Next, he powered up his laptop and logged onto the Internet. He searched his name on Google News and found several articles reporting the kidnapping and murder of a senior CIA officer in Tajikistan by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, complete with quotes from the CIA director and public affairs director, mourning his loss and commending his service. There were also reports of a counterterrorism raid in Gorno-Badakhshan by a special American-trained Tajik unit that resulted in the death of Otabek Babayev. The White House would release a statement later.
That was good to hear about Babayev, Cramer decided. The IMU commander had served his purpose well, but he’d always been too much of a wild card, too unpredictable and difficult to control. His death left no loose ends.
At 1:00PM, the hotel’s front desk called to tell him he had visitors.
Cramer immediately went to the door, Beretta in hand and held low, and squinted into the tiny peephole. A minute later, he relaxed and opened the door to allow Aleksander Litvin into his suite. The Ukrainian was accompanied by the towering, shaved headed Caucasian Russian with the spider tattoo, and Litvin’s bodyguard, who was not introduced. Greetings and handshakes were exchanged, with Litvin eyeing Cramer up and down and observing that he looked exceptionally well for a dead man. It was the first time Cramer had seen Litvin in over a month.
Litvin and Cramer filled the armchairs around the tiny round table near the window that looked out over the traffic on Kirova Street below. The Krasnaya Mafiya enforcer known as Karakurt remained on his feet, his posture ramrod straight, hands clasped in front of him. Litvin’s bodyguard remained near the door.
Cramer produced from his pocket a small, black square-shaped device the size of a cell phone, with a short, stubby antenna and tiny LED display. The miniature countersurveillance unit was the latest model produced by CIA’s Directorate of Science & Technology and had a built-in radio frequency locator capable of finding and jamming any audio listening devices within its vicinity. He trusted Litvin, to a certain extent at least, but the Belarusian KGB still bugged hotel suites. Unsurprisingly, the device instantly detected and blocked numerous transmissions.
Cramer first met Aleksander Litvin during a formal black tie diplomatic reception when he ran the CIA base in St. Petersburg. Litvin attended as a guest of the Russian defense minister. CIA had caught wind of Russian endeavors to arm belligerents on both sides in various African civil wars and tasked Cramer with penetrating the arms dealer’s organization. Given Litvin’s political connections in Moscow, the Seventh Floor later called off the op, under orders from the White House, but Cramer held onto Litvin as a contact, even using GlobeEx, through one of CIA’s Russian agents, to deliver weapons to the Northern Alliance.
Cramer met Mullah Adeib Arzad during his last Afghanistan tour, when the US Government implemented the Afghan Peace and Reintegration Program, wherein members of the Taliban and other groups were paid cash to disarm and then invited to civilly take part peacefully in Afghan politics. Many of the participants were militants responsible for the deaths of numerous NATO soldiers and Afghan civilians. Not long ago, many had been on JSOC’s capture/kill list. But the diplomats and politicians saw Reintegration as a way forcing a peaceful conclusion to a war they had no interest in winning, and these terrorist and insurgent leaders were welcomed as politicians and community leaders.
In reality, Washington was simply handing the country over to the Taliban, who were using Reintegration to infiltrate their agents into the Afghan government. Cramer became a vocal critic, sending scathing reports back to Langley. In retaliation, the Seventh Floor recalled him from Afghanistan.
Cramer had long believed that there were two enemies. The enemy in the field presented the more immediate, physical threat. But there was another enemy. This one consisted of the politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats, and reporters back home who were far removed from the realities of the battlefield and cared only about their image, prestige, and advancing their own agenda. The latter was just as likely to get people killed as the former, and they were far more duplicitous.
Tajikistan proved to be an ideal starting ground for Cramer’s new war, which had started in an unlikely way.
Shortly after taking over Dushanbe station, Oleg Ramzin made a brush pass on a crowded city bus, slipping Cramer a piece of paper with a time and location for a future meeting. Suspicious but seeing a recruitment prospect, Cramer attended the meet. He was surprised when Ramzin instead attempted to recruit him. But Ramzin hadn’t made the pass on behalf of Russian intelligence. Like most FSB officers, Ramzin was deeply connected with Russian organized crime. His offer came on behalf of the Krasnaya Mafiya. Cramer left the meeting, but stayed in sporadic contact with Ramzin. In order to cover his own ass and, rather than arousing suspicion by meeting with Ramzin in secret, Cramer put him in the files at Dushanbe station as CK/SCINIPH.
Several months later, Cramer made a new proposal for the Krasnaya Mafiya, and reestablished contact with Aleksander Litvin.
“There is a problem, two actually.” Litvin’s English and was educated, with the barest trace of an accent.
Cramer had expected complications to arise at some point. It was just a question of the severity. So far, everything had gone too smoothly. Any good planner took into account the basic, fundamental caveat that anything that could go wrong inevitably would.
Litvin looked to his mafiya colleague and nodded.
The Krasnaya Mafiya enforcer with the spider tattoo said, “The Taliban has reported to my man in Peshawar that their trucks are long overdue and never reached their Afghan checkpoint.”
“That’s their problem, not ours,” Cramer said, perhaps a little too defensively. Despite the current arrangement, he was still no supporter of the Taliban. They had killed a few of the rare people he truly considered friends. He detested having to form partnerships with reprehensible, vile creatures like Mullah Arzad, but that was the job of a spy. Most of CIA’s foreign agents were scumbags — killers, terrorists, thieves, smugglers, drug dealers, arms traffickers, gangsters, and traitors. “We weren’t responsible for delivering the weapons into Afghanistan. We fulfilled all of our obligations in Tajikistan.”
“This is true,” Litvin agreed, “but there are early news reports indicating Americans are combing over the wreckage of multiple large vehicles on the highway, thirty miles south of the Tajik border. So…”
“So if the convoy was interdicted,” Cramer said, finishing Litvin’s statement for him, “how did they know about the delivery and the route?”
“It is troubling.”
“Perhaps my colleagues at CIA finally caught up with Arzad. After all, last time I checked, he was still on the White House’s kill list.”
“Perhaps, but then as you say: never assume.”
Cramer rolled his eyes. “You said there were two problems. What’s the other?”
The mafiya enforcer answered. Unlike his Litvin, his English was heavily accented and slowly delivered. “I received a call from Oleg. An hour after we departed Ayni, the Russians discovered the bodies of one of their soldiers behind the hangar. His throat was slit. This morning, in the light, they found footprints in the mud.”