all-time low.
Of course, that robbed Banich’s own job of some of its challenge. He shrugged the thought off. He’d welcome anything that made intelligence-gathering in this crazy country easier. His own nation’s changing priorities made the job tough enough as it was.
Len Kutner was waiting for him in his cramped, sixth-floor interior office. That was something else Banich liked about the tall, balding chief of station. The man never played phony power games such as holding every meeting on his own turf.
“Alex. Sorry to break in on you like this. Everything okay?”
Banich shook Kutner’s outstretched hand and nodded. “Fine. Hennessy’s faxing shipping orders down to Kiev right now. And I picked up this for our troubles.” He held out the sheaf of Ministry of Defense documents.
The station chief flipped through them rapidly, his forehead wrinkling with effort as he translated technical terms into their English equivalents. “They’re moving three full divisions? Rather expensive, isn’t it?”
“Sure is.” Banich pointed to the last few pages in Kutner’s hands. “And they’re moving them back into Belarus from up near the St. Petersburg Military District.”
“Closer to the Polish border? Curioser and curioser.” Kutner looked up from the documents. “Have you heard anything else about this? From your sources in the Parliament, say?”
Banich shook his head. “Not a whisper. Which I find very interesting indeed.”
“Very. Maybe some of the generals are falling back into some bad old habits, eh?”
“Exactly.”
“Right. Put some time in on this one, Alex…” Kutner paused, looking troubled. “Or at least, as much time as you can afford. We’ve received some new marching orders from D.C., through Langley.”
Banich waited for the other man to explain. Now they were getting to why he’d been called out of the field so soon.
Kutner laid the documents down on his subordinate’s file-strewn desk and looked him right in the eye. “It seems there’s a new push on from some damned interagency working group. The Joint Trade Task Force. Whatever in God’s name that is.
“Anyway, they’re complaining that most of our product focuses too much on military and political matters… and not enough on trade and commerce. Stuff they call ‘the real measure of a nation’s strength.’”
“Jesus Christ!”
Kutner nodded bet kept going. “Whatever you or I may think about it, Alex, these folks have real pull with the Congress. And they’ve got backing inside the Agency, too.” He handed Banich a message flimsy. “That came down the satellite link this morning. It lists our new priorities in order of importance.”
Banich scanned the list in growing disbelief. Sales figures and prices for French and German industrial tools and pharmaceuticals? For Japanese automobiles? Evidence of “payoffs” for Russian buyers or government officials? It went on for ten or fifteen more categories, each one growing more obscure and more difficult to dig up. He looked up angrily. “These assholes can’t be serious! We’re trying to keep tabs on a dozen republics spread across eleven time zones and they want us to waste time on this kind of crap?”
Kutner held up a hand to slow him down. “Yes, they do. Look, Alex, I’m pulling in every chit I’ve got to get this reversed or at least trimmed down. But for right now, those are your new targets.”
“Great.” Banich tried unsuccessfully to tone down the bitterness in his voice. “Can you tell me which of my contacts I’m supposed to cut off while I chase down this garbage? The Ministry of Defense? Or maybe my recruits inside the Foreign Ministry?”
Kutner shook his head. “Just do what you can. Nobody’s expecting miracles from you, Alex.”
“Well, that’s good, because I’m fresh out of loaves and fishes.” Banich took a deep breath, fighting to calm down. It wouldn’t do any good to piss Kutner off. He needed all the upper-echelon backing he could get. “Look, Len. I can’t even begin to track half of this junk. Not with the resources we’ve got now. We’re going to need more bodies around here just to get the necessary legwork off the ground.”
“Agreed. I’ll see what I can do.” The taller man patted his shoulder kindly and edged past him out the narrow office door.
Banich sat staring down at his crowded desk till far past midnight, trying to work out how to spin a finely tuned intelligence apparatus onto a completely new tack — all without irretrievably wrecking it.
He was still at it when the first delicate snowflakes began falling on Moscow’s empty streets.
CHAPTER 4
Cataract
Paris lay shrouded in darkness. The lights were out all over the city, cut off by a day-long wildcat strike that had crippled regional power plants. Only those government ministries and corporate buildings with backup generators were lit by electricity.
Others across the blacked-out capital fell back on older, more primitive means.
Flames licked the night sky above the 19th Arrondissement, dancing eerily among the district’s decaying houses and shabby tenements. Silhouetted against the fires they’d set earlier, crowds of howling men and women surged back and forth through streets strewn with wrecked cars, bodies, and smoldering barricades. Some waved bloodied knives and makeshift clubs over their heads. Many were drunk, hopped up on a lethal mix of cheap wine and unleashed violence. All of them were poor and out of work and ready to settle scores with those they blamed for their troubles.
They blamed
No one knew exactly how the trouble started once the lights went out. Maybe with a fistfight on the Rue de Flandre. Or with a shouted racial slur in the Place du Maroc. It didn’t really matter much. What mattered now was that the riot was spreading through the immigrant slums, spilling through unlit streets in an orgy of arson, theft, and murder.
At the southern end of the Arab quarter, two armored riot-control vehicles and a thin line of security police in green combat fatigues and gas masks guarded the entrance to the Place de Stalingrad and its elevated Metro stop. The troops were members of the CRS, the government’s mobile antiriot force. Their armament reflected the unit’s well-deserved reputation for brutal efficiency. Some of the men were armed only with clear plastic shields and nightsticks, but others carried loaded shotguns and assault rifles. And turrets on both their armored cars mounted launchers equipped to lob tear gas and concussion grenades into unruly crowds.
So far, though, the CRS troopers hadn’t needed to use their weapons. The mobs running amok through the burning slums north of the square hadn’t tried forcing their way past them into the city’s more fashionable districts. They were too busy butchering anyone who looked “Arab” and looting neighborhood grocery stories, wine shops, and pharmacies.
And in turn, the security police had been too busy establishing a defensive perimeter to interfere. Now that was about to change.
“Yes, sir. I understand.” Lieutenant Charles Guyon swore in disbelief and lowered his walkie-talkie. He turned to the short, sour-faced sergeant at his side. “We have new orders. We’re to advance, clearing the streets as we go.”
An angry voice spoke up out of the darkness, mirroring his own unspoken thoughts. “That’s fucking crazy! We’ll all get killed in there!”
Guyon looked up sharply. “Who said that?” He waited, scanning the cluster of suddenly blank faces around him.
No one answered.
The lieutenant glared at his men for a moment longer before shifting his gaze back to the sergeant. “We move out in five minutes. Other units will parallel us, advancing along the canal and the Rue de Tanger. We’re free to use ‘all necessary force.’ Questions?”
