Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

But that hadn’t happened.

General Vladimir Sirinov’s treason had been Murov’s salvation. Vladimir Vladimirovich had sent for Murov the day after he returned to Moscow, greeted him like an old friend—which in fact he was—and told him that he was going to “have to pick up the pieces and get what has to be done finally done.”

Murov was appointed to replace Sirinov as first director of the SVR, and his promotion to general came through the day he actually moved into Sirinov’s old office.

Vladimir Vladimirovich didn’t have to tell him specifically what he wanted; Murov knew. Vladimir Vladimirovich wanted former SVR Polkovnik Dmitri Berezovsky; his sister, former SVR Podpolkovnik Svetlana Alekseeva, and Lieutenant Colonel Carlos G. Castillo, USA, Retired, in one of the rooms in the basement of the building on Lubyanka Square. He would be barely satisfied to hear they were dead, even if they were disposed of with great imagination—for example, skinned alive and then roasted while hanging head down over a small fire.

Vladimir Vladimirovich wanted them alive.

Murov didn’t think getting all three in the bag was going to be that difficult. He thought the negatives involved were outweighed by the positives.

The negatives were that none of the three were naïve about the SVR. They knew its capabilities and would be prepared for them. The “extended families”—Aleksandr Pevsner and Nicolai Tarasov in the case of Berezovsky and Alekseeva; Castillo’s former associates in the American intelligence community—would have to be dealt with, of course. That wouldn’t be easy. Both Pevsner and Tarasov were former colonels in the KGB, which had evolved into the SVR. Pevsner had what amounted not only to a private army but a private army of former KGB people and Spetsnaz officers and soldiers of unquestioned loyalty to him.

Murov not only had no one inside Pevsner’s estate in Bariloche, his home outside Buenos Aires, or even in the Grand Cozumel Beach & Golf Resort in Mexico, or for that matter on any of the vessels of his fleet of cruise ships, he had little hope of getting someone inside Pevsner’s organization. All attempts to get people inside, which dated from the earliest days, had resulted in dead operatives.

Only once, when a former FBI agent in Pevsner’s employ had been turned by the offer of a great deal of money, had there been even a suggestion of success in that area. Pevsner’s assassination had been set up but had failed when the American, Castillo, got wind of it and ambushed the ambushers. The former FBI agent had been slowly beaten to death, possibly by Aleksandr Pevsner himself, in the Conrad, a gambling resort in Punta del Este, Uruguay.

Getting at any of them when they were traveling was made next to impossible, as they traveled only by aircraft owned by Pevsner or Tarasov. Or, in the case o

f Castillo, on aircraft he owned or were owned by Panamanian Executive Aircraft, which he controlled, the crews of which were all former members of the USAF Special Operations Command—“Air Commandos”—or the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

On the other hand, there were some things that almost certainly were going to make things easier. The most significant of these was the incredible stupidity of Lieutenant Colonel Castillo. He fancied himself to be in love with former SVR Podpolkovnik Alekseeva.

When he’d first heard that, Murov had had a hard time believing it. Getting emotionally involved with someone with whom one was professionally involved was something an intelligence officer—and giving the devil his due, Colonel Castillo was an extraordinarily good intelligence officer—simply did not do.

But it was true. The fool actually wanted to marry her. The proof was there. The Widow Alekseeva had gone to the head of the Orthodox Church Outside Russia and asked for permission to marry. He in turn had gone to the Patriarch of Moscow. Murov had people there, and Murov had learned of it immediately.

Very conscious that he himself had an emotional, as well as a professional, interest in the players involved—he had known Svetlana and Dmitri Berezovsky since childhood; had in fact had a schoolboy’s crush on Svetlana when he was fourteen, and had been a guest at her wedding when she married Evgeny Alekseev, another childhood friend—Murov had proceeded very cautiously.

He had informed His Beatitude that the circumstances of the death of Evgeny Alekseev—which, of course, had made Svetlana the Widow Alekseeva and freed her to marry—were suspicious. That put the marriage on hold.

The bodies of Lavrenti Tarasov and Evgeny Alekseev had been found near the airport in Buenos Aires. Murov didn’t know the facts. It was possible that they had been killed by the Argentine policeman Liam Duffy as revenge for the failed attempt to assassinate him and his family. Duffy was known to have terminated on the spot individuals he apprehended moving drugs through Argentina. That interference with the SVR operation that funded many operations in South America had been the reason Vladimir Vladimirovich had ordered his termination.

It was also possible that Svetlana or her brother had been involved in the death of her husband. They both knew that the only way Evgeny could have redeemed his own SVR career after her defection was to find and terminate her. The unwritten rule was that if an SVR officer could not control his own wife, how could he control others? So when he had appeared in Argentina, her brother had decided—or she had, or they had—that Evgeny had to go.

That was credible, but Murov thought the most likely scenario was that Colonel Castillo had taken out Evgeny. Doing so would not only have protected Svetlana from Evgeny but make her eligible as a widow to marry him in the church.

Whatever the actuality, Murov’s whispered word in the ear of His Beatitude had resulted in a report from Murov’s people at the wonderfully named Aeropuerto Internacional Teniente Luis Candelaria in Bariloche that His Eminence Archbishop Valentin, the head of ROCOR, and his deputy, the Archimandrite Boris, had flown in there, nonstop from Chicago, in a Gulfstream V aircraft belonging to Chilean Sea Foods, which Murov knew was yet another business formed by Aleksandr Pevsner from the profits of hiding the SVR’s money.

Murov believed that His Eminence would decide there was nothing to the rumors that Svetlana had been involved in the termination of her husband, and the marriage could take place. For one thing, Aleksandr Pevsner’s generosity to ROCOR was well known. For another, Colonel Castillo could credibly say that he had never had the privilege of the acquaintance of his fiancée’s late husband. And if nothing else worked, Dmitri Berezovsky would confess that he had taken out Evgeny to protect his little sister.

All of these factors came together to convince General Murov that his best opportunity to deal with the problem was during the wedding.

It would not be easy, of course. He could not personally go to Bariloche, running the risk of being seen by any of the players, all of whom knew him.

And the team would have to be able to blend, so to speak, into the woodwork, which meant Spanish-speaking terminators would be needed. There were people available in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, but Liam Duffy would know who they were and have an eye on them.

That left Cuba and Venezuela. The successor to Hugo Chávez, whom Murov thought of privately as something of a joke, would be more than willing to do what he could for the SVR, but his people were, compared to the Cuban Dirección General de Inteligencia, bumbling amateurs.

Furthermore, earlier on Colonel Castillo had taken out Major Alejandro Vincenzo of the DGI in Uruguay. That was something the Cubans, in particular Fidel’s little brother, Raúl—who before he took over from Fidel had run the DGI—had never forgotten and would love to avenge.

General Murov picked up his telephone and ordered that five seats on the next Aeroflot flight to Havana be reserved for him and his security detail.

He hung up and then picked up the telephone again.

“When you pack me for the Havana trip,” he ordered, “put a case of Kubanskaya with my luggage.”

Not only was Kubanskaya one of the better Russian vodkas—and ol’ Raúl really liked a taste a couple times a day—but he liked to let visiting American progressives read the label and get the idea it was made right there in Cuba.