“Did you see that woman in the knit dress?” Kushner asked as he sat down, his plate piled high with eggs, pancakes, and bacon.
“How could anyone miss her?”
“She’s from Babruysk. You know what they say about women from Babruysk.”
“Actually, in Warsaw we don’t talk about women from Babruysk that often. In fact, it’s probably closer to never. Can we get on with our business, please?”
“My dear, dear Tomasz,” Kushner replied. “What good is all the money we made, and all the risks we took, if we cannot enjoy ourselves?”
“Pavel, we have known each other for many years, so I hope you’ll appreciate my being comfortable enough with you to be frank. Knock off the bullshit. Do you have something for me, or not?”
“What I have is a prediction for you. Within a year, unless you loosen up, you will be in a retirement home.”
The Pole shook his head. “Of all the meetings I have ever had, this is the one I should have brought a gun to. You’d better have more than just a prediction in that briefcase, old friend.”
Kushner smiled. “Would I disappoint you, old friend?” he asked, opening the case to show him what was inside.
Wójcik removed the file folder from his own briefcase and compared the pictures Kopec had given him to what he was now looking at. It was a perfect match. Kushner appeared to have secured the components from one of the upgrade kits.
“Where did you get that?”
The Belarusian shrugged. “It wasn’t difficult. I told you. There are only a few people in Belarus who could handle something like this.”
“Where are the rest of the kits?”
“They’re safe.”
“I paid you one hundred thousand dollars to locate them,” said the Pole.
“Which I did,” Kushner replied. “I even brought one here to prove it to you. If you have a buyer interested in the entire lot, I’d be happy to let my source know.”
Wójcik looked at him. “So now you’re the broker on this deal?”
“As far as you’re concerned, yes.”
“Who has the upgrade kits?”
“My dear Tomasz, it would be highly unethical of me to divulge that information,” said the Belarusian.
Wójcik felt a wave of nausea coming over him. Kopec was going to be extremely angry at this development.
Taking a deep breath, he tried to remain calm. “How about this? Let’s go downstairs to my room. I’ll take a few photographs of the merchandise, contact my client, and we’ll take things from there.”
“Can I finish my breakfast first?” asked Kushner.
“Bring it with you,” replied the Pole, removing several bills from his wallet and placing them on the table. “I’ll carry the case.”
Picking up his plate and his coffee cup, Kushner followed Wójcik to the elevator and down to his room.
There, Wójcik produced a small digital camera and took pictures of the components from every conceivable angle.
When he was finished, Kushner shoveled the last bite of food into his mouth, repacked the equipment into his briefcase, and headed for the door.
“Wait a second,” said Wójcik. “Where are you going?”
“If your client is interested, you know how to reach me,” Kushner replied. “Thanks for breakfast.”
Leaving the room, the Belarusian was careful to make sure that he wasn’t being followed. He had been warned that Wójcik likely had a tail.
As he disappeared into the stairwell, a man stepped out of a doorway at the other end of the hall. Seeing that the Pole’s visitor had left, he removed his encrypted cell phone and composed a message. Oleg Tretyakov would want to know everything that had happened.
CHAPTER 60
Harvath’s plan wasn’t simple. In fact, it was quite complicated. That meant there were a lot of ways in which it could go wrong.
According to Kuznetsov, Colonel Oleg Tretyakov was in Kaliningrad. Similar to the Vatican’s being its own state within Italy, Kaliningrad was an exclave — sovereign Russian territory, a minicountry cut off from Russia — right inside Europe.
Sandwiched in between NATO members Poland and Lithuania, Kaliningrad was tightly controlled and nearly impossible to get into. And, based on what Kuznetsov had revealed, it would be doubly difficult for Harvath.
Kuznetsov had recognized him back on Gotland because of the CCTV footage Johansson had recovered from Visby Hospital. That footage had been forwarded to Tretyakov and had likely been added to every Russian database.
The moment Harvath tried to access any Russian-controlled port of entry and his photograph or facial scan was run, he’d be taken into custody and the GRU alerted.
That meant the only way he could get into Kaliningrad was to sneak in.
He had thought about somehow smuggling the team in via trucks, but the Kaliningrad crossings resembled those at the U.S./Mexico border. There was a heavy dog presence at each one, and they had no problem holding people up for hours as they went vehicle by vehicle, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
The situation along the exclave’s rugged coastline wasn’t any better. As Kaliningrad was home to Russia’s Baltic fleet, the surface and subsurface patrols were extensive and around-the-clock.
With land and sea options out of the question, that left only one other possibility — air.
The plan was to conduct a High Altitude Low Opening, or HALO, parachute jump.
They would exit the aircraft over Lithuanian airspace and glide for several kilometers, popping their chutes and landing in a predetermined location in the Kaliningrad countryside.
From there, they would make their way into the city and search for Tretyakov. Everything up to that point was the easy part. Getting out of Kaliningrad was going to be something else entirely. Harvath had no idea how they were going to pull that off.
The last big exfiltration he had done had been via high-speed boats out of Libya. Their Navy was easy to avoid and had they been forced to, even easier to outrun. The Russians, though, were in a completely different league.
It was said that it could take even longer to get out of Kaliningrad than to get in. Waits for exiting the country could run as long as five or more hours. It was why citizens of Kaliningrad preferred taking the buses, which have their own lanes at the borders.
On top of the problem of how they were going to get out, Harvath also had to plan for what they’d do if a member of the team were injured or captured, or if the authorities became aware of their presence and there was a tightening at the borders and an exclavewide manhunt. The sheer impossibility of it all was almost overwhelming.
It reminded Harvath of the beginnings of the OSS and the incredibly dangerous assignments its teams were sent on behind enemy lines. But at least when they jumped into foreign countries, they had local partisans on the ground whom they could link up with and get help from.
That wouldn’t be the case in Kaliningrad. As soon as Harvath and his team touched the ground, they’d be on their own. They’d have to secure their own transportation, do their own reconnaissance, and avoid detection every step of the way.
With the OSS in mind, Harvath decided to reapproach his problem. How would they have handled it?
While they were tough as hell and, when forced, underwent some amazingly grueling treks, they had always looked for the simplest answer first. If an ounce of courage could prevent a pound of hardship, they had gone the courage route.
The easiest places at which to cross over were the designated border checkpoints. Because Jasinski was Polish military intelligence, and because they might be coming in hot, he wanted to exit Kaliningrad into Poland, where she not only spoke the language, but also commanded some authority.