Kremlin storm, p.11
Kremlin Storm, page 11
part #4 of Sokolov Series
“Okay, I’m open to suggestions. Something exclusive and low-key.”
“Well, there’s this place called Blumenfeld. Very private. It’s not famous, but you won’t find a better chill-out spot. The atmosphere is unreal, in a good way, if you know what I mean. None of the crazy, drug-induced debauchery seen at other clubs.”
“I’m not after the wild stuff, only a strict door policy against the Polizei.”
“It’s almost impossible to get into. But once you do, you could spend the rest of your life there.”
“I’d rather not, but we’ll see about that. What’s the address?”
“Somewhere in Friedrichshain. The club took up a redeveloped socialist building of some sort,” she explained.
Sokolov knew his way around Berlin, especially East Berlin, which the district of Freidrichshain had been part of. Their father taking him and Constantine on weekend trips to the capital made the highlights of his childhood memories. Twenty minutes later, he arrived at the club’s location, hidden away in a former industrial area off Karl-Marx-Allee.
The urban landscape of Berlin may have changed since the reunification, but the communist legacy still reared its ugly head in the form of God-awful street names and lifeless architecture and planning.
The owners of Blumenfeld had done their best to mask it. The blocky edifice was bathed in a purple neon glow and covered with layers of graffiti.
A queue of about fifty people had formed outside the entrance. A team of bouncers let some clubbers in twos and threes, and denied entry to others, seemingly at random. The head bouncer had the build and all the charm of a bulldozer. A mountain of a man, well over two meters tall, sporting facial piercings in the shape of snake fangs jutting below his lower lip and a bull ring in his nose, which made him look even more formidable. As Sokolov parked the scooter and hung the helmet on the handlebar, he glimpsed the action at the front door. The bouncer was kicking a visitor who’d attempted to go ahead of the line. The young man, clad in a maxi skirt, crashed to the ground. Another tough-looking, mohawked bouncer dragged him to the end of the queue, where a couple of his beer-toting buddies picked him up and they departed, muttering obscenities.
“We’re early,” Asiyah noted. “The perfect time to get here is four a.m.”
“We can’t wait, and I’m not too keen on dealing with these creeps.”
“I got this. Trust me.”
Before Sokolov could say anything, Asiyah cut in front of the line and approached the hulking brute.
Sokolov followed her, calculating the most efficient way to dispatch the bouncer.
“Hey, Otto,” Asiyah said.
The giant broke into a grin of recognition and replied, “Asiyah! Long time no see.”
Then he eyed Sokolov suspiciously.
“He’s with me,” she said, winking.
The bouncer nodded approval, waving them inside Blumenfeld.
As they walked through the entrance, Sokolov could hardly contain his surprise.
“Otto?”
“He’s a good friend,” she said by means of explanation. “And so is Timo, the club’s founder.”
Otto slammed the door shut behind them.
They stepped into a tight corridor. It was pitch-black. A cacophony of electronic noise was blaring from the sound system. Although far from claustrophobic, Sokolov found the experience disturbing as he treaded in the darkness.
Then he heard a soft cry from Asiyah and the next thing he knew, he himself was in free fall.
A trapdoor had opened under their feet and they went sliding down a chute into the club proper, situated in the enormous basement.
Once they landed there, their senses were assaulted by pulsing light of every conceivable color.
As if in slow motion, hit by the flickering flashes, two or three hundred people were jerking spasmodically on the dance floor.
“Down the rabbit hole,” she said as he helped Asiyah to her feet. “Come on, let’s go.”
Following her, Sokolov waded through a sea of humanity which throbbed to a thumping techno beat.
Crossing the underground floor, they reached a stairway which led back to ground level. Behind a row of doors were the club’s darkrooms. A different kind of music played here, more like psychedelic trance. This part of Blumenfeld was cast in a muted red glow. Asiyah guided him into a vacant room, so dimly lit as to render the surroundings barely discernible. Sokolov sank onto a creaky sofa which was the only piece of furniture in an otherwise empty room, with no other doors or windows. He’d been to a strip club in the sleaziest neighborhood of Paris, but it couldn’t match Blumenfeld for weirdness. The surreal use of space, lighting, and acoustics produced an almost hypnotic effect. Only now did he realize how exhausted he was, mentally and physically. After the stress of the last few hours and days, even a worn sofa provided comfort. He felt his muscles relax. The melodic wave reached a crest and swelled in another phase of build-up. The outside world didn’t seem to exist. He was drifting toward a state of semi-consciousness. In the semi-darkness, Asiyah sat beside him on the sofa and before he knew it, her mouth found his. She began kissing him voraciously, her fingers caressing his face and then tugging at the buttons of his shirt.
The dopamine rush in his brain was exhilarating.
He snapped out of it, disengaging from her craving lips and pushing her away.
“No. Stop it, Asiyah.”
She arched her eyebrows, unbelieving that he’d rejected her.
“But why? Isn’t that what you wanted? I thought you were doing it all for me. I thought you loved me.”
“I do my job because it makes me the man that I am. Love? You’re too cold and calculating to know what it means.”
“But I do love you. I only want to be with you. If only we could make it to Switzerland together, I’ve got enough money there to last us a lifetime.”
“Don’t expect to buy my loyalty just because you’ve sold yours to Frolov.”
“I’ve done no such thing!”
“What were you doing at the hotel, then? How did you obtain the false passport in the name of Erzana Mulić?”
“I have no idea who that is,” she said defiantly.
“More lies.”
He extracted the laptop from his pouch, powered it on, and opened the image of her Serbian passport for proof.
“Where’d you get that from?” she demanded.
“I pried it from the dead hands of Colonel Lisovsky, the GRU officer who ran the whole operation.”
Her face looked troubled. She was cornered and she knew it.
“All right. From now on I promise I’ll only tell you the truth. Everything I know. No games. Ask me anything you want.”
Sokolov replied, “I don’t have to. It’s all right here. The hard drive contains gigabytes of data. I wonder how many files mention your name? Anyway, it’s up to the boys in Virginia or Maryland to dig out. Cold, hard facts on your Kremlin connection and your involvement in today’s terrorist attack.”
“You’re working for the Americans now?” she exclaimed.
“Not for them. Not even alongside them. I’ll just hand over the laptop and walk away. They’ll carry on from here.”
“You can’t do this to me.”
“Give me a reason not to.”
“You must believe me, Eugene! I’m the deceived, not the deceiver!” She sobbed. “I was told to meet with Ivanov to discuss an offer. It was a set-up.”
“Who’s Ivanov? The man they abducted?”
“Dmitry Ivanov, Nobel Laureate in Physics.”
“What do they want him for? Mercury-18?”
“You do know quite a lot.”
“Only that it has something to do with weather manipulation, earthquakes, and Tesla.”
“The short answer is yes.”
“And the long answer?”
She sighed. “Even with my degree and all, I’m not sure if I can explain it to you.”
“Try me.”
“Okay. Well, Mercury-18 is based on Tesla’s discovery of longitudinal scalar waves. By around 1960, Soviet scientists had weaponized his electromagnetic research, and they spent the next thirty years advancing it. The so-called Tesla howitzers are actually interferometers which operate by tapping into scalar EM waves. Hostile weather engineering is one of their earliest capabilities. The electromagnetic blasts can be used in either heating or cooling mode, thus altering the weather at any given target. Earthquakes, on the other hand, can be triggered by directing scalar energy at seismic fault lines. It’s a lot more complex, so this stage of Mercury-18 stalled until the Soviet Union collapsed. But Dmitry Ivanov was the Mercury-18 project leader during the final testing phase—which he never had the chance to complete.”
“So now he’s been offered another opportunity. What if he turns it down?”
“In any case, Mercury-18’s development will continue where it left off in 1991, which still presents a massive head start over the West. You see, behind the scenes Ivanov has been a staunch advocate of scalar weapons parity. He’s lobbied for the creation of an EM defense system to balance out Moscow’s advantage. His disappearance has virtually squashed any chance of the U.S. catching up with Russia any time soon.”
“And coercing Ivanov to work for the Kremlin will end the new arms race before it even started,” Sokolov surmised. “Do you know where they’ve taken him?”
“No. I don’t. And I have no idea what their next step is. That’s it. Make of that what you will,” she concluded. “Are you still going to turn me over to the Americans?”
He sighed. “Asiyah, there’s no easy way out of this mess for you. My priority is getting out of Germany. You can stay here, or follow along, or run off to Switzerland or any other country from Austria to Zimbabwe. But you must realize that you’ll get caught eventually, either by the Americans or the Russians. Are you ready to live the rest of your life as a fugitive? It’s up to you. Right now, I’m just interested in survival.”
“You’re right, of course. There’s only one side that’s marked me for death, and it’s not the U.S. I’d be willing to cooperate under their witness protection program. It has its perks. The CIA is nowhere near as bad as the SVR or—Allah forbid—the GRU, so I hope you can broker a deal.”
“You have an entitled mindset, princess. With government agencies, you always get the worst end of the bargain. I don’t make promises I can’t keep. Let’s see if we’re still alive by this time tomorrow. Until then, we’ll have to improvise.”
There wasn’t an awful lot he could do at all right now. He hated the futility, but he knew that if there was one person he could depend on, it was his brother. It might prove too big a challenge for Constantine, but they were short on options. He raked his memory for his father’s old contacts he could turn to, but came up empty. Unless Constantine could figure out an escape plan, they were screwed. Time was running out. Sooner or later, the German authorities would zero in on him and Asiyah. And then only God knew what would happen next. The Germans didn’t want any trouble, so a hush-hush extradition back to Russia seemed probable, right into the hands of the FSB and the cellars of the Lubyanka. He didn’t completely trust Hilton, either. Their partnership had been pretty one-sided so far.
A notification popped up. Incoming message. From the moment he opened it, he knew they had a break-through. As he read it, he felt a wave of renewed hope and said a silent prayer of thanks.
“What is it?” Asiyah asked.
“A lifeline. Someone’s agreed to bail us out and take us to a safe house—in exchange for information. The rendezvous is a few blocks away from here. Are you on board?”
“The price seems reasonable. I’m in. How soon should we get going?”
“Now. There’s no time to spare. Come on.”
He crammed the laptop into the bag and started toward the exit.
“Nobody’s leaving,” boomed a deep male voice.
Outlined by the dim light, Otto’s imposing shape filled the doorway as another man stormed into the darkroom ahead of him. The intruder boasted a trendy quiff haircut and a satin shirt, buttons undone to reveal a waxed chest.
“What nonsense. You want to party to the end,” the man said. “Can I offer you some booze? Or maybe some coke?”
Sokolov could wager that he wasn’t talking about the soda drink.
“Timo, my dear,” Asiyah said, “you run the best club in Berlin, but we really must go.”
His outstretched arm barred her path.
“I insist that you remain here as my guests. Or else you’ll have to deal with Otto. The only thing he’s better at than keeping people out of this place is keeping them in.” Beneath the arrogant tone, there was menace in his voice.
“Too much hospitality can get annoying, even at your club.”
His mouth twisted, baring his whitened teeth.
“I’m sorry, Asiyah. I’m so sorry. But you know that Blumenfeld wouldn’t last long without rich Russian clients. One of them told me to be on the lookout for your pretty face. I’m simply returning a favor. I just got off the phone with a man from the Russian embassy who should arrive here any minute now. And afterwards … what happens in Blumenfeld, stays in Blumenfeld.”
Instantly, Asiyah slapped a stinging open-hand strike across Timo’s face that snapped his head sideways. Bleeding red gashes appeared on his left cheek as if he’d been clawed by a tiger. Then Asiyah’s rigid backhand chop to the throat cut off his miserable cry and sent him sprawling on the floor.
A split second before Otto could respond, Sokolov swiped at the bull piercing in his nose and ripped it out. As the brute clasped his blood-spewing snout in complete shock, Sokolov drove a fierce upside-down-fisted ura-tsuki punch into his solar plexus. The explosion of pain caused Otto to double over. Sokolov whacked the nape of his neck with an elbow, striking the cerebellum, and the behemoth bouncer toppled next to his boss.
Sokolov grabbed Asiyah’s hand and together they ran out of the darkroom.
“There has to be another way out of this hellhole,” he said. “I’m not climbing up that damned chute.”
“The fire escape!”
They rushed through the door marked Ausgang. Out in the street, they were met by driving rain. They rounded the corner of the building, running toward the waiting Vespa.
Otto’s mohawked henchman was standing next to it, keeping watch.
“Get away from my scooter!” Sokolov warned.
Instead of heeding his warning, the bouncer launched himself at Sokolov, throwing a wild punch.
The battle was short-lived. Sokolov dodged his attack and countered with a spinning backfist that battered the hood in the face, teeth flying. The bouncer hit the ground as if scythed, and stayed there. By the time his buddies showed up, the Vespa would be long gone.
The scooter charged through the nocturnal city. In the distance, the Berlin TV tower jutted out like a beacon guiding Sokolov to Alexanderplatz, making it easy to navigate to the neighboring locality of Prenzlauer Berg where their stopover lay. The Vespa would reach it within minutes. The journey to the CIA safe house itself would take far longer. He hadn’t told Asiyah that the safe house—or rather, black site—was located somewhere in Poland.
28
German Kanzlerin Augusta Müller felt stabbing pain as if her head were being squeezed by a vise. She massaged her temples as she left her desk and approached the tall window overlooking the Reichstag and beyond, the Brandenburg Gate. Located on the bank of the River Spree, the postmodern Chancellery was a cubic structure of white concrete walls, glass, and irregular-shaped columns. On the top floor, eight levels above the 19,000 square meters of government headquarters, was a special apartment reserved for the Chancellor. She did not frequent the 200-square-meter flat, preferring the comfort of her private home to the utilitarian space taken up mostly by the two large briefing rooms, with only 28 square meters left for the unused lounge, kitchen, and south-facing bedroom. But tonight the occasion was far from normal. Augusta Müller was facing her biggest crisis as Bundeskanzlerin. And she was alone. She needed the kind of seclusion that only the Kanzlerapartment provided.
She’d just finished reading the urgent, top-secret BND brief on the killings at Palais Pannwitz. The palace had become a slaughterhouse.
Count de Grenier was dead. Harry Richardson, dead. Forty-four other dignitaries from around the world, brutally murdered.
The world would never learn about the heinous crime. It would have to remain as secret as the Brandenburg Club meeting itself.
There would be no day of mourning, no media coverage, no #IchbinEinBerliner hashtags on social media.
Even the Bundestag members would have to be kept in the dark. The very coalition which had backed her for another term as Chancellor, despite Russia’s efforts to sow discord and meddle in the German parliamentary elections.
Already a plan was set into motion to cover up the sudden disappearance of the slain Brandenburg Club members. A heart attack. A suicide. A boating accident. Death by an assortment of other natural causes and tragic mishaps. Each announcement timed days or even weeks apart to arouse no suspicion.
And above all, the terrorists had to be hunted down and exterminated without public knowledge. As soon as possible, before they could carry out a follow-up attack.
No other world leader had been made aware of the Schlosshotel wipeout. Augusta Müller was about to phone the U.S. President and inform him when an unexpected call came through to her.
It was from the Kremlin, said the Kanzleramt operator.
She answered it.
“Good evening, Frau Chancellor,” said Russian President Saveliy Frolov. His adequate command of English eliminated the necessity of an interpreter.
“Good evening, Herr Frolov,” said Müller coolly.
“Please accept my condolences in relation to tonight’s despicable act of terror in Grunewald.” Frolov’s voice sounded raspy.
How could he possibly know? she thought desperately. It was inconceivable, unless …
During the reunification, West German intelligence had recovered the names of Stasi officers and agents working throughout East Germany.
