The Mingrelian

by Ed Baldwin

  “Do you want to go?” he asked.

  The two men had been selected to pick up the detonators because they were low level engineers and knew what they looked like. No sense in killing a hundred people to steal the wrong item. They looked back at the intensity of the fighting and made their decisions.

  “I will go,” one man said and climbed the steps.

  The other man gave a salute and walked back to the truck, apparently preferring to meet Allah today rather than later.

  Ghafoor returned to the cockpit and strapped in, released the parking brake and turned onto the runway. He pushed the throttle all the way forward and turned on the landing lights. In 60 seconds he was at 10,000 feet headed west at 590 miles per hour.

  Chapter 23: The Secretary of Defense

  “I

  ’ve got a meeting at the White House in two hours,” the defense secretary said, fiddling with a pencil on the large and mostly empty expanse of his desk. “The National Security Council is going over the whole story of the Iran situation. Now that someone has stolen nuclear triggers from Pakistan and they’re apparently in Iran, the whole nuclear scenario is front-burner,” he said, looking up at Maj. Gen. Bob Ferguson.

  “Yes, sir,” Ferguson said, feeling like a bug under a dissecting lens.

  “State and the CIA have both reported message traffic from the People’s Mujahedin of Iran,” the secretary said of the group known as MEK in Farsi, “and their political organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, that the communications we’ve gotten from inside Iran on the Iranian nuclear program are genuine, and that they’re coming from within the government itself, very high in the government itself.

  “Also, that strange communication from the Second Ayatollah, as he’s being called, is genuine, and they want to publicize that worldwide to expat Iranians, as it strengthens their position as a government in exile. It seems there is a power struggle going on in Iran, and things are very unstable. That’s good, and it’s dangerous, doubly so now that we know from the last flash drive that the source within the program discovered new stockpiles of plutonium and asserts that Iran has three times the plutonium we previously thought. That source confirms that those new designs you ran by our technical people at Sandia Labs are indeed being manufactured right now. So, it’s later than we thought.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ferguson said. “The Sandia people were shocked that the Iranians have abandoned work on the simple gun assembly uranium weapon and are building an implosion plutonium bomb from the beginning. We thought that was years away.”

  “Someone’s helping them.”

  “Yes, sir. Sandia thinks it’s the Russians. The design of the bomb shows the fingerprints of Russian engineering process.”

  “Then why would the Iranians let the Chechens try to assassinate the Russian president?”

  Ferguson shrugged but said nothing.

  “We’ll be talking about that today,” the secretary said. “State reports a lot of feedback from the Russian Embassy on that subject. The good thing, for me, is that all this information traffic has vetted our source. I was going to be on the hot seat to confirm that we aren’t being strung along. Now, tell me again about our guy there … what’s his name?”

  “Chailland, sir, Captain Boyd Chailland.”

  “Yeah, Chailland. OK, tell me about him again. I’m going to need to vouch for him this afternoon.”

  “Sir, you remember that business in Texas two years ago, when the president almost bought the farm?” Ferguson asked. “That was him. Then the whole business with the Ebola outbreak and the secret vaccine, we used him undercover there. We sent him into Tbilisi just as a courier, and he broke the assassination plot in time to save the Russian president. He left bodies all over Tbilisi. He’s quick-witted, and he’s got a mean streak. He’s busted some heads for us. He’s our best guy.”

  “OK; get to him right away and tell him to stick close to his contacts, be available 24/7, and transmit anything he gets right away over the scrambled satellite feed from the embassy. If there’s any problem with that, tell him to call you directly on his satellite phone. The days of waiting a week for the diplomatic pouch are over. Something big is about to happen.”

  Chapter 24: Black Sea Storm

  A

  mass of arctic cold swept across Europe signaling the end of a warm fall and the beginning of winter. A low-pressure cell formed when the tail of the cold front blew across the warm waters of the Mediterranean, causing thunderstorms and wind in Crete and Greece as low pressure followed the front across the Sea of Marmara and Istanbul into the Black Sea. The frigid wind of winter blew through Ukraine to the Crimea, and Sebastopol experienced unusual turbulence when that cold air hit the low pressure, sinking several ships with loss of life late in the morning on Sunday. Gaining momentum over the colder waters of the Black Sea, the storm accelerated eastward, whipping up 18 foot waves.

  *****

  “You can see Gali from the top of this hill,” Ekaterina said, spurring her Arabian up a steep hill above her family’s estate. Zugdidi was small in the distance.

  Boyd leaned forward in the saddle, and his big bay gelding, docile but strong, kept pace.

  “There, you can see it now.”

  She pulled up and pointed down the hill to the northwest.

  “David, was a captain in the Georgian army, in charge of an outpost on the road to Sukhumi, in Abkhazia. The Russians came through with tanks. Everyone died.”

  “I’m sorry,” Boyd said, feeling her sadness. It was awkward.

  “Niko was barely 4. He never really knew David.”

  Boyd was silent.

  “So, now I have my job at the bank, and the task of raising Niko, and the dreams of my father.”

  “Dreams of your father? He has more plans than his bank and that fine estate back there?”

  “I love my father, but, well,” she said, turning away from the view of Gali to face Boyd. “Somehow, he wants to return to the grand old days of the Principality of Samegrelo – Mingrelia before the Russians annexed it.”

  “That would be hard to pull off.”

  “Impossible, really, and he knows that. Yet …”

  She shrugged. Then she turned her horse and spurred higher up the mountain. “

  Come on, you can see the Black Sea from up here.”

  Laughing, Ekaterina raced up the hillside with Boyd in pursuit. They crossed a pasture and went through a gate onto a higher pasture dotted with sheep. At the top, Ekaterina dismounted to open a gate by a rustic stone shepherd’s shelter, just four walls and a roof. Rocks towered above them, the headwall of the Caucasus Mountains, their tops snow-capped but dark and foreboding.

  They picked their way around some large boulders, leading the horses now, and walked out onto a grassy shelf with a view of the coast.

  “There it is,” she said. “The Black Sea, Abkhazia and, way up there, Russia.”

  Large waves crashed into the coast, which stretched far to the north with whitecaps marching out into a dark, angry sea. Beyond that, Boyd could see a wall of black clouds rushing toward them.

  “Uh oh we may be in for some weather,” he said, pointing out to sea. He’d seen clouds like that in the Atlantic, and it was not a good omen.

  “We better get back,” she said, just now recognizing the danger.

  Lightning flashed overhead with an immediate crash of thunder, and Ekaterina’s Arabian bolted from her grasp and rushed up the hill. Boyd steadied his mount.

  “I’ll get him,” Boyd said, preparing to mount the bay.

  “No, he’ll run from you. Let me,” she said, taking the reins and swinging into the saddle. “Hup!”

  The bay surged up the hill, leaving Boyd alone on the shelf to watch Ekaterina in her riding breeches and high boots leaning forward on the bay as she spurred the big gelding. She was one with the horse as they rounded the boulders and raced out of sight.

  Lightning flashe
d again, and the thunder was immediate. Boyd stepped back around the boulders to get off the shelf and lesson his exposure to the lightning. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the black cloud was now at the beach, moments away. Rain hit in a wall of water, and Boyd was soaked immediately. Then the wind blew him down the path. He ducked behind a boulder as lightning hit a tree farther down the mountain. He heard hooves on rock.

  “Boyd!” She called from behind him. She had circled above and around the rocky outcropping and was approaching from below. She had the Arabian.

  “Here,” he called and ran out. Lightning flashed, and thunder crashed again.

  “The gate,” she called above the howling wind and rain.

  He ran down the hill and opened the gate. She led the Arabian through and jumped down from the bay.

  “In here,” she said, tying the Arabian to the fence by the shepherd’s shelter. “They’ve been in the rain before.”

  She opened the door and peered in.

  Boyd tied the bay and followed. The stone house had a crude door on leather hinges. A lone window without glass stared out onto the mountainside. The sky outside was almost black, the thunder constant, and rain cascaded off the roof. It was dry inside.

  “The weather changes fast here,” Boyd said, shaking the water off his jacket.

  “It does,” she said, shaking her jacket. She was soaked. Her blouse was plastered to her breasts, and he looked away. She put her jacket back on and turned to look out the open window at the raging storm outside. He stepped over to stand beside her and look out, his arm casually draped across her back. She leaned into him.

  Boyd’s cellphone rang. He felt the long arm of General Ferguson, again calling at just such a moment.

  “Yes, sir,” he answered. It could be no one else on this satellite telephone. He stood there listening for two minutes, brow wrinkled, frowning. Then a smile creased his face, and he looked at Ekaterina and winked. “Yes, sir,” he said again and the smile broadened. “I’ll do that right away. It may take me away from the embassy.”

  He put his arm back on her shoulder and, a moment later closed the telephone.

  “What was that?”

  “My boss,” he said, still smiling as he looked down at her.

  “At the embassy?”

  “No, in Washington,” he held up the telephone. “This is a satellite phone.”

  “You’re so important?” she asked, a disbelieving smile creeping across her face.

  “Not me – you. They sent me clear around the world just to meet you.”

  The full truth of what he’d just said caused the smile to fade. He stepped back.

  “This is a dangerous game we’re playing,” Boyd said. “Your father got shot trying to help. We don’t know how his contacts in Iran knew about the assassination attempt on the Russian president, or why they told him about it. What he did was heroic. If the people who wanted the Russian president dead figure out it wasn’t just two random guys passing by, we’re all in trouble.”

  “My father has been passing messages from the Iranian resistance to the Americans,” Ekaterina said. “We have a long-standing business relationship with Iran. We didn’t think it would come to this.” Her brow wrinkled in concern and doubt.

  “It’s more than that. You’ve been passing insider information about the Iranian nuclear weapons program,” he said sadly, as if he’d just told her a relative had died. He couldn’t let her continue if she didn’t know the risk. He saw the shock on her face. She didn’t know. Now she did. He had just been told to strengthen his relationship with his contact, and instead he may have destroyed it.

  She gasped, looking at him, then took a step away and looked back toward the bottom of the hill, toward the villa. “Does my father know that?”

  “He knows some of it. He said his friends in Iran are risking everything to undermine the current regime, and he wants to help,” Boyd said, feeling a wave of nausea as he realized he may be severing this vital link that Ferguson had just told him might be the key to avoiding a nuclear war. “He didn’t know he was passing the detailed plans of how the Iranians are manufacturing a plutonium bomb. He couldn’t have known that, but that’s what it is. And, there’s more. This week, some Pakistanis stole nuclear detonators and flew them into Iran. It was in the news. He couldn’t have known that was going to happen. Recent developments put his contacts with anyone from Iran under scrutiny. I assume that’s why he asked me to meet with you.”

  Boyd wasn’t going to string this woman along with anything but the truth.

  She stepped farther away, to the side wall of the shelter and looked at the blank wall, in the direction of the villa below and her family. When she turned back tears streamed down her face.

  “I’m sorry,” Boyd said. “I couldn’t let you go on if you didn’t know.”

  “I have some questions for you,” she said, stepping toward him. “The information my father insisted on having before we would meet with you. Is it true?”

  “I don’t know what they gave you.”

  “We ran a credit check on you with your credit card. What is your birthday?”

  “May 25, 1984.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Kennett, Missouri.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Ninety-five miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, and 26 miles west of the Mississippi River.”

  “Who is Eight Ball?”

  Boyd laughed out loud.

  “How did you hear about Eight Ball? He’s my dog.”

  “We checked Facebook for Kennett, Missouri, and found your name mentioned by someone named Becky Rhoades. There’s a picture of you on her Facebook page with a caption about you and Eight Ball jumping into their pool,” she said, laughing. “We had quite a time digging up all the information on you we could, and that Eight Ball picture was funny. I admit, I was intrigued by this whole thing. Your government just gave us all your personal information. You were … naked before us.”

  The import of that last statement made her blush.

  “I’m expendable,” he said quietly.

  “No family?”

  “Some cousins.”

  “You’re a professional spy, then?”

  “Not a spy. More of an action officer.”

  “Action officer?”

  “In the military, we have a term for covert action. ‘Black Ops.’ We have a whole command that does that. But, when they need something done and don’t want anybody to find out about it, they call on me. I do black ops, off the books.”

  “Just meeting with me, that wasn’t so much, was it?”

  “That chase through town in your blue Lada with your father was black ops, off the books.”

  “Oh!” Recognition crossed her face. “So that’s what you do?”

  “These missions they send met on seem to come down to that. I’ve done it a few times. It isn’t something you get away with more than a few times. I’ve been lucky. Some of the people I’ve worked with haven’t been.”

  “What happens now?”

  “You need to be very careful, if you choose to continue. My boss just asked me to stick close to my source, protect you as best I can, and get any additional information that comes out of Iran back to him as soon as possible.”

  “My father is going back to Tbilisi to work next week. He’s told everyone at his office he had cancer surgery. He meets his contact there.”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  “No. I work at the bank, too, and he has visitors, many from Iran, all day. We stay in Tbilisi during the week and come here on the weekend. I stay at my grandfather’s home above the rug store, and Niko goes to school in Tbilisi.”

  She took another step toward him and searched his face, then said, “I trust you, Boyd Chailland.”

  “Good,” Boyd said, smile breaking out.

  “My father is right,” she said, turning away to clear her mind for what she
wanted to say. “Our bank is based on the business we do with Persia, and some of it breaks laws in other countries. I have helped him with that and have accepted the risk in order to secure the future for my son and our family.”

  She turned back to face him.

  “My great grandmother was born in Persia. We have worked with Persians for centuries. Persia has been Georgia’s most important trading partner, after Russia. Both of them have used us, and we have used them. There have been many dangerous games in our history. I am a part of this one.”

  Boyd opened his arms and she came to him, placed her arms around his back, under his jacket. He did the same. They stood, warming each other as the rain outside turned to snow.

  *****

  “First, you will have to talk to my mother,” she said, laughing as their horses walked down through the pasture two hours later, wet snow clinging to the grass. “If we are to appear to be courting, just for a cover, then you need to do it properly. We Georgians take matters like this seriously.”

  “Would that be true even for a widow? That seems a bit extreme just to have a few dates.”

  “You call it dating in your country,” she said. “We call it courting.”

  Chapter 25: Imam Khomeini International Airport

  E

  skander Khorasani checked a large suitcase for his nonstop flight to Tbilisi. He had been allowed to return to his job at the Petroleum Bank of Iran after a month of unexpected vacation preceding the assassination attempt on the Russian president. Before being given permission to return, he’d been interviewed – interrogated, really, about his job and his contacts in Tbilisi. He knew every statement would be verified to confirm his integrity. He knew also that his suitcase would be taken apart completely, X-rayed, sniffed, tested. Sweat dripped down the back of his shirt. He’d never expected the stakes to get this high, but he was in and there was no way out.