Turning back toward Jesse, he took several long drags on his cigarette and held the smoke in his chest. What was wrong with the girl? She had been laying there for almost two days. She wouldn’t eat. She didn’t move. She hardly even opened her eyes. Stupid wench. What was she going to do? Just lie there and die?
He took another drag on his cigarette. The glow burned down to his lips, and he tossed the smoldering white stub on the floor and stomped it out, smearing the highly polished wood floor with ashes and spit.
He was bored and tired of the cabin. He was tired of the forest and trees. He missed the noise of the city. He missed his friends and his girl. He was tired of his wife. He was tired of guarding this stupid woman who just lay there and slept. It had been too long. He needed more beer.
He paced across the floor to the bed. Jesse hadn’t moved. He glanced at his watch. A couple more days. One way or another, in a couple days this job would be through.
BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, WASHINGTON D.C.
“Did you read the bulletin we sent out a couple days ago about the Ukrainian named Morozov?” Buddy Spencer asked.
Lt Col Oliver Tray didn’t answer as he concentrated on the ball. He checked his back foot alignment and tried once again to relax his grip. Align. Align. Back foot slightly forward. Knees slightly bent. Check displacement from the ball....
“It’s weird,” Buddy cut in once again. “For six years the guy was a ghost. Absolutely invisible. Now suddenly, it’s like he’s everywhere. I’m telling you, once we started to track him, he showed up all over the freakin’ world.”
Left arm straight. Head down. Eyes on the ball. Slow, controlled back swing ....
“Have you seen any of the bulletin traffic? It’s pretty interesting. You ought to take a look at it if you get a chance.”
Tray let it go. The ball sailed off over the trees, cutting the par four dog-leg at a near perfect angle. He squinted into the hazy, early winter sun and watched the ball just clear the last stand of pines and drop out of view. Good shot, he smiled to himself. No ... great shot. Good distance, no hook or slice, right over the left edge of fairway. It was perfect. He lifted his driver onto his right shoulder and turned back to Spencer. “Just like on the tour,” he instructed proudly. “You concentrate. You learn to ignore the distractions. There will always be jerks in the crowd.”
Spencer laughed and prepared to tee up. It was only the fifth hole and he was already down by three strokes. It was time for combat rules. Next time he would stand so that his shadow fell over Ollie’s tee and dance around the box to distract him.
Tray stood in silence while his friend teed off, placing his ball down the middle of the fairway, a nice but conservative shot.
“You’re not going to beat me with balls like that,” Oliver prodded. “When you’re behind to a master, you’ve got to play a little more aggressively. Haven’t you learned that by now?”
“Yeah, yeah, teach me, Oh Master,” Buddy lifted his arms over his head in mock adoration. “Let me walk in your footsteps, Oh Great One. So long as you’re buying the beer.”
Oliver smiled, picked up his clubs, and began to stride down the fairway.
Oliver Tray and Buddy Spencer had been playing golf together for more than three years. They met at the Bolling golf course every other Wednesday afternoon; rain or shine, heat or sleet, if the course was open, then they played. In that time, Spencer had beaten Oliver only three times, but he no longer let it bother him. He had accepted the obvious fact that, unlike his friend, he would never be a scratch golfer.
Besides, the game was not the main reason he and Tray liked to spend a couple of afternoons a month together.
Passing the ladies’ marker, they strolled down a small hill toward Buddy’s ball which lay two hundred yards in the distance, a tiny- speck of white peeking above the tightly cut grass. “Judging from your ball, it’s pretty obvious you weren’t listening to me,” Buddy observed. “So I’ll ask you again. Did you read the general bulletin? It was sent toward the end of last week.”
Tray thought for a moment. He remembered something about it, but so many things had been happening the past few days, it wasn’t something that stuck in his mind. “Yeah, I saw it in our morning message traffic a couple days back. Didn’t pay much attention to it. Something you’re working on, Buddy?”
“Me and about three hundred other guys. It’s really got the CIA rocking. This guy Morozov has developed a fairly large gathering over the past year or so.” Spencer paused as he kicked his way through a small clump of wiregrass and cattails that lined the left edge of the fair-way, looking for lost balls as he went. “And there’s a little more to it than it would first appear,” he continued. Oliver nodded with understanding. There always was.
Buddy Spencer, a big man with piercing gray eyes and a large Roman nose, was an intelligence analyst at the CIA; however, for the past five years he had been on loan to the staff of the National Security Office at the White House. Specifically, he headed the Office of CounterIntelligence and Threat Analysis/European Theatre, or CIT N Europe, as it was called. His department was responsible for advising the National Security Advisor, and thus the President, of the suspected covert/counterintelligence operations ongoing within Europe. It was CITA/Europe’ s responsibility to glean, pool, sort, and organize all of the unrelated bits of intelligence information about suspected covert operations, speculate and draw conclusions to determine the threat, then present their observations to the President in a timely and accurate daily analysis. Given the sheer volume of work this involved, anyone with any real knowledge of their operation recognized that it was a hopeless task. The crushing mass of information was nearly overwhelming, and to sort through it all and bring it together on a daily basis was much like sticking a high-pressure firehose down your throat in order to get a drink.
This was one of the reasons Buddy Spencer so much enjoyed his time with Lt Col Tray. Their bimonthly games provided him with an outlet; someone to talk to with a different perspective, someone who could relate to the pressures he worked under, someone who understood the subtleties of the intelligence culture. With both men sharing the same interest, as well as a TOP SECRET clearance, it was only normal that their conversations would center on shop.
“So, who is this guy?” Ollie wondered. Instinctively, he looked around them to make certain no one was within hearing distance. They were alone. Not a soul within three hundred yards. That was the beauty of golf.
“Ivan Morozov. He recruits and trains the guys that you’re after. Spies. Traitors. That sort of thing. But his real specialty was deep-seeded moles. Young Pioneers, really just young children, were brought into his organization then trained and provided a cover that would allow them to operate undetected within various Western countries until they were needed. He was the head of the Sicherheit until the Soviet Union broke up. Then he more or less disappeared.
“Until last spring. I guess it was about April when we first started to see him around. Now we see him regularly going into and out of Golubev’s presidential palace and-”
“Golubev? Yevgeni Oskol Golubev ... the Ukrainian prime minister?”
“Yes. Yes. See, Morozov-and I didn’t know this until fairly recently-but he’s Ukrainian. In fact, both of his parents, along with about two million other Ukrainians, were deported by Stalin to Siberia after World War Two, after they wcre accused of being German sympathizers. I guess the old man figured the whole of Ukraine was a bunch of Nazi bums, and you know Stalin-never afraid of a little overkill. Fact was, of the two million Ukrainians, maybe one percent of them were actual Nazi collaborators.
“Anyway, apparently nothing could have been further from the truth in the Morozov family, for Ivan Morozov has proven a loyal socialist his whole life through. Now he is home, apparently doing much the same thing he has done in the past.”
“Interesting ... I guess,” Oliver replied. “But there must be dozens of guys like him out there. So what is it about this fellow that’s d
riving you all so crazy?”
They were approaching Spencer’s ball, and Oliver stepped to one side to watch him take his shot. Spencer stared at the flag that fluttered lightly in the even breeze and measured the distance, then pulled out a six iron and stepped over his balL Without much further consideration, he pulled back and whacked it toward the rolling green. The ball bounced twice then disappeared into a steep bunker. Spencer swore. Oliver handed him his bag of clubs and the two men set out to Oliver’s ball, which lay a hundred and twenty yards short of the green.
“What is it about this guy?” Spencer continued in answer to Oliver’s question. “Well, it’s several things, really. For one thing, he seems to be working on his own. Likc somc kind of hired gun. He’s not listed in any of the official Ukrainian registries as a government employee. He has no official position. Yet, we see him continually with some of the highest officers within the Ukraine, both military and civilian. And outside of the country as well. He shows up here, he shows up there. Last week he was down in Panama with Carlos Salinas just before the guy got knocked off. And he was involved with the transfer of some huge sums of money. Now, doesn’t that seem a little odd? I mean, why would the Ukrainians be popping Columbian drugs kings and stealing their money?”
Oliver Tray didn’t answer. It did seem kind of strange, but not horribly out of place. It was obvious the guy was up to something, going about his old trade, but with the situation deteriorating so rapidly between Russia and Ukraine, he seriously doubted it was anything to be much concerned about. If this Morozov guy was working again, his target almost certainly was not the United States. Not with almost two million Russian soldiers camping along the Ukrainian border. They, not the U.S., had to be his only concern.
Tray walked up to his ball and studied his lie, then pulled out his eight iron and practiced a couple swings, cutting his club through the drying grass. It was getting late, and the sun was low on the horizon as he squinted toward the flag. The pin had been placed well back on the uneven green, sloping away from the center. He would have to place his ball right on the forward edge of the green and hope for a reasonable roll.
“And get this,” Spencer continued once again, disregarding Tray’s effort to concentrate on his ball. “This is the real kicker.” Tray gave up trying to ignore him and turned to face his friend.
“We’re looking back through some of our old files. Going back over the past year, when we find something that’s nearly impossible to believe.”
Oliver Tray raised his left eyebrow, only half-interested and less than half-listening. He wished his friend would shut up. He wanted to finish the game.
“We found out that Morozov has been in this country,” Spencer said. Tray’s ears perked up. That was interesting news. “He was here,” Spencer continued. “Maybe as many as three times. All within the past year. We’ve got pictures of him going through customs in L.A. back in June. And a possible ID from a computer search of passports that have come into Dallas. Can you imagine? The guy was here. Now, why do you suppose that might be?”
Tray could hardly believe it. Here! In the U.S.! Now that was far more than merely intriguing. That was worthy of some real thought. Spencer knew his friend would be fascinated by this little piece of information. It was sure to distract him. That’s why he told him before he took his shot.
“L.A. and Dallas, huh?” Tray wondered. “Why do you think he entered the country there? Were those cities his final destination in the U.S., or only his port of entry, and then he moved on from there?”
“To be honest, we don’t know. We have a few theories. A few ideas, but nothing set in concrete. I’ll tell you this, though. He’s after some kind of computer technology. Some of the most advanced and cutting-edge stuff. Hc was posing as a computer technician when he passed through customs in Big-D. We know that because the customs agent made special notc when Morozov insisted on hand-carrying his luggage onto thc aircraft and asked that it not be X-raycd through the security machines. So, of course the bag had to be searched. The customs official logged the contents as computer equipment, specifically, hard drives and mass storage devices. We have that on record. Morozov left the country with a bag full of twelve-inch computer drives.”
Tray nearly dropped his club. His mouth went suddenly dry, as his heart started to race. “And, uh, I don’t suppose you know where he went after he left the U.S., do you?” he stammered. “Did he fly to Europe? Where was his flight going to from here?”
Spencer frowned as he thought. Where had Morozov flown to after he left the United States? He remembered and then answered, “He went to Helsinki. Took a direct flight. We lost him after that. Don’t know when or how he got back to Kiev.”
Tray’s mind started racing. Helsinki! Could it be?!
He thought of the stolen computer equipment. He thought of the missing hard drives. He thought of the State Department’s investigation into the request from the rogue computer company in Helsinki who wanted to import the aviation simulation programs. Could it only be a coincidence, he wondered. If it was, it wouldn’t have been the first time that a promising lead had suddenly turned sour. After all, it was such a big world. There was so much going on. What were the chances that he and Spencer had stumbled on to something? What were the chances that they each held a piece to the puzzle? Probably not very good.
But then again, maybe he was wrong.
Oliver Tray and Buddy Spencer never finished their round of golf. Instead, at Oliver’s urging, they left the course immediately, walked the half mile back to the clubhouse, threw their clubs into the back of Spencer’s car, and drove quickly over to the USCOM building where they spent the next eight hours in a secure room, comparing notes. At 12:30, they left Tray’s office and went home to get a few hours sleep. By five the next morning, they both were back at work, only this time they met at Spencer’s cluttered office at the National Security Office.
By midmorning, they had gone over everything no less than five times. Yet, still, they didn’t have any answers, or even know if they wcre asking the right questions. They were like a couple of hounds in the forest, sniffing here, chasing there, circling around a few trees. The best they could hope for was to shake things up a little bit and see what fell out. That was about all they could do.
“Do you think hc’s coming back?” Olivcr asked as he leaned back and sipped at a warm bottle of spring water. “Would he chance another trip to the states?”
Buddy shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows? Hey, we don’t even know why he came here in the first place. I reckon that is the key. If we knew what he was after, we might guess if he’d chance coming back.”
“We need more surveillance,” Oliver muttered. “We need to have people out watching. Every international flight into Dallas and Los Angeles would have to be monitored. Is that even possible? Or is that too much to ask?”
Spencer only smiled. Apparently Lt Col Oliver Tray was not familiar with the power that the National Security Agency held. He picked up his phone and had a talk with his boss, who then had a talk with the watch supervisor. By five o’clock that afternoon, the surveil-lance was underway. From that time on, every passenger passing through customs in either LA or Dallas was secretly photographed on videotape. The video was then sent to the NSA’s main office in Washington, D.C., where it was digitized and compressed for easier viewing. The next morning, two young and eager agency interns, both of them college seniors at George Washington University, began the tedious task of viewing the compressed images on computer, looking for Ivan Morozov.
FIFTEEN
_______________________
______________________
THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON, D.C.
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR, MILTON BLAKE, HANDED THE REPORT to the President (code name Backdog) with trembling hands. Blake had had only three hours sleep in the past two and a half days and it was beginning to show. His face was gaunt, and dark puffy flesh surrounded his eyes.
The President took the
report from Blake without any comment and began to read.
TO: Backdog (Eyes Only)
TOP SECRET HUMIT/SATIT/RADIT/RECIT/WINTEL
one copy only - Destroy in compliance code A
FROM: Grounder NSA (source copy DIA intelligence report 96-1127)
RE: Analysis of Current Russian Affairs
REPORT:
1-) The Russians are in the third day of the largest military exercise conducted since 1989. Twenty regular army divisions are massed along the Ukrainian border, with three more held in reserve near Shakhty and Kursk. The 32nd Airborne (Black Hogs) along with two motorized rifle divisions (light) are currently deployed to Yelets. The entire IL-76 fleet is either on the ground in Yelets, or waiting to fly there from their bases in Saransk and Volgda.
Coinciding with this military exercise is an increase in the level and intensity of diplomatic activity. The Russians continue to press the Ukrainians for guarantees of future grain shipments. They claim to have evidence that the Ukrainian government intends to renege on last year’s grain contract. They also fear that the Ukrainians will cut off other shipments of agricultural commodities which the Russians need to feed their population.
Fedotov’s government has also accused the Ukraine of gross infractions upon the rights of the eleven million Russian citizens that are currently living in the Ukraine. Fedotov has made it clear that he considers the well-being of his citizens threatened, and that his government will take all means necessary to ensure the safety of its foreign-living citizens. In anticipation of war, approximately five hundred thousand Russians have left the Ukraine over the past seven days.
2-) There are unconfirmed reports of covert Spetsial’noye Naznacheniye (Spetznaz) activity taking place behind the Ukraine border. This includes acts of both espionage and sabotage against Ukrainian command, control, and communications (cube 3). At this time these reports are still unconfirmed, but considered extremely likely.
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