Throughout the week, Darren had been trying to setup a meet with SCINIPH. The Russian agent had already ditched him two days earlier. An agent always got nervous when he was turned over to a new handler he’d never met before. Since SCINIPH didn’t know Darren, Avery arranged with Gerald to go in Darren’s place.
The movie started. It was a Bollywood film, not Avery’s first choice, but that didn’t matter. He looked straight ahead at the screen, but his attention was concentrated on his right peripheral, through which he monitored the aisle and the people still coming in through the set of double doors seven feet away. He didn’t know what SCINIPH looked like, and it was now too dark to make out any visually distinguishing features anyway.
SCINIPH was in total control here. He’d picked the time and location of the meet, set the rules, and would be the one to make contact. The fact that he was the last person to have seen Cramer and was therefore possibly complicit in his abduction wasn’t lost on Avery. Either way, even if he wasn’t involved, SCINIPH would have still seen the IMU video with Cramer by now — there was no way he’d miss it since Russian intelligence would be very interested in this matter— and he’d be on edge, wondering if he’d been outed by Cramer under torture.
Avery carried his Glock 17 with a spare magazine in a BDS Tactical Gear holster beneath his Columbia windbreaker, which he kept zippered just less than halfway. The windbreaker was baggy and loose enough to conceal the Glock and not reveal any unnatural bulges. The evening temperature outside had dropped to the low seventies, with a cool breeze, so the lightweight jacket wouldn’t look out of place.
Twenty minutes into the movie, while the audience laughed, Avery heard the first set of double doors, those going into the vestibule, then the second leading into the theater proper. Through his peripheral, he saw a smallish figure step down the aisle and drop into the seat at the end of his row. The newcomer reeked of Turkish tobacco.
Avery continued looking ahead at the screen and didn’t turn his head. Neither did the man two seats away.
He sat through the next fifteen minutes of the movie. He didn’t have a clue what it was about, but the Tajiks thought it was hilarious. And SCINIPH was good. Avery didn’t even see him get up to leave and didn’t know how long he was gone. He shifted his eyes periodically to the right. One second the silhouette of the man was there, and the next it wasn’t. The scent of Turkish cigarettes still lingered in the air.
Avery turned his head and found the end seat empty. In the seat immediately next to him, there was a paper bag of popcorn that had been left behind. He grabbed the bag and palmed the note that had been left inside.
Five minutes later, Avery quietly left the theater and examined the note. It instructed him to go to Casa Labriola where there was a reservation for him in the name of Darren. He didn’t know where this was and didn’t have the time or means to find out, so he hopped in the nearest cab.
He knew SCINIPH was giving him the run around, running countersurveillance to see if he came alone. Although he couldn’t blame him under the circumstances, it raised questions in Avery’s mind because this was exactly what the handler directed his agent to do before a meet. It also indicated that SCINIPH likely had watchers along the route. But if SCINIPH was an FSB traitor spying for the Americans, then who were his backup? This was starting to feel more like a legit FSB op.
The cab ride lasted ten minutes.
Avery tipped the driver, exited the vehicle, and strode inside the restaurant. The hostess spoke poor English, so he just repeated the name of the reservation and was soon shown to a corner table in a back corner near the kitchen and handed a menu. He hadn’t eaten since leaving DC, and the hunger was suddenly sinking in. He opened the menu and had only enough time to realize it was an Italian restaurant before he was aware of someone approaching his table.
The man was short but thickly built. He had a badly receding hairline trimmed close, with a stubble beard and strong Slavic features. He pulled a chair out and sat down across from Avery and placed both hands on the table, but he could easily, and likely did, have a gun beneath his half-opened leather jacket, just like Avery. SCINIPH was FSB, and Avery had no doubt that he was armed. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, too young to be a KGB hold-over, but his 201 file indicated that he’d seen plenty of action in Chechnya, the Balkans, and Georgia, ran anti-mafiya ops in the former Soviet republics, and had more than a couple kills under his belt.
“Sciniph,” Oleg Ramzin said in thickly accented English by way of introduction.
“Darren,” Avery replied, holding eye contact. He returned his attention to the menu and was aware of the Russian’s eyes on him. Ramzin was a pro. He’d know how to read people. “Thanks for coming. I know you’re taking a risk being here.”
“Robert was a close friend of mine,” Ramzin said. He took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. It was the same scented tobacco Avery smelled in the theater. “He is a good man. I am most concerned.”
“So are we.”
“These Uzbeks are a nasty lot. I’ve spent time in Tashkent. I have seen firsthand what they do to their enemies. They are savages, worse than animals.”
“What do you know about what happened to Robert?” Avery decided that Ramzin, if he was on the level, could be a valuable source. Naturally, FSB would take an interest in Cramer’s abduction, and the Russians had better sources here than CIA did. The problem was Ramzin couldn’t do anything unnatural like express too much interest in the American hostage, without arousing the Russians’ suspicions.
“You are aware of my position, yes? I have my sources, too. I work closely with Tajik security services. I heard the early reports of a missing American from the embassy and another found dead. But I didn’t know it was Robert until I saw the video they put on Internet earlier today.” He shook his head sadly. “You know, my country hunted IMU long before America invaded Afghanistan. These Uzbeks are vicious, far worse than the Arabs or the Afghans, especially this fellow Otabek Babayev. He was in GRU once, did you know that?”
Avery didn’t. That bit of information hadn’t been in the dossier CIA had on Babayev.
“He was a lieutenant of vozdushno desantnye voyska, airborne forces, assigned to Military Intelligence Directorate. His father was white Russian, his mother an Uzbek and a devout Muslim. In Afghanistan, his patrol searched a village after a Soviet chemical weapons attack. The commanding officer ordered Babayev’s troops to execute surviving villagers. There was a young Afghan girl there, badly burned and suffering. Babayev tried to comfort her. He held her in his arms, but her skin peeled off. He shot her through the back of her head so that she never saw the pistol. Then he executed his commanding officer and killed the two soldiers and the KGB political officer who attempted to apprehend him. He wandered into the mountains alone and joined the Afghan mujahedeen. After the war, he returned to Uzbekistan and learned that his mother was imprisoned and tortured by the Russians in reprisal for his actions. He met up with that lunatic Namangani and joined the IMU.” Ramzin shook his head again. “Babayev killed many of my friends. Now I am afraid he has another.”
“Your country is confident that the IMU is responsible for what happened to Cramer?”
“Da, we know IMU is responsible. This has been confirmed by our Tajik and Uzbek agents. Unfortunately, my service will not openly cooperate with you, you understand, but I will pass along anything that I hear. Do you think I may be in danger? Have you heard anything? It would create trouble for me if my people were to learn of my association with Robert.”