“There may be,” Richter admitted slowly. “But it’s one hell of a long shot.”
Martindale eyed him carefully. “I submit that our mutual friend’s situation may be bleak enough to warrant taking chances. Even extreme chances,” he said.
“Well, I’ve kind of been tinkering around with something new,” Richter said slowly, frowning in thought. “Although really the device I’m working on is more for the civilian medical market. As far as I can tell, there aren’t any military applications that make sense.”
“Is this new device of yours something we could try on General McLanahan right away?” Martindale asked.
“Oh God, no,” Richter said, abruptly appalled at his own train of thought. Proving a new technological advance was one thing. Using someone else as an expendable guinea pig, especially someone like Patrick McLanahan, was another. “All I have so far is a really raggedy-ass prototype. Between software glitches and hardware malfunctions, it still crashes about three-quarters of the time.”
Martindale nodded. “I see.” He frowned. “I assume a crash in this case would be bad?”
“Oh yeah,” Richter nodded vigorously. “Bad as in fatal.”
“And does this ‘raggedy-ass’ prototype of yours have a name, Dr. Richter?” the other man asked.
Richter hesitated again. “Well, yes, it does,” he admitted at last, somewhat nervously. People were always telling him that the project and equipment names and acronyms he came up with sucked. “I’ve been calling it the LEAF.”
Martindale showed no reaction to that, one way or the other. “Then let’s discuss exactly what it’s going to take to scrub the glitches out of this new machine of yours ASAP,” he said firmly.
SIXTEEN
Plump and balding, with a round, cherubic face, Yuri Akulov looked more like a baker than a spy. His amiable, harmless appearance had served him well during a long career with the KGB and later the FSB. Adversaries, whether foreign agents or rivals inside his own service, almost always underestimated his cunning, raw intelligence, and sheer ruthlessness. By the time they figured him out, it was usually too late. Foreign spies found themselves in prison, dead, or kicked out of Russia in disgrace. KGB and FSB colleagues who crossed him ended up in godforsaken backwater posts, guarding state secrets no one gave a shit about anymore.
Now Akulov used the same skills and deceptive appearance in his work as one of Igor Truznyev’s top “security consultants.” Asked by one of his girlfriends to describe the difference between being an FSB operative and working as a private consultant for the Zatmeniye Group, he’d cynically told her “about ten million more rubles a year. But if I kill anyone now, I have to be a bit more cautious.”
Working in the private intelligence sector was also more challenging, he allowed. If pressed, you couldn’t just whip out your state security ID and scare the hell out of potential sources or possible suspects like in the good old days. Instead, you had to rely on your wits, the ability to tell convincing lies, and, all too often, a willingness to mimic the patience of a saint.
Take this most recent assignment, for example. It was easy enough for Truznyev to order him to discreetly pierce the web of secrecy cast around Russia’s cyberwar operation. Carrying out those orders, without getting caught, had proved a lot harder. None of his contacts inside the FSB turned out to know much about Gryzlov’s plans or wanted to risk the president’s wrath.
What had emerged from a series of careful, oblique conversations was that senior FSB officers were incredibly envious of Major General Arkady Koshkin’s growing power and influence. That didn’t surprise Akulov. Even in his day, Koshkin had been derided, behind his back, as Moscow’s “Langleyite,” because of his worship of technology over tradecraft. To FSB veterans, that was the same mistake made so often by the American CIA.
But now Gennadiy Gryzlov had allowed Koshkin to create his own fiefdom, this mysterious Q Directorate. That was bad enough for his detractors. What was worse was that Russia’s president seemed to have given Koshkin and his computer geeks a blank check.
“He even bought a nuclear reactor, for God’s sake!” one of Akulov’s old comrades had groused. “I can’t get funding to recruit more agents in Washington, D.C., and that durak, that jackass, spends billions of rubles to buy a fucking reactor from Atomflot!” Then, aware that he’d probably said too much, the FSB officer had suddenly clammed up.
But at least the man’s momentary indiscretion had put Akulov on a new scent, one he’d followed from Moscow far into the frozen north — all the way to Murmansk, the headquarters of Atomflot, a state-owned company responsible for Russia’s fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers. More cautious inquiries inside the company, along with a number of bribes, had finally led him to Atomflot senior nuclear supervisor Ivan Budanov.
Budanov, his sources told him in whispers, had been away for months earlier in the year, seconded to the Kremlin for some big secret project. Since then, he’d been lording his status as a man of mystery over his coworkers.
For a time, Akulov had thought he’d need a complicated cover story to explain why he wanted to talk to the nuclear engineer. Fortunately, it turned out that Budanov was both an egomaniac and a binge drinker. Just the hint that Akulov represented other Russian military and intelligence outfits who were interested in his “widely appreciated expertise” sufficed to lull the Atomflot engineer’s suspicions. Akulov’s offer to pay for a night on the town had sealed the deal.
What he hadn’t counted on was Budanov’s ability to drink massive quantities of vodka for hours on end, all while telling incredibly dull and pointless anecdotes involving every shipborne reactor project he’d ever worked on. And Akulov, hiding his boredom behind a mask of cheerful comradeship, had reeled from bar to bar with the engineer. It had been an agonizing experience. He’d smiled and nodded and laughed and pretended to match the other man drink for drink, in the hope Budanov would finally let something useful slip about Q Directorate’s secret nuclear power plant.
All to no avail.
Then, when the bars finally closed, Budanov had drunkenly insisted they go back to his dingy apartment to close out the night with a bottle of what he called “the good stuff.” It was a miracle the man was still alive, let alone in a responsible position, Akulov thought disgustedly. Still faking good cheer, he perched on a sagging sofa watching as the buffoon downed yet another shot.
“Nu, vzdrognuli! Here we go again!” Budanov slurred. He raised his dirty glass to Akulov with a huge, lopsided grin. “And here’s to all the sweet girls I’ve screwed together over the years!”
It took Akulov a few moments to understand that the Atomflot engineer was now referring to the reactors he’d helped build as “girls.” Sighing inwardly, he raised his own glass to the other man with an equally shit-faced smile. Maybe I can just push him out the window, he thought bleakly. Budanov’s apartment was only on the second floor, so the fall probably wouldn’t kill him… but the drunken bastard would certainly freeze to death before anyone found him.
“To your sweet girls!” the ex-FSB agent agreed, deciding to try one last time before bailing out and returning to Moscow with his tail between his legs. “Especially the last one, eh? That must have been something to see.”
“Definitely,” Budanov said. He shook his head. “Now, there was a weird job, I can tell you. Assembling a reactor designed for a twenty-three-thousand-ton icebreaker way down deep inside a fucking mountain, imagine that!”