The Lone Patriot

by JT Brannan

  He had been lucky in his long-lived career, he knew; most of his comrades had been purged, in one form or another, over the years, while he had continued on his path, relatively undisturbed. A part of it, he understood, was the fact that he played the quiet man, never on anybody’s radar. He performed his tasks well, and yet – with no stomach for politics – had not risen through the ranks as quickly as his abilities would certainly have allowed him. He was not ambitious in that sense, and was content now with his position. As one of the Deputy Directors of the SVR, head of Directorate S, he was able to ply his ruthless trade with the minimum of interference.

  Directorate S was designated as the department of ‘Illegal Intelligence’, responsible for recruiting and placing illegal agents abroad, as well as running sabotage operations in foreign countries and fomenting terrorist activity against the enemies of the Russian Federation. It was, Dementyev believed, the tip of the SVR’s spear, and he controlled the directorate with complete authority. After all, he’d been involved in this game longer than many of his officers had been alive.

  And yet, despite his operational success, his contributions to the Motherland, he knew that the knives were out for him in some quarters.

  He sipped his black tea and recognized that much of the problem was his current work, the masterplan that was Project Europe.

  Not that there was anything wrong with the project, however; far from it in fact, it was the single most important plan that Dementyev had ever been involved with. But it was so ambitious, so far-reaching, that his old boss – Konstantin Zaytsev, the Director of the SVR – had called the idea crazy, had written it off as sheer fantasy and even called Dementyev’s continued ability to lead Directorate S into question.

  And so – with the passion of a true-believer, or perhaps even an obsessive – Dementyev had taken the plan to President Emelienenko directly. The Russian spymaster was an expert in reading people, a natural psychologist of almost perfect instincts, and he had correctly seen that Emelienenko would almost certainly love the idea. The Russian leader was ambitious, fearless, and had a very clear idea of where he wanted to take the country – back to the heady days of the Soviet Union, when Russian influence around the globe was at its zenith.

  But he was also being faced with long-standing economic problems, the economy too narrowly based on oil trading to weather any true catastrophe. The people – although still fierce in their admiration for him – wouldn’t support him forever; there was a limit to how low the ruble could go, how little money they could survive on, before they too turned against their president. They loved him for now, of course – he was the iron strongman, a model of leadership so admired by the Russians – but they would only continue to love him if he played that role for all he was worth.

  To his credit, Emelienenko recognized in Dementyev’s plan the means of achieving this. He knew that greatness for Russia – the ultimate aim of Project Europe – would forever be equated with greatness for Emelienenko himself, the man who delivered this success to his people.

  The president, newly in power after his predecessor’s sudden illness, had agreed to Dementyev’s proposal after several covert meetings; covert because, if there was one thing which might damage the operation’s chances of success, it was if knowledge of the plan leaked out somewhere. The strategy was predicated upon complete surprise; as the Americans called it, ‘shock and awe’.

  Dementyev had not felt unduly guilty when Konstantin Zaytsev, his old boss at SVR, had been arrested, charged with treason, and executed. He had not believed in Project Europe, didn’t support it, and yet knew about it from Dementyev’s initial proposals. With secrecy all-important, Emelienenko had deemed Zaytsev to be a security risk, and dealt with him as such. The new man, Feodor Kravchik, was a political appointee, and guaranteed not to stand in Dementyev’s way; he knew exactly what fate had befallen his predecessor.

  But several of the old guard, friends of Zaytsev’s, blamed Dementyev for his fall from grace and ultimate death, and he knew that some people here at SVR were out to get him. They didn’t know about the protection that he was afforded by the president, as the relationship between the two men still wasn’t public knowledge; most of their meetings were still held in secret, and the full extent of the project was known to only a precious few trusted loyalists, even at this late stage in the game. As Dementyev himself believed, the less people that knew all the details, the better.

  But it wasn’t just Zaytsev’s old friends in the SVR who were gunning for Dementyev; his opposite numbers within the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence arm and a key rival of the SVR when it came to foreign intelligence gathering, knew that something was afoot, and were determined to get their fair share of it.

  But, Dementyev thought as he sipped his black tea and stared out over the treetops, he only had to survive a while longer; then the truth would be out, and he would receive all the protection he needed.

  And if the plan should fail, he considered with grim humor, then backstabbing colleagues would certainly be the very least of his worries.

  There was a knock on his door, and he turned in his chair to face it.

  ‘Come in,’ he said, straightening his back.

  The door opened, and Dementyev was once again startled by the beauty of Irina Makarova as she entered the room. But the beauty did not deceive him; he knew the woman in front of him was perhaps the most physically dangerous person he had ever known.

  ‘Irina,’ Dementyev said with a welcoming smile. ‘You are well, I hope? Please, take a seat.’

  Makarova sat down opposite Dementyev, her icy blue eyes studying the intelligence chief. ‘I am well, Colonel,’ she said. ‘Well, and anxious to go to work.’

  ‘Good,’ Dementyev said, having gotten used to the woman’s brusque, direct attitude over the years. It was funny, really, he thought; she could twist people this way and that with her feminine wiles during an operation, but that wasn’t how she really was at all. Her true self was all-business, and Dementyev respected that. ‘Good,’ he continued, ‘because there is work for you.’

  ‘Athens?’ she asked, and Dementyev nodded. She had been briefed on the possible mission previously, and this was merely the final order, confirmation that the operation was to go ahead.

  ‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘In Athens.’

  And then that will be that, Dementyev thought with a smile.

  One last piece of the puzzle.

  6

  Cole watched as the second man reached out his hand, saw the cellphone being passed to him by the first.

  It could be nothing – maybe the senior officer would give it no more than a cursory check, perhaps it was just an example being set for the junior man – but Cole also knew that he couldn’t take that risk. If this guy was trained in such things, it was possible that he would recognize the tracking capability of the phone.

  In that single instant, as the man’s hand closed around the cellphone, Cole decided that he could not take the chance.

  The callused edge of his own hand smashed down onto the senior officer’s forearm, and Cole knew that the radius bone was almost certainly broken. The man opened his mouth to scream in pain, but Cole was already moving again, crashing his fist into the side of the FSB man’s head. Cole’s hardened knuckles caught him flush in the temple, and he watched the lights go out of the man’s eyes, already moving to the younger officer even as the older man dropped unconscious to the bathroom floor.

  The other man was halfway through drawing his handgun from his belt holster when Cole moved in, pinning the man’s hand down onto the belt, holding it in place as he delivered a headbutt to his exposed face.

  Cole felt the blood from the shattered nose explode over his forehead, but knew it wouldn’t be enough to stop the FSB officer. As the man staggered with the blow to his face, Cole pulled the officer’s hand away from the holster with both of his own hands, twisting it violently with the aikido wristlock known as kotegaeshi; the wrist broke at the sa
me time as Cole stamped down onto his kneecap, blowing it out and bringing him down heavily to the ground. The officer’s face came up, dazed, and Cole finished him off with a kick to the head that left him unconscious next to his spread-eagled colleague.

  Knowing that time was now of the essence, Cole bent down and pulled out the handguns from both men, putting one in his belt, and one in his coat pocket. He had no desire to shoot anyone, but would certainly be willing to do so in self-defense if it came to it. He also pulled out the senior man’s ID; their ages were similar, if not their exact appearance, and Cole felt it wouldn’t hurt to have an FSB badge to use. It might open some doors to him.

  Cole edged toward the restroom door. He didn’t know if there were other FSB officers in the building, or perhaps waiting outside. But he was a pragmatist, and had to assume there were.

  He put a hand in his pocket, resting on the Serdyukov SPS 9mm pistol that lay there, ready to use it in an instant should the jazz bar turn into a shooting gallery on his exit.

  Gennady Orlov wondered if he should enter the restroom; he had heard some strange noises through the door, and wondered what was going on. But he had his orders, to stand guard right outside and stop people going in.

  It was probably nothing to worry about anyway; his boss was an old hand at this, and young Nikolai was a tough little son of a bitch. They were probably just roughing up that old drunk a little bit, he thought with a smile.

  The restroom door opened then, and he moved to one side to let his comrades out into the noise and bustle of the bar beyond. The jazz quartet had started playing, and the place was packed.

  But then he saw that it wasn’t his colleagues leaving the restroom; it was a man, on his own . . . the drunk who had stumbled in there earlier, one hand in his coat pocket . . . and on the floor behind him, half-hidden, were two bodies . . .

  Orlov tried to react, going for his gun, worried about what the man had in that pocket; but the drunk was too quick for him.

  Before his hand managed to grab his pistol, Orlov felt a nerve-wracking pain shoot through his neck, understood that the man had punched him in the throat. But why did it hurt so much? His brain clouded over with the pain, and he felt his eyes starting to close even as he tried to grab the pistol that nestled under his own jacket. But his fingers wouldn’t respond, and then he felt a second blow to the side of his neck, this one even worse than the first, and his legs began to go from underneath him.

  And as he sank to the ground, blackness descending, he saw the drunkard’s legs moving past him, into the bar beyond.

  The man outside had taken Cole by surprise, but he’d reacted quickly; he’d left the Serdyukov where it was, instead striking the man guarding the door in the throat with the point of his thumb, supported by his bunched fingers underneath. The power, channeled into such a small impact point, had dropped the man quickly, and he’d finished him off with an edge-of-the-hand blow to the side of his neck. Disrupting the flow of blood from the carotid while stunning the vagus nerve at the same time, the strike had taken the FSB man out of the picture instantly.

  A moment later and Cole was past him, eyes scanning the teeming bar, looking for other signs of danger.

  He took in the jazz players on the small stage in the corner, men gathered on stools at the bar, groups and couples drinking at the tables, men and women filling the remaining standing space, Veronika Galushka still with her friends but looking nervously around the room, eyes moving toward . . .

  A man with close-cropped hair and a thick neck, eyes locked on Cole from across the room, hand pushing inside his leather jacket, coming back out just instants later . . .

  Cole instinctively dove to the ground as the shots rang out, audible even above the band and the crowd. He sensed someone falling next to him, saw the dead eyes of a woman hitting the ground, blood pumping wildly from a bullet wound in her neck. He pulled his own pistol free as he crawled across the tiles, using the crowd for cover even as it erupted into chaos at the sudden gunfight. People started running this way and that, jumping up from their tables or throwing themselves to the floor to hide underneath them.

  Through the myriad of running legs, Cole could just make out the heavyset FSB officer shouting into his wrist mike as he kept his gun steady in front of him, tracking the movement of the crowd, trying to relocate his target.

  Cole cursed silently. In some ways, the radio was worse than the pistol; it meant that backup was being summoned, and the odds against Cole’s escape were rapidly mounting against him.

  As he moved quickly across the floor – anxious to get to another area without being seen, to give himself some sort of a chance when he finally, inevitably, had to get back to his feet – he wondered about giving the signal to Barrington and her team to move in. He couldn’t let himself be captured. And yet . . .

  The Duma bar was only a single kilometer from the Kremlin, they were in an area of the city that was literally teeming with FSB officers, armed police and a glut of military units. Depending on who this guy had informed, a virtual army might arrive here, literally within minutes. Meanwhile, the extraction team was based on the far side and – unlike the Russian agencies – it had to follow normal traffic regulations if it wished to remain undercover. By the time they arrived, it would be unlikely that they would win the battle, no matter how good they were.

  No, Cole decided, he was just going to have to get out of this mess himself.

  And he’d start with the man stalking him with the pistol . . .

  Aleksandr Nevsky was angry.

  First, he’d seen his friend Gennady taken down by the drunk that his other two colleagues had followed into the restroom – and he could only hazard an unpleasant guess about what had happened to them – and then, even worse, he had allowed himself to panic.

  After ten damn years on the job!

  He’d panicked, fired wildly, and hit an innocent woman. Had he killed her? It was possible, he realized; the bullet had taken her in the neck. The place was in such turmoil that he wasn’t even sure if he hadn’t hit someone else too. He knew that if he got his man though, any ‘collateral damage’ would be overlooked by his superiors. And if he didn’t, they would use his lapse in judgement to hang him with.

  But where was the son of a bitch?

  He knew the man had dived for cover as soon as he’d seen Nevsky coming for him, but where was he now?

  There were so many people in such a small place, so many legs moving everywhere, so many tables and chairs. Some of the bar’s customers had already made it to the exits, and Nevsky could only hope that his target hadn’t snuck out along with them.

  He continued to scan the floor, picking up the sound of a saxophone playing behind him, realized that at least one of the bandmembers was still playing, despite everything.

  Nevsky almost chuckled. Crazy bastard . . .

  And then he saw the man he was after, saw his face as clear as day, staring straight at Nevsky from his position on the ground; saw too the wide, black hole of the barrel that was pointed right at him.

  Nevsky’s brain sent the signal to his finger to pull his trigger, but it was too late; the man had been waiting for him and was already prepared, and it was the man who pulled his own trigger first.

  Nevsky didn’t feel the pain, only a short flash of light, deep within his head, and then nothing at all.

  Cole watched the FSB man’s head rock backward with the impact of the high-velocity 9mm round, brain matter exploding like a bursting can of paint from the back of his skull.

  Cole hadn’t wanted to kill the man – it would only complicate matters, ensure that a citywide manhunt would be ordered, with no quarter given – but he’d had no choice. If Cole had not responded with lethal force, the man might have shot him instead, and his sense of self-preservation was far too strong to let that happen.

  He saw people cramming into doorways, struggling to flee the crowded bar; knew instantly that it would take too long to get out through the normal exit
s.

  Instead, he raced toward the long window which stretched down one wall, grabbing a heavy wooden chair as he went. He realized that there could be other intelligence agents in the room, but he didn’t think there were; they would have moved in on him when he’d shot their colleague, if so.

  But he kept low nevertheless, just in case, until he reached the window and launched the chair at it. The huge glass expanse shattered with the impact, the cool night air rushing inside to chill the room instantly. Wind blew through the jagged hole, along with ice-cold snow, blasting around the bar in a swirling vortex.

  Cole ignored the discomfort and jumped through the broken window, rolling across the snow-encrusted sidewalk until he came to his feet some distance away, pistol once more in his hand. He tracked it around the area, saw only patrons of the bar emptying out of the rear fire exit into the alleyways beyond, one on top of another.

  He began to head toward them, to lose himself in the crowd, when his head whipped around at the sound of a car engine revving high, its tires squealing as it raced down the alleyway toward him.

  He saw men inside pointing at him, and realized he was still clutching the pistol. Stupid, he cursed himself, damn stupid. He’d grabbed the weapon in case there were people waiting for him out on the streets; but when he’d seen there weren’t, he should have put it away immediately.

  There wasn’t time, he told himself, trying to excuse the lapse in judgement.

  No. There was time, he corrected himself. You’re just getting old. Tighten up, dammit, or you won’t survive the day.

  Knowing he’d been seen, Cole broke ranks from the crowd and unloaded his pistol at the oncoming car, the shots cracking the windscreen, raking the hood and doors. But he didn’t stop to admire his handiwork, or to check the damage; instead, he was already moving, racing as fast as he could across the icy concrete toward the block of buildings hidden down a tiny tree-filled courtyard to his left.