True Believer

by Carr, Jack

  The morning train to Paris left at seven and Grey spent his day staring at the countryside as it rolled by. He overnighted in La Ville-Lumière before traveling, again by rail, to Strasbourg, where he boarded one last train for the final leg of his long journey. Flying would have been faster and more direct, but this method was far more secure and allowed him to spend time with his new identity. He was shaking with excitement as he walked through the doors of Basel’s SBB station in search of his contact.

  It didn’t take long to spot him, a severe-looking man with a shaved head dressed in all black. The man’s dead eyes were locked on him from across the room and, when Grey finally met his gaze, the man nodded without smiling. He didn’t offer to take Grey’s bag, but led him to a black Mercedes AMG G63 idling in front of the station. The driver, who looked about as friendly as his partner, stepped out of the SUV and loaded the bags into the rear cargo area. Grey climbed into the backseat and shut the door. After the long journey on public transportation and among so many strangers, the feel and smell of the soft leather interior was another indication that he had almost arrived.

  CHAPTER 65

  THE ROYAL JORDANIAN AIRLINES flight left Erbil at 4:00 a.m., which meant that both Reece and Freddy hadn’t slept a wink all night.

  Shouldn’t a possibly imminent terrorist attack qualify them for a Gulfstream? Reece wondered.

  Their diplomatic passports got them through the check-in process quickly, neither had checked a bag. The guns all stayed behind, making Reece feel naked, even in jeans and a dress shirt with suit coat. The business-class seats on the Airbus 319 were comfortable, but Reece’s sleep was soon interrupted by their approach in Amman, where they would have three hours to kill until their Frankfurt flight.

  They drank coffee and put a serious dent in the Royal Jordanian Lounge’s breakfast spread before boarding the late-morning flight to Frankfurt. Located in Germany’s fifth largest city, Frankfurt Airport was Europe’s hub to the Middle East, and had certainly seen its share of American trigger-pullers and spooks pass through over the years. Reece got a few more hours of sleep on the next flight and was starting to feel almost human again when they touched down in London.

  Another four-hour layover, another airport lounge, another pot of coffee. At least this airport had an international bookstore with some interesting titles. Reece always enjoyed perusing international bookstores, as he often found interesting military nonfiction written by Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, and South Africans. In this particular bookstore he found a copy of Three Sips of Gin, by Tim Bax, about the Selous Scouts and pseudoterrorist operations in Rhodesia.

  Catchy title, Reece thought.

  They boarded the United 777 at 4:30 p.m. local and found their seats for the nine-hour flight to Dulles. Reece read his new book, dozed off a few times, and switched back and forth among the cable news channels available on the in-flight monitor, hoping subconsciously that he might catch a glimpse of his favorite journalist.

  The sky stayed in a perpetual state of sundown as they flew west across the time zones, nighttime teasing but never quite falling. The big Boeing touched down right on schedule at 8:05 p.m., startling Reece out of his slumber. He was more than ready to get off the plane after nearly two days of constant travel. Fortunately, their business-class seats put them near the exit.

  Reece was expecting to ride on one of Dulles’s Chrysler-built “mobile lounges,” the obsolete aircraft boarding buses that looked like something devised on a 1950s-era drawing board as “the future of passenger comfort.” Instead they docked at a jet bridge at C Concourse that dumped the passengers directly into a Federal Inspection Station, where bored but alert U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers were waiting in their dark blue uniforms. A man with a clean-shaven head and an ID lanyard hanging outside his light gray suit was standing off to one side as the bleary-eyed returning tourists and stoic business travelers shuffled off the aircraft. Freddy spotted him and gave him a quick wave, showing the man both of their credentials. The slightly portly man motioned for them to follow and he swiped his ID card and punched a four-digit code into a nondescript doorway that led to an elevator.

  If this was some type of trick to get Reece back to the United States so that he could be arrested, this was where it would go down. Their path allowed them to bypass Passport Control and Customs as their escort showed them to an uncrowded stop on the airport’s AeroTrain. Moments later they were walking through Dulles’s unique concrete-and-glass wing-shaped terminal, another relic of Draperesque 1950s design.

  I guess I really am a free man.

  It was late enough that the legendary D.C. area traffic was light, especially heading toward the city. Their CIA driver didn’t say a word as he negotiated the route. Reece was amazed by all the new tech- and defense-related office buildings that lined the Dulles Toll Road; this area had been built up significantly since his last visit.

  It was strange being back home; Reece felt like he was getting away with something. He’d pocketed a pack of gum from a 7-Eleven as a kid, the only time he’d ever stolen anything in his life; this feeling was oddly similar.

  The Tysons Corner Hilton was their destination for the night and both Reece and Freddy, whose bodies were operating on the assumption that it was long past midnight, opted to skip dinner and head to bed. Thanks to the time difference, Reece was wide awake at just after 4:00 a.m. and couldn’t make himself go back to sleep. He hadn’t packed workout clothes or athletic shoes, so he made do in his room wearing the T-shirt and boxer briefs he’d slept in. After a few minutes of stretching, he knocked out a hundred burpees, leaving him soaked in sweat. It felt good to move. Fitness is perishable.

  He watched cable news with the volume low, all the channels obsessed with a tropical wave off the coast of Africa that they expected to become a hurricane. Meteorologists clad in raincoats bearing the logo of their respective networks had been pre-positioned all over the Caribbean, waiting to report on the storm’s violence that was still days away. Outside of terror attacks, bad weather seemed to be the only thing that tore people away from television’s many streaming services and back to watching the news. The networks responded by hyping up every storm as if it were “the next big one.” Reece turned off the giant LCD screen and hit the shower.

  He and Freddy were both downstairs and waiting when the hotel’s restaurant opened for breakfast at 6:00 a.m., the normally scraggly operators looking almost dapper in their business suits. Neither man said much, as what occupied their minds wasn’t something that they could discuss in public. They did make sure to get the U.S. government’s money’s worth from the twenty-six-dollar breakfast buffet.

  Their ride pulled up just before 8:00 a.m., and the traffic was at its peak as they made the short drive through McLean to their destination. They were cleared through the security gate, the black Tahoe stopping in front of the six-story George Bush Center for Intelligence. Reece wasn’t impressed by much, but he was wide-eyed as they approached the entrance to the “old” building, which was completed in 1961. As they made their way past the doors and through the electronic security turnstiles, Reece spotted something in the lobby and asked Freddy to stop for a moment.

  On a wall of white Alabama marble were 129 stars, flanked by the flags of the nation and the Agency. Each star carved into the wall stood in silent testimony of a CIA officer or contractor killed in action.

  Reece read the inscription:

  IN HONOR OF THOSE MEMBERS

  OF THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

  WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES

  IN THE SERVICE OF THEIR COUNTRY

  A black goatskin book sat in a glass case below the stars, listing the names of ninety-one of the slain officers: the remaining names still classified. His eyes took in locations and dates from Vietnam, Bosnia, Somalia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Two had even been killed when a Pakistani national opened fire at the line of cars waiting to enter headquarters in 1993. He saw the names of Glen Doherty and Ty
Woods, men he’d known in the SEAL Teams who had died defending the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, and of XXXXX XXXXXXX XXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXX XX XXXX XX XX. He searched for his friend XXX, killed by an EFP doing Agency work XXXXXXXXXXXXXX just after Reece had left the unit, but didn’t see it. Along with thirty-seven others XXX’s star still kept its secret.

  Reece looked at all the names of those killed in 2003. The one he was searching for had only a simple star followed by a blank space where the name should have been. He took a moment to reflect, to remember. Then, exhaling deeply, he turned to Freddy, who gave him an understanding nod before leading him to the elevators.

  CHAPTER 66

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  October

  ANDY DANREB WAS A big man, taller than Reece, with broad shoulders and large Slavic hands. He wore his graying hair short and carried himself in a way that suggested he’d once served in uniform. Though his oxford blue dress shirt was neatly pressed and his pants were clean, he wore the exhausted expression of a man who’d been beaten down by the government’s bureaucracy for his entire career. He greeted his visitors with little enthusiasm. His small office was cramped thanks to the stacks of books, papers, and files that sat upon every surface, including the floor. Without apology, he cleared stacks of books from the two chairs opposite his desk and motioned for Reece and Freddy to sit. He was one of the Agency’s foremost Russian experts, a relic of the Cold War kept on ice for occasions such as these. Break glass in case of war.

  “We came a long way to see you, Andy.” Freddy spoke first.

  “Probably a giant waste of your time but we’ll see. What can I do for you?”

  There was a slight Chicago accent there that Danreb hadn’t shaken.

  “We need your help on something. Have you ever heard of a Russian expat living in Switzerland who people in intel circles call ‘the Colonel’?”

  “Кyкoльньій мacTep, ‘the Puppet Master’ . . . his name is Vasili Andrenov.”

  Danreb switched between Russian and English effortlessly.

  “Who is he?”

  “He was a colonel in the GRU, Soviet military intelligence. If there was a tin-pot insurgency or coup during the latter half of the Cold War, he was there stirring the pot and handing out weapons. He specialized in spreading chaos and misery around the world.”

  “So, the KGB didn’t run those operations?” asked Reece.

  “No, military-specific operations were always GRU. KGB was busy fucking off in the capital with all the embassy intrigue BS, regardless of what all the eighties spy movies would have you believe. GRU was out doing most of the wet work in the field.”

  Danreb spun his chair and dug into a stack of files cluttering the top of his inkjet printer. Within seconds he turned back around and opened the folder to an eight-by-ten black-and-white photo of a young Andrenov standing among some soldiers holding Soviet weapons in what looked like Africa. A shock of sandy hair hung below the brim of the dress cap worn pushed back on his head, the distinctive striped undershirt of the Soviet airborne and Spetsnaz forces visible inside the open collar of his camouflage jacket.

  “This is him in Mozambique, I think, no, maybe it was Angola . . . no, Mozambique. He almost single-handedly provided the weapons for all the African insurgencies in the seventies and eighties.”

  “Would he have been the one who supplied the MANPADS that shot down the two Rhodesian airliners, one in ’78 and the other in ’79?” Reece asked.

  “I’d bet on it.”

  Reece’s eyes narrowed, thinking of Rich Hastings’s sister who had perished in the second attack.

  “How did this guy get to be such a player?” asked Freddy.

  “The same way everyone does in a communist system. His father got him the job. Oh, he was a real monster, that one; one of the orchestrators of Stalin’s purges. He coordinated the Katyn Massacre in Poland during the war.”

  “I’m not familiar with it,” Freddy admitted.

  “I’m not surprised to hear that. What’s twenty thousand dead among sixty million? Basically, the Russians had a long-term plan to take over Poland after the war. They didn’t want to leave anyone who was going to make trouble, so they did what they always did: killed everyone with a brain. They rounded up officers, lawyers, professors, anyone who could organize. They marched them one by one into a soundproof room and shot them in the back of the head. They had a door on the other side of the building where they’d sling the bodies into the back of a truck. The bodies were dumped in the Katyn Forest, hence the name of the massacre. That’s what happens when you don’t have a Bill of Rights. The German army actually discovered the bodies when they invaded. The Russians tried to blame it on them. The Nazis documented it in typical German fashion, and the Russians finally fessed up to it at the end of the Cold War.” He paused. “I’m rambling. Anyway, Andrenov the elder came out of that as a big shot, and his son’s path was set early. No muddy plows or greasy factory work for young Vasili.”

  “What a legacy. Is Andrenov still working for the Russians?” Reece asked.

  “No, not for the government at least. Russian president Zubarev is a moderate, at least by their standards. Andrenov is a hard-core Russian nationalist trying to stoke the fires of the empire’s last gasp.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Russia is a dying nation, literally. Their life expectancy is so bad that the average Russian never makes it to retirement age. Booze, drugs, HIV, heroin, TB, overall bad health—they are in rough shape as a people. On top of that, their birth rate has been in the shitter for generations. Don’t you guys read Zeihan?”

  “Who?”

  “Forget it. Anyway, ethnic Russians are dying off in droves and there’s no one to replace them. The only group that’s growing in Russia is the Muslim population and to folks like Andrenov, they aren’t real Russians. The nationalists want the Russians to push their boundaries out to places like Ukraine and Poland to grab both their people and resources. If they can annex those people, Mother Russia will live on.”

  “A land grab to save a dying empire,” Reece stated.

  “That’s it,” Danreb confirmed. “Look at human history. It’s what nations do. Stalin forcibly relocated people in an attempt to grow the empire. I actually think they’re going to push south as well, into places like Azerbaijan and maybe even Turkey.”

  “What about NATO?” Freddy asked.

  “It’s already begun in Crimea. What did NATO do about that? Don’t get me wrong, they’ve got Europe nervous. Sweden has reinstated their draft, which has everything to do with this, but without U.S. leadership, no one except perhaps the Germans are in a place to oppose Russian expansion. Remember, they shot down an airliner full of Europeans over Ukraine, and the world shrugged its shoulders.”

  “But the current Russian administration didn’t invade Crimea. That was the last guy,” Freddy said.

  “Exactly, he was one of Andrenov’s people and, with him out of power, the Colonel is out of favor with the current administration. Andrenov would love nothing more than to see Putin, or someone like him, back at the helm.”

  “Would Andrenov be bold enough to attempt a coup?” Reece wondered aloud.

  “He’s spent his entire career doing just that around the world, so I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute.”

  “Sounds like someone could scoop up Andrenov and charge him with war crimes or something to get him out of the picture,” Reece offered.

  “Yeah, good luck with that; between his bullshit charity and all of the K Street suits he has on retainer, he’s untouchable. I’ve been sounding the alarm on him for years, but it all falls on deaf ears. This asshole should be behind bars but instead he’s throwing galas that are attended by half of the U.S. Senate.”

  “What do you mean?” Reece asked.

  “Andrenov runs a foundation focused on ‘helping the downtrodden across the globe,’ or some such nonsense. It’s really a front for influence peddli
ng around the world. You want to drill for oil in Nigeria or mine for lithium in the ’Stans, you give the foundation eight figures and their people on the ground open those doors. The funds are cleaned up and distributed to politicians through Stewart McGovern’s lobbying firm. Money makes a lot of friends in D.C., especially in an election year.”

  “Sounds like someone we should talk with,” Reece observed. “Any idea who he might use as hired help if he were going to make a move?”

  “Impossible to say. Between his GRU days and his foundation, he has endless contacts around the world.”

  “We have some single-source intel that he may be using an ex–Syrian general to hire mercenaries,” Freddy added.

  “I’ll buy that. I think his fingerprints are on both sides of the Syrian Civil War, but that’s not my area. If I were in your shoes and had that information, I’d be waterboarding Syrian generals until I could link Andrenov to something concrete.” He paused. “But that’s probably why they don’t let me leave this building.”

  Reece was starting to like this guy.

  “We’ll do our best. On another topic, do you know Oliver Grey?” Reece asked.

  “What about him?” Andy replied, his demeanor stiffening.

  “What are your thoughts on him? One hundred percent off the record.”

  “I’ve never trusted that little weasel. I brought up some questionable behavior of his a few years back and was told to stay in my lane. You wouldn’t believe the PC bullshit in this place.”

  “Any chance that he’s somehow associated with Andrenov?”

  “It wouldn’t shock me in the least. I’d honestly be surprised if Andrenov didn’t have a minion somewhere in this building.”