America (58 page)

Even though the room was brightly lit, Ashruf removed a flashlight from his pocket and examined every square inch of the object on the pallet.

General Petrov came over to Ashruf, squatted down. “Are you satisfied?”

Ashruf glanced at him, then continued with his inspection. Finally he stood, walked to the door and went out.

When he returned, he carried a shiny aluminum case. He brought it over to the pallet, set it on the wooden floor, and opened it. After flipping some switches, he removed a wand from his pocket and plugged the cord into the box. He waved the wand over the metal shape as he examined the gauges of his instrument. Finally he turned off the power to the instrument, unplugged the wand, closed the cover and hoisted it.

“I am satisfied,” he said.

“Good,” said Petrov. “Now we shall inspect the money. Bring it in and put it on the table.”

Ashruf and three of his men carried in duffle bags. They dumped the contents on the table. United States currency, bundles of one-hundred-dollar bills, fifty to a bundle. The army officers and the civilians picked up random bundles and began counting.

While this was going on, Ashruf and his men stood and watched.

The woman, whose name was Anna Modin, chose a random bundle and tore it apart. She spread the currency on the table, then picked up a leather bag from the floor beside her chair and set it on the table. Opening it, she removed a black light and a magnifying glass mounted on a small light table. She used these tools to examine the bills, one by one.

Finally she gathered up the bills, counted them, snapped a rubber band around them, then dove deep in the pile for another bundle. After tearing it apart, she began inspecting random bills.

“It's all real,” Ashruf remarked to Petrov, who paid no attention. He continued to count bills within the bundles.

When Modin put away her equipment, the soldiers carefully arranged the bundles in stacks, then counted them. General Petrov announced, “Two million dollars. Does everyone agree?”

They all did. A gesture from Petrov caused the officers to begin placing the stacks of currency in the duffle bags.

“So,” Petrov said, addressing Ashruf, “do you want this one, or do you want to choose all four at random?”

Ashruf took his time, apparently making up his mind. “We will take this one and three more.”

“Each of them weighs about two hundred kilos. Eight men can handle one.”

Ashruf nodded again, once.

“Use your people,” Petrov said.

The armed Russians watched as Ashruf and his seven colleagues, which was everyone from the van and truck, arranged themselves around the pallet. At Ashruf's command, they hoisted it off the ground, then worked it through the door and out to the truck. With much huffing and puffing, they lifted the pallet and its shape high enough to slide it into the bed of the cargo compartment. Then they climbed into the truck and shoved mightily until they got the pallet into one corner, where they secured it with ropes.

With Ashruf and his men in their truck following along behind, Petrov climbed into a truck loaded with armed soldiers and led the way into the darkness. They drove for several miles, passed through several more high fences, and entered an area containing long rows of earthen mounds. Finally the lead truck stopped and the soldiers piled out of the back. They directed the driver of the following truck to park in front of a double steel door. One of the soldiers used a key to open the lock, then several more opened the door and turned on lights inside the mound.

Several dozen pallets were stored within. An ovoid shape was strapped to each with metal straps. Beside each one a steel rod protruded from the ground, one with a wire that led to the metal fittings on the rear of each shape.

“Take your pick,” Petrov said.

The shapes were painted white, yet on some of them a fungus had begun to grow. Ashruf scraped at the fungus with a fingernail, removing the flora and the white paint underneath. His flashlight beam revealed rust spots on the steel skins.

He used the device in the aluminum case. After checking eight or nine of the objects, he selected three that seemed to have the least amount of surface corrosion. As Ashruf and his men disconnected the grounding wires, General Petrov remarked, “I'd be careful, if I were you, with those warheads while they are ungrounded. The detonators are in the high explosive. If you let electromagnetic energy build up on one of those things, it's conceivable you raghead sons of bitches and a whole lot of your friends are going to find yourself instantly in hell with Mohammed.”

Ashruf ignored the general. Speaking Arabic, he arranged his men around the first pallet, hoisted it carefully, and carried it to the truck. When they had that warhead secured, they returned to the magazine for another.

The entire operation took about half of an hour.

Anna Modin was standing outside the one-story building in the compound area when the party returned from the magazines. Ashruf stayed in the cab beside the truck driver while his colleagues climbed down from the back of the truck, locked the cargo door, and entered the van. With General Petrov and Modin watching, the van followed the truck out of the compound past the tanks and headed for the main gate.

“A profitable evening, General,” Anna Modin said. “Two million American dollars. Congratulations.”

“You have earned your ten thousand,” Petrov said as he watched the taillights of the van and Ashruf's truck cross the low ridge beyond the compound gate. When the lights disappeared from view, he suggested, “Let's drink to our good fortune.”

“Did you recognize him?” Petrov asked, meaning Ashruf.

“Oh, yes,” Anna Modin said. “The name he uses most often is Frouq al-Zuair. He's Egyptian, I think. He could be Palestinian or Saudi. He is wanted by the Israelis and the Egyptians. Bombs are his specialty, yet as I recall, the Egyptians want him for hacking some tourists to death with a machete. Infidels, you know.”

“He had friends with money,” Petrov said. He was a practical man.

“You would have done the world a favor,” Anna mused, “if you had just shot them and kept their money.”

“And the evening would have been just as profitable,” Petrov said, grinning. “Alas, Anna Mikhailova, you don't understand the intricacies of capitalism and international trade. Killing customers is bad for business. Al-Zuair and his friends may return some day with more millions.”

“Someday,” Anna Modin said hopefully, and followed General Petrov toward his office.

CHAPTER ONE

The tall, lean man walked out the entrance of the United Nations building in Manhattan and paused at the top of the main staircase to extract a cigarette from a metal case. He wore a dark gray suit of an expensive cut and a deep blue silk tie. He lit his cigarette, snapped the lighter shut, and descended the staircase.

He joined the throngs on the sidewalk and walked purposefully, taking no more note of his fellow pedestrians than any other New Yorker. He turned westward on East Forty-sixth Street, which was one-way eastbound and choked with traffic, as usual. Striding along with the pace of a man who has a destination but is not late, he crossed Second, Third, and Lexington Avenues, and turned north on Park.

On Forty-eighth Street, he turned west again. Crossing Madison and Fifth Avenues, he took no notice of the crowds or people in front of the plaza at Rockefeller Center, but walked steadily through them, ditched his cigarette at the door of the NBC building—he was on his third by then—and went inside. Seven minutes later he was on the Rockefeller Center subway platform. He stepped aboard a southbound B train just before the doors closed and grabbed a bar near the door. The train got under way immediately.

As the train roared through darkness, the tall man casually examined the faces of his fellow passengers, then stood at ease holding the strap. He watched with no apparent interest as people got on and off the train at each stop.

In Brooklyn he exited the train, climbed to the street and immediately went back down into the subway station. In minutes he was aboard another B train heading north, back into Manhattan.

This time he exited the train at Grand Street in Little Italy. Up on the sidewalk, he began walking south. An hour later the tall man passed the entrance of the Staten Island Ferry and walked into Battery Park. Several times he checked his watch.

Once he stopped and lit another cigarette, then sat on a bench overlooking New York Harbor. After fifteen minutes of this, he went back toward the Ferry pier and began walking north on Broadway. Three blocks later he caught a north-bound taxi.

“Seventy-ninth and Roosevelt Drive, please.”

Broadway was a crawl. The taxi driver, a man from the Middle East, mouthed common obscenities at every stoplight. North of Times Square the cab made better time.

After he left the taxi, the tall man walked toward the Hudson River. Soon he was strolling the River Walk. He turned onto the pedestrian pier that jutted into the river and walked behind several dozen people standing against the railing facing south. Many had cameras and were shooting pictures of the skyline to the south where the twin towers of the World Trade Center had stood.

At the end of the pier were several benches, all empty save one. Four men, two of them policemen in uniform, were turning strollers and tourists away from the bench area, but the tall man walked by them without a word. The middle-aged man seated on the bench was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, a faded pullover sweater, and wrap-around sunglasses that hid his eyes. He had a rolled-up newspaper in his hand. He glanced at the tall man as he approached.

“Good morning, Jake.”

“Hello, Ilin.”

“I'm clean, I presume.”

“Ever since the Rockefeller Center subway station.”

The tall man nodded. His name was Janos Ilin, and he was a senior officer in the SVR
(Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki),
the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, which was the bureaucratic successor to the foreign intelligence arm—the First Chief Directorate—of the Soviet-era KGB. The man in jeans was Rear Admiral Jake Grafton of the United States Navy. He appeared to be in his late forties, had short, thinning hair combed straight back, and a nose that was a size too large for his face. He looked reasonably fit, with a tan that suggested he spent time in the sun on a regular basis.

Ilin stood examining the surroundings. After a minute spent looking south at the southern end of Manhattan, he ran his eyes along the shoreline, the people on the pier, then turned to watch the boats going up and down the Hudson. “That atrocity,” he said, gesturing toward the southern end of Manhattan, “would never have happened in Russia.”

Jake Grafton made a noncommittal noise.

“I know what you are thinking,” Ilin continued, after a glance at the American. “You are thinking that we would never have given several dozen Arabs the free run of the country, to do whatever they had the money to do, and that is true. But that is not the critical factor. Bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Islamic Jihad—all those religious fascists know that if they ever pull a stunt like that—” he gestured to the south “—in Russia, we will hunt them to the ends of the earth and execute them wherever we find them. We will exterminate the lot of them. To the very last man.”

“The same way the KGB murdered Hafizullah Amin in Kabul?” Jake asked. In 1979 KGB special forces disguised in Afghan uniforms assaulted the presidential palace and assassinated the president of Afghanistan, his family and entourage. Moscow's hand-picked successor asked for Soviet help, which fortunately was right at hand since the Red Army had already invaded.

“Precisely. But you Americans don't do things the Russian way.” Ilin got out his cigarette case and lit one.

“Thank God. You killed a million Afghanis and lost fifteen thousand of your own in Afghanistan.”

“As I recall, you killed four million Vietnamese and lost fifty-eight thousand Americans in your little brush fire war.”

“I served that one up, I suppose.” Jake sighed. “Two men followed you to Rockefeller Center. Apparently Russians. Someone over there doesn't trust you.”

“
Touche,
” Janos Ilin said. His lips formed the trace of a smile. “Can you describe them?”

Jake reached under his sweater and produced two photos. He handed them to Ilin, who glanced at each one, then passed them back. “I know them. Thanks for coming today.”

“Why me?” Jake Grafton asked as he pocketed the photos.

Yesterday Ilin had telephoned Callie Grafton at the Grafton's apartment in Roslyn, Virginia, and asked for Jake's office telephone number. Since she knew Ilin—he had worked with her husband the previous year—she gave it to him. Then he telephoned the FBI/CIA Joint Antiterrorism Task Force at CIA headquarters in Langley and asked for Grafton by name. The call came from a pay telephone in New York City. When Grafton came on the line, Ilin asked to meet him in New York the following day. They had set up the meet. Grafton had arranged to have agents monitor Ilin's progress around New York to ensure he wasn't followed. If he had been, Grafton would not have been waiting on the pier.

“I heard you were the senior military liaison officer to the CIA/FBI antiterrorism task force. I know you, so…”

“I don't think that's classified information, but I don't recall anyone doing a press release on my new assignment.”

A trace of a smile crossed Ilin's face. “The fact that I know is my credential. Let's reserve that topic for a few minutes.”

Jake took off his sunglasses, folded them carefully, and put them in a shirt pocket inside his sweater. His eyes, Ilin noticed, were gray and hard as he scrutinized the Russian's face. “So what are you doing in New York? Servicing a mole?”

“I came to see you.”

“Did the Center send you?”

“No.”

Ilin stepped to the railing facing south, which he leaned on. Jake Grafton joined him. A police helicopter buzzed down the river and jets could be heard going into Newark and Teterboro. Contrails could be seen in the blue sky overhead. Ilin watched them a moment as he finished his cigarette, then tossed the butt into the river.