she wasn’t old enough to have.
“It’s not my job to save people, not like that,” said Lia. “It’s not why I’m here.”
“I think it is.”
“You know, Charlie Dean, that’s the same attitude that got a lot of people killed in Vietnam,” said Lia.
“What do you know about Vietnam?” he snapped.
“My dad was there, my adopted dad,” said Lia. “He told me what it was like.”
The last thing Dean wanted to hear was warmed-over Vietnam stories. They were all well-constructed set pieces of horror. People trotted them out to show that they had been touched, moved by war. They still had nightmares. They still thought about it.
Except that most of the people who spit out the stories were full of shit.
He liked her better when she was being an asshole, he decided.
* * *
The first spot they were supposed to check out was an oil machinery plant, which dealt with companies like Petro-UK. It lay right off the highway. Lia saw the rusting fence and the sign with its Cyrillic letters as she passed, hit the brakes, and wheeled through a one-eighty, narrowly missing the only other vehicle they’d seen for the last fifteen minutes or so.
“Jesus,” said Dean as the large tractor-trailer whipped about an inch from their bumper.
“They’re not used to other drivers on the road here,” said Lia. She glanced at her watch. It was before seven, but already there were people in the building. “Here’s the deal. We’re looking for a helicopter. You’re the new accountant from Australia. I’ll do most of the talking.”
“I can’t do an Australian accent,” said Dean.
“I doubt they can, either.”
Lia parked the car in a muddy lot, then hopped from the truck. They locked it; Dean adjusted his pistol under his sweater and followed her inside.
Accountants held a more important position in Russian businesses than in most Western companies. One token of this was the fact that they were the ones who tended to be arrested when the required permits or bribes weren’t paid. So it wasn’t surprising that when Lia mentioned Dean’s cover to the man they met in the front room, he bowed deeply, put up his hands, and practically ran to the back to get the big boss. Lia’s story was that they needed a helicopter. The boss protested that they were not in the business of selling aircraft — but then he proceeded to add that they did, as a matter of fact, have several available. He led Lia and Dean outside to a small jeeplike truck and drove them out through a yard filled with rusting tractor blades to a packed gravel yard filled with large pumps, pipes, and vehicles at least twenty years old. At the center of the field sat a thick cross of asphalt that obviously functioned as a helipad. Large plastic barrels sat at the far side, half-buried in the ground — obviously a fuel farm of some kind.
Lia pushed out her story, complaining that they needed a heavier helicopter than the Alouette the manager showed her. That led to two identical rather tired-looking machines parked at the farthest end of the large yard. They were squat, with two sets of rotors, one atop the other, and a double-fin tail. Dean could guess from looking at the machines that neither was what they were looking for, but Lia played through, checking the craft and even asking if one could be started up. The manager didn’t know how and the pilot wasn’t available. Perhaps they’d come back, Lia said.
As they were walking back to the truck, she stopped to tie her shoe. The manager began talking to Dean in English about the difficulties of doing business here. Dean simply shrugged. He worried that he might have to eventually say something about Australia and decided he would divert the manager with a story about being educated in America — he could bullshit plausibly about that, he thought. But Lia caught back up with them and it wasn’t necessary to say anything else.
“We have more stops,” she said, taking the manager’s card. “We will be in touch.”
“Those were Helixes we looked at?” Dean asked as they got back in their truck.
“Kamov KA-27s,” she said. “Match the pictures the Art Room gave me.”
“How do you know the Art Room’s right about what kind of chopper it was?”
“You really are a Luddite, aren’t you?”
“No. I just don’t trust everything I’m told.”
“They’re the right kind of helicopters.”
“So civilians have military helicopters?”
“Well, civilians do have military type helicopters, even in the West,” said Lia. “But here there’s a bit more flow back and forth. You have to trust us on this one, Charlie Dean.”
“If they don’t sell helicopters,” said Dean, though he knew he was being stubborn, “why do they have so many?”
“Oh, they always say that,” said Lia. “See, if they sold helicopters, they would need certain licenses. We might be from Moscow instead of spies.”
She laughed and started the engine.
* * *
By the time they reached their next site, the morning had turned almost balmy, which brought the bugs out in full force. A swarm seemed to attach itself to them as they drove into a small town. Several rows of fairly large houses sat in a staggered semicircle next to the main road; beyond them were oil fields. The town gave way to a tall fence, which at first seemed to contain empty land. Nearly a half-mile from the start of the fence it veered toward the road. A hundre
d feet farther down it crossed at a gated cul-de-sac. A large building sat at what would have been the middle of the road had it continued. There were other buildings behind it; the complex seemed to stretch a fair distance. A guard stood in the middle of the road; there were others beyond him. All had AK-74s, and there was at least one machine-gun post inside the gate.
“I think it’s time to turn around,” said Dean.
“Yup,” said Lia, who nonetheless drove right up to the guard and started talking to him. He didn’t buy whatever she tried to sell. He gestured sharply for them to turn around and finally showed his anger by raising his gun. Still chattering, Lia put the truck in reverse and backed down the road.
“Not much for chitchat,” she said after they had gone back through the town to the main highway.
“What’d you say to him?”
“I asked if he knew someone who wanted to get laid.”
“What’d you really say to him?”
She laughed. “Why don’t you think that’s what I said?”
“What’d you really say to him?”
“I told him I was looking for my brother. Didn’t even break the ice.”
“This has got to be the place.”
“You think, Charlie? But what if the Art Room agrees? Then what? They can’t be right.”
They refilled the truck’s gas tanks. Lia consulted the map on her handheld, then got back on the highway, heading to another town about five miles farther south. As they drove, Dean took the binoculars and looked back at the area, trying to see something beyond the forest of oil pumps and fences.
“It’s some sort of school,” said Lia. “They used to send KGB officers there for what we’d call SWAT training. That was fifteen years ago.”
“Now what do they do there?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Lia. “We’ll ask when we check in. In the meantime let’s go see what’s behind door number three.”
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