He extended his hand to Lucya Pavrikova. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lucya.”
The tears streaming down her face were illuminated by the soft green glow of a small laptop computer mounted to a table behind the second row of seats. She shook his hand tentatively, but said nothing.
“How are we looking?” he said to the technician kneeling in front of the computer.
The technician typed for a few seconds before looking up.
“SVR units were pulled from the nearest surveillance job to respond. They’re fifteen minutes out. Police units have been dispatched. They should arrive within five minutes. It’ll take them time to sort out the mess. We’ll be in a different vehicle by the time they issue an alert,” Luke Fortier replied.
“Keep a close eye on that. If we need to change vehicles sooner, we’ll improvise,” Nikolai said.
He turned back to Pavrikova, who stared out of her window. “Did my associate fully explain your situation?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Do you have any questions?”
“What happens to my family?”
“They’ll be questioned. Watched for a while, but nothing beyond that. This isn’t your father’s Soviet Union.”
“Will I see them again?”
“That’s not up to me. You’ll have to work that out with your new friends,” he said.
“And who exactly are my new friends?”
“I’m not authorized to share that information. We’re just the delivery team. I will caution you to accept their proposal,” Nikolai said.
“What if I don’t accept?”
“Then your broken body will turn up somewhere outside of Moscow a few days from now,” Nikolai said.
“I should have known better than to trust Yuri. He’s so far up that Cold War dinosaur’s ass, he probably never stopped to consider the possibility that Kaparov was working for the CIA. Saving Mother Russia, my ass. Kaparov is a CIA mole,” she spat at him.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t repeat that again. Ever,” he said and placed the business end of the OTs-14’s suppressor against her forehead. “Unless your specific intent is to nullify any arrangements that have been made on your behalf. And for the record, Yuri Prerovsky and his Cold War dinosaur boss saved your ass from a miserable death. They insisted that you be given a second chance.”
“How generous of them. I disappear and nothing changes for them,” she uttered, sniffling and wiping her face.
“Exposing Kaparov would have put you in the hands of some very pissed off Directorate S operatives. Did you think they would grant you some kind of immunity deal?” he asked, staring into her face.
She averted her eyes, which told him everything he needed to know. He was surprised that she could have been so naïve, even for a technical agent.
“You did. Well, you’re the luckiest woman in Moscow right now. Up until five minutes ago, you were on course to be brutally tortured and gang raped to death in some undisclosed, dank warehouse. I’d say your options have significantly improved thanks to your friends.”
She started sobbing uncontrollably, which suited Nikolai fine. She needed to get as much of this emotional outburst out of the way before they handed her off to the CIA. She’d need to be as levelheaded as possible during the transfer. The full bottle of wine she had consumed over the past hour compounded this problem. He’d make sure they understood this, though he hoped she might sober up slightly by the time they made the delivery. She had a chance to come out of this unscathed, and he was happy to steer her away from her certain fate at the hands of the Foreign Intelligence Service.
Even more so, he was pleased to learn that his ten-year undercover stint hadn’t been compromised for a trivial reason. Sanderson didn’t know which FSB agents would benefit from Lucya’s abduction, but Nikolai had always made it a priority to learn the names and ranks of the senior agents at the Federation Security Service. The mere mention of Kaparov and his direct subordinate tied the entire scenario together for him. If the FSB’s deputy director of the Bioweapons/Chemical Threat Assessment Division was assisting the CIA, the removal of Lucya Pavrikova had everything to do with enabling a future operation to deal with the bioweapons mess that had been unleashed on the world.
His only regret was that he would not be able to directly participate in the operation. He had been officially recalled from Russian soil, to return to Argentina. Since Luke couldn’t determine with one hundred percent certainty that no external cameras had been used by the SVR near Pavrikova’s apartment building, they had to assume that both he and Klinkman would eventually be identified. Sanderson strongly suspected that images taken by street security cameras in Stockholm had led to the recent disappearance of one of their operatives. Until their identities could be significantly changed, they would be confined to the Americas.
Chapter 21
Upon entering the secure conference room, Dmitry Ardankin stood at attention in front of the Foreign Intelligence Service Director and waited for permission to take a seat. As deputy director of Directorate S, Ardankin made the trip to the director’s office on a daily basis, and not always under welcome terms. His directorate had experienced its share of failures, mishaps and defections during his tenure, but it had also pulled off some of the most notoriously successful foreign operations in the Directorate’s recent history. Not to mention the weekly, if not daily “tasks” performed by his Zaslon operatives on behalf of the Federation’s more connected government officials.
He wasn’t sure what had angered Pushnoy more, losing Reznikov or losing eight of Putin’s errand boys. Probably the latter. The Zaslon group had devolved into Putin’s “business compliance” enforcers over the past several years, spending most of their time pressuring or assassinating Russian citizens abroad. Most of their targets were business types or entrepreneurs that had fallen out of favor with one of Putin’s key government or industry allies.
Zaslon was a throwback to the sleeper-cell program initiated during the Cold War and grossly overestimated by the Americans, often romanticized in Western espionage novels. The program had existed, but on a much smaller scale and mostly in Europe. Kremlin leadership had long ago determined that the decisive battle would be fought and won on European soil, so GRU and KGB programs focused on disrupting strategic and tactical NATO targets in western Europe by inserting Spetsnaz teams prior to the anticipated start of hostilities. Sleeper cells comprised a tiny portion of the Cold War plan, just as Zaslon operatives barely factored in the Foreign Intelligence Service’s global espionage network.
Still, they were extremely valuable, nearly irreplaceable assets, and the loss of a single member was treated as a disaster. The loss of eight Zaslon operatives at one time was an unmitigated catastrophe, and this didn’t even begin to address the implications associated with Reznikov’s disappearance. Unfortunately, their mess had fallen in his lap, and he’d managed to make matters worse, through no fault of his own. He’d sent eight of his best operatives, double what had been suggested by the director himself, and it hadn’t been enough. The best they could figure at this point was that the Americans had a similar “illegals” program, and that their operatives were possibly better trained. Of course, all of this would have been a moot point if the FSB hadn’t been compromised. Pavrikova’s deception had put the two teams on a fatal collision course, in which the better team had clearly prevailed.