The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel полностью

They stayed below to reduce the profile as the cruiser slowly moved away from the pier, down the harbor, past the sea buoy, and into open water. It was night now, the horizon to the west still a little light, the blackness to the east and south impenetrable. The crew signaled Nate when they had gone twelve miles, outside Putin’s territorial waters, and Piotr opened a bottle of Sliwowica, and they stood close together on the afterdeck and drank under the stars. Agnes contrived to bump shoulders with Nate as Ryszard sang “Hej Sokoly,” “Hey Falcons,” from the Polish-Soviet war. The cruiser rolled in the gentle sea swell.

Phase one finished, thought Nate, two and three coming up. Istanbul. Gable. Dominika.

GEORGIAN BEET SALAD

Put boiled beets, pitted prunes, garlic, walnuts, and sour cream in a food processor and pulse to a grainy paste. Garnish with rough-chopped walnuts and cilantro. Serve with crusty bread.

18

Phase Two

Nate’s primary liaison contact in the TNP was a thirty-year-old captain named Hanefi. He was short and dark, with a single caterpillar eyebrow and a thick black mustache, which would twitch sideways whenever he was agitated. He was learning English and tried to use it at every opportunity. The backs of Hanefi’s hands were something out of Phantom of the Opera—burned during an explosion—and he self-consciously hid the shiny disfigurement by keeping them in his pockets. Nate and Hanefi worked well together, but not before the intense police officer began trusting Nate. Gable had warned him about working with Turks: “No recruitment attempts, no case-officer moves, not even if one of them volunteers. They take their time warming up, but once they’re satisfied you’re not working them, they’re your friends for life. But if they later catch you trying to pick their pockets, they’ll never forgive or forget.”

Nate spent hours with Hanefi, listening to teltaps of Shlykov on the phone with Moscow and various PKK cell leaders—Russian and fractured English were used—discussing the upcoming weapons delivery. For an officer of his rank, Shlykov’s comsec (sense of communications security over the phone) was nonexistent. Each careless call to a separatist would identify five more members, those five, ten more. Each identified location led to the next two, then the next three, all of them in Istanbul’s sooty suburbs: Cebeci, Alibeyköy, Güzeltepe; an apartment in a rust-stained high-rise; a daub-and-wattle shed on a muddy lane; or a sagging farmhouse in a garbage-choked gully. There were so many sites that additional police units were brought in from Ankara to assist in surveilling all the locations.

Then the munitions arrived and a TNP helicopter with a HYENA receiver vectored TNP surveillance teams—they were as good as Nate had ever seen anywhere—to warehouses where the explosives would be stored before dispersal. The patient Turks set up on each location, watching, marking suspects. A coordinated assault plan was finalized. The Turks were impressed with Nate’s beacons; they were a marvel, said Hanefi.

“How did you do it, Nate Bey?” asked Hanefi late one night in a smoke-choked listening post, referring to the crates. Nate smiled.

“If you asked me whether we did it in Russia, I couldn’t tell you,” said Nate. Hanefi put back his head and laughed.

“Aferin, sen Osmanli,” said Hanefi. He meant, Bravo, you’re an Ottoman, a righteous stud.

The night of the multiple raids, Nate checked the QUICKHATCH beacon readouts from a terminal in the consulate. That technology was not releasable to the Turks—they were unaware of the redundant system—but all locations were corroborated 100 percent. Benford called on the secure phone and uncharacteristically praised Nate’s performance both in Sevastopol, and in working with the Turks in Istanbul, which he called “satisfactory.” Benford confirmed that the tech team for Phase Three would arrive the next day. Part of Nate’s plan to frame Shlykov had already been running for a time, a denigration ploy so insidious that a chuckling Gable had said Shlykov was already screwed, only he didn’t know it yet. “Good luck, tonight,” Benford had said, then terminated the secure link.

Nate hung up, remembering that Agnes had also wished him good luck after the WOLVERINEs returned by boat to Varna. He didn’t know it, but Agnes had booked a flight a day later than the rest of the team. Nate likewise was waiting for his flight to Istanbul, and was staying one night at the Central Hotel, a tired Romanian Black Sea resort where the lobby, corridors, and rooms smelled of hot elevator oil. Agnes had sneakily taken an adjoining room, and surprised him by pounding on his door while announcing servitoare, housekeeping!