The Falstaff Enigma (22 page)

"As I have mentioned, his computer records have been erased with the exception of his name, photograph and a biography section that mentions only his experience as an Army commando. We think he is the head of
a very elite group created by the KGB a couple of years ago. This team is referred to officially as Directorate V. But the few people who know about it simply call it ‘Vympel’.” Borskov looked at Austin. “It is analogous to your Delta detachment.” He then turned his eyes towards Margolis. “Or your own Kidon unit.

“I don’t know for sure if Sorovin heads up Vympel or some other even more secret unit. But I know that the GRU has raised hell over the existence of such a unit as Vympel in the KGB.”
The GRU, the acronym for the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye, was the foreign intelligence service of the Red Army.

“
Aside from that, I have had my two men spend every free moment at Sheremetyevo Airport to try to spot him passing through. But I think that represents a one-in-amillion shot. It takes them thirty minutes to drive out there so they don’t go often, and the only chance that Sorovin would use that airport would be on an international flight. For domestic flights he could also use either Domadedovo or Unukovo airports, which are both south of the city."

"Or he could use the militar
y airbases”, interjected David.

"No, that won't get us anywhere," Austin
said, thinking aloud. “We need a different approach." There was silence as each man thought.

A fac
e. That was all they had, but it was a distinctive face, easy to spot.
Where would he frequent?,
Austin thought.
A restaurant, an apartment, a base of operations?
A base!
"How about this. We know he leads a team of elite killers. That means that they must have trained together and probably still do, which means they must have a base of operations. Colonel, back on April 15, how long did you have the assassin in custody before Sorovin came by to take him?"

"About an hour.
Why?"

"Because that is too short a time for Sorovin to have flown in from anywhere. He must have already been in Moscow, which means their base city is Moscow. Now if you were an
ex-Army commando and headed an elite assassination squad, where would you train?"

Borskov replied, "On an Army base, of course."

"Exactly," Austin said. "Can you check your computers for any and all Army bases within an hour's drive of the Lubyanka, and especially those that normally house commando teams? Then we will watch those bases. You mentioned last night that an agent recognized Sorovin because he had attended a training camp with him." Borskov nodded in agreement. “Find out where that camp was. If it was around Moscow, that should be where we start.”

"Yes, it’s brilliant," said the
colonel in an effusive voice. "l will have a list by 9:30 tomorrow morning. Then I will stop by and bring you an automobile."

Robert Austin stepped out of the shower and into the steam filled bathroom. He wiped away a multitude of water droplets from the mirror and examined the whiskers on his face, dreading the upcoming shave.

But he was excited. He finally had a foundation. He knew far more than at any time since viewing a videotape on May
Day. And he had a course of action. Sorovin would be a building block, from which clues to other blocks would be learned, each feeding the next, creating its own inertia, leading to an end.

The analyst stepped into the hallway for the short journey betwe
en the bedroom and the kitchen. He heard laughter and stopped, unable to resist the urge to eavesdrop.

"One of my friends wa
s like that. She was too wild for her own good." The voice belonged to Svetlana.

"But not quite as wild as you?" replied David.

The woman placed a finger to her mouth and exhaled rapidly through formed lips, producing the low pitched swoosh that told the Mossad agent to be quiet. "That's supposed to be a secret." The sarcastic line was followed by muted laughter.

Austin walked into the kitchen.

"Good morning, Andrei," said the woman, her voice suddenly aging. She tried to remove her left hand from David's shoulder without the analyst noticing. She failed.

"Did you sleep well?" the Mossad agent
asked.

"Fine.” The response was short and cold.

Svetlana placed a plate of eggs in front of Austin. "There is tea on the stove. Now  I must  take a shower. Excuse me." She left the room.

"What the hell is your problem?" asked the analyst rhe
torically and in a hushed voice. "You two are carrying on like two teenagers. Without Borskov, our lifespans will be sorely limited and I'm still trying to figure out who is trying to seduce whom."

"Look, I'll admit she’s been coming on strong. That's why I want to know what her motive is. I'm just pl
aying out the scene. I think she works for her husband, and if that's true then there is something more to him than we know."

"And if you are wrong then we've got one of the most powerful men in the KGB out to kill us."

"Don't be so dramatic. It won't let it go that far."

"You're not that good an actor," Austin
replied, turning his attention to the breakfast in front of him.

The front door opened. Anatoly Borskov was right on schedule. "Good morning," he said as he closed the door behind him.

"Good morning, Anatoly. Your wife is in the shower,” Austin said. "How did the car search go?"

“It was successful but it is only a GAZ Volga, not very fancy by your standards. It was the only car in the motor pool that ran. I also brought you these."
Borskov placed his now familiar briefcase on a clear spot on the kitchen table and opened it. "Here’s another thousand rubles." He tossed an envelope on the table.

"One tip: bribes by KGB personnel to gain information are not unheard of
, but are still rare. The penalty for offering or accepting bribes ranges from one year hard labor to death. Only one in a thousand will refuse to cooperate once you identify yourselves, so my advice is to stay away from any bribes other than as a last resort." He was speaking to the two men as if they really were career KGB officers, not two men who would be shot if caught by anyone other than Borskov.

"I got you these for when you are on foot," continued the
colonel. He pulled out two miniature radio sets with small microphones that attached to the inside of the collar and earpieces that were almost invisible when in place. "Strap the transmitter/receiver unit to your chest, turn it on and you are ready to go. The device is in a continual transmit/receive mode and has a range of about 500 meters. And you have a real radio in the car. Your call name is 'Nevsky dva’, but only I or my two men will attempt to call you. No one else even knows you exist. My two men will go by 'Nevsky odin’ and I will be 'Nevsky tri.' But only return our calls, do not call us first."

"Very good.
What about our stakeout today?" David asked.

Borskov pulled out a map of Moscow and opened it on the table. "There are three possible sites, all shown in yellow on the map. This big one is a very active military complex, so I will have my men watch it." Borskov was bent over the map, pointing to each site with his finger. "This is a
naval air base that houses a marine commando unit of 100 men. My feeling is that this is the least likely. Now, this is an old base called 'Patriots Park ' in the military. Today it is mostly a supply depot but it does have a battalion assigned there. It also used to house an Army commando unit of fifty men until 1979, when it was disbanded."

"Why?" David
asked.

"All I know is the official explanation that it was assimilated into other
units because of its small size. I have heard rumors that it was an anti-terrorist squad that was disbanded after many passengers were killed when it stormed a hijacked Aeroflot flight in Poland. The government then claimed that the plane had crashed. Supposedly, the man who led the assault was killed afterward by a young lieutenant."

"Sorovin?"

The colonel shrugged his shoulders. "You can start there. The small 'x' marks the only gate on and off the base. Any questions?"

“What about the base where your agent was trained by Sorovin?” Austin
asked.

“That was in the Ukraine. But it was a good thought.”

“What about entering a military base?” asked Margolis.

“The guards will be afraid of you once you show your badges. Just be confident and cocky and they will never have a doubt about your status.”

Each man looked at the other. "We're ready," Austin said.

"Not quite," Borskov
replied. "You will need these." He handed each man a photograph of Sorovin. "Now you're ready and I need one of you to drive me back to my office."

"Let's go,"
said Austin as he got up and headed into the bedroom for his jacket.

Borskov closed his briefcase. "Good luck. Tell my wife I said goodbye."

David wondered if the colonel was toying with him, but he came to the quick conclusion that the words were neutral in tone. "I will, Anatoly. Goodbye."

The
colonel acknowledged with a slight bow of the head and followed Austin out the door.

David Margolis picked up the morning edition of Izvestia. The headline story dealt with the latest talks to set conditions for upcoming talks with the U
.S. on nuclear disarmament. He scanned the lines briefly, not quite as comfortable with the Cyrillic letters as he felt he should be. The story was generic; it could have come from the New York Times, and David wasn't particularly interested. His attention was caught by a headline in the lower left half of the front page.

Two Arrested for Hooliganism.

He began reading and immediately became rigid in his seat. The story told of two "Jewish hooligans attempting to undermine the State by advancing certain mythical religious fanaticism" by conducting Talmudic study classes.
By conducting Talmudic study classes. The bastards. The pogroms continue
.

David realized that he hated this country and especially the pigs who ran the apparatus. Anatoly Borskov was one of those pigs.
No,
he thought,
it’s the system, not the country.

"Well, where is everyone?" asked Svetlana Borskov, standing in the doorway of the master bedroom, which was adjacent to the kitchen.

David put the paper down and turned his head ninety degrees to look at the woman. The morning's light streamed in from a window ten feet behind her. The effect was a halo of light that made a blonde tinge around the silhouette of her black hair, still wet from her shower. Small drops of water shimmered in her hair, occasionally falling to contribute to the crescendo of spots on her white bathrobe.

Her face cut sharp angles, contrasting distinctly with the average Russian woman. There were no telltale lines that usually herald the end of one’s fourth decade. Instead her face was youthful and alive, the face of someone who enjoyed life. She could easily pass for a woman of 28. David wondered if she had benefited from a surgeon's knife, but the rest of her body belied that possibility.

The sun's light penetrated the white robe, outlining her form. She was slender and toned. David thought that she could be a perfect aerobics instructor. He found the stories of her promiscuity easier to believe, but he still worried that she might be working for her husband.

"Mikhail?" repeated Svetlana with emphasis, forming a slight smile with her thin lips.

"I'm  sorry, Andrei drove your husband back to work."

"Work."
She laughed briefly and sat down next to the Mossad agent. "Is that what you call it? Not something glamorous like ‘espionage' or 'spying'?”

David shrugged his shoulders, his eyes involuntarily glancing down at her loose breasts. The robe had parted just enough to make the view irresistible.

“Do you like what you see?” Svetlana asked, her green eyes alive with seductiveness.

David smiled and blushed. "Excuse me," he said in a hushed voice.

"I like what I see," the woman added.

David wanted her, but his years of experience in the intelligence business
– along with the circumstances he and his partner found themselves in – told him it would be a mistake. He still found her hard to resist. She was both pretty and willing and – David cursed himself for thinking this – her husband was a KGB pig.

He leaned over to her slowly, pausing to see if she would offer a last-second resistance. None came. He kissed her.

She took his hand and led him into the bedroom.

It was nearing the end of their second day and the two men had run out of things to talk about long ago.

"How many more days are we going to wait here?" David
asked. "I'm tired of watching teenage soldiers drive trucks in and out all day."

"I
don't know," Austin replied. "I've been thinking of ways to flush out Falstaff."

"Falstaff?"

"Our mole in the company."

"I
thought you were using Falstaff to refer to the overall situation?"

"Well, I think it will apply to the mole now."

"Whatever."

"
Ya, whatever."

A light truck approached the gate, which was a chain link fence topped with barbed wire that the guards could roll aside at the touch of a button. The truck was inside the base and from the two men's car fifty yards outside the gate, they could easily see everyone leaving. The military facility was on the outskirts of Moscow, in a neighborhood of warehouses and small factories. The men had not been questioned in either of the two days of watching.

David raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes and strained to view the driver in the waning sunlight. The truck stopped in front of the guardhouse and David focused on the driver.

"This one still has pimples. This is futile." He dropped the binoculars down on the seat and slumped back.

"Come on, show me some of that patience that landed you those big contracts for ITT."

"I'm a man of action. I don't like sitting around doing nothing."

"I know, David, and that's what I'm so worried about."

"What does that mean?"

"Tell me about you and Mrs. Borskov."

"What do you want to hear?"

"Goddammit, David, I do have eyes. What I saw last night was two people who were close friends. Close, as in intimate."

David looked at Austin, who was seated behind the wheel. "You're like a fucking Sherlock Holmes. Doesn't anything escape your eye?"

"Not much, and I'm sure less gets by Colonel Borskov."

David laughed softly and rubbed his eyes with his left hand.
"I guess I blew it this time."

"Well, Borskov hasn’t pulled the plug on us yet, which means he
is either using his wife or he just doesn’t care."

"I'm sure she isn't working w
ith him."

"Why?"

"When she talks about him, she has almost a hatred in her voice. I think their marriage was arranged. You know, the young good-looking daughter being hitched up to the rising star. I don't think they have had sex together in years."

"You seem pretty sure
with such inadequate evidence."

"I
t's a feeling, something I have to rely on for every mission."

"Did she press you for any information?"

"She has a curiosity but that's it. No, she hasn't pressed."

"Don't sleep with her again,"
said Austin in a voice half way between fatherly advice and a superior's command.

"I won't.
I realize it was stupid."

The conviction was lacking and both men knew it.

It was a warm day by Moscow standards and the car the two men were in seemed to grow smaller as the sun crept higher. The night before, the three men had exchanged views in a "situation meeting." The tension had been obvious, not the tension of East versus West, but the tension of a love triangle. Austin had even thought at one point that Borskov would openly accuse David of sleeping with his wife. In the end, everyone continued to play his part. Robert was spending the day formulating plans to change the direction of their operations; he had to separate the players.

"There he is!" said David,
his voice hurried and excited.

"What?" Austin had not heard the words. They had merely broken his concentration.

"At the gate. That's him." A large Chaika sedan had stopped in front of the gate, waiting to enter. "Look at the guards. They know him." A young guard on the inside, who had always diligently stepped outside the fence to check the identification of each truck driver, simply stepped inside the guardhouse and pressed the button that opened the gate. The car quickly disappeared behind a warehouse.

"One eight two five VM," muttered David, repeating it over and over to himself.

"You got the license number?" Austin asked. David nodded. "Wait, I have a pen." Austin wrote down the number on a piece of newspaper. "How do you know it's him?"

"I saw hi
m from the side as he drove by. He had light brown hair, almost blonde, wire-rimmed glasses, a thin, muscular face and a big nose." David looked down in his lap at the photograph of Leonid Sorovin. “We have found our man, Robert.” His voice was victorious.

As agreed, they waited until Borskov radioed them.
He had been checking in about every two hours. The radio call came forty-five minutes after the sighting.

"Nevsky
dva, Nevsky dva, this is Nevsky tri. Do you receive me? Over."

"Nevsky tri," replied Austin, "we are here.
Over." It was the agreed-upon response.

"What is your status? Over."

"Status is positive, repeat positive. Over."

"Understood."

Within thirty minutes a car pulled to the curb about twenty meters behind the two Westerners. Anatoly Borskov got out and walked to the small car. He wedged his short, pudgy body into the miniature backseat.

"Congratulations. How do yo
u know it's Sorovin?" he asked.

"I saw him as he drove by. I'm sure it was him. I got his license number," replied David. Austin tore off the section of newspaper with the letters and numbers and gave it to Borskov. "He was in a black sedan."

"When did you first see him drive by?" the KGB officer asked.

"I don’
t understand," David replied.

"Did you see which direction he came from?"

"No, I first saw him as he passed by us."

Borskov leaned over to the side window on his right and looked at the building beside them. It was a two-story factory building with some offices on the second floor. "Both of you get out and go up there." He pointed at one of the second floor offices.
"Take your field glasses and small radio sets. I will be within radio distance. When you see him at the gate, alert me. Then check him with the field glasses and tell me if you're sure or not."

"What will you do?" Robert
asked.

“We have to follow him home, but if we do it by car he will pick us up no matter how many cars we use. However, we can track him from outside visual distance.”

"How? There's no way to get a transmitter in his car," Austin said.

“There is another way. I will tell you
about it later. Now let’s go.”

Fifteen minutes later, everyone was in place. Nob
ody was visible from the street – Sorovin was too good allow for that. Austin and Margolis were in an office by themselves. What Borskov had told them was understated; they flashed their KGB badges to the plant foreman and were given carte blanche, no questions asked. They kept their radios off so that they could converse. The wait had begun.

It lasted a little more than three hours. "There he is," said Austin.
"Check him out."

"Warn Borskov," David
said as he raised the binoculars. Austin turned on the transmitter strapped to his chest.

"Nevsky tri, all is go."

"Understood," came the reply. It was barely audible in the tiny earpiece.

"It's definitely him,"
David observed.

"Nevsky tri, verified."

"Understood. Await instructions."

The fence opened and the black sedan accelerated onto the street beyond. It passed beneath Austin and Margolis.

"What do we do now?" asked David.

"Wait. What else?"