by Tom Clancy
“What is it you want to do?”
“Keith Bixby is a good COS who’s in a tough situation. I thought we could go over to Kiev and check into this mob connection, just to see what Gleb the Scar is up to.”
Hendley looked at the rest of the group. Not surprisingly, they all looked ready to head to the airport right now.
“How big is this guy in their organization? Is he like a Mafia don?”
Chavez had become something of an expert on organized-crime groups in the past year; it was a topic that he’d focused on in his downtime with The Campus.
Ding said, “Russia doesn’t really have a mafia in the sense we know it, that’s just a convenient name we use to convey the fact it is a criminal organization. In Russia and the other eastern states, the top dogs of the criminal hierarchy are the vory v zakonye, which translates to ‘thief-in-law,’ but means something like a thief who follows the code. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the criminals running around with gold chains and ill-fitting suits want you to think they are big shots, but they are not true vory v zakonye. Having said that, there might be several vory at the top of each organization, and whoever the absolute top dog is will be vory for sure.”
Chavez added, “Gleb the Scar, we are certain, is the genuine article. He’s vory.”
Hendley next asked, “How big is the organized-crime problem in Russia these days?”
“Valeri Volodin’s Interior Ministry has chased almost all of the largest and most powerful criminal groups out of Russia proper.”
“How did they do that?”
“The FSB has a unit called URPO, the Directorate for the Analysis and Suppression of Criminal Organizations. They are basically a hit squad, taking out OC members throughout Moscow and Saint Petersburg. But interestingly, they only seem to target foreign gangsters.
“There is a group of Slavs that started back in the late eighties that is flourishing now because all the Chechens, Georgians, Armenians, and others have been so heavily pursued by the FSB. This group is known as the Seven Strong Men.”
Hendley said, “There are only seven of them?”
“No, they were named after an unusual rock formation in the Komi Republic by that name. It’s seven massive stone pillars that jut out of a flat field. The group was formed in a gulag there in Komi.
“These days in Russia, the Seven Strong Men controls money lending, kidnapping for ransom, human trafficking, prostitution, car theft, assassination for hire . . . you name it.”
“And Gleb is the head of the Seven Strong Men?” Hendley asked.
“Not the head—the leader of the organization is unknown. Not even most of the people in the group seem to know who’s running the show. But we do know that Gleb the Scar is the chief of Seven Strong Men’s Saint Petersburg operation. He very well might be the second in command.”
Caruso spoke up. “And nobody has a clue what he’s doing in Kiev associating with Chechen gangsters, right?”
“None whatsoever. He hasn’t been known to leave his turf, nor has he been known to be friendly with ethnic minorities.”
Hendley said, “Okay, I approve. But how will you get intel on the Seven Strong Men’s operation?”
Clark turned to Biery. “Gavin?”
Biery said, “I can’t get into Intelink-TS. Not yet, anyway. But I do have access to the SIPRNet. This is the confidential-level network used by the government. Certainly not as good as the TS-level data, but . . . you know how it is with intelligence. There’s a shit ton out there in open source, and twice as much is lightly classified.”
Clark said, “With Gavin providing confidential-level intel to aid our physical surveillance in Kiev, we should be able to get a good picture of the situation there.”
Gavin added, “Additionally, I’ve hacked into the servers of the Ukrainian SSU—that’s their national police. This is where they keep all the goods on organized crime. Should be helpful, but it’s not the same as having Intelink-TS access.”
Driscoll spoke up now. “We’ll just have to supplement it with old-fashioned shoe-leather spy shit.”
The others grinned, but Hendley still had questions. “Who will be going over?”
“Obviously Ryan is in the UK, but all the rest of us will head over,” Clark replied.
Hendley seemed mildly surprised by this. “I thought you told me you were done with fieldwork.”
“I did. But I speak Russian, and I can read Ukrainian. I’ll need to go back in the field for this one.”
“I guess you don’t get to hang up your fedora just yet, Mr. C,” Dom joked.
Clark gave Dom a hard look. “Screw you, kid. I’ve never worn a fedora in my life. I’m not that old.”
Dom said, “Don’t ruin the badass mental image I have of you back in the day, Mr. C.”
Chavez said, “Hey, Gavin. You’re coming along, too, right?”
Biery looked to Hendley, like he was a child pleading with his mom to go over to a friend’s house to play.
Hendley sighed. “I guess since you made it back from Hong Kong in one piece you consider yourself quite the international man of mystery now, don’t you, Gav?”
Biery shrugged, but Chavez came to his defense. “He pulled us out of a real jam over there, Gerry. It pains me to say it, but we might not have made it out of there without him.”
“All right,” Hendley said. “You can go into the field to support the operation.” Hendley turned his attention back to Clark. “Surely you can’t go over there with weapons.”
“No,” Clark said. “We’ll have to be ready to get picked up and questioned at any time by authorities. We can use a journalist cover. If our credos are good enough, we’ll be just fine.”
Hendley countered, “Good documents will help if you get picked up by the police, but they won’t help you if you get picked up by Seven Strong Men.”
John Clark acknowledged this point. “Very true. We’ll be careful not to get picked up by the Scar and his boys.”
Gerry added, “John, I don’t have to remind you that Kiev is going to be absolutely crawling with all manner of shady characters. Official and unofficial.”
John looked at the rest of the team. “I read you loud and clear, and we’ll do our best to keep our operation under wraps, from the official and unofficial.” He smiled. “But just for the record, I’ve got my own crew of shady characters.”
18
The entourage surrounding the President of the United States arrived in the intensive-care unit of George Washington University Hospital shortly before ten p.m. The press had staked out the main entrances, but there was a loading dock on 22nd Street that had been cordoned off, and the President had arrived in a green Chevy Suburban in the middle of several clandestine Secret Service vehicles and pulled right up to the door, ensuring the press completely missed the low-key arrival.
The White House radiation story had been all over the news. There was talk around the White House of keeping a lid on the polonium angle, just releasing the news that Golovko had been poisoned, coincidentally while he was visiting the White House, and not mentioning that the poison had been, in fact, a radioactive isotope. But ultimately, reason prevailed. Any frenzy prevented by keeping this news from the public would last only until the truth came out, and the truth would come out at a time of its own choosing. They decided to reveal the full story about the event immediately, keeping only some details about Golovko’s condition under wraps for the sake of his own privacy.
Sergey had no close living relatives; in the ICU waiting room Ryan was introduced to members of Golovko’s traveling entourage: a publicist, a travel coordinator, and a British security officer.
Jack looked around for others, but that was it. After Sergey’s long life serving the Soviet Union and Russia, most of his home nation seemed to have turned its back on him or forgotten about him.
After conferring with the doctors about the dos and don’ts of visiting a man in Golovko’s condition, Ryan and his Secret Service detail continu
ed up the hall toward Sergey’s room. Jack’s principal protection agent was by his side, and she had reservations about tonight, but she did not air them. Andrea Price-O’Day knew when to speak up to SWORDSMAN, and she knew when to let it go. Although she would very much prefer to be in the room with Ryan and Golovko, she knew Ryan would not allow it. Instead, she went into the hospital room with two other agents, swept the small space quickly and silently while Golovko lay still like a cadaver on the bed, and then stepped back into the hallway. She would keep a line of sight on POTUS through a window, but he would otherwise be alone in the room with the stricken patient.
Jack entered the room alone, and he was immediately taken by both how small the room was and how completely full it was of medical equipment. In the center of all the machines, Sergey seemed small and pale. The Russian was tubed and wired, and his skin was pierced with IVs. A large pillow held his head up; Ryan had been told by the doctors that the man’s neck muscles were too weak for him to lift his head.
His eyes were sunken and rimmed with gray, and his hair was noticeably thinner than it had been just the day before. Ryan saw loose hair on the pillow around his head. An EKG machine behind the bed beeped slowly in time with the Russian’s resting heart rate.
Jack thought the man was asleep, but his eyes flickered slowly, and then they opened. After a moment to focus, they locked on Ryan. Jack detected a weak smile, but only for a second, and then Golovko’s face went blank, almost as if the muscles tired from the effort.
“How are you feeling, Sergey Nikolayevich?”
“Better now, Ivan Emmetovich.” His voice was scratchy, but stronger than Ryan had anticipated, considering his terrible condition. He smiled weakly and switched to Russian. “Na miru i smert’ krasna.”
Jack had not practiced his Russian for a long time. He said it softly to himself. Then, “With company, even death loses its sting.” Jack did not know how to respond to this.
“This must be an awkward situation for you. Izvinitie.” Sergey’s brow furrowed; slowly he realized he had lapsed into Russian. He translated for himself: “I am sorry.”
Jack pulled the one chair in the room up close to the bed, and he sat down. “I’m just sorry this happened to you. Nothing else makes a damn bit of difference right now.”
Golovko looked off into space. He said, “Several years back, the Chinese government tried to kill me.”
“I remember, of course.”
“They failed, only by my good fortune, but they failed nonetheless. It breaks this old Russian’s hard heart to know my own government, my own country, has succeeded.”
Jack wanted to tell him he wouldn’t die, that the doctors here would get him through this. But that would be a lie, and he owed Sergey more than that.
Instead, he said, “We will find out how this happened.”
Sergey coughed. “I shook a lot of hands in the past week. I drank a lot of tea, bottles of water. I ate a hot dog in Chicago.” He smiled a little, reminiscing. “Somewhere along my journey here in the United States—” He began coughing again. The fit lasted thirty seconds, and by then it seemed he had lost his train of thought.
Jack waited to make sure Sergey was finished, and then he said, “I know you are weak and tired. But there have been two other events. I almost don’t want to tell you about them, but you may be able to help me with some advice.”
Golovko’s eyes seemed to sharpen a little. Jack could tell he was glad for the chance to help in any way.
Ryan said, “Stanislav Biryukov was killed by a bomb in Moscow last night.”
Jack was surprised by Golovko’s reaction, or the lack of one. He said, “That was just a matter of time. He was a good man. Not a great man. A good man. He wasn’t one of Volodin’s inner circle. He needed to be replaced.”
“But why kill him? Couldn’t Volodin simply replace him with the stroke of a pen?”
“His death will benefit the Kremlin more. They will blame Ukraine or U.S. or NATO or one of their enemies.”
“They are blaming us. It has already begun.”
“And you will be blamed for this.” His papery white hand rose a few inches from the bed and made to wave around the room. It dropped back into the sheets almost instantly, but Jack understood. After a pause Sergey said, “You said there were two events.”
“Volodin went on New Russia TV and announced that FSB and SVR will form into one organization.”
Golovko’s eyes closed for a moment. Softly, he said, “Talanov?”
“Roman Talanov is now in charge of everything, yes.”
Sergey said, “Roman Talanov appeared from nowhere in the FSB. I have been with the state security services for all my adult life, yet I had never heard of the man until six years ago, when he was a police commissioner in Novosibirsk. I was director of the SVR, and I received word from my staff that this man, this police commissioner, was replacing the FSB director in the city. His promotion did not come through FSB channels. It was an order that came directly from the Kremlin.”
“Why?”
“That was my question at the time. I was told he had been GRU, military intelligence, and he was a favorite of the leaders in the Kremlin at the time. I could not understand how this was, seeing how he was just some ex–military intelligence officer no one knew who was chief of police in a town in Siberia.
“I found out later that Valeri Volodin, who was prime minister at the time, forced the FSB director in Novosibirsk out, and put Talanov in his place.”
Jack asked, “What did Talanov do at GRU?”
“I tried to find out myself. Just out of professional curiosity. I heard he was in Chechnya during the first war before he became police commissioner in Novosibirsk. But as to the question of what he did in Chechnya, and what he did before that, I received no answers.”
Ryan wasn’t sure what his own intelligence service had on Roman Talanov, but he was damn sure he would find out as soon as he left Golovko’s bedside.
“Why haven’t you told anyone about this?”
“It was an internal matter. For all my problems with the administration, there is some laundry that I did not want to air to the West. Nepotism is cancerous in our government. It always has been. We have a term for a benefactor who gives protection to someone as they make their way up the ranks. We call it a krisha, a ‘roof.’ Revealing the fact Talanov was handed a job in FSB he likely did not deserve was not so surprising. He has a krisha high in government. Maybe Volodin himself. Still, his lack of a background with GRU is very troubling.”
Jack just nodded. Considering all of Ryan’s other problems at the moment, the ancient history of the new leader of Russia’s combined intelligence service didn’t seem like that big a deal, but it clearly was important to Sergey Golovko.
The Russian said, “Find out who he is. What he was.”
“I will,” Jack promised.
Golovko looked impossibly tired now. Jack had planned on asking him if he wouldn’t mind talking to the FBI waiting outside, but at that moment he decided this man did not need the added intrusion. Jack was mad at himself for staying as long as he did.
He stood slowly, and Sergey’s eyes opened up quickly, like he’d forgotten Ryan was there.
Jack said, “Believe what I am about to say. This thing that has happened to you will make a positive difference. I’ll see to it. I can’t tell you how right now, but whatever comes out of what they did to you will make our nations stronger. I will use this against Volodin. It might not happen in days or weeks or even months, but you will win.”
“Ivan Emmetovich. You and I have been through much over the years.”
“Yes. Yes, we have.”
“We will not see each other again. I want to say you have done much good for the world. For our two countries.”
“As have you, Sergey.”
Golovko closed his eyes. “Could you ask the nurse to bring me another blanket? I don’t know how I can be both radioactive and cold, but it is so.”
&nb
sp; “Of course.”
Jack stood, leaned over to shake the prostrate man’s hand, and realized he was sound asleep. He took Golovko’s hand in his and squeezed it gently. He’d been told by the doctors he would need to be decontaminated if he touched Golovko. Jack assumed it was their idea of a polite warning, cajoling him to keep his distance. He didn’t give a damn. They could scrub him down, but they weren’t going to prevent him from giving his old friend one last gesture of compassion.
19
Jack Ryan, Jr., and Sandy Lamont boarded a British Airways Triple Seven for the eight-hour flight to the West Indies nation of Antigua and Barbuda. As they checked their boarding passes and headed to the front of business class, they saw the flight itself was only half full, but Ryan and Lamont quickly saw their section was packed.
The luxurious leather seats were arranged to face one another at an offset so they could convert into beds for the transatlantic crossing. Ryan faced rearward, so he could not help scanning the other passengers on the flight. Business class was full of Indians, Asians, British, and Germans. There were a large number of Swedes on board as well, which confused Ryan until he heard a flight attendant mention the 777 had started its day in Stockholm before stopping off at Heathrow.
Coach seemed like it was mostly tourists, but up here in business, and presumably in the completely separate first-class cabin, the aircraft would be full of men and women who did their banking, either in whole or in part, in the offshore tax haven of Antigua. Ryan’s work of the past two months made him incredibly suspicious of those around him, and he discreetly eyed the passengers one at a time, making guesses as to their identities and the dark secrets they held.
Jack hadn’t heard any Russian accents, but he wouldn’t have been surprised at all to learn that first class behind him was full of Eurasian oligarchs and organized-crime lords.
After a few minutes of all this speculation he realized he could drive himself crazy being so suspicious of those around him, so shortly after takeoff he forced himself to concentrate on the lunch menu.