by Lee Jackson
“Or trying to cover up an attempt? I don’t know. If Atcho were the assassin, why would he be at the estate with Reagan and Gorbachev? Doesn’t add up.”
A thought crossed Collins’ mind. He explained his encounter with Atcho in the library the day before. “Find that author,” he said, referring to Rasputin’s biography. “Have someone read that book. I want to know about any references that might have current significance.”
Two hours later, Jakes called back. “We located the author,” he said, “but she was uncooperative. Someone else already inquired and must have spooked her. We’ll keep working on it.”
“Fine,” he replied. “I’m coming back to Washington.”
7
After Sofia saw Atcho’s taxi drive off, she poured a cup of coffee and sipped it, staring absently. After some moments, she reached into her robe pocket and pulled out a crinkled piece of paper. She flattened it and gazed at the words, written in her own handwriting.
Dear Atcho,
Something isn’t right. The other two times I saw you act as if the world were coming apart, Govorov was involved. I think he is again. I’m going to find out. You won’t be alone again. All my love,
Sofia.
Intending for him to open the note while in flight, she had written it in a moment of emotion just before Atcho entered the kitchen. She had thrust it into her pocket as he walked through the door. No use adding to his problems. It could get him killed. She shredded it in the garbage disposal.
She called Burly. “What’s going on? This is Sofia.”
“What?” He sounded sleepy.
“Why did Atcho really go on that business trip to Austin?”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know, and don’t play games. This has something to do with Govorov again.”
Burly exhaled. “This isn’t a secure line.”
“Fine,” Sofia snapped. “I’ll be at your place in twenty minutes.”
Burly met her at the door. “Calm down. Atcho is on a business trip. I’m sure of it.”
“Since when did he inform you of his business arrangements?” She shoved past him into his living room, turning to face him. She had changed clothes, but was still disheveled. “I know Atcho—his moods. I know when he’s facing a business problem and when he’s facing something overwhelming.” Her eyes sharpened. “Incidentally, why would we need a secure line to talk about Atcho’s business?”
Burly stared at her, speechless.
She stared back. “Here’s what I’ve figured out. I don’t know where Atcho went two days ago, but he didn’t stay in Denver and he has no transactions there. I know his business. I checked. Furthermore, he had the same attitude that he had while that crap with Govorov was going on. Call it women’s intuition with a heavy dose of intelligence experience.” She stood feet apart, glaring. “Are you going to tell me what I need to know?”
Burly let the reference to Yermolov as Govorov go by. To do otherwise was to give credence to Sofia’s theory. He shook his head. “I can’t. You know that.”
“Ah, so there is something.” She saw that Burly looked flummoxed. “Now you hear me,” she went on. “You tell whoever needs to know, that Atcho is not going to be out there alone this time. He rotted in prison for nineteen years, and operated by himself for another ten. We have no right to ask him to do more.” Fury sparked in her eyes, and her cheeks flushed. She started toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To find answers. Obviously, I’m not going to get any here.” She stopped. When she turned, emotion had disappeared, replaced by the poker face of a professional. “Atcho came home from somewhere with those same old fears, and that was right after Reagan and Gorbachev met in New York. He’s probably the only guy that both trust. He knows Govorov. Somehow all that ties together. If I’m right, you’re the guy he’d come to. Am I close?”
Burly only stared.
“Will you at least tell me who’s running the op?” Again, silence. She left.
***
Sofia listened to her phone ring at the same time that Collins tracked a decoy in Austin and Atcho flew over the Atlantic. She did not answer it. She had returned to her house, cleaned up, packed a few things, and was on her way out the door.
She paused to hear if a message would be left on her answering machine. There was, and she recognized Burly’s voice. That cinches it. She walked out without answering. Minutes later, she drove onto a freeway bound for the suburbs.
Within two hours, Sofia had parked in a private rental garage and purchased a used automobile with cash. She registered the vehicle using an alias backed by an out-of-state driver’s license. In her purse, she carried documents and major credit cards to further support that alias, and others.
Then she headed for a safe house in Alexandria. It was currently unoccupied; she had checked. She could stay there only long enough to make phone calls.
8
Eight men gathered around a table in the back room of a tavern in a village outside of Paris. On the table in front of them was a large serving bowl with fish soup. The heavy smell permeated the room. They spoke in hushed tones.
“Can you do it?” one asked. He directed his query to a slight man who sat at their center.
“It’s already done,” the man replied. “I made a few calls. Soviet security is incredibly weak on its nuclear stockpiles these days, and the black market is active. I’m not saying it was easy, but I managed to get enough of what I needed to do the job.”
The men peered at him wide-eyed, almost fearful. “How soon can you have it ready?” one asked.
“I’ve been working on the design for months,” he replied, “and I constructed the bomb over the last few weeks. All I needed was the nuclear material, and now that I have it, I’ll finish within three days.”
The room was deathly quiet as each man contemplated the implications. Then they murmured among themselves. “Is this something we should be doing?” one asked.
“Of course it is,” another responded harshly. “The Soviets have ground us under their jackboots for seven decades. This is a chance to bring them down, and we’ll probably never get another one.”
“Or we could start a nuclear war that will kill everyone,” another retorted.
“It won’t come to that,” the bomb-maker interjected. “This is a very small bomb, and the intent is to use it for blackmail.”
“You say that,” another broke in, “but both superpowers are ready to strike back. If Moscow thinks the US is involved, it’s all over. And how much do you know about this distant cousin of yours, this Yermolov? Just a few months ago you didn’t even know he existed.”
“That’s not quite true,” the old man replied. “Rasputin left several illegitimate children around. We had heard rumors of Yermolov, but until he appeared, we had no means of confirming his existence. He provided impressive documentation.”
“You know Aleksey won’t go for this,” another chimed in. “He’s not an active follower of Rasputin despite having served him, and he owns the cabins and cars that Yermolov and his men are using.”
“Then we’ll just have to make sure Aleksey doesn’t know,” the bomb-maker replied. His voice took on a bitter note. “Look, we’re all here because we were driven from our homes by this Soviet monstrosity. I saw Stalin’s goons kill my parents in the Ukraine. We’ve lived our entire lives in exile because Germany sent Lenin to Moscow to keep Russia out of World War I. This is the first and maybe only chance we’ll ever have to strike back, and I’m not going to pass it up.”
“You’re a nuclear physicist,” another broke in. “How certain are you that this thing won’t go off accidentally?”
“It could,” came the grim reply. “None of Yermolov’s men will know of its existence. It has some fail-safe mechanisms to prevent disarming it once it’s set. That’s so Yermolov can activate it remotely. But if someone finds it…” He shrugged. “I’ll give it to Yermolov as soon as I finish it.”
>
***
“Sir, you’d better see this.”
Noting the urgency in his voice, Burly crossed his thrown-together headquarters in the basement of the White House. Computers and communications equipment lined the walls, and a team of people sat at monitors. His home phone had been forwarded.
The man who had spoken handed Burly several pages. “We just got this from NSA, the section that monitors commo between the Soviets and western Europe,” he said. “A few days ago, they started catching telephone conversations between Paris and an area near a Soviet nuclear weapons depot. Look at this.” He indicated highlighted text on the page.
Burly scanned through the pages. When he looked up, the blood had drained from his face. “Call the national security adviser,” he ordered as he headed for the door. “Tell him I’m on my way.” When he arrived, he barged directly into the adviser’s office. “Sir,” he said, “Yermolov might already have a nuclear bomb.”
9
As soon as Atcho had cleared customs in Paris, he took a taxi to the safe house as Burly had instructed, and called him on the secure line. “I’m here. Did you speak to Sofia?”
“She came to see me right after you left,” Burly replied. “She didn’t believe the Austin transaction. She didn’t answer my messages. She’s on her own.”
Atcho noticed an unusual level of tension in Burly’s voice. “To do what?” he replied. “She doesn’t know what I’m doing.”
“She figures things out.”
“What’s to figure out?”
When Burly responded, his voice was quiet, his tone flat. “She works for us.”
Dread seized Atcho’s stomach. “You mean the CIA?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“Atcho, did you hear me?”
“How long have you known?”
“Since we worked together last year.”
Atcho felt deadly calm. “Why wasn’t I told?”
“You would have been informed before the wedding. Until then, there was no need for you to know. Now there is.”
Atcho’s head snapped back, his jaw set in a hard line. His mind flashed to the tender embraces of the night before. He felt betrayed by the woman he loved and by a respected friend, but this was no time for recriminations. “Is she an analyst or an operator?”
“She’s a high-level analyst.”
“So, she isn’t trained for fieldwork.”
“That’s not accurate. She was an operator years ago. But…”
“No buts!” Atcho interrupted angrily. “She could get herself killed! Tell the president she has to be stopped, or I’m done.”
“Listen to me,” Burly butted in. “You need to know that Sofia was a top field officer. She can take care of herself, but we’ll find her.”
“Obviously, you know her better than I do.” Atcho’s fury was barely contained. “I need to think.” He stood with his head pressed against the back of the booth. “What about Rafael and Ivan?” His mind raced while Burly told him that Rafael was closing in on the KGB officer. The Russian worked out of a shipping front-company for the KGB north of DC. Ivan should be in Paris within a week.
“What about the author of that Rasputin biography?”
“We called her and asked a few questions, but she wasn’t much help. She feels obligated to protect the privacy of that group. We tracked down its location in Paris.” He gave Atcho the address.
“Any news on Yermolov?”
There was none. “The president’s not happy with the way things turned out. We had hoped to gather resources and do better planning before we launched.”
“Got it,” Atcho snapped. “You tell him I’ll stay on the job for one week. If Sofia isn’t found in that time, I’m coming home. I’ll be in touch.” He hung up without waiting for a response.
He tried to sleep, but his mind was plagued by the ironies of his changed life. Four days had passed since Burly showed up in his apartment with the president’s message. Now, he was thousands of miles across the Atlantic, leading a shadowy existence and pursuing an enemy thought long dead. And the woman he would have married in less than a month was a stranger.
He felt the familiar pricking of nerves in his arms and legs, but finally dozed, his mind flayed by memories of happier times, and then danger and treachery. He dreamed of the thrill of galloping through sugarcane fields as a boy with his father on their prize horses. Then, almost immediately, his mind descended into the torment of his wife’s death during childbirth; of the sight of his parents being consumed in fire only feet from him; of the haunting laughter of the man he had known as Govorov stealing away his little daughter; of the final humiliation, the defeat and his capture at the Bay of Pigs and subsequent cruel imprisonment. After each remembered horror, he awakened with a start, and moisture streamed down his face. He was alone again.
Then, fully awake, he thought of Collins, wondering if he would uncover additional information, or find support for what he thought he already knew. What if he finds something solid to galvanize his activity; or worse yet, he decides to publish? He hoped his decoy in Austin had worked.
Early the next afternoon, Atcho hailed a taxi and directed it to the address Burly had supplied. Scattered clouds hung in the sky.
When the driver indicated that they approached the destination, Atcho told him to drive past. He alighted two blocks farther on. With leaves swirling on the sidewalk and the cold December wind biting through his jacket, he circled the neighborhood on foot. He drew closer until he was across the street from the house. Several park benches lined the curb. Atcho sat down to observe.
The house was five hundred meters down a residential street from a commercial intersection. It was square and surrounded by a high fence with two gates: a driveway, and a pedestrian entry. Far from appearing sinister, the house blended into the peaceful neighborhood.
Atcho watched for half an hour. He had read enough of Rasputin’s biography to be fascinated by the notion of a Christian cult that revered the memory of a sex-crazed mystic. Having expected a dark building with high walls and cowled, chanting fanatics, he found this peaceful setting disconcerting.
A car entered the driveway and parked. A young couple got out and carried bags of groceries into the house. A moment later they reappeared, followed by a toddler pushing a toy truck.
Atcho wondered if he had been given the correct address. He waited a few more minutes, then made his way back to the hotel.
“That is the place,” Burly informed him on their next call. He told Atcho that the group was very private about its religious beliefs, but otherwise its members were normal in every way. “They might not even know what Yermolov is up to.”
“Anything on Sofia?”
Burly sighed. “The president agrees that if Sofia can’t be found, you should terminate the mission. They’ll have to go another route.”
“Doesn’t the CIA or the State Department know where she is?”
“She took a leave of absence from the State Department, and no one at the Agency knows where she’s gone. Reagan called the director into the Oval Office.” He paused. “She totally vanished. She might be a little rusty, but she knows what she’s doing.”
“Tell the president I’ll be on the next plane to Washington.”
“Wait!” Burly exclaimed. “He ordered a full covert search. They have to do that; she has top clearances. When they find her, the director will bring her straight to the president. He sends a personal request that you stay on the job at least until the search is well underway. Then you won’t need to repeat preparations.”
Atcho mulled the situation. “All right, but speaking of wasted time, I’m twiddling my thumbs. I need Ivan.”
“We’re working on it. Ivan’s accident will occur in three days.”
“Fine. I’ll keep watching the house.”
“Before you go.” Burly sounded reluctant, but urgent. “There’s another issue. You need to meet with a courier. He’ll contact you at the safe
house.”
Atcho felt suddenly wary. “What’s that about?”
“I can’t say. He’ll explain.”
“I’ve had it with spook games,” Atcho blurted. “We talk about everything on secure lines? How will I even know him?”
“You’ll have to trust me.” Burly was clearly annoyed. “He’ll know you. He’ll ask about who you lost shortly after you and I first met.”
Atcho’s chest caught. He knew Burly referred to Juan, his childhood hero, family sugar-plantation foreman, and later his best friend and deputy in the fight against Castro. “All right,” he said quietly. “I’ll expect to hear from him.”
After he hung up, he reflected on Juan. He had been a noble, good man who had worked for Atcho’s family for many years. When the family plantation had been burned down, Juan had entered the flaming mansion and carried an unconscious Atcho to safety on his broad shoulders. He was too late to save Atcho’s parents.
Grief stricken on recovering consciousness, Atcho’s only desire was to take his four-year-old motherless daughter, and escape to America. Juan convinced him of his duty to stay and use his superior military training to try to help win his country back from Castro and communism.
In the heat of battle at the Bay of Pigs, Atcho and Juan had been separated, and Juan was killed. Years later, Yermolov had taunted Atcho with Juan’s death, and had laughed about it.
Atcho had never spoken to anyone about Juan, except Burly. If the courier knew the details, he would certainly be the man sent by Burly.
For the next three days, Atcho moved about the neighborhood. In the evenings, he re-read the biography, Rasputin: The Power-Crazed Mystic. Combined with the gloominess of the weather, it kept his spirits at a low ebb. Nevertheless, he was amazed at how Rasputin gained raw power in the tsar’s court. An incredible story of tragedy and corruption unfolded with each page.
Rasputin rose to influence within the Romanov family due to his extraordinary ability to resuscitate the hemophiliac heir to the throne. The tsar, a weak personality heavily influenced by his wife, regarded Rasputin’s advice as divine. The mystic exercised his power with caution, seeing the royal family through countless political crises.
