Paul Vidich - The Mercenary

“Next turn.”

Ronnie threw a blanket off her lap and pulled a deflated, life-size sex doll from the floor, arranging it on the seat, slumped forward. Mueller tested his door handle, rehearsing in his mind a sequence of moves.

Suddenly, the Lada sped up, accelerating into a right turn, and Rositske followed with another immediate right turn, and then a third. As he came out of the last turn, he pulled hard on the hand brake, slowing the car without its brake lights glowing red.

“Now!”

Mueller pulled the handle, opening the door, and he rolled onto the pavement, hitting hard. His momentum brought him to his feet, and in a split second he had taken cover between a stunted bush with prickly thorns and a parked car. Mueller pressed against the car, gulping air, and he looked at the accelerating Lada. The inflated life-size doll was propped in his seat, the glowing tip of a Prima dangling from her mouth and a fox shapka on her head. Technical Services in Langley had come up with the trick. They purchased the doll and two back-ups in a Washington, DC, sex shop and shipped them to Moscow Station via diplomatic pouch.

Mueller saw the two Volgas speed past unaware of the deception and breathed deeply to prepare himself to go dark. He looked at his watch: 4:17 P.M.

MUELLER MOVED ALONG the dark street, keeping to the center of the sidewalk, and passed through circles of light cast by widely spaced streetlamps, just an older man carrying a cloth bag with his holiday meal. He had three hours until his rendezvous with GAMBIT, and while it had once seemed like an unnecessarily long interval, he was glad he had the time to dry-clean himself.

Mueller moved from shadow to shadow in his bulky overcoat with the slack step of a Party apparatchik returning to his one-room apartment to eat dinner alone. His cloth bag held a fresh orange, parsley potatoes, herring, walnut rogaliki , and a small bottle of plum brandy. Under his pensioner’s dinner was tightly wrapped brown paper of the sort used by butchers, and inside a T-50 miniature camera fitted into a ball-point pen, film cartridges, a tiny burst radio transmitter, and a thick stack of rubles. The cloth bag swung at his side as he walked and from time to time he blew on his gloved hands for warmth. The falling temperature stung his cheeks.

Mueller made his way along grim streets and through drab apartment blocks dotted with lights, beacons of joy for families gathered to celebrate a secular holiday that the Communist Party had elevated over Christmas. He crossed the Moscow River at Borodinski Bridge and then doubled back on Kalininskiy Bridge, headed toward Moscow Center. He was alert to movements in his peripheral vision, but he resisted the temptation to look. He had learned not to meet another person’s eyes. If he looked, he knew the stranger would look away. Muscovites kept to themselves, and they knew to mind their own business.

But coming to the end of the second bridge, Mueller happened to stop to light another cigarette. As he shielded his match against the wind, he glanced around. If the KGB were there—on foot or in a car—they had mastered the art of being invisible, and that was the fear of some case officers in Moscow Station. It had been a bad season. A dozen of the Station’s best assets had been arrested, their networks rolled up, and years of patient work wiped out. Everyone had a theory for the loss. Rositske believed the KGB’s new ghost surveillance was a ploy to demoralize Moscow Station. Teams of KGB would wait beyond the visual horizon for hours, giving the appearance there had been a break in surveillance, and then suddenly they would converge in cars or on foot, when the case officer was confident he was dry-cleaned and could go operational.

Rositske advised Mueller not to take an operational role that required a young man’s reflexes and a chess master’s mind. At sixty-three, Mueller had his best years behind him, but the evening’s success depended on more than fitness—it depended on GAMBIT’s trust, and Mueller alone had that.

Mueller flicked his cigarette over the edge of the bridge and watched it fall to the river’s pack ice. He fixed his eyes on Kalinin Prospekt in the distance and beyond that the metro station. Ready , he thought.

The Arbatskaya Metro Station entrance was empty of the usual crowd, and he joined the few people moving down to the platform level. He let himself be pushed by a big, bustling woman who smiled until she got a better look at his face. Mueller was alert to watchful militia teams nearby and the footsteps of passengers rushing to beat the metro’s closing doors. He moved through the vaulted lobby, becoming another submissive Soviet Russian who knew to keep to himself. He shuffled his worn shoes to give the appearance of a diminished older man, someone the militia would judge to be a person of little interest. In this way Mueller passed through the station, emerging on the street at a separate entrance. He glanced back. Clean. It was time.

MUELLER ENTERED KARL Marx Prospekt on the northwest corner of the Kremlin. Cold darkness lay across Red Square, and he slapped his gloves to warm his hands and prepare for what lay ahead. Not since he’d parachuted behind Nazi lines at night in Occupied France had he been this nervous.

He moved clockwise around the medieval fortress and entered the open square, where the enormous clock and bells of Spasskiy Tower inside the Kremlin wall announced the time. A horizontal band of snow obscured the spire’s red star.

Mueller saw the honor guard goose-stepping out of an archway in the wall, proceeding to Lenin’s Tomb on their hourly rotation. He gazed across the scattered pedestrians who crossed the square, hunched against the wind, trying to stay warm. Mueller looked for a man like himself, dressed in a tired overcoat and shapka , holding a cloth bag in his right hand. GAMBIT had set the time and place of their brush pass, thinking—Mueller assumed—that an open place with people to overwhelm the militia’s watching eyes would be a good spot to converge. This was an amateur’s mind at work, and Mueller knew that GAMBIT’s choice could put them both at risk.

In spite of the bad weather and the late hour, groups of visitors looked toward Lenin’s dark granite mausoleum. Tourists from the provinces and a few foreigners endured the cold to catch the changing of the guard, while others had taken up positions to watch the evening’s fireworks display.

“Smoke?”

Mueller was aware of the man before he heard his voice, but what unsettled him was the question in English. He turned to face an Interior Ministry militiaman wearing a high-crown cap with the seal of the USSR. He had the stern, self-assured face of a man aware of his authority. Mueller gave no hint that he understood, and his eyes opened slightly. Confusion. The militiaman pumped two fingers to his lips.

Mueller obliged, hitting the red pack of Primas on his sleeve, offering a loosened cigarette.

“ Spasibo .”

Mueller continued toward the Monument to Minin and Pozharsky in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral’s candy-striped domes. Mueller had gone a few steps when he saw the man he knew must be GAMBIT. The time was right, the spot agreed, and the man carried a cloth bag in his right hand. He was dressed like Mueller, so they could pass as doubles—two older men who looked alike on a vector to cross paths by the benches. If all went as planned, they would exchange bags in their brief moment of contact and separate. Only the most vigilant observer would notice that the cloth bags had been switched, Mueller carrying another man’s dinner and GAMBIT carrying camera, film, radio, and rubles. The brush pass would happen in the blink of an eye.