The books had them down as surreptitious-entry techs, but it was less formal than that: these men had jimmied, shimmied, and picked their way into embassies, boudoirs, code rooms, and missile bunkers around the world. They called themselves “rum dubbers” or steel-bolt hackers; their Harley-Davidson and Jack Daniel’s belt buckles had squeezed past laths and joists, under electrified wire, around cable runs, over roof slates covered in snow. Older now, in their fifties and sixties, they traveled less. A new breed—cuticle chewers with laptops—was needed to get past infrared cameras and biometric electronic locks. And the Golden Age of Surreptitious Entry had passed. No modern ops manager in the intelligence community today wanted to authorize a delicate physical-entry operation with career-ending risk written all over it.
But there were exceptions. In Shlykov’s case, the object of this clambake was not to emplace microphones or cameras, nor was it to open safes and quick-copy classified materials with a roll-over camera. Rather, the object of this surreptitious entry was to leave things behind.
Divide ground lamb and beef into thirds. Sauté two-thirds of the ground lamb and beef with chopped onion until meat is cooked and onions are soft. Mix with remaining one-third raw meat, egg, parsley, salt, and pepper. Knead mixture to incorporate and refrigerate until firm. Form thick finger-sized
19
Checkmate
Nate and the three technical officers stood in the darkened hallway in front of Shlykov’s apartment. The old concierge finally had left her post for the evening and the CIA men had silently walked up four flights of stairs, each stepping in the slipstream of the others’ tension. Last in line, Nate saw that even though the staircase was well-washed marble, the good ol’ boys by habit walked on the outside of the treads to avoid squeaks; each step likewise was taken supinating on the outside of their cowboy-boot soles, eliminating the sound of footfalls in the stairwell.
This had all been Nate’s plan, the ghost transmissions, the signals, the surveillance. For the final act he had blithely suggested an entry to Shlykov’s Beyoǧlu apartment. But Nate had never before gone in with a veteran surreptitious-entry team; he was nervous as the whole show revolved around this break-in. Thank Christ these old boys were unflappable. The lead tech, a fifty-five-year-old peckerwood from Alabama named Gaylord, knelt in front of Shlykov’s door. He had a potbelly and knuckly hands; his white hair was wavy. His teammates had told Nate that he could pick any lock. Gaylord looked at the lock, turned to the others, and whispered “We got a Russian, in an apartment in Turkey, and the door’s got a Yale lock.” Nate was unsure whether the discovery of a Yale lock in Turkey was in effect good or bad, but concluded it must be good. With bird-like fingers on those beefsteak hands, Gaylord inserted a brass bump key into the keyway, feeling the pins through the tips of his fingers. He seated the key firmly, applied slight pressure on the cylinder, and sharply rapped the bow of the key with the rubber handle of a screwdriver. The pins jumped with the shock transmitted through the bump key, the cylinder rotated, and they were in. No emotion out of any of them; they just straightened and quietly entered the darkened apartment.
Shlykov’s apartment smelled neutral, like an intensive-care unit, hot and sanitized. It was neither messy nor neat; he didn’t have many possessions. The great repositories of a man’s secrets—the bedside table drawers—were empty: no books; no porn; no pics, empty. The second window into a man’s life, the fridge: no beer; no veg; no spice; no ice. The box was cold and sour. Most of all, Nate could not identify in the apartment where Shlykov’s personal spot was. No armchair with reading lamp; no ass-worn couch in front of the television; no canvas chair on the grimy little balcony. Did this guy hang by his heels from the closet rod until dusk?
