Patrick Carlton 01 - The Diamond Conspiracy

by Nicolas Kublicki

  He stood still under the skeletal outline of an oak tree, watched the front windows of the building. The windows of the apartment above were illuminated with flashes of blue-gray light from his neighbor’s television. Sadie Kerwood was a woman in her nineties who exemplified the stamina and toughness of her generation by remaining independent, mobile, and sharp as a tack. Carlton helped her with her groceries. She often baked him cookies and kept a spare set of keys for him. In contrast to her illuminated window, Carlton’s apartment windows were black.

  The living room window was dark.

  Strange.

  Since childhood, Carlton had been a tropical fish aficionado. Despite his meager finances, he had managed to keep an aquarium through college and law school. Due to his wildly varying work schedule, he kept the aquarium light on a timer. It should still be on.

  But it wasn’t. The fluorescent bulb couldn’t be burned out. Carlton had replaced it a month ago, and the bulbs lasted forever.

  With a shiver, he recalled the man dressed in a Postal Service uniform who had checked his mailbox. He walked to the lobby door, pulled it open, walked up the half-flight of stairs to his front door, inserted his key, pushed himself against the side wall, and pushed the door open with his foot.

  Darkness. Nothing else.

  He reached inside and flicked on his living room light.

  Nothing. Someone had cut the power.

  Before he could retract his arm, a gloved hand grabbed his forearm like a vise, pulled him inside, and slammed the door, leaving the apartment in near total darkness. Carlton lunged for the door, but two hands grabbed his shoulders, a knee slammed into his groin.

  He gasped in pain, doubled over on the floor, still clutching the Glock. He wanted to shoot, but it was too dark, the assailant invisible.

  He heard his assailant’s footsteps on the hardwood floor. Approaching. The thump of boots stopped. Carlton braced for the next blow. It came quickly. A swift kick in the head. Searing pain assaulted his every sense. The room became a vivid white of blotchy stars. He gasped more loudly than before. He had to get a clear shot somehow.

  The assailant delivered his next blow. Another swift kick. To the stomach, this time.

  Despite the pain and gasps, he continued to grasp the Glock in his right hand. If only he could equalize the playing field so he could see—

  A fourth blow. Again to the stomach. The assailant was toying with him before the kill. Carlton coughed, reached into his pocket and removed his DOJ Zippo before the assailant delivered his next blow. To the head this time. Stars flashed before Carlton’s eyes. Pain throbbed in his head with every heartbeat. He gasped.

  Almost by themselves, the fingers of his left hand opened his lighter. He heard the click, snapped the flint wheel. A bright butane flame flickered into life. He slid the Zippo across the floor, its flame dancing bright. Despite Carlton’s blurry vision, the assailant was finally visible. The assailant was momentarily distracted by the bright light flashing in his night-vision goggles, following its path across the floor. It gave Carlton the precious second he needed. Still lying on his side, Carlton took aim at the blurry shape in the dim light and squeezed the Glock’s trigger. Two 10mm Parabellum rounds tore into the man’s neck before a third exploded his head. He was dead before his body crumpled onto the hardwood floor.

  Carlton gasped for a few seconds before lifting himself to his feet, a slow and painful process. He staggered into the dark kitchen, turned on the tap, splashed his face and drank deeply.

  He recovered the Zippo, clicked it shut. It was then that the shock hit him. He trembled uncontrollably, felt nausea well up inside him, and vomited on the hardwood floor of his living room.

  Guns didn’t scare Carlton. He was used to them. He had trained with guns for years, practiced regularly at a nearby shooting range. But he had never actually used a gun against another human being. Used a gun to kill another human being. He knew he had validly used self-defense, but his emotions didn’t register the fact. He wanted to believe the assailant was a mercenary thug hired by Fress to kill him. But he knew that the person was probably an honest, dedicated fed misguided by the White House Chief of Staff to eliminate a terrorist.

  Now was not the time for remorse or fear, but for flight. He had to get out of there. Fast. He stumbled to his bedroom, stripped off his clothes, put on his Navy uniform. Then he heard the siren.

  He picked up the Glock, ran back to the Shark, and slowly drove away from the snowy parking lot to one of the dark side streets. Seconds later, the police cruiser turned into his street from the main boulevard, roof lights flashing. Soon Carlton was speeding to Bolling Air Force Base, the nearest safe haven he could think of.

  34 TRAITOR

  GRU Headquarters

  Moscow

  2:53 A.M.

  GRU Colonel Grigory Klimov was underpaid. Underpaid and decidedly discontented. For a man with his training, his education, and his intelligence, his pitiful GRU salary was intolerable. But Klimov was far too wily to rely solely on the state’s meager salary. After all, Klimov possessed a very valuable commodity. As commander of the night watch at GRU headquarters, Klimov had access to information. Not just a little information. Reams of it. Truckloads of it. Although the Cold War had been fought and lost and many classified documents declassified, many more remained and were as valuable as ever, more marketable now that more foreign powers had entered the fray.

  Klimov did not discriminate. The highest bidder was always the winner, loyalty something that had to be purchased. If the rodina was stupid enough to pay brilliant men like him peanuts, it did not deserve his loyalty. One week it was the French Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, or DGSE. The next, it was the Israeli Ha Mossad le Modi'in ule Tafkidim Meyuchadim, also known as the Mossad. Or British Military Intelligence. Or the American Central Intelligence Agency. At one time, ironically, it had been the KGB. As long as the currency was U.S. dollars or euros, from where it came mattered not.

  To be sure, the GRU was far too experienced and far too distrustful of its underpaid employees to leave especially a senior officer like Klimov unwatched, and he knew it. He glanced at his digital watch, stepped out of the hangar-like file room into the hallway, and threw a pack of cheap Kosmos cigarettes on the desk of Private Semenov, the night guard.

  “I’m going to visit Lenin,” Klimov joked before going down the hall to the men’s room, his way of telling Semenov he should not allow anyone entrance into the file room after he entered.

  Semenov looked up from his Russian edition of Playboy. “Da, tovarish Colonel.” As Klimov walked down the hall, Semenov dialed the number of Sergeant Anna Bucharovna, in charge of video and audio surveillance for the file room.

  “Sergeant Bucharovna. Semenov here. Would you care for a cigarette break, Sergeant?”

  “No thank you. I just took my break. Perhaps later.”

  “Very well. Have a productive watch.”

  Have a productive watch. The words alerted Bucharovna of Klimov’s impending fishing expedition in the ocean of GRU files. Here, like nearly everywhere else in the Russian military apparatus, most of the underpaid soldiers were on the take. It was merely a matter of the right price. Klimov paid well.

  Several minutes later, Klimov returned to the file room. The electronic door locked shut behind him. He walked to the tiny area where personnel with sufficiently high clearance could inspect files out of reach of the hidden video monitors. He glanced at his watch. It was 2:59 A.M.

  Bucharovna waited until precisely 3:00 A.M., pressed the ‘Stop’ button on the obsolete Sony videotape recorder in front of her, ejected the tape, and replaced it with a prerecorded videotape. Although she hit the ‘Record’ switch, the one hour tape was unalterably prerecorded to show an empty file room. The only information that would be recorded on the tape was the date and time. From 3:00 to 4:00 A.M.

  Klimov had one hour.

  Inside the file room, Klimov waited until his watch read 3:05 A.M.,
to make sure Bucharovna had time to change the videotape, then proceeded from the small side room to a cabinet marked with a cryptic code in the main file room. Only he and the three other colonels who supervised the file room had a record of each steel cabinet and its contents. The armored cabinet in front of him contained the hefty GRU file of the late Leonid Pyashinev. Although the file had been opened when Pyashinev initially began his career at Komdragmet, it had recently been updated. Why, Klimov did not know. Nor did he care. The less he knew about the contents of files and the reasons for which his foreign clients sought them, the better. It would be that much more difficult for the prosecution to show a particular pattern of spying on any particular person, his lawyer friend at the Justice Ministry advised him.

  Klimov opened the cabinet at the beginning of the row, eight cabinets down from the one that contained Pyashinev’s file. The lock on each cabinet was linked to a computer that recorded the date and time at which each cabinet was opened and closed. Klimov had to establish a pattern of opening and closing each cabinet in the row for several minutes. To the person who reviewed the computer’s record, it would appear as if Klimov were performing a regular inventory, an integral part of his duties. After all, the last thing the GRU needed was for a file to become misplaced. The GRU paid staff members to watch the surveillance videotapes at random. Luckily for Klimov, the GRU was so crippled by budget cuts it could no longer afford to reconcile the computer data of the cabinet doors with the videotapes. But why take a chance? Klimov might be a traitor, but he was a meticulous traitor.

  For the next forty-five minutes, Klimov opened and closed the eight cabinets down from the one of interest, each for approximately five minutes, leaving him five minutes to rifle through Pyashinev’s file.

  Time moved forward in nerve-wracking silence.

  At 3:50 A.M., two stories above the file room, Colonel Kovanetz appeared through the main doors of GRU Headquarters. Sergeant Bucharovna shot out of her seat, stood ramrod straight, and saluted the officer with the chiseled features and lifeless green eyes.

  Kovanetz returned the salute crisply. “Colonel Kovanetz, Sergeant. I’m going to consult a file.”

  Bucharovna’s sweat glands kicked in. “You work very late, tovarish Colonel.”

  “Work for the rodina does not rest, Sergeant,” Kovanetz replied tersely, without a hint of a smile.

  “Da. Please sign in here, Colonel.” She pointed to a registry and lifted a telephone receiver. “I will announce you to the file room.”

  “Private Semenov. This is Sergeant Bucharovna. Colonel Kovanetz is coming down to inspect a file.”

  Bucharovna replaced the receiver, again saluted crisply as Kovanetz replaced the pen on the registry and walked toward the bank of elevators behind her. He pushed the call button, tapped his foot nervously on the worn marble floor as he waited for the ancient elevator.

  Klimov looked at his watch. 3:51 A.M. He closed the heavy cabinet, locked it, then finally unlocked the cabinet that contained Pyashinev’s file. He searched through the thick wads of files, reached a file that read ‘Pyashinev, Leonid Ivanovicz.’ He removed the file and turned to the first of five pages Colonel Kovanetz had added during the past week. He pressed the chronograph, light, and date buttons of his digital watch in sequence, placed the face of the watch on the top of the first page. Slowly, he scanned each line of the page, each photograph.

  The elevator door had barely opened when Kovanetz stepped inside and punched the basement button with his fist. The doors slid shut with a scraping noise. After a brief shudder, the old hydraulic elevator began its groaning descent to the basement.

  Klimov turned the second page over, began to scan the third. The words were scribbled densely. He had to drag the watch over each sentence slowly to be sure that it recorded all of the information.

  The elevator scraped open and disgorged its impatient passenger.

  Private Semenov stood and saluted sharply. “Colonel Kovanetz. Sir!”

  Again, Kovanetz returned the salute crisply. All he wanted was to read the list of Russian cities and foreign countries Pyashinev had visited during the past two years. Pyashinev’s dying note was not much to go on. Perhaps the list of countries would give him a clue to where he might have hidden the diamond stockpile. It wasn’t much, but it was worth a try. Counting sheep certainly wasn’t helping.

  “If you will please sign in, tovarish Colonel.”

  “I already signed in upstairs, Private.”

  “Da. I realize that, tovarish Colonel.” Semenov feigned embarrassment. “But regulations are regulations, and—”

  “I know all about regulations, Private.” He hunched over and signed his name on a registry identical to the one guarded by Sergeant Bucharovna. Semenov’s sweat glands were pulling double duty, and the steamy issue of Playboy safely tucked under his desk was not the cause.

  Klimov finished scanning the third page and began to scan the fourth. Again, the page was dense with scribbles.

  “There.” Kovanetz replaced the pen on the registry. “Now open the door, Private.”

  “Certainly. I will have to search you first, of course,” Semenov heard himself say. His body became rigid as he prepared for Kovanetz’s rage.

  “You want to what?” Kovanetz demanded. “Search me? Are you out of your mind?” He shouted.

  “Sir, I—”

  “Search me for what? Do you know who I am, Private? I’m a senior advisor to the president! Even the Kremlin guards don’t search me!” The colonel’s jade green eyes chilled Semenov.

  He looked down. “Da. I’m sorry, tovarish Colonel. Regulations are regulations, and—”

  “Private!” The booming voice blew through Semenov’s closely cropped hair like wind. ”If you do not let me into that room immediately,” he pointed behind Semenov,“ you will have the luxury of cleaning radioactive latrines in Semipalatinsk.”

  Klimov finished scanning the fourth page and began work on the last page of Pyashinev’s file, the page covered with a jungle of photographs and scribbles.

  Shaking, Semenov removed a thick wad of keys from his desk, inserted one into a lock in the door, followed by another key into another lock.

  “Private!” Kovanetz shouted in exasperation. “I’m losing my patience!”

  “Da. The electronic lock is not functioning properly.”

  Klimov heard the rattle of the lock as he began to scan the last paragraph on the page. Something was wrong. Someone was coming in.

  Private Semenov opened the third and last lock. “Colonel Klimov!” He bellowed. “Colonel Kovanetz is here to review a file!”

  Klimov swiped the last line and dropped the watch into his pocket. He turned to face Kovanetz and the private. “Good morning, Colonel!” He said loudly, attempting to mask the sound of the cabinet as it closed shut.

  “Colonel Klimov,” Kovanetz cocked his head. “What are you doing in here?”

  Klimov gave him an exasperated look. “Inventory, Colonel. Inventory. It never ends. I wish someone else would do this.” Klimov locked the cabinet, then walked toward Kovanetz, carrying a clipboard he had with him to make his inventory look legit.

  He saluted Kovanetz. As he did so, he glanced at the large clock on the wall. It read 3:59. The videotape would end in less than one minute.

  “Pardon me, Colonel.” Klimov leaned theatrically toward a hook on the wall behind Kovanetz, let the clipboard slip and fall to the floor. On its way down, it flicked the light switch down and extinguished the lights.

  Klimov cursed. Kovanetz replied in kind. The terrified private remained silent. Klimov found the light switch, flipped it on. The fluorescent lights flickered on. He looked up at the clock - 4:01.

  A new videotape was now recording. When viewed, it would begin when the lights were out. The viewer would assume Kovanetz had entered the file room when Semenov opened the door to allow light inside.

  At 9:30 that morning, after a hearty, cholesterol-laden breakfast in the officers’ mess, Kl
imov exited GRU Headquarters and drove to Czas, literally translated as ‘Time,’ a small watch store in his own neighborhood. He placed his Timex digital watch on the counter and asked the clerk for a new battery. Klimov browsed the small establishment. The clerk disappeared with the watch. When he returned, Klimov paid, replaced the watch on his wrist, and went home to sleep.

  The source and the data were too sensitive to risk electronic transmission, even encrypted. The FSB/SVR’s counterespionage capabilities were legendary. Before Klimov’s head touched his eiderdown pillow, the microchip coded with the latest information from Pyashinev’s file was inserted into an identical Timex, sealed into a package with other allegedly faulty timepieces, and picked up by the 10:30 A.M. FedEx truck. When Klimov awoke seven hours later, the package had arrived in Paris and was on an Air France flight en route to Washington, D.C., locked inside a bulletproof case handcuffed to the wrist of a CIA courier. By the time Klimov began his next shift, the information in the microchip was being downloaded at a laboratory in Langley, Virginia.