The Mingrelian (2 page)

The blue Lada slid into the traffic circle, and two men got out and ran to the Russian president’s car.

He chambered a round and pointed it at the first man, who stopped, raised both hands and said:

“Captain Boyd Chailland, United States Air Force, sir; I am unarmed.”

Chapter 2: Six Months Earlier

here’s the prostate,” the flight surgeon said triumphantly, as if he’d just discovered a gold nugget.

A jolt shot from deep in Boyd Chailland’s fundament, yanked something in his genitalia and took his breath. He was bent over an examination table at the Aeromedical Consultation Service at Brooks City Air Force Base in San Antonio. During the past week, he’d been questioned, examined, poked, prodded, X-rayed and ultra-violated, and it took all his resolve to restrain him from taking this officious prick doctor’s head off.

“That concludes your evaluation, Captain Chailland. When I get all the lab results back, and we have a chance to look over the MRIs of your brain, chest and back, I’ll write up the aeromedical summary and we can submit a waiver request. Air Combat Command usually takes about a month to make a decision. You’ve had a fractured skull, three collapsed vertebrae, two broken ribs, a gunshot through the right lung, and you’re missing part of your scapula and a rib on the right side. You’re in great physical condition, but all of those injuries are disqualifying for flying duty, so I wouldn’t get my hopes up. I’ll do what I can.”

Boyd stood there nude, still bent over the exam table with lubricating jelly smeared over his butt.

“Oh, and you can wipe off with this and get dressed,” the doctor said as he handed Boyd a paper towel and turned toward the door.

Boyd was just zipping up his flight suit when the doctor knocked politely and re-entered, demeanor totally changed.

“Uh, your waiver’s already been approved, uh … by the Air Force Chief of Staff.”

*****

Boyd’s flight home was delayed three hours by a thunderstorm over Atlanta, which caught up with him just after his flight arrived in Columbia, S.C. He drove home in a downpour. It was well after midnight when he splashed down the last mile of a dirt road to his rented farmhouse 12 miles from Shaw Air Force Base. He’d been ecstatic over the news he’d gotten his flying waiver, but that faded when he got a cellphone call from his wing commander’s secretary that the boss wanted to see him first thing in the morning.

Eight Ball, his black Lab, burst from beneath the porch as his truck came down the road.

“Hey big boy, how you been?” The Lab jumped gleefully, feet landing on Boyd’s chest as he opened the door. “Down!” Boyd rubbed Eight Ball's ears and sides, pushing him away but enjoying the greeting. His spirits improved dramatically. He grabbed his bag and fumbled for his keys as the two of them climbed the steps to the wooden porch.

      
******

“You’ve got orders,” Brigadier Gen. Charles “Dunk” Wells said as Boyd entered his office the next morning.

Boyd was stunned.

“Have a seat,” Wells said, indicating the couch to the side of his desk. Wells rose and sat in a chair next to it. Ass-chewings are done from behind the desk, advice and counseling is done seated in the informal furniture beside it. Boyd was a journeyman F-16 pilot and flight leader, one of Wells’ top jocks. He’d been out of the cockpit for a year – six months to
complete a mission so secret Wells was not read into it, and six months to recover from the gunshot wound he received completing that mission. Wells had welcomed a sick, busted-up pilot back to the base and watched his determined recovery, even jogged the perimeter road with him a couple of times as part of the mandatory fitness program. Now he had some bad news to deliver.

“You’re done in the F-16,” the general said, sympathetic but straight to the point. “Your orders are to Little Rock. Your waiver to fly doesn’t include ejection seat aircraft. You’ll transition to the C-130.”

Chapter 3: Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia

abney St. Clair drained the shot of vodka in one gulp, following the example of the Georgian defense secretary, a retired Russian general, who was seated beside her. The toast had been in her honor as the new deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy. A traditional “Georgian Table” feast was being hosted by the Georgian government at a local restaurant to honor new personnel arriving during the summer rotation at several embassies.

All embassy personnel are spies. The whole purpose of diplomatic missions is to have eyes and ears on the ground in other countries, to gather rumor and nuance and mix with the locals and the other diplomats, then report back home.

The Georgians and their guests, about 30 people, were seated at one long table in a medieval wine cellar converted into a banquet venue specializing in traditional cuisine and entertainment. They’d seen a traditional dance by a handsome young man in a
chokha
, a long military-style tunic with a short dagger at his waist, and a beautiful girl in a long dress and white head covering. They acted out scenes of encounter, courtship, passion and conflict. Accompanied by stringed instruments and drums, it went from sedate to frenetic, and there was much leaping and swirling about, and finally that Cossack-style dance where the man kicks his legs out while in a squat. It all ended with a finale of other dancers and stirring music.

The guests took turns going to the front to snap pictures of the young dancers in their costumes. Central Asian tribal rugs covered the stone floor and were hung as tapestries on the walls, the dark reds and blacks adding heaviness to the already massive stones that made up the cellar. Then the toasts had begun, a necessary part of Georgian hospitality.

Dabney stood as the traditional ram’s horn was handed to her. As the honoree of the most recent toast, she was to fill the ram’s horn with wine, propose a toast to someone else, and drain it in one gulp. She was prepared with a toast, written for her by the embassy military attaché, who’d been in Tbilisi for a while.

“Two friends climbed a high mountain ...”

Some of the embassy personnel really are professional spies, Central Intelligence Agency covert operators. Embedded within the embassy staff, CIA operatives maintain cover identities, but they report to the CIA, which reports to the director of national intelligence, who reports directly to the president. They aren’t State Department employees, and they don’t answer to the ambassador. There can be, on occasion, friction.

“… and so we drink to friendship,” she concluded and drained the ram’s horn to laughter and appreciation, and she handed the horn to the Georgian minister of culture.

Dabney St. Clair’s career had stagnated at CIA headquarters at Langley, Va. No advancement to upper management without serving as a CIA station chief. She’d been a covert agent at embassies in Turkey and Uzbekistan but had been behind a desk for five years as an analyst. She pulled some strings, pointed out that she’d done good work as an analyst and suggested that if she’d been a man, she would have been promoted by now. It worked. They promised to send her
someplace to fill that station chief square. On short notice, the only State Department position open for a Central Asian operative to fill was the deputy chief of mission at Tbilisi, not the usual spot for the CIA station chief. The ambassador shit a brick when Dabney was substituted for a rising young Foreign Service officer. So he had a deputy that didn’t work for him, and he had to keep that a secret.

The defense minister took advantage of a break in the action to stand and was recognized by the tamada, or toastmaster. He wasn’t drinking wine or beer; instead, he’d been served a carafe of vodka. He poured himself a generous shot and refilled Dabney’s glass. He rambled on in Georgian, breaking occasionally into Russian, before finishing with a great flourish that only a few of the guests understood, but all laughed. Dabney downed the shot.

The tamada called for dinner to be served, and the kitchen door opened with fanfare as waiters filed in burdened with plates of food, which they placed family style in the center of the table. Wine followed, as each guest’s glass was filled with heavy, red Georgian wine.

*******

“… outed herself the first week she was in town,” the ambassador said with disgust on the secure line back to Washington and State Department headquarters a few days later. “The defense minister got her drunk at the welcome party, and the deputy foreign minister invited her to the Presidential Palace for a nightcap with some of the others. She was flying high! Then she had to tell everyone what a coup it was when she was substituted for Ray Wagner at the last moment, how she had ‘pull.’ Then she named ‘her staff’ and outed the other two CIA covert agents.”

“Was she really covert? Don’t they usually figure out who the station chief is?”

“Well, you know, it takes a while. Most people had figured out who the last CIA station chief was. He was ex-Army, no prior State Department postings. But his replacement as regional security officer would have been assumed to be the new station chief. Dabney’s cover as deputy chief of mission was perfect!”

“How about the other two?”

“Deep cover, nobody knew, and they’re the ones who did the covert work. Now, nobody will talk to us. The CIA is gonna be out of business in Georgia for a year at least.”

“Do they know?”

“Not my job to tell them their girl stepped in it.”

“We’ll have to have a big, out of cycle staff turnover. Pull out nearly everyone and start over with three CIA imbeds.”

“That is gonna piss off a lot of people – household goods, schools, spouse jobs. All of it out of cycle.”

“I’ll call the CIA. I don’t know if they have any important sources there. Probably not. There might be another way to handle this.”

Chapter 4: Kartvelian National Bank, Tbilisi, Georgia

ado Chikovani greeted each of his guests with a warm smile and a handshake. Middle-age handsome, thin with long hands, he was impeccable in a dark three-piece suit and expensive Italian shoes. He didn’t feel the camaraderie he was trying to project. His guests circled the room like sharks, sizing each other up, keeping their backs to the wall, smiling.

This was the epicenter of a burgeoning worldwide trade to evade the United States’ embargo on Iran aimed at restricting its sale of oil to slow down its nuclear weapons program.

The United States may have been confident that its pronouncements and regulations were choking Iran into submission, but banned goods continued to move across borders around the world – hidden, disguised and misrepresented. Friends, allies, competitors and opponents all had reasons and the means to circumvent the embargo, and they did. An invisible, electronic current returned payment through a maze of legal entities and clearinghouses. Embargo creates wealth, and dangerous partnerships. Today, electrons would become cash.

Toghrul Bayramov was the deputy director of the Azerbaijan Railway. Zand Tehrani was the chief export officer of Mapna Locomotive Engineering and Manufacturing Co. in Tehran. Jamshid Khadem was the Tbilisi principal of the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Iran Trading Co., which had arranged the sale of 10 electric locomotives to be built in Karaj, Iran, under license from
Siemens, the German engineering company, and financed by Kartvelian National Bank with a 10-year loan. Eskander Khorasani was president of the Tbilisi branch of the Petroleum Bank of Iran, and a frequent guest at Lado’s weekend retreat and ancestral home in Zugdidi. Davit Kvaratskhelia, senior loan officer of KNB and Lado’s cousin, was present to handle the papers.

“Gentlemen,” Lado said, motioning toward boardroom adjacent to his office. Papers were laid out on the table; it was time to strike a deal.

They walked into the boardroom and stood around the table, wary, each searching the room as if expecting cameras or recording devices.

Trade was in Lado’s very genes. Tbilisi is on the old Silk Road, the trade route joining Europe with Central Asia and China beyond. Silk, jewels, rugs, gold, art, relics, spices, and contraband of all types have crossed and re-crossed the steppes of Central Asia for 2,000 years. Georgia’s location on the Black Sea makes it a transit point for goods from the Caspian Sea, Russia, Iran, and points east into the world marketplace.

“Eskander has confirmed that his bank has received our transfer of $24 million to Petroleum Bank on behalf of the Azerbaijan Railway, and to the credit of Mapna Locomotive Engineering and Manufacturing Company,” Lado said in Farsi, then again in Russian.

Bayramov signed the 10-year note. Tehrani signed the contract to deliver the electric locomotives, and a $2 million check drawn on the Petroleum Bank to Khadem for arranging the transaction, which Khorasani countersigned. Afterward, tea and cakes were served, and conversation was cordial and lasted the necessary half hour before the meeting broke up.
Electric locomotives are not part of the American embargo on Iran, so this was an entirely legal transaction.

But, it was a sham. There was no loan. The money came from the government of Greece in payment for a tanker loaded with 50,000 deadweight tons of Iranian Persian Gulf crude oil sold at a 15 percent discount from the spot price, a real bargain at $90 a barrel. A medium range tanker, registered in Dubai, had loaded the oil at the oil terminal at Batumi, Georgia, on the Black Sea, and it had made the short run through the Bosporus and Dardanelles strait into the Aegean Sea to Greece. Lado Chikovani’s Kartvelian National Bank made $1 million for moving the Greek payment through several shell trading companies and clearing banks in Switzerland and Germany, and for holding the fake loan on its books for a decade. The locomotives, though ordered and paid for, would never be built. Iran had just sold 321,000 barrels of crude oil for a net price of $77.88 per barrel.