Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (27 page)

 
          
“And
so what does
Russia
get?” Yejsk asked. “What do
we
get
?”

 
          
Kazakov
smiled broadly—he knew he had them now. Once they stan thinking about
themselves
and their cut of the action, Pavel knew they were hooked. “Overtly,
Russia
gets a flowage fee from the oil that I
transport across
Russia
and ship out of
Novorossiysk
,” Kazakov replied. “Covertly, I will pay a percentage of the profits
for protection of my pipeline.
Russia
maintains a presence in the Balkans again,
plus you earn whatever you can squeeze out of the republics. I know
Russia
is very good at milking the republics it
has sworn to protect—
Macedonia
,
Bulgaria
, and
Albania
should be no different. I will offer the
same .. incentives, shall we say, to
Macedonia
and
Albania
.”

 
          
"Plomo
o plata?”
Zhurbenko asked. “If they accept they get rich, and if they
refuse they get dead?”

 
          
“It
is a win-win situation for all of us,” Kazakov said. “It is an offer no one can
refuse.”

           
“An offer you can't refuse, all
right,” Linda Mae Valentrovna Maslyukov muttered to herself, as she finished
her stretching exercises and then began a simple black-belt karate
kata
routine while standing on a narrow gravel turnout on the side of the road near
the end of the runway.

 
          
Linda
Mae was an electronics expert from
St. Petersburg
, the daughter of a Russian father—a former
Russian consul and trade negotiator based in
New Orleans
and
Los Angeles
—and an Irish-American mother from
Monroe
,
Louisiana
. Although she'd been bom in
New Orleans
and had spent most of her life in the
United States
, when her father had been reassigned back
to
Moscow
, she had eagerly gone along. Her long,
flaming red hair and sparkling green eyes made quite an impression on the boys
and professors at loffe-Physico-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, but she
didn't allow her popularity to interfere with getting first a bachelor’s, then
a master’s degree in science in semiconductor heterostructures.

 
          
Linda
had renounced her American citizenship in 1995 after receiving her master’s
degree, which completely opened up her career paths in
Russia
. With a citizen’s fluency in both English
and Russian and advanced degrees in sophisticated electronics technology, she
had her choice of jobs and salaries. She rejected a few more lucrative job
offers in
Moscow
and professorships in
St. Petersburg
to go to Zhukovsky and work in a
communications design laboratory. Because of her prior
U.S.
citizenship, she could hold no higher than
a secret security clearance, but she still enjoyed a good lifestyle and a high
level of prestige from her colleagues and fellow workers. She often spoke about
moving to
Moscow
or
St. Petersburg
, but the talk always faded—mostly after
meeting a new pilot or senior officer from one of the bomber squadrons at
Zhukovsky.

 
          
No
one knew the real reason why she stayed at Zhukovsky, why she broke off torrid
affairs with high-ranking officers, why she was satisfied with a relatively low
salary at Zhukovsky when she could command much higher wages in the city. The
reason: Linda Mae was a paid spy for the
United States of America
. Whatever she might have made elsewhere was
more than compensated for by numbered
Cayman Islands
bank accounts, where she hoped to retire the second it looked like her
cover was going to blow.

 
          
She
had just downloaded the latest tap from a passive listening device she’d
installed in the Metyor Aerospace hangar several weeks before. Metyor had never
had very much activity until recently, right around the time that the father of
Metyor IIG’s largest shareholder, Pavel Kazakov, had been brutally killed in
Kosovo. Suddenly, Metyor Aerospace was buzzing with activity. Before it got too
hairy over there, she had managed to plant listening devices inside the main
hangar and in the administrative offices. No matter how old, young, married,
busy, or noninterested they were, her red hair, green eyes, luscious Louisiana
breasts, and sassy attitude attracted men like nothing else, and she
practically had free access to Metyor. But no matter how hard she tried, it was
impossible to get inside the secure hangar or get close to the facility
director, Pyotr Fursenko. The old fart had to be gay—she’d tried all of her
feminine charms on him, to no avail.

 
          
Linda
had not seen it depart, but she knew the Metyor-179 was gone the day after the
raid on
Kukes
,
Albania
. There was no doubt in her mind that it had
done the raid. She’d pieced together snippets of other conversations and could
draw a fairly detailed timeline of the entire mission, all the way back to when
live weapons were uploaded, what kind they used, where they got them, the
strike routing—even details on what they would do if they encountered an AWACS
radar plane, which obviously they had. The listening devices were very, very
effective.

 
          
Unfortunately,
in order to prevent detection, they were extremely low-power devices, which
meant she had to get very close to the facility in order to download the stored
recordings; they also had to be very-low-frequency transmissions in order to
penetrate the radio-resistant steel hangar, so each packet of data, although
compressed, took a long time to download. She had to bring the downloading
device somewhere where it would be within the two hundred meters’ range of the
pickup/transmitters. She needed at least one minute to download Five minutes’
worth of conversations, so the recorder had to be within range for at least
thirty minutes.

 
          
Linda
could never get permission to live at base housing, and at the current time she
didn’t have a boyfriend who lived there, so she had to disguise these download
sessions by taking up jogging. The main road around the airfield at Zhukovsky
led from the main base area around the long northeast-southwest runway and all
the way to the housing area on the south side of the base. Every day, after
working late in her office or in the design labs, Linda would go to the base
gymnasium, stretch or lift weights for an hour or so to let the traffic die
down, then change into a jogging suit, put on her Austrian- made portable tape
recorder, and jog the main road all the way to the housing area, rest or visit friends
who lived there, and then jog back. As long as she was within two hundred
meters of the Metyor hangar, the transmitter would feed digital packets of data
into the CompactFlash memory card inside the tape recorder. She made sure she
stopped many times along the way—although she was fit enough to run a marathon
if she wanted to, she would stop every kilometer or so to check her pulse, make
like she had to get her breath back, watch airplanes land, or just do some
karate
kata
or stretch. The entrance to the Metyor Aerospace facility
sometimes had a friendly guard on duty, so she stopped there often to chat,
flirt, or do whatever was necessary to hang out long enough to collect data.

 
          
She
could also listen to the data as it was downloading— dangerous, but it helped
to remind her of the importance of what she was doing, why she was risking her
life to get this information to the
United States
. Ever since things started buzzing inside
Metyor. she started listening to the downloads—and it scared the hell out of
her. This development was even scarier. They were actually going to use the
Metyor-179 to...

 
          
She
heard the rustle of tires on gravel coming up behind her. She had the
headphones on, so she pretended not to notice. She switched the data downloader
off, switched the Russian rock music back on, tried some jumping jacks,
unzipped her jogging suit jacket about halfway down her chest, then took the
headphones off.

 
          
“
Prasteetye
,
gaspazha,
” a man said behind her. She pretended to be startled and
turned around. It was a base security police vehicle, with two officers. They
didn’t have their flashing lights on, so maybe this wasn't an enforcement stop,
just a friendly...

 
          
At
that instant, the officer behind the wheel turned on the flashing red and blue
lights. Oh, shit, what was this about?

 
          
“Da?”
Linda asked in her most seductive, disarming voice, adding just a hint of her
Louisiana
accent to try to put them off guard.
“What’s going on, fellas?”

 
          
“Miss
Maslyukov, we would like to ask you some questions,” the officer outside the
vehicle said. “Would you mind coming with us, please?”

 
          
“May
I ask what this is about, officer?”

           
“We will explain everything at base
security headquarters, Miss Maslyukov,” the officer said. It was then that
Linda noticed it—a strange antenna bolted to the hood of the trunk. A scanner,
probably to detect eavesdroppers. That was new to the base. It must’ve come
from outside the base, because if the base commander wanted any sort of
electronic gear, he came to Linda’s shop to get it.

 
          
“
Kharasho
,
” Linda acknowledged. She stepped toward the officer outside the car. Once out
of the glare of the headlights, she looked inside the vehicle. No dog. The
other officer was still in the driver’s seat, still seat-belted in, the radio
microphone in his hand casually watching her approach, a cigarette in his left
hand. Obviously, he expected this to be a very mu- tine pickup.

 
          
She
knew, whatever happened, she must not get inside that car.

 
          
The
second officer had a large metal flashlight in his left hand, his right hand
behind his back, unsnapping a pair of handcuffs from his utility belt pouch. As
she approached the officer outside the car, she noticed he was doing exactly
what she expected him to be doing—staring at her chest, the flashlight beam focused
right on her cleavage. “Please put your hands behind your back, miss,” the
officer ordered, in a not-too- forceful, almost anticipatory voice.

 
          
“Like
this?” Linda put her hands behind her back without turning around, which served
to push out her breasts even farther. The second officer’s attention was fully
riveted on her tits.

 
          
She
didn’t know where the strength came from. Maybe it was from worrying about this
very moment for so long. Maybe it was some sort of heroic, defiant gesture.
Maybe she had just watched too many episodes of
Charlie's Angels.
Whatever it was, wherever it came from, it was happening whether she thought it
was safe or sane or whatever Prison, interrogation center, Hell, or the
Cayman Islands
. One way or the other, she was on her way.

 
          
Just
as the second officer took a step toward her, still paying attention to nothing
else but her white billowy breasts, Linda executed a perfect snap kick, just
like her black-belt-qualifying
kata
move. It missed by a mile, nailing
the officer in the shins. But the officer seemed frozen, as if he couldn’t
believe what she had done, which gave her the opportunity to line up an even
better kick. Her second attack was right on target, her right foot burying
itself deeply into the officer’s groin. He made a loud, long grunt and bent
over nearly double. She quickly stepped beside him and jammed her left foot
into the side of his left knee. The joint buckled, and he went down on his left
side—exposing the side arm on the right, its safety strap unfastened. She
snatched it out of the holster. He reached out, grabbing for her, but she
twisted out of reach.