“Do you know anything about an operation being run out of here by Mustafa? Something big?”
“There’s been talk,” Mohammed said finally. “No details, but we know it has something to do with a facility outside of town. Mustafa brought men there to train. Eric Jesem was one of them.”
“How many men in total?”
“Fifteen. Maybe twenty.”
It seemed like about the right number. Six weapons handled by two-man teams so as not to raise suspicion. Then some backups in case there were problems.
“Do you have access to outside communications?”
“No. The hard lines have been destroyed and the Americans are jamming cell signals.”
Rapp nodded. “Can you get me to that training camp?”
“Yes. It’s not far. But for what reason?”
Rapp tossed the man back his weapon. “To kill as many of the people there as I can.”
CHAPTER 38
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
U.S.A.
IRENE Kennedy sat down at her desk for the first time in days. She’d barely reached for her briefing file when Mike Nash entered waving a manila envelope. It looked distressingly thin.
“You found him?” Kennedy said hopefully.
Nash fell into one of the chairs in front of her and tried to find a comfortable position. She’d purposely chosen furniture with backs too straight and padding too thin in order to discourage long, unproductive meetings. There were some even less comfortable ones in a storage closet that were brought out during visits by members of Congress.
“Not exactly found. But with Claudia’s data to work with, we’ve made progress.”
“I don’t need progress, Mike. I need success.”
“I know. The machine is running, but this guy isn’t exactly an amateur.”
He pulled an eight-by-ten photo from the envelope and placed it on her desk. Grisha Azarov apparently didn’t share Rapp’s uncanny ability to avoid being caught on camera. He was staring straight into the lens as he strode across a stage with a microphone in his hand. The dark hair and sculpted nose were close matches to the composite Nash had created. His skin was more tanned, though, and his eyes leaned a bit more toward Asian. The pinstripe suit he was wearing seemed a bit too large, as though it had been tailored to obscure the physique beneath.
“That’s Azarov-or Filipov, if you prefer-speaking to almost a thousand people at a conference last year in Abu Dhabi.”
“What kind of conference?”
“Extraction industry. This guy is taking the concept of hiding in plain sight to a whole other level. He’s the head of a well-known oil and gas consulting firm that operates all over the globe. His clients include Exxon, BP, and Aramco, just for starters. Hell, they’re so good, even we’ve used them a few times.”
“That would allow him to move around Russia and the Middle East without attracting attention.”
“And he takes advantage of that ability. A lot. Our information on his travels is still spotty, but we have entry and exit dates putting him in Pakistan when Scott was attacked. He flew in on his company jet and was staying in the nicest suite the Islamabad Marriott offers. He has condos in London and New York, but doesn’t seem to have been to either for years. We were able to infiltrate the management companies caretaking them and get people inside, but they didn’t find anything.”
“He must live somewhere.”
“Agreed. His permanent address is listed as the offices of his company in Moscow, but I think we can do better than that.”
He pulled a colorful map of the world from the envelope and unfolded it on her desk.
“This is a graphical representation of his private jet’s trips?” she asked, examining the hundreds of arcing lines between countries and continents.
“Not exactly. We suspect that his plane is putting in a lot of hours empty.”
“He’s trying to throw off anyone who might be watching.”
“Like I said, this guy’s no amateur. But we know he doesn’t fly commercial, so what you’re seeing here is a representation of charter flights coming and going from locations where we could place him and with passengers whose identities we couldn’t verify. Three hundred and twelve in all over the course of five years. Notice anything unusual?”
“There seem to be an unlikely number of flights going to Central America.”
“Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, to be precise. Our statistics guys say that there’s less than a ten percent chance that the pattern is a random occurrence.”
“Home,” she said.
Nash nodded. “We’re assuming Costa Rica, since it’s in the middle. Matching flights in with flights out is time-consuming but a picture’s starting to emerge. Someone’s coming in and staying for anywhere between one week and two months. During those times, Grisha Azarov makes no public appearances.”
“If he returns to Costa Rica, can we track him?”
“I think so. We figure he lands at one of about ten available airstrips and then drives a private car to wherever he lives. He has no visa for any of those countries and no car registered, so we figure he’s got an alias. We’ve got teams watching all the strips, and since he seems to like his first name, we’re going after that. Not the fastest process in Central America, though. A lot of their records are on paper.”
“But right now you have no idea where he is?”
“None. He dropped off the radar after Pakistan. We’ve tried to contact him through one of our companies that’s worked with him in the past, but all we get is that he’s unavailable.”
Kennedy pushed the map away and leaned back in her chair. “I’m not sure this helps us, Mike. Whatever move he’s making, my sense is that it’s imminent. That he won’t go home before his mission is completed.”
“Have you figured out what that mission is?”
“Our analysts have given me a number of scenarios. Too many, in fact. They span from dirty bomb attacks on U.S. cities to multiple nuclear blasts in Israel.”
“Anything catch your eye?”
“The confirmation of Azarov’s identity convinces me that Krupin is behind this. And that honestly makes an attack on the U.S. mainland unlikely. It’s hard to see how he would benefit and it could invite a devastating retaliation. No, what Krupin needs is simpler.”
“To shore up his position at home,” Nash offered.
“Exactly. His power over the Russian people is slipping. He has to give them some economic relief and he has to do it quickly.”
“Well, nuking someone isn’t going to do much to get his country out of the toilet.”
“No, but creating chaos in the Middle East would.”
“Oil prices,” Nash said, lacing his hands on top of his head and trying again to find a comfortable position in the chair. “I can see that crazy Russian bastard pulling something like that.”
“At this point, he has very little to lose.”
“How, though?”
“He’s already given us part of the answer: ISIS. They’ve proven their effectiveness against failed nations, but places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE are different. They’re protected by either their stability, their military capability, or both.
“So nuke Dubai, Cairo, Riyadh, Tehran, and Jeddah. Throw in Tel Aviv, just to get the shit storm really rolling. Then ISIS moves in and oil prices spike to record levels. Krupin would have the money to pay off every corrupt bureaucrat from Moscow to Siberia and to drown the average citizen in new entitlements.”
Kennedy didn’t respond, instead pulling off her reading glasses and setting them on the desk.
“You don’t agree, Irene?”
“I don’t disagree. Anything is possible at this point. But Krupin is a sociopath, not a madman. He’s not motivated by God or illusions of world domination. He just wants to maintain power. Your scenario has so much potential for blowback. Retaliation from the West, unforeseen economic consequences. Even an increase in terrorist attacks inside Russia. It seems to me that he’d do as little as possible to get the effect he needs.”