Karl got up. “I should get my new phone and make sure the company disables the old one. For all I know, those men have been calling everyone they can think of on my Rubles.”
Maya got up and gave him a big hug, following that up with a kiss on both cheeks and a prolonged kiss on the lips. “Come and pick me up at noon and we will have lunch.”
He smiled and nodded agreement. Outside in the frigid morning air, he watched her walk down the sidewalk toward their apartment building. He would miss that fine butt, he thought. In reality, he would miss just everything about Maya.
Instead of going to get a new phone, which he didn’t need, Karl eventually went back to his apartment and gathered his small duffle carry-on bag with the clothes he wanted to keep. The rest he would have to leave behind.
He had set up his flight out of Murmansk and was scheduled to leave that evening. But he was still a bit disturbed by the events of the previous night. How had those men found him with the drone in the park? Or was he just a victim of circumstances? The two men could have simply saw him crossing the road with the drone and decided to steal it from him. Right. And he was in Murmansk to learn international economics.
Karl left his apartment and went to the trash room at the end of his hallway. Then he took out his phone and considered making a call for guidance. He hesitated, thinking about what his father would have done in this situation. What about his mother? Reluctantly, he punched in a long sequence of numbers and waited. Just as he was about to cut the call short, his phone clicked and he waited. Then there was a sound like the ocean crashing against rocks.
Finally, a familiar voice said, “How the hell did you get this number?”
“Jake, it’s Karl.”
The man on the other end laughed and then said, “You know you can call me dad or pops or father or some shit.”
“I know.”
Hesitation from both ends.
His dad then said, “What’s up? How’s Murmansk?”
“Cold and snowy. Wait. How the hell did you know?”
“You’re calling me on a secure Agency SAT phone to my even more secure SAT phone,” Jake said. “Mine tells me your exact location. And I see you’re on the beautiful Russian Arctic Riviera.” His father hesitated and then said, “Besides, you don’t think my contacts won’t keep me informed as to where my son is assigned?”
Good point. Karl knew his dad was dialed in, but he had no idea of just what kind of pull he had in the Agency. “Understand. I’ve got a bit of a conundrum.” He briefly told his father about the other evening and waited for a response.
“Who’s the girl?” Jake asked.
“Just another grad student at the university.”
“If you say so.” He paused and only the ocean could be heard for a moment. Then Jake said, “The two guys are GRU.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. That’s their MO. They’ve always been heavy-fisted and without finesse. The KGB, or FSB or SVR now, would have probably followed you back to your apartment and taken you out there.”
“Killed me?”
“No. Not right away. They’d haul you in and interrogate you first. See what you know.”
“How would they know my affiliation?”
“They wouldn’t need to know it. They would get that from you.”
“I wouldn’t talk.”
“Everyone talks, Karl. The key is to feed them so much bullshit that they won’t be able to discern the truth if it happens to slip out. They tortured me for more than two weeks in the eighties in a Draconian prison. I held out for a requisite time before starting to fill them with crap. I think they finally let me go because they were sick of my lies. I was lucky they didn’t just kill me or disappear me.”
“I never heard that story,” Karl said.
“I’ve never had the time to tell you a lot of stories,” his father said. “Where are you now?”
“About to bug out.”
“I hope you’re not at your apartment. If so, cut this call off now and get the hell out. The GRU could have bugged your place last night when they trashed the place.”
Crap. Karl hadn’t thought about that. “I’m in the trash room down the hall.”
“If they didn’t get the video, they’ll be back to get it from you.”
“The video wasn’t on the phone.”
“Then you need to hide somewhere until your flight.”
“Okay. Thanks. By the way, is that the ocean?”
“Yeah. I’m in shorts and a T-shirt in the Azores. Envy now, my son.”
With that, his father hung up.
Karl felt better after talking with his dad. He shoved his phone into his pocket and started out the door. But he stopped in his tracks when he saw two men at his door down the corridor, so he scooted back inside the trash room. He couldn’t be sure, but the two had to be the same GRU officers who had confronted him the night before.
Now what?
He peered around the door again and just caught a glimpse of the two men entering his apartment. Seizing the moment, he slipped out the door and rushed down the stairwell on the end of the building.
Once he got to the ground floor, he moved casually out onto the sidewalk, his bag over his shoulder, and didn’t look back. At the first main crossroad, he got onto a trolleybus heading toward downtown. Finally, he looked back toward his apartment building down the block and saw the two men back out on the street. He would have to ride around the city until his flight later than evening.
4
The Russian commercial cargo ship Magadan cruised slowly out into the open water of the Barents Sea, heading North Northwest.
An imposing figure dressed in a heavy wool peacoat or bushlot, his head covered with a wolf fur hat, leaned against a bulkhead with a view of the icy ocean ahead, smoke from a cigarette mixing with the steam from his breath. By now the sun was setting over meter-high waves. Only the lights of the icebreaker in front of them could be seen, and just barely through the foggy night. He thought about what was ahead, knowing the northernmost tip of Norway was somewhere out in the distance.
Dmitri Vladimirovich Samsonov was officially the third in command of this commercial cargo ship, but unofficially he was still a lieutenant colonel in the Russian GRU, the main intelligence agency of the Russian Federation. Yet, even the captain of the ship didn’t know this fact. Samsonov had worked his way up the ranks in the GRU Spetsnaz, before transferring into the clandestine directorate as a young captain.
He lit a second cigarette from his first and brought the tip to a bright orange just as the hatch opened and the first officer came up to Samsonov.
“Could I get one of those, Dmitri?” the first officer asked.
Samsonov found the nearly empty pack inside his jacket and flipped it up, exposing a couple cigarettes. The first officer took one and accepted a light of the end of his cigarette. Then the two of them leaned back against the metal bulkhead, trying to hide slightly from the cold sea air.
“It will be nice to get out of this cold Arctic,” the first officer said.
Samsonov lifted his chin. He had been briefed on this man’s background, and had considered having him replaced before taking on the cargo. But there had been no time to bring in a replacement.
“Why did you want to talk with me?”
Taking in a long draw on his cigarette and holding the smoke before sending it up into a stream at his immediate superior, Samsonov chose his words carefully. “When we brought the cargo aboard in Murmansk, you seemed a bit disturbed.”
“I expressed my concern to the captain,” the first officer said.
“I was told you worked with Strategic Missiles in your youth.” His intense eyes shifted through the smoke of his cold breath and his cigarette, landing squarely on the first officer’s expression.