central control exist in the psyche of Russia's new leaders.
'It's going to take decades to get rid of them. Barbarous actions, poisoning and assassinations, all aimed at crushing dissent, stamping out free expression. Drastic measures, and they all thrive today in Russia. It's an integral part of an insidious political culture.
'Remember, Jimmy, it was Stalin himself who said very simply, ‘If you have a man who represents a problem, get rid of the man. Then there's no problem.' Both Arnie and I believe Mikhallo Masorin was the embodiment of just such a problem. Would he really secede from Russian rule and take his oil with him?'
'Not anymore he wouldn't,' said Jimmy, 'and no bloody error.'
'Both Arnold and I would like you to bear that in mind during the course of your investigations. And by the way, we would like you to continue with them, on a full-time basis for the next couple of weeks. We really ought to find out what the hell's going on.'
'Christ, sir. Mind if I take a swig of the coffee. That's a bloody lot to digest.'
Admiral Morris smiled. 'Take a look at some of the really suspicious deaths that have taken place in the past, say, forty years. And you might start with Georgi Markov.'
'Who's he, sir?'
'He was a Soviet expert with the BBC in London — a good journalist with excellent contacts behind the Iron Curtain. He wrote some really hair-raising stuff about the Soviets and the KGB. I believe he was a good friend of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He was a real thorn in the side of officials in the Soviet embassy in London…'
'And what happened to him?'
'Why don't you go and look it up accurately. Late seventies. I remember it, but not well enough.'
'Righto, sir. I'll get right on it.'
Lt. Commander Ramshawe retreated to his lair and moved into the Internet. It took him ten minutes to find a reference…
A later article by the former KGB colonel and renowned British double agent Oleg Gordievsky stated categorically that Markov had been assassinated by a KGB agent. And what's more, that assassination was carried out with the approval of the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, later the General Secretary of the Soviet Union.
'Streuth,' said Jimmy Ramshawe for the second time in a half hour. 'One bloody surprise after another.'
He trawled through all manner of disappearances, of politicians, dissidents, and others deemed whatever the Russian is for pain in the ass, before alighting on the big one…so big it forever blighted the name of the Russian leadership, and it did not even work.
Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition leader in the infamous Ukraine election of 2004, the hugely popular pro- European who was spectacularly poisoned but never died in the September before the election.
His face, hideously pockmarked and disfigured, was shown to the entire world, just a few weeks after he had looked perfectly normal. The murder attempt had taken place at a political dinner with Ukraine security services, and the evidence of poisoning by dioxin was overwhelming. At least it was considered so by the doctors who treated Viktor in Vienna. They asserted the levels of dioxin in his blood were more than one thousand times above normal.
It was also obvious that his stance as a pro-European, pro-democracy candidate was a serious danger to Moscow, with its love of state control. Here was a man, and here was a problem. And Joseph Stalin himself had instructed them how to be rid of it. Viktor Yushchenko was lucky not to have died, and everyone knew the new Russian secret police, the FSB, had been responsible for this attempted murder.
It was also a timely reminder that the old, vicious KGB methods of elimination were alive and well in modern Russia. Not just alive, and not just well, but ruthlessly woven into the fabric of Russian politics, where they've been since the 1920s, when the KGB first built their laboratories to develop special poisons to use against dissidents.
Jimmy Ramshawe was gratified to note that Viktor Yushchenko eventually became President of the Ukraine, and that his health slowly returned to normal. But his ordeal demonstrated once and for all that modern ideas of political freedom and human rights have never taken root in Russia, and probably never will.
At least, that was the view of Admiral Arnold Morgan and his cohort Admiral George Morris. 'And who the bloody hell am I to argue with those two?' muttered Jimmy. 'They got me. The ole Ruskies most definitely took a pop at Mikhallo, and this time they didn't fuck it up.'
By now, Admiral Morris had left for a meeting at the Pentagon, and Jimmy elected to spend the rest of the afternoon trying to find out just what Mr. Masorin had done; something so bad the heavies from Moscow had decided to take him out, right after dinner in the White House, damn nearly in full view of the entire world.
Jimmy Ramshawe picked up his telephone and asked to be put through to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, extension 4601.
'Hi, Mary, is Lenny in this afternoon?'
'He sure is, sir. You want to speak with him?'
'Would you just ask him if I can come and see him, right now?'
'Hold a moment…yes, that will be fine. Mr. Suchov said the usual place, say, forty-five minutes?'
'Perfect, Mary. Tell him I'll be there.'
Six minutes later Lt. Commander Ramshawe's black Jaguar was ripping down the Spellman Parkway heading south. He cut onto the Beltway at Exit 22 and aimed the car west, counterclockwise, and stayed right on the great highway that rings Washington, DC, until it crossed the Potomac River on the American Legion Memorial Bridge.
Seventeen miles along the Beltway had taken him fifteen minutes, and now he picked up the Georgetown Pike for two miles, straight into the CIA headquarters main gate, where a young field officer from the Russian desk met him and accompanied him to the parking area near the auditorium.
Jimmy thanked him and walked through to the CIA's tranquil memorial garden, pausing just to gaze at the simple message carved into fieldstone at the edge of the pond—
Like most senior Intelligence officers, a place in Jimmy's soul was touched by those words — and visions instantly stood before him of grim, dark streets in Moscow or the old East Berlin or Bucharest, of men working for the United States, alone, in the most terrible danger, stalked by the stony-faced agents of the KGB. Always the KGB, with their hired assassins, knives, and garottes.
'I just hope the nation is bloody grateful, that's all,' he said as he walked in the sunlight toward the blue- painted seat by the pond where he always met Leonid Suchov, perhaps the most brilliant double agent the West ever had.
He smiled when he thought of Lenny. A stocky little bear of a man, who walked lightly on the balls of his feet, Lenny hardly ever stopped smiling, and would slide a knife between your ribs as soon as look at you. Which was the principal reason he was still alive and not buried somewhere in the bowels of Lubyanka. Even Lenny had lost count of the KGB agents he had somehow eluded. Or worse.
Lenny was Rumanian by birth, but lost both of his parents, schoolteachers in Bucharest, when he was twelve. Typecast as dissidents, they were grabbed by KGB thugs and never seen again. Lenny, however, had a major talent to go with his profound hatred of the Communist Party, Moscow, the Iron Curtain, and everything to do with that monstrous regime.
Lenny was a champion wrestler. Never quite good enough to win an Olympic medal himself, he became a world-class coach and was part of the team that helped steer the great Vasile Andrei to the Greco-Roman heavyweight gold medal for Rumania at the Los Angeles Games in 1984.
For aficionados, the name Andrei still brings curt, knowing nods of respect. In each of his four bouts in L.A., the mighty Rumanian defeated his opponent in less than four and a half minutes, an almost unprecedented feat of strength and skill.
And Lenny was right there heading up the coaching squad. The only difference was, the others went home to Rumania, whereas Lenny Suchov was spirited out of the Olympic village and then flown in a United States Navy helicopter to Vandenberg Air Force Base north of Santa Barbara, and thence to Washington.
His disappearance was of course a huge embarrassment to the Rumanian Olympic authorities, and
