Designation Gold

by Richard Marcinko

  Andrei’s eyes showed some surprise but he managed to maintain a neutral expression. The flash in Grinkov’s was the giveaway that he was not only sharp, he understood exactly what I was saying. Werner Lantos was shocked, too—you could see he hadn’t anticipated any personal connection between Paul and me. Andrei, however, missed the dangerous look altogether. “You have my condolences, Captain,” he continued, his voice low.

  I’ll bet I did. “I don’t want condolences. I want whoever killed my friend and my godchild.”

  He picked up his coupe and drained it. Immediately, the glass was refilled. “That has nothing to do with me, Captain Marcinko. I am simply a businessman trying to make a dollar or two.” He gestured expansively left and right. “Like tonight. As you see, I have put together old friends. If they form a successful venture, they pay me a small finder’s fee. But if I can help you in any way, then I would be happy.”

  I realized right then that this absurd verbal tennis could go on all night if I didn’t put a stop to it right away. And so I made a command decision to use a technique I’d developed over the years after watching some of the world’s best journalists and most talented intelligence officers practice their trades.

  Oh, yeah—just in case you didn’t know it, the practice of journalism is very similar to the practice of intelligence. I see you out there—you’re dubious. Well, Mr. Dubious—come on into the tent and let me lay out the basics to you.

  Both journalism and intelligence are based upon the timely exploitation of sources. In journalism, you try to get some poor asshole to betray his (or her) company or his (or her) boss or his (or her—and, by the way, are you getting enough of this ironically employed EEO shit yet?) country so you can put that information into a magazine or a newspaper or onto a TV news show. In intelligence work, you try to get some poor asshole to betray his (or her) company or his (or her) boss or his (or her) country so you can use that information to promote your own national interest.

  In journalism, you are genteel. You call said A2—Aforementioned Asshole—a source. In intelligence work, which is slightly less genteel, the A2 is known as an asset. (Known as an asset, incidentally, because you SET said source’s ASS on the street to dig up info.) In both cases, when intelligence officers or reporters are in private, their A2s are more accurately described. In private, sources and assets are both referred to as “snitches.”

  Having laid out the general philosophical framework, let’s get down to specifics. Interrogation, for example. The interrogation techniques employed by intelligence officers and journalists are remarkably similar. No, torture is not a realistic option in either field. Most editors and reporters are liberals and hate violence. The same, incidentally, goes for career intelligence officers. More of them are liberals than you might imagine.

  Besides, in 99 percent of all cases you get more information by using your brain than your fists (or a twelve-volt battery or a pair of pliers). And both journalism and intelligence work employ false flag recruitments—which, as I explained before, is when the reporter or officer makes you think he represents one country (or business) when in fact he represents another. And both use the gambit I like to call the PIP, or Partial Information Ploy.

  The very best journalists will make their sources believe that they know far more than they do. Sometimes, if they have only an inkling, they’ll lay a scenario out and hope it’s close enough to being right to jar the subject and coax him to talk. Sources love to correct reporters’ perceived misconceptions—and the scenario approach lures them into doing exactly that.

  Sometimes the scenario elicits an HTF, or, “How the fuck did you know that?” response. That’s when you say bingo to yourself while never showing your cards. In other instances, you use buzz words, code phrases, and other mumbo jumbo to convince your sources that they might as well spill the whole kettle of beans because you, the journalist or intel officer, know the whole story anyhow, so they’re not giving up any information you didn’t already have.

  Tonight, I’d use PIP on Andrei. So I drained my Bombay, slammed the glass back on the table, and gave the Georgian my best Nasty Rogue Look.

  “You’re nothing but a fucking liar, you moodyuck cockbreath,” I said, calling him an asshole in Russian.

  The way his eyes screwed up behind the glasses, I thought he was going to shit—or sic his byki on me. But I didn’t give him a chance to do either. “Paul knew you were tied into the dual-use smuggling—the stuff that’s going to the Middle East through your ’old friend’ Werner Lantos, here—and a bunch of other stuff you’re moving courtesy of your other ’old friend,’ Viktor Grinkov. So you had him killed before he could do anything to upset your action. It was nothing personal. It was a simple business decision on your part—zapodlo.” I used the Russian underworld idiom that translates as “illegal commerce.” It was a word Avi had used earlier in the day to describe Andrei’s activities.

  Since I knew my rapid-fire English was supposed to be flying past Viktor Grinkov’s head untranslated, I concentrated on Werner Lantos’s face as I spoke. It was hard to discern any change in his expression. He sat there, immutable as a statue. Except that he didn’t have the degree of muscle control he might have desired. Just below his right ear, his neck was throbbing like a fucking tom-tom. His carotid artery was going crazy and there was nothing he could do to stop the pulsing. That told me Werner Lantos was exercised. Exercised, hell—Werner Lantos was homicidally furious.

  I poured another Bombay, picked up the glass, drained it all at once in the Russian style, and slapped it back onto the table belligerently, as if to say Fuck You. As I did, Lantos leaned toward Andrei and started to say something in Russian. But I wasn’t about to let anybody break the mood, so I interrupted. “It’s that fundamental. Andrei, so don’t try to shit me.”

  Andrei did an HTF. How did I know he HTF’d? Because the sonofabitch didn’t have me killed on the spot. He didn’t call me names—didn’t tell me I was full of shit. He didn’t even try to deny what I’d just accused him of. He only tried to parry it.

  “You have no proof.” he said, his eyes moving in tight little circles, his eyelids fluttering in those micromomentary tremors psychologists will tell you indicate mendacity. “Only what Vassily told you—and he is a known liar.”

  Here is what I did not say: Oh, I see you know I spent some quality time with your U2, goon Vassily Chichkov, whose information sent me to your dacha. But guess what, asshole—even though the dacha was empty—I managed to find one shard of evidence on the premises. Yeah, the Air France waybill you left behind. And the Israelis have a lot more in their files. Now, to be perfectly honest, you know as well as I do that until right now. I’d been working with evidence that was almost completely circumstantial. But the look on Andrei’s face, the micromomentary eyelid fluctuations, and his lying response added up to Guilty As Charged.

  However, this was not the time to pass sentence. That would come later—in a one-on-one-and—in a place more private. Right now, there were more immediate things to do. Like get my behind out of this place.

  I pushed my chair hack from the table and stood up. I nodded in Ministry of the Interior’s direction. “Nice to meet you. Viktor,” l said. I bowed slightly at Werner Lantos. “A pleasure, monsieur.” I lied.

  Then I fixed Andrei in a murderous stare. “See you ’round, Koresh.” I said, calling him pal. “We’ll do some serious talking, you and I.”

  Vynkenski and Blynkenski bookended me as I rose. “They will take you back to your hotel.” Andrei said between gritted teeth.

  Like hell they would. “I’ll find my own way.”

  “No—” He frowned. He obviously wasn’t used to being contradicted by anyone. “They will take you. It is no problem.”

  I bet it wasn’t. I looked up at Vynkenski and Blynkenski. They had the kind of open, unsophisticated, guileless faces that spoke volumes if you know how to interpret the pages on which they’re writ. Dear friends, I am the Evelyn Fucking Wood of
face reading. Right at this moment, for example, these two byki were trying to sort out exactly where in the Moscow River they were going to dump my body after they’d finished with me.

  Now, as we’re all making our way out and you start thinking that I’m being reckless, let me explain a few elements of my SpecWarrior strategy.

  First, I knew—and they obviously didn’t—that I had four very aggressive shipmates watching everything that was going on. Second, I had no idea where Andrei was holed up but I still wanted to talk. There was the matter of Paul Mahon and his family, which had to be cleared up. And there was the cozy relationship between Andrei, Werner Lantos, and the head of the Ministry of the Interior, which had to be explored.

  I mean, friends, the nasty possibilities are endless. The Ministry of the Interior controlled all exports of dual-use technology. It also had jurisdiction over Russia’s nuclear materials industry and domestic arms production. And it was the Ministry of the Interior’s troops who controlled the borders, as well as maintained counterterrorism units like OMON. Come to think of it, many of the old KGB’s functions were now under the direction of the Ministry of the Interior. Kind of makes you nervous to know that the man who ran that ministry is an old friend of avor, doesn’t it?

  Well, at least one thing was clear. Now I realized how the dacha operation had been compromised. In fact, it occurred to me right then that the dacha might have been a trap, set for Boris, the still-honest cop, or for one or two of the OMON shooters who perhaps refused to take bribes and become part of the system—or a trap set for me. You say that sounds far-fetched? Perhaps you are right. But in my line of work, the alternatives are endless, and you take nothing for granted. As the old Rogue’s SpecWar Commandment reads, “Thou shalt never assume.” So I wasn’t about to assume anything.

  Now, perhaps in all honesty the cops on the organized crime squad and the intel weenies from the Ministry of the Interior had no idea where Andrei Yudin could be found, on a day-to-day basis, even though it hadn’t taken me very long to learn that he hung out at the Dynamo. It was vaguely conceivable. After all, Moscow is a confusing city. Not to mention the fact that they’ve changed hundreds of street names since the fall of communism—and not all of the new, more democratic-sounding ones are on the maps yet. There are also huge numbers of anonymous, unnumbered apartment blocks, unheard-of warehouses, and other sundry obscure structures scattered throughout the city.

  It was also possible, if somewhat unlikely, that Andrei, by playing the old Yasser Arafat shell game of residence switching, had managed to “elude” the authorities. It was much more likely that since his old friend ran the ministry that was ostensibly in charge of taking him down, Andrei simply stayed one step ahead of the few honest cops left in Moscow.

  But tonight, things were different. Tonight, I knew exactly where he’d be staying. Well, I didn’t actually know it yet. But I was being presented with impeccable sources: my two huge bookends. Vynkenski and Blynkenski knew exactly where Andrei was going to rest his well-coiffed little head tonight.

  Moreover, Andrei knew they’d be late getting home—because they’d have to dispose of my large, muscular, and hard-to-conceal corpse. So he wouldn’t worry if they were a little late showing up.

  And third, it is always advantageous to allow your enemies to believe they are overrunning your position, when in fact, you are simply drawing them into a trap. That maneuver, incidentally, is a tactical homily first mentioned by Sun Tzu more than two thousand years ago. It was preached during the French and Indian wars by Major Robert Rogers, the CO of Rogers’s Rangers and founding father of American SpecWar, and brought into the twentieth-century Navy lexicon by Roy Boehm, the legendary maverick mustang who is the major heir of Major Rogers’s philosophical legacy as well as the godfather of all SEALs.

  “Okay, you guys,” I said. I punched Blynkenski on the upper right bicep hard enough so that even in his well-fortified, feel-no-pain condition he winced. “Let’s move it, boychik.”

  They tried to steer me through the crowd, but there was no way I was going to allow them to put their hands on me. So we played touchie-feelie-slappie-slappie all the way out the door. As I passed the jam-packed bar I caught Wonder and Doc in my peripheral vision but made no attempt at eye contact—no telling who might have been watching—and continued toward the exit. Besides, contact was unnecessary. My guys are operators. They’d know exactly how to play it.

  The Ivans pushing close right behind me, we walked past the bouncer onto the sidewalk. They wobbled slightly as they tried to veer me starboard. Blynkenski pointed toward a dark Mercedes sedan that sat in a cusp of street light half a block away. “We take my car,” he said.

  No fucking way. I stopped short, swiveled, and headed the opposite direction. “Nyet—we’ll walk this way,” I said, pointing in the direction my men and I had arrived from.

  Vynkenski looked at Blynkenski, Blynkenski looked at Vynkenski, and the two of them shrugged conspiratorially, as if I was nowhere to be seen. “Okey-dokey, Dickie Marchinko,” he said, “we go the long way. More interesting maybe if we walk.”

  I let them bookend me as we marched back past the well-lit hard-currency stores, slaloming past tightly packed Mercedes and Beemers. “So, Ivan,” I said, slapping Blynkenski’s back, “do you know Vassily Chichkov?”

  “No Ivan. Not Ivan—me Volodya,” he said, underlining each and every syllable. He chewed my question for a few seconds before digesting it. “Vassily,” he said, a smile spreading across his face as he obviously remembered something they’d shared. “Is very good man. Old-time friend.”

  “You know he was wearing my friend’s Naval Academy ring,” I said.

  “Naval? No—Vassily not naval. He was with me in army,” Blynkenski said, simultaneously misreading my question and signing his own death warrant so far as I was concerned. After all, I only needed one of them for information.

  We turned the corner. The lights were dimmer here, the block of nineteenth-century apartments a shadow on the opposite side of the street. To my left stood a low wall, which marked the border of the small, neglected cemetery.

  Blynkenski stopped and peered into the deserted graveyard. I could see his mental gears trying to shift. It was like his lips were moving, it was all so obvious. He winked at Vynkenski and said, “Hold it all up, please.”

  We held it all up, thank you.

  “Having to take big leak,” Blynkenski pronounced. He stepped over the decaying, three-foot stone wall that set the graveyard off from the street, then turned toward me. “What about you, Dickie?”

  “Hey, Volodya, right on—nothing like draining the old lizard,” I said.

  “Liz-ard?” Blynkenski looked back, confused.

  “Shakin’ the snake, bub—uncoiling the old pocket anaconda and lettin’ it breathe.”

  Behind me, Vynkenski laughed. It was somewhere between a belch and a guffaw. He moved close, as if to help me over the wall. “I got it,” I said, elbowing him hard enough in the gut to make him keep his distance. Once over the wall I stayed well ahead of him—out of reach of those size twelve paws of his. Vynkenski might be drunk, and stupid. But he was still big, and potentially dangerous.

  And he was ready for action,now. I knew that because despite the chill he was sweating. He was also breathing deeply. Those are two of perhaps half a dozen overt signs that the body is preparing for combat. The Warrior works hard to keep such signs to himself. These assholes weren’t Warriors. Bullies. Muscle. Goons. I wouldn’t trade one of my SEALs for a hundred of ’em.

  Now, speaking of SEALs, I knew that my guys were close by. They’d have shadowed us from the moment we left the Dynamo. Which is why I’d taken this route. Wonder had done his homework well—the cemetery was a fitting place to take these two assholes down. But I wasn’t about to call for any backup. I’d decided to deal with these two pigs myself. Especially since they were pals of Vassily’s. Maybe they’d been there, too. Helped Vassily and Andrei to kill my shipmate. And his wi
fe. And their firstborn—my godson.

  We moved away from the cemetery wall, walking nonchalantly past the ragged rows of headstones, clustered sarcophagi, and small mausoleums. Oh, yes, it was appropriate that we were here in this place of death together; this burial ground, where I’d begin to take revenge for what they’d done to my extended family.

  Blynkenski stopped next to a large, ornate mausoleum, sidled up to the wall, unbuttoned the fly on his trousers, and began to take his leak.

  He sighed the way so many do as the lizard’s draining, then turned his head vaguely in my direction. “Hey, Dickie Marchinko—I zamochit— piss on this guy’s grave. Maybe some day I zamochit on yours, too, huh?”

  “Highly unlikely, cockbreath.” In the darkness my hand had slipped under my jacket and retrieved the P7 from its holster in the small of my back. It takes fourteen pounds of pressure to cock the squeeze safety on the pistol’s grip, but only a pound and a half to keep it cocked. I cocked the weapon, holding the safety pressed down. My trigger finger indexed along the trigger guard, just below the frame. I held the gun next to my right leg, where it was invisible in the shadows.

  My major concern was sound, so I decided to take him out with a contract shot—not as quiet as a suppressed weapon, of course, but Blynkenski’s clothes and his body would absorb some of the gun’s report.

  I moved up toward the mausoleum wall as if I was going to take a piss, too. Blynkenski sensed me approach, but was in the middle of shaking his wanker off, so he was somewhat distracted. I got directly behind him as he faced the mausoleum stones, his cock in his hand, his gaze directed downward. I brought my right arm up, jammed my pistol’s muzzle tight against the base of his neck, using the suitcoat he wore as insulation, and squeezed off two rapid shots—ba-boom, baboom!