“Very well. I want daily updates while the team is moving into place, graduating to more frequent communication as we approach the raid. I’ll monitor the final raid from the Situation Room. This will be a very limited audience. Similar to Stockholm.”
“Understood, Mr. President,” Director Copley said.
The president stood, signaling an end to the meeting. He walked around the table and shook hands, careful not to betray his distrust of Berg. When he reached Copley, he held the grip a few seconds longer than the rest.
“Robert, keep a close eye on this one,” he said, looking back at Manning and Berg. “You have good people working behind the scenes, but I need your personal supervision to ensure this goes by the book.”
“Of course, Mr. President. Though I don’t think we have a book that covers this kind of operation. We’re writing it as we go,” Copley said.
“Make sure it goes by my book.”
Copley nodded, and the president released his hand. Once the CIA entourage had departed the president’s study, James Quinn, Jacob Remy and the president reconvened at the table.
“So, what do you really think?” the president asked, interlocking his fingers and placing them on the bare table.
“I think we need to make sure that General Gordon and anyone else with tactical authority over the extraction force understands that U.S. forces are not to cross the Kazakhstan-Russian border under any circumstances. Our CIA friends didn’t put up any resistance when you reiterated this position, which gives me an uneasy feeling. Sanderson still has connections high up in the Department of Defense. That much is clear. We might need some kind of additional failsafe to keep our forces out of Russia.”
“I agree with your assessment, Jacob. I trust Copley will follow my rules. Manning will follow suit. I don’t know what to think about Karl Berg. Until recently, his name has never surfaced, which leads me to believe that he has been intimately involved in the planning of this mission—”
“Which means he knows the players all too well,” Remy said.
“Exactly,” the president agreed. “If he’s been working with Sanderson since Stockholm, we have to assume their history goes back even further.”
“How far?” Remy said.
“That’s the question. How far is Berg willing to go for Sanderson and his people?” the president asked.
Chapter 25
Karl Berg hunched over his desk and stared at the mess of notes chronicling his efforts to keep “Operation Black Fist” on track. He’d just brokered one of Reznikov’s calls to his bratva contact in Moscow, who had assured the scientist that a sizable sum of money had been transferred to seal the deal between the Solntsevskaya Bratva and foreign mercenary operatives assigned to carry out the raid against Vektor Laboratories. Sizable was an understatement. Berg had just wired the largest sum he’d ever handled to a Panamanian bank account, which would no doubt bounce around between several discreet international accounts before finally landing in a Russian bank account.
If the bratva contact brokering this deal wasn’t already one of the 150,000 or so millionaires living in Moscow, he could now add that distinction to his title. A grand total of five-point-two million dollars secured a personal assurance of cooperation from a mystery voice at the other end of a completely untraceable phone number. Audra Bauer had suggested they make their best attempt to confirm the general location of the bratva contact in order to provide Manning and the director with some kind of reasonable assurance that they weren’t feeding five million dollars to one of Reznikov’s close friends.
As expected, the NSA’s best efforts to trace the call resulted in a scattershot of locations that changed several times every second as the data signal was redirected through dozens of networks internationally. The NSA’s best guess based on the signal’s travel patterns indicated continental Europe, which was good enough for Berg to pass on his own assurances through Bauer.
Berg didn’t suspect this was a money scam on Reznikov’s part. He’d made it perfectly clear to the scientist that he would die swiftly if his bratva contacts betrayed them in any way. Reznikov remained adamant that they would uphold their end of the bargain if the CIA met their price. He’d negotiated them down from their initial request for six million dollars, which he knew was more than they expected to receive up front. He played the game, working them down to the exorbitant price of five-point-two million dollars. A king’s ransom under normal circumstances, but less than he anticipated paying in the end. He fully expected a last-minute “glitch” requiring another eight hundred thousand dollars. He was prepared to spread around some of Sanderson’s money when that phone call came.
Involving the Russian mob had been a necessary compromise that had been vetted on several levels. The CIA’s own analysts had assured Berg that the Solntsevskaya Bratva had a notorious reputation for honoring contracts, or more specifically, punishing those that didn’t honor their commitments. Recent historical cases indicated that this informal code worked both ways and that the Solntsevskaya Bratva enforced breeches of agreement made by their own members. Reputation was everything to them, and this included business dealings outside of their inner circle. Still, analysts warned him that high-level bratva members displayed opportunistic tendencies when confronted with large sums of money.
He couldn’t give the analysts any specific details of the operation, but their final warning fueled Berg’s sole fear regarding the mafiya. He could envision an enterprising bratva soldier selling them out to the Russian government in exchange for more money and other lucrative favors. Sanderson’s team would remain on high alert throughout every stage of the operation, searching for signs of betrayal. Farrington had been ordered to abandon the mission at the first sign of trouble related to their mafiya contacts. They simply couldn’t take any chances once they were on Russian soil. Getting out of Novosibirsk would be difficult enough under the best of circumstances.
He shuffled one of the papers to the top of the mess on his desk. Sanderson’s request for detailed information regarding Vektor Labs. Onsite security protocols. Recent facility upgrades. Military response procedures. Anything and everything that Alexei Kaparov, director of the Bioweapons/Chemical Threat Assessment Division, should know about Russia’s premiere virology and biotechnology research center and former Biopreparat site. He couldn’t blame Sanderson for demanding more information, especially regarding the P4 containment building and any security response protocols. CIA intelligence confirmed a reduced security posture in terms of onsite personnel with the addition of automated cameras and an additional perimeter fence, but this just meant that the real threats could be better concealed. For all they knew, the number of security personnel remained the same, but the number of visible patrols had decreased due to expanded visual coverage provided by the cameras.
Kaparov should be able to shed some final light on the security arrangements. He hated to put this kind of pressure on him, but “Operation Black Fist” was gaining critical momentum and he couldn’t afford to lose Sanderson’s enthusiasm. Farrington’s crew was less than twenty-four hours from crossing the line of departure. He picked up the phone and called a redirect number designated to ring the most recent cell phone number provided by Kaparov. He just hoped that his friend hadn’t decided to throw all of his remaining cell phones in the Moscow River. There was no way he could risk calling Kaparov’s desk. Pavrikova’s kidnapping wouldn’t fade from FSB or SVR attention for quite some time, and he couldn’t assume that her sudden departure would be interpreted to mean that she was the sole leak at Lubyanka Square.