ROGUESTATE, page 11
Ellen Grafft arrived from the St. Louis Office a little more than a year ago. Her expertise was closer to organized crime and racketeering issues. She had been instrumental in recovery theSAMSON weapons.SAMSON was a dark secret kept from everyone except the most senior Congressional Members, and Feldman had been charged by the Director to keep a tight rein around Ellen. It was a condition of his continued employment inside the Bureau’s elite fraternity.SAMSON was particularly irksome to Feldman because it reminded him of Harvey Randall and Jim Harper—a rogue and a renegade.
Cecil Bixby was one of the smartest people employed by the Bureau. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of every white supremacist, mountain top survivalist, and environmental extremist group between the Rocky Mountain’s Front Range and the Pacific Coast. Cecil had bright blue eyes, uniformly gray hair, and a smooth face that belied his sixty-five years.
Dwayne grabbed the remote control for the projector and started his briefing. He focused on the Cuban community explaining they had kept their heads down since the Justice Department raid over Easter weekend. While everything appeared calm on the surface, a simmering resentment percolated throughout enclaves in Miami and New Jersey. The election would have little impact on the internal political dynamic, as the Cubans felt betrayed by the Democrats and distrustful of the Republicans.
He moved onto the unsuccessful search for Eric Robert Rudolph wanted for the Olympic Park and Birmingham Abortion Clinic bombings. Dwayne’s department suspected Eric Rudolph was receiving aid from radical anti-abortion groups. It was disturbing that Rudolph appeared to be emerging as a hero. There was a growing sentiment amongstdecent people that bombing abortion clinics might be the only solution.
Dwayne concluded with the Southern succession movement. Where the Cubans could be managed and Eric Rudolph ignored, the Southern secessionist movement truly frightened Dwayne. He would like to marginalize their impact by labeling them the descendants of the Ku Klux Klan, but they were more sophisticated than white-sheeted Grand Dragon cross-burners. These people had a political agenda, weapons, and a growing determination to accomplish their goals. Dwayne had no idea how right he was.
Ellen began her portion of the meeting reviewing the Eastern European and Muslim groups that tended to congregate in Chicago and St. Louis. She maneuvered through the complex associations between different Islamic branches and the relevant rogues states sponsoring Hezbollah and Hamas. It would be convenient to lump everything into an anti-Semitic hate group, but there were other pressures created by nationalistic groups fighting for independence inside the former Soviet Union’s boundaries. A significant amount of money made its way from American paychecks to arms merchants. It fueled the resistance in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, and elsewhere.
Cyber hackers came under Ellen’s purview, as they might exist anywhere in the country. The most egregious violator was someone calling himselfCaptain America . For a brief time, he slipped from behind the veil of spoofing IP addresses and hijacked ISP servers to attack Defense Department servers. It appearedCaptain America operated inside the Midwest, and he led the Attorney General’s most wanted list. His explicit hacks of the DOJ and White House websites had done nothing to endear him to the reigning powers.
Cecil blinked awake and recited a cautionary warning regarding extremes of the white supremacist cults and the environmentalist movement. Oddly, these groups sought to destroy the same institutions for vastly different reasons. He cited the World Trade Organization’s Seattle meeting and the riots that paralyzed the city. Cecil suggested in his unblinking manner that these groups could cooperate for a season. As usual, Cecil left Feldman wondering if a career in garbage collection might not have been a better choice rather than attempt to keep up with Cecil’s quick-fire explanations.
Feldman nodded confidently and asked, “Any thoughts on the problems in Yemen with regard to our domestic groups?”
Cecil replied without hesitation. “They do not have the means to project force beyond their regional environs.”
Dwayne shrugged indifferently. He puzzled over the CYCLOPS report on his desk. Early last week, the Minneapolis satellite system identified Irv Fredricks. Irv hated the cold north. In his mind, he was still fighting the Civil War.
Ellen wrinkled her brow. “We do have radical elements in Chicago and Detroit.”
Rita Mason looked up from her notes. “Such as?”
Ellen let her gaze land on the coifed assistant. She wondered how much Ritaassisted Feldman. “We have Armenian, Azerbaijan, Chechen, and everyone else from Transcaucasia living vicariously through the Internet and ethnic papers. They have brought their ethnic hatreds to America. I have file after file of people who advocate murder and theft in the name of virtually unknown causes.”
“So what’s the problem?” demanded Feldman. The vivid images of theCole marching across CNN’s screens cooled Feldman’s ardor for foreign terrorists.
Ellen allowed a smirk to skitter across her lips, “The problem is that these domestic groups raise money either throughpatriotic appeal or outright extortion. The money funnels out to Caribbean accounts and then vanishes. That’s the problem. They are funding a war.”
“So are the Irish and Jews,” replied Rita dismissively. Unlike Chechens and Armenians, the Jewish and Irish communities had powerful Congressional constituencies. Her offhanded equivocation drew a raised eyebrow from Cecil.
Feldman examined his own notes. There were a couple of doodles along the margin. “So are there any specific threats to the election?” It was the issue he needed to nail down. Everything else was superfluous to his agenda.
Dwayne sighed. “The Cubans are going to run their phone banks, and do their literature drops. They still believe in the process.” As far as Dwayne knew, Irv had never ventured further north than Chicago. What could possibly interest him in Minneapolis?
Cecil sat behind his clasped fingers and said softly, “We’ll have trouble after the election. Most likely it will come from the tree huggers and skinheads.” Cecil would be proven wrong on both counts.
“Why is that?” asked Ellen.
Cecil looked over the steeple created by his fingers. “The tree huggers distrust both candidates and have demonstrated tendencies towards greater activism. The skinheads see little difference between the major candidates and are prone to further violence.”
Feldman waited a moment and dismissed Cecil’s ramblings. He looked around the table. “Anything else?”
Dwayne looked up from his musings and answered quietly, “There is one thing that came up.” He decided he needed input.
Rita Mason changed inks on her multicolored pen and started a new heading on her note pad.
Feldman seemed mildly annoyed.
“CYCLOPS tagged one of my charges in Minneapolis last week,” began Dwayne.
It was enough to gather Ellen’s attention. “Who?”
“Irv Fredricks,” replied Dwayne.
Rita wrote the name down, and Feldman worked on tic-tac-toe.
Cecil perked up and declared, “Southern succession movement.”
“Yeah, and he is not that far removed from the Klan. He’s smart, mean, and pretty sly. We have not been able to penetrate his group,” said Dwayne.
Cecil nodded. Simple phone taps and surveillance video were no longer adequate to handle the modern day anarchist. Developing deep cover legends for undercover agents became increasingly difficult with the advent of Internet-based databanks where history could be checked lightening-fast from multiple directions. More than one operative had vanished behind the Saw Tooth mountain range of northern Idaho.
“Maybe he has family in Minneapolis,” suggested Rita.
Ellen frowned. “I doubt it.”
Cecil bobbed his head in agreement. “These people tend to be very parochial.” He leaned forward, “It is something to keep an eye on, Ellen.”
No one challenged Cecil’s suggestion. Feldman could tolerate eccentricity as long as it was manageable. Besides, if Cecil ever got out of line, Feldman could arrange for a gold watch, a hearty handshake, and a fond farewell. The problems Cecil posed were far different from Harvey Randall. It bothered Feldman that he had lost track of Harvey again. Somehow, he knew the troublesome ex-agent would surface again.
“Anything else?” asked Feldman impatiently.
Cecil ignored the impertinent assistant director. “Dwayne, did anything else strike you as unusual?”
Dwayne shrugged. “He just popped up in Minneapolis. We had no tracking on him prior to ten days ago. When we checked up on him this week, he was back home.”
“All sweet and innocent,” quipped Cecil.
“Yeah,” replied Dwayne.
Feldman tapped his finger.
“The danger is the possibility that Irv is spreading his movement beyond the confines of the Deep South. It would suggestpressures ,” continued Cecil, picking his way through his words, “mounting in areas we have previously ignored.”
“Minnesota and the Dakotas had a tax protest movement called…” began Ellen.
“The Posse Comitatus,” exclaimed Rita.
Ellen nodded and plowed ahead. “They’ve got a similar philosophy to the Sovereign Citizen or the Southern Succession movements.”
“The Posse’s dead,” declared Feldman.
“Then what was Irv Fredricks doing in Minneapolis?” asked Dwayne.
“Isn’t that your job to figure it out?” snapped Feldman as he gathered his papers together effectively ending the meeting. Rita Mason gathered herself together, wraith-like. She followed Feldman into the halls of the SIOC and growing horror over theUSS Cole.
Dwayne looked from Feldman’s vanishing shoulders to Ellen and Cecil. Ellen smiled curtly, the way people do when their stomach hurts.
Cecil waited until Ellen joined Feldman on the way back to her office. “These people do not trust anyone outside their regions,” murmured Cecil. “You’ll need to go back to the surveillance tapes and try to ascertain who Irv met.”
“What about Feldman?” queried Dwayne.
Cecil cast a disparaging glance at the vacant chair. “All bark, no brain.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Grozny, Chechnya,London Telegraph,Nigel Turner, May 7, 2000 –Five Russian soldiers were killed when two landmines destroyed the armored personnel carrier in which they were riding. Despite the infusion of 150,000 troops, dusk to dawn curfews, and police tactics reminiscent of the old KGB, the Chechen resistance continues to bloody the Russian army.
Grozny, Chechen Republic
Friday, October 13, 2000
7:00 A.M. (GMT + 3:00)
Captain Eduard Gurov, accompanied by a platoon of fresh-faced recruits, entered a battle-scarred building. He left the relative security of an armored personnel carrier. The Chechen rebels had anti-tank weapons, but intelligence suggested they would use weapons in an area where they had a chance to make long-range kills. The broken labyrinth that was Grozny was safe. It had become a sniper’s haven.
* * * *
Eduard’s return to Grozny followed a circuitous trip to the Kola Peninsula and the Northern Fleet’s homeport. Dogged by bodyguards and given carte blanche investigative powers reminiscent of the former KGB, Eduard suspended civil rights, threatened widows, cajoled mothers, imprisoned girl friends, and abducted children. He ordered everything from psychological examinations, battery cables attached to genitalia, truth drugs, and beatings with rubber stanchions. He derived the truth using the brutal and bitter tactics that were all too easily revived.
He found the truth in the person of a fifty-year-old mother already suffering the effects of osteoporosis. His heart had no time for an old woman’s tears, nor did he examine closely the purplish welt swelling along the side of her face. His was a secret mission burning away on a short fuse. If Shamil Basayev reached Putin and his Security Council before Eduard solved the mystery, then Eduard would slip into the Gulag’s mists and his identity would dissolve as so many others.
He raised a blister on his thumb as he worked the cattle prod on the old woman. He left horrible third-degree burns along her back, around her neck, and across her belly. He could still hear her screams cascading in the tin roof pole barn he used for interrogation. Outside, winter storms roiled across the Barents Sea and lashed the docks. Beneath the frigid waters, Russian and Norwegian divers delved into the shatteredKursk ’s hull and retrieved the dead. No one dared to interfere.
Eduard ran her through his photo gallery of Chechen commanders and lieutenants. Mumbling through broken teeth, blood, and spit, she waved a hooked finger at the same picture.
“You’re sure, old woman?” he snapped.
A rheumy blood-stained drool slid down from the corner of her mouth. Thin copper wire bit through her wrists, and the temperature inside the barn was colder than the winds howling outside. It was a barbarism carried out beyond the range of the international camera crews. The world was distracted with the spectacle of Norwegian and Russian divers carefully probing a frozen tomb.
Finally satisfied, Eduard left the old woman wired to the wooden-framed chair in the cold barn. The rain whipped through the open doors, and the penetrating early winter cold hung icy fingers over her heart. It took her another three days to die.
Eduard went from the winter gray confines of the Kola Peninsula to the Moscow nightlife. American dollars and Japanese yen fueled a rampant supply of pimps and whores. Eduard mobilized the entire SVR Moscow Office. He sent them through the glaring neon signs, blaring music, and mean-spirited hookers. The nebulous connections between the SVR and the Russian Mafia were pulled tight. The manpower required to flash Hyder’s photograph tripled as a phalanx of former and current secret police plumbed Moscow’s seedier depths.
Two women were found within forty-eight hours. One proved to be a useless cocaine addict who was too stoned to remember her own name, much less a liaison several weeks ago. The other had a daughter little more than three years old. Terror knows no bounds. Eduard and four others drove the women and the child beyond the Moscow ring into the countryside where similar problems had been dealt with over the years. The bloody Russian soil was still thirsty.
Eduard dispassionately removed his Makarov pistol and held it to the addict’s temple. His eyes never left the distraught mother or the child’s hand she held. The Makarov popped sending the 9x18mm round spiraling into addict’s brain. Besides a momentary whimper, the first woman collapsed at his feet and Eduard stepped over her as if she were no more than a fallen log.
“I want to know everything,” he began slowly as he allowed the gun’s muzzle to cover the second woman’s daughter.
The pasty-faced mother/whore gulped once and nodded tentatively. These sorts of things were not supposed to happen in the new Russia, but the dirty secret was that new Russia was not far removed from old Russia. They stood—a macabre tableau—in a field outside Moscow. The gun muzzle never wavered and Eduard experienced a euphoric rush as he played at God over the hapless whore and her child.
The woman explained in a jumbled rush of words what had happened. The dates lined up with the fire at the Ostankino Tower. Eduard had a face and name. Eduard had motive and opportunity. Eduard had witnesses—pesky, inconvenient witnesses. The threat to the President and the Security Council was a dark secret. Russia was a land with many dark secrets.
Eduard’s decision might even be viewed as merciful in the shadow of his predecessors in the NKVD and KGB. He snapped the Makarov out to arms length, fired twice, and hit the whore in her throat, but he spared the child—a mercy of sorts. Moscow was a city awash in whores and orphans. No one would miss the two dead whores, nor would anyone notice the newly made orphan.
* * * *
Eduard moved through the broken entrance into the darkened lobby. Plaster ceiling titles were broken and pushed aside creating a narrow path over the ruined carpeting. Huge holes peppered the back wall leading to the vacant elevator shafts. The gloom pooled around the stairwell door. The lead soldier had to kick open the door due to the damage—it was obvious one of the vicious close-quarter battles had raged inside this building. Discarded camouflage-coated brass shells rolled under foot.
Eduard left two men to stand guard in the lobby. The rest escorted him to the third floor. Parvez Hyder had once lived in this rubble-strewn building. The intense shelling delivered from the assembled Russian firepower along the ridgelines bordering Grozny had hollowed it into a shell.
Hyder’s flat was a broken affair. Grozny was a haunted city inhabited by more rats and pigeons than people. Bird droppings littered the floor and a pair of nests rested inside fist-size holes punched through the outer wall. Broken glass joined the trash on the floor, allowing the wind to dance with the ragged curtains. Any food in the refrigerator had spoiled or had been stolen long ago.
Eduard shuffled through the trash causing more than one rat to scurry into the darkness. He brushed debris from the chair and settled down next to the desk. There were chewed and water-stained papers scatted across the top of the desk. Only a broken brick kept them from fluttering away.
Tacked to the wall above the desk were faded photographs. Eduard might have ignored the images were it not for the obvious American setting. He paused before reaching for the photographs. There were three of them depicting a younger Parvez against the cluttered backdrop of signage advertising pizza and petrol. He thumbed to the next photograph showing a American street
setting.
He worked his way through the drawers and produced a bundled set of letters. The onionskin airmail envelopes were smeared with red ink and written in the return address corner was an American address. Eduard snapped the tattered rubber band and opened a recent letter.
Like many former KGB officers, Eduard had learned English. The main adversaries throughout the Cold War remained the stubborn English and the bumbling Americans. His eyes ran down the words. The letter was dated March 7, 2000. Stumbling over the difficult cursive letters, Eduard learned one fascinating fact—someone expected Parvez to come home by winter. He flipped over the envelope and examined the address—Chicago, Illinois.
