The past two days had been a whirlwind. He’d cleared out of Barcelona, then trained to Madrid and flown from there to Charlotte, North Carolina. He was stressed about his trip to the USA; he knew there were dangers there for him on a par with what he faced in his own country. To combat the shakes he’d developed worrying about passing through U.S. immigration, he’d gotten himself good and drunk on the plane, and he passed through the airport control formalities in a calm, collected stupor.
In Charlotte he rented a car and then drove up the coast to D.C. He spent a night in a hotel, and moved into this basement apartment underneath the front staircase of a brownstone in upscale Dupont Circle.
He had actually been ready to work since noon today, and it was eight p.m. now, but before he even pulled his laptop out of his backpack or turned on his mobile phone he’d attempted to contact an acquaintance at the Russian embassy here. He wasn’t sure if the old SVR colleague was still posted in Washington, so he found a pay phone outside a post office and then called local directory assistance.
The man was not listed under his own name, which was no big surprise, but Kovalenko checked a couple of aliases the man had used on operations abroad, and only then did he accept the fact he would not so easily wend his way out of his obligations with the Center organization by phoning a friend for help.
After a lengthy surveillance detection run he went to the Russian embassy on Wisconsin Avenue, but he did not dare get too close. Instead he remained a block away and watched men and women come and go for an hour. He had not shaved in a week, and this helped him with his disguise, but he knew he needed to limit his exposure here. He did another SDR on his way back to his neighborhood, taking his time to get on and off public transportation.
He’d dropped by a liquor store on 18th Street just around the corner from his place and picked up a bottle of Ketel One and a few beers, returned to his flat, then put the vodka in the freezer and downed the beers.
His afternoon, then, was a complete bust, and now he found himself sitting at his computer and waiting on Center to reply.
Green text appeared on the black screen. “You are in position?”
“Yes,” he typed.
“We have an operation for you that is most urgent.”
“Okay.”
“But first we need to discuss your movements today.”
Kovalenko felt a twitch of pain in his heart. No. No way in hell they tracked me. He’d left his phone on his desk in his apartment, and his laptop had not even been unpacked. He’d used no computer, he’d not seen anyone tracking him through his SDRs.
They were bluffing.
“I did exactly as you asked.”
“You went to the Russian embassy.”
The pain in his heart increased; it was just panic, but he fought it. They were still bluffing, he was certain. It would be easy for them to guess he would try to make contact with SVR associates as soon as he got to Washington. He had been a good one hundred yards from the embassy.
“You are guessing,” he wrote, “and you guessed wrong.”
A photograph appeared on his Cryptogram window without warning. It was Kovalenko, surveillance quality, and he was sitting in a small park across from the Russian embassy on Wisconsin Street. Clearly it was taken this afternoon, perhaps from a traffic camera.
Valentin closed his eyes for a moment. They were everywhere.
He stormed into his kitchen and took the bottle of Ketel One out of the freezer. Quickly he grabbed a water glass from his cabinet and poured two fingers of the chilled vodka. He polished off the glass in a few gulps and then filled it again.
A minute later he sat back down at the desk. “What the fuck do you want from me?”
“I want you to obey your directives.”
“And what will you do if I don’t? Send the Saint Petersburg mob after me? Here in America? I don’t think so. You can hack a security camera, but you can’t touch me here.”
There was no response for a long moment. Valentin looked at his computer while he drained the second glass of vodka. Just as he put the glass back on the tiny desk, there was a knock on the door behind him.
Kovalenko bolted upright and spun around. Sweat that had formed on his forehead in the past minutes dripped into his eyes.
He looked down at the Cryptogram window. There was still no response.
And then… “Open the door.”
Kovalenko had no weapons; he was not that kind of intelligence officer. He ran into the little kitchen off the living room, and he pulled a long kitchen knife out of a butcher’s block. He returned to the living room, his eyes on the door.
He rushed over to the computer. Typed with shaking hands, “What’s going on?”
“You have a visitor. Open the door or he will break it down.”
Kovalenko peered through the small window next to the door, and he saw nothing but the steps up to street level. He unlocked the door and opened it, his knife low to his side.
He saw the figure now in the darkness, standing next to the garbage can under the stairs up to the brownstone. He was a man, Kovalenko judged from the stature, but he stood as still as a statue, and Valentin could not make out any of his features.
Kovalenko backed into his living room, and the figure moved toward him, came near the doorway, but did not enter the apartment.
From the light of the living room Kovalenko saw a man, perhaps in his late twenties. He was solidly built and fit-looking, with an angular forehead and very pronounced and high cheekbones. He looked to the Russian like some sort of cross between an Asian and an American Indian warrior. Serious and stern, the man wore a black leather jacket, black jeans, and black tennis shoes.
“You are not Center.” Valentin said it as a statement.
“I am Crane,” was the response, and Kovalenko instantly could tell the man was Chinese.
“Crane.” Kovalenko took another half-step back. The man was intimidating as hell; he looked to the Russian like a stone-cold killer, like an animal not fit for civilized society.
Crane unzipped his jacket and opened it. A black automatic pistol was tucked in his waistband. “Put down the knife. If I kill you without sanction, Center will be angry with me. I do not want Center angry.”
Valentin took another half-step back and bumped into the desk. He placed the knife on the desk.
Crane did not reach for his gun, but he clearly wanted it displayed. He spoke in heavily accented English. “We are here, close to you. If Center tells me to kill you, you are dead. Do you understand?”
Kovalenko just nodded.
Crane motioned to the laptop computer on the desk behind the Russian. Valentin turned and looked at it. At that moment a new paragraph appeared on Cryptogram.
“Crane and his men are force multipliers for our operation. If I could realize all my schemes from a computer keyboard, I would do that. But sometimes other measures must be taken. People like you are used. And people like Crane are used.”
Kovalenko looked away from the computer toward Crane, but he was gone. Quickly Kovalenko shut the door and locked it.
He returned to the desk and typed, “Assassins?”
“Crane and his men have their tasks. Making sure you follow directives is one of their tasks.”
Valentin wondered if, all this time, he’d been working for Chinese intelligence.
When he thought it over, some of the pieces fit. But others did not.
He typed, his hands still shaking, “It is one thing to work with the mob in Russia. It is very different to control teams of assassins in the United States. This has nothing to do with industrial espionage.”