“Fuck,” said Williams.
“My sentiments exactly.”
After he returned to his office, Johnson sank heavily behind his desk. The importance of the documents was unquestionable regardless of what he’d said to Williams. But without a living, breathing witness, a Russian witness, nothing would come of them.
Langley, he was certain, would dismiss any suggestion of an exfiltration out of hand. There were more important things going on in Moscow, and the care and feeding of dissidents was not one of them. The value of dissidents was here in their own country where cases such as Magnitskiy’s could be seen by the entire world. The persecution of such people meant that some realization of the sly brutality of the Kremlin would leach into the consciousness of the world and bolster resistance to Russian aggression.
If the Illarionov boy could only get out on his own, maybe something could be done. Even then, the long, toxic arm of Russian vengeance could snuff him out.
Johnson resolved to follow this case, discretely, of course, and Langley had no need to know about it for the time being.
Chapter 12
Gleb Solntsev gathered his inner circle at the small office on Sretenka Street. Olga was not among them because she was the subject of discussion.
Pasha, Kostya, and Volodya, Solntsev’s most trusted enforcers were there, and they all wore expressions of concern.
“Gleb,” said Pasha, “we don’t know enough about her, and she would have noticed our absence from the organization meeting the night of Illarionov’s death. What if she starts putting two and two together?”
Their anxiety surprised him. “Boys, do you really think she is so stupid as not to have known what she was doing when she told me about Illarionov’s plans? She’s a smart girl, and she’s been with us now for over three years. She’s never shied away from any task I’ve given her, and her behavior at Golovina’s was near to spectacular.”
“But she’s not really one of us,” insisted Volodya. What he meant was that she was not an FSB operative in mufti. “We still have to be careful of her.”
Solntsev drummed his fingers on the desk. The only light came from the lamp at his side, and the corners of the room were cast in appropriately conspiratorial darkness. The group resembled hunters gathered around a campfire discussing their next prey.
After a thoughtful pause, Gleb said, “I understand what you’re saying, but I’ve seen no signs of unreliability in the girl. Quite the opposite. She’s dedicated and loyal.”
“Nevertheless…” ventured Pasha.
Solntsev studied the three men with their hard, feral eyes that glowed yellow in the lamplight. My pack of wolves, he thought. They will not be satisfied with inaction.
“Pasha,” he said, “you’re one of my best men, maybe the best, and I respect your opinion.” He waved a hand at the group. “I can personally guarantee that you all have bright futures. Now go and leave this to me. I think I have a solution.”
Pasha brightened visibly as he considered the possible permutations of Gleb’s solution. It was easy, and not a little frightening to read in the big man’s square face that he was willing to take care of anyone for the sake of the organization, even his own mother. Kostya was reliable, but stupid. He would obey any order without question. Volodya also was basically just muscle without Pasha’s sly intelligence.
Solntsev remained in the dark office for a long time after they left.
The tenacious Sergey Illarionov’s investigation and his collaboration with the traitor Tretyakov had required too many deaths. Olga Polyanskaya’s acquaintance with Illarionov’s son was the reason he had been able to nip the problem in the bud. The question Pasha now raised was whether the girl might see the Illarionov boy again and start to put it all together.
But Solntsev did not agree with Pasha’s suspicions about her. She had demonstrated her value. Surely she had known what she was doing when she told him about Illarionov’s plans.
But new complications arose daily, and Pasha might well decide to take matters into his own hands. Something would have to be done quickly if he were to avoid a serious problem. Without further thought, he picked up the telephone and dialed a number he knew by heart.
“Nikolay Davydovich? It’s Gleb,” he said, “Something’s come up here that might be problem. I need to see you now.”
Listening to the response, he hung up the phone, once again pleased at the handy location of his office. In a half hour he was on his way to the building with which he had been connected for most of his adult life and which, if the truth be told, was still his home. He could walk there, a few blocks along Sretenka, then south along Bol’shaya Lubyanka, then left onto Furkosovskiy Pereulok, past the small parking area and through the metal gates of the discreet “working entrance” of FSB Headquarters.
Prudence dictated that visits be rare over the past few years. The familiar beige carpeted corridors enveloped him in a kind of sweet nostalgia. These walls had molded him into the ruthless, shrewd and invincible professional he considered himself today. This was the only place capable of arousing sentimentality in him, and “Davydych,” as today’s Chekists called him, was the only person toward whom Gleb Solntsev evinced any human emotion.
General Nikolay Davydovich Lisitsyn was known as “God’s operative.” He’d served in KGB Counterintelligence and played a role in the capture of famous traitors, such as Dmitriy Polyakov and Adolf Tolkachev. The old man was a living legend, the personification of a heroic past. In a word, Davydych represented continuity.
Chapter 13
1987
Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB
Michurinskiy Prospekt, 70
Moscow, Russia
The man’s eyes were wide, and he was screaming, the veins in his neck distended. His shrieks echoed through the empty foundry. There was no other sound.
The terrified man was naked and bound to a heavy wooden plank with what appeared to be thin piano wire, wrapped round and round his body in tight, painful coils, rendering him completely immobile except for his head. It required four stout men to carry him toward the open, flaming maw of one of the foundry’s furnaces. The men wore heavy, heat resistant suits and gloves, their faces grotesquely masked by hoods with a rectangular slit of thick glass for eyes that made them even more hideous. The flames were so intense that the two men at the foot of the plank raised their hands to protect their faces from the heat despite their hoods.
The man bound to the plank, knowing what was to come, continued to scream.
With a heave the men dropped the foot of the plank onto the lip of the open furnace. The ones nearest the furnace retreated quickly to the other end to help their comrades feed the plank ever so slowly into the flames.
As his feet were consumed, the shrieks of the bound man took on an unearthly quality, warbling almost to the edge of audibility and renewing with each breath. His mouth was so far open that he might have dislocated his jaw.
The men continued to shove the plank into the flames. The bound man’s legs were now completely engulfed as the white hot furnace, hot enough to melt metal, greedily ate away his flesh and then turned the bones black and brittle until they too were so much smoke up the flue.
The screaming continued until the flames reached the bound man’s chest. By that time, the face was no longer human. His gut exploded in a riot of wet entrails that lasted but a few seconds, sizzling in the flames. When the screaming stopped, the men heaved what remained all the way into the furnace in a single motion.