Paul Vidich - The Mercenary

It was a long meeting. Mueller was unable to answer many specific questions, and he was frustrated when the same question was asked again and again. “Everyone in this room has top security clearance,” he said, “but this operation is not over. Our asset is still inside the Soviet Union. Our best people are at risk.”

“What can you tell us, George?” the senator asked, leaning forward and looking over the top of his reading glasses. “The room isn’t bugged.” The senator put his ear onto the table in an exaggerated show of levity. “At least I don’t think it is.”

“Sir,” Mueller said. “This is a very delicate situation. Our people are operating in a hostile country. It’s a dangerous operation—we have never exfiltrated a senior Soviet intelligence officer from Moscow.”

“How many people?”

“It’s one man.”

“One man? Who are you relying on for this billion-dollar coup? I don’t need his name. I’m sure it’s classified.” The senator looked at Mueller. “Do you trust him?”

Mueller looked up. “He’ll get the job done.”

“A billion-dollar spy.” The senator smiled. “Let’s hope he is as good as you think he is. I can’t imagine one man doing all this, except, maybe, if he were Errol Flynn or John Wayne. That’s why I’m sitting here and he’s out there.”

The senator sipped his coffee, but it had gone cold, and he set the cup on its saucer, displeased. He looked at the gloomy men around the table. “I’m the only one asking questions.”

“You’re doing a fine job, Senator,” the National Security Advisor said.

“Okay. I’m done,” the senator said. To Mueller, “Thank you. Very helpful. Good to know we’ll save a billion dollars.”

MUELLER SAT BESIDE the DCI in the back of his black Lincoln Town Car, sharing a ride back to Langley. It was not yet 9:00 A.M., and they moved quickly in the opposite direction of the morning commuter traffic coming into downtown Washington.

The DCI had posed a question. Mueller took his eyes off the cars passing on the opposite side of Key Bridge. They had been quiet for several minutes after entering the limousine. Mueller had accepted the DCI’s assurance that he’d done a good job, but Mueller knew that the offer of assurance itself meant that he’d done poorly. This was what had always bothered him about Washington—endless bureaucracy, sanctimonious grandstanding, smug dismissals of the Agency’s dangerous work, and everyone was expert at putting lipstick gloss on ugly failures.

Mueller was angry. He looked directly at the DCI. “Those men have no idea of the risks involved. They ask pious questions, make slanderous criticisms, and expect easy answers. They see everything through the lens of expedient politics.” Mueller waved his hand indignantly. “We achieve what we can with the resources we’ve got. That’s all, goddamnit.”

The DCI nodded. “I agree, and I sympathize. When I’m gone from this job, you’ll still have to work with them.” He turned to Mueller. “Do you trust Garin?”

“Within limits.”

“How did we end up with him?”

“He was there before. He knows the terrain. We didn’t have options.”

“Where is he now?”

There was a long silence. “He went dark. We know that Moscow Station was compromised, and Counterintelligence is evaluating the damage.”

The DCI’s face was fatigued. “Where is he?”

Mueller had carefully filed Garin’s dispatches, and he knew that things were going off the rails. He could read worry in the vague statements that consciously avoided the obvious dangers, and then the dispatches had suddenly stopped.

“We don’t know. He’ll show up.” Mueller looked out the car’s window at the traffic. He spoke quietly, almost to himself. “He’s resourceful.”

“What’s next?”

“I fly to Prague and drive to the border. We have a car fitted with a compartment to hide GAMBIT. The driver will pick up the family at the Uzhgorod train station. I will be at the Czech border with a team to meet the car.”

“Has he got a chance?”

Mueller’s eyes settled on the daffodils that had come up in a riot of yellow in the spring weather. Does he have a chance? Mueller clenched and unclenched his fist, rubbing his knuckles as he considered the unthinkable. When things started to go wrong, they went very wrong. Events in Moscow had caught the Agency unprepared. Mueller had not known the DCI long, but he had made his judgment quickly—a Washington insider who hopped between senior appointments like a man stepping on hot coals: groomed hair, polished wingtips, perfectly knotted tie, double-breasted suit, and an American flag lapel pin that gave him the gloss of patriotism. He had the relaxed health and bronzed tan of a man who spent weekends socializing on the golf course. He had never known the stress of managing men whose covert work put their lives at risk. He was a non-intelligence professional in charge of intelligence, a man eager for a success that he could share with the Oval Office, and intolerant of failure.

He thought of Aleksander Garin somewhere in Moscow—hiding, frightened, on the run. Even the best spies lived with fear. Would he succeed? Would he become another casualty in a Cold War skirmish? Would he try to save himself?

“Well?” the DCI asked.

“He has a chance.”

“A good chance?”

Mueller turned away from the daffodils and met the DCI’s gaze. “He has a chance. But he’s just one ordinary man. Maybe he believes in what he is doing, but I suspect he doesn’t.” His eyes narrowed. “The men in that conference room have no idea the risk we are taking.”

GARIN WAS UNSHACKLED, AND HE tried to stand. There was a moment when he thought he would make it, but his numb legs had lost feeling, and he fell when he tried to obey the shouted command. Lieutenant Colonel Talinov let him lie on the floor and watched him with a belligerent expression. Garin massaged his muscles to bring his legs back to life.

Talinov nodded at the two guards. “Lift him. Walk him around. I need him awake. Wash his face. Get the blood off.” He looked at Garin. “Get up!” he shouted.

Garin waved off the guards’ offer of help, and he pushed himself to his knees, using the wall for support. He rose to his full height and stood taller than the others, but wobbly. His shirt was undone at the neck, showing his chest, and he went to button it, but he realized the holes were torn. He smoothed his sleeve and patted his trousers, vaguely aware of his own smells. His socks were across the room, where someone had taken care to stuff them in his shoes. His bare feet were cold on the concrete, and he requested permission to cross the room. He was trembling.

“Clean up,” the younger guard said, handing him a moist, soiled towel and a clean shirt. “Get dressed. You’re leaving.”

“Where?”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

THE COURTROOM WAS a dimly lit, high-ceilinged space in a grim Russian baroque building converted into a hall of justice. Fluorescent panels hung on long wires from a dark ceiling and made the courtroom feel cold, and while it was much larger than his cell, the curtained windows and coning light produced a feeling of claustrophobia in Garin when he entered. The prisoner’s dock and an administrative table were illuminated, but beyond the perimeter of light, the room was dim. He saw a dozen shadowed faces. He was aware of an echo in the tall space and whispers across the room were audible, as was the shuffling of paper among the two lawyers who sat at a gray desk facing the chairman of the proceeding, a heavyset, middle-aged woman who wore an obvious wig and an olive-green uniform with a white collar. Her deputy was on her right, at the squat administrative table in the front of the courtroom, and two military assessors were on her left. Garin shook off the guards’ grip and flexed his wrists. Handcuffs and ankle shackles had been removed before he entered.