Another Man's Freedom Fighter

by Joseph Carter

  Bombel made a ‘sleep’ gesture with his hands and tried to look as tired and pitiful as possible. It was entirely true, he was tired after not having slept for over twenty hours.

  The Russian guard was not impressed. He kept gesturing ‘turn around’ and explained in Russian that they were not letting any civilians pass.

  “For your safety,” he said. “Hear the thunder? That’s artillery. Less than 30 kilometers away.”

  They heard the thunder, and they liked the sound of it. Yet, the whole crew got nervous. The longer they were held up, the lower their mission’s chance of success.

  Laska only heard a click from the back seat, and before he could say or do anything, the newbie in the driver side back seat shot the guard in the face through the open window.

  Bombel screamed in agony, rested his forehead on the steering wheel, and held his bleeding ear. Before anyone in the van could do anything, the private on top of the Tigr had emptied a belt of 12.7 mm rounds into the crew cab.

  ✽✽✽

  Smagin, now dressed in an ill-fitting black suit and a white dress shirt, sat in the transit area of Minsk National Airport. The flight to Vienna would leave at 6:10 a.m., by mid-afternoon they would land at Berlin’s Tegel Airport. Two rows away, Shashka and the two specialists he had brought along rested their eyes while Smagin was hammering away on his laptop. He prepared the profiles of the suspected Polish insurgents.

  Colonel Popov kept giving him the feeling that he had something to make up for after the devastating ambush on Shashka’s raid squad. That and the fact that he still was upholding a lie regarding the role of TLKS in the grand scheme of things made him work twice as hard.

  He had suggested the insurgents use TLKS regularly to communicate via steganographic, coded messages. While he was sure this was a technique used by the Polish, he was equally sure that this technique was not at all used regularly. In fact, contrary to what he had told his superiors, he had only one definite incident in which a contact named ‘Witek’ used a picture to probably relay some sort of message. The other incidents he had merely made up. Anyway, he would stick to his story and cover his own ass. If TLKS would be taken offline in the process, then that had to happen.

  Eventually, he told himself, it would have happened anyway. Being an uncontrolled means of communication, it had been a target of FSB since its launch. The more people used it, the bigger it became a target. His little white lie would only speed up the inevitable process.

  Smagin had just finished a first set of target profiles of possible insurgents in Germany and briefly thought whether it was alright to upload them to the Vpoiskakh system over the airport wifi. He looked around for Popov who was nowhere to be seen. The colonel had said he would go to collect their papers.

  Shashka was sleeping, and after the encounter with Shashka’s bayonet he did not dare wake him. He decided it was safe as they were in an allied nation and he was using GRU’s standard encrypted VPN.

  He mentally ticked off this first item on the mission plan and asked himself if he would be able to get a half day off in Berlin. He closed his laptop and then his eyes. Four hours more before the flight would leave, a little sleep would do him good.

  ✽✽✽

  The bright yellow subway train smoothly rolled into Senefelderplatz station. Mark stood on the platform holding a paper cup of coffee from the nearby Impala Café. He had already eaten his thai-chicken Stulle on the platform. The roast aromas of his coffee, now cooled down to a drinkable temperature, mixed with the spicy aftertaste of his sandwich. He could not pin it down, but he liked the odd sensation in his mouth. Ofelia could never understand why.

  He boarded the train with the cup in his hand, excited to finally do what he and Mlada had planned to do years earlier. Back then, the CIA had stopped them just before they could deliver the final blow.

  The Panama Files, as published by Vitus and a collective of journalists round the globe, had shed light on a lot of interesting personalities. Governors, prime-ministers, simple civil servants in Russia, Ukraine, but also in Iceland and Britain had considerable holdings in Panamanian and Swiss banks. Anonymous off-shore corporations obfuscated the provenance of the funds, but emails and other documents could undoubtedly prove the ownership. The question how civil servants with an annual income in the five- and low six-figures could amass tens of millions of dollars was quickly answered. Corruption, theft, embezzlement, sometimes hidden as exclusive investment opportunities, sometimes paid directly into bank accounts.

  The last file they had published before the CIA had shut them up was a music professor’s. He was a department head at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. A humble civil servant with a modest income and no overt business interests, not even giving private lessons. This man had access to gold, shares in various Russian raw materials concerns, and cash amounting to a total of two billion dollars. Billion with a b.

  The man happened to be a close friend of the Russian president. In fact, he himself had once claimed they were ‘like brothers’ when interviewed for a TV special to celebrate the president’s 60th birthday. The man never even made an attempt to explain away the fact that these funds existed and that they existed in his name. He never tried to explain how he could have possibly amassed such riches. He simply kept his mouth shut.

  Mark exited the subway car at Nollendorfplatz after a twenty-four minute ride. Svetlana had already been waiting on the platform. Together they walked out of the station and then towards Motzstraße. Both excited, not speaking, they hurried across the Platz past the Goya club that had once been a theater.

  While Motzstraße number 1 was a nice building, the renovators did a horrible job with the front door. It was an ugly white affair with a plastic feel right next to a greasy hot dog stand. It was very different from the almost regal entrance of Mark’s building.

  Marks impression changed slightly once inside, and considerably once he had entered Dernov’s apartment. It was on the top floor with a large terrace full of exotic plants. The view was not much to look at, just the backyard of the former theater but then there was blue sky and no nosy neighbors. One could simply sit down, enjoy a beer, put a steak on the grill, and be happy.

  The wooden floors looked exquisite and expensive, the furniture looked very luxurious. The kitchen was hyper-modern and must have cost as much as a good man makes in a year. It was much nicer than Mark and Ofelia’s kitchen, that was for sure. It was semi-clean after a handful of days of Dernov’s cooking canned beans and other wholesome meals.

  Dernov himself was a bit shaky. He had not slept well for days, the bags under his eyes and his wallpaper white skin made that abundantly clear. He shook Mark’s hand with some hesitation and looked at the much taller German with a bit of suspicion.

  “I’m sorry for the mess,” he said finally, just to say something.

  “I don’t mind,” Mark replied.

  “I do, but I’ll let it slide this once,” Mlada injected herself into the awkward conversation and immediately turned it around. “Guys, I propose to get working immediately and skip the huggy-feely part of team building in this project.”

  “Okay,” Dernov said. “I thought a little about what I can bring to the table.”

  He motioned his guests to sit on the Rolf Benz couch. Sitting down, he explained his idea how to disseminate the information in a way that made it immediately matter to the individual.

  In his experience, Russians tended to just shrug at cases of corruption when they happened in a far-away province or in Moscow. When they happened in their own hometown, or involved someone they knew, on the other hand, it moved them much more. He told Mlada and Mark that they had only one shot at mobilizing the Russians, and this needed a maximum effect. Just putting up a website where everybody could search through documents would just not work.

  They had to make it much easier to see the kleptocracy in the people’s own backyards. Since the kleptocrats owned all the traditional media, they needed to make the most out of t
he reach of TLKS and the members’ social relationships.

  “So, I’ve been thinking to link the cases, the individual kleptocrat’s hometown, their place of work together and match them with similar characteristics of TLKS users,” he summed up his idea. “One example. There is some Kolja living in some city, let’s say Saratov. He works as a bus driver for the city. He won’t search for cases in his hometown on some website. He doesn’t care if the mayor of Voronezh drives a Ferrari. But if we show him that the mayor of Saratov has a Ferrari parked in front of his mansion, the mansion that has been built on the city’s tab, and that he has a shitload of money parked in bank accounts in the decadent Gayropa he keeps trashing in his speeches. And all that right there on his smartphone without making a click, so that he understands what’s going on during the five-minute break between two tours. That’s how we get them.”

  “Makes perfect sense to me,” Mark said. “You sure this complies with your privacy statement?” He chuckled.

  “Fuck privacy in this case. I don’t have a board of directors and no shareholders to please, I can pay the fucking fines the EU might charge, I’m the only one I have to answer to.” Dernov got up from his couch and walked a little back and forth to cool down.

  “Got it. I admire that,” Mark said looking up. “I’d hoped you’d be on board and bring ideas like that to the table.”

  “We should start, boys,” Mlada said and unpacked her MacBook. “Pyotr, I’ll walk you through the database setup and the search algorithms. Then we should build a test environment for your idea. We can cut some corners on the normal development process for added speed. But we need to test this thing to hell and back.”

  “Agreed,” Dernov nodded.

  Mark watched the two get to work and suddenly realized he had hardly anything worthwhile to contribute at this time. After sitting on the couch and toying with his phone for a while, a question he had wanted to ask Mlada suddenly resurfaced his mind.

  “Hey, Mlada, can you spare a minute?” he asked.

  She looked up from her screen slightly annoyed to be dragged out of her tunnel.

  “Could you send me a list of the Vpoiskakh our insurance policy filtered out? I’m a little curious who these people are.”

  “Will do, give me a minute. Forgot to tell you, there were ten new calls last night. These GRU guys are pretty inconsistent fellows.”

  ✽✽✽

  “As you can see, Sebastian, we are progressing. Slowly but surely,” Chief of General Staff Pułaski told the quietly listening president.

  “That’s good to know, Bonifacy,” he answered. “Thank you for the update.”

  The president had gotten considerably better during the one week since his rescue. A whole armada of physicians and psychiatrists secretly came and went to see him on the Sheraton hotel’s top floor. Kamila and Agnieszka attended all his meetings and made sure he was alright. At the first sign of stress, they would inject themselves into the conversation with a question or a counterargument to give their president a chance to rest. During the last two days, they had done this less and less. It would be a while before Sebastian Berka was his old self, but he had come a long way already.

  “What do you think, how long this monstrous war will continue?” Berka asked his general.

  “Judging from the advances we’ve made in under a day, we should be in the center of Warsaw within another twenty-four hours. We expect the Russians to retreat to the Praga bank of the Vistula. The British and Danish will be in Poznań within the next two days as well. They lead our Territorial Defense infantry. In the West with most of their supply routes closed, I guess, we will have the Russians beat after that. Of course, there is no guarantee, Sebastian,” the general explained.

  The general did not tell his president about the failed mission to assassinate the Belarusian military delegation that had left Warsaw just the night before. Killing the Russians only potential allies representatives would have isolated their enemy completely. And it would have embarrassed the Russian leadership. Deprived of their only ally, humiliated before the world and their own population, the Russian president would have been severely weakened. Maybe even to a point where Russia’s internal unrest might have ended the war for the Poles.

  Forty-Four

  The spreadsheet was simple, only 65 lines and twelve columns. Of the columns, only the first five were consistently filled with data. Date and time, first name, family name, MSISDN, location. Other fields such as date of birth, passport number, place of birth, email-address were sometimes filled, sometimes empty. Your typical incomplete data set, Mark had seen it a million times in customer databases. Optional fields are often left blank.

  He scanned over the names and found, as expected, mostly Polish names. Marcin, Jacek, Jakub, Paweł, Michał, Krzysztof, only one female first name, Andżelika. Kowalski, Miler, Jakubowski, Grabski, all quite usual family names. No name stuck out to him, Michał’s was not one of the names, which was a relief. His worry for his best friend was part of the motivation to look over the list.

  Next, he browsed the MSISDN fields. Mobile Station International Subscriber Directory Number was telco speak for a person’s cell phone number. Up to fifteen digits starting with the country code. The numbers started with +48 for Poland and then numbers mostly starting with a six, the number slot reserved for mobile subscribers. Only one stuck out. It started with +49, the German country code. It was the third number from the bottom of the list, a call that had just gone out the night before.

  Of course, it was quite plausible that one of GRU’s targets was a Polonia, a Pole living abroad. He would have a German phone and use it in Poland while doing whatever he was doing. And yet the case piqued Mark’s curiosity. He copied the latitude and longitude from the field and then pasted 52.530470,13.410500 into his browser’s address bar.

  “Fuck me,” he swore at the result. The red marker in the shape of an upside-down raindrop marked an address in the center of Berlin. Schönhauser Allee number 181 was just 230 yards away from Senefelderplatz station where he had boarded the train in the morning.

  He looked over the other nine from the previous night, all were in the latitude 52 and longitude 13 range. He copy-pasted a few more into Google, all were addresses in Berlin.

  “Verdammt. Guys, sorry to pull you out of your work,” he said turning the laptop around facing Mlada and Pyotr. “But you have to look at this. GRU are now targeting people in Berlin. They are operating in Germany at scale. It’s not just one or two. All ten from last night are here in Berlin.”

  ✽✽✽

  Anatoly Smagin and the GRU operatives exited from the plane at gate A02, and two minutes later they were seated in three black SUVs with diplomatic plates. They had already cleared customs and immigration in Vienna. Their carry-ons labeled as diplomatic baggage had not been checked. Their new identities had held up to what little scrutiny they had been placed under by the Austrian immigration officers.

  “This airport is amazing, we were out of the plane and into the car in no time,” Smagin marveled at the efficiency of this airport destined for closing after the new Berlin International would open in 2022.

  The SUVs with diplomatic plates sped down Saatwinkler Damm way over the speed limit.

  “You uploaded the Berlin targets tonight, Smagin,” Colonel Popov observed. “Normally, I prefer the morning hours, but I believe we will send out the first raid party in the evening.”

  “If possible, I would like to have any surviving phones and electronics, Comrade Colonel,” Smagin said.

  “Of course. Yet, our priority will be to eliminate the targets.”

  ✽✽✽

  “That’s scary,” Dernov said. “All the more reason to speed up here, right?”

  “Right,” Mlada seconded.

  “I agree,” Mark said. “But shouldn’t we do something about this?”

  “Like what?” Mlada asked.

  “Inform the authorities,” Mark had to laugh at that himself. The two oth
ers joined in briefly.

  “Seriously, though, if I talk to Hardy, he might be interested.” Mark packed up, and while he believed the chances of getting to talk to the CIA officer would be slim, he went on his way to the U.S. embassy. He took out his phone and reserved a Mercedes A-Class with the Car2go app and left.

  The drive to the U.S. embassy right next to the Brandenburg Gate took less than fifteen minutes. As usual, parking was difficult in that part of town with the masses of tourists and the security bollards in front of the embassies. After driving through Ebertstraße and Behrenstraße, Mark saw an old red Miata pull out of a spot on Hannah-Arendt-Straße. He parked and made the short walk around the mazelike 2,711 concrete columns that are the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe on the Ebertstraße side.

  The U.S. embassy is a modern building on the corner of Ebertstraße and Behrenstraße. The Reichstag is only a five-minute walk away, the Chancellery fifteen across the vast lawn in front of the parliament. The famous Adlon Hotel where visiting dignitaries usually stay is right across Pariser Platz. The building is secured against vehicle attacks by a perimeter of metal bollards. A few German policemen patrol around the building’s outside. The Pariser Platz entrance is only open for embassy events while the door across from the Holocaust memorial is where visitors may call.

  Only one marine is on station at the desk as visitors to the embassy are few, the consular department is in the western part of the city at the former U.S. Berlin Brigade HQ. Only a handful of journalists, politicians, and businesspeople call for meetings with embassy staff every day.

  Mark walked past the German policemen unmolested, entered through the glass door, and said a friendly hello to the marine at the desk. He explained to him that he was looking for Thomas Hardy. As an avid reader of spy novels, he had heard of so-called walk-ins, people going to an embassy with information for the CIA. He expected the Marine to know what to do.