Long Shot

17

This time, Swanson recognized the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the landmark of the Brussels neighborhood, and the nearby brick-and-plaster building that was unchanged since he had last been there. Calico drove into the underground garage and Kyle went through the chutes-and-ladders identification routine to reach the interrogation room on the second floor. Colonel Ivan Strakov was already there in his chair, drinking a soda, no more nervous than a midlevel banking nerd figuring out how to best foreclose on a widow.

Gone was the common orange jumpsuit, and instead he was in khaki pants and a soft brown sweater, with unscuffed Italian loafers on his feet. He was spending his first million, and planning on more. Swanson reached the table in a few steps, trading silent stares with the Russian. The man’s hair was newly trimmed and his nails were buffed and polished. On his left wrist bulged a large new watch with silver sweep hands on a black face and a little window that clocked the days. Overall, this was a man enjoying his special treatment.

Strakov’s snake eyes flickered over Swanson, then he said, “Finally, my hero returns. I knew you would be back.” He sipped a Diet Coke.

Swanson cleared his throat. “You are not the only thing happening in the world, Strakov. I had to talk to somebody else, somewhere else, about something else. Now it’s your turn again.” He would not give Ivan the satisfaction of an explanation, nothing that the Russian could use to play him. It was like walking through a mental minefield.

“Good. Good.” Ivan scratched an ear. “I spent some of the downtime watching television. They let me do that now that I have proven myself, so I binge-watched all of Breaking Bad and I want to start Game of Thrones tonight. Hollywood is a wonderful dream factory.” He held up his left wrist to show the timepiece. “And I even went shopping.”

“I noticed the new threads and kicks. Hell of a watch.” They had let him leave the house?

“Of course. I am a guest here, not a prisoner.”

Kyle crossed his arms and did not pursue the pampering issue. He had to trust that the CIA minders knew what they were doing; probably just fattening the cow to keep it happy before the butchering. “Whatever. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“And the news shows, Kyle! I watch a lot of news,” Strakov said with a sharp look. “Things seem to be getting a bit tense out there.”

Kyle thought, Damn it all! Going out into public and open television viewing? Outside information should not be allowed to reach this man. He remembered the crossword puzzle from last time. Newspapers, too? “Don’t believe the media, Ivan.”

The colonel frowned. “Among the things I watched with interest were reports of a rather large Russian military exercise along the NATO border. Had you not run out on me, I would have warned you that it was coming.”

“Sure you would.” He dodged the accusation. “You have been so forthcoming on everything. Anyway, the exercise was no big deal. The rabbits ran around for a while, and even now are scooting back into their holes, but not before we took pictures of your hotshot Armata tanks and battle platforms. Yesterday’s astonishing secret is old news now.”

The defector remained infuriatingly smug. “Of course it is, Kyle. It was called Operation Hermitage, by the way, and it was a practice for defending St. Petersburg. The last tsar had his Winter Palace there, the Hermitage, which is now a magnificent museum. Hence the name. I really wanted to explain the exercise so NATO would not have been taken by surprise. You took off before I had the chance.”

Swanson coughed into his fist. “You think that we are unaware that Moscow has forces lined up all the way down the border from Estonia, through Latvia and Lituania? There is no news there, buddy. Your President Pushkin would love to snatch those little countries back for his dream of rebuilding the Soviet empire.”

Strakov glanced around the bare room to gather his thoughts before continuing. He smiled. “Consider it this way, Kyle. Suppose Louisiana or Texas broke away from the United States in some ill-considered revolution, but the overwhelming majority in those states wanted to stay allied with Washington. Would Washington want to help those unhappy former Americans rejoin the fold? Same thing.”

“No, it’s not.” Swanson placed both hands flat on the table. “Let’s not waste time arguing hypotheticals. It’s like when you spout off with poetry. You say words, but nothing comes out. President Pushkin might want to take a bite out of the Baltics, but NATO and the United States will never allow that to happen.”

Ivan Strakov let that stupid grin break through again. “And you think that is what Operation Hermitage was about: practice to invade the Baltics?”

Kyle felt as unsteady as if he was standing on a cliff edge. “Yes.”

Strakov slowly moved his head back and forth and exhaled heavily, a teacher disappointed in a student. “It was all a misdirection play, Kyle. Your people concentrated on the exciting Armata hardware and the movement and flights along that border, looking for the Red Horde to ransack some beleaguered town so your brave air cavalry could dash in to save the day, all to be reported by your vapid television people. You swung and missed again, Kyle. Strike two.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“While you people scrambled to meet the nonexistent threat of Operation Hermitage, Moscow slipped forty-five hundred more men — an entire motorized rifle brigade — into the Murmansk region, far to the north. The war game had nothing to do with the Baltics, Kyle. Those three little dominoes will fall back to the Motherland on their own, in due time. Instead, the operation had everything to do with the Arctic Circle.” He leaned back and crossed his legs. “Further details will cost another million or so.”

Swanson remained outwardly unruffled. “Stop stalling with the bullshit, Ivan. Our satellites and submarines watch and listen to Pushkin’s every move up there.” At least he hoped they did. “A fur seal can’t belch on an iceberg without us hearing it, so let’s get back to the real world, which is you and me in this room.”

The Russian bobbed his head. “Fine. Did you know that the media is now carrying my name and picture and a story about how important I may be to allied intelligence? I believe it is time to renegotiate the terms.”

“I don’t handle press relations. I am not a lawyer. The clock is still ticking, Ivan, and I am cold out of patience with this game. To me, you are just a big puddle of useless noise. Your value lies in supposed cyber warfare, not troop movements.”

“You are wrong, Swanson. Overall intelligence has always been my game. Computers are but a component, just like the Armatas.”

“Give me something,” Swanson pressed him. “Convince my higher-ups that you’re still worth the trouble, or you may be visiting Guantánamo.”

Strakov considered that and stared at Kyle for a few moments. “All right. Do you remember last time, when I said that you were dealing with a madman?”

“Right. Personally, I do not think President Pushkin is mad, in the clinical sense. Crazy like a fox, yes, and much too brutal and aggressive, but he seems to know what he is doing.”

“There. You jump to the wrong conclusion once again, Swanson. I should start worrying about your own value to this interrogation progress. I was not referring to Pushkin at all. The maniac behind all of these sudden military moves is General of the Army Pavel Sergeyev, the chief of the general staff.”

Swanson thumbed through his memory bank. “Sergeyev? He’s just another paper-pushing Kremlin bureaucrat, too old to fight and getting ready to retire.”

“He is much more than that, Kyle. General Sergeyev maintains, shall we say, large dreams. He needs to be locked away in a place that treats the mentally ill before he triggers a nuclear war.” Strakov checked his new watch. “That’s enough for now. I need a nap. Check out Sergeyev. Send in a company lawyer next to discuss my contract.”

Freddie Ravensdale dined alone that Tuesday evening, unfit for company while merciless tendrils of memory squeezed his heart. Really, was there any way out for him? He didn’t think so. The general took a deep breath, drank off the remainder of his brandy in a single swallow and closed his eyes while he excavated his life as some anthropologist of a future generation might study his bones. Beside his right hand lay a Glock 17, a beckoning 9mm solution that would end his pain, but not the problem.

His mind became a time machine that dialed him back to Berlin in the mid-1980s and the fateful ballet performance at the Deutsche Staatsoper on the Unter den Linden. He was a young captain at the time and looked splendid in the dress black uniform of a British officer, his bemedaled chest crossed with a brilliantly shining Sam Browne belt as he drove out of the British Zone and was waved through Checkpoint Charlie after a purely routine stop, then entered the Russian Zone. Berlin was a divided city, but certain courtesies were extended. As usual, a little Russian car fell in behind to follow, just as the allies trailed any Russians coming out of their sector. It was the Cold War and all that, but a man could still have a good time in Berlin.

At intermission, the British officers stood by themselves in a group, drinking inexpensive champagne, and the crowd around them gave them plenty of space. In postwar Germany, civilians who did not recognize the uniforms were wary of any officers who wore black, once the color of the hated SS.

Lorette had appeared at his elbow out of nowhere, and asked the cheerful group with open curiosity, “Who are you men?” Lorette with the fair hair and sky eyes, tall and full-figured; God had made all German women beautiful and had spent extra time creating this one, who was touching his arm.

Ravensdale took a bite of the tempting apple. The ballet and his friends were forgotten and the two began a courtship filled with ecstasy. His little auto bearing the BZ license tag was soon making almost nightly trips to her flat and they went to the theater, for long walks, to new restaurants and always ended up back at her flat. He never missed a day of work, never shirked his duty. Lorette understood. She did not pry. His professional life was full, and now she was giving his personal life meaning, too. It was not an unusual event. A large number of British and Americans had German girlfriends and many were eventually taken back home as wives; glistening, living, beautiful, spirited war trophies.

He did not see Lorette die. She was already dead when he arrived at the flat that night, dead on the bed, her long arms and legs spread and tied with ropes to the bedposts. The neck was purple with bruises as were her face and rib cage. A silk tie was tight around her neck. Several East Berlin policemen were standing in the room, talking calmly, waiting for him. The dreaded Stasi, the Ministry for State Security, made him identify her corpse, then pounced on him like wolves on a lamb, and gnawed on him with questions while Lorette’s naked body cooled on the mattress nearby.

About an hour into the questioning, a Russian intelligence agent appeared and spread the bad news before the stunned British captain. They had fingerprints, they had pictures, they had eyewitnesses, and they even had reports that Lorette had written about him. Long pages in her beautiful script traced their relationship from their first meeting at the ballet, how lust turned to romance, almost his every word, and finally her concerns that he was a violent man trained as a British commando, and that she feared him. Their sex play had turned increasingly rough, she lied. By midnight, Ravensdale was informed that he was going to be charged with murdering a civilian in East Berlin.

He had fallen headlong into a honey trap. Lorette was an agent of Moscow. By morning, he had agreed to the offered deal. It had seemed so easy at the time for the naïve, frightened, embarrassed, saddened British officer: He could be wrecked, or he could cooperate. All the Russians wanted was a single favor to be granted by him at some unknown time in the future, a debt that might never even be collected, for who could tell what fortunes life would deal a combat officer? Agree and the evidence and the dead girl would disappear. Otherwise, something quite different would happen. He accepted the offer, and made it back to his duty station on time the following morning.

The happiest days of his life came in 1989, when the Berlin wall fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Freddie Ravensdale had risen quite far in rank by then, his career was soaring, and as the bricks toppled, he believed the sword that had hung over his head for so long was gone. The Stasi was dismantled, the Soviets collapsed and even the mighty KGB disappeared as the Cold War ended. Decades passed.

Then two weeks ago, his private cell phone rang and General Sir Frederick Ravensdale, the deputy supreme allied commander of NATO in Europe, answered it.

“Do you remember Lorette?” asked a smooth female voice he had never heard before.

The Russian MiG-29 fighter jet, an aerodynamic dream, whisked all alone through the darkening sky above Lapland, teasing the Finnish air defense radars that tracked it. The pilot, Captain Ildus Polnykov, knew they were watching him zip across the vast emptiness of the northwestern border. With Operation Hermitage still in progress, everybody was watching everybody.

One of his two assignments tonight was to force the Finns to scramble some F-18 Hornets up on an intercept course so the response could be timed. Once they arrived, Polnykov would peel away and fly back to Murmansk, where technicians would analyze the data collected by his electronics package. That they would come was never in doubt. He would make it happen with his second task, that of sparking a real confrontation.

He was about thirty miles across the international border into Finland and had come in so fast that no interceptors had yet shown up on his own radar. Normally, that was what these test flights were all about, he thought. To probe. See how far he could push it. See if he could pick a fight. This mission was going to be a lot different. He let the powerful MiG-29, known to NATO as the “Fulcrum,” slide down several thousand feet in altitude and bled off some speed to become an even bigger target.

At times like this, Polnykov felt a strange sense of peace, alone in a place of beautiful fantasy. The sky was purpling as the last ridge of the late-setting sun went down before him, while below were untracked snowy miles and great primeval forests. The only sounds were his own breathing into his oxygen mask and the periodic low voice of a controller far back in Russia. He would love to mix it up with a Hornet tonight, to dance in the heavens in playful menace, but that was not the main job. True air-to-air combat was something he had never experienced, and that absence was a hollow place inside of him. He checked his full load of armaments. Pure power lay right at his fingertips

Suddenly Captain Polnykov was snapped back into reality. The sensors were screaming warnings that he was being painted by radar, and the pinging was loud and strong, showing the threat was nearby. They had just turned it on, and it caught him by surprise.

Finland had put some new mobile antiaircraft missile batteries into the field, and the vehicles were secluded in the thick forests and hard to pinpoint because they changed position every day. In the past few weeks, the batteries appeared to be snuggling closer to the Russian border. Captain Polnykov and other pilots had been ordered to find and destroy one and show the Finns the cost of such folly.

Ah. He had done it. A missile radar truck was on line. Good. Make the run. He slid down to an even lower altitude, went to full throttle and the Klimov turbofan engines kicked into afterburner. The pilot was pushed back in his seat by that mighty thrust. Destroying the site would surely be enough provocation to draw a few F-18s up to play. He was so low that trees bent beneath the disturbed air of his passing over them.

The captain clicked on his ground-lock radar and let it sweep the evening. The radar instantly pointed out the radiating target below and identified it as an Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System. He listened to its frantic beep-beep-beep and considered what the perplexed Finnish Defense Force soldiers below were thinking as the Russian fighter-bomber roared toward them, eating up the miles only a few hundred feet off the deck and with a full rack of bombs. They would never fire first, and after he set his weapons free, they would not have adequate reaction time to shoot back because he was coming in too low and fast. This was a good find, and Polnykov rode in knowing that even without any Hornets to fight, he could return to Murmansk after this run and be cheered and rewarded. He began his final portion of the attack run.

Just as he sent three air-to-surface missiles sliding from the wing racks to ride down the radiating beam toward the Finns, he saw a brilliant flash against the bleak landscape below, and then the smoking trail of a missile erupting up out of the forest. Even as the avionics warnings shouted in his ears, he knew it was too late. The Finns had actually fired back! Two AMRAAM antiaircraft missiles had thundered out of the Finns’ launcher at point-blank range.

The Finnish missiles and the Russian plane collided with an incredible closing speed and the eighty-eight-pound high-explosive warheads blasted the MiG apart. Falling and spinning and the burning fragments gouging deep furrows where the pieces hit the frozen ground.

It crashed not far from the mobile launcher site, which itself was torn to shreds and left as a flaming pyre when the trio of Hermes missiles fired by Captain Polnykov smashed into it.