Jack Ryan 11 - Bear And The Dragon (35 page)

This is amazing, Lieutenant Provalov thought. All the resources we have, and we can't develop a single reliable piece of information. Was he chasing ghosts? Well, he had five of those already. Avseyenko, Maria Ivanovna Sablin, a driver whose name he couldn't remember at the moment, and the two putative Spetsnaz killers, Pyotr Alekseyevich Amalrik and Pavel Borissovich Zimyanin. Three blown up spectacularly during a morning rush hour, and two murdered in St. Petersburg after having done the job -- but killed for succeeding or failing?

“Well, let me know when you develop anything.”

“I will do that, Oleg Gregoriyevich,” Abramov promised.

The militia lieutenant hung up his phone and cleared his desk, putting all his “hot” files into the locked drawer, then he walked downstairs to his official car and drove to his favorite bar. Reilly was inside, and waved when he came through the door. Provalov hung up his coat on a hook and walked over to shake hands. He saw that a drink was waiting for him.

“You are a true comrade, Mishka,” the Russian said to his American friend as he took his first slug.

“Hey, I know the problem, pal,” the FBI agent said sympathetically.

“It is this way for you as well.”

“Hell, when I was a brand-new brick agent, I started working the Gotti case. We busted our asses bagging that lowlife. Took three juries to put him in Marion. He's never coming back. Marion is a particularly nasty prison.” Though “nasty” in American terms was different from the Russian. Russian prisons didn't really bear thinking about, though Reilly didn't worry much about that. People who broke the law in any society knew about the possible consequences going in, and what happened when they got caught was their problem, not his. “So, what's the story?”

“This Suvorov. We can't find him. Mishka, it is as if he doesn't exist.”

“Really?” It both was and was not a surprise to Reilly. The former, because Russia, like many European societies, kept track of people in ways that would have started a Second American Revolution. The cops here were supposed to know where everybody lived, a carryover from the Bad Old Days when KGB had kept a third of the population as informers on the other two-thirds. It was an uncommon situation for the local cops not to be able to find someone.

The situation was not surprising, however, because if this Suvorov mutt really was a former KGB officer, then he'd been expertly trained to disappear, and that sort of adversary didn't just die of the dumbs, like most American and Russian hoods did. Nor would he die from talking too much. Your average criminals acted -- well, like criminals. They bragged too much, and to the wrong people, other criminals for the most part, who had the loyalty of rattlesnakes and would sell out a “friend” as readily as taking a piss. No, this Suvorov guy, if he was who and what the informants said he was, was a pro, and they made interesting game for interesting hunts, and usually long hunts at that. But you always got them in the end, because the cops never stopped looking, and sooner or later, he'd make a mistake, maybe not a big one, but big enough. He wouldn't be hanging with his former buds in KGB, people who would help keep him hidden, and would only talk among themselves and then not much. No, he was in a different milieu now, not a friendly one, not a safe one, and that was just too damned bad. Reilly had occasionally felt a certain sympathy for a criminal, but never for a killer. There were some lines you just couldn't cross.

“He has dived into a hole and then covered it up from inside,” the Russian said, with some frustration.

“Okay, what do we know about him?”

Provalov related what he'd just learned. “They say they will be asking whores if they might know him.”

“Good call.” Reilly nodded. “I bet he likes the high-end ones. Like our Miss Tanya, maybe. You know, Oleg, maybe he knew Avseyenko. Maybe he knows some of his girls.”

“That is possible. I can have my men check them out as well.”

“Can't hurt,” the FBI agent agreed, waving to the bartender for a couple of refills. “You know, buddy, you've got yourself a real investigation happening here. I kinda' wish I was on your force to help out.”

“You enjoy this?”

“Bet your ass, Oleg. The harder the case, the more thrilling the chase. And it feels real good at the end when you bag the bastards. When we convicted Gotti, damn if we didn't have one big party in Manhattan. The Teflon Don,” Reilly said, hoisting his glass, and telling the air, “Hope you like it in Marion, boy.”

“This Gotti, he killed people, yes?” Provalov asked.

“Oh, yeah, some himself, and others he gave the orders. His number one boy, Salvatore Gravano -- Sammy the Bull, they called him -- turned government witness and helped make the case for us. So then we put Sammy in the witness-protection program, and the mutt starts dealing drugs again down in Arizona. So, Sammy's back inside. The dummy.”

“They all are, as you say, criminals,” Provalov pointed out.

“Yeah, Oleg, they are. They're too stupid to go straight. They think they can outsmart us. And y'know, for a while they do. But sooner or later...” Reilly took a sip and shook his head.

“Even this Suvorov, you think?”

Reilly smiled for his new friend. “Oleg, do you ever make a mistake?”

The Russian grunted. “At least once a day.”

“So, why do you think they're any smarter than you are?” the FBI agent asked. “Everybody makes mistakes. I don't care if he's driving a garbage truck or President of the fucking United States. We all fuck up every so often. It's just part of being human. Thing is, if you recognize that fact, you can make it a lot further. Maybe this guy's been well trained, but we all have weaknesses, and we're not all smart enough to acknowledge them, and the smarter we are, the less likely we are to acknowledge them.”

“You are a philosopher,” Provalov said with a grin. He liked this American. They were of a kind, as though the gypsies had switched babies at birth or something.

“Maybe, but you know the difference between a wise man and a fool?”

“I am sure you will tell me.” Provalov knew how to spot pontification half a block away, and the one approaching had flashing red lights on the roof.

“The difference between a wise man and a fool is the magnitude of his mistakes. You don't trust a fool with anything important.” The vodka was making him wax rhapsodic, Reilly thought. “But a wise man you do, and so the fool doesn't have the chance to make a big screw up, while a wise man does. Oleg, a private can't lose a battle, but a general can. Generals are smart, right? You have to be real smart to be a doc, but docs kill people by accident all the time. It is the nature of man to make mistakes, and brains and training don't matter a rat-fuck. I make 'em. You make 'em.” Reilly hoisted his glass again. “And so does Comrade Suvorov.” It'll be his dick, Reilly thought. If he likes to play with hookers, it'll be his dick that does him in. Tough luck, bro. But he wouldn't be the first to follow his dick into trouble, Reilly knew. He probably wouldn't be the last, either.

“So did it all work?” Ming asked.

“Hmph?” Nomuri responded. This was strange. She was supposed to be in the afterglow period, his arm still around her, while they both smoked the usual after-sex cigarette.

“I did what you wished with my computer. Did it work?”

“I'm not sure,” Nomuri tried as a reply. “I haven't checked.”

“I do not believe that!” Ming responded, laughing. “I have thought about this. You have made me a spy!” she said, followed by a giggle.

“I did what?”

“You want me to make my computer accessible to you, so you can read all my notes, yes?”

“Do you care?” He'd asked her that once before, and gotten the right answer. Would it be true now? She'd sure as hell seen through his cover story. Well, that was no particular surprise, was it? If she weren't smart, she'd be useless as a penetration agent. But knowing what she was...how patriotic was she? Had he read her character right? He didn't let his body tense next to hers, remarkably enough. Nomuri congratulated himself for mastering another lesson in the duplicity business.

A moment's contemplation, then: “No.”

Nomuri tried not to let his breath out in too obvious an expression of relief.

“Well, then you need not concern yourself. From now on, you will do nothing at all.”

“Except this?” she asked with yet another giggle.

“As long as I continue to please you, I suppose!”

“Master Sausage!”

“Huh?”

“Your sausage pleases me greatly,” Ming explained, resting her head on his chest.

And that, Chester Nomuri thought, was sufficient to the moment.

Pavel Petrovich Gogol could believe his eyes, but only because he'd seen the whole Red Army armored corps on the move in the Western Ukraine and Poland, when he was a younger man. The tracked vehicles he saw now were even bigger and knocked down most of the trees, those that weren't blown down by engineers with explosives. The short season didn't allow the niceties of tree-felling and road-laying they used in the effete West. The survey team had found the source of the gold dust with surprising ease, and now a team of civil and military engineers was pushing a road to the site, slashing a path across the tundra and through the trees, dropping tons of gravel on the path which might someday be properly paved, though such roads were a problem in these weather conditions. Over the roads would come heavy mining equipment, and building materials for the workers who would soon make their homes in what had been “his” woods. They told him that the mine would be named in his honor. That hadn't been worth much more than a spit. And they'd taken most of his golden wolf pelts -- after paying for them and probably paying most generously, he allowed. The one thing they'd given him that he liked was a new rifle, an Austrian Steyr with a Zeiss scope in the American .338 Winchester Magnum caliber, more than ample for local game. The rifle was brand-new -- he'd fired only fifteen rounds through it to make sure it was properly sighted in. The blued steel was immaculate, and the walnut stock was positively sensuous in its honeyed purity. How many Germans might he have killed with this! Gogol thought. And how many wolves and bear might he take now.

They wanted him to leave his river and his woods. They promised him weeks on the beaches at Sochi, comfortable apartments anywhere in the country. Gogol snorted. Was he some city pansy? No, he was a man of the woods, a man of the mountains, a man feared by the wolves and the bear, and even the tigers to the south had probably heard of him. This land was his land. And truth be told, he knew no other way to live, and was too old to learn one in any case. What other men called comforts he would call annoyances, and when his time came to die, he would be content to die in the woods and let a wolf or a bear pick over his corpse. It was only fair. He'd killed and skinned enough of them, after all, and good sport was good sport.

Well, the food they'd brought in -- flown in, they'd told him -- was pretty good, especially the beef, which was richer than his usual reindeer, and he had fresh tobacco for his pipe. The television reporters loved the pipe, and encouraged him to tell his story of life in the Siberian forests, and his best bear and wolf stories. But he'd never see the TV story they were doing on him; he was too far away from what they occasionally called “civilization” to have his own TV set. Still, he was careful to tell his stories carefully and clearly, so that the children and grandchildren he'd never had would see what a great man he'd been. Like all men, Gogol had a proper sense of self-worth, and he would have made a fine storyteller for any children's school, which hadn't occurred to any of the bureaucrats and functionaries who'd come to disturb his existence. Rather, they saw him as a TV personality, and an example of the rugged individualist whom the Russians had always worshipped on the one hand and brutally suppressed on the other.

But the real subject of the forty-minute story that was being put together by Russian national television wasn't really here. It was seventeen kilometers away, where a geologist tossed a gold nugget the size of his fist up and down like a baseball, though it weighed far more than the equivalent volume of iron. That was merely the biggest nugget they'd found. This deposit, the geology team explained to the cameras, was worthy of a tale from mythology, the garden, perhaps, of Midas himself. Exactly how rich it was they'd learn only from tunneling into the ground, but the chief of the geology team was willing to wager his professional reputation that it would beggar the South African mine, by far the richest found to date on the planet. Every day the tapes the cameras made were uploaded to the Russian communications satellite that spent most of its time hanging over the North Pole -- much of the country is too far north to make proper use of the geosynchronous birds used by the rest of the world.

This was not a problem for the National Security Agency. NSA has stations worldwide, and the one located at Chicksands in England took the feed of the Russian satellite and instantly cross-loaded it to an American military-communications satellite, which dispatched the signal to Fort Meade, Maryland. Agreeably, the signal was not encrypted and so could be immediately forwarded to Russian linguists for translation, and then off it went to CIA and other national assets for evaluation. As it played out, the President of the United States would see the footage a week before the average Russian citizen.

“Damn, who is that guy, Jim Bridger?” Jack asked.

“His name is Pavel Petrovich Gogol. He's the guy credited with discovering the gold deposit. See,” Ben Goodley said. The camera took in the row of gilded wolf pelts.

“Damn, those could be hung in the Smithsonian...like something out of a George Lucas movie...” SWORDSMAN observed.

“Or you could buy one for your wife,” Goodley suggested.

POTUS shook his head. “Nah...but...maybe if it was a gilded sable coat...you think the voters could handle it?”

“I think I defer on such questions to Mr. van Damm,” the National Security Adviser said after a moment's consideration.