After Afghanistan, the newly minted full colonel took command of the Vympel Group, which was gutted and tossed around from agency to agency upon the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later. Colonel Baranov’s group eventually landed in the hands of the Interior Ministry (MVD), with only sixty of its original three hundred operatives. In 1993, Maxim Greshnev plucked Baranov out of the MVD on his meteoric rise up the FSB hierarchy ladder, placing him as the assistant deputy director of Greshnev’s newly formed Center of Special Operations. By 1995, Baranov had consolidated control of CSN, showing little motivation or ambition to rise any further, which suited Greshnev fine. He had little doubt that Baranov could easily outmaneuver him on the way to the top. Fortunately for him, Baranov was Spetsnaz to the core and couldn’t step away from the action to be bothered with politics.
“We have a problem,” Greshnev grumbled.
Baranov cocked his head slightly and waited for Greshnev to continue.
“I just got off the phone with the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, and he’s not happy—”
“He’s never happy,” Baranov interrupted, drawing a critical stare from Greshnev.
“Apparently, they have confirmed that Reznikov’s address in Stockholm was leaked to the CIA.”
Baranov shook his head. “Let me guess. They think it came from my division.”
“This was the first joint operation with SVR in years, and it ended in disaster. It’s only natural for them to react this way.”
“Joint operation? We had a grand total of four people in the Ops Room for that fiasco. Myself, two others that I trust explicitly, and one of the senior techs,” Baranov said.
“Then our investigation shouldn’t take too long,” Greshnev said.
“That won’t satisfy our friends in the SVR,” Baranov said.
“No. It probably won’t. We can expect them to start surveillance on your entire department,” Greshnev said.
“Maybe we should put Directorate S under surveillance. How many fucking people did they have involved in the operation?”
“Given the unit involved, not as many as you might think. Ardankin won’t ignore the possibility that the leak came from his side, and neither will his boss,” Greshnev said.
“It’s the Security Service’s job to investigate issues like this,” Baranov said.
“Not when Zaslon is involved. I can’t hand this over to the Counterintelligence Service and let them swarm CSN. I’ll handpick a team from Internal Affairs’ (IA) special investigative unit. We’ll keep this low profile for now, and I’ll actively liaison with Ardankin’s SVR goons. Give them what they want, and get them out of our business,” Greshnev said.
“I’ll tolerate surveillance by our SVR comrades, but that’s all. If they make a move against any of my people, they’ll have a war on their hands…and I’m good at fighting wars,” Baranov said.
“I know you are, and so do they. I’ll make sure they understand the ground rules. Do you have any ideas beyond the four agents present in the Operations Room during the raid?” Greshnev asked.
“Our weakest link is technology. In the old days, we had telephones and status boards marked by grease pencil. Throw in a few TVs hooked to video players. Now we have twenty widescreen monitors, hundreds of computers, videoconferencing equipment, visual data boards…all controlled by a network of servers and optics cables that I couldn’t dream of comprehending. The whole setup requires an army of technicians, many of whom I’ve never personally met. The whole fucking place is a liability, which is why I kept the number of people involved in that operation to an absolute minimum. Those fucking idiots at SVR could have updated me over the phone, instead of insisting on a live joint feed. All we needed to know is whether the mission succeeded or failed…and even that didn’t really matter. Unless Reznikov steps foot on Russian soil, we’re on the sideline.”
“The joint involvement was my idea,” Greshnev said.
Baranov cracked a smile before responding. “I know.”
“You haven’t changed since I met you. Always a ball breaker,” Greshnev said.
“That’s my job these days.”
Greshnev smiled in return. “That’s why I keep you around. Promoting you out of here would catapult this place into chaos. We’ll investigate the techs associated with the Operations Room in this building, leaving your headquarters out of it, for now. Internal Affairs has a group that specializes in technology investigation. I have to bring the heat down on everyone that was in the Operations Room at the time.”
“Including me?”
“Especially you. I can’t afford to have you sneak up and kill one of their surveillance agents. The sooner I convince them that you’re clean, the better.”
“Am I that transparent in my old age?” Baranov said.
“Quite the opposite. I have no fucking idea what you are thinking these days. Make sure none of your operatives kill any of their new shadows. All right?”
“Understood,” Baranov said, standing up to take his leave. “This Reznikov business…there’s more to this than meets the eye.”
Greshnev stared at him blankly. He agreed with Baranov’s assessment, but would never acknowledge the fact in front of him, or anyone, for that matter. Pure instinct told him to steer clear of pursuing the matter. Even though he truly possessed no information suggesting that Reznikov was anything more than a rogue scientist offering the prospect of bioweapons to terrorists, he sensed there was more to this story. Way more.
His Directorate had chased down men like Reznikov before, but the effort and resources spent on finding Reznikov had been disproportionately higher than any of those previous efforts, and this calculation didn’t account for the diplomatic risks inherent to operating larger than usual teams on foreign soil.
Sending a regional military Spetznaz platoon into Kazakhstan turned into a disaster of epic proportions, somehow explained away as a training exercise gone seriously awry. Fortunately for the Center of Special Operations, someone at the highest levels didn’t think their Alpha Group team in Novosibirsk would be large enough to deal with the five Americans snooping around the former site of Reznikov’s suspected laboratory. Apparently, an entire platoon hadn’t been enough.
The most damning evidence came from the operation in Stockholm. Neither of them could fathom the circumstances leading to the loss of ten Zaslon Spetznaz operatives. Frankly, he had been shocked to learn that the SVR had assembled so many Zaslon operatives in one place. They had never been informed of the actual number, but he had little trouble putting the pieces together based on Swedish news reports and crime scene information leaked by their sources in the Swedish National Bureau of Investigation and Stockholm County Police Department. The importance of this mission to Putin must have been unprecedented. He could think of no other reason why Dmitry Ardankin would have authorized such a large-scale Zaslon operation.
Zaslon operatives typically worked alone under deep cover, conducting sensitive missions abroad related to “state security.” This euphemism covered a wide spectrum of nefarious activities, from kidnapping to assassination. Most of their operations were carried out against Russian citizens who had betrayed Russia in one way or another. Of course, this was all purely rumor. Government officials had never acknowledged the existence of the Zaslon program, which was why the Stockholm mess underscored the importance of Reznikov. The Americans had wanted the scientist just as badly, which added another layer of intrigue to the entire fiasco. He didn’t believe that Reznikov had been terminated, regardless of what he’d been directly told by Dmitry Ardankin. This business wasn’t finished.