Katazin had watched the news all day yesterday and was quite pleased with the results of his and his associates’ efforts to ramp up the chaos. Much of it took on a life of its own with some of the snotty and uninformed European youth protesting any and all American businesses and military installations. It made him chuckle.
The next phase of the operation was ongoing and involved over a hundred individual, lone wolf terror attacks across Western Europe and the United States. Some of these attacks had been attributed to the growing civil unrest and were not even covered by the network news.
All of this activity was just a prelude to what the Kremlin actually wanted to accomplish. Their goal was to swallow up another republic. An important one. Their eyes were set firmly on Estonia, the most advanced and most wired country in Eastern Europe. The Estonian infrastructure would provide Russia with a means of communicating and transferring money unlike anything they had had in the past. It would be a new world, with more land and a base from which the military could move into Latvia and eventually Belarus.
He marveled at how the Americans couldn’t understand why Russia continued to make threatening noises when the U.S. did virtually nothing to stop its successful annexation of Crimea and its continued efforts to bring Ukraine back into the fold.
He doubted anyone realized there were still Russian agents planted inside the continental United States. He knew he wasn’t alone. There were others he could call on if things got tough. They were too far into the operation to abandon it now.
If he could just find Derek Walsh.
13
Fannie Legat had dreaded the moment her new friend, the Russian major Anton Severov, and her annoying Iranian associate, Amir, finally got a chance to talk at length. The chitchat in the car had been bad enough. It was early in the evening, and they had just sat down at an outdoor restaurant in Tartu. The breeze was comfortable, and the atmosphere of the town was comforting in an old-world and courtly way. It reminded her of some of the older outlying areas of Paris where the tourists hadn’t defiled every site and crammed the streets with their wide asses and knock-off fashions. Tartu, Estonia, was not unique in Europe, but for the moment it was perfect.
Severov sat next to her, and Amir across the wide table. The two men could not have been more different physically: Severov tall and athletic, and Amir short and pudgy. Severov had a pleasant smile and was curious about all aspects of the area, not just physical barriers to the Russian military but the history of certain buildings and what the residents were like while not stuck at some job. Amir looked at everyone he saw as a potential enemy and someone he would never have to deal with once he reached paradise. In short, virtually everyone in the world was against him, and he held the same attitudes that had kept Islam down for a century. Fannie even understood how little he thought of her, just because she was a woman. But she had a duty and a job to do.
She had a clear picture of this assignment. It was simple and straightforward. She was to drive the major as far west and south as he wished to go and not ask him too many questions about their pending operation. She was to have him back across the border within a few days or, if they were contacted, be able to race up the narrow highways of Estonia and drop him on a few hours’ notice.
The one thing that concerned her about the assignment was why Amir had been included. He added nothing to their operation. He had no intimate knowledge of Estonia itself, he did not drive well, and he stuck out in public. He had some training as an engineer, but the major didn’t need that. He knew what his tanks could go through and what they would have to go around. Amir’s drawbacks were obvious: There was no way to disguise the fact that he was a Middle Easterner. Even if Iranians occasionally considered themselves to be part of the Far East and wished to distance themselves from the rest of the region, this dark, hairy little cur was no better than anyone else. But it was clear that wasn’t what he thought.
Severov finished gazing around in all directions, the way he did any time they stopped in a town, and said to Fannie, “This is a lovely city. Did you know this quaint little country with its ancient buildings is considered the most technologically advanced and wired country in Eastern Europe?”
Fannie smiled and said, “Yes, I did. I’m often reminded by my computer.” She was referring to the number of spam e-mails and scams offered to her over the Internet that originated in Estonia, but Severov could’ve just as easily interpreted it as understanding his military mission.
Amir looked at the tall Russian officer and said, “That’s the only way empires like you can expand. Conquer people who have accomplished more and developed technologies you need.”
Severov did not appear bothered by the comment. “It’s funny to hear a Persian say something like that.”
“I am a proud citizen of Iran.”
“Why?”
“What you mean, why? I was born there. I live there now.”
Severov kept a sly smile as he said, “I mean why on earth are you proud to be an Iranian? What have they done recently? About the most notable thing they did was kidnap some Americans and hold them for four hundred and forty-four days. I don’t see any technological advances coming out of Iran. All I see is crazy little presidents who travel to the UN and spout off about things no one believes.”
Fannie had to stifle a grin at the look Amir shot the Russian major.
Derek Walsh stood on the eastern side of the courtyard and watched the crowds on the western side of the Thomas Brothers Financial building as they surged toward the police lines and then backed away in a ridiculous show of useless bravado. The skies had cleared, and it was a comfortable sixty-five degrees. Although he wouldn’t want to be a cop standing for hours on end in a heavy Kevlar vest and holding a shield.
This side of the courtyard seemed to be restricted to journalists and spectators. The crowd was noticeably older, and most had the look of professionals. He fit into the crowd with his nice pants and white shirt, and he was now wearing a pair of wide sunglasses. He didn’t want to cover his new hairstyle with a hat; people noticed things like a beard or being bald. No one had given him a second look. There was little conversation, and even the cops paid more attention to what was happening across the wide courtyard than to the crowd of more than a hundred spectators. No one noticed him or any of the other spectators standing across the courtyard. The building had been kept open in an effort to show that it was business as usual on Wall Street.
Walsh recognized that very few people would be working in his office today, but the one man he needed to talk to, Ted Marshall, would be there. In fact, he probably had not left. He hadn’t risen to his position by being an absentee manager. He would want to personally ensure that the building and operations were secure.
Walsh had stopped at an electronics store run by disgruntled Israelis and bought a prepaid Boost cell phone, giving the guy an extra twenty dollars to not ask any serious questions about his obviously shaky identity. Now he had a phone with a thousand minutes to use, which he hoped would be more than enough to resolve all the issues that were swirling around him.
There were only a few numbers he could recall off the top of his head. He’d been lucky to get Mike Rosenberg’s personal cell phone. He also knew Alena’s apartment phone number, but not her cell phone number. He had already called her but didn’t leave a message, in case someone else came into the apartment. He was adjusting to the fact that he was a fugitive. He could picture his girlfriend already on the campus of Columbia, and she normally didn’t get home until after five. He knew she had to be worried about him and wondered how she had tried to contact him. Then he started to consider the possibility that she had tried to find him at his apartment or that the FBI had tracked her down. He’d be careful when he approached her later in the afternoon.