Op Center 02 - Mirror Image Read online

  "What about that shop, the Bestonia?" Rodgers asked.

  "Clean until now. Owned by the Belnicks, a family that came from Kiev via Montreal in 1961."

  "So they're a deep plant," said Rodgers.

  "Very," Herbert agreed. "Darrell informed the FBI and they put a stakeout team on the shop. Nothing's happened so far except for bagel deliveries."

  Darrell McCaskey was Op-Center's FBI and Interpol liaison. By coordinating efforts between the agencies, he allowed each to benefit from the other's resources.

  Rodgers asked, "You're sure they're bagels?"

  "We videotaped the open bags from a rooftop, examined the footage," Herbert said. "They look like bagels all right. And the deliveryman seems to get the right amount of money for the size of each order. Nobody that gets a delivery goes out for lunch, so they must be eating what's in the bags."

  Rogers nodded. "So that brings us back to something brewing in St. Petersburg. What's D16 doing about it?"

  "They've got a man on-site," said Herbert. "Commander Hubbard has promised to keep us informed."

  "Good," Rodgers said. "And what do you think about all this?"

  "I feel like I just took a short Twilight Zone hop back into the 1960s," Herbert said. "When the Russians spend big money on something these days, I worry."

  Rodgers nodded as the intelligence chief signed off. Herbert was right. Russians weren't gracious losers, and they were faced with the possibility of the loser in an election having access to a secret operation with agents in the U.S.

  Rodgers was worried too.

  EIGHT

  Sunday, 4:35 P.M., St. Petersburg

  Whatever the season, the heat of the day leaves St. Petersburg almost immediately, chased away by the wind that rises from the gulf in the late afternoon. The cool air is carried to every comer of the city by the webwork of rivers and canals, which is why the warm glow of indoor lights appears earlier in the day. It's also the reason why pedestrians, who brave the often brutal winds and knifing cold, feet a special kinship after sundown.

  The effect of sundown was almost supernatural, thought Fields-Hutton. For nearly two hours he had been sitting beneath a tree on the banks of the Neva, reading manuscripts stored in his Toshiba laptop. At the same time he was listening to his Walkman that was actually a radio receiver tuned to the frequency of the peso behind the door. Now, as he watched the sun drop lower in the sky and the streets begin to empty and the riverside promenade become virtually deserted, he felt as though people had to be indoors before the vampires and ghosts came out to prey.

  Either that, he reflected, or I've been editing horror and science-fiction comic books for far too long.

  He was getting cold. He felt colder than even his London-hardened flesh was accustomed to. What was worse, he was beginning to think that the afternoon had been wasted. All he had heard since he tuned in to the bug was trivial chatter about sports, women, hipcracking bosses, crowbars ripping up crates, and the comings and goings of people working on the TV facility. Not exactly the kind of surveillance that made the pulses race back at D16.

  He looked out across the river, then gazed back toward the Hermitage. The museum was striking, its dozens of white columns now ruddy with sunset and the ribbed dome gleaming. The tour buses were beginning to carry their groups away. The day shift started to leave. The night shift was just arriving. The local citizens who had spent their Sunday at the museum were filing out to meet trolleybuses or to take the fifteen-minute walk to the nearest Metro stop, the Nevsky Prospekt Station. Soon, like the streets themselves, even the great museum would be deserted.

  Fields-Hutton hoped that Leon had been able to get him a hotel room: he was going to have to come back in the morning and continue his surveillance. He was convinced that if anything untoward was going on here, the TV studio was the place.

  The Englishman decided to go back inside and stake out the room for a few minutes, to watch and see if someone other than the work crew used the room near closing time. Someone he might be able to describe to the photo division at D16-a military person in civvies, a government official, a foreign agent. What's more, there was always confusion and pressure in the days before and immediately after the start of any new operation. Moreover, a worker leaving the place might say or do something that would tell him what was really happening here.

  Closing up his computer and rising on bones that an American agent once described as belonging to Arthur Fiedler-he stood with a symphony of pops-Fields-Hutton brushed off his pants and left the Walkinan on as he walked briskly toward the museum.

  To the right, he saw a couple that had just left the museum strolling hand in hand along the river. He thought of Peggy, not of the first fateful walk they took, the one where she brought him into the spy business, but of the walk just five days before along the banks of the Thames. They had talked about marriage for the first time, and Peggy admitted that she was leaning toward it. Of course, Peggy had the constitution of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and it might take her an eternity to fallbut he was willing to run the risk. She wasn't quite the demure creature he had always envisioned himself ending up with, but he enjoyed her pluck. She had the face of an angel. And, most important, she was well worth waiting for.

  He smiled as a young woman jogged toward the river with her Jack Russell terrier. He didn't think they had the English breed in Russia, though the black market was smuggling anything and everything these days, including dogs that were fashionable in the West.

  The woman was dressed in sweat clothes and a baseball cap and carried a small plastic water bottle. As she approached, he noticed she wasn't perspiring. That seemed strange, since the nearest apartments were at least a half mile away and a runner should have worked up a sweat by now. She smiled at him. He smiled back. Suddenly, the dog broke free of its leash. it darted toward him and took a bite from the inside of his shin before the jogger was able to pull it away.

  "I'm so sorry!" she said as she thrust the yipping dog under her arm.

  "It's all right," he said, wincing as he dropped down on his right knee and examined the painful wound. He set his computer aside, took out his handkerchief, and wiped away the blood from the two semicircular rows of teeth marks.

  The woman knelt beside him, her face a mask of concern. With her right arm clasped tightly around the frenzied terrier she held out her left arm, offering him the water bottle.

  "This will help," she said.

  "Thank you, no," Fields-Hutton said as the teeth marks filled anew with blood. Something wasn't right about this. She was too concerned, too attentive. Russians weren't like that. He had to get out of here.

  Before Fields-Hutton could stop her, the woman poured water on his wound. Rivulets of blood streamed down his leg into his sock as Fields-Hutton reached out to stop her.

  "What are you doing?" he demanded as she emptied the bottle on his wound. "Miss, please-"

  He rose. Then she did, backing away as she stood. Her expression was no longer concerned but devoid of emotion. Even the dog was silent. Fields-Hutton's suspicions turned horribly real as the stinging in his leg began to fade-along with sensation in his feet.

  "Who are you?" he demanded as numbness spread up his leg and he began to feel dizzy. "What did you do to me?"

  The woman didn't answer. She didn't have to. FieldsHutton suspected he'd been poisoned with a fast-acting chemical agent. As the world began to spin, he thought about Leon and bent to retrieve his computer. He fell, grabbed the handle, and dragged the laptop along as he crawled toward the river. When his legs became completely numb he tried to claw ahead, to remain conscious. He wanted to stay alive long enough to throw the computer into the Neva. But then his shoulders began to lose all sensation. His upper arms became dead weight and he fell forward.

  The last thing Keith Fields-Hutton saw was the golden river flowing just a few meters away. The last thing he heard was the woman behind him say, "Goodbye." And the last thing he thought was how Peggy would cry when Commander
Hubbard informed her that her lover had been killed on a mission in St. Petersburg.

  His head rolled slowly to the side as the VX nerve agent stopped Fields-Hutton's heart.

  NINE

  Sunday, 9:00 P.M., Belgorod, the Russia/Ukraine border

  The Kamov Ka-26 radial-engined helicopter landed on the floodlit patch of earth, its twin rotors kicking up dirt and swirling it into inverted sea horse patterns. While soldiers ran over and began unloading crates of communications equipment from the bay aft of the pilot's cabin, Interior Minister Dogin stepped out. Holding his fedora with one hand and the front of his greatcoat with another, he ducked low and walked briskly from the landing area.

  Dogin had always loved temporary bases like this one-empty fields transformed overnight into pulsing centers of power, bootprints on the windswept soil, the dusty air ripe with the smell of diesel fuel.

  The base was set up for mountain warfare, using a configuration designed in the closing days of the war in Afghanistan. To his right, one hundred yards away, was row after row of large tents, each housing a dozen soldiers. There were twenty tents in a row, and they reached far beyond the glare of the floodlights, nearly to the distant foothills. Beyond them, at the north and south corners of the camp, were firing pits for riflemen and dugouts with overhead covers. In the event of a war, these positions would be used to protect the base from guerrilla attacks. To the left, where there were no hills, were rows of tanks, armored vehicles, and helicopters, the mess area and canvas shower stalls, garbage pit, medical tents, and supply depots. Even at night, there was life here-mechanized, electric, and invigorating.

  Off in the distance, straight ahead, Dogin saw the immaculate, vintage PS-89 twin-engine monoplane that belonged to Dmitri Shovich. Two men stood guard, each carrying Avtomat assault rifles; the pilot sat in his seat, ready to depart at a moment's notice.

  Looking at the plane, the Interior Minister felt a chill. What had only been talk until now was about to become a reality. The men and materiel here, and the equipment en route, would take them only so far. To get the money he needed to help undo the disastrous results of the election, he was about to make a pact with the devil. He only hoped that Kosigan was right, that the escape clause would work when the time came.

  Beyond the supply depot were three more tents: the weather station, with its sensors outside, on tripods, hooked to computers inside; the communications center, with one satellite dish pointing northwest, another southeast; and the command tent.

  General Mikhail Kosigan was standing outside the last of these, his legs spread wide, hands locked behind his back, head held stiffly erect. An orderly stood behind him, to his right, also holding onto his hat.

  Though the hem of the General's jacket, his pant legs, and the flaps of the tent kicked wildly in the wash, Kosigan didn't seem to notice. From the iron-black eyes to the deeply cleft chin to the ruddy scar that ran diagonally between them, the six-foot-four-inch General was the quintessence of his strong, confident Cossack stock.

  "Welcome, Nikolai!" the General said. "It's good to see you!" Kosigan wasn't speaking loudly, but his voice carried over the din of the helicopter.

  Dogin shook Kosigan's hand. "It's good to see you too, Mikhail."

  "Oh? Then why do you look so grim?"

  "I'm not grim," Dogin said defensively. "I'm preoccupied."

  "Ah, the great mind always working. Like Trotsky in exile."

  Dogin shot him a look. "I can't say I like the metaphor. I would never have opposed Stalin, and I hope that being hacked to death is not in my future."

  Dogin's eyes held Kosigan's. The General was a man of charm and incredible poise. He was twice world champion and an Olympic competitor in pistol shooting, the result of a youth spent in the paramilitary DOSAAF-the Voluntary Society for Cooperation with Army, Air Force, and Fleet, which trains young people in sports that have a military application. From there, his rise in the military was rapid and brilliant-though never quite fast enough to satisfy his towering ego. Dogin was sure that he could trust the General now. Kosigan needed the Minister to help him leapfrog over his superiors in the coming order. But what about later? Later was always a problem with people like Kosigan.

  Kosigan smiled. "Don't worry. There are no assassins here. Only allies. Allies who are getting tired of maneuvers, who are eager to do something ... but"-the smile broadened- "allies who are as ready as ever to serve the Minister."

  "And his General," Dogin said.

  "But of course." Kosigan smiled as he turned and extended a hand toward his tent.

  Entering, Dogin saw the third member of the strange triumvirate: Dmitri Shovich. The mobster was seated in one of three folding chairs set around a small, green metal table.

  Shovich rose as Dogin entered. "My good friend," Shovich said softly.

  Dogin couldn't bring himself to call the fiend "friend." "Dmitri," he nodded, bowing slightly as he looked into the slight man's hazel eyes. They were cold, those eyes, and seemed more so because of the closecropped, peroxide-white hair and eyebrows. Shovich's long face was impassive and his skin unnaturally smooth. Dogin had read that Shovich had endured a therapeutic process of chemical peeling to remove the hard, cracked skin he'd suffered during nine years in a Siberian prison.

  Shovich sat back down, his eyes never leaving the newcomer. "You're not happy, Minister."

  "You see, Nikolai?" General Kosigan said. "Everyone notices it." He turned a chair around, straddled it, and pointed at Dogin, his index finger extended, thumb upraised as though his hand were a gun. "If you'd been less serious than you are, perhaps we wouldn't be here now. The new Russia likes leaders who can laugh and drink with them, not someone who seems to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders."

  Dogin unbuttoned his coat and sat in the last chair. There was a tray with cups, a teapot, and a bottle of vodka. He poured himself tea. "The new Russia has followed a piper who will lead them laughing and drinking to destruction."

  "It sounds like fun," Kosigan admitted. "But Russians have never known what's best for them-and, fortunately, we are here to show them, What a noble bunch we are. "

  Shovich folded his hands on the table. "General, I'm not noble, nor am I interested in saving Russia. Russia sent me to hell for nine years before Gorbachev's general amnesty freed me. I am only interested in the terms we discussed previously. Are they still acceptable to you both?"

  "They are," said the General.

  The gangster's cold eyes shifted to Dogin. "Does he speak for you, Minister?"

  The Interior Minister stirred a lump of sugar into his tea. In the five years since his release, Shovich had gone from being a convicted robber to the leader of a global crime network that was comprised of an army of 100,000 men in Russia, Europe, the United States, Japan, and elsewhere-most of whom had been admitted to the ancient order of the thieves' world after proving their loyalty by murdering a friend or relative.

  Am I mad to be joining forces with this man? Dogin asked himself. Shovich would be loyal only as long as they gave him twenty percent of the total assets of the former Soviet republics, which included the largest petroleum reserves on earth, double the timber found in the Amazon, nearly a quarter of the planet's unmined diamonds and gold, and some of the world's largest deposits of uranium, plutonium, lead, iron, coal, copper, nickel, silver, and platinum. The man wasn't a patriot. He wanted to exploit the natural resources of a rebuilt Soviet Union and use their legitimacy to launder drug money.

  It made Dogin sick to contemplate, but Kosigan maintained that as long as he and his colleagues controlled the world's largest standing army, and Dogin ran the secret new surveillance operation in St. Petersburg, they would have nothing to fear from Shovich. He could be forced out at some later date, exiled to one of his residences in New York, London, Mexico City, Hong Kong, or Buenos Aires. Or he could be shot from the sky if he refused to go.

  Dogin wasn't so sure of that, but there didn't seem to be any other option. He needed a lot of mone
y to buy politicians and military officials, to wage an aggressive war without Kremlin assent. Unlike Afghanistan, this would be a war the Russians could win. But money was the key. How Marx would have bristled.

  "I speak for myself," Dogin said to Shovich. "Your terms are acceptable to me. On the day Zhanin's govement is ousted and I am named President, the man you select will become the new Minister of the Interior."

  Shovich smiled a cold, chilling smile. "What if I select myself'?"

  Dogin felt a flash of horror, though he was too seasoned a politician to show it. "As I said, the choice is yours."

  The tension of mutual distrust was thick when Kosigan broke it with a blustery, "What about the Ukraine? What about Vesnik?"

  Dogin looked away from Shovich. "The President of Ukraine is with us."

  "Why?" asked Shovich. "The Ukrainians have the independence they sought for decades."