“Yes. Everything is in place. The weapons have been shipped. The men are awaiting the orders. Together, we will do it. The global imperialists backed the riots in Caracas which almost toppled my government. Now we will repay them a thousand times and bring hybrid warfare to their doorstep. It will be their worst nightmare. Catalonia will become their Crimea, their Donbass.”
Villanueva was referring to Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, carried out by an invading force of Little Green Men—unmarked armed troops who occupied government buildings. Their lack of military insignia designating them as Russian soldiers made it difficult to hold the Kremlin liable for the attack. Later, the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which neighbored Russia, had broken away in a move instigated by Moscow. The Kremlin had lent covert support, deploying a significant presence of Russian military hardware and personnel across the border. The special forces posed as local ‘pro-Russian’ insurgents.
Combined with massive disinformation and propaganda campaigns, these advanced unconventional tactics became known as hybrid warfare.
Gerard de Puig said, “We shall proclaim the Catalan People’s Republic.”
“Only one thing worries me, Don Anatoly,” said the general. “The problem which arose from your side. Did you deal with it?”
“It could jeopardize the entire project,” de Puig agreed.
“No cause for concern. I’ve solved the problem. She’s dead. And so are the bastards who helped her.”
“They’re alive.”
The voice of BLACKFOX finally sounded in a deep drawl.
“What?”
“They survived the FSB raid,” BLACKFOX repeated. “Paulina and that man, Sokolov have arrived in the U.S. under false names. They’re in the hands of American intelligence officers. Your men screwed up, Anatoly. What’s worse, they made you look like an idiot.”
“Nobody makes a fool out of me!” Shaloy roared slamming the lobster claw against the table, shards of shell flying. “I’ll punish those responsible for this fiasco.”
“It doesn’t solve the problem,” said Villanueva.
“Do you know where they are hiding?” Shaloy asked BLACKFOX. “I can have them killed wherever they are.”
“It has to be done quickly,” de Puig said with concern.
“It will take a few hours,” Shaloy assured him. “I have men everywhere.”
“They’re in a safe house in Virginia,” said BLACKFOX. “However …”
“Yes?”
“I believe it would be unwise to kill her. We must learn who else she’s leaked the information to. Besides, the CIA wouldn’t be able to cry foul play if she simply vanished. For all they know, she might as well have re-defected. Women are so fickle.”
“Very smart. What about that Sokolov guy?”
“He’s unimportant.”
“Then he’s as good as dead,” Shaloy said firing off a message on his phone. “All right, enough talk about business. Time to have some fun.”
Shaloy snapped his fingers at a uniformed steward who bowed knowingly at the signal and disappeared.
A minute later, a dozen bikini-clad escort girls walked into the dining room, strutting on high heels, hips swaying seductively as they showed off their hot bodies.
“Pick any one,” Shaloy told his guests, grinning. “Or two.”
“Puta madre, que peras,” General Villanueva muttered salivating as a busty blonde leaned to him.
With both hands, Shaloy smacked the backsides of a couple of tattoo-covered brunettes.
BLACKFOX wasted no time, heading off to his stateroom with a transsexual Latina.
Only the Catalan president didn’t seem aroused by the carnal show around him. He was busy snorting a bump of cocaine off his hand between the thumb and forefinger.
“My friend, I’ve got someone special for you,” Shaloy told him.
Another girl entered. She was dolled up like the rest but her innocent face and petite body suggested that she had just hit the middle stage of puberty.
Gerard de Puig’s eyes lit up with lust.
18
Golub stormed into Minski’s office unannounced.
Minski tore his eyes off the laptop screen, hitting a key combination to quit the private browser he was using to surf a gay porn website.
“What’s going on, Golub?” he said, annoyed. “Didn’t your mom teach you any manners?”
Then he saw that his subordinate had arrived with a trio of plainclothes FSB operatives in tow.
Golub shut the door behind them and turned the lock.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Minski fumed.
“You should understand. I’m sorry it has come to this, Anton. I enjoyed working with you.”
Outraged, Minski shot up from his chair but two henchmen were onto him in an instant. They twisted his arms so hard that Minski doubled over. The third man struck a blow across Minski’s face. They pinned him down in the chair, immobilizing him. A pair of handcuffs were slapped on his wrists, securing his hands behind the chair’s back. Minski panted, seething with anger. His ego was hurting as much as his face. He’d never been so humiliated in his life.
“Let go of me at once! Do you know who I am, you morons? I’ll have you all locked up in Lefortovo for this. Have you gone mad, Golub?”
“I’m only following orders. But this is my office now. And you’ll be the one thrown into prison for letting them slip though. Not once, but twice. It’s hardly a coincidence.”
“You are mad. Sokolov and the woman? That’s impossible.”
“We won’t recover their bodies because they were never there,” Golub continued.
“Utter nonsense. How would you know? The wreckage hasn’t been cleared yet.”
“From the man who ordered the Klimov job. He knows where they really are.”
Anatoly Shaloy.
Under the Kremlin’s control, the Russian secret services and the Mafia were deeply intertwined. The FSB sometimes used criminals to carry out hits against their targets. Or vice versa, like in that particular case, with mob boss Shaloy instructing the FSB to assassinate Klimov.
And of course, the kill had been green lit by the Kremlin as part of a bigger operation which President Frolov had assigned to Shaloy.
“You set it all up, Anton. It was you who sent the Vympel squad right into the trap.”
“It was Netto, you fool!” Minski said through gritted teeth. The left side of his face was swelling from the blow.
“Drop the act. Sokolov’s friends disavowed him. You’re the one who helped him and Pavlova escape. You’re a traitor.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“I didn’t expect you to come clean. Just like how you never came out as queer. Maybe Sokolov blackmailed you about your boyfriend? Or perhaps he bribed you. We’ll find that out. You will tell us. Let’s not waste any more time. Soon, I’ll have your confession.”
Someone had to take the fall. The old gulag adage applied: Better you than me.
Minski cursed. He should have seen it coming. Golub would put all the blame for the failed operation on Minski and also boost his own career.
Perhaps Golub wasn’t as dumb as he’d led Minski to believe.
Even more humiliating was the fact that Sokolov had beaten him at his own game. He was the one accused of crimes now, his own men turning on him. A part of him still refused to believe it all wasn’t some sick joke.
Minski felt icy fear spreading through his guts.
Golub opened a drawer and produced a cordless drill. FSB officers used the tools instead of hole punchers to manually process large quantities of paper.
Minski jerked in the chair helplessly, held down by the three of his former colleagues.
Golub pressed the tip of the drill bit against Minski’s fleshy thigh.
Then he squeezed the trigger switch.
19
Sokolov tossed and turned in his bed, unable to sleep or distinguish night from day.
He was back in his room. Alone.
He’d rejected her.
It wasn’t because he found her unappealing. Quite the opposite. Paulina exuded raw femininity that he felt dangerously attracted to. But he would not be manipulated by sex.
Since his youth, Sokolov had learned to control his urges and his discipline hadn’t failed him. As a man, he was aware of his self-worth. He wasn’t a monk but he pursued any romantic interest on his own terms. At the right time, in the right place, and with the right woman.
There was something wrong about her behavior, the way she threw herself at him but he couldn’t put a finger on it. She tried to make it seem as if she acted on impulse but her sudden show of passion felt calculated. She was trying to draw him closer to her, bond with him as her protector, control him, but why?
What game was she playing?
He struggled to grasp her motives and it set off alarm bells in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more it bothered him. Something in the bigger picture didn’t add up, either. Why would she risk her life to uncover Moscow Gold? Sokolov knew that a grieving mother could have no greater motive than avenging the death of her only child. The sorrow in her eyes couldn’t be fake. Sokolov had seen it too many times before. But he sensed an extra layer beneath the surface, a part of her story that she was hiding from him.
In any case, if she believed that in helping her, he was only driven by sexual desire, she got it wrong. He wasn’t doing any of it for her. He acted out of a sense of duty, a moral conviction. He was doing it for himself. And for Klimov.
The old spring mattress sagged as he rolled on his back and shut his eyes.
It all came back at him, Klimov’s death flooding his mind, haunting him. The gunshots, the screams.
He breathed deeply in a relaxation technique.
He imagined being carried by a water current. But instead, he found himself floating in a river of blood. Washed up in the middle of nowhere.
He’d lost his country but he still had his duty, whatever happened next. He wondered what the future might hold for him, and the answer came sooner than expected.
As he drifted off to slumber, his hearing detected sounds of intrusion.
A soft turn of the doorknob and the squeak of hinges.
He bolted upright. Straining his vision in the darkness, he discerned a silhouette rushing at him.
Sokolov raised his arms just in time to catch the intruder’s hand which swung a blade at him. Sokolov lashed out with his foot, kicking the attacker in the midsection.
The man grunted with pain and piled on top of Sokolov with all his weight, trying to overpower him, forcing the knife downward, two-handed, at Sokolov’s throat. His face was so close to Sokolov that he smelled the vile odor of the man’s heaving breath. Holding him off with his hands, Sokolov landed a knee strike into the knifeman’s ribs, forcing him to relent the grip. Sokolov wrestled himself free, rolling sideways, wrenching the knife away.
The attacker grabbed the pillow and lunged at his face again, trying to suffocate him. Sokolov stabbed. The man roared in agony as the blade cut into his flesh. Sokolov extracted the knife and pushed him away.
Sokolov sprang up from the bed and hit the light switch. As his vision accustomed to the sudden burst of light, he got a look at the attacker.
The man writhed on the floor, clutching his ripped gut as blood pumped through his fingers. He’d die in a few hours unless he received first aid.
He looked up at Sokolov, growling, his eyes filled with loathing.
“Suka!” he cursed in Russian.
Sokolov eyed him coldly as if studying a cockroach.
Round head, black beard, black tee with a bloody splotch spreading around the knife wound. Prison tattoos covered the visible skin on his forearms, wrists, and blood-slicked fingers. One tattoo stood out in particular—a dagger inked across his throat as if piercing it. The coded symbol meant that the man had killed someone with a knife previously.
The knifeman was no dopehead who’d stumbled into Royalty Inn & Suites by chance, searching for easy prey to rob.
He was an assassin sent to murder Sokolov.
Which meant that Paulina’s life—
Sokolov dashed to the door but before he could reach it, he heard her scream.
The walls had no soundproofing and her shrill cry filled the room.
Sokolov burst outside to see Paulina being manhandled by two thugs into the back of a waiting BMW X7. She thrashed as they half-dragged, half-carried her. One of them jumped into the car, pulling her in, followed by the other mobster as they sandwiched her in the rear seat. No sooner had the rear door swung closed than the driver hit the pedal and the large SUV raced away.
Sokolov sprinted after it barefoot, chasing the taillights but the car vanished within seconds, heading for the highway.
The effort was both desperate and futile.
He stopped, catching his breath, cursing silently.
Paulina was gone.
Knife in white-knuckled hand, he rushed back to his room.
His eyes swept the room to find that it was empty. The window was wide open. A trail of bloodstains on the floor leading to it marked the wounded thug’s escape. He’d disappeared before Sokolov could question him. Bleeding, the attacker couldn’t get far on foot but it was likely that a getaway vehicle would pick him up. The odds of locating the knifeman were slim. Sokolov couldn’t risk drawing attention by running around and searching for him. Someone might have already called Nine-One-One, alerted by Paulina’s cries for help. Detention in police custody would waste his time and ruin the chances of finding Paulina alive.
Sokolov, too, had to disappear before the cops caught him.
He pulled on his jeans, buttoned his shirt, and reached for his encrypted cell phone.
20
Constantine answered on the first ring.
“Hi, Gene. Too starved to sleep?”
“No. They’ve snatched Paulina.”
“What?”
“Some Russian-speaking thugs have kidnapped her. And they tried to kill me.”
“Oh God. Did you get hurt?”
“I didn’t but the killer did.”
“Are you safe now?”
“I’m on my way to the nearest gas station.”
“Hang tight. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
The call ended.
The first rays of dawn hued the sky when the Chevy Blazer pulled up at the fuel pump.
Fueled up by coffee from the convenience store, Sokolov tossed the disposable cup into the trash as he jogged to the vehicle and hopped in the front passenger seat.
Constantine swung the CUV back toward Arlington.
“Hilton let you drive?”
“It’s an office car.”
“Where are we going now?”
“Back to the HRF.”
“You were still at the office? What kept you up all night?”
“Stephen and I have been studying the data from Paulina’s flash drive. Thousands of pages of documents. Signed contracts, bank account statements, company charters, wire transfers. Figuring out all the connections will take ages without her help.”
“That’s why they kidnapped her,” Sokolov said.
“Are you sure these bastards are bratva?” Constantine used the Russian slang term for Mafia, meaning The Bros.
“As sure as I can be.”
“The Kremlin is a criminal syndicate. I’m not surprised that Frolov has control over Russian mobsters. But I thought they were based mostly in Brooklyn and Philly, not Virginia or the D.C. area. Organizing a job like this in a matter of hours? Unbelievable.”
“It shows how dangerous she is to them. We must get her back. Damned if I know how, though.”
“I’m sure Hilton will come up with an idea.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Sokolov said. “You’re putting too much faith in his abilities
. And too much trust in his integrity.”
“Don’t be paranoid.”
“Don’t be stupid! Somebody tipped the bratva off. The safe house location was compromised. There’s no other explanation for the lightning-quick strike.”
“Stephen?”
“Who else? Remember, he lived in Russia for a very long time. Too long, perhaps. Enough to develop contacts on the other side. He could have turned.”
“No,” Constantine objected. “I refuse to believe it.”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out. Facing him right after the attack, we’ll know one way or another if he’s the one who set it up. Why didn’t he show up, sending you after me in his car instead? I feel we’re running headlong into another trap.”
“I hope you’re wrong about him.”
“If I’m wrong, then you’d better step on it. Because if the bratva knew about the safe house, they’ll know about the Foundation. Stephen will be their next target.”
Stephen Hilton III refilled his mug from the coffee pot which had lasted him through a tough night. By early morning he was already facing a full-blown catastrophe. The news of Paulina Pavlova’s abduction had come as a shock. The day ahead didn’t promise to get any easier.
He chugged the black liquid, which sloshed in his stomach, but it had little to do with the bitterness in his throat.
The reason he tasted bile was severe stress.
To put it simply, he was royally screwed.
There wasn’t much he could do about the kidnapping.
Bringing Pavlova in had been a wild gamble which had backfired. The entire case depended on her testimony and interpretation of data. He acted at his own risk, without the agency’s official approval. Russia was a highly sensitive topic under the current White House administration, which didn’t want to anger the Kremlin. Fear of diplomatic backlash hindered any intelligence operation against Frolov. The Agency wanted plausible deniability in the event of a spy scandal blowing in their faces. The only backing came from a splinter group within the Agency with a hawkish stance on Russia, led by Cold War veteran Jeff Monteith. One of the dinosaurs. It was Monteith who’d sent the rendition plane to Zurich.
Moscow Gold (SOKOLOV Book 5) Page 8