Sohlberg and the White Death (12 page)

Navalny said nothing. He was going to make it difficult for the newest enforcer of Russian tyranny and corruption.

“How loyal are you?” said Valiulin.

“As loyal as you are.”

“That’s an interesting answer. Very interesting.”

Navalny crossed his legs. “Colonel . . . why do you find it interesting? . . . I’m sure that there are plenty of loyal citizens beyond these walls.”

The colonel’s obsidian eyes sparkled. “Speaking of loyalty . . . I read the file on your grandfather. He lost his job as a senior customs inspector . . . and never found work after that.”

“Yes,” said Navalny. “His crime was that he refused to take bribes at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport from communist government officials who came back to Mother Russia . . . loaded with illegal contraband from evil capitalist countries.”

“Your grandmother then had to maintain the family. Correct?”

Navalny remembered his grandmother. Nana walked with a pained sideways shuffle thanks to the arthritis that ravaged her hips and knees. After her husband got axed and blacklisted she had to work like a dog to provide for her family as a registered nurse for decades. “Colonel . . . I’m glad you have enough time to read old K.G.B. files on my grandparents. Is there anything else you want to talk about?”

“Of course I do. . . . I imagine that you’ve had plenty of time over the decades to reflect on what happens to people with a holier-than-thou complex like your grandfather.”

“I have better things to do than taking some mindless trip down memory lane.”

“Actually,” said Col. Valiulin, “I think that reflection is a good thing in a man. Introspection teaches a man to learn from his mistakes. Don’t you think?”

“I’m not big on reflection or introspection. I’m big on
action
.”

“Do you think that your father took the right action?”

“I don’t think about the past.”

“It would do you good. You would at least remember that your father also lost his job at the university when he spoke up for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.”

“What’s done is done. Anything else on your mind?”

“There’s always something else in my mind.”

“Let’s hope so. . . . What is this all about?”

“I know that you keep some operations off the books from the higher-ups. You don’t report everything that your department is doing . . . or you only report a little.”

“What?”

“Do play coy with me.” Valiulin’s wolf eyes flashed in steely angry. “I know this from my days working down there with you at The Old Lady.”

“Colonel. . . . Does this mean that you did the same thing in your anti-extremism unit? . . . Or does your E-Center have off-book operations going on right now?”

“We’re not here to discuss me. We’re here to discuss your operations.”

“What would you like to know?”

“Everything.”

“How many hours do you have?”

Valiulin broke into a dazzling white smile that was not friendly. “I understand that you have been monitoring the activities of our intelligence services.”

“Your understanding and sources are both wrong.”

“One of your men was spotted last afternoon . . . he was driving an unmarked car on Volgogradsky Prospekt. He had someone under surveillance at the Mercedes Benz dealer. Your man then followed his target to a warehouse on Ostapovsky.”

Navalny kept his poker face intact.

Was my man careless or were Valiulin’s men lucky?

Either way it wasn’t good for Navalny or his department. His man was supposed to be following Col. Pyotr Petrovich Zubkov, a corrupt colonel in the FSB—the successor agency to the KGB. The Federal Security Service was riddled with crooked agents who profited from activities that ranged from protecting organized crime to participating in it. A few agents had already been caught selling state secrets to the highest bidder. Navalny suspected Zubkov to be in that treasonous category.

“I,” said Navalny, “will have to look into that.”

“Are you telling me that you have nothing to do with that operation?”

“I have a lot going on. I’ll find out who was there and get back to you.”

“You better. Or else. . . .”

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s a reminder that you are legally obligated to cooperate with me and my department.”

“Tell me something,” said Navalny as he stood up.

“What do you want to know?”

“Since when did truth—honesty—and integrity become a form of extremism?”

“My friend. Don’t be naive. Or stupid. Truth . . . honesty . . . and integrity have their limits.”

“Do they?”

“Anything and everything . . . even truth and honesty can be taken to extremes . . . the same goes for integrity.”

~ ~ ~

The gloomy Brezhnev-era apartment building swallowed up Navalny into its proletarian grayness. And yet he looked forward to dinner with his family. He would soon be greeted by appetizing smells from the kitchen and the chatter of his wife and two sons. He opened the door. The apartment was, however, utterly empty. His eyes immediately fell on the blinking red light of their outdated phone message machine.

Navalny pressed the PLAY key.

“Listen carefully and follow orders. We have your wife and sons. . . .”

~ ~ ~

A real man does what he
needs
to do and not what he
wants
to do.

Ivan Navalny understood that the Moscow City Police and the Russian government would later denounce him. Relatives and in-laws and so-called friends would disown him and curse his name. For sure he would be stripped of his rank as a Police Lieutenant Colonel. His 20-year career would end in disgrace at the GUVD-Moscow. He also knew that a long prison sentence waited for him if paid or unpaid killers didn’t catch him first.

So what?

A real man does what he needs to do . . . not what he wants to do . . . not what he
feels
like doing.

The same goes for a real woman.

Navalny remembered what his grandfather and father often told him:

“A real man does what he needs to do because no one else will ever do as good a job as you yourself can
and
will do. Ivan . . . you and your family will never really thrive or be independent if you’re waiting on someone else’s handout or some government agency’s magical program to solve your problems.

“Let someone else do what you need to do and they will fail you. They will disappoint you. And if you’re lucky . . . very lucky . . . they won’t turn on you or otherwise harm you or try to control you.”

A real man does what he needs to do. That’s why Ivan Navalny ankle-holstered his father’s 8-round Makarov semi-automatic pistol while he gazed lovingly at a recent picture of his wife and sons. He preferred his father’s reliable army-issued Makarov from 1978 to the modern 17-round MP-443 Grach that the Moscow police had issued him. The Grach went into his shoulder holster.

He picked up a silver-framed picture that he had taken of his family on last year’s vacation in the Black Sea. Navalny fondly remembered the visit to his aging parents in Krasnodar. He had splurged and taken his parents along for a two-week stay at a beach-side resort in Sochi. He had always taken care of his family and that reminded him of one thing.

The difference between a man and a boy is that a real man does what needs to be done and
not
what he
feels
like doing. Ditto for a real woman.

At that very minute he had one
feeling
: the compelling urge to grab his trusty AK-47M assault rifle from his Army days and then barge into the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Interior Affairs—the dreaded MVD—at 16 Zhitnaya Street through one of the many secret entrances that he knew about. He would easily find Col. Timur Samirovich Valiulin and his boss and the boss of that boss. The last one being the MVD Lieutenant General who masterminded the ugly and bloody mess that he now needed to clean up. Navalny made plans—down to the last detail—on how he will empty out the Kalashnikov on all those fine gentlemen and anyone who might try to stop him.

Of course he will have no problem entering the Ministry and dispatching those men. He can and will walk into their offices any time. After all he is the Chief of the Fourth Division of the Moscow City Police Operational Search Department. Or he will find them at home. He can and he will find them. He is the top man in charge of surveillance at the Moscow City Police.

Ivan Navalny ignored his immediate
feelings
and he delayed his murderous gratification. He first had to do what needed to be done. Before Lt. Col. Navalny left on his mission he played the voice message one more time:

“Listen carefully and follow orders. We have your wife and sons. You won’t see them alive if you don’t do exactly as I say. . . .”

He took one final look around his apartment and knew with absolute certainty that this would be the last time that he would ever set foot in his home. Ivan Navalny embarked on his mission on the remote chance that his family was still alive.

I will never have a normal life after I’m done with this mess.

He grabbed the envelope that contained his life insurance and he walked out of his home for the last time.

Chapter 8/Åtte

ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA: WEDNESDAY

JULY 13, OR THREE MONTHS AND 1 DAY

AFTER THE DAY

The canals and architectural jewels of St. Petersburg entitle the city to claim that it’s the Venice of Russia. But the grandeur of the city was a distant rumor in the abandoned and rusting 1950s tractor factory that Stalin had once hailed as “a socialist marvel for the centuries”. The pervasive smell of urine and feces almost overcame the acrid stench of a versicolor brew of toxic chemical spills that covered the floor.

The stomach-churning aroma reminded the ever-so-cynical Ivan Navalny that he would make a fortune if he came up with a women’s perfume and a men’s cologne called
New Russia
. He would sell out if he could somehow capture and bottle the stench that permeated the factory and Russia. He wondered if Saks Fifth Avenue and a couple of other elegant stores in New York and London and Paris and Monaco would carry the
New Russia
fragrance that apparently got lost whenever corrupt Russian tycoons bought super-luxury homes outside of Russia at prices that ranged from $ 30 to $ 300 million U.S. dollars.

Could $ 30 million be the benchmark when ill-gotten gains from rotten sources start smelling like roses and Chanel No. 5?

“You are late,” said Pyotr Petrovich Zubkov. The hulking man’s tiny blue eyes almost sank into oblivion under his bulging Neanderthal brow.

“I’m late?” said Navalny. “I didn’t know I was punching a time clock . . . or in charge of my train’s schedule.”

The dour colonel with the FSB looked at his watch one more time to drive home the point. “You’re very late.”

In plainclothes the beefy agent looked as dangerous as he did in uniform. Upon seeing him for the first or second time most people did not know whether to stare at the former boxer’s cauliflower ears or at the poorly stitched harelip left over from a horrific childhood in a hellish orphanage. Very few people had the nerve to stare at the bulbous mass of livid tissue than hung between the colonel’s eyes. The repulsive area had formerly been a nose that had been broken too many times. With those visual choices most people preferred to stare at Zubkov’s massive yellow-gold Rolex Submariner watch—an Oyster Perpetual Special Edition worth at least $ 10,000 U.S. dollars.

“Colonel Zubkov . . . if I had a nice watch like the one on your wrist then maybe I would’ve been on time. But then again I couldn’t afford such a watch. . . . Tell me . . . how did you pay for it?”

“Shut your insolent face up.”

Ivan Navalny grinned but he knew better than to keep goading the ugly gangster who had started out in the KGB beating up political dissidents. At the KGB’s successor agency—the FSB—Zubkov was now known as a fixer for the robber barons who were looting billions of dollars every year from Russia thanks to Yeltsin and then Putin. The two leaders of the New Russia had “privatized” the gold mines and oil fields and banks and other assets that the old communist government had once owned.

“Get in the back door.”

Navalny glanced at the two menacing black SUVs that looked more like funeral hearses thanks to their black-tinted windows. “Which one?”

“Front one,” muttered Zubkov. “Get moving.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

Navalny walked closer to the two cars. He recognized the front one as a top-of-the-line Mercedes G-Glass vehicle and the other as a GM Yukon—both vehicles the favorites of tycoons and organized crime bigwigs and the security services. Navalny calculated that the giant American SUV held a full complement of seven passengers because the vehicle’s load weighed it down rather close to the ground.