“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m taking some time off. I need a vacation. Thanks for everything.”
I sensed something and waited for Sherri to say it: “I’ve got bad news, Max. I have clients in the U.K. I read the London papers to keep up. Scotland Yard found Viktor Lukovsky’s body floating near his yacht last week. The crew has disappeared.”
It was time to run and I needed running equipment. The driver located an upscale shopping mall for me with his GPS. He waited while I bought luggage and warm-weather clothes to fill it. Then, we continued to Washington.
Considering my Farm training and Jill’s warning, I should have gone directly to the airport, but there was the matter of the rented computer in my hotel room. I had tried to erase my digital tracks, but there are smart people in the FBI’s cybercrimes unit. If they got their hands on the computer, they might be able to trace my instructions to the Belize bank. If they found my money, they would eventually find me.
I waited until after midnight before going to the hotel. I had an arrangement with the night desk clerk to let me in through the kitchen. I told him that I was in the middle of a nasty divorce and my wife had hired private detectives to find me. That story and a hundred-dollar bill was all it took to guarantee his services.
The lobby was empty, as it should have been at that hour. I took the elevator to my floor and went to my room. The automatic light didn’t come on as I stepped inside. I sensed that something was wrong and stepped backward into the hall before the door closed. I got a hard shove from behind that propelled me into the room. The door slammed shut behind me. The floor lamp by the window came on. A man in a dark suit was sitting in the chair next to the lamp. He was holding a stun gun.
“I won’t use this unless it’s necessary,” he told me. “Someone wants to talk to you. Will you come quietly?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
I shrugged and raised my arms.
The man behind me patted me down for weapons. Finding none, he peeled off my trench coat and dropped it. He said, “Turn around.”
I did. He cuffed my wrists in front of me and covered the cuffs with my coat.
We took the elevator back to the lobby. It was dark and the clerk was missing. A black SUV was waiting. They pushed me into the back seat with an “escort” on either side. We sat in silence until the driver exited the lobby and joined us. As we drove away, the lobby lights flickered to life.
The fellow who had patted me down produced a pair of blacked-out, wraparound sunglasses. “Hold still. I’m going to put these on you. It’s better if you don’t know where we’re going.”
“Better for who?” I asked.
No one answered.
There wasn’t much traffic. We drove in silence, at a good clip, for over an hour to someplace rural. I heard crickets against an otherwise quiet night as they helped me out of the SUV.
My escorts led me up a gravel path, into a house with wooden front steps, down a hall, and downstairs to a basement. We walked down another hallway and stopped. A door opened. I was led into a room and pushed onto a cold metal chair. Someone removed the coat from my cuffs, but left the cuffs in place. Off came my blacked-out sunglasses.
Instinctively, I looked away from the harsh lights in front of me and saw Jill sitting in a bare metal armchair to my right. She wore the clothes from our train ride. She wasn’t wearing cuffs or a headscarf. Her blond hair hung down in disorderly ringlets and there was a bruise on her chin. Evidently, she hadn’t come quietly.
She looked at me. I saw anger and determination in her face.
We were in an austere box of a room. Halfway between our chairs and the desk in front of us was a large, circular drain in the floor with a perforated metal cover. My optimistic hope was that this was the shower room at Miss Hortense’s Country School for Wayward Girls, and the reason we were there for our “talk” was because these guys couldn’t afford upscale office space. I had to abandon that theory when I saw the walls. They were covered with spongy, burgundy panels consisting of vertical rows of sawteeth designed to muffle sound. The ceiling had the same paneling. I suspected the room had a more ominous purpose than girls’ showers.
Someone turned down the harsh lights. I looked up and squinted. There, sitting on the edge of an ugly, gray, metal desk was Rodney. He wore a white, knit sweater with baggy sleeves and light gray slacks, white socks, and cordovan penny loafers. One leg dangled over the edge of the desk. The other was straight, his foot on the floor. He could have been at his country club’s pro shop, casually holding a 9-iron. Instead, he was holding the ivory-handled .32 automatic I had seen in his collection.
He gave us his disarming smile. “Don’t concern yourself with the gun. It’s for my protection. You two have proven yourselves more-than-capable street brawlers. Whereas, I must rely on the gentlemanly art of shooting to defend myself, should the need arise. I hope it won’t.”
Rodney laid the gun on the desk between his right hip and an open package. He followed my gaze to the package and smiled, a triumphant little upturned crack in his patrician face.
“Yes, Max, it’s what you think it is. We intercepted your package of presidential dirt before Stan Herman got his greedy reporter’s hands on it. But look at the bright side. Now, we don’t have to gouge out his eyes, cut out his tongue, and set him to wander in a wilderness of fake news.” Rodney treated us to a grand smile. He was enjoying himself watching us watch him, while he enjoyed himself.
He moved on to his intuitive brilliance. “Because of your Moscow history with Stan, we guessed he would be your go-to guy if you went public with the kompromat.”
Rodney placed his palm on the package. “I assume there are others.”
“Lots,” I assured him.
“And should I also assume that, by a certain time, you must contact someone or appear in public to prevent the distribution of such packages?”
“Absolument.” I gave him a taste of my French. If I had to go, I was going in style.
Rodney sighed, “Humm.” That was his usual “tell” that he had made a decision.
“You two should have guessed by now that the decision to fire Max and dangle him to Bowen was made on the Seventh Floor.”
Like a lot of decisions made on the Seventh Floor, this one had unintended consequences. I didn’t say that. It was my turn to listen and learn.
Rodney pressed on. Mainly for Jill—a relative newbie at the Agency—Rodney said, “Let me share some history with you. During his rise to power, Putin developed a list of enemies and marked some for assassination. High on that list were Russians who had defected to the West. Alexander Litvinenko was such a man. He was a FSB officer who defected and became a naturalized British citizen. In 2006, Putin had him assassinated in London by putting a radioactive substance in his tea. When the Brits failed to retaliate in a meaningful way, Putin was emboldened. He realized he could literally get away with murder.”
Sarcastically, Jill added, “He could shoot someone down on Fifth Avenue and no one would care.”
“Precisely. So, Putin ordered his military intelligence service to develop a network of assassins—a revenge squad, if you will—who would roam the world killing his enemies, with traitors at the top of the list.
“That didn’t happen immediately,” Rodney continued. “It took time to spin up the network: recruiting, training, organizing, and so forth. At the same time, Putin was busy with so many other activities: robbing his country blind, dealing with sanctions, killing off his domestic political opposition, invading Ukraine, annexing Crimea, the Sochi Olympics, not to mention meddling in the Middle East, European elections, and ours. We suspect that all of these concerns may have pushed his revenge squad to the back burner.
“Then, along came the Ironside Dossier, forcing the issue of disloyal Russians to the front burner of Putin’s fevered brain. He was incensed that Russians, some apparently in his government, gave Ironside information that spoiled Ted
Walldrum’s smooth transition to power in the White House. Putin became obsessed with finding and killing Ironside’s sources. So, the revenge squad was set loose, but not as you might imagine.”
Rodney shifted his weight further back on the desk so that both legs dangled over the front edge. “You will remember that Putin is an expert in judo, a martial art that advocates using an opponent’s strength to defeat him. It was Putin’s idea to use this technique to unmask the traitors who helped Ironside. He planned to use a Western spy to find the traitors so the revenge squad could kill them. With the sources eliminated, no one could verify Ironside’s allegations that Walldrum was compromised by Russia.
“Bill Bowen, a Moscow tool, was enlisted to find an ex-Western spy to ferret out the traitors. We found out about Bowen’s project and wanted to control it to get the Walldrum kompromat, if there was any.”
Jill was puzzled. “I was working for Bowen and I didn’t find out what he was doing until after he had hired Max. How did the Agency know what Bowen was up to?”
Rodney turned deadly serious. “That is the secret that can never, ever be discussed again by the two of you. Understood?”
We both said, “Yes.” At that moment, I also understood that we might not be going down that drain in the floor. Still, Rodney had the gun, I was handcuffed, and he could change his mind.
Not that it mattered in a soundproof room, but Rodney lowered his voice. “The Agency has a source very close to Putin. We share him with MI6. Let’s call him Source Ivan, for the purposes of this discussion. Ivan gave Ironside some of the material for his dossier. When Ivan became aware of Putin’s scheme to find Ironside’s sources, he feared for his life. He knew that if Putin discovered his identity, it meant death for him and his family. Ivan got word of the scheme to the Agency and wanted us to pull him out. We wanted him to remain in place. To put Ivan’s fears to rest, we had to sabotage Bowen’s traitor hunt.”
Rodney turned to Jill. “We knew you had infiltrated Bowen’s money laundering operation, but we had no assurance that Bowen would let you join in the traitor hunt.”
“That’s where I came in,” I concluded.
“Yes. To clear the air, I’ll be brutally honest. I sent Vanessa to Australia under false pretenses. I set you up with Claudia to have you fired. I dangled you to Bowen. He took the bait and we were in business.” There was no hint of apology in Rodney’s tone.
I was angry. “You did a damn good job of ruining my life and my career.”
“We’re at war. Wars always result in collateral damage.”
“Is that all Vanessa and I were to the CIA, acceptable collateral damage?”
“It wasn’t that cold-blooded, Max. Our leadership agonized over how you would be treated. In the end, we determined that we needed you to be authentically pissed at the Agency and money-hungry. Our reasoning was that, should Bowen or one of his Russian colleagues give you truth serum or a polygraph test, you would pass and not end up on a garbage heap with your head and fingertips missing.”
I let Rodney know I knew that wasn’t the only reason. “And if I was really pissed and desperate, I might not let moral or legal restraints influence how I got the job done.”
“That, too,” he admitted without hesitation. “Again, Max, I remind you that we are at war, even if our Congress doesn’t know it.”
Something else was bothering me. “Why were you tracking me with the sat phone? Was that to let the Russians know when and where I made contact with the sources Putin wanted killed?”
“That is a convenient theory for your conscience, but incorrect. My sat phone didn’t lead the Russians to Bogdanovich and your Russian Embassy contact, Boris Kulik. It was your sloppy tradecraft that led them to those sources.
“The Russians were about to burglarize Ironside’s home when you showed up and beat them to the punch. They simply followed you to Bogdanovich and Kulik.” Rodney couldn’t resist a dig. “Better tradecraft on your part could have saved both sources.”
I gave it some thought. Rodney’s explanation raised another question. “How did you know the Russians were prepping to burgle Ironside’s house before we got there?”
Rodney cleared his throat. “That’s above your pay grade.”
“I don’t have a pay grade, remember. I think you know because Zabluda told you. He’s quarterbacking the revenge squad and he’s on the Agency payroll, isn’t he?”
“Yes!” snapped Jill, her voice carrying triumph of an “ah-ha” moment. “That’s why I was told to avoid him. It wasn’t because the PM wanted to catch Zabluda getting kill orders from Moscow. He already had orders. The Agency didn’t want me to take out its asset.”
That raised another Machiavellian thought in my mind. “How does Zabluda work for the Agency and MI6, and make his bones with the Kremlin?”
Rodney didn’t answer.
Jill did. She was on a roll. “They let Zabluda kill off a few old Russian defectors who had outlived their intelligence value and their shelf life on the pension rolls.”
“Come on, Rodney,” I needled. “You were going to be brutally honest. Zabluda has to be a double agent. He was the guy in the confessional who told me about the plot to get Walldrum the Nobel Prize.”
Rodney was menacing. “Careful, don’t talk yourself down the drain.”
I didn’t think so. “If you were going to kill us, we’d be dead by now. Besides, Source Ivan is the Agency’s big secret. Zabluda is just convenient dirty laundry.”
Jill had another ah-ha. “Zabluda is low-level. He wouldn’t know about a Nobel Prize plot involving Walldrum, Putin, and Kim Jung-Un. Someone told him about it.”
My light went on, too. “Source Ivan told Zabluda. Zabluda is Ivan’s courier. In the confessional, Zabluda told me that, since the election, he couldn’t trust CIA contacts in Moscow. Zabluda was just the mouthpiece. It was Ivan who no longer trusted Moscow Station.”
The Zabluda cat was out of the bag and Rodney looked resigned to it.
“The London warehouse hit …” Jill recalled. “Zabluda was the team leader. Why was he standing watch outside? Why wasn’t he inside supervising the action?”
Reluctantly, Rodney answered. “After Max left Bogdanovich, Zabluda’s team killed the Russian. After, they watched to see if Bogdanovich’s MI6 keepers would show up. They did, Ironside, Swope-Soames, and Jock ‘What’s-his-name.’ Zabluda reported what he saw to Moscow. Back came orders to kidnap Ironside, make him ID his sources, and kill the others as punishment for aiding the Russian traitor.
“That put Zabluda in a bind,” said Rodney. “He’s sitting on an order to kill British spies, but the Brits know he’s on our payroll. Zabluda’s solution was to have his men execute the kill order while he stood watch. If he ever had to account for himself, he could claim to the Brits and to us that he wasn’t a shooter at the warehouse.”
The more Rodney told us, the dirtier it sounded.
I asked, “Why did the Russians kidnap me at the warehouse?”
“They killed Ironside by mistake when he drew a gun. Since they knew you had burglarized Ironside’s home, I assume they thought you might know Ironside’s sources. Zabluda would have left you had he not been standing watch outside.”
Rodney gave his assessment. “Overall, the warehouse hit was potentially a huge screwup. If the Russians had taken you with them, you wouldn’t have gone to Russia to collect the kompromat. Our plan, as well as Putin’s, would have been trashed. Bowen would have had to start over.”
“And you wouldn’t have had another Max to dangle.” I was seething with anger.
Rodney just gave me a sad look.
Jill asked, “Why is Zabluda working for the Agency?”
Happy to escape my hateful stare, Rodney explained. “Zabluda is a talented rogue and soldier-of-fortune, working both sides of the ideological divide. He’s a friend of Source Ivan and the perfect courier. His job requires freedom of movement in Western nations. Ivan identified him to us for recruitment.”
With detachment, Rodney noted, “Zabluda is a pirate. Recruitment wasn’t a hard sell, but we do prefer insurance. Zabluda has twin sons in the Russian Army. We compromised one of them while he was on R and R in Cuba. That’s our hold on Zabluda and, of course, we could always out him as an Agency asset. Lastly, he likes money and wants to defect someday … if he’s not promoted to general.” Rodney smiled at me. “Now that he has your five million dollars, he may not wait for that promotion.”
“If you want to ensure my silence about the kompromat, you could get my money from Zabluda and return it to me.”
“That money is long gone down the rabbit hole, I’m afraid.” Rodney lifted his chin and his voice. “We had something else in mind for you two. Jill, you did excellent work. Your reward is a promotion and the posting of your choice. The terms of your continued good standing with the Agency are that the words ‘Source Ivan,’ ‘Zabluda,’ ‘kompromat,’ and ‘Ted Walldrum’ are never uttered by your luscious lips, written by your lovely hand, sent by you from a mountaintop with mirrors, or communicated in any manner whatsoever that connects one to the other. Agreed?”
Jill gave him a sullen, “Agreed.”
Rodney slid down from the desk and inspected the bruise on Jill’s jaw as if he hadn’t noticed it before. He reached out with a forefinger and stopped short of touching her face. “I apologize for the roughhouse. The men I sent for you were warned of your prowess in karate. I fear they took every precaution to escape a disabling blow.”
“Comes with the job,” replied Jill. “I just hope I meet those bastards in a dark alley some night.”
Rodney made a point of examining the scar on her forehead. “In a less emotional atmosphere, you might reconsider that aspiration. We don’t want you to become the Agency’s Salome, hiding your battle scars behind seven decorative headscarves.” He glanced at me and gave Jill a nasty smile.
Jill glared daggers at him.
Rodney went behind the metal desk and pressed a call button. An intense-looking middle-age woman in a dark pants suit and white blouse came into the room. Rodney said, “Please escort Miss Rucker home.”
The President’s Dossier Page 30