Collusion

by Newt Gingrich

  “Makayla in Paris?”

  “The three of us became friends. But he’s dead now.”

  “How?”

  Rivera paused, took a long drink of water that she’d been brought earlier. “He was killed, and it was her fault.”

  Rivera began to cry. “He told me things—things he wasn’t supposed to tell me. He sent me away from Paris months before he died. He didn’t want me implicated. I begged him to come here with me, but he was a true believer, just like her. He truly loved me, but she came here after he died. I was afraid to tell her no. She’s . . . she’s . . . killed people before.”

  “How and when?” Mayberry asked quietly.

  “A shooting. One of her plans. Don’t you see? If the FBI discovered I knew she had already been involved in a terrorist act, they would not believe anything I said about yesterday’s bombing. I’m in too deep and now, so are you.”

  Rivera looked around the restaurant again to ensure no one could hear them. None of the customers appeared to be watching them. Four women by a window chatting. Two men in suits talking loudly out of earshot. The bodyguard.

  “It’s okay,” Mayberry said reassuringly. “No one can hear us. You said your lover introduced you to Makayla?”

  “Yes, he told me that she knew many important people, including people in the States. I went to a protest at a college. Smithmyer. This was before I met you. This person—a white man—picked her up in the parking lot after that demonstration. He was her D.C. contact, I think.”

  “What’s his name? Do you know where he works?”

  Again, Rivera’s mood swung between paranoia and a need to confess. “You are asking too many questions. Stop asking.”

  For several moments, they sat in silence and then Rivera said, “I believe he works at the U.S. Capitol.” Quickly followed by “You’re interrogating me!”

  Rivera began breathing rapidly. “My father’s lawyer warned me. He said others at the shrine—they would turn against me, testify against everyone else. Is that why you’re asking me all these questions? I thought we were friends. I came to warn you!”

  “I’m not going to betray you,” Mayberry replied, trying to steady her. “I’m asking about Makayla because I can’t flee the country. The best way for me to protect both of us is to learn everything I can about Makayla. I will never, ever mention you, I swear, Aysan. But your father’s lawyer is right. If I get arrested, I’ll give them her name. She’s the one who did this to us. She’s the one who should be punished. But I don’t know if Makayla is even her real name. I need to know how to contact her. Please, if you know her phone number, tell me. Tell me and if something happens to either of us, I will tell the FBI about her, but never you. I swear it.”

  Rivera didn’t speak. More water. More fidgeting. More scanning the room with her eyes.

  “Aysan, we’re friends,” Mayberry said. “You can trust me.”

  “Can I? If I tell you her number, you might warn her that I’m leaving Antifa. Running away.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. You’re my friend.”

  Without warning, Rivera pushed out her chair and stood to go.

  “My father’s attorney said no one is my friend. He says everyone will turn against everyone.”

  “Makayla’s number, please,” Mayberry pleaded. Real emotion crept into her voice. “I need it to protect myself and you.”

  Rivera hesitated. She looked down at Mayberry, looked into her eyes. “I do trust you,” she said. “You didn’t know about the bomb.” She pulled an ink pen from her purse. Grabbed Mayberry’s palm and scribbled three numbers on it, but stopped suddenly and jerked back her hand.

  “No, no, no! I can’t do this!” She jammed the pen back into her purse and spun around.

  “Wait, wait,” Mayberry said, rising from her seat.

  But Rivera was already darting toward her bodyguard and the restaurant’s exit.

  Mayberry sat back down at the table. She read the digits: 2-0-2. The original long-distance area code for Washington, D.C. She needed to think. Consider her options. If she called “Mr. Smith” and reported everything to Director Harris, the CIA would intercept Rivera after she fled the United States. They’d wait for her to get overseas. Otherwise, the FBI would need to get involved. Harris wouldn’t want that. He wouldn’t want Rivera talking about her good Antifa pal Valerie Mayberry and recounting how she was at the shrine bombing.

  Her second option would be to tip off the FBI. Director Harris would be furious, and it would get her into trouble, but it would be better for Rivera. The FBI would treat Rivera better than the agency overseas. Mayberry felt genuinely sorry for Rivera. A gullible student, easily recruited by the oldest method ever. A lover.

  A third option. Play dumb. Let whatever fate awaited Rivera play out. Tell no one. Not Director Harris and not the FBI. Sit tight. Forget their meeting here ever happened. She’d promised not to hurt Rivera.

  Mayberry reviewed her options. A waiter came. She ordered and continued to ponder as she ate. After she’d paid the bill and walked outside, Mayberry dialed a number on her cell.

  “Mr. Smith,” she said. “I have information for Director Harris.”

  Twenty-Three

  Deputy Foreign Minister Yakov Prokofyevich Pavel saw the CIA’s signal at 7:33 a.m. Moscow time. A black circle spray-painted the previous night on the public phone shell. The Americans’ signal that they were ready to pick him and Peter up later that day.

  Pavel betrayed no emotion—not even a smile—as he rode along New Arbat Avenue in his chauffeured government car toward the Russian Foreign Ministry.

  Getting instructions to the Americans via Bolshoi tickets had proven simple and easy—all thanks, ironically, to General Gromyko. The general had stripped Pavel of nearly all diplomatic duties. To further humiliate him, he’d put Pavel in charge of arranging tours for visiting dignitaries—a menial task normally assigned to a junior diplomat. Whenever the Bolshoi was scheduled to perform, a ballet employee would deliver a packet of tickets for Pavel to disperse. Last night’s production had corresponded with the arrival of an American oil company delegation in Moscow to cut a deal for offshore drilling rights in the Chaivo Field, located in the Sea of Okhotsk. It had been effortless for Pavel to write coded instructions on the backside of a pair of Bolshoi tickets and leave them at the will-call window for the fictional “Fred Thomas.”

  The fact that Pavel had accomplished this under Gromyko’s nose greatly pleased him. Now he was ready for the next stage in his well-planned escape. As soon as his grandson had arrived in Moscow, Pavel had enrolled him in Moscow State School #57, which had been the city’s most elite school during the Soviet period. After the collapse, most wealthy Russians had begun sending their children to the private Humanitarian Classical Gymnasium in the exclusive Moscow suburb of Zhukovka. Pavel’s choice had pleased the school’s headmaster, who had been completely unaware of the actual reason for it. The school was near the intersection of Komsomolskiy Prospekt and the Third Ring Road, major roads, along with numerous museums and other sites, including the Donskoy Monastery and Gorky Park.

  Pavel had called the headmaster nearly every afternoon and requested that Peter be dismissed early. The pretense was that Pavel wanted to familiarize the teenager with Moscow’s many cultural treasures that he’d missed growing up in rural areas. By doing so, he was establishing a pattern, so his request today would not appear out of place.

  Pavel knew General Gromyko was watching his every move, especially after the Americans had stupidly arrested an NSA employee so quickly after Pavel’s return from Ambassador Thorpe’s funeral.

  When Pavel arrived in his office, he telephoned the school’s headmaster, knowing one of Gromyko’s goons would be listening in. Pavel said he needed Peter dismissed at three o’clock.

  “Where will you be taking your grandson today?” the headmaster asked.

  “The Museum of Art Deco.”

  “An excellent choice,” the headmaster replied. “And close
to our school.”

  Pavel had lied. After picking up his grandson, he would tell his driver to take them to another close site—the Public Museum of the Moscow Metro. It was a relatively unknown gallery with displays that chronicled the construction of what arguably was the most beautiful city transit system in the world. Launched during Stalin’s reign, Moscow’s first underground stations were works of public art, with magnificent marble columns, ceiling murals painted by Russia’s finest masters, and gold-plated light fixtures. They were meant to impress the Soviet masses—visible proof that communism had a glorious future. The fact that only top party members could afford cars and everyone else had to depend on mass transit was largely ignored.

  Pavel had selected the metro museum because it was housed above the Sportivnaya metro station, so-named because it served the nearby Luzhniki Olympic Complex. Although he had not been trained in evasion techniques, Pavel was clever enough to know his chances of disappearing in a crowd would be better inside a bustling metro station crammed with Muscovites boarding and exiting a constant stream of subway cars.

  After notifying the headmaster, Pavel took a moment to simply sit and breathe. It was much too late for him to change his mind, nor did he wish to, yet he felt a genuine sadness as he glanced around his office, finally settling his eyes on the worn briefcase on his desk. To avoid suspicion, Pavel had not packed anything unusual in it with the exception of a single envelope. It contained two photographs. His daughter, her husband, and Peter as a child, and a much older one of Pavel’s deceased parents. As true believers, they would have been horrified about what he was about to do. Everything else that he owned that connected him to his past, his decades of service to Mother Russia, and his family roots would be left behind for Gromyko to pick over like the vulture that he was. All Pavel would possess would be his memories.

  8:30 a.m., Moscow, U.S. Embassy

  Marcus Austin summoned Brett Garrett.

  “It’s a go,” Austin announced the moment Garrett arrived. “You’ll meet Pavel and his grandson between three ten and three thirty this afternoon. That’s a twenty-minute window to get him and Peter into the van.”

  “That’s a long window,” Garrett replied. “Where’s the pickup?”

  “The address that Pavel wrote on the Bolshoi tickets is for a Billa market near the Sportivnaya metro. It was the first foreign-owned grocery chain permitted after the Soviet Union collapsed.”

  Austin unfolded a map of Moscow on his office desk and stabbed his index finger onto the store’s location. “I had Ginger—your escort at last night’s birthday party—drive by there early this morning to check things out.”

  “So, she does work for you. Was she followed?” Garrett asked.

  “Ginger is deep cover. Smart and tough. She knows how to avoid tails. I’d trust her with my life.”

  “That’s your life. Not mine.”

  “Stop being a bitch, brother,” Austin cajoled. “I know Director Harris bent you over when he testified before Senator Cormac Stone about Cameroon. He screwed up, but you know me, brother. We’ve worked together and I’m telling you straight up my girl is solid. No one has a clue she’s part of my team. That’s how deep-cover she is. Helping you today can possibly blow years and years of her insinuating herself into State. You should respect that.”

  Garrett didn’t reply so Austin continued: “Now, there’s not going to be any street parking outside that store, but you’ll be driving a delivery truck. You can park on the street or jump its wheels on the curb.”

  “Twenty minutes is a long time to block traffic,” Garrett noted.

  “Not in Moscow. Drivers are used to having streets blocked and your Russian is passable enough if a cop shows up. Besides, like I just said, Billa is foreign owned. Even if someone identifies you as an American, which they probably will, there’s a fabricated work permit in the document packet I gave you yesterday.”

  “Any idea how Pavel and the kid are planning on getting to the store without Gromyko and his FSB thugs tailing them?”

  “None,” Austin said.

  Garrett cursed. “You’re trusting this guy to not be followed? If he is, Gromyko will arrest me.”

  “He and his grandson will be shot if caught,” Austin replied. “That’s a pretty good incentive to be careful. Now let’s move on. After you pick them up, you will exit the city here.” He shifted his finger to Moscow’s Third Ring. “Pavel’s clever. You’ll already be on the southwestern outer end of Moscow, with lots of possible escape routes.”

  “And exactly where am I delivering them in Ukraine?”

  “Novhorod-Siverskyi,” Austin replied. He spread out another map, laying it over the first. It was of southwest Russia. “A village in the northeast corner of Ukraine, far away from the fighting in the southeast. About seventeen thousand residents. Director Harris chose it personally because it’s less than thirty miles from the Russian border and most of the people who live there hate the Russians and Ukrainians. You should fit right in.” He chuckled at his own joke.

  “Is there anyone they do love?”

  “Not really, including Americans, but they’re dirt poor and are descended from a long line of mercenaries.”

  “I trust the agency was the highest bidder.”

  “Faith, brother, you got to have it. A little background for you. Novhorod-Siverskyi has a long history of turmoil, dating back to when princes used to fight over it back in 1044. The Mongols ransacked it in the 1200s. Next up, the Lithuanians, the Poles, the Germans, and finally Russia.”

  “The agency provide you with all that historical data?”

  “I read it on Wikipedia, brother.” Austin chuckled. “Despite who’s in charge, the people are Cossacks, which means they’re loyal only to their own blood and money.”

  Austin continued, “The city is off the beaten path, although a few tourists come to visit its churches, a monastery, or a couple statues of princes and princesses who’ve been maggot food for centuries.”

  “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?”

  “It’s roughly three hundred and sixty-six miles from Moscow. At seventy miles an hour on a nice blacktop that’s only a five-hour drive. The truck’s top speed is probably sixty and the roads are full of potholes so you won’t be able to drive even that fast. I’m guessing ten to twelve hours.”

  “Wikipedia?”

  Austin grinned. “Mapquest.”

  “Border-crossing station?”

  Austin produced several satellite photographs of the Russian–Ukraine border near Novhorod-Siverskyi. He spread them out over the maps. “If you stay on this main road, there’s a crossing station when you exit Russia. Basically, a tollbooth with two officers. They’ll go home around midnight. But to be safe, you turn off the main road about five miles before you reach them.” He pointed to a close-up image of the terrain. “There’s a dirt road that cuts across a field. Follow it and you’ll end up in Ukraine. Rejoin the main road and you’ve just avoided the checkpoint. The only person you may meet would be an angry farmer.”

  “A Cossack. Riding a horse armed with a sword.”

  “Garrett, you and I both know Harris isn’t going to allow anything bad to happen to Pavel once you cross into Ukraine. You might be expendable, but not a deputy foreign minister. Wouldn’t be surprised if Director Harris is going to be there personally to greet Pavel and interrogate him on the flight home. He’s intent on finding out how Gromyko is reading our mail here.”

  Garrett shuffled through the aerial shots. “How old?”

  “Taken within the past five days. They’re accurate. Plus, if you run into a problem, use your SAT phone connection to Thomas Jefferson Kim at IEC. He can guide you using it as a GPS locator. He’s been briefed. In fact, this border crossing was devised by Harris before you touched down in Moscow. The only missing piece is how Pavel intends to get himself and grandson to the Billa store.”

  “Was all this in the packet Ambassador Duncan delivered? The one he read through.”
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  Austin nodded. “Faith, brother. You got to trust someone.” He reached under the photos and southwestern map of Russia to retrieve the city map.

  “This is where the Zil is waiting for you.” He checked his watch. “Go grab your gear and meet me in thirty outside.”

  “What’s the truck carrying, in case I’m asked?”

  “Boxes of Nestlé-Russia breakfast cereals,” Austin said. “Russians love cornflakes. Fresh clothing for you, Pavel, and Peter, their fake travel documents and fake passports. There’s a carve out between the cab and the boxes in the cargo area where the old man and his grandson can hide, if necessary. You enter it through an opening behind the passenger seat.”

  Garrett nodded.

  Austin handed him a set of truck keys.

  Ten Minutes Later, U.S. Embassy, IEC Living Quarters

  Brett Garrett tucked his IEC documentation papers, U.S. passport, and Russian work visa and concealed weapon permit into a gym bag. Next was the SAT phone and SIG Sauer pistol with extra ammo. He splashed water on his face and gulped down one of the pills he’d stolen the night before from Heidi Duncan’s private weight-loss stash. He held up his right hand to see if any tremors had set in. Not so far.

  The pills hadn’t given him as much relief as Suboxone, but it had stopped most of the sweating and curbed his urge to vomit. Garrett stepped from his room—and came face-to-face again with Gilbert Hardin and two of his IEC buddies waiting in the hallway.

  “You didn’t show last night after the birthday party,” Hardin said. “Time to play.”

  “Sorry, pal, I’m in a rush.”

  “You’ve already used that lame excuse,” one of Hardin’s pals sneered.

  “Listen, Garrett, I checked the duty roster and you aren’t on it,” Hardin said. “You’re ducking me.”

  Garrett lowered the gym bag on the tile floor. “In the interest of saving time, let’s say I let you sucker-punch me and we’ll call it square.”