The Orchestration E-Book

Steve Burkart

• Herausgeber: Proisle Publishing Services
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 442

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

When covert ops director John Darque receives a mysterious package from a former adversary, he suspects the worst, but the box contains items more dangerous than even he could have imagined ... they indicate that the President-Elect of the United States, Thomas Jefferson Davis, is a mole whose rise to power has been carefully nurtured for more than 30 years as part of a Russian plot to overthrow the US government. Darque's organization must first determine if Davis is a threat to the US, and, if so, are others also involved in the plan. The greatest challenge, however, still lies ahead: once a conspiracy is uncovered, Darque must formulate a scheme to thwart the Russian coup, but in a way that costs no suspicion on Davis in order to protect the American people. If the conspiracy evolves undeterred. World War Ill is imminent. Eliminating the threat will require all of Darque's ingenuity and expertise to prevent the overthrow of America from within. The Orchestration is a gripping thriller in the tradition of great espionage novels.

Steve Burkart spent the majority of his 22-year military career in Europe as a counterintelligence agent, during and immediately following the Cold War. He has in-depth personal experience of intelligence work during the 1980s. often referred to as "the decade of the spies". He now lives in Ohio. The Orchestration is his first novel.

Leseprobe

The

Orchestration

By

STEVE BURKART

Copyright © 2023 by: Steve Burkart

ISBN:978-1-960224-48-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Other Books By the Author

The Master Hacker

The Darque Side

Chapter One

Cancer.

It has no boundaries, favors no ethnic group, and is a terrible way for a soldier to die.

Even before he swallowed the two pain pills, he knew this bout was going to be a bad one.

Flashing lights seemed to explode in his head as waves of nausea ebbed and flowed throughout his body, and the anguish became almost unbearable. Only one thought kept him going: after that night, the pain would be gone.

“It's time to go,” he said to his wife as he put on his jacket. Cool weather had returned to Moscow, and winter could not be too far away.

She didn't say anything as he picked up a box from the kitchen table and tucked it under his arm.

He looked at her and tried to smile through his agony, but she knew even that was painful for him, and fought to keep back her tears; what he was going through was hard enough, and she was careful not to do anything that would add to his misery. She would have plenty of time for tears when it was over.

Once outside the house, he checked his watch and began to walk a preplanned route that would eventually take him to his destination. His goal was a crowded train station where he would deliver his parcel to a waiting courier, but he had to do it without raising anyone's suspicion.

As he passed a small cafe, he glanced at one of the patrons who began to drink coffee from a white mug. It was the signal he hoped for: he was not being followed.

The man continued along his route, and thought once again about the ongoing events that had brought him to this point. While outwardly the world seemed to be in a period of relative calm, behind-the-scenes actions were moving it toward a confrontation of nations that would bring about the demise of the West if left unchallenged: another cold war was acceptable to him, but another shooting war wasn't.

Because of his position within the government, he knew two things: first, his country was the instigator behind the impending cataclysm; and second, he was the only person who would do anything to try to change the outcome. In order to accomplish his self-imposed mission, it was imperative that the package he carried get into the hands of its intended recipient in the United States.

It had taken time for him to establish a way to get the package out of the country, but he did it in a manner that made the courier believe he was delivering it at the behest of the KGB, an organization most Russian citizens did not turn down or acknowledge working for.

The box would be taken to an accommodation address where it would be readdressed and resent to other addresses until it reached its final destination; a man named John Darque. He had known Darque for only a short period of time, and that was after the American had him arrested for conducting espionage in Germany. He didn't know if Darque was in a position to do anything about the impending situation, but for some reason he felt he could trust the man with the information in the box. Besides, he didn't know anyone else he could turn to.

As he entered the congested train terminal, he spotted the man he had seen earlier at the cafe, and watched as the man folded a newspaper and tucked it under his left arm: he had so far avoided attracting the attention of any surveillance.

He smiled through his pain.

On a normal day, he would have chastised the people he knew were out there to identify people like him: a danger to the Russian Government. He didn't know all of them by face or name but he had trained many of them, and even though he had done nothing to attract any interest to himself, he expected them to somehow be able to determine who was or was not a threat. In their defense, he knew this was an impossible task, and he counted on that fact to help him complete his mission unhindered.

The courier was sitting where he was supposed to be, and he had a package in his lap that was quite similar in appearance to the one carried by the man who approached him. He noticed the look of pain in the standing man's face, but said nothing as he quickly switched the packages and continued walking at a leisurely pace.

The seated man waited for almost 15 minutes after the other man disappeared in the crowded station, and then boarded the train that would be the first leg of his journey to the United States. He wondered momentarily who the man with the painful expression on his face was, and why the KGB had picked him to deliver the package to the United States, but then thought it was best not to worry about such things, and settled into his seat.

The man with the pained expression on his face, KGB Colonel Nikolai Rolnikov, watched as the courier got on the train, and then headed back to his residence for what he knew would be the last time.

After entering the apartment he shared with his wife, Freya, he removed his jacket, took a bottle of vodka from a cabinet, and sat at the kitchen table. He appeared to be staring at a picture of Stalin hanging on the wall, but was actually recalling fond memories of the times he had spent with Freya and their daughter Heidi, who was now out on her own.

He picked up the bottle of pills on the table and read the label he had memorized long ago: take two tablets when needed for pain, but no more than six in a 24-hour period.

Smiling through his pain, he dumped the remaining 52 pills in the bottle into his hand and swallowed a few at a time with long drinks from a bottle of vodka. No one would ever know his death was for any reason other than to overcome his unremitting pain, and his treachery, or heroism, depending on how one looked at the situation, would never be known. His last conscious thought was to wonder if he had done the right thing with the box; his last sensation was to feel the pain ebbing from his body, and the last thing he heard was Freya's gentle sobbing coming from another room.

Chapter Two

Darque slowed the pickup truck as he approached the driveway to his cabin, and the hairs on the back of his neck raised in alarm when he spotted a package leaning against the base of the wooden mailbox post. Since he wasn’t expecting a package, the arrival of one aroused his suspicion. He knew some people might interpret his reaction as paranoia, but he didn’t care what anyone else might think. He had reasons to be cautious.

He leaned across the cab of the vehicle and opened the door on the passenger side.

“Bill,” he said to his companion, a large German shepherd, “check the box.”

The dog leapt from the truck, and cautiously approached the package. He kept his nose close to the ground, and advanced one paw at a time, just as he had been trained to do when locating explosives.

While the dog investigated the parcel, Darque peered into the trees and bushes on both sides of the cracked asphalt scar of a road. As he shifted his weight inside the truck, Darque felt the pistol concealed at the small of his back, but he made no attempt to reach for it. He knew that carrying a weapon was a lot like a child carrying a teddy bear: it helped to provide a certain amount of security, but it wasn’t necessarily the right tool for every situation. If the purpose of the package was to get him to stop so he could be ambushed, he’d already be dead. The fact that he was armed wouldn’t have made a bit of difference.

Darque climbed out of the truck and walked over to where the dog now treated the parcel with indifference. Bill had turned his back on the object and slowly walked away, then rolled around in the fringe of high grass and weeds beside the road.

“So, you figure it’s safe to pick up?” Darque asked.

Bill yawned, and Darque, who took the response to mean ‘yes’, bent down and picked up the package. It was addressed to John Darque, but he didn't recognize the name of the sender: Mr. James K. Johnson, Salem, Oregon. He had reasons to remember such things.

Darque placed the box in the bed of the truck as Bill returned to his place on the front seat, and then he shut the passenger door and walked around the truck. Over time, his body had become so conditioned to stress that the adrenalin rush he once felt in tense situations was a thing of the past.

“Let’s go home and see what the mailman brought us,” Darque said as he drove the pickup onto the dirt driveway marked by the mailbox.

A meandering dirt lane led through the trees to the log cabin he and Bill shared. The driveway was in terrible condition with potholes nearly the size of bomb craters, but the unkempt look was intentional: it discouraged unwanted visitors, alerted Bill to the approach of vehicles, and added a layer of security to the cabin.

When they climbed out of the truck at the cabin, Darque watched closely as Bill ran crisscrossing patterns throughout the clearing, stopping occasionally to scrutinize an unfamiliar odor. After determining that no danger existed, the dog returned to Darque’s side.

The driver lifted the package from the bed of the truck, tucked it under his arm, and led the way into the cabin. He placed the container on a small table beside his recliner, and listened as Bill’s clicking toenails on the wooden floor announced the dog’s movements through the structure. Darque rubbed his hands together to fend off the chill, and then started a fire in the stone fireplace. As the flames climbed higher, invisible tentacles of heat began to attack the cold inside the structure. Once the temperature moderated, Darque removed his coat and weapon, and sat down in the recliner. It was time to focus his attention on the newly arrived parcel.

Although Bill had not alerted on the package, Darque carefully slit the box open with his pocketknife, and used the point of the blade to lift the flaps. As he peered into the container, an envelope with his name on it stared back.

He set the envelope aside and removed several crumpled sheets of newsprint covered with Cyrillic writing, but unless analysis proved otherwise, Darque thought the wadded up Russian newspaper was used as cushioning material, as well as being a thinly disguised clue about the package’s origin.

He removed the padding and smiled as he saw two green bottles with red and white labels. Darque knew without even reading the product name that they contained Budweiser beer; not the copy made in the U.S., but the original one brewed in the Czech Republic. He put the beer aside and picked up a small, liquid-filled, glass vial that contained a misshapen chunk of metal decorated with brown flecks.

The only other things he saw in the box were a manila envelope and a thumb drive.

He picked up the envelope addressed to him, slit it open with his knife, and removed a single sheet of typewritten paper. For some reason, the impressions of the metal keys made the letter seem more personal than if it had been compiled on a computer. He settled back in the chair and began to read the message:

“Mister Darque,

I don’t often get an opportunity to use the English I had to work so hard to learn, but since I know you never learned Russian, I felt this way was best.

You may be asking yourself how I got your address, especially after I tell you that there is no new information in your file following your retirement as a Counterintelligence Agent for your government. I often wondered if we were wise to drop all interest in you after that, but apparently, none of my superiors believed, as I did, that you continued to be a threat against our activities.

Since I could find no address for you in our files, I had someone enter a request for it on several military related sites that offer to help former members reestablish contact, and eventually I received a response that contained the information I sought. Many of your countrymen continue to be very naive concerning intelligence matters, but since it was to my benefit on this occasion, I will not admonish you for an oversight I imagine you’re already aware of. The person who submitted the request poses no threat to you, and is untraceable.

You may not remember me, but we met once in Germany in 1984, when you had me arrested for spying. I didn’t know who you were then, but I learned about you later from our files.

I was wrong to have my wife and daughter with me on that mission, but it was part of my cover story and it gave them a chance to travel. You were kind to my family then, and helped them leave the country without problems. They think you are a good person and I think so too; that’s why you now have the box where you found this letter. I will have died of cancer by the time you receive it, so don’t waste your time trying to get in touch with me for additional information. As a matter of possible concern, I can tell you that my wife and daughter will be OK, so don’t worry about their futures. I sent the beer as a sign of friendship, even though we’re on opposite sides of the same coin; I read in your file that you like it. If you remember me, and I’m sure you have ways of finding out if you don’t, I was only in prison two years instead of ten as part of a prisoner exchange. I was very happy to walk across the Glienicke Brücke in Berlin and return to my family in so short a time.

After my return, I was put behind a desk and not back on the street to work; probably too much exposure, or maybe my superiors just wanted to keep me nearby so they could watch me more closely. Like all true agents, I hated being in an office, but I learned a lot about many things, and I was trusted with several important assignments. When ordered to do so, I destroyed a lot of files, but managed to keep part of one I smuggled out of headquarters; what I kept is now in your possession. I felt someone on your side had to be made aware of the threat that is developing to plunge the world into a war that may be impossible to stop, and I chose you to be the recipient.

I hope you enjoy the beer; it would have been nice if we could have shared one together.

Nikolai Rolnikov”

There was a P.S. at the bottom of the letter, written in what he suspected was a woman’s handwriting: “Thank you always. Heidi thanks you for her ugly pig; she still has it. Freya”

Darque digested what he had read, then picked up one of the bottles of beer. He rested the serrated lip of the crimped cap on the edge of the table, and snapped it off with a downward thrust of his other hand. A long drink of the brew reinforced his contention that it was still the best beer he ever tasted even when it was warm.

The postscript convinced him, as it was meant to, that the letter was authentic. No one but the Rolnikovs would have known about ‘the ugly pig’. Actually, it was a small, stuffed, purple hippopotamus. He had given it to Heidi just before he put her and her mother on a train out of Germany, but the little girl had renamed it.

Darque pulled a laptop from beneath his chair, and plugged in the thumb drive. The picture that appeared on the monitor was not of the best quality, but the subject matter could not be mistaken. It showed a man naked in bed with a series of naked females, and although the room remained the same, sudden scene changes indicated that several different incidents had been combined to make one tape.

After the bedroom shots, the scene changed completely. Three men sat around a table in a small room. Their voices were barely audible, but the gist of the conversation was that the male in the video informed the other two that he would be happy to spy for them. He said the main reason he had come to the Soviet Union was to offer his services in that capacity, even though he didn’t know if he could do much good. One of the other two said they would wait. Maybe sometime in the future, the younger man would be in a position to do more for them. The younger man then signed some papers, and the two men gave him $5000 as a sign of their faith in his future assistance. The video ended with the exchange of money.

Darque removed the portable storage device from the computer and put it next to the vial. He then pulled the manila envelope out of the box, revealing another envelope beneath it.

He opened the envelope and found a number of papers written in Russian. He’d have to wait for them to be translated before he could determine why they had been included in the box. He returned the documents to the envelope, laid it aside, then removed the last envelope from the box and opened it. Inside it and then found two pieces of paper, one printed in Russian and the other in English. Darque read the English version of the document, and was certain the Russian document contained the same information.

The form was used as a work agreement by intelligence agencies to acquire a source’s signature, and could be produced if it ever became necessary to blackmail or coerce the signatory to continue working for his/her handlers. The signature at the bottom of both documents was identical: Thomas J. Davis.

Darque knew of only one person named Thomas J. Davis. He was the U.S. Senator who was the current front-runner, and probable winner, of the upcoming election for President of the United States.

If Senator Davis was the man in the video and the signer of the two documents, the next President of the United States was also a traitor.

Chapter Three

Darque watched silently as sunlight passed through a stained-glass panel creating colorful patterns that slowly crept across the floor like spiders in search of prey.

It appeared that the FSB, still better known as the KGB even after its evolution, had an interest in Davis becoming the next U.S. President, and Darque knew he had to determine what the Russian security agency was up to before he could allow Davis to become the next leader of the free world.

As head of the covert agency responsible for detecting and eliminating threats to the U.S. that were beyond the scope of known agencies, it was his responsibility to ensure Davis' motives for becoming President were in the best interest of the American people. If an ulterior motive existed that would endanger the country, Davis would have to be eliminated before he could achieve the Presidency.

Darque realized he would have to move cautiously. If his assessment of the situation was correct, there would be forces in place to ensure Davis’s ascension to power happened without interference: no one could carry out a plan of this magnitude alone. Davis as President might be a foregone conclusion, but he would not gain any real power until after his inauguration, and that was all the time Darque had to come up with a solution for the problem if one existed. With that thought in mind, he picked up his secure phone and called the Cave (the organization’s nickname for its headquarters) to notify the duty officer that he would be there shortly, and to have his staff assembled in his office.

Penny Miller, the Duty Officer and one of the team leaders at Olympus, was also his confidante and lover, and his face softened when he heard her voice.

“I thought you and your creature were enjoying your time away from here,” she said.

“We were, but something has come up that cut our vacation short.”

He told her about the contents of the package, and voiced his concern about how the man who would probably be the next President fit into the picture. He was rewarded with silence as he pictured her mulling over what he’d said.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked incredulously.

“As sure as I can be without having researched any of it.”

“This could be a bad one if you’re right,” she said apprehensively. “What do you want me to do?”

“Let Doc know I’ll be bringing in some stuff for the lab’s immediate attention. If Davis is a mole, his handlers wouldn’t have wanted him to do anything that would attract attention. Have the Research Department start checking him out, and let the people there know I want anything and everything they can find out about him. I’ll leave here shortly, and we can discuss the situation further at your place tonight.”

“It’ll be nice to have you home again,” she said softly before breaking the connection.

As he hung up the phone, he thought about Penny and wondered how they had ever been able to establish a close relationship. Both of them were loners and suspicious of others, and an abusive marriage was reason enough for Penny to avoid any intimate contact with males. Somehow, they clicked. Maybe it had something to do with two negatives equaling a positive. She was almost 10 years younger and 50 pounds lighter, and she was also the prettiest, blue-eyed blond he had ever seen. Bill just yawned and returned to his nap.

The fire was dying in the fireplace, but a loud popping noise coming from the ashes was enough to interrupt Darque’s reverie.

With the sun well below its zenith, he decided to pack some things and get on the road if he wanted to reach Penny’s by midnight. He took the last sip of beer, walked to the bookcase, and placed the empty bottle on one of the shelves … a commemorative souvenir of an unpublished international incident.

Darque completed his packing, and returned the items he had received in the mail to their carton … except for the other bottle of beer which now rested in the refrigerator.

He used the fireplace poker to stir up the remaining embers, and created a shower of sparks inside the hearth.

With the clothing bag dangling from his hand, and the box under his arm, he turned to Bill.

“Let’s go to Penny’s,” Darque said as he grabbed his jacket and pistol.

Bill was already tugging on the handle to open the door and get outside, and Darque followed closely behind.

The dog sniffed the air and looked around the area before walking across the yard to the pickup. Nothing had changed that caused him any concern.

After Darque opened the truck door, Bill jumped in and curled up on the passenger’s seat as Darque climbed behind the steering wheel.

It was a long drive to Penny’s, and Darque’s thoughts kept returning to Davis. The problems he thought he might encounter to resolve the situation were numerous, but he was sure of one thing: if Davis was a traitor, failure was not an option.

Chapter Four

T

he trip to Penny’s didn’t take as long as Darque had anticipated, but it was still close to midnight when they arrived. Bill displayed more excitement as they got closer to their other home. Penny was the only person in whose presence Bill wagged his tail.

Darque parked the truck in the driveway and carried the bag and cardboard box into the house. Although they hadn’t gotten married, he and Penny had exchanged house keys in a ceremony they decided meant the same thing.

Darque entered the house and found Penny asleep in an overstuffed recliner buried beneath a fake polar bear hide she called ‘Mr. Bear’.

The glowing embers of a recent fire were dying in the fireplace, and a sip of wine remained in a glass that rested on the table next to her chair.

He didn’t know how long she had been asleep, but he had learned not to awaken her by touching her if they hadn’t been together before she fell asleep. Because of her abusive marriage, she never went to sleep when she was alone without a readily accessible straight razor. When they were together the razor disappeared, and he never questioned her decision to keep the weapon nearby. It was one of her ghosts, and she dealt with it the best way she could.

As was their usual pattern if they arrived at the house while she slept, Darque went into the kitchen and made some noise, and Bill sat near Penny so she could see him when she awakened.

It took a while before Darque finally heard her moving around, and he went in to check on her.

“How long have you been sleeping?” he asked as he leaned down to kiss her.

“A couple of hours,” she said. “Give me a minute to figure out where I am, and I’ll fix you something to eat.”

“Sounds good,” he said.

Bill frantically wagged his tail as he tried to get her attention, and she finally scratched him behind the ears as an acknowledgment of his presence. She actually liked the dog, but this was a game she played to, as she put it, keep Bill in his place. It didn’t work.

Darque saw that she wore a pair of house slippers that depicted killer whales when she finally got out of the chair. She also wore a long nightshirt with a large picture of a rhinoceros head on it, and the caption: I’m horny.

“Very nice,” he said.

“You should know by now that I never wear anything but my best lingerie for you,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

She made her way to the kitchen where she constructed a couple of ham sandwiches, and they ate in silence at the table.

“So, tell me more about the package you received,” she said when she finished eating.

Darque retrieved the box and put it on the table in front of her.

“This is it,” he said, “but most of the contents are still a mystery to me.”

She removed the wads of newsprint and flattened them out on the table.

“I don’t think there’s anything in these that will help you, unless you’re interested in what the weather was like in Moscow a few months ago,” she said.

He gave her his really dumb look. Penny was fluent in six languages, and Russian was one of them. Darque was conversant in two, and Russian was neither of them.

She removed the compilation of papers from the envelope, and immediately showed signs of interest.

“Well,” she said, “what have we here?”

She silently read for a couple of minutes, so he tried his dumb look again. It worked.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I forgot; you don’t read Russian.”

He might have interpreted the comment as being condescending, except for the fact that she had punctuated it by sticking her tongue out of him.

She was the only person he could kid around with, and that was one of the reasons Darque found their relationship so special. If not for her, he probably would have fallen into the quicksand of despair, and the results of that would probably have been bad for a lot of people.

“It’s their equivalent of a TOP SECRET document about an immersion program to train personnel to infiltrate different countries. It appears that just about every country on the planet was targeted.”

She looked up from the document and considered the impact of such a program before she continued.

“I think we need to look at this a lot closer,” she said.

She put the documents back into the envelope, reached for the letter that had accompanied the box, and waved it at him when she had finished reading its contents.

“Any doubt about its authenticity?” she asked.

“None,” he said.

“The ugly pig thing, right?”

“Yep,” he said.

As Penny reached for the envelope with the signed forms in it, he asked her to wait and look at those last.

The small liquid filled vial caught her attention, and she held it up to the light so she could study the contents.

“What did you make of this?” she asked.

“At first I thought it might be a bullet, but it looks as if it has some rust on it and lead doesn’t rust,” he said.

“Well, I may have some news for you. I believe it is a bullet, but the brown specks on it are blood, not rust. It also appears that the collapsed slug captured some tissue in its folds,” she said as she handed him the vial.

He hadn’t noticed it earlier, but some type of matter swayed in the liquid, and remained attached to what might well turn out to be a bullet.

She stood up from the table and removed the thumb drive from the box. Bill, who lay at her feet, seemed a little annoyed at being disturbed.

“Let’s go to the other room so I can watch this,” she said as she headed for the living room.

She inserted the drive into a computer and turned it on, then watched the monitor in silence as he handed her the envelope he wanted her to look at last. She pulled the documents out and studied them as the video ended. When she was finished, she put the documents back in the envelope, removed the external drive from the computer, and returned to the kitchen where she put the items back in the box.

“This is incredible,” she said in a hesitant voice. “How could something like this happen?”

“Politics”, he said. “As you well know, in order to gain access to classified information, one must undergo an in-depth background investigation unless one is a politician; in that case, it’s assumed the person is OK and gets the access as part of his or her job title. In some cases, those individuals turn out to be the worst offenders, but the results sometimes go unnoticed until after the damage is done. We check the backgrounds of those in or trying to gain power, but even if we find disqualifying data, there isn't much we can do overtly to stop them. On the other hand, threats of public exposure will sometimes change the direction a politician takes, and an arranged accident will work every time, but we have to be sure before we consider that. Now is the time for us to find out what's going on, and when we figure that out, I'll decide how to resolve the problem if one exists.”

“So, what are we going to do?”

“Resolving this is now our priority. We need to get the material in the box analyzed, and start digging into every aspect of Davis' life looking for anything that might indicate what his true motivation is for becoming President. I want him kept under discreet surveillance 24 hours a day. If he even suspects someone is questioning his true motive, he may try to disappear. It’s imperative that we find out what he’s up to, and neutralize his efforts before any damage can be done. He’s a popular figure, so our actions can’t cause him or his background to come under public scrutiny.”

“Any ideas about how we’re going to do that?” she asked.

“Not a one,” Darque said, “but we better come up with some answers pretty quickly. If I’m right, whatever’s supposed to happen has been in the planning stage for more than 30 years, and Davis’ inauguration is in about three months. Time is not on our side.”

Chapter Five

The clouds changed rapidly from light to dark gray, almost as if they were in a blender, and if the winds were any indication, the weather was about to change for the worse.

The man who moved slowly along the walk in front of the Vietnam Memorial seemed to be engrossed in his own thoughts, but if anyone looked closely at him, the smile he displayed probably would have seemed out of place for such a solemn site. Whenever he took this stroll, the irony of the situation always struck him as amusing.

He didn’t know for sure, but he felt certain he was directly responsible for at least 100 of the names being incised into the polished marble panels. Indirectly, at least ten times that many because of the courses he taught the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops. He was quite proud of the testament the monument made to his prowess as a combat warrior.

Although he used many routes in his job, he liked this particular one best because whether on a mission or not, it kept anyone who followed him trying to guess his true purpose.

It didn’t take long for him to reach his goal, a park bench along the dirt and gravel walkway on the north side of The Mall beside the Reflecting Pool near the Lincoln Memorial. The location was ideal for his purpose, because he could either appear or disappear via the Arlington National Cemetery Metro Station. The walk to and from the station involved crossing the Arlington Memorial Bridge, which was an ideal location to conduct counter surveillance measures to identify anyone who might be displaying interest in his activities.

The man’s unhurried and seemingly innocent presence did not seem to attract any attention from passersby, but the people who were interested in the man’s actions were continually amazed by his cool demeanor in what can only be described as a stressful activity. He was so calm, it was often difficult for them to determine when he was operational, and when he was just out for a stroll. The problem was easily resolved since they had been told to treat anything the man was observed doing as an operational matter.

The man now seated on the bench by the Reflecting Pool was Colonel Vladimir Kostchenko, the head of several KGB operatives working in the District of Columbia whose seemingly innocuous jobs allowed them to conduct clandestine activities on behalf of Russia. He was listed as a minor official with the Russian Office of Fisheries in Washington, D.C., which was ironic because he never liked the taste of fish.

His official duties required him to occasionally issue press releases concerning such topics as the dwindling number of sturgeons in Russian waters, and what great strides could be made to correct the situation if the generous people of the United States would send money to help fund the project to reverse this trend.

Except for a broken nose, a reminder of a training accident kept as a kind of badge of honor, he was a rather nondescript individual who could fit into any situation. He spoke English better than most Americans, and he was quite familiar with the customs and history of the United States; the place he had learned to refer to as his ‘target country’. He was in his late 50s and, like most intelligence officers, he missed the days of the Cold War when there were more ongoing activities.

Still, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union, tensions between the U.S. and Russia had relaxed, at least on the surface and in public statements. Expressions of friendship between the two countries were now commonplace, and since travel restrictions inside the U.S. had been lifted, his job had become a lot easier.

Because of his efforts and successes over the years, he was one of the best agent handlers within the KGB, and that was the reason he was currently in the United States. The network necessary to support his activities had been in place for many years, and it was relatively easy to infiltrate highly trained personnel into the country when necessary. Under the guise of students, business executives, media personnel, medical technicians, and Kostchenko’s personal favorite, members of the clergy, these adjunct operatives had few problems carrying out their assigned duties before returning to Russia.

Without a doubt, he liked operating in the U.S., and with few exceptions, things seemed to be going better than he had hoped. He did not consider the FBI to be much of a problem because it was easy to create situations that diverted their attention, and he realized that most police departments were not trained to recognize or handle national level activities.

While he sat on the bench, he sipped a cup of coffee and read a newspaper, but furtively glanced around the area from time to time. His movements were natural and unhurried; a skill developed from the many hours he practiced conducting this activity.

Once satisfied that he was not being observed, he acted quickly.

While he took a sip of coffee from the cup in his left hand, his right hand moved almost imperceptibly around the end of the bench where he attached a small, magnetized container to a metal band on the bottom of the seat.

“Kostchenko seems to be getting a bit careless,” said one of the men watching the KGB agent. “I think he’s becoming a bit overconfident about his capabilities, and it’s about time; I was beginning to think he’d never make a mistake.”

“What happened?” asked the man’s companion.

All his associates knew the ‘watcher’ as Yoda, and his companion was a younger agent on what was supposed to be a training exercise. The two of them sat in the rear of a surveillance van parked along 22nd Street, and they had observed and video-taped every move Kostchenko made.

“Keep focused on him; I’ll explain everything to you in a couple of minutes,” said Yoda.

As the two of them watched, their target arose from the bench and walked toward the Lincoln Memorial, but stopped at a tree before continuing toward the bridge.

“What was that all about?” asked the younger man.

“Those, my young friend, were the actions of a person who is up to no good,” remarked Yoda.

Yoda was Darque’s Chief of Surveillance, and he currently headed the surveillance team assigned to monitor Kostchenko’s movements.

“All he did was sit on a bench, drink a cup of coffee, read a newspaper, and then leave”.

“Did you see him appear to grab the right side of the bench with his hand?” asked Yoda.

“Yes, but that was probably just to balance himself while he shifted his position on the bench”.

“I’m pretty sure that wasn’t his purpose, but we should know shortly,” said Yoda. “I believe the bench will soon have another visitor, and that individual will also, as you put it, balance himself with a movement of his right hand. Be sure you get that movement, and the person who made it, on tape.”

“Will that stand up in court as evidence?”

“We’re not looking for evidence that will stand up in a court of law; we’re looking for indications of activities that might warrant further investigation. If we can identify those, and further investigation is warranted, that will be the time to start looking for evidence that will aid in determining how the matter will be resolved. A court battle is not necessarily the best way for situations involving representatives of foreign governments to be handled, and that is especially true for KGB agents.”

“Did I miss anything else?”

“Probably. Did you notice that he quickened his pace once he stood up and started to walk away from where he had been seated?”

“Yes, but so what?”

“People who carry out clandestine activities often move away from the points of their incriminating actions more quickly than they move towards them. It may have something to do with the knowledge that they have just done something for which they could be arrested, but since they seemed to get away with it unchallenged, staying in the area would only draw more attention and increase the possibility of being caught. It may just be a psychological quirk, but its result is a clue that something is not right, and with enough clues, a puzzle can be solved.”

“So, what do you think happened?”

“I think he loaded a dead drop, and I suspect someone will show up pretty soon to retrieve whatever was left behind.”

“Shouldn’t you have told some of the team to follow him?”

“A couple of people will stay with him to make sure he stays out of trouble, but we know who he is, and we can find him just about whenever we want to, but there’s a good chance the person who shows up to get whatever Kostchenko left behind is an unknown player, and we'll need to determine who that individual is. Our priority has switched from Kostchenko to whomever shows up as his replacement on the bench.”

“Anything you want me to do right now?”

“Yes. I want you to walk by the tree where Kostchenko hesitated, and see if you notice anything unusual, but be very casual about it.”

The younger agent checked all the one-way glass in the van for anyone who might be showing interest in the vehicle, and left quietly out the side door of the van when he saw nothing suspicious. After his departure, Yoda relocked the side door because it was embarrassing to be interrupted by prospective car thieves and casual passersby while conducting surreptitious activities.

It wasn’t long before the man returned to the van, and Yoda unlocked the side door to let him reenter the rear compartment.

“Did you find anything out of the ordinary?” Yoda asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“What did you find?”

“There was a thumbtack sticking in the tree at about waist level, but it may have been there for quite a while.”

“I doubt it,” said Yoda. “I suspect that’s the load sign. Whoever is going to service the drop will pass close enough to the tree to see the tack, and that will be the signal for him to retrieve whatever Kostchenko left at the bench. He will already know where the drop is located, and was probably the one who initially identified it.”

Yoda sat silently as he watched each person who walked past the bench, and looked for any sign that might indicate who the KGB agent’s intended recipient might be; the identity of that person would be the payoff for many hours of boring inactivity. Catching a bad guy in the act was the five-second adrenalin rush that made all the discomforts endured during a surveillance worthwhile; it was finding the needle in the haystack, and the reward was satisfaction for having done a tedious job well.

Yoda looked at his watch and broke the silence.

“I have a feeling the person we’re interested in has already seen the tack, and is probably in the vicinity waiting for just the right moment to approach the bench.”

Having said that, Yoda reached for the mike and issued his instructions to the other members of his team, because it was important to get surveillants out of their vehicles and on foot so they could more closely observe the activities of anyone who approached the drop site.

“Send out your legs and be ready to move and pick them up when and where they direct. Concentrate on the target and his means of transportation once both are identified.”

As the drivers in each of the vehicles replied, acknowledging receipt of his order, he knew he didn’t have to say anything else.

Foot surveillants had departed the vehicles in which they had been riding, and they now took up positions where they could remain unobtrusive, but closely watch the spot where Kostchenko had been seated. From whatever locations they had chosen, they would hopefully be able to follow whoever retrieved whatever the KGB agent had left behind.

Their goal was to get a good visual, physical description of the person, as well as photos and video, and then follow the person to whatever conveyance he would use to exit the area so the person and vehicle could be identified as soon as possible.

Communications between Yoda and all other team members was accomplished through the use of ‘body comms’ that were worn by each team member. The gear was wireless and consisted of a transmitter about the size of a pack of cigarettes, a microphone about the size of a shirt button, and a receiver about the size of the end of a cotton tipped swab which was inserted into an ear canal.

Knowing that the foot and vehicle portions of the surveillance were in place and ready to act, Yoda relaxed. He focused his video camera on the bench where Kostchenko had been seated, but nothing had changed.

A couple of people had been seated on the bench, but neither of them had made any attempt to reach under the bench. A child had climbed up on the bench and stomped back and forth leaving dusty footprints on the seat, but then decided to jump to the ground and move on to pester some pigeons that pecked at a piece of bread, possibly left behind by a well-meaning tourist since local office workers seldom do anything to encourage the presence of the ‘lawn vultures’.

A male’s voice suddenly came through Yoda’s ear piece.

“Possible target. Male Caucasian, 35-40, 5’10-6’1,” 175-185, dark hair, light blue coat, gray shirt, dark blue trousers, black shoes. He walked past the drop site twice, looked toward it both times, and occasionally looked over his right shoulder to check behind himself. He just turned around and is now headed back toward the drop.”

Yoda knew that every member of the team would scan the area for the person who fit the description that had just been broadcast, and it didn’t take any of them long to locate the individual. The mistakes being made by the man as he approached the drop site drew the immediate attention of those who watched.

Yoda focused the camera on the man as soon as the individual approached the bench where Kostchenko had been seated, and it became rather obvious that this was the person they had all been waiting for to show up.

The man tried to appear calm, and except for his darting glances at passers-by, the unidentified target acted out his ruse pretty well. As he assumed the same position the KGB agent had used earlier, the man removed the object left by Kostchenko from beneath the seat and put it in his coat pocket, but remained seated for a few seconds until he convinced himself that his actions had not been witnessed. With a smug look on his face, the man arose from the bench, and quickly walked away from the area in an almost direct route toward his vehicle, which was parked near George Washington University. The surveillance team followed the man without any problems, and watched as he entered a vehicle and drove out of the area.

As soon as the man had entered his vehicle, a description of it was relayed by one of the team to the other members who were still in their vehicles, and it wasn’t difficult for them to take up a pursuit once the target entered the flow of traffic.

Unlike Kostchenko, who was classified as a ‘hard target’, his contact proved to be rather easy to follow as he drove directly to what turned out to be his residence; a small, nondescript house in a residential neighborhood of other small, nondescript houses, all of which appeared, with minor variations and colors, to have come from the same drawing board.

A DMV check of the license plate on the car he drove disclosed that the vehicle was registered to an Albert C. Michaels, and a quick search through a local phone registry indicated that the residence he had just entered was listed in his name, so the team now had a name for its target as it settled in to wait for the man’s next move.

Yoda was pleased with the way the mission had gone so far, and after reviewing in his mind the actions that the man had taken, he wrote one word under the physical description of the man that he had jotted down earlier: overconfident.

After he entered the house, Michaels walked through the living room to the kitchen, and removed the small container he had retrieved at the drop site from his pants pocket. When he opened the tin, he found a key, similar to the kind used to open lockers at transportation hubs, with the number 263 inscribed on it, along with a piece of paper that had ‘Union Station’ written on it. He put the key in his pocket, dropped the container into a cabinet drawer, and set the piece of paper on fire before washing the ashes down the kitchen sink.

He grabbed something to eat from the refrigerator, because he knew he had to wait for a few hours for the avalanche of workers to depart the train station before he retrieved whatever had been left for him in the locker. Even though he didn’t know what he was supposed to pick up, he knew it was what he needed to deliver to Germany to complete his assignment, and even though his role in the overall plan was minor, he was sure of one thing: the world needed a change, and once the plan came to fruition, that would most certainly happen.

His greatest fear was that somehow the plot would be discovered and foiled, but if that were the case, he had the comfort of knowing that it would not be his fault, because he had been very careful, and besides, he knew there was no turning back.

Chapter Six

Call it intuition, or maybe just anxiety, but things seemed to be going too well; this was no time to sit back and relax.

Kostchenko knew he was pretty good at playing the espionage game, but he was also smart enough to know that he probably wasn’t the best, especially since he was on foreign soil; the winner had the ability to use unfolding events to his advantage, and the secret was to be able to identify those events when they occurred.

His exit from The Mall area included a transfer on the metro from the blue line to the red line, and he emerged from the system at the Woodley Park - Zoo Station, where his driver awaited his arrival.

The driver smoothly entered the flow of traffic, and carefully adjusted both outside mirrors, as well as the rear-view mirror, so he could watch the trailing traffic in an effort to detect any vehicles that might take an interest in his car.

“What do you think, Georgii,” Kostchenko asked the driver.

“I didn’t spot anything, but I sometimes get this feeling,” the driver said as his voice trailed off into silence.

“I know what you mean,” Kostchenko said. “I’m worried about that man.”