Moving targets, p.5
Moving Targets, page 5
Kaplin threw back his head and laughed out loud, all the way from his gut. “In Japan the trains run on time; here it’s a wonder they run at all.” He was shaking his head, steam rising off his neck as if he were a locomotive in Siberia. “Now, fuck your mother, what’s this surprise you have for me?”
Sweeney had to laugh too, but he’d never felt more alone, more cut off from the real world … from his real world in the West … or more in mortal danger than he did just now. But then it was a job, after all. And he sure as hell hadn’t come to Moscow for the weather.
“Come on,” he said, turning and heading back the way he had come.
“Where are you taking me?”
“I got us an apartment. A safe house where we can meet, and where you can go if you need to run, or just relax. It’s not far from here. All I ask is that you be careful you don’t lead anyone to it.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t shit in my own nest,” Kaplin said. “Besides, your people are watching the place, right?”
Sweeney didn’t answer him, and the Russian didn’t press the issue.
The apartment was a half dozen blocks from the park’s north exit, on Dobryninskiy 1 Pereulok, one of four side streets of exactly the same name (just different numbers), near the Moskovsko-Leninskiy department store. The building was an ancient yellow stone structure of three stories, and the room that embassy housekeeping had found for them was on the top floor at the front. From the apartment they could keep tabs on what was happening below in the street, and if someone were to come in the front door, they had a good chance of escaping across the roofs.
It wasn’t foolproof, but then nothing was in Moscow, not even these days.
The apartment was poorly furnished and very poorly lit, but it had running water, a tiny gas water heater above the tin sink in the kitchenette, and a gas ring to heat tea water. There was no refrigerator or icebox, but this was winter, and besides, there would never be enough food in the place to spoil. Heat came mostly from up the stairs, which meant they had to leave the door open if they didn’t want to freeze, although someone at housekeeping had thoughtfully provided a Finnish-made electric heater. The cushions on the back of the couch could be removed to convert it into a bed, and there was some bedding stuffed in a cardboard box in one corner. The place smelled of unflushed toilet. The bathroom was at the end of the short hall.
There was a Metro station on the corner, but Sweeney cautioned Kaplin against ever using it. “Give yourself at least four blocks to make sure you’re coming in clean. If you’re ever in any doubt, even the slightest doubt, do not try to come in. This place could save your life one day.”
“And yours,” Kaplin said, going to the single window and slightly parting the filthy curtain. He studied the street for a few seconds, then let the curtain fall back as he turned around.
“We’ll be reasonably safe here for a while. Later, perhaps, we’ll have to move.”
Kaplin smiled. “I think that if you treat all your spies this poorly, you might not be in business much longer.”
“It’s not the Radisson, but this isn’t a lawyers’ convention either,” Sweeney said. He went into the kitchenette, got two glasses down from the shelf over the counter and a bottle of good vodka from beneath the sink, and from a wooden box propped against the wall took out a cardboard tray containing bread, some pickled fish in a small box, a few grams of caviar, and a tiny piece of good Swedish cheese. Russians could not drink without eating something.
He brought the stuff to the small, rickety table in front of the couch and motioned for Kaplin to take a seat. As the big Russian came away from the window, he stepped on a loose board that creaked, and he froze. For a long five seconds or so he stood listening, but when the building remained quiet he came to the table and accepted a glass of vodka.
“I’ll remember that one,” he said.
“No one lives beneath us,” Sweeney said. “No problem.”
“Ah, but here you always watch your floorboards as well as your friends … either can betray you when you least expect it.”
“Which is what we’re going to talk about, Anatoli Stepanovich, your friends.”
“How long have you been in the business?” Kaplin asked after his third glass of vodka. He’d eaten some of the bread, all of the fish, and most of the cheese.
“A long time.”
“How long?”
“Fifteen years.” Kaplin had not mentioned the CIA, but they both knew what they were talking about.
“University?”
“Minnesota, and then MIT for my master’s.”
“Subject?”
“Physics, mathematics. Double major.”
Kaplin looked at him with renewed interest. “A smart boy. Why didn’t you get your doctorate? Why didn’t you stick with it?”
“I wasn’t interested,” Sweeney said, which of course wasn’t the truth, and Kaplin chuckled. “I got married.”
“Still married to the same girl?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love her?”
“More now than on the day I married her.”
Kaplin poured himself another vodka. “Vitali Konstantinovich Boyarov, Igor Greshkinovich Gremiakin, and Mikhail Lukich Mukhin.”
“Who are these people?”
“Friends, acquaintances.”
“KGB?”
“They work for the government,” Kaplin said, cautiously.
“They … feel as I do.”
“Have you met as a group?”
“No.”
“Have you spoken with these men individually, then, recently?”
“Yes.”
“About me?” Sweeney asked.
“Ah, well.” Kaplin hesitated. “About you, yes. But by name? No. Only by principle. We have always talked merely principles. You understand, Richard, that this is a very big, very important step for these three.”
Sweeney nodded. “Are there others?”
Kaplin looked startled. “There could be.”
“Will you tell me about these men?” Sweeney asked. He wasn’t familiar with any of the names. They could have been anyone—even a figment of Kaplin’s imagination. It was one of the things they’d discussed with him at Langley. A staff psychologist who was an expert on why men became traitors to their country had cautioned that Kaplin could be insane.
“He might be suffering from what I call the Napoleon complex,” the psychologist had said. “He thinks he’s somebody he’s not, willing to give you information that he doesn’t have. It won’t necessarily mean he’s stupid, just that he might be insane.”
“How do I tell?”
“You don’t, at least not immediately, but you must be on your guard for it.”
“Not only could he be a KGB ringer, he could be nuts,” Sweeney said.
“Interesting, huh?” the psychologist said.
Not very, Sweeney thought.
“Boyarov works in the Special Service II Branch of the Komitet’s First Chief Directorate.”
“The counterintelligence division?”
“Yes. Gremiakin is the executive secretary of the direction of School One.”
School One was the KGB’s training base outside. of Moscow, very much like the CIA’s Farm at Camp Peary outside of Williamsburg.
“What about Mukhin?” Sweeney asked, holding his excitement in check. If this was true, they’d hit more than a gold seam; this was the fucking mother lode.
“Mukhin is an assistant foreign affairs adviser to the President.”
CIA Director Robert Vaughan, an intense look on his square-jawed face, was just leaving the Oval Office when Tyson got off the elevator. “Morning,” he mumbled in passing.
Tyson had noticed the Agency limousine at the west portico at nine. That had been a half hour ago. This morning’s intelligence briefing had run longer than normal.
The President’s appointments secretary, Ray Geller, stepped out of his office, a harried look on his pinched accountant’s face that turned to one of relief when he spotted Tyson.
“I just tried to call your office. He wants to squeeze you in right away. He’s got a nine forty-five that’s a must.”
“What’s up?” Tyson asked.
“I don’t know,” Geller said.
Tyson knocked once and entered the President’s study: The President, a tall, distinguished man with a quiet voice, was pouring himself a cup of coffee from a silver service. “Morning, Al, coffee?”
“No thanks, Mr. President,” Tyson said, crossing the room. The Oval Office had come as a surprise to him the first time he’d seen it. It was small. He didn’t notice now.
“Robert brought this over this morning,” the President said, handing Tyson a buff-colored file folder marked “Top Secret” top and bottom. “Read it. Tell me what you think.”
Tyson sat down and opened the folder to the first page of a brief, three-page report titled “MOHAWK.” The list of signatures on the promulgation page was very short.
He read it in five minutes. When he was done he closed the folder and looked up. He was impressed, but troubled. The President read that from his face.
“It hit me that way too. But what do you think their chances are?”
“It’s dangerous. If the CIA screws up over there, you’ll end up the villain, and what relations we’ve managed to salvage will be irreparably harmed.”
“We can’t ignore it.”
“No, Mr. President, that we cannot do. The question is, how far do we want to take this?”
“What happens if the Kremlin does turn up the heat?” the President asked. “Not because of this, but because of something else? Where would that place the information we’d get from MOHAWK?”
“At the head of the class,” Tyson said without hesitation. “If there’s any further fracturing of the Russian government, we’d need that information in a worse way.”
“Exactly my point, Al.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Our only real problem, then, as I see it, is making sure the operation goes without a hitch.”
“What have you got in mind, Mr. President?”
“Who have we got to send over there for a quick look? It would have to be someone bright, someone reliable, someone who wouldn’t stick his nose in where it didn’t belong.”
“Without first apologizing,” Tyson said. “Roland Clark. He’s on my staff. Used to work with me over at the Agency, so he knows the business as well as anyone.”
“Do you trust him?”
“Completely, Mr. President,” Tyson said.
“Keep your distance,” Radchenko warned his driver, Viktor Yakunin. They had just turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue from 19th Street and had come to within forty or fifty meters of the assassin, who was on foot. They had been tailing him since Georgetown. So far as Radchenko could tell, no one else was following him.
“Where is he going?” Yakunin grumbled half under his breath as he pulled over to the side of the busy street.
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he was going to see the White House. This is his first trip to the States.”
“The bloody fool,” Yakunin said.
Radchenko looked sharply at his driver. “Do you know who that man is?”
Yakunin shrugged. “Another field officer.”
“He is an assassin, Viktor Vladimirovich. And from what I am told, a very good one.”
Yakunin glanced at Radchenko. “What, that one? He looks like my uncle Dmitri.”
“That one has killed more than twenty people in his career. I think I would not want him to hear me call him names.”
Yakunin glanced from Radchenko to the nondescript-looking man on foot ahead of them. The assassin had stopped and was admiring the passing traffic.
“We don’t do that anymore,” he said.
Radchenko started to laugh, unable to help himself, and a woman in a passing car, seeing him that way, smiled.
It was well after midnight and Zimin’s legs ached as they often did if he sat in one position for too long. He’d been here forever, it seemed, and he needed sleep. But he thought they were finally getting close.
The key past the Finance Directorate’s rose was Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Minor. The first ten notes which defined the concerto’s theme were entered by the standard digital values used in most music synthesizers. Zimin had pirated one of the programs from the University of Moscow’s music department. He pushed the enter button.
WELCOME TO DIRECTORATE ONE FINANCE ACCESS
STATE YOUR MENU CHOICE
ALARM SEQUENCE IN PROGRESS
Zimin stared at the screen for a moment. Fuck your mother, but he was in! At least this far. Mukhin’s information was accurate.
“Once you’re in you’ll have ten seconds to secure your entry or you’ll be locked out, an alarm will sound, and they’ll put together an access review board immediately. You’ll never get back in. And sooner or later they’ll catch up with you. So you’d better be careful.”
Zimin entered the next sequence:
PAYMENT GREEN GRASS
FIRST FISCAL QUARTER 1992
Green Grass was the old name the KGB had used for its foreign currency transactions. Mukhin wasn’t sure that the program by that name was still in existence. But he thought it would be a starting point.
RESTRICTED ACCESS
BETA LEVEL AND ABOVE
IDENTIFICATION PLEASE
No alarm sequence now. He was in, but only just, still with no access to anything useful.
WITHDRAW REQUEST
LIST AUTHORIZED USERS BETA LEVEL AND ABOVE
The computer replied almost instantly:
RESTRICTED ACCESS
BETA LEVEL AND ABOVE
A moment later the rose appeared on the screen, and Zimin sat back. The KGB was hiding something, and it was very big. Even authorized users of Finance Directorate records were locked out. Beta level and above, whoever they were, held this little secret close to their vests.
No doubt they would kill to protect themselves, Zimin told himself. It was time to move with even more care now than ever before.
3
“THE BALL IS IN OUR COURT,” SWEENEY SAID TIREDLY. HE’D been going steadily for the twenty-four hours since he and Kaplin had met in Gor’kiy Park. “We’re going to have to come up with a list of prioritized questions that won’t reveal the gaps in our knowledge, and get them to Kaplin. It’ll be up to him to pass them on to his people, and get their replies.”
“Or the answers that the KGB will manufacture for us,” Pool said.
“Naturally we’ll include some tag questions to which we already have the answers … but answers they don’t know we have.”
Pool shook his head. “It’s their game, Dick. Hell, they practically invented it.”
“Then we’ll have to be extra careful,” Sweeney said. They were alone in Pool’s office. It was after ten in the evening. “But this is just the start, the tip of the iceberg. Kaplin’s is only the first name on the list. There are others I’m going to try to develop. We can’t let this opportunity pass.”
“Something you’ve already taken care of,” Pool said. “I never thought this would happen. Not of you.”
“I have my orders too, Kelly.”
“I’m talking about your cable report to Langley last night before I had a chance to even read over your shoulder.”
“I tried to get to you, but you were gone, goddammit. What the hell was I supposed to do, sit on the biggest find to come along since … God knows when?”
“You could have made more of an effort, is all I’m saying,” Pool said petulantly. “It’s all I’ve ever asked of my people, besides loyalty: that they make an effort.”
Sweeney was suddenly sorry for his old friend. The man, like so many before him, had lost touch. Either it was Moscow or it was the business itself. Either way a lot of intelligence officers left the service burned out.
“I’m sorry,” Sweeney said.
“Am I being cut out here?” Pool asked bluntly. “It’s all I want to know. Have you been given instructions … ?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then if this is still my station, I want to make something perfectly clear. That is, we’re going to have to move with caution, and I don’t give a rat’s ass what Langley has to say about it. They’re not out here in the field like us. First off we’re going to make damned sure that your feed to Kaplin is exactly what you say it will be. We’re not going to throw out the baby with the bathwater. And secondly, we’re definitely going to hold off with your other contacts until we get a good handle on Kaplin and his crowd. It’s the only way that makes sense from where I’m sitting.”
“I agree,” Sweeney said.
“Even a small percentage of something is better than one hundred percent of nothing.”
The analogy didn’t work, but Sweeney nodded. “You’re right. We’ll get the committee together and work out the scenario. Langley will have to be put in the loop, though.”
“I know that,” Pool said. “Tomorrow. Right now it’s late and you look like hell.”
“I can’t look half as bad as I feel. I think I’ll go home and get a few hours’ sleep.”
“I don’t want to see you back here until noon. I’ll set our first meeting for then.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sweeney got up, but at the door Pool stopped him. “It’s too hard a business to go it alone, Dick. Just remember that.”
“Yes, sir,” Sweeney said, and he left the office.
When Roland Clark was nearly four years old, and had not yet spoken his first word, everyone was concerned that there was something the matter with him; either he was retarded or his vocal cords had somehow been damaged at birth. But one afternoon his father had looked down at his young son and asked him why the hell he hadn’t said anything yet. Roland replied in a clear, strong voice: “I’ve got nothing to say, Daddy. Nothing at all.”
