the lights, wall sockets, switches and pictures hanging on the walls. If there was a bug, the penlight’s bulb would flash. But nothing happened. The room was clean. “Who are the they?” “I didn’t know at the time. But now I think they were probably mafiosa hired by someone inside the SVR, or maybe in the Kremlin. Someone possibly in Putin’s office, or very close, who wants to sweep everything under the rug.” Nikolayev shrugged. “It’s happening all over Russia, but especially Moscow.
America’s cooperation is too valuable to jeopardize.” McGarvey motioned Nikolayev to his feet. The old man stiffly complied, and McGarvey quickly frisked him for weapons. But Nikolayev came up clean.
He sat back down. “Whyd you run? Did you think that they would come after you for disturbing the files?” “That’s exactly what I thought,”
Nikolayev said. “So I pulled the file I needed and took the first train to Leningrad and from there Helsinki and then a flight to Paris.”
“How about Vladimir Trofimov?” “He was General Baranov’s chief of staff in the early days. The sixties and seventies. I thought that he might have some of the answers.” “That was going too far back, wasn’t it?” “No. Actually it was the beginning of the project. Baranov’s dream.” McGarvey stood across from the old Russian, but he said nothing. He waited for Nikolayev to continue. “Like your people, we were working on behavior modification techniques using a combination of psychological means, and of hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and derivatives from peyote and some other plants that Banco del Sur supplied us with from Mexico. It was brainwashing. An extension of what the North Koreans and Chinese were doing in the fifties.” The realization of the full measure of Baranov’s scheme began to dawn on McGarvey. “You’re saying that the sleeper agents Baranov sent over here, the assassins, were brainwashed?” “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Gennadi Zhuralev had made a copy of the list of assassins and their targets for insurance. He left a marginal note, apparently by mistake, in one of the files. He was the director of resources, so he certainly had the means.” Nikolayev shook his head. “But they got to him first.” “What about Trofimov?” “He was chief of staff, as I said, so I thought that he would have seen the list and maybe he would remember some of the names. But he only told me one. It was you.
Baranov had placed you at the head of the list.” “How many others were there?” Nikolayev spread his hands. “Maybe as many as a dozen. But it’s highly unlikely that all of those people are still alive.” “Who is my assassin?” McGarvey asked. “I never saw that list. But from what Otto tells me, it has to be someone very close to you. Or at least someone with reliable intelligence about your movements.”
Nikolayev picked up the stack of file folders and offered it to McGarvey. “These are his suspects.” McGarvey hesitated a moment before he took the files. There were seven of them. He was almost afraid to look at the names. “Did you recognize any of these?” “Not beyond the obvious,” Nikolayev said. “But Otto told me that there might be one more name to add to the list. He wasn’t completely sure yet, but when he was, he would name the person.” The first of the folders was Dick Yemm’s. McGarvey looked up. “This man is dead.” “I know. But Otto said that Mr. Yemm remained a suspect, which in effect would mean that the threat was over.” Nikolayev seemed suddenly very tired. He idly rubbed his chest. “Remember that if the SVR had these names, they would all be targets for assassination themselves.” The second file folder was a dossier on Dmitri Runkov, the Russian SVR rezident at the Washington embassy. He was hiding out in his house, but Fred Rudolph had admitted that if the Russian intelligence officer wanted to get out of there without being seen, it was possible. “I don’t think it would be Runkov himself,” Nikolayev said. “But rather someone who Runkov knows here in the States. A sleeper resource. An agent buried so deep that he’s beyond detection by U.S. authorities, but who could be accessed by a handful of people in an emergency. The Washington rezident being one of them.” The third file folder was marked UNKNOWN.
In it, Otto had laid out the parameters for the assassin. A bulletproof identity, good intelligence, nearness to McGarvey, knowledge of explosives and a dozen other traits. The fourth file folder contained the dossier of Bob Johnson, Jared Kraus’s number two in Technical Services. According to Otto’s notes he was Senator Hammond’s source within the CIA. Otto had learned that from various computer and telephone taps he had conducted of his own accord. He had not blown the whistle on Johnson’s talking to the senator because the man was one of the suspects as McGarvey’s would-be assassin. The fifth folder contained Otto’s own dossier, without notes other than StenzePs psychological profiles on him. “Unique, wouldn’t you say, for a chief investigator to name himself as a suspect,” Nikolayev said. McGarvey made no comment. How much control or self-awareness would a brainwashed person have? Maybe none.
The sixth and seventh file folders contained dossiers on Dick Adkins and on Todd Van Buren. Adkins was old enough to have come under Baranov’s influence while the general was still alive, but Todd had been a young man then. Still in grade school or junior high. Otto’s notes listed him as a “secondary,” but a suspect nonetheless. “A recruit trained by the original agent’s handler,” Nikolayev explained.
“But you need to know something else, Mr. Director. In fact if there is a possibility of identifying and catching the killer, it will be because of the existence of a second group. One even more important than the list of suspects themselves.” “What are you talking about?
What group?” “Their control officers.” Nikolayev became introspective. He looked away momentarily. “When we were doing this work we succeeded brilliantly. The conditioning could be done in a week’s time. But there was always a problem that we could not overcome. The conversions last only seven days, sometimes as long as eight or nine days, but that’s it. After that the subjects slowly began to return to normal, or at least to a near-normal psychological state. In fact within twenty-four hours of the deadline, the subjects became useless for our purposes.” Something else dawned on McGarvey.
“You were in on it from the beginning. That’s why you came out to try to stop Martyrs. Your conscience was killing you.” Nikolayev nodded heavily. “I directed the project.” “Knowing what Baranov was going to use it for?” Again Nikolayev nodded. But he looked up. “I won’t make excuses, except to say that you were our enemy. Americans might have feared that our nuclear weapons would rain down on their heads, and rightly so. But Russians were just as frightened. We wouldn’t have spent billions of rubles building our subway system as bomb shelters.”
“Point taken,” McGarvey conceded. “If we find out who has a control officer, and keep them apart long enough, we’ll have our sleeper.
How?” “You must offer yourself as bait. It will mean shutting down your security measures at the safe house Otto has told me about.
Sending away your security team. And then inviting each person on the list to come out for a chat. One-on- one.” McGarvey put the folders aside. “Did Otto give you any hints who the eighth suspect might be?”
“No.” They were his friends, most of them. Even family. It was monstrous.
Worse than he had feared. But despite himself he could see the logic in Otto’s list of suspects. They were the people who, in the deepest recesses of his heart, he himself had suspected. “What about Runkov and the dossier Otto designated as unknown? How do we get word to them?” “Otto has access to your law enforcement computer systems in the Washington area. He can place your present whereabouts on those Web pages. En claire. The right people will see it soon enough.”
“The assassin won’t come.” “Yes he will, and you know it. Most of those people are your friends. But so will the assassin’s control officer have to make an appearance. To reinforce the conditioning.”
“You’ll be waiting.” Nikolayev nodded. “With help. Someone from the FBI or from your Office of Security. Once the principals show up, whoever comes next will be our link to the assassin.” “I’ll have Jim Grassinger assign someone to you. In the meantime, you’ll remain here.” “I suggest that we get this over with as soon as possible, Mr.
Director.” “Tonight,” McGarvey said. “It gives us the entire day to get ready.” At the door he turned back. “But what did the sonofabitch hope to accomplish by killing me? I’m just one man.” “He’s already done more than that if you stop to think about it,” Nikolayev said.
“Nobody in the intelligence community in Washington completely trusts anyone else. You don’t trust your own friends. I’m sure that the mistrust at Langley is hampering operations. From what I read in the newspapers you and the President are at odds with Congress. You’re so distracted, in fact, by the attacks on your family, that your job is suffering. And were Baranov alive now, I have no doubt that he would have planned for some spectacular event to happen in the midst of all the confusion.” “But he’s not,” McGarvey said, once again seeing Baranov pitch forward dead. Nikolayev nodded. “Good luck, Mr.
Director.” McGarvey returned to the dayroom, where he took Todd aside.
“I want you to stick around here and keep an eye on him for the rest of the night. We’ll send out your relief. Then I want you to go home, get something to eat, grab a shower and get some sleep.” “Did he tell you anything
