Inside the dacha’s main hall, two sets of high-ranking soldiers and civilians sat facing each other across a large rectangular table. Each man had a blotter, notepad, and a pitcher of ice water set out in front of him. Translators were seated behind the negotiators, providing a whispered, running commentary on what was being said.
Major Paul Duroc stood against a wall with the other junior members of the French negotiating team. After several hours on his feel listening to the same trivial issues being debated by the same droning voices, he was bored out of his skull, tired, and increasingly irritated. He shifted awkwardly, feeling the sweat trickling down his back beneath his jacket. Even with the drapes closed against the summer afternoon sun, the room was uncomfortably warm.
How much longer today would these idiots babble on? he wondered. This negotiating session had already run well over its allotted time without any apparent progress. Both Desaix’s handpicked representative, Ambassador Sauret, and Kaminov seemed perfectly willing to talk each other to death before coming to any agreement.
Duroc grimaced. He could understand that in the Russian. Kaminov, for all his rank and power, was still a peasant at heart. You could find his kind in any rural French village — the surly, suspicious old man who couldn’t buy a horse without counting its teeth and poking and prodding the poor beast to distraction, complaining all the while about the seller’s obvious villainy. But Sauret was supposed to be an educated gentleman, the product of Europe’s most sophisticated society. His participation in this haggling seemed both ignoble and foolish.
If France truly needed Russia’s assistance to win this war, then why not promise Kaminov and his followers anything they wanted? To Duroc, promises, especially those made by diplomats, were made to be broken — or at the very least carefully ignored. Besides, what difference did a few billion francs really make? If the Confederation won, the extra money could always be squeezed out of its smaller members or the defeated Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians. If the Confederation lost, Russia wouldn’t be in any position to press its financial demands anyway.
Weary of watching the negotiators fumble with their papers or sip their water, the major found his gaze wondering over the Russian soldiers and civilians lining the opposite wall — his counterparts in boredom. Most wore the same practiced look of long-suffering patience and forced interest, an expression common to subordinates of all kinds in boardrooms, government ministries, and military posts around the world. But there was one exception. One officer, a tall, handsome, fair-haired colonel, seemed uneasy. While Duroc discreetly inspected him, the Russian glanced down at his watch and looked up in evident dismay. He did it again just thirty seconds later. And again a few seconds after that. Interesting.
Duroc mentally sorted through the intelligence files he’d studied before coming to Moscow, trying to put a name to the aristocratic face in front of him. If nothing else, the effort was a useful exercise — a way to stave off the meeting’s tedium for a few moments. Memory and vision merged successfully in short order. The Russian was one Colonel Valentin Alexievich Soloviev, one of Marshal Kaminov’s top military aides.
Key sections of the file on Soloviev came bubbling to the surface along with his name. A decorated veteran of the Afghan War with a reputation for daring and tactical skill. In politics, a hard-liner, firmly wedded to Kaminov’s policies and person. The colonel was also reported to be one of the prime movers behind the Russian Army’s ongoing purge of officers with democratic connections or suspect “ethnic” ties. Overall, the analysis prepared by the DGSE’s Moscow Section presented the picture of a cool, calm, resourceful officer.
The Frenchman pursed his lips, increasingly interested in what he was seeing. If the reports he’d read were accurate, the nervous tension so readily apparent in this Colonel Soloviev was almost wholly out of character. And in his experience, men did not break long-established patterns of thought and action without good reason. So why was this ice-cold Russian soldier so jumpy?
During a brief pause while the French translators struggled to catch up with one of Kaminov’s long-winded pronouncements, Soloviev leaned forward to whisper something in the marshal’s ear. Without really listening, the older, stockier man nodded impatiently, flicking his hand toward the exit.
Clearly relieved, the colonel straightened up and headed for the conference room door. Several of his fellows looked surprised to see him leaving.
Intensely curious now, Duroc made his own muttered excuses and left the room close on Soloviev’s heels. The Russian colonel was moving faster, hastening down the hall toward the dacha’s main entrance. That erased the last, faint trace of doubt from the French security agent’s mind. The other man wasn’t simply seeking a washroom. He was leaving the compound — unexpectedly and in a tearing hurry.
Why? What did Soloviev consider more important than these negotiations? And important enough to risk angering his notoriously short-tempered superior? Duroc frowned. Whatever was going on, he wanted to know more about it. He’d had enough surprises in Hungary and they’d almost wrecked his career.
He stepped out onto the mansion’s enclosed front porch in time to see the Russian sliding behind the steering wheel of a staff car, a black Volga. Plainly, wherever the man was headed, he was headed alone.
Not so fast, Colonel, Duroc thought coldly. He clattered down the front steps and strode toward a group of men standing idle around their own vehicles, smoking cigarettes and chatting softly while waiting for their masters to emerge.
Against Duroc’s advice, the French special ambassador and his staff always traveled out to the conference site from the embassy in several armored limousines flanked by chase cars manned by members of his security team. Although the practice had seemed unnecessarily showy and indiscreet to the DGSE officer, at least it gave him manpower on the scene now.
“Foret! Verdier!” He motioned the two closest agents over. Both were experienced, veterans of several covert operations.
Obviously surprised to see him, they hurriedly stubbed out their cigarettes. “Yes, Major?”
Duroc nodded toward the black Volga slowly backing out of its parking place. “I want you to follow the Russian officer in that car. Carefully, so that he doesn’t know you’re there. I don’t want him spooked. Find out where he goes, and who, if anybody, he meets. You have a camera?”
Foret, a tiny, rat-faced man, nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Then get pictures if you can.”
Verdier, bigger and better-looking than Foret, jerked his head toward the woods and the access road. “What do we tell the soldiers at that checkpoint when they ask us why we’re leaving early?”
Duroc shrugged. “Tell them the ambassador wants to make sure his steward has the right wines ready for dinner tonight. You shouldn’t have any trouble making them believe that.”
Both men smiled and nodded. Ambassador Sauret’s devotion to his stomach and his fussiness were already a source of secret amusement for his underlings and their Russian counterparts.
“Any more questions?” Duroc asked. “No? Then get going.” Soloviev’s car was already halfway down the drive to the woods.
While Foret and Verdier hustled to obey, he turned back to the dacha, pondering his next move. If nothing else, tailing this fellow Soloviev would help keep his own men on their toes. But he felt sure his orders would achieve far more than that.
To the major, the intelligence game was only a variation on the age-old hunt — a quest for facts in the midst of uncertainty, instead of food in the midst of the wilderness. He knew that no man’s conscious mind could possibly pick up more than a fraction of the sensory and other cues flooding in from all sides. The rest had to be processed by the subconscious — emerging as sudden flashes of insight and inspiration. Although his decision to put the Russian colonel under surveillance had been largely instinctive, Paul Duroc had long ago learned to trust his instincts.
During the early part of the twentieth century, Arbat Street was one of Moscow’s most fashionable shopping districts. Under communist rule, it had fallen on hard times as a symbol of “capitalist exploitation.” Now, as the twentieth century came to a close, the area had come full circle. Private renovations, foreign investment, and government preservation orders had spruced the Arbat up, creating a cobblestone-paved pedestrian district crowded with gift shops, art galleries, and theaters.
Even under the harsh austerity program imposed by Kaminov’s martial law government, the Arbat still had life and color. As the capital city’s ministries and businesses closed for the day, shoppers and theatergoers swarmed into the area seeking bargains and entertainment. Many were in uniform — officers serving on headquarters duty in the vast concrete bulk of Russia’s Ministry of Defense right down the street.
