The Russian Deception

by Alex Lukeman

  Lamont pointed. "Something's happening on the bridge."

  A new group was pushing its way across on the stone bridge across the river. Their signs were different.

  Down with traitors!

  Todorovski is a puppet of the West!

  Unite against the fascists!

  "Who are the fascists?" Selena asked.

  "Anyone who doesn't agree with them," Nick said.

  They were standing near the spot where the bridge opened onto the square. As the group of counter-protesters came by, Nick recognized two of the hard men he had seen yesterday from the hotel window.

  "It's a set up," Nick said. "They've been sent to start trouble."

  The crowd was starting to notice the newcomers. A murmur of anger swept across the square. On stage, the current speaker was shouting something.

  "What's he saying?" Nick asked Selena.

  "He's calling for calm. He's telling the crowd not to let them provoke trouble. He's saying it's what Mitreski wants."

  "I don't think anybody's listening," Ronnie said.

  Angry voices called out as the new demonstrators spread out through the crowd, pushing and shoving. Somebody shouted. One of the newcomers hit someone over the head with his sign. Another punched a woman standing nearby. That was all it took. The crowd closed in, fists flying.

  A whistle blew on the far side of the square. The riot police advanced in a line behind their shields. People backed up in front of them but there was nowhere to go. The police reached the crowd and began swinging their batons. Selena saw a woman shouting at them. They clubbed her down. Blood streamed from her head. Others began to fall before the onslaught.

  Some of the crowd had come ready for trouble. Pieces of pipe and improvised clubs appeared. A surge of shouting demonstrators swept into the police, like a wave crashing on a rocky shore.

  "Whoa," Lamont said. "Those people have some balls."

  In seconds the scene in the square turned into a full-fledged riot. People were fighting and screaming and trying to get away.

  "They're unleashing the Army," Ronnie said.

  The soldiers waiting behind the police deployed in skirmish lines. Behind them an officer stood on the hood of an armored carrier with a bullhorn. He began barking something. The harsh words carried across the square.

  "What's he saying?" Nick looked at Selena.

  "He's telling them to disperse or he will open fire."

  "Shit," Lamont said.

  "They're not listening," said Ronnie.

  "Time to boogie." Nick pointed at the bridge. "Let's get back across the river."

  By now they weren't the only ones with the idea of getting to the other side of the river and away from the square. The bridge filled with a stampeding current of people pushing and shoving. Nick got separated from the others. Selena was somewhere in back of him. Ronnie and Lamont were lost in the crowd. He struggled against the press.

  The first shots sounded from the square. A low moan rippled through the mass of people. The pressure of the crowd increased. There were more shots. Someone fell nearby, blood streaming from his wounds. The panicked mass trampled over him.

  Nick looked around, trying to find Selena. He thought he saw her for a moment before she disappeared back into the crowd.

  A man stood immovable in the middle of the bridge. He was broad, with a beetle brow, a chest like a gorilla and arms to match, one of the men Nick had seen casing the square of the day before. As people came close he pushed them aside or knocked them down. He grinned and lashed out at anyone who came near, creating a small circle within the stream of people.

  The giant saw Nick coming, zeroed in on the press badge and grinned even wider. There was no way for Nick to get around him.

  I need this like a hole in the head, Nick thought. To hell with this.

  When he was close enough Nick launched a kick to the groin that would've felled an elephant. Gorilla man gasped and doubled over, his mouth open in pain and surprise. Nick moved to step around him.

  That was when the bomb went off.

  From the corner of his eye Nick sensed something coming at him. There was a brilliant flash of light and then everything went black.

  CHAPTER 9

  Valentina was on the far side of the river near the bridge, waiting for her target to appear. She only needed to get close enough to brush against him. In her pocket was a device that contained a powerful, silent electric charge. It propelled a tiny poisoned dart that could penetrate a thick outer jacket and underlying layers of clothing. An unnoticed touch against the target's back or side and he'd be dead within minutes. It was not an easy way to die. That was of little concern to Valentina. Her concern was the successful completion of her mission.

  She watched what was happening in the square with growing unease. It wasn't because the demonstration was getting violent that she felt uneasy. It was that Todorovski wasn't going to show up if the demonstration disintegrated into a riot.

  Her thoughts calmed when she saw Todorovski coming along the river walkway, surrounded by a cluster of people. In a minute he would be close enough for her to mingle with the crowd and kill him. No one would know what had happened.

  The first shots sounded on the other side of the river. She swiveled toward the sound. People were panicking, struggling to get away, to cross the bridge, to run from the soldiers.

  The leader of the 11 October movement stopped and began talking to one of the men with him, gesturing at the square. She couldn't hear what he was saying but it looked like he was being urged to turn back. Another man joined in. Then Todorovski shrugged and turned away. His face was angry. He began walking back the way he had come.

  Now I have to think of something different.

  There was a sudden disturbance in the middle of the bridge. A large man began knocking people down as they fled the square.

  A provocateur, she thought. One of Mitreski's men.

  Another man wearing a dark blue jacket walked straight up to the thug and kicked him between the legs before he could react, bringing him down.

  I wonder who he is? Not many men would attack first like that.

  She was about to follow after Todorovski when the stage disintegrated in an explosion that rocked the square. Pieces of debris fountained into the air and scythed through the crowd. A dirty cloud of gray-black smoke rose into the wintry sky. Echoes rolled back from the mountains that formed the valley where the city lay.

  Then the screaming began.

  Der'mo, she thought. Shit.

  The cloud of smoke drifted over dozens of dead and wounded. The blast had taken down police, soldiers and protesters together with indifference.

  Valentina turned her back on the scene and began walking after Todorovski, her mind working on what had just happened.

  Who's behind it? Mitreski? But some of his troops were killed.

  It occurred to her that the Kremlin could be responsible but Orlov gained nothing by the violence. She was sure he'd given the order to send her here; it made sense. The West saw Todorovski as a potential ally, someone who would fall in with their plans to contain a resurgent Russia. Someone who would be open to placing missiles on Macedonian territory. At that level of politics, the order to terminate had to have come from the Kremlin. Orlov had no need for a bomb with her assigned to handle the problem.

  The bomb had probably been on a timer. Todorovski's appearance had been delayed past the scheduled time. If it had been controlled by a remote detonator, the assassin would have waited until Todorovski mounted the stage. The explosives had been placed under the speaker's platform and if things had gone as planned, the leader of the 11 October movement would now be scattered in a thousand bloody pieces over Skopje.

  The first ambulance screamed by.

  CHAPTER 10

  "Come on, Nick. Wake up, buddy."

  Someone patted him on the cheek.

  "Nick. Open your eyes."

  He recognized Selena's voice. Somewhere a woman sobbed, a d
eep, wailing sound. He opened his eyes. Selena and Ronnie were bending over him. Ronnie's look of relief was almost comical.

  "All right. You're back," Ronnie said.

  "My head hurts."

  "Yeah, no kidding. You got hit in the head by something."

  "What happened? I think I got in a fight with someone."

  "That's one way of putting it," Selena said. "You kicked one of Mitreski's gorillas in the balls. Then someone set off a bomb."

  "I don't remember that."

  "It will come back. You might have a concussion. Can you stand?"

  "Help me up."

  Ronnie and Selena each took one side and helped Nick to his feet.

  "Man, you look like shit," Lamont said. "There's blood all over the side of your face."

  Selena gave him a hard look.

  Lamont shrugged. "What?"

  "Suits the way I feel," Nick said.

  He looked around. The bridge was strewn with articles left behind by the fleeing crowd. There was no sign of the man he'd kicked. In the square, people huddled in clusters around the fountain or around figures lying on the ground. Groans and cries drifted across the river.

  Police and paramedics began to cross the bridge. A medic stopped and said something. Selena answered him in the same language. The man went on into the square.

  "What did he say?" Nick asked.

  "He wanted to know if you're okay."

  "We need to figure out what happened. Let's get back to the hotel before somebody starts asking a lot of questions."

  The desk clerk looked at Nick's bloodied face as he came in, the one Selena said didn't like reporters. He didn't say anything but Nick thought he saw the trace of a smile.

  "Something funny?" he said. The man's face blanched.

  "Nick…" Selena put her hand on his arm.

  He shook it off. "It's all right."

  The four of them went to Nick's room. He went into the bathroom and cleaned the blood off his face. There was a long gash across his forehead, the source of the blood.

  "I think we can get away without stitches," Selena said. "I'm going to tape the sides together. First I have to disinfect it. This will sting."

  She poured something from a small glass container onto the wound.

  "Ow. What the hell is that stuff?"

  "Tea tree oil. It comes from Australia. Kills just about everything."

  "I believe you. Ow," Nick said again.

  She finished cleaning the wound and applied tape.

  From the hotel window they could see the aftermath of the bombing. The bridge and square were cordoned off. Several emergency vehicles were parked along the river. Two men in civilian clothes looked through the wreckage of the stage.

  "Good thing we made it back here before they closed everything down," Lamont said.

  Ronnie walked over to the dresser and turned on the television. "Let's see what the official line is."

  "That's a game show," Selena said. "Try a different channel."

  Ronnie worked the remote. A newsfeed came on with pictures of the square, the same scene they were watching live through their window. The camera panned in on a serious looking announcer speaking from behind a desk.

  Selena translated. "They're calling it a terrorist attack. He says the Ministry of the Interior has received a note claiming responsibility."

  "Who did it?" Nick said.

  "According to him, a group called the Albanian National Front."

  "I never heard of them."

  "Oh, oh," Selena said.

  "What, oh, oh?"

  "The announcer just said that troop movements are reported on the border with Albania. Mitreski has declared a state of emergency. He's imposed a curfew."

  "War?" Ronnie asked.

  "It sounds like they're getting ready for it." Selena sighed. "The last time this happened NATO stopped it from turning into an all-out conflict but it took months."

  "What's the problem with Albania?" Lamont asked.

  "It goes back hundreds of years to the time of the Ottoman Empire. Almost a third of the population in Macedonia is Muslim but the rest of the country is Orthodox Christian. The last time they almost had a war it was over working conditions for ethnic Albanians living here. There's a lot of bad blood between the two countries."

  "This seems pretty convenient for Mitreski."

  "What do you mean, Nick?" Ronnie said.

  "That demonstration was about people who want to see Mitreski gone. A lot of them. All of a sudden there's a state of emergency and the country is under the threat of war with Albania."

  "You think the government set off that bomb? Their own people were killed."

  "I don't think that would bother someone like Mitreski. People in power will do anything when their position is threatened."

  "A false flag attack," Selena said.

  "It could be. Or it could be what they say it is, a terrorist attack. Either way, things just got a lot more complicated."

  "What do we do next?"

  "We need more information. I have to talk with Harker."

  "What about the mission?"

  "Probably changed," Nick said. "We'll see what Harker has to say."

  "Maybe she'll tell us to come home," Lamont said.

  "Sure she will," Ronnie said. "You been smoking some of those funny cigarettes?"

  CHAPTER 11

  Elizabeth and Stephanie watched a string of reports about Macedonia on the monitor in Elizabeth's office. Stephanie had deep shadows under her eyes. It hadn't been that long since she'd been shot during an ambush on the Project team. She'd lost the child she was carrying and almost died.

  Steph's long brown hair had been cropped short in the hospital. She'd lost a lot of weight. Elizabeth thought it looked good on her but there were better ways to go on a diet. The outer wounds were healing. Elizabeth wasn't sure how long it would take for the ones that didn't show.

  "This is a mess," Stephanie said.

  "I talked to Nick. Things are really tense in Skopje. The word on the street is that there's going to be a war with Albania. The government is blaming an Albanian terrorist group for the bomb."

  "You think that's what really happened?"

  "It's always convenient to blame terrorists. It might be a set up by Mitreski, something to divert attention from the 11 October movement."

  "A false flag."

  "Exactly," Elizabeth said.

  "Nothing is what it appears to be anymore." Stephanie's voice was weary.

  "It sounds like a typical move. Every leader in that part of Europe is corrupt. I wouldn't trust any of them, no matter what they said. Whoever is behind that explosion just upped the ante in the region. Look at this."

  Elizabeth entered a command on her keyboard. The image on the monitor shifted to a live satellite shot over the Balkans and the mountains between Macedonia and Albania. She zoomed in. Military convoys were moving on the highways on both sides of the border, headed toward each other.

  "Troop movements," Stephanie said. "They have tanks and artillery with them."

  "It didn't take them long, did it?"

  "You think they'll start shooting at each other?"

  "Not yet. There will be a lot of posturing and accusations going back and forth between Tirana and Skopje before it really heats up. Unless somebody does something stupid. That's always a possibility."

  "Are you going to pull the team out?"

  "No. Right now they're our best source of intelligence. I want to leave them in place until we get a better idea of what's happening. They're supposed to be reporters. No one will think anything about them asking questions."

  "What is it that you want them to find out?"

  "Anything they can about whoever set off that bomb. If it exists, sooner or later someone will be willing to talk about them."

  "What if they don't discover anything?"

  "Then the probability goes up that Mitreski is lying. We have to find out. This has the potential to bring in NATO and t
he White House needs accurate intelligence. If the group is genuine and they did it, that's one thing. If not, it requires a different response. The Balkans are simmering with old hatreds that can erupt into another war. That would mean intervention on our part."

  "You mean intervention by NATO."

  "It really isn't any different. If NATO gets involved so will we, either with air strikes or sending ground forces. The Europeans will dither and argue and stall until things really get bad. They hate the idea of contributing troops and if they do, they'll put such stringent rules of engagement on them that they'll be worse than useless."

  "They're not the only ones that do that," Stephanie said. "Look at the rules we put on our people in Afghanistan and Iraq. The politicians have crippled their ability to carry out the mission. All because politically correct people think war should be clean and polite and we shouldn't offend anyone. There's never been a war that was polite. No wonder we can't win."

  "Better hadn't let anyone from the media hear you say that. They'll crucify you."

  "I'm not the only one who thinks it's stupid to fight a war with one hand tied behind your back."

  "No, you're not."

  They watched the convoys streaming toward the border.

  "Where do you think Nick should start?" Stephanie asked.

  "That's a good question. I'm not sure. The convoys are headed toward the main crossing checkpoint near that big lake on the border. It's on the only decent highway between the two countries. If I were a terrorist, I wouldn't go anywhere near there."

  "You want them to go look for terrorists?"

  "Not exactly," Elizabeth said. "I doubt they'd find them. All I'm interested in is trying to confirm their involvement in the bombing."

  "Nick and the others can't cover the entire border."

  "They don't need to, they just need to talk to some people."

  Elizabeth studied the monitor and pointed.

  "That city close to Albania, the one on the western side near that smaller lake. What's it called?"

  Stephanie entered a search on her laptop. "Debar. It says here that the population is almost completely Albanian, even though the city is in Macedonia."