Politika (1997) Read online

  Less than three minutes after they’d gotten set, Gregor saw the K-9 unit come into position near the far corner of the building. Reaching down, he hit the squawk button on the small radio attached to his belt, twice. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The double signal was enough.

  On the far side of the building, Nikita, the fifth and last member of his team, silently unlatched the doors on the covered cages she had brought with her. Opening the doors, she pressed a button on a control she had laid on the ground before her, discharging a small battery and sending a mild electrical shock through the floor of the cages. The reaction was immediate as two rabbits darted forward, fleeing the cages and the unexpected pain of the shock.

  They would veer away shortly, she knew, as soon as their pain faded and they became aware of the dogs, but by then it wouldn’t matter. All they had to do was to attract a little attention.

  They did. Just as Gregor had planned. The nearest dog started barking and, moments later, the second one joined in. Nikita smiled softly to herself. Picking up the cages, she melted back into the night to await Gregor’s return.

  Gregor Sadov heard the dogs start barking, but he did not give the command to move forward. Instead, he waited, watching for the moment when, as they had done every night this past week, the guards all turned their heads to see what had gotten the guard dogs so worked up.

  His hand went up, holding his team in check, and then, when the last guard turned away, he formed his hand into a fist and let it drop. Instantly, his team moved forward, keeping to the shadows as much as possible and moving quickly into the warehouse.

  Sadov went with them, leading from the front as he always did.

  Security was light within the warehouse itself. Some of the guards patrolled inside as part of their irregular rounds, but mostly they stayed outside, on display, warning away any who might try and steal the foodstuffs stored within. In times like these, food was worth more than gold—and Gregor was there to drive its value even higher.

  Taking up a position with a good vantage point, he gave the signal for his team to disperse. Outside, the dogs grew silent, but that didn’t matter anymore. Inside the darkened warehouse, Gregor’s team had the advantage over the guards. And soon they would be making their own distraction.

  Through his goggles, Gregor watched as his team scattered through the darkness, dropping their little devices at all the preplanned points. These devices—each a block of paraffin with grain and sawdust mixed in, along with a tiny piezoelectric mechanism that would create a single spark on command—were all Gregor needed to help bring down a regime. At his signal, these devices would ignite. Strategically placed, they would bring a touch of fire to the grain stored here and, within a very short time, the entire place would go up in flames.

  The best part was that no one would ever be able to prove arson. The paraffin was similar enough to the wax sealing many of the crates and cartons, and the sawdust and grain would be indistinguishable from the crates and their contents. Only the piezoelectric devices would stand out, but they were small enough that they would most likely be utterly destroyed when the warehouse burned.

  As his team placed their paraffin blocks, Gregor disabled the sprinkler system. It was old, and hadn’t been tested in years, and probably wouldn’t have worked anyway, but Gregor never took unnecessary chances.

  Gregor was turning away from the sprinkler system, about to head to his next task, when some unexpected movement caught his eye. One of the guards had come in through the far door, and was making his way deeper into the warehouse, toward Gregor’s team.

  That was a problem. One guard would not be able to stop them, but he might be able to get off a shot—and that would bring more guards than Gregor and his team could handle.

  And there was another, bigger problem. Even as Gregor began moving forward, toward the guard, he saw Andrei, the youngest and most impetuous member of his team, also moving toward the guard. And Andrei was drawing his gun.

  Gregor could not allow that. Any shot—whether it came from the guard or from one of Gregor’s men—would draw more guards. For that reason, Gregor would have liked to have had his young team tackle this assignment unarmed... but that would have been tempting fate. Even the best laid plans could go wrong, and his team deserved every chance to survive a screw-up.

  Gregor started to reach for his radio, but it was already too late. He could see Andrei bringing up his pistol.

  Gregor had no choice. He didn’t hesitate. Drawing his gravity knife, he flipped it once in his hand and then threw it.

  He could have gone for the guard, but he didn’t dare. He knew Andrei. Seeing the guard fall, Andrei would have simply assumed that he was ducking, and would have fired anyway. So Gregor did the only thing he could do. He threw the knife at Andrei.

  The heavy blade went into Andrei’s throat, but Gregor wasn’t watching. As soon as he threw the knife, he started moving once more, heading toward the guard.

  Andrei grunted, already strangling on his own blood. The guard, hearing the faint noise, started to turn, and Gregor’s hands closed around his neck. A squeeze, a twist, and the guard was dead, moments before Andrei, too, died.

  “Shit,” Gregor said, softly. He lifted a crate from a nearby pile and leaned it against the guard’s neck. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best he could do on such short notice. Besides, it wasn’t necessary to convince the authorities that this was an accident.

  His job was to set this fire without making it obvious that it was arson. With luck and the usual Russian incompetence, the fire would still look like an accident. But if not, it wouldn’t matter. The people were starving and terrified. Even if the government pieced the puzzle together, they wouldn’t dare announce that these fires were deliberate. Not unless they wanted to start the very panic they were working so hard to avoid.

  Turning to Andrei, Gregor retrieved his blade, cleaned it and sheathed it, and then hoisted Andrei’s body onto his shoulder. The rest of the team had finished placing their blocks, and it was time to leave.

  Gregor settled Andrei’s body more comfortably on his shoulder and gave the signal to withdraw. His team met him at the door farthest from where the fire would begin. None of them said a word, but from the way they looked at the body he was carrying, Gregor knew they had all learned a valuable lesson tonight. None of them offered to carry the body.

  Standing in the darkness beside the door, looking out into the night for signs of any guards, Gregor reached into his pocket and pressed the ignition switch. Moments later, he caught the first faint whiff of smoke.

  The guards reacted quickly—more quickly than he’d expected—but that was good. The fire was already too well set for them to stop, and their quick response only let Gregor’s team slip out that much sooner, and increased their slim safety margin. Gregor knew grain, and how it burned, and he wanted to be well away from this area before the fire really got going.

  Once more, he gave the signal to move out. Their job here was done, and Gregor had a report to call in. His masters would be very pleased with this night’s work, and with the work Gregor and his team would do over the next few days.

  Slipping out into the night, Gregor tried not to think too much about the mistakes they had made as, behind them, the first orange flames leaped toward the night sky, and the first stores of grain exploded.

  SIX

  KHABAROVSK TERRITORY NEAR THE RUSSIA-CHINA BORDER OCTOBER 27, 1999

  DOTTING THE BANKS OF A WATERWAY THE RUSSIANS call the Amur, and the Chinese refer to as Heilongjiang, or the Black Dragon River, the handful of dwellings that compose the village of Sikachi-Alyan housed a population of indigenous Nanai tribesmen too small to be measured on any census, and more than glad to remain overlooked. Without a single hotel or restaurant, the settlement lay well off the major shipping routes, and drew few outsiders besides the scholars who occasionally arrived to inspect the thousand-year-old petroglyphs carved into the boulders scattered along its mud
dy shoreline.

  This very isolation—and its proximity to the border—had made it an ideal place for the group to meet in secrecy.

  Their rented wooden fishing trawler had left Khabarovsk at sunset and cruised some forty kilometers down-river through the gathering dusk, its half-century-old Kermath engines clanking and wheezing, the running lights at its bow gleaming like tiny red eyes in the mist and drizzle. It had been stripped to the handrails of all gear. There was no crew aboard. Its cubbyhole cockpit had room enough for just a single occupant, a Nanai wheelman who spoke little Russian and had been told to remain on deck as a strict condition of his payment.

  Now, moored in the black offshore waters flowing past the village landings, the stout little vessel’s engine was silent. Behind the clamped door of the hold, its passengers sat on transom seats that had been set down along the bulkhead, bracing uncomfortably against the heave and sway of the boat.

  All but one of them were men. The Russians, Romual Possad and Yuri Vostov, had arrived on separate commercial flights from Moscow earlier that day. Teng Chou had traveled a slower, more exhausting route, flying from Beijing to the airfield in Harbin, then riding through the night in the backseat of a military jeep. Having reached Fuyuan at 7 A.M., he’d gone directly to the river station and taken the hydrofoil to Khabarovsk on the Russian side of the Amur, where he had been met by members of the Chinese consulate three hours later. The little sleep he’d gotten in their guest quarters had hardly refreshed him.

  Seated opposite him, Gilea Nastik, the only woman in the group, silently cursed the chill and dampness. In this part of the world, she thought with disgust, there were no seasonal transitions—it was summer one day, and winter the next. Her wiry, desert-tanned body had not been bred for such a miserable climate.

  “Well, it’s up to you,” she said in Russian, tiring of Possad’s indecisiveness. He hadn’t uttered a word in almost ten minutes. “Will you obtain the approval of your superiors in the ministry, or are we wasting our time?”

  He gnawed on his bottom lip.

  “It depends,” he said. “Make no mistake, I see how it could work, providing we have the money. And a reliable network of contacts.”

  She stared at him, the skin tightening over her cheekbones, giving her face a sharp, almost predatory appearance. Then she looked down at her hands, shaking her head.

  “I have already guaranteed unlimited funding. And the necessary materials,” Teng Chou said in a clipped tone. “You should know I am as good as my word.”

  Possad swung his gaze over his shoulder to Vostov.

  “Your people in the United States... you’re certain they can be trusted?”

  Vostov struggled to conceal his irritation; Possad’s thinly veiled superiority filled him with a dislike bordering on hatred. From the lowliest bureaucrats to the most highly ranked officials, government men were all hypocritical bastards, never looking in the mirror, as if they knew nothing of self-interest, greed, and betrayal.

  “If everyone sticks to the bargain, there won’t be any problems,” he said. “Pure and simple.”

  Possad worried his lip some more, tasting his own blood. The moment he’d met these three, he had felt as if he’d gone plunging off a bridge into a bottomless chasm. But he’d been given his instructions. What choice did he have except to follow them?

  Communiques from the delegation in Washington indicated that Starinov had struck a quick agreement with the President, and that a majority of congressmen seemed inclined to give it their support. A hunger relief effort spearheaded by America would be under way before too long. And the Moscow press was already hailing Starinov as a political savior. He had used precious food aid to enhance his image and shuffle his critics into the background. And soon he would use it to sell the Russian people on more of his never-ending concessions to the West.

  Only a drastic action would change the course that events had taken, Possad thought. And if his allies in plotting that action were to be a thug who had made his fortune through narcotics, theft, and vice; an Indonesian arms dealer fronting for Beijing; and a soulless woman who dealt in blood and carnage... well, having been driven into hell by necessity, what choice was there, indeed, but to consort with demons?

  “All right,” he said at last. “The plan has teeth, and I’m prepared to advise the minister to go ahead with it. But there’s one other thing—”

  “I know the game we are playing, as my team’s action in Kaliningrad last night should prove,” Gilea said. She stared at him, her eyes dark and bright as chips of polished onyx. “Rest assured, blame will be assigned to the right party. Mr. Chou and I have already exchanged some thoughts as to how that might be done.”

  Chou bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment, but said nothing.

  They were silent awhile in the cramped, unheated hold. The boat rocked, water sloshing rhythmically against the bottom of the hull. Rusty fastenings creaked and squealed.

  “Too bad this rattletrap is without creature comforts,” Vostov said. “Right now, we should be opening a bottle of champagne, and drinking a toast to our shared fortunes.”

  “And the coming of the new year,” Gilea said.

  A grin crept across Vostov’s fleshy lips.

  “Yes,” he said. “That would be most appropriate.”

  Possad glanced at them and felt his stomach tense. There was, he supposed, still very much for him to learn about human cruelty.

  After a moment he shifted his eyes to the smeared circle of glass that was the compartment’s single porthole, needing to look away, to remind himself that the world he had always known was still out there, that he had not entirely left it behind...

  But he saw nothing outside the window except blackness.

  SEVEN

  KALININGRAD, RUSSIA NOVEMBER 2, 1999

  “LISTEN, VINCE, NOT TO BUST BALLS, BUT YOU WANT to explain again why we had to come all the way into the city?”

  “My job title’s risk assessment manager, isn’t it?”

  “Well, obviously...”

  “There’s the first part of your answer. I’m here assessing risks. That’s my bailiwick. It’s what Roger Gordian pays me the big bucks to do. Now, you want the second part of the answer?”

  “Well, I suppose I did ask for it...”

  “That’s right, you did, and I’m happy to give it to you.” Keeping both hands on the steering wheel, Vince Scull glanced over at the man sitting beside him in the Range Rover. “The second part is that you also work for Gordian. And that your job as a member of our cracker-jack Sword team is to provide security. Which you are doing by making sure nothing happens to me.”

  “Right.” Neil Perry gestured out his window. “I think I see a parking space ...”

  “Forget it, there’s plenty to choose from, we’ll find a better one up ahead,” Scull said. “Now, to finish answering y—”

  Cutting himself off midsentence, he stomped his foot down on the brake, jolting the Rover to a halt behind a battered Volga taxi that had stopped in the middle of the road to discharge its passengers.

  Scull counted to ten under his breath, staring balefully at the idling cab as a soot-black cloud of exhaust fumes chuffed from its tailpipe and came rolling over his windshield. Then he opened his power window and leaned his head outside.

  “C’mon, tovarishch, you wanna get that stinking pile of shit out of my way, or what?” he shouted, grinding his palm down on the horn. “Skahryeh!”

  “Vince, you really ought to try and stay cool when you’re driving. This is a foreign country.”

  “Don’t remind me. I’m still jet-lagged after flying twelve hours from the States to St. Petersburg, and then another three to this godforsaken oblast,” Scull said. “And being jet-lagged makes me cranky.”

  “Sure, I understand. But your wallet’s already lost enough weight thanks to those GAI robber barons on the highway—”

  “Don’t remind me about that, either,” Scull said without easing off the horn. Scowling,
he thought back a while to when they’d been stopped near the city line by a squad of the Gosavtoinspektsia, or State Automobile Inspectorate, for allegedly doing 100 kilometers per hour in a 60 km/h zone. The bastards had come shooting up from behind in a Ford Escort patrol car, the blue gumball light on its roof whirling, its siren whooping like crazy as they signaled him to pull over. He had done so immediately, passing his driver’s license, corporate registration, U.S. passport, and triple-entry visa to an officer who’d demanded in broken English to see them. Then he had sat there fuming while the one cop scrutinized his documents, and two others pointed Kalashnikovs at his head, which was pretty much SOP at Russian traffic stops. After twenty minutes, Scull was informed of the offense he was supposed to have committed, made to pay an exorbitant cash fine on the spot—also typical—and sent on his way with a warning that he could have his driving privileges revoked, or even be hauled into the station on criminal charges, if he disregarded the speed limit again.

  Now, the taxi in front of him finally having rejoined the sluggish flow of traffic, he gave the horn a rest... much to Perry’s relief.

  “Anyway, Neil, getting back to my answer,” he said, and shifted his foot to the gas pedal, “the third and next-to-last reason we came into town is so I can buy some smoked herring, which the stores here mainly stock for our neighbors from Krautland, and is one of the few things I find appetizing in this country, and is also impossible to find out in the boonies, where our ground-station-in-the-making happens to be located.”

  Perry grunted vaguely, figuring he might as well get it all over with. “And the last reason?”

  “Two, three blocks up, there’s a nice little watering hole where some Americans who work for Xerox hang out,” Scull replied. “And I thought maybe we could get soused.”

  Perry grinned and settled back in his seat.

  Now that had been an answer worth waiting for.

  As Scull viewed it, the specs that accompanied his fancy job title were simple and straightforward: he’d been hired to help his employer plan for the future by making plausible guesses about what that future would be. What wasn’t so simple was actually isolating the factors that were key to an analysis. Say Gordian wanted his predictions about how an agricultural crisis in Russia would turn out, what effect that outcome would have on the nation’s sociopolitical climate, and what bearing it all would have on completion of UpLink’s European low earth orbit satellite communications gateway. The usual way to do that was to rely on news summaries, historical precedents, and dry statistical reviews, which Scull believed was a lazy man’s cop-out. There were limits to how much troubleshooting could be done from behind a desk; inevitably, forces that couldn’t be quantified on paper would come into play and drive events along one course or another. To detect them you had to use your personal radar, read subtle wind changes, keep your eyes and ears open for anything that might be important. The more you got around, the better.