Ньют Гингрич - Collusion

“Brett Garrett—the American the CIA sent here to escort the traitor Yakov Pavel to the West. He has been to the Kamera laboratory in Svetogorsk.”

Once again, this was information Kazakov already knew, but he remained quiet. Listening.

“General Gromyko just assured me that he will eliminate this witness,” Kalugin said. “He is sending a man.”

“Without Garrett, the Americans will have only hearsay,” Kazakov said.

It was a comment, but it sounded more like a question.

Kalugin used a towel to wipe his sweat-covered face. He was again thinking through his thoughts, wanting to be certain of his plan.

“How many Zasion officers are currently in our embassy in Washington?” he asked. A reference to Russia’s elite Zasion Special Operations Group, whose existence was officially denied by the Kremlin but whose soldiers were used to protect Russian diplomats.

“Five,” Kazakov replied. “Under the command of Fedor Ivanovich Vasiliev.”

“Tell him that he needs to escort General Gromyko back to Moscow immediately. Tell him we do not want to risk having the Americans detain the general for questioning.”

“They wouldn’t dare. Such a move would break all diplomatic protocols.”

Kalugin scoffed. “I suspect that line already has been crossed.” He again wiped the sweat from his face. “The general flew to America on a private plane, not a government aircraft,” he said. “This is a good thing. It was not a government flight. It suggests that he was operating independently. It would be best if that same private airplane returned for the general. To bring him back home.”

He twisted in his seat so that he was now looking directly at Kazakov. “It would be best if that aircraft encountered a mechanical malfunction while returning across the Atlantic.”

“Survivors?”

“None.”

The slug fired into Brett Garrett’s leg had been a hollow-point round, designed to mushroom upon impact to cause maximum damage. His tibia, the second-largest bone in the body, had been fractured and it had taken surgeons more than four hours to perform open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF), a procedure that involved placing a metal rod down the inner aspect of the bone to stabilize and repair the fracture.

He had awoken from anesthesia in recovery but had been given several high doses of morphine, despite his opioid addiction, as well as powerful sleep medication before being moved to a private hospital room. He immediately fell into a deep sleep.

Sally North had instructed an FBI agent to stick close to Garrett and alert her when he was coherent enough to be interviewed. Thomas Jefferson Kim had taken it upon himself to have an IEC security guard stationed outside Garrett’s door, primarily to keep reporters from intruding.

A few minutes after 3:00 a.m., while the FBI agent was flirting with the nurses at a workstation, a lone assassin peered out from an emergency stairway and, seeing no one, stepped onto the rectangular floor. He’d already familiarized himself with the layout: two hallways running north to south holding five rooms each, joined at their ends by matching east-west corridors. The end units housed three patient rooms apiece. The nurses’ workstation was located in a cut-through in the center of the wing, allowing easy access to the longer hallways. Glass offices on each side of the nurses’ station filled the rest of the unit. Normally, lights in these offices allowed the nurses to look directly through them. Because it was night, those lights were switched off, diminishing the view.

Garrett’s room was on the southeast corner. Gromyko’s hired assassin entered the floor at its northwest corner, as far away as possible from Garrett’s room. The assassin ducked into a nearby patient’s room where an elderly woman was sleeping peacefully, attached to monitors tracking her vital signs. He clutched the woman’s throat with his right hand and began to squeeze while covering her mouth with his left palm. Her eyes shot open, and she struggled to grab hold of the stranger strangling her, but she was no match, and within moments, an alarm sounded inside the nurses’ station.

Knowing they would respond via the west hallway running north, the assassin dashed into the east hallway and walked by the now-empty nurses’ base. The FBI agent who’d been chatting there had followed the nurses.

Garrett’s room was easy to identify because it was the only one with a security guard outside it. He was sitting scanning through Facebook on his cell phone.

As Gromyko’s man neared the IEC guard, the killer slipped his right hand up under his light blue jacket.

The guard glanced up and saw him approaching. The killer smiled and in a well-practiced move drew his Ruger .22-caliber pistol fitted with a suppressor, firing twice at close range into the startled guard’s face.

Having disposed of the guard, the assassin slipped into Garrett’s room.

General Gromyko had just drifted to sleep when his bodyguard, Boris Vladimirovich Petrov, gently awakened him.

“Sokolov has sent his plane from his sports team in Texas.”

Gromyko had moved his quarters from the former Soviet embassy to a nineteen-room mansion on Pioneer Point, a scenic peninsula on the eastern Maryland shoreline where the Corsica and Chester Rivers merged. The main house was part of a forty-five-acre compound that contained two swimming pools, a soccer field, multiple tennis courts, and ten bungalows—all purchased in 1972 by the Soviet Union as a Chesapeake Bay “dacha” for its diplomats and visiting Kremlin dignitaries. The house had been owned previously by John J. Raskob, best known as the builder of the Empire State Building. Although the property was not legally sovereign Russian territory, under the Vienna Convention no one could enter it without permission, and any attack on its grounds was the equivalent of an assault on Russia.

Gromyko dressed quickly, tucking a PSM pistol, an easy-to-conceal handgun issued to top Russian diplomats, under his suit jacket.

Petrov was waiting outside his bedroom door.

“Did you do what I asked?” the general said.

Petrov nodded. “It’s ready.”

Four men were waiting for them in the house’s grand foyer. Gromyko recognized Fedor Ivanovich Vasiliev, the Zasion commander in charge.

“Why are you here?” Gromyko asked.

“Moscow ordered us to escort you to your airplane in case the Americans attempt to detain you,” Fedor replied.

“Moscow? Who in Moscow?”

“I received a direct order from your deputy Nikolai Kazakov.”

The four soldiers split into pairs. Two fell in next to Gromyko, the other two next to Petrov. They were greeted outside by two drivers standing next to twin black Mercedes-Benz S Class sedans that had been lightly armored.

“General,” Fedor said, “it would be better if Mr. Petrov rode in the second vehicle so two of us can ride comfortably with you.”

“Tell me,” General Gromyko said, “who does Kazakov report to?”

“Why, he reports to you, General.”

“Then he has no authority over me, does he?” Gromyko replied. “Unless you wish to find yourself stripped of your duties, you need to acknowledge my authority. I decide who sits where and my bodyguard will travel next to me.”

Without waiting for an answer, Gromyko and Petrov both took seats in the backseat of the first Mercedes.

“I meant no disrespect, General,” Fedor said, slipping into the front passenger seat. “I simply thought it safer if two of us were in this car with you.”

“Now you have offended Petrov,” Gromyko chuckled. “Do you think he cannot keep me safe?”

The three other Zasion soldiers rode in the second Mercedes. The two-car motorcade exited the mansion’s circular driveway, traveling along Corsica Neck Road toward the property’s gated exit. Two of the compound’s bungalows were now on the left side of the moving vehicles. To the right of the two-way road was an undeveloped plot covered with Atlantic white cedars and underbrush. It was a buffer to the Chester River.