Arctic Gold

The Organizatsiya, evidently, was coming uncomfortably close to matching those fictional villains in the real world in the sheer scope and scale of their ambitions.

An hour later, the briefing over, Dean was ushered into Rubens’ office. “Well, Mr. Dean, you now know more about the Russian mafia than you really cared to know.”

“It still seems a bit odd, sir,” Dean replied, “going up against a bunch of criminals instead of a government.”

“In this case, it’s tough to draw a line between the two,” Rubens said, booting up the computer on his desk. “In any case, we have you booked on a flight to London this afternoon, Dulles, fourteen thirty.”

“And then on from there to St. Petersburg,” Dean said, completing the thought.

“No,” Rubens said. “There’s been a change in plans.”

Dean felt an unpleasant tickle, centered in his gut. “I thought I was supposed to join Lia and her partner in Russia.”

“DeFrancesca and Akulinin are safe enough for the moment, and our organization inside St. Petersburg is arranging to smuggle them out of Russia within the next twenty-four hours. Right now we’re more concerned about the potential threat to another of our assets. An entirely different operation.”

Rubens turned his monitor so Dean could see the screen, which displayed a grainy and slightly out-of-focus photograph of a laughing, half-naked blonde, Grigor Kotenko, and another man, lean, his hair buzz-cut short, his shirt open to reveal a number of blurry tattoos.

“The man on the right,” Rubens said, “is Sergei Braslov, former Red Army, GRU, and later MVD. A Russian working for the CIA snapped this photo through a telephoto lens at a Black Sea resort last summer. Our agent on Operation Sunny Weather encountered Braslov a few hours ago in London. He appears to have infiltrated an environmental activist group, Greenworld.”

“Excuse me,” Dean said. “This Braslov… is he still MVD? Or is he with the Tambov Gang? Who’s he working for?”

“That,” Rubens said dryly, “is what you are going to find out. As Mr. Ryder pointed out at the briefing, it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether an individual over there is with the government or with the crooks, and where their loyalties lie. However…” He touched a lectern control, dragging a square around Braslov’s upper torso in the photo, then enlarging the picture, in effect zooming in for a close-up of the man’s partly revealed chest. Dean could just make out the blurred blue shapes of several tattoos on the man’s skin.

Rubens used his mouse to bring up an overlay of straight lines, resolving and clarifying the tattoos. “Within the Russian Mafiya,” Rubens said, “tattoos comprise a rather complex symbolic language, a code, if you will. This image isn’t clear enough for a complete translation, but computer enhancement allows at least a partial reading.

“Here-” A pointer darted across the screen, indicating a large tattoo over Braslov’s solar plexus. “A crucifix. It signifies a ‘prince of thieves,’ someone with a high ranking within the organization. Above the crucifix… a crown. That means the wearer is a pakhan, the leader of a thieves family. Think of a Sicilian Mafia don, the head of one of the Five Families.

“And above the crown…” The pointer shifted to a blurred mark beneath Braslov’s throat. “An eight-pointed star, sometimes called a chaos star. Another rank insignia. It means Braslov is a member of the very highest levels of Russian organized crime.

“From this, we can infer that Braslov is a member of the Russian Mafiya, most likely one of the Moscow families. If he’s socializing with Kotenko at a Black Sea dacha, it’s possible that we’re seeing evidence of some sort of alliance. Braslov’s direct involvement with Greenworld suggests some sort of disinformation campaign, but we’re not sure of that yet. Braslov may be there in his official capacity as an officer of Russian Internal Security… or he may be there as a key player with the Mafiya… or he may be there for both.

“You, Mr. Dean, are going to make contact with Braslov in London. You’ll have Mr. Karr already there, as backup. ‘L’ Section will provide you with a small bugging device and remote transmitter that will allow us to eavesdrop on Braslov’s conversations. We’re particularly interested in what he is doing as an agent inside of Greenworld.

“I can’t stress this strongly enough, Mr. Dean. The Russian Mafiya is an extraordinary threat in today’s world. It has already demonstrated its potential for destabilizing nations and economies worldwide, and might well do so on a global scale. We need to know what’s going on over there-if there is an alliance between the St. Petersburg and Moscow gangs, if the Russian government is in on such an alliance, and just what it is that they’re up to.”

Dean slouched back in his chair, then nodded. “Yes, sir.”

He was worried, frankly, about Lia. From the little he’d heard so far, Lia and Akulinin had come up against the St. Petersburg mob and bounced. It hardly seemed credible. Desk Three routinely took on national governments- China, North Korea, Syria, Russia-and emerged victorious. It didn’t seem possible that a gang of common criminals could best the Agency’s field operators.

And that thought, Dean decided, highlighted the problem. Members of the Russian Mafiya, whatever else they might be, were not “common criminals.” They were smart, they were wealthy, they were powerful, they were as well armed and as well equipped as some small countries, and they were well connected with members of their own government and with powerful people in the governments of other countries.

Underestimating these people, Dean decided, could have decidedly lethal consequences.

7

“London’s Living Room” GLA Building, London 1420 hours GMT

TOMMY KARR WALKED OUT onto the broad observation platform that encircled the uppermost floor of London’s City Hall.

The Thames lay spread beneath him, gray-green and dotted with pleasure craft and barges. An ancient light cruiser, the HMS Belfast, now a museum, lay tied up to the City Pier to the left, on the near bank almost at his feet. Beyond her, the clean, modern lines of the new London Bridge spanned the river, in front of the thrust and bustle of London’s business district and the far-off blue dome of St. Paul’s. To his right, downstream, rose the Tower Bridge, older and more conventional beneath its twin supporting caissons and towers that looked like the squared-off steeples of Anglican churches.

The bridge architecture fitted in perfectly with the sprawl of medieval castle walls, turrets, towers, and cupolas directly across the Thames from City Hall, the infamous Tower of London.

Closer at hand, the demonstration had spilled into the park and waterfront pier directly below City Hall, filling it as far as the near end of the Tower Bridge, perhaps 150 yards away. Karr was looking down on a sea of people and brightly colored banners. Occasionally megaphone-directed chants rose the ten stories to the observation promenade, but mostly the noise was little more than a distant, subdued rumble.

“Anything new on the telly?” he asked aloud.

“Nothing on CNN or the networks,” Jeff Rockman’s voice said in his ear. “BBC Two is carrying a lot of footage, though. It’s big news in Europe, at least. We’ve spotted you three or four times, now, when the cameras zoomed in on Spencer.”

Karr grinned as he turned from the sprawling city panorama. “Hi, Mom,” he said. He could see a couple of media types nearby, a sharply dressed woman with a microphone and a shirt-sleeved partner with a minicam, filming the delegates.

The meetings had broken for an afternoon recess. A number of delegates had spilled out onto the promenade outside or wandered off to the building’s restaurant. The symposium had been going for more than four hours now and already generated several spirited, even acrimonious debates between various of the attendees. A Nigerian delegate had been ejected, loudly shouting that caps on emissions were tantamount to racism, a means of strangling the economies of third-world nations. Supposedly, the Kyoto Accords exempted developing countries from the stringencies of limiting their industrial emissions, in effect requiring industrial nations to pay a tax on their behalf. There still seemed to be a lot of misunderstanding on that point, however, generating a widespread sense that the developed countries were either patronizing the third world or strangling it-take your pick.

The entire issue was now so bound up with politics, money, and shrill invective that it was nearly impossible for