The devils shepherd, p.8
The Devil's Shepherd, page 8
Thus, the cease-fire ended.
“It will still take these crazy Yugoslavs some hours to get back in the game. Won’t be real hellfire until tonight.”
Colonel Valery Stepnin paced before a large window on the third floor of the Russian Embassy annex. All of the glass in the Bascarsija section of the Old Town had long since been blown out and he hated the substitute sheets of frosted plastic, because they made him feel like he had cataracts. Yet he still enjoyed the filtered sunlight bathing his thick boxer’s face.
“Their fingers are probably still frozen from the snow, have to thaw out a bit.” His rumbling voice dripped sarcasm. “Takes a delicate touch, you know, loading all those shells and azimuthing. Fucking fools.”
The colonel was the highest-ranking officer of the new Russian Central Intelligence Service assigned to Sarajevo, but he still thought of himself as KGB, that Kafkaesque espionage icon at whose breast he’d been suckled.
“My father worked with these people during the Great Patriotic War,” Stepnin muttered. “With Tito and his partisans. He was a tough one, my father, even survived Stalingrad, killed plenty of Waffen SS himself. But he said these Serbian maniacs frightened him. Walked around wearing necklaces of Nazi ears.”
The colonel turned from the window to face his adjutant, a young captain, tall and blond and with the rosy face of a soccer player. Neither man wore a uniform, only rough wool trousers and braided brown sweaters. To wear a uniform in Sarajevo was to be a wooden duck in a sniper’s arcade.
“What’s the body count now anyway, Yuri?” Stepnin asked.
The captain was holding a sheaf of papers, including the embassy’s morning briefing.
“Umm, estimates are more than two hundred fifty thousand shells fallen so far. Approximately sixty thousand citizens wounded, eight thousand dead or missing.”
Stepnin nodded and walked to his desk. The blotter had been pierced by a late-night errant bullet while he was out having a vodka with his Bulgarian counterpart. He plucked a black cigarette from a brass holder made from a cut-down howitzer shell. The cigarette was a Balkan Sobranie. He lit up with a wooden match.
“Business is booming,” Stepnin quipped, though he did not smile. The Russians had no justifiable mandate in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They were not trying to make peace, only rubles. Most of the local weapons, on all sides, were of Soviet manufacture. Someone had to sell the idiots their ammunition. “Very acceptable numbers.” He blew out a cloud of heavy coal smoke. “If you’re fucking Satan himself.”
“Yes, sir.” The captain smiled.
Stepnin dropped his muscular form into his wooden office chair, but its reclining spring was worn and he nearly went over backward, only saving himself by jamming the toe of his cavalry boot under his desk.
“Yup tvoyu mahtt Motherfucker,” he muttered. He rubbed the bushy gray bristles atop his large head. “So, report to me on the girl.”
The captain straightened his shoulders and opened a thin file folder.
“Well, I killed the tap on her private telephone.”
“Why?” Stepnin frowned.
“All the private communications services are blown out in her neighborhood.”
“Good boy. Waste of money. What’s her name again?”
“Hašek. Niki Hašek.”
“Ahh, yes. Cute thing down on the first floor.”
“Yes, sir.”
Stepnin wagged a finger at his adjutant. “And forget about fucking her, Yuri. Her boyfriend’s a defector.”
“Had not crossed my mind, sir.” The captain smiled broadly, then he raised his chin with some pride. “I checked all the annex tapes this morning. She took a foreign call yesterday.”
“Really?” Stepnin leaned forward a bit. “Here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“From?”
“Africa.”
“No!” Stepnin slapped his desktop, then laced his fingers together and set his elbows as if he was going to arm wrestle. “Tell me.”
“It was in Czech, and very brief, a man’s voice.”
“Yes? Yes?”
“He said only, ‘Ahoj. Štastnou cestu.’ ”
“‘Hello? Have a nice trip?’ That’s all?”
“That was all.”
“That’s it!” Stepnin jumped up from his chair. It rolled backward and tipped over with a crash, but he ignored it. “He’s coming to get her!” He plucked up a fresh Sobranie and lit it with the stub of the first, then crushed out the butt under a boot. He had given up trying to keep his office tidy. Everything that was breakable had already been smashed. “No, no.” He shook his head and snapped his fingers. “He’s sending someone for her.”
“To here?” The captain looked doubtful, confused. “Who would come here to get anyone?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Stepnin was waving his heavy arms, pacing behind his desk. “I have my theories.”
“And why leave us such a clue? Contacting her at her post . . .”
“Because he had no choice, no other way to reach her.” He jabbed a finger at his adjutant. “She still has her watchers, yes?”
“My best men. Twenty-four hours a day.”
“Take them off.” Stepnin sliced across the air with a bladed hand. “Put Ivan and Burko on her.”
Now the captain looked absolutely aghast. “Ivan and Burko?”
“Yes, yes. And tell them I said if anything happens to her, if they even let her pee by herself, they’ll be here till the very end of this fucking war.”
Just then a lone mortar shell detonated in the distance, but it was enough, to make the plastic window sheets ripple. Stepnin jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“And from the sound of it, this century may die before that happens.”
“Yes, sir . . .” Yuri hesitated, but his colonel kept him on because he was smart and inquisitive, not because he was a yes man. “But, sir. Ivan and Burko? One’s a vodkaholic and the other’s nerves are shot.”
The colonel smiled wryly at his adjutant and cocked his head.
“Tell me, Yuri. In six years have you ever seen me make a tactical error?”
“No, sir.”
“Good boy. Now, take care of this and let’s go get an early lunch, before the fucking fools shell all the decent cafés to rubble.”
It had taken nearly thirty-six frenetic hours before Eckstein’s team was finally in position to cross the southwestern border of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Naturally, they were not traveling as a troupe, but zigzagging individually across Europe, all the while ignoring the alarming news flashes hailing from “Radio Zid” in Sarajevo, because nothing would alter their course anyway.
Eckstein was making his own way to Zagreb, the final assembly point before Niki Hašek’s “rescue” commenced in earnest. In general he preferred to travel with Baum, an acceptable practice when their cover provided for an appropriate relationship. However, they had recently abandoned this habit after a trip to Rome, where they were joined in the elevator of the La Residenza Hotel by an old Viennese woman who peered at them over her bifocals, found no resemblance between “father and son,” and unabashedly announced, “Spione. Spies.”
“That really spooked me,” Eckstein had said the moment he and Baum were alone again. “No pun intended.”
“Mich auch,” Baum agreed in their native German. “Call it just a lucky guess on her part, but we must be emitting some kind of odeur d’espionnage.”
“Guess we’d better travel solo for awhile, Benni. I’ll miss your belching and snoring in coach class.”
“Flirt with the stewardesses.”
In the case of Operation Sorcerer, there was a sound tactical reason for all the team members to avoid each other like lepers until the last possible moment. Horse’s speculation that Krumlov’s gambit might be an ambush still carried weight, and Ben-Zion had insisted they revert to the most paranoid practices of tradecraft, which sometimes seem silly as intelligence officers mature. But the general viewed his operators as very expensive weapons systems. He hated losing them, because it played hell with the budget.
And so, Benni Baum was flying from Tel Aviv to Frankfurt, switching passports from German to French, then doubling back to Croatia. Eckstein had suffered some stomach-churning hours in Vienna, where there should not have been snow this late in the year, but a low ceiling of potato soup clouds hammered the tarmac at Schwechat and inside the terminal an announcer kept apologizing for delays to all capitals. He clutched his Croatian Airlines ticket, pacing and chain-smoking on the lower level, praying that the rest of Sorcerer’s “magicians” would make the rendezvous on schedule.
The three additional operators had been selected, brought into Jerusalem HQ and thoroughly briefed before departure to all points. However, each of them was enduring the glitches common to military operations.
Serge Maxime had spent the day silently cursing General Ben-Zion, because he had to go all the way to Paris-de-Gaulle before doubling back to Zagreb. And why? Because Documentation wanted to see the most recent French entrance stamp on his passport.
This was in keeping with Ben-Zion’s policy of “consolidating operational expenses.” In other words, the general was a cheap prick, and Serge was quite sure that even if the prime minister’s wife was kidnapped by a band of thugs in Hong Kong, Ben-Zion would task the rescue team with additional chores: “And while you’re there, pick up six Sony CD players. They’re on sale in Kowloon and the lab needs them for a demolition job.”
Serge was the son of French-Moroccan Jews, a very large young man with fiery eyes, a head of black wire-brush curls, and a bushy beard cultivated while serving with a special forces outfit called Duvdevahn. These young men all had fluent Arabic and a penchant for deadly force, their mission to infiltrate the Palestinian population on the West Bank, wreaking swift vengeance on Hamas bomb-makers and Red Eagle terrorists. Whenever tasked to AMAN’s Special Operations, Serge served as team “offensive weapon.” He still held the rank of sergeant major, having repeatedly refused a commission.
“My uncle was in the Foreign Legion,” he would mutter cryptically. “Once you’re an officer, you lose your self-respect.”
Eckstein took no offense at these remarks. His own self-respect, or alternating lack thereof, was usually a reflection of his family life and had little to do with rank.
Gerard Folberg, the second operative on the manifest, was enduring a delay in Athens, the victim of a fate as ridiculous as lost luggage. He had flown from Tel Aviv aboard Olympic Airways (Israeli intelligence agents never fly El Al), but he had been forced to check his rather large Médecins Sans Frontières medical kit, which had now failed to be regurgitated onto the luggage carousel.
Folberg was a French-born Israeli whom Eckstein had personally vetted for AMAN some seven years before. Recruited as a corporal from the air force’s elite Pilot Rescue Unit 996, his trade was leaping into the sea from hovering CH-53Ds and snatching up downed fighter jockeys. This dash of raw nerve, coupled with a foreign background, was the essence that attracted AMAN talent-spotters.
Folberg’s designation on Sorcerer was as team medic—he had passed so many army medical courses that his abilities matched those of a surgical resident. He had an unflappable, relaxed air about him, a smooth pond compared to the roiling rapids of Serge Maxime’s personality, but Eckstein still wondered that seven years with SpecOps had not dulled his bright eyes nor grayed a hair of his sandy head.
However, at the moment Folberg was aging at the approximate rate of one month per minute. The carousel was nearly empty, most of the passengers gone, and when at last his gear bag flopped onto the rubber belt he hugged it and sprinted for the Alitalia counter in a cold sweat. He still had to switch from his French passport to a Belgian forgery, purchase a ticket, and make the flight to Zagreb. He had thirteen minutes . . .
Francie Koln rounded out the team nicely, serving as decoy and communications officer. She had four languages besides Hebrew and a wealth of field experience, although for Eckstein her presence induced some nostalgic pain. Francie had been Ettie Denziger’s best friend, and for a long time he avoided working with her. She did not blame Eckstein for the loss—it was clear that he accomplished that self-flagellation without anyone’s help. In fact, Francie admired Eckstein, for his brain, his heart, and his talents, and she would not forget that once when her life was in danger in Cairo, he had blown his own cover, flown to that capital, and beaten down the doors of the Israeli embassy until they whisked her off to a safe house.
She was working a “diplomatic” posting in Jordan now, but Eckstein and Baum brought her in on Sorcerer because she was a “turn key”—an asset who could be plugged into any mission. Francie had acquired the departmental nickname Zikkit—Chameleon—for she could alter her physical attributes in an instant. With her long brown hair bunned, a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, and a baggy gray shift, she was an Anglican nun. Then, ninety seconds in a closet with a battery-powered curling iron, lipstick, miniskirt, and a Wonder Bra, and she would emerge as an Amsterdam hooker. She was a great fan of the actress Meryl Streep, and she scored well with almost any nine-millimeter pistol.
Francie’s trip to Zagreb via Rome and Naples was progressing without logistical hitches, her only complaint being a personal and private one. She had just nearly had her first orgasmic experience, with a GSS officer who also worked at the embassy in Jordan. In her profession good lovers, especially Israeli ones, were hard to come by, and the idea of perhaps dying in Sarajevo before achieving that sexual summit would be as frustrating as Sir Edmund Hillary failing Everest. . .
At any rate, in Vienna Eckstein was unaware of the specific tribulations of his teammates. The Croatian pilots, who had a reputation for timidity, refused to fly, and the disgusted Austrians finally rolled out their own Tyrolean Air turboprop.
Eckstein sprinted to it as the snow changed to freezing rain, and they took off in total blindness while he examined a deck of emotional cards flipping through his brain: his affinity for and simultaneous rejection of men and machines Germanic; the enraging idea of a mole inside the Israeli weapons program; the disgust at having to service the whims of this alleged Czech defector; pity for fifty starving children in Africa; guilt at having abandoned Simona and Oren. Again.
He set it all aside and fell into proper professional mode, focusing only on the first stage of Sorcerer. He looked out the window, completely obscured by a remaining lather of de-icing foam as the small plane bounced through the clouds, and he felt rather like a lost sock in a washing machine.
Zagreb was the last civilized way station before one ventured east toward the growing thunder of errant artillery. The long, drab terminal building at the airport reminded Eckstein of the leftover barracks at Dachau, and just inside, off the frozen tarmac, the atmosphere was nearly as dour.
Pockets of anxious U.N. troops waited before a passport control banner stenciled Kontrola Putovnica, wearing their hangdog expressions of military impotence as they dragged damp kit bags across the puddled floor. Eckstein joined this throng of trudging Poles, Austrians, and Frenchmen, and a tall Legionnaire wearing lizard camouflage glanced up from a copy of Soldier of Fortune and frowned. The Israeli major was a veteran of more combat than any of these young men, but apparently he looked so much the misplaced, pot-smoking tourist for his black motorcycle jacket and blond ponytail.
His French passport was sewn into the lining of his leathers, so he offered Anthony Hearthstone’s British document to the man in the glass booth, received a large white visa sticker, shouldered his blue nylon hockey bag, and walked toward Customs . . .
Intelligence agents all have their secret phobias. After all, theirs is a profession that breeds expert liars, spending their careers waiting to be caught. It is a trade that fosters paranoia, so if you were a mentally healthy, well-adjusted, stable soul when you were recruited, you’ll be very far from it when you’re done.
Some fear the night, for that is usually when you steal, with an amber flashlight in your damp fist and the sweat dribbling down your temples. Some tremble at a handshake, for a rendezvous with an unknown human asset is often the time when blown agents are murdered. Some resist all intimacy, for if you always sleep alone, you are not likely to give yourself away in the throes of a nightmare.
With Eckstein, it was border crossings: customs clerks, immigration computers, suspect profilers, X-ray machines, contraband-sniffing dogs. Even when he traveled for pleasure, which was rare, he always felt as if he was smuggling a kilo of heroin. And when he successfully passed a harmless checkpoint, he breathed again like a prisoner of war who had just breached the wire of a Nazi stalag.
Technical Services had assured him that the only weapon he carried was undetectable by X-ray, but it was his ass on the line, not theirs. Buried in his bag was a pipe smoker’s leather pouch, which along with the briar, tamper, and bristle cleaners contained a box of Dr. Perl Junior pipe filters. Inside the foil-lined box, the bottom row of white filter tubes each held a .22-caliber shell with a Teflon-coated bullet.
The pipe itself was a modification of an old Office of Strategic Services weapon circa World War II. You could actually smoke the AMAN version, or, in a last-ditch emergency, remove the pipe stem and insert an armed filter. Doing so had the effect of cocking a spring-loaded firing pin. Thereafter, you held the bowl in the palm of your hand, pointed the mouthpiece at the target, twisted the stem with thumb and forefinger, and bang.
Before his departure from Jerusalem, Eckstein had been somewhat giddy with fatigue when Avi Lahst, the department’s aging Nashak Ha’rashi (Chief Armorer), had signed him out for the pipe and box of twenty rounds.
“You think I’ll actually have time to reload, Avi?” Eckstein had foolishly chuckled. “Why not give me two rounds to use at most?”
“You can use your dick, for all I care,” the armorer growled as he returned to short-fusing a Russian hand grenade, for God knew what purpose.
