Snow Wolf

by Glenn Meade

  Vukashin glared at Lukin furiously but said nothing. A trickle of blood dribbled from his mouth. Pasha came back up the stairs, and as he entered the room Lukin shoved Vukashin aside.

  “Get this idiot out of my sight before I throw up.”

  Pasha smiled. “A pleasure.”

  • • •

  Lukin left KGB Headquarters well after seven that morning.

  Lights were coming on all over Moscow as he drove to his home on the eastern end of Kutuzovsky Prospect.

  The olive-green BMW 327 Lukin owned had been built in 1940, one of many vehicles confiscated from a defeated Germany at the end of the war, but the powerful six-cylinder engine was still reliable and ran sweetly, and the car was the one worthwhile luxury his KGB officer status allowed.

  He parked on the street outside the one-bedroom apartment he and his wife occupied near the Moscow River. It was in a district once favored by Moscow’s wealthy merchant class, but now the buildings looked shabby from the outside, the pastel green paintwork cracked and peeling, but inside the plumbing and the heating always worked, a minor miracle in Moscow. He climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and let himself in quietly.

  The apartment was cold, and Nadia was still asleep. Lukin filled an enamel kettle in the tiny kitchen and lit the gas stove to make coffee. As he removed his overcoat and unbuttoned his shirt, he crossed to the window and looked down, resting his forehead against the cold pane of glass.

  Lukin thought about the arrests that morning. He had lost his temper with the captain but the fool deserved it. No doubt Lukin would receive a reprimand.

  He knew several of the doctors on the list by reputation—all respected physicians with no hint of crime in their pasts. The arrests puzzled him, especially since most of the men were Jews. Surely he would find out eventually why they had been taken to the Lubyanka.

  The KGB Headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Square that housed the Lubyanka prison was a huge seven-story complex of office blocks that took up the whole northeastern end as far as the top of Karl Marx Prospect. The building was actually a hollow square, with a courtyard in the center, the front and side wings up to the top, six floors of which were devoted to the various KGB offices and departments.

  And although it contained eight separate directorates, or specialized sections, that dealt with internal and external Soviet security, only four were considered important enough in size and purpose to hold the title Chief Directorate, of which each had a separate and distinct function.

  The 1st Chief Directorate was the foreign intelligence branch that operated in Soviet embassies abroad and controlled the networks of agents, foreign informers, and sympathizers who provided invaluable intelligence aid.

  The 5th Chief Directorate was responsible for internal dissidents, which included Jews and anti-Soviet resistance groups operating from as far apart as the Baltic to the Far East; the Chief Directorate of Border Guards was responsible for sealing and patrolling all Soviet borders.

  The 2nd Chief Directorate, to which Lukin belonged, was perhaps the most important and largest. A purely domestic security branch of the KGB, its responsibilities were the most wide-ranging and included the surveillance of all foreigners and foreign businessmen resident in or visiting the Soviet Union, foreign embassies, and embassy staff; the hunting down and arrest of Soviet nationals who had fled abroad or escaped from prison camps or who had committed murder or serious crimes; the supervision of artists, actors, and actresses; recruiting and controlling informers; and curbing the black market. And last, but hardly least, the pursuit and capture of enemy agents from the moment they entered Soviet territory.

  There was one other noteworthy section in the bowels of the KGB building: the Lubyanka prison itself, a grim maze of torture chambers and windowless cells where Lukin knew the doctors were destined to be sent.

  He poured himself hot coffee and spooned in three spoonfuls of sugar. As he went to sit at the kitchen table, the door opened.

  Nadia stood there wearing a pale blue dressing gown. Her red hair was down around her shoulders. He saw the slight rise in her belly and smiled. “Did I wake you?”

  She smiled back sleepily. “You always wake me. Are you coming to bed?”

  “Soon.”

  Even that early she looked very pretty. Far too pretty for him, Lukin always thought. She was nineteen and he thirty when they first met at the summer wedding of a friend. As the wedding band played, she had smiled across the table at him and said impishly, “What’s the matter? Don’t KGB officers dance?”

  He smiled back. “Only if somebody shoots at them.”

  She had laughed, and something in her girlish laugh and the way she had looked at him with her soft green eyes made him know he was going to love her. Within six months they had married. And now, three years later, she was four months pregnant and Lukin felt happier than he ever imagined.

  She came over to sit on his knee and began to massage his neck. He felt the comforting touch of her warm fingers on his skin. “How was your night shift?”

  “You don’t want to know, my love.”

  “Tell me anyhow.”

  He told her about his morning’s work.

  “You think it’s true about the doctors?”

  “It’s probably Beria up to his tricks again. He enjoys killing.”

  He felt the hands stop massaging his neck and saw the shock on his wife’s face. “Yuri, you shouldn’t say such things. You never know who might be listening.”

  “But it’s true. You know how the head of State Security gets his kicks? Marakov, his driver, told me. He’s driving along and Beria sees a pretty young girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old. He has her arrested on trumped-up charges and rapes her. If she dares to protest, he has her shot. Sometimes he has her shot anyway. And nothing is done to stop him.”

  “Yuri, please. Skokov might be listening.”

  Every apartment block, every house, had its KGB informer. Skokov, the block janitor who lived on the ground floor, was theirs. It wasn’t beyond the man to crease his ear against someone’s door. Lukin saw the fear in his wife’s eyes and stood and cupped her face in his hands and kissed her forehead. “Let me get us some coffee.”

  Nadia shook her head. “Look at you. You’re tense. You need something better than coffee.”

  “And what would you suggest?”

  Nadia smiled. “Me, of course.”

  Lukin saw her pull back her dressing gown to reveal her flimsy pink slip. Even though she was petite, she had perfect legs and full hips, and there was something both beautiful and desirable about the gentle rise of her stomach that embarrassed him.

  She smiled. “A surprise for you, Yuri Andreovitch. I bought it on the black market.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Where else in Moscow can a woman get something like this? You don’t think Comrade Stalin would have me sent to Siberia for buying underwear!” She laughed and kissed his cheek.

  Lukin smiled despite himself.

  “Do you know what the French say?”

  “No, but I think you’re going to tell me.”

  “When a woman makes love to a man, her secrets fly away like butterflies.”

  He looked into her face. “But with you, somehow the secrets multiply.” He kissed her forehead and her arms went around him. “I love you, Nadia.”

  “Then come to bed.”

  He gently caressed her belly. “You don’t think making love would be bad for the baby?”

  “No, silly, it would be good for the baby.” She giggled. “Make the most of it while you can. In another few months we’ll have to keep our hands to ourselves.”

  She took his arm and led him into the bedroom. The bed was still warm as Lukin and his wife made love, and beyond the glass the early morning traffic hummed as Moscow came awake.

  10

  * * *

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  JANUARY 22

  The collection of wooden buildings on the bank of th
e Potomac River looked to the passerby like a dismal, run-down barracks. The walls inside were pockmarked with holes, the plaster ceilings were smudged with damp stains, and the rain leaked through the fragile roof. The view from the two-story building was equally dismal: a decayed red-brick brewery and a distant roller-skating rink. Only a handful of the shabby buildings had the distinction of overlooking the famous reflecting pool farther along the river.

  Originally a First World War army barracks, the ramshackle collection of wooden huts had later housed the offices of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the organization responsible for America’s wartime foreign intelligence. Transformed only in name and function four years after the Second World War, the buildings now housed America’s Central Intelligence Agency.

  Fresh CIA recruits, expecting their role in intelligence work to be glamorous, soon found their expectations rapidly diminished when they got their first glimpse of their dingy offices. It was difficult to believe that these same buildings had been home to one of the most intrepid wartime agencies, one that had taken on the collective intelligence might of Germany and Japan.

  The CIA barracks complex was divided into sections with alphabetic titles. The “Q” building, overlooking the river, housed the section known simply as the Soviet Operations Division. It was here that highly sensitive and secret operations were planned and executed against the Soviet Union, clandestine work known only to a handful of highly trusted and trained senior intelligence and government personnel.

  The office at the end of a long corridor on the second floor of the building had no title on the door, just a four-digit number. It was pretty much like all the other offices, with the same green desk and filing cabinet and standard-issue calendar, but on the desk alongside the photograph of his wife and two grown children, Karl Branigan had placed a Japanese officer’s ceremonial dagger on a brass mounting.

  At fifty-six, Branigan was a blubbery but muscular man with a tightly cropped GI haircut and a fleshy, ruddy face. Despite his name he was neither Irish nor German in background but third-generation Polish, the surname arrived at by having a Brooklyn-Irish cop for a stepfather. And despite the army haircut and the ceremonial dagger, Branigan had never seen frontline action but had been a deskbound intelligence officer most of his working life. But the presence of the keepsake gave some indication of Branigan’s character. He was certainly a tough man, a man who made decisions quickly and decisively, who was ferocious in his dedication to duty, and for a senior CIA officer those virtues were valued by his superiors.

  It was almost two o’clock that cold January afternoon when his secretary rang to say that Jake Massey had arrived. Branigan told her to organize a car to take them to the morgue.

  • • •

  A small elevator led down to the morgue. There was just enough room for the three passengers—Massey, Branigan, and the attendant.

  When the elevator halted and the attendant opened the door, they were in a cold, large, white-tiled room with four metal tables at the far end. Two of the tables had forms under the white sheets. The attendant pulled back the sheet on the first table.

  Shock and a terrible anger registered on Massey’s face when he looked at the body underneath.

  The man’s face was frozen and white as marble, distorted in death, but Massey at once recognized the features. There was a hole drilled through Max Simon’s forehead, a purple swelling surrounding the wounded flesh. Massey noticed the traces of a powder burn around the skull wound, then the tattoo of a white dove above his wrist. He grimaced and nodded and the attendant drew back the sheet and moved to the second table.

  When the sheet was pulled back this time, Massey wanted to be sick. He saw the perfect white face of the child, the eyelids closed, the same hole in the flesh of the forehead. Nina lay on the metal table as though asleep. Her long dark hair had been combed, and for a moment Massey thought that if he touched her she might come awake. Then he noticed the dark purple bruises on the body, around the arms and neck, and the marks where the forest rodents had gnawed at her flesh.

  The attendant pulled the white sheet over the girl’s body, and the two men turned and left the room.

  • • •

  Jake Massey and Karl Branigan had known each other for almost twelve years and their relationship had not improved with time.

  There was often an air like crackling electricity between the two men that some claimed was the result of professional rivalry. Both were capable and hardened men and both were dangerous to cross. Today, however, Branigan seemed civilized and courteous.

  “Tell me how it happened.”

  Branigan hesitated. “I guess you and Max Simon were friends a long time?”

  “Thirty years. I was Nina’s godfather. Max was one of the best people we had.” Massey’s face suddenly flushed angrily. “Why, Branigan? Why were they killed? Who did it?”

  “We’ll come to that later.” Branigan’s hand stretched to a cigarette box on the table, popped a cigarette in his mouth, and lit it. He didn’t offer Massey one.

  “But I’m sure you realize that what happened to Max and his daughter was an execution, pure and simple. They were both shot in the head at close range. I assume the girl was killed because she saw whoever shot her father, or they meant her death as a further warning.”

  “They?”

  “Moscow, of course.”

  “What do you mean, a warning?”

  “Max was gathering some pretty sensitive information for us before he was killed. We didn’t know about the deaths until a routine Interpol report reached our office in Paris. We had the bodies identified and shipped back.” Branigan hesitated. “Max arrived in Lucerne from Paris on the eighth of last month, after traveling from Washington. He took his daughter with him for the trip. She’d been ill recently, and he wanted her to see a Swiss doctor.”

  “Is that the reason he was in Switzerland?”

  “No, it wasn’t. He was there to arrange a meeting with a highly placed contact from the Soviet Embassy in Berne. They were to meet in Lucerne, but Max never made the meeting, nor did his contact. We think Max and his girl were abducted from their hotel, or maybe outside in the street. The police checked but no one saw anything. You know the Swiss, they’re upright citizens. They see you parking a car on the wrong side of the street and they scream for the cops. It would have been reported if anyone had seen an abduction. But one thing the Swiss police do know is that the hunter, Kass, stumbled on the executions, tried to stop them, and was killed for his trouble.”

  A flood of anger registered again on Massey’s face, and he stood and crossed to the window. “Why did they have to murder the girl, Karl? She was only ten years old.”

  “Because we both know the people who did it are ruthless animals. Simple as that.”

  “Have you any idea who murdered them?”

  “Why? You got revenge on your mind?”

  “A year ago Max Simon moved out of my operation in Munich to work for Washington. Now he’s dead, and I’d like to know why.”

  “Who did it I can tell you pretty much with certainty: a man named Borovik. Gregori Borovik. We think he followed Max from this country and was ordered to kill him in Switzerland. Borovik’s not his real name. He uses a whole lot of aliases. Kurt Braun is one. Kurt Linhoff is another. I could go on, but you get the picture.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A hired killer the Soviets use. He belongs to one of their hit squads—the guys Moscow takes from prisons and puts on the payroll to do their dirty work in return for their freedom. East German national, speaks English and Russian fluently. Operates all over the place. Europe and Stateside, and a dangerous piece of work if ever there was one. We’ve got at least three murders put down to him. But I’d get revenge out of your mind. Besides, we’ve got other plans for you.”

  “What plans?”

  Branigan smiled. “All in good time. And it’s revenge of a kind if you care to look at it that way.”

  Mas
sey sat down. “Then tell me what it was Max was doing for you that cost the lives of him and his daughter.”

  Branigan shrugged. “I guess I can tell you that. He’d been buying information from the Soviet Embassy official I told you about, information important to Washington. Only someone in Moscow got to hear about it and didn’t like it one little bit. The official was called back home. What happened to him you can guess.”

  “What sort of information?”

  “Pretty high-grade stuff out of the Kremlin. Some of it pretty hot.”

  “How hot?”

  Branigan smiled thinly. “On a scale of red hot to boiling, it would probably bust the thermometer.”

  “Has this got something to do with why I was recalled?”

  Branigan shifted his heavy bulk in the chair. “We knew you’d want to see the bodies. You and Max went way back. I heard you knew each other as kids in the streets of Little Russia. I remember Max told me once you were kind of like brothers. But you’re right, that’s not the real reason you’re here. There’s something I want you to see. I guess it’ll explain everything.”

  Branigan unlocked a drawer with a key he kept on a ring in his pocket. He slid out a buff-colored file and placed it on the table. Stamped along the top in red letters was FOR PRESIDENT’SEYES ONLY. He looked at Massey. “The classification says it all. But it seems you’re a special case.”

  He slipped his jacket from the back of the chair and pulled it on. A hint of aggression crept into his voice as he said, “Only get this straight: you tell nobody about the contents of that file unless you’re cleared to do so. Which I guarantee you won’t be—ever, not in a million years. I’m going to leave you alone for, say, fifteen minutes. That ought to be enough time to read what’s inside and prime you for what you’re going to hear later. When I come back I’m taking you to see Wallace. He’s expecting us at his place. Another thing—if you need to use the john, use it now.”