David Duffy - Last to Fold

“I haven’t signed on to that platform yet, and I didn’t mean to start an argument. I was asking… You take a lot of chances. You’ve already paid a big price. What are you in this for? Love, honor, duty, revenge, money—what?”

He picked up his glass, saw it was empty, looked at the bottle, and put the glass back on the counter. “Not money. This suit is the most expensive thing I own. The rest—maybe some of all of the above. If we both live long enough to get to know each other better, I’ll tell you the story. That might explain things. I’d like to hear yours, too. That could explain more.”

The bitterness was gone and the relaxed grin back.

“Play the card,” I said, “if you’re still game.”

He paused, considering one more time, but not for long. “What I’m about to tell you only four people know. Used to be a few more, but the Cheka has been chipping away at our ranks, two so far this year. You’ll be on the list.”

“You’re repeating yourself. Tell the story.”

“Fact number one—there was another corpse in the Valdai shelter with Anatoly Kosokov. Boris Gorbenko, an FSB colonel who was the point man on the 1999 apartment bombings. Fact number two—the bombings were an FSB operation from start to finish. Fact number three—Kosokov and Rosnobank financed them.”

Petrovin paused to pour some more vodka while I processed what he was telling me. Kosokov’s bank was a Cheka financing vehicle. The Cheka staged multiple bombings that killed three hundred people and pinned them on Chechen terrorists. There had been allegations at the time, but there almost always were, and I hadn’t paid them much attention. Now Petrovin was telling me the allegations were true. Kosokov financed the operation, and the Cheka started the second Chechen war. It should’ve sounded fantastic. Except it didn’t.

“You say these are facts. You have proof?” I said.

“We have Gorbenko—on videotape and a signed affidavit. You’d call it a confession. He was a weak man. We’d had our eye on him—he was one of the Cheka’s go-betweens with the Chechens. We wondered which side of the street he was playing. After the Moscow bombings we brought him in and sweated him, told him we’d let both the Cheka and the Chechens know he’d sold the other out. He turned, laid out everything, how he’d arranged for Gochiyaev to rent the storage spaces in the buildings, acquired the RDX explosive from Perm, how he directed Kosokov where and when to move money. He knew every supplier, every warehouse.”

“He could’ve told you what he thought you wanted to hear.”

Petrovin shook his head. “Remember the bomb that didn’t go off, in Ryazan? Putin was busy praising everyone involved for their vigilance, then two FSB agents were arrested for setting the explosives, and Patrushev tried to make that ridiculous claim about a training exercise?”

I nodded. Not the Cheka’s finest moment.

“Gorbenko tipped us to Ryazan, and we called the local police. He not only knew the location of the explosives and the time of detonation, he knew the names of the FSB operatives. We held those back. The local cops nailed them on their own, and they were exactly who Gorbenko said they’d be.”

“Why didn’t this come out at the time?”

“You know part of the answer. The Cheka slammed the lid on. Every attempt at the truth was corrupted. They wanted their war with Chechnya, they got it. They wanted Putin to replace Yeltsin. They got that, too.” His voice grew bitter again.

“And the other part?”

“We overreached. We believed Gorbenko, but we also knew he’d say anything to save his sorry skin, as you just observed. The Cheka was moving fast. If we were going to take them down, we needed everything ironclad. We sent Gorbenko to bring in Kosokov and the Rosnobank records.”

“Hold on a minute. This was 1999. If you don’t mind my saying so, you must have been a teenager.”

“True. I joined the CPS in 2004. Worked closely with a man named Chmil. He ran Gorbenko. He was murdered last year. Gunned down in his car at a stoplight. That’s why I said what I said earlier.”

“And Chmil told you all this, about Gorbenko?”

“He was still trying to build a case. I helped. And I’ve read the file. It’s closely guarded, even within CPS.”

I believed him. I also had the feeling their security wasn’t as good as they needed it to be, and Petrovin knew it, too. He wasn’t just playing with dynamite. He was tiptoeing through the entire Russian nuclear arsenal. His story was a conspiracy theorist’s dream come true. It went all the way to the top of the Kremlin. The apartment bombings and the second Chechen war put Putin in power. But if that was the case…

“Why hasn’t Ivanov run with it?”

“Patience. You’ll see.”

“All right. Go on.”

“Gorbenko arranged a meeting with Kosokov at his dacha in the Valdai Hills. This was about two weeks after Ryazan, October sixth, rumors were flying all over. Also turned out to be the day that Rosnobank burned. Chmil figured Kosokov wouldn’t show, but he did. Gorbenko was wearing a wire, connected to a recording chip taped to his back. We didn’t want to risk any of our people in the neighborhood. Gorbenko was supposed to convince Kosokov to cooperate with us, or at least get him to own up that he’d been the Cheka’s banker for years and specifically for this operation. We promised what we could—money, a new identity in a new country. Chmil didn’t believe it would be enough. He was right. Would you like to hear what happened?”

“You have the recording?”

“We got lucky. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.”

Petrovin retrieved a laptop from his bag. He clicked some keys. Faint voices emerged from the little speakers, talking in Russian.

“That’s Gorbenko, speaking first,” he said.

“You’ll never make it, you know. They’ll have men at every border crossing.”

“Let me worry about making it. If the Cheka’s as smart as everyone says it is, we’d all still be working for the Party.”

“Don’t be a fool, Anatoly Andreivich. Look what they did to your bank. They’re shutting everything down, erasing all the tracks, eliminating all the links. You’re a very big link. You and I, we’re the only two who could expose everything.”

“I’m counting on that fact to keep me alive. You made your deal, Boris. You’re on your own with it. I’ll take my chances by myself.”

“You’re crazy! The CPS can provide protection. We can bring the Cheka down. Yeltsin will have no choice but to purge the entire organization when people see what they’ve done. It’s their one big weakness. No one will have difficulty believing they murdered innocent Russians to pursue their own ends. Especially once you and I lay out the evidence. Like the Katyn massacre. There’ll be national outrage.”

“National outrage? Russia today? Hah! Don’t make me laugh. Neither of us will live to see it, in any event. Like I said, you made your deal. Good luck to you. I’m taking my evidence with me. My life insurance policy.”

The crash of a door. A new, female voice. “Tolik, I came as soon as I could. What the hell is going on? What are you doing here? Oh… Who the hell are you?”

Gorbenko said, “No names. Better that way. Call me Leo. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

I recognized her voice, but I still asked, “Who’s that?”

He stopped the recording. “Kosokov’s mistress. Your friend Barsukov’s wife, Polina Barsukova. There’s more. Remember, Gorbenko—Leo—is in the kitchen now. We think some time has passed. But here she comes.” He tapped a key.