The Mercenary Read online

  Garin sat, head in hand, groggy, unable to focus, for a minute or two. His neck ached and his welted thigh, black and blue from knee to hip, throbbed. His clothes stuck to his body, and he had a terrible thirst.

  He became aware of two polished black boots, which had entered the room and now stood before him. He looked up to the fresh face of an unsmiling Lieutenant Colonel Talinov and felt the hot sting of a slap.

  “Idiot,” Talinov said. “You have given us nothing.”

  Garin rubbed his cheek and met Talinov’s eyes. “I know what you want.”

  21 WASHINGTON1, DC

  GEORGE MUELLER SAT AT A conference table in a mahogany-paneled conference room in the Russell Senate Office Building. Gauzy light came through the drawn curtains and illuminated the five men who sat across from Mueller—prominent men with grim, skeptical faces.

  Coffee cups and bone china dishes sat in front of each man, but only one had bothered to drink, and none had tasted the Danish pastry set out for the early-morning briefing by the new acting head of the CIA’s SE Division. Their attention was riveted on Mueller, who had a file open in front of him, which he occasionally consulted in the course of his classified briefing on events in Moscow.

  Mueller knew the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a balding older man with bushy eyebrows, and also a smug lawyer who had never lost his litigator’s propensity to appear hostile even when he sought to be accommodating; and he also knew the Director of Central Intelligence, his soon-to-retire boss. He was acquainted with the president’s National Security Advisor, a political appointee and toady who saw the world through the lens of public relations; and the Secretary of Defense, a former CEO of a defense contractor who listened with intermittent interest to Mueller’s assessment of the value of the intelligence the CIA was collecting from GAMBIT.

  “I am big fan of yours, George, always have been,” the senator said. “You’re quite convincing, but how can you possibly put a billion-dollar price tag on the value of the intelligence you’ve gotten? I understand you want to make this sound big—and a billion dollars is a large number, and I’ll be sure to remember it when you come back to defend your Agency’s budget—but where does the number come from? Did someone pull it out of his ass?”

  Mueller didn’t smile, and he waited for the National Security Advisor to stop whispering in the DCI’s ear.

  “Mr. Chairman, it is a big number,” Mueller said. “I didn’t make up the assessment, and I didn’t come up with the number. The Pentagon did. It is based on what we’ve seen and what we expect to see from our asset.”

  Mueller pushed the file to one side, folded his hands on the table, and looked at the senator. He had little tolerance for the gobbledygook that passed for sophisticated thinking on Capitol Hill. He was tired of being a lonely voice.

  “We are in an arms race. It isn’t a nuclear arms race, but a race to acquire the military technology that is needed for the regional conflicts that are defining our influence in the world. The race requires new weapons systems: look-down radar, drone technology, and compound materials that can make our stealth bombers ghosts on Soviet radar screens. The Soviets, for all their social and economic failures, have dedicated resources to creating weapons technologies that have frustrated the Pentagon’s engineers. The billion dollars is an estimate of the R-and-D costs we will save by building only those weapons we need to defend against their arsenal, and it includes what we will save by leapfrogging our failed efforts. How valuable is that? Mr. Chairman, does that answer your question?”

  It was a long meeting. Mueller was unable to answer many specific questions, and he was frustrated when the same question was asked again and again. “Everyone in this room has top security clearance,” he said, “but this operation is not over. Our asset is still inside the Soviet Union. Our best people are at risk.”

  “What can you tell us, George?” the senator asked, leaning forward and looking over the top of his reading glasses. “The room isn’t bugged.” The senator put his ear onto the table in an exaggerated show of levity. “At least I don’t think it is.”

  “Sir,” Mueller said. “This is a very delicate situation. Our people are operating in a hostile country. It’s a dangerous operation—we have never exfiltrated a senior Soviet intelligence officer from Moscow.”

  “How many people?”

  “It’s one man.”

  “One man? Who are you relying on for this billion-dollar coup? I don’t need his name. I’m sure it’s classified.” The senator looked at Mueller. “Do you trust him?”

  Mueller looked up. “He’ll get the job done.”

  “A billion-dollar spy.” The senator smiled. “Let’s hope he is as good as you think he is. I can’t imagine one man doing all this, except, maybe, if he were Errol Flynn or John Wayne. That’s why I’m sitting here and he’s out there.”

  The senator sipped his coffee, but it had gone cold, and he set the cup on its saucer, displeased. He looked at the gloomy men around the table. “I’m the only one asking questions.”

  “You’re doing a fine job, Senator,” the National Security Advisor said.

  “Okay. I’m done,” the senator said. To Mueller, “Thank you. Very helpful. Good to know we’ll save a billion dollars.”

  * * *

  MUELLER SAT BESIDE the DCI in the back of his black Lincoln Town Car, sharing a ride back to Langley. It was not yet 9:00 A.M., and they moved quickly in the opposite direction of the morning commuter traffic coming into downtown Washington.

  The DCI had posed a question. Mueller took his eyes off the cars passing on the opposite side of Key Bridge. They had been quiet for several minutes after entering the limousine. Mueller had accepted the DCI’s assurance that he’d done a good job, but Mueller knew that the offer of assurance itself meant that he’d done poorly. This was what had always bothered him about Washington—endless bureaucracy, sanctimonious grandstanding, smug dismissals of the Agency’s dangerous work, and everyone was expert at putting lipstick gloss on ugly failures.

  Mueller was angry. He looked directly at the DCI. “Those men have no idea of the risks involved. They ask pious questions, make slanderous criticisms, and expect easy answers. They see everything through the lens of expedient politics.” Mueller waved his hand indignantly. “We achieve what we can with the resources we’ve got. That’s all, goddamnit.”

  The DCI nodded. “I agree, and I sympathize. When I’m gone from this job, you’ll still have to work with them.” He turned to Mueller. “Do you trust Garin?”

  “Within limits.”

  “How did we end up with him?”

  “He was there before. He knows the terrain. We didn’t have options.”

  “Where is he now?”

  There was a long silence. “He went dark. We know that Moscow Station was compromised, and Counterintelligence is evaluating the damage.”

  The DCI’s face was fatigued. “Where is he?”

  Mueller had carefully filed Garin’s dispatches, and he knew that things were going off the rails. He could read worry in the vague statements that consciously avoided the obvious dangers, and then the dispatches had suddenly stopped.

  “We don’t know. He’ll show up.” Mueller looked out the car’s window at the traffic. He spoke quietly, almost to himself. “He’s resourceful.”

  “What’s next?”

  “I fly to Prague and drive to the border. We have a car fitted with a compartment to hide GAMBIT. The driver will pick up the family at the Uzhgorod train station. I will be at the Czech border with a team to meet the car.”

  “Has he got a chance?”

  Mueller’s eyes settled on the daffodils that had come up in a riot of yellow in the spring weather. Does he have a chance? Mueller clenched and unclenched his fist, rubbing his knuckles as he considered the unthinkable. When things started to go wrong, they went very wrong. Events in Moscow had caught the Agency unprepared. Mueller had not known the DCI long, but he had made his judgment quickly�
�a Washington insider who hopped between senior appointments like a man stepping on hot coals: groomed hair, polished wingtips, perfectly knotted tie, double-breasted suit, and an American flag lapel pin that gave him the gloss of patriotism. He had the relaxed health and bronzed tan of a man who spent weekends socializing on the golf course. He had never known the stress of managing men whose covert work put their lives at risk. He was a non-intelligence professional in charge of intelligence, a man eager for a success that he could share with the Oval Office, and intolerant of failure.

  He thought of Aleksander Garin somewhere in Moscow—hiding, frightened, on the run. Even the best spies lived with fear. Would he succeed? Would he become another casualty in a Cold War skirmish? Would he try to save himself?

  “Well?” the DCI asked.

  “He has a chance.”

  “A good chance?”

  Mueller turned away from the daffodils and met the DCI’s gaze. “He has a chance. But he’s just one ordinary man. Maybe he believes in what he is doing, but I suspect he doesn’t.” His eyes narrowed. “The men in that conference room have no idea the risk we are taking.”

  22 MILITARY COLLEGIUM OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE USSR

  GARIN WAS UNSHACKLED, AND HE tried to stand. There was a moment when he thought he would make it, but his numb legs had lost feeling, and he fell when he tried to obey the shouted command. Lieutenant Colonel Talinov let him lie on the floor and watched him with a belligerent expression. Garin massaged his muscles to bring his legs back to life.

  Talinov nodded at the two guards. “Lift him. Walk him around. I need him awake. Wash his face. Get the blood off.” He looked at Garin. “Get up!” he shouted.

  Garin waved off the guards’ offer of help, and he pushed himself to his knees, using the wall for support. He rose to his full height and stood taller than the others, but wobbly. His shirt was undone at the neck, showing his chest, and he went to button it, but he realized the holes were torn. He smoothed his sleeve and patted his trousers, vaguely aware of his own smells. His socks were across the room, where someone had taken care to stuff them in his shoes. His bare feet were cold on the concrete, and he requested permission to cross the room. He was trembling.

  “Clean up,” the younger guard said, handing him a moist, soiled towel and a clean shirt. “Get dressed. You’re leaving.”

  “Where?”

  “You’ll know soon enough.”

  * * *

  THE COURTROOM WAS a dimly lit, high-ceilinged space in a grim Russian baroque building converted into a hall of justice. Fluorescent panels hung on long wires from a dark ceiling and made the courtroom feel cold, and while it was much larger than his cell, the curtained windows and coning light produced a feeling of claustrophobia in Garin when he entered. The prisoner’s dock and an administrative table were illuminated, but beyond the perimeter of light, the room was dim. He saw a dozen shadowed faces. He was aware of an echo in the tall space and whispers across the room were audible, as was the shuffling of paper among the two lawyers who sat at a gray desk facing the chairman of the proceeding, a heavyset, middle-aged woman who wore an obvious wig and an olive-green uniform with a white collar. Her deputy was on her right, at the squat administrative table in the front of the courtroom, and two military assessors were on her left. Garin shook off the guards’ grip and flexed his wrists. Handcuffs and ankle shackles had been removed before he entered.

  After two days of dark confinement, the bright fluorescent lights disoriented him, and he was suddenly pushed into a wooden chair at the witness table. Lime-green plaster walls were bare except for a water stain from a ceiling leak and a large portrait of Lenin. Beside it, there was a ghost aura of darker pastel where dead Chernenko’s portrait had once hung, and two limp flags stood on either side of the judge’s table. Garin saw Talinov, who sat beside the prosecutor Rostov, and there were five other people that Garin hadn’t seen before.

  Comrade Posner sat alone in the prisoner’s dock wearing a prisoner’s gray smock and slippers. He had files open in front of him at the small defendant’s table, and he looked up when Garin entered. His flowing gray hair now fell over his ears, and his eyes were shadowed with worry. Garin almost didn’t recognize him.

  “Is this him?” the judge asked.

  “Yes,” Rostov said. “Aleksander Garin. We are presenting him as a witness against the defendant, who, if I may repeat to the court, is accused of capital offenses under Articles 70 and 72 of the RSFSR Penal Code.”

  Garin looked across the faces in the room, and then he settled on the judge. He knew that the proceedings had been going on for hours, possibly for days. The judge had documents piled at her side, nearly blocking the stenciled name plate on the table: V. Ulrich, Chairman. Garin submitted himself to the courtroom’s proceedings, stating his name, occupation, and nationality.

  “Mr. Garin,” the chairman said when he was done. “This is the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. You are here as a fact witness in a sensitive matter. You are obliged to cooperate, and you are required to give truthful answers. Do you understand? Do you need a translator?”

  Garin, unrehearsed and unprepared, stood, believing he was required to do so.

  “Sit down. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. I don’t need a translator.”

  She nodded at Rostov. “Proceed.”

  Rostov rose from his table, gathered himself, and moved to the center of the room, looking once at Garin. He held files in one hand, which he slapped against his other palm, and stopped suddenly. The prosecutor looked from Posner to Garin and then back at Posner.

  “Mr. Garin, do you know the defendant, Dmitry Posner?”

  Garin hesitated.

  Rostov rephrased his question. “Do you know his name? Have you met him?”

  “I know the name.” Garin remembered the prosecutor’s nasally voice, his false charm, and the bead of sweat that formed on his upper lip. He remembered his questions from the cell, and he tried to think a chess move ahead, sacrificing a useless fact to test the man’s game. He felt the eyes of the room on him. An answer existed, and the outcome that would follow from his answer was his only way to control the room.

  “Can you point him out?”

  Garin indicated the prisoner in the dock, whose face had drained of color. Posner bore his guilt stiffly.

  “It may surprise you that defendant Posner was convicted of bribery and unlawful possession of foreign currency in connection with trade union corruption in a separate case in Zamoskvoretsky District Court. Posner used his privileged position in the KGB to fill his itching palm, and he laundered the money overseas.”

  Garin sat morosely and listened to Rostov’s plodding accusations, detailing how Posner’s knowledge of Swiss banking helped him use shell companies, which he controlled through nephews he appointed as directors, to work around restrictions on a Soviet citizen’s possession of foreign currency. “All this activity,” Rostov said, looking around the courtroom, “was documented in the Party’s anti-corruption campaign, and this man”—he pointed to a subdued Posner—“was convicted of various crimes, including misuse of office, false statements, and undermining social order. He took cash for favors and used cash to bribe bankers to launder money through overseas accounts. He owns an apartment and an automobile in London. He engaged in malicious anti-Soviet agitation and organized criminal activity prohibited under Articles 70 and 72 of the Penal Code.”

  Rostov turned again to Garin. “This trial stems from evidence found during investigations conducted in the first trial.” Rostov presented Garin with a single printed page from the file he held. “Have you seen this?”

  Garin recognized the name of the bank at the top of the account statement, and he saw one small, dollar-denominated transfer that had been circled. There was no account name on the statement. It was a numbered account.

  “This is your account, correct?” Rostov said. “Account number P12278910Z at Compagnie de Banque et Investissements, lo
cated at Rue du Rhone 96-98, Geneva. Can you confirm that?”

  Garin guessed that he was being led down a path of forking choices; he couldn’t know if his answers would lead to a way out or take him deeper into a labyrinth. Rostov already had his answer, but the process of the trial and its theater required a show. None of this mattered to him, but all of it mattered to his release. He had only to submit himself to the questions to find a way out. His mind saw the room as a two-dimensional maze where to escape he had to do the opposite of what was expected of him.

  “Yes, this is my account,” he said. “These are my funds. Where did you get this?”

  “Thank you. And the sum here of nine thousand, nine hundred and fifty US dollars was electronically transferred to your account by Posner?”

  Garin said nothing.

  “It doesn’t matter. I will come back to that. Look at this, please.”

  Garin took two schematics of look-down radar designs that were stamped as official court exhibits.

  “Let me direct your attention to the very bottom,” Rostov said. “Do you see the serial number? The underlined sequence of letters and numbers: 207X-1803851820-93. Do you see that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me what it is?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I will tell you. The first four digits identify the unique copy machine that was used to make a duplicate of the drawing. The second set of numbers are the date and time the copy was made, and the last two are the number of pages copied. Have you seen this document before?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me direct your attention to the bottom of the document. Here.” Rostov pointed. “Do you see the stamped identification—‘Top Secret’? In English. You don’t have to answer. I will stipulate it is there.” Rostov stepped back. “Can you tell me, Mr. Garin, how a classified Soviet military schematic copied on a KGB photocopier ended up marked ‘Top Secret’ in English?”