Michael Gresham (Book 5): Sakharov the Bear

by John Ellsworth

  I hear my name, turn and spot Antonia Xiang. She stands when I nod at her and comes over before I can stop her. I don't want the court officials to see that we know each other, but it is too late.

  "I tried to talk to him back there through the glass but the meter maids ran me off."

  "Yes, it's very different here, I'm sure. Listen, I'd rather they didn't know we were connected but it's too late for that now. Can we speak after we're finished here?"

  She ignores my request. "I went to see him last night. Sunday night is visitors' night. They refused to let me see him, even with a fake name. ‘He's accused of state secrets,’ they said, whatever that means. They said state secrets defendants get no visits except from their lawyers. Do you think I might enter my appearance as one of his co-counsel?”

  She has me there. Back in Washington, Antonia Xiang is a world class Assistant U.S. Attorney. She would likely prove invaluable to my team. Of course there is the fact her usual beat is terrorism. FSB might already have a line on her and violently object to her coming into the case.

  "Let me talk that over with Van. Right now I'm tempted to say yes, come aboard, but safety first. Let me get Van's input and I'll get back to you."

  "Call me at the hotel?"

  "I promise. Later today."

  She smiles and moves back to her seat in the pew. Another issue for us.

  Van has explained to me what is happening in the case right now. The criminal investigation in Xiang's case is divided into two stages: an informal inquest performed by the police, and a formal preliminary investigation, usually conducted by a legally trained investigator who works for the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

  A word about confessions, for they are rife in Russian courtrooms. Van has explained it to me on the taxi ride to court. To protect suspects against being coerced to confess to crimes, a constitutional right to counsel from the moment of arrest is on the books. In addition, the Russian Constitution guarantees the right not to testify against oneself. The Supreme Court has interpreted this to mean that the police must advise a suspect of the right to remain silent and of the right to counsel before commencing an interrogation. Unfortunately, the police routinely coerce suspects into "waiving" their right to counsel. If suspects refuse to give a statement they are often tortured. He tells me that something like forty percent of all suspects are tortured, usually through beating, and by asphyxiation or electric shock. He also says the guards will give other inmates special privileges to beat, rape, and force suspects into confessing. We are assuming that Russell has made no such confession since we last met with him. Still, judging from his looks and wraps and bandages, our assumption could be totally wrong.

  The judge strolls mechanically into the courtroom once the lawyers are seated and their papers spread before them. For some reason he is known as Chickenhawk, Van tells me with no small glee. When I ask where the nickname comes from he looks at me and shakes his head. "Perhaps we'll find that out this morning," he says.

  The judge begins speaking. His words are interpreted in real time by an interpreter standing at the right side of the platform, standing and speaking the English interpretation as a counterpoint to the judge's continuing exposition. In other words, the judge speaks and the interpreter immediately is offering the English even as the judge moves onto his next comment.

  The interpretation at the beginning is this: "Mr. Sakharov, you have filed papers asking for pre-trial release from detention.”

  Then he launches into the language of criminal bail law. “Most suspects against whom a preliminary investigation is initiated remain in custody in preventive detention facilities until trial. Detention is authorized if there is fear the defendant will not appear for trial, will destroy evidence, commit more crimes, or just because of the seriousness of the offense. Mr. Sakharov, this is your case on all points. One, if released on bail, Xiang will fail to appear for trial. Two, by doing so he will commit more crimes, even destroy evidence. Three, there is no more serious offense than acquiring state secrets. So defendant Xiang is remanded to the custody of the City Jail. Now we shall have our preliminary matters heard. Mr. Prosecutor, please proceed."

  The prosecutor climbs to his feet. He is a thin man, sallow of complexion, who riffles nervously through his papers and constantly pushes his rimless glasses back on his nose. He looks up at the judge and speaks Russian urgently, all the while pointing at me and sometimes even jabbing a finger at me.

  Van nudges me and I lean toward him. "This is Sergei Gliisky, the prosecutor. He is claiming that you are not who you say you are and that you are not qualified to appear in this court. He is asking the judge to order the militia to take you into custody until your background is sorted and your identity established. You are a fraud on the court."

  The judge then reacts and the interpreter starts up again:

  "Mr. Sakharov, the prosecutor has filed papers just now stating that your real name is Michael Gresham and that you are an agent of the American CIA. These are very serious allegations. My inclination is to hold you in custody until your true identity is known before making a decision on the prosecutor's motion that you be held in criminal attempt for attempting to illegally influence the outcome of a Russian judicial proceeding. You could go to jail for a minimum of ten years if these charges are proven against you."

  I almost faint when I hear "ten years."

  "What?" I whisper to Van, "Do something, man."

  Van then stands and looks around, blinking. His opening remarks are halted and spoken in a tone that even I can interpret as apologetic. His speech lasts less than thirty seconds, then he sits back down.

  "What?" I ask.

  "I told the judge that you came to me and told me your name was Mikhail Sakharov. I told the judge that as far as I was concerned, that was your real name. Then I apologized if it turns out I made a mistake."

  "Van, what the hell? I paid you to co-counsel with me! I didn't pay you to cover your own ass!"

  Van moves away several inches, separating himself from me. "I thought you were being honest, Mr. Sakharov. I had no idea you might not be who you told me you are. Do you have family that could come before the judge and clear this up?"

  My mind immediately goes to Verona Sakharov. Then I shut it off. I will absolutely not, under any circumstances, ask her to come into this courtroom and identity me as her husband. That would be a terrible abuse of our time together and would crush any trust she might have in me to even ask. Absolutely. Will. Not.

  "I have no family to clear this up. I live alone."

  Then the judge is speaking and Van's attention swings back to him. I listen as the interpreter again announces, "The court will order defense counsel Mikhail Sakharov taken into detention and held while his identity is proved. After that he shall be immediately released and allowed to continue with his defense of Russell Xiang. The court is in recess."

  Immediately there's a great deal of clamor in the courtroom, the judge disappears, I turn and see that Russell has been removed from the cage, Van is headed for the doors; four armed Russian women swarm me and put the bracelets around my wrists. But they leave me with a glimmer of hope because they have cuffed me in front rather than behind.

  As she passes me by, Antonia Xiang flashes me a sad look. Sad because she knows me as Michael Gresham and her face says it all: See you in ten years.

  As for me, the worst that could happen has happened. Suspicions have been raised about my true identity. The ID that Marcel put together for me will leak like a sieve upon close inspection. My pulse hammers in my neck and my breathing becomes forced. I'm gasping for air and swallowing it down. My lungs feel like they want to burst as they burn and cry out normal respiration. But I'm scared and I know it and the guards know it too, as they push me along from behind, up the aisle, out into a long dark hallway, and down toward what can only be the freight elevator. Everyone else is heading to the first floor by the main staircase that opens onto this floor. My eyes quickly memorize every inch of
it as I approach. Its steps are polished with use and the handrails are worn down. In great distress, I look at the lucky souls leaving by the stairs. I'm pushed ever more insistently as I slow to watch them leaving and consider making my break to fly down through them and escape.

  But where would I go? How and where would I hide if I suddenly ran out the front doors of the Moscow City Court? Handcuffed? No one is going to assist a handcuffed man. I know I wouldn't. So I put that notion out of my head.

  The elevator well holds two doors. The door on the left opens and a green arrow points down. I'm pushed from behind and stumble inside as my face is pushed up against the wall. I hear voices outside the sliding door just before it closes and I realize not all four guards have entered with me. Slowly I edge around and am astonished to see that only one guard is now attending to me. Where did the others go? Will we see them again downstairs when our door opens? I don't know, which puts me at a great disadvantage. But one thing I do know is this: cops around the world carry handcuff keys. Usually inside the chest pocket of their uniform. It's common and I'm realizing that I can hang onto that fact and make it into something much larger.

  For example, the woman guarding me is several steps away, looking up at the floor numbers changing as we proceed downward. I'm cuffed with my hands in front, which makes attacking her possible. So I have a heart attack. Right there on this downbound elevator I suddenly collapse into a heap, scaring the Russian woman to death. Her face is suddenly over me and she is shouting the same word at me over and over, and I make no attempt to respond. Then the elevator door slides open and, before anyone can come inside, she backs them off with a stern warning.

  She stands over me and studies my face. She feels my pulse and then says something into her shoulder mike. Help is probably on the way, so it's now or never. I struggle to my feet and lunge for her; she is knocked back against the wall. I locate her holster. I claw its flap open and pull her gun into my hand. Then I point it at her chest. "Handcuffs," I pant at her. "Key!" She seems to understand, for she raises a hand as if to say I should stay calm, then reaches inside her shirt pocket—sure enough—and produces the tiny handcuff key. With a quick twist the cuffs come off and I fling them aside. I'm still pointing the gun at her. Only then do I realize a huge commotion has erupted just outside the door.

  Without a second thought I push my way through the crowd that was waiting to board our elevator and come out the other side. I'm still holding the gun when I walk up to a heavyset Russian man and begin unzipping his coat and miming that he should remove it. He cooperates, raising his hands as if to ward off any shots I might fire at him.

  As I'm shrugging into his coat, four Russian militiamen materialize on the steps outside and see me though the glass door, standing with a gun. They immediately pull their pistols and point them at me. I turn and look for a way out. But three more female guards have just stepped off the second elevator and are making their way toward me, guns drawn, their faces angry and determined. It is finished.

  The first woman to me utters a loud command and I know what she means. She is going to shoot me unless I drop the gun. I bend down and place the gun on the marble floor. Then they are upon me and handcuffs are snapped onto wrists, this time pulled back behind me.

  The man whose coat I stole comes up and speaks in an angry voice to the guards, who by now have been joined by the militiamen. Clearly he wants his coat returned. But he is told to stand aside, which he does, and I'm marched out the front doors and down the steps to a waiting van.

  I'm pushed and pulled into the van and forced back against my manacled wrists. They hurt but I know no one will help so I remain silent.

  The van has three rows of seats and it slowly dawns on me as I look around: Russell Xiang is in the middle seat just ahead of me. He says, without turning around, "Welcome, Mikhail. Now we shall have unlimited time to discuss my defense."

  I want to laugh but don't. From the looks on their faces, these militiamen would be very upset to have their prisoner laughing. Maybe upset enough to rap him across the mouth.

  So I maintain my silence.

  The streets are a blur outside the window. I know nothing about Moscow streets and directions and have no idea where we are. Even if I had escaped I would have been quickly captured because I wouldn't have known where to run.

  So we bump along over the streets rough with snow.

  My fear begins to mount in my gut the farther we are from the courthouse. Because the farther we are from the courthouse, the closer we are to Moscow City Jail, and the stories I've heard about that place.

  I silently pray those stories are not true.

  Chapter 21

  When she put her name to the confession, her left arm was broken in two places, her right wrist dislocated after being battered by a police baton, her right eye swollen shut from savage blows, three ribs cracked from powerful kicks, and two fractured teeth were embedded in the roof of her mouth from being sapped in the jaw. Anna Petrov saw two lines and two names being signed at once though there was really only one line and one name. Diplopia can indicate severe trauma to the optic nerve and Petrov, being sapped repeatedly in the face, now saw double everything.

  She had been wearing no coat inside the green house when taken into custody and she is wearing no coat when they push her out the rear loading dock of the Moscow Jail down into snow up to her waist. She falls onto her back and lies there for several minutes, catching her breath and trying to stop the vomiting. Then she struggles to her feet and shakes off the powdery snow clinging to her backside. On her feet are green deck shoes and her lower garment is bluejeans with torn knees while her upper garment is a wool turtleneck sweater with a cotton T-shirt beneath. She blows on her hands. She cups snow against her throbbing wrist. The dislocation is the worst, she decides, and she knows she needs medical attention. She also knows from the questions they've been asking her that she works for the government in some capacity, but she can't say what that is. She just can't recall those facts. They told her what name to put on the confession when she signed but for the life of her she has no memory of it. It just didn't ring a bell.

  "It's short term memory loss," she tells herself in the dark alley while the wind howls all around. "It'll pass." Her words were words welded into her mind during training at the spy school in Maryland. Certain rote phrases and knowledge islands existed to help the brain-addled spy survive, courtesy of her employer, the Company.

  She feels inside her pockets. There is crumpled up about six thousand rubles and a book of matches from a downtown Moscow lounge. Forcing herself to move and not just surrender to the snow, she trudges two hundred feet to the closest street and walks onto the curb, where she teeters, peering into the pelting sleet and snow. No traffic passes by for several minutes. She heads for the front of the building where she was incarcerated. In the yellow of the street lamp she makes out a double street sign that says, she is quite certain, Novoslobodskaya. Isn't that the street the jail fronts onto? She knows Moscow and thinks she is right: if her memory can be trusted. She waits, shivering and stamping her feet until a cab comes toward her before she steps into his lane and waves him down. He pulls to the curb. She staggers around to the driver's window and asks him, in her perfect Russian, if he will take her to a hospital.

  "Which hospital?" he wants to know.

  She asks him which one he recommends.

  "Central Clinical Hospital and Polyclinic," he tells her. "That's the one I know best. They can help you."

  "All right," she tells him, "take me there."

  He drops her in a bladed driveway beneath an overhang at the emergency entrance of the hospital. She wanders inside and tries conversing with the intake receptionist. But she makes no sense and turns to walk back out. The receptionist, however, is a young woman who cares, and she catches up to Petrov and takes her by the arm, gently guiding her to a hospital gurney and helping her lie down. She then covers her with a light blanket and summons the ER nurse.

&nbs
p; Her broken arm is cast from shoulder to hand and her dislocated wrist is put back into place—the worst of all the pain she has felt yet. Then they examine her eyes and teeth and commence an overall physical exam, making a plan of treatment. An ophthalmologist is caught as he is leaving the hospital for the night and he returns to his suite, where she is wheeled for evaluation. He thinks the visual disturbances are, at this point, likely due to edema from the trauma and he predicts that will resolve over the next forty-eight hours.

  Next, she is admitted and taken upstairs.

  In the morning, a staff physician removes the dental fragments from the roof of her mouth. A dental exam follows and temporary crowns epoxied in place.

  By the third day, certain memories are beginning to return. First is her name and then her residence information and, by the fourth day, her employment details. Which shock her. She is a CIA operative working out of Moscow Station and it is imperative that she make her way to her employer immediately. Which she does, leaving the hospital AMA by way of the same ER door that delivered her inside four nights previous. The hospital has outfitted her with a second-hand coat from its County Aid stores and black leather gloves too large for her hands but that accommodate her swollen wrist.

  She is dropped at the American Embassy that snowy noonday and by one o'clock she has passed all the ID tests—without any papers or pass cards—and she is back with her team. The last time there, the Moscow Station Chief Edward R. Henshaw was gunned down by a high-powered rifle, and in the chaos that followed she fled with Russell Xiang for the green house. That all seems like a dream to her now as she sits in the lounge and awaits new ID, keys to her flat, and money.

  Then comes an intensive debriefing. She tells her manager the entire story, beginning with the raid on Henrik's house, the shootout, and finding the bill of lading for the weapons and munitions. They ask more questions and she tells them about the green house and the FSB raid where she and Russell were taken captive. She asks her manager how the FSB could have known she and Russell were hiding there and he looks at his chief and there is a moment of understanding, but then neither one answers her question. Then they ask her about jail, about court, about the beatings—especially whether the bruises and breaks and dental injuries were photographed and preserved and she answers yes, remembering that those things were done, especially the photographs. Of course, they all agree, yet because it is a Federation hospital those same artifacts proving the extent of her injuries could just as easily disappear if the FSB gives the word. Whereupon, a photographer and medical team are brought in and an ad hoc exam performed and photographs are taken for the CIA's files.