The Russian Affair

by Adrian D'hage

  O’Connor held the vehicle in his sights. Made by Zavod imeni Likhachova, or ZIL, who were better known for producing tanks and armoured personnel carriers, the ZIL 4112R was even more impressive than ‘the beast’, the Cadillac that carried the President of the United States. Petrov was protected by thick armour plating and a 12-centimetre thick titanium roof that was strong enough to withstand a tank driving over it. Powered by a massive 7.7-litre engine, O’Connor knew the car had been tested by Russian soldiers firing anti-tank missiles at it while the designers sat inside. It was an encouragement for the designers to get it right, a practice that went back to Stalin. Of all the days, the Russian president had chosen this moment to visit his nuclear weapons design laboratories. O’Connor groaned inwardly. How many extra guards would be on duty?

  O’Connor was not left wondering for long. It had started to snow, and two figures appeared just 50 metres away, coming toward him. The two Sarov guards were wearing white snow gear, and they were leaving nothing to chance when it came to the president’s safety.

  O’Connor reached for his .45 Glock 21 and screwed the silencer into place. The snow was falling heavily now, but the two guards kept coming toward him. They were almost on top of him before one of them suddenly raised his pistol.

  O’Connor fired twice and one after another they fell with a bullet to the head. The snow around them was quickly stained a bright red, but O’Connor didn’t move, confident that they wouldn’t be missed for some time yet. And even then they would be hard to find. The heavy snowfall would soon cover their bodies and the bloodstains. An hour later, as darkness enveloped the forest and the nuclear laboratories, the presidential convoy roared out of the entrance. Petrov was headed back to Sarov to address the residents of the hidden city, after which his helicopter would return him to the Kremlin.

  O’Connor reached for his night-vision binoculars as the two perimeter guards appeared. Neither were paying any attention to the fence. They talked to one another as they walked their mandatory patrol, a boring and repetitive duty they carried out on the hour, every hour. They reached the end of their route, turned and headed back toward the guard house and O’Connor waited until they disappeared from view. He chose a covered approach to the fence and an entry point where the Russians had allowed the forest to encroach on the arcs of the security cameras. O’Connor silently withdrew a pair of special forces battery-powered boltcutters and tested the fence for any electric current. The Russians were getting slack, he thought, and he went to work. Twenty seconds later, he was inside the compound and he followed the layout he’d memorised. The weapons laboratory was in an isolated area, nearly 2 kilometres away on the northern side of the compound.

  O’Connor could see the lights were on, and he checked the path leading back toward the administration buildings and the main complex but it was clear. With his pistol drawn and keeping to the shadows, he finally reached an open steel door beyond which he could hear raised voices. He eased around the door only to have it erupt in a shower of sparks as an ISIS fighter emptied a magazine from his Uzi submachine gun. The silenced Uzi sounded like a quiet anchor chain being released and the bullets pinged and whined with the ricochets flying off the steel walls.

  O’Connor dropped to the ground and returned fire and the ISIS fighter toppled from the mezzanine floor into a line of gleaming nuclear warheads. Each was a bright yellow and about the size of a street fire hydrant. Dragunov’s SUV was parked alongside them. O’Connor rolled and took cover behind a filing cabinet only to be greeted by another burst of submachine gun bullets. Three more ISIS fighters appeared, each armed with Uzis.

  ‘Fuck!’ O’Connor swore as a hail of bullets erupted around him. The penetration of the nuclear facility by ISIS was greater than he or McNamara had anticipated, and it would come as an even bigger surprise to the Russians. Outnumbered, O’Connor waited for a lull in the muffled firing and he rolled out of the doorway and back into the darkness. There were limits, he thought grimly as he beat a retreat into the forest surrounding the laboratory.

  Through his night-vision goggles, O’Connor watched Dragunov drive out of the laboratory with Pavlenko in the passenger seat. Ten minutes later, the silence of the forest was shattered by the unmistakable sound of a Russian Mi-8 military helicopter lifting off from the Sarov helipad. O’Connor swore softly as he dashed toward the hole in the wire and the hide where he’d left his Jeep. An hour later he put through an encrypted call to McNamara.

  ‘Bartók remains the priority,’ said McNamara after he’d absorbed O’Connor’s aborted attempt to capture Dragunov at Sarov. ‘Murray’s monitoring Rabinovich, who’s still in Paris, but that’s not going to last much longer. The Mi-8 has a cruise speed of around 120 knots and a maximum range of 960 kilometres, so destination becomes a critical part of the jigsaw.’

  ‘Even though Dragunov is now clearly at the whim of ISIS,’ O’Connor offered, ‘if the military pilots are at gunpoint, that range would only allow them to cross into the Baltic States, Belarus or Ukraine to the east. But if the pilots are in the dark and simply flying a military mission for the General, which is the more likely scenario, then the destination has to be one that is not going to raise suspicion. For ISIS, a military base is out of the question, which leaves Moscow or St Petersburg which is just on maximum range.’

  ‘I agree,’ said McNamara, ‘and since Dragunov’s flight plan was to St Petersburg then Moscow, I’m still banking on Bartók being somewhere in St Petersburg.’

  ‘With the snow, it’s the best part of a 15- to 18-hour drive, but I’m on my way.’

  ‘It remains to be seen whether ISIS have any interest in Bartók,’ concluded McNamara, ‘but we’ve got to get him and the thumb drive before anyone else does.’

  The Turkish Airlines flight from Kabul to Tbilisi via Istanbul had taken nearly ten hours, but General Waheeb was still very alert. He cleared Tbilisi’s Shota Rustaveli International Airport without incident and his driver was waiting in the car park in a nondescript Toyota HiLux. Two heavily armed guards lay hidden beneath the rear canopy just in case any Chechen rebels decided to take too close an interest in the vehicle. An hour’s drive to the north of the Georgian capital, past the stunning Sabaduri Forest, they reached the town of Tianeti and Waheeb’s alertness only increased as they headed west then north again on the dirt road leading into the Pankisi Gorge. They followed the valley floor on the banks of the Alazani river past the stone houses of Matani and a hazelnut plantation, and on through the stone villages of Sakobiano and Duisi until they reached the village of Jokolo. They passed a stone church and turned west into the soaring mountains beyond.

  The decision to hold a face-to-face meeting with Caliph al-Rahman had been a strategic one. Waheeb had no doubt as to the Caliph’s charismatic pulling power, especially amongst disenfranchised youth alienated by society, but when it came to finalising a military operation as crucial as the securing of nuclear warheads, General Waheeb wanted to be there in person. He had yet to work out the motive, but when the Russian General Dragunov had suggested that Bartók might make a useful bargaining piece with the West, he issued orders for Pavlenko to retrieve the scientist from where he was being held in St Petersburg.

  Anatoly Kuznetsov stroked his beard as he waited for the black Mercedes carrying General Dragunov and his two guests, and a black Mercedes van carrying unspecified cargo, to come to a halt alongside; the Printsessa’s private berth on the River Neva. The captain of the Printsessa had not been surprised at the order to take on maximum fuel. It was not the first time his secretive client had ordered a sailing for a yet-to-be-disclosed destination, and all was in readiness for a departure. One of the fastest yachts in the world, the Printsessa was powered by two Paxman diesel engines and two Lycoming gas turbines which together produced an astounding 20 500 horsepower and a top speed of 60 knots. The flank speeds of US warships were classified but Waheeb and Pavlenko both knew that even the fastest US warships, the Independence and the Freedom, had top speeds of
45 knots. But they also knew that at a speed of 60 knots, the Printsessa would have to make several dangerous refuelling stops on her 5000-nautical mile journey down to the Strait of Gibraltar and on to her destination port.

  Free of her berth, Captain Kuznetsov gave orders for ‘slow ahead’. Thirty minutes later, sailing due west, Kuznetsov ordered ‘full ahead’ and the Printsessa surged into the Gulf of Finland.

  Antoinette Moreau was in high spirits. La Clef’s long-serving housemaid had a half-day off. Her son and daughter-in-law, together with her five-year-old granddaughter were staying with her for a whole week, and today they had booked a lunchtime cruise on the Seine. She knocked on the last room to be cleaned.

  ‘Service de chambre? Room service?’ Antoinette waited ten seconds before using her master key. It didn’t happen often but more than one of her colleagues had opened the door only to beat a hasty retreat when confronted with guests in flagrante delicto. Antoinette chocked the door and set about her well-worn routine. She stripped and remade the bed, cleaned the coffee table and was about to move to the bathroom but the wardrobe door was open, so she checked the iron and ironing board. ‘Qu’ils sont bêtes,’ she muttered, cursing the stupidity of the idiot who had left the safe locked. It was one of the more frequent guest complaints. She lifted the latch and opened the door with the master safe key, only to find a cell phone. Another one for lost property, she thought and she put it in her pocket.

  Dubois looked at his watch. Eleven a.m. and Bartók was still at La Clef. Perhaps the American had a few in his room last night and decided to skip the morning’s presentations. An hour later, he checked again and to his surprise, Bartók was out on the river, moving away from the Eiffel Tower toward Pont Neuf and the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. Dubois called his man outside La Clef.

  ‘No, I took over at 7 a.m. and there’s been no sign of him, unless he slipped past us at about 8.30. I was moved on by a gendarme who said I couldn’t park where I was, so I drove around the block. That couldn’t have taken more than five minutes, although I suppose it’s possible.’

  ‘Merde! Shit! Okay, keep the hotel under observation. I’ll deal with it.’

  The tourist barge returned to the wharf beneath the Eiffel Tower and Antoinette Moreau took no notice of the two gendarmes and two men in plain clothes. Together with her son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter, they queued for the Eiffel Tower.

  ‘Can we go all the way to the top, Daddy? Please,’ Sophie begged.

  ‘If you promise to go to sleep tonight and not get on that iPad?’

  Sophie nodded with a promise she had no intention of keeping.

  Romain Dubois scratched his head and called his agent out on the riverbank. ‘What the fuck is going on? Are you sure Bartók wasn’t on that tourist barge, because now that encrypted phone is at the fucking Eiffel Tower!’

  It had been a long day, but as tired as she was, Antoinette did what grandmothers do. She started to prepare the evening’s coq au vin when there was a knock at the front door.

  ‘Ms Moreau?’

  ‘Yes?’ Antoinette said, puzzled by the appearance of two gendarmes and two men in plain clothes.

  ‘May we come in, there is an issue with a cell phone.’

  ‘Pardon? . . . Oh no! Oh no! You must mean the one I found in the safe this morning. I put it in my pocket meaning to take it to lost property – oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll return it first thing in the morning.’

  An hour later, the two men in plain clothes were still grilling a tearful Moreau when one of their mobiles rang.

  ‘Dubois. I’ve spoken with the manager of La Clef. I think it’s an honest mistake. Retrieve the phone and come back to base. We need to find where the fuck Bartók’s got to.’

  Over at the Ritz, Rabinovich picked up her phone. Regev was on the other end.

  ‘Regev. We’ve solved part of the mystery. The phone was left in the hotel room safe and picked up by a housemaid. Whether Bartók left it there deliberately or by accident, we’re not sure. I suggest you stay at the Ritz for the moment in case he turns up, and we’ll turbocharge the search for him. Did he seem normal when you last saw him?’

  ‘In a word, no. He was nervous and didn’t want to go through with it. Added to that, he’s naïve. He inferred that he hadn’t broken any law because he hadn’t handed over anything, so I introduced plan B and I played him the tape of our meeting in Boston where he divulged an outline of the physics behind what’s on the thumb drive.’

  Regev allowed himself a wan smile. They had trained her well. ‘So he didn’t leave any clue as to where he might be.’

  ‘No – when I saw him the night before last he agreed to hand over the data at the end of the conference.’

  ‘Hmm – all right. Stay where you are for the time being. We’ve got the airports, train stations and bus stations covered, and we’re monitoring the hire car companies, so hopefully we’ll have a line on him in the next 24 hours or so.’

  Rabinovich put down the Mossad phone deep in thought. Things were getting more than a little bit sticky. She somehow needed to trace Bartók, retrieve the thumb drive and give the Mossad the slip so she could return to her beloved Russia. An hour later, Rabinovich’s Russian phone rang.

  ‘Cohen.’ She and her Russian handlers had decided very early in the mission that she would use her Israeli alias regardless of iPhone. It was easier that way.

  ‘Antonovich. I have to meet with you. We might need to get you out.’ Valerian Antonovich was chief of station at the Russian embassy in Paris and he’d been ordered by President Petrov to oversee Rabinovich’s stay in the French capital and plan her return to Russia if that became necessary. In Rabinovich’s view, that was looking increasingly likely. She knew that if the Israelis tumbled to her real mission, she would likely finish up in the same high-security Ashkelon prison as Mordechai Vanunu – the Israeli technician who had blown the whistle on Dimona had spent 18 years there, 11 of them in solitary confinement.

  ‘Do you think you’re under surveillance?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure I’m not, although they will be tracking my cell phone so it’s best you come here.’ Rabinovich clicked off, deep in thought. Why did they need to get her out? Was she about to be exposed? An hour later her questions were answered.

  ‘We’ve found Bartók, or at least we know he’s no longer in Paris,’ Antonovich began, after Rabinovich had let him in to her suite.

  ‘We were also told to keep a trace on Dragunov while he was here. The word is the president doesn’t trust him, and he’s about to be kicked out of the nuclear program. And you didn’t get this from me, but the rest of that scuttlebutt concerns you. Once he’s sacked Dragunov, President Petrov is going to promote you to general and put you in charge of the entire nuclear program, so somewhere along the line, you must have impressed him.’

  Rabinovich shrugged, but inwardly she felt a mixture of pride and a longing to be back in her own country, regardless of appointment.

  Antonovich pulled a laptop out of his briefcase. ‘Have a look at this. We have a contact at Le Bourget and to complete our Paris coverage of Dragunov for our report back to the Kremlin, we grabbed the CCTV footage of his departure.’

  ‘That’s Bartók!’ Rabinovich exclaimed, pointing to the second person boarding Dragunov’s Hawker 1000.

  ‘Exactly. Dragunov took Bartók back to Russia, and from what they’ve said to you, it happened before the Mossad was able to cover the airport.’

  ‘Have you reported that back to the Kremlin?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ve only just got the footage, and before I do, I wanted to know what you make of it?’

  ‘This fits.’ Rabinovich marshalled her thoughts. ‘The Israelis had him tagged, but he threw them off the scent by leaving the phone I gave him in his hotel safe. Now it’s starting to come together. I suspect that Bartók sat down with Dragunov sometime on the first day of the conference and asked for asylum. The bargaining chip would have been the thumb drive. Do we know if it’
s been handed over?’

  ‘Another reason I’m here. Dragunov’s back in Moscow, but as far as we’re aware, there’s been no announcement by him and no sign of Bartók, and it’s now been the best part of 24 hours. The other thing that’s puzzling me here is the flight plan for Dragunov’s aircraft. It left here bound not for Moscow, but St Petersburg. It stayed on the ground there for no more than 30 minutes, before continuing on to the capital.’

  ‘I think I know why,’ said Rabinovich. ‘I suspect Bartók was dropped at St Petersburg because for whatever reason, Dragunov wants to keep him under wraps,’ she said, omitting to declare she knew Dragunov had a dacha in the city and she knew exactly where it was.

  ‘Well, regardless of where Bartók is, and I guess the FSB will solve that eventually, I have orders, again from the president himself, to get you out. There’s one of our jets on standby at Le Bourget.’

  ‘Does it have encrypted communications?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a GRU Gulfstream 550, why?’

  ‘After I’ve given this some more thought, it might be useful to speak with the FSB back in Moscow.’ Rabinovich had no intention of speaking with the FSB, but she had every intention of calling the president with a special request. Given her involvement to date, she wanted to be there to capture the thumb drive. She would, she decided, ask for the president’s imprimatur and have the GRU aircraft diverted to St Petersburg.