Deep Past

by Eugene Linden

  Even if they had the authority, Sergei was not going to take orders from these thugs. Rob was right—had he known after the uprising what he was convinced of now about Russian involvement in Hayden’s death, he never would have served as an intermediary. Ordinarily Sergei preferred to work from the shadows, but a white-hot anger overtook him. As calmly as he could, he picked up a walkie-talkie. “Hey, Rob, would you send a security detail over to the warehouse? These assholes are leaving.”

  Then he picked up his phone and photographed the two men. “Get the fuck out of my warehouse,” he said in Russian, “and don’t come back without an army. These photos will be posted at the gatehouse.”

  Dimitri turned beet red and started to get up just as Rob and a security detail had burst into the warehouse, flanked by a team of US troops in camo.

  Sergei was still shaking from adrenaline when he and Rob returned to Rob’s office.

  “Well, you clearly need some brushing up on how to suck up to your new bosses,” said Rob, trying to lighten the mood.

  Sergei took a few deep breaths and sighed. “That was probably the most spontaneous thing I’ve done in twenty-five years, and probably the dumbest.” Rob offered him a bottle of water, and Sergei took a sip. “It wasn’t just because of Hayden or stealing Transteppe. It’s because of a lifetime of taking orders from Dimitris and Pietrs—and Bezanovs!”

  The two sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally, Rob spoke. “You’ve put a big fat bull’s-eye on your chest. I know you just got here, but I can’t protect you. You’ve got to go, old friend.”

  Rob started to pick up the phone, but Sergei put a hand on his arm.

  “I’ll go, but not yet. Claire only has a little time to further investigate the mesa, and I’m the only one who can help her.”

  Rob nodded. “That’s a fair point.”

  “And we might yet stop the Primorskichem takeover. I’m sure there were cameras on the rail landing. Have you looked at the footage?”

  Rob shook his head. “You just told me about the janitor and the guy speaking Russian being there.”

  “Let me look at the footage from the unloading. All we need is a picture of the faces.”

  Rob didn’t waste time weighing the pros and cons. “OK, let’s get cracking. I’ll get going on arrangements for Claire while you start looking at the video.”

  76

  Decision number two had been easy for Claire. In fact, in the end, it was not even her decision, and it happened the day after she returned from Boisbeaux. During the previous weeks on campus, she had come to realize that in her soul she was a field researcher. She had just started planning her arguments to return to Transteppe when Rob preempted her timetable. He called and said there was pressure to resume exploratory drilling in the mesa and that it was unclear how long that could be stalled. Was she prepared to return to Transteppe and resume probing the mesa on an urgent basis? “Absolutely, give me a week.”

  “You don’t have a week,” said Rob quietly. “We’ve made arrangements for the Transteppe plane to bring you tomorrow.”

  Claire thought that odd but didn’t argue. She couldn’t wait to see Sergei.

  She also wanted to see Rob, though for different reasons. As much as she had blamed herself for Hayden’s death, she imagined Rob would have been much more devastated. He had involved Hayden in the first place, and he was head of security. He had seemed subdued on the phone.

  When she stepped off the helicopter at Transteppe, Sergei was there to give her a fierce Russian hug that left her gasping for breath.

  It was a very different Transteppe than the one she had left. Where there had been heavy equipment and workmen bustling about, now there were only security patrols. The offices were down to a skeleton crew, and there was a melancholy feel to the near-empty cafeteria.

  Over the next few days, Claire caught up with the Kazakhs as well as Sauat—and Lawrence, who seemed to be working on his hunting skills. She would bend down to tie her shoelaces in the warehouse and a paw would shoot out from under the bench. Claire didn’t think it was that big a step from hunting shoelaces to catching mice.

  Claire was alarmed to learn that Primorskichem now had majority control of Transteppe (the reason they had given her for the urgency of the exploration), but they did not tell her of their conviction about Russian involvement in Hayden’s death. They did say that Primorskichem had overplayed its hand in demanding renewed exploratory drilling. The attempted subversion had alarmed Transteppe’s remaining independent directors, because resumed activity would be seen as choosing sides in the uprising, and Transteppe had everything to lose and nothing to gain by trying to pick the winner in this stalemate, even if Primorskichem now had a controlling stake. And with the concession guarded by American Special Forces, Primorskichem management had to tread carefully in establishing control.

  Transteppe’s reaction to the Russians’ visit bought Claire time to plan a dig on the mesa, though how much time remained an open question. The conflict might flare up at any moment, or the Russian politicians, who seemed to control Primorskichem, might decide that they didn’t care what the rest of the world thought, and simply restart operations. Claire vowed to make the best of it, however, as she was convinced that the ill-starred, ancient beings that had taken the trouble to leave behind traces of their gentle civilization would have left more than just a few bones, a cranium, and that remarkable stone.

  77

  It didn’t take long to find the image he was looking for. Sergei remembered the exact time and date of the encounter, and so it was easy to find the relevant tapes. Surveillance cameras covered the entire landing area—theft being an omnipresent threat in Kazakhstan—and as soon as he had printed up a few stills of the men talking, Sergei brought the images to Rob.

  Rob already had a plan. “First, we’ll show the footage to a lip reader to see if they can make out what’s being said. Then, let me give these to my contacts in intelligence to see what they’ve got on these men.”

  Sergei shook his head. “My experience is that intelligence agencies take but don’t give. Why would they share what they find? They might have other fish to fry and prefer to use what they find for leverage.”

  “That’s always a risk, but we’ll dole it out piece by piece, and if they don’t give, they won’t get. Besides, we’ve got parallel interests.”

  Sergei shrugged. “So did your CIA and FBI before 9/11, but that didn’t stop the CIA from hoarding intelligence that could have stopped the attacks.”

  Rob looked at him strangely. “How do you know so much about 9/11?”

  “I watch 60 Minutes. OK, do it your way, but if they don’t respond in a week, I’ve got an idea to stir the pot.”

  Rob raised an eyebrow and faked a Russian accent. “What means this ‘stir the pot’?”

  Sergei laughed. “The Kazakhs would love to find evidence that the uprising was all about taking over Transteppe, yes? So we let them leak the photo of the ‘janitor,’ along with the story about Russian involvement to the Astana press, and see which rats start scurrying. And I’ll bet we’d then start getting more cooperation from your intelligence guys.”

  “Why just the janitor?”

  “Because it will give the Russians a sense that they are free at home”—a confused look passed over Sergei’s face—“sorry, home free, and with that, maybe they’ll go after the janitor.”

  Rob liked the idea but for one thing. “Or, go after you. Look, whoever this is in the picture had the brains to set up an immaculate hit on Hayden. That took meticulous planning. Such a person would assume that we had surveillance on the platform—and for that reason, my guess is that the conversation is innocuous, or even misleading. If the janitor truly is an operative, he would recognize you just as you recognized him, and the Russian probably already knew about you. Which means that once the photo is leaked, the Russian will instantly connect it to you.”

  “One more bull’s-eye won’t show,” said Sergei, his Russian fat
alism surfacing. “Do you have a better idea?”

  78

  The man was known to his loving family as Tom Frechette, though even that was not his real name. His wife thought his job was as a troubleshooter for high-tech nuclear-powered turbines, an occupation that explained his abrupt disappearances and unwillingness to talk about what he did. He had once used the name Proteus but had long ago given that up—the nickname was too memorable, and he realized only complete anonymity satisfied his need to be completely unmemorable. Now, in his office, he read the story in Kazakhskaya Pravda for the fifth time. There was a picture of the alleged killer of Hayden, and a story saying that there was evidence that he had acquired the weapon used to destroy Hayden’s helicopter from Russian sources. As journalism, the story was wildly irresponsible, but what alarmed Frechette was that it was completely accurate. Bezanov must be shitting bricks, he thought.

  Frechette always assumed that there was no such thing as a guarantee when setting up a hit. He always thought in terms of odds rather than certainties, and he was always ready to trade some degree of certainty of outcome for insulation from blowback should things go wrong, as they often did given the type of people drawn to work in the shadows. The trade-off lengthened the time it took to finish an assignment, but Frechette credited it with keeping him alive and in the game far longer than most in his field.

  Despite all his precautions, the man realized that he was now as close to exposure as he had ever come in over two decades of off-the-books black ops. He looked again at the article. Why was there just a picture of the “janitor” and not the Chechen who had made the transfer? They’d been standing quite close, and he doubted that Transteppe had only partial coverage of the platform. That made it likely that whoever had delivered the photo to the paper had purposefully cropped the other man from the photo. Why? Two possibilities presented themselves immediately: whoever planted this story already knew who he was and an operation was already underway to eliminate him, or they wanted him to believe that they thought it was a local operation, tempting him to go after the Chechen.

  Frechette opted for door number two. And, he admitted, they were half-right—he was going to go after someone, only it was not the Chechen delivery boy, but the clever man who Frechette assumed had planted that story. He would kill the geologist Sergei who had so casually walked past Frechette and the Chechen on the train platform.

  ¬

  Several thousand miles away in Vladivostok, Andrei Bezanov was brought the same article and instantly realized his whole plan was in mortal danger. He was certain Sergei was behind the planted story. The man certainly had motive. Why couldn’t the idiot just walk away as he promised when he freed his brother? Either Bezanov had to get him back under control, or he had to go.

  Bezanov then realized, while Anachev was a threat to the Primorskichem takeover, the anonymous black ops man, the now-exposed “janitor,” was a threat to Bezanov. He had to go, too.

  Bezanov started thinking about a plan. If he got his operative to take the woman scientist hostage, then, he was certain, Sergei would stop at nothing to get her back, or to get back at her killer if she somehow died in the process. He could even drop some clues pointing Sergei toward the assassin. The simplicity and efficiency of the plan appealed to his chess player’s mind.

  Time was of the essence. He was thinking about how to set things in motion when his phone buzzed with a text message. He looked at the screen and read the words Dead man’s switch. Attached to the text was a very brief and innocuous snippet of the conversation in which Bezanov had given the assignment to take out Hayden. Bezanov slammed the table with impotent, bitter fury. He now had to root for the survival and success of a man who just a few seconds earlier he was plotting to kill.

  He again slammed the table in frustration. This was getting out of hand.

  79

  Rob and Sergei sat down with Claire in Sergei’s work area. Sergei knew it was going to be a hard sell, which was why he had enlisted Rob to join the conversation. Sergei was pushing a mug of coffee back and forth between his hands. Claire sensed the tension and was on her guard.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You mean beyond the concession being taken over by thugs and living on borrowed time?” said Sergei, softening the words with a smile. “Nope, not a thing.”

  Claire looked at Sergei sharply. “What do you mean, living on borrowed time?”

  “What Sergei’s saying,” said Rob quickly, “is that the likelihood is that this stalemate won’t last forever, and once it ends, the Russians will likely fire us, take over the concession, and either stop the fossil exploration or take it over.” He looked at Sergei. “That about right?”

  Claire took this in. “And?”

  “And that means we’ve got to start breaking off pieces of the lip, bring chunks back here for quick analysis, and ship off the promising pieces,” said Sergei. Claire started to say something, but Sergei held up a finger. “I know that’s not how it’s done, but we’re in a war zone. We can’t bring big equipment out to the area—we don’t even have the operators—but we can do a quick survey and I’ll use the results to position the cuts. I can split off some chunks and we can collect them at the bottom.” He was talking fast. “If you remember looking down from the lip, there were big chunks on top of the scree. That means the rock doesn’t disintegrate when it falls.”

  Claire sighed. “I think that someday there will be an entire textbook devoted to my career as a field scientist entitled How Not to Do a Dig.” She furrowed her brow and thought a second. “Or maybe I’ll be part of a miniseries, Scientists from Hell.”

  “So we agree.”

  Claire laughed bitterly. “Yes, with one condition. Rob shoots a video of me walking toward the lip with my hands up and Sergei pointing a gun at me—something I can show to my accusers when I’m drummed out of the American Anthropological Society.”

  Rob deadpanned. “I can do that.”

  Claire laughed a little nervously. “You know I’m joking.”

  80

  The next day before dawn, Claire and Sergei began in earnest. Instead of horses, they took ATVs that Rob had pre-positioned for them at the dry river crossing. It was mid-November and it was cold, but the real frigid temperatures were still a month away. They followed the tracks created by the giant Bucyrus earthmover that had brought the lip back to the warehouse. Rob had wanted to send a security detail, but Claire and Sergei had been adamant that any large group would attract unwanted attention and the possibility of freelancers plundering the site. No one ever went to the mesa section of the concession, and they wanted to keep it that way.

  Sergei’s ATV had a small cargo area, and they drove the vehicles right up the sloped mesa and started unloading. He’d brought with them small explosive charges and detonators, a small remote trigger to launch the explosions, a small gasoline-powered boring tool to set the charges, and a lawn mower–size remote-sensing device on wheels.

  He had suggested the ground-penetrating radar because the dry, sedimentary rock was well suited to electromagnetic profiling. Claire spent the next hour and a half slowly moving the equipment over the edge of the mesa, working from the edge backward. The radar beamed waves downward, and the recording equipment would show where those waves had been deflected. She was using a thousand-megahertz antenna, which limited penetration to six feet but allowed them to see objects with a resolution to three-sixteenths of an inch. Sergei’s logic was that since they had found the other objects close to the surface, it was likely that any future finds would be in the same strata and so sacrificing penetration for resolution was an obvious choice.

  The problem was that sedimentary rock contained a lot of ordinary stones. Ordinarily it would be a long and arduous job to sort through the jumble of images once they had completed the survey, but they did not have the time for a thorough job. Claire tried to sort promising images from the background noise so that Sergei could place the charges in such a way that these objects
had as much protective rock surrounding them as possible.

  She knew this was an awful way to do field science, but still Claire was excited. If Bart’s peers were smart enough to send one message to the future, they were smart enough to send more. Even with the high noise level, she could see several objects that looked to be more regularly shaped.

  By the end of the day, Sergei had completed the boreholes on what remained of the lip and placed the charges. Claire wanted to videotape the explosion from down below so that they could track where particular chunks fell.

  “Here’s how we’re going to do it,” he said. “I’m going to say, ‘One, two, three,’ and then hit the trigger. We’ll be well back from the explosion, so don’t worry.”

  Since it was late afternoon and the light was fading fast, they decided to delay until the following morning. Sergei would take his ATV up onto the mesa, while Claire would position herself a safe distance from the mesa on the desert floor and film the operation.

  81

  Claire was starting to turn, having sensed that someone was behind her, when she felt the cold barrel of the pistol against her neck.

  “You must be the anthropologist. Sorry to interrupt your work.”

  Sergei was getting organized on top of the mesa and hadn’t yet looked down.

  “Don’t worry,” said the man in a reassuring voice. “I just need to ask your friend some questions. Once I get the answers, I’ll be on my way and you can resume whatever it is you’re doing here. OK?” Frechette always offered his victims hope because he knew the desperate would cling to that hope, no matter how impossible, and it always made them easier to handle.

  The man stepped back and Claire turned to look at him. What she saw was at first glance the least intimidating man she could imagine. Slight of build, with mild eyes and a receding hairline, the man looked like a desk clerk at a storage unit. But then Claire saw the veins popping on his neck and realized that he was strung taut as a bow. She didn’t believe his story for a second. She knew the three of them would not be going their separate ways after a friendly conversation.