Black Wolf, page 2
Dan and Ben were processed through quickly. When Mel finally approached the inspection station, a long table behind which the two unsmiling guards stood, her suitcase had already been completely emptied—clothes, shoes, and underwear spread out for everyone to see. Her cosmetics bag had been opened and the older of the two guards was pawing through it. He upended the bag, noisily spilling out its contents.
Irritated, Mel took in a sharp breath, preparing to say something, but Julie closed her fingers gently around her arm. “Good opportunity to practice self-restraint,” she whispered. Noting that Mel was young and used to speaking her mind, this had been one of Julie’s favorite pieces of advice in their earlier talks. “To the Soviets,” she had said, “nothing screams Western exceptionalism more than a blatant show of impatience.”
Mel nodded, keeping her expression a careful blank.
The guard unwrapped a cardboard tube and looked through it as if it were a tiny telescope. Pulling on the blue string, he eased out the cotton cylinder and held it hanging in front of his face. He turned to his younger partner, who shrugged.
“What is this?” he asked Mel in Russian.
Mel turned to Julie in disbelief. “He’s kidding, right?”
Julie responded quietly, but the guard still looked perplexed.
“Shto?” he asked loudly. What?
Julie grinned wickedly and, now matching his blaring tone, began a long-winded explanation of what the cotton cylinder was for, and where it was applied.
When the guard looked back at Mel, she nodded, gave him a practiced innocent look, and added a visual aid to clarify: a forefinger thrust forcibly upward.
The man dropped the tampon as though it had caught fire, shoved everything back into the suitcase, and motioned for Mel to move along.
“So much for the glorious Revolution liberating women,” Julie said as Mel grabbed her bag. “Wait till they find out American condoms are ribbed.”
In the main lobby, the group was met by an unsmiling, portly man wearing a terrible haircut and even worse shoes, holding a sign on which was printed in archaic-looking letters: HATTON PARTY + 3. Standing next to him was a harried-looking woman who rushed forward to shake everyone’s hands, welcoming them in heavily accented English, letting them know that her name was Elena and she would be accompanying them to their hotel.
The cover story for the team was that they were on a fact-finding mission on behalf of the US State Department, which was considering offering American financial support to the newly sovereign—although still technically Soviet—republic of Byelorussia. Dan and Ben were posing as accountants, protective of the American dime, Julie as their official translator. Their true job was to report back to the Department about the realities of the fracturing Soviet Union. And what threats would be posed by this new republic, which would be the gateway to Western Europe.
There had been clandestine Agency forays into Byelorussia all throughout the Cold War, but this was the first time an official American delegation would circumvent the centralized politburo in Moscow. They had been invited by the newly declared Byelorussian Ministry of External Affairs, which would have been unthinkable only a year ago, before the warming effects of glasnost and the destruction of the Berlin Wall shattered Soviet control. But now Byelorussia needed money, and Uncle Sam was determined to help fill their coffers before other countries, like Iran, stepped in. The country that controlled the purse strings helped control the further proliferation of military weapons.
Mel’s cover was that she was simply Dan’s secretary. Therefore, the least prioritized and, more importantly, the least scrutinized member of the team. Internally, she’d been introduced to her three team members as an “independent observer.” Meaning, as far as the other members of the group were concerned, she was to report on the reporters. This was not uncommon, but usually left to more experienced agents. The fact that she was so young and on her first mission did not immediately endear her to her team.
So it had taken Mel weeks of concentrated effort to win over her colleagues before their arrival. With Ben, his open, relaxed nature made it easy to strike up a conversation. She was a good listener, and a few well-placed questions revealed their common interests: reading, traveling, and psychology, especially as it related to true crime. They’d spent some deliciously dark hours after dinner discussing the possible motivations of the Zodiac Killer, John Wayne Gacy, and David Berkowitz, among others, hours that, for Mel, felt effortless. And, as he’d spent time stationed with the army in Germany, he was familiar with that country’s own spectacular serial killers.
Mel also formed a quick attachment with Julie, after encouraging Julie’s inclination to take on a protective role. This was a relief, as Mel’s experience with police officers, through her father, a thirty-year veteran sheriff in Madison, Wisconsin, was that women in the force were often very competitive. When you were constantly being hit over the head by machismo, it was easier to punch down. But Julie seemed eager to play the role of big sister, and with half a dozen clandestine missions to Eastern Europe in her file, she was the most experienced of them all at maneuvering through Communist Bloc countries. Mel planned to stay close to her side, absorbing as much knowledge as possible as quickly as possible.
Dan was a harder read. He wasn’t unfriendly, but he held himself slightly aloof, especially with her. Tall and slender, his hair worn longer than most men with the Agency, he dressed in expensive but rumpled suits and well-worn loafers. In his midthirties, he looked to Mel like the perennial Ivy League poly sci graduate from a wealthy family who’d joined the intelligence service out of boredom at the thought of doing real State Department work.
And even though he was constantly telling jokes, Mel quickly understood they were both a mask and a barrier to more intimate, unguarded conversation. Only through continual chatter during her training had she gathered that he’d been in some dangerous hot zones, and more than once, which would explain his cautious nature in relaxing his guard around an inexperienced, untried agent.
The success of her mission relied on the goodwill and cooperation of all three, and she intended to continue cultivating both, even as she was vigilant in hiding her true mission. When, at the end of a long day, she’d expressed worry about that balance to one of her Agency trainers, he’d sighed and snapped, “You took theater, right? Make it work!”
She was the only child of Walter Donleavy, taught to be fiercely independent and outspoken. But she tamped down her natural inclination to defend herself and absorbed the rebuke. “Understood, sir.”
Elena, having at last gathered the group and all their luggage, was ushering them out of the airport and into a waiting van—the portly man abandoning his sign to climb ponderously into the driver’s seat. From the passenger seat, she gave a running commentary on all the points of interest they’d see as they approached Minsk. Their driver’s name, she explained, almost as an afterthought, was Anton. He would be their driver for the duration of their stay.
“Unfortunately, Anton does not speak very good English,” Elena said, frowning, as though it reflected poorly on her. “But he is excellent driver.”
Ben gave Mel a subtle nudge. It was impossible that anyone would be assigned to foreign visitors without being fluent in several languages, including English. With his heavy brow, ham fists, and the bunched muscles Mel suspected hid under his stout build, Anton was most assuredly KGB.
As they entered Minsk from the northeast, Elena described in detail each notable building or park they passed.
“Here, as you can see,” she said, pointing to a vivid redbrick building, “is the Red Church. Very famous.”
A few minutes later: “Here is Victory Square…Here is Government House…Here is post office…Here is GUM, largest department store in Minsk, which you all must go and experience for yourself…”
To Mel, the dichotomy between the grandiose buildings and the somber, at times threadbare, pedestrians—the steep morning shadows engulfing the long lines of people waiting noiselessly to gain entrance into the state-run stores—was depressing. It worked to dampen her initial enthusiasm for being in an exotic, and until recently forbidden, country, despite Elena’s rehearsed lauding of the city.
When Elena announced the KGB headquarters, a Western European–style four-story building in yellowish stone, Dan pointed and said, “That’s the tallest building in Minsk.”
When no one took the bait, he added, “‘And why is that, Dan? Every building in this part of town is four stories.’ Well, since you asked, it’s because from the top floor you can see all the way to Siberia.”
Elena stiffened visibly. But when Mel looked at Anton, he was smiling.
At last, Elena escorted them into the Planeta Hotel—a graying ten-story building, fronted along the roofline by a large blue sign—taking their passports and handing them personally to the manager. Their passports would be held until the group was driven back to the airport at the end of the trip. They were also all given rooms on different floors, in order to separate them, making it easier to monitor their movements. Mel had been briefed: their phones would be tapped, their rooms bugged, and the mirrors would be two-way.
As they waited for the elevator, Elena explained that the Planeta was of the highest order.
“It was built for party officials, high-ranking military, and only best athletes,” she said emphatically.
As a child, Mel had been given a cardboard dollhouse, one that had to be assembled in pieces to reveal the idealized 1960s living room. It had come complete with shiny metallic side tables, sleek leather furniture in garish colors, and glistening wallpaper in improbable shades of burnt orange and silver. The lobby of the hotel reminded her of that beloved dollhouse, especially after the cardboard had begun to fray. She experienced an unexpected jab of nostalgia, combined with the lingering sense of emotional vertigo that such a space still existed, unchanged for three decades, in a “modern” city.
“Yikes,” Julie muttered, taking in the spectacle. “People have been shot for less.”
The five of them squeezed uncomfortably into the small elevator, along with the manager, who insisted on accompanying each of them to their rooms. He keyed the elevator to the top floor and, with a flourish, immobilized the doors so that they would all have to wait until he returned.
“Best rooms here,” he said, nodding to Dan.
“Ah,” Dan said. “Farthest to travel, and”—he lowered his voice, whispering into Mel’s ear—“if necessary, farthest to fall.”
He winked at her as he followed the manager out of the elevator. “Get a few hours’ rest. Then we’ll meet for lunch downstairs and get to work.”
Mel was the last of the four to exit with the manager, leaving Elena alone in the elevator. Her room was on the second floor, at the end of the hallway, past the dejournaya, the ever-present hall monitor. Every hotel in every city in the Soviet Union had them, and they performed many duties. Placing a call through the central switchboard to an outside number, if a guest needed it, or bringing tea, hopefully without too much grumbling, and safeguarding everyone’s room key, which was returned to the desk whenever a guest left the floor.
But their most important duty was keeping an eye on the comings and goings of hotel guests and reporting them to the internal security apparatus. Mel’s dejournaya was a middle-aged woman with narrow shoulders, ample hips, and an implacable mouth circled by deep smoker’s lines. On her desk was a board labeled with the room numbers, each with a hook for the key.
The manager had taken the appropriate key and opened the door to Mel’s room. Satisfied, he handed it to her but remained in the doorway for a few beats as she walked inside.
“I am Maksim,” he said, leaning against the frame and looking pointedly at her chest. He was short and sturdy with protruding eyes that appeared never to blink.
Mel gave him a stony look, resisting the impulse to slam the door in his face. She heard Julie’s voice in her head cautioning restraint. “I’ll remember that.”
Maksim snorted dismissively and then retreated. Mel closed the door and sat on the bed. The room was as she’d expected. Brown paneling, worn carpets, scratchy sheets, net curtains incapable of blocking out the sunlight that would stream through the windows starting at five a.m.
There was a large mirror over the shabby dresser. Rising again, Mel crossed the room and leaned in toward it, as though examining the dark circles under her eyes. Casually, she placed the tips of her fingers against the reflective surface, appearing to steady herself. In her peripheral vision she could see there was no gap between her fingers and their reflections. Definitely a two-way. She’d have to take care to always dress and undress in the bathroom. There was nothing she could do about the bugs in her room without arousing suspicion.
Resigned, she lay back on the narrow bed, fully clothed, deciding to unpack later. A few hours’ sleep would be of more use. But it took a few minutes for her mind to still.
Dan had said that they’d begin work after lunch. But Mel had started working even before exiting the Aeroflot plane. It wasn’t an active type of work per se. It wasn’t even done consciously—at least, not completely. It was, instead, a skill that Mel had been born with, and one that she tried her best to hide. Revealing her unique ability to people was to invite, at best, probing questions she didn’t have ready answers for. At worst, it triggered a profound discomfort in others, a reflexive pulling away.
In truth, she’d never intended for her ability to be discovered by her trainers either at the FBI or, subsequently, the CIA. She’d been found out during a training exercise at Quantico, and since then, her gift had been exploited by US national intelligence.
There was as yet no widely used category for Melvina Donleavy’s ability, which was simply that she never forgot a face. Ever. Even if she’d not seen the person since childhood, she could, twenty years later, recognize a former third-grade friend, from thirty feet away, from behind. Just from the general shape of their head. Even if the person had changed their hair color, or had plastic surgery, or had been in a disfiguring accident. If their head was still attached to their body, she’d recognize them—the shape of their ears, their dimensions, the composition of their skull.
Every person she’d seen on the plane, every traveler at the airport and pedestrian on the street as they’d driven in, had been captured and committed to the short-term memory bank inside Mel’s brain. And from that bank, she could recall anyone at a moment’s notice. Whether she saw them in real time on the street, or in a still photograph or even grainy surveillance footage, she’d be able to pick out a preselected target almost immediately. At the Farm, they’d proven that her accuracy was close to one hundred percent.
Later, she would need to process the faces she’d seen today into the deeper recesses of her long-term memory. For that, she had developed a nightly ritual. One that she had practiced since she was very young. Without the ritual, after twenty-four hours, her head would ache and she’d start to see flashes of light at the periphery of her vision. After forty-eight hours, she’d begin feeling sharp pains jabbing at both of her temples. Beyond that, the pain would become excruciating, and debilitating. It was as though the images she collected over a day filled up her cerebral cortex, like water filling a balloon. And she harbored an irrational fear that without a release valve, her head, like a balloon, would burst.
It had been nearly twenty-four hours since she’d last been able to do her processing ritual and she already felt the pressure building behind her eyes. Like her gift itself, her ritual was another necessary secret.
She rubbed at her temples and tried refocusing on her current objective. Before leaving the US, she’d been shown photos of three preselected targets, all men, all from Tehran. And all committed to the acquisition of nuclear weaponry—or, barring that, weapons-grade uranium—from the fast-disintegrating and chaotic military infrastructure of the Soviet Union.
When Mel was growing up, she’d been all too aware, thanks to her father, of the violence perpetrated in society, usually by men. Shootings, stabbings, and assaults were, if not a daily occurrence in Dane County, not uncommon either. Particularly against women.
Later, at Quantico and the Farm, she came to understand that man’s potential for violence could climb a monumental scale. A world-ending scale. The Middle East was on fire. Iraq had invaded Kuwait. And Mel had been sent to Minsk to confirm the rumors that Iran had initiated a clandestine pact with Russia. The project was named Persepolis. The Agency suspected that Russia was planning to provide nuclear experts, technical information, and fissionable material to Iran. In return, Iran would funnel vast amounts of currency back through untraceable Swiss bank accounts. It seemed the Soviet rats were beginning to leave the ship and needed resources for a comfortable lifeline.
What Mel had been tasked with—confirming that Iran was actively seeking nuclear weapons—seemed, on that first day, overwhelming, her narrow bed a life raft in a vast, gray sea, where she floated alone.
Mel closed her eyes and dreamed of burning cities.
Chapter 3
Thursday, August 2, 1990
The dining room of the Planeta Hotel was two stories tall and had all the warmth of an airplane hangar. The walls were stark white, with long red curtains that only served to highlight windows that had probably last been cleaned when Chernenko was in power. A few scattered diners were seated at the two dozen tables; Mel immediately recognized a man from the swirl of travelers at the airport. He’d kept his face turned away, but she’d retained his image, reflected on the glass window fronting a money-changing kiosk.
The man looked at her briefly and then quickly lowered his head back to his newspaper. Assuming that Anton and Elena had been tasked with reporting from the road, here was Minder #3, presumably tasked with following them on foot.
Dan waved to her from the far side of the room, and she made her way past a tight knot of waiters, all of them arthritic and stooped, watching her with open hostility and grumbling impatiently in her wake. Ben and Julie were already seated, small bowls of what looked like coleslaw and pickles at the center of the table. Mel sat in the remaining empty seat directly across from Dan.
