“Who was he sending them to?” Mayberry asked.
“The secretary of state’s personal account. They were intercepted and blocked by the hacker.”
Harris and Mayberry scanned the printouts while Kim continued. “The first intercepted emails were about the summit, but then Ambassador Duncan reported that a female embassy employee threw red wine on a network television correspondent at a birthday party for his daughter. This correspondent had written several complimentary stories about the ambassador’s wife, Heidi. They were friends. The reporter suspected the female employee was shielding Brett Garrett, protecting him. So the reporter asked Heidi Duncan after the party if the employee was a covert CIA officer posing as a member of her staff.”
“You can’t reveal if someone is a CIA operative,” Mayberry said.
“Heidi didn’t, but she did mention it to her husband. She told him that she might have a deep-cover CIA agent on her staff and that prompted the ambassador to go on an email tirade.”
Kim leaned forward from his sofa seat. Elbows resting on his knees. Eyes looking directly at Harris. “This is where the ambassador screws the pooch.”
Harris looked sullen. “Please continue.”
“Ambassador Duncan tells the secretary that the CIA apparently is spying on Heidi and he wants the agency to back off. What the ambassador doesn’t realize is the hacker is intercepting his emails and it’s at this point where the hacker begins writing back to Duncan on the aircraft.”
“Are you telling me this hacker began interrogating him?” Harris asked.
“Exactly, the hacker asks why Brett Garrett is in Moscow and Duncan—thinking he is communicating with the secretary—tells him everything, including how Garrett was in the midst of smuggling a high-ranking Russian asset out of the country. He was like water gushing from a garden hose.”
“Why would he do something so careless?” Mayberry asked.
“Because he thought he was talking to the secretary and because he was venting. He was furious the CIA was spying on his wife.”
Harris put down the printouts that Kim had handed him. “This is why the president shouldn’t have doled out the Russian ambassadorship as a political plum. A few hours of security protocol training apparently wasn’t enough for him.”
“In his defense,” Kim said, “there’s no way Ambassador Duncan realized he was exchanging emails with a Russian hacker.”
“Have you identified this hacker?” Mayberry asked.
“Only by his nom de plume—Magician. Because of his computer skills, I suspect he works for GIT inside the Moscow Station.”
“Your rival when it comes to government computer contracts,” Harris noted.
“Perhaps it’s time for State to switch IT support,” Kim replied.
Harris said, “I’ll deal with this. Now, has Garrett tried to contact you?”
“No,” Kim said. “Our last communication was on the SAT phone twenty-four hours ago during the Moscow chase.”
“Do you know what’s happened to him and the others?” Mayberry asked Harris.
Director Harris shook his head. “The last word Garrett spoke before destroying the SAT phone was ‘Gordievsky,’” Harris said.
“Like the KGB defector who MI-6 got out of Russia?” Mayberry asked. “It must be a message. The Brits wrote emergency instructions on how to flee Russia in invisible ink in a collection of Shakespeare sonnets and gave it to Gordievsky. When he got into trouble, he soaked the book in water and they appeared. That’s how he knew to take the train to the Finnish border,” Mayberry recalled.
Harris agreed. “He’s not going to Ukraine. We assume he’s going to follow Gordievsky’s escape route.”
“Where did Gordievsky cross over?” Kim asked.
“Just outside Vyborg,” Mayberry answered. “About twenty-four miles from the Finnish border. Before Stalin seized it, Vyborg belonged to Finland.”
“How far is Vyborg from Moscow?” Kim asked.
“If you’re driving, eleven or twelve hours,” Harris replied.
“If he drove all night, he could already be there waiting,” Mayberry said.
Harris disagreed. “The main highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg would be too risky. Even if General Gromyko assumes Garrett is heading to Ukraine, he will have roadblocks along all major routes east.”
Addressing Kim, Harris said, “I need you in Langley working with my people to positively identify this Magician. We need to nail him. But before you go, answer me this. Can you tell me if this Magician intercepted the call in time to hear the word Gordevisky?”
“I’m not sure,” Kim said. “I’d put the odds at fifty-fifty.”
“Thank you, Mr. Kim,” Harris said. “You can go now.” He waited until Kim had exited the safe house.
“There’s a high probability that General Gromyko is going to catch Garrett and Pavel,” Harris said. “If they do, Gromyko will, more than likely, kill them and move forward with his poison attack here. That means you’re our best option for learning where the Antifa attack will happen and when.”
“Aysan Rivera,” Mayberry said. “Have your people intercepted her from wherever she fled?”
“No, she never boarded her plane at Dulles.”
“Where is she?” Mayberry said, genuinely concerned.
“I was hoping you could answer that question.”
Twenty-Seven
Deputy Foreign Minister Pavel began complaining twenty minutes after they exited Moscow. “We should be in a Range Rover. The mafia drives them and the police won’t trouble them. In this BMW, they will think we’re rich and can pay a large bribe.”
The State Inspection of Safety of Road Traffic officers (GIBDD) were known to find any excuse to pull over drivers and threatened them with jail unless they were paid bribes.
Another gripe seconds later. This time about the two major highways connecting Moscow to St. Petersburg. “The M-11 is where a wealthy Russian would drive. Fewer holes. Not the M-10. You selected the wrong road.”
Next came a direct order. “Drive faster. You’re calling attention to us by traveling so slowly.”
Garrett eyeballed the BMW’s speedometer. The national speed limit was 100 kilometers (about 62 mph). He was driving 144 kilometers (90 mph) and still being pressured.
Garrett ignored Pavel.
By this point they’d been on the M-10 motorway long enough for General Gromyko to have ordered roadblocks. Garrett could see a line of cars slowing in front of them. He had counterfeit documents, passports, and travel papers in his gym bag, but Gromyko would have distributed photos of Pavel and Peter, and the two of them would be recognized even though they were traveling under fake names. Would a lucrative bribe be enough for a GIBDD or FSB officer to look the other way? Risky. Another alternative: Garrett’s SIG Sauer. Kill anyone who stopped them. Even more risky.
“We need to get off this highway now,” Garrett announced. “We should find someplace to hide—at least until night.”
“You didn’t plan for this?” Pavel asked. “The SVR would have.”
“I wasn’t planning on being ambushed in Moscow.”
“There was a leak obviously by your people,” Pavel lectured. “Americans talk too much. Involve too many. Now turn off the motorway and I will direct you to a dacha where we will be safe from Gromyko.”
“Whose dacha? Nothing you own, nothing your family owns, nothing your relatives own, nothing your friends own.”
“Don’t waste my time telling me the obvious. Gromyko will not look for us where I am taking you.”
* * *
Slowing the car, Garrett said, “I don’t like it.”
“Gromyko will not think of this dacha because it belonged to a family whose daughter he raped and murdered.”
“They’ll take you in?” Garrett asked.
“What I told you is sufficient.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Pavel didn’t reply. He was sulking. He was not used to anyone giving
him orders.
Garrett pulled to the side of the road, parked, and turned off the engine.
Pavel wet his lips. “Gromyko was not the first to abuse this woman,” he explained. “A Soviet foreign minister violated her when she was a child. The father protested to the Foreign Ministry, and I was put in charge of paying restitution. That’s how it was done in the Soviet days. We didn’t murder people. I was a junior diplomat and part of the restitution was building the family a dacha. I found the girl a good job after she finished school.”
“I thought you said Gromyko raped and murdered her?”
“Yes, he did. It happened several years later. The girl’s boss took her to a party. She was an adult and quite beautiful. Gromyko was there and when she rejected his advances, he raped her. When her father demanded justice this time, there was no restitution. Gromyko killed him, her, the entire family. He will not think to look for us there. He isn’t aware of my earlier connection to the family.”
“How can you be sure no one is living there now?”
“Tell me, Mr. Garrett,” Pavel replied, “all of the residents know what Gromyko did. Would you risk moving into that dacha?”
Unlike the highway, Pavel directed Garrett onto ruts, washed-out sections of road, and potholes in what road was not yet washed away. Moscow was modern, but this countryside reminded Garrett of developing countries he’d seen. “All the young have left the county,” Pavel volunteered. “The collectives provided work. There is nothing here now except the old, decay, and the stench of death.”
Ten minutes after they passed through a village, Pavel ordered Garrett to turn onto what had been a dirt road but now was a barely visible path overgrown with weeds.
Several limbs had fallen onto the entrance to the heavily treed property. With Peter’s help, Garrett moved them aside while Pavel waited. Eventually they entered a meadow with a creek and no visible neighbors. “This is the price the state puts on child molestation,” Garrett said. “How old was the girl?”
“That is of no importance to you.”
A log cabin made from hand-hewed timber had been built by the creek more than a century before. A newer building had been added to it, but it was now several decades old. Long ago faded were its yellow walls with green trim. The panes in two windows were cracked. So many weeds had overtaken the front door that it would have been impossible to pull outward. A single wooden T from a clothesline stubbornly stood erect. Its mate had fallen. A waist-high, fenced-in area enclosed what Garrett assumed had been a vegetable garden. Fireplace wood was neatly stacked near an outdoor toilet. Easily missed was an ax protruding from a chopping block. Both had been overtaken by an indigenous vine that had curled itself around the stump and up the tool.
Garrett maneuvered the BMW to the back side of the original log cabin and discovered that one wall had been removed from it as a conversion project, turning it into a garage. A 1980s-era Lada was parked inside. Despite dry rot, the tires were still inflated even though the box-shaped Lada’s bright red paint was layered with dirt and bird dung.
Pavel was the first to enter, swatting his hand in front of his face to clear cobwebs. This back door opened inward and he pushed hard against the door, forcing it across the planked floor.
“Fetch firewood,” Pavel ordered his grandson.
“No,” Garrett said. “Smoke will get attention.”
Peter looked at his grandfather, who shrugged and relented.
Garrett was surprised when he stepped inside. The dacha’s interior had remained untouched by human hands. A single, large room, with a curtain closing off a sleeping area. The bed still carefully made. No electricity. Glass jars of canned fruits filled the kitchen cabinets. Contents black now, impossible to identify. Everything store-bought in paper boxes had been ravaged by mice. A musty smell. Two framed watercolors mounted near chairs. A single framed photograph. Parents. Two boys. A girl, maybe five at the time.
A piano.
“The father insisted,” Pavel said without emotion, “for his daughter to take playing lessons.”
Peter walked to it and pushed a dusty white key. Out of tune but it worked.
“Play something for us,” Pavel said. He glanced at Garrett, adding, “Peter is a prodigy. You can play any piece of music to him one time, and he can duplicate it.”
The teenager sat and began to play.
Pavel closed his eyes and hummed along. “Tchaikovsky,” he said. “This is from The Seasons. November.”
He continued to hum along and then said:
In your loneliness do not look at the road,
And do not rush out after the troika.
Suppress at once and forever the fear of longing in your heart.
Peter struck a wrong key.
“You half-wit!” his grandfather snapped, opening his eyes. “If you can’t play Tchaikovsky correctly, you shouldn’t try.”
The teen stopped. Ashamed.
“I thought he did a pretty damn good job,” Garrett said.
“Every child in America does a damn good job even when they don’t,” Pavel retorted. “It is why you are weak.”
Pavel walked across the room to a decorative wooden cabinet. “We are saved,” he declared, removing two bottles of unopened vodka, which he placed on the dacha’s only table.
“Peter, fetch us three glasses,” he said. “Vodka. Our gift to the world.”
He opened the first bottle and filled three cups. “There are many false stereotypes about Russians, but drinking vodka is not one of them.” He examined the bottle. “Russki Standard, one of our most popular. Every educated Russian knows the history of vodka. Why? Because the outside world always asks us, ‘Why do Russians drink so much vodka?’ Do you know the history, Mr. Garrett?”
“No,” he replied, happy that Pavel was now talking so freely.
“Pyotr Arsenjevitch Smirnov introduced vodka to the czars but, like all the rich, he fled Russia after the October Revolution. Where did he go? Where else but America? A joke. His vodka wasn’t accepted there until some American advertising man called it ‘white whiskey.’ Pearls before swine.”
Pavel raised his glass. “Let’s have a toast. You must toast. Let’s toast to us following in the footsteps of Smirnov to America!”
Pavel downed his in one swallow. The teen pushed his away. Garrett sniffed the vodka.
“Vodka doesn’t go bad,” Pavel declared. He reached across the table and reclaimed his grandson’s still full glass, which he also drank in a single gulp. He refilled both glasses for himself.
“Do you think I am trying to poison you?” he asked Garrett.
“Isn’t that how Tchaikovsky died?”
Pavel’s face lit up. “Ah, so now you are trying to impress me. Tchaikovsky died from cholera caused by drinking unboiled water.” He dropped his voice to a whisper and added, “There are others who say he committed suicide from depression brought on by living in Russia.” He laughed and drank one of the glasses before him, his third shot.
Garrett took his first sip. “How is Gromyko planning on attacking the U.S.?”
Pavel’s toothy smile became a frown. “Mr. Garrett, I prefer being kissed before I am—” He stopped short, censoring his language for the sake of his grandson. “You want to learn what I know, first get us to America alive. No more talk about this. We drink and discuss happy things.”
He emptied the fourth glass and nodded at Garrett’s still nearly full one. “Mr. Garrett, let me further disabuse you of any diabolical thoughts. It is physically impossible for an American, any American, including you, to outdrink a Russian when it comes to vodka. If you are hoping to get me drunk to loosen my tongue, you will be deeply disappointed.”
Garrett finished his glass and turned it over so Pavel couldn’t refill it.
“My father was an alcoholic,” he said.
“Every Russian’s father is an alcoholic,” Pavel said, laughing.
“Mine killed himself and my mother in a car crash.”
&nb
sp; “And what?” said Pavel. “You are telling us this sad story to win my sympathy? You hope to establish some personal bond, some intimacy? You forget that you are seated at a table with a Soviet-trained diplomat who has survived a poison attack. You are seated with a Russian father whose only daughter and his son-in-law are dead, leaving my grandson here without a parent. Do you think you have suffered because your parents died? You Americans know nothing about suffering.”
Pavel downed the glass before him. “My country lost thirty-one million people during World War Two. Three hundred thousand soldiers were killed during the Siege of Leningrad. Another million killed, wounded, missing, or captured at Stalingrad along with forty thousand civilians. We remember this because every family in Russia lost someone. You are like spoiled children compared to us. We know death. We accept death. We expect death.”
Despite Pavel’s earlier bragging, the vodka was taking root. His eyes were becoming glassy.
“You hoped to impress me because you knew about Tchaikovsky’s death. Tell me about Vasily Semyonovich Grossman if you are so well educated about my country.”
“You win. I have no idea who that is,” Garrett replied.
“This is because Americans only study American history. They are ignorant about the rest of the world. Grossman was a journalist for the Red Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda. He wrote firsthand accounts of the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, and Berlin. He was the first to tell us about the Nazi extermination camp at Treblinka.”
Pavel licked his lips. Perspiration was forming on his forehead.
“Did I tell you he was a Jew?” Pavel asked. “This is why Stalin eventually banned his writings and books. This Jew—this Grossman—he saw more human suffering than other men.”
Pavel closed his eyes, leaned his head back as if he were reaching into the back of his mind to retrieve information. “Grossman wrote this: ‘There are people whose souls have just withered. People who are willing to go along with anything evil—anything so as not to be suspected of disagreeing with whoever is in power.’”
His head fell forward, his eyes open. “This Jew was writing about the Germans. The Nazis. But he could be talking about my people today. Gromyko. Kalugin. Everyone lives in fear of them. My daughter and her husband are dead but they did not have withered souls.”
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