“So did I. Less than five minutes ago, coincidentally,” Kaparov replied.
Greshnev showed the faintest hint of a smile, which faded as quickly as it arrived. “Monchegorsk is a closed issue.”
“I couldn’t agree more. I haven’t asked any questions or made any suggestions in nearly two weeks.”
“Let’s keep it that way. This comes from above. Far above me,” Greshnev added.
“I never look any higher than your office, comrade. If it comes from you, that’s all I need to hear,” Kaparov said.
“All right then. Do you need anything from me?”
Here was the moment of truth. He didn’t want to piss off Greshnev, but it was necessary to keep him off the suspects list, should the missing CIA officer from Stockholm end up in a dank, SVR-sponsored torture chamber.
“How should I proceed with Anatoly Reznikov? I forwarded my assessment of the information captured in Dagestan, but never heard back. If he’s working with Chechen separatists, this could represent a major bioweapons threat to the Russian Federation.”
“I have it on good authority that Reznikov is no longer a threat. SVR wouldn’t release any details, which leads me to believe that he met an untimely death.”
“The only thing untimely is that it didn’t happen years ago. I’ll close Reznikov’s file,” Kaparov said.
“Good work making that connection. Russia is much safer because of your diligence in that matter,” Greshnev said, standing up. He held out his hand, signifying the end of the meeting.
“Thank you, sir. That’s all I’ve ever persevered to do on behalf of our government.”
Chapter 7
Mihail Osin walked toward the door at the back of the dimly lit room. He stopped and glanced over his shoulder at the sagging, bloodied CIA officer zip-tied by his hands and feet to a high-backed wooden chair in the center of the room before continuing to the door. He heard the door’s external deadbolts slide, followed by a sudden bright light. Mihail stepped into the well-lit hallway and shut the door behind him, shaking his head at Stepka, one of the operatives assigned to his team. Stepka uttered an expletive and relocked the deadbolts. None of them wanted to spend any more time in this building.
Acquired over a decade ago by a shell company associated with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the warehouse served as a Directorate “S” way station for northern European operations, and provided the perfect location for a discreet interrogation. Located on Oxelösund’s working waterfront, the warehouse was one of few serviceable buildings left on the sparse north dock. Most of Oxelösund’s ironworks exports passed through structures on the more accessible and modernized southern dock, leaving the north dock largely ignored.
Warehouse 42 was maintained in decent enough shape to keep Swedish public safety authorities from demanding a detailed inspection of the grounds, but not well enough to attract the attention of local criminals. Most of the money allocated to the warehouse by Directorate S went into an internal expansion of the “corporate offices.” The internal structure consisted of several soundproofed interrogation rooms, stocked with every tool or device needed to extract information from its unfortunate guests. Mercifully, Warehouse 42 represented the last stop for most guests. The unluckiest among them were transferred by boat to a coastal site near St. Petersburg, where they could be sent anywhere within Russia for a more thorough interrogation.
Additional rooms beyond the interrogation cells served as temporary lodging for transiting teams of “illegals” or Spetsnaz; complete with showers, locally sourced clothing and a stocked kitchen.
The last room, known as the “bath house,” served the most nefarious purpose, and few within Directorate S knew what was kept inside. Once a guest expired in Warehouse 42, they were taken to the “bath house,” where the team that “sponsored” the guest would dispose of the body. One look inside the room would test the personal resolve of the hardest operative.
Unlike the rest of the “office suite,” the interior walls of the “bath house” were lined with floor to ceiling cinderblock, matching the ugly gray concrete floor. An industrial-grade stainless-steel ventilation hood reached down from the center of the tall ceiling. A 55-gallon stainless-steel barrel mounted to a wheeled frame sat next to a Teflon-coated 20-gallon rectangular bin along the wall opposite the door. A small sewer drain sat in the furthest corner of the room, flanked by a water spigot on one side and a neatly coiled, wall-mounted garden hose on the other. A sturdy plastic shelving unit next to the door held several one-gallon jugs of hydrofluoric acid. Larger, five-gallon, military-style plastic jugs labeled “sodium hydroxide,” lye, were stacked side by side on the lowest shelf next to three neatly arranged propane tanks.
The most gruesome spectacle was the “work bench,” a thick, wooden four-foot-by-three-foot tabletop set upon solid, stubby square legs. The table was pushed up against the wall next to the plastic shelving unit. A blue industrial pegboard covered the wall above the table, suspending two small chainsaws and an electric skill saw.
The process for disposing of Warehouse 42’s guests was relatively simple. The bodies were cut into smaller pieces and placed in the stainless-steel drum, which was wheeled into the center of the room under the ventilation hood. The drum was filled with enough sodium hydroxide and water to cover the body parts, and a sizable propane burner was placed under the drum. The burner slowly brought the drum’s contents to a boil, accelerating the alkaline hydrolysis process and completely dissolving the body within seven to eight hours.
The resulting alkaline soup was poured down the drain in the corner and washed down with the hose. Hydrofluoric acid was used in the Teflon-coated bin to dissolve metal remnants like knee pins or any stubborn bone material that failed to completely dissolve in the heated lye. The guest’s clothing and shoes were often burned in a metal barrel outside of the warehouse or taken along by the “sponsors” to be deposited in a city dumpster.
Upon completion of the process, nothing remained of the guest in question. Sixty-seven guests had disappeared at Warehouse 42 during its twelve-year operational period, designating the cement-lined room in Oxelösund, Sweden, as the most active “bath house” operated on foreign soil by Directorate S. Within Russia, several notorious “bath houses” far exceeded Warehouse 42’s productivity level, forming the backbone of an expansive network of clandestine torture chambers commissioned after the dissolution of the KGB in 1991. Nearly all of the KGB’s secret locations had been exposed when the organization was split into the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the Federal Security Service (FSB). The SVR’s Directorate S, which operated under considerably less oversight than any of the other branches, took the lead in reestablishing the KGB’s legendary interrogation apparatus.
Mihail turned left and walked down the concrete hallway, past a door leading to another windowless interrogation room. He leaned against the cold wall and dialed his control station on a small, encrypted satellite phone kept in his coat pocket. After negotiating a few layers of SVR security, he was connected with Dmitry Ardankin, Director of Operations for Directorate S. Ardankin’s voice sounded like a whisper.
“What do we know?”
“The CIA station at the embassy provided ground surveillance for the operation. Several officers were staged throughout the city to put eyes on the target when the location was passed.”
“When did they put these officers in the field?”
“The night before the raid. The station chief turned over control of the agents to NCS operations. The assault team arrived separately, but he doesn’t think the assault team was CIA.”