At least all of the attention wouldn’t be focused solely on his Directorate. He’d take his lumps, but Federation Security Service leadership would take the brunt of the blame for this debacle. Pavrikova couldn’t have been more perfectly placed within the Center for Special Operations to spy on high-level joint operations.
He took his eyes off the wall behind Stephan Pushnoy for a brief moment to see if the director had finished scrutinizing the files he had forwarded an hour earlier. If Pushnoy was staring at him, then the meeting wouldn’t go well. The director’s cold blue eyes didn’t meet his glance. He was still absorbing the details of last night’s abduction.
“Dmitry, please take a seat,” he said, without looking up.
Ardankin started to feel better about the meeting. Pushnoy never invited one of his deputies to sit during an ass-chewing. He would have preferred that the director looked up at him, but this was better than the interminable silence that inevitably preceded the director’s wrath. He got halfway into the seat next to Pushnoy before the first question erupted.
“Reinhard Klinkman. What do we know about him?”
“Not very much. German citizen. Lives in Hamburg—”
Pushnoy looked up at him, which stopped him from continuing. He knew the look. The director was interested in simple, conclusive statements.
“Nothing in his publicly available record raised any red flags. There is no record of him entering or exiting Russia,” Ardankin said.
“I assume you found nothing unusual surrounding Nikolai Mazurov?”
“Aside from his involvement in the kidnapping of a Russian national and the murder of seven SVR agents? No.”
Pushnoy looked up at him again, and he could see the start of a sinister grin. He had to admit, the director looked intimidating. He had thick, dark brown hair, which contrasted starkly with his light blue eyes and pale skin. The imbalance made it nearly impossible to determine his age. Only the thick crow’s feet around the outside of his eyes and the deep wrinkles on his forehead suggested the kind of advanced age one could assume by his position as the senior ranking member of the Foreign Intelligence Service. He met the director’s gaze and held it, knowing from experience that the former KGB officer expected his subordinates to look him in the eye while speaking. He interpreted an aversion to eye contact as weakness or deception. Ardankin had no intention of falling under either label.
“I don’t expect they’ll turn up in Russia or Europe. The remote operations team reports that none of the surveillance teams responded to their radio calls. What is your theory about that?” Pushnoy asked.
“Klinkman and Mazurov had technical support. All P25 encryption systems are vulnerable to detection and jamming. Signal interception and hijacking is also possible, but requires an extremely sophisticated electronics presence. The camera feeds remained functional, so I suspect they targeted the radio network. Smart. If they had played around with any of the remote video feeds, our technicians in the Operations Center might have detected the intrusion.”
“Tech savvy and lethal. A dangerous and admirable combination,” Pushnoy said.
“Our agents have the same capabilities,” Ardankin reminded him.
“Then why are we losing so many agents?”
“This group operates in a radically different—”
“You mean they win!”
“I’m not making excuses,” Ardankin began. “What I mean is that—”
“I know what you are trying to say. Even the Americans’ Special Activities Division adheres to basic rules of engagement. This group appears to have no rules or boundaries. We’ve been spoiled for a long time, Dmitry, taking advantage of the West’s misguided sense of morality and ethics. I fear those days have passed. Hubner said he was sent to Stockholm by Sanderson. Brigadier General Terrence Sanderson, United States Army, retired. His name didn’t come up in any of our classified files. How did this man escape our attention for all of these years? Klinkman, Hubner and Mazurov were deep-cover operatives.”
“Here’s what we have so far,” Ardankin said. “The three you just mentioned are mystery men. We found established public records in Germany and the Russian Federation reaching back to the mid to late nineties. University records to start, followed by the usual markings of a citizen from that point forward. Utility bills, car registrations, city permits…everything you would expect. Hubner’s name came up in connection with several black market weapons dealers in Eastern Europe. He started small and worked his way onto the international scene, but promptly vanished in 2001, apparently deciding to pursue an advanced business degree in Munich. This sudden change of heart coincided with General Sanderson’s fall from grace back in the United States.” Ardankin paused to allow Pushnoy ask questions.
“You suspect a connection?”
“Absolutely. General Sanderson appeared briefly in 2001 to testify before the American Congress. Specifically, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He retired from the army shortly thereafter. We know that Sanderson spent over a decade attached to the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, commanding the unit for nearly two years before taking a relatively obscure position at the Pentagon in 1991. He spent the next ten years in that position, which is extremely unusual. Our analysts found no mention of Sanderson during that ten-year period. He basically disappeared with a paycheck.”
“Unusual indeed. The CIA had nothing on him?”
“Nothing, which is why his program never drew our attention,” Ardankin said.
“Assuming he created a program,” Pushnoy added.
“Of course, but here’s where it gets interesting. Cameras in Stockholm captured images of Hubner and another operative involved with Reznikov’s abduction,” Ardankin said.
“Petrovich.”
Ardankin nodded as Pushnoy shuffled the papers in front of him, removing two full-page photographs and setting them side by side.
“Daniel Petrovich. Now this is a complicated individual. His public record is sketchy at best. Graduated from Northwestern University in 1991. Commissioned in the United States Navy immediately upon graduation. Hometown news releases indicate that he was trained in Newport, Rhode Island as a surface warfare officer and—”
“Precisely what is a surface warfare officer?” Pushnoy interrupted.
“Shipboard naval officer. He was assigned to a frigate based out of Japan after completing about nine months of training at the surface warfare school in Newport. Nothing unusual about this training or his follow-on assignments. However, our analysts found nothing on Daniel Petrovich in the public domain after he reported to Japan—”
“Do you suspect he never reported?”
“We’re pretty sure he reported to Japan. Analysts found press releases filed by the ship’s public affairs officer and subsequently carried by his hometown newspaper. The latest date for one of these releases is November of 1993. At some point during this tour, he vanished. Daniel Petrovich didn’t reemerge until the fall of 2000. He attended business school at Boston University, followed by a corporate job in Portland, Maine, at a technology company. We found a Massachusetts marriage license dated in 2001. He got married during business school to Jessica Petrovich—”
“What was her maiden name?” Pushnoy asked.
“None listed.”
“Odd,” Pushnoy said.
“Very odd, but minor in the grand scheme of things,” Ardankin said.
Pushnoy raised a single eyebrow and stared at him.