Operator - 01 (25 page)

“And they’re all dead.”

“Well, someone might have survived in the pickup truck.” I say and then look at her directly, making contact with those green eyes. They force me to answer the question. “But…I get your point. That’s what happens in these situations. A lot of people die. It’s not very pretty. I don’t miss it.” Not this part, anyway.

She just shivers and leans against me. After a while she smiles and laughs. “I guess I can see why you’d leave that life. But now I also totally get why your boss wants you back so badly.” I look at her in shock for a second, not sure I’m hearing her right. Then I laugh too. It’s an unfamiliar feeling in my throat.

I hear the sound of a helicopter overhead and stand as I scan the horizon. I’m hoping the FBI has managed to track the GPS signal in my Blackberry and that it’s our ride.

* * *

“We’re almost there, Orion. A sworn statement from Ms. Ryan along with our identification of the team that intercepted you this afternoon will be enough for your colleagues in the State Department to sit down with their Russian counterparts in the next twenty-four hours and express our displeasure. I believe we are looking to keep the Russians from vetoing a resolution in the Security Council for stronger sanctions against Iran. If we don’t get the answer we want, the whole story will hit the
Washington Post
next week. Ms. Ryan should be safe, but I’ve asked the FBI to extend in-home protection to her for the next few days.”

“Thank you, sir,” I reply. I’m glad that Veronica is finally going home and that someone will watch her. And while I should be appalled that all the misery of the past week has become a bargaining chip to save some parliamentary maneuver at the United Nations, I’m not. I was in this game for long enough to know that even that trifle is more of a concrete outcome than we usually get. In fact, it would be a big win for both the FBI and the Activity. Still, I can’t help feeling a little bitterness that so many lives were lost or ruined – from Mel to all of those little girls and even Dmitriev and his men – because of a bunch of spy games. It may seem like we’re all the same people in the intelligence community, but operators go in to do a job and get out. We fix problems. We don’t much care for the people who create them.

“You may be interested to know that Kiril Dmitriev was the man’s real name. We have a substantial file on him – he was an operator with the Vympel counterterrorist unit for about a dozen years until he was recruited to Zaslon. They’re the SVR’s counterpart to the Special Activities Division at CIA,” Alpha clears his throat. The Special Activities Division is sort of like a Delta Force within the CIA, but both Delta and the Activity have had a notably poor relationship with SAD. But then again, nobody ever trusts the CIA. “Dmitriev’s team is – or was – thought to be one of the top elimination teams with Zaslon. They’ve caused us a lot of trouble over the past few years. There’s a good deal of excitement in the big building over their retirement.” The big building is the Pentagon – top brass. I sigh. It’s hard to imagine that my name is not being connected with all of this at some level. I feel Alpha’s tendrils insinuating themselves.

“What’s your update?” Alpha asks.

“I’m with Special Agents Holland and Brennan in Oyster Bay. We’re on surveillance of Constantine Drubich. Veronica rattled his tree this afternoon by telling him I was sure he’d compromised the red-headed man she met at the U.N. party, and that the FBI is actively searching for the guy. As far as the NSA has been able to tell us, Drubich did not make any unusual calls at work today. It will take more time for his encrypted communications to be analyzed. But we think there’s still a chance he’ll make a move to warn the man, so we’re going to sit on him for a couple of days to see if we get lucky. I’ll help you through the weekend if necessary, but I have to be back at work on Monday at the latest.”

“Without question, you should get back to work whenever you need to, Orion. What you’ve already accomplished is greatly appreciated. I have one request of you right now, however. You are better qualified at surveillance than those men you’re with,” Alpha says, his voice echoing in my ear through the encrypted Bluetooth earpiece wirelessly connected to my government-issued Blackberry. I’m suddenly glad he’s not on speakerphone. “I’d ask you to ensure that Mr. Drubich does not suspect he is being watched. My understanding is that they’ve only devoted a single car to the operation, which is troubling.”

“Yes, sir, that’s correct,” I reply. “This afternoon a tracking device was planted on Constantine’s car when it was being washed. The device allows us to operate a tail outside of visual range, so I think we’re okay, but it’s still not an ideal situation. The Russian security people sweep these cars all the time, so they might find it. And when Constantine drives into the city, we always risk losing him if we get too far away and he takes off on foot. I’m here for about six more hours. There’s a backup team relieving us after midnight.” In truth, I am even more concerned than I let on. Alpha can read between the lines, and the fact that he’d even ask the question tells me he’s on the same page. The FBI doesn’t seem to be taking Drubich as seriously as I’d have expected. Menetti is enthusiastic about the potential connection, but some of his superiors are suffering from not-invented-here syndrome because the lead has been handed to them from the outside. I don’t know why else the FBI would be skimping on resources, but there might be some political maneuvering going on.

All I’m sure of is that I’d much prefer to have multi-vehicle surveillance of Drubich supported by aerial drones and audio and video monitoring of his house. But you play with the hand you’re dealt, so I’m sitting in a black Suburban two blocks away from Drubich’s expensive house on Long Island with two Special Agents from the Albany Field Office. They seem like good men, but they’re out of their depth with Drubich. He’s one of Russia’s top spies, and he’s bound to spot our amateur level surveillance pretty soon.

Drubich has been home from work for just over an hour, so there’s an even chance we’ll be spending the evening sitting in the Suburban and hoping that one of Drubich’s neighbors doesn’t get worried and call the cops on us.

I wrap up the conversation with Alpha, which has been circumspect by necessity. I have mixed feelings about our pursuit of the redheaded man. Part of me says it’s a wild goose chase; we are staking out Drubich on the possibility that after seeing a redheaded man one time at a U.N. party several years ago, he managed to compromise and blackmail him and will feel the urgent need to meet him in person in the next day or two. It sounds pretty thin: I-hope-I-win-the-lottery thin. On the other hand, Veronica has pretty good instincts – I don’t think I’d bet against her with my Final Four picks given what I’ve seen in the past couple days. I’m more than willing to spend a little time sitting in an SUV eating cold sandwiches to try to prove her right. I’m curious how these guys plan to follow Drubich in Manhattan tomorrow morning. It’s impossible to double-park an SUV on Fifth Avenue near the Russian consulate. We’ll need more help to follow the man on foot, that’s certain.

I’m only half-surprised when, just a half-hour later, a black Mercedes S550 noses out of the gated driveway to the spymaster’s house. Confident of his electronics, Agent Holland allows the big sedan to pull out of sight before flicking the Suburban’s headlamps on and pulling away from our parking spot. We’re lucky that Drubich doesn’t live at one of the toniest addresses in Oyster Bay, as those houses are on private, looping roads with peaceful-sounding names like Sherwood Gate, where a strange SUV with blacked out windows parked on the street couldn’t sit for more than thirty minutes without entertaining a visit from the police. The street Drubich lives on is nice enough, but even the houses with high shrubs and gates are low-rent, with price tags in the single-figure millions. I’m sure that it’s all worth it to live on the North Shore of Long Island, just a stone’s throw from the Long Island Sound.

The Mercedes’ position is marked by a moving red dot on the built-in GPS in the Suburban. It replaces the standard navigation system and feeds us road directions that allow us to stay just beyond visual range of the Mercedes. We wind our way through the local roads of the Oyster Bay, then onto Route 106 south toward Jericho, where we pick up the Long Island Expressway headed for Manhattan. Following a car without actually seeing it is new to me and feels more like playing a video game than real surveillance work. While the technology has been around for a while, this is a much slicker implementation than anything that was in the field when I was with the Activity.

By the time we get through the midtown tunnel, Agents Holland, Brennan and I are all convinced that Constantine is heading back to work, but we’re wrong. Instead of turning north, Drubich cuts south on Second Avenue, then twenty blocks later turns east on 14
^th
Street. Holland has the good sense to reel him in a little at this point, because if Drubich pulls into a parking garage he could be out of his car and on foot before we can spot him. There’s not too much danger in Drubich picking up the tail in Manhattan as long as he’s on the major cross streets, though.

Constantine cuts east to west across the entire island, passing the Apple Store on Ninth Avenue into the trendy Meatpacking District, a cobblestoned neighborhood of exclusive boutiques, outdoor cafés and expensive restaurants. As we close to within three cars of the S550, Constantine makes the turn north into Chelsea and onto Tenth Avenue. He slows the big Benz as he passes the Chelsea Carwash and practically crawls through the intersection at 15
^th
Street.

This block looks like a throwback to an earlier era. An iron viaduct snakes above the eastern side of the street, a sooty python of an elevated trestle that once enabled the great rail companies to transport meat to the markets. After shooting over Ninth Avenue, the viaduct wraps itself around the old Nabisco factory in the enormous Chelsea Market complex, then turns south into the heart of the Meatpacking District. The portion of the viaduct crossing Ninth Avenue between 14
^th
and 15
^th
looks like an iron catheter invading a vital artery, while an art deco pedestrian bridge from the 1930s soars overhead.

Constantine pulls his S550 over at the far the end of the block, in front of a fire hydrant. Agent Holland immediately steers the Suburban toward the opposite curb, cutting off a taxicab, which speeds around us with a belligerent honk of the horn. We are about fifty feet shy of the Mercedes on the opposite side of the street.

“I’ll follow him on foot,” I say, opening the passenger door of the Suburban. “Once I figure out which direction he’s heading you can drop Agent Brennan ahead of him. If he steps into one of these places,” I nod at Craft Steak and Del Posto, the restaurant Drubich has pulled in front of, “we’re going to need more help, because I’m not dressed for that kind of scene and you two will stand out like a sore thumb.” Agents Holland and Brennan are both wearing dated grey suits. The nicest thing I can say is that neither one of them is sporting a clip-on tie. Knowing the high percentage of lawyers among FBI field agents, I’m a little surprised they aren’t better dressed. I guess their duties in Albany don’t call for expensive suits. I’m wearing a cream-colored button-down shirt over black jeans, both of which I found in the bag from Alpha that we rescued from the bullet-riddled G8 on our way out of the Catskills. I’ve had to ditch the muddy Merrell trail runners for a pair of black Adidas Sambas. I slip on a pair of clear Persol glasses from a lizard case in the pocket of a black Burberry raincoat as I slip out of the SUV.

I shuffle north on Tenth Avenue, watching Drubich from across the street as he peels a bill from a money clip and hands it to the valet who eagerly hops into the Mercedes and pulls away. Drubich crosses Tenth Avenue like a New Yorker – twenty feet shy of the actual intersection. He’s wearing a black cashmere overcoat and walks with a gait very wealthy or very powerful people adopt – slow and commanding, as if challenging anyone to disturb him. I stop and bend over to tie my shoe as his gaze briefly sweeps in my direction. Then he’s on my side of the street, stepping in front of the gracefully curved arch and billowing red drapes of the Japanese restaurant Morimoto. Constantine crosses over 16
^th
Street and turns to the right, out of my line of sight. I reach the intersection a moment later. Peering down 16
^th
, I scan the sidewalks for Drubich, but he has vanished. An eight-story modern brick and glass residential building advertising luxury condominium rentals on multicolored vertical banners covers the entire north side of the street, and I don’t see any shops on either side he might have entered. I experience a moment of panic, wondering if I’ve been out of the game too long and my instincts have gone to seed.

As I calm myself and take a breath, a young couple steps directly in front of me. The man has dark hair, thick and windblown, and sports a soul patch – a square bit of facial hair under the bottom lip that looks like a shaving accident to me. The woman is Asian, with long, lustrous black hair and an engraved silver belly-button ring peeking out from a short white tee shirt underneath an open ankle-length black jacket with a faux fur fringe. They’ve stepped from an exterior stairway hidden away in the corner of the residential building named The Caledonia on a brass plaque. I turn to the stairway and see that it leads up to the old train trestle.

I sprint up the staircase, which winds around an open elevator shaft. As I reach the railway trestle I’ve observed from Tenth Avenue, an elevator car carrying an elderly man with a walker passes me going down. I emerge into a different world.

The abandoned train trestle has been converted to an aerial park. A pathway of textured concrete with chunks of embedded granite snakes down its length, winding right and left between beds of wildflowers and native grasses. The vegetation, half of which might be properly called weeds by a fastidious suburban gardener, is carefully landscaped to appear wild, mirroring what must have been the prior condition of the abandoned railways. In places, bushes poke up between sections of the original train tracks. In others, the concrete has been formed into narrow strips of four parallel tracks with grasses peeking through them, in a playful allusion to the old railway. Slender metal poles sprout up waist-high through the flowerbeds, softly bathing the greenery in LED illumination. The section I’ve stepped into snakes between The Caledonia and an enormous tan brick building on the opposite side of the street. The walkway runs north and south above Tenth Avenue, and a dozen yards from where I stand, the path spears directly through the Chelsea market building.