I got into the elevator, pushed the button with the number of my floor, and, trying to calm myself down, began to repeat: «This won't do at all! Time to cheer up.»
The elevator stopped. I got out of the cage, and, before going to the office, headed for the kitchen, talking along the way: «Everything's fine. Everything's fine. Sophia has nothing to do with me. I don't want to know her! Everything's fine! Everything's excellent! Lloyd is mistaken. He has a right to be. We'll go on working as if nothing had happened. Ha! Ha! Ha! You're cheerful, and you're in a wonderful mood. Show everybody that you don't have a problem.»
I made coffee, added milk, sat down at the table and continued my self-soothing routine: «There's no reason to panic. So what, so Lloyd just asked several times in a row about Sophia. You have no right to take offense-he's doing his job. In his place, you'd act the same way: everyone who's had family or friendly relations with a suspect involuntarily tries to shield him. You don't have to look far for an example. Remember Hanssen.»
I thought about the agent arrested three years ago as a Russian spy. His wife guessed that he was working for some foreign intelligence service (For some reason, she thought it was France), but said nothing. Expensive gifts and an existence luxurious beyond their means shut her eyes to her spouse's double life. It was a banal story-the good life is seductive. After all, it wasn't her taking the risks. The investigators didn't want to fan the flames of an unpleasant scandal, especially since Hanssen had decided to play at nobility and shield his wife. In return for his sincere repentance and agreement to cooperate with the investigation, the prosecution made a deal with him: they wouldn't press for the death penalty, and not only left his wife in peace, but they even saved the pension for her, too, that her husband had earned for his quarter-century's work in the ranks of the FBI. Lloyd remembered Hanssen's wife, and asked questions about Sophia, just in case. That was all.
I returned to the office, composed a cipher, and sent it to the FBI representative at the American Embassy in Qatar. I didn't want to telephone-if there was nothing urgent, there was no reason to wake the officer on duty at night.
I had prepared to go home-gathered up papers and placed them in the safe-when Sandy came into the office and, as if in passing, informed me that, on Lloyd's orders, he had sent a photograph of Sophia to the Qatari investigators.
«What for?» No matter how I feigned calmness, I didn't succeed in hiding the irritation in my voice.
«To find out whether she's crossed the borders of the Emirates within the last month.»
I compressed my lips in displeasure, but I didn't say anything. I don't doubt that he informed me about this on Lloyd's orders. Could the boss really have ceased to trust me, and be letting me know that he had started cross-checking my statements about Sophia? Okay, we go on working as though nothing has happened. No panic. Apparently, I'm under close observation. The smallest fluctuations in my mood will be misconstrued.
The days that followed passed under tremendous pressure, although I made a studious show of total calmness. Neither Lloyd nor Sandy asked again about Sophia, but I sensed that they were conducting independent research.
On the fifth day, the Saudi newspaper Ash-Shark Al-Awsat announced the arrest of two people suspected of Yandarbiyev's murder. They had been arrested in Abu Dabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, but were citizens of neither the UAE, nor Qatar, and had European facial features. Suspicions of Sophia's involvement intensified. The next night, the Qatari Secret Service arrested three Russians.
They turned out to be officers of the GRU, Anatoly Yablochkov and Vasily Pugachev. The third detainee, First Secretary of the Embassy Alexander Fetisov, was, thanks to diplomatic immunity, allowed to go free.
The trigger had worked instantly. When we were talking about Doroshenko's murder, Sviridov had mentioned the name of Anatoly Yablochkov.
At the morning five-minute meeting, I brought this detail to Lloyd's attention. «A strange coincidence. Isn't that the same Yablochkov who made Swiss cheese out of Doroshenko on Coney Island Beach?»
Lloyd smiled benevolently-I immediately sensed that his attitude towards me had changed-and confirmed my guess: «It's him.»
Sandy whistled in surprise. I couldn't hide my amazement either. «How on earth did they pinpoint him?»
Lloyd broke into a self-satisfied smile.
«Not without our assistance. After the explosion in Doha, the Qataris came to the FBI with a request for our cooperation in investigating the crime. At first it was for analysis of the components of the explosive used in the creation of the bomb. After that, they asked us for help with information, and gave us the passport data of foreign citizens who visited Qatar during the month prior to the terrorist act and left immediately after it was done. The files received from the Qataris were cross-checked against our database. The computer went through the FBI file and stopped at Anatoly Yablochkov, suspected of carrying out a contract killing on US territory. The information was immediately passed on to the Director of the Security Service of Qatar, General Mubarak al-Nasr. The Qataris themselves carried out the subsequent investigations.»
Sandy turned an admiring gaze on me. «The Emir ought to come up with a diamond-studded medal.»
I dropped my eyes and, feigning embarrassment, muttered, «Your Majesty, I'm a modest man, and prepared to turn down the order. But instead-I wouldn't refuse to accept just a teensy-weensy oil well. It can be a low-yield one-just two or three thousand barrels a day.»
Lloyd, playing the Emir, puffed out his cheeks and said grandly: «The great-great-grandson of Bonaparte deserves better.»
Playing the fool, I respectfully put my palms together and made a bow. Everyone started laughing. The victorious mood was contagious.
The meeting ended. I went back to the office, but, instead of the expected relief, I felt a mounting pain in my temples-the pressure of the last few days, carefully contained and hidden, had risen to the surface. What had happened in Lloyd's office was a tour de force, the equivalent of the performance of an actor who has survived a tragedy and, on autopilot, goes before an audience to play in a comedy. Behind the curtain he's a piece of junk, labored and overwhelmed, incapable even of putting two words together.
I phoned Lloyd and, pleading domestic problems, asked for leave to go home. I went to Brooklyn. But instead of going home and getting a good sleep (sleep is the best medicine), I headed for the ocean, and for a long time, until I froze, wandered along the empty beach.
…A day later-thunder out of a clear sky. Lloyd, ordinarily contained and imperturbable, was in a rage and, using immodest expressions, was cursing diplomats.
I was taken aback: I'd never seen him so furious. Sandy explained when we were alone. «The boss is beside himself. Thanks to Stephen Pfeiffer, the Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of State, there's been a leak of top secret information. He arrived in Moscow on an official visit. In an interview in the newspaper Vremya Novostei, to a question connected with the fallen agents, instead of avoiding answering, he blurted out, word for word: 'As for the arrest of the Russians, we offered Qatar a little technical assistance. But basically, the Qataris acted on their own'. Imagine, now those words have been taken up and circulated by all the media.»
«Idiot! I understand how Lloyd feels. Moscow will start accusing us of a breach of inter-allied obligations in the war on terror, and their Counterintelligence will try to explain exactly what kind of assistance we gave them.»
Sandy nodded reproachfully. «They won't dig up much, but there'll be a big enough stink. And all because of one loudmouth! What's the difference to us, who bagged Yandarbiyev? The main thing is, they did away with one more terrorist.»
«Couldn't he hold his tongue and just say: 'Sorry, I don't possess any information of interest to you?'»
Sandy had long been indignant at the «Too-intelligent Washington diplomats,» using far from diplomatic epithets on them; and, alas, he turned out to be right. The results of Pfeiffer's pronouncement pro
ved to be tragic.
About ten days after Yablochkov and Pugachev's arrest, the corpse of Victor Sviridov was washed ashore by the waves on one of the Long Island beaches. No traces were found of a violent death. According to the medics' conclusions, after taking a fair amount of alcohol, he had gone swimming in the ocean by night and drowned.
I took a skeptical view of the official version of his death. With whom had the UN diplomatic worker been drinking at night on a beach on Long Island? Where were the witnesses? After all, there must have been drinking buddies? And how, had he come to be on Long Island at all? Why had the Russian Embassy demanded the results of the investigation only for show, and, once it received the police version, quickly quieted down?
I am bound for the long term by certain obligations. This is no time to name the real names and surnames of working agents in the FBI, and especially of informers, including foreign ones.
For Victor Sviridov an exception has been made, and that is for just one reason: he is in no danger from anything now.
Nothing happens without a cause. Sviridov sold out Yablochkov, supposing that the latter would not appear in the USA anytime in the next few years. After his arrest in Doha, in order to avoid scandalous disclosures, the Russians began to cover his traces. To remove those who might have been involved in the toppled agent's arrest.
But in Moscow, they insisted unanimously: since the middle of the last century, the Russian Intelligence services had not engaged in the organization of terrorist acts.
This sound like a fairy tale: difficult to believe. In 1961, KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky turned himself over to West German authorities and confessed to the murder of Ukrainian nationalist leaders Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera. A scandal of grandiose proportions arose. The Kremlin was forced to announce that after Bandera's elimination, the KGB would no longer engage in liquidating political enemies abroad. They ought to have added, «with their own hands.» Whether or not this was so, there were no infamous flops of the sort that would arouse suspicions of state terrorism. Although at least one instance is known when the KGB violated this principle. After he moved to the USA, former KGB general Oleg Kalugin confirmed what everyone had guessed, but lacked evidence of: the KGB was directly involved in the 1978 murder of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov. The Bulgarian Intelligence Service carried out the operation, but the poison and the murder weapon-an umbrella with a poisoned tip- were amicably supplied to them by the KGB.
And the story of the attempt on Pope John Paul II in May of 1981? The published archives of the Stasi have confirmed what defectors spoke of. The assassination was planned by the KGB; Eastern European Intelligence coordinated the operation and covered its tracks; the Bulgarian Embassy in Rome did the organizing; and the actual executor was Turkish extremist Ali Agca. But, as in the case of Georgi Markov, the KGB kept its gloves on-it took no direct part in the action and didn't press the trigger.
As might have been expected, Boris Labusov, the head of the press bureau for the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia, decidedly rejected the accusation of murdering Yandarbiyev, announcing before the TV cameras: «The Foreign Intelligence Service, as before, does not engage in such things.»
To Labusov's horror, the arrested agents didn't hold out long. They wet their pants as soon as they were threatened with dogs, and confessed that they'd received the order for Yandarbiyev's liquidation from the Russian Defense Minister. At the request of the Qatari investigators, the detainees sketched the plan, indicating where they were at the moment of the killing and where the target was; they marked the place where the bomb had been planted-in short, they laid out for the investigation a mountain of confessional testimony. That made it possible for the investigators to make an official accusation of premeditated murder against them back on February twenty-sixth.
When I found out about it, I remembered Putin's famous remark, which he made after the terrorist act in Moscow: henceforth «We will rub out terrorists in the outhouse.»
I remember, Gulya and I discussed it in Paris. The conversation happened in the most inappropriate place-against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, when, according to all the rules, we ought to have been reveling in our short-lived vacation and admiring the beautiful sights of Paris.
We slowly strolled through the Jardin des Tuileries, which was slumbering for the winter, in the direction of the Arc de Triomphe, imagining how, long ago in the Louvre, the passions of Alexandre Dumas' heroes boiled. Gulya was a brilliant listener: she gave up the initiative, and I delighted in the opportunity to say my piece without interruption.
«The unseemly history of France, a mixture of perfidy, betrayals and palace intrigues, became, in Dumas' exposition, romantic and alluring. A place was found in it for the splendid musketeers, whose image was inherited by those heroes of Russian poetry, the cavalry guards of 1812. Nobody knows what the musketeers were really like, but in history, they are preserved as matchless lovers, honest, brave, and nobly-born knights-the way the great Dumas created them. Gepetto carved Pinocchio: Dumas, the musketeers. Nowadays, Alexandre Dumas' admirers are sure that the history of France is a story of diamond pendants, hunts for Milady, perfidious Richelieu and poor, but nobly-born D'Artagnan. Too bad Russian literature never had its own Dumas. The Song of the Cavalry Officers and the delightful film «Star of Captivating Happiness» finally appeared after a long delay. But what did we see? A touching melodrama. The love story of the Frenchwoman Pauline Gebel, who followed Count Annenkov into Siberian exile. The cavalry officers did not measure up to the musketeers, and so, the Russian history of the early nineteenth century doesn't look as attractive.»
Gulya snickered and said waspishly, «The Decembrists are indebted to their wives for their heroic aureoles.»
«Don't be so severe-remember their upbringings.»
Although Gulya didn't belong in the category of inveterate debaters, and, when necessary, could hold her tongue, Paris had a sobering effect on her. I saw a different Gulya. Heatedly defending her own opinion. Imperceptibly the conversation worked its way around to modern Russia, and Gulya lost her patience.
First, she remarked that the Stalinist «Generals,» Molotov, Kalinin, and Poskrebyshev, did not adhere to the tradition of Russian women and follow their arrested wives to Siberia. She brought up Yelena Bonner, the wife of the academician Sakharov, who followed her husband into exile in Gorky, and Nadezhda Mandelstam-into Voronezh. She enumerated a whole series of other names unknown to me, and when I was finally «won over» by her arguments, she returned to discussing the «Zakayev case,» from which, we had escaped to Paris. Gulya brought up Putin's promise to «rub out terrorists»-it was on everyone's lips at the time-and said that Putin needed to learn restraint and diplomatic etiquette.
I agreed, with one reservation: «The subject is a delicate one: on the one hand-you can't replace justice with spot liquidations. On the other hand-terrorists never, when they've carried out some heinous crime, willingly appear in court.»
Gulya flared up. «I'd like to hear what the 'civil rights activists' would say if their relatives were among the hostages in Dubrovka, in the blown-up houses in Moscow, or in New York in the collapsing Twin Towers buildings!»
«The comparison is incorrect.»
«Really?» seethed Gulya, «Criminals aren't afraid of getting arrested. They know: not one European court will sentence them to death. Even if they explode a dirty bomb, the humane Europeans will spare their stinking lives.»
She took a breath and added vehemently-I'd never seen her so aggressive before-
«We won't get anywhere with the war on terror if we don't resort to a strategy of preventive strikes. Strange as it is to say what I'm about to say-if there were a repeat of September Eleventh, and it included the use of weapons of mass destruction, we would not avoid a second Hiroshima! Civilization must defend itself! When it's applied to themselves, at any trifle, extremists demand the observation of standards of Western democracy, lawyers, jury trials; and The next moment, they forget a
ll about humanitarianism, killing people who are guilty of nothing…Regardless of who it happens to be, Christians, Muslims or Jews. If I knew the coordinates of the place where bin Laden is hiding, I'd attack it with a missile.»
How long ago that was! Paris, Copenhagen. Hardly any time has passed-sixteen months-but it seems like an eternity has gone by.
…The end of the workweek is a special day. At many companies, the employees come to work in casual attire; exchange Friday humor on the internet; and, if circumstances permit, go out together. In this scheme of things, if there are no urgent cases, our firm is no different from the others. Right before lunch, Sandy wanted to know whether I'd be free after five; and, receiving an answer in the affirmative, he invited me to visit a bar on Broadway, not far from our office, which following the Irish custom-he called a pub, and down a bottle or two of beer. I agreed.
Eight days had gone by since the terrorist act in Madrid, and, fearing a repetition of the Madrid attack, the New York subways were kept under especially tight control. For the first few days I was on duty round the clock at the railway station on thirty-fourth street; my duties included checking passengers with backpacks and heavy bags. After a tough week, the police, FBI and National Guardsmen who had been called to action were able to relax.
When we arrived, the bar was only just beginning to fill up. We found two unoccupied seats at the bar, across from a television of large size, which was showing a football game; ordered beers, and, as usual, Sandy started talking about hockey. In spite of the fact that the playoffs had begun, his enthusiasm was only sufficient for fifteen minutes. He unexpectedly turned the conversation to politics. «I understand the Russians, trying hard to free the captured agents. We'd do the same thing.»
I took a sip of beer and acknowledged, «It's common practice.»
Sandy burst into a tirade.
«Remember in ninety-seven, after the unsuccessful attack in the Jordanian capital on the leader of Hamas, Israel in return for the freeing of the captured agents sent an antidote capable of neutralizing poison, and freed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who had been sentenced to life in prison.»
Napoleon Great-Great-Grandson Speaks Page 30