Harry's Rules
ALSO BY MICHAEL R. DAVIDSON
Incubus
The Incubus Vendetta
Caliphate – The Inquisitor and the Maiden
Caliphate – Retribution
Krystal
Eye for an Eye
To the reader:
In the development of this novel the author was inspired in part by actual events connected with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its aftermath that have been amply reported in the press and literature.
Having made this clarification it is important to emphasize the fact that this is a work of fiction and the situations described, as well as the characters and their actions are totally imaginary.
Having reviewed the manuscript, as required by law, the CIA required the following disclaimer:
“All statements of act, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the CIA or any other US Government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or Agency endorsement of the author’s views. This material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent the disclosure of classified information.”
HARRY’S RULES
Copyright © 2012 by Michael R. Davidson.
All rights reserved. No parts 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 Publisher.
MRD Enterprises, Inc.
PO BOX 1000
Mount Jackson, VA 22842-1000
mrdenter@shentel.net
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012912305
ISBN 978-0-615-66394-4
Cover design by M. Davidson
Second Edition 2015
Acknowledgements:
In fictional format I attempted to transmit to the reader the authentic feelings of the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency as they face the daily rigors of their chosen profession. The protagonist’s thoughts in many ways reflect my own as derived from 28 years in the Clandestine Service. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve my country afforded by the CIA and the insights those years provided into the darker ways of the world. The Cold War has now been eclipsed by the War on Terror, and once again the clandestine warriors fill the front line trenches. They have my undying admiration, and I hope they can forgive me for some of the liberties I took in telling this story.
The idea for this story was largely inspired by Paul Klebnikov’s Godfather of the Kremlin, published by Harcourt, Inc. in 2000. Mr. Klebnikov was the first editor of Forbes Russia. He was shot to death as he left his Moscow apartment on July 9, 2004. As Steve Forbes put it in his July 12, 2004 obituary of Mr. Klebnikov, “Who ordered Paul's gangland-style execution and why? We don't know the specific answers--yet. But Paul wrote extensively, incisively and all-too-knowledgeably about post-Soviet Russia's crime-ridden, oft-murderous worlds of business and politics. Criminal capitalists and their political allies literally have looted billions of dollars of assets from this impoverished nation.” In fact, it was Klebnikov who reported the looting of the coffers of the Communist Party and KGB and the ridiculous valuations placed on enormous state assets during the chaos of the immediate post-Soviet period, and how unscrupulous men took advantage.
The forbearance of my family as I wrote and rewrote the story and the kindness of friends who read the early manuscripts is highly appreciated. This book might never have been published but for the encouragement and willing assistance provided by writer Bob Morris and his wife, Maka.
This acknowledgement would be incomplete without mention of my former literary agent, John Hawkins, of John Hawkins and Associates, Inc. who died unexpectedly on November 13, 2011. John was unselfish with his time and encouragement.
Last, but not least, thanks must go to President Vladimir Putin. His unrelenting mendaciousness provided one of the primary inspirations for writing this story. Some of the editors who first reviewed this manuscript did not believe a story about the continuing Russian-American confrontation would be relevant to modern readers. This illustrates how far into the background of the zeitgeist the problem of dealing with Russian intentions has receded. Any reasonable person with a grasp of current events and the troublesome role Moscow continues to play on the world stage could not fail to agree that the ancient Russian yearning for domination remains strong and problematic for the United States.
Michael R. Davidson
New Market, Virginia
2012
To the brave men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency who in anonymity fight the unsung battles.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 - January 1992, Moscow
CHAPTER 2 - "Otto"
CHAPTER 3 - Madrid, 4 February 1992
CHAPTER 4 - Ennui
CHAPTER 5 - Exile
CHAPTER 6 – Saturday, February 8
CHAPTER 7 – Intersection
CHAPTER 8 - Responsibility
CHAPTER 9 - Berlin
CHAPTER 10 - Stankov
CHAPTER 11 - Decision
CHAPTER 12 - Volodya
CHAPTER 13 - Communications
CHAPTER 14 – On the Move
CHAPTER 15 – "The Forest," February 12
CHAPTER 16 – "Magic"
CHAPTER 17 – Sasha, February 13
CHAPTER 18 – Drozhdov
CHAPTER 19 – Bloody Valentine
CHAPTER 20 – Wet Night
CHAPTER 21 – New Friends
CHAPTER 22 – The Basement
CHAPTER 23 – Small Talk
CHAPTER 24 – Moscow, February 15
CHAPTER 25 – Israeli Embassy, Vienna
CHAPTER 26 – Spain, February 14
CHAPTER 27 – Arkadiy Nikolayevich
CHAPTER 28 – Israeli Embassy
CHAPTER 29 – Evasion
CHAPTER 30 – The Key
CHAPTER 31 – Maryland
CHAPTER 32 – Judgment
CHAPTER 33 – Breaking
CHAPTER 34 – Alarm in Moscow
CHAPTER 35 – Zhenya
CHAPTER 36 – Quiet Sunday in Vienna
CHAPTER 37 – Morning After
CHAPTER 38 – Taking Stock
CHAPTER 39 – The Black Treasury
CHAPTER 40 – Langley, Virginia
CHAPTER 41 – Morley
CHAPTER 42 – Fallout
CHAPTER 43 – Persona Non Grata
CHAPTER 44 – "A bris is out of the question."
CHAPTER 45 – Morning in Moscow
CHAPTER 46 – On the Move
CHAPTER 47 – Marbella, Spain
CHAPTER 48 – Yudin and the Night Visitors
CHAPTER 49 – Gunfight
CHAPTER 50 – Death
CHAPTER 51 – Tel-Aviv, February 22
CHAPTER 52 – Something to Think About
CHAPTER 53 – The Russians
CHAPTER 54 - Safehouse
CHAPTER 55 - Caesarea
CHAPTER 56 – Cause for Apology
CHAPTER 57 – Deal
CHAPTER 58 – Entr'acte
CHAPTER 59 – Jake Triumphant
CHAPTER 60 – Loose End
CHAPTER 61 – Bad News
CHAPTER 62 – Back to Paris
CHAPTER 63 – Full Circle
CHAPTER 63 – Aftermath
EPILOGUE – Republic of Ireland
Afterword
CHAPTER 1 - January 1992, Moscow
I’ve often wondered how it must have been that last night in Moscow for poor old Stankov. After all those years of waiting his big opportunity was within his grasp, and he had gathered up his courage. He must have be
en certain I would be pleased.
The shabby little man shuffled up to the entrance of the imposing building, hunched against the bone-chilling wind of the Moscow winter. He was bundled in a heavy overcoat of indeterminate color that had seen better days and wore a fur shapka jammed onto his head with the flaps down over his ears. With a slight grunt he pushed the heavy meal and glass door inward, allowing stray flakes of snow to be pushed into the ornate, marbled foyer. The guard, seated at a desk at the back of the loby, had just begun to pull the greasy paper from around a sausage and mustard sandwich when he felt the chill blast and looked up, surprised by the interruption to his normally somnolent week-end routine. The man who had entered, Mikhail Sergeyevich Stankov, saw the guard quickly shove a half-empty bottle of vodka into a drawer before standing to adjust his gray uniform tunic and peer suspiciously toward him through the gloom of the dimly lit foyer.
Stamping the snow from his boots, Stankov approached the guard’s desk as he unwrapped the muffler from around his face and removed his shapka and gloves, “Good evening, Sergeant,” he muttered, as he bent to sign the leather-bound log book.
Recognizing Stankov as one of the people from the “special section” on the third floor, the guard looked on benignly. “What brings you here on a Friday night, sir? Nothing wrong, I trust.”
Stankov raised his face to the guard, alert to any sign of suspicion but saw none on the man’s broad, Slavic face. Satisfied, he replied, “No, Sergeant. Nothing’s wrong. I’m leaving on an official trip tonight and there are a few things I need to clear up in the office before I go.”
“Where are you off to?”
Stankov hesitated for a second. It was really none of the guard’s business, but his destination was not a secret, and as annoying as it was the man was just making idle conversation. “Vienna, to audit the books at the embassy.” He straightened to step around the desk.
“You’ll have to leave your suitcase down here, sir” the guard said, pointing at the battered leather valise Stankov carried. “Regulations.”
“Of course, Sergeant,” he sighed. “I won’t be long.”
He dropped the valise at the side of the desk and plodded down a semi-darkened hallway toward the bank of elevators, the remaining ice from his boots leaving a trail of wet footprints in the carpet.
Five minutes later, he was at his desk, alone in the suite of offices on the third floor of the most infamous building in Moscow. He booted up his computer terminal and sat hunched over his desk stiff with barely controlled fear. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the chill as he stared intently at the greenly glowing columns of numbers that marched across the screen. This was the most dangerous thing he had ever attempted, and he was all too aware that the intrusion would be traced to his computer as soon as it was discovered, perhaps within hours.
He fidgeted, struggling to master his anxiety, as he waited for the program to complete itself, shooting nervous glances into the corners of the room, dark except for the light on his desk where he had worked for the past year, his heart thudding heavily against his ribs. He sat up straight for a moment and wiped his brow with his sleeve.
Stankov was not a particularly brave man, but he was highly motivated. His entire future hinged on the action he was now taking, and the vision he had of that future had driven him to take the unimaginable risk.
He watched the crawling green line on the screen that displayed the progress of the file transfer until a soft ‘ding’ signaled that the operation was complete. He then rammed a large capacity floppy disk into the slot on his CPU and copied the files from his desktop onto it. He extracted the disk and placed it in a flat envelope that he slid into his inner coat pocket next to the precious plane ticket out of Moscow. With the prudence of a careful bookkeeper he made a second copy and placed it in a separate envelope.
Stankov leaned over the keyboard and typed rapidly for a few seconds and then, gulping down a deep breath, pressed the execute key and watched intently as the long columns of numbers and addresses on the display disappeared, line by shimmering line. Finally, he inserted a specially prepared disk into his CPU and uploaded its contents, routing them to the mainframe in the basement. The virus would infect the mainframe, continuously looping and destroying data until it would be nearly impossible to retrieve and reconstruct the files he had just downloaded.
With luck no one would detect what he had done before opening of business on Monday, by which time he would be long gone. But he had no faith in luck, and for all he knew alarms might already be going off. He looked involuntarily over his shoulder at the window as if he feared some malevolently vigilant presence might be there observing his treason, but there was only the swirling snow outside.
He shook himself and slowly breathed in and out to calm his nerves. Satisfied that the procedure he had rehearsed so many times was complete, he rose, donned scarf, cap, and coat and forced himself to walk calmly to the bank of elevators. In the lobby he signed the exit log, retrieved his bag and waved good night to the guard.
He walked across the inner courtyard and out onto Furkosovskiy Pereulok and trudged around the building. In a few minutes he was crossing the snow-swept expanse of Lubyanskaya Square where the imposing statue of “Iron” Felix Dzherzinski had stood until August of the previous year. Removing the statue from its iconic location had been intended to symbolize the retreat of the long shadow of Dzherzinski’s KGB from Russia. But Stankov knew it had been only a deception.
Shivering not only from the cold, he turned his back on the large yellow brick Lubyanka office building, put his head down against the freezing wind, and headed for the warmth of the near-by subway that would take him south to the Paveletsky Station and the southbound rapid train for the 43 kilometer ride to Domodedovo Airport. The Aeroflot flight to Vienna was scheduled to depart at 9:15 PM.
CHAPTER 2 - "Otto"
Rosalind Christophersen came to Oslo in the early 60's as a Foreign Service secretary at the US Embassy, a small-town girl from Pennsylvania looking for adventure. She’d met, fallen in love with, and married a nice, middle-aged Norwegian and settled down to contented married life. Now 68-years-old and widowed, she was more at home in this sleepy European capital than she would have been in the United States. The city had changed, of course. Drugs and crime and immigration gradually had changed its character. But much of the popular television programming consisted of English-language American imports, and these days Rosalind spent much of her time at home in the comfortable detached house her husband had left her, and she chose to ignore the changes.
Over the years she kept up her acquaintances in the Embassy, and it was only a matter of time before the Agency recruited her. In 1983 she was asked if she would be willing for her address to be given to an individual who needed to maintain secret contact with the US government. Thereafter she occasionally received postcards marked in a certain way that she passed immediately to her contact.
The Agency paid her a small stipend for this service in addition to an occasional gift of American products from the Embassy commissary. Abruptly in 1989 Rosalind was told that her services were no longer needed.
She found Stankov’s envelope in her mailbox four years later and was puzzled until she noticed the deliberate misspelling of her surname, a replacement of the "e" with an "o," connoting that this was one of the "special" messages.
Rosalind knew what she had to do and took a taxi to the triangular-shaped American Embassy at Ibsen’s Gate. The building was now encircled by a high, wrought-iron fence, and protected by steel stanchions on its periphery. It hadn’t been like this in the 60’s, a more innocent time.
The arrival of a message from a clandestine asset via a local accommodation address provided an unusual and welcome break from monotony for the perpetually bored CIA Chief of Station in Oslo.
It was a cheap greeting card inside an envelope bearing a Vienna postmark. The card depicted the façade of the Viennese State Opera with a short message written in German saying
the writer was having a nice time visiting Aunt Greta who would celebrate her 70th birthday on 2 February. The writer, who signed the name Otto, wrote that he had found a wonderful gift for his aunt.
A check of the Station files quickly dampened the COS’s excitement. The operation was associated with a Russian agent code-named "Otto." The corresponding file entry was labeled "terminated."
January 31, 1992 - Langley, Virginia
When Jake Liebowitz, Deputy Chief of CIA’s Russia Section, discovered a copy of Oslo’s report buried deep in his reading stack, he grabbed the handset of his Agency internal secure phone and called the Chief of the Russian Ops Desk
“We don’t need old whores like this any longer,” he was told. “Money piled up in his escrow account for years while our budget was getting tighter, so we shit-canned him in ‘89.”
The same year the Berlin Wall had fallen.
Liebowitz was not surprised. In the past any credible penetration of the Soviet government would have been valuable, but times had changed. The current Administration and the CIA’s Seventh Floor were distracted by a new war in the Middle East and intent on establishing amicable relations with the Russians, convinced that the end of Communism had left them docile and eager to become fat capitalists.
Liebowitz was surprised to learn that a junior officer, Jim Thackery, had been dispatched to meet “Otto” in Vienna. His mission was thoroughly bureaucratic. "Otto" had never been formally “terminated.” The slime ball lawyers and the rules dictated that someone had to tell him ‘officially’ that his services were no longer required, hand him the money from his Agency escrow account, and demand that he sign a quit claim.
This is what lawyers like to do – tie everything up with neat bows, he thought. Did the legal eagles really believe that an agent like Stankov might actually someday sue the Agency for non-payment?
If "Otto" had any information of value, at the very least Thackery would be smart enough to accept it. Liebowitz asked his secretary to fetch the ops file, just in case.