Echo Platoon (22 page)

But I guess it worked, because the next thing I knew, he was hinting that there could be big bucks in it for me if I was to share some of the “wisdom,” as he put it, I was gaining during my visit here, with him. He was careful never to mention the words
intelligence,
or
spying,
or anything like that. In fact, I gotta tell you that he was smooth, and practiced, and entirely professional. That’s what made him so fucking dangerous.

Well, friends, I listened to him as he piled the manure higher and higher. And it was indeed all horse puckey. Every bit of it.

Now, I wasn’t going to let on that I knew about his ties to all those crime organizations. Or that I suspected he was using his NGO to launder money. Or that I thought he was as dirty as any double-dealing, pond-scum-sucking sphincter I’d come across in a long, long time. I also knew that it was time for me to give him the sort of wake-up call that would rattle his teacup. But I had to do it carefully. If I didn’t play the part right, he’d take me seriously. And I didn’t want him doing that. Not yet. Not until I’d had the opportunity to take a real close look at his operation—and his office. Not until I had the goods on him, put him in the crosshairs, and was s-q-u-e-e-z-i-n-g the trigger.

“That’s all very interesting, Sirzhik,” I said. “But in point of fact, people like you can’t do fuck-all.”

He looked at me as if I was crazy. “Now, Captain—”

I didn’t allow him to continue but stepped in, took him by the lapels, and let him see into the depths of my WARRIOR’s soul by giving him my War Face, up close and personal. “Y’see . . . Sirzhik,” I said, “let’s take a fucking NGO like your foundation. Oh, you have economic clout. And you know a bunch of people who can pull strings. But that’s it. You can’t make policy, because you don’t have a military to back it up.” I paused. “You got a few goons here, a few goons there, but they don’t mean shit. Now me? I’m here as a fucking projection of America’s strength and power.” I lifted his feet clear off the deck and shook him like a shaman’s rattle. “See what I’m talking about,
Sirzhik?”
I asked, shaking him some more.
“That’s
fucking power.”

He tried to wriggle away, but I held him close to me. I knew he spoke French, so I told him, “Jap bed, scumbag.”

He looked at me as if I were crazy.
“What?”

“
Fut-on
. Get fucked, asshole.” I shook him some more. “Lemme put that in Russkie.
Yob tvoy mat
—fuck you.” He struggled, his feet tap-tap-tapping the floor as I held him. But I wasn’t about to let him go. No way.

Then I gave him the Crazy Roguish Biker Gangster Jesse Ventura Look—the one where I cross my eyes and spew saliva when I speak. “They sent me here because I’m a fucking killer, Sirzhik.”

He tried to pull back, because he was getting wet. Oops. He couldn’t move. Now it was time to set the hook. He knew I was dangerous. His body language told me that. But now he had to think I was a complete fool, so he’d leave me alone and let me do my job. I let his feet touch the floor, but I kept hold of his tux. “Now what really makes me mad is your saying I have a drinking problem. I don’t know where you heard it, but it ain’t fuckin’ true. Got that?”

His head bobbed up and down.

“Good. Because lemme tell you, the next time you talk about my fucking drinking problem, Sirzhik, which is a problem I DON’T FUCKING HAVE AND NEVER FUCKING DID, I’m gonna come visit you and disassemble you, piece by fucking piece.”

I started to let him go, and then, as if I’d just remembered something else to say, I grabbed him and pulled him even closer. “Because nobody tells me I have a fucking drinking problem. Nobody.” I squinted at him to make sure he was receiving my message loud and clear. “Got that, Sirzhik?”

From the look on his face, he had indeed Got It. He realized that I was an alcoholic in full denial; that I couldn’t handle being confronted with my problems; and that when I was confronted, I became belligerent and violent. And from the pace of his pulse, which I could feel through his tux, he didn’t like having Got It one fucking bit.

Then it was my turn to take him by the back of his arm. Except I applied some real Roguish pressure. Enough to make him wince.

“So, now that we’ve had our little tête-à-tête, maybe we should go back and join the ladies.” I elbowed him in the ribs hard enough to make the cartilage crack. “Mine’s a real piece of ass, ain’t she? And hey, yours ain’t so bad for a broad without tits. Maybe we switch, huh?”

His eyes went all crazy on me. He struggled in my grip, but there was no way he could escape my grasp. Not until I decided to let him go. “And Steve—”

He looked over at me, his face contorted in pain. “No sweet speeches about me tonight, okay? I kind of like my privacy.”

His expression told me I didn’t have to worry about that one iota. Good. I opened the door with my left hand, and walked him through. His feet were barely touching the floor. We rejoined the receiving line, The missus gave him a nasty glance for deserting her. But Sirzhik wasn’t looking at her. He was searching the crowd.

I held him close. “Thanks for the conversation,
baklan,”
I stage-whispered, and then I licked his ear in the Hells Angels style just for emphasis.

He yanked himself away from me, turned, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, and rubbed his ear. He
saw that people were staring at the two of us, and self-consciously he stuck the hankie back in his pocket. But he was out of my clutches, and obviously feeling safer now.

He backed toward a pair of his security guards and stood between ’em. “Our conversation was . . . very instructive.” He looked at me with undisguised repugnance. But he was every inch The Diplomat he considered himself, because he managed to clench his teeth and say, “Please, go and enjoy yourself, Captain.” He put another three feet of space between us. “I expect,” he said through clenched teeth, “that we will have a chance to deal with one another in a . . . less public venue in the near future.”

Steve Sarkesian paused, and cocked his head like a hunting falcon who’s just noticed raw meat nearby. “I have just decided to remain in Baku for the foreseeable future,” he said to no one in particular. His violet eyes caught the light from a chandelier and flickered brilliantly. “There is so much work to do here.”

“You got that right, Sirzhik—that’s what I always say: ‘So many assholes to kill, so little time.’ Right, huh?”

He started to give me that kaleidoscopic look again. But I moved on, giving Mrs. Sirzhik a Roguish leer as I passed.

Ashley took my elbow and steered me toward the bar. “What was that all about?”

“Mind games,” I said. “I’m up one set to nil.” I looked across the mansion-size blue-on-red Azeri beneath my feet, saw a familiar figure, and waved. “Yo, Avi—”

The little Israeli waved back. He was in what passes in Israel for a dress uniform, although it’s a lot
less “dress” than most Park Avenue doormen wear on a regular basis. But that’s always been the case with the Israelis. They prefer killing to cocktail parties, and their uniform reflects that fact.

But more important than Avi, there was Mikki, his wife. She stands six inches taller than Avi—and she’s a lot better looking, too.

We shouldered our way through the crowd and I picked Mikki up off the floor, whirled her around, kissed her on both cheeks in the French style, and then made the proper introductions.

Avi looked approvingly at Major Evans. “You know this crowd, of course,” he said offhandedly. And when Ashley demurred, and hinted that she’d been left out of the social loop by the ambassador, Avi grinned and spread his arms wide. “Then let me tell you all about the who’s and who’s and vhat’s and vhat’s of this magnificent Baku intelligentsia,” he said, a playful twinkle in his eye.

Ashley interrupted him right then by tapping her index finger below her own right eye in the French sign of skepticism. “Baku intelligentsia? Isn’t that an oxymoron, Avi?” she asked.

That broke the ice. It wasn’t five minutes before Ashley and the Ben Gals were chatting as animatedly as any old friends. I brushed up between Ashley and Avi and told them I’d be back in a few minutes, after I’d scoped the place out. But first, I went in search of succor—which I found at the bar. Lots of it, in fact. Standing at the end of the room, an old-fashioned glass of Bombay Sapphire on the rocks in my paw, I had a good opportunity to eyeball the party for a while, gauging the ebb and the flow of the place. I saw where the surveillance cameras had been placed. I noted the
likely locations of hidden microphones. Then I ambled back up the main corridor toward the loos, stuck my head inside both, to take note of their layout as well (shocked the shit out of a bejeweled dowager socialite when I emerged from the stall next to hers, too).

Then it was back to the bar for another Bombay, and a tactical overview of the room. It didn’t take long for me to pick up on the rhythms, either. In fact, it was kinda like looking at the ocean off the bridge of a big carrier. I watched eddies of socialites easing their way up and down the long, wide space, making sure they’d covered their bases by making contact with as many folks as they could, spending a few seconds with each—a kiss on each cheek, a smile, a knowing wink—then leaving ’em in their wake. There were half a dozen corner huggers, who’d come STO—simply to observe. There they were: drinking it all in, hungrily. But they wanted no part of full-contact party-going. And so they remained close to the reassuring safety of the walls and corners, watching from afar. There were lots of politicians and diplomats. Ambassador Madison, for one. She made her entrance like the fucking queen of the night, and spent a long, long time in earnest conversation with Steve Sarkesian, her fingers intertwined with his, playing the fucking “Moonlight Sonata” on his palm.

I watched their faces as they played handsie-handsie. Then I saw the look on Mrs. Sarkesian’s face as she watched her hubby and Ambassador Madison try to play out their petit charade.

Of course. Eureka. It was obvious from the look on her face. Wifey knew what was going on. Wifey knew that Steve-o was getting a little on the side. A little . . .
foreign aid . . . from our benevolent Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Marybeth Madison.

Then, having played fuckee-fingers and probably given Steve-o a nice stiff dick, Ms. Madison proceeded to work the room like a pro, displaying her ten-grand dental work and her twenty-grand tits to all and to sundry. You had to hand it to her. She was just as smooth and polished as any senator up for reelection as she smiled and tittered and laughed her way through the crowd, a quartet of tuxedoed Diplomatic Security Service agents surrounding her in a rough diamond pattern, clearing the path.

Oh, she was a piece of work.

But I didn’t have time to admire our good ambassador, because I wanted to eyeball the professionals here tonight. How did I know they were pros? I knew it just like I knew it in the Grand Europe Hotel lobby: because I am a fucking pro myself, and it takes one to know one.

And it didn’t take me long to pick ’em out, either. Steve Sarkesian had his security people on duty. He’d brought ’em in from Paris, and they were smooth. Then there were the clods. To be precise, a TOC—a trio of clods—in badly tailored formal wear, who were elbowing and shouldering their way around as if they owned the place. By their moves, they obviously worked for Sirzhik, and they’d been assigned to keep an eye on
moi,
although they weren’t doing a very good job of it.

The other two floaters
were
pros. One was a Sov—to be precise, a retarded
57
KGB brigadier general named
Oleg Lapinov. He was wearing civvies, and he’d shaved his head, making him look almost like a malignant Mr. Clean
®
, what with his puffy cotton-ball eyebrows and thick white handlebar mustache. But I still recognized his face, even from the ten-year-old DIA surveillance photos I’d been faxed. And lemme tell you, Oleg was no Mister Clean
®
. Not by a long shot. He was RBN—real bad news. He was in his seventies now, but he still had the stone killer look on his beat-up, round, perpetually red face. As a young KGB hood he’d actually worked for Uncle Joe Stalin, making political dissidents disappear in East Germany just after World War II. Later, he’d been part of the KGB’s advance group infiltrating Prague just before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1956. In the 1970s, he’d run training camps for transnational terrorists right here in the Caucasus. In 1979, he’d been in charge of the Spetsnaz Alpha Team that assassinated the president of Afghanistan just prior to the Soviet invasion. In the 1980s, he’d directed a ruthless policy of extermination against Afghan mujahideen leaders.

Now, he’d turned up once again—this time as the Kremlin’s chief advisor on oil policy in the former republics. Which is to say, it was his job to notch the trees out here in Baku so they’d fall in a direction that would benefit Moscow, not Washington or anyone else. To do that, according to the CIA’s RUMINT, he was Moscow’s liaison with the
lovrushniki
—which is KGB slang for the Georgian, Azeri, and Armenian Mafiyas. He told ’em how far they could go collecting
dan,
or protection money. He set the limits on how big a
tusovka,
or piece of the action, they could slice themselves. At least that’s what Jim Wink had told
me when I’d asked who my opposition in Baku was.

And where was Oleg baby? He was playing yin to my yang. When I went right, he went left. If I did the port side thing, he did starboard. When I went fore, he mirrored the move. It was like we were two magnets, working in polar opposite. I decided to have some fun with him, but before I could manage anything, one of the Parisian security guys pulled him out of the crowd and ushered him over to the edge of the room, where Stephan Sarkesian stood, a serious expression on his wolfish puss.

I could tell from Oleg baby’s body language that he didn’t like being summoned. Well, that was in character. Generals, whether they’re KGB or USA, like to give orders, not take ’em.