“I don’t think so. You didn’t see anyone besides me and our nasty assassin looking for Stankov did you? Perhaps you were looking for him too, though?”
The Israeli took a sip of tea. Ignoring the question, he asked, “What exactly did Stankov say to you before he was shot?”
“He thought I was here to extract him. He couldn’t believe I had not received the package he passed to Thackery. He referred to a disk, probably a computer disk. When I informed him that the courier had been killed he said that we must have a leak somewhere, that someone was after him, and that it was vital that I take care of him. He didn’t have time to say any more than that.”
Eitan nodded, “I fear he may be correct about a leak. Did he say anything else, anything more specific?”
“Such as?”
Eitan slapped his knee in exasperation. “Words, Mr. Connolly! What were his exact words?”
I remembered something Stankov had said that had seemed out of place.
“He asked, 'What about Voskreseniye?’ I don’t know what he meant. The word means ‘Sunday’ in Russian. Maybe he was expecting something to happen on Sunday.”
Ronan went very still.
Sasha spoke up for the first time, “Are you a Christian, Mr. Connolly?”
I was nonplussed by the non-sequitur and must have shown it. “Sort of.” My mother had given me a good Methodist upbringing.
“You speak Russian very well. Tell me, what else does that Russian word mean in the context of Christianity?”
“Voskreseniye also means ‘Resurrection.’”
Sasha nodded.
Ronan smiled broadly. “Exactly.”
“I think it’s time for you to show me yours, Ronan.”
CHAPTER 26 – Spain, February 14
Fourteen hundred miles away from Vienna the bullet train eased with a hiss of brakes into Seville’s ultra-modern Santa Justa Station. Arkadkiy Nikolayevich Yudin awoke from his nap in his First Class compartment and stood to retrieve his expensive leather luggage from the rack above his seat. He carried his bag to the car park where he retrieved his Mercedes 600 SEL and settled into the soft leather for the 135 kilometer drive to his home near Marbella.
He was tired from the two unexpected trips to Madrid and would be happy to return to his seaside villa. His schedule called for him to meet some bankers in Cyprus the following week, providing this thing with the Center was cleared up by then, but for now he wanted to get home to Barbara, his twenty something Spanish mistress. Arkadiy stepped on the gas and the sedan leapt smoothly forward as anticipation of his homecoming elicited an urgent tumescence between his thighs.
Forty-five minutes later he pulled into his cobbled drive, the automatic iron gates clanging shut behind him.
Leaving his luggage in the trunk, he almost sprinted to the front door. Once inside he strode directly to the back of the house towards the huge terrace that faced upon the Mediterranean. He could see Barbara through the sliding glass door reclined in a chaise longue by the pool taking in the last rays of the strong Andalusian sun. She wore only a thong, her ample breasts pointing majestically skyward, nipples erect in the cooling afternoon air.
The throbbing between Arkadkiy’s legs became more urgent as his distended manhood stretched the fabric of his trousers. Not for the first time the Russian reflected that young girls were the best aphrodisiac. Barbara heard the door slide open and turned to see the stocky form of a rampant Arkadkiy pitching toward her, his arms outstretched. She did not love the burly 50-year-old Russian, but she did greatly appreciate the fact that he was fabulously wealthy, showered her with expensive gifts, and provided her with a luxurious house that was the envy of her friends. Barbara was a “modern” uninhibited Spanish girl of the 90’s to whom sex was a pleasant uncomplicated activity and, often as not, a means to an end.
She stood and met Arkadkiy’s onrush accepting his fierce kiss. While his hand fondled and squeezed her breasts, Barbara deftly unzipped Arkadkiy’s trousers and freed his heavy member. Arkadkiy groaned as she fell to her knees and took him into her mouth. “Not so fast, krasavitsa,” he panted. He picked her up bodily and carried her back to the chaise where, pulling the thong aside, he went to his knees and entered her. After only a few lusty thrusts, he was finished and collapsed heavily upon her.
“I missed you,” he said.
Laughing, Barbara stood and stripped the thong down her leg, turned and dove into the pool. Rising to the surface and floating on her back she said, “Obviously you did, mi oso grande. You know I hate it when you are away on these silly business trips. Where do you go all the time? I'll bet you have some other girl somewhere.”
“I would have lasted longer, krasavitsa moya, if I had been with another woman before coming home.” Arkadkiy knew she was only teasing him.
“Will you take me to the casino tonight?” Barbara asked. “We could have dinner afterwards.”
“Not tonight. I’m still tired from all this damned traveling. I got off the train less than an hour ago.” He now felt truly spent and wanted nothing more than a shower and a shot of iced vodka.
“But, osito, I bought a new dress yesterday. I look very beautiful in it. You will be the envy of all the other men. Please take me out. I’ve been cooped up here in the house for nearly a week!”
“Not so cooped up that you could not get out and buy a new dress.” Arkadkiy could not keep his eyes off of her naked body, still floating easily in the pool, her long jet black hair fanned in the water. “I prefer you just the way you are, my sweet, and I don’t want to go out tonight. I am too tired.”
He could see that the girl was disappointed. “Perhaps I have something that will make you happy to stay at home tonight,” he teased. Zipping his trousers and straightening his clothes, he walked to where he had dropped his briefcase and extracted a long, elegant box. He held it up to the girl could see it from the water.
“Oooh, a Valentine’s present!" She squealed, paddled to the ladder and climbed out of the pool and grab a large towel to wrap around herself.
“Ah, Ah,” scolded Arkadkiy with a leer. “I won’t give it to you as long as you are wearing that towel.”
Posing prettily, Barbara allowed the towel to drop and then approached Arkadkiy. He handed the box to her and she quickly opened it. The diamonds of the bracelet sparkled in the slanting rays of the fading sun, and Barbara caught her breath. The bracelet was at least three centimeters wide, and the diamonds of best quality. This was a bauble that could support her for a long time, if ever needs be. She made all the appropriate noises and pressed her damp body against the Russian. “Very well, mi osito, we will stay at home tonight. Now, you go take a shower, and I will prepare a Spanish tortilla and a salad for you. I have some excellent Albariño in the fridge.”
Arkadkiy squeezed one of her breasts and went back into the house. Women! He thought. They’re so simple to understand. Dangle something shiny in front of them and they’re sucking your cock before you know it! In this case, he had picked up the latest shiny bauble in Zurich for 125,000 Swiss francs.
CHAPTER 27 – Arkadiy Nikolayevich
Just four years ago Arkadkiy Nikolayevich Yudin had been an economic advisor to the Moscow City Government. He was a highly trained graduate of the Soviet Union’s Mining Institute, Gosplan’s Higher Economic School. Married with two children, his annual state salary had been less than $5,000. His fat Russian wife and the two brats were still living in Moscow, and he was glad they were so far away. Fortunately, though she might imagine the debaucheries committed by her husband in Spain, Mrs. Yudin was happily ensconced in a fancy new apartment with all the conveniences and a chauffeured Volvo.
Little more than two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Boris Yeltsin and a group of comrades dissolved the Soviet Union -- on December 8, 1991. The action was illegal, of course, but it solidified their power and emasculated the already weakened Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Now the Russian economy was shattered. Pric
e reforms and the premature imposition of a “free” market had rapidly wiped out personal savings and impoverished the Russian populace. People were on the streets trying to sell their most precious possessions so they could buy enough bread to survive.
But tragedy for some is always opportunity for others, and another of the fledgling “democratic” government’s ill-considered reforms opened the gates for an all-out pillaging of the country’s most precious assets by those clever enough to seize the opportunity, and Yudin was very clever, indeed.
The very nature of the old Soviet system had been to “rationalize” the means of production through the creation of specialized manufacturing sectors, i.e. state monopolies. In the Soviet era, the Russian economy had ranked third in the world behind the US and Japan. Yeltsin’s privatization of industry led to economic chaos and the devaluation of the monetary worth of all of Mother Russia’s industrial and natural resource wealth to a mere five billion dollars. As a result vast, unimaginable wealth was up for grabs at lower than fire sale prices, and only a few strategically placed individuals were in a position to take advantage of the situation.
Yudin knew a gift horse when he saw one, and his Moscow city government position gave him contacts and access. His stratagem was not uncommon. As soon as it was permitted he formed a private trading company and with the connivance of friends in the vast Russian mining complex, he was soon buying Russian zinc and other ores for which he paid cheap Russian prices and exporting them to the West for sale through a broker in Switzerland at world prices. His usual profit was well over 100%. These profits were placed in a safe account in Zug, Switzerland. Yudin calculated that his current personal net worth was in the neighborhood of $500,000,000.
Along the way he became more than proficient in the arcane financial practices of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Cayman Islands. He also made some interesting friends along the way, certain of whom he could not refuse when they demanded his help. Next week he would fly to Moscow to meet them.
CHAPTER 28 – Israeli Embassy
February 15 – 2:00 AM
Ronan took his time extracting a Gauloise Caporal from its distinctive blue pack and lighting it. He inhaled deeply and released a cloud of acrid smoke before asking, “What do you know about what is happening in Russia today?”
“What’s happening in Russia? I thought you were going to level with me, Ronan, not continue asking questions.”
"All in good time. But first, it is important that we establish a common basis for discussion. Now, I’ll repeat the question: what is your understanding of the present situation in Russia?”
I inferred that the Israeli intended to determine whether he was dealing with a fool or someone who could handle the facts. I decided to play along.
“It’s a mess, especially after the failed coup attempt on Gorbachev last year. Yeltsin’s a drunk. He’s surrounded by toadies and cronies. The economy is out of control. Peoples’ savings have evaporated. The social structure is falling apart. Criminal gangs are running rampant. Moscow is worse than Chicago in the ‘20’s and ‘30’s. People are murdered regularly on the streets. There is nothing in stores for people to buy. Lives are being destroyed.”
Ronan nodded, satisfied with the answer. “But fortunes also are being made, would you not agree?”
“Sure, but not much of it is staying in Mother Russia from what I hear.”
“That is not entirely true. Generally speaking, there is a lot of criminal or at best semi-criminal activity facilitated by official venality and weak laws. But there is much more at stake than personal gain, and much that is structured and politically purposeful.”
“You have my attention, Ronan.”
The Israeli lowered his voice and continued, “Did you know that all the foreign reserves of Russia were depleted by the end of 1990? Nearly thirty billion dollars in gold and securities disappeared into thin air. Poof! Like that!” He snapped his fingers. “Likewise the cash and gold reserves of the Central Committee of the Communist Party mysteriously vanished, at least another twenty billion dollars. In other words, while the entire gamut of Soviet industrial and natural resources were on the auctioneer’s block ridiculously under-valued at around five billion dollars, ten times that amount already had disappeared from official coffers. A lot of millionaires have been created in the new Russia, and several billionaires, but somewhere someone is controlling enough money to buy the entire country ten times over. The Russians refer to these assets as the ‘Black Treasury.’”
Ronan insisted that with the handwriting on the wall writ large, the inner circles of the Kremlin and their Praetorian Guard, the KGB, devised a plan to protect their assets and use them eventually to regain power. This was not exactly a Russian “Odessa,” such as the Nazis established in the wake of World War II to fund the escapes of prominent war criminals. The Russians were not considering escape. On the contrary, the funds were intended to buy Russian assets on the cheap, to finance the establishment of banks and other funding mechanisms, both inside and outside Russia. The KGB and Communist Party leadership recognized that they could still control Russia if they took advantage of the chaotic breakdown of the economy. Not only did they fund overt financial institutions, they also provided the means by which certain individuals could acquire great wealth so long as they agreed to be controlled. And they were not so fastidious as to avoid involvement in clearly illegal activities designed to drain national resources and hard currency from the country. The KGB funded and controlled criminal gangs and used them to eliminate political and economic competitors or force them to cooperate. Sanctioned murder became a commonplace occurrence in Russia.
With just a few insiders pulling the strings, the funds were used to acquire the real prizes of Russian infrastructure, the keys to controlling the future: vast oil and mineral wealth, natural gas, electronics, automobile production facilities. And when they found that some private individual had beaten them to a prize, he was given the choice of collaboration, imprisonment or death. Greed is a powerful incentive, and many of these individuals refused to cooperate. They discovered that that the criminal gangs thought nothing of staging massive shoot-outs in city centers.
“They call themselves ‘Voskreseniye Rossii,’ ‘The Resurrection of Russia,’ ‘Russian Rebirth,’ or ‘Voskreseniye’ for short,” Ronan concluded his dissertation. “We’ve been aware of them for a long time. As you might imagine many of my, ah, coreligionists were involved in the reorganization of the Russian financial landscape. Voskreseniye created literally hundreds of foreign bank accounts and bought controlling interests in many western financial institutions, and in many illegal enterprises. They now control banks and lending institutions and have placed their people in key positions of economic power inside Russia. They control Russia’s mineral and petroleum wealth, defense industries, and soon they will have the real prize, Gazprom, within their grasp, as well. Russian gas accounts for a large percentage of Western European energy use. What do you think these fanatics will do with that power?
“There are but a handful of key individuals who know the full extent of Voskreseniye organization’s holdings, and even fewer know how to access the money. We know that at least one of these key people lives in Western Europe where he can travel freely to tend to the accounts and other ‘business’ matters. Some of Voskreseniye’s financial dealings are known, of course; it’s impossible to keep everything secret, but the full extent of their penetration is unknown. We would like to shut them down.”
“Why, Ronan,” I asked. “What difference does it make to your people how much money the Russians control?”
If the CIA had downgraded interest in things Russian, it was becoming clear that the Mossad had other ideas.
“Please call me Eitan,” he said. “Their money obviously gives them great power, and since when have the Russians ever been friends of the Jews, or of the West, for that matter? The Russians invented the pogrom and have gleefully killed Jews throughout their history. Th
ese people want to rebuild Russian national power and prestige, and I’m afraid they will turn to their old friends in doing so, and in the process seek to harm their old enemies. You know that the Soviets made huge arms sales in the Middle East, to the Syrians and Iraqis. Before 1989 they wielded enormous influence in the Middle East. About a year ago one of our people in Moscow caught wind of something perhaps even more dangerous, especially to us. That’s why I’m here, and it’s why you are still alive, my friend.”
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
I had discovered an intact Montecristo No. 4 in my jacket pocket. Ronan lit another Caporal as I stoked the stogie. It gave me a moment to reflect on the fact that Stankov had been a banker, and whatever connection he might have had with all this was clearly where the conversation was heading. Fifty billion dollars was certainly motivation enough for the Russians to kill, but how was Stankov a threat to them? Ronan was on a roll, so I did not interrupt him with questions. I was learning a lot, and the Israelis knew nothing about the small packet I had retrieved from Stankov’s pocket.
“Please, continue.”
“Russian nuclear specialists began to travel back and forth between Moscow and Tehran with great regularity about a year ago, after they began discussing a commercial agreement to rebuild the Bushehr reactors. The Iraqis did serious damage to Iran’s nuclear research capabilities when they bombed the Bushehr facility during the Iran-Iraq war in the80’s. They actually bombed it six times. Originally you Americans urged the Iranians to launch a nuclear power program under the Shah, of course with the proviso that American companies should make a lot of money on the deal. Eventually the Germans took over, but that ended shortly after the ’79 revolution. The Argentines got involved for a while, but we put pressure on them. The Iranians worked with the Chinese and others, but their program has not noticeably progressed. It now seems that the Russians are willing to supercharge the program’s development – with the blessings of your government, Mr. Connolly. In not too many years the Imams will be enriching plutonium and getting close to weaponization. The Iranian program is controlled by the intelligence services and the Revolutionary Guard. They are impossible to penetrate, and now we have Russian experts moving in to help them. Guess where they would target their first nuclear weapon.”
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