The Russian Affair

by Adrian D'hage

  ‘The one question remaining is how to get you out of here without the Mossad knowing. They’ve got every airport covered, looking for Bartók, and that includes Le Bourget.’

  ‘I’ve already planned for that or a similar eventuality. In fact I gave it some thought before I left Russia,’ she said. Rabinovich got up and retrieved her bag from the stand near the wardrobe. She unzipped the bottom and pulled out another small bag. ‘What do you think?’ she asked after she adjusted the wig in front of the mirror.

  Antonovich was puzzled. From past experience, he was also aware there could be a right and wrong answer when a woman asked for an opinion on how she looked, but then the light went on. ‘Aha. I’ve seen an earlier photograph of you. I think it makes you look exactly like that. And the passport?’ Rabinovich fished her old passport out of the secret wig bag and handed it to Antonovich. ‘Perfect,’ he said, handing it back. ‘The aircraft’s on standby, so . . .’

  ‘Tell them to strap in.’

  By the time Antonovich had left, it was getting dark. From her observations since she’d been in Paris, she was fairly sure the Mossad had not put a physical tail on her, but just in case, she had reconnoitred the Ritz and like La Clef, the Ritz had more than one entrance.

  Just before she left, she placed her Israeli iPhone in the room safe. She’d thought about leaving a wistful note for Dubois, but decided against it. There was no point in making life more difficult for him than it was about to become. Two cell phones in two safes in 24 hours. The Mossad would be incandescent.

  A few hours later, the Gulfstream 550 levelled out at 40 000 feet and Rabinovich put through a call to President Petrov on the personal cell phone number he’d given her. Ten minutes later, her aircraft changed course for St Petersburg and shortly afterward, the head of the FSB, General Nikita Zherdev was making arrangements to fly to St Petersburg to meet Rabinovich at the airport.

  O’Connor pulled over to the side of the road on the outskirts of St Petersburg to take the call from McNamara.

  ‘I’ve got Murray with me, and she’s broken a Rabinovich transmission with Petrov. Bartók, they suspect is holed up in Dragunov’s dacha in St Petersburg. Rabinovich has escaped from Paris and the Russians have diverted her aircraft. With the Russian president’s blessing, Rabinovich is going to lead an FSB assault on the dacha which is called Mir, and it’s on Bolshaya Alleya. It will be touch and go, but we need you to get there first.’

  Mir. It meant ‘peace’. The irony was not lost on O’Connor as he copied the coordinates into his computer and then headed toward the River Neva. Time was running out, but he stuck to the speed limit. The last thing he wanted was to be pulled over by the police. He crossed the 110-year-old Art Nouveau Troitskiy Bridge and swung off past the Museum of Artillery and the Zoo. To the left he could see the Peter and Paul Fortress where over the years high-ranking political prisoners, including Leon Trotsky, had been incarcerated. O’Connor kept heading down Zhdanovskaya, crossing the Krestovka waterway on the Lazarevskiy bridge until eventually he reached the marina on the Srednyaya Nevka.

  O’Connor found the Sea Ray 195 Sport where Howarth said it would be and the big five-litre V8 engine kicked over immediately before settling into a throaty burble. O’Connor let go the fore and aft painters and eased the Sea Ray past the other expensive-looking boats moored at the marina. There were no speed limits posted but he kept it to under ten knots, just in case.

  Had he known how close Rabinovich was behind him he would not have adhered to any speed limit, posted or otherwise.

  Rabinovich cleared VIP customs and immigration within minutes of landing at Pulkovo International Airport and the head of the FSB, General Zherdev, was there to meet her.

  ‘Welcome back, Colonel Rabinovich,’ he said, extending his hand. Zherdev had sized up the situation very quickly. For whatever reason, Rabinovich had the inside running with the president and the FSB chief was not about get in the road of that; he led the way to his waiting black Mercedes.

  ‘The dacha, if I remember correctly, General, is on Kamenny Island at 12 Bolshaya Alleya. That’s where I expect we’ll find Bartók. Given my long involvement with this little creep, if it’s all right by you, I would like to be there when we bring him in.’

  ‘The president and I have discussed this, and given your outstanding performance to date, I have assembled a three-man Spetsnaz team and I’m putting them under your command. We’ve also got the canals covered with rigid inflatables, just in case.’

  They reached the St Petersburg FSB office and Rabinovich was introduced to the Spetsnaz team – Felix Yeltsin, Nikolai Bogrov and Ruslan Annikov. She quickly got kitted out and equipped herself with her weapon of choice, the PSS pistol. In the briefing room, she requested and received satellite overheads of Dragunov’s property.

  ‘There’s no guarantee that Bartók is going to be there, but logic says that’s the most likely location,’ she began. ‘As you can see, the area around the dacha is very heavily wooded, so while Yeltsin and I come in from the front,’ she said, tasking the most junior Spetsnaz member to accompany her, ‘Annikov – you and Bogrov are to cover the rear. We are after a simple thumb drive – but it’s not any old thumb drive. The information on it will be of great value to our country and both I and President Petrov are depending on you. I don’t expect any trouble but we’ll take nothing for granted. We’ll communicate by encrypted cell phone. Any questions?’ Rabinovich waited, but there were none.

  ‘Good – we leave in ten.’

  ‘She’s not half bad looking,’ said Bogrov, after Rabinovich had disappeared to the bathroom.

  ‘I wouldn’t crawl over her to get to you, that’s for sure,’ said Annikov with a grin. The Spetsnaz squad checked their weapons and equipment and minutes later they followed Rabinovich out to the patrol cars.

  O’Connor cut the throttle on the Sea Ray and let it drift in to the bank of the canal. He secured the bow to a tree and reached for his transmitter.

  ‘November Oscar Golf Bravo, this is Hopi One Four, over.’ NOGB was the international call sign for the USS Mount Whitney and she answered immediately.

  ‘Hopi One Four, November Oscar Golf Bravo, go ahead.’

  ‘Candyman, over.’ It was the code word for the commencement of the operation to capture Bartók and the thumb drive.

  ‘Golf Bravo roger, Knight Hawk One Zero is ready for lift-off.’

  ‘Hopi One Four.’ The Mount Whitney would need to stay in international waters, but as soon as O’Connor radioed success, the Knight Hawk would head toward him. O’Connor removed the Heckler and Koch 416 carbine from underneath the bow and slammed on a magazine. He crept along the riverbank and then kept to the trees on the drive that led to Dragunov’s dacha. The house was eerily quiet, so he edged around to the back door and knocked. The housemaid gasped when she saw the Heckler and Koch, but O’Connor reassured her.

  ‘I am here for your guest, Denis Bartók.’

  ‘He gone,’ the housemaid stuttered in her broken English. ‘They come to get him.’

  O’Connor pushed past the terrified housemaid and systematically searched the dacha, but Bartók was nowhere to be found. Back in the kitchen, he demanded answers. ‘What time did they come?’ he asked, switching to fluent Russian.

  ‘In the night . . . they come to get him.’

  ‘Who is they? How many?’

  The housemaid held up two fingers.

  ‘General Dragunov?’

  The housemaid just nodded, more terrified than ever.

  Convinced she was telling the truth, O’Connor exited along the same route but as he crossed the road to where he’d moored the boat, a burst of pistol fire crackled around him. He took cover behind a large tree, from where he recognised Rabinovich firing at him from maximum range. O’Connor returned fire with his Heckler and Koch and dealt with the bow rope. Another burst of automatic fire crackled over his head and he turned to see a fast-approaching FSB car, lights flashing, hurtling down the road toward hi
m. The FSB officers were firing from the nearside open windows and O’Connor returned fire. He and his SEAL team had devoted many hours of practice to instinctive firing, and it paid off. The front left tyre blew and the FSB car slewed across the road and ploughed into the river.

  The Sea Ray roared into life and O’Connor gunned it down the canal toward the first low bridge. He glanced over his shoulder to see a small RIB – a fast rigid inflatable boat, planing down the canal in hot pursuit. Suddenly, it veered to the bank and Rabinovich appeared, still firing at the Sea Ray as she leapt aboard.

  O’Connor ducked as he powered under another low bridge and then he swerved into another canal as a second RIB loomed up on the starboard side. O’Connor reached the Krestovka waterway and made to execute a turn to starboard and the open Gulf of Finland, only to find a third RIB hurtling toward him and blocking the way. He spun the Sea Ray and gunned it back around the waterway toward the palace embankment on the main branch of the Neva River with the three RIBS in hot pursuit. To the stunned amazement of tourists on a river barge, O’Connor weaved around them, showering them with spray as he roared past toward the Fontanka River Canal. He passed under the bridge near the Summer Garden and roared on past the tourist wharf beside the world-famous Fabergé Museum. O’Connor rounded a bend, only to find another tourist barge angling toward the Fabergé wharf. With the Sea Ray’s engine screaming, he hurtled through the gap between the barge and the stone edge of the canal with barely a centimetre either side. The barge master frantically sounded his horn, but the two RIBs behind had nowhere to go and they collided with the barge and the stone canal embankment in a shower of sparks and spray.

  ‘Give it all you’ve got,’ Rabinovich yelled at the FSB coxswain as they followed O’Connor down the Fontanka, one of St Petersburg’s major canals. She kept her PSS trained on the Sea Ray, but she was reluctant to open fire. They were now in the centre of the city, passing under Nevsky Avenue and the Anichkov Bridge, the oldest bridge across the Fontanka. The original bridge had been constructed in 1715 on the orders of Peter the Great.

  O’Connor used the narrow confines of the canal to keep Rabinovich’s pursuing RIB at bay, weaving around work barges and tourist barges, to the accompaniment of angry horn blasts from their masters. Minutes later, O’Connor thundered past Russia’s Admiralty Shipyards and gained the mouth of the Gulf of Finland. He reached for his binoculars, turned and focused them on the pursuing RIB. The gap had widened but he could clearly pick out Rabinovich urging her coxswain to get more out of his outboards.

  The two speeding boats passed under the new Western High-Speed Diameter Toll Road and out into the Gulf and O’Connor reached for his radio.

  ‘November Oscar Golf Bravo, this is Hopi One Four, Barracuda, over.’ It was a signal to get the Knight Hawk airborne.

  ‘Golf Bravo, roger, Knight Hawk One Zero will be airborne in three, time over target, two zero minutes over.’

  ‘Hopi One Four.’

  O’Connor kept the throttle on the Sea Ray fully forward and the hull banged alarmingly over the swell. The RIB was still behind and O’Connor knew he would need a buffer to board the Knight Hawk.

  Twenty minutes later, right on cue, the Knight Hawk loomed over the horizon, nose down and touching on 150 knots. The aircraft flared to a hover above the Sea Ray and the vicious down draft kicked out ocean spray in a wide circle. O’Connor caught the winch and gave the loadmaster the thumbs up. As soon as he reached the door he swung aboard, and on a whim, he leaned back out and waved to Rabinovich in her fast-receding RIB.

  Rabinovich put down her binoculars and shook her head. Whoever that was, he was one cool customer, she thought. She had a feeling they would meet again.

  The loadmaster handed over a set of headphones and O’Connor pressed the internal squelch. ‘Thanks for that. Much appreciated,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘All part of the service, sir. I’ve been asked to patch you through to Langley . . . wait one . . .’

  ‘I’m afraid Bartók got away with Dragunov and ISIS.’ The spy chief’s voice held the gravity of the moment. ‘They’ve flown the coop in Dragunov’s superyacht. We don’t have a destination yet, but Murray’s onto it and as soon as we do, we’re going in.’

  O’Connor smiled to himself. ‘We’re going in’ could always be translated as ‘You’re going in, O’Connor.’

  ‘I’ve arranged for you to be flown to our detachment at the Turkish Air Base at Incerlik where you are to link up with SEAL Team Six and await further instructions.’

  Atef had chosen a motel just off the highway to the west of Denville, a small township of some 16 000 people off Route 80 that led into New York. Alone in his room, Atef opened his laptop and with the codes provided by General Waheeb, he searched for one of the ISIS portals in the Dark Web. Once in, he typed in a simple coded message:

  Steel girders are ready for first delivery.

  General Waheeb had given very specific instructions and equipped his commanders with a series of code words and phrases. The General was accurate in his view that even in the Dark Web, the Infidel might try and crack ISIS’s defences. A reply came back almost immediately, although it was hardly surprising that Waheeb was monitoring the site. D-Day was scheduled for tomorrow, with the attacks timed for 5 p.m. in New York, which would catch the city rush hour, and an hour later in Sydney, 9 a.m. local time, at which time the Cessna would be able to fly the scenic route up the coast.

  Thank you. Second delivery is also ready.

  Both deliveries are to proceed as per schedule.

  If the Infidel was monitoring the Dark Web, those messages would probably capture their attention, but there was no mention of times or places, and ‘steel girders’ could mean anything. Atef summoned Aysha and Khadafi to his room. Tonight, he would arm the bombs and tomorrow, he would remain with his young radicals until they reached the George Washington Bridge. Atef had groomed both Aysha and Khadafi meticulously, and he’d calculated that it was better to have them operating as a pair of suicide bombers rather than as individuals. They would, he reasoned, provide each other with strength and resolve, and even if one got cold feet, the other could provide the impetus to press on. For his part, Atef had obtained a monthly permit from the Fort Lee Parking Authority in New Jersey, and his getaway car was parked and ready for him.

  ‘Tomorrow, Khadafi,’ Atef began, ‘you will drive. It’s about 40 miles to Manhattan, but because of the traffic, we’ll allow two hours.’ Atef pulled up the map of New York on his laptop. ‘We’re going to take the slightly longer route over the George Washington Bridge, and from there, you will proceed to Central Park.’

  ‘Why Central Park?’ asked Khadafi. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to destroy some of the high rises, like the Empire State?’

  Atef shook his head. ‘The high-rise buildings actually shield people from the blast,’ he lied. He needed the widest possible drift of the radioactive particles, but his young suicide bombers didn’t need to know that. ‘Added to which, Central Park is one of the world’s icons. Once you clear the bridge, you are to proceed down Central Park West Street,’ he said, indicating the route on the map, ‘until you reach the intersection of West 81st and the 79th Street Transverse. The American Museum of Natural History will be across the road on your right. The Transverse connects with Fifth Avenue, here on the east side of the park. Turn left at the intersection and you will see a sign that warns of a ten foot two low clearance. You’re under that height, and shortly after turning left, you will come to a low bridge. Go under the bridge and detonate the bomb here, halfway across the Transverse, in the centre of the park.’ The winds in Central Park, Atef knew, prevailed from the north-west, and he’d already checked the weather. Tomorrow the winds were forecast from that direction at 10 to 15 miles an hour, which meant that as well as completely contaminating the park and everything in it, including the zoo, the winds would blow the radioactive cloud across Fifth Avenue and on toward Madison Avenue, Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue, where so
me of the city’s most expensive shops were to be found.

  ‘If you’re stopped by police before you get into the park,’ Atef continued, ‘you’re to immediately detonate the truck. Any questions?’

  ‘You’re not coming with us?’ asked Aysha.

  ‘I have many more bombs to construct, Aysha. Your explosion will undoubtedly bring the Infidel to his knees, but he is stubborn, and until he submits to Allah’s will and introduces Sharia law, we have to keep attacking him. But when you both get to heaven, Allah will be waiting to reward you and eventually I will be joining you and we will be reunited.’

  Khadafi had broken into a sweat. He crunched the gears and they lurched forward off Broadway, heading south-east underneath the green iron rail bridge and down Martin Luther King Boulevard until they reached Frederick Douglass Boulevard. Aysha sat beside him in the right-hand seat, praying and nervously fingering the detonator. Just before they reached the roundabout at the intersection with 110th Street and Central Park North, Aysha sat back in her seat, startled.

  ‘Khadafi! Look! The police!’ she shouted. ‘Should I press it?’

  ‘No, Aysha, no,’ replied Khadafi nervously. ‘Not yet. He’s just directing traffic around that broken-down taxi,’ he added, irritated by Aysha’s jitters. The policeman, in a white cap and sunglasses and wearing a yellow vest emblazoned with NYPD, held up a white-gloved hand for Khadifi to stop.

  ‘Now, Khadifi?’ Aysha whispered again, her hands shaking.

  ‘No!’ Khadifi hissed, at the same time nodding and smiling at the policeman who was waving traffic through from 110th Street. For Aysha, it seemed like an age, but the policeman eventually stopped the cross flow and directed them through.

  ‘Thanks, sir. Have a nice day,’ the policeman mouthed with a smile as Khadafi inched past the taxi with less than a metre to spare. Central Park West was lined with trees and the park on the left and hugely expensive apartment blocks on the right. The sidewalks were crowded now, as the rush hour began.