War Plan Red

by Peter Sasgen

  Zakayev turned flaring eyes on Serov. “And now they know our resolve is unbreakable. Now they will fear the worst.”

  “What, killing a million Russians instead of a thousand?”

  “Those are only numbers.”

  “This time, if you kill even a hundred Russians, the Kremlin will declare martial law.”

  “Which will be bad for business. Ivan Serov’s business.”

  “Yes.”

  An elderly woman walking a schnauzer on a lead said, “Dobry den’!”

  Zakayev nodded good day.

  Serov leaned against the girl sitting between them and thrust his big head toward Zakayev. He smelled of tobacco and garlic. “I asked for this meeting, Ali, to discuss mutual concerns, not to listen to one of your speeches.”

  “And I told you there was nothing to discuss. Anyway, I’m done giving speeches. It’s too late for that.”

  “In business, my friend, it is never too late to discuss a mutually beneficial deal.” Serov got to his feet.

  “Come, the three of us, we’ll take a stroll. My leg hurts when I sit too long.”

  Serov linked his arm through Zakayev’s and turned him toward one of the narrow spoke streets that led back to the river. With a sudden deft move that surprised Zakayev, he took the heavy, bulky leather portfolio from Zakayev and gave it to the girl. “She can carry it for you, eh? Your cell phone may go off. I don’t want any distractions while we talk.”

  Serov steered Zakayev toward the Anichkov Most, one of the city’s most beautiful bridges. “I have a message for you from the Brotherhood.” He was referring to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic organization based in the Middle East that supplied Zakayev and his men with money for weapons through one of Serov’s many front organizations, for which Serov extracted an exorbitant fee. “They promise that they will supply you with whatever you need to continue the fight against Russian control inside Chechnya’s borders. But they won’t support any plan you have to launch another attack on Russia itself. In other words, they won’t support another operation on the scale of the concert hall massacre.”

  “Do they think—do you think—that the Kremlin will pull its troops out if we suddenly give up and ask for a negotiated peace? No. As long as the Russian Army occupies our country and commits atrocities, we will continue to fight. As for the draft of a new constitution, we will never accept one drawn up by the Kremlin because the moment they think we have lost our resolve, they will attack in force. That’s the only thing they understand: force. And we will meet them with equal force. If the Brotherhood won’t support us, so be it. We’ll get help from other organizations who are sympathetic to our cause.”

  “The moment may be approaching, Alikhan Andreyevich, for you to consider alternatives. For the Islamic extremist movement, funds are becoming harder to raise. If you alienate the Brotherhood, how can you hope to find the money needed to fund your operations? They control the flow of money to organizations like yours from the Saudis, Syria, Libya, Iran, even the North Koreans, and will simply cut you off.”

  “You forgot to mention your own organization.”

  “I’m only a simple middleman. I control nothing. You seem to think I have more power than I actually do.”

  Zakayev snorted. “You have unlimited power, Ivan Ivanovich, and unlimited resources. Why pretend you don’t? You don’t care about our cause. What you care about is losing your fat brokerage fees if the Brotherhood cuts off our funds. Well, let me tell you, we have other ways of dealing with that. Our people are dedicated. They will do whatever must be done.”

  “That’s what troubles the Brotherhood. And what troubles me. They’re not stupid. We both know how you think. We both know what’s possible.”

  The trio reached the hub where the narrow cobblestone streets met the roundabout with the fountain at its center. The streets themselves were lined with three story czarist-era buildings recently restored to their former glory and resplendent in their creamy yellow and white paint.

  “And what is it that you think you know, Ivan Ivanovich?” said Zakayev.

  “I know, for instance, about the death of an American in Murmansk. Rumor has it that your people were involved. Why?”

  Zakayev stopped and unlinked his arm from Serov’s. He faced the mafiyosoi and said, “The rumors are wrong. You shouldn’t believe them.”

  Serov took hold of Zakayev’s coat lapels. “You’re not listening to me Ali. We will lose everything we have gained if you go ahead with another large-scale operation. If you are planning something big—

  bigger than the concert hall operation—and you succeed, the Russians will turn Chechnya into a wasteland.”

  “But they have already turned it into a wasteland.” For a moment his eyes went to the girl taking it all in, then back to Serov. “Ask her, if you don’t already know this, and she’ll tell you.”

  One of the most dangerous men in Russia gave Zakayev a menacing look. He took time to light a cigarette. When he spoke, his voice was cold and flat. “Not only are you pigheaded, Alikhan Andreyevich, you insult me.”

  Zakayev said nothing.

  “As a practical matter,” Serov said icily, “whatever it is you are planning, I suggest you change your mind and put it off.”

  Zakayev gave Serov a crafty smile. “Is that a threat?

  Serov, looking down, rolled the flattened brown cigarette between a thumb and forefinger. “I don’t believe in threats,” he said.

  “Then go back to Moscow,” said Zakayev. “We have nothing more to discuss.”

  Serov took the cigarette out of his mouth and made a face.

  Zakayev, alert, saw an almost imperceptible gathering of feral energy in Serov’s body. The mafiyosoi raised his arm over his head and, with a sweeping gesture that gave the appearance of being staged, threw the cigarette he was smoking into the dry fountain, where it landed with a shower of sparks among withered leaves and dried bird droppings.

  A split second later Zakayev heard the thunder of tires on cobblestones echoing off the fronts of buildings. He spun around and saw terrified pedestrians flatten themselves against the walls of buildings as a black BMW hurtled down one of the narrow streets.

  Behind Zakayev a burgundy BMW, its tires thundering over the cobblestones and scattering pedestrians, hurtled down another street from the direction of the river toward the hub. The two big sedans, tires howling, engines roaring, raced each other round the fountain as if playing tag. A man wearing a balaclava leaned out an open front window of the black car and opened fire on the burgundy car behind him.

  Serov the gimp, backpedaling toward the fountain, had drawn a heavy automatic from his coat pocket.

  Zakayev heard a powerful explosion, then another. He saw Serov slam against the rim of the fountain.

  The girl, aiming the pistol she’d pulled from the portfolio, was ready to shoot Serov again. But before she could, Zakayev dragged her to the cobblestones out of the line of fire, breaking her fall with his body.

  Bullets whined off the fountain and cobblestones. Someone in the burgundy car returned fire. Bullets thunked into BMW sheet metal, slapped through wind shields. The black car swung too wide and sideswiped an iron bench, then fishtailed, jumped the curb, and slammed head on into a stone wall fronting one of the czarist-era houses. Steel shrieked and buckled; diamonds of shattered safety glass exploded against the wall. The car rebounded, leaving both the driver’s and gunman’s heads tangled in the bloody folds of the deflated air bags that had punched through the bulging windshield.

  The burgundy BMW slewed to a stop; its doors flew open and pairs of strong hands dragged Zakayev and the girl into the car. Zakayev felt brutal acceleration, heard tires spinning, fighting for traction on the cobblestones. The girl lay sprawled on her stomach in the backseat across the lap of one of the brutes from the auto repair shop. Her long hair flew every which way and her stockings had been torn at both knees. Zakayev, lying on his back on the floor of the car, saw that she still had a tight g
rip on the pistol and an exultant look on her face.

  “I shot him,” she said. “I shot Serov.”

  “Dobro pojalovat’v Rossiyu—welcome to Russia, Captain Scott.”

  He saw a pretty woman with short blond hair and a serious look on her face. She had on sneakers, jeans, and a down-filled jacket over a turtleneck. Not the typical U.S. Embassy greeter sent to fetch a jet-lagged VIP, thought Scott, but just as well. Low profile, Radford had said.

  “Spasiba—thank you. I’m supposed to meet—”

  “That’s right, I’m Alex Thorne,” she said.

  “But I thought—”

  “I know what you thought. My name is Alexandra, but everyone calls me Alex.”

  They shook hands while passengers departing customs and immigration flowed around them like a river.

  “Sorry for my getup,” she said, “but they didn’t tell me I was to pick you up until an hour ago. Shall we go?”

  Outside the terminal she muscled a black Embassy SUV from the parking lot through airport traffic and sped for the Moscow Ring Road via the International Highway.

  “Where are you quartered, Captain?” she asked, all business now.

  “Jake.”

  She smiled. “Right. Jake.”

  He looked at her profile, the straight line of nose, taut chin, and full lips. She pushed blond hair behind an ear and gave Scott a glance.

  “The Marriot Grand,” he said. “They broke the budget for me.”

  “I take it you’ve stayed there before.”

  “During my last tour.”

  “Ah. Then you know your way around Moscow.”

  He glanced out the SUV’s tinted windows at a forest of construction cranes rising over the Russian capital’s skyline. “But I hear it’s changed a lot.”

  “It sure has. Parts of Moscow are like a Potemkin village, while other parts of it are more like the States than the States. Shopping malls are popping up all over. Want mall rats? We have ’em. Rap stars too.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “And terrorism.”

  “That attack on the concert hall must have everyone on edge.”

  “Sure does. People here are frightened of what might happen next. Things won’t return to normal until Russia pulls out of Chechnya. Even if they do, it may not end the bloodshed. The Chechens have been brutalized and are bent on destroying Russia by any means possible.”

  “What’s your role in this?”

  “It’s my job to see that Chechen terrorists don’t get hold of fissile materials from decommissioned nuclear subs to make a radiation bomb or a nuke. It’s a frightening situation. There’s so much nuclear rubbish laying around up north that it’s almost like another Chernobyl.”

  “I know it’s the most radioactive place in the world,” Scott said. “The Russian Northern Fleet has decommissioned—what?—sixty nuclear submarines, nearly their entire fleet. That’s more than a hundred reactors to safeguard. Can it be done?”

  “Not the way things are. The Russian Navy’s main concern is when they’re going to be paid. A crew in charge of a laid-up nuclear submarine is hardly thinking about security. Plus, many of the crews are unfit for service. A month ago a sailor at the sub base in Olenya Bay went berserk and killed five people before he killed himself. A week later a guard at a nuclear reprocessing plant in Siberia killed his boss and two coworkers. A terrorist could easily walk onto a base and steal enough nuclear fuel to make a dirty bomb. Just mix a couple of kilos of strontium 90 with Semtex and set it off in Moscow.”

  “What are the Russians doing about secure storage?”

  “It’s a joke. Most of the boats are rusting away at their piers and in danger of sinking. In Murmansk, for instance, an old Hotel-class sub laid up in a fjord is in such bad shape that the navy’s afraid to move it for fear it’ll sink. As for storage, the concrete bunkers are overflowing with solid and liquid waste.

  Worse yet, they’ve dumped scores of naval reactor assemblies into the Barents Sea. Talk about shitting in your own backyard.”

  Alex whipped the SUV around a line of slow-moving lorries hauling precast concrete pilings to a Moscow construction site. Another motorist seemed to take offense and sped past the SUV with a middle finger raised defiantly.

  “The Russian economy is just starting to climb out of the tank and they have no money for cleaning up the mess,” she said. “Norway and the U.S. have signed agreements with Russia to help build a processing plant. But it will take years. Meanwhile there’s the war in Chechnya—Uh-oh.”

  Scott saw her eyes flick to the rearview mirror. A pale gray car with flashing red and blue lights on its roof came up fast and tucked in behind the SUV. He heard the familiar hee-hawing and knew what it was.

  “Shit,” said Alex.

  “Gaishnik—traffic cop?”

  “GAI—traffic inspector. He sees the diplomatic plates and knows he can’t get a bribe out of us, just wants to give us a hard time.” She braked and pulled onto the shoulder to stop.

  “Like I said,” Scott said, “nothing has changed.”

  The officer, in creaking leather and mirrored sunglasses, got out of his patrol car and approached. He motioned that Alex should lower her window.

  “Vaditel ’skie prava.” The cop looked past Alex, at Scott.

  Alex fixed the cop with a disapproving gaze. “Nyet. Ya Amerikanski diplomat.” She pointed to herself and Scott.

  “Your driver’s license,” the cop demanded again, this time in English.

  She handed it over and he kept it as he made a slow circuit of the SUV, thumped a fender, and returned to the open window. Alex held out a hand for the document.

  “This vehicle has a burned-out brake light.”

  “Thank you for pointing it out, Officer. I’ll be sure to tell the motor pool mechanic at the American Embassy,” she said, emphasizing American and Embassy. “Now, if you don’t mind, we’re on our way to a meeting with an official of your government.”

  “It’s dangerous to drive with a burned-out brake light. It can cause an accident and you can be arrested.” The cop eyed Alex from behind his mirrors, perhaps weighing whether or not he could wrangle a bribe after all.

  “I’m sure you’re right, Officer,” Alex said. She reached out and plucked her license from the cop’s hand. Before he could react, she upped the power window and drove off. “Prick.”

  Scott smiled but said nothing. The only thing he and Alex had in common so far was an interest in Drummond’s death. But he was beginning to like her a lot. He also liked the way she took charge and admired her determination not to be intimidated, which was a tall order when dealing with dangerous materials scattered across the Kola Peninsula or bribe-hungry Russian cops.

  Alex got on the car phone with the embassy duty officer and detailed their encounter with the gaishnik.

  She also gave an ETA at the Marriott Grand. “Just in case,” she said to the duty officer.

  She was an attractive woman and Scott wondered if she’d gotten involved with Drummond—and if she had, how his death, in a hotel room with a naked Russian sailor had affected her. It wasn’t idle erotic speculation on his part: He’d need her help and had to gain her trust if he was going to discover how Drummond had died. There was little to go on and little time to find answers.

  “Sorry,” Alex said, hanging up the phone. “I thought it best they know.”

  They caught up to and repassed the lorry convoy. She took the next exit to the inner ring road and crossed the Krymsky Bridge over the Moskva. Traffic had thinned, and, wrist draped over the wheel, Alex relaxed and permitted herself a look in Scott’s direction.

  “I know you must have a lot of questions about Frank,” Alex said.

  “I do. I have orders to escort him home, but that’s not the only reason I’m here. I know you worked with him on the nuclear security side. That he was liaison to the Norwegians and Earth Safe. What else?”

  “He was a great guy. We were more than colleagues: We were friends. He always h
ad a good sea story to tell. He never got impatient, never got angry. He was a good listener too. We worked well together.

  When he died, I was devastated.”

  “Do you believe the death report the FSB filed with the embassy.”

  Her mouth tightened. “I don’t know. It didn’t seem possible…I mean, that Frank was…gay. I know he was married, that his wife paid him a visit in St. Petersburg, but still, I don’t know what to believe.”

  “What was he doing in Murmansk that night?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You were there with him, weren’t you?”

  “Actually, I wasn’t. We’d been in Murmansk for two weeks, digging through records, photographing sites, interviewing Russian naval personnel. We had been aboard several submarines waiting to be dismantled in Olenya Bay, tagging equipment and such. But we’d also been aboard a nuclear sub that was being readied for a patrol.”

  “A sub still in commission?”

  “Yes, a fairly new one, as they go.”

  “Do you remember which one?”

  “An Akula, the K-363.”

  “What were you doing aboard her?”

  “Interviewing the crew. We try to develop a baseline on crew proficiency and training. As you know, active submariners in the Russian Navy are trained at their nuclear power school. From them we sometimes select individuals for special training in the handling of nuclear materials ashore.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’d returned to Moscow to file a report a day before Frank was due to wrap up in Murmansk on Tuesday. But my train was delayed by bad weather and I didn’t get to Moscow and to the embassy until Thursday morning. I found a message from Frank on my embassy voice mail system, but it was so garbled I couldn’t understand it. He had used a cell phone and it sounded like he was heading back to Moscow on Friday, but that something had come up. Anyway, when he didn’t show on Saturday, I called the Norwegians and the base commander at Olenya Bay. They both said he’d left for Moscow Thursday night. That’s when I notified the authorities in Murmansk that he was missing. They found him on Sunday. With the dead Russian sailor. And the gun.”