Covert One 6 - The Moscow Vector (17 page)

Yudenich nodded again, shivering suddenly under his heavy camouflage jacket.

Moscow

Erich Brandt stepped off the steep escalator and walked into the vast, echoing underground hall of the Novokuznetskaya Metro station. Throngs of tired-looking shift workers heading home surged around him. Even this late at night, subway trains rumbled loudly through the tunnels, arriving and departing in warm gusts of oil-scented air every two or three minutes. Moscow’s underground railway system was the best in the world, carrying nearly nine million passengers a day—more than the London Underground and New York’s subways put together. And in contrast to the dreary utilitarian hubs of the West, many of the Metro stations were gems of art and architecture. As a means of demonstrating the growing power and culture of the now-dead Soviet Union, each had been built in marble and decorated with sculptures, carved reliefs, mosaics, and enormous hanging chandeliers.

For an instant, Brandt stood still, eyeing the khaki-colored bas-reliefs lining the walls. They depicted soldiers and military leaders, ranging from stout Mar-shal Kutusov, who had fought Napoleon at Austerlitz and Borodino, to panels caned to show heroic Second World War Soviet Naval Infantrymen leaping ashore from assault boats to join the climactic battle at Stalingrad. On the high curved ceiling overhead, occasional mosaics showed smiling factory workers and farmers reveling in their happy, idyllic lives as servants of the Communist State.

The big, blond-haired man snorted wryly. The Novokuznetskaya station had been constructed in 1943, at the height of the brutal Soviet struggle against Nazi Germany. Its art celebrated certain victory over Hitler and his fascist minions. Trust Alexei Ivanov to choose this as a place to meet his unwelcome East German colleague. For all his reputed subtlety as a spymaster, the head of the Thirteenth Directorate had a blunt, heavy-handed sense of humor.

After a moment, Brandt spotted the gray-haired Russian intelligence chief sitting calmly on a marble bench and went straight over to sit beside him.

Both men were much the same height.

“Herr Brandt,” Ivanov said quietly.

“I have the special HYDRA variant you requested,” Brandt told him.

“Show me.”

The blond-haired man opened his briefcase, revealing a small, soda-can-sized thermos. With his thick leather gloves still on, he unsealed the metal cylinder in a puff of vapor, pulled out a small vial full of clear frozen liquid,

and then handed it over.

Ivanov held the vial up to the light. “A lingering death with so innocent an appearance. Remarkable,” he murmured. Then he glanced at his companion.

“But how can I be sure that this tube contains anything more lethal than ordinary tap water?”

“In all candor, you cannot. Not without using it against the intended target. You will have to trust me.”

The head of the Thirteenth Directorate smiled grimly. “Trust is not something I grant easily to anyone, Herr Brandt. Especially not with more than a million euros’ worth of state funds involved.”

The ex-Stasis officer returned the same thin, cold smile. “That is understandable, but unavoidable. You asked for a means of ensuring the continued cooperation of my employer—or for taking vengeance on him should that prove necessary. Renke and I have met your request. Whether you believe us or not is up to you. Under the circumstances, our price is entirely reasonable.”

Ivanov grunted. “Very well, you’ll have your money. I’ll authorize the second wire transfer to Switzerland tonight.” He held the vial up to the light again

and then looked narrowly at Brandt. “What if our scientists instead used the material this contains to reverse-engineer the HYDRA technology? Then we would no longer need you, Professor Renke, or your master.”

“You could try that, I suppose.” The blond-haired man shrugged his massive shoulders. “But Renke assures me that such an attempt would inevitably fail. Your researchers would only recover a few broken fragments of unusable genetic material drifting in a sea of dying bacteria.”

The head of the Thirteenth Directorate nodded slowly. “A pity.” He slid the vial back into the thermos. The thermos itself went into his own coat pocket.

Brandt said nothing.

“One thing more, Herr Brandt,” Ivanov said abruptly. “I want your personal assurance that your security for HYDRA is still intact. Now that we are entering the final phases of our own military preparations, absolute secrecy is vital.

The Americans and their allies must not discover what is about to happen.”

“Both Kiryanov and Petrenko are dead,” Brandt said flatly, hiding his concerns about the missing Colonel Jon Smith. “There are no other outstanding threats to HYDRA,” he lied.

“Good.” Ivanov smiled again, but his dark brown eyes were completely de-void of any warmth or amusement. “And you understand that we will hold you personally responsible for any failure?”

Brandt nodded tightly, feeling droplets of sweat beginning to form on his forehead. “Yes.”

“Then I bid you good night, my friend.” The gray-haired chief of the Thirteenth Directorate rose heavily to his feet. “For now we have nothing more to discuss.”

February 18

Warm in her full-length, fur-lined coat, Fiona Devin came out of the Borovit-skaya Metro station and turned south. She walked carefully along the icy pavement, moving gracefully around the other pedestrians on their way to work in the lingering darkness. Though it was morning by the clock, the long winter night still gripped the city. Not far ahead, a large mansion rose above the street, set on a massive stone base. Pillars and ornate carvings decorated the building’s white facade and a perfectly proportioned rotunda topped its roof. To the east, Moscow’s streets and other buildings fell away, sloping downhill toward the red walls and towers of the Kremlin.

She smiled narrowly to herself. She was not surprised that Konstantin Malkovic had set up shop in one of the Russian capital’s most beautiful and conspicuous locations. The Serbian-born billionaire was famous for both his self-aggrandizement and his lavish spending. This mansion, Pashkov House, had been built in the late eighteenth century for a fantastically wealthy Russian officer, Captain Pyotr Pashkov, a man determined to own the grandest private home in all of Moscow, one perched on a hillside overlooking the Kremlin itself. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the building had become an annex of the adjoining Russian State Library, the repository of roughly forty million precious books, periodicals, and photographs.

Shortly after deciding to make Moscow one of the centers of his global business empire, Malkovic had donated more than twenty million dollars to help restore the sagging fortunes of the aging and antiquated Russian archives. One of the strings attached to his grant had been permission to set up a suite of offices on the top floor of the Pashkov House. Protests by a few architectural purists had fallen on newly rich and newly deaf official ears.

Bells from the nearby Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer, recently rebuilt after its destruction by Stalin, began pealing, echoing across the surrounding neighborhoods. It was just after nine. Her interview with the billionaire was scheduled to begin in ten minutes.

Moving faster now, Fiona strode up the broad stone steps and into the main hallway. There a bored-looking functionary checked her name against the register and directed her up the main interior staircase. Two unsmiling security guards waiting at the top carefully examined her identification, closely studied her camera and tape recorder, and then motioned her through a set of detectors, checking her for weapons and traces of explosives.

A second pair of employees, both pretty young women, took her in tow.

Speaking politely in hushed tones, they briskly ushered her through the busy semi-chaos of a large outer office full of desks, computers, and people entering data or issuing buy and sell orders for stock markets across Europe. One of the women took her coat and vanished. The other escorted her into a slightly smaller, immaculately decorated room —Konstantin Malkovic’s private office.

Along one wall, three tall windows offered a spectacular view of the Kremlin’s floodlit walls, turrets, and golden domes. Centuries-old Russian Orthodox religious icons, priceless originals, stood in niches built around the rest of

the room, carefully lit by recessed lights shining down from the high, intricately painted ceiling. A thick Persian rug covered the floor in muted splen-dor. Malkovic’s elegant eighteenth-century desk faced away from the windows. A flat-screen computer and a set of slim, ultramodern phones seemed to be the room’s only concession to the twenty-first century.

The billionaire himself rose to his feet from behind his desk and came around it to greet her with an outstretched hand. “Welcome, Ms. Devin! Welcome!” he said, smiling broadly, revealing a full set of perfect white teeth.

“I’m

a great admirer of your work. That last article in The Economist—the one on the competitive advantages of Russia’s flat tax system—was particularly good.”

“You’re far too kind, Mr. Malkovic,” she said calmly, taking the offered hand and smiling back. She recognized this effusiveness as one of the routine tactics he employed on those whom he hoped to influence. “After all, I only wrote a few thousand words of analysis about its likely effects. But I’ve been told that you had a hand in crafting the new tax code itself?”

He shrugged. “A hand? Nothing so direct.” His eyes twinkled. “Oh, perhaps I spoke a word here. And perhaps another small word there. Nothing excessive, though. As a mere man of business, I never interfere too deeply in any nation’s domestic politics.”

Fiona let the polite fiction pass unchallenged. According to her sources, this man could no more resist meddling in political affairs than could a starv-ing lion lie down quietly beside a nice fat lamb.

Malkovic was taller than she had expected, with a mane of thick white hair left long on top but cropped short at the sides and neck. High cheekbones and pale blue eyes marked his Slavic ancestry. The clipped tones and slightly flattened vowels of his English reflected the years he had spent in Britain and America, first as a student at Oxford and Harvard and later as a wildly successful businessman, investor, and commodities speculator.

“Please, do sit down,” he told her, indicating one of the two embroidered armchairs set at angles in front of his desk.

When Fiona took one, Malkovic sat down casually in the other. “Some tea first, perhaps?” he asked. “It’s still quite cold outside, or so I understand. I came in very early this morning myself—several hours ago, actually. The world financial markets, alas, follow an unholy schedule in our day and age.”

“Thank you, yes. Tea would be lovely,” she said, hiding her amusement at hearing his scarcely veiled boast about the long hours that he worked.

Almost immediately, another of Malkovic’s secretaries brought in a tray with a sterling silver samovar, two tall clear glasses, and two small crystal bowls, one containing slices of fresh lemon, the other a dollop of jam to sweeten the strong tea. The woman poured for them and then left quietly and quickly.

“And now to business, Ms. Devin,” he said amiably, after they had both taken a few cautious sips of steaming tea. “My staff tells me that you are especially interested in the role I see for myself and my companies here in the new Russia.”

Fiona nodded again. “That’s quite right, Mr. Malkovic,” she replied, settling down into a familiar role, that of a journalist in search of a good story.

It

was not difficult. Over the past several years, she had built a well-deserved reputation as a talented, hard-hitting reporter. She specialized m following and explaining the often-complicated interaction of Russian politics and economics. Her work appeared regularly in leading newspapers and business journals around the globe. Conducting this interview — with the largest and most influential private investor in Russian industry—would have been a natural for her, even without her ultimate interest in using the billionaire as one more means of prying open the secrets of the state medical bnreaucrac v tor Covert-One.

And, on the surface at least, Malkovic himself was an easv man to interview. Ever-charming and apparently perfectly relaxed, he answered her questions about his plans and business dealings readily and without evident evasion, choosing only to dodge a few probes that even she realized were too personally intrusive or that might reveal closel) held propnetan information useful to his competitors.

Nevertheless, Fiona sensed that the billionaire was always m hill control of himself. He chose his words with precision, plainly determined to influence the way she saw him and the wav he would appear to her readers whenever this interview was published. She shrugged inwardly. This was the great game, the eternal dance for any journalist—especially a freelancer working without the clout provided by a major newspaper, magazine, or television network.

Ask too many tough questions and your subjects refused to speak to you again.

Ask too few and you wound up writing puff pieces that could have been churned out by any second-rate public relations firm.

Slowly and carefully she brought the conversation around toward politics, focusing delicately on the growing authoritarianism of the Dudarev government. “Surely you see the risks of arbitrary rule to any investor, especially a foreign investor?” Fiona said at last. “I mean, you’ve seen what happened to the owners of the Yukos oil cartel —prison for some, disgrace for the rest, and the forced sale of all their holdings. Every dollar or euro you invest here could

be snatched away by Kremlin decree in the blink of an eve. It laws or regulations can be made and unmade at the whim of a few, how can you plan ra-tionally for the future?”

Malkovic shrugged expansively. “There are always risks in anv venture, Ms. Devin,” he said genially “Believe me, I know that very well. But I am a man who looks to the long-term, beyond the shallow day-to-day twists and turns of fortune. For all its many faults, Russia remains a land of great opportunity. When Communism collapsed, this country gave itself over to capitalist excess—to its own Gilded Age of greedy tycoons and business oligarchs. So now, quite naturally, the pendulum has swung back a bit in reaction, toward tighter state control over life and politics. But that same pendulum will eventually swing back toward the moderate middle. And those of us who were wise enough to stand by Russia through the difficult times will reap enormous rewards when that day comes.”