First Salvo (11 page)
THE CRIMEA, USSR
A
couple of hours before first light, Henry Cobb was paddled ashore northeast of Yalta, up the coast toward Alushta. Lassiter had shaken his hand, cuffing him playfully on the side of the head before Cobb went over the side into the rubber craft. It hadn’t been necessary for Lassiter to repeat it as many times as he had, but he had to assure Cobb that he would be back in the same spot in less than twenty-four hours, then once more twenty-four hours later. If there was no Cobb by then, then the mission was a failure. Henry Cobb would be considered a casualty—an unreported casualty.
Cobb scurried up the hillside through the undergrowth to the winding road that led through the villages toward Yalta. A sliver of moon hung low in the sky, and the night was clear and black. He needed very little light to find his way. The track he would follow was embedded in his memory. Days before, in the map room in Washington, he had pieced together the satellite photos himself, recording each step he intended to take. If he’d had the slightest doubt about a potential obstacle in his path, he had had the photo blown up until he was sure what it was. Or if still hesitant, he would call over one of the photo interpreters and ask his opinion.
His was a photographic memory in many ways. But as Dave Pratt had once pointed out, they were very strange ways. Cobb’s mastery of languages was incredible, right down to his ability to immerse himself in local dialect. He could have crossed a minefield blindfolded once he had the opportunity to study its layout. The structure of Kremlin hierarchy, the layout of each office, and the names of each individual could have been committed to memory in an amazingly short time span. Pratt often said that Henry could have made a fortune if his mind had been channeled in the proper direction, but the prospect of making money had never occurred to Cobb.
He followed the dirt road for a short distance, mentally checking off the identifying features he’d selected days earlier. Turning into the hills on a path that appeared to have been a goat track, he began an easy climb, now heading in the direction of the moon sliver that was hovering just over his objective.
Below him stretched the Black Sea, occasional lights bobbing in the distance signifying fishing boats. Farther away he could see the glow of lights in the sky, hinting at a large city, Yalta. This was where the gentry of the Communist Party came to play in the summer—senior officials, scientists, managers, prominent Party members, and, most important, the generals and admirals. Their dachas were scattered over the hillsides that looked down into the warm, blue waters of the Black Sea. This part of the Crimea was the playground of those who made the USSR tick.
His objective was the dacha of General Keradin, the head of the Strategic Rocket Forces of the Soviet Union, that element of the Soviet Army that controlled the ICBMs. With an order from one man, Keradin, the most terrifying attack mankind had ever known, and perhaps the last it ever experienced, would be launched. This man was so powerful, so respected by those few who were senior to him, that he could come and go as he pleased. And in the summer he chose to spend much of his time at his dacha in the Crimea, less than two hours flying time from Moscow. It didn’t really matter where Keradin chose to locate himself, for the immense power of his command could be exercised in split seconds from wherever he happened to be.
General Keradin’s dacha was not only his escape but his hobby. The sweet dessert wines of the Soviet Crimea were his first love, his way of escaping the terrible responsibility of his position. The hillsides sweeping up and to the north were covered with vineyards that faced the Black Sea and the summer sun. Though the dacha and its many guest rooms were designed to house a staff ready to launch missiles at a moment’s notice, the real center of the estate was the wine-making barn, the heart and soul of Keradin’s obsession.
It was Keradin’s infatuation with wines that had precipitated a crash course in the art of winemaking for Henry Cobb. Whisked by a military jet to an Air Force base north of San Francisco, Cobb was met by the man who would be his teacher over the next five days. Very little surprised Cobb. Yet his host, the scion of a successful, family-owned vineyard, consistently astonished him during those days. As he struggled to acquire the knowledge that had come to one man in a lifetime, Cobb also learned that hatred spans generations. His mentor proudly acknowledged working for the CIA whenever he was in Europe promoting his rapidly growing industry. Cobb would later reflect that he learned more than he bargained for about his quarry during his whirlwind education.
The dacha was remarkably similar to his host’s homestead in the Napa Valley. White plastered walls reflected the sun and allowed the inside to remain cool even on the hottest days. A veranda stretched much of the length of the building so that the inhabitants could come out to socialize in the sun or find enough privacy to be on their own. The only real difference was the many individual balconies on the second floor, much like a tacky motel, Cobb thought. These were where the staff slept, each with his own room, a nice gesture by Keradin to keep his people happy.
There was also a security force. It was composed of military intelligence people from the GRU, and they were very good. The CIA also reported that Keradin was an extremely private man who did not appreciate the trappings of the military when he escaped to the Crimea. Moscow was one world, his dacha the other. And in the latter he insisted that the GRU maintain a low profile. No man could relax in an armed camp, and Keradin felt that his vineyard, far from the mainstream, was not a place that would be easily targeted by an enemy. He felt secure.
Cobb circled to the north, above the highest vineyards. Within yards of his final goal, he found the rock outcroppings that had been so prominent in the photos. It was not above the fence that surrounded the vineyards, but it slanted upward enough, almost like the lip of a ski jump, to make it the weakest point on the perimeter.
His one weapon was a razor-sharp knife in his boot. With this, he was able to cut a sturdy sapling from a nearby stand of trees. Carefully, he sliced off the branches one by one, close to the trunk. Then just as prudently, he smeared the whitened scars on the bark with dirt. After he was over the fence, there would be no way to dispose of it, and he wanted nothing that would attract the attention of the guards.
Back on top of the outcropping, he tested the strength of the sapling, making sure it would take his weight. To the southeast, he could make out the faint glow over the Black Sea that presaged the sun and a new day. Planting the staff in the hard ground below, he bounced lightly on his toes for a second, then vaulted gracefully into the air. It was not really a pole vault. He wanted just enough height to clear the fence, just enough distance to land far enough beyond the sensing devices that he knew were implanted two yards beyond the fence. As he reached the apex of his leap, he very deliberately cast the sapling backward into some rye grass growing a few yards from the fence. With luck, the grass and the dirt he had rubbed into the cuts in the bark would hide it from curious eyes.
As he landed precisely on his toes, he rolled forward before his heels could make full impact on the turf. Touching the ground first with his right shoulder, he rolled twice in an effort to absorb the impact and avoid setting off an oversensitive device near the fence.
He was in! Remaining on his knees, his eyes searched in every direction, using the faint horizon as a backdrop to ensure there were no guards nearby. He’d been right. The flashlights he’d counted from outside represented the only men who were there. As the CIA report had stated, they felt secure enough on this hillside that there was no effort to make the vineyard impenetrable, no anticipation that someone like Cobb would seek entry in this manner.
Very unlike the GRU
, he thought, remembering the difficulty he once had breaking their security in Moscow.
Now creeping into the safety of a row of vines, all he could do was wait for the sun to rise, for the workers to arrive so that he could mix among them and move about as if he were one of the peasant laborers. He knew the basic location of every building and every path, and the purposes of most of them. However, there were some buildings to the west, in the lower part of the fields, that mystified him. He had to quickly develop a feel for the movement of the day, the habits of the workers, the daily customs and routines of the dacha that its inhabitants followed without thinking. Acclimatization was one of Cobb’s first steps wherever he went, and it was often what saved his neck in the first hours in a new place.
At a very early hour, when the sun had yet to heat the still air, the huge main gate was opened to allow the workers inside. Cobb noted both the security devices that were apparently turned off at this time and the location of the button that engaged an electric motor that moved the heavy gates. The guards had disposed of their rifles beforehand, their only weapons now apparently pistols. It was likely another of Keradin’s efforts to avoid the tension of an armed camp.
The peasants shuffled up the dirt path to a large building where a man, whom Cobb gathered must be the foreman, addressed them for a moment. As he did so, the first breezes of the day came up to him from the Black Sea. They carried a multiplicity of aromas that indicated to Cobb that many of the grapes had already been picked and crushed. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, for this was the period that Keradin cherished most. They were about to harvest those special grapes, the most heavily sugared of all, that would eventually go into the finest wines. It could be a matter of days, though perhaps some were ready now, before they were ready for harvesting. Time was of the utmost importance to insure that the now-molding grapes contained just the right amount of sugar, that they had shriveled just enough to attain that magic essence the General treasured.
Keradin would be in the fields today, assessing the grapes himself, indicating those he wanted picked so that he might experiment. He usually wandered on his own, as shown in U.S. intelligence photographs. He would appear with a wide-brimmed hat shading him from the hot sun as he meandered through his vineyard, removing an occasional cluster of grapes from underneath the leaves to check their development, sometimes picking a grape to taste, other times slicing a cluster from the vine and dropping it into the picker’s basket slung from his shoulder. Remembering the soft peaceableness of his own mentor, and the similarity of habits between the two men seemed incongruous to Cobb.
To thoroughly know the entire compound and its daily habits, Cobb would have to make himself a part of its routine as quickly as possible. As the workers moved up the hillsides, each with a basket slung from one shoulder and balanced on the opposite hip, he moved out of a row and picked up a basket that had been carelessly dropped nearby. His dress was perfect, though he noted that many of the workers’ rough clothes were more stained by the harvest than his own. In a few moments, however, his own disguise was as blotched with juice as the others’.
The workers seemed to move with a numbing purpose, mechanically cutting, gently placing clusters of grapes in their baskets. They rarely talked, and this was fine with Cobb, though he longed to hear the local dialect to learn the oddities of local pronunciation.
As the sun climbed higher, the day quickly warmed, waves of heat rising from the now dry ground. Rivulets of perspiration ran from under his cap, streaking his dusty features before they coursed down his back and chest. Pratt had once referred to him as a chameleon, and now Cobb adapted so rapidly to those around him that few would have recognized the movement of his head and eyes as he studied and memorized everything around him. Yet, with a natural expertise, he selected the proper bunches, separating them neatly from the vine with a quick slash of his knife and placing them gently in the basket to avoid damage to the fruit.
Three times he filled his basket and worked his way in the slow shuffle of the peasants to the dumping station near the crusher. Each time, he selected a different route so that he could learn every path, every fence, every root and rock. Most important of all, by watching the comings and goings from the main house, he could determine just what each room might be used for and where each door led. Through habit, he laid out a simple floor plan in his head. The estimated depth of a given room might certainly be questionable, but he learned years ago that his guesses were usually within reason. He also identified the servants and what seemed to be their responsibilities. All this could help him later.
Once again, he noted that security was lax at best. Once the workers had filed in for the day, the gates were closed. Though they and the fences were watched continuously by men dressed in civilian rather than military clothes, Cobb sensed that they did not consider themselves under the same pressures that existed in Moscow. A number of military men, almost none in uniform, drifted in and out of the main building. Cobb could have picked them out as military anywhere. It soon became obvious to him that General Keradin’s staff was so highly organized, so professional, that a simple, relaxed system could exist, easily replacing the formalities of Moscow.
Cobb moved higher up on the hillside toward a row of vines that appeared more ready for harvesting. As he peered under the leaves, he could see that these grapes were almost perfect. Perhaps it was the soil, perhaps a deeper gulley between rows that held water for a longer period, perhaps even that these plants were a bit taller and caught the direct sun longer to produce a higher sugar content. These he would begin with in a moment.
He sat down on the edge of a cistern. Removing his cap, he mopped his forehead with a grimy rag he had found near the crusher. The cloth came away with a dark silt of sweat and dust. Neatly folding it, he wiped at either corner of his eyes to remove the clinging dirt.
A deep voice came to him at the same instant a shadow fell across his feet. “Well, it is a hot day, eh? Very good for the sugar. What do you think, eh?”