“No problem,” she said, keeping her tone uninterested. “I will just bring it back to the office and return it to sender.” Her goal was to get eyes on Kozlov without being seen herself, so entering the building and going upstairs to his apartment would be a last resort. She would do it if she had to, though.
It would all depend on what he said next, if anything.
“Fine,” he said after another short pause. “I will be right down.”
Tracie turned and exited the apartment building. She couldn’t return to her car to observe the foyer because of the parking lot’s location, so she walked straight toward the street, crossing a small courtyard filled with dying brown grass and weeds.
She reached the sidewalk and leaned against an ancient cast-iron lamppost.
Reached into her pocket and pulled out a pack of Russian Belomorkanal cigarettes.
Removed one of the cigs from the pack and lit it, lifting it to her face every few seconds, pretending to smoke as she observed the apartment’s entryway. She was far enough from the building that Kozlov would likely not take any particular notice of her, but close enough to ensure she got a good look at the man.
Hopefully.
The interior apartment doors opened almost immediately after she reached the lamppost and a single figure entered the foyer from within the building. Tracie focused intently but then turned away as a heavy-set middle-aged woman lumbered through the second set of doors and out of the building. The woman turned to Tracie’s right, moved to the sidewalk and then marched away.
About a minute later the doors swung open again and a tall, silver-haired man with a bushy mustache and Karl Marx beard entered the lobby. His age looked appropriate to be Kozlov, and his actions confirmed his identity to Tracie’s satisfaction. A puzzled look crossed his face, morphing into anger as he glanced right and left reflexively, even though the foyer was so small it would be impossible to miss a delivery person standing there.
Then he shoved open the exterior doors and stomped out of the building. He looked in all directions, including directly at Tracie, as he searched for his nonexistent package. He walked along the front of the building until reaching the parking lot and then peered into it, shaking his head and gesturing angrily despite being alone.
Then he moved back to the apartment, entered the building and disappeared.
Tracie dropped her cigarette to the crumbling sidewalk and ground it out. Then she returned to her car, moved it as close to the building’s entrance as possible, and settled in for what could be a long surveillance.
***
Kozlov would have to exit his apartment eventually, but there was no telling how long it would take for him to do so, and Tracie felt strongly that time was of the essence. There was literally a ticking time bomb waiting to go off—somewhere—and the notion of sitting passively inside her Russian car and waiting for something to happen was anathema to her.
She felt confident Kozlov was a high-ranking member of Navsegda, maybe the head man. The group wouldn’t leave it to a flunky to meet with a rich, influential guy like Sergei Marinovich and do the money exchanges; there were too many ways an arrangement like that could go wrong. Not the least of which being the flunky might decide to take the money and disappear.
No, Dimitri Kozlov was a worthy target for her surveillance. What she had to decide was whether she wanted to sit here twiddling her thumbs outside Kozlov’s home with the minutes and hours ticking by, or whether she should abduct him the next time he walked through those apartment doors, bring him to the safe house and torture him until he gave up the location of the nuclear device.
The second option was sorely tempting.
But something didn’t feel right about their whole operation. She’d felt a nagging concern for a while now, like she was missing something.
Was Sovetskiy Soyuz Navsegda really big enough and influential enough to pull off something as brazen as flying a nuclear bomb from Russia to the United States, secreting that bomb somewhere in or near a large city, and then detonating it?
Such a mission would be a tall order for the KGB itself to pull off, although Tracie had no doubt they could if they set their minds to it. But for a small-to-middling paramilitary organization like Navsegda to do so just struck her as perhaps a bridge too far.
So she decided to wait.
For now.
Given the enormity of what Navsegda was trying to accomplish, and her sense that Kozlov was a major player in the organization, she felt it was only a matter of time—and probably not too much of it—before the man would head off to a meeting or a briefing with other high-ranking members. With any luck she could follow him and get some sense of their command structure, something solid she could bring to Aaron Stallings, something more than she could get out of a torture session with Kozlov.
If it seemed that too much time was passing and no Navsegda meeting appeared imminent, she would move to Option Two: take the man and force him to talk.
15
June 13, 1988
3:30 p.m.
Abandoned service station
Yaroslavl, Russia, USSR
“I have good news,” Nikolay said to Ilya and Rostya. He had gone into town to speak with his Navsegda contact via pay telephone, leaving the other two men to argue over the decline in the fortunes of the Red Army hockey team. Ilya felt that decline mirrored perfectly the decline in the Soviet Union’s standing in the eyes of the world, while Rostya was certain the team would rebound at any moment and regain its rightful place at the top of the international hockey world.
The argument had continued raging in Nikolay’s absence, and he rolled his eyes as his Navsegda comrades ignored his words as if he hadn’t even spoken, while continuing to press their respective points.
“Gentlemen!” he said sharply, raising his voice and banging his fist on the rickety card table separating Ilya and Rostya. The table jumped and most of the playing cards tumbled to the stained concrete floor, but both men shut their mouths—finally—and looked at Nikolay with expressions of surprise on their faces.
“After listening to you complain non-stop about wanting this assignment over,” Nikolay said, holding Ilya’s gaze, “I would think you might show a little more interest in what our handler had to report during our telephone call.”
“Of course I am interested,” Ilya answered. “But I can only put up with Rostya’s stupidity for so long before it becomes unbearable.”
Rostya sat back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, a self-satisfied grin on his face. It was obvious to Nikolay that he had been baiting the short-tempered Ilya just to pass the time, but that realization seemed to have bypassed Ilya himself.
“In any event,” Nikolay continued, “as I tried to explain while the two of you were busy arguing over trivialities, I have good news. We can soon escape this shithole and begin working toward the conclusion of our mission.”
Both men’s faces brightened considerably. Ilya said, “So our contact finally got us the vehicle we need?”
“That is correct. The exchange will take place soon.”
“That is outstanding news,” Ilya said. For once Rostya and Ilya seemed to be on the same page, both men smiling and nodding.
“While we wait,” Nikolay said, “it is important we discuss specifics regarding mission completion.”
“We have gone over all of this a thousand times,” Ilya said, exasperated. His jubilant mood seemed to have vanished after just a few seconds.
“Yes, we have,” Nikolay answered. “But I have yet to receive concurrence from you as far as the division of labor is concerned, so it seems we must have the discussion again.”
“I do not concur,” Ilya said, “because it is not fair that you will receive all of the glory when this assignment is over.” His lower jaw thrust forward as it always did when he was being stubborn.
Nikolay did his best to remain patient. “We are all equally critical to the successful completion of the mission, thus we will a
ll receive equal credit.”
“But Rostya and I must do the shit job.”
“There is no shit job,” Nikolay said, exasperated. “Every facet of it is important.”
“If there is no shit job, then let us swap responsibilities. Allow me to drive the American truck and have the task of seeing this assignment through to the end.”
“No,” Nikolay said simply. “That is my responsibility and will remain so.” Rostya was sitting silently, his head swiveling between the other two men. He looked like someone watching a particularly spirited ping pong match.
“Because you are in charge,” Ilya said contemptuously.
“That is exactly right.”
Ilya spat on the floor. “That is what I think of you being in charge. Just because your name was drawn out of a hat, you think you have the right to tell us what to do, and to determine how every portion of the assignment will proceed?”
“I do not care what you think of the current chain of command,” Nikolay said softly. “And I do not care what you think of me. But that chain of command was established during the planning phase of this mission, and if you had a problem with it you should have spoken up then. It is far too late to contemplate changing the command structure now.”
Ilya glowered at him but said nothing.
“We are going to do things my way. When the mission is over, you will have the opportunity to voice your displeasure to Navsegda leadership if you wish. In the meantime, you will do what I tell you, when I tell you to do it. Is that clear?”
Ilya spat on the floor again and walked away.
Rostya’s arms were still crossed and he continued to lean back in his chair. His grin widened as he winked at Nikolay.
16
June 13, 1988
3:40 p.m.
Moscow, Russia, USSR
Tracie had tried to position herself so she could observe as much of the front of Dimitri Kozlov’s apartment building as possible. Without knowing whether the Navsegda operative owned a car or not, there was no way to tell whether she would be following him by bus, on foot or by car if and when he decided to leave his home.
So she tried to select surveillance locations that would permit her to do any of the three when the time came.
She had utilized her initial site in the front corner of the building’s parking lot for close to ninety minutes, observing the main entrance intently as a more or less steady stream of Muscovites entered and exited the high-rise, none of them Kozlov.
No one seemed to pay her any attention, but after almost an hour-and-a-half, she began to feel exposed. How long would it be reasonable for one young woman to sit alone inside a parked car without meeting anyone or moving?
A little after two o’clock, she started the VAZ and pulled away from the apartment complex. The vehicular traffic had thinned considerably, so it took just a few minutes to circle the block and pull into an on-street parking space located diagonally across from Kozlov’s building. From there she could observe the entrance and remain virtually unseen unless he was in the habit of scanning the neighborhood with binoculars before leaving his apartment.
The risk inherent in changing locations and being forced to circle the block was obvious: in the few minutes she lost eyes on the building, Kozlov could have strolled out the front door and vanished, and Tracie would have no way of knowing.
It was one of several major drawbacks to conducting surveillance alone, and something over which she had no control. In most cases, that slim possibility wouldn’t particularly bother Tracie. If she lost Kozlov today, she would wait until he returned home and then try again the next time he went out.
Given the time constraints of the current situation, though, that scenario would be unacceptable, and Tracie found herself gnawing on the inside of her lower lip incessantly. It was a reaction to extreme stress she’d had since she was a little girl, and one she had been unable to completely eradicate even after becoming aware of it.
She concentrated on relaxing and only succeeded in becoming tenser as she considered her odds of success in this assignment. They weren’t good. Following Kozlov was a long shot, since while she felt confident he would lead her to other Navsegda members—eventually—there was no way of knowing how long that would take. And even if it happened soon, those members may or may not have any connection to the missing Soviet nuke.
But a long shot was the only shot she had right now. And there was reason for optimism. Pulling off the theft of a nuclear device and then transporting it to the states for detonation was not a project that could be undertaken on a shoestring budget. Now that Tracie had identified the group’s main source of funding, it only stood to reason that their financier’s contact would be closely connected to the project.
And that contact was Kozlov.
The relevant question, though, was tantalizingly simple and impossible to answer: was she too late?
She was mulling over that question like a bulldog worrying a steak bone, attacking it from as many different angles as she could, when the glass double-doors across the street flew open and the man with the Karl Marx beard exited. Unlike a few hours ago, when he seemed confused and angry while searching for the nonexistent delivery person, now he was moving with a purpose.
Tracie sat up straight in her seat and tracked him as he crossed left to right toward the parking lot. If she’d been forced to lay a bet, she would have said he owned a car, or at least had access to one. It was hard to imagine the main source of a revolutionary group’s financing collecting large amounts of cash via bus.
When Kozlov unlocked a small Lada—a car that looked virtually identical to millions of other small Ladas in use all across Russia—and then slipped behind the wheel, she started the engine in her own car, letting it idle while she waited to see what would happen next.
Kozlov sat unmoving for a moment as he glanced absently back toward his apartment building. He looked like a man reviewing a mental checklist. Tracie took that as a positive sign and she began to get the butterflies in her stomach that told her something significant was happening.
After apparently deciding he hadn’t forgotten anything, Kozlov backed out of his parking space and chugged toward the street. He waited for an opening in traffic and then turned left, moving in the direction Tracie had driven thirty minutes earlier when she circled the block. She waited impatiently, allowing four cars to fill in the space behind Kozlov, then she pulled away from the curb and settled in behind him.
Tailing a subject wasn’t something she considered herself particularly adept at, and as Kozlov drove northwestbound, leaving Moscow and its suburbs behind and moving into more sparsely populated territory, she concentrated hard on maintaining sufficient spacing. Fall too far behind and she could lose him when he finally decided to turn. Close the gap too much and he would eventually become aware that the car behind him had been there far too long to be explained by coincidence.
By the time she’d been on the road an hour, Tracie began to question the wisdom of tailing Kozlov as opposed to kidnapping and torturing him. He was still moving northwest, more or less following the Volga River along the Leningradskoye toll highway, showing no signs of stopping, turning or even slowing.
Once again she was becoming painfully aware of the passage of precious time. If she’d made the wrong decision in following along behind him as opposed to taking more direct action, she might well be condemning thousands of Americans to a horrible death. The thought of a nuke detonating outside Phoenix, say, while she drove along a Russian highway behind a man doing nothing more sinister than going to visit friends, was more than she could bear.
But she’d committed to the current course of action and would give it time to play out, one way or the other. At least on the toll highway, with its limited number of exits, losing Kozlov would be nearly impossible, even while leaving plenty of space between the two vehicles.
He passed exit after exit, showing no sign of leaving the highway, and she began to suspect Kozlov
was making a beeline for Leningrad, which was nearly an eight-hour drive from Moscow. If that were the case she was going to have to revisit her plan and maybe at some point force him off the road and take him. She didn’t think she could afford to dedicate that much time to Kozlov without gaining any actionable intelligence.
He continued to drive, steady as a metronome, and she decided she would stick with the current plan only until he passed through Tver, a city of nearly half a million residents on the banks of the Volga and Tvertsa Rivers. If he left Tver in his rear view mirror she would gradually close the distance between them with the intention of waiting for an opportunity to force his car off the road.
But it never came to that. Almost before she realized she was creeping up on him, Kozlov slowed and exited the highway maybe twenty minutes outside Tver. Instantly alert, Tracie adjusted her speed and tried to time her approach so she would hit the off-ramp just as her target was reaching the end of it.
The fact that she’d never taken this exit off the Leningradskoye made it a dicey proposition.
She was a little late exiting the highway, but was still able to observe Kozlov turning left and accelerating westbound at the end of the off-ramp. Tracie hit the gas and sped down the ramp much faster than she would have liked, not wanting to risk a police stop but knowing she could not afford to lose the Russian now, not after spending the better part of an afternoon cooling her heels waiting for him to do something interesting.
A line of eastbound traffic stretched at least eight cars deep, preventing Tracie from making an immediate left turn at the end of the ramp and she cursed, once again gnawing on her lower lip. Halfway through the line of vehicles was an eighteen-wheeler not quite able to keep up with the car in front of it. Saying a quick prayer that her stolen VAZ’s engine didn’t pick this moment to give up the ghost, she eased into the road and then punched the gas just as the car in front of the eighteen-wheeler passed her grille.
The Nuclear Option Page 9