NOTE: This was written for entertainment purposes only.
They drove into the sunset, east from the Russian capital. Traffic had picked up in Moscow since their last adventure here, and you could use the center lane in the wide avenues. They continued driving until the scenery was changed from steel and concrete to green and leafy birch trees, and fields of chamomile, undoubtedly the familiar sights in the Russian countryside.
The first thing they saw was a thirty year-old man living alone with his herd and a rifle to fend-off wolves. This citizen has lived alone since his parents died when he was twelve years of age, quite forgotten by his relatives, known to exist by a few shopkeepers in a village thirty kilometers to the south, and his mental state reflected his long-term isolation. He managed to shoot three or four wolves per year, and he kept the pelts as any herdsman/hunter might, but with a difference. First he took the pelts, and weighing them down with stones, set them in the small river that ran near his hut.
In Western literature, there is the well-known story of Jason and the Argonauts, and their heroic quest for the Golden Fleece. It was not known until recently that the legend of the artifact sought was quite real; the tribesmen of Asia Minor had set the skins of their sheep in their streams to catch the gold dust being washed down from the deposits higher up, changing the pale wool fibers into something almost magical in appearance.
It was no different here. The wolf pelts they found hanging inside the hut looked on first inspection to be sculptures by Renaissance masters, or even artisans of the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. They were evenly coated, and they found that each of the pelts weighed a good sixty kilograms, and there were thirty-four of them! Sitting down with him over a necessary bottle of vodka, they learned that his name was Sergei Lyukashev, that he'd fought against the terrorists in the Second Chechen War as a sniper, and remarkably, was twice a Hero of the Russian Federation for his marksmanship, mainly in the battles around Sverdlov and the Chechnyan capital Grozny. A somewhat grateful nation allowed him to return to his ancestral lands---he was, it turned out, descended from well-to-do Russians who'd come to Siberia in the nineteenth century---where he'd be forgotten by the bureaucrats who never fully wondered much where the reindeer meat eaten by the locals came from, or who might be cashing his checks to buy 7.62x52mmR ammunition for his Dragunov sniper rifle. Sergei Lyukashev knew the value of the gold he found, but he'd never spent the any of it, as he found his solitary life quite satisfactory.
Sergei Lyukashev first broke the silence. "Who exactly are we waiting for?"
"You'll see." The lieutenant of Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, the Russian secret service, replied.
This would be a very important evening, Reginald Agincourt thought. Yeah, sure, he'd banged Esmeralda De la Vega the night before, and she seemed to have liked it, but now that she'd have time to think it over, would her reaction be the same? Or would she reflect that he'd plied her with liquor and taken advantage of her? Agincourt had dated and bedded his share of women, but he did not confuse amorous successes with any sort of understanding of the female psyche.
He sat on the bar of a medium-sized restaurant, different form the last one, smoking a cigarette, which was new for the CIA officer. He wasn't coughing, though his first two had made the room seem to spin around some. Yeah, he thought, sure, and here I am wondering if my girl will show up, and she's already nineteen minutes late. Agincourt waved to the bartender and ordered another scotch. It was a Japanese brand, drinkable, not overly expensive, and when you got down to it, booze was booze, right?
Are you coming, Emmie? the CIA agent mumbled. Like most bars in the world, this one had a mirror behind the glasses and bottles. He examined his face quizzically, pretending it was someone else's.
It's cool, buddy, he asked in the air,
women are always late. Maybe she's working late, or the traffic is heavy, or some friend in the office needed her to come over and help move that goddamned furniture. Agincourt rubbed his eyes.
What the hell are you worrying about, asshole? Just because you might not be laid tonight? Jesus fucking Christ.
As it turned out, Agincourt was so entranced with his thoughts that he didn't see Esmeralda come in. He felt a gentle tap on his back, and turned to see---
---she wore the radiant smile, pleased with herself at having surprised him, the beaming brown eyes that crinkled at the corners with the pleasure of the moment.
"I am sorry to be late," she said rapidly. "My boss needed me to transcribe some things, and he kept me in the office late."
"I must talk to this old man," Agincourt said archly, hauling himself erect on the barstool.
"He is, as you say, an old man, and he does not listen very well. Perhaps age has impeded his hearing."
No, probably the old fucker doesn't want to listen, Agincourt did not say. Esmeralda's boss was probably like bosses anywhere, well past the age when he looked for the ideas of others.
"So, what do you want for dinner?" Agincourt asked, and got the best possible answer.
"I'm not hungry," with sparkles in the brown eyes to affirm what did she want. Agincourt tossed off the last of his drink, stubbed out his cigarette, and walked out with her.
"I have the beginnings of an operational plan," the notorious terrorist Dietrich Gunther said.
"You do not intend to bomb Israel, then?" Gunther's colleague Ibrahim Al-Nadeb asked. He was the one who would approve or disapprove the plan. He would, however, listen to his German friend. "Can you tell me of it yet?"
"Yes." Gunther did so.
"Interesting. What of security?"
"One problem is our friend, Reginald Agincourt. He knows too much." Gunther said. "He's far too greedy. Didn't I warn you about that pig?"
"I would have thought that killing him carries more risks than rewards."
"Previously, it appears so, but times have changed."
"Go on." Ibrahim was all ears.
"Discovery of his body will force the police to act, and that is also a problem. He must disappear."
"How will you do it?"
Gunther explained briefly. "It will also validate the reliability of our people for that part of the operation. I'll leave the details to my friends."
"Trickery? One cannot be overly careful in an enterprise like this one."
"If you wish, a videotape of the elimination? Something unequivocal?"
"It is barbaric," Al-Nadeb said, "but regrettably necessary."
"I will take care of that when I go to Cyprus."
"You'll need security for that trip, my friend."
"Yes, thank you. I think I will." Gunther knew what that meant. If his capture by authorities looked imminent---well, he was in a profession that entailed serious risks, and Al-Nadeb had to be careful. Gunther's own operational proposal made that all the more imperative...
...and Ibrahim was right, even if he was a patronizing son of a bitch.
"Good evening, Comrade General," Lyukashev said, puling himself to attention.
Mikhail Kirilenko had felt guilt at coming to see this former soldier so early in the morning, but he'd heard the day before that the retired sniper was not the one to waste daylight. And so he wasn't, the general saw.
"You kill wolves," Kirilenko observed, seeing the gleaming pelts hanging on the wall of his rough cabin.
"And bears, but when you gild the pelts, they grow too heavy," Lyukashev agreed, fetching tea for his guests.
"These are amazing," Kirilenko's aide-de-camp said, touching one of the wolf pelts.
"It's an amusement for a retired sniper," Lyukashev said, lighting a cigarette.
General Kirilenko looked at his rifles, the new black polymer-resined Kalashnikov AK-103, and the 1962-era
Snayperskaya Vintovka Dragunova---Dragunov sniper rifle.
"How many with this one?" Kirilenko asked.
"Wolves? Bears?"
"Chechen rebels," the general clarified, with coldness in his voice.
"I stopped counting at forty, Comrade General. That was before Sverdlov. There were many more after that. I could not recall how many, but truth be told, I can still remember their faces, right here in my head." Lyukashev grinned.
"You have the look of a soldier, and a good one." Kirilenko sipped his tea, served properly in a clear glass with a metal holder.
"I served in my time," Lyukashev replied, "First in Sverdlov, then on the long walk to Grozny."
I bet you did walk all the way, too, the general thought. This wizened Lyukashev bastard had stared death in the face and spat at it, trained to do so, probably, by his life in these woods. He'd grown up with bears and wolves as enemies---as nasty as the terrorists from Chechnya had been, at least they didn't eat you---and so had been accustomed to wagering his life on his eye and nerve. Soldiers might admire their own snipers, might value them for their skills, but you could never say "comrade" to a man who hunted men as though they were animals---because on the other side of the line might be another such man who wanted to hunt you. Of all the enemies, that was the one you loathed and feared the most, because it became personal to see another man through a telescopic sight, to see his face, pull the trigger, and take his life as a deliberate act against one man,
even gazing at his face when the bullet struck. Lyukashev had been one of those, a hunter of individual men. And he'd probably never lost a minute's sleep over it. Some men were just born into it, and Sergei Lyukashev was one of them. With a few hundred thousand of such men, a general could conquer an entire world, but they were too rare for that...
...and maybe that was a good thing, the general mused.
"If my memory serves me correct, you served in the Military Tribunal, right?"
"That is true."
"Well, in that case, I have come here to ask you a favor," Kirilenko said. "We need men like you to serve in the militia."
Lyukashev was dumbstruck. "What? Is the general joking? I'm a soldier, a sniper at that. I fail to see why the militia would need me."
"Terrorist activities are increasing at an alarming rate," the FSB lieutenant said.
"The FSB needed a man with sniping and countersniping skills. They have come to me, and I have come to you." the general explained.
"And why a sniper?" Lyukashev said while staring at the FSB lieutenant. "And why not him instead?"
The FSB officer replied, "Intelligence reports that the terrorists were trained by a former sniper of the Russian Army. And that same person is former KGB, which, you may know, are quite slippery under surveillance."
Mikhail Kirilenko added, "We do hope that we can expect you to serve the motherland one more time."
A long pause. "I'll think about it."
"When was the last time someone told you how good a lover you are?"
"I sure don't hear it in the Agency." Agincourt was speaking on the top of Esmeralda's head, which nestled on his chest. Her left arm was wrapped around his torso, while his left hand stroked her blond hair. "Not in the Press Room either, dear."
"Well, you're hearing it from me."
"Thank you, Emmie." Both had a good laugh. Esmeralda moved up to kiss him, dragging her breasts along his chest to do so. "Reg, you don't know what you mean to me."
"Oh, I think I might."
De la Vega shook her head. "All those dry years. Never had the time. Been very busy with work."
"Well, I hope I was worth waiting for, sweetie."
"You were, and you are." She rolled over, resting on her head on his shoulder and drawing his hand across her chest until it rested on a convenient spot. His other hand found a similar place, and her hands held his in place.
Esmeralda brought one of his hands to her face and kissed it. "You know, at times like this, I really miss cigarettes."
"Smoke after sex?" he asked with a harder embrace.
"When you make love to me, I smoke during sex," she turned to stare into his eyes.
"Maybe I should think about relighting the fire?"
"They say," Esmeralda purred, moving to kiss him again, "They say being an agent is drop-dead sexy."
"I do my best, dear."
Half an hour later, De la Vega decided that it was true. She was starting to love him. Then she wondered what he felt for her.
"It is a small thing, and if it is necessary nothing more needs to be said," Erwin Keitel replied to the question.
"And the men?"
"I have what I need, and they are reliable. All have worked overseas, mainly in Africa. All are experienced."
"Reliability is important." Gunther reminded him.
"I know that, Dietrich." Keitel assured.
"How soon can you do it?"
"Five days---I'd prefer that we take longer, but I am prepared to move quickly. The problem, of course, is disposing of the body in a suitable manner."
Gunther nodded. That was something he'd never had to worry about.
"How will I deliver the DVD to you?"
"Someone will meet you there. Not me, someone else. Stay at the same hotel two weeks from today. You will be met. Conceal the disc in a book."
"Very well," Erwin Keitel thought Gunther was overdoing things. Cloak-and-dagger was such a game that amateurs enjoyed playing it more often than the professionals, for whom it was merely the job. Why not simply put the thing in a box and wrap it in plastic like a pirated DVD copy?
"I will soon need funding."
Gunther handed over an envelope, "A hundred thousand Euros."
"That will do nicely. Two weeks from today." Keitel left Gunther to pay the bill and walked off.
Gunther ordered another beer, staring off to sea, cobalt blue under a clear sky. Ships were passing out on the horizon---one was a naval vessel, whose he couldn't tell at that distance, and the rest were simply merchant men plying their trade from one unknown port to another.
On a day like this, a warm sun and cool ocean breeze. Not far away was a beach of powdery white sand where children and lovers could enjoy the water. He thought of his wife and his own children. No one passing by could tell from his face. The overt emotions of his loss were behind him. He'd wept and raged enough to exorcise them, but within him were the higher emotions of cold fury and revenge. So fine a day it was, and he had no one with whom to enjoy it. Whatever days might come later would find him just as alone. There would be no other family for him. His wife was arrested several years ago by the FBI for, what? For mistaking her for a terrorist? Just because she was a Palestinian and she disliked the Israelis? She disliked the Israelis so much that she threw a Molotov cocktail in front of that Israeli Embassy in Berlin. It was the American paranoia that literally tortured his wife by pulling her fingernails out to admit a crime she did not commit. She was not a terrorist, but the American labeling machine did so. It was that same American paranoia that made his wife commit suicide in a prison cell. His three-and four-year old daughters were forcefully taken over by Social Services, thinking that their biological parents were "evil" enough to make the girls a detriment to society. He would be alone for the remainder of his life. It was not a pleasant thought. No love, no children, no future. Around him the terrace bar was almost about half-full of people, mainly Europeans, mainly on vacation with their families, smiling and laughing as they drank their beer or wine or any other local concoctions, thinking ahead to the entertainments the night might hold, the intimate dinners, and the cool cotton sheets that would follow, the laughter and the affection---all the things that the world had denied Dietrich Gunther.
He hated them all, sitting there alone, his eyes sweeping over the scene as he might have done a zoo, watching the animals. Dietrich detested them for their laughter and their smiles...and their futures. It wasn't fair. He'd had a purpose in life, a goal to strive for. Pointless though their lives might have been, they had the happiness that life had denied to the solitary man sitting in the shade of a white umbrella, staring out to sea again and sipping his beer. It was not fair, not the least bit fair. He had devoted his life that he'd hoped to give welfare, while he had less than nothing.
Except his mission.
Dietrich Gunther decided that he would not lie to himself on this issue any more than he did on others. He hated them. Hated them all. If he didn't have future, why should they? If happiness was a stranger to him, why should it be their companion? He hated them because they had rejected him, his wife, Ibrahim Al-Nadeb, and all the rest who fought injustice and oppression. In doing that, they have chosen the bad over good---and for that, one was damned. He was more than they were, Gunther knew, he was better than they could ever hope to be. He could look down on them all, he still tried to believe, was for him alone to decide. If some of them was hurt, that was too bad. They were not really people. They were empty shadows of what could have been people if they'd lived lives of purpose. They had not cast him out, they cast themselves out, seeking the happiness that came from...whatever lives they led. The Lazy Way. Like cattle. Gunther imagined them, heads down in feeding troughs, making contented barnyard noises while he surveyed them. If some of them had to die, should it trouble him? Not at all, Gunther decided.
The bed, an antique with a white chenille spread, was awash in moonlight. Agincourt pulled back the covers and laid Esmeralda down. She didn't resist when he unwrapped her from the blanket, then divested her of her bathrobe.
He stretched out beside her, making the bed sag in a soft portentous squeak of springs, and threw the covers off the end of the mattress. That done, he lay on his back, and rolled Esmeralda on top of him and kissed her.
She was lost, even then. The kiss sent fire streaking through her, and the size of his erection, pressed between their bellies, took her breath away.
Agincourt found Esmeralda's breast, teased the nipple with the tip of his tongue.
"Oh, God," she moaned, pressing him closer with both hands.
He enjoyed her with an exuberance that made her hips dance in the mattress, they reached down to tease her in a greater frenzy. When he put two fingers inside her, all the while caressing her most sensitive place with the pad of his thumb, she came in a quick dizzying spin.
He reached her bellybutton, and explored it with the tip of his tongue. She knew for sure, then, that things were going to get more intense, and she trembled with anticipation. "I mean," he drawled, "that you're going to give up a lot more than one little squeak before I get through with you. That was.."---he moved lower, tasted her with his tongue, and she jumped as if she straddled an electric fence.
"Reg..." she gasped.
He tongued her, holding her hips, positioning for pleasure. Her pleasure. Sensations that were driving her every brain cell crazy. Not caring in the world except the intense sensation...
...so intense that she did not hear the audible creaking of the bedroom door.
The courier arrived from Cyprus right on schedule, handing off his package to another man at one of five pre-selected transfer points, all of which had been under surveillance for twelve hours. The second man walked two blocks and started up his Suzuki GSX-R1000 motorcycle, tearing off into the countryside just as fast as he could in an area where motorcyclists were all certifiably mad. Two hours later, he delivered the package, certain that he had not been followed, and kept going another thirty minutes before circling back to his point of origin.
Dietrich Gunther took the package and was annoyed to see that it was to all appearances a DVD copy---Band of Brothers--- rather than the hollowed-out book that he requested. Perhaps Erwin was sending a message along with the disc. Gunther inserted it in a player and switched it on, catching the first few minutes of the mini-series. Soon, he realized that Keitel's message was on what intelligence professionals really did. He fast-forwarded through ninety minutes of the film before the picture changed.
What?
"Who are you?" an off-camera voice asked harshly.
"I don't know who the fuck you guys are, but---" The rest was just a scream. The equipment used was just an electrical cord ripped off from a lamp, the insulation trimmed off the free end to expose a few centimeters of copper. Few understood just how effective crude instruments could be, especially if the user possessed some degree of sophistication.
Reginald Agincourt screamed as though his throat would split from the effort. He'd already bitten through his lower lip in previous efforts to keep silent. The only good thing about using electricity was that it wasn't especially bloody, just noisy.
"You must understand that you are being foolish. Your courage is impressive, but wasted here. Courage has use only when there is hope of rescue."
"What drugs do we have?" another voice asked.
"A rather good tranquilizer. Now?"
"Now. Not too much."
"Very well." The man went off-camera, then returned with a syringe. He grasped the victim's upper arm, then injected the drug into a vein inside the elbow. It took three minutes before the CIA agent regained consciousness, just enough for the rush of drugs to assault the higher brain functions.
Agincourt's eyes went wide as a small-caliber pistol appeared, was placed against his chest, and fired. The camera withdrew a bit to show more of the room. A plastic sheet covered the floor to catch blood and other droppings under the metal chair. The bullet wound was speckled with black powder marks and bulged outward from the intrusion of gun-gasses below the skin. There wasn't much bleeding. Heart wound never produced much. In a few more seconds, the body stopped quivering.
"We could have more time to ascertain the additional information, but we have what we need, as I will explain later." It was Keitel's voice, off-camera.
"Now,
fraulein Esmeralda..."
They brought her in front of the camera, hands bound in front of her, her mouth gagged with a duct tape, her eyes wide with terror, naked. She was trying to say something around the gagged mouth, but no one there had been interested. The video was a day and a half old. The performance was a professional tour de force designed to meet his requirements.
Gunther could almost hear Keitel thinking,
Now, how do we do this? Gunther momentarily regretted the instructions he had given Keitel. But the evidence must be positive. Magicians and other experts in the field of illusion regularly consulted with intelligence agencies---but some things could not be faked, and he had to be sure that he could trust Keitel to do dangerous and terrible things. It was an objective necessity that this be graphic.
Another man looped a rope over a ceiling beam and hauled her hands up, then pressed a much larger 9mm Desert Eagle pistol into her armpit and fired a single shot. At least he wasn't a sadist, Gunther thought. Such people were not reliable. It was quite sad to watch in any case. The bullet had punctured her heart, but she was too terrified to die quickly, struggling for more than half a minute, eyes still wide, fighting for breath, still trying to speak, probably begging for help, asking why...after she went limp, one checked the pulse at her neck, then lowered her slowly to the floor. They'd been as gentle about it. The shooter then spoke without facing the camera.
"I hope you are satisfied. I did not enjoy this."
"You weren't supposed to," Gunther said to the television set.
Reginald Agincourt was taken off the chair and laid beside Esmeralda. While the bodies were being dismembered, Keitel's voice spoke. It was a useful diversion, as the visual scene simply got more horrible. Gunther was not squeamish about many things, but it troubled the psyche when human bodies were abused after death. Necessary or not, it seemed gratuitous to him.
"I regret the complications involved, but it took several days to set up arrangements for disposing of the bodies, and we had no idea that Agincourt had his guest when we came. At that point, of course, it was too late. Besides, with the rain we had ideal conditions." Two men were working on each body. All wore the chemical warfare protective suit of rubberized fabric, and put their hoods and masks on, doubtless to protect them from the smell as much to protect their identity. As in a slaughterhouse, sawdust was applied in buckets full to soak up copious amounts of blood being spilled. Gunther knew from experience just how messy these murders can be. They worked quickly as Keitel's voice-over went on using powered industrial cutting tools. Arms and legs had been removed from the torsos, and then the heads were removed and held up to the camera. No one could fake this. Keitel's men had truly murdered two human beings. The dismemberment in front of a playing television made that absolutely certain, and would doubtless make disposal easier. The body pieces were assembled neatly for wrapping in plastic. One of the men started brushing the blood-soaked sawdust into a pile for yet another plastic bag.
"The body parts will be burned at two widely separated locations. This will be accomplished long before you receive this disc. That ends our message. We await further instructions." And the DVD returned to the dramatization of the Battle of the Bulge---or was it Bastogne? Gunther wondered. Not that it mattered of course.
The city of Saint Petersburg was known to some as the Venice of the North for the rivers and canals that cut through it, though the climate, especially in winter, could hardly have been more different. And it was in those rivers that something appeared.
A citizen had spotted it on his way to work in the morning, and seeing a militiaman at the next corner, he'd walked that way and pointed, and the policeman had walked back, and looked over the iron railing at the space designated by the passing citizen.
It wasn't much to see, but it only took a second for the cop to know what it was and what it would mean. Not garbage, not a dead animal, but the top of a human head, with light brown hair. A suicide, murder, something for the local cops to investigate. The militiaman walked to the nearest phone to make his call to headquarters. In thirty minutes, a car showed up, followed by a black van. By this time, the militiaman on his beat had smoked two cigarettes in the crisp morning air, occasionally looking down into the water to make sure that the object was still there. The arriving men were detectives from the city's homicide bureau. The van had followed had really been trained in the city's public works department. These two men took a look over the railing, which was enough to tell them that recovering the body would be physically difficult but routine. A ladder was set up, and the junior man, dressed in waterproof coveralls and heavy rubber gauntlets, climbed down and snatched the submerged collar, while his partner observed and shot a few frames form his digital camera. That was when the surprise started.
The routine was to put a flexible collar on the body under the arms, like that used by a rescue helicopter, so that the body could be winced up. But when he worked to get the collar under the body, one of the arms wouldn't move at all, and the worker struggled for several uncomfortable minutes, working to get the dead stiff arm upward...and eventually it was found to be handcuffed to another arm.
The revelation caused both detectives to toss their cigarettes into the water. It was probably not a suicide, since that form of death was generally not a team sport.
The body-recovery team placed the bodies in the bag and loaded into their van for the drive to the city morgue. The bags were not properly sealed due to the handcuffs, and they sat side-by-side on the floor of the van, perversely like the hands of lovers reaching out to each other in death.
Several hours later, the medical officer of the city morgue presumed that the cause of death of two full-bodied adult males was a single bullet in each brain, with powder tattooing evident on both scalps. They'd both been killed at short range, less than a meter, with what appeared to be a 2.6-gram bullet fired from a 5.45mm PSM pistol.
"I fucking regret that I accepted this job." Sergei Lyukashev swore.
"Well," Lieutenant Viktor Provalov of the Moscow Militia shrugged, "You have once uncovered the illegal arms trade a few years back when you were a military tribunal officer."
"I was just lucky at the time."
"Really now."
"It is true."
The illicit arms trade Provalov referred to was in 1998. Lyukashev discovered a high-level weapons negotiations among the Russian military. The
then-Russian president Vladimir Putin had the involved generals to be punished at the full extent of the law. Putin also offered Lyukashev a post in the FSS, the security branch for the Russian Duma, which the latter politely refused.
It was six fifteen on the Russian spring evening , the sun high in the sky still, in anticipation of the "White Nights" for which Russia is justly famous.
"I could use a smoke." Lyukashev mused.
"Later. Here he comes," Provalov said. "I wonder what items he could provide for the Saint Petersburg homicide case."
That person in question was Pavel Petrovich Klusov. He was not exactly an advertisement for the quality of life in Russia. Hardly one hundred sixty-five centimeters in height, but close to ninety kilos. He was a man the bulk of whose calories came in liquid form, who shaved poorly when he bothered at all, and whose association with soap was less intimate than it ought to be. His teeth were crooked and yellow from the lack of brushing and a surfeit of smoking cheap unfiltered cigarettes. He was thirty-five or so, and had a fifty-fifty chance of making to forty-five. It was not as though he'd be much of a loss to society. Klusov was a petty thief, lacking the talent---and the courage---to commit a major crime, much like a scampering small dog. But he did have ears, which many people had an odd inability to consider.
"What do you have?"
"Your two Saint P victims, I know not. But I think a Klementi Suvorov had them killed."
"Have you seen his face?"
A shake of the head. "No. I learned this from...someone I know." Klusov lit a cigarette.
"Did your acquaintance say why our friend Suvorov had them killed?"
And who the hell is Suvorov? Provalov wondered.
The informant shrugged. "Both were former KGB. There's bad blood between them."
Former KGB? That's a nice thought, Provalov thought. "Any knowledge on his whereabouts?"
" None that I can think of."
Upon hearing the details, Lyukashev's mind was already spinning.
Okay, a former KGB killed two guys under what motive? "You know," turning to Provalov, "We need the victims' identification."
"It is still under process from Central Records." Provalov groused. Central Records was known for its elephantine inefficiency.
"Pavel, you can go." Provalov dismissed with a wave of his hand. "Find anything out. It ought not to tax your abilities."
"I will do what I can," the informant promised.
"And you will do it quickly, Pavel."
"Yes,
Comrade Polkovnik Leytnant, "Klusov agreed. "I'll try to be back tomorrow."
"You will not try. You will do it." Provalov told him, like a schoolmaster demanding homework from an underachieving child.
When Klusov was out of sight, Lyukashev said, "You put your trust in thieves?"
"I know he's not to be trusted," Provalov replied. "But he has given me information in the past."
"Klementi Suvorov, eh? Must track that down."
It was a miracle, Provalov thought. Central Records had gotten the files, fingerprints and photographs of the two bodies recovered in Saint Petersburg. The names and photographs were only a start. The service records were fairly impressive. Once upon a time, Pyotr Amalrik and Vladimir Borissovich had been considered good soldiers, smart, fit, and reliable; good enough that they went to Spetsnaz. After their military service, both returned to civilian life, both working in an ammunition factory in Volgograd. But both Amalrik and Borissovich found ordinary civilian life boring, and both, he gathered, drifted into something else.
Mercenaries.
On the other side of the room Lyukashev is reading Suvorov's file, which confirmed that he was a KGB agent. Former agents who went underworld were frightening, people with real professional training and experience in black operations, who knew how to recruit and exploit others, and how to function invisibly.
On the other hand, he had this gut feeling that this Klementi Suvorov was not KGB, not even a Russian for that matter. He dismissed his thoughts.
Lyukashev's silence was broken by Provalov's phone call. A few minutes later, the lieutenant explained that Klusov informed him that Suvorov has a taste for expensive hookers.
Well, Lyukashev thought,
might as well talk to them. Let's rattle some bushes.
Sergei Lyukashev was in the building perch instead of one of the vehicles, holding a pair of binoculars. There was Klementi Suvorov, sitting back on the bench, an afternoon paper in his hands. There were a thousand of park benches in Moscow, and the probability that their subject would sit in the same one was astronomical. But watch they did.
His right hand left the paper, reached inside his jacket, and pulled something metallic. Then the hand paused briefly, and as he turned the pages in the paper---the fluttering of the pages was a fine distraction to anyone who might be watching, since the human eye is always drawn to movement. The right hand slid down and affixed the metal transfer case to the magnetic holder, then returned for the paper, all in one smooth motion.
Fifteen minutes later after Suvorov left the park bench, Lyukashev crossed the street and retrieved the case. It was the locked variety. One had to get past the anti-tamper device to keep the contents from being destroyed. Twenty minutes later, the case was opened and the contents extracted, unfolded, photographed, refolded, reinserted, and relocked the container, which was immediately returned to the bench.
Back in the FSB headquarters, the decryption team typed the message into a computer into which the one-time pad had been inputted. After that, it was a matter of seconds, the clear-text message was in Cyrillic. The content of the message is something else.
The message, in its original Russian text, did not make any sense. It was decided that it should be run on a multi-translator. A few minutes had passed, the message was readable...
...in German.
"Yob tvoyu maht!" the technician muttered, in one of his language's more repulsive imprecations:
Fuck your mother. He handed the message to Lyukashev without a word.
The bomb shall be delivered by truck, which will be parked infront of the American Embassy in Moscow. Our boys inside shall set it up. Leave the area after ten minutes.
After reading the message, Lyukashev said, "It seems that our friend here killed the the two ex-Spetsnaz boys as insurance. Let's pay Suvorov a visit."
"The Miranda Rule never reached our Russian shores," Provalov explained. "The instant I saw him, I knew he wasn't Russian, so I took the liberty to ask him questions."
That "liberty" in question was to use interrogation methods that would make the American FBI a bunch of city pansies. Such interrogation methods were...interesting. A testament to that was Suvorov's broken fingers.
"If he's not Russian," Lyukashev asked. "Then who the hell is he?"
"Ever heard of Erwin Keitel?" Provalov snatched the hair of the miscreant, which was not hair but a well-made wig, revealing not a black hair but a
blonde hair.
"What? The former intelligence officer for East Germany?"
"None other." Provalov said. "It seems that an attack on the American Embassy could put the Russian government to blame." He faced Keitel, "So, Erwin, where is the bomb?"
Erwin Keitel was not a coward, but he was a realist, and realism told him that he had nothing to gain by non-cooperation.
"Apartment 236, Block 8, Moscow."
"So?" Provalov asked.
"So, he is in this building," Lyukashev clarified. "Takedown team is ready to go up and make the arrest."
"We are ready, comrade," a senior Spetsnaz officer said. "Our friend is sitting in the kitchen discussing matters with his guest. They're looking at how they would detonate the bomb."
"Proceed." Lyukashev ordered. "Remember, do not use too much explosives. There's a bomb inside. You don't want yourself to become Hungarian sausages."
With that, the four-man team walked back out into the corridor. They were dressed in their own Spetsnaz suits, black Nomex, and carrying Kalashnikov AK-104, the shortened, folding stock version of the full-sized AK-103. The Russian troopers looked ready. Alert and pumped up.
Sergei Lyukashev moved down the corridor to the door. His explosives man ran a thin line of detonating cord explosive along the door edges and stepped aside, looking at Lyukashev for the word.
"Shoot," Lyukashev told him.
The corridor sundered with the crash of the explosion that sent the solid-core door into the apartment at about three hundred feet per second. Then a major and a lieutenant tossed in flashbang grenades sure to disorient anyone who might have been there with a gun of his own. The team darted into the apartment in pairs, just as they had been trained to do, and there was no other sound, except for a scream down the hall from a resident who hadn't been warned about the day's activities.
The inside was a predictable mess. The entry was now fit only for kindling and toothpicks, and the pictures that decorated the wall did so without any glass in the frames. The blue sofa had a ruinous scorch mark on the right side, and the carpet was cratered by the other flashbang grenade.
The two supposed miscreants were now facedown on the tile floor. Their hands manacled behind them and guns not far behind their heads.
"Greetings, Dietrich Gunther," Lyukashev said. "We need to talk."
Dietrich Gunther had found himself alone in the cell of a maximum security prison. Everything had been lost...except the hate.
He calmly made his decision. In the manner of prisoners all over the world, he'd found a way of getting a piece of metal with an edge on it. He removed it from its place of hiding then pulled the sheet from the mattress. With the razor edge he began detaching the trim from the mattress. He continued cutting until he obtained two meters of improvised rope, and with the improvised rope comes an improvised suicide.
He fixed the noose on the ceiling and placed it on his neck. He stood on a chair and without any last words, he kicked the chair away.
He was surprised by the pain. The noose fractured his larynx before sliding it to a point under his jaw. His eyes opened wide. That's when panic hit him. Ideology has its limits. He couldn't die, didn't want to die. Didn't want to---
His fingers raced to his throat. But the more he fought to remove the noose around his neck, the tighter it held. He began to quiver violently.
Unknown to Gunther, he was being watched by Sergei Lyukashev in the CCTV, saw his hands fluttering aimlessly in the air.
Well, Lyukashev snorted,
the brutal ones were cowards after all.
"This television is broken," he said, switching it off. "Better get a new one to keep an eye on Prisoner Gunther."
"That will take about an hour." The guard on duty said. He was on the other side of the CCTV panel.
"That's fast enough." Lyukashev removed the cassette from the tape recorder. There was no smile on Sergei Lyukashev's face, but there is a look of satisfaction.
Lyukashev walked out of the prison toward his motorcycle. He didn't want to be near the prison when Gunther's body was discovered.
Case closed.
(End)
Title: Bipolar
Edited by The Wandering Jew, 10 August 2009 - 02:18.
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