Morgan Stone
THE RUSSIAN FACTOR
A Novel Based on Actual Events
To Dad
PROLOGUE
It was entirely unlike Jack to vanish without a trace.
It’s what ended me up in a Soviet built Jeep, lurching and crashing along a goat trail in the mountains of southern Kazakhstan. Had that desolate landscape harbored a casual observer, we would have seemed an unlikely pair. My native driver was a man who looked ninety, but was probably not a day over forty. I was a woman in her mid-thirties, clinging to the rusty innards of a vehicle trying to toss me out. The driver had no idea I was a western intelligence contractor and to him, I was probably as out of place in his world as he would have been in Bloomingdales.
He’d told me his vehicle was called a Wahzeek and looked at me with a toothless grin every time the oil pan slammed into solid rock. I stifled the urge to look behind for puddles of oil, held on tight and stared straight ahead.
I couldn’t shake the gut wrenching feeling that Jack was dead. Worse, was thinking it was my fault. I figured I’d find an answer, one way or another, at an abandoned Soviet airfield, hours ahead along the boulder strewn trail. Some kind of communication breakdown, maybe, but this was Jack. He had never failed to make his reports on time using any method necessary. “Jack is a survivor!” Rolled around in my head like a mantra. He had flown fighters, bombers, and almost every bush-plane around for the last forty some-odd years.
High-altitude reconnaissance of the mountainous region revealed that Jack’s beloved Fieseler Storch, a vintage German liaison aircraft renowned for its unbeatable short takeoff and landing capabilities, hadn’t moved in three weeks. On top of that, there’d been no contact from Jack in over a month. It didn’t make sense that payments to the fake airfreight company I’d set up continued, while Jack’s deliveries hadn’t. When things stop making sense, I know something’s gone wrong.
Years before, Jack Reed had been my flight instructor. His flying-ace common sense and composure in the face of danger made him my first choice as a pilot for a specialized type of airfreight company. He knew the danger and I think he even enjoyed it, but most of all, he relished the opportunity to fly his vintage craft over some of the most challenging terrain on earth. He spoke little Russian and certainly not a word of the local dialect, but he felt comfortable among the people living on the abandoned airfield. He liked their simple way of life, and he loved the solitude and raw nature of the mountains.
Unlike the shepherds and peasants who lived in the hamlet year round, Jack and his Storch were only meant to be summer residents. Had I asked him though, he probably would have strapped skis on that old war-bird and gone on flying as long as it took to gather the evidence I needed. Mile after bone-jarring mile in the Wahzeek, I compulsively went over what could have gone wrong. It should have been simple. I had proof the subject — client — was moving nuclear material to a receiver in Iran. I could have pulled Jack out, but I wanted more. I wanted to know who the receivers were. Jack was an ace pilot, a friend, even a confidant, but certainly no spook. I cursed myself for adding the photo request to the time, routing, and cargo information he was already sending.
Another shuddering crunch and Bashir, my driver, asked yet again, what I wanted in that rocky wasteland that I couldn’t get in Shymkent. I answered patiently in halting Russian, knowing he understood only half of what I said, that I was working for a humanitarian organization and was looking for a pilot we sent out there. Bashir nodded as if he understood, but I could see he was hoping to convince me to turn back, sparing him and his vehicle.
Apart from the Internet security firm I run with my brother, my extracurricular sideline as an intelligence contractor has accustomed me to coming up with plausible reasons for being in various places with various people at various times. My stories are tailored to the recipient based on his or her level of knowledge, experience, and their need to know. Mostly they are intended to deflect questions while providing enough information to keep the questioner engaged in a task I need carried out. Such tasks can be as simple as driving me from Shymkent to the middle of nowhere, to as complex as entrapping the sellers of nuclear fission waste products. It was in that type of job I had involved Jack and his plane.
Under the guise of a fictitious no-questions-asked airfreight company, Jack kept tabs on a Russian crime syndicate of great interest to my employer. The syndicate needed someone willing to squeeze through mountain passes, below radar, while making impossibly dangerous landings in alpine meadows. All to deliver a product that would undeniably have made customs clearance inconvenient.
“Blyad!” My reluctant driver snapped.
The Russian expletive hit me as Bashir stomped on the brakes.
“Hit goat! Not good to kill man’s goat!” Bashir stopped the engine and climbed out.
It was a goat all right, but the stench made it clear, we hadn’t killed it. Bashir insisted on dragging it off the road. Lamenting the wasted meat, he threw a token handful of dirt on the carcass and muttered something in broken Russian about bad omens.
Getting back into the Wahzeek, it wasn’t bad omens worrying me. I’d seen the crusted blood around the animal’s eyes, nostrils and anus. The blackened feces and blood caked in the animal’s coat told me the poor creature lay on the road for a considerable time, literally bleeding out its entrails. Other than a tropical hemorrhagic pathogen like Ebola, the only thing I knew capable of killing an animal that way was radiation poisoning.
Bashir and I rode on in silence until, climbing onto a plateau, we saw the tattered windsock and ramshackle buildings of the former airfield. There was no one in sight as Bashir brought the Wahzeek to a stop by Jack’s Storch. “This should be place, but people, they should now be back from fields…” He said, hunched over the wheel, peering through the crazed filthy windshield.
“This is the place alright.” I agreed, my heart sinking.
The silence was broken by the occasional bleating of a few isolated sheep. Bashir mumbled something about going to collect them before wandering off. I was glad he was gone. It gave me a chance to conduct my search without distraction. At that moment in the bright sun, in a place which would be beautiful under other circumstances, I dared to hope I would find nobody in the buildings. Silently, I bargained with fate: “Let this be just a kidnapping. Let me find a ransom note. If I can just find a way to work this out, I’ll never push my luck like that again.”
Jack’s workshop was padlocked from the outside. I circled behind, thinking I might find him or some of the hamlet’s inhabitants in the huts they had taken over. A lone hen pecked in the dust. When I saw a dog on a stoop, its body contorted, long since desiccated, I realized the absence of dogs confirmed I would find no one. No one alive, anyway. Looking over, I saw Bashir halfway across the meadow, heading toward me with a sheep on a very short rope. I walked his way, smiling when I saw that he’d used his belt to restrain the uncooperative animal.
“Sheep very thirsty. Need water.” Bashir made his point by pulling the sheep’s head up by a handful of wool on the back of its neck. “No one take care sheep. Is very bad go, leave animals. No one here. I take sheep.”
“Sure, take the sheep.” I said, putting my thoughts in order, and then to keep him busy, “You better get the other ones.”
Bashir agreed. Rummaging some rope from the Wahzeek, he tied the sheep he had with him to the vehicle and set off for the other strays.
I walked around Jack’s Storch. He knew everything about that plane and took any opportunity to sing its praises as the best short-takeoff-and-landing craft ever made. There’s no way he would ever have let a layer of dust accumulate on it. I tried a door, it was unlocked. I wasn’t sure it even had locks. I flipped on the master switch and scanned the minimal instrument panel. The high-wing reconnaissance aircraft had full fuel tanks and a charged battery. On the seat lay Jack’s worn aeronautic and topographical charts, a thermos, his David Clarke headset and his leather gloves. The thermos was full. Jack had been about to leave when his plans changed.