by Alex Dryden
With a fussiness that disguised fears of his own, Golubev brushed imaginary dust from the lapels of his jacket, smoothed its sides, and then led the generals through cream-painted concrete corridors to an elevator that took them down four floors into the earth and finally into a brightly lit room the size of a tennis court. It was one of several operations rooms in this core SVR building and Viktorov knew it well. It was here that many undercover missions had been planned, from the wars in Chechnya to foreign assassinations in the Middle East and Europe. Long, identical tables were laid out in neat rows, each with a harsh light over it, and at a casual glance the whole space might have suggested a snooker club.
Golubev proceeded to a table near the centre of this space and pulled up two tall chairs for the generals that offered a view down onto the high table, and then one for himself, which he never sat on.
At once, Viktorov looked at several maps that had been opened on this long table. The particular map that caught his eye—it was in the centre of the table, which was at the centre of the room—was of the Soviet Union. It was a pre-1991 map, in other words, from a time before the Soviet Union had broken up. Viktorov was pleasantly surprised, as if he was looking at a recently discovered family treasure that had been uncovered in the clearing out of an old attic, and he took a greater interest. He saw another map of the period, and of equal size, next to it that was a close-up of part of the former empire. It had been titled “Little Russia,” but only by a scrawl on a yellow Post-it note stuck to the top. The name on the map itself, however, was “Ukrainian SSR.”
“When is the prime minister arriving?” Viktorov asked, looking down on Golubev from the tall seat. Golubev fidgeted uncomfortably. Viktorov was a big, muscled man, despite his age, and he took care about his appearance and his physical fitness. His eyebrows were artfully shaped to eliminate the wild-growing hairs that age had unleashed, and the skin of his face had a polished, pampered appearance. General Antonov, on the other hand, was ruddy in complexion and had allowed the hairs of his advancing age to grow like weeds in an abandoned courtyard. The one general affected a modern, careful appearance, while the other seemed to seek the virtues of a rugged lack of vanity.
“You’ll be meeting with some colleagues first,” Golubev said. “The prime minister has been detained.”
“Colleagues?” Antonov queried. “For how long?”
“Patriotiy,” Golubev replied almost mutely, as if embarrassed at the mention of this informal, almost underground group that was definitely not part of his modern Russian vision. “We are waiting for the prime minister’s call,” he added.
“Ah,” Viktorov said. “Our Patriotiy friends. That’s the reason for the map, then.” He was pleased to be meeting with fellows and, no doubt, old colleagues, too, from the Patriotiy.
Golubev didn’t reply. But the generals relaxed into their seats as the nervous ministry man ordered coffee to be brought.
The Patriotiy were the core, Viktorov ruminated as he waited for the coffee to arrive. They were the promise. They were like a rare seed, preserved in one of Russia’s frozen storage units, that guarded the planet’s ecological and agricultural future. Like these rare seeds, the Patriotiy were the guardians of Russia’s past and the hope for its future. They were the only ones left with any power who were true to the memory of their own people where Russia’s former might was concerned. And for a moment Viktorov felt a brief affinity for the GRU boss Antonov, a veteran like himself of Afghanistan.
The Patriotiy consisted mainly of these veterans from the Afghan war. Most important in this all-but-secret society of the new Russia, members of the Patriotiy didn’t believe that the loss of empire was anything other than a temporary historical mistake. In any democratic country, they would have been way outside the political process, on some semilunatic fringe. In the Russia of the twenty-first century, however, they were at the centre of power, though invisibly so to all but a few. Afghan veterans like himself and Antonov, who had risen in Putin’s Russia through the organs of the security services, the Patriotiy were now in control of several intelligence departments and government ministries and had brought their grudges of lost empire with them.
Coffee arrived, delivered by an attractive woman in uniform whom Viktorov smiled at with an avuncular look that didn’t—and didn’t intend to—disguise the lust that lurked behind it. And then the room began to fill up with a dozen or more men in their sixties or seventies and a few younger men. Most of them were in uniform, lesser generals, colonels, retired or not retired. Greetings were exchanged, old links renewed. Two more uniformed female assistants had now materialised to help Golubev distribute files to all the men. Viktorov gave his trademark smile to the woman who approached his table. He took a file and slipped a pair of reading glasses over his nose. The title in bold Cyrillic on the cover was: “Reappraisal. The Weakness of Ukraine—Political, Economic, Ethnic, and Military.”
Viktorov and the others leafed through their files without yet reading them closely. “Who wrote this?” Viktorov snapped at Golubev.
“A think tank at the Ministry of the Interior,” was the reply. “Along with some of your own intelligence staff, General.”
Behind my back, Viktorov thought. The prime minister’s mind games had begun. He snorted loudly and confidently, though whether at the words “think tank” or the fact that Interior people were in part the authors was unclear. Not that he despised the Interior Ministry. The Interior Ministry was one of several important ministries now controlled by the Patriotiy, and its chiefs shared the same aims as the people in the room.
For a moment, Viktorov removed his glasses and looked across the large room. He stared hard with unfocused eyes until he recognised his son, Dmitry. Or Balthasar—though only the two of them knew him by the latter name. He saw that Balthasar was talking to an older man—an officer in the Alpha Group, Viktorov thought. Viktorov couldn’t take his eyes away from his son.
Then Balthasar broke away from a brief exchange with the officer and began to make his way through the throng. He walked with expert precision around three tables and paused to nod a greeting and say a few words to two or three other men. He looked assured, smooth in his movements, somehow modern, Viktorov thought, in that his proper deference to senior men was never at the expense of his personal pride and individuality. He was a colonel—also in Department S—and was now thirty-eight years old. But in this room he was a junior.
Viktorov saw Balthasar was clearly making his way towards him. With one hand he was lifting up a chair that was in the way, while with the other he shook greetings with colleagues. He looked directly into people’s eyes.
Amazing—even now it amazed Viktorov. Such extraordinary power Balthasar had. Nobody who didn’t know him would ever have guessed that he was blind. And, knowing that he was blind, nobody would have dreamed that he could be Russia’s most senior and most-decorated intelligence field operative in all of the Muslim countries. Amazing, there was no other word for it. Sometimes his son’s strange abilities discomfited Viktorov—but there was no denying Balthasar’s extraordinary, if uniquely bizarre, powers. For not only did he have an unerring geographical relationship with the people around him and with his surroundings in general—sensing the chair, moving it easily, knowing precisely where there was a hand to be shaken, understanding exactly where to meet other’s eyes with his own sightless ones—but also, despite all of this supernatural power, to Viktorov’s mind, Balthasar’s real value was that he could do what no eye and no electronic device could do, no matter how sharp or sophisticated. He had the ability of seeing inside the minds of those he was with. He had a sixth sense and maybe—who knew?—a seventh and an eighth.
Viktorov cast his mind back thirty-nine years. The brothers of Balthasar’s mother who he, Viktorov, had rescued him from all those years ago had said he was cursed by God. This “curse” had turned out to be a most precious, a most unique weapon. God had given him something far greater than normal sight. As it turned out,
God had blessed him.
Balthasar approached his father and, with the same direct accuracy, shook his hand, “looked” in his eyes, and exchanged a welcome. To Viktorov his son’s demeanour suggested Balthasar was in some official position in this room. He appeared to be at the heart of the purpose of the strange meeting. Viktorov wondered why he hadn’t known before about Balthasar’s presence. He was the chief of Department S, for God’s sake.
So. This morning was the prime minister’s party and his own position could be, and often was, usurped by Putin and a few others. Yet what did Balthasar have to do with the message on the table? The map? Ukraine was an Orthodox Christian country. Not Balthasar’s area of operations at all. Balthasar was in Islamic operations, pure and simple. Ukraine was the birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy, the origins of old Rus. Ukraine was Russia’s spiritual heartbeat.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing at the map, and then immediately felt foolish to be using a word that assumed working sight.
“I know.” Balthasar smiled, ignoring the mistake. He put his hand on the map, as if he could actually feel the terrain it represented. “Ukraine,” he said simply.
If Viktorov thought he would draw out his son’s reasons for being here by referring to the map of Ukraine, he was unsuccessful.
A trolley was now brought in by the two women who had distributed the files. It was 6:45 A.M. and there were several bottles of flavoured vodka and shot glasses on it. Not Golubev’s idea of the right time for a drink and the ministry man was showing it with anxious glances. Not Putin’s idea either, for that matter, so perhaps that was why Golubev looked so uncomfortable. But the glasses were distributed solemnly—like some sort of pseudoreligious, regimental ceremonial—by a one-legged spetsnaz hero who was apparently determined to show his infirmity made no difference. The toast, when it was raised by a fellow SVR general, was to “Historic Russia.” All present drank and placed their glasses back on the trolley, which was wheeled away. One drink for the toast, that was it. The party, such as it was, was over. And they all knew that historic Russia meant Kiev, the capital of a Ukraine which had been independent from Moscow now for twenty years, after centuries of occupation.
Golubev’s phone rang. He walked away from Viktorov and Balthasar, who reminisced in quiet voices. When he returned, he looked only at the generals, Viktorov and Antonov.
“You’ll have to read it on the road,” Golubev said to the two generals, nodding at the document, and he clicked the mobile phone shut. “The prime minister is delayed. He asks you to come to his dacha.”
As the Mercedes swung out of the gates and took the autoroute back to the ring road, Viktorov thought that none of this—the apparently pointless trip to Balashiha, the meeting with the veterans and even the enforced shared trip with Antonov—was unplanned. Clearly he would be expected to work with Antonov, and the meeting at Balashiha was in the style of an underground regimental get-together, something like Nazi SS officers meeting in secret at inns in the depths of the Harz forest after the war. Except that here it was official and government backed. The Patriotiy were the establishment.
They were met at the imposing gates of Putin’s dacha by a Kremlin car that would take them up the drive to the dacha where Putin worked, swam, and practised judo. His family dacha was hidden farther in the forest.
Inside the high-ceilinged reception room the two generals stood. Still they didn’t talk. Finally after nearly half an hour, they were summoned to a long, lavishly furnished office the size of a small ballroom where Putin was sitting at a desk under the Russian eagle. He motioned them to seats in front of the desk, then, without preamble, leaned on his elbows with his hands clasped together and stared his blank, unblinking stare.
“We need greater cooperation,” he said. “This war between two great services has to stop.”
Viktorov shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The latest skirmish between the SVR and the GRU had occurred just three weeks before, in Germany. The SVR had betrayed two agents of the GRU to the German intelligence service. Their reason was—from the SVR’s point of view—that the GRU was transgressing on the SVR’s own patch.
“We have important work to do,” Putin said. “And I need full cooperation. Your jobs are at stake. Russia’s future is at stake.”
The generals inclined their heads. Putin didn’t seek a reply. Then he leaned in closer. “The report,” he said. “Read it closely. Elections in Ukraine take place in just over a week’s time. The final runoff is three weeks after that. But the elections are irrelevant. Whoever wins, we want to make our arrangements with our friends in Ukraine. Redress the balance.” He looked severely at them and Viktorov wondered, not for the first time, if Putin actually didn’t have any eyelids, if he was like a snake. Putin leaned back in his chair and stared at the two generals. “We all know, of course,” he said with finality, “that Ukraine is not even a state.”
2
JANUARY 8, 2010
THE HEAD RESTED GENTLY between two reinforced glass clamps on the glaring white surface of a disinfected plastic tabletop. The table had gleaming, skeletal aluminium legs protruding beneath it and its aluminium wheels were locked in place at the bottom of the legs in the unlikely event that the trolley might roll away on the perfectly level, spotlessly clean white floor.
The chill in the laboratory storage facility at the CIA’s Forensic Investigation Department in Langley, Virginia, was almost as great as the freezing winter temperatures outside the building and the two men and one woman who stood closest to the trolley table were still wrapped in the thick winter coats they’d worn for the short walk across the parking lot to the building. Three white-coated laboratory workers who stood behind them like pagan ceremonial guardians of the severed head wore Arctic thermal wear in here, for the greater freedom of movement of their arms.
The head was indeed like the graven image of some ancient god. Though it was a thing of flesh, it was not a thing of blood. Its dull, lifeless fish eyes in the grey, dead flesh seemed to bring the temperature down still lower, as if temperature were a kind of mood that fit the sombre circumstances.
The head had a plump face that showed a round-cheeked man, with bristling black eyebrows, slightly frosted from the deep frozen drawer that had contained it until the visitors’ arrival. The bloodless lips were generous, the ears looked almost enormous. There was a scar on the left cheek that looked more pronounced without any blood flowing beneath the skin around it. The neck, foreshortened by a jagged cutting instrument, was jowly and flabby and the wild thick black hair that topped the head was frozen in a concoction of swirls and curlicues, as if the head were a photograph capturing a man in a high wind.
It looks like a sculpture, Burt Miller thought, though he was thinking, not of a stone god, but of one of the modern pieces the British artist—something-or-other Quinn, he seemed to remember—made, which consisted of a plastic head filled with the artist’s own blood. But the colour of the flesh, Burt mused with an art historian’s appreciation, was more like the grey, dead-looking humanity to be found in a Lucian Freud, one of whose works he owned at a cost from Christie’s of somewhere in the region of ten million bucks.
“So, Theo,” Burt said breezily, exhaling a slightly frosted breath. “Exhibit A.”
Theo Lish, the CIA chief, drew his coat tighter around his neck. “Exhibit A to Z actually,” Lish replied moodily. “It’s all we have, Burt.”
“Not the usual headless corpse, but the less common corpseless head,” Burt said lightly and with his usual upbeat view of any situation, no matter how complex and inconvenient it was. “It’s a message, then.”
“Presumably,” Lish said with a nod. “They want us to know the man’s identity. That’s the significance.”
Burt looked to his left at Anna Resnikov. “Normally, in an identification parade, we’d have half a dozen severed heads for you,” Burt joked. “I guess the others just never turned up. You’ve got to up your fees if you want these identity parades to make a dif
ference, Theo.”
Anna didn’t return Burt’s look. Either she wasn’t amused or she was staring so hard at the head on the table that she hadn’t heard his little witticism. That was the reason she was here, after all—to study, identify, bring her knowledge to bear. For she was not just Burt’s highly valued lieutenant in his vast private intelligence empire that went under the cheekily named Cougar Intelligence Applications, she was also a former colonel in the KGB and—until her defection—right at its dark intelligence heart, Department S.
“How did it get here, Theo?” Burt asked, looking back to the CIA chief again.
“It was delivered to the home of one of our junior embassy officers in Kiev,” he replied. “Young man, name of Bill Singleton, married, two small children.”
“What about security?” Burt shot back.
“In Ukraine all our staff houses have cameras, security alarms, early warning systems, sensors—you name it. The usual, in terms of the bare minimum. But Kiev isn’t high up on the list as far as security threats are concerned. This”—he indicated the severed head with a nod from his own living one”—this was left in the garden, actually, not the house,” he said by way of correction. “The person who placed it there was caught on camera, but set off no sensors. Not close enough to the house, apparently. The film shows a man, we presume, wearing a balaclava. He enters the garden, carefully removes the head of the Singleton children’s snowman, drops this one out of a sack, and replaces the snow head with it. The four-year-old daughter of the family found it next morning. Someone had been tampering with the family’s snowman and she was outraged—in tears.” Lish sighed. “Clearly it was delivered in that particular place because security allowed it to be. We don’t have—or need—razor-wire-topped, twelve-foot walls for all our Kiev embassy staff. But it was clearly left for us. So, yes, it’s a message. They want us to know who it is.”
