Chapter 32
Richard Farrington stepped off the train from Yekaterinburg and examined the station, noting the odd-colored building that dominated the skyline. He wasn’t interested in the color or unique architecture of Novosibirsk’s railway station. His entry into Russia had been risky, starting in Kiev, where he stepped off a connecting flight from Rome. Despite eighteen years of sovereign independence from the Russian Federation, the Ukraine maintained close ties to their former master. Too close, in Farrington’s opinion, but his other entry options put him at even greater risk.
Kiev gave him easy access to dozens of trains that conducted regular runs to cities throughout western Russia and drew little scrutiny from Border Control guards. At most, the train would stop at the border for a rapid examination of visas and passports. Often, the outbound Kiev trains had a section on the train reserved for Border Control officials, who would take care of this formality while en route to the first Russian station. The high volume of rail passengers between the two countries had led to streamlined procedures that worked to his advantage.
His only real concern was the possible interconnectivity between Ukrainian customs at the Kiev airport and Russian intelligence agencies. Karl Berg had warned Sanderson that the two nations’ intelligence services actively and regularly shared information. Given the low-intensity conflict smoldering over Reznikov’s abduction, Berg thought it was fair to assume that the Ukrainians had been asked to carefully screen for anomalies. Farrington’s cover wouldn’t draw any immediate attention.
He’d flown from Buenos Aires to Sidney, Australia, where he picked up a new passport and the visas needed to complete the rest of his journey as an Australian tourist. His Russian language skills were good, but might not hold up during a customs inquiry, and there was no sense taking the risk. Sanderson’s new program wasn’t designed to create deep-cover “illegal” operatives. He just needed to get into Russia, where he could employ his skills to temporarily melt away into the population.
Farrington adjusted his backpack and walked through the station, constantly scanning for anyone that might have taken an unhealthy interest in his arrival. Moving through the packed station, he headed directly for the transit exit located beneath a massively wide, three-story window facing the gray city. A call placed to Viktor fifteen minutes outside of Novosibirsk had confirmed his pickup. Someone would meet him at the top of the stairs outside of the station and escort him to a waiting car. The bratva would take him to a secluded location, where the team would stay for the duration of the trip. Everyone agreed that moving six operatives between hotels would be cumbersome and risky if any of them attracted attention while entering Russia.
The worst-case scenario involved Russian intelligence agencies detecting an anomaly in one of their profiles that warranted further investigation. Follow-on attempts to locate his operatives would quickly dead-end at various points of entry into western Russia, leaving authorities with nothing to pursue. Each operative’s trail ended at their first border entry point. Like Farrington, they immediately switched to their Russian identities for follow-on travel, strictly avoiding airports. Train or rental car transit would bring them together in Novosibirsk undetected.
Well aware that he might be on an internal Russian watch list, he took advantage of an unexpected chance to change identities in Yekaterinburg, when an apathetic ticketing agent neglected to request his identity papers. The agent asked him to spell his name, and Farrington obliged, becoming Boris Ushenko for the final leg of his journey.
The only exception to this tactic had been Erin Foley. She had arrived in Vladivostok through a series of flights originating in Australia. Since she would spend four days on a train, arriving in Novosibirsk ahead of the team, Berg didn’t think it would be wise to switch her identity. Too many prying eyes on the train, which he felt was their only discreet option to smuggle her into Novosibirsk. Berg and Sanderson accepted the possibility that one of the seven operatives would be flagged entering Russia, and they couldn’t take the chance that it would be Foley.
Unlike the rest of the team, Foley was far from nondescript and could be easily traced by investigative teams flashing her photograph on the streets. They had changed her appearance significantly, but they could do little to hide the fact that she was an attractive, confident woman that men and women alike tended to remember. Given the notoriety of her Stockholm debut, the last thing the Russian FIS would expect was for her to voluntarily set foot on Russian soil. Routing her through Vladivostok offered additional insurance, since prying eyes would be focused on Europe and western Russia.
Unfortunately, the rest of the team had to enter through the west. Novosibirsk stood as the commercial gateway to eastern Siberia, offering the only airport in Siberia with direct flights outside of Russia, and the Trans Siberian-Mongolian Railway was the only viable commercial rail option approaching from the east.
Crossing into Russia from Europe carried a higher risk of detection, but offered hundreds of options and put them in close proximity to Novosibirsk. Each operative arrived within a day or two of crossing the border. With the mission planned for Sunday evening, they had two full days to prepare, four days in Russia. Even if the Russians detected one of their entries, he couldn’t imagine any scenario that put them in a position to stop the operation.
Farrington walked through the doors and up the stairs leading to street level, immediately spotting his contact when he reached the top. A bulky man wearing a black leather jacket held a piece of tattered cardboard with a prearranged generic Russian name scribbled in black marker. The name was meaningless, one of the safeguards agreed upon earlier, and nothing that would attract attention or prove memorable to anyone at the station. He approached the gruff driver and nodded, hoping for some kind of sign that everything was all right. The thick man raised a small handheld radio to his mouth and spoke a few words, putting it to his ear for the response. Farrington noted the deep scars on his face and a trace of tattoo reaching his lower jaw, just above his gray turtleneck sweater. He dropped the radio into his pocket immediately, folding the sign in half.
“Viktor says we need to hurry if we’re going to make it to dinner on time. Let’s go,” he said, repeating another prearranged signal.
If the man had said anything different, Farrington would have kept walking, prepared to fight his way out of whatever situation presented itself. The fight would have very likely been short-lived, since he carried no weapons at this point, but he would have made every attempt possible to escape. He hadn’t expected any trouble. Everyone on his team had arrived without incident and had been ferried off to a discreet location on the outskirts of the city. Farrington started to relax a little. As far as he could tell, the first phase of the operation had been successful. His strike team had arrived intact.
He followed the bratva soldier across a large cement walkway to a black BMW sedan idling between two buses in the designated station pickup zone. He could see two men in the front seat. Neither of them looked in his direction as he neared the vehicle. Scarface opened the rear passenger door and nodded for him to get in. He was met by thick, noxious cigarette smoke upon entry, sliding across the back seat to the driver’s side of the car. Before Scarface could lower his hulking frame into the car, the man in the front passenger seat turned and extended his hand.