The President’s Dossier

by James A. Scott

  As team leader, the male agent answered. “Keep them in sight at all times. Report all contacts they had with anyone, especially Russians and persons not on the city tour.”

  Zabluda turned to the female agent. “And your orders?”

  “The same, Colonel.”

  Zabluda addressed the male agent, “Walk me through your surveillance. When did you acquire the target, Geller?”

  “When he came off the cruise ship. We”—he nodded to his partner—“were on the pier pretending to be on the cruise and with his tour group. We were taking photographs of ourselves with the cruise ship in the background.

  “The subjects, Geller and Rucker, came down the gangplank and went directly to the immigration booths and were cleared for entry. Then, they went to the souvenir mall. We followed at a discreet distance.”

  “Were they in your view between the immigration and the souvenir mall?”

  The agent hesitated. “We were delayed for several minutes at the immigration booth because the officer who checked our passports was confused.”

  “Confused about what?”

  “When she checked our passports against the database, she saw that we were FSB and wondered why we didn’t show our credentials to pass immigration. She called a supervisor for assistance—”

  Zabluda said, “And Geller and Rucker got out of your sight.”

  “Only for a short time,” protested the male FSB agent.

  “Why didn’t you go to the supervisor before the cruise ship docked and arrange to be cleared promptly through immigration?”

  “We … we were told that this surveillance was most secret and we were not to involve anyone not part of the operation.”

  Zabluda shot a withering glance at Dragonov.

  Turning back to the two agents, he asked, “What happened after you lost sight of the subjects?”

  “We followed them into the souvenir hall and—”

  “Correction. You didn’t follow them into the souvenir hall. You went looking for them in the souvenir hall.”

  The two surveillance agents were sweating and the male’s voice was shaky. “We … I … as I approached the men’s restroom, Geller was coming out. He stopped to buy a Russian doll. I turned away and pretended to be looking for a souvenir to purchase.”

  “When Geller came out of the men’s room, did he see you?”

  “Yes.”

  “When he stopped to buy this doll, did he turn away from you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you get a good look at him?”

  “As I said, he turned away to buy something.”

  “How do you know it was Geller?”

  “By his clothes. I recognized what he was wearing when he left the cruise ship.”

  “Did you recognize his face as the man who came out of the restroom as that of the man who got off the cruise ship, or just his clothing?”

  “I didn’t get a good look at him as he came out of the restroom, Colonel. He turned away to purchase a gift …”

  “You followed the decoy.” Zabluda turned to Dragonov. “He followed the damned decoy.”

  Zabluda turned back to the agent. “Were you told that Geller would use a decoy?”

  “No, sir. I was told that he would change identities with another man.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Colonel Dragonov.”

  “And how did you interpret that information?” asked Zabluda.

  “That Geller would exchange papers with someone so he could move about the city with a Russian identity.” The agent shifted his puzzled gaze between Zabluda and Dragonov.

  Zabluda questioned the female agent next. Her story of the broken surveillance was essentially the same as her partner’s.

  Addressing the two agents, Zabluda said a frosty, “Thank you. You’re dismissed.”

  Zabluda turned to Dragonov. “For you, promotion is now out of the question. You want to keep your job? Get those videos and find Geller! I’m leaving my second-in-command, Major Ipatyev, here to monitor your search and to keep me informed.”

  “Where will you be?” asked Dragonov.

  “In Moscow. We are sixteen hours behind two American spies. They may have already contacted the traitors here in St. Petersburg and be on their way to Moscow. I’m going there to try and catch them. For your sake, pray that I’m successful.”

  Zabluda was still fuming. He walked away from Dragonov. Then, he came back to the colonel and pointed a finger at him. “Understand this, Dragonov. I was sent here to kill people. Right now, the only people worthy of my services are in this building. Find Maxwell Geller!”

  CHAPTER 19

  THE SAYING GOES, “When in Rome, do as the Romans.” When in Moscow, follow Moscow Rules, a set of Cold War guidelines developed by Western spies for survival in that hostile city. The rule of immediate concern to me was, “Go with the flow, blend in.” Accordingly, we had taken a train that arrived at Moscow’s Leningradsky station at 7:55 a.m. to coincide with rush hour.

  I left Jill at the station with instructions. “Take a cab. Ask the driver where you can get a good breakfast. Eat slowly. Meet me back here in two hours.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  “What if you don’t come back?”

  “Sherri will meet you here at 4:00 p.m.”

  “Did you make that arrangement in Stockholm?”

  “Yes,”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I just did.”

  She was pissed. “Suppose the FSB had grabbed you on the train?”

  I smiled. “You would have shot them and we would have escaped.”

  * * *

  I took a cab to a years-old rendezvous point, hoping to meet an asset who worked in Russian intelligence. In times past, he dropped his daughter off at a private school and walked to a nearby café for his morning coffee.

  Sergei was on his way to the café when I approached him. His eyes widened in momentary surprise. Then, he glanced at the paper cradled under my left arm, the sign that I wanted a meet.

  He said, “A good morning to you.” That was the signal that it was okay for me to meet him at the coffee shop.

  I circled the block scanning for surveillance. Detecting none, I met Sergei as he was leaving the café, coffee cup in hand. We walked to his car—a black Lada Vesta—and slid into the front seat.

  “What the hell are you doing back in Moscow?”

  “I’m happy to see you, too, Sergei.”

  “I read that the CIA fired you for criticizing Walldrum. That wasn’t smart. Maybe I bet on the wrong political system when I gave you Mother Russia’s secrets.”

  “You don’t believe that. Democracy is the best political system in the history of mankind.”

  He gave me a stern look. “I believe that, but you Americans better get your shit together soon or you’re going to be a dictatorship. Putin doesn’t like democracies.”

  I changed the subject. “How are you getting along with your new case officer?” Sergei was still spying for the CIA.

  “His Russian is not as good as yours, but he’s smarter than you.”

  “Based on your product, you deserve the best.”

  Sergei smiled. “So, what do American spies do after they’re fired?”

  “They become private investigators.”

  “Working for … ?”

  “Working for what you and I always worked for, to free Russia from Putin. That’s why I came to see you.”

  “What do you want, besides the opportunity to get yourself killed in the shadow of the Kremlin?”

  “I want to verify a claim in the Ironside Dossier that Ted Walldrum cavorted with prostitutes at the Riga-Ritz Hotel in Moscow. I need original sources, people who saw things with their own eyes, heard things from the mouth of the speaker with their own ears. Rumors won’t cut it. So, who should I talk to at the Ritz and who should I avoid?”

  Sergei sighed. “Why
are you doing this? Your government has already verified many of the allegations. Nobody cares if prostitutes pissed on a bed at the Ritz.”

  “Walldrum cares. He keeps denying it. Did it happen?”

  Sergei massaged his forehead. After a while he said, “Okay. Avoid the hotel manager. He’s FSB, so is the security staff. If you want eyewitnesses, you have to find the maids who serviced the room and the laborers who moved the mattress. There’s your problem. Those people have been bought off, moved off, or killed off. A maid was murdered for talking to a reporter about this. The reporter was killed, too.” Sergei looked at me with concern. “That’s all I know and I got that secondhand.”

  “How would I get a roster of hotel employees at the time of the alleged incident?”

  “I doubt there is one. If I had to cover up the incident, the second thing I would do—after getting rid of the witnesses—would be to delete the names of those witnesses from the personnel roster or replace the entire roster with one that was bogus.”

  Sergei was silent for a few beats. “If you’re serious about this, you need to stay off the radar of the security services. No hotels. Check Moscow obituaries from six months to a year after the incident. Find a hotel worker and a reporter who were killed about the same time and you have a lead. Then, you track down the hotel worker’s family and find out who he or she worked with and where. Even if you do all that, and find the people you need to talk to, they may not want to talk to you. You could do a lot of work and end up with nothing.”

  “I could be successful and end up with a hand grenade.”

  “Ah, but who would pull the pin on your grenade and throw it into the political arena? How many times have we intelligence professionals given politicians the ammunition they need, only to have them squander the opportunity to use it?”

  That was a depressing thought. I moved on. “Have you heard of the Omega Group?”

  Sergei said a thoughtful, “No. What is it?”

  I gave him a polite smile.

  He nodded his understanding that I couldn’t tell him. “So,” he said, “this is how it works—I tell you what you want to know and you tell me nothing?”

  “If I told you what I think it is, you would have to do something. That would hurt your cause and mine.”

  “Well, if the Omega Group is an organization whose interests conflict with those of the Russian Federation, the FSB has probably penetrated it. We’re very good at placing our agents in opposition groups, remember? If you get involved with this group, be very careful.” Sergei looked at his watch. Our time together was running out.

  I requested, “Two more topics?”

  Sergei nodded his okay.

  “I have information that Walldrum was laundering money for oligarchs as far back as the nineties. Who would have firsthand knowledge of that?”

  “One or two senior managers during that period at the Moscow branch of Allgemeine Volksbank—our Kremlin kleptocracy’s hometown bank of choice. The problem is, senior managers in that era are retired. Your best source would be the bank’s records. You need someone on the inside with access to the archives, if they haven’t been destroyed.”

  “Do you know someone with access to those archives?”

  “It would take someone with a long nose and a short life expectancy. The only one who comes to mind immediately is you.” He didn’t smile.

  “Last subject. Do you know General Alexei Grishin?”

  “He retired before my time, but he’s a FSB legend. Old-timers call him ‘The Ghost.’”

  “Why?”

  “His career was rescued from the graveyard more than once. Grishin ran the FSB version of your Pussy Posse, setting honey traps to get kompromat on enemies of the state.”

  “Or anyone passing through the state,” I added.

  Sergei ignored me. “The story goes that Grishin was marked for oblivion when Putin became head of the FSB and started replacing Posse staff with his own people. In the 1990s, Prosecutor General Yury Skuratov opened a corruption investigation targeting President Yeltsin, his family, and political cronies. Grishin saved the day by producing a tape of Skuratov in bed with two young women. Putin put it on TV. Skuratov resigned. The investigation died and Putin became a Yeltsin favorite. Unfortunately, the tape didn’t make Grishin a Putin favorite. To Putin, Grishin was just doing his job. Grishin resumed his slide into the career graveyard.

  “After Putin left the FSB, Grishin again rose from the grave. He caught a drunken Chechen in a honey trap, telling a prostitute about a plot to blow up the Moscow Metro. That was the beginning of a string of successes. Grishin kept dropping well-timed sex tapes of the regime’s opponents and got his long overdue promotions. They say he still holds a grudge against Putin for not promoting him early in his career.”

  “Where is Grishin on the political spectrum these days?”

  “He has supported political opposition figures, including Boris Nemtsov.”

  “Why didn’t Putin’s hoods kill Grishin when they murdered Nemtsov?”

  “Russians understand if you kill your political opponents. If you start killing people who helped you rise to power and kept you there, your current supporters might begin wondering if they’re next. That can destabilize a regime.”

  “If it came to a hard choice, would Grishin be with us or Putin?”

  “Ask him.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “He has a dacha in the country and a Moscow apartment in the Presnya district.” Sergei gave me directions to both.

  I knew about the Presnya apartment. The address and Grishin’s name were listed in an Internet phone book. My question was a test to see if Sergei was still batting for our team.

  He started the engine. “Time to go. I have a job and I’m late.”

  “Thank you, Sergei. I wish you well.”

  “I wish you hadn’t come back, my friend. You’re like a man fighting a bear with a hot poker. You better hope the bear gives up before the poker burns your hands.”

  CHAPTER 20

  I GOT BACK to the Leningradsky train station late. Jill was unhappy. Too bad for Jill.

  As we checked our suitcases into a fresh set of lockers, she demanded, “Well?”

  “I have a couple of leads. I’ll tell you later.”

  “Why are you keeping me out of the loop, Max?”

  “For your protection. If the FSB picks us up, you can’t compromise anyone because you don’t know anyone. It’s that simple.” It really wasn’t. Hopefully, when I met Sherri later, she would be able to tell me just how complicated my relationship with Ms. Rucker really was.

  “Now,” I diverted her attention, “we need to buy a few more items of typical Russian clothing so we can blend in when we need to.”

  With Jill in stony silence, we took the Metro to the Partiyanskaya stop northeast of Moscow center and headed for the shopping center. My suit and boots were expensive enough for a FSB colonel, but I bought a good fur coat and an expensive fur hat, appropriate to my rank. I also purchased a set of cheap clothing in case I needed a common man’s disguise. Jill’s purchases matched mine.

  When we returned to Leningradsky Station, I called General Grishin’s Moscow apartment on a pay phone. Good news. No answer. Jill and I packed our suitcases with clothes to sustain us for a few days and took a cab to Grishin’s apartment.

  Presnya is a quiet, pricey, residential neighborhood with easy access to the center of Moscow. The residents are affluent Russians and expatriates working in the Tverskaya Street business district nearby. There were enough restaurants, bars, shops, and Metro stops for us to move about without attracting attention. The area had been yuppified since I was stationed in Moscow. Lower-class housing had been razed and replaced by luxury apartment buildings. Grishin lived in a ten-story version of one. There was no doorman. A uniformed concierge sat at the lobby desk. His name tag read, “Dmitri.”

  He started to speak, but I took the initiative. “Has General Grishin returned yet?”
/>
  “No.”

  “Good.” I flashed my phony FSB creds. “I am Colonel Usenko, FSB. My wife”—I nodded to Jill—“is the general’s grandniece. We’ve just arrived from St. Petersburg. Which apartment is the general’s?”

  “It’s 1004, Colonel.”

  “Thank you. We have a key. We’ll wait for the general.”

  The concierge looked confused momentarily. He recovered and opened a leather-bound book. “Would you sign the guest register, Colonel?”

  Before the book was open all the way, I closed it gently on his hand and gave him a sinister smile. “We want to surprise the general. You won’t expose us, will you?”

  He straightened his back. “Of course not, Colonel.”

  Jill gave him a friendlier smile. “Thank you, Dmitri. What is your family name?”

  “Yolkin.”

  She wanted to leave Dmitri with the unsettling knowledge that a FSB colonel knew his full name. Later, to our peril, we would discover that his real family name was Grishin.

  The brass and glass elevator took us to the tenth floor where Jill stood guard while I picked the lock on apartment 1004.

  Inside, I used my handy-dandy laser detector to check for hidden cameras, while Jill used an equally handy RF sweeper to find listening devices. The place was clean.

  Grishin’s apartment was compact, but comfortable, befitting a general. There was a small kitchen, expansive living room, master bedroom, and a smaller guest room with twin beds. Jill and I unpacked our belongings in the guest room.

  “We’re staying here?” she asked.

  “Until we can’t.”

  “What about the meeting with Sherri at the train station?”

  “If we don’t show, she or Tony-D will come back each day until we make contact. It’s called ‘tradecraft.’”

  “I know what the hell it’s called. I don’t like being kept in the dark. Why are we here? I thought Sherri was going to find a safehouse for us.”

  “This is Moscow. The people Sherri is dealing with might be compromised. If they are and they get Sherri, she can’t give us up.”

  “You’re a cold-blooded son-of-a-bitch.”