Collusion

by Newt Gingrich

  Hardin glanced at his buddies, shrugged, and said, “Fair enough.” Hardin was a big man, with softball-size fists and thick biceps. Garrett braced himself.

  Hardin lowered his right shoulder and let fly a thunder-packed blow against the left side of Garrett’s head, causing his mouth to flood with blood and nearly knocking him unconscious.

  Garrett staggered back, spit, and felt one of his teeth to determine if it was cracked. “That was a hell of a wallop. I’ll give that to you, Hardin. Now we’re even.” He leaned forward to retrieve his gym bag. Hardin stepped forward and caught Garrett in his abdomen by surprise, knocking the wind out of him and causing him to fall on his knees, clutching his gut.

  “No, Garrett, now we’re even,” Hardin declared triumphantly. He turned his head to smile at his buddies.

  He never saw it coming. By the time he realized Garrett was springing upward onto his feet, it was too late. He might have spotted Garrett’s left, but he certainly didn’t have time to react to his right. Garrett was too quick. His left busted Hardin’s nose, his right landed under Hardin’s jaw knocking his head backward with tremendous force. A loud cracking noise.

  Most men would have been knocked out, but then the same could have been said about the blow that Hardin had first landed on Garrett. Instead Hardin came at Garrett with both of his huge fists, ready for blood. Garrett feigned surprise and ducked, causing Hardin to follow his fist. Garrett delivered two hard punches to Hardin’s middle but the big man still did not fall. Because of his size and strength, Hardin was used to defeating his opponents with a few mighty blows and was not a well-practiced pugilist. Although smaller, Garrett sidestepped and quick-punched Hardin, hitting his face three times without taking any shots in return. His fourth hit caused Hardin’s eyes to tilt upward, a fifth and Hardin was done. He collapsed onto the hallway floor.

  “Get out of my way,” Garrett said to the other two.

  “It was a fair fight,” one said. Both stepped clear.

  Five Minutes Later, Outside the U.S. Embassy

  “What kept you—” Marcus Austin started to ask but stopped when he saw the swelling around Garrett’s eye, his bloody swollen lips, and nasty red bruises on his cheeks. He’d beaten Hardin but not without first taking several licks.

  “You look like hell,” Austin said. “We don’t have much time. Get in the third car and keep down.”

  Austin usually required his people to take a minimum of ten hours to go black in Moscow. Even longer during daylight. Moscow was a city of snitches. Its older residents had been groomed during the Soviet days. Back then, every Russian had been required to meet weekly with block captains to be questioned about their friends, neighbors, or strangers. Everyone was suspect. Everyone was a rat. The best got rewarded. It was a custom that had been passed on to the younger generation.

  Garrett was riding with a State Department protective detail that was escorting Ambassador Duncan and Heidi to Vnukovo International Airport, south of Moscow, for a flight to Geneva. An international financial summit. Everyone knew the FSB would be trailing the embassy’s four-vehicle convoy. Garrett’s escape would be on the return ride. He would leap from the passenger side of the third SUV as it turned at a tight V intersection. The fourth SUV guarding the rear of the convoy would slow, giving Garrett a maximum of ten seconds before the FSB following them could make the turn. Ten seconds. Just enough time for him to disappear down the stairs of a nearby metro station and hope the Muscovites on the street minded their own business and didn’t wave down the FSB cars.

  Inside the tinted-glass third vehicle, Garrett slipped on a pair of worn deliveryman coveralls. Through his swollen eyes, he checked his gym bag a second time. Everything was there, including his SIG Sauer.

  Three Minutes before 2:00 p.m., Russian Foreign Ministry

  Deputy Foreign Minister Pavel tucked a thick file of papers into his briefcase to give the appearance that he was taking work home. He checked his reflection in the mirror hanging near his door, straightened his burgundy tie, and surveyed the room’s interior for a final time. The past.

  “I’m leaving to take my grandson to a museum,” he declared as he passed his longtime secretary.

  “Excuse me, Deputy Minister, but there’s a meeting at three today that you are scheduled to attend. Should I warn them you might be a few minutes late?” she asked.

  He glared down at her. “You have fulfilled your duties by informing me of the meeting. If I wished for you to tell them, I would have asked.”

  She was used to his ill temper and sharp tone and quickly lowered her eyes. “Yes, Deputy Minister.”

  For a moment, he considered apologizing. They had worked together nearly three decades. She had followed him up the chain of command and, after he fled, he knew Gromyko would interrogate her and, most likely, punish her for not realizing that Pavel planned to defect.

  He realized that he knew little about her personal life. She was widowed and had grandchildren but lived alone. He’d never bothered to inquire where. She, on the other hand, knew a great deal about him. After his wife had died, she’d taken on the task of keeping tabs on his housekeeper, ordering his clothing, and handling all the dozens of forms when his daughter’s ashes and those of her husband had been returned to Moscow. She’d also dealt with the paperwork required to enroll Peter in Moscow State School #57.

  Yet even she could not be trusted. If he suddenly changed character and offered her a warm parting word, she might report him. He kept walking and rode the elevator downstairs to where his driver was waiting.

  They arrived at 3:05 p.m. outside Peter’s school, where the headmaster was patiently waiting at its front entrance. Pavel offered no apology for being tardy, extended no appreciation for the headmaster’s personal attention to Peter. There was no need. Pavel knew that the headmaster was treating him with the upmost respect because someday that same headmaster intended to seek a favor—at least the headmaster thought that he would be able to do that. A joke on him now that Pavel was going to defect. Tit-for-tat was how the old Soviet system worked. Everyone knelt to the nomenklatura to keep the Rube Goldberg country limping along. It was still the way Russia operated.

  “Drop us at the Public Museum of the Moscow Metro,” Pavel instructed his driver.

  “Not the Museum of Art Deco?” he replied.

  He’d not mentioned the art deco museum. Clearly, that information had been relayed to the driver either by one of Gromyko’s goons listening to Pavel’s earlier call or the headmaster.

  “When does a driver control a deputy minister’s schedule?” Pavel asked indignantly. “You will wait outside the Public Museum of the Moscow Metro until we are finished.”

  Pavel rode with Peter in silence. He remembered a time when his grandson had spoken. Peter had stopped unexpectedly at age five. No one could explain why. Pavel suddenly felt an urge. He reached over and tousled Peter’s dark brown hair that the teen wore too unkempt for Pavel’s tastes. Peter smiled at him and then shifted his head to avoid Pavel’s hand. He looked outside. He’d always been a curious boy.

  Students at School #57 were not required to wear uniforms but Pavel had demanded that his grandson dress appropriate to his grandfather’s status. Nothing with U.S. or British sports logos. No baseball caps. No denim jeans, despite their popularity, or fancy athletic shoes. This afternoon Peter was wearing a red wool sweater over a dark blue button-collared shirt and black leather shoes. Pavel noticed sideburn hairs beginning to appear on the thirteen-year-old’s baby-soft skin. Although Peter didn’t speak, he paid attention. Answered with nods and facial expressions. He was lanky, an awkward teen when he moved.

  Pavel removed the envelope with the two family photos from his briefcase and handed them to Peter to see. His grandson’s sparkling blue eyes lit up. Pavel took them back and slipped them in his suit coat pocket. He was taking them from his briefcase because it would have appeared odd for Pavel to tote his briefcase into the museum.

  “Come, Peter,” Pav
el said, taking the teen’s hand when they arrived outside the three-story museum. As they exited the car, Pavel saw three men in dark suits step from a vehicle behind them. There was no parking on the busy street and the fact that both his driver and their driver remained parked there was a clear signal that they were either Gromyko’s men or FSB officers.

  Pavel checked the time and realized he was running late. Ten after three. No time to waste. He guided Peter inside the building, but rather than going upstairs to the museum, he led his grandson down a flight of stairs to the entrance of the underground train station.

  Opened in 1957, the stop was not nearly as ornate as Stalin’s original creations. Still, it was ornate. Dark gray and black floor tiles. Brown marble-covered walls. Gold-plated sconces illuminating a wide corridor packed with travelers.

  Pavel heard the sound of a train entering and quickened their pace, still holding his grandson’s hand while glancing over his shoulder at the three men who were now pushing their way through the throngs of riders that separated them from Pavel. Down a flight of stairs to the platform, still a good forty feet or so ahead of them.

  Pavel went immediately to the first car of the train, ignoring those on the platform packing its cars. He tapped on the train engineer’s window but was ignored until he flashed his ministry credentials. Behind him, the three pursuers were being stalled trying to descend the stairs. Too many riders blocked their way but they were closing in.

  “What’s your name?” Pavel demanded when the engineer slid open the car’s window.

  “Yuri Kuznetsov,” the startled driver replied.

  “I am Deputy Foreign Minister Yakov Prokofyevich Pavel and I need you to follow my exact instructions. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Deputy Minister.”

  Pavel looked over his shoulder again. His three pursuers were still midway down the stairs, still being blocked.

  Pavel barked out his orders.

  “Deputy Minister, may I ask—”

  “Not if you wish to continue being employed, Yuri Kuznetsov.”

  Still holding Peter’s hand, Pavel lifted his red Foreign Ministry passport, waving it for all riders to see.

  “Make room!” he shouted. Those on the platform parted. Two women, who’d already boarded the first car, obediently exited so Pavel and Peter could enter.

  Pavel watched from inside the car as the three FSB officers shoved their way through the mob and forced themselves onto the third car—the one closest to the subway steps—just as the train’s doors were closing.

  The engineer drove the train forward but suddenly stopped after traveling less than five feet and opened the doors. But only to the first car. He had done exactly as Pavel had instructed him.

  Pavel pulled Peter outside onto the platform. The engineer immediately closed the first car’s doors and drove the train forward, trapping the three men following Pavel in the third car.

  “We must hurry!” Pavel exclaimed, tugging his grandson through the curious crowd waiting for the next train. They headed upstairs and outside. The Billa market was less than a block away.

  Brett Garrett stepped from the Zil delivery truck outside the store’s entrance when he spotted Pavel and Peter approaching.

  He moved quickly, opening the passenger door. Peter first. Pavel next. In under thirty seconds, Garrett was popping the Zil into first gear.

  The Billa market was located on a rectangular block. Its entrance faced Khamovnicheskiy, an east-westbound street. At the western end of the block was Usacheva, which ran north-south. The eastern end connected to Dovatora. The street at the top of the rectangle—that ran parallel to Khamovnicheskiy—was Savelyeva, completing the rectangle.

  As Garrett headed east, two GAZ-2330 Tigr armored military vehicles suddenly appeared, nose-to-nose, blocking the Dovatora intersection. Ten tons of armored vehicles now blocked their escape route. Garrett could see General Andre Gromyko stepping from them. Ten armed men, five on either side of him. Weapons pointed at the Zil delivery truck.

  “It’s a trap!” Pavel exclaimed. “Gromyko knew!”

  Garrett didn’t have time to agree or calculate who had betrayed their escape plan. He threw the truck into reverse and began speeding backward west against one-way traffic toward Usacheva. Cars behind him honked, drivers swerved, but before they could reach the north-south intersection, two more Tigr military vehicles appeared, closing off their route.

  Panicked, Pavel reached for the door handle, ready to flee on foot, but Garrett grabbed his shoulder.

  “If you want the kid to survive, stay put,” he ordered. “Crawl onto the floor. It’s armored. Both of you.” The old man and his grandson slid together from their seats into the narrow footwell that had been reinforced with heavy steel plates.

  Garrett pressed down on the Zil’s accelerator, catapulting east once again, heading directly at the two Tigrs and General Gromyko.

  The sight of the speeding Zil caused Gromyko to run for cover. Shouting, “The engine! The tires! The American driver stays alive!”

  His men fired their Vityaz-SN submachine guns; 9x19 mm slugs peppered the front of the approaching truck. Several pierced the radiator. Steam shot from the holes, but the truck kept speeding forward. Other slugs punctured the Zil’s tires but didn’t flatten them. The truck’s regular tires had been replaced by Marcus Austin with Hutchinson Composite RunFlat tires, as bulletproof as possible. Despite Gromyko’s warnings to aim low, the Zil’s windshield became a spiderweb of cracks and bullet holes. Working in Garrett’s favor was the ammunition. The shooters were firing hollow points designed to mushroom on impact for maximum damage to human flesh. Good for killing people, but not effective at piercing armor.

  It looked as if the Zil was on a kamikaze path, about to crash headfirst into the two military vehicles blockading its route. But when it reached the entrance to the metro station, Garrett swerved hard to his left, jumping the vehicle onto the sidewalk, causing watching people to dive out of its path. There wasn’t a street here but there was a pedestrian walkway. It ran along the western edge of the Sportivnaya metro station. Just wide enough for the Zil.

  But Garrett wasn’t free yet. Midway up the pedestrian walkway that connected Khamovnicheskiy to Savelyeva, its northern border, were six concrete steps.

  In those split seconds, Garrett tried to calculate if what remained of the Zil’s front tires would hit the bottom step and mount it, lifting the truck up to the subsequent steps. Or would the front-heavy Zil’s nose slam into the upper steps first before its front tires made contact, stopping the vehicle cold. He had no choice.

  Garrett braced for a collision as he pushed the Zil’s engine to its limits. The first sound he heard was the truck’s front bumper scraping the bottom of the first step, sending sparks flying on each side. But before its front bumper collided with the second step, the front wheels hit and bounced up, lifting the vehicle, enabling it to awkwardly climb the staircase.

  Garrett’s risky move caught Gromyko completely off guard. He’d not stationed any vehicles or men on Savelyeva. Garrett turned left when he reached it, driving toward Usacheva, the north-south avenue to his west. As he entered that intersection, the two Tigr vehicles that had been blocking Khamovnicheskiy backed up from their nose-to-nose position. Both drove north on Usacheva in pursuit.

  Garrett’s encrypted SAT phone rang. From the footwell, Pavel opened the gym bag and handed Garrett his phone.

  “Heard your driving is worse than mine,” Thomas Jefferson Kim chirped. He was watching Garrett from one of his satellites.

  “Funny, but I’m a bit busy right now.”

  “Drive toward the Novodevichy Convent,” Kim said. “I got Marcus Austin on another line to help us get you free. I’ll pass his instructions to you.”

  “Where the hell is Novo—this convent?” Garrett asked, checking the truck’s rear side mirrors. The two Tigrs were closing in. Even more worrisome, one of Gromyko’s men in the lead Tigr was standing in the gun portal, readying a
7.62 PKP “Pecheneg” machine gun. Unlike the weapons fired by Gromyko’s ground troops, that machine gun’s rounds were capable of penetrating the Zil’s cargo area and cab when fired from behind.

  Kim said, “Get ready to take the first left turn, running west.”

  General Gromyko’s Mercedes was more agile and quicker than the Tigrs, but he was starting from the farthest distance. Playing catch-up. Still, from Kim’s office in Tysons Corner, he could see the general joining his troops in pursuit.

  “Oh,” Kim said, “I forgot to mention that that left will take you on a one-way street, going against oncoming traffic.”

  Garrett didn’t have time to reply. He swerved left at the same moment the machine gunner behind him unleashed a barrage of rounds. Because Garrett was turning in front of a southbound truck, that vehicle took the brunt of the rounds. Bullets blew into the vehicle’s cab, instantly killing its driver and causing the truck to smash into a storefront.

  Garrett tossed the SAT phone to Peter. “I need both hands.” The teen immediately slipped up onto the seat next to him, buckled his seat belt, and held the phone near enough so Garrett could hear over its speaker.

  Garrett downshifted and began swerving left and then right to avoid the one-way traffic coming at him. The GAZ Tigr turned left, too. Its gunner was about to unleash another round of bullets when one of the oncoming cars swerved onto the sidewalk to avoid the Zil and then jerked back onto the street, its driver unaware that the Tigr was about to hit him. The more powerful military vehicle smashed into his car, knocking it onto its side, sending a cascade of golden sparks in all directions. That collision caused two more cars that had dodged the Zil to hit the car in front of the Tigr. The second Tigr rear-ended the first, completely jamming the street, making it impassable. The first Tigr’s driver pushed down hard on the accelerator, hoping to climb over the stopped vehicles. Instead the Tigr got stuck on the roof of the first car. A furious Gromyko, who was following them, ordered his driver to reverse and find a parallel street.

  Through the Zil’s cracked windshield, Garrett spotted turban-shaped spires in front of him as he turned off the one-way street onto a north-south thoroughfare. Four gold-plated domes.