He looked down at his feet. “Then several months ago I was approached by a man named Peterhof. He was the representative of a major arms export company — a company called Arrus Export, Incorporated.”
Arrus? Colonel Peter Thorn glanced at Helen., “I’ve heard of it,” she whispered. “It’s a big player in the Russian arms market. Moves tanks, artillery, spare parts, and other military gear all over the globe.”
“This man wanted to buy working Su-24 engines for export out of Russia,” Serov continued. He shifted uneasily. “Naturally, I refused.”
“Naturally,” Koniev said cynically.
Serov flushed again. “Call me what you wish, Major, but I am no traitor. I need every engine in working order just to keep some of my aircraft flying!”
“But then you thought of the engines stored here?” Helen prompted.
“Exactly!” Serov nodded vigorously. “Since Moscow will not provide the resources to repair them, they are all destined for the scrap heap sooner or later. So I decided to make some profitable use of them.”
“How?” Koniev demanded. “Surely this arms merchant, Peterhof, did not pay you for useless jet engines?”
“No.” Serov shook his head. “That is where Captain Grushtin and the others came in. Especially Grushtin.”
“You cannibalized some of the engines to provide the parts to repair some of the others,” Thorn realized suddenly.
“Yes,” the Russian general confirmed. “Captain Grushtin led the work crews we used to rebuild working Saturns from the wreckage of others.”
“And just where did these rebuilt engines go, General?” Koniev asked.
“I don’t know,” Serov said slowly. “It was never discussed. And I never asked. It was made clear that such a question would be unwelcome.”
Thorn frowned, running over the most recent defense bulletins he’d read in his mind. Which countries flew the Su24? Iran? Iraq? Libya?
Didn’t China have its own homebuilt copy of the Su-24, the Hong-7? Any of them would welcome the chance to obtain spare engines for their expensive, advanced attack jets.
And none of them were exactly members of the friends of America hit parade.
There was another possibility, he realized. One that was even more disturbing. Since the collapse of the U.S.S.R. both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency had been engaged in projects to acquire top-grade Soviet weaponry for evaluation and training. Did the U.S. Air Force Red Eagles Squadron based at Nevada’s Dreamland have Su-24s in its inventory now? Jesus.
What if this was some kind of CIA-sponsored covert purchase gone wildly wrong? Langley would go ape if it had been sucked into a drug smuggling operation by accident.
Thorn spoke up with a question of his own. “Exactly how many engines did you sell, General?”
“Twenty,” Serov answered. “We transferred four separate shipments of five engines each.”
“When?”
The Russian general frowned. “I have the exact dates in my office, but the first shipment was made sometime in April. The last left by train late last month — around the twenty-sixth, I believe.”’ Thorn suppressed a whistle. The engine shipments roughly coincided with the wire transfers they’d found in Grushtin’s financial records. He stared hard at Serov. “And how much were you paid for these rebuilt engines?”
The Russian general glanced uneasily at Koniev.
“How much?” the MVD major ground out.
Serov capitulated. “Two hundred thousand American dollars per engine,” he admitted softly.
“And precisely how much of that did you pocket for yourself, General? In your impoverished circumstances, I mean?” Koniev asked in disgust.
“Half,” Serov whispered.
Helen took up the hunt. She turned toward the base commander.
“Then how much did the other officers earn? Captain Grushtin, for example?”
“Grushtin?” Serov’s lips pursed in thought. “Perhaps ten thousand dollars an engine. Something like that. Not more.”
Thorn arched an eyebrow. If the Russian general was telling the truth, Grushtin’s four $250,000 wire transfers were wildly over the amount the murdered maintenance captain could have earned from refurbishing the Su-24 engines. Five times as much, to be exact. So what else had he been paid for?
He looked more closely at the massive Su-24 engines laid out across the bare floor in front of them. You could hide one hell of a lot of heroin in any one of those babies. Was that what Grushtin’s game had been?
“You say the last shipment left by train on May 26?” Koniev said.
Serov nodded. “Yes.”
“Do you know where that train was headed?” the MVD major asked.
“Pechenga,” the Russian general said eagerly. “I remember that Peterhof wanted those engines due in Pechenga no later than the morning of May 28.”
After he’d ordered Serov back to his headquarters to assemble both his records and the other officers involved in his scheme, Koniev turned back to Helen and Thorn. “Well,” he asked wearily, “what do you think? Did that corrupt swine tell us the truth?”
Thorn thought about that for a moment, running Serov’s answers over in his mind. “Yeah. Some of it, anyway. A lot of what he said rang true.”
Helen nodded. “He may be holding something back. But the basic story seems to fit what we already know.”
“Then we talk to the rest of his officers now?” the MVD officer said.
“Yes.” Helen narrowed her eyes. “Before they have any more time to coordinate their stories. And if they confirm what Serov says … “We head for Pechenga,” Thorn said flatly.
“Uh-huh,” Helen agreed. “And we hope the trail hasn’t grown too cold in the meantime.”
Satisfied, Thorn turned to Koniev. “Just one more question, Major. What’s likely to happen to Colonel General Serov? When you report this to Moscow, I mean?”
Koniev’s mouth turned down. “Probably nothing.”
“Nothing?”
The MVD officer shrugged ruefully. “Perhaps a slap on the wrist, if he’s unlucky.” He grimaced. “Compared to the recent activities of other senior officers in my country’s armed forces, I suspect his crimes will seem unimportant to my superiors.”
Thorn nodded. In one case he’d read about, the commander of Russia’s entire Far Eastern Strategic Air Force had been arrested for using his long-range bombers as an air freight service.
“In any event,” Koniev continued sadly, “Serov is no fool. I would be very surprised if a portion of his newfound fortune hasn’t already made its way up the ladder in Moscow.”
Christ, Thorn thought grimly, contemplating the prospect that high-ranking officials could so easily be bribed — and worse, that a ranking police officer like Koniev could so easily imagine such a thing. He had the sudden, uneasy feeling they were walking into quicksand here — and that nobody would be standing by with a rope to pull them out if they started sinking.
Just thirty miles east of the Netherlands and eighty-odd miles southwest of Denmark, Wilhehnshaven was one of several ports along Germany’s low, waterlogged North Sea coast. The city and its harbor lay just inside the mouth of a large, sheltered bay, the Jadebusen.
Once home to warships of the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet and Hitler’s Kriegsmarine, Wilhelmshaven had been eclipsed as a port in recent years by Bremerhaven, but supertankers still arrived regularly to off load oil destined for the heavy industries of the Ruhr.
The city, often cold and wet with North Sea weather, wasn’t a big tourist draw. That suited Baltic Venturer’s owners perfectly.
Shortly after she arrived from Bergen, harbor workers shifted the five steel cases to another Caraco-owned ship, the Caraco Savannah.
