RW14 - Dictator's Ransom

by Richard Marcinko

  Setrovich took me to what looked like a small house about two kilometers out of town. The place turned out to be a restaurant with two medium-sized dining rooms at the front and some smaller ones farther back. The colonel was apparently well known there; the woman who met us at the door simply nodded when we came in, then walked us silently through a zigzagging corridor to a room at the far back. It looked almost like a private study, with thick upholstered chairs and a table off to the side. Setrovich walked to the table, took off the sports coat he was wearing, and rolled up his shirtsleeve.

  “Well?” he asked, putting his arm down in wrestling position.

  “Loser pays,” I told him, rolling up my sleeve.

  “You already pay,” he said.

  “Double or nothing. I win, you pay. You win, I pay you and get the drinks.”

  “Dah!”

  Setrovich’s forearm was larger than a bull’s thigh. I put my elbow down, looked toward the door, and caught Colonel Setrovich off balance with a posting toproll.

  “You cheat!” he exclaimed.

  I shrugged. “Best two out of three?”

  “Dah. We go again.”

  Colonel Setrovich put down his arm. Now on his guard, he tested me gingerly; as soon as I started to push, he pushed back. I let him get some pressure on me for a few seconds, then started to press back. I could have taken him from there, but then I would never have gotten any information from him—I let him beat me back, then gave up with a bit of a flourish.

  Setrovich grinned. His face was beet red.

  “Let’s leave it there,” I suggested. “I’ll pay for drinks.”

  “You very good man, American Bear,” he said, slapping me on the back.

  Several vodkas later—vodka was all they served—Colonel Setrovich got around to telling me what he knew about Ike Polorski. Polorski’s military background was admirable—his paratrooper unit had been an elite within the elite, with every member trained to handle weapons ranging from knives to helicopter gunships. He had gone on to lead a special squad of soldiers dedicated to improving security at Polish facilities—now who does that remind you of?

  They even stole a submarine.

  Or tried to.

  “That trick got him kicked out of the service,” said Setrovich. The submarine was the Orzel, a Russian Kilo-class boat and the most advanced ship in the Polish navy. The admiral in charge of the fleet was ready to retire, and the embarrassment over the issue meant he couldn’t be promoted before his retirement, which cost him much money. “Admiral very angry. He talked to people, called in favors. Polorski was . . .”

  Setrovich ran his finger across his throat. I suddenly felt a lot of sympathy for Polorski—our military experiences had a number of parallels. But our career paths differed once we left the service. He moved to Russia, where he joined up with some former friends and went to work with or for—Setrovich wasn’t sure which—the mafiya. At first, they had merely smuggled stolen prescription drugs from the West into Russia. But as the years went on, they had dabbled in art theft and counterfeiting. Then Polorski and friends had put their military backgrounds to better use. They began stealing weapons from Russian army bases and selling them in places like Somalia. I say stealing because Setrovich did, but it’s more likely that they simply paid off starving members of the chronically underpaid Russian military to give them surplus weapons, a popular pastime in the mid and late 1990s. Their customer list grew quickly, eventually expanding to include the Chechen rebels who murdered the schoolchildren.

  That incident had brought Polorski’s gang notoriety, but it was small potato peelings as far as Polorski was concerned. The gang was now selling to African and Middle Eastern governments, and had made at least one attempt to steal a nuclear weapon out of a Russian arsenal. Setrovich didn’t say exactly where, but from his description it was probably from the air base at Belaja, where the air force keeps a stockpile of nukes just in case the day comes when they find enough spare parts to get their Backfire bombers back in action.

  “Very dangerous man,” concluded Setrovich. “Here, have more vodka.”

  [ V ]

  WHILE THE COLONEL and I were trading drinks, Trace was working her way through the crowd at a bar across the street from Setrovich’s office, fishing for ID cards. It was a bump and grab routine—she bumped up against someone, then gently grabbed the key card clipped to their shirt or belt. She had already gotten three cards—it never hurt to have a spare—and was on her way back toward Matthew when a big, grouchy Russian got in her way.

  “Let’s dance, then fuck,” said the Russian.

  The only thing that saved him from being kneecapped was the fact that he was speaking Russian, and Trace didn’t understand. She squinted at him, wondering if he had seen her lift the IDs.

  “We’ll dance,” said the lug, reaching for her hand.

  Had he succeeded in actually touching Trace’s hand, it’s more than likely that he would have found himself breaking the sound barrier along with the plate-glass window at the front of the place. But luckily for him Matthew had seen him approach and was already creating a diversion. Swinging his hand wildly as a waitress passed, he overturned her tray of glasses and vodka. The crash got everyone’s attention—Russians hate to see good vodka go to waste. Realizing that hitting the idiot in front of her might complicate the mission, Trace took the opportunity to slip away, ducking into the crowd and then out the door, with Junior close behind.

  Trace planned to use the magnetic strip on the cards to gain access to the building; once inside, they’d simply act as if they belonged, a time-honored and surprisingly effective technique. But as they crossed the street, she spotted a three-man cleaning crew unloading their gear from a van at the side of the building. She and Matthew followed them through a rear door, watching as they opened up a closet just off the back staircase and filled their wash buckets. After the janitors then took off on their respective assignments, Trace led the way to the closet, which was generously supplied with extra uniforms as well as more cleaning apparatus. The only complication came in the person of Mr. Murphy, who happened to be lurking down the hall. Just as Trace and Matthew were zipping up their blue jumpsuits, a foulmouthed, cigar-puffing shift supervisor appeared and began yelling at them in Russian.

  Matthew put his head down and slunk out the doorway. Trace started to follow, but the supervisor barred her way. He said something she didn’t understand, but his leer made his meaning obvious enough. He blew a cloud of cigar smoke into her face—wooing by scent, I suppose—then tapped her chest with his hand.

  Trace pushed him back with the handle of the broom. He smiled, threw his cigar down on the floor, and grabbed the broomstick. Trace flicked her wrist, breaking his grip, then whacked him in the face. A knee to the groin sent him back against the hallway wall; Trace finished him with a boot to the chin.

  The commotion brought the guard from the front running. Trace squared to confront her, but it wasn’t necessary: as soon as the security guard saw what had happened, she began nodding approvingly. Then she walked over to the supervisor, said something in Russian, and gave him two kicks of her own before spitting on him and returning to her post.

  Trace and Matthew made their way to Colonel Setrovich’s office upstairs without any further interruption. Getting past the lock on the inner office took Trace a few seconds. Setrovich’s computer was on a low desk at the side of the room. Matthew knelt in front of it as if he were praying, then began looking around for a password, hoping that like most people the colonel had written it down somewhere nearby for easy reference. When he couldn’t find one, he booted the computer into diagnostics mode and made an end run around the security protocols. The Russian characters made things difficult, but the database program was itself a slightly altered version of Oracle, standard software that Junior had learned to manipulate back in ninth grade. It took about half an hour, but after some trial and error he managed to find the classified folder Setrovich’s unit kept on Polorski,
dumping the information into a file on a USB memory key for translation back home.

  I WAS WORKING ON my own database, using vodka as my software. The more it flowed, the freer Setrovich was with information about Polorski. The mobster had a good number of influential friends, thanks to his generous impulses; according to Setrovich they were to blame for Polorski’s continued freedom. Several times, the colonel and his people had been closing in on Polorski, only to have him slip away at the last minute. The col onel suspected that someone in his own office tipped Polorski off whenever they were closing in.

  “For him, when I find him, snap,” said colonel Setrovich, twisting his hands together as if wringing Polorski’s neck.

  Setrovich hinted that Polorski’s dealing with “foreign criminals”—terrorists, tango, scumbags; use the term of your choice—was sanctioned by someone in the government itself. The government official hated America, and believed that any attack, large or small, helped Russia.

  “Which official?” I asked. “Who?”

  “No, no, no, theory only,” protested Setrovich. “To put you down a peg, though—that would be aim.”

  “Put who down a peg?”

  “America. Too big for his britches.”

  Actually, he said bitches. Setrovich’s English got worse the more he drank. I struggled with the image as Setrovich continued. There are definitely Russians who wouldn’t mind seeing the U.S. hit by another 9/11-style attack, or even a more devastating nuclear strike. The Cold War may be over, but the us-versus-them mentality continues. A larger number of Russian officials, in government and in the military, realize that we face a common threat—and that Moscow is an even more inviting target than New York for some Islamic crazies, especially those from Chechnya.

  “So where is he?” Setrovich asked finally.

  “Who?”

  “Polorski. You have come to tell me.”

  “I thought you knew.”

  “Me?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Nyet. Nyet.”

  Setrovich refilled our glasses and started a long rant in Russian. When he finished, he downed his vodka in one gulp, slapped the glass on the table, and said loudly in English that Ivan had promised I knew where he was.

  “Ivan got it wrong. I’m trying to find him myself.”

  “You have wasted my time.” Setrovich rose.

  “Two days ago, he was in China,” I said calmly, remaining in my seat. “He got away from me. The trail isn’t cold yet, if you help.”

  “He escaped from you? From American Bear?”

  I hate to puncture my image of infallibility, but Polorski certainly had gotten away from me. I nodded.

  “Huh,” said Setrovich.

  “It’s possible if we work together we can catch him,” I said.

  “If I know where he is, I catch him myself.”

  “I’m sure you could.”

  Setrovich looked down at the vodka bottle. “Why was he in China?”

  “Are we working together? Or just talking?”

  The Russian frowned, then pointed to the bottle. “Pour.”

  “Partners?”

  “Partners? Nyet. But . . .” He sat down. “If we have a goal in common, we share information, like we share vodka.”

  That was as much of a commitment as I was going to get. I told Setrovich about Yong Shin Jong, and that Polorski had managed to snatch him from the Chinese.

  “I’ve been told he’s planning to turn Yong Shin Jong over to Kim Jong Il for a nuclear weapon,” I said. “And from what you’ve told me, it sounds very plausible.”

  Setrovich’s face, not particularly ruddy to begin with, had turned several shades whiter.

  “It will be very important to apprehend him as soon as possible,” said the colonel. “His organization has recently acquired a Topol mobile missile launcher, and seems to be trying to sell it.”

  15 Ivan is a pseudonym. I hope to have use for him in the future.

  6

  [ I ]

  THE TOPOL MISSILE—OFFICIALLY the RT-2PM16—is a three-stage, solid booster rocket that is often compared to the American Minuteman, mostly because it’s about the same size. Known to NATO as the SS-25 “Sickle,” it’s roughly ninety feet long, can carry a good-sized warhead (the Russians originally outfitted it with a thousand-kilogram payload before upgrading the missile for multiple warheads), and unlike North Korea’s Taep’o-dong 2, can actually be counted on to hit a target in the U.S. that it was aimed at. The range varies depending on the size and configuration of the warhead, but during the SALT talks the Russians declared it could fly 10,500 kilometers—which by my arithmetic works out to roughly 6,500 miles . . . a bit less than the distance from Tehran to Washington, D.C.

  The Topol would be considered just another run-of-the-mill weapon of mass destruction except for one quality: its size and fuel system not only allow it to be easily transported by truck, but it can be launched from one as well. I’m not saying it can be hauled around in the back of your pickup; the missile carrier is as long as two and a half school buses, or half again as long as your standard semi. It requires a trained crew to get the damn thing erect and fired at a target, and your local car mechanic can’t do the maintenance. But compared to just about any other nuclear-capable missile, it’s very easy to use and very hard to find. Park it someplace where it blends in with the scenery—say a train yard in North Korea, where with a minimum of fuss it can be disguised as a tanker car—and even a trained expert can miss it on the satellite photo.

  The missiles were originally constructed and stationed in several different Soviet regions, including Belarus. In 1996, Belarus—by then an independent country—returned eighteen missiles to Russia, accounting for the last of those officially stationed there. But what went unaccounted for was a spare unit and some associated parts, kept at the original factory. It was this missile, which lacked a warhead, that Polorski had obtained.

  If you’re wondering, gentle reader, why Polorski and company didn’t just sell the missile and launcher to North Korea, you’re in good company. I wondered the same thing. In fact, I wasn’t convinced that he hadn’t, though Setrovich believed that the missile was still in Russia somewhere. But I had to admit that this was a case where a whole was worth a hell of a lot more than the parts—supply a nuclear warhead with the missile, and the price would be exponentially greater. If Polorski could pick up the nuke relatively cheaply, his profit would shame an oil company executive.

  Polorski’s unit was not your typical small-time outfit filled with wannabes and rap hopefuls. They had a serious infrastructure and money in the bank. At least three banks, according to the file that Matthew had teased out of the computer. We had the file translated within an hour of our return to Japan, thanks to one of the Russian experts we have on retainer at Red Cell, a one-eyed professor at Virginia Tech. The professor lost his eye in a boating accident when he was thirteen; while he was recovering someone gave him a copy of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and he was hooked on Russian literature. From what I understand, he goes around telling cute-looking students that he lost the eye in a duel over a woman while spying in Odessa; they apparently find it hard to resist a one-eyed former spy.

  “The organization uses three different banks to move its money around. They’re all Russian, they all have numerous ties to the government and the mafiya, and none of them are known for cooperating with foreigners,” the professor told us after reviewing the files. We were listening by speaker phone at the hotel. “They use Rigndael encryption, which can’t be decrypted by anybody except the NSA—and maybe not even them.”

  “Except for Junior,” I said, turning to Matthew.

  “I wish,” he said. “Only the No Suchers17 can do it. Maybe.”

  Rigndael encryption is better known in the U.S. as AES or Advanced Encryption Standard. It uses a set of mathematical equations to change clear text—the message—into gobbledygook. Without going into the technical bs, defeating the encr
yption—“breaking the code” to us nonexperts—requires considerable computer power and generally requires invading the computer using it. As good as Matthew was, he didn’t have the horse power necessary for the job.

  He did, however, suggest an alternative. Rather than looking at the banks in question, we find other banks that did business with them and look at what that business was. He fired up his laptop and began looking for transfers from the accounts in question to other banks. Electronic transfers generally passed through a third-party clearing house. These records were also secure—but we knew how to access them because of some work Red Cell had done a few months before ferrying hard data backups around Asia.18

  “There’s this HSBC bank account that’s interesting,” said Junior about an hour later. “It was used to put a down payment on a trawler a month or so ago.”

  He found about a dozen other transactions, all of which were suspicious and we checked out, but it was the trawler that turned out to be important. I contacted Jimmy Zim and told him that I would be willing to engage in some parallel play by exchanging information. He was nonplussed to hear from me, not surprised, not excited, not dismayed. Just, “Yes, Dick. We’ll see what we can find.”

  A half hour later, he called back. The ship’s name and registry had been changed twice; it was now the Shchi, homeported at the far east Russian city of Kamenka.

  “Is it still there?” I asked.

  “I think we should continue this discussion face-to-face,” said Jimmy Zim. “How long will it take you to get to the embassy?”

  “Get the ice ready,” I told him. “I’ll be there before it starts to melt.”

  The CIA agent was better than average at following directions, and Dr. Bombay’s finest was perfectly chilled when I reached the ambassador’s study.

  Unfortunately, so was Fogglebottom. The State Department pseudo-ambassador and his cuffed pants loomed in the corner, arms folded, scowling with disapproval as Jimmy Zim gave me my drink.