“Beris druzhno, ne budet gruzno,” said Nate in Russian. If all of us take hold of it together, it won’t feel heavy. Piotr clapped Nate on the shoulder.
“Now I will buy you a drink,” he said.
ZRAZY ZAWIJANE—POLISH ROULADE OF BEEF
Pound slices of round steak very thin. Put thin-sliced onions and pickle, and a finger of trimmed French bread, on each slice, roll tightly, and secure with toothpicks. Boil dried mushrooms in beef stock. Roll beef rolls in flour and brown in butter with additional onions in a Dutch oven. Cover rolls with stock and bake until beef is tender and braising liquid has reduced to a rich gravy.
17
Phase One
The narrow S-shaped Balaklava harbor on the southern coast of the Crimean peninsula was too short to be called a fjord. Protected by craggy headlands topped by the ruins of a Genoese fort built in 1365, the sunbaked little harbor was flanked by empty warehouses and two sleepy restaurants with tables and umbrellas. At the end of the harbor, on the west side, yawned a decrepit concrete adit that was the entrance to the defunct Soviet underground submarine base with a five-hundred-meter channel built under the mountain during the Cold War to shelter Red Fleet submarines from nuclear attack. Clustered on the hills above the east side of the harbor were newer buildings of the town, including the red-tile-roofed Dakkar Resort Hotel with stone balconies overlooking the little jewel harbor. At night, under the riotous Crimean stars, the few city lights glittered on the still water.
Nate and the WOLVERINEs sailed into Balaklava harbor at midnight, on a fifty-two-foot trunk-cabin cruiser with a dark-blue hull and graceful varnished topsides. The leased yacht with two crew from CIA’s Maritime Branch had departed from Varna, Romania, and in two days had navigated the three hundred nautical miles, out of sight of land, directly to Balaklava Bay on the placid Crimean coast of pine-covered peaks and rocky islets. The boat backed into an empty slip at the modest Golden Symbol Yacht Club, too late to check in with the authorities. The next morning, uninterested Ukrainian customs officers recorded the Polish alias passports of the passengers on a coast-wide holiday cruise. Instead of staying aboard the yacht, the passengers booked six rooms at the Dakkar Hotel and spent the rest of the day exploring the little town, climbing the hill to the castle ruins, and taking the organized tour of the underground submarine pens, now a museum. By the end of the day, they had satisfied themselves that there was no coverage of them by local police or regional security services. It had been a consideration that Nate—known by Moscow FSB as a CIA officer—technically was in Russian-controlled Crimea, but he was anonymous in the company of the team.
They ate at the crowded Café Argo, dipping crusty bread into vermillion Georgian beet-salad spread, squeezing lemons over shashlik, sizzling lamb kebabs sprinkled with wild oregano, chased by ice-cold Lvivski beers. The WOLVERINEs were watchful but at ease. Steady nerves, top pros. Nate tried to tamp down his anticipation, the edginess he always felt before an op. He saw Agnes looking at him from down the table, sensing his mood. Tomorrow they would go active, travel to Sevastopol, and break into the warehouse; DIVA had reported the address from Moscow. Nate and the WOLVERINEs had rehearsed how they would tag the crates with quick-plant beacons, and Nate saw how good they were. So good, in fact, that they expanded the original plan. He had bonded with the Poles during the two days of training—Witold and Ryszard, rigidly proper; brainy Jerzy, well, brainy; and gruff Piotr, a Polish version of Gable. Agnes had kept looking at Nate, categorizing him, sizing him up. Now in Balaklava, she appeared calm and collected; perhaps the only sign of pre-op nerves was her habit of twisting a strand of her thick hair around a finger.
An hour later, Nash stood on the darkened balcony of his hotel room before going to bed, looking at the black harbor and the starlight on the hills across the water. Dominika. He would see her soon, if nothing went wrong in the next two days. He played in his head what he would say to her in Istanbul. Gable would be hovering, watching them, his big sheepdog head turned into the wind, sniffing. Jesus, he wanted to hold Dominika in his arms, put his hands on her back, and pull her tight against him. If he did that, Gable would feed him to the lions.
He knew, just knew, however, that Dominika would fly into a rage if he fended her off; she had done so before. She was of the view that she could be a spy and still be in love with her CIA handler, whom she desired. And she did not sympathize one bit with his conundrum that his superiors disapproved of their doing what they both most wanted to do. She would see to it he was not fired. If they loved each other, that should be enough.
If you love me, then nothing else matters, Dominika had told him. Nate resented being in this situation, resented Benford looking over his shoulder all the time, resented Gable’s acuity, resented Dominika’s damn Russian incorrigibility. And tomorrow he and this team would break into a warehouse in broad daylight and futz with antipersonnel explosives designed to blow them up. Chill, what’s the matter with you? he thought. He heard his door latch click and turned to see a sliver of hallway light widen, then go dark again. Someone was in his room. FSB? Had he missed hostile coverage today? Breathe. Heartbeat up. Nate moved quietly off the balcony, reaching for the heavy glass ashtray on the side table. He smelled perfume and his stomach flipped. No way. Agnes came out of the shadow into the bar of starlight slanting across the room. She was wearing a baggy sleep shirt and was barefoot.
“The locks on these doors are ridiculously easy,” she said.
Nate swallowed. “Agnes, what are you doing? Are you all right?” He knew the answer.
“I always am a little nervous before an operation,” she said. “Aren’t you?”
“Nervous about what?” asked Nate.
“Well, not nervous, exactly,” said Agnes, running her fingers through her hair.
“What exactly?” said Nate.
“More like amorous,” she said.
“Amorous?”
“As in horny,” she said, stepping toward him. She touched his cheek.
“Agnes,” said Nate, “this is not a good idea. We have work tomorrow.”
“It will steady our nerves,” she said, trailing her hand down his chest.