Vektor (17 page)

He stretched his arms in his seat, twisting his body to look into the pitch-black recesses of the van. The shadowy figure sitting directly behind the driver cracked his knuckles.

“You’re going to give yourself arthritis doing that,” Shelepin said.

“That’s an old wives’ tale,” the agent said.

A cell phone lit up the inside of the drink holder on the van’s center console tray, bathing all of them in a soft blue light and exposing the agent in the van’s second row of seats, who squinted. Shelepin grabbed the phone and answered.

“Agent Shelepin.”

“Why the fuck aren’t you answering your radio? The apartment was just breached! Nobody is answering the radios!”

Shelepin didn’t bother to raise the surveillance scope to view the apartment. Training and instinct took over, telling him not to waste the time. He hissed at the driver and grabbed his handheld radio.

“Let’s go. Front door,” he said before speaking into the handheld. “Surveillance units report. This is Shelepin! Report your status now!”

The van lurched forward, racing toward the main street. He received no reply from either unit. Seconds from turning the corner, he put the cell phone back to his ear.

“What happened in the apartment?”

“One man kicked the door in and shot the roommate. Your target left willingly. What is the status of the other agents?”

“I don’t know,” Shelepin replied just before the van turned sharply right onto Raskovoy Boulevard, pinning him against the passenger door.

***

Nikolai Mazurov reached the corner in time to hear the van’s tires screech, validating one of their most critical assumptions about the SVR operation. Their electronics tech had studied the neighborhood’s electronic signature for hours and had found several suspicious bandwidths that could signify the presence of listening devices or wireless camera feeds. He couldn’t be sure, since every household in this lower income neighborhood utilized some form of pirated electronics. Because these devices were mostly illegal on the international market, the manufacturers weren’t concerned with conforming their products to recognized international bandwidth spectrums. Bandwidth ranges varied wildly with these unregulated devices, creating an electronic signature that looked like a “fucking mosaic,” according to their tech. Even this mosaic had a pattern that could be interpreted given enough time, but time wasn’t one of the luxuries on their menu today. They had arrived shortly before six o’clock, several minutes before their target exited the nearest Metro station. They simply assumed that the apartment had been rigged with video feeds, which meant their countdown started when Klinkman kicked down Pavrikova’s door.

Nikolai risked a quick peek and saw the silver van barreling toward the intersection. He wouldn’t have time for any well-aimed semi-automatic shots. He thumbed the fire rate selector switch to automatic and raised the rifle, jamming the suppressor against the building’s corner and tilting the weapon forty-five degrees to use a small custom red dot sight affixed to the side.

“Engaging hostile van. Request pickup on Raskovoy in front of target building.”

Not waiting for a response, Nikolai fired a sustained but controlled burst of fire at the front windshield, peppering the glass directly in front of the driver with several rounds. His next burst collapsed a large section of windshield on the passenger side. The van lurched to the left and accelerated through the intersection, barely missing the corner that concealed him. The unguided vehicle raced past him and slammed into a streetlight on the opposite side of Raskovoy Boulevard, casting a dark shadow over the area.

Nikolai quickly shifted to the protected side of the building’s corner and fired the rifle’s remaining rounds into the back of the van. While swiftly changing rifle magazines, he noticed several lights appear in the windows above. Their timeline had just been hyper-accelerated. Without hesitation, he leveled the Groza and systematically punctured the van’s rear compartment with the thirty rounds supplied by the fresh magazine. He reloaded the rifle, keeping it leveled toward the van, and used his peripheral vision to navigate the street. Any movement within the wrecked vehicle would conjure another maelstrom of steel from Nikolai’s weapon. His earphone crackled.

“Coming out of the apartment with our package.”

He detected movement to his left and quickly glanced over his shoulder to confirm that Klinkman and Pavrikova had walked through the front door.

“The street is clear. Where the fuck is the van?” Nikolai said.

“Turning onto Raskovoy,” his earpiece responded.

A pair of headlights appeared on Raskovoy, moving rapidly toward them. Nikolai tensed, and Klinkman eased back into the building’s alcove. The lights flashed twice, allaying their concern and drawing them back into the open.

“Let’s go,” he said, still focused on the last remaining immediate threat.

He started walking backward along the sidewalk, while Klinkman and Lucya jogged toward the speeding van. By the time Nikolai climbed inside the van a few seconds later, Klinkman had replaced the electronics tech as their driver. The van sped down Raskovoy and turned onto a side street. If their plan was still intact, Klinkman would find the next major road heading north.

He extended his hand to Lucya Pavrikova. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lucya.”

The tears streaming down her face were illuminated by the soft green glow of a small laptop computer mounted to a table behind the second row of seats. She shook his hand tentatively, but said nothing.

“How are we looking?” he said to the technician kneeling in front of the computer.

The technician typed for a few seconds before looking up.

“SVR units were pulled from the nearest surveillance job to respond. They’re fifteen minutes out. Police units have been dispatched. They should arrive within five minutes. It’ll take them time to sort out the mess. We’ll be in a different vehicle by the time they issue an alert,” Luke Fortier replied.

“Keep a close eye on that. If we need to change vehicles sooner, we’ll improvise,” Nikolai said.

He turned back to Pavrikova, who stared out of her window. “Did my associate fully explain your situation?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Do you have any questions?”

“What happens to my family?”

“They’ll be questioned. Watched for a while, but nothing beyond that. This isn’t your father’s Soviet Union.”

“Will I see them again?”

“That’s not up to me. You’ll have to work that out with your new friends,” he said.

“And who exactly are my new friends?”

“I’m not authorized to share that information. We’re just the delivery team. I will caution you to accept their proposal,” Nikolai said.

“What if I don’t accept?”

“Then your broken body will turn up somewhere outside of Moscow a few days from now,” Nikolai said.

“I should have known better than to trust Yuri. He’s so far up that Cold War dinosaur’s ass, he probably never stopped to consider the possibility that Kaparov was working for the CIA. Saving Mother Russia, my ass. Kaparov is a CIA mole,” she spat at him.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t repeat that again. Ever,” he said and placed the business end of the OTs-14’s suppressor against her forehead. “Unless your specific intent is to nullify any arrangements that have been made on your behalf. And for the record, Yuri Prerovsky and his Cold War dinosaur boss saved your ass from a miserable death. They insisted that you be given a second chance.”

“How generous of them. I disappear and nothing changes for them,” she uttered, sniffling and wiping her face.

“Exposing Kaparov would have put you in the hands of some very pissed off Directorate S operatives. Did you think they would grant you some kind of immunity deal?” he asked, staring into her face.

She averted her eyes, which told him everything he needed to know. He was surprised that she could have been so naïve, even for a technical agent.

“You did. Well, you’re the luckiest woman in Moscow right now. Up until five minutes ago, you were on course to be brutally tortured and gang raped to death in some undisclosed, dank warehouse. I’d say your options have significantly improved thanks to your friends.”

She started sobbing uncontrollably, which suited Nikolai fine. She needed to get as much of this emotional outburst out of the way before they handed her off to the CIA. She’d need to be as levelheaded as possible during the transfer. The full bottle of wine she had consumed over the past hour compounded this problem. He’d make sure they understood this, though he hoped she might sober up slightly by the time they made the delivery. She had a chance to come out of this unscathed, and he was happy to steer her away from her certain fate at the hands of the Foreign Intelligence Service.

Even more so, he was pleased to learn that his ten-year undercover stint hadn’t been compromised for a trivial reason. Sanderson didn’t know which FSB agents would benefit from Lucya’s abduction, but Nikolai had always made it a priority to learn the names and ranks of the senior agents at the Federation Security Service. The mere mention of Kaparov and his direct subordinate tied the entire scenario together for him. If the FSB’s deputy director of the Bioweapons/Chemical Threat Assessment Division was assisting the CIA, the removal of Lucya Pavrikova had everything to do with enabling a future operation to deal with the bioweapons mess that had been unleashed on the world.

His only regret was that he would not be able to directly participate in the operation. He had been officially recalled from Russian soil, to return to Argentina. Since Luke couldn’t determine with one hundred percent certainty that no external cameras had been used by the SVR near Pavrikova’s apartment building, they had to assume that both he and Klinkman would eventually be identified. Sanderson strongly suspected that images taken by street security cameras in Stockholm had led to the recent disappearance of one of their operatives. Until their identities could be significantly changed, they would be confined to the Americas.

Chapter 21

4:55 PM

Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Headquarters

Yasanevo Suburb, Moscow, Russian Federation

Upon entering the secure conference room, Dmitry Ardankin stood at attention in front of the Foreign Intelligence Service Director and waited for permission to take a seat. As deputy director of Directorate S, Ardankin made the trip to the director’s office on a daily basis, and not always under welcome terms. His directorate had experienced its share of failures, mishaps and defections during his tenure, but it had also pulled off some of the most notoriously successful foreign operations in the Directorate’s recent history. Not to mention the weekly, if not daily “tasks” performed by his Zaslon operatives on behalf of the Federation’s more connected government officials.

He wasn’t sure what had angered Pushnoy more, losing Reznikov or losing eight of Putin’s errand boys. Probably the latter. The Zaslon group had devolved into Putin’s “business compliance” enforcers over the past several years, spending most of their time pressuring or assassinating Russian citizens abroad. Most of their targets were business types or entrepreneurs that had fallen out of favor with one of Putin’s key government or industry allies.

Zaslon was a throwback to the sleeper-cell program initiated during the Cold War and grossly overestimated by the Americans, often romanticized in Western espionage novels. The program had existed, but on a much smaller scale and mostly in Europe. Kremlin leadership had long ago determined that the decisive battle would be fought and won on European soil, so GRU and KGB programs focused on disrupting strategic and tactical NATO targets in western Europe by inserting Spetsnaz teams prior to the anticipated start of hostilities. Sleeper cells comprised a tiny portion of the Cold War plan, just as Zaslon operatives barely factored in the Foreign Intelligence Service’s global espionage network.

Still, they were extremely valuable, nearly irreplaceable assets, and the loss of a single member was treated as a disaster. The loss of eight Zaslon operatives at one time was an unmitigated catastrophe, and this didn’t even begin to address the implications associated with Reznikov’s disappearance. Unfortunately, their mess had fallen in his lap, and he’d managed to make matters worse, through no fault of his own. He’d sent eight of his best operatives, double what had been suggested by the director himself, and it hadn’t been enough. The best they could figure at this point was that the Americans had a similar “illegals” program, and that their operatives were possibly better trained. Of course, all of this would have been a moot point if the FSB hadn’t been compromised. Pavrikova’s deception had put the two teams on a fatal collision course, in which the better team had clearly prevailed.

At least all of the attention wouldn’t be focused solely on his Directorate. He’d take his lumps, but Federation Security Service leadership would take the brunt of the blame for this debacle. Pavrikova couldn’t have been more perfectly placed within the Center for Special Operations to spy on high-level joint operations.

He took his eyes off the wall behind Stephan Pushnoy for a brief moment to see if the director had finished scrutinizing the files he had forwarded an hour earlier. If Pushnoy was staring at him, then the meeting wouldn’t go well. The director’s cold blue eyes didn’t meet his glance. He was still absorbing the details of last night’s abduction.

“Dmitry, please take a seat,” he said, without looking up.

Ardankin started to feel better about the meeting. Pushnoy never invited one of his deputies to sit during an ass-chewing. He would have preferred that the director looked up at him, but this was better than the interminable silence that inevitably preceded the director’s wrath. He got halfway into the seat next to Pushnoy before the first question erupted.

“Reinhard Klinkman. What do we know about him?”

“Not very much. German citizen. Lives in Hamburg—”