The Kremlin Strike

Fourteen

“Poyekhali! Here goes!” Major Alexei Rykov downed his shot of vodka in one gulp and then rapped the empty glass on the scarred wooden surface of the bar. “Another, please.”

The bartender chuckled. “Please? You say please?” He shook his head and poured another shot into Rykov’s glass. “Man, you must not be drunk enough yet.”

“Not yet,” the Sukhoi-27 fighter pilot agreed with a short, sharp laugh of his own. “But I will get there.” He turned to the younger man next to him. “Won’t I, Sergei?”

His wingman, Captain Sergei Novitski, already well over the line between sobriety and inebriation himself, nodded vigorously, with an owlish, glassy-eyed stare. “That is affirmative, Lead.”

With his fresh drink in hand, Rykov turned to survey the packed, smoke-filled bar. The place was a dive, just the kind he liked. With only two days of leave from the159th Fighter Aviation Regiment at Petrozavodsk, he and Novitski didn’t have time to waste. They were on the prowl for cheap booze and fast women, in no particular order.

His gaze flitted lightly across the crowd, evaluating and discarding possible companions in rapid succession. Too chubby. Too short. There was a redhead parked over in the far corner who wasn’t horrible, but she had far too many piercings and tattoos for his taste. God only knew what kind of diseases he might catch. Maybe that skinny blonde? Privately, he dubbed this process “target selection,” likening it to the way his Su-27’s Phazotron Zhuk-MSE active electronically scanned array radar sorted through air contacts — identifying those worth a heat-seeking or radar-guided missile.

Rykov’s gaze drifted across to a slender, attractive woman sitting alone at a tiny table near the door. Now there was a real looker, he thought with sudden interest. Jet-black hair, ice-blue eyes, and a leather bomber jacket unzipped far enough to give him a good look at her assets. She seemed a bit out of place in a seedy bar like this, a little too elegant and composed. But that should work to his advantage, considering the slovenly, ill-kempt civilian schlubs who were his only competition.

Noticing his attention, the woman smiled back at him. Her eyes gleamed brightly in the dim light.

Very promising, he decided. He straightened up to his full, middling-tall height and raised his glass in a silent toast.

With an exaggerated shrug of regret, she held up her own glass and turned it upside down, indicating that it was empty.

Rykov smiled to himself. Target locked on, he thought. Turning back to the bartender, he ordered two shots of vodka, the most expensive brand this time, and then clapped Novitski on the shoulder. “Don’t wait up for me, Sergei,” he said cheerfully. “I’m flying solo tonight.”

His wingman blinked a few times in confusion and then shot him a sly, understanding grin. “Good hunting, Alexei!”

Humming under his breath, Rykov sauntered across the bar, holding both drinks up high to avoid being jostled by a new wave of thirsty patrons crowding in out of the warm St. Petersburg summer night. From the look of them, all torn jeans and spiky hair, some punk rock concert must have just ended.

The attractive woman smiled up at him when he arrived at her table.

“Hello,” Rykov said pleasantly, holding out the drink he’d ordered for her. “My name’s Alexei. And you look thirsty.”

“Parched,” she admitted, taking the glass with a half-sheepish, half-delighted laugh. “Was it so obvious?”

“Not at all,” Rykov lied gallantly. “I have a sixth sense for recognizing beautiful women in distress.” He sat down in the chair across from her and raised his own vodka in another toast. “Vashe zdorov’ye! Your health!”

With a dimpled smile, she echoed him, downing the contents of her glass with a quick, head-back gulp that widened his own eyes in surprised admiration. Then she leaned across the table. “So, Alexei, what is a nice man like you doing in a dump like this?”

“Isn’t that supposed to be my line?” he asked in mock protest.

She shrugged. “It seemed appropriate.”

Rykov glanced around at their surroundings — now even more crowded and noisy than ever. Clouds of acrid cigarette smoke coiled across the bar’s low ceiling, settling like a fog across the sea of sweating, hard-drinking regulars packed in elbow to elbow. He turned back to her with a wry shrug of his own. “Maybe I’m looking for somewhere nicer?”

“Me too.” She cocked her head to one side. “Interested in finding it together?”

Better and better, Rykov thought with secret glee. Not only was this woman sexy as hell, she wasn’t bothering with the usual coy games. He hadn’t even had to play his Hero of the Motherland and fighter-pilot cards yet. “Quite interested,” he said warmly. “Where do you think we should start looking?”

“Well, my car is parked close by,” she said with a demure look that didn’t fool him at all. “And my apartment is only a short drive away.”

Delighted at his good fortune, Rykov rose to his feet and chivalrously offered her his hand. “You know, that sounds like an excellent plan.”

Outside on the sidewalk, she guided him toward a big black Mercedes sedan. But when they drew near, the rear passenger door swung open and a big, grim-faced man in a dark business suit climbed out.

Startled, Rykov stopped dead in his tracks. “Hey, what the hell is going on here?” he demanded.

“Get in the car, Major Rykov,” the woman said coolly. There was no trace of warmth left in her eyes or in her voice.

He scowled at her. “Why should I?”

“Because my name is Colonel Natalia Talanova and you are now in preventative state security custody.” She fished an identity card out of her bomber jacket for his inspection. “You would be wise not to try my patience.”

Rykov stared down at it in confusion. The woman he’d thought he was picking up for some fun, no-strings-attached sex was a senior officer in the FSB’s counterintelligence service. Moistening his lips nervously, he looked up into her unsmiling, wholly unsympathetic face. “Look… Colonel… what is this all about?”

“You don’t know?” Talanova raised a skeptical eyebrow. “It seems that someone has been a very, very naughty boy, Alexei. Maybe it was you. Maybe it was someone you know.” She nodded toward the big man. “That is what my colleague over there and I intend to discover.”

Rykov swallowed hard, suddenly feeling very, very sober indeed. There were many unpleasant stories about how the FSB treated suspects it considered uncooperative. He had no desire to find out if any of those whispered tales of beatings and torture were true. This time, when the colonel ordered him into the car, he obeyed without question.

An hour outside St. Petersburg, the black Mercedes turned off onto a long gravel road that ran deep into the forest. Two kilometers farther on, it parked in front of a small wooden cottage — probably once the country dacha of a mid-ranking Communist Party official. A small light glowed dimly behind one curtained window. Otherwise, the house looked as dark and forbidding as the wilderness all around it.

Silently, Colonel Talanova and her fellow FSB officer marched Rykov inside and into an empty room at the back of the house. Apart from a plain wooden chair set directly under a bare overhead bulb and a small table along one wall, there was no furniture or any other sign of human habitation.

Talanova nodded toward the chair. “Sit down, Major.”

Numbly, Rykov did as he was told. She moved around to stand in front of him. Her face was mostly in shadow, almost wholly unreadable. Cat-quiet despite his size, the big man moved around to take up a position behind the chair, somewhere close by but out of Rykov’s sight. The back of his neck itched.

“You do know why you are here, Alexei, don’t you?” Talanova said calmly.

Desperately, he shook his head. “Honestly, Colonel,” he insisted. “I have no idea of what all this is about. I’m just a pilot, that’s all.”

She snorted. “Just a pilot?” She shook her head. “Try again, Alexei. Ordinary combat aviation officers do not have military service records which contain otherwise unexplained eighteen-month-long periods of ‘special detached duty.’”

Oh, shit, Rykov thought, feeling his heart rate accelerate sharply. What had been a bad situation was about to get much, much worse. Someone, somewhere, in either the Ministry of Defense or the FSB itself, had really fucked up — and now he might be about to pay in blood, bruises, and broken teeth for their mistake. Nevertheless, the special security oath he’d sworn was crystal clear, as was the prescribed penalty for violating that oath. He forced himself to sit up straighter in the chair. “I am very sorry, Colonel,” he said firmly. “But I really am not at liberty to discuss that subject.”

“You think not?” she said, sounding amused. Reaching into her leather jacket again, she tossed him yet another identity card.

Rykov looked it over in stunned disbelief. The card confirmed that Colonel Natalia Nikolaevna Talanova held a Level Two Mars Project clearance — a full level above the one he’d been issued as a cosmonaut candidate at Star City. Slowly, he breathed out. Why should he be surprised? The FSB, like the KGB before it, involved itself in everything. With a repressed sigh, he handed the card back to her.

“Right, then,” she said briskly. “I don’t want to hear any more noble bullshit about how you can’t talk about the program, Major. You spent those eighteen months of ‘detached duty’ training to become a cosmonaut. You know it. And I know it.”

Reluctantly, he nodded. She was right. Commended for his courage, superb technical and analytical abilities, and excellent flying skills, he’d been among those chosen for Colonel General Leonov’s rigorous cosmonaut selection and training program. His class had started the course one hundred strong. In twos and threes over the next months, they’d been whittled away. He had only failed to make the final selection cut by the narrowest of margins. Most of the failed candidates, like him, were sent back to their regular military duties. Several had died in training accidents. Others were probable suicides, the victims of intense psychological pressure and their own undiscovered inner weaknesses.

Talanova smiled thinly. “Now we are getting somewhere, Alexei.” Her humorless smile faded. “Which brings me to the point of tonight’s little excursion to this rather dreary dacha.”

Rykov swallowed again.

“Someone has been talking out of school,” she went on coldly. “And as a result, the West’s spies may be close to learning what were supposed to be our Motherland’s most closely guarded secrets.”

He stared at her. “What?”

“That surprises you?” Talanova countered.

“Of course it does.” Rykov grimaced. “But whoever’s blabbing, it is not me. I swear it.”

She studied him for a long, uncomfortable moment. Then she shrugged. “Oaths can be broken, Alexei. I prefer proof.”

“For God’s sake, how am I supposed to prove a negative?” he asked desperately, instantly despising himself for sounding so weak.

“You cannot,” Talanova said bluntly. “But perhaps I can.”

He stared at her. “How?”

“That depends on you, Major Rykov.” She moved forward, coming more fully into the circle of light cast by the bare bulb overhead. “Are you prepared to cooperate fully — without reservation?”

“Yes, I will. Absolutely,” Rykov said, almost stumbling over his words in his hurry to grasp the lifeline the colonel seemed to be offering. “What must I do?”

“Tell us your life story,” Talanova said. Her mouth twitched. “Or, to be more precise, your life story from the moment you arrived at the Anatoliy Gryzlov Military Cosmonaut Training Center.”

He stared at her in surprise. “But why? You already have access to the records of my time there, don’t you?”

“A dry list of classes, test results, and comments from your instructors?” she scoffed. “Of what use are they in determining whether or not you have betrayed your country? No, Alexei, you are going to talk us through your experiences at Star City — fully, honestly, in your own words, and in your own way. We already know what has been illicitly revealed to Western agents. And if you are the one responsible for this treason, so do you.”

Talanova looked down at him. “Now, a skilled liar may be able to conceal the truth for a time by carefully controlling how much he says. But the more anyone talks, the harder that becomes. Small inconsistencies begin to mount up. Hidden falsehoods emerge from what seems a jumble of otherwise irrelevant details. Eventually, the liar unmasks himself.” Her voice slashed at him, as sharp as a razor’s edge. “You see?”

Rykov nodded tightly. He said nothing.

“Very well. Let’s get started.” She glanced toward the big man looming behind him. “Wire him up, Dmitry.”

Without speaking, the other FSB officer began attaching electrodes to Rykov’s scalp, chest, neck, and wrists — pressing them firmly into place. The Su-27 pilot sat rigid in his chair, all too aware of the sense of helplessness and terror crawling up his spine.

“We don’t just use our ears to listen,” Talanova explained dryly. “Lies can be discerned in many different ways.” She leaned closer. “So, then, Alexei. Tell me a story…”

It was well past dawn when they dropped the exhausted and shaken Rykov at a commuter rail station outside St. Petersburg and drove away.

“Do you think he’ll tell anyone about what just happened?” Marcus Cartwright asked. He glanced in the rearview mirror, checking automatically to see if they were being followed.

“That he’s been under suspicion as a possible traitor?” Sam Kerr shook her head with a wry smile. “Our friend the fighter pilot wasn’t at his best last night, but he’s not really a fool. No, he’ll keep his mouth shut.” She shrugged. “Even if he doesn’t—”

“Colonel Natalia Talanova will have vanished,” the big man finished for her.

Sam nodded contentedly. “It is very hard to find someone who never actually existed in the first place.”

“And all those wild stories he told us? About the kind of training the Russians are doing at Star City? Do you believe them?”

She pondered that. Under their questioning, Rykov had painted a picture of an incredibly intense training regimen. He claimed that Russia’s cosmonauts were learning everything from on-orbit construction techniques to sensor data analysis and the combat use of both lasers and missiles. From what she knew, all of it sounded plausible. But what about his insistence that he and his fellow cosmonaut trainees had also been taught how to manage highly advanced nuclear fusion power systems? For decades, scientists and engineers had claimed that working fusion reactors were just around the corner. But their predictions never panned out. Could the Russians finally have made the technological breakthroughs that had eluded so many other researchers for so long?

At length, Sam shrugged. “Hell if I can say.” She frowned. “We certainly know that poor bastard Rykov believed he was telling us the truth and nothing but the truth. So I guess the sooner we send what we’ve learned to Mr. Martindale the better. Because I’m pretty sure our report is going to scare the living crap out of a lot of people back in the States.”