Price of Duty

SIX

Ramshackle houses and huts dotted the steep, snow-covered hillsides above Ahmad Usmaev’s walled compound. Rifle-armed guards, bulky in heavy sheepskin coats, patrolled the walls. Their breath steamed in the frigid air. Winter came early this high up in the Caucasus.

Inside the compound, Colonel Yevgeny Perminov held his arms out from his sides, hiding his disgust while one of the Chechen warlord’s slovenly bodyguards frisked him for concealed weapons. Service in Russia’s military intelligence arm, the GRU, often required dealing with unsavory characters. Seen in that light, the self-styled sheikh Ahmad Usmaev was not so different, although his coarseness, paranoia, and almost mindless brutality might be said to plumb new depths of depravity.

Usmaev was one of the cold-blooded killers Russia relied on to hold down its restive Chechen Republic. He and his kinsmen ruled over a large stretch of mountainous territory outside the capital city of Grozny. In return for generous subsidies from Moscow, Usmaev stayed loyal to President Khuchiev, another warlord put in power by Russia. In exchange, the Russians turned a blind eye to the methods he employed to terrorize the villages and towns in his grip — an orgy of murder, mutilation, rape, extortion, and hostage taking.

The bodyguard stepped back and nodded to Usmaev. “He is unarmed.”

The warlord, a short, portly man wearing an intricately embroidered vest and a green velvet Muslim skullcap waddled forward to greet Perminov. “My friend, welcome again to my simple home! You honor me with your presence.”

With an effort, the GRU colonel kept a straight face. Usmaev’s “simple” home was a villa stuffed full of ornate, expensive furniture, priceless tapestries and carpets, and high-priced consumer electronics — all paid for by Moscow’s largesse and the profits from his own reign of terror. He followed the Chechen into a palatial sitting area.

Usmaev plopped down on a plush, overstuffed couch and waved Perminov into a high-backed chair trimmed in gold leaf. Another of the warlord’s guards deferentially returned the colonel’s still-locked briefcase. It had been taken away from him at the gate and then run through an X-ray machine as a precaution against explosive devices or other hidden weapons.

After several minutes wasted enduring the customary round of utterly insincere compliments and platitudes, Perminov finally felt able to come to the point of his visit. “You have received my government’s request, Sheikh?” he asked.

Sagely, Usmaev nodded. “I spoke to your superiors, yes.”

“And you can provide the men we need? With the necessary weapons training?”

“As easily as I do this!” the warlord said, snapping his fingers. He lowered his voice. “Though I understand the risks involved are, shall we say, significant?”

Perminov nodded. “So I believe.”

Usmaev smiled coldly. “I have a number of followers who are bored by the peace I have established here. They grow restless. And such restless men can cause a lot of trouble if they are not given the chance to act on a wider stage.”

“That is true,” Perminov agreed cautiously. “In this instance, the audience may prove unforgiving. Perhaps lethally so.”

“That is in Allah’s hands,” Usmaev said with a shrug. His eyes glinted. “Who knows? Perhaps he will be merciful.”

The colonel got the distinct impression the other man would be happier if the god he worshiped decided matters the other way. And perhaps that was just as well. “You understand that we are in some haste?” he asked. “I have an aircraft standing by to ferry your men to Moscow for further briefing.”

“Of course,” Usmaev said. He raised an eyebrow. “Assuming our other arrangements proceed smoothly, they can join you at the airport within the hour.”

Perminov unlocked his briefcase and flipped it open so that the Chechen could see the contents. The case contained fifteen million rubles in cash, worth about two hundred thousand American dollars. “Please, Sheikh, accept this small token of our appreciation for your assistance in this matter,” he said.

Usmaev’s smile grew even wider. He nodded to one of his bodyguards, who stepped forward to take the briefcase from Perminov. “Your visits are always a joyous occasion, Colonel. I look forward to our next meeting.”

“As do I,” the GRU colonel said stoically. Much as he personally loathed Usmaev, there was no getting around the fact that the other man had one great virtue. Like many in this brutal, war-torn region, he would sell his own sister if the price were right. But unlike so many of his rivals, once bought, Ahmad Usmaev stayed bought.

And that, in the end, was what truly mattered to Perminov’s masters in the Kremlin.

Two men, both bundled up against the cold, strolled casually together along a winding, wooded trail. They were alone.

Izmailovsky Park, once the childhood home of the czar Peter the Great, was a favorite haunt of Muscovites in the summer and winter. During the summer, crowds sought its forest glades and ponds as a refuge from the city’s heat and humidity. And in the snowy depths of winter, they poured in with their sleds, ice skates, and cross-country skis. But few people found the park’s damp gravel paths and stands of barren, leafless trees very inviting on the dreary, gray days so common in the late fall.

All of which made it the ideal spot for a discreet rendezvous.

Igor Truznyev, former president of the Russian Federation, glanced down at his shorter, thinner companion. “You’re sure you were not followed?”

The other man’s world-weary brown eyes crinkled in wry amusement. “Should I ask the same question of you, Igor?” He nodded toward the desolate stretches of woodland lining both sides of the trail. “Shall we waste our time prowling about to see if anyone is lurking behind one of those birch trees? Or hiding beneath the fallen leaves?”

The taller man laughed softly. “A fair hit, Sergei.” He shrugged his big shoulders. “I only worry that your protégé might find these occasional discussions behind his back somewhat disconcerting.”

“Gennadiy may be more… confident… than you assume,” Sergei Tarzarov, Gryzlov’s chief of staff replied softly.

“He sees himself as invincible, you mean?” Truznyev asked pointedly. “As so powerful now that he is immune to betrayal from his own closest subordinates and associates?”

“Perhaps,” the older man said. “And why not?” He turned his gaze more directly on the former president. “Some of us know how narrowly we averted disaster in our war with Poland last year, but the masses do not. They idolize Gennadiy as the leader who retook eastern Ukraine for Mother Russia and humiliated NATO in the process.”

For a split second, Truznyev saw red. What no one else knew, most especially not Gryzlov or Tarzarov, was that he had orchestrated that war with Poland — secretly funding a band of Ukrainian terrorists in the hope of luring his hated successor into a political and military quagmire. Then, or so he had fondly imagined, Russia’s elites would see the terrible mistake they had made in backing a madman like Gryzlov. And once that sobering realization took root, they were bound to come, hats in hand, humbly begging him to reclaim their nation’s highest office.

But his plan, brilliant though it was on paper, had backfired — foundering on human weaknesses he could never have anticipated. How could he have imagined any American president so cavalierly betraying a longtime NATO ally, let alone showing herself willing to buy Gryzlov’s restraint by ordering the deaths of her own countrymen?

Grimly, Igor Truznyev fought to keep the cauldron of rage and shame boiling up inside from showing on his broad face. Why risk making Tarzarov suspicious now? If the veteran Kremlin insider saw the value of keeping in touch with those like Truznyev who were currently out of power, why rock the boat? Besides, these clandestine meetings gave him valuable insights into the otherwise secret deliberations of Gryzlov’s government.

And if nothing else, Tarzarov’s patronage over the past few months had lined his pockets quite nicely. In the years since he’d been forced out as Russia’s leader, Truznyev had used his skills and his contacts to build a substantial business empire, including a highly competent private intelligence network. His plan there was twofold. Money was the mother’s milk of political success, especially in post-Soviet Russia. But the dirty little secrets he and his personal agents uncovered were bound to be even more useful… when the day of reckoning with his political enemies came.

With that in mind, he changed the subject.

“I see from the news out of Romania that you’ve put my guys to work, Sergei.” He winked. “I told you they were good. Maybe a bit unkempt and ill-disciplined, like so many young people these days, but still very effective, eh?”

“So it seems,” the older man agreed tersely.

“But their parents and boyfriends and girlfriends keep asking me where on earth you’ve stashed them,” Truznyev said, watching Gryzlov’s chief of staff closely. “Naturally, I tell them I haven’t the faintest idea.”

A thin, utterly humorless smile flickered across Tarzarov’s narrow, lined face. “I can only imagine how much pain it causes you to offer the unvarnished truth, Igor.”

“Very funny,” Truznyev said. He kept his eyes fixed on the other man. “Still, I hear rumors. Strange rumors. People talk of a mysterious ‘treasure cave’ being built out somewhere in the east.”

“Do they?” Gryzlov’s chief of staff said coolly. He shrugged. “Slovo serebro. Molchaniye — zoloto. Words are silver, silence is golden.”

“That’s easy enough for you to say,” Truznyev noted acidly. “You don’t have to deal with the constant whimpers and complaints. ‘Please, sir, where is my boy Sasha? Where is my lover Ludmilla? Are they well? When will they e-mail me?’” He scowled. “The litany never ends. And frankly, it’s getting on my nerves.”

Tarzarov looked back at him without any discernible emotion. “Then you tell them all they need to know.”

“Which is?

“That their loved ones serve at the pleasure of the state, wherever the state requires,” the old man said. “And that the sensitive nature of their current work demands total seclusion — for the time being.”

“Yes, well, that won’t exactly offer their families much comfort,” Truznyev said.

“You surprise me, Igor,” Tarzarov said. “I would not have thought you so sentimental.”

“I’m not. I’m only tired of being kept in the dark.”

“Oh?” The older man raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “You’ve been compensated for your assistance. In fact, richly compensated. True?”

“True,” Truznyev agreed.

“Then be content with your pay, Igor,” Tarzarov told him brutally. “And stop prying into state secrets that are no longer your concern.”

For a moment, Truznyev stood rooted in place, transfixed by anger and shame. Once, with the mere wave of a hand, he could have exiled this dry stick of a man to Siberia or had someone put a bullet in the back of his skull. Slowly, he took another deep breath. Patience, he told himself. The time would come when such insults could be avenged.

He started walking again, keeping pace with Tarzarov along the winding path. With an effort, he kept his voice level. “I presume, then, that you have a specific reason for contacting me? Some further need for my services as a private citizen and businessman?”

The other man nodded. “I need more specialists.”

Now, that was interesting, Truznyev thought. “How many exactly?”

“Perhaps thirty or forty more,” Tarzarov replied. “Of the same type and with the same skills and abilities.”

Truznyev whistled softly in surprise. “So many?” He shook his head doubtfully. “That’s a tall order, Sergei. Gifted computer hackers are in high demand, especially in the private sector.”

“The needs of various criminal enterprises do not concern me,” the older man said flatly. “Tawdry schemes to steal credit-card numbers and drain bank accounts will have to wait.”

Truznyev ignored the gibe. “So now that Gennadiy sees the damage a few lines of cunningly written code can do, he grows more ambitious, eh?”

“What the president intends is well beyond your need to know,” Tarzarov reminded him. “The question is: Can you provide the people we require?”

“It will be difficult. And expensive,” the former president warned.

“How surprising,” Tarzarov said dryly.

Truznyev shrugged. “You can’t expect iconoclasts like these komp’yuternyye botanikov, these computer nerds, no matter how patriotic, to flock to government service — especially now that the word’s gotten around that you’ve put the first batch I found you in cold storage somewhere.”

“And how do you suggest we overcome this… reluctance?”

“With money, of course,” Truznyev said. “You’ll have to up the signing bonuses you offer substantially.”

“Which will increase your own referral fees,” Tarzarov said tartly.

The former president shot him a vengeful smile. “Of course.” He eyed the older man narrowly. “You may also find it necessary to reimburse certain… businessmen… at least those who rely on these experts in certain extremely profitable sidelines.”

Tarzarov frowned. “You seriously expect us to pay off the Mafiya?”

“Why not?” Truznyev said bluntly. “It’s been done before. And many times.” He smiled again at Gryzlov’s chief of staff. “As you know yourself, Sergei.”

The older man frowned.

“Look, the math is simple,” Truznyev pointed out. “You can pay off the crime bosses to keep them happy. Or you can waste even more time and money on futile police raids. Because we both know the police will never find anyone the Mafiya decides to keep for itself.”

The older man sighed in exasperation. “Exactly how much is this all going to cost, Igor?”

“Well, that’s an interesting question,” Truznyev said carefully. “For a start, you’ll have to at least double the signing bonus you offer each hacker. Figuring a minimum of thirty people, that’ll mean—”

Deeply immersed in their discussion, he and Tarzarov moved farther along the walking trail, haggling over the price Russia’s government would pay for its new “special information troops.” What neither of the two men noticed was the very small, brown, birdlike shape silently swirling through in the sky above them. It was a palm-size glider, an ultralight spy drone equipped only with a sensitive microphone and a few cell-phone components serving as a communications relay.

Roughly one mile away, a Bell 407GXP light helicopter orbited slowly over the city at an altitude of one thousand feet. Private flights were ordinarily restricted to routes along the Moscow River, but this helicopter belonged to Tekhwerk, GmbH — a jointly owned German and Russian import-export company specializing in industrial and light-manufacturing equipment. Since the corporation helped the Kremlin obtain otherwise difficult-to-replicate Western high-technology machinery at reasonable prices, Russia’s law enforcement and regulatory agencies often turned a blind eye to its activities.

The larger of the two men in the Bell helicopter’s luxuriously appointed passenger cabin spoke to the pilot over the intercom. “How much longer can you give us here, Max?”

“About twenty more minutes, Herr Wernicke. I told Moscow Control that you wanted to check out some possible new factory sites from the air.”

The big, beefy man who called himself Klaus Wernicke nodded appreciatively. “Good work. Keep us posted.”

“Will do.”

Wernicke looked across the cabin at his companion. “Everything okay on your end, Davey?”

“We’ve still got a good, solid signal from the Wren,” confirmed David Jones, a much smaller and younger man than his superior. He wore earphones and clutched a small handheld controller. “With the thermals I’m picking up, I should be able to keep her aloft for another five or six minutes.”

The big man nodded. The tiny Wren glider they were monitoring was the significantly more advanced version of a miniaturized reconnaissance drone originally developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Called the Cicada, the Wren’s predecessor was designed for deployment in mass swarms. Sown from manned aircraft or even larger drones, Cicadas were tasked with gathering intelligence on large-scale enemy troop movements using a variety of lightweight, low-bandwidth sensors. In contrast, this Wren had a much narrower and far more focused mission. It was tasked with keeping tabs on just one man, Igor Truznyev.

Although the Russians didn’t realize it, Tekhwerk was ultimately owned, through an intricate web of holding companies, by Kevin Martindale and Scion. Profits from its legitimate operations were used to fund covert action and intelligence gathering inside Russia itself. And the need for frequent travel between Tekhwerk’s dual headquarters in Moscow and Berlin and its other far-flung divisions provided invaluable cover for Scion agents masquerading as corporate executives and employees of the company.

Scion field operatives like Marcus Cartwright, for example.

Calling himself Klaus Wernicke, Cartwright had been running a surveillance operation against Truznyev for months — ever since Scion had captured and interrogated one of the agents the former Russian president used to foment last year’s brushfire war with Poland. Made aware that Truznyev, a ruthless, wildly ambitious, and dangerous man, was still very much a player on the world scene, Martindale had ordered a close watch kept on him.

Unfortunately, it was a mission that had proved much easier to set in motion than to accomplish.

Before he became Russia’s president, Truznyev had spent years in charge of the Federal Security Service, the FSB, one of the successor agencies to the USSR’s feared KGB. When he’d been ousted from the Kremlin, many of the spy service’s veterans had joined him in private life, going to work for the consulting group he’d founded. As a result, his personal security and countersurveillance people were top-notch, generously paid, and well equipped. All of which meant that employing the usual methods — tailing Truznyev through the Moscow streets or bugging his offices or hacking into his computers — would only have tipped him off.

So far Cartwright and his Scion team had only been able to track their target’s major movements at a distance, without gaining any significant intelligence on his operations or current plans. For all the time, money, and effort they’d expended, their investigation hadn’t picked up much more about Truznyev than could have been gleaned from reading the gossip pages of any Moscow tabloid or trade journal.

It had been enormously frustrating.

Until today.

Today, Truznyev had left his personal security detail behind and ventured out alone. He’d never done that before, not even when he paid visits to his various mistresses. Cartwright had immediately seen this as a sign that something big was in the wind. And free to act at last, his surveillance team had pounced, warily tailing the Russian right up to the edge of Izmailovsky Park.

But that was as far as they dared go. Inside the park’s deserted confines, anyone who stayed close enough to tag Truznyev and his contact, let alone listen in on them, might as well paint shpion, spy, across his forehead.

That was when the Wren drone they’d launched from this helicopter had proved its worth. Floating down silently on the wind, circling slowly as it rode thermals rising from the ground, the bird-size glider had been able to intercept most of the conversation between Truznyev and his contact.

Best of all, the Russians would never know they’d been bugged.

Before the Wren ran out of altitude and airspeed, a twitch of its flight controls could send the little drone gliding away across the woods. Eventually, it would skitter down through the trees and crash-land somewhere in among piles of dead leaves. And even if someone else stumbled across it before one of Cartwright’s people got there, the palm-size drone would appear to be nothing more than some child’s cheap toy.

“Truznyev and this other fellow are saying their not-so-fond farewells now,” David Jones announced, still monitoring the signals coming through his headset. He glanced across at Cartwright with bright eyes. “I don’t know who he is yet, but I can tell you one thing for sure, he’s a big enough fish to put the fear of God himself into our friend Igor. At least for a bit.”

Cartwright bared his teeth in a hunter’s triumphant grin. Smile, Comrade Truznyev, he thought coldly. You’re on candid microphone.