Man on Edge

by Humphrey Hawksley

  His work had consumed him, costing him his marriage and weakening him enough for Yumatov to act. He had no children, and his wife of more than forty years had moved to Moscow.

  Semenov placed the head set on a Scandinavian-style wooden table next to photographs of himself in bed with a beautiful young dark-haired woman whose affections for him had been as false as her name. Under instructions from Yumatov, Amy Vitsin had moved convincingly to fill the vacuum in Semenov’s life for the purpose of blackmail. Should his wife ever see these photographs, Semenov would have no chance of rescuing his marriage and, without that, he had had no idea how he might keep going. He would be seventy next year, not a good age, he had thought then, to be alone or to try to start over again.

  ‘What now, Colonel?’ There was no anger or defeatism in his tone. Semenov understood his mistake, assessed, and had made his decision to comply.

  ‘You wait to hear if your niece is coming. We fly to Moscow. You meet her. She takes you to the embassy and you hand over the data.’

  ‘Was it necessary to bring in my family?’

  Yumatov laid a conspiratorial hand on his shoulder. ‘It is far more natural for a vice-admiral to enter a NATO embassy socially, with your niece, than to walk in unannounced.’

  ‘At least show me what I will be delivering.’

  Yumatov plugged a small flash drive into a laptop on the table. Semenov adjusted his spectacles. The first image showed an engineering diagram for air-independent propulsion that made a submarine quieter. Yumatov moved away, leaving Semenov to scroll down, seconds only on each image, faster and faster until he looked up, perplexed. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘There is nothing here that the Americans don’t know.’

  ‘You are correct. The importance to NATO will not be the quality of data, but that it is you who delivers it and that Russia is offering.’

  Semenov took off his spectacles and placed them on the table ‘But why threaten me? If your plan is to reach out to NATO, stop this dreadful talk of war, why not just ask me?’

  Yumatov let out a short disparaging laugh. ‘You could have called the Kremlin and that would have been the end of it?’

  ‘You say Foreign Minister Sergey Grizlov is behind this, and I believe you.’

  ‘He is. You know as I do that Russia is split. One foot in Europe, the other heading toward China. Grizlov and I need to prevent that, which is why we are reaching out to the West.’

  ‘A scientist is a bad navigator of human need.’ Semenov rubbed his eyes. ‘You are promising that if I do this, I can continue my work, and this blackmail will go away.’ He picked up one of the photographs of the woman he thought had cared about him.

  ‘You have my word. It was only ever an insurance. I knew your views about Russia’s future were aligned with mine, which is why I chose you.’

  ‘We are Europeans. We are not Asians.’ Semenov shrugged. ‘So, yes, I am with you. We fly to Moscow and I will see my niece.’

  From the small balcony of his apartment, Artyom Semenov watched Yumatov leave the building and turn right toward the Barents Sea. He let the freezing air clear his mind and, only when he was certain of his next move did he go back inside, lock the French window, walk across his spacious living room to his study, which looked inland over the dreary architecture of Severomorsk.

  It was here that Semenov kept computer hard drives containing his most secret work. Technically, it was illegal, but he did not know any military scientist of his stature who allowed decades of work to be kept only by the government. The only other copy was in his workshop less than a mile away. None was stored on any cloud, however secure and encrypted, and none was known to any intelligence agency from the United States or NATO.

  This was far more valuable than the information that Ruslan Yumatov wanted him to hand over, and far more dangerous.

  By blackmailing him, Yumatov had also opened a window. His high-class hooker had shown Semenov a glimpse of a life awaiting him, should he choose. She might have been a fraud, but there were other beautiful young women, honest and loving, happy to enjoy the company of an older man and his pension while he traveled the world speaking at seminars, feted for his brilliant career.

  As Semenov activated the electronic code to open the safe, he hummed an American tune from the Sixties about never walking alone. He should stop being afraid. What was the point of pleading with Marissa to try again at their marriage only to return to their same unhappiness? She was building her own new life in Moscow and, within a few days, he could be celebrating in New York with his sister and his two lovely nieces. Carrie and Angela could become the daughters Marissa had failed to give him.

  He would walk into the British Embassy with Carrie, hand over Yumatov’s anodyne drive and, at the same time, offer more valuable technology on condition that he fly back with Carrie to New York. He would have preferred to go straight to the Americans, but they and the British were as thick as thieves and if Carrie had chosen the British so be it.

  The Americans would play hardball. They would mock Yumatov’s naive offering as not even an olive branch. Some of the material was open-sourced, discussed at security conferences, not enough to convince the United States that Russia wanted to end hostilities and do a deal. If Semenov were to escape with a New York apartment and a well-paid professor’s post at an Ivy League university, the Americans would need to see his game-changing submarine technology. Semenov had decided to give it to them.

  Working on a laptop, Semenov structured the data into compact files that, taking up no more than eight hundred gigabytes, could fit onto a small one terabyte flash drive. He copied them, zipped the drive into his jacket pocket, and locked the safe. While waiting for Yumatov to take him to the airport, he surfed the Internet looking for apartments in Brooklyn.

  Fifteen minutes after leaving the vice-admiral, Yumatov pressed the identity code to a low-rise office building two blocks from Semenov’s apartment. There was no logo on the gray wooden door badly in need of a coat of paint. In this closed military city, most work was conducted out of the eye of civilians and of rival agencies. The building was owned by Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, the equivalent to America’s CIA. Yumatov took the stairs to the top floor, which was occupied by a unit within the SVR known as the Seventh Department for the Center of Self Security. Attached to that was Yumatov’s highly classified military unit, Zaslon, which translated as Screen.

  Zaslon’s official task was to keep safe Russian diplomats, embassies, and their secrets. Its members had proven themselves in Ukraine, Syria, and other less famous theaters. Zaslon troops reported not to the Russian armed forces, but to the civilian SVR controlled by the Foreign Ministry that was now led by presidential hopeful Sergey Grizlov. Yumatov had engineered his recruitment to Zaslon while in Syria and identified it as the best-placed unit with which to achieve his goal.

  He punched a code into a black keypad next to a steel door. Inside was a wall of windows that carried a similar view as from Semenov’s apartment across the ice floes of the Barents Sea except from a lower angle. The floor covered an open space with computers in one corner, a sink and a kitchen area, weapons in another space, and a gym machine and a brown leather punchbag.

  ‘What the hell went wrong, Joe?’ Yumatov stepped in and pushed shut the door.

  Josip Milotic was the driver who had worked with Yumatov on the successful Gerald Cooper operation. He had also been tasked with the failed operation the following day to capture Rake Ozenna and Yumatov wanted to know why.

  ‘The navy, sir.’ Sweat dripped off Milotic’s forehead and lined his neck above his black tank-top T-shirt. He held out his boxing gloves. Yumatov pulled off the right glove and laid it on a steel table. ‘They sent in a Ka-27—’

  ‘I know about the helicopter, but who and why and whose idea was the fucking armored vehicle?’

  Unphased by Yumatov’s tone, Milotic pulled off his left glove. ‘The navy thought having Ozenna in custody would complicate plans t
o get NATO to wind down the Dynamic Freedom exercise.’

  ‘You know that or you’re guessing that?’

  ‘I know it.’ At the level he operated, Milotic’s contacts were excellent and not only in Russia. He was a product of the 1990s, born in Russia, raised in Birmingham, England, trained by the British army with combat in the Middle East. He moved on to private security contracting and, in Syria, was spotted by Yumatov, who identified his torn loyalties. Yumatov became an understanding ear, explaining that the days of shared values and flung-open borders were over. People were retreating back into tribes. Milotic was a Russian Slav, as was Yumatov. They must never forget who they were.

  Yumatov snapped the top of a bottle of water and took a sip. ‘How did the navy know?’

  ‘GRU told them,’ said Milotic. ‘If we had our own resources, we could have handled it.’

  ‘We don’t, and we need to keep it small.’ Yumatov handed the bottle to Milotic, who drank heavily. ‘I need you in Moscow.’

  Milotic finished the water, crushed the plastic bottle between his fingers, and dropped it into a trash can under the table. ‘Permission to speak openly, sir.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘How much do we need Ozenna?’

  Yumatov crossed to the punchbag and landed a fist hard in the middle of the rough leather. He steadied the slow swing and punched a second strike with the left fist. His knuckles tingled. A black and white pattern had been sewn into the top of the punchbag of an eight-spoked wheel known as the Kolovrat, an ancient symbol representing the spiritual and material strength of the Slavic people. The Slavs were Europe’s biggest ethnic community, stretching right across Russia to Asia. At the end of each rigid spoke, a blade ran at right angles like an ice pick. The Kolovrat had many meanings and over the centuries had been hijacked by Hindus in India and Nazis in Germany, who had turned it into the Swastika. Its origins were about infinity, the repeating cycles of life, and the power of the sun. Today, for Yumatov, it combined political power with ethnic identity, which is why his unit had sewn it into the punchbag which helped them build strength and hone fighting skills. It was this symbol that he had cut into Gerald Cooper’s severed ear.

  Yumatov took another drink of water while weighing up Milotic’s question about Ozenna. ‘In the Diomedes two years ago, Ozenna murdered our young men,’ he said. ‘If we capture or kill Ozenna now at this juncture of our history we show Russian people a new hope. It would be a great moment for the nation. Leadership is about messages, delivering certainty and a vision that people want to follow. For that we need to show our people two paths, the certainty of hope and the certainty of revenge. So, yes, Joe, for our mission, we do need Ozenna.’

  SIXTEEN

  Washington, DC

  Rake’s phone lit with a second message from Carrie. Heading out. Next time. His concentration shifted. The panel moderator, wrapping up the question and answer session, shot him a disapproving glance. A slim man, exceptionally tall, with a tight, drawn face was on his feet. He identified himself as a reporter and said, ‘This is for Major Rake Ozenna.’

  From the edginess of his tone, the rigidity of his body language, Rake braced himself for a hostile question. Whyte gave him a pointed look, tapping papers in front of him. Stick to the talking points.

  Rake and Whyte sat at one end of the podium table. Whyte wore the same uniform as last night. Rake was in the full-dress uniform of the Alaska National Guard that had been sent to his hotel room, the medals, a blue emblem with eight small yellow stars that placed him with the Alaska State Defense Force whose origins lay with the Eskimo Scouts, giving him a brush of pride. Two years ago, Rake barely knew places like the Center for Political and Global Studies existed. Now, because of his race, the Diomede crisis, his West Point lectures, the army wanted him on panels as a poster boy with blood under his fingernails. Rake had warned he could be a liability. The army hadn’t listened.

  In the middle of the podium was the moderator, on the other side was a trim, middle-aged woman with neat, short blonde hair who ran a peace-keeping operation in Asia. At the far end sat a Harvard professor, an expert on Latin America who had come up with a catchphrase, The Guevara Trap, about making heroes out of terrorists that had caught on among academics.

  The audience occupied circular tables with water jugs and cups of coffee. Each wall carried a screen. It was 10:27, three minutes before the break for coffee.

  Rake typed into his phone: Where you going? Boccaccio? The name of the Kabul restaurant where he and Carrie first had dinner. A joke. Apart from one time, Carrie had pretty much shut down on him since they had parted on Little Diomede.

  A television lamp snapped on, projecting harsh light straight into Rake’s face. ‘Are you with us, Major Ozenna? Or should we all wait until you have finished your private business?’ the reporter challenged.

  From his accent, Rake guessed he was Russian, early middle age, long, thin face, light, straggly hair, swept back over the forehead. He wore a dark pin-stripe suit, once a soldier; maybe still was.

  ‘Apologies,’ replied Rake with a smile, except his smile never moved much beyond his lips, no shine in the eyes, no crease of skin of the around the cheekbones.

  ‘Major Ozenna, will you now confirm that you are the American who murdered nine young Russian men in cold blood on the island of Little Diomede; that you carried out these murders without orders at a time when Russia and the United States were in friendly negotiations; and that your irresponsible actions made war between our two nations more likely?’

  Rake sifted through answers and couldn’t find any that were good. His eyes stayed on the reporter. He didn’t react to the lamp’s brightness. Sun on Arctic snow was far worse. Since childhood, he had narrowed and hooded his eyes against glare, making his expression difficult to read. The army uniform helped tidy him up, dilute a wild, cold, weather-rawness that was etched into his features.

  ‘And could you, Major Ozenna, the cold-blooded killer, now apologize to the families of the young men you murdered?’

  The wall screen, with a live wide shot of himself, the reporter, and the audience streamed across the world. His answer would be picked up by Russian social media, a key weapon in low-intensity conflict. Rake had warned. The army hadn’t listened. He scanned the room for allies and couldn’t be sure, except for Mikki, who was at a table near the reporter.

  Mikki loosened up, shifting in his chair. This was not a venue for a Russian to accuse an American serviceman of murder. Faces in the audience became tense and surprised; lobbyists and congressional staffers in suits and ties calculating political fallout; casually-dressed academics and reporters, curious, observant, antennae out for a good story; mid-career uniformed military officers, gauging allegiances. A wrong word in this room could be a promotion maker or breaker. ‘It is a yes or no question, Major Ozenna,’ challenged the reporter. ‘Will you apologize, and will the United States apologize to the Russian people and hand Major Ozenna over to be tried for the war crimes he has committed?’

  Rake had to say something. To stay silent would indicate wrongdoing. He reached for the microphone. Whyte muttered, ‘No, Major. Do not.’

  Rake leaned in.

  ‘Thank you for that question, sir,’ said Rake. ‘It’s a good one and a tough one to answer and fortunately for me, I am a foot-soldier, a few days back from Afghanistan and the very important issues you raise are way above my pay grade.’

  Relief flooded across the moderator’s face. She cut in, apologizing for being out of time, thanking the panel, thanking the audience, pointing to coffee urns and cookies outside. The screens returned to the conference logo.

  Whyte reprimanded, ‘Ozenna, you disobeyed a direct order.’

  The reporter clocked security officers walking toward him. Like a greyhound off the block, he leapt forward, knocking over a chair and jumping onto the podium, a trained military man. With the television crew, there could be at least three in the room.

  Mikki reached inside his ja
cket. Whyte got to his feet to block the reporter, who hit him four times, very fast, a fist to the kidneys, a kick to the testicles, a blow to the left temple on the upper skull and the heel of the same hand under the chin, which propelled Whyte toward the floor, gashing his head on the sharp edge of the table as he went down, leaving barely two feet between himself and Rake. The reporter held a double-bladed knife, high-carbon stainless steel, sharp on one edge, serrated on the other, designed for quiet battlefield killing, its blade long enough to enter the body and destroy vital organs.

  He was six inches taller than Rake, giving him a lethal reach. Rake’s mind raced. Was he acting on orders? Was his television crew a military unit, here with a ‘don’t mess with Russia’ message, taking advantage of the live-streaming to show how Russia’s enemies will be hunted down, even to the heart of Washington? The cost to Moscow would be minimal. Three Russians arrested in DC and three Americans would be picked up in Russia. A year or so on there would be a swap.

  Or was it personal, a man driven by revenge, a grieving father who had lost a son on the Diomedes? Nightmare by nightmare, he would have imagined this final moment of closure and that meant he would make mistakes because he needed to be a soldier, focused, not a father grieving. Like oil and water, military training and personal feelings didn’t mix.

  Rake whispered in Russian: ‘Screw your pathetic little family. I’ll kill them all.’

  Fury creased through his enemy. His arm swung back. Rake shifted to his left. The attacker stepped the other way, knife clasped, not a throw, a curling strike that would end up as an upward thrust to the throat to avoid body armor. His wrist muscles tightened. His eyes were tormented and diluted. Rake guessed right. This was about family, revenge and human frailty. Rake judged speed and direction. Too early, he would be floored. Too late, the blade would cut him. Rake leaned back to avoid it and raised his forearm to block it.