The Outlaws

by W. E. B. Griffin

  Morton’s Steakhouse

  1050 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.

  Washington, D.C.

  1930 8 February 2007

  Sergei Murov sat at the bar of the restaurant, drinking twelve-year-old Chivas Regal while he watched in the mirror behind the row of bottles the headwaiter stand at the entrance. Murov was waiting for the syndicated columnist C. Harry Whelan, Jr., to show up.

  Murov knew that the headwaiter—and other restaurant staff—were aware of who the freely spending cultural attaché of the embassy of the Russian Federation was. And he was equally certain—Washington being the small town that it really was, where everybody knew each other’s business—that they had at least heard and probably believed that he was the head Russian spy.

  Murov wanted the word to get out around town that he had had a private dinner in Morton’s with Whelan. The FBI would be helpful in this regard. The usual quartet of FBI special agents had been waiting outside the embassy with two cars and had followed him here.

  He knew how they worked. The cars were now parked on opposite sides of Connecticut Avenue so that they could easily follow him no matter which direction he took when he left the restaurant. One special agent had followed him into the restaurant and was now sitting at the end of the bar. The second agent-on-foot was now standing in the alley outside the kitchen against the possibility that the wily Russian spy might try to elude surveillance by sneaking out of Morton’s through the kitchen.

  One of the FBI men had almost certainly already radioed the information to whoever was supervising his surveillance that he was in Morton’s, and just as soon as C. Harry Whelan arrived and joined him, that information, too, would be passed on.

  That information, however, would not be shared with anyone—at least immediately—outside the J. Edgar Hoover Building. But the information would get around where Murov wanted it to go via the headwaiter, who would be on the receiving end of at least one “Flying C-Note”—he loved that phrase—for making discreet telephone calls to various print and television journalists telling them that C. Harry Whelan, Jr., had just walked into Morton’s and was breaking bread with Sergei Murov behind a screen erected at Murov’s request.

  “Good evening, Mr. Whelan,” the headwaiter said when the journalist walked through the door. “Nice to see you again. Your regular table?”

  “I think I’ll have a little taste first, thank you,” Whelan said, gesturing toward the bar. “Oh, look who’s there!”

  Sergei Murov had gotten off his bar stool and was smiling at Whelan. Whelan walked to him and they shook hands.

  Whelan, too, knew that a substantial percentage of the headwaiter’s income came to him off the books and thus tax-free in the form of Flying C-Notes given him as an expression of gratitude by various print journalists and television producers for keeping them up to date on where C. Harry Whelan and others of Inside-the-Beltway prominence were, had been, or were going to be, and who they were talking to.

  Whelan was usually delighted with the system, and especially so today when he knew the word would spread that he had had dinner with Murov. Murov met with only the more important journalists, and actually very few of those.

  Whelan had no idea what Murov wanted from him, and would have been very surprised if he got anything at all useful from the Russian. But the word would spread. Among those it would annoy to learn that he was bending elbows with the Russian spymaster was Andy McClarren, anchor of Wolf News’s most popular program. Whelan recently had come to think that Straight Scoop McClarren was getting more than a little too big for his kilt.

  This was by no means the first, or even the tenth, time that he’d met Murov at Morton’s. He knew what was going to happen: There would be some very good whisky at the bar, and then, when they had moved to a table, some really first-class wine, and one of Morton’s nearly legendary steaks.

  People often quoted Whelan’s evaluation of Morton’s Steakhouse: “The food is so good in Morton’s that it’s almost worth about half what they charge for it.”

  And afterward, Murov would not only insist on paying the check, in cash, but also would leave the actual bill lying on the table, from where he knew Harry would discreetly—and thinking Murov didn’t notice—slip it in his pocket.

  Murov had diplomatic privilege, which would allow him to turn the bill over to the IRS for a refund of the tax. He had decided, the first time he’d seen Whelan grab the bill, that the Russian Federation could easily afford forfeiting the returned taxes if that meant a very important—and thus potentially very useful—journalist would come to the conclusion that he was putting something over not only on the IRS but also on the rezident of the Russian embassy. It is always better if one’s adversary thinks he is far more clever than oneself.

  “How are you, Sergei?” Whelan greeted Murov.

  “What a pleasant surprise!” Murov said. “Have you time for a drink, Harry?”

  “I could be talked into that, I think,” Whelan said, and slipped onto a bar stool.

  He ordered a Famous Grouse twelve-year-old malt Scotch whisky with two ice cubes and half as much water as whisky.

  As the bartender was making the drink, Murov said, “I saw you on Wolf News, Harry. ‘Straight Scoop something’?”

  “You and four million other people,” Whelan said somewhat smugly.

  “I thought your ‘arf-arf’ business was hilarious, but I wondered what it did to your relationship with President Clendennen.”

  “It went from just-about-as-bad-as-it-can-get to worse.”

  “What was that all about, anyway, at Fort Detrick?”

  “I don’t know, Sergei. I think you know what really goes on out there.”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  “The hell you don’t. Okay, they have a biological weapons laboratory out there. That’s probably classified Top Secret, but it’s really about as much of a secret as McClarren’s wig.”

  “Really? That red hair isn’t his?”

  “That’s why they always shoot him up,” Whelan said, demonstrating with his hands a low camera angle pointing upward. “If they shoot him down, or even straight on, you can see the cheesecloth or whatever it is under the hair.”

  “You really are a fountain of information, Harry,” Murov said.

  Whelan thought: Actually, of disinformation.

  As far as I know, all that red hair comes out of Ol’ Andy’s scalp.

  But the bartender heard what I just said, and before the night is over, it will be all over Morton’s.

  And before the week is out, Jay Leno will have made a joke about Old Baldy and His Red Rug.

  Whelan said, “So, what happened at Fort Detrick was that they had an accident. Somebody dropped a bottle or somebody forgot to close a door. They’re prepared for something like that. The emergency procedures were put into play. Since the world didn’t come to an end, we know that the emergency procedures worked. But in the meantime, Homeland Security, the Defense Department, every other agency determined to prove it’s on the job protecting the people, rushed up there, and the Wolf News photographers in the helicopter got those marvelous shots of everybody getting in everybody’s way. Chasing their tails. Arf-arf. ”

  Twenty minutes and two drinks later, Murov called for the bartender, told him he was ready for his table, and asked for the bill. When it was presented, Murov laid three twenty-dollar bills on the bar, and told the bartender to keep the change. The headwaiter appeared, bearing menus and trailed by the sommelier bearing the wine list.

  C. Harry Whelan, Jr., slipped the bar bill into his pocket and followed everybody to a table set against a wall behind a folding screen.

  Ten minutes after that, a waiter had delivered a dozen oysters on the half-shell and the sommelier had opened and poured from a bottle of Egri Bikavér, which Murov told Whelan he had learned to appreciate as a young officer stationed in Budapest.

  “‘Bull’s blood,’ they call it,” Murov said. “The Hungarians have been making wine for a tho
usand years.”

  “What were you doing in Budapest?” Whelan asked. “As a young officer?”

  “I was in tanks,” Murov said.

  Bullshit. You were in the KGB, or the OGPU, or whatever they called the Soviet secret intelligence service in those days.

  You are a charming sonofabitch, Sergei, but you didn’t get to be the Washington rezident because you’re a nice guy.

  You’re dangerous.

  What the hell do you want from me?

  They tapped the rims of their glasses together.

  “I’m going to tell you a story, Harry,” Murov said, “one that would go over very well if you went on The Straight Scoop tonight with it—”

  Well, here it comes!

  Whelan interrupted: “Sergei, my experience has been that if someone tries to feed you a story ...”

  Murov went on: “—but I think when you hear the whole story, you will decide to wait a little before coming out with it.” Murov paused, then added: “And if you decide to break the story immediately, I will of course deny it. And since it touches on the incredible, I really think people would believe my denial.”

  “Why are you being so good to me, Sergei?”

  “Because it is in my interests to do so. And because, frankly, you are the most important journalist to whom I have access.”

  Whelan thought: That makes sense.

  Murov reached for, and then placed on the table, a very elegant dark red leather attaché case. When Whelan saw it, he thought of the wine—bull’s blood.

  Murov took two sheets of paper from the attaché case, laid them on the table, closed the attaché case, returned it to the floor, and then handed Whelan the two sheets of paper.

  “What am I looking at? It’s in Russian.”

  “Underneath is the translation. What you’re looking at is a letter from Colonel Vladlen Solomatin.”

  Whelan read the translation, and then looked at Murov, his eyebrows raised in question.

  “When you have your own translation of the Russian made, Harry,” Murov said, “I think you’ll find that one’s quite accurate. I know that because I did it myself.”

  “I confess I don’t understand what this is all about,” Whelan said.

  “Those warmongers who scurrilously accuse me of being a member of the SVR rather than the innocent diplomat that I am would also allege that my superior in the SVR is Vladlen Solomatin. The second directorate of the SVR is in charge of SVR agents around the world, exercising that authority through the senior SVR officer in each country, commonly called the rezident. Are you hearing all this for the first time, Harry?”

  “Absolutely. This is all news to me.”

  “I’m not surprised. Anyway, so I’m told, most of these rezidents know each other. We ... excuse me ... they went to school together, served together, et cetera. You understand?”

  “Sort of an old boy’s club, right?”

  “Precisely,” Murov said. “Not very often, but once in a great while, people who are not in the SVR form close friendships with people who are. In our embassies—as, I am sure, in yours—cultural attachés know who the rezident/ CIA station chief is even if that is supposed to be a secret. Am I right?”

  “Probably. Are you going to tell me who the SVR rezident in your embassy here is, Sergei?”

  “No. But I know who he is, even though I am not supposed to.”

  “And I’m sure that secret is safe with you,” Whelan said as he reached for the bottle of Egri Bikavér. “Vladimir Putin may sleep soundly tonight.”

  Whelan saw in Murov’s eyes something that told him Murov did not like the sarcasm or—maybe particularly—the reference to Putin.

  Good!

  “Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky and I are friends from childhood,” Murov said. “And we went to Saint Petersburg University together.”

  “And Berezovsky is ...?”

  “The former commercial attaché of our embassy in Berlin.”

  “Read rezident?”

  Whelan had asked the question to annoy Murov and was genuinely surprised when Murov replied: “All right, the former rezident in Berlin. And I was therefore genuinely surprised when word came that he and his sister, who was the rezident in Copenhagen, had deserted their posts shortly before they were to be arrested on charges of embezzlement.”

  “This letter,” Whelan said, tapping the document with his fingers, “says they didn’t do it. ‘Come home. All is forgiven.’”

  “They didn’t do it. Svetlana’s husband was trying to pay her back for leaving him. In the SVR, husbands are expected to control their wives; if they can’t, it puts their character into question.”

  “Are you pulling my leg, Sergei?”

  “Not in the slightest. Svetlana—”

  “You keep using her first name. You know her, too, huh?”

  “Very well. As I was saying, Svetlana not only moved out of their apartment, but had begun divorce proceedings against Colonel Alekseev. Having one’s wife—particularly a wife who is a co-worker, so to speak—find one wanting in the marital situation is very damaging to an officer’s career. Evgeny’s father was a general—”

  “Evgeny’s the husband?”

  Murov nodded and said, “Colonel Evgeny Evgenyvich Alekseev. And Evgeny wanted to be a general, too. And I would suppose there was a human element in here as well.”

  “Human element?”

  “Aside from everything else, his losing Svetlana. She’s a strikingly beautiful woman. Charming, elegant. Evgeny was crazy about her. Jealous.”

  “Does the term ‘soap opera’ mean anything to you, Sergei?”

  “I know what a soap opera is, of course.”

  “This sounds like a soap opera. A bad one.”

  Murov sucked in his breath audibly. And then he was spared having to reply immediately by the waiter.

  “Excuse me,” the waiter interrupted. “Are you ready to order, gentlemen?”

  He was pushing a cart loaded with steaks, chops, lobster, and other items from which one could select one’s steak, chop, lobster, or other item.

  Whelan seriously doubted one actually got what one selected. For one thing, all the cuts were lying on a bed of ice, and were therefore presumably below room temperature, and you weren’t supposed to grill steaks unless they were at room temperature. For another, it was reasonable to assume the diner would pick the best chunk of meat. If this then went to the grill, another good-looking steak would have to be added to the cart.

  It would therefore be easier to let the customer think he was selecting his entrée, and actually serve him with something from the kitchen, and he was sure they did just that.

  “Filet mignon, pink in the middle, with Wine Merchant’s sauce, asparagus, and a small salad, please,” Whelan ordered without looking at the selection on the cart.

  “Twice, except because of the big portions I’ll have mushrooms instead of asparagus,” Murov said, then looked at Whelan, and said, “We can rob from one another’s side dish,” then turned back to the waiter, and added, “And bring another bottle of the Egri Bikavér.”

  The waiter repeated the order and then left.

  “You will recall I used the phrase ‘touches on the incredible,’” Murov said, “when we began.”

  “That was an understatement, but go on,” Whelan said. “What happened?”

  “Well, all of this apparently pushed him over the edge. He decided to punish her. Or maybe he did what he did consciously, thinking that losing a wife who was a thief would be less damaging to his career than a wife who had kicked him out of the marital bed. So he started to set up her and her brother on false embezzlement charges.”

  “Sounds like he’s a really nice guy,” Whelan said.

  Murov exhaled audibly again.

  “One does not get to be the Berlin rezident of the SVR without a very well-developed sense of how to cover one’s back,” Murov said.

  “I suppose that would also apply to the Washington rezident of the SVR.”<
br />
  Murov ignored the comment. He went on: “Dmitri learned what was going on ...”

  “Why didn’t he go to his boss and say, ‘Hey, boss. My sister’s husband is trying to set me up. Here’s the proof.’”

  “Because his boss was his cousin, Colonel V. N. Solomatin. I’m sure Vladlen would have believed him, but Solomatin’s superior was—is—General Yakov Sirinov, who runs the SVR for Putin. And Sirinov was unlikely to believe either Vladlen or Dmitri for several reasons, high among them that he believed Dmitri was a personal threat to his own career. The gossip at the time Sirinov was given his position was that it would have gone to Dmitri if Dmitri and Putin had not been at odds. And also of course because Vladlen and Dmitri were cousins.”

  The odds are a hundred to one that I am being fed an incredible line of bullshit.

  But, my God, what a plethora of details! Murov should have been a novelist.

  Either that, or he’s telling me the truth.

  Careful, Harry! Not for publication, but you’re really out of your league when dealing with the Washington rezident of the SVR.

  “So Dmitri did what any man in his position would do.”

  “The SVR Washington rezident, for example?”

  Murov looked at him, shook his head, smiled, and said, “No. What the Washington rezident would have done in similar circumstances would have been to call Frank Lammelle, and say something like, ‘Frank, my friend, when I come out of Morton’s tonight, have a car waiting for me. This spy’s coming in from the cold.’

  “Dmitri didn’t have that option. He was in Berlin. His sister was in Copenhagen. And they were being watched by other SVR officers. They couldn’t just get on a plane and come here. But what they could do, and did, was contact the CIA station chief in Vienna and tell her that they were willing to defect, and thought the best time and way to do that was to slip away from the festivities at the Kunsthistorisches Museum.”

  “I don’t understand,” Whelan confessed. “What festivities? Where?”

  “There was going to be a gathering in Vienna of rezidents and other SVR officers. As a gesture of international friendship, the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg sent Bartolomeo Rastrelli’s wax statue of Russian tsar Peter the First on a tour of the better European museums. First stop was Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum.”