Lord of the Swallows

by Gérard de Villiers

  Chapter 7

  A fascinated Richard Spicer listened to Malko’s account of his meeting with Zhanna Khrenkov the night before. When Malko phoned, the CIA station chief had immediately invited him to lunch. Time was short, so they met at the Millennium Hotel on Grosvenor Square, a stone’s throw from the American embassy, where the CIA was housed.

  They were talking in low voices in a quiet corner of the dining room, surrounded by graying, preoccupied businessmen.

  Spicer had taken out a little pad and was taking notes. He looked up when Malko finished.

  “At first blush, it sounds like a fairy tale!” he exclaimed. “But I’m not a Russian specialist, so I’ll send your account to the Russia desk at the DI”—the Directorate of Intelligence. “Because it’s such an unusual approach, I’ll also run it by Ted Boteler in special operations. Do you think the feeler is genuine?”

  “A lot of what Mrs. Khrenkov told me is accurate,” said Malko, who was working on his second espresso. “She clearly knows the world of intelligence. But the Russians are old hands at disinformation, so our meeting might not be as accidental as she claims. It could be a cover for some devious setup.”

  Spicer requested and paid the check.

  “I’m off to see MI5,” he said. “I won’t mention your being here. And I’ll send the memo to Ted. Can you stay on in London a little longer?”

  “I think so, sure.”

  The station chief stood up and flashed Malko a piratical grin. “You and I have worked a lot of jobs together, and it would be fun if this one panned out. But I can’t see the Agency agreeing to a targeted assassination, even for a whole bunch of Russian spies. We don’t do that sort of thing anymore.”

  Once out on the Grosvenor Square sidewalk, Malko thought of calling his old pal Gwyneth Robertson. A retired CIA case officer, Gwyneth was the queen of high-society fellatio, perfected in the best British finishing schools.

  But then he had a better idea.

  Why not call “the bitch,” Lynn Marsh? If the swallows project took off, being in touch with her could be useful.

  The call to Lynn’s number went to voice mail, so Malko left a message inviting her to dinner. It felt like tossing a bottle with a note into the sea.

  Thanks to Zhanna, he knew that the young dentist was currently on her own in London, since Alexei was in New York. Malko might be able to determine if she was as much in love with him as Zhanna feared.

  —

  Rem Tolkachev slowly reread the short memo. It had reached him after a circuit of several thousand miles in absolute secrecy. It was just one page, single spaced, but its author demanded immediate action.

  Tolkachev made a habit of always reading important documents twice, to really absorb them. Sometimes he would discover a new angle on the repeat reading. Caution and care were second nature to him. They had allowed him to keep his small office in the south wing of the Kremlin for the last sixteen years.

  His door bore no sign, and only its thickness and sophisticated access code—it changed every week and was known only to Tolkachev and one presidential aide—suggested that the office housed someone important. The few people in the Kremlin who knew called it Osobié Svyazi, the Office of Special Affairs.

  Over the years, Tolkachev had served a succession of Kremlin masters: Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, and now Medvedev. The latter didn’t take much notice of the old man and let his prime minister, Vladimir Putin, deal with him.

  Tolkachev served all those masters with the same dedication. In his eyes, he was working for his rodina, Russia. The only leader to officially recognize him was Yuri Andropov, the former KGB head, who awarded him the Order of Lenin.

  It hadn’t gone to his head. Tolkachev was a soldier of the shadows, devoted and dispassionate.

  The steel-reinforced safe in his office contained the leadership’s most explosive secrets of the last quarter century. Most of the instructions Tolkachev gave were oral. When a written document was required, he wrote it by hand or typed a single copy on an old Remington, an American Lend-Lease gift. The spymaster deeply distrusted electronic media, and saw the Internet as a trap invented by the imperialists. He hadn’t ever wanted a secretary.

  If, against all odds, someone managed to break into his office, a powerful incendiary device would burn up the intruder along with the room and all its precious documents.

  —

  Every morning Tolkachev drove into the Kremlin through the Borovitskiy gate. He used to drive an old Volga but had recently been given a brand-new Lada, whose modern lines he hated. In the evening he returned to a modest apartment on Kastanaevskaya Street in a quiet Moscow neighborhood. A widower, he ate at home except when he indulged his only weakness, going to the Bolshoi.

  Tolkachev carefully folded the document he’d just read and filed it in the large wall safe. He glanced at his large poster of Felix Dzerzhinsky, published in 1926 on the Cheka founder’s death. The man he admired most in the world. The one who reportedly said, “There are no innocents in the socialist state, only bad investigators.” Tolkachev often went to the KGB museum on Lubyanka Street to contemplate Dzerzhinsky’s death mask.

  Just then someone knocked on the door, and the red warning light came on. Tolkachev checked the peephole to identify his visitor, but it was only the fat housekeeper who brought him the sweetened tea he drank every day around four thirty. Her eyes downcast, she set the tray on his empty desk and silently beat a retreat.

  Tolkachev sipped his tea and pondered his next course of action. He disliked haste and recklessness, whose results almost always had to be corrected later.

  He picked up his telephone and dialed the number of one of President Medvedev’s aides. This was Tolkachev’s liaison with Vladimir Putin, who had been exiled to the white prime minister’s building.

  Tolkachev’s phone was connected to the internal Kremlin network but wasn’t listed in the official directory. The only people who could call him were those he’d given the number to. On the other hand, all the numbers he might need were contained in a locked address book. It held the names of two generations of apparatchiks and intelligence agents.

  When a senior official in one of the major departments was promoted, he was immediately told about Rem Stalievitch Tolkachev. Few knew what he looked like, or much beyond his somewhat slow speech and high-pitched voice, with an accent from central Russia. What they did know was that when Tolkachev asked for something, he was to get it immediately, without asking questions. He embodied the Kremlin’s absolute power, regardless of who the current tsar might be.

  Born the son of an NKVD general at Sverdlovsk in 1934, Tolkachev had spent his entire career in the “organs.” This included a long stint in the KGB’s Second Directorate, where he was the liaison with the elite military Alpha group. This gave him an endless supply of efficient, discreet, and reliable assassins.

  Tolkachev didn’t make much of an impression on people who didn’t know his real functions. Widowed for a decade, he was a tiny old gentleman with a crown of smooth white hair. But he ruled not only departments and intelligence agencies. Over the years he had accumulated a prodigious collection of contacts that allowed him to confront any situation.

  His safe held thousands of files, their pages dense with his tiny, precise writing about all the people he’d ever used. They were all there: siloviki, gangsters, killers, swindlers, mafiosi, bankers, military veterans, and priests, in intimate detail.

  Tolkachev always knew exactly whom he was dealing with.

  Every month, he combed through his list, drawing a little Orthodox cross by the names of people who had died.

  He was the person who had had the idea of launching a new flight of lastochkas fourteen years earlier.

  When the SVR succeeded the glorious First Directorate, all the best operatives left the agency to go into the private sector and get rich.

  Dismayed by the foreign intelligence service’s incompetence, Tolkachev sent a letter under seal to Vladimir Putin. To his sur
prise, he was summoned to the president’s office that very day. The Kremlin’s new leader was a man who shared both Tolkachev’s hatred of Gorbachev and his nostalgia for the days of Soviet power.

  “Rem Stalievitch, Russia should have many more men like you!” exclaimed Putin. “I approve your project 200 percent. What do you require?”

  “Only your support, Mr. President. I’ll do the rest.”

  Thanks to a complex, top-secret routing system, Tolkachev had unlimited funds at his disposal, in cash or any other payment method, everywhere in the world. It required no accounting, but Tolkachev was compulsively honest and wouldn’t steal a kopeck from the money at his disposal. His greatest joy came from the unlimited power he exercised and the trust shown him by the country’s leadership.

  His only distraction was a monthly visit to the Bolshoi. He bought his own ticket, though a mere phone call would’ve opened up an entire row of orchestra seats. And his only indulgence was the slim, pastel-colored Sobranie Cocktail cigarettes he chain-smoked when he was thinking hard.

  Having finished his sweet tea, Tolkachev lit one now.

  He had to give his correspondent an answer by this evening, but he was in a quandary. The lastochkas network was his pet project. Over two years, he had personally recruited all its members, choosing them with the greatest care. Each had family back in Russia, which gave Tolkachev leverage over them, but none had misbehaved.

  Good Russians still existed, he reflected.

  Early on, his first problem arose when the man Tolkachev appointed as the link with the agents in the United States got cancer. Boris Orlov was a businessman who’d made a fortune plundering Russia’s nickel industry, so he did whatever the authorities asked of him. Nor was Orlov suspect in American eyes. He had officially broken all ties with the motherland and lived in the United States, which was essential.

  Alas, Orlov now lay buried with the others who had served the nation in Moscow’s prestigious Novodevichy Cemetery.

  Tolkachev had learned of Alexei Khrenkov while leafing through the secret reports delivered to him every morning. The spymaster investigated, and learned that he’d swindled his way to a fortune and was about to flee the country. Seeing that the former vice minister would have the perfect profile of a network leader, Tolkachev had made his move.

  Khrenkov was about to board his flight at Sheremetyevo International Airport when he was taken aside by customs officials for a supposedly routine check. Instead, he spent that night in the Lubyanka prison basement. They left him there for a week with practically nothing to eat, giving Tolkachev time to study his reaction. Then they took him from his cell, cleaned him up, and brought him to the Kremlin.

  In an anonymous office, Khrenkov had met a white-haired old man who gave him a stark choice: become the head of the swallows network or join Putin’s defeated rival Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Siberia for the next fifteen years.

  Unlike Khodorkovsky, Khrenkov actually was guilty.

  Tolkachev warned him that he would be under constant surveillance by security agents. That wasn’t unusual; all the émigré oligarchs had bodyguards. The difference was that these men would be taking their orders from the Kremlin.

  Needless to say, Khrenkov had jumped at the chance. There wasn’t even a handshake to seal the deal; these people were serious. He was told he was free to leave the country, and had best do it quickly, because the Moscow oblast was starting to realize what the Khrenkovs had done. So he flew out of Sheremetyevo without any problem, leaving Russia for good.

  It was none too soon. Three days later, the oblast obtained a warrant for his arrest, as did the Moscow FSB financial section. Neither organization knew about the deal Khrenkov and Tolkachev had struck, of course. In their eyes, he was just another rich fugitive.

  Just the same, the Kremlin passed word to the FSB not to broadcast the affair abroad, so as not to scare off foreign investors.

  In the three years since, everything had worked perfectly. The swallows network was beginning to produce results. One of the spies, a gorgeous redhead, had even married a U.S. senator thirty years her senior who sat on a number of important committees.

  If Tolkachev drank champagne, he would have raised a glass.

  Today, however, he found himself facing a completely unexpected problem.

  If it had involved anyone other than Malko Linge, he wouldn’t have worried. But he particularly distrusted the CIA agent, who had given him a lot of grief in the past. Linge’s meeting Khrenkov and his wife couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. As a follower of scientific socialism, Tolkachev didn’t believe in coincidences.

  It would be easy enough to have the agent killed, but something held Tolkachev back. Though he doubted it, the meeting actually could have been a coincidence. And in that case, killing Linge would draw attention to the Khrenkovs, which was the last thing he wanted.

  By his sixth cigarette, he’d made up his mind. His reasoning was logical. If the CIA agent had actually met the lord of the swallows by chance, he would soon move on, and everything would return to normal.

  If not, it would prove that the CIA was after something. That would be extremely unfortunate, because it would mean Khrenkov had been targeted. It might be for the “wrong” reasons, such as his recent and very shady past. But it might also be for his role running the network.

  In which case Tolkachev would have to act very quickly.

  He would first kill Linge, then bring Khrenkov home. It would leave the network leaderless, but that was better than scuttling it. Tolkachev had no illusions about people. If the Americans gave Khrenkov a choice between betraying his network or spending the next hundred and fifty years in prison, he wouldn’t hesitate for a second. He was no hero of the Soviet Union, just a crooked apparatchik who wanted to enjoy his ill-gotten gains.

  Tolkachev stubbed out his last cigarette unfinished and drafted a short note to the head of the Khrenkovs’ protection detail. This was Vladimir Krazovsky, a former Spetsnaz colonel and devoted patriot whose job was to maintain a firewall around the couple to make sure they made no further suspicious contacts.

  —

  Malko had long since returned to the Lanesborough, and he was feeling at loose ends. Gwyneth Robertson, his friend with benefits in London, was on assignment in Stockholm for her think tank and wouldn’t be back for another three days. And Lynn Marsh still hadn’t answered his message.

  He decided to call her again, though without much hope. To Malko’s surprise, she answered on the fifth ring.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, there. It’s Malko Linge,” he said in his most seductive voice. “I left you a message earlier.”

  It took the young dentist a few seconds to place him.

  “Oh, of course! You were the man at my table last night.”

  “That’s right. I suggested we have a drink at Annabel’s, but you said no.”

  “I had to get up early this morning.”

  “The message I left was to invite you to dinner tonight.”

  “I haven’t checked my mobile. Sorry.”

  “So what do you say?”

  She agreed, but with some reluctance.

  “I’ve had a tiring day, and will have to get home early. Could we have dinner at seven?”

  “Absolutely. How shall we meet? Can I pick you up?”

  “No, I have my car. Where are you staying?”

  “At the Lanesborough.”

  “All right, I’ll see you there at seven. You can choose the restaurant.”

  Malko hung up, feeling half-satisfied. Lynn didn’t have anything untoward in mind. Zhanna was right: she really was in love with Alexei Khrenkov.

  Chapter 8

  Lynn Marsh nibbled the last of her rhubarb crumble and ginger ice cream and looked at Malko with an expression of delight.

  “This is marvelous!”

  Annabel’s was as pleasant as ever. Their table stood a little distance from the small dance floor and the booths occupied by people who were there only
for cocktails. The music was neither too loud nor too modern, and when the band started playing “Strangers in the Night,” Malko took the opportunity to ask Lynn to dance.

  After the slightest of hesitations, she stood up and preceded Malko down the few stairs to the dance floor. This gave him a perfect view of her back. She was wearing a long white dress that emphasized her tan, open to the top of her buttocks.

  When Malko put his arm around her, setting his hand low on her bare back, she pulled away slightly.

  Aside from his somewhat formally kissing her hand, this was the first time they’d actually touched.

  They danced very properly, with Lynn holding herself erect and a little apart. She was the first to head back to their table, where a bottle of Taittinger Brut in a silver bucket awaited them.

  “I love champagne!” she said.

  Like most women.

  The champagne seemed to loosen her up more than dinner had, and Malko decided to see what he could learn.

  “Are you seeing anybody these days?” he asked casually.

  “Yes.”

  “He gives you a lot of freedom,” he said, with a touch of irony.

  Lynn took his remark literally.

  “He doesn’t live in London. He’s traveling right now.”

  “Was he supposed to have been in my seat at the gala last night?”

  “That’s right.”

  This confirmed what Zhanna Khrenkov had told him. Lynn was indeed her husband’s mistress. Malko didn’t pursue the matter; he knew enough. In any case, the young dentist glanced at her watch as she drank a final flute of champagne.

  “I can’t stay out too late,” she said. “Do you mind if we leave now?”

  Malko assured her he didn’t mind and asked for the check. Waiting for a taxi under Annabel’s awning, he looked the young woman over, thinking that it was too bad she was involved with someone else.

  “I’ll get off with you at the Lanesborough,” she said. “I left my car with the valet parking there. I live quite far away, beyond Hammersmith.”