Paul Vidich - The Mercenary

Garin kept his thoughts to himself as the others debated the idea, tested it, considered its implications, its dangers, and its possibilities. Mueller was asked what he thought.

“Let’s assume the worst,” he said. “They suspect you. Then, by our own rules, we should play this out. If surveillance has seen you, keep going and stay with your cover. That’s the rule.”

Mueller queried the group: Rositske?… Garin?… Ronnie?… Garin?

“He’s thinking,” Ronnie said.

“I don’t like it.”

Rositske’s brusque voice cut off the conversation. “I want to speak with George alone.”

The room emptied. It was late. The meeting had been convened at an hour when it was safe to bring Garin to the off-limits seventh floor.

Rositske moved closer to the speakerphone. “I’m alone.”

“What’s on your mind?” Mueller asked.

“I didn’t like him when he showed up, and I have seen nothing to make me comfortable. He is not one of us. Who knows where his loyalties sit. Do you trust him?”

“Up to a point,” Mueller said. “He has issues with us, but he has contempt for them. It doesn’t matter. We don’t have a choice. GAMBIT requested him.”

“How do you know he’s stopped working for the KGB? I got the file. Jesus fucking Christ. He was never cleared. There were questions. Some people thought he was responsible for the loss of General Zyuganov.”

“It was never proved.”

“He was forced out.”

“He quit.”

“He had to leave. There were questions and no good answers. He took what he was offered.”

“What do you suggest?” Mueller grunted. “Think about it. GAMBIT is out there. He requested Garin. If we remove Garin, who would you slot in?” There was a beat of silence. “We are where we are.” He added, “Send Garin back in. I want to speak with him. Alone.”

Garin stepped into the Bubble and moved toward the speakerphone’s red light. He glanced out into the hallway at the two people staring at him. He sat down and placed one hand on the other, and his voice, when he spoke, was matter-of-fact.

“George, you want to speak with me?”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes, except for the ones standing outside the Bubble staring at me with their lime-shriveled, pucker-faced expressions. What did Rositske want?”

“He doesn’t trust you.”

“I don’t trust him. You didn’t say what you thought of the plan.”

“I said I didn’t like it. Have you been recognized for the work you did here six years ago?”

“No one knows about that.”

“GAMBIT knows. Talinov knows. Their side knows. Are you being targeted?”

Garin lifted his eyes to the people in the hallway, and he felt anger stir and with it a desire for a drink.

“What happened with General Zyuganov?” Mueller asked.

“We made a mistake.”

“You made a mistake.”

“A mistake was made,” Garin shot back. “They knew he was meeting me at the boat in Vyborg.”

“Have you been compromised?”

“Here?”

“Yes. Do they know you’re back?”

“No one has connected me. But how would I know? Wouldn’t it be stupid of them to say, ‘Oh, Alek, welcome back’?”

“Where is their interest coming from?”

“Who the fuck knows? George, don’t go there. It’s a tunnel without light. It was six years ago. My body was never found. They were led to believe that I was at the bottom of the Baltic. Or dead on the tundra.”

“What happened that night?”

“Read the file.”

“I want to hear it from you.”

Garin knew how his version of the incident differed from the conclusions of the official inquiry. He had no need to defend himself. Their judgment had been made and punishment rendered, his reputation tarnished, his life altered. “How much time do you have?” he asked.

“Go ahead.”

Garin delved into the part of his memory that contained the willfully forgotten. “It was a Friday,” he began. He described how General Zyuganov had made his way to Vyborg, near the Finnish border, with a plan to meet a small fishing trawler that would make its way to the Finnish coast under the cover of night. The plan required heavy fog, so the exact date of the exfiltration was not fixed. Then the right conditions arrived and the boat docked in the harbor by the old castle. The trip was sixty kilometers and would take eight or nine hours in normal seas. The plan had been to reach a specific drop-off on the coast by dawn, where the CIA pickup team waited. Garin paused. “Tell me if you already know this.”

“Go ahead.”

Garin shook his head at a private thought. “So,” he went on, “maybe this is the part that you haven’t heard. The inquiry was eager to assign blame, and no one wanted to admit it was a bad plan. The idea that a senior KGB officer would make his way alone to Vyborg without raising suspicions in Moscow Center. Langley was convinced of the plan, and no one wanted to hear that it was radically flawed. One man. Visible. Recognizable. Traveling with false documents by Aeroflot. Brilliantly stupid. But no one wanted to listen, so we went forward.”

Garin paused. “Or maybe this is the part you don’t know. It was spring and cold fronts were unpredictable, but frequent dense fogs covered the coastline when cool air followed a warm day. Zyuganov needed a safe place to hide in Vyborg until the weather turned and made the crossing safe from Soviet shore patrols. Zyuganov knew he had to hide until conditions were right, but being unfamiliar with Vyborg and unwilling to risk going to a hotel where he might attract suspicion, he had someone arrange a hiding place. He had help from a trusted person. A Russian. That’s what I heard. Another man, or maybe a woman, and I heard both versions of the story afterward. One version had the woman being a girlfriend, but that was the fevered imagination of a man who knew less than I knew, and he was happy to embellish his story. It had to be another KGB officer. That’s what I believe. Someone Zyuganov trusted, who had access to false documents—or someone whose trust he bought.”

Garin stared at the blinking red light. “He never made it to the boat. A dense fog was moving into the harbor, and the time to leave was approaching. The trawler’s captain was the first to hear footsteps on the cobblestones, and then I heard a man moving quickly across the dark plaza, staying in the shadows of buildings. A second man emerged from a parked car, and a third followed. There was a brief chase, but then the square filled with cars. Bright headlights revealed Zyuganov, and his fate was sealed. He was brought to his knees by a blow to his head.

“A stranger can disappear for a few days even in a small town like Vyborg, but the KGB knew where to wait. I could hear that from the boat. Five Volgas converged at the same time in a coordinated operation. He wasn’t betrayed by a suspicious neighbor or a curious hotel clerk. They were waiting for him.

“The fog was rolling in, but the cars’ beams were bright and the square was not far away. I could see some of what was happening, and what I didn’t see, I heard. Zyuganov was beaten. They were interrogating him. The operation was blown, and we had very little time before the KGB found the boat. We had paid the captain well, but he refused to leave his trawler, and he paid dearly for his mistake. I left on foot and avoided roadblocks over several days as I made my way to the Finnish border. The KGB was embarrassed by the whole episode. They invented stories about my death that excused the sloppiness that allowed me to escape. In one version, I tried to swim away and drowned in the frigid water. I prefer the version that had me walking across the rocky terrain camouflaged with branches and leaves, carrying a stinking, dead possum to throw off their tracking dogs. The terrain was rough, my body was never found, and they believed I was dead.