by Tim Tigner
“The four of us,” Victor interrupted. “Are you telling me that the five years I spent in the US were part of your plan, the master plan you developed during your Academy years—to take over the Soviet Union?”
“Yes, Victor. I am.”
Chapter 5
CYPRUS, 1980
Victor looked out the window toward the crude stone walls that divided the mountainside into arable plateaus, but did not see them. His thoughts were focused on the window of his mind. Only four people knew of his father’s plan, and Victor was now one of them. Karpov was investing in him. Was it conceivable that respect would follow? For the second time in his life, he was learning that nothing was as it seemed, and he had the uneasy feeling that there was more to come.
He turned in the car seat to look at his father. “I thought you sent me to the US to get rid of me—like the affluent Americans who send their kids to boarding school.”
Karpov did not have an answer ready for that one, so Victor enjoyed a moment’s respite while his father composed his thoughts.
“Any man can be a father, Victor. Only I can do what our country needs me to do. Your compatriots’ need for a founding father trumped your need for a paternalistic one.”
“Is that why I didn’t know your name, didn’t know you were alive for the first sixteen years of my life? Is that—?”
“Victor. Now is not the time for this.”
Would it ever be? “So, I’m to stay in the US?”
“Yes.”
“Working for the KGB?”
“And the Knyaz.”
“And what will my Knyaz job be?”
“One that parallels your KGB assignment.”
“And that is?” Here it comes.
“Your job within the KGB Illegals Directorate will be running a group of agents whose task is to accumulate defense intelligence at the contractor level.”
“You mean spying on missile manufacturers and counting tank orders?”
“Yes, but with a caveat. You will be working from the inside. Once the KGB sets you up undercover, I will require you to take their work a few steps further. Your Knyaz job will be identifying revolutionary new technologies—civilian technologies—while they’re still in the developmental stage. You will be stealing them for the Soviet Union, and then sabotaging the American companies that invented them so we can beat them to market.”
While those words hung in the air like cannonballs over Victor’s head, Karpov pulled into the driveway of a rustic cliff-side cabin. The next time Victor took note of his surroundings, he was seated in a wooden armchair on the cabin’s back terrace, looking out over fragrant coniferous hills toward the sparkling Mediterranean Sea. He had no recollection of how he had gotten there. His mind was awash in image and revelation.
Karpov took a seat next to him. He pulled two freshly cut cigars and a silver lighter from his breast pocket and raised his eyebrows. “Sometimes even Californians must yield to occasion.”
Victor managed a weak smile.
Karpov lit his cigar and sat on the edge of his chair amidst a cloud of blue smoke while Victor slid all the way back in his, holding the arms as if bracing for impact. He wasn’t ready to light up yet. “The KGB is asking you to assume a role, to play a game with the Americans. I’m making the game that much more interesting by asking you to do the same thing to the KGB. It’s nothing traitorous, mind you. I’m not asking you to serve a different master—you’ll still be working for the people of the Soviet Union—I’m just changing your management.”
The lump in Victor’s throat grew to choking size—assisted, perhaps, by the blue cloud—but still his father pressed on. He always pressed on.
“I’ve given you a glimpse of the tasks that lie ahead of you, now let me show you a couple of the tools. First the mundane.” Karpov handed him a large envelope. “Congratulations, you’ve been accepted at Stanford. You’re going to be an engineer.”
“Stanford . . .” The word dissolved the lump in his throat like water on Alka-Seltzer. Victor instantly felt bubbly and refreshed. Staying on at Stanford sounded fantastic and he loved engineering. It felt odd to have his future dictated like a weather forecast, but as long as it called for sunny skies . . .
“Now the magical,” Karpov said, placing a large syringe on the wooden arm of Victor’s porch chair. Victor picked it up without comment. The syringe was not much bigger than the cigar in his hand. Instead of a needle, it ended in a tapered plastic tip that was reminiscent of the sharp end of a mechanical pencil.
“What you hold in your hand represents a decade of my life. It took me that long to become the head of the Scientific and Technical Directorate, but it was worth it to have this secretly developed.”
“What is it?”
“I call my brainchild the Peitho Pill after the Greek goddess of coercion. It’s what’s going to make everything that I’ve told you possible. With Peitho in your pocket, you will be able to work both jobs, and perform remarkably at each. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Simply put, Peitho is the ultimate coercive tool.”
As Karpov took a long pull on his Cuban, Victor found himself sliding forward in his chair.
“The syringe you’re holding is specially designed to implant the capsule you see here.” Karpov pointed to a vitamin-sized capsule at the base of the syringe’s tip. “That capsule is Peitho. I had originally conceived of a device that could be slipped into someone’s food, so we called the project the Peitho Pill. The engineers quickly concluded that an injectable capsule would work better, so the design changed, but the alliterative name stuck.
“In injectable form, you don’t have to worry about how to get your target to swallow Peitho, and the capsule will stay in place until it’s activated by radio transmission. It will sit harmlessly in place for years, rather than just a digestive cycle.
“Getting back to the design, the tapered tip punctures the skin of the buttocks like a regular needle, but then it stretches the skin, so the residual blemish is little worse than a mosquito bite.”
“Why’s the size of the blemish important?”
“Because we might not want the patient to know Peitho is there.”
Victor decided he would chew on that piece of information for a while before questioning it further. There was a lot about this coercive tool that caught his interest. “What’s the numbered ring above the taper for?”
“You rotate it to the approximate weight of the patient. It regulates the tip’s length, so you always implant Peitho at the appropriate depth.”
“It goes all the way down to ten kilos,” Victor said, more to himself than to his father. Karpov didn’t respond, and Victor wasn’t sure he wanted him to.
Victor found himself as much intrigued by the Peitho Pill’s engineering as the plans for its use. He took that as a good sign, considering Karpov’s Stanford revelation. “So what’s in the capsule?”
“Peitho contains a bicomponent acid, a poison, and a signal receiver.”
“What’s the poison?”
“It’s a KGB concoction that’s lethal within seconds, and leaves the same pathological markers as a heart attack.”
“Yeah, but what happens when the autopsy uncovers the signal receiver?”
“That won’t happen. When Peitho receives the activation signal, it mixes the two components of the acid, which then dissolves both the signal receiver and the capsule, releasing the poison into the bloodstream. The acid itself even breaks down into naturally occurring compounds. There’s nothing suspicious left to find, and regardless, the coroner is not likely to cut open the buttocks of a heart attack victim.”
Absolutely brilliant, Victor thought. His mind continued to work the concept while his father watched. Then he hit a snag. “Given the growing number of signals flying over the airwaves these days, what’s to prevent a random transmission from activating the pill an
d killing the person we’re exploiting?”
“Probability. Peitho codes are fourteen characters long, so the odds of randomly hitting on the correct code are thirty-six to the fourteenth power. I don’t think they even have names for numbers that large. On top of that it has to be cleanly transmitted, meaning there’s nothing else transmitted for three seconds before or after the correct code. Some nuclear launch sequences are less secure.”
“Why wouldn’t the victim just cut it out? That can’t be any tougher than digging out a bullet, and Yarik seems to have that done all the time.”
“Why not indeed? A brilliant engineer not much older than you solved that problem for me. He designed Peitho’s coating to be photosensitive. Visible light, which surgeons would use during any conventional procedure, and intensive X-rays, which doctors would use to pinpoint or even accidentally discover Peitho, will dissolve the capsule instantly. To answer your question, the patient will die and Peitho will vanish before the doctor can get to it.”
“So what do you do if—?”
“You find yourself on the wrong end of an implant? There are two potential solutions: either destroy every record of your fourteen-digit Peitho code, or have Peitho surgically removed using red light, as in a photographic darkroom. The buttocks are neither sensitive nor crucial, so precision isn’t imperative. Look, Victor, don’t worry too much about the details now. Yarik will take you through it all again ad nauseam this summer. My goal today is just to get you acquainted with Peitho. You’re going to be working a lot together.”
Tomorrow night he and the goddess of persuasion had yet another date, and as much as he looked forward to that, it was tonight’s adventure that really had Victor excited. Tonight would be the maiden voyage of his father’s latest invention, Medusa. Tonight he was going to introduce her to an old friend.
Chapter 6
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA, NOVEMBER 1990
Alex cracked an ammonia capsule under his captive’s nose.
Enrique coughed, opened his eyes, and immediately began studying his surroundings while trying to shake the fog from his head. He was seated in a wheelchair before a folding table that supported a pizza box, a couple bottles of water, a satellite phone, and a photograph. He tested his arms and legs and found them free to move, but remained sitting while studying the small, windowless room with its bare concrete floor and walls.
“It’s a storage unit,” Alex said, stepping forward from behind and taking a seat across the table from Enrique in a folding chair. “You feeling okay?”
“Been better, but yeah, I’m okay. What’s going on?”
“I need your help.”
“You have a funny way of asking.”
“I couldn’t think of a better way. I tried, but couldn’t. Hungry? The pizza’s not bad.”
“Who the hell are you? You went through both my bodyguards and two of my father’s best men faster than I can sprint to second base.”
“I’m just a guy who needs your help.”
“Help with what?”
Alex picked the photo up off the table and handed it to Enrique. “That’s Tommy Chirico. He’s eleven. He was kidnapped last week in Sabaneta. His parents hired me to get him home safely.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“I know you don’t. Your father might not know the specifics either. But you and I both know that nothing happens in Sabaneta without his blessing. So if he doesn’t already know where Tommy is, he can find out in two minutes and fix it in five. I want you to call your father and ask him to have Tommy Chirico driven home. Preferably within the next five minutes.”
“Or you’ll kill me?”
“I’m not going to kill you. I’m not going to do anything to you. I’m not that kind of guy.”
“I’ve seen some evidence to the contrary. As have four of my friends.”
“A broken wrist and a concussion. That’s what most northern boys call a hockey season. But seriously, think about how much easier it would have been for me to use a gun like Tommy’s kidnappers did. Instead, I went in with a baseball bat and half a dozen tranquilizer darts.”
Enrique didn’t reply to that. He just stood up, slowly, testing Alex.
Alex didn’t move. “But suppose I was?” Alex added. “Suppose I was the kind of guy who’s holding little Tommy right now: violent, desperate, and cruel? Suppose your hands and feet had been bound to that chair for a week, and there was a burlap bag over your head? Suppose you were hungry enough to eat live bugs but half glad you were starving because you were so scared that every time you ate you shit your pants? Suppose you didn’t know if you’d ever feel warm or safe or loved again? Tommy is only eleven years old. Make the call.”
Enrique did.
And then they waited.
And then Alex’s cell phone rang. But the call wasn’t from Tommy’s parents, telling him that their son was home. It was a different call altogether. And it had Alex running for his car.
Chapter 7
NOVOSIBIRSK, RUSSIA
Karpov knew something was wrong the moment he popped into Nazarov’s office on a surprise visit. Nazarov grew bug eyes on his paled face, jumped to his feet behind his big oak desk, and then tried to look calm. “Good morning, general.”
Nazarov was the director of SibOil, which drilled one of Siberia’s largest oil reserves. Since that oil reserve was the source of the Knyaz’s financing, Karpov checked in whenever it was convenient. More often than not, he found work to do. Nazarov, like most communist bureaucrats, was more concerned with preserving his own privileged status than with promoting his business or protecting his people. Karpov had that very characteristic in mind when he put Nazarov in place: it maximized his control.
Walking across the office, Karpov paid the director no attention. Instead, he watched the woman Nazarov was speaking with as she turned to look over her shoulder. Her face flushed the moment she saw him, and she, too, scrambled to her feet.
Karpov had been affecting people that way for several years now. His progressive policies had turned around Siberian industry and made him the darling of the local press. Still, he had not gotten used to the stares.
He extended his hand. “Good morning. I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m General Vasily Karpov.”
“Orlova, Luda Orlova. I’m a senior accountant here at SibOil. It’s a privilege to meet you, general.”
“Tell me, Senior Accountant Luda Orlova, what you’ve done to put such a sour look on your director’s face?”
“It seems we have an accounting discrepancy, general,” Nazarov hastened to say.
“I’d like to hear Ms. Orlova tell me about it.”
Luda lowered her eyes and then gave a glance over at Nazarov, who returned a single nod. “The Libyan Oil Company paid us twice for our shipment this month, ten million dollars instead of five. So I placed a call to the LOCo accounting to find out if they wanted us to refund the money or credit it to next month. When the operator asked who was calling, I said I was from SibOil, and she put me straight through to their president.” She paused and looked up nervously for a second before returning her eyes to the floor. “Before I could say a word, LOCo’s president began apologizing for the mistake. He said that his CFO had been in an automobile accident while he himself was out of town, and that the substitute accountant didn’t know that half the money for SibOil was supposed to go to Knyaz.”
Karpov canted his head and raised his eyebrows in query. No wonder Nazarov looked pale, he thought.
“I asked the president of LOCo why he would send half our money to a company named Knyaz, and he said, ‘What do you mean why? That’s what we’ve always done.’ At that point, I didn’t know what to think, and I didn’t want to risk offending him, so I said, ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ He said, ‘Yes. Give Nazarov my apologies and tell him it won’t happen again.’”
“
And that’s when you came to see the director?” Karpov asked.
“Yes.” She hesitated, and then spoke the words that changed her stars. “While I was waiting for a break in his schedule I did some calculations.”
Karpov watched from the corner of his eye as Nazarov squirmed his way from pale to red.
“We’ve been working with LOCo since we first started pumping oil. If they’ve been sending half our money to Knyaz all these years as their president said, then as of this month, Knyaz would have four hundred fifty-five million dollars of our money. Plus interest. I know that’s a ridiculous idea, especially since all our oil is accounted for, but I wanted to be thorough.”
Karpov flashed his eyes in admiration to soften her up. “So tell me, what do you think really happened?”
“I think LOCo has SibOil confused with another of its suppliers. Knyaz is also a Russian name, although I’ve never heard of them. Perhaps he thinks we’re all the same.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Karpov said.
Luda continued. “But there is still the issue of the extra five million dollars. The daily interest alone is more than I earn in a year.”
“Well, that will surely teach them not to make the same mistake twice. Tell me, where was your boss during all this?”
“Mr. Ivanov is at an accounting seminar in Moscow all week. I would normally have left this for him, Mr. Ivanov always deals with LOCo personally, but the overpayment was so large that, well . . .”
“You did the right thing. With LOCo informed, SibOil is now in the clear. Further activity by anyone but Ivanov can only make things worse. I suggest we agree to table this until he returns, or LOCo calls back. Agreed?”
