Final Strike--A Sean Falcone Novel Read online

  Comrade X-ray suspected that it was no coincidence that Danshov rowed for Yale when Ray Quinlan, President Oxley’s chief of staff, was also on Yale’s heavyweight crew team.

  The Danshov dossier included documents showing that he had been recruited on campus by the CIA, probably because of his Special Forces experience and his Russian and Ukrainian language abilities. Yale has long supplied CIA officers, including George H. W. Bush ’48, William P. Bundy ’39, and Komov’s counterpart, James Jesus Angleton ’41.

  Komov was not surprised either to see that one of Danshov’s lecturers at Yale was Joseph Brodsky, a Russian poet whose 1972 expulsion from the Soviet Union had been urged by Komov. He often said that Brodsky should thank the KGB, along with Western anti-communists, for his 1987 Nobel Prize and his 1991 appointment as America’s Poet Laureate.

  One of the documents in the dossier was an FSB counterintelligence analysis of Danshov’s CIA career. After training at the Federal Law Enforcement Agency Training Center in Georgia and Camp Peary, known as “The Farm,” in Virginia, Danshov had been assigned to the Office of Russian and European Analysis (OREA), where he translated and evaluated documents provided by U.S. agents in Russia. After mention of Camp Peary, there was a footnote:

  *Near the site of Global Special Services, which is known to obtain highly sensitive contracts from U.S. intelligence services and is considered to have quasi-official status through its owner, Major General Harold William Drexler.

  Komov looked up from the dossier to angrily scrawl a note admonishing the analyst for the vagueness of the footnote. He hated which is known and is considered and quasi-official, all indicators to him that either the officers who provided the data or the author of the report lacked solid information and tried to hide their ignorance.

  He recognized Drexler’s name and knew that men working for GSS had recently abducted a high-profile Al Qaeda leader in Yemen. It was an operation worthy of America’s famed SEAL Team Six.

  A thick day-by-day surveillance report of Danshov’s activities was attached as an appendix.

  A coincidence? Comrade X-ray did not believe in coincidences. Too many times had he seen connections—possible, probable, flimsy, but connections nevertheless—between Drexler’s GSS and the CIA.

  According to the dossier, Danshov had never served under diplomatic cover anywhere, and there was no indication that he had ever attempted to enter Russia clandestinely. A Russian agent in Washington, who claimed knowledge of OREA operations, said Danshov had resigned after “a heated argument with his superior” over the decision to not post him to Moscow. Undoubtedly a staged argument, Komov thought. He made a note to run a security check on the agent in Washington: He could have been doubled by the CIA.

  A year after leaving the CIA, Danshov initially entered Russia under the auspices of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, which Komov begrudgingly judged to have no connection with U.S. intelligence services. He had a short audience with President Lebed, who welcomed him and used the meeting to show his support of the Institute “and the joining of the intellectual communities of our two nations.”

  The dossier included a summary of Danshov’s passport and visa records, which showed a pattern of entry and departure dates that coincided with Moscow University’s academic calendar. The usual FSB watch on Americans turned up no suspicious activity. But the report noted that known and suspected dissidents frequently appeared at his off-campus lectures and informal talks.

  One of the dissidents was Sergei Aldonin, who was immediately placed under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Aldonin worked in the FSB’s counter-electronic division. Komov cross-referenced the surveillance reports on Aldonin and pounced on the fact that Danshov had met with Aldonin three times. Two of the meetings lasted more than thirty minutes.

  Komov dug further, checking highly classified files containing information hacked from Swiss bank accounts. Even Lebed did not know that the files existed—or that two of them could be traced, through a maze of international banks, to Lebed and his wife. As Komov expected, Aldonin had a substantial account, from which he had recently extracted enough to buy a small dacha in Tver, about an hour and a half north of Moscow.

  At first, all that Komov knew about Aldonin was that he worked as an electronics technician. Because Komov had little interest in the electronics of counterintelligence, he did not know until what he called “a strenuous interrogation” that Aldonin’s principal job was the daily “sweeping” of Lebed’s office for unauthorized electronic devices.

  Aldonin finally confessed that he had been recruited by Danshov, who gave him a working cigarette lighter and told him all he had to do was have the lighter in his pocket when he swept. Aldonin said he assumed that the lighter contained a chip that served as a switch for turning on a recorder. Whatever it recorded, Aldonin supposed, was transmitted in intermittent bursts to NSA technicians in the U.S. Embassy. He swore by his dead mother’s soul that he did not know where the recorder was.

  FSB technicians found the chip in the lighter and determined that it had been disabled by remote command, presumably when Aldonin disappeared. While waiting to decide what to do next, Komov ordered Aldonin secretly flown to an FSB detention center in the Siberian city of Samara. Aldonin’s family and colleagues were told he was on special assignment; they all assumed he was one of the so-called green men secretly sent to Ukraine.

  Komov personally vetted Aldonin’s successor as sweeper, who repeatedly declared that Lebed’s office was free of unauthorized electronics. Komov was satisfied that the removal of Aldonin also meant the finish of the recorder. He decided not to tell Lebed that many of his conversations had been heard by U.S. eavesdroppers.

  “There is no need to disturb the President—or make him worry about the FSB’s vigilance,” Komov confided to his bodyguard, Shumeyko. “I will tell him in due time. No further harm can be done. We wait for the enemy to move. The NSA knows the spy-listening has stopped. Professor Danshov will be alerted and will probably panic. Now we wait for the cat to jump.”

  36

  The U.S. ambassador to Russia frequently held what he called “public diplomacy” receptions at his residence, the Spaso House, a magnificent pre-Revolution mansion built for a Russian businessman of fabulous wealth. Midlevel officials of the Foreign Ministry and other Russians were invited, along with American academicians or business executives with interests in maintaining commercial, scholarly, or literary relations with their Russian counterparts.

  Several Foreign Service officers at the U.S. Embassy were CIA officers under diplomatic cover, an old masquerade practiced and accepted by many nations. A CIA officer caught spying is almost invariably PNG’d—declared persona non grata—and expelled from the country. CIA case officers who use a real or seemingly real business as a cover do not have the protection and secure communications of an embassy; if they are caught, they’re arrested and may be imprisoned or, in very rare cases, executed.

  Lebed did not like the fraternizing that occurred at these receptions, but he accepted his foreign secretary’s belief that they were basically harmless and sometimes produced valuable insights into American policies. Seemingly noteworthy conversations at the receptions were reported to intelligence and policymakers in both nations and filed away for analysts to ponder. This was all routine for analysts of the American and Russian intelligence services.

  Two weeks before Falcone went to GSS headquarters and met with Drexler, the ambassador held a Spaso House reception commemorating the scholarly and cultural ties between the two nations. Guests included Americans studying in Russia under Fulbright scholarships and their Russian professors, along with Leonid Danshov.

  After seeing Danshov’s name on an invitation list provided by a Russian working at the embassy, Comrade X-ray decided to give this reception full-throttle surveillance, with the focus on Danshov. Komov ordered detailed reports and analyses showing the patterns of conversations between Russians and Americans; scraps of remarks
heard in passing; and transcripts of talks between Americans and FSB operatives wearing recorders and cameras.

  The reception data made work for many FSB analysts but did not seem to produce any significant new intelligence. Komov spent a day and a night going through the pile of printouts reporting on the reception. The reports turned up nothing. Komov next shuffled through the surveillance photos of Danshov at the reception—and found what he wanted: an encounter that the analysts had ignored.

  The photos showed a smiling, handsome man in his early forties, short and stocky. He had a neatly trimmed beard and long black hair gathered in a ponytail. When he entered Spaso House, his ponytail hung out of a red baseball cap bearing a white W. He did not doff the cap until he reached the top of the red-carpeted staircase from the lower lobby to the Chandelier Room, named for the enormous object that was the hub of the reception. Overwhelmed by the glitter and grandeur, he pocketed the cap. But in the reception’s facade of formality, he stood out in his leather-elbowed tweed jacket, plaid sport shirt, jeans, and moccasins.

  He headed for one of the bars, turning down the California wines. Instead, he grabbed a Samuel Adams and drank from the bottle. He attracted the young students as if he were a rock star—and inspired a run on the beer by them and many of the Russians.

  * * *

  Included in the surveillance report to Komov was a video made by a body camera hidden in the vest of an FSB officer posing as a Foreign Ministry official. The video, viewed on a laptop brought to Komov’s office, showed that soon after the reception began, Eileen Morse, a trim young woman on the staff of the embassy’s cultural attaché, took Danshov’s arm and led him to her boss for an official welcome and a short, unrecorded chat. Komov thought that the attaché looked surprised at what Danshov was saying. After a moment, the attaché handed Danshov back to Morse, and they had an animated conversation that lasted two minutes.

  Komov had the archivist repeatedly rewind the video for the interval showing the span of time when Morse was with Danshov. “Stop!” he said again and again. Then, “Yes! Here. Look!”

  “Sir?” the deputy director asked.

  “Look at the way she and he walked, staying away from FSB officers, who obviously had all been spotted,” Komov exclaimed.

  He pounded on the desk and shouted, “Careless surveillance! Find out who trained these fools! Look. She stops and shakes his hand and they walk off in opposite directions. Look at her right hand. Passing a note. A crude brush contact. Who is she?”

  The deputy director consulted his notes. “Her name is Eileen Morse, Colonel. A new person in the embassy. She is on the cultural attaché’s staff.”

  “We know the attaché is CIA. And she?”

  “We … we believe she is, Colonel. We are … shall we—”

  “Stop stuttering! Why was there no mention of this obvious brush-contact?” Komov asked the deputy. “Find out which one of the analyst fools prepared the surveillance report. Demote him.”

  “The analyst is a woman, sir.”

  “And so? Demote her.”

  Komov sent away the director and archivist with a dismissing gesture, touched a button on the console on his desk, and said, “Send in Lieutenant Shumeyko.”

  Lieutenant Pavel Shumeyko walked in as the other men walked out. The former champion hockey center had a counterintelligence officer’s hard eyes. He wore a black suit, white shirt, and tightly knotted blue tie.

  “Sit down, Lieutenant,” Komov said. He told Shumeyko about the brush contact at the reception, handed him the Danshov dossier, and gave him a few minutes to go through it. When Shumeyko closed the dossier, Komov said, “I want you personally to bring him in. Go first to his apartment. Bring along the searchers. Tell them I want everything. Computer. Cell phone. All papers, books, posters on the walls. Everything.”

  “Yes, Colonel,” Shumeyko said, standing and giving a brisk salute.

  “Sit down and stay for a moment, Lieutenant,” Komov said, placing a hand on Shumeyko’s arm. “I want to emphasize that the arrest of Danshov is not routine. As you saw in the dossier, there is a cross-reference to Aldonin. Danshov was Aldonin’s case officer in that diabolical plan to listen to the conversations of our President. Danshov is a malicious enemy of the state.”

  37

  Shumeyko went directly to Leonid Danshov’s austere apartment—bed, table, television, small refrigerator, closet, toilet, and shower—accompanied by two FSB men who specialized in searching for (or planting) evidence. The apartment was on the top floor of the seven-story Moscow State University guest house used by students and transient faculty members. Danshov was not there, and the middle-aged woman who watched over the seventh floor reported that he spent little time in his apartment.

  The guest house accommodations were designed for security and surveillance more than for comfort. Access to the building was by a university propusk, the omnipresent all-purpose identity card that everyone was obliged to carry on campus. The propusk also had to be shown to enter each floor and its kitchen, where people of that floor cooked their meals.

  Through the use of propusk records provided by the woman, Shumeyko quickly developed a view of Danshov’s quotidian life on campus: kitchen, chat room, dry cleaners, magazine kiosks, cafeterias, and an expensive restaurant in the soaring main building, a Moscow landmark that claims to be the tallest educational building in the world. “I will need a list of the American’s friends, with dates and your observations,” Shumeyko said. “An FSB officer will pick it up shortly. Do not mention my visit to anyone.”

  Shumeyko sat at the woman’s desk in the hall near the elevator and opened her propusk file on Danshov. The record showed that he rarely visited the kitchen, cafeteria, and restaurant. Shumeyko assumed that Danshov did most of his eating beyond the huge campus, which was a kind of small town about ten miles from central Moscow. Danshov was easy to find. Early that morning, before he had awakened, Danshov had been put under total surveillance by Komov. When he called the leader of the surveillance team, he was told that Danshov was at the Hard Rock Café on Arbat Street at the historic center of Moscow.

  Shumeyko left the searchers behind and ordered his driver to park on Arbat Street near the café, which Shumeyko despised for its rock ’n’ roll décor and all-American menu. He also did not like Arbat Street, which teemed with tourists patronizing cafés and souvenir shops or gawking at sidewalk artists and beggars.

  Two members of the surveillance team met Shumeyko outside the café. “I will go in alone,” he told them. “Do not enter unless there is a disturbance.”

  Danshov sat at a table with a man and a woman who looked like students. He was facing the entrance door—as intelligence officers are taught to do, Shumeyko thought. Danshov stood and calmly walked toward the men’s room. Shumeyko reached him in three steps, grabbed the collar of Danshov’s jacket, and leaned forward to whisper, “Do not give me trouble or I will also arrest your friends.”

  The man and woman, frozen in their seats, looked away as Shumeyko spun Danshov around and marched him toward the door. The café was suddenly silent. As the captor and his prey passed a table, a British tourist raised her cell phone. Shumeyko snatched it out of the woman’s hand, threw it to the floor, and crushed it underfoot without missing a stride.

  Shumeyko pushed Danshov into the backseat of the ZIL limousine. One of the surveillance officers got in the front passenger’s seat. “Lubyanka,” Shumeyko ordered, and the car sped toward the big yellow-brick building that Russians had dreaded since the days of the Cheka, the czar’s dreaded secret police. It was called the tallest building in Moscow because you could see Siberia from its long-closed basement prison, which Lebed had reopened.

  Danshov remained silent during the short, high-speed drive. But, as the car pulled up in front of the Lubyanka, he shouted, in English, “You can’t do this. I am an American.”

  “Speak Russian,” Shumeyko ordered. “You are not an American. You are a Ukrainian Jew spying for the Americans.” />
  “You must have seen my passport, my visa,” Danshov said in Russian. “You know I am American. Born in America. A professor at Moscow State University. You know all that. I demand that you contact the American Embassy.”

  “The best thing for you to do right now is to keep quiet and let the routine take place. I am leaving you in the hands of my colleagues,” Shumeyko said, his voice surprisingly gentle and persuasive.

  He took Danshov down the hall to the ground-floor reception room, Danshov took Shumeyko’s advice and remained calm through the routine: pat down, jacket removed and pockets checked; photo taken; fingers printed; inner right cheek swabbed for DNA sample. A man of the routine—one of the men in gray slacks and gray shirts open at the throat—took him by the arm and led him to the elevator. His heart began to thump. I’m a spy. I’m without cover.

  Up meant routine: arrest paperwork, formal interrogation; Down meant prison and perhaps torture. There was a third destination: the courtyard. But, he thought, Surely that can’t be true anymore. He had a sudden memory of having read that the massive walls of the Lubyanka surrounded the courtyard and muffled the gunfire of executions. So the inmates on the ground floor heard the lethal, echoing sound.

  The man touched the elevator button on a metal plate too old and scratched to read. Danshov entered not knowing whether he would ascend or descend.

  38

  The elevator rose to the fourth floor. Danshov stepped into a long, narrow room, dark except for a bright light with a green metal shade hanging from the middle of the ceiling. The light shone directly on a wooden chair, which was bolted to the floor. The man in gray silently led Danshov to the chair, handcuffed him to a rear rung, manacled his feet, and went away.