| "Deceit in a Maze of Lies" | ||
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Popov's Office June 10, 2008, 0400 hours "Patch me through," he told Lisovsky. As the computer whiz carried out the order Popov turned his mind to ascertaining why Nikolai would feel the need to contact him, given the ROE he was meant to be working under; no extraneous contact was one of the points in that. So, it must be important for his young charge to have broken protocol and asked to speak directly with him. Well, he would have to wait to find out what the reason was. "Ok, he's on now," Lisovsky informed him. "Thank you," he said, then waited for the beep. "Hello Kolya," he said to the new speaker. "Seryozha," Nikolai replied, the tone serious and the word clipped. "What is wrong?" he asked, noting the agitation in the youngster's voice. "Why am I being fucked?" "Kolya, you will have to beg my pardon, but what do you mean?" Ok, he thought, this was not going to be good. "We ran into a little trouble a little while ago. Seems these protesters work for the American Government, and they like carrying fucking guns around with them. Ok, I may have fucked up a bit, got spotted by them, but I managed to retrieve the situation and deploy the non-lethal systems. Thing is, after the event one of the hostiles tripped over me as she was snooping around." He let the tension build for a few seconds. "It was one of the girls from the Konstantin hit, one of the ones who did the hit. In fact, and it gets even better than that, she was the fucking CIA agent that I did the intel exchange with." This came as a shock to him. What the hell was going on? It was a grave situation by the sounds of it, but he had no knowledge of what had happened, and he knew for a fact that he had not done anything to facilitate this situation. So who had? Georgiev must have known something about this. Yes, of course, that was why he didn't want Myech to use lethal force. "Kolya, I have�" "Fuck that Sergei!" Nikolai interrupted. "This is a load of shit. I fucking protected her at the hit, and now I'm trying to fight her. I mean what the fuck is that for? Huh? Because I sure as hell don't know. They want Petrenko dead, and they get to use bullets. We want him alive, so we get to piss about with lights and shit. It's not fucking on, Sergei. Not fucking on." "Kolya, if you'll just�" "So seeing as this is just one big cluster-fuck," Nikolai interrupted again, "myself and little miss CIA, yeah, if you'll believe that one, have set up a meet to sort things out, because it seems like no other fuck is willing to help us out here." "That's enough!" Sergei bellowed. Nikolai went quiet on the other end of the line. "I have absolutely no knowledge of what is going on. I didn't even know that American agents were in the country, and I certainly didn't ask you to use only non-lethal systems in the knowledge that you were going to be in a firefight. Now, if you will just calm down and wait I will contact Georgiev and find out what is going on." "What the fuck is going on?" He asked Georgiev a minute later. He was sufficiently pissed off to not really care how he spoke to the man. Having spent most of his life at the sharp end as a mere line animal he had come to loathe some of the people who generated his orders. It was as if they had no operational sense whatsoever, and the vast majority of them had never had much experience in the field at all, and so they didn't really understand why their orders were met with such disdain. But he had never been placed in a situation like the one he was in know. This was more than just bad orders. This was deceit in a maze of lies. "What are you talking about, Sergei Semyonovich?" Georgiev inquired. "I'm talking about the fact that my team has just had a confrontation with a group of American Special Ops people trying to take out Petrenko." Georgiev was silent. "So, what haven't you told me?" he asked. "This is a delicate situation," Georgiev started, "and it is not as simple as one would wish it to be." "No, Ilya Stepanovich, it is far from simple. And as for the situation being delicate, it isn't half a delicate as your life will be if one of my people gets hurt because of information you withheld from me." He voice had a calculated menace to it. A pause. "Is that a threat?" "Yes sir, it is," Sergei responded. Another pause. Georgiev was obviously trying to work out what he would do. Finally his voice came back on the line. "Ok Sergei Semyonovich, I will explain the situation to you." He spoke for about five minutes, detailing the existence of the SIA and its relationship to the RGZS. He also explained that although the two agencies where going to be working together it was not seen as prudent for this to be rushed, both by himself and by the American President. Finally he explained about the delayed messages, and why he kept the information about the SIA targeting Petrenko from him. "That is all well and good, sir," Popov said, a bit calmer now that he knew what was going on, "but it would have been better to have taken the risk and letting at least me know what was going on. I don't like sending one of my teams into a situation without all of the available intelligence. Now," he continued, "Nikolai and the SIA agent have set up another meeting set for a few hours time. This is to discuss the situation and try and find a solution. What I need to know is how should he proceed." "Tell him to go ahead with the meet, but make it clear that we will need at least another day to work things out at our end. Have you gotten any information on Petrenko yet?" "Not much at first, but after the attack last night he called a number of people, and three of them seem to be involved in the American embassy bombing. Ideally I would like another week to follow up on this information but I know that this will now not be possible. So, does that mean we are going to allow the Americans to kill Petrenko?" "It seems we will have to," Georgiev replied. "So what about Myech? Do we leave them in there? I'm just thinking that they are an SVR team as far as everyone is concerned, and it would not be prudent to embarrass Krivenko by having one of `his' teams fail in such a high-level protection assignment." "You make a good point, Sergei Semyonovich, and one I will address. Tell Nikolai to stall as long as he can, and I will engineer an `all-clear' signal from within the Politburo that will allow your team to depart and be replaced by a standard protection detail. That way the SVR can not be to blame." "Ok Ilya Stepanovich, I will inform Nikolai." The line went dead. "Nikolai," he said, back on the line with his future son-in-law, "you are to go ahead with your meet and try and delay any possible action against Petrenko. A day at least is needed to pull you out without any political fallout going Grisha's way." "What? Pull out?" "Yes. We have gathered some good intelligence from your bugs, and the Americans are going to take Petrenko out one way or another. At least our way will not affect the SVR's position, and that is my primary concern." "I still don't like it, but I'll go along with it." "When has there ever been something we've liked in this business?" he asked. "Stay calm Kolya." "Ok boss." "Just don't do anything rash. We are meant to be working with this American agency at some point in the future, but Ilya Stepanovich said that it had been decided that at present it is too early for that, that we are not ready for it. Just don't do any damage," he said with a little grin. Nikolai must have sensed the grin because he relaxed a little. "Ok, I won't make any holes in people. Still, I'm not in the best of moods right now. Feels like I've been fucked good and proper." "I can't explain any more now, but you will have an explanation, I promise you. All I can say is that Georgiev had some complications, and that is why this situation has developed. "Ok Seryozha. Well, I best get going. I'll let you know how the meeting goes." "Take care, Kolya, and calm down." He cancelled the line and sat back in his chair. There was a lot more to this he was sure, maybe even more than Georgiev realized. He was missing something, something important. If only he could remember what it was. Return |
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