Collision (14 page)

He hit the button again, said something in Russian, and abruptly turned around. He nearly bumped into Kurpanov, who followed Yazov into the food court. He sat at a table near the door and motioned for Kurpanov to sit next to him so both could look through the front window and watch the cruisers as they parked side by side at the edge of the lot. An officer got out of each car.

Yazov leaned forward and spoke in Russian again.

“Speak English, for God's sake,” Kurpanov said.

“I think they look at our car. These fuckin' cops, they never get out of car unless they want to ask questions or give ticket.”

“Maybe they're just coming in for eats,” Kurpanov said. He was unwrapping one of the hot dogs.

“I know turnpike, turnpike cops. You don't. We go right now. Put down food. Need hands,” Yazov said, standing up. “We drive to next exit, get off fuckin' turnpike.”

Yazov's cell phone rang. “Dimitri,” he said. He nodded, spoke a few muted words in Russian, and pocketed the phone. “Dimitri on cop scanner. Car hot. We can't drive.”

“What? How—”

“I go to car to get gun. You wait a little, then come. Follow me, like you walk to car in back, where cars come in. We hijack car, take to next exit. Dimitri send car there.”

“Hijack? Jesus, Viktor! I—”

“Shut up. I do it. Easy. Scare shit out of driver, make him drive.”

Yazov walked rapidly to the food court's glass doors. As he neared the car, the radios in the cruisers crackled. One of the troopers opened the driver's door and leaned in to listen.

“We go,” Yazov told Kurpanov, who meekly followed a few steps behind.

Yazov hit the unlock button, got in, and sat in the driver's seat. He reached out to the door and pressed a switch under the armrest. Nothing happened. Then he remembered that he had to turn the ignition key to power the access door to the hidden compartment. He inserted the key and turned it. A section of the door lining opened and he grabbed the silver-and-black Sig Sauer P226 with its thirty-round magazine, minus the round that had entered Cole Perenchio's brain.

Kurpanov stood by the driver's door. Yazov stepped out of the car, jammed the gun in his waistband under his jacket, and angrily repeated, “We go.”

As Yazov got out of the car, one of the troopers approached, walking along the parking spaces' white line, toward the driver's side of the Mercedes. He unlocked his holster, closed his hand around the grip of the gun, but did not draw.

The second trooper did the same and walked parallel to the first along another white line, nearing the car on the passenger's side.

“Raise your hands,” the first trooper ordered, drawing his gun and aiming at Yazov.

Simultaneously, Yazov moved his hand toward his waistband and the trooper fired. Yazov slumped against the car and tossed the gun across the hood to Kurpanov, who raised it toward the trooper. He shot Kurpanov twice in the chest. As he fell dying, the last sound he heard was a toddler screaming in the Volvo parked alongside his body.

 

28

Boris Lebed, the President
of the Russian Federation, had succeeded Vladimir Putin, who had died from what the Kremlin said was “a rare blood disease.” Eloquent and charismatic, Lebed had convinced the voters and the kingmakers that a forty-six-year-old mayor of Volgograd, with a business degree from the London School of Economics, could lead Russia into a truly prosperous era—while keeping the Motherland strong and vigilant.

Lebed had managed to weather an outburst of fury when word leaked that Kuri Basayev was Lebed's major financial supporter. How could he associate with a man named Basayev, people asked, recalling a horror indelibly recorded in national memory? In 2004, Chechen terrorists, led by a warlord named Shamil Basayev, had seized a Russian school near the border with Chechnya and held more than 1,100 people—including 777 children—hostage for three days. The siege ended with firefights and explosions that killed more than 300 hostages, including 186 children.

Lebed responded with an emotional press conference and survived the criticism. He called Basayev a friend and a patriot “suffering for his name and not for his deeds.” Condemning Kuri Basayev “because of the crimes of a distant relative,” Lebed said, “brings back the dark says of Stalin, when innocent Russians suffered because their names were on lists written by secret informers.” Lebed also revealed that Basayev had served in the FSB, Russia's Federal Security Service, under its then-director Vladimir Putin. “And if Kuri Basayev was good enough for a future and beloved President of Russia, then he is good enough for me.”

*   *   *

Lebed was in what
he called his work office, an oak-paneled Kremlin room with a large square desk, when an aide brought in a sealed envelope from Colonel Nikita Komov. Lebed smiled at Komov's usual form of communication. But when he opened the envelope and read the handwritten note, he frowned and sighed. Komov wanted a meeting, not here in the work office but in the so-called safe room on the top floor. Lebed buzzed for his security detail and said he was going to the Deaf Room, as it was called.

In the 1980s, Komov, then a KGB colonel, had urged the creation of the room to foil CIA laser-beam eavesdropping that had been revealed by a defecting CIA officer. “There is reason, Comrade President, for extreme secrecy,” the Komov note said.

Lebed had heard about Komov long before the transition period following President Putin's death. Komov had been the prime instructor in the KGB counterintelligence school when he first met the new KGB officer named Vladimir Putin. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the KGB was replaced by the Federal Security Service, Putin had been appointed its director. He overruled regulations and ordered Komov kept on well beyond retirement age. He was made director emeritus of the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, which gave him access to any secret document.

Putin had always treated Lebed like a nephew, giving him numerous insights, such as why he kept Komov as an advisor on intelligence issues. Putin lavishly praised Komov for his truth-to-power honesty and his institutional memory, which went back to the beginning of the Cold War.

Putin credited Komov with a sixth sense for detecting defectors. His counterintelligence colleagues called him Comrade X-ray for his ability to see through the fa
ç
ade of anyone contemplating defection. But Komov, looking back on his long career, remembered most of all the two times when he had detected a defector only to have his suspicions ignored by his superiors.

While Lebed understood the importance of Komov's experience and counsel on intelligence matters, he distrusted Komov and feared that his loyalty ran to his friends in the old KGB.

Lebed had been surprised by Komov's capacity for total recall and had learned to respect him despite suspicion about his link to former KGB officers and security zealots known collectively as the
siloviki
—“the people of power.” Their ever-suspicious, xenophobic views aroused the liberal left and threatened Lebed's promise to pursue a more moderate and less authoritarian form of governance. Anyway, he already had a well-connected advisor in the
siloviki
: his principal fund-raiser, Kuri Basayev.

*   *   *

President Lebed and Nikita
Komov sat across from each other at a narrow table in the Deaf Room. Komov, at ninety-one, was lean and sat ramrod-straight. His narrow, sharp-chinned face was thatched with wrinkles. His white hair was short-cropped. He wore the formal blue gold-belted uniform and black boots of a KGB colonel, a fashion statement frowned on by the civilian-attired employees of the Security Service.

“Now, Colonel, you said that this had to be an extremely secret meeting,” Lebed said as soon as Komov had taken his seat. “What is it about?”

“It is, sir, about Kuri Basayev.”

Lebed frowned, took off his wire-rimmed glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Without commenting, he replaced the glasses.

“A middle manager in our counterintelligence directorate opened a case file on Basayev and was censured by his superior—a rather brash, inexperienced analyst,” Komov said in his crisp baritone. “He ordered that the file be erased. But I was alerted and, before the file was cast into digital oblivion, I saw it and preserved it. This preservation is not known to the manager of the directorate—I mean ‘department,' the modern term that is deemed less sinister than ‘directorate.'”

“What was the basis of opening a file on one of my trusted advisors, a man who himself is a veteran of the Security Service?” Lebed asked, glaring at Komov.

“I well know, sir, that he served briefly in the service when Comrade Putin was the director. I met him briefly after a lecture I gave to new recruits. He soon left the service and began making his fortune.”

“I am well aware of his biography, Colonel.”

Komov nodded and went on: “During the financial crisis caused by the greed of Wall Street, Basayev lost a great deal of his fortune. He then enlarged his criminal activity—drugs, money laundering, and some bloodshed; the details are not important. What is important is that American surveillance sharply increased, and—”

“He's no angel,” Lebed said, shrugging. “I have been aware of what you call his criminal activity. Drugs? Not into Russia, correct? Money laundering? Of concern to America, not of much concern to us. And bloodshed? Well, he
is
Chechen.”

“What you say, sir, is only partially true. Basayev's drugs
are
finding their way into Russia. But it is not the crimes that inspired the opening of a counterintelligence case file. It is the shift in the structure of the surveillance.”

“Meaning?”

“He has been under total surveillance by America. Total surveillance is very expensive and reserved for important targets.”

“Well, as a known advisor to me, he would
be
important.”

“Yes, sir. He would get the full menu: CIA, NSA, FBI.”

“And so? Please, Colonel, get to the point.”

“The FBI continues a surveillance operation that is highly visible for anyone looking for it. But the CIA has changed its pattern—and, I believe, has not informed the FBI, much as the KGB would not inform the GRU about a shift in surveillance. I have seen this before.”

“You have seen
everything
before, Colonel,” Lebed said with a condescending smile.

“Yes, counterintelligence is more art than science, sir. A CIA counterintelligence chief named James Jesus Angleton called it ‘a wilderness of mirrors'—and took credit for the phrase. In fact, the phrase is incomplete and was from a poem by a modern poet, T. S. Eliot.”

“I am aware of T. S. Eliot,” Lebed said. “He stopped being modern a while ago. What are you getting at, Colonel?”

“Eliot wrote, ‘In a wilderness of mirrors, what will the spider do? Suspend its operations?' The point for counterintelligence was: Do not be bothered by the mirrors; just keep watch on the operation. Our analyst noticed that the CIA has changed the operation. They are no longer giving Basayev the kind of surveillance designed to see—and hear—what he is doing. They have subtly modified the operation to see if he's being followed by
us
and to see whether he's doing what
they
told them to do. Your valuable advisor, sir, is a mole, working for the CIA.”

Lebed stood, his face contorted in rage. “Get out!” he shouted.

Komov sprang to his feet. “Sir, no one else in your Security Service had the courage to tell you about the Basayev file. And no one knows that I have seen it.” Komov reached into his tunic and took out four sheets of lined paper bearing handwriting. “I have written a report containing what is known and suspected. After you read it, you can decide whether to accept my facts or accept my resignation.”

 

29

On the day after
Cole Perenchio's murder, Taylor arrived in his office, as usual, at precisely 8:30. “Good morning, Molly. I … Do you know if Cole Perenchio had any kin?”

“I don't really know anything about him, Ben. Is something wrong?”

“He's dead, Molly. Shot last night.”

“My God! How—”

“Is there anything in the
Post
?” Taylor asked, pointing to the folded paper on Molly's desk. She handed it to him and he rapidly flipped through the front section, then to Metro. On page five of the Metro section he saw a two-paragraph story with a one-column headline, “Killing on Capitol Hill.” “Here it is,” he said, folding back the page and handing it to Molly.

“Unidentified man?” she asked. “But…”

“That's Cole. Unidentified.”

“Did you—”

Without answering her, he went into his office and directly to the Four-Eyed Monster.

At the worktable he checked his e-mail and then plunged into outlining the PBS-special idea. He had been at work for about fifteen minutes when his phone buzzed.

“What's up, Molly?” he said.

“It's a Mr. Sarsfield,” she said, pausing to add, “That is,
Agent
Sarsfield. I will send him in.”

Taylor stood as the door opened and the prototype of an FBI agent—fit-looking white male in his forties, wearing a black suit, white shirt, blue tie, and shoelaced black shoes—stood for a moment in front of Taylor and flashed his badge and identification card. “Special Agent Patrick Sarsfield,” he said, swiftly pocketing a black leather case that looked like Detective Seymour's. Taylor idly wondered if there was one stockpile for all government ID cases. He put out his hand, as did Sarsfield.

“There are usually two of you,” Taylor said.

“Like Mormon missionaries,” Sarsfield said with a quick smile. “Budget cuts. And we are obliged to help out the dear old Capitol Hill coppers who don't have much detecting to do.” As Taylor motioned Sarsfield to a chair next to his desk, the agent added, “Don't quote me about the Mormons. I can see my flippancy surprises you.”