The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel by Jason Matthews (20)

Checkmate

Nate and the three technical officers stood in the darkened hallway in front of Shlykov’s apartment. The old concierge finally had left her post for the evening and the CIA men had silently walked up four flights of stairs, each stepping in the slipstream of the others’ tension. Last in line, Nate saw that even though the staircase was well-washed marble, the good ol’ boys by habit walked on the outside of the treads to avoid squeaks; each step likewise was taken supinating on the outside of their cowboy-boot soles, eliminating the sound of footfalls in the stairwell.

This had all been Nate’s plan, the ghost transmissions, the signals, the surveillance. For the final act he had blithely suggested an entry to Shlykov’s Beyoǧlu apartment. But Nate had never before gone in with a veteran surreptitious-entry team; he was nervous as the whole show revolved around this break-in. Thank Christ these old boys were unflappable. The lead tech, a fifty-five-year-old peckerwood from Alabama named Gaylord, knelt in front of Shlykov’s door. He had a potbelly and knuckly hands; his white hair was wavy. His teammates had told Nate that he could pick any lock. Gaylord looked at the lock, turned to the others, and whispered “We got a Russian, in an apartment in Turkey, and the door’s got a Yale lock.” Nate was unsure whether the discovery of a Yale lock in Turkey was in effect good or bad, but concluded it must be good. With bird-like fingers on those beefsteak hands, Gaylord inserted a brass bump key into the keyway, feeling the pins through the tips of his fingers. He seated the key firmly, applied slight pressure on the cylinder, and sharply rapped the bow of the key with the rubber handle of a screwdriver. The pins jumped with the shock transmitted through the bump key, the cylinder rotated, and they were in. No emotion out of any of them; they just straightened and quietly entered the darkened apartment.

Shlykov’s apartment smelled neutral, like an intensive-care unit, hot and sanitized. It was neither messy nor neat; he didn’t have many possessions. The great repositories of a man’s secrets—the bedside table drawers—were empty: no books; no porn; no pics, empty. The second window into a man’s life, the fridge: no beer; no veg; no spice; no ice. The box was cold and sour. Most of all, Nate could not identify in the apartment where Shlykov’s personal spot was. No armchair with reading lamp; no ass-worn couch in front of the television; no canvas chair on the grimy little balcony. Did this guy hang by his heels from the closet rod until dusk?

Nate checked his watch. They had an hour-long window. Shlykov was propping up a wall at a dip party, watching fellow Russians, not working the crowd. He was too important to bother with dip targets. He had the covert action to propel him to his colonelcy. Three base officers in a loose circle around the Russian, eating, drinking, laughing, and handing off the eye, would punch Nate’s number when the major started moving. The techs were moving separately in the apartment, in a smooth, practiced choreography, dividing the rooms into cylindrical search sectors—high, low, middle—looking for the telltale wires of bugs or cameras, though it was unlikely that arrogant Major Shlykov would take such security precautions. No touching, no talking, their eyes moving in the dim light; Nate stood in the middle of the living room and waited.

The Mississippi boy named Lee, baby of the group at age fifty-two, moved to Shlykov’s bedroom and in thirty seconds had found a well-worn, hard-sided suitcase under the bed. He weighed it in his hand and nodded. He dipped into the small bag slung over his shoulder, no rummaging around, no sound, and came out with a pair of pincer pliers that looked as though they had first been used in 1415 at Agincourt. Nate kneeled beside him as Lee gently pulled off the aluminum flashing around the upper lid and using a long, thin spatula carefully pried apart the two sandwich layers of molded plastic. He snapped his fingers softly to attract Nate’s attention. From his own bag Nate took out the glassine envelope and carefully slid two secret writing carbons—specialized, essential, and incriminating—between the layers of the lid. Lee then squeezed the layers together, applied a dot of adhesive, and fitted the flashing back around the edge of the lid. He crimped the aluminum tight and pointed with his finger. Nate saw that Lee’s crimping tool had purposely left tiny teeth marks in the aluminum. Lee slid the suitcase back under the bed.

Nate again checked his watch through sweat-stung eyes and moved back to the living room. Gaylord and the third tech—a jolly Falstaff from upstate New York named Ginsburg—meanwhile had spread a tack cloth on the floor and were feeling with artisans’ hands the grain of a large wooden chessboard standing on its edge. Where had they found it? All Russians love chess, thought Nate. Was this Shlykov’s defining hobby? It was his bad luck, whatever it was. Ginsburg took an instrument of the Inquisition out of his bag, black handle, guide rails, battery pack. The tool itself made only a faint crunching termite sound as he plunged a three-inch-deep mortise into the wood along the end; Gaylord sucked up the sawdust with a silent handheld vacuum as it came off the bit, and cleaned out the hole. They both looked at Nate, who stepped forward and inserted a tiny two-inch square notepad with gummed edges—a onetime pad, called an OTP—into the cavity. This was a block of tiny pages of printed numbers in random sequences used to provide an ever-changing (and therefore unbreakable) key to encrypt messages. Onetime pads had been used forever—in the Great War, inside the Bastille dungeons, and on the Roman roads of Judea.

Gaylord meanwhile had taken the collected sawdust and mixed it in a shallow beaker with an odorless chemical from a squeeze bottle to create a thick batter. Fitting a plastic plug into the cavity to protect the OTP, he smeared the paste over the mortise hole and troweled it even along the edge of the board, like a pastry chef smoothing frosting on a cake. He blew on the spot, tested it with the tips of ridiculously sensitive fingers, and in a few minutes, lightly sanded it smooth. Nate shined the penlight as Gaylord held a color wheel to the chessboard, then painted the area; it disappeared into the exact shade of the wood. “You sure they’ll find this?” whispered Nate.

Ginsburg looked him up and down. “If they’re looking for it, guaranteed. The cavity’ll light up on a fluoroscope like a polyp on your colonoscopy.” Nate looked at Ginsburg and nodded thoughtfully; given his age, the grizzled tech perhaps was speaking from recent experience. Whatever Ginsburg intended to say, there was a certain anatomical irony: when the chessboard and suitcase were discovered by Russian counterintelligence officers, Shlykov figuratively would be bent over and would experience the long arm of Kremlin justice.

As it turned out, they did, and he was. After a month of burst communications heating up Russian SIGINT antennas in Turkey, followed by the shootouts, the Kremlin had enough. Colonel Egorova traveled unannounced to Istanbul to observe the situation in the consulate, accompanied by two FSB heavies collegially lent by FSB Chief Bortnikov, who expected Egorova would discredit Shlykov and prove to the president that the Security Council members who opposed the rash OBVAL operation had been correct.

Intermittent rain squalls blown in from the Sea of Marmara were slashing across the runway when Dominika’s Aeroflot flight from Moscow arrived at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport. As the plane taxied to the gate, the rain pattering against the smudged windows, she could feel the thready pulse under her jaw; she was about to initiate a konspiratsia against a dangerous adversary and, she presumed, his Spetsnaz bullmastiff, though Blokhin had not been seen in the city at all. She was in a foreign country now and the Turks were shrewd and aggressive. This was hostile territory, and she was here to conduct a mock counterintelligence investigation, the result of which had to be the arrest of Valeriy Shlykov for treason. She had a delicate role to play; a too-facile conclusion to her investigation might raise suspicions. She would have to “discover” the evidence against this ambitious officer plausibly and convincingly. The role-playing starts now, she thought as the plane jerked to a stop.

As she entered the modern arrivals hall with its soaring vaulted ceiling, the burnt-nut aroma of Turkish coffee in the air enveloped her, and reminded her she was now in the mysterious Orient, among the small dark men who watched all yabanci, foreigners, with distrust and uncertainty. She walked past a small take-out cantina, the steam table laden with appetizers—roasted peppers and garlic, flat köfte sprinkled with sumac, a tray of kabak graten, golden zucchini gratin. Past Customs, two nervous officers from the Russian Consulate rushed up to greet her, bobbing their heads. An SVR colonel was an important visitor. Chin up, Dominika walked with them to the waiting car, saying nothing.

Istanbul was this morning a mass of blocked roads, snarled traffic, and emergency vehicles. The police action of last night had resulted in the capture of lethal munitions of Russian manufacture. Endless television news reported the killing of scores of PKK separatists in as many firefights. The Grand National Assembly met in emergency session. The TNP put the captured land mines and rocket tubes on display. In the Russian Consulate, an apoplectic Valeriy Shlykov cursed. He suspected perfidy and betrayal from some quarter. As Shlykov raved, the junior officers in the rezidentura cowered, clueless. This ambitious GRU major had lorded it over everyone, and had not briefed them on the covert action, to ensure compartmentation and security, but really so he could hog the credit.

Gorelikov regrets I have to make this trip, thought Dominika, but I do not. Apart from their compromising Shlykov, the Istanbul trip would, of course, be an opportunity to meet her CIA handlers, their first contact since New York. She had been passed the address of an Istanbul yali, an elegant three-story wooden Turkish Baroque mansion in Anadolu Kavagi, a resort town on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, designated CIA safe house AMARANTH. The mansion had been rented by a real estate firm in Beverly Hills ostensibly for peripatetic senior Hollywood studio executive Blanche Goldberg, who used the house twice a year to meet mesmeric French film star Yves Berléand, with whom she’d had an on-again, off-again love affair for three years and counting (you never knew with a French lover). Blanche was only vaguely witting that the house was paid for by CIA—she didn’t ask the reason—but made her contribution to the love-nest cover-for-status by keeping a bedroom armoire full of expensive Beverly Hills lingerie and toiletries, including a bottle of Swiss Navy Lube in the elegant master bathroom medicine cabinet.

In Moscow, Dominika had been passed descriptions of the CIA moves to discredit Shlykov via thumb drives placed at a timed-drop site in the bushy verge against the ornamental wall of the Zhivonachalnoy Troitsy Temple on Kosygina Ulitsa on the southern border of Vorobyovy Gory (Sparrow Hills Park) on the Luzhniki bend of the Moskva River. Benford himself had included the key information regarding what Dominika should look for in Shlykov’s apartment: chemically treated brochures, suitcase lining with crimped flashing, chessboard.

The result was that Dominika was aware of every nuance of the CIA sting, and could direct her investigation unerringly to the evidence, to the astonished admiration of her FSB wingmen. She noted that suspicious Western foreigners were sitting across from Shlykov at lunch (were they signaling him?). The FSB boys followed them and they turned out to be US Consulate employees, presumed CIA. She spotted a thumbtack signal in a tree near Shlykov’s apartment that was pushed in too low to affix a poster. A horizontal chalk mark that was noted on a wall outside Shlykov’s apartment building on one day had a fresh vertical cross stroke two days later. And the electronic burst messages continued. Things were looking decidedly worse for Major Shlykov.

At no time did Shlykov mentally connect the massive operational flap culminating in running police shootouts at twenty locations in the city with any singular, personal failure in tradecraft, comsec, or planning. He was rarely burdened by introspection. Now this ridiculous Egorova had arrived to conduct a preposterous investigation on some nonsense about transmissions, and the timing ensured she would be here to witness his humiliation. He had been ordered to remain in Istanbul until the postmortem of OBVAL was complete.

The interview with a scowling Shlykov seated at a table in the rezidentura secure room developed nicely: Valeriy reacted angrily when asked about the mysterious transmissions, claimed not to know any Americans in town, and dismissed as ridiculous the existence of clandestine signals near his apartment. The FSB officers present looked at one another skeptically. Things got more interesting when Shlykov flatly refused to let the FSB “donkeys” search his apartment. The yellow halo around his head, bleached by rage and pulsing with fright, told Dominika a lot. His fear of career disintegration was eclipsed by his bol’shoe samomnenie, his self-importance, and his outrage at being challenged and questioned, especially by a woman. He’ll hang himself with that ego, Dominika thought. This would be easier than she expected.

“This is an uncomfortable situation for us all,” said Dominika equably. “I personally regret the need to interview a fellow colleague from the GRU.”

“Then fly back to Moscow and leave me to my work,” said Shlykov. “I have critical operational tasks, which you should realize take precedence.” He glared at Dominika with the disdain of privileged Soviet Golden Youth.

“Yes, well, the police shootouts in this city with your terrorist protégés seem to suggest that your critical operational tasks have not been totally successful; in fact, they were unrelievedly disastrous,” said Dominika. “They almost certainly may yet prove to be damaging to the Russian Federation and embarrassing to the president.” In the silence that followed, every Russian in that interview room knew that damaging the country was by far the lesser delinquency.

“I’ll attend to the operations,” said Shlykov, seething. He decided to add a towering insult. “Why don’t you concentrate on what you do best: filming yourself seducing men?”

“I suggest you take a less defiant line,” said Dominika. “It is unfortunate.” The FSB men heard something in her voice that made them shift in their seats. Shlykov seemed not to register the danger.

“There are anomalies that correspond to your movements,” said Dominika. “I trust they will amount to nothing, but I am here to confirm that there are no counterintelligence issues.”

“Do you think I’m working for the Americans?” Shlykov shouted. “You’re ridiculous, Po’shyol ’na hui, fuck off.” He stood and loomed over Dominika.

“I advise you to sit down and cooperate,” said Dominika, looking up at him. Shlykov bent over her, and stuck his face in hers. The FSB men sat on the edge of their chairs.

“Your reputation precedes you,” said Shlykov. “The wonder girl with the big sis ’ki, the well-titted-out prostitute trained to suck off—”

Dominika’s hand shot out and grabbed Shlykov’s jutting bottom lip between forefinger and thumb, and pulled down hard. The major grunted with the pain and went to his knees. Dominika twisted his lip and slammed his head against the edge of the table. Shlykov sat on the floor and held his head. His lip had already swelled and gone purple, and his right eye was closed.

“Consider yourself confined to the rezidentura,” said Dominika, standing. “You can sleep on the duty-officer cot. A security officer will be with you at all times.” She turned to the FSB men.

“Get the keys to Comrade Shlykov’s residence, both front door and apartment,” she said. “I want to go there now.”

At the apartment, the FSB bloodhounds did Dominika’s work for her—she didn’t have to prompt them at all. In fact, she praised their diligence. They gathered all the papers in Shlykov’s desk drawer and found the suitcase under the bed and showed Colonel Egorova the telltale marks on the lid, suggesting some tampering. They hefted the big wooden chessboard they found on the upper shelf in the front closet, shook their heads, and were going to leave it.

Dominika shrugged, pulled out more drawers, and rummaged around the closet. “Strange,” she said. “Have you found chess pieces, a chess set?” The FSB men looked around, shook their heads, and suggested they take the chessboard back to the consulate and examine it under the fluoroscope used to screen incoming mail and packages. Dominika looked doubtful.

“Very well,” she said. “It’s better to check, to be thorough.”

“Bez truda, ne vitashis i ribku iz ruda,” said one of the FSB men loftily, without effort you won’t pull a fish out of a pond.

“I suppose you’re right,” said Dominika. “Let’s see what we find.”

Iosip Blokhin had not appeared anywhere in Istanbul during the disastrous failure of OBVAL. There had been a firefight between TNP shock troops and PKK cell members barricaded in a private house in the historic Rumelihisari neighborhood on the Bosphorus that had been fierce and prolonged, suggesting that the normally unsophisticated PKK terrorists had received tactical advice from a professional. A police picket line in the woods around the house detained a stocky man making his way through the trees as the shooting began tapering off, and he was taken into custody in the police precinct house in Arnavutköy on the basis that he had no identification.

When the burly man in East Bloc English claimed he was a Russian diplomat and demanded to see a consulate official, the police lieutenant called the coordinating captain (it was Hanefi), who in turn called his American friend Nathaniel Nash and offered him the opportunity to speak to the Russian who the Turks strongly suspected was a professional soldier. Hanefi said he could give Nash an hour alone with the Russian before Russian dips arrived to spring him. Nate accepted and quickly called Benford to say this had to be Blokhin who, Dominika was sure, had killed the two women and two cops in New York, her North Korean asset, and her Sparrow in Vienna.

“Go hard on this ape,” said Benford. “Pitch him—your cover’s blown to these Bolsheviks anyway—and tell him we know what he did. Say we got him on Hilton Hotel security cameras, to protect DIVA. Tell the son of a bitch the next time he shows a hair of his ass outside Russia, we’ll extradite him to New York to stand trial for the dissident’s murder,” said Benford. “Burn him so badly he’ll be useless to them from now on.”

“It’s highly unlikely, but what if he’s ready to play ball? How high are you willing to go to get him in harness?” said Nate.

“Three years substantively working in place inside, he gets one million dollars. He wants out now, he’ll get two hundred fifty thousand dollars after a meaningful debriefing in the United States. Money contingent on production—the usual. See if that shakes his tree. Get something solid from him as a sign of good faith before you agree to anything,” said Benford.

“Okay, I’ll talk to him tonight and let you know,” said Nate. “I’m prepping for the meet tomorrow with Domi. I’ll get over there early and get things set up for Marty. When’s he get in?”

“He’s not coming,” said Benford, thinly. “I had to send him to Sudan; a wheel came off in Khartoum Station.”

“Marty’s not coming?” said Nate, his stomach flipping.

“I trust you heard me, unless your ears were affected by the blood rushing to your lower extremities,” said Benford.

“Gable is DIVA’s primary handler,” said Nate.

“And you are her backup officer,” said Benford. “You know how this works, Nash. You debrief her, review commo and sites, make sure she is operating safely. Did you receive the requirements cable?”

“It came in this morning,” said Nate.

“Then go and do your job,” said Benford. “And endeavor not to ruin the asset with your beastly manner. Or do I have to come out there myself?”

“No, I’ll handle it,” said Nate. “You’ll get a wrap-up cable when we’re done.”

“Good hunting,” said Benford, hanging up.

Blokhin was in a small gray interrogation room at the police station that was bare except for two metal chairs. Hanefi met Nate outside the door and they took turns looking at him through the peephole.

“Bir esek oglu,” muttered Hanefi. A son of a donkey. “Nate bey, he looks dangerous. Dikkatli ol, be careful. Do you want a man in the room?” Nate shook his head. “Tabanca?” A pistol?

“No. I want to squeeze him and don’t want him to lose face. But if you hear me screaming, come in and shoot him,” said Nate.

“I am thinking he is in Istanbul for organizing the cells,” said Hanefi. “With no diplomatic papers we put him in Silivri Prison for twenty years, but because Ankara fears trouble with Moscow, he is free after you finish with him. Iyi sanslar, Nate bey, good luck.”

Nate pulled open the door and stepped into the room, which was dimly lighted by a single bare bulb. Blokhin stood in a corner, leaning against the wall, his tree-trunk arms crossed over his chest. There was a bruise under his right eye, probably a corrective love tap from a TNP jailor who didn’t like Russians. Nate sat in one of the chairs and slid the other chair a foot toward Blokhin, an invitation to sit, but the sergeant remained standing. Nate knew he was unlikely to find this guy’s buttons, but there was nothing to lose. A brief bio on Blokhin had been spun up, but there wasn’t much.

“Sergeant Iosip Blokhin,” said Nate in fluent Russian. “Congratulations on the sharada, the charade of last night. I thought Spetsnaz was better than that.” Blokhin stared at him.

“It’s hard to imagine you going along with such a half-baked plan, but that’s GRU for you—amateurs,” said Nate. Blokhin didn’t move. Push another button.

“Of course you’ll be blamed for the unsatisfactory operation,” said Nate. “No one in the Kremlin, or the Security Council, or the General Staff will support you. Major Shlykov will cast you aside, like the pack animal he thinks you are. They may even cashier you out of Spetsnaz. What group are you in? Alpha or Vympel?” Blokhin uncrossed his arms, pushed off from the wall, and stood behind the metal chair looking down at Nate. He slowly sat down, back straight, hands on his thighs. Nate braced for a lunge.

“You are CIA?” Blokhin asked. His voice was like gravel poured out of a bucket.

“If they kick you out of Spetsnaz, what will you do in Moscow?” said Nate, ignoring the question. “Become a driver on a city tram? Collect tickets at Dynamo Stadium? Do you have a family to feed? Parents?” Come on big boy, tell me something, anything.

“You come from Washington?” asked Blokhin, tilting his head as if Nate had blown a dog whistle.

“Washington is close to New York City,” said Nate. “Ever been there? Ever been to the Hilton on Sixth Avenue?” Blokhin’s face was impassive but his pupils dilated.

“What do you want?” said Blokhin, sitting back in his chair. An opening? Work it.

“We both serve our countries loyally, sometimes endure hardships, but in your system there are no rewards except the pride you take in having served. But that will be gone when you return to the Rodina. They will take that away from you in the space of a deep breath.” Blokhin said nothing.

“We are not enemies,” Nate said, with a straight face. “We are both soldiers, in different uniforms perhaps, but we both understand loyalty. In America we value loyalty and friendship, and repay it. Our soldiers retire with benefits, and live in comfort.”

“What do you want?” Blokhin repeated.

“I have a proposal, a way for you to reap the benefits you have earned. Something for you, apart from Russia, and Spetsnaz, and Shlykov.” Blokhin waited.

“Talk to us about what is happening in Russia, in the army, in Spetsnaz,” said Nate. “Do it for yourself; you deserve the rewards.”

“I would dishonor my uniform, my oath,” said Blokhin, shaking his head.

“They dishonor you already,” said Nate.

“You dishonor me; your proposal is an insult.” He didn’t ask how much, he just slammed the door.

“I want you to know that authorities in New York have fingerprints and DNA found in Daria Repina’s hotel room,” said Nate. “They will be compared against samples just taken from you by the Turks. There is no doubt there soon will be an Interpol warrant out for your arrest, and Washington will request your extradition to stand trial.” Blokhin smiled thinly. He knew Moscow would never agree to that.

“What this means is that you will be obliged to remain in Russia indefinitely, to avoid immediate arrest by a foreign government,” Nate continued. “Your days as a clandestine military operator are over. This neudacha, this fiasco, in Istanbul will be your last operation, an unfortunate professional legacy for which you will be remembered.” A bit dramatic, that. Nate knew Shlykov was already well and properly framed, and Blokhin at most would be criticized and demoted for his part. The added indignity of being pitched by the Americans after being arrested would be intense. Blokhin got up from his chair, returned to the corner, and leaned against the wall.

“I hope our paths cross again,” said Blokhin in English.

As he walked out of the police station, Nate erased Blokhin from his mind. He was meeting Dominika tomorrow. Nate took a deep breath. Godamn hell, shit-bitch, as Hanefi would say. This was going to be tricky. He could attend to the debriefing professionally, no problem. Intel first, followed by ops intel and CI. Establish a sked for future meetings, then review security, sites, and signals. Doing all this in five hours (the last Bosphorus ferry back to town was at 1800 hours) was going to mean they would sit down and work straight through. It would mean Nate must keep his mind on business, even if Dominika put her slim, cool hand on his arm, or if her just-washed hair brushed his cheek, or if she laughed and stuck out her tongue at him. He would ignore that trademark sideways glance that meant she wanted him, invariably accompanied by the barely perceptible lifting of the hem of her skirt, a come-on from her Sparrow past. He could imagine Gable’s comment (“Nash’ll be playing twenty toes with her in five minutes”) and Forsyth would shake his head ruefully, disappointed.

Maybe he’d surprise everyone and instead convince her about coming out with him, defecting, quitting, leaving the danger, and the dread, and the risk, and starting a new life, together. What if she says, “Yes, let’s go, right now, I’m ready”? Nate thought. Besides meaning the end of his CIA career and the work that defined him, it would also mean the loss of the Agency’s best Russian source with irreplaceable access to Putin’s Kremlin. And he’d be the cause.

Dark ancillary thoughts emerged: Could either of them live without the sustaining excitement of this work, the knife-edge bustle of the street, the adrenaline high of stealing secrets from an implacable foe? What would their retired life be like? Would they look at the snowy Rockies from the porch of a log cabin? Or eat breakfast on a white balcony overlooking Biscayne Bay? Or throw another log on the fire in a cozy New England farmhouse? A conjugal dream or a constricting nightmare? Could either of them survive retirement? Gable always said that spooks dried up and died when they left the Game. Most Russian defectors went around the bend away from the Rodina; they missed the Motherland, the black earth, and the pine forests. Could he do that to her, to himself? Jesus, maybe he had scared himself straight, maybe she’d see the light too. Maybe they would move to the next chaste and professional level of superasset and sagacious handler, coolly taking care of business against Vladimir Putin and his predatory kleptocracy. Maybe.

And, anyway, what was that fucking Gable doing in Khartoum, now of all times?