Surface to Air

by Gérard de Villiers

  Somov looked at his watch. He couldn’t hang around forever. He would come back tomorrow to arrange the shipment of the Iglas to Dagestan, though doing that without Khadjiev might be a hassle.

  As he started his Mercedes, Somov was struck by an unpleasant thought. What if Malko Linge was still alive, and he went to talk to Marina?

  She didn’t know anything, of course, but that could be worrisome.

  —

  Feeling tense, Malko stepped into Hot Dog’s. It was late—the murder attempt had been five hours earlier—so he wasn’t likely to find Marina still there. Unless she thought he was dead.

  As before, the two apelike bouncers checked him out carefully. He paid his three hundred rubles and made for the bar. There were more people than the night before, and some of the tables were occupied. The crowded bar included a woman in a red jacket with long black hair sitting alone in front of a Martini Bianco on the rocks.

  Malko’s pulse started to race: it had to be Marina!

  He came up behind her, and a sixth sense made her turn around. She was carefully made up, and he could make out slightly sagging breasts under a sheer black blouse.

  “Malko!” she cried, giving him a warm smile. “I’d given up hoping you were coming.”

  “Why so?”

  “My driver went to pick you up earlier, but you’d already left the hotel.”

  She radiated sincerity, and her gaze was completely open. Malko took a stool next to hers and ordered a beer.

  Marina clearly hadn’t sent the killer, yet she was the only person who knew the circumstances that made the ambush possible.

  “Something came up,” he said. “But here I am, as you see.”

  She gave him a flirtatious look.

  “So much the better! Even if you didn’t use my driver, I’m very happy to see you.”

  A heavy hint.

  Marina now seemed eager to leave. She polished off her Martini at a gulp, leaving only the ice cubes.

  “Do you have time tonight?” she asked, almost shyly.

  Malko was about to say no, but thought better of it. After all, the young woman must know something.

  “Sure,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Out on the sidewalk, it was drizzling.

  She opened the door of a Lada with peeling red paint. Malko’s driver from the night before got behind the wheel.

  “Are we going to the Kempinski?” she asked.

  —

  Impressed by his luxurious suite, Marina walked over to the picture window facing the Kremlin.

  “God, it’s beautiful!” she said admiringly.

  She turned to Malko, and added:

  “You must have a lot of money.”

  The request couldn’t be ignored. He discreetly peeled off 1,600 rubles, which she stowed in her purse. Then she took off her blouse, revealing a lacy red bra. The rest followed. Her string panty, red as well, stopped just below a long appendicitis scar. This was common among poor Russians; Soviet-era doctors were butchers.

  The young woman’s blue-gray eyes expressed something unexpected among whores: sincere pleasure.

  She quickly pulled off her string panty, revealing that she was completely bare, Russian style.

  “You’re gonna fuck me good,” she whispered, embracing him.

  That sounded sincere as well.

  She started giving Malko a blow job while expertly massaging his perineum. The groans of pleasure she produced were well worth 1,600 rubles.

  When he laid Marina across the bed, she arched her back and cried out when he entered her. Her hips moved in a kind of circular dance that heightened Malko’s enjoyment.

  Afterward she rested on her belly for a while, before eventually standing up.

  “I’m going to leave now,” she said. “You must be tired.”

  As she got dressed, she put a business card on the night table.

  “That’s my cell,” she said. “If you need me or a car, just call.”

  Malko didn’t know quite what to make of her. She was a hooker with a chauffeur who rented out cars. Deeply sensual, but somehow involved with the missile affair.

  This was a slim lead, and one to be handled carefully. It had already nearly cost Malko his life.

  The next thing to do was to get Parviz Amritzar’s cell phone to reveal its secrets, and only the technical division people at the embassy could do that.

  So far, the facts that Malko had gathered didn’t fit together. He had a puzzle with some major pieces missing.

  Yet without realizing it, he’d already learned quite a lot.

  CHAPTER

  20

  Colonel Dmitri Voloshino, the head of the FSB investigations department at 38 Petrovka Street, read the report carefully. It detailed the discovery of a burned Lada 1500 in a vacant lot near the Kursky train station the previous evening. The car contained a man’s body, his lower body shredded by some sort of explosion, possibly a grenade. The flames had burned everything, so it was impossible to identify the man, but the discovery of a 9 mm Makarov with a silencer strongly hinted at organized crime.

  Voloshino ordered the serial numbers of the car and pistol traced, but didn’t give it much thought. It was almost certainly a gangland settling of scores.

  Just in case, he forwarded the report to the counterterrorism directorate at the Lubyanka.

  —

  Arzo Khadjiev’s partners Karon and Terek had almost finished loading the eight Igla-S into the old Ural truck. They stacked the cases wrapped in their carpets up front, then filled the rest of the truck with cartons containing flat-screen televisions, computers, and electrical appliances.

  It was more than a thousand miles to Dagestan, and this way, if they were stopped along the road, they could barter their way out of trouble. On their meager pay, few border guards could afford a flat-screen TV.

  As they were about to leave, the two men looked at Parviz Amritzar’s body. In its plastic sheeting, it had begun to swell. They didn’t feel like taking it along, and no one would be looking for it, so they decided to leave it behind.

  Karon, the conscientious one, took the trouble to rig a grenade booby trap underneath it. If somebody moved the body, it would explode. A harmless little joke to punish the nosy.

  Just then, his cell phone rang. It was a man he knew only as “Pavel”—almost certainly a fake name—who spoke like someone used to giving orders.

  “Arzo had a problem,” said the man. “Don’t wait for him. I’ll meet you there.”

  Karon didn’t argue. He was paid cash on the barrelhead for his services, and this trip would be no exception. In Dagestan, an Igla-S was worth its weight in gold, he knew.

  He and Terek went upstairs to the courtyard, locked the basement door, and drove out toward the ring road. They would then take the M6 to Tambov and make for Volgograd. After that, it would be the Caucasus and eventually Makhachkala.

  The two men were armed, but more out of habit than fear.

  People knew who they were, and anyone who bothered them would pay the price.

  —

  Malko watched as Tom Polgar studied the Nokia phone, which he’d had charged. He first looked at the photo of Benazir Amritzar, then scrolled through the list of outgoing calls. Many were to the Hotel Belgrade, and one to a number in the United States. But one call appeared to have been made to a Russian cell phone.

  “I’ll give the phone to the Technical Division, and see what they can get out of it,” said Polgar.

  “Have you talked to the FBI?” asked Malko.

  “They’re lying low. Bruce Hathaway would only hint vaguely that they’d screwed up.”

  “And no news of Parviz Amritzar, I assume.”

  “Nope. Bruce talked to the FSB, and they claim to be in the dark. They didn’t mention the eight missiles. I think they’ve lost interest in Amritzar, because now they’ve got much bigger fish to fry: a real terrorist plot.”

  “What about Benazir?”

  “The FSB questioned
her, but she wasn’t able to tell them much. They told her to stay at the hotel and not to leave the country. She’s an American citizen, so we sent her our vice consul. But I’m sure she doesn’t know anything.

  “It looks like the FBI has precipitated a catastrophe, because they didn’t know Amritzar was connected to real terrorists based here. That’s why he was so eager to get to Russia; he wanted to join his pals.”

  Malko didn’t agree.

  “It seems to me more likely that he was framed,” he said.

  “In that case, he’s dead,” said Polgar soberly. “When a Russian loses his cell phone, it’s not a good sign.”

  “The man who used it and tried to kill me looked like a Caucasian,” said Malko. “And Marina deals with Caucasians. That’s a lot of coincidences.”

  Malko paused.

  “I’ll repeat what I suggested before: get clear of this mare’s nest, tell the Russians what we know, and let me fly back to Austria.”

  “No way,” said Polgar firmly. “We’re involved whether we like it or not. They tried to kill you, so you’re in somebody’s way, and it wasn’t the FSB or the other secret services. We’ve stumbled into something a lot more complicated, and we better figure it out.

  “Besides, you’re forgetting the most important thing. Even if Amritzar was wholly created by the FBI, he really did want to shoot down Air Force One. The president will be here in a few days, and the FBI won’t be the ones to protect them.”

  “What about the Russians?”

  “I’m sure they don’t want an incident like that, but nothing says they can prevent it. Caucasians have already struck in Moscow with impunity. They’ve infiltrated the intelligence services and can do whatever they like. Besides, an Igla-S can reach 12,000 feet, so you never know what might happen.”

  “Doesn’t Air Force One have electronic countermeasures?” Malko asked in surprise.

  “Of course, but the Russians claim that the Igla-S can penetrate all the ones in use today. No sense in putting it to the test.”

  The CIA station chief had a point. The only way any of them would rest easy was to retrieve the stolen missiles.

  —

  General Razgonov had just come from a meeting on the seventh floor of the Aquarium, right below the helipad. He was feeling tense.

  Per the Kremlin’s order, the head of the GRU had called in all his top deputies to brief them on the Igla theft. The information was secret, but every intelligence service in the country was told to question their sources for clues to the missiles’ whereabouts.

  The threat against the U.S. president’s plane was also covered, of course. It would be terrible for the Kremlin if the hated Caucasians made Russian intelligence look foolish in the eyes of the world. They had already done so in the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002 and a number of other attacks committed under the noses of the police.

  As the general formerly in charge of the North Caucasus, Razgonov felt all eyes were on him. He had dealt with enough Chechens and Dagestanis to still have contacts among them. He’d been told to approach the Wahla Arsaiev group, a likely candidate for launching this kind of attack.

  This was awkward for Razgonov. After all, these were his customers, handled by his friend Alexei Somov.

  Back in his office, Razgonov went over the situation in his mind. All in all, it wasn’t too dire. In a few days, he would be getting eight million dollars. No one could connect him to the theft of the missiles. Anatoly Molov was dead, and the Kolomna FSB hadn’t found any clues to his murder.

  Parviz Amritzar, the phony terrorist, was out of the way, and the truck carrying the missiles had left Moscow for Dagestan.

  —

  Somov still didn’t know what had gone wrong, but was beginning to fear the worst. If Khadjiev didn’t call, it meant that he was dead. That wasn’t a big deal in itself, but could anyone get back to him through the young Dagestani?

  He didn’t see how, even after giving it a lot of thought.

  Somov had had no official knowledge of the FBI sting operation that had started this whole business.

  That left Marina as the only connection. The fact that he occasionally slept with her was no crime, and he had never used her in any of his operations. So there was no point in killing her, which would only cause problems.

  Somov glanced at his watch. He would be seeing Anna at the end of the day. Maybe she’d heard something. Now that the Sword and Shield restaurant near FSB headquarters had closed, it was harder to glean bits of useful information.

  As Colonel Tretyakov’s secretary, Anna was the only person who knew he was aware of the FBI’s original request to borrow an Igla-S. And she probably didn’t realize she had tipped him off.

  Somov lit a cigarette and looked out the window at the gray sky. The search for the missing Iglas would give him a perfect excuse to go to Dagestan to investigate. It would allow him to collect the eight million dollars and also dispose of the missiles. That should take some of the pressure off.

  —

  By now, Rem Tolkachev was working on practically nothing but the Igla-S affair. It went far beyond an ordinary counterterrorism action. If terrorists managed to attack the American president on Russian soil, the shock would be terrible. Many heads would roll, maybe even his own.

  Tolkachev went over what he knew and what he didn’t.

  Parviz Amritzar had disappeared, probably to go join terrorists in the Caucasus.

  Eight Igla-S missiles had been stolen, something that had never happened before. In Tolkachev’s eyes that meant the terrorists must be planning to strike in Moscow. After all, Chechnya was pacified, and all its boiviki dead. Ingushetia was quiet. The Wahhabi groups in Dagestan didn’t need surface-to-air missiles except for prestige, or to sell them, probably outside of Russia. Nobody was fighting them, and Dagestan itself only dispatched a suicide bomber to Moscow from time to time so Russia wouldn’t forget about it.

  For the first time in his long career, Tolkachev didn’t see how to solve the problem. Meanwhile, the FSB, GRU, and the FAPSI information service were sending him blizzards of reports, most of them meaningless.

  Going through the stack of documents, Tolkachev came across the surveillance report on Malko Linge, and skimmed it. His idea of killing the CIA agent now seemed a long time ago. But a sentence in the report jumped out at him. Linge was having a relationship with one Julia Naryshkin, a good-looking intellectual who’d once been the girlfriend of Makhachkala’s mayor.

  Hm, thought Tolkachev, the Caucasus again…

  It might be a coincidence, of course. Magomed Nabiyev was a refugee in a wheelchair and Naryshkin was a free woman. Just the same, Tolkachev made a note to have Gocha Sukhumi questioned, to see if she still had any connections with the Caucasus.

  The report also mentioned the CIA agent’s twice visiting a pickup bar at 26 Zemlyanoy Val Street, which was a section of the Garden Ring. The second time, he’d taken a hooker back to the Kempinski.

  Tolkachev paused thoughtfully, his pen in midair. Then he went to his safe, rummaged among his files, and pulled out the one on Malko Linge.

  It was as thick as a phone book.

  Quickly leafing through it, he learned something interesting. In Linge’s various trips to Russia, he had slept with a number of women, but never with a prostitute.

  It could be a clue.

  Tolkachev drafted an urgent request for a close-up photo of the woman, to be taken without her knowledge.

  As far as he knew, Linge had no official business in Moscow, so his presence was intriguing. He was up to something, but what?

  —

  Tom Polgar handed Malko a freshly decoded message from Washington. It wasn’t from Langley, but the White House.

  It was brief and to the point.

  As the representative of the CIA in Moscow, Polgar was instructed to schedule an immediate meeting with FSB head Alexander Bortnikov, to deliver an official message.

  The State Department wanted Russian intelligen
ce to retrieve the eight Igla-S missiles stolen from the KBM factory in Kolomna before President Barack Obama’s arrival in Moscow. Otherwise the American ambassador would notify the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the visit was being postponed.

  The matter was being kept at the level of the intelligence services for the moment, so as not to cause talk.

  Malko handed back the message.

  “Who told the White House that there were eight missiles?”

  “I did,” said Polgar. “I couldn’t keep that to myself.”

  “And the Russians aren’t aware that we know?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “This is going to rock the boat, Tom. They’re going to start asking themselves questions, and they may have a few for us. We have to protect Gocha.”

  “I’m not about to burn our sources,” said the station chief. “And the decision about the president’s visit isn’t mine to make. The White House is really worried about an attack, and I can’t blame them.”

  “When will you see Bortnikov?”

  “As soon as I can get an appointment,” said Polgar. “I don’t think it’ll be a long meeting.”

  “Have you informed the FBI?”

  “No, I haven’t. They’re the ones who got us into this shit.”

  It wasn’t exactly the era of good feelings.

  “So what do you want of me?” asked Malko.

  Polgar smiled tightly.

  “You’re going to have some work to do.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Amritzar’s cell gave us an interesting lead. You know we keep files on all the important people in Russian intelligence, right?”

  “Of course. So what?”

  “A call was made from the phone that we wouldn’t have expected. It was to a certain Alexei Somov. He’s a black-market arms dealer, ex-GRU. Apparently all of Somov’s operations are vetted by a former military commander in the Caucasus, General Anatoly Razgonov. The number three man at the GRU.”

  CHAPTER

  21

  Malko was stunned.

  How could a former GRU officer possibly get a call from a man the FBI suspected was a terrorist? The Igla-S affair was becoming more and more murky. Malko and Polgar already knew that the FSB planned to trap the FBI. Now suddenly the GRU was on stage, but in a role they didn’t understand.