Putin's Gambit

13

Fannie Legat had dreaded the moment her new friend, the Russian major Anton Severov, and her annoying Iranian associate, Amir, finally got a chance to talk at length. The chitchat in the car had been bad enough. It was early in the evening, and they had just sat down at an outdoor restaurant in Tartu. The breeze was comfortable, and the atmosphere of the town was comforting in an old-world and courtly way. It reminded her of some of the older outlying areas of Paris where the tourists hadn’t defiled every site and crammed the streets with their wide asses and knock-off fashions. Tartu, Estonia, was not unique in Europe, but for the moment it was perfect.

Severov sat next to her, and Amir across the wide table. The two men could not have been more different physically: Severov tall and athletic, and Amir short and pudgy. Severov had a pleasant smile and was curious about all aspects of the area, not just physical barriers to the Russian military but the history of certain buildings and what the residents were like while not stuck at some job. Amir looked at everyone he saw as a potential enemy and someone he would never have to deal with once he reached paradise. In short, virtually everyone in the world was against him, and he held the same attitudes that had kept Islam down for a century. Fannie even understood how little he thought of her, just because she was a woman. But she had a duty and a job to do.

She had a clear picture of this assignment. It was simple and straightforward. She was to drive the major as far west and south as he wished to go and not ask him too many questions about their pending operation. She was to have him back across the border within a few days or, if they were contacted, be able to race up the narrow highways of Estonia and drop him on a few hours’ notice.

The one thing that concerned her about the assignment was why Amir had been included. He added nothing to their operation. He had no intimate knowledge of Estonia itself, he did not drive well, and he stuck out in public. He had some training as an engineer, but the major didn’t need that. He knew what his tanks could go through and what they would have to go around. Amir’s drawbacks were obvious: There was no way to disguise the fact that he was a Middle Easterner. Even if Iranians occasionally considered themselves to be part of the Far East and wished to distance themselves from the rest of the region, this dark, hairy little cur was no better than anyone else. But it was clear that wasn’t what he thought.

Severov finished gazing around in all directions, the way he did any time they stopped in a town, and said to Fannie, “This is a lovely city. Did you know this quaint little country with its ancient buildings is considered the most technologically advanced and wired country in Eastern Europe?”

Fannie smiled and said, “Yes, I did. I’m often reminded by my computer.” She was referring to the number of spam e-mails and scams offered to her over the Internet that originated in Estonia, but Severov could’ve just as easily interpreted it as understanding his military mission.

Amir looked at the tall Russian officer and said, “That’s the only way empires like you can expand. Conquer people who have accomplished more and developed technologies you need.”

Severov did not appear bothered by the comment. “It’s funny to hear a Persian say something like that.”

“I am a proud citizen of Iran.”

“Why?”

“What you mean, why? I was born there. I live there now.”

Severov kept a sly smile as he said, “I mean why on earth are you proud to be an Iranian? What have they done recently? About the most notable thing they did was kidnap some Americans and hold them for four hundred and forty-four days. I don’t see any technological advances coming out of Iran. All I see is crazy little presidents who travel to the UN and spout off about things no one believes.”

Fannie had to stifle a grin at the look Amir shot the Russian major.

Derek Walsh stood on the eastern side of the courtyard and watched the crowds on the western side of the Thomas Brothers Financial building as they surged toward the police lines and then backed away in a ridiculous show of useless bravado. The skies had cleared, and it was a comfortable sixty-five degrees. Although he wouldn’t want to be a cop standing for hours on end in a heavy Kevlar vest and holding a shield.

This side of the courtyard seemed to be restricted to journalists and spectators. The crowd was noticeably older, and most had the look of professionals. He fit into the crowd with his nice pants and white shirt, and he was now wearing a pair of wide sunglasses. He didn’t want to cover his new hairstyle with a hat; people noticed things like a beard or being bald. No one had given him a second look. There was little conversation, and even the cops paid more attention to what was happening across the wide courtyard than to the crowd of more than a hundred spectators. No one noticed him or any of the other spectators standing across the courtyard. The building had been kept open in an effort to show that it was business as usual on Wall Street.

Walsh recognized that very few people would be working in his office today, but the one man he needed to talk to, Ted Marshall, would be there. In fact, he probably had not left. He hadn’t risen to his position by being an absentee manager. He would want to personally ensure that the building and operations were secure.

Walsh had stopped at an electronics store run by disgruntled Israelis and bought a prepaid Boost cell phone, giving the guy an extra twenty dollars to not ask any serious questions about his obviously shaky identity. Now he had a phone with a thousand minutes to use, which he hoped would be more than enough to resolve all the issues that were swirling around him.

There were only a few numbers he could recall off the top of his head. He’d been lucky to get Mike Rosenberg’s personal cell phone. He also knew Alena’s apartment phone number, but not her cell phone number. He had already called her but didn’t leave a message, in case someone else came into the apartment. He was adjusting to the fact that he was a fugitive. He could picture his girlfriend already on the campus of Columbia, and she normally didn’t get home until after five. He knew she had to be worried about him and wondered how she had tried to contact him. Then he started to consider the possibility that she had tried to find him at his apartment or that the FBI had tracked her down. He’d be careful when he approached her later in the afternoon.

Watching the Thomas Brothers building satisfied several issues. It kept him hiding in plain sight, and he felt like he was accomplishing something by waiting for Ted Marshall to leave the building. He knew his boss would likely come out what was widely considered the rear door even though it opened onto the street. Usually people came through the courtyard, but the protesters made that impossible today.

Walsh was jostled as someone made their way through the crowd. No one on his side of the courtyard was protesting, even though the crowd was fairly large and attracting more spectators as the day wore on. He glanced over his shoulder and realized there were a couple of uniformed cops coming through, and he stepped to his right. It wasn’t until the cops had passed him that he noticed Tonya Stratford from the FBI and her sour-looking partner following behind the officers.

Just as she turned her face toward Walsh, he managed to look over his shoulder away from her. He found himself holding his breath waiting for a tap on the shoulder, but nothing happened. When he turned his head back, the two officers and two FBI agents were in the courtyard walking quickly toward the front door. Several bottles were launched from the protesters’ side and crashed to the ground near them, making one of the cops jump straight in the air and land cursing at the protesters.

He noticed Agent Stratford look over her shoulder in his direction rather than where the bottle had come from. Maybe it was time to change position.

Joseph Katazin had taken a cab from his business but had to abandon it after about five blocks because of the goddamned protesters. He took some satisfaction in the fact that he was the reason they had poured out onto the street, but he also judged them as spoiled Americans with too much time on their hands. In Russia they would riot over important things like no food or no heating oil when the temperature had dropped below zero Celsius. It was all part of his plan, and he could report with confidence that this part was working to perfection.

The lone wolf terror attacks, at least the ones in the United States that he had some knowledge of, had also sent a chill up the spine of the American government. You could stop conspiracies, but a single, determined man, who believed he was going to paradise if he simply wrapped himself in explosives and walked into a crowded store, was another story. Two of the attacks would be slow in developing because the jihadists had poured a strain of anthrax into the air-conditioning and ventilation systems at Macy’s and Grand Central Station. It would be a week before people really started feeling the effects, but the impact would be dramatic. By then no one would care where the Red Army was in Europe. They would be screaming for action about a terror attack on their own soil.

Katazin was happy he didn’t have to work with these Middle Eastern nuts after this. They’d served their purpose, and he was glad they weren’t currently focusing their rage on Russia, but they were unstable. He had put some thought into what drove them. He could only classify it as an unnatural rage against Western societies. A sociologist he’d spoken with said it was fueled by the disparity of wealth in the region, with the majority of the Islamic world being in desperate poverty while the rich made the 1 percent in the United States seem like paupers. The ruling family of Saudi Arabia, for example, had no concept of cost or money. So much flowed in from oil revenues that they just assumed most people lived like them, choosing to ignore the homeless children and starving families virtually at their doorstep.

The proof of the extravagance of these ruling families throughout the Arab world was shown by outlandishly tall buildings and even completely man-made islands in the shape of palm trees. Billions of dollars were spent merely to satisfy the whim of a few wealthy families.

Another theory went that the Islamic world was pissed off that they were so far behind the rest of the world. One fact that had been pointed out was that the small country of South Korea had more intellectual patents filed in the last ten years than the one billion Muslims around the world. That spoke volumes about their interest in educating the masses and spreading the wealth.

Whatever the reason, and for however long, Katazin had harnessed that rage and was using it to great effect.

The streets of New York were in chaos as he made his way west, toward his best chance to find the wayward Derek Walsh. He was going to get Walsh out of the way, and he hoped he could make it look like suicide. That would delay the investigation into the transfer of money long enough for everyone to fade back into their quiet lives, knowing they had done their patriotic duty.

Katazin was thrilled at the prospect of getting his reward. Whether it was a promotion or recall back to Russia to a hero’s welcome, he was ready.

Mike Rosenberg sat in his organized office inside the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. It was more than just an office. He could close the door and be completely sealed off from the rest of the world to work in private. Any information that left his office could be monitored. But his job was to gather as much information as possible from public sources, which included the Internet, and work with other analysts to decide what that information meant and how reliable it was.

He was proud of the history of the agency. Few people recognized how significant their work had been since World War II, when they grew out of a little-known agency called the Office of Strategic Services. There were connections to the history of the marines as well, and he realized people around the office respected his former position in the Corps. An intelligence officer in a combat-ready unit was vital. Although it was popular to say that “military intelligence” was an oxymoron, Rosenberg had found that most intelligence officers worked with what they had and were able to save American military lives during combat with the information they provided.

That was his goal today. He wanted to save a former military man, his friend Derek Walsh. Luckily he could justify anything he was about to do by saying he was trying to get a better handle on the growing violence and fear in both the United States and Western Europe. That was all anyone was trying to do at the moment. The riots got worse in the evening in Europe and tended to die out in the United States.

He had spoken to his other friend from the marines, Bill Shepherd, and learned that the military base where he was stationed had seen heavy protest during the night and felt the wrath of a group of Germans that grew to over three thousand. Shepherd said it wasn’t that bad, but Rosenberg could tell by his friend’s voice that it had unnerved him and he was ready to go out on the line again tonight.

The first thing Rosenberg started to look at was the transfers from Thomas Brothers Financial. He had talked to one of the analysts connected to the FBI who had the information, and it didn’t take long to determine that the accounts the money went to in Europe were all connected. Now that he was looking at information outside the United States, things could get complicated, but that was why he liked his job.