The Mingrelian

by Ed Baldwin

  “Major Shands,” came the prompt reply.

  “Sir, we’re one mile out.”

  All Lado could manage was a nod of his head as the next interchange came up. Boyd could see the flag of the United States on the other side of the crossing road. A single shooter leaning out of the passenger side window of the Mercedes put two rounds through the windshield. The next shot blew the right rear tire.

  ****

  Shands stood on a balcony 100 feet behind the gate to the compound of the embassy. The gate was open and several private security guards, under the direction of Corporal James, were lined up along the fence. A blue Lada, engine screaming in second gear and running tireless on the right rear rim, slid down the exit ramp onto George Balanchini Street a half-mile away. A black Mercedes was right behind it, maneuvering for a shooter in the passenger seat who was steadying a handgun 20 feet behind the Lada.

  Major Shands put his hand on the shoulder of Corporal Anthony, who chambered a round into the M2 Browning .50-caliber machine gun fixed to a tripod on the embassy balcony.

  “The Mercedes,” Shands said.

  The first few shots of the volley hit between the cars, and the Mercedes drove into the rest of it. A dozen 50-cal bullets blew out the windshield, killed the driver and the shooter and spun the Mercedes sideways in the road, stopping its forward momentum. The second volley of half a dozen shots blew the front tire, killed the passenger in the back seat as he tried to open a door and set the engine ablaze.

  The blue Lada slid through the embassy gate and careened to a smoking stop on the lawn. Embassy personnel, trained as first responders, were standing just inside the door. They rushed out and opened the driver’s side door. Taking quick assessment, the first member of the team replaced the Russian president’s fingers on Lado’s carotid artery with his own and eased the wounded man out onto the ground.

  Boyd exited the car and looked back at the burning Mercedes, then up at Major Shands and Corporal Anthony on the balcony. He gave quick salute, which was returned.

  The Russian president, covered in blood, exited the back seat, took in the scene, smiled broadly and slapped the top of the blue Lada.

  “Good Russian car,” he said in English.

  *****

  The international news media convulsed with activity, reporting an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the Russian president. The ample video of the explosions and firefight were replayed around the world. It made for great news theater. Most of the assassination team had been killed, but some survivors were being interrogated, and they looked like Chechens, and spoke like Chechens. The tale was told with no details about the vehicle the Russian president commandeered to drive him to the U.S. Embassy. Under heavy guard, he was moved to the Ilyushin II that night and returned to Moscow to a hero’s welcome. He was seen in Russia as a larger-than-life figure who escaped certain death by dashing exploits and cunning skill. He did nothing to dispel that impression. That night, a crack surgical team from Moscow flew secretly to Tbilisi to help the local surgeons install a Dacron graft carotid artery into Lado Chikovani’s neck.

  Boyd flew the C-130 back to Incirlik the next morning. The extra pilot took the right seat for the long flight to Tashkent the next day. Boyd got a change of assignment.

  Chapter 20: Another Grand Ayatollah

  “Rulings are subject to utilitarian outcomes, and utilitarian outcomes change according to changes in the times, and differ with the differences in followers of those rulings. So it’s possible for a specific ruling to be beneficial for a people in a particular time, and hence enforceable, but detrimental to another people in another time, and hence prohibited.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense to me,” Boyd said, speaking to General Ferguson in the Incirlik Air Force Base command post over the scrambled satellite communication. Ferguson had just read him a communication that had been included in the second flash drive that Ekatarina Dadiani had slipped him.

  “It didn’t make any sense to me, either, the first dozen times I read it. But, that paragraph sets the whole Shiite Muslim world on its ear.”

  “How is that?”

  “It’s a liberal interpretation of the Quran that undermines the case for strict Shariah law, which is the basis for militant jihadists.”

  “Says who?” Boyd retorted.

  “According to the flash drive you sent in the diplomatic pouch; that comes from Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Mohammad Mashadi.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He’s very popular in Iran,” Ferguson said. “But, he’s in jail and held incommunicado by the regime. Nothing has come out. At least nothing came out for a year. But now we’ve got pages of fatwas, pronouncements on a variety of subjects and messages to his followers.”

  “From that flash drive?”

  “Right.”

  “What does that have to do with nuclear secrets?”

  “Nothing, and everything. This Mashadi guy was stirring up the resistance before the regime put him in jail. Somebody has gotten to him, and now he’s getting out his message. But we have to verify that. This could be all made up.”

  “OK,” Boyd said, beginning to be annoyed that no mention had been made of his adventure in saving the Russian president the day before. He’d expected an attaboy or something, but no, just talk about some ayatollah in Iran.

  “We’re vetting all this stuff through our Iranian experts back here,” Ferguson said. “We’ll get back with you on that. Now, to the next item. That first flash drive contained some disturbing elements. Iran appears to have enough plutonium for several bombs. We didn’t think they did, but it appears they do, and they’re moving to the manufacturing phase. The scary thing is they’re not talking about nuclear triggers any longer, which was a phase that would take them a while to master. Someone may have either sold them some or is teaching them how to make the trigger for a nuclear bomb.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “Yes. The message on the flash drive promised more clarity on that in the next one, which is due next week. Which brings us to the next item: verification. We don’t know this contact, the Mingrelian, at all. We need to vet this guy before we act on any of this stuff he’s bringing us. Have you met him?”

  “Met him? Met him? Sir, he was the guy driving the car yesterday, when we saved the Russian president’s ass. And, I met his family at the hospital last night.”

  “Good, we’re going to need you to dig into that a bit deeper. Whoever is feeding information to him in Iran has access to the main vein of what’s going on there. If it’s valid, it’ll be right up there with cracking the Japanese code in World War II.”

  “I can do that,” Boyd said as the vision of Ekatarina Dadiani sitting by her father’s bedside the night before flashed before him.

  With tears streaming down her face, she had thanked him for saving her father’s life. “He told me the Russian president wanted to throw him out of the car, but … you ...,” she said, then kissed his hand.

  “Yes,” Boyd said to Ferguson. “I need to get into that.”

  “OK, next item: change of assignment. We’re beefing up the embassy in Tbilisi, and we’re putting in another military attaché – you. The whole problem of the CIA exposure and the need to have another contact for the Mingrelian is now overcome by events. We need you there, all the time.”

  “Good idea,” Boyd said, beginning to feel very good. He liked flying the C-130 but, really, it was dull.

  “OK, last item on the agenda. You’ve been nominated for the Order of St. George, the highest military honor the Russians have. The Russian president himself is writing the citation, and approval is assured. Frankly, I think the two Air Force Crosses and two Presidential Citations you already have would be enough for one man, but we can’t turn this thing down. He wanted to bring you to Moscow for a ceremony, but we nixed that. That’s an old Russian trick, exposing a spy with honors. After that, you’d be useless to us for any other miss
ions. We told him something less ostentatious would be more appropriate.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Boyd replied, remembering the honest smile on the Russian president’s face when he emerged from the blue Lada unharmed and realized he was safe in the U.S. Embassy. The handshake that followed was firm, heartfelt and long.

  Chapter 21: Illusions

  “W

  e’ve got some tickets to the opera here,” the ambassador said at a morning staff meeting. “They’re free,” he added when there were no takers.

  “It’s not the opera, it’s ballet,” his secretary corrected.

  “Oh, ballet then.” He scanned the room. “We need to make a showing there, this is a big deal in Georgia.”

  Boyd was trying to decide which would be worse, the opera or the ballet. He’d never been to either.

  “OK,” the ambassador said. “Think about it, perhaps some of the other staff would like to go. They’re quite good. I’ve been many times.”

  Boyd didn’t believe that.

  Later that morning. Boyd was arranging his desk in the office he now shared with Major Shands when the ambassador’s secretary came in with the tickets.

  “I’ll tell the ambassador you asked for it. This one is for you,” she said, looking Boyd in the eyes, then nodded and handed him the ticket.

  What did that mean? Was she sending a message that, as the newest staff member at the embassy, he’d drawn the short straw and was assigned to go the opera/ballet? Or was this a message from someone. The secretary was Georgian, after all. He took the ticket.

  “What do you wear to the ballet?”

  *****

  Ratface entered the Central Republican Hospital in central Tbilisi, carrying a bouquet of flowers. He approached the receptionist.

  “My old friend has been in hospital, Lado Chikovani. Could I visit him?” he asked in Russian.

  The secretary scanned the computer. “Ah, here he is. Third floor.” She pointed to the elevator.

  Ratface exited the elevator with his flowers and approached the nursing station. He scanned the hall both ways; dozens of closed doors, no guards.

  “My old friend, Lado Chikovani is here. Could I see him?”

  “Are you family?”

  “A cousin.”

  “I’m sorry, immediate family only. You could leave the flowers.”

  “Uh, this is so sudden. What is the illness?”

  “Cancer,” the nurse said, with a regretful, nurturing look.

  “The doctors are optimistic,” she said. “They’re sure he’ll be well in a few weeks.”

  He turned and walked toward the elevator.

  “Sir!”

  He turned. “Yes?”

  “The flowers, did you want to leave them, with a message, perhaps?”

  “Oh, yes.” He walked back to the nurse and handed over the vase. There was a card on it.

  As the elevator door closed, the nurse picked up the telephone and spoke to someone in Mingrelian.

  A man followed Ratface to his hotel.

  *****

  Boyd, dressed in his new dark suit, found his seat at the end of a row in a box in the first balcony. He looked up at the bright crystal chandelier hanging 70 feet above him that dominated this ivory and gilt cathedral to performance art and felt out of place. He was glad he’d bought the suit. The ambassador had been right; these people do like their ballet.

  Early as usual, he watched the hall fill to capacity. In the lobby he had lingered over a poster of the performance he was to see this night. It featured men in fur hats and the traditional Caucasian chokha, a long, high-neck wool coat with bandoliers across the chest on both sides. The men were leaping while beautiful girls in long white dresses with pillbox hats and veils swirled about. It looked interesting, but he hoped it wouldn’t go on for too long.

  Six boys filed in just as the lights dimmed to announce the show was starting. They were dressed in matching grey chokhas, with full-cut black pants and high boots. They filed in straight and proud with the eldest, about 15, in front, and the youngest, about 9, last. Boyd stepped into the aisle to allow them to pass into his row. At the end of the line was their sponsor, Ekaterina Dadiani.

  *****

  There was a minor drama before Boyd left the embassy the following Friday on his way west to Zugdidi and Lado Chikovani’s birthday celebration. Dabney St. Clair had received an invitation to an event at the German Embassy and wanted Boyd to be her escort. When he declined due to a previous engagement, she pulled rank. Touchy.

  Boyd had learned there were four stovepipes of culture and authority in the embassy. Most of the Americans were State Department employees and answered to the ambassador’s every whim because he controlled their performance reports. Dabney St. Clair was the only remaining CIA employee, ostensibly working for the ambassador, but still in frequent contact with her superiors at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Boyd and Major Shands and five enlisted Marines took their orders from their respective services and from the secretary of defense. About two dozen Georgians in administrative and support roles were foreign national employees of the State Department, or contractors. Many of those were known to report what goes on to the government of Georgia and, in a couple suspected cases, to other governments.

  Ekaterina had slipped Boyd another flash drive at the ballet and then invited him to Zugdidi for the weekend for Lado's 50th birthday party. Really, it was a celebration for having cheated death saving the Russian president’s life a month before. Lado was recovering from carotid surgery at his villa there. Clearly, this was a key element in Boyd’s mission in Georgia. He needed to vet Lado and understand how and why he was passing secrets about Iran.

  Dabney, behind a closed door in her office, had told Boyd: “The mission of this embassy must trump whatever personal plans you might have for the weekend. I can’t just show up at the German Embassy alone, and I need to attend this event.”

  Boyd had been specifically warned not to share any information about the Mingrelian and his mission with Dabney St. Clair. Sitting meekly in her office while she railed at him, he struggled to remain just another dumb airplane driver placed at the embassy for her convenience.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Boyd had said. “But, really, I’ve made some plans I can’t change.”

  “How dare you!” she said, eyes wide with anger, standing behind the desk in her office adjacent to the ambassador’s.

  “Perhaps Major Shands could accompany,” Boyd suggested. Rick Shands was married, and his wife lived with him in Tbilisi. If he accompanied Dabney, his wife would have to stay home. Awkward.

  “You owe me big time, buddy,” Shands had said with a smile after he’d gone into the lioness’ den later that day and calmed the storm. He would accompany, and his wife would stay home with the children.

  Dabney’s eyes shot daggers Boyd’s way for the next two days whenever they passed in the hall.

  Now headed into the countryside on a sunny fall afternoon, Boyd felt relief at being out of the cloak-and-dagger world of Tbilisi. To his right, the Caucasus Mountains rose, nearly a mile higher than the Colorado Rockies that he’d found so amazing during his days at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Just like the front range of Colorado, water from melting snow had been channeled from the Caucasus into irrigation canals so that meadows could become row crops, of corn and wheat. But the meadows were returning as most of the huge collective farms of the Soviet era were neglected, and hundreds of small family plots of corn and grapes were tilled. Cattle and sheep grazed on the hillsides, but the milking sheds needed for a large modern dairy operation were abandoned. It was mom-and-pop agriculture eking along in the remnants of agribusiness, until he got to Zugdidi.

  *****

  “That’s Dadiani Palace, down there,” Lado Chikovani said expansively, propped up on a couch in the sun on the balcony of his villa up the hillside from Zugdidi. He’d taken the bandages off his neck and the fresh scar from the
gunshot and the subsequent surgery was red and shiny in the sun. He was pointing to an ornate stone palace in the town below. It was surrounded by well-maintained grounds. The parking lot was full midmorning on a Saturday.

  Boyd sipped coffee and enjoyed the warm fall day, eager for the vetting process to begin. Why would a man with all this risk it to get involved in passing nuclear secrets about Iran to the United States?

  Ekaterina and her two brothers were in the driveway below greeting guests arriving early to the party planned for the afternoon. Lado’s wife, Mariami Chikovani, a handsome woman of middle years who spoke no English, had just left them to assist with caterers delivering great platters of food and drink. Lado’s estate spread up and along the mountain for some distance and supported several hundred black and white cattle. Boyd noticed a modern milking house at the bottom of the hill. Vineyards occupied the steeper hillside on the other side of the house. Winter wheat was sprouting in a field Boyd estimated to be a full section of land – 640 acres – to the south. Two modern grain elevators were along the adjacent road.

  “My ancestor Gen. Prince Katzo Chikovani eliminated the rabble of nobility and assumed leadership of Mingrelia during a difficult time in 1681,” Lado said. “His son George assumed the traditional name of Mingrelian rulers and became Prince George IV Dadiani. All members of the ruling family of Mingrelia who followed him are blood members of the House of Chikovani.”

  Lado pulled a package of cigarettes from beneath his pillow and lighted one. He peered over the railing to be sure Mariami wouldn’t see him.

  “Niko Dadiani, the last ruling prince of Mingrelia. was deposed by the Russian Czar in 1858, and Mingrelia became part of Georgia; a part of Russia, really.”

  Lado hurriedly flicked the cigarette over the rail when he heard his wife coming back up the stairs. He didn’t fool her; she had smelled the smoke and said something harsh in Mingrelian, found his cigarettes under the pillow and returned to the first floor with the package crushed in her hand.