“The CIA may terminate this thing before they make it to the sub.” Josh tried to sound upbeat.
“You trust the CIA to do its job?” Mikhail had the feeling that wasn’t going to be the case. Murphy’s Law had come into play too many times in his life for him to expect the best. “They will get to the sub, and if we aren’t in top shape, then it will be a cold prison we’ll all share, for eternity.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Partners and Pressure
Mohsen hadn’t spoken the entire flight. Occasionally he would glance over to the briefcase containing the currency to satisfy himself that there was no way the money could leave the plane. He hated George — or Akbar, as he knew him.
The plane taxied to the gate, George walked off, and Mohsen was right behind. He even grabbed hold of George’s sleeve when he felt they were getting too far apart.
“We must go to the gate representative.” Someday I’ll kill you, he thought.
The change in plans disturbed George. “Why? Aren’t we going to Crimea?”
“No. We are going to take the next flight to Rostov and then a connecting flight to Kirov. That’s where we’ll meet Stemovich.”
Alarms were ringing in George’s head. Security was relaxed in Istanbul, but to carry $200 million deep into Russia was a different thing. Someone along the way would demand to look at the contents, and then all hell could break loose. George hoped that Mohsen was smart enough to get past these obstacles. The tickets at the gate were prepaid and ready. Both men walked down the concourse to Areoflot number 69. Russian customs was still the old Soviet system, which George never felt good going through. They approached two security officials who had just finished doing a thorough search of a woman’s handbag. George got that terrible sinking feeling as he came upon them.
But they got nothing more than a glance before they were waved on, and George didn’t even break stride. The people behind them were abruptly stopped and made to open their bags. Well, Mohsen might be smarter than I gave him credit for, he thought.
They were fifteen minutes early, so they took seats, and the silence continued. George was not looking forward to another eight hours on the plane, especially if Mohsen was to be sitting at his side the whole way. He began to wonder what motivated these people to implement such an outrageous scheme. They have little concern for the rest of the world. They’re growing selfish with the corruption of money.
In general, Nick was enjoying his personal tour of Russia. Marina had become more at ease with him, and he tried his best to fit into the surroundings. His beating the previous night had left its mark, physically and mentally. He put his brash Americanism on the shelf and instead took on the character of being somewhat subservient. The cut over his eye was patched, yet it would yield a nasty scare in the future. He wanted to protest that treatment, but he also realized that the beating he received was the quickest way for the agents to smarten him up to the dangers of the situation. Still, the black-and-blue cut was a little much, he thought.
I wonder what she has at stake? Their relationship, which had started off so coolly, had shown some signs of thawing. But not enough for Nick to really care if they ever got to know each other. Callous was his appraisal of Marina. One thing’s for sure. I’ll never get into those pants.
It had been a bad morning for Marina Romanov. No woman liked to wake up and look the way she did. She was only saved by the fact that Nick had stayed asleep while she took a cold shower and put herself together. Then it was back to business. The last of her stores were used for their breakfast. It wasn’t much — some eggs and toast. Her opinion of Nick was bleak. It was beyond her why they had sent someone who had no experience. To her, he seemed like an obnoxious buffoon, and he put the job in great jeopardy. Good sense told her to call it off, yet she couldn’t. She had to think of her freedom.
She reflected on her formative years. The day Boris Yeltsin ascended to power Marina felt that her country might be able to pull itself into a free society and end the tyranny of communism. As the months went by, she saw an embattled Yeltsin begin to lose ground in the Congress of People’s Deputies. Hard-liners from the right were beginning to reemerge and gathered support in favor of the slowdown of reforms. They cried that Yeltsin had too much power and that he was moving too quickly for the country. They were certain that under Yeltsin’s wing the Russian state would crumble and be thrown into chaos. This was their plea, and people began to listen.
It scared Marina. She heard the rumblings in the Russian military, speaking out in favor of the efficiency of the old Soviet ways. She listened to the people in the street. The Communist Party still had support, and it was growing. Every demonstration for the return to a communistic state seemed to be getting larger and carried more weight in the Congress. Marina felt it was the beginning of a turn of events.
Then it happened. Yeltsin’s choice for prime minister was struck down by pressure from the Congress as the Congress’s power grew. Yeltsin’s counter was to install an old communist hard-liner in the position — Viktor Chernomyrdin. Radical reformers felt betrayed by Yeltsin and vowed to pull their support. The appointment of Chernomyrdin was met with great support from 86 percent of the Congress. Outwardly they now spoke of stopping reform, yet Marina knew there was more behind it. It was the first step in placing the old hard-liners in positions of authority. It was the first step backward. Chernomyrdin was not for a free-market economy. He hated the small shops that littered the streets of Moscow. People competing and selling goods were foreign to him and rather unsettling.
When Yeltsin suddenly resigned in 1999, his handpicked successor was a progressive — Oscar Ochinkin. People thought him to be a man who would offset the Chernomyrdins of the state, but Ochinkin, despite his unquenchable thirst for power, was a man afraid of his own shadow. He was thus corruptible. Ochinkin bloviated about free-market reforms but was selling his country out the back door. In some respects, he is worse than communism, thought Marina. All Ochinkin wanted to do was survive, so he could then listen to what an important figure he had become in Russian history. He survived his first term, took a lesser position in the government, then ran, and won, another election to again be president — all aided by ambiguous constitutional language and the resources of the new billionaires created over the past fifteen years. He was the first president fully obligated to special Interest groups in the country.
Marina’s background was unique. At the age of five, her grandparents fled the Soviet Union to Germany. In reprisal, the Soviet State arrested her mother and father as spies and locked them away in a gulag. They died three years later, branded as criminals. Marina was saved by her uncle, a policeman for the city of Kiev. The state trusted him because of his position and overlooked using him as a further example to would-be defectors. The death of his brother and sister-in-law made her uncle rethink his loyalty to the party.
Using his position in the police, and with the help of his parents in Germany, Marina’s uncle began to smuggle people out. He was quite successful, and it began Marina’s indoctrination into fighting the injustices of the Communist Party. As would follow, it wasn’t long before the United States would use her uncle to enter the Soviet Union. When she grew older, she amassed a great knowledge of the operation and of the black market, along with the acquaintance of many Soviet party officials.