“That is precisely my concern. The ‘special project,’ as you called it, is ready to go. All that needs to be done, really, is press a button, figuratively speaking. Then I am no longer essential. He can dispose of me like Uganov.”
“Stetchkin and Uganov were rivals, Piotr. They had a long, unpleasant history, going back to before the collapse. You have no such history with him, and you are not a threat to his power or position.”
“He hates me. He hates weakness. He thinks I am soft,” Egorshin said.
Morosov smiled again. “But you are soft, Piotr. Most of you young people are. Not like the Americans or Western Europeans, perhaps. Their institutions are actually training them to be soft. And they will reap the consequences. But our young people are not far behind.”
“Why did he do that to Uganov? Why not simply remove him from his office?”
“Again, Piotr,” Morosov said patiently. “They had a history. If you are still concerned, however, I can have a word with Alexei Vasiliev.”
“The president’s chief of staff? You know him?”
“Our families, Piotr, go back together to before the revolution. I would wager we even share a relative or two. We were dvoryane; Stetchkin’s family were peasants.
“Is that why he hates me?”
“No,” Morosov said, shaking his head. “How should I put this?” He looked to the ceiling, searching for the right word. “Stetchkin is evil.”
“You mean psychopathic.”
“No. That is merely a clinical term to deflect accountability,” Morosov said. “Understand, Stetchkin is evil. He and I served together thirty-five years ago in Afghanistan. We went in alongside the 103rd Guards Airborne Division. We were Zenith. Our job was to demoralize and suppress the resistance. Stetchkin excelled at it. He killed indiscriminately. Not just the mujahedin, but men, women, and children who were not involved in the fighting. If the mujahedin killed one of our soldiers, he would not simply kill one of theirs in retaliation. He would kill ten. To start. The mujahedin would torture our captured soldiers. But even they could not compete with Stetchkin in terms of sheer brutality. He would bring women and children to the center of the village, torture them for days, until they were dead. At night, the valleys rang with their screams. Stetchkin reveled in it. He invented new and extreme methods and trained others in the techniques he had perfected. When our group left Kunar Province, he left behind one of his pupils, called Lucifer. When we left Panjshir Valley, he left another disciple—the Butcher. But he was the master.”
“That is the fate that awaits me? The same as Uganov? That is why you are telling me this?”
“Piotr, once again, Uganov was a rival.” Morosov saw that his nephew was not mollified. “I will speak with Vasiliev so you may rest assured.”
“Thank you, Uncle Sergei. I do not mean to burden you, but the matter of Uganov and Stetchkin’s evident dislike for me makes me anxious.”
“I can see.”
The men heard Tatiana turn off the shower. The SVR agent stood. “I will be on my way,” Morosov said. He patted Egorshin’s shoulder. “Do not be concerned. Mikhailov needs you.”
Egorshin walked Morosov to the door and gave him a hug. Morosov walked into the hallway and waved good-bye as Egorshin’s phone vibrated. He waved as his uncle entered the elevator, closed the door, and took the call.
“Colonel?”
“Yes,” replied Egorshin as he watched Tatiana, her hair wet, emerge from the bathroom in search of a robe.
“Colonel, this is Major Volkov.”
“I know, Major. What can I do for you?”
“Colonel, Mr. Stetchkin is looking for you.”
Egorshin felt a bolt of anxiety.
“And?”
“Colonel, he asked why you did not arrange the video link earlier.”
“I did arrange the video link. I instructed you to do it. That is your function, and the link was established.”
“Colonel, to be clear,” Volkov said nervously. “He asked why you did not personally set up the link.”
Anxiety mixed with bewilderment in Egorshin’s mind. Setting up the link was a task for someone several levels below Egorshin’s rank. No one could possibly expect Egorshin to perform such a task. It would be akin to expecting the regional vice president of Exxon to pump gas at a filling station.
“What does he want?” Egorshin asked, looking blankly about the apartment, oblivious even to the undressed form of Tatiana Palinieva.
“Colonel, he directed me to find you and tell you to report to his office at six A.M.”
Egorshin stared at a smiling Tatiana, standing naked in the middle of the living room with a hand just above the curve of her hip, her legs shoulder-width apart. But in his head, all Egorshin could see was the image of a husk of a human being that had once been Ivan Uganov shuffling obediently down the aisle toward his master.
CHAPTER 33
WASHINGTON, D.C.,
AUGUST 15, 5:55 P.M. EDT
Olivia had attempted to reach James Brandt upon leaving the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, but his secretary said he was still in a meeting with Iris Cho, President Marshall’s chief of staff. Olivia took a cab back to her office at the OEOB, where she searched for any and all reports she could find that might shed some light on the troop movements on Laura Casini’s screen.
James Brandt, exercising his best judgment, could discount the importance of a slight increase in activity at Russian industrial sites. He could dismiss the possibility of any correlation between such increased activity and the shootings in Georgia that bore a familiar, if not unique, signature. But with the addition of Russian troop movements, Olivia was confident Brandt would bring the matter to the president’s attention.
None of the intelligence summaries spanning the last week, however, revealed anything out of the ordinary, nothing that would shed light on what was going on in the satellite images on Laura Casini’s screen. In fact, the summaries contained no mention of any unusual or unexpected Russian military maneuvers. According to the reports, it appeared everything in Russia was business as usual.
No matter, thought Olivia. Russian troops near the borders of Baltic nations might not be unusual; Russian troops moving southward along the Caspian was strange, to say the least. From the outset of their collaboration, dating back to her undergrad days at Stanford, James Brandt had taught Olivia to take seriously any strange or unusual Russian behavior. There was rarely, if ever, an innocuous explanation for such behavior.
Olivia was prepared to log off her computer and call Brandt’s secretary again when a footnote in one of the summaries caught her eye. But for the satellite images Olivia had just seen, the footnote might otherwise be anodyne. In the last week there had been increased Russian naval presence at Bandar Abbas, the Iranian Persian Gulf port on the northern coast of the Strait of Hormuz. There was no description of the Russian vessels other than they appeared to be part of the Russian Pacific fleet out of Vladivostok.
Olivia dialed Laura Casini’s number.
“Casini.”
“Laura, take a look at Bandar Abbas for me, will you? Time lapse the last week. Let me know what you see, okay?”
“On it.”
Olivia hung up. “There are no coincidences in this business,” Dwyer had said. The coincidences were piling up. She looked at the time on the lower right corner of her computer screen. Brandt’s meeting with Cho had to be over by now. Iris was famous for terseness and time management.