War Plan Red (5 page)

At length Serov said, “It’s a long trip from Moscow to St. Petersburg. I haven’t been in the city of the czars for a while. I almost don’t recognize it, it’s changed so much. All the construction. The Winter Palace is beautiful. I hope the American president will appreciate it. They say he’s not interested in culture, just money.”

“They say his wife is devoted to the arts,” Zakayev snorted.

“She’s a former actress. Married to a black politician who once marched with that—what was his name? King. And became president. Only in America. That’s why he’s coming to Russia. He wants to talk about business. No harm in that. If business between the U.S. and Russia is good, we all benefit.

Even you, Ali.”

“He also wants to assure the Kremlin that in return for privileged oil deals and continuing support for America’s war on the Middle East, the U.S. will not object to the massacre of Chechen civilians and the destruction of our country.”

Serov frowned. “We all have our business interests, Ali. Some of us have even been willing to compromise to get the deals we want. Perhaps you should consider it. The Americans are not indifferent to your concerns but are caught in the middle. They think they can bring the Kremlin around to accepting that independence for Chechnya is inevitable. But it will take time.”

“We don’t have time. Our people are being murdered. The Russians torture children and old women, destroy cities and homes…But you know all that.”

“You’re too impatient.”

“Am I? The war has gone on for over ten years. It won’t end until the Russians are defeated, until their people and cities are destroyed too.”

“You tried that and it didn’t work. The bombing of the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall was a disaster. Killing a thousand Russian civilians—women and children too—only hardened their resolve.”

Zakayev turned flaring eyes on Serov. “And now they know our resolve is unbreakable. Now they will fear the worst.”

“What, killing a million Russians instead of a thousand?”

“Those are only numbers.”

“This time, if you kill even a hundred Russians, the Kremlin will declare martial law.”

“Which will be bad for business. Ivan Serov’s business.”

“Yes.”

An elderly woman walking a schnauzer on a lead said, “Dobry den’!”

Zakayev nodded good day.

Serov leaned against the girl sitting between them and thrust his big head toward Zakayev. He smelled of tobacco and garlic. “I asked for this meeting, Ali, to discuss mutual concerns, not to listen to one of your speeches.”

“And I told you there was nothing to discuss. Anyway, I’m done giving speeches. It’s too late for that.”

“In business, my friend, it is never too late to discuss a mutually beneficial deal.” Serov got to his feet.

“Come, the three of us, we’ll take a stroll. My leg hurts when I sit too long.”

Serov linked his arm through Zakayev’s and turned him toward one of the narrow spoke streets that led back to the river. With a sudden deft move that surprised Zakayev, he took the heavy, bulky leather portfolio from Zakayev and gave it to the girl. “She can carry it for you, eh? Your cell phone may go off. I don’t want any distractions while we talk.”

Serov steered Zakayev toward the Anichkov Most, one of the city’s most beautiful bridges. “I have a message for you from the Brotherhood.” He was referring to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic organization based in the Middle East that supplied Zakayev and his men with money for weapons through one of Serov’s many front organizations, for which Serov extracted an exorbitant fee. “They promise that they will supply you with whatever you need to continue the fight against Russian control inside Chechnya’s borders. But they won’t support any plan you have to launch another attack on Russia itself. In other words, they won’t support another operation on the scale of the concert hall massacre.”

“Do they think—do you think—that the Kremlin will pull its troops out if we suddenly give up and ask for a negotiated peace? No. As long as the Russian Army occupies our country and commits atrocities, we will continue to fight. As for the draft of a new constitution, we will never accept one drawn up by the Kremlin because the moment they think we have lost our resolve, they will attack in force. That’s the only thing they understand: force. And we will meet them with equal force. If the Brotherhood won’t support us, so be it. We’ll get help from other organizations who are sympathetic to our cause.”

“The moment may be approaching, Alikhan Andreyevich, for you to consider alternatives. For the Islamic extremist movement, funds are becoming harder to raise. If you alienate the Brotherhood, how can you hope to find the money needed to fund your operations? They control the flow of money to organizations like yours from the Saudis, Syria, Libya, Iran, even the North Koreans, and will simply cut you off.”

“You forgot to mention your own organization.”

“I’m only a simple middleman. I control nothing. You seem to think I have more power than I actually do.”

Zakayev snorted. “You have unlimited power, Ivan Ivanovich, and unlimited resources. Why pretend you don’t? You don’t care about our cause. What you care about is losing your fat brokerage fees if the Brotherhood cuts off our funds. Well, let me tell you, we have other ways of dealing with that. Our people are dedicated. They will do whatever must be done.”

“That’s what troubles the Brotherhood. And what troubles me. They’re not stupid. We both know how you think. We both know what’s possible.”

The trio reached the hub where the narrow cobblestone streets met the roundabout with the fountain at its center. The streets themselves were lined with three story czarist-era buildings recently restored to their former glory and resplendent in their creamy yellow and white paint.

“And what is it that you think you know, Ivan Ivanovich?” said Zakayev.

“I know, for instance, about the death of an American in Murmansk. Rumor has it that your people were involved. Why?”

Zakayev stopped and unlinked his arm from Serov’s. He faced the mafiyosoi and said, “The rumors are wrong. You shouldn’t believe them.”

Serov took hold of Zakayev’s coat lapels. “You’re not listening to me Ali. We will lose everything we have gained if you go ahead with another large-scale operation. If you are planning something big—

bigger than the concert hall operation—and you succeed, the Russians will turn Chechnya into a wasteland.”

“But they have already turned it into a wasteland.” For a moment his eyes went to the girl taking it all in, then back to Serov. “Ask her, if you don’t already know this, and she’ll tell you.”

One of the most dangerous men in Russia gave Zakayev a menacing look. He took time to light a cigarette. When he spoke, his voice was cold and flat. “Not only are you pigheaded, Alikhan Andreyevich, you insult me.”

Zakayev said nothing.

“As a practical matter,” Serov said icily, “whatever it is you are planning, I suggest you change your mind and put it off.”

Zakayev gave Serov a crafty smile. “Is that a threat?

Serov, looking down, rolled the flattened brown cigarette between a thumb and forefinger. “I don’t believe in threats,” he said.

“Then go back to Moscow,” said Zakayev. “We have nothing more to discuss.”

Serov took the cigarette out of his mouth and made a face.

Zakayev, alert, saw an almost imperceptible gathering of feral energy in Serov’s body. The mafiyosoi raised his arm over his head and, with a sweeping gesture that gave the appearance of being staged, threw the cigarette he was smoking into the dry fountain, where it landed with a shower of sparks among withered leaves and dried bird droppings.

A split second later Zakayev heard the thunder of tires on cobblestones echoing off the fronts of buildings. He spun around and saw terrified pedestrians flatten themselves against the walls of buildings as a black BMW hurtled down one of the narrow streets.

Behind Zakayev a burgundy BMW, its tires thundering over the cobblestones and scattering pedestrians, hurtled down another street from the direction of the river toward the hub. The two big sedans, tires howling, engines roaring, raced each other round the fountain as if playing tag. A man wearing a balaclava leaned out an open front window of the black car and opened fire on the burgundy car behind him.

Serov the gimp, backpedaling toward the fountain, had drawn a heavy automatic from his coat pocket.

Zakayev heard a powerful explosion, then another. He saw Serov slam against the rim of the fountain.

The girl, aiming the pistol she’d pulled from the portfolio, was ready to shoot Serov again. But before she could, Zakayev dragged her to the cobblestones out of the line of fire, breaking her fall with his body.

Bullets whined off the fountain and cobblestones. Someone in the burgundy car returned fire. Bullets thunked into BMW sheet metal, slapped through wind shields. The black car swung too wide and sideswiped an iron bench, then fishtailed, jumped the curb, and slammed head on into a stone wall fronting one of the czarist-era houses. Steel shrieked and buckled; diamonds of shattered safety glass exploded against the wall. The car rebounded, leaving both the driver’s and gunman’s heads tangled in the bloody folds of the deflated air bags that had punched through the bulging windshield.

The burgundy BMW slewed to a stop; its doors flew open and pairs of strong hands dragged Zakayev and the girl into the car. Zakayev felt brutal acceleration, heard tires spinning, fighting for traction on the cobblestones. The girl lay sprawled on her stomach in the backseat across the lap of one of the brutes from the auto repair shop. Her long hair flew every which way and her stockings had been torn at both knees. Zakayev, lying on his back on the floor of the car, saw that she still had a tight grip on the pistol and an exultant look on her face.

“I shot him,” she said. “I shot Serov.”

“Dobro pojalovat’v Rossiyu—welcome to Russia, Captain Scott.”

He saw a pretty woman with short blond hair and a serious look on her face. She had on sneakers, jeans, and a down-filled jacket over a turtleneck. Not the typical U.S. Embassy greeter sent to fetch a jet-lagged VIP, thought Scott, but just as well. Low profile, Radford had said.

“Spasiba—thank you. I’m supposed to meet—”

“That’s right, I’m Alex Thorne,” she said.

“But I thought—”

“I know what you thought. My name is Alexandra, but everyone calls me Alex.”

They shook hands while passengers departing customs and immigration flowed around them like a river.

“Sorry for my getup,” she said, “but they didn’t tell me I was to pick you up until an hour ago. Shall we go?”

Outside the terminal she muscled a black Embassy SUV from the parking lot through airport traffic and sped for the Moscow Ring Road via the International Highway.

“Where are you quartered, Captain?” she asked, all business now.

“Jake.”

She smiled. “Right. Jake.”

He looked at her profile, the straight line of nose, taut chin, and full lips. She pushed blond hair behind an ear and gave Scott a glance.

“The Marriot Grand,” he said. “They broke the budget for me.”

“I take it you’ve stayed there before.”

“During my last tour.”

“Ah. Then you know your way around Moscow.”

He glanced out the SUV’s tinted windows at a forest of construction cranes rising over the Russian capital’s skyline. “But I hear it’s changed a lot.”

“It sure has. Parts of Moscow are like a Potemkin village, while other parts of it are more like the States than the States. Shopping malls are popping up all over. Want mall rats? We have ’em. Rap stars too.”

She wrinkled her nose. “And terrorism.”

“That attack on the concert hall must have everyone on edge.”

“Sure does. People here are frightened of what might happen next. Things won’t return to normal until Russia pulls out of Chechnya. Even if they do, it may not end the bloodshed. The Chechens have been brutalized and are bent on destroying Russia by any means possible.”

“What’s your role in this?”

“It’s my job to see that Chechen terrorists don’t get hold of fissile materials from decommissioned nuclear subs to make a radiation bomb or a nuke. It’s a frightening situation. There’s so much nuclear rubbish laying around up north that it’s almost like another Chernobyl.”

“I know it’s the most radioactive place in the world,” Scott said. “The Russian Northern Fleet has decommissioned—what?—sixty nuclear submarines, nearly their entire fleet. That’s more than a hundred reactors to safeguard. Can it be done?”

“Not the way things are. The Russian Navy’s main concern is when they’re going to be paid. A crew in charge of a laid-up nuclear submarine is hardly thinking about security. Plus, many of the crews are unfit for service. A month ago a sailor at the sub base in Olenya Bay went berserk and killed five people before he killed himself. A week later a guard at a nuclear reprocessing plant in Siberia killed his boss and two coworkers. A terrorist could easily walk onto a base and steal enough nuclear fuel to make a dirty bomb. Just mix a couple of kilos of strontium 90 with Semtex and set it off in Moscow.”

“What are the Russians doing about secure storage?”

“It’s a joke. Most of the boats are rusting away at their piers and in danger of sinking. In Murmansk, for instance, an old Hotel-class sub laid up in a fjord is in such bad shape that the navy’s afraid to move it for fear it’ll sink. As for storage, the concrete bunkers are overflowing with solid and liquid waste.

Worse yet, they’ve dumped scores of naval reactor assemblies into the Barents Sea. Talk about shitting in your own backyard.”

Alex whipped the SUV around a line of slow-moving lorries hauling precast concrete pilings to a Moscow construction site. Another motorist seemed to take offense and sped past the SUV with a middle finger raised defiantly.

“The Russian economy is just starting to climb out of the tank and they have no money for cleaning up the mess,” she said. “Norway and the U.S. have signed agreements with Russia to help build a processing plant. But it will take years. Meanwhile there’s the war in Chechnya—Uh-oh.”