Ghost Dancer aka Dance of Death

CHAPTER 14

Wilson sat by himself in the hotel’s lobby, drinking tea while he waited for Belov. It was midafternoon, and the lobby was suffused with a wintry light. Zero and Khalid were playing backgammon at a table near the door, occasionally looking up in annoyance at a tour group of Orthodox Jews, who were arguing with the desk clerk in a language Wilson didn’t understand. Nearby, a couple of businessmen sat on the edge of a white leather couch, reading newspapers.

It was three o’clock when Maxim Pavelovich Belov arrived, brushing the snow from his shoulders. Seeing him, it occurred to Wilson that he looked like a million bucks – or about two percent of his net worth. (Wilson had Googled him the night before.)

A former KGB major, Belov wore a Savile Row suit under a black vicuna overcoat, and a sable hat of Soviet army design. Snowflakes sparkled in the fur. According to a report by a UN investigating team, he was forty-three years old and held an economics degree from the Institute of Social Relations in Moscow. He was also one of the largest small-arms dealers in the world, having gotten his start flying South African gladiolas to Dubai, where the flowers sold for ten times what he paid for them.

Striding directly over to Wilson, Belov pulled off his gloves, clicked his heels with a look of bemusement, and held out his hand. “Welcome to Evil Empire!” he said, his voice filled with gravel. “Or what’s left of it. Did you enjoy yourself last night?”

Wilson got to his feet and shook the Russian’s hand. A low-pitched buzzing sound emanated from an improbably pink pair of earphones dangling from Belov’s neck. White Stripes. “I was surprised when you didn’t meet the ship,” Wilson told him.

Belov laughed. “I never ‘meet ship.’ Maybe you smuggle drugs. Viagra, even!” He laughed again. “That’s all we need. You ready?”

Wilson nodded. With a heads-up to Zero and Khalid, he followed Belov out to the street, where a pair of Cadillac Escalades idled in the snow, their windows gray with steam. A small flag flew from a plastic standard on the passenger-side fender of each car. The flags consisted of a black field, emblazoned with a silver sheriff’s badge – the kind with a six-pointed star.

It was odd, Wilson thought, but so was the way the Russian came and went without bodyguards. Then he saw that this wasn’t actually true. As he got into the back of the second Escalade, he saw the “businessmen” from the lobby, the ones who’d been sitting on the white couch, climb into the car ahead of him. Apparently, they’d been watching him for more than an hour before Belov himself appeared at the hotel.

One by one, each of the car doors slammed shut against the sleet. Belov slapped the top of the seat in front of them – two quick raps with the palm of his hand – and the cars pulled away from the curb.

“First time in Odessa?”

Wilson nodded. The car was soundproofed or armored, or both. He couldn’t tell. Either way, it had the feeling of a cocoon.

“You see Steps?”

“Yeah.”

Belov sat back in his seat. “First time I see steps, I cried. Not like baby. But… I’m wet in face. Maybe you feel same way when you see Statue of Liberty. No?”

“No.”

Belov laughed.

The SUVs gathered speed as the city petered out into farmland, the earth fallow under a blanket of snow and litter. They were heading away from the sea, moving inland over a road that needed repairs. “So how do we do this?” Wilson asked.

Belov shrugged. “Easy. First, we go nowhere.”

Wilson shot him a look.

“No joke. Place we’re going… this place doesn’t exist.” He cocked an eye at Wilson. “You know Transniestria?”

Wilson shook his head.

“I rest case,” Belov said. “Ten, fifteen miles. Like being on moon.”

“Why is that?”

Belov thought about it. Finally, he said, “Perestroika! Remember? Means, ‘restructure,’ I think.”

Wilson nodded.

“First thing, big cutbacks for army. Then Wall comes down. Soon, everything comes down. No more Evil Empire, okay?”

Wilson nodded a second time.

“Okay. So, soldiers come home. Cuba, Germany, everywhere – it’s hasta la vista! But now, we have big surpluses. Tanks and APCs. Artillery! Choppers, rockets. Mortars, missiles. Antiaircraft guns. They have to put surplus somewhere, right? So where do you think?” Belov raised his chin toward the windshield. “Transniestria.”

As they neared their first checkpoint, the Russian explained that Transniestria had been a part of Moldova, which, in turn, had been a part of Romania until the end of the Second World War. Annexed by the Soviet Union, Moldova declared its independence when the USSR dissolved. Russian troops remained where they were, however, on Moldovan territory east of the Dniester River. That was fine with the locals, who liked the idea of an independent state allied with Moscow. And so Transniestria became what diplomats like to call “a fact on the ground.”

The only problem (other than the country’s extreme poverty) was that almost no one recognized it. This meant that its citizens were effectively stateless. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Transniestria doesn’t exist.

“Transniestria, he is No-Man’s-Land,” Belov said. “Big problem. No country, no trade. No trade, no money. So everyone is poor. Not good. Someplace else, normal poor country, poor is okay. Look at Argentina. Africa! People get in line to give money. IMF, World Bank, Soros. Morgan Stanley! Here? No! No country? No help! All you can do is leave. Except you can’t leave, because to leave, you need passport. And Transniestrian passport, this is like cartoon.”

“So what do they do?”

“They get passport somewhere else. In Russia, maybe, or Ukraine. Third best is Internet. You’d be surprised how many Knights of Malta living in Tiraspol.”

“What’s Tiraspol?” Wilson asked.

Belov did a double take. “This is capital of Nowhere,” he explained. “Maybe twenty miles now. But first, airport. I show what you’re buying!” Belov told him. “You see with eyes!”

Wilson’s shoulders heaved. “If you tell me it’s all there, I’m sure it’s fine.”

Belov slapped Wilson on the knee, and guffawed. “I never do business this way! First time! So tell me, what happens? You land in Congo. Client opens crate. And – uh-oh! Is grapefruits! What then?”

“Well,” Wilson said, “then I’d have a problem.”

“No shit!”

“But that won’t happen,” Wilson told him, “because then you’d have a problem.”

Belov looked surprised. “With you?” he asked. The question was almost cheerful.

“Of course not. I’d be dead by then.”

“Is true! You’d have red hole.” The Russian tapped his forefinger, three times in rapid succession, against his forehead. “Right here.”

“I know.”

“So… for me? I don’t see problem.”

“You’d have a really basic problem,” Wilson said, punning on the only Arabic he knew.

Belov looked puzzled for a moment, and then he chuckled. “Is good joke. ‘Basic.’ You mean al-Qaeda.”

“Well, Hakim and his friends.”

Belov nodded. “True.” The Russian pursed his lips. After a moment, he said, “So! We go to airport. Maybe you don’t know guns, but you know grapefruits from grenades, right?”

Wilson laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “Grapefruits are pink inside.”

“Okay, so you see crates, and later, maybe you talk to Hakim. And you tell him: ‘No pink.’”

The Tiraspol airport was nothing like Wilson expected. He’d imagined the kind of airstrip you find in the Caribbean: a ribbon of asphalt running past a cinder-block terminal. But what he found, instead, was a military base with barracks and hangars, and runways capable of handling the biggest cargo planes.

Chain-link fences, four feet apart, circled the base. Each was topped with razor wire. The Escalades came to a stop in front of a guardhouse, and cut their engines. A soldier appeared beside the car, and ordered the driver to roll down the window. As he did, a second soldier examined the undersides of the Escalades, using a mirror attached to the end of an aluminum racing jack.

Belov and the soldier chatted in Russian for a bit, then the soldier saluted and waved them on. Leaving the road, they followed a dirt track that ran beside the fence for half a mile until it came to an end at a hangar on the far side of the airfield. Belov motioned for Wilson to follow, then put up a hand when Zero and Khalid began to follow.

“Just you,” the Russian said, his breath like smoke in the freezing air.

Wilson hesitated, then gestured for his bodyguards to wait. They looked disappointed. And thoroughly chilled. Other than a sweater that Zero had acquired on the ship, they were wearing the same clothes they’d worn in Baalbek. T-shirts and jeans. Cheap jackets.

Sucks to be them, Wilson thought, and kept walking. A gust of wind brought tears to his eyes.

Inside the hangar, a medium-size cargo plane, more than a hundred feet long and almost as wide, occupied the entire space. It was painted a gray-blue color that Wilson guessed would make it hard to see from the ground.

“Golden oldie!” Belov exclaimed. “Like me!” He laughed. “Antonov-seventy-two. I get from Aeroflot, ten years now. Very good plane.”

“How much does it carry?” Wilson asked.

“Ten tons, metric.”

“Nonstop?”

Belov scoffed. “No way. Not even close. Not even with extra tanks.”

“So we have to refuel.”

Belov nodded.

“Where?”

The Russian smiled. “Sharjah.”

Wilson thought about it. “That’s kinda out of the way, isn’t it?”

The Russian looked surprised. “You know Sharjah?”

“I know where it is,” Wilson told him. Hakim had mentioned the place at dinner, and Wilson looked for it on a map in the lounge aboard the Marmara Queen. One of seven sheikhdoms in the Emirates, it was a patch of sand on the Persian Gulf, just across from Iran. Which put it about two thousand miles southeast of the hangar they were standing in.

The Congo, on the other hand, was southwest. And that’s where they were going.

Belov smiled. “We’re in Sharjah two hours, maybe three. Not to worry.”

The Russian cocked his head for Wilson to follow him around to the rear of the plane, where a hinged cargo-loading ramp disappeared into the fuselage. Nearby, a pair of battered forklifts sat amid a dozen containers, some sealed, some open. The Russian handed him a typewritten list on a single sheet of onionskin paper. There was no letterhead, just the word CEKPET stamped in ink at the top of the page.

36 type-69 40mm (man-portable) RPGs (w/4X telescopic sight) $124,200

90 rockets (40 mm) 35,050

200 assault rifles: AK-47 7.62mm (30-round magazines, side-folding) 84,460

1,000 boxes, 20 each cartridges 7.62mm 10,100

50 Franchi SPAS-12 combat shotguns 55,000

500 boxes, 10 shells (00 gauge) 8,320

10 flamethrowers (Brianchi) 1,460

4 vests (Kevlar) 1,220

12 stabiscopes (Fujinon, 3rd generation) 201,550

100 Rigel 3100 tactical night-vision goggles 505,200

300 combat boots 25,075

1 Meillor 37mm dual antiaircraft gun 188,256

100 antiaircraft shells (37mm) 9,500

10 mortars 60mm 17,600

100 60mm shells 14,300

400 pounds liquid explosive (Triex) 80,500

200 pounds RDX plastic booster 32,040

400 time delays, electronic (solid-state programmable, one hour to 90 days) 83,600

1 special kit 33,500

30 man-portable air defense systems: Russian Strela-2 (SA-7a) 1968 54,000

15 1.17 kg infrared seeker, 5 feet long, 30-40 lbs 105,260

TOTAL: $ 1,670,191

(1,429,992 euros)

Wilson studied the list, curious about just what it was he was delivering to Africa. “‘Cekpet’?”

“‘Secret,’” Belov explained. “I don’t have English stamp.”

“And this?” Wilson asked, pointing to an entry.

“Stabiscope? Special binoculars, with gyroscope! On vibrating platform, is stable like rock. Good for helicopter, APC. Tank, too. Come! I show you.” He grabbed a crowbar that was leaning against the wall, and led Wilson up the ramp and into the plane.

The fuselage was cavernous, with belt-loader tracks running along the floor under wooden palettes held down by tensioning buckles and cargo nets.

Wilson glanced at the list. “What’s this?” He pointed to the entry for thirty Strela-2s.

“Manpads.”

“Which are what?” Wilson asked.

“Missile. Like Stinger.” To illustrate, he rested the crowbar on his shoulder. Aiming at an imaginary plane, he squeezed off an imaginary shot. “Hold like bazooka,” he said. “Pull trigger, and… boom!”

“And this… ‘special kit’? What’s that?”

“Poison kit,” Belov said. “Four kinds, all by mouth or DMSO. So watch what you eat, and don’t touch!” He chuckled, then grew serious again. “ECC: tastes like shit, but no one ever complains. One taste, convulsions. Number two: THL. Forty-eight hours, mouth to morgue. So, have time to leave. Then heart stops. Number three is CYD: liver dies, kidney dies. Four hours, maybe six. Last one? MCR. Ugly way to die! Organs decompose. Totally. They open you up, inside looks like soup, so obvious foul play.”

“And the DMSO…”

“Is solvent. Mix with poison, put on keyboard, doorknob, rifle, whatever. One touch, right to bloodstream – tits up.”

Wilson glanced around. “When do they finish loading?”

“Tonight. When pilot get in. Very important he get balance right.”

“And this is everything?”

It seemed to Wilson that Belov hesitated before he nodded.

“What?” Wilson asked.

“Is small thing…”

“In a deal like this?”

“Yes, yes! Is small thing. I show you!”

The Russian went from pallet to pallet until he found what he was looking for. Using the crowbar, he pried up the lid on one of the boxes. “Look!” he said. “These African guys, they want Russian RPGs, but… no way, José. Impossible, even for me! So, I substitute Type Sixty-nines. Chinese made. Not bad. And cheaper.”

Wilson stared at the gunmetal-gray cylinders. “What if they don’t want them?”

“If they don’t, I take them back. Is five percent off bottom line. No problem. Customer always right.”

“Actually, it’s seven point one percent,” Wilson told him.

Belov frowned. “How you figure?”

“It’s arithmatic. You need a pencil?”

Belov looked at him for a moment. And blinked.

They came to the first in a series of checkpoints about two miles from the airport. Soldiers in olive-drab camouflage were dragging a striped wooden barrier back and forth across the two-lane road, questioning drivers, waving them on. Nearby, a concrete blockhouse stood by the side of the road, its foundations soaked in mud, its walls filigreed by gunfire. Smoke curled from a rusty stovepipe in the roof.

There were a dozen trucks and cars waiting in line, up ahead of them. Wilson felt the Escalade slow as one of Belov’s bodyguards leaned out the window, shouting angrily and waving a gun. For the first time, Wilson saw that the car’s windows were about an inch thick.

From a wooden hut on the other side of the barrier, an officer emerged. Seeing them, he straightened almost to attention, and saluted.

Belov saw that Wilson was impressed. “Fender flags.”

Wilson nodded. “I meant to ask; where are they from?”

Belov chuckled. “From here. Nowhere. They’re company flags.”

Wilson gave him a questioning look.

“Is bullshit government here,” Belov said. “Like Wild West. So Sheriff Corporation steps in. Makes law. Owns things.”

“Like what?”

“Airport. Hotel. Kentucky Fried. Mercado. Telephones. Electricity. Everything that works.”

“And you’re, what? The president?”

Belov scoffed, and shook his head. “Small fish.”

Wilson thought about it. “So where are the big fish?”

The arms dealer shrugged. “Deep water. Red Square.”

Wilson nodded, then turned his eyes to the landscape outside. The sleet was changing to snow. Flakes the size of quarters floated toward them.

“Lagos,” Belov added, seemingly to himself. Then he flashed a wolfish grin. “Geneva… Dubai.” He laughed.

“I get the picture,” Wilson told him.

“Virginia Beach…”

Tiraspol turned out to be a forlorn anachronism of the Soviet era. Whatever charms it might once have had, had long since disappeared, bulldozed into oblivion by communist urban planners. In their place stood block after block of soulicidal apartment buildings, concrete warrens ablaze with graffiti.

“So, what you think?”

“I think it looks like shit,” Wilson replied.

“Looks like? Is!” Belov chuckled.

They entered a roundabout with an enormous statue of Lenin at its center. Nearby, a couple of soldiers stood in the cold, smoking cigarettes beside a tank. They eyed the Cadillacs warily, then looked away.

“Hotel just ahead,” Belov said. “Not bad. Like fucked-up Intercon. But one night only, so… no big deal. In morning?” He answered his own question by cupping the palm of his hand, then flattening it out in what looked like a Hitlerian salute. “Flaps up.”

Wilson felt his stomach growl. “You know someplace to eat?”

“Hotel. Chinese restaurant. Not so bad.”

“I was thinking I’d get something to eat, maybe take a walk.”

Belov shook his head and chuckled. “Maybe not,” he said. “You get lost, Hakim kills me.”

“You could draw me a map.”

Belov rolled his eyes. “Map is problem.”

“Why?”

“Is crime!” Belov declared.

“What is?”

“Map! In Transniestria, having map is crime.”

“You’re kidding,” Wilson said.

“No. Map is big security issue. Anyway, you don’t have visa. So, is better you stay off streets.”

“I could get one, couldn’t I? How hard could that be?”

“Impossible!” Belov told him.

“Why?”

“Because you’re here,” Belov told him. “Without visa. So-”

“-is crime.”

Belov grinned. “Exactly. Cops ask questions. Anyway, Transniestrian visa is only good for eight hours. Day-trip for Ukrainians.”

“That’s it?”

Belov nodded. “Yes, ‘it’! Better you stay off street.” Wilson started to object, but Belov cut him off. “I know. This is pain in your ass, but…” The arms-dealer raised his hands, as if he were surrendering. “So much I can do only.” By way of ending the conversation, he donned the pink earphones, lay back in his seat and closed his eyes.

The manager was waiting for them in the lobby of the Red Star Hotel, a concrete cube with mouse-gray carpeting. Behind the front desk, a heroic haute-relief of Elena Ceau escu hung from the wall.

To Wilson’s eyes, the hotel had the ambience of a Day’s Inn, but the manager was impressive. Snapping his fingers like castanets, he summoned a posse of elderly bellboys, who hurried over to stand at attention beside each of their bags.

Greeting Belov with a warm handshake and a quiet joke in Russian, the manager waived the formalities of registration. Going over to the desk, he picked half a dozen keys from a rack on the wall, and began handing them out. One to Zero, another to Khalid. A third to Wilson.

On Belov’s advice, they avoided the elevator (which was subject to electrical outages) and followed the bellboys up the stairs to the second floor.

To Wilson’s surprise, the room was fine. Large and comfortably furnished, it had cable TV and a small desk next to the window. Atop the desk was a neatly printed card with instructions on how to access the hotel’s high-speed Internet connection for “only” thirty euros an hour.

He was about to do just that when a wave of fatigue washed over him. Sitting down on the bed, he ran a hand through his hair and thought about taking a shower. That would wake him up. But the mattress was as soft as goosedown could make it, and the hotel quiet as a stone. Lying back on the pillows, he closed his eyes, and listened. The wind was like a bellows, gusting hard, then dying. It threw bits of ice at the windows, making a ticking sound that was barely audible. And then, nothing.

When he awoke, the room was dark. But it wasn’t late. Not really. Rolling out of bed, he crossed the room to the minibar and broke the seal on the door. Inside, he found a couple of bottles of Slavutych Pyvo, which looked like beer.

And was.

Picking up the remote, Wilson snapped on the TV, then flicked through the channels until he found one in English. It was a live feed from Iraq. Half a dozen kids were kicking the shit out of a dead soldier, lying next to a burning Humvee while a mob danced in what looked like a pool of blood. In a voice-over, President Bush counseled the world that democracy was “hard work.”

Wilson snorted.

Meanwhile, images flashed upon the screen. More smoke, this time from a suicide bombing in Kabul. Men running with stretchers. Women and sirens wailing. Nervous soldiers looking on through identical pairs of polarized Oakleys, M-16s at the ready, guns pointing at heaven. Then a trauma ward. A man on the floor, looking as if he were bleeding out, a woman thrashing in pain-

This is nothing, Wilson thought. This is bullshit. If they think this is bad, wait’ll they get a load of me.

The idea made him smile. It’s like an orchestra, he told himself. The mayhem on the tube was the visual equivalent of the noise that an orchestra makes as it gets ready to play, with each of the images corresponding to an instrument being tuned. The cacophony was massive and uncoordinated, a traffic jam of noise and violence. But then – soon – the conductor would tap the podium with his baton, and the first note of every symphony would descend: silence.

Then the storm.

Wilson took a long swig of Slavutych. Duty called. He hadn’t checked his messages since he’d left the ship. He plugged his laptop into the telephone, and waited for the computer to boot up, musing all the while on the idea of himself as a kind of conductor. An artiste! If you listened hard enough, you could almost hear the applause, people shouting Maestro! Maestro!

He clicked on the Internet Explorer icon, went to my.yahoo.com and signed in. Clicked on Mail, clicked on Draft – and there it was, a single note dated two days earlier, the address line left blank:

I can’t find Hakim.