“What the fuck is going on, Bob? Lerher isn’t even attached to JSOC anymore!”
“He’s not really attached to anything anymore,” Pope deadpanned.
Gil stopped for a red light. “That’s not funny.”
“You said you wanted him dead. You got what you wanted.”
“I want to know what the fuck he’s doing in Paris with Dokka Umarov.”
“I’ll get to the bottom of it,” Pope promised. “Right now you have to head for the Russian Embassy.”
The light turned green, but Gil didn’t notice. “What the fuck am I gonna do at the Russian Embassy?”
“Get yourself stitched up, for one thing. Maybe even a shot of penicillin. Those dog bites are going to fester.”
“You’re saying the Russians have agreed to take me in?”
“You just killed Russia’s bin Laden,” Pope said, referring to the Chechen Islamist warlord Umarov. “It’s the least they can do for you. Now make a left, and try not to drive like you’re fleeing the scene of a multiple homicide, will ya?”
3
Security at the Russian Embassy was expecting Gil when he arrived, and he was immediately admitted through a side entrance to the garish-looking building. Four hulking soldiers escorted him to a conference room with a one-way mirror set into the wall.
“If you have weapons, put them on the table,” one of the stone-faced soldiers said in good English. On his shoulders, he wore the rank insignia of a sergeant major — or a starshina, as they were called in the Russian army, a rank roughly similar to that of a US Navy master chief.
Gil slowly took the Glock 39 from beneath his jacket, placing it on the table along with three extra six-round magazines and the cigarettes. “That’s everything,” he said, his blue eyes smiling.
The starshina pointed at Gil’s earpiece. “That too.”
“They’re making me sign off, Bob.”
“That’s to be expected,” Pope replied. “Good luck, Gil. There isn’t much more I can do for you.”
“Just find out what Lerher was up to.” Gil took the earpiece from his ear and tossed it onto the table.
“Passport?” the starshina asked.
Gil was almost six feet tall, lean and wiry, and with brown hair cut high and tight. He took the passport from his jacket and handed it to the sergeant.
The Russian looked it over. “You’re Canadian?”
Gil shook his head.
“CIA?”
“I guess that sorta depends on who you ask. ‘CIA’ don’t mean what it used to.”
The sergeant stood eyeing him and then pointed to a steel chair against the wall. “Sit there.”
Gil did as he was told, and the solider gathered his possessions into a leather attaché case, which he took with him when he left the room. The other three guards, a junior sergeant and two efreitors (similar to corporals), stood at three different points around the room watching Gil with their arms folded across their broad chests.
“I don’t suppose you guys have any—”
The door opened, and a doctor in his late twenties came into the room carrying a large red case of medical equipment. “Take off your clothes, please.” He set the case down on the table. “There is not a lot of time.”
Gil got to his feet, stripped to his skivvies, and retook his seat. He was bleeding from wounds to his left forearm, left thigh, left hip, and his right foot. There was also a two-inch gash in his scalp that he couldn’t explain.
Seeing Gil’s many battle scars to his legs, torso, and head, the three soldiers exchanged glances of what might have been approval.
“This is from dog?” the doctor asked, examining Gil’s ripped-up forearm.
“Yes.”
“And this?” the doctor asked a moment later, carefully probing the bite marks to Gil’s thigh.
“Along with my foot, yeah. This here on my hip is a bullet wound. And I don’t know why the fuck my head is bleeding.”
The doctor looked over at the youngest soldier, one of the efreitors, speaking at length in Russian. When he finished, the efreitor gathered up all of Gil’s clothes, including his boots and socks, and left the room.
“I am going to treat your wounds now,” the doctor said, taking a syringe and a small bottle of lidocaine from the medical case. His fingers were deft, and he had all of Gil’s wounds neatly stitched within a half hour.
The stone-faced sergeant returned with a new set of street clothes the same moment the doctor finished, and this was when Gil fully took in that he must be under observation through the one-way mirror.
Gil got dressed and wasn’t a little impressed to find that the new shoes were his exact size. He smiled at the soldier. “Well done, Starshina. You guys are pretty good.”
The Russian allowed a thin smile.
The doctor left the room, and a photographer came in immediately after with a digital camera.
“Sit,” the sergeant said. “Don’t smile.”
Gil sat back down, and the photographer took his photo, disappearing again almost as fast as he had appeared.
“So what now?” Gil asked.
The sergeant motioned the other two soldiers to leave and followed them out. Gil was alone in the room for forty-five minutes before the door opened again, and a healthy-looking man in his early seventies came in. He offered Gil his hand, and Gil stood up from his chair to take it.
“My name is Vladimir Federov,” the old man said.
“Good to meet you, sir. I’m—”
“I know who you are. Come sit at the table. We’ll have a talk.”
They sat across from each other, and Gil waited to hear what the man had to say.
Federov laced his fingers in front of him. “I was captured in Berlin in 1973 by the CIA,” he began. “I was a young KGB agent then, and, luckily for me, a CIA agent had been captured in East Berlin the day before. After twenty-four hours, it was agreed we would be exchanged at Checkpoint Charlie.” Checkpoint C had been the most famous crossing point in the Berlin Wall during the Cold War, and many spies were exchanged there during that period. After the final collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany in the 1990s, the location became a tourist attraction.
“I hope you were well treated,” Gil said, meaning it.
“Oh, I was very well treated,” Federov replied. “I was captured by a young agent named Robert Pope. I understand you know him quite well.”
Gil smiled. “Pretty well, yeah, but I didn’t know he’d ever captured himself a genuine KGB agent.”
Federov grinned. “The son of a bitch used a woman to dupe me.”
Gil was hard pressed to conceal his amusement. “Well, knowing Pope’s taste in women, I doubt you stood much of a chance.”
“I was young and foolish,” Federov admitted. “But Robert treated me well, and he saw to it that I was exchanged quickly, something I have always been grateful for. In those days, the families of captured KGB agents were treated with suspicion by the Soviet government, and their lives were often made difficult. Robert understood that, and my quick return spared my parents those humiliations.”
“I understand.” Gil knew the pleasantries were out of the way and that it was time to get down to business.