Power Play (21 page)

Kurt had been involved a dozen years before in one of the FSB’s most ruthless actions—when they finally located the “mad Muslim” Shamil Basayev, mastermind behind the Russian theater disaster and the Beslan school massacre. The FSB simply lured Shamil toward a truckload of high explosive and blew both him and the truck to smithereens. Questions were asked, but the reply was simple: the FSB had legal power to carry out targeted killing at its own discretion.

Kurt Petrov was accustomed to FSB autonomy and brutality. He had no idea what would happen to the naval officer, although he understood one thing: Nikolai Chirkov would require some very fast talking to get out of this one.

 

Things had moved very fast, and very unexpectedly, since the hour between eleven and midnight the previous evening. And neither Lieutenant Commander Chirkov nor “John Carter” knew one thing about it.

At ten o’clock the Internet security team, led by Lennart Weinert, had made a routine check on the desk computer of Admiral Alexander Ustinov. They had found a discrepancy—the system had revealed an update to his most protected file at 9:35 in the evening.

The team had not been able to look at the file, since they did not know the password, but they could see there had been “editing” at that time. Problem: Admiral Ustinov, commander in chief of the Northern Fleet, had not returned to the ship before eleven. So who had done the “editing”?

Lennart Weinert reported to the admiral as soon as he returned to his quarters and informed him that someone had been into his computer ninety minutes before his return.

The admiral was mystified and told the security guys there must be something wrong with the hard drive.

“This is not a discussion,” he told the highest commander in the fleet and almost certainly the next chief of Russia’s Naval Staff. “Someone went into that file. Otherwise, the information could not have been saved.”

“Well, the only person would be my personal assistant, Lieutenant Commander Chirkov. He has access to the office. But not to that computer, certainly not to the most sensitive documents.”

“I am proposing to call in an FSB officer and discuss the matter further,” said Weinert.

“I am not ready for that,” replied the admiral. “And I forbid it. However, the lieutenant commander has informed me he will be off the ship for a couple of hours in the late afternoon, tomorrow. You have my permission to follow him. If there is guilt, we must find it. But I would be very surprised if Nikolai Chirkov had committed any kind of indiscretion.”

“As you wish, sir,” replied Weinert. “I will undertake that. And report to you as soon as possible.”

One hour later, FSB HQ, in Lubyanka Square, Moscow, had officially sanctioned a “tail” to be assigned to a Russian Naval commander, a man working personally with one of the two or three most auspicious men in all of the Russian Navy. It was not unprecedented, but it had not happened in recent years, certainly since the KGB had been formally dismantled in November 1991.

Thus, Kurt Petrov was hurtling around the shores of the White Sea on his motorbike, trying to find out precisely what Nikolai Chirkov was up to. And, by any standards, he’d gotten very close to achieving that on his first day at work.

He returned to the FSB private office inside the enormous waterside sprawl of Zvezdochka Shipping and Engineering, the world’s largest shipyard, in Severodvinsk, where the
Admiral Chabanenko
was still laid up after more than six months.

He printed his pictures, selected the best ones, and called in to report that the Learjet’s flight plan was direct to Sheremetevo-2 in Moscow. The FSB was mildly interested in the program of the Englishman, John Carter, but not sufficiently to arrest him and risk a blazing row with the British Embassy. All they really wanted was to know who he was, and why, as a paint salesman, was he apparently in cahoots with the Israeli Embassy?

As the somewhat bored duty officer in the Lubyanka said, “They’re probably redecorating, right?” The route of the private jet suggested he was leaving Russia anyway, and Kurt had noted that Carter and Chirkov had met, perhaps by accident, at the Vaskovo Airport. Yes, they had left together, but separated immediately and gone in totally different directions.

There was a naval inquiry scheduled for 9:00 a.m. the following morning,
Monday, and Kurt needed to have his pictures ready. Admiral Ustinov was chairing it himself, since any aspersions cast upon his personally selected assistant would reflect very badly on him.

Alexander Ustinov, a bull-necked, bald-headed former nuclear submarine commander, had a towering reputation in the Russian Navy and had also commanded the eight-thousand-ton Sovremenny Class destroyer
Nastochivy
in the Baltic. He was a native of the city of Volgograd, which sits on the convergence of the Volga and Don Rivers and was the scene of the bloodiest battle in human history, July 1942, when the city was called Stalingrad.

Admiral Ustinov was fifty now, but he was an expert on that and many other aspects of World War II. His grandmother had died in the German bombardment, and his grandfather was one of the six hundred thousand Russian troops who also died. Alexander Ustinov had a total of twelve relatives killed in the siege of Stalingrad almost thirty years before he was born.

But to him, it was last week. The Northern Fleet commander was a Russian, through and through. He had nothing but contempt for any other nation and was indeed certain that no other nation in the annals of the human race could have withstood what the Russians endured in the face of the German army and then crushed them.

Every year he made a pilgrimage back to his hometown, and there, in company with his two army officer sons, he would walk up the long slope of the hill that serves as a plinth for the largest free-standing statue on earth, the
Mamaev Kurgan
. . . Mother Russia, in battle mode, sculpted to commemorate the most triumphant and tragic event in Soviet history.

The 236-foot female warrior, her sword brandished another 36 feet above her head, caused his heart to beat and his tears to flow as he stared across the distant Volga River. It was as if Alexander Ustinov was renewing sacred vows of devotion and, if necessary, valor. There was no military officer in all of Russia more suited to help President Nikita Markova fulfill his dreams of a dominant Russia.

Admiral Ustinov held his inquiry in the wardroom of the
Admiral Chabanenko.
He sat at the head of the table, surrounded by Weinert and one other member of the Internet security team; by Kurt Petrov, the man with
the photographs; and by two officers of the FSB. Lieutenant Commander Chirkov was informed five minutes before proceedings began that he was required to attend.

But only when the admiral was finally seated did he realize this was about him and that he faced a possible charge of high treason against the state. Nikolai was terrified, and he tried to scramble his thoughts into line, asking Admiral Ustinov over and over what he was supposed to have done wrong.

The C-in-C informed everyone he would conduct the inquiry personally, and if anyone had any specific questions, they must be addressed to him alone. If he thought Nikolai Chirkov should answer directly, he would indicate his approval. Admiral Ustinov was accustomed to total command.

“Lieutenant Commander,” he began, “it has been brought to my attention that my personal computer was used by persons unknown during my absence from the ship on Saturday evening. The log on the hard drive showed a record of editing carried out at 2135 hours. I ask now, was that you?”

“Of course it was, sir. I entered the office to bring you the notes about the missile, and I noticed your machine was still switched on, although the screen was blank. I hit the space bar to wake it up, and it jumped instantly to the page you had left.

“The headline had a major mistake. It referred to an improved range for the Iskander of two-hundred-plus miles. I knew it should have been two-thousand-plus, so I added a comma and a zero. Saved it and shut it down.”

“Thank you, Nikolai. Weinert, what else?”

“Nothing on that, sir.”

“Very well.” Admiral Ustinov studied Kurt Petrov’s report. “Now, Lieutenant Commander, you left the base on Sunday afternoon, traveling by car. Where did you go?”

“Archangel, sir. To visit my aunt.”

“In the town.”

“Yessir. Gaidara Street, near the park. She’s Ludmilla Volkov—my father’s sister.”

“Lieutenant Commander, I put it to you that you never went anywhere near Gaidara Street, or the park, or your father’s sister. As a result of the
computer confusion, you were followed by officers of Russian internal security, and you were ‘tailed’ and photographed at Vaskovo Airport.”

Nikolai Chirkov’s mind raced. If he was caught lying, seriously lying, he could be shot at dawn. He needed a story.

“Sir . . . this is hugely embarrassing. I did not wish you, or anyone else, to know the truth. But this is a very private family matter . . . ”

“In your own interests, I am afraid I must ask you to inform us of the truth.”

“Sir, Ludmilla Volkov is still attractive and very wealthy. She has been seeing some kind of a mysterious foreigner, intermittently, and both my father and her children are afraid this man is after her fortune. After weeks of persuasion, she finally provided us with his name and phone number.

“He’s English, younger than her, and a director of an industrial paint company. My father arranged for me to meet him at the airport and try to find out his intentions toward Ludmilla, who is, needless to say . . . smitten.”

Everyone in the room smiled at the vision of the wealthy widow and the plainly rakish paint salesman fortune hunting in Archangel.

“Then why lie to us?” asked the admiral.

“Sir, surely everyone can see this is not something my family would want made public, especially as Ludmilla might suffer a fit of pique and marry him . . . ”

“Well, yes, I see that. But to tell deliberate untruths to a naval inquiry such as this is punishable by a very long term in a military jail, or by an instant dishonorable discharge. For matters involving espionage . . . ”

“Sir, this is about as far removed from the affairs of Russia’s navy as it’s possible to get. Surely, I get some leeway to deal with a family problem, and try to keep it private?”

“Well, I see no reason to act in a completely inhumane way,” replied the admiral. “And your service record is quite outstanding. I would be inclined to drop the whole matter, pending Ludmilla’s broken heart. But the FSB must make their own decision whether to check out the story.”

“Sir,” said the resident FSB field officer in Severodvinsk, “with your approval, we will discuss this further and then decide.”

“Very well,” said Admiral Ustinov. “You make your decision later. For the moment this inquiry is suspended, and, I should record, with no blemish thus far on Lieutenant Commander Chirkov’s record.”

Everyone left the wardroom except for the admiral and his assistant, who had a huge amount of work to do, recording the official version of the test firing of the Iskander-K.

“I really am very sorry about that,” said Nikolai. “I probably should have told you the story before I even left.”

“You probably should have. But I think it will be fine. Except for poor Ludmilla. You probably frightened this Mr. Carter to death, turning up at the airport in naval uniform—he’ll probably never come back to Russia.”

“I suppose not . . . but still, anyway, I expect you want to start the full report of the test firing. Will I meet you in the office in ten minutes?”

“That’ll do well.”

“Yes, sir,”
snapped Nikolai, saluting his boss, in deference to his exalted rank. At which point he left the room, unsure whether to (a) take his service revolver and commit suicide, (b) run for his life, or (c) try to contact Ludmilla.

Only one thing was certain. He was finished, in the navy and in Russia. The FSB would check out his story and find it was a pack of lies. His father would not have the slightest idea what they were talking about, and neither, for that matter, would Ludmilla Volkov. The “spooks” probably already had a phone tap on the landline in Ludmilla’s house and probably on his father’s. Neither of them had a cell phone, which rendered him just about powerless.

He could contact no one. The only area of confusion would be Ludmilla’s whereabouts. He happened to know she was on vacation somewhere down on the Black Sea. There would be no one at the house on Gaidara Street. Not even the housekeeper.

But the “spooks” would find her. It might take a couple of days, maybe three. But they’d locate her, and she would listen in amazement to the absurd tale of the British fortune hunter. At which point they would know the whole story was a fabrication, and a warrant would be issued for his immediate arrest.

If they were very smart, which they normally were not, a new question would leap to the forefront: who precisely was this John Carter? He clearly had not come to Archangel to see Ludmilla Volkov, who’d never heard of him. So whom, precisely, had he come to see? Lieutenant Commander Nikolai Chirkov?

If they got that far, the FSB might very well pinpoint the Israeli Embassy and burst in demanding answers, whether or not Rani was still in the country. Right now, Nikolai needed to get hold of Rani, on a cell phone, and make arrangements to get out of Russia. Luckily, he did have money.

He returned to his quarters and gathered up his gear—laptop, notebooks, pens, and Iskander-K missile-component guide. He reported to the admiral’s office and started mapping out headings for the missile report. He could tell Alexander Ustinov was busy because he was uncharacteristically late. When he did come in, he was preoccupied on the phone.

Eventually, he produced his hardcover notebook, opened it, smoothed out the page he wanted read, and told Nikolai to make a start on the report, following his own jottings in the book.