“As soon as I heard about Checkmate being in Kyiv, I knew you’d be knocking at my door,” Harris said. “You know what the DCIA called it? ‘Our moment of truth.’ That’s what he said. Twenty-plus years in the Company and neither of us had ever faced anything like this.” He shook his head. “I met with the President. He’s thrilled you’re alive, but he’s not sure that lets him off the hook. It bothered him. A lot.”
“Yeah, I know how tough you guys have it. West Wing chicken sandwiches, Ritz Carlton and all,” Scorpion said, looking at the spot on Harris’s throat where a single blow would end it. “Cut the bullshit, Bob. Why’d you set me up?”
Harris smiled grimly. “I guess it’s time to-what was it the old-timers used to call it-to ‘fallen die hose, ’ to drop your pants.” He leaned forward. “I need your word. What we say now never leaves this table. Never. No matter who, no matter under what circumstances, no matter anything.”
Scorpion looked at him sharply. “Or else what?”
Harris glanced at the two men he had stationed by the door. Scorpion followed his glance.
Go to hell, he thought, but didn’t say it. If Harris was this serious, it meant that what he was about to say went higher up. If he wasn’t lying, it went all the way to the Oval Office. It might also explain why people he had trusted-Rabinowich and Shaefer-had gone along. Also, he didn’t need a war with the CIA. “I’ll want something in exchange,” he said.
“What?” Harris asked.
“I’ll tell you when we’re done.”
Harris exhaled sharply. “God, you’re a pain in the ass. You want another?” indicating the drinks.
“You’re buying,” Scorpion said.
Harris waved the waitress over and gestured for another round. They watched her walk away in her tan Ritz-Carlton-worth-the-money skirt and top. Harris hesitated.
“I have your word?” he began.
“For Chrissake, let’s have it,” Scorpion said.
“I t was a walk-in,” Harris said. “Can you believe that? A walk-in! Like having a single dollar bill in your pocket and, as a throwaway, you give it to the clerk and you win the lottery.”
“Where was this?”
“Madrid. An all-expenses-paid NATO and wannabes’ conference. Tapas and whores. That’s not the story.”
“What’s the story?”
“The father. Let’s call him ‘Leva.’ Leva Nikolaevych. But you need the context. In 1964, Leonid Brezhnev becomes General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union. Brezhnev was a Ukrainian of ethnic Russian parents from Dnipropetrovsk oblast. He was a protege of Nikita Khrushchev, who, although Russian, was himself born near the Ukrainian border. Brezhnev brings with him several key Ukrainians whose loyalties belong to him. Among them is a certain KGB agent, our Leva Nikolaevych. Leva is instrumental during the period when Brezhnev is jockeying for power with Suslov, Kosygin, and others. He gets very close to Brezhnev, who will eventually consolidate all the power in his own hands. Life is good.
“Fast-forward to 1968. In Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dub?cek launches a wave of reform that came to be known as the ‘Prague Spring.’ This created a major crisis for the Soviet Union. You have to remember, 1968 was a time of great unrest: the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and the resulting student protests, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, demonstrations and protests all around the world, the riot at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Within the Russian Politboro there were serious disagreements as to how to deal with Czechoslovakia. They feared a wave of revolt and reform that if unchecked could lead to the breakup of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. Some argued for a hands-off attitude, others for political and economic pressure, still others wanted a full-scale military invasion to crush the reform.
“The head of the KGB at that time was Yuri Andropov, who was also a member of the Central Committee and had ambitions of his own. He provided intel to the Central Committee that the CIA had instigated the Prague reform, that we were running Dub?cek and were planning a coup, and that NATO was about to move to support Czechoslovakia and break up the Warsaw Pact.”
“Were we?”
Harris shook his head. “The truth was that the U.S. was ass-deep in Vietnam. We had our own problems. The Company had nothing to do with Dub?cek or the Prague Spring, but Andropov had a majority of the Central Committee convinced they were on the brink of either the dissolution of the Soviet Union or nuclear war and that it was all a CIA plot. He demanded that the Soviet Union crush the Czechs. Preparations were made for a Soviet intervention.
“In August, 1968, Russian tanks led a massive invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact. The Prague Spring was over. Reforms were ended. KGB agents arrested thousands of reformers, many of whom were killed. Thousands more were imprisoned and tortured. Most were never heard from again. Dub?cek was hauled to Moscow and forced to sign a protocol that basically restored Soviet-style communism to Czechoslovakia.
“But there was a problem. Something called the ‘Kalugin Papers’; internal KGB documents that proved beyond any doubt that the CIA had nothing to do with the Prague Spring, NATO wasn’t planning anything, and Andropov had fabricated all his intel. Guess who was Kalugin’s superior within the KGB and had the documents?”
“Of course,” Scorpion said.
“Leva.” Harris nodded, taking a sip of his drink. “Now Andropov had a problem. The Soviet Union had already invaded and was widely condemned in the West. Andropov couldn’t afford to have the Central Committee learn he’d deliberately sold them a bill of goods. Kalugin, who was based in Washington, was easy. His body was found a few days later floating in the Potomac River. Leva, on the other hand, was no case officer like Kalugin. He had friends. And he wasn’t just Andropov’s problem, he was Brezhnev’s too. Neither of them could afford to let it get out to any of their competitors in the Politboro or the Central Committee.
“Plus, Leva was Brezhnev’s droog- his buddy. Brezhnev had bounced Leva’s son on his knee how many times? In those days in Russia, you didn’t just get rid of somebody. The whole family would disappear into the Gulag and never be heard from again. But Brezhnev didn’t want to do that with what was in effect his own godchild. The boy was eight years old and adored his father. So to save the child and both their asses, Brezhnev and Andropov did a deal. They sent Leva to the Gulag, to Strafnaja Kolonija 9, a prison camp in Siberia so secret, even most KGB officers didn’t know it existed. The mother and the rest of the family disappeared in the Gulag. That was common at the time. But the little boy, Leva’s son, they sent him back to Ukraine.”
“Jesus,” Scorpion said, looking up. “It’s Gorobets.”
Harris nodded. “Gorobets. Even after Brezhnev and Andropov and the Soviet Union itself were all long gone, the KGB, now the FSB, knew that if Gorobets ever entertained even the slightest anti-Russian thought-and of course, how could he, raised as a pro-Russian patriot? — they would kill his father.
“Except, one fine day, who comes strolling in out of the hot sun on the Calle de Serrano into the American embassy in Madrid? A walk-in. The one-in-a-million you don’t plan for because it’s impossible, it doesn’t happen. That same little boy, all grown up and the most important person in the Svoboda party-if not the whole damn country of Ukraine. And he wants revenge.”
“You believed him?”
Harris brushed the thought away as though it were a fly.
“Of course we didn’t believe him. You have no idea how long and how hard it was to find out and vet everything I’m telling you. Two years. After that thing in Rome, we had Rabinowich working on it full-time for months.”
“What made him turn?”
“That was the part we had to get right. It was quite an odyssey. Brezhnev, who was the leader of the Soviet Union-and after he died, Andropov, who became General Secretary-kept an eye on the boy. They guided him into the KGB, and after Ukrainian independence, the SBU. He was Leva’s son, all right. He had no father or mother. The Gorobets you know, the ruthless Gorobets of the Black Armband thugs, is a child of the KGB; they made him.
“The problem was, he was old enough to remember his parents. He still loved them. That hole in him had never been filled. And someone had survived. An aunt. Tetya Oksana, Aunt Oksana.”
“What happened two years ago that made him walk into the embassy in Madrid?”
“Somebody gave him something. Someone in the Metro in Kiev pressed it into his hand, and by the time he turned around, they were gone. It was a cross. One of those Ukrainian crosses; you know, with the two crossbars
