It was almost 2.00AM when the ambulance finally left, taking Michael to the ER for stabilization, then to rehab. The EMS crew members sounded reassuring, saying they didn’t think the episode would lead to any permanent brain damage.
Jeremy watched the ambulance turn the corner and disappear. Then he curled up on the sofa and sobbed, long, breathless sobs stifled in the pillow that still carried his son’s scent. After a few moments, he slowly rose. Grabbing his keys, he headed out the door to the hospital. It was going to be a long night.
…10
Major Evgheni Aleksandrovich Smolin hung up his office phone and started arranging his tie, getting ready to meet with his boss. The meeting was unscheduled; Colonel Markov had just called to invite him over for a quick chat.
Smolin straightened his tie and buttoned his uniform jacket, watching his reflection in the window overlooking Yasenevo District. He loved the elevated view of the district and, as he had climbed through the ranks of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation or SVR, his view had improved through the years, serving as a constant reminder of where he’d been and where he wanted to be. At forty-eight, he was just as ambitious as he’d been at twenty-three.
His career as an intelligence officer had started with a serious roadblock. Just when young Smolin was graduating from the university with a four-year degree in economics, recently turned twenty-three and dreaming of nothing else but to join the KGB, things were changing dramatically in Russia and the KGB was being dismantled. Smolin still recalled how he had learned the news on the radio and had rushed to Lubyanka Square, pleading with every man or woman exiting the building that day.
“Please help me,” he had said to every KGB officer leaving the agency’s headquarters that cold November morning in 1991, “I always wanted to join the KGB, could you please tell me where to go?”
“Go home, kid, it’s over,” some people answered. Others just ignored him.
He somehow managed to go against the flow and enter the building. He found the personnel office and asked for employment application forms. The personnel officer laughed in his face.
“Haven’t you seen the news on TV? KGB is being dismantled, it’s over. Done. Finished. Go home.”
“Yeah, I know, but somebody will still have to do this work, right? A country can’t function without security services, without intelligence officers. Dismantling or not, I want to apply for a job here.”
The personnel officer stared at him as if he was some sort of a nut case. Smolin stood his ground.
“Please, sir, I’ve always wanted to work in intelligence. Please help me.”
“All right, whatever; you’re going to be Russia’s own James Bond, I can see that,” he said, offering him the employment forms bearing the KGB logo. “Fill these out, and if there’s any recruiting happening in the next months I’ll keep you in mind.”
He went home happy and hopeful that day and didn’t budge from the phone, waiting for the interview call. No call came for many weeks, and he soon lost hope. Every couple of weeks or so he’d try to reach that personnel officer, but he couldn’t get him on the phone. He even went back to Lubyanka Square a few times, but he wasn’t allowed inside the building.
Then one day the call finally came, taking him by surprise. A few weeks later, he entered formal training as an intelligence officer, after having persuaded the hiring manager that he could recruit anyone to do anything. He had made a powerful impression on his future leaders, his self-confidence and commitment opening the door for him to start in Directorate S — Illegal Intelligence.
His first assignment was to recruit a foreign national traveling on a short business trip. His mark was British, a corporate employee working in the research department for one of the major digital imaging companies in the West. She was scheduled to be in Moscow for twelve days, attending a series of conferences. By the sixth day she was turned, spending her nights in bed with Evgheni Smolin and her days gathering useful information that helped him promote his career. For years to come she had continued to send him passionate love letters and valuable information in the field of digital imaging, from medical applications to imaging data compression, satellite-image processing and mapping, encryption algorithms, and high-volume data storage solutions. She traveled to Moscow to see Smolin every few months or so, couriering the intel herself and making his job and his advancement really easy. Smolin did his part, keeping their flame alive, and his source of intel motivated and satisfied.
A tall, well-built man with blond hair and charming blue eyes, Smolin was a talented actor who could play any part. He could tell any lie without blinking and be very convincing at it. He was a natural.
His favorite story, the one he used on numerous traveling foreigners with access to useful intel, was that he had to get some valuable intelligence back to his bosses or suffer unspeakable cruelties at their hands. Either he brought good quality information, or he risked dying in some god-forsaken corner of Siberia, freezing to death in a nameless labor camp, just like his father had died. Nope, glasnost and perestroika hadn’t changed the core issues of Russia, he was telling his marks. The same people held the power and influence, and Siberia was still there, waiting for him to fail.
They all fell for it, mostly women, but also a few men. They all worked hard to help the young, desperate, and sexy Russian who had no other choice. Only no element of his story was true. His father hadn’t died, at least not yet, anyway. He hadn’t even traveled outside of Moscow, not even once. A low-level mechanical engineer who worked in a machinery factory, the senior Smolin had failed to instill in his son the willingness to put in a hard day’s work. Evgheni Smolin wanted to be in the elite, to see the world, to live adventurously.
His fame in the SVR was consolidated the day he received a commendation for a very successful operation on foreign soil. His boss, a little intoxicated at the time, had said about Smolin that, unlike the rest of the men in that room who thought with their dicks, Smolin fucked with his brain. A few weeks later, jokes about him were heard all over the building:
Why doesn’t Smolin ever wear condoms? So his dick can ask questions when he fucks.
Why doesn’t Smolin ever get blowjobs? Because his women need to keep on talking.
He was famous. He loved it.
A couple of successful recruiting missions in Germany, where his physical appearance and natural talent for foreign languages made him pass for a native, brought him recognition and advancement in the ranks of Directorate S. He enlisted the services of numerous Russian emigrants who were living in Germany, and those recruits stayed productive and in contact, although Smolin’s methods were not always direct and honest, or charming. Some, he had to threaten. A few, he had to kilclass="underline" stupid idealists who believed that if they made it to the West they were free of their obligations toward Mother Russia.
He knocked on his boss’s door and entered, then stood at attention.
“Sit,” Markov invited him. “Have you ever heard of Division Seven?”
“No, sir.”
“Seven is an ultra-secret intelligence division, reporting directly to the minister of defense. Only the best of the best from the SVR, GRU, and FSB are invited to join Division Seven. Its mission is top secret, above my level.”
“Sir?”
“You are being promoted, major. You have been selected for an urgent mission and you’ll be joining Division Seven. You’ll report tomorrow morning to the ministry of defense. Congratulations.”