Temple of Spies

by Ian Kharitonov

  “I beg you! Have mercy! By all that’s holy!”

  “Where’s the pendant?” Stacie asked.

  “Inside the briefcase.”

  “And the codebook?”

  “It’s there, all there!”

  Going through the contents of the briefcase, Stacie found both. She clasped the pendant around her neck. Then she held up the codebook.

  “What’s so important about it? What secret did my great-great-grandfather possess that could be worth killing for today?”

  Mark clenched his jaw.

  “Answer her.”

  Mark blinked rapidly.

  “I don’t know the details. I swear by God!”

  “God? I’ll let Him be your judge,” said Sokolov as he stepped toward Mark, his weapon raised with apparent intent to maim or kill.

  Mark held up his hand defensively. “No! Stop! All right, listen. The Oltersdorf notebook contains information that will swing the balance of power in Siberia. The Patriarchate has been after it for years, and so have the Chinese.”

  “What interest do the Chinese have in it?” Sokolov asked.

  “It’s a bargaining chip for the next round of negotiations. As you know, the economic sanctions imposed by the West have placed the Kremlin under immense pressure. The Russian economy is failing as oil revenues are dropping. Cash-strapped, the Russian oligarchs have turned to China for financial backing. The Chinese know how desperate the Russians are, and they want to get maximum advantage. Beijing wants access to Siberia’s natural resources. Perhaps even the concession of certain territories.”

  “Why would the Patriarchate act on behalf of the Russian oligarchs?”

  “Because the Patriarch himself is one of the biggest oligarchs. He controls the Russian alcohol and tobacco markets, and has a stake in the diamond industry, oil and gas, you name it. And he may hold the key to Russia’s future as a country.”

  “How come?”

  “Over the last few decades, the Patriarchate has been hunting for a hidden source of unimaginable wealth. Lost treasure, located somewhere in Siberia and currently worth at least 200 billion U.S. dollars. It is known that the treasure’s exact location is encrypted in the Oltersdorf notebook.”

  Two hundred billion? Sokolov contemplated the figure. It was enough to turn the tables. No wonder the Chinese wanted to thwart any attempts to obtain it.

  “What role does Saveliy Frolov play?”

  “He’s in charge of the so-called Order of Holy Orthodox Knights. It’s a front for clandestine operations. For example, the Patriarchate uses it as an unofficial channel to deal with the North Koreans.”

  “To what end?”

  “The Oltersdorf notebook is just a part of the picture, a contingency plan in the operation they are running. The Patriarch and Frolov have devised a scheme to break away from Chinese influence completely. Once triggered, it’s a gamble they believe they cannot lose. Operation Temple.”

  “And what exactly is Operation Temple supposed to trigger?”

  Grimacing through the pain, Mark twisted his mouth in a crooked smile.

  “A doomsday event.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “An unprecedented act of terrorism.”

  “What’s the target?”

  “When it comes to Church matters, look no further than the Holy Land.”

  “Israel? This is madness,” Stacie said.

  “Far from it,” said Mark. “Using the North Koreans, they want to supply the Iranians with the required weapons—and set them up, incidentally. The attack will throw the Middle East into turmoil and Iran will get the blame. Oil prices will soar and Moscow will gain leeway in the talks with Beijing, especially with that extra 200 billion from the Oltersdorf affair.”

  “The risk is insane. What if the terrorist plot is exposed, and the instigators of the attack are traced back to Moscow? Russia will become a pariah. The leaders of every country will turn away, including the Chinese. We’ll face total international isolation.”

  Mark nodded slowly. “Exactly. What better way to keep the populace in check than the threat of a new world war? Yes, Russia will be ostracized from the civilized world, but isolationism is the very objective. A new Iron Curtain, a siege mentality, an indoctrinated ‘us-against-them’ worldview which is the only way to keep power in an impoverished country, suppressing all dissent. We’re fully committed to going the North Korean route, albeit with a twist—an Iranian-style theocracy. The Patriarch will be proclaimed as the new national leader and the Patriarchate will govern the country. Those in power will retain their positions forever. Again, the 200 billion will come in handy until the West eventually recognizes the new regime. The wheels are in motion. And there’s nothing you or your Aussie whore can do about it!”

  Sokolov bludgeoned him.

  10

  At the Trinity Lavra, Father Mikhail peered into the cold darkness of the night. He waited for his rendezvous outside the sprawling, three-storied baroque building which housed the monks’ cells. A shadow moved across the courtyard, the man’s stealthy approach startling Mikhail as a voice sounded behind him.

  “Is he inside?”

  The voice was as cold as the surrounding darkness.

  “Yes. He’s in his cell, sedated.”

  Mikhail turned toward the man, who was of average height and build, wearing jeans and a bomber jacket. He had the kind of appearance that never stood out in any environment, a chameleon-like quality to stay unnoticed. He went by different names, including Herman, Imran and Victor, but nobody knew his real identity.

  In the mid-1990s, an entire FSB hit team had rebelled against their boss, refusing to assassinate a Russian businessman. They’d chosen to stick their neck out rather than play any part in a political conspiracy. Wary of that incident, FSB Director Saveliy Frolov employed a hitman loyal to him personally, and him alone. Not bound by any rules, the assassin carried out the dirtiest jobs for Frolov, and continued to do so even after his master had formally left the FSB. Victor was a former Spetsnaz officer like Father Mikhail himself. And now Mikhail was assisting the hitman on a job that couldn’t get any dirtier.

  Mikhail ascended the stairs to the second floor and arrived at the door of Ilia’s cell. He unlocked it with his own key. Victor trained a penlight on the Spartan interior of the cell, which comprised a simple cot, a wooden chair, and a desk stacked with books. A prone figure occupied the cot, one arm dangling over the edge of the thin mattress. A large crucifix hung on the wall over the bed.

  Ilia lay senseless.

  Together, Victor and Mikhail dragged the old man from his cot, across the floor and down the stairs, and placed him in a wheelchair which Mikhail had brought from the monastery’s medical unit. Then they wheeled Ilia outside, all the way across the main plaza and through the Holy Gates.

  Victor’s nondescript gray Hyundai sedan was waiting in the parking lot just beyond the ancient stone walls of the Lavra, illuminated by streetlights.

  Beads of perspiration rolled down Mikhail’s face as he helped haul Ilia’s body into the trunk. The old man moaned as Victor slammed it shut.

  They drove in silence, the hitman and the priest, both former GRU officers, now doing what they did best. The Hyundai reached the outskirts of Sergiev Posad. Once out of town, they headed south-west, to a wooded area. As he turned to a gravel road cutting through a forest, Victor stopped the car at the roadside and killed the engine. Mikhail could hear Ilia’s muffled groans emanating from inside the trunk.

  The two of them got out of the car. The surrounding scenery looked forlorn, with skeletal trees and no other motorists in sight. Victor opened the Hyundai’s trunk.

  “Who are you? What do you want from me?” Ilia shouted through the darkness.

  “You know the answers to both questions,” said the assassin.

  “Herman? No! No!”

  The assassin swung a fist, slugging Ilia in the face. As the old man cried out in pain, the hitman grabbed him
by the shoulders and pulled him out of the trunk, dragging him into the dense blackness behind rows of trees.

  Mikhail lit a cigarette. Halfway through it, he heard the first screams. The interrogation could drag on for a while, he knew.

  He crushed the cigarette butt with his foot and flicked his lighter to ignite the next one. It glowed faintly in the night which was only broken by screams. He watched it burn while the screams intensified, melding into one blood-curdling cry.

  He quashed a wave of nausea, but even more sickening than the old man’s screaming was the total silence that fell abruptly afterwards. His fingers trembled slightly as he finished the cigarette. He’d grown too soft since his retirement from the GRU.

  He noticed that a sliver of the rising sun, as fiery as his dying cigarette stub, had rendered a gray hue to the dark sky.

  A red dawn was breaking.

  Clear in the brighter light, Victor emerged from the forest, his bomber jacket splattered with blood.

  Mikhail had grown too soft and too slack. He never saw the shot coming as Frolov’s hitman put a bullet through his skull.

  PART IV

  1

  Siberia

  Inferno. It was hell on earth as a gigantic column of fire gushed from the ground, rising a hundred meters into the sky. Even standing four kilometers away, Eduard Malkovich felt nothing but awe as he observed the colossal flame burning amid the snow-covered Siberian wasteland.

  In a blowout at one of the largest gas wells, the fountain of natural gas had burst out at a pressure of 300 atmospheres, catching fire and incinerating the drill tower. The blowout had occurred 465 days ago, the gargantuan torch devouring 12 million cubic meters of gas per day.

  The resulting heat was so ferocious that it made the fire unapproachable within several hundred meters, charring the permafrost around it and roaring with a thunderous din. The sheer force of the blowout sent vibrations across the icy plain. Here in Yakutia, on the fringes of the Arctic Circle, polar twilight would normally descend in winter, shrouding the area in darkness. In the vicinity of the blowout, however, the blazing inferno brightened the sky in a shimmering haze as if it were broad daylight.

  Over the last fifteen months, all attempts to quench the blowout by conventional means had proved ineffective. The gas gusher would keep on burning for years to come—unless Eduard Malkovich succeeded in stopping the uncontrolled release. And he would. Today. In just over an hour. To do it, he put his own life on the line.

  Malkovich treaded over the frozen soil toward a low structure built from concrete. The distant fire reflected in the transparent faceplate of his hazmat suit. The suit was capable of withstanding extreme conditions, but the air temperature hovered around the -20 degrees Celsius mark, well above the average high of -50 that would set in in a few weeks.

  At the entrance, Malkovich was greeted by a pair of FSB sentries guarding the structure. Each wore a green camo uniform and a sheepskin hat with ear-flaps, called ushanka. FSB troops patrolled the area along the four-kilometer radius outside the blowout. Farther away, the perimeter eight kilometers away from the blowout was secured by special police forces flown in from Moscow, just like their FSB counterparts. Such airtight security might have seemed excessive. The part of East Siberia known as Yakutia had a population of under a million people, despite being greater in size than Argentina. The remote northern areas of Yakutia were especially deserted. Hundreds of kilometers of forbidding terrain separated the blowout from the nearest village. But Malkovich deemed the defensive measures reasonable as far as his job was concerned.

  Inside the structure, he found a team of technicians, clad in yellow coveralls. They were buzzing as they went through final preparations, paying no heed to Malkovich when he entered. The source of their attention lay positioned on a transport dolly in front of a bank of testing equipment hooked to it by wires. The object was a cylindrical tube, 85 centimeters in diameter and three meters long. The black casing glinted in the glare of overhead lamps. It was a 20-kiloton nuclear explosive device.

  Content that he’d glimpsed the fruit of his labor for one last time, Malkovich exited the Assembly Building and made his way back to the Control Center, an identical structure located next to it. He heard the thumping of rotor blades as choppers circled above for a final inspection of the danger zone. A cargo helicopter was descending to touch down behind the Control Center, on stand-by to evacuate personnel in case of emergency.

  Malkovich removed his headgear, revealing his weathered, mustached face as he stepped from the cold into the confines of the Control Center.

  “Everything is going according to plan,” Malkovich reported to a senior man dressed in similar protective coveralls. The man cut a short and rotund figure, his face clean-shaven and wrinkled. Curly gray hair surrounded the bald spot on his head. His name was Vladlen Zeldin. In their quest for progress, the Soviets had fought with reactionary Christian names, coming up with new ones. Vladlen was an initialism which stood for Vladimir Lenin. Both Zeldin and Malkovich worked at the Institute of Experimental Physics based in Sarov, a town 400 kilometers south-east of Moscow. True to his name, Vladlen Zeldin was a Soviet stalwart, a man who had spent his entire career in a top-ranking position at the Soviet Los Alamos. Semi-retired, he now acted as the younger man’s supervisor and immediate boss.

  The twelfth-century town of Sarov had been famous for its medieval monastery. After the Revolution, the Bolsheviks had shut the Sarov Monastery down, killing the monks, and converted it into an NKVD prison. Later, Sarov had become a restricted area for top-secret nuclear research. The entire town had vanished from every map. The defiled churches of the Monastery still stood next to the classified facilities.

  To quote Vladlen Zeldin’s article from a 1988 issue of Scientific Atheism: “The use of atomic energy is regarded as Man’s triumph over Nature. Nuclear physics has given Man the ability to part seas and blow up mountains at will. But to be more precise, Man has defeated God, leaving no place for religion. Sarov, pried from medieval darkness to serve all Mankind, is the biggest testament to such conquest.”

  Apparently, though, Zeldin’s attitude toward organized religion had improved as of late. Making a U-turn, he’d bridged the gap with the Moscow Patriarchate, even taking an honorary position at some sort of Orthodox organization. Oddities accompanied old age, Malkovich figured. Perhaps it was just as well. After the success of the current mission, Malkovich would reap all the rewards, push Zeldin closer to full retirement and usurp his position at the Institute.

  “The explosion is scheduled at 10:00 sharp,” Malkovich added.

  “When the countdown approaches zero, make sure you’re standing on your tiptoes to avoid spine damage from the quake,” Zeldin joked. His eyes narrowed slyly. He was in good humor. Days like this didn’t come about very often.

  “Any other valuable experience you can share, Professor?”

  Zeldin peered at the fiery vortex four kilometers away through twin windows, tiny slits in the thick concrete walls of the Control Center.

  “If you see a huge mushroom cloud breaking the surface, run for the helicopter.” The old man chuckled, baring nicotine-stained teeth. During the blast, the windows would be closed by metal shutters, they both knew, but if the underground explosion ended in disaster, they could do little about it. “Don’t worry, Eduard, your calculations are flawless. Your team has done a fine job. I was there in 1972 when we applied the same method in Ukraine, outside Kharkov. Similarly, we drilled a directional hole, two and a half kilometers long. It slanted downward until it reached the gas well. Then the explosive device was lowered down the hole and detonated. The only reason we failed to seal the gusher was because the nuclear charge wasn’t powerful enough at under four kilotons. In your case, twenty kilotons should be enough to cause a subterranean soil shift that will block the gas well from the source of the fire. Over the years, I’ve dealt with devices of thirty and fifty kilotons as well, but you realize that there are some things I can’t tell
you.”

  Malkovich nodded. He himself had signed a 15-year non-disclosure agreement relating to all information on the blowout.

  A commotion outside the Control Center became audible. The whine of helicopter rotors intensified. Added to it was the rumbling diesel of a heavy KAMAZ truck. Sharp cracks of gunfire chattered above the engine noise. Malkovich bolted to the door and pulled it open. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “What the hell is going on?” he muttered.

  The KAMAZ truck was towing the bomb-laden dolly out of the Assembly Building, far earlier than expected. And the truck wasn’t moving along the intended route to the slanting hole, or even in the direction of the blowout. Instead, it was heading toward the cargo chopper which had just landed. Its rear loading ramp opened and soldiers in white camouflage, armed with AK rifles, swarmed out like a pack of rats. They charged into the Assembly Building, facing no resistance from a lone FSB guard. If anything, the sentry was assisting the invaders, letting them inside.

  Then Malkovich saw the body of the truck driver in yellow coveralls lying sprawled in the snow, spewing blood. He realized that it wasn’t his technician, but rather the second FSB guard driving the truck, towing the nuclear device to the waiting Mi-8 helicopter.

  A staccato of gunfire boomed inside the Assembly Building, mixed with anguished cries.

  One of the specialists managed to escape from the slaughterhouse. Frantically, he ran outside before a trio of chasing attackers blasted him from their AKs, splattering gore over the pristine snow.

  “Everything is going according to plan,” Zeldin’s voice sounded behind Malkovich. “My plan, that is, not yours. But you must realize there are certain things I can’t tell you.”

  Malkovich pivoted, eyes wide in disbelief.

  “Have you lost your mind, Professor?”

  The force of the burning gas gusher was so immense that the fire produced low-frequency acoustic waves, well below the limit of human hearing. Although inaudible, the emitted infrasound traveled great distances and impacted the nervous system. Prolonged exposure to infrasonic waves caused feelings of anxiety, fear, revulsion, sorrow and aggression, and could lead to insanity. That could explain the FSB guards going berserk, Malkovich thought. But none of the winter-camouflaged troops looked like they were suffering from nervous breakdowns. And who the hell were they, anyway?