Page 108 of The Collector
“You will, however, trigger a Russian response. A response,” added Gabriel, “that will include an assessment of how it was that the Ukrainians knew about the plot.”
“All the more reason you need to get your friends out of the country as quickly as possible.”
“They’re trying, Adrian.”
“Where are they now?”
“Approximately halfway between Moscow and Saint Petersburg.”
“How’s the weather at the airport?”
“You’re the director of the CIA. You tell me.”
“I think there’s at least a fifty percent chance they should consider alternative travel arrangements.”
“I’d say it’s closer to like seventy-five.”
“Options?”
“Ask the Ukrainians to light up Nikolai Petrov’s place in Rublyovka, preferably before he realizes his directive is missing.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” said Carter, and the screen went dark.
Gabriel stared at the satellite photo. A busted-down old farm in the middle of nowhere. Two giant Kamaz trucks in the rutted yard, another Kamaz in the outbuilding. That was the truck Langley was worried about. That was the one with the bomb.
The sixteen men billeted at the farmhouse in the hamlet of Sokolovka were attached to the 3rd Guards Spetsnaz Brigade, an elite reconnaissance unit of the GRU. Their commanding officer was Captain Anatoly Kruchina, a veteran of the wars in Chechnya and Syria, and one of the mysterious “little green men” who had seized Crimea in 2014. Thus far, Kruchina’s most significant contribution to the so-called special military operation had come in Bucha, where he had helped the 234th Air Assault Regiment slaughter several hundred innocent civilians. It had been a nightmare, the worst atrocity he had ever witnessed. But war was war, especially when it involved Russians.
Kruchina and his unit were ordered to take up residence at the farmhouse in late November. The white Kamaz truck had arrived two days later. In the back was a cylindrical object about three meters in length, mounted to a steel frame and connected by a coiled wire to an external power source. Kruchina had not been told the nature of this peculiar-looking object, only that he was to allow nothing to happen to it—and that he must never, under any circumstances, throw the switch on the external power supply. As instructed, he had placed the truck in the farm’s corrugated metal outbuilding and padlocked the door. And there the thing had sat for the better part of the last two weeks, watched over by sixteen of the GRU’s most highly trained operatives.
The only break in the monotony had come the previous afternoon, when they received a surprise visit from the director of the GRU himself, General Igor Belinsky. He had been dressed in the uniform of a lowly colonel and accompanied by two engineers in civilian garb. They had inspected the object in the back of the truck and checked the battery level in the external power supply. Then the director of the GRU had told Anatoly Kruchina that he had beenchosen to carry out the most important mission of the special military operation in Ukraine, perhaps the most important in the history of the GRU itself.
It was not a complex assignment. All Kruchina had to do was drive the truck to the village of Maksimov, leave it at a Lukoil petrol station, and throw the switch on the power supply. Detonation would occur thirty minutes later, but by then Kruchina would be long gone; another GRU operative would be waiting to spirit him safely out of the blast zone. Upon the successful completion of his mission, Kruchina would be promoted to the rank of colonel and awarded the GRU’s highest citation. His future, the director assured him, was luminous.
“How many will die?”
General Belinsky had shrugged. They were only human beings, after all.
“But they’re Russian citizens.”
“So were the people in those apartment buildings back in ninety-nine. Three hundred were killed, just to make certain that Volodya won that first election.”
At the conclusion of his briefing, General Belinsky had given Kruchina a parcel of civilian clothing. He was to remain in place at the farm until receiving the order to proceed. It would come from General Belinsky himself and would be preceded by the code word Aurora. Belinsky anticipated the transmission would occur sometime after six in the morning. He suggested that Kruchina try to get some rest. It was essential that nothing go wrong. He would need to be at his very best.
But it was now nearly 5:00 a.m., and Anatoly Kruchina had not slept a minute. He was seated at the wobbly linoleum table in the kitchen, dressed in the civilian clothing, a lethalpapirosaburning between the first and second fingers of his right hand. His eyes werefixed on his secure satellite radio, which was resting on the table before him, next to the key for the padlock on the corrugated metal outbuilding. His thoughts were focused on a single question.
Why Captain Anatoly Kruchina, the grim reaper of Grozny, the butcher of Bucha? What had he done to deserve this great honor? Why had General Igor Belinsky chosenhimfor this most sensitive mission? The answer was obvious. They had chosen him because he had followed every order, and carried out every shit assignment, they had ever hurled at him. And yet he was certain, as certain as a man could be, that his director had misled him. There would be no promotion, no citation, no GRU operative waiting in a parked car at the Lukoil station—and no thirty-minute delay before detonation. War was war, thought Anatoly Kruchina. Especially when it involved Russians.
54
The Kremlin
There was nothing unusual in the way the morning began, no omen or inkling of what was to come. The president’s chief of staff entered the Grand Kremlin Palace at his customary time, 6:00 a.m. sharp, and was his typical malevolent self. Silver-tongued Kremlin spokesman Yevgeny Nazarov sauntered in a few minutes later, looking as though he hadn’t a care in the world, which wasn’t the case. He had spent the entire forty-minute commute from his mansion in Rublyovka batting away reports that Russia had kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children and locked them away in a network of reeducation camps. The official in charge of the program—she just happened to be Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights—was already hard at work in her office on the second floor.
Nikolai Petrov, the secretary of the Security Council, was running a few minutes behind schedule, but only because there was a backup at the Borovitskaya Tower, the business entrance of the Kremlin. Normally, Petrov might have upbraided his driver, but Plan Aurora required of him a deceptively serene demeanor, so he carried onreading his daily summary of global news as though untroubled by the delay. His attaché case rested on the opposite side of the backseat. The lid was open, but the internal compartment where he stored sensitive documents was tightly zipped.
Finally, the logjam broke, and Petrov’s limousine rolled through the tower’s arched passageway and into the courtyard of the Grand Kremlin Palace. Attaché case in hand, he headed upstairs to his office, which was presidential in size and grandeur. Pavel Semenov, his aide-de-camp, relieved him of his coat. As always, a traditional Russian breakfast awaited him. Semenov, ever attentive, poured the first cup of coffee.
“A restful evening, Secretary Petrov?”
