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Laynie Portland, Spy Resurrected

By Vikki Kestell

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Chapter 1
November 29, 2001
Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia

Laynie followed the river north from Holy Trinity Cathedral, walking steadily toward Tbilisi’s Dezerter Bazaar. She was in no hurry and paused several times, staring into shop windows at colorful wares, using the windows’ reflections to surveil her surroundings.

To check for a tail.

Seraphim had said she and Wolfe would arrange for a man from the US embassy to observe her during her stay. She’d spotted him when she landed at the airport. She’d even caught a glimpse of him on her way to the cathedral.

But not afterward.

I lost him when I left the cathedral. If I was able to “make” him, surely any too-interested party would have, too.

She pursed her lips. Can’t have someone tagging along when I meet up with Cossack.

A gust of wind buffeted her. Glancing at her own image in the window, she was grateful for the faded caftan and headscarf of a Muslim woman with contact-lens-brown eyes staring back at her. Her clothing’s thick fabric was a welcome barrier between her and the icy breeze.

Still, she shivered. From the cold? Or from some sixth sense, a premonition warning her of danger? Carefully scanning her surroundings again, she spotted nothing of concern, no one who triggered an alarm.

Dressed as I am, I’m as nameless and unknown as anyone can hope to be in this city.

Laynie’s fingers strayed toward the hard outline of the mobile phone tucked into her bra. The phone rested in the hollow below her breastbone.

Jaz will be monitoring my phone’s signal in real time. So long as my phone has a cellular connection, she will be tracing my progress.

Laynie visualized Tobin’s worried eyes peering over Jaz’s shoulder and drew comfort from the image. I’ll be back soon, Quincy. We’ll have plenty of time to “figure things out.”

At Queen Tamar Avenue, she turned right. If the glut of pedestrian traffic converging at that intersection and moving in a common direction was any indication, the bazaar was not far ahead.

She rehearsed her instructions. I am to find the fish market on the edge of the bazaar and look for a sign indicating fresh-caught Black Sea and Caspian seafood. At noon, I am to ask for beluga caviar.

It would be up to Cossack to initiate contact with her after that.
—

The man code-named Cossack ran his gaze around the stuffy tea room. Cossack occupied a table just inside the tea shop’s entrance. The shabby, hole-in-the-wall shop was situated diagonally across the road from the city’s famed Dezerter Bazaar. His table afforded him a clear line of sight to the fish market on the corner. Cossack kept his back against a plastered pillar and his chair angled so he could monitor the tea room’s occupants while he kept watch on the seafood stalls without appearing to do so.

The angle of his chair would also allow him to spring to his feet and flee through the rear of the tea room should circumstances warrant a hasty escape. A reliable motorbike waited for him out back, ensuring his quick departure.

Cossack’s clothing—the apparel of a man from the steppes of eastern Ukraine or perhaps the Caucasus Mountains to the north—were not in keeping with the dress of westernized Georgians, but they were not all that uncommon a sight in the city either. He wore a turban, tunic, and vest over loose-fitting pants stuffed into stout boots. A thick wool cloak over his shoulder prepared him for the impending winter nights.

The tail of his turban hung down the right side of his face and looped about his neck. The skin around his gleaming amber eyes was creased and burned to bronze from a lifetime in the sun. His thick brows and beard, once glossy black, were shot with silver, but his beard had more to say about the man. While it sprung thick and wiry along his left jaw, little facial hair sprouted on the opposite side where, years before, the fiery shards of an exploding mortar round had struck him. Seared him. Instead of bushy whiskers, yellowed scar tissue mottled his cheek and jawline.

The innocuous scarf trailing from his turban did its job veiling the scars. Cossack fingered the scarf out of habit. It would not do for the fabric to shift—for it disguised a man whose features were too remarkable to go unnoticed. A man upon whose head the Russian Federation had placed a sizable reward.

The Russian “wanted” posters referred to him as Arzu Labazanov, the name he had taken years ago. However, from Ukraine across southern Russia to the Caspian Sea, Cossack’s exploits as a smart, ruthless fighter and strategist, a general in the cause of Chechen independence, had earned him the designation “Dark Destroyer”—Temnyy Razrushitel in Russian. He and his militia had been a bloody thorn in the side of the Russian Federation for more than two decades. And those who hunted him for his role in the ongoing war against Russian domination? They knew him by his scars as well as his reputation.

Cossack was a man, too, whose alliance with the Chechen-Islamist militia All Glorious for Allah must never be questioned by its leaders—and yet the tea house in which Cossack waited this day was nearly three hundred miles from his militia’s stronghold in the Caucasus Mountains. His presence in Tbilisi, should he be seen and recognized, would raise questions and unwanted scrutiny.

Because his face could so easily betray him, Cossack rarely left his stronghold in the Caucasus Mountains. On the odd occasion that he did so, he hid his scars and arrayed loyal followers around him. While he observed from the shadows, his proxies did his bidding.

As they would today.

However, the men he depended on today were not drawn from the ranks of his Chechen militia. Over the past six years, Cossack had recruited a number of Chechen refugees, those who had fled their war-torn country to live in Tbilisi. Cossack had chosen only men who were Christian by heritage. Cossack knew that Christian refugees were unlikely to be known by the Islamist radicals of his own militia or AGFA.

When the tea room’s owner set a fresh glass of steaming tea before him, Cossack placed a sugar cube between his front teeth, lifted the glass of hot tea to his lips, and sucked the fragrant brew into his mouth. Closing his eyes momentarily, he savored the sweetness that joined the tea as the sugar melted.

Cossack raised the steaming glass of tea to his lips again, employing the motion to casually sweep his eyes across the fish market. Deshi and Chovka, two of his men, loitered out of sight in the nearby bazaar. Bulat, another man loyal to Cossack, worked with his father and brothers behind the counters of the Dezerter fish market. Cossack’s gaze noted but did not linger on the bright blue shirt Bulat wore or the counters where Bulat oversaw his family’s selection of seafood.

Cossack set the glass of tea on the table, dropping his eyes at the same time. It was nearly noon. Midday. He and his people were ready, waiting for Director Wolfe’s operative to appear. He would surely show himself. Soon.

In the coded message he had sent to the director, Cossack had instructed the director’s operative to peruse the stalls of the fish market. He was to look for a sign advertising “fresh-caught Black Sea and Caspian seafood” and ask for beluga caviar. When the director’s operative did so, Bulat would signal Cossack’s men loitering in the bazaar. As the director’s operative moved back into the flow of the pedestrians, Cossack’s men would flank him, identify themselves, and escort him to a vehicle waiting in sight of the tea room.

Cossack would pay for his tea, mount his motorbike, and rendezvous with them at a predetermined meeting place.

These carefully scripted moves were necessary to protect Cossack’s deep cover within his Chechen militia. The men of his Chechen militia were faithful, both to him and to the cause of Islam, the holy struggle. They would die as willingly for him as they would for Allah—but they only thought they knew their leader. Cossack had been embedded in Chechnya for so many years, had lived as one of them for so long, that his identity and his allegiance to the twin causes of Chechen separatism and the ascension of Islam were indisputable—so much so, that Cossack himself sometimes forgot that his role was an alias, a means of gathering and conveying intelligence to his western handlers.

Unfortunately, his own agency had been infiltrated by those who hated America and sought her downfall. For months now, Cossack had maintained operational silence, afraid to pass intel up the chain of command, worried that the moles within the agency would intercept the intel and trace it back to him. When the intelligence he had painstakingly gathered reached a point worth the risk, Cossack had been forced to employ unorthodox and unapproved means of communication to bypass the moles and reach the director.

Now, with vital details in his hands but uncertain of whom he could trust, Cossack had requested a face-to-face meeting with the agency operative who had stymied AGFA’s plot to assassinate a highly placed Russian dignitary. Why? Because no agent loyal to AGFA would have saved the Russian. Cossack felt certain the operative could be trusted.

Soon, with the help of his secret Tbilisi cell, Cossack would meet the director’s operative and hand off the intelligence he had collected. He would, at the same time, institute new communication protocols with this man, again ensuring the smooth flow of intelligence from Cossack to the director.

Cossack set his tea down and picked up his newspaper with both hands. He used its open pages like a shield while he kept one eye on the fish market. Cossack tracked Bulat’s bright blue shirt as he haggled with customers over the price of the day’s catch. So far, the director’s operative had not shown himself.

A Muslim woman approached the stalls and began to peruse the selection of fish. Cossack’s gaze passed over her. Stopped. Returned to her. The woman sauntered along the fish market stalls as though looking for a particular item.

Cossack’s eyes narrowed. What is it? What did I see?

Muslims bought their meat only from halal butchers who would slaughter the animals as dictated by the Quran. Although the Quran did not require a halal butcher for fish, Muslims still tended to buy all their foods from fellow Muslims. Yes, it might be unusual for a Muslim woman to shop the public fish market . . . but it was not completely out of the question.

That’s not it. Something else.

He picked up his tea, brought it to his mouth, and skimmed his eyes over the woman, taking inventory. He used the edge of his scarf to dab at his mouth and assure himself that it covered his scars. Just then, two women and a man shouldered their way past the Muslim woman.

What is it?

Ah. All three were shorter than the Muslim woman.

Is that it?

Yes. The Muslim woman was tall, taller than most Georgian women, Muslim or not. She retraced her steps, paused, leaned across the stall toward Bulat’s blue shirt. She must have spoken, because Cossack saw Bulat’s head jerk incrementally.

Why?

Cossack thought the woman spoke again, perhaps repeated herself. After a moment’s hesitation, Bulat nodded. He reached behind him and retrieved something that he handed to the woman. A small red bag. The woman slung the bag over her forearm and moved away.

Bulat had marked the Muslim woman as the director’s operative.

Cossack sat back and exhaled. The director’s agent, the one who had saved Vassili Aleksandrovich Petroff from a terrorist chemical attack not many weeks back? That operative was a woman?

I have been too long in this part of the world. I presumed the director would send a man.

He frowned and considered the unanticipated twist.

Does this affect the plan?

No. As long as the woman is not part of the corruption within the agency—as long as she conveys my intelligence to the director without being intercepted, I need not change the plan.

The intelligence must reach him. Nothing else matters.

And it mattered a great deal.

Less than three months after the attacks of 9/11, new assaults against the US were in the making. In fact, the next terrorist action was mere weeks away, a series of coordinated New Year’s Eve attacks across the US eastern states to further demoralize America—to soften her up for the coup d'état, a stroke so brazen and devastating that it would drop America to her knees, shake her economy, and trigger her fury. The attack would pit America against the Russian Federation—which was the objective.

All of the attacks are engineered to point back to Russia.

And when tensions between America and Russia escalated to all-out war? Russia’s attention would swing away from Chechnya and her former Soviet Bloc states, providing the opening for every separatist militia to strike in concert under the direction of AGFA and its ruthless, single-minded leader, Mohammed Eldar Sayed.

Sayed.

Should the moles within the director’s organization intercept this woman? And should she be found to be carrying the specifics of the next plot? Then AGFA would know that they had a leak. Sayed would know he had been betrayed from within.

Two things would happen. First, Sayed would goad AGFA into a more tightly controlled structure and move to purge anyone he deemed a possible leak. Proof of guilt would not be required—Sayed was merciless. He would cut off every possible avenue of treason no matter how loyal or close to him.

Second, Sayed would order his generals to alter the plans.

Cossack thought on the tenuous alliance between his militia and AGFA, the fragile trust Sayed had bestowed on him and his people.

For more than twenty years, Cossack had fought for Chechen independence. He had cut off every tie from his past, had given himself fully to the Chechen cause, had espoused Islam, and had been more than “careful.” He told those who asked that he had been born in eastern Ukraine to a Chechen man and a Ukrainian woman, that his father had filled his childhood with tales of Chechen glory and independence. He spoke Laamaroy muott Chechen, the dialect of the southern mountain tribes as the native he pretended to be. He spoke fluent Russian with a Chechen accent, and he spoke passable Arabic.

He had taken particular pains to ensure that no one knew he spoke English.

More than once, other militia leaders had spoken English in his presence—much of it broken, all of it heavily accented—thinking their conversation was private. Cossack had come away with important facts and a sense of how they viewed him.

He had lived this hard and lonely life to infiltrate the radical Islamists, to keep his fingers on the pulse of the Chechen wars with Russia, and to pass on to his handlers at home any immediate and long-term intelligence he could gather. He was the eyes and ears of the US as closely embedded with the radicals as he could get.

Would it all be in vain?

I and my militia would certainly fall under Sayed’s suspicion. At the very least, he would box us out while they changed their plans. At worst, he would move to purge us. Either way, the attacks would go forward—and I would not be privy to the altered plans. The US would have no warning.

The possibility of exposure caused Cossack’s gorge to rise. He ground his teeth. That cannot happen.

Cossack watched as his men, Deshi and Chovka, stepped from the shadows and drew alongside the woman.

It was time. Throwing some coins on the table, Cossack rose and threaded his way toward the tea room’s back exit to retrieve his motorbike.
—

Laynie understood that the innocuous red bag dangling from her arm marked her as the director’s operative. She had not taken ten steps before two men converged on her, one on either side. They kept their faces and eyes forward as did Laynie. Outwardly, the men appeared to be ordinary shoppers in the bazaar, unknown and unrelated to her—until the man on her right nudged her elbow.

“Follow,” he whispered in heavily accented English, never turning his face or eyes in her direction. “We have car.”

He walked on, and Laynie fell in a little behind him while the second man dropped behind her. As they reached the street at the edge of the market, a black late-model Russian-manufactured Lada Riva sedan pulled to the curb. The man ahead of her threw open the rear door. Laynie did not hesitate. She climbed in and scooted toward the opposite door. The man got in after her.

The second man took the front passenger seat. As he closed the car door, he hissed to the driver, “Go!”

The driver edged away from the curb and expertly maneuvered the Riva through the congested foot traffic. A block later, the pedestrians thinned. He sped up and turned onto a wider road where traffic flowed in both directions—cars, vans, trucks, and motorcycles moving as fast as their drivers chose. The driver of the Riva was obviously accustomed to navigating through the chaotic melee, and they sped onward, dodging other vehicles, changing lanes without notice.

No one spoke.

Several blocks later, the driver slowed as the car approached a busy intersection. One vehicle ahead, a woman had left the curb on their right, dragging a small cart filled with produce directly into the path of ongoing traffic. In response to the slowdown, horns blared, drivers cursed in frustration, and tires squealed as they sought purchase on the asphalt.

With her head bent toward the pavement, the woman in the intersection seemed either heedless of the danger or oblivious to it.

Laynie’s driver stomped his brakes to avoid rear-ending the car in front of them. About then, the woman lifted her head and raised a shaking fist. She rained down curses on the cars and their drivers before continuing her slow progress across the intersection. As traffic began to move, Laynie’s driver looked to the right and let up on the brakes. Laynie glanced right, too, just as the driver turned his head to the left. Suddenly the driver shouted. Laynie’s head snapped left in time to only glimpse what was bearing down on them from that direction.

She cried out as the heavy truck plowed into them, striking the front side of the Riva including the driver’s door at around forty miles an hour. Metal shrieked and crumpled. The truck’s forward motion carried the sedan across the sidewalk and slammed it into a high retaining wall. Moments later, the truck reversed, leaving its bumper embedded in the Riva’s frame.
—

The truck backed, turned in the direction from which the Riva had come, and idled in the intersection. The driver swore as he fought the gearshift, trying to force it to move. The truck’s transmission protested then acquiesced as the driver, sweating and laboring with furious intent, at last jammed it into gear and stomped on the accelerator, lumbering away from the accident, slowly picking up speed.

The Riva, its right side mashed against the retaining wall, blocked the sidewalk. Concerned pedestrians drew near to render aid. Other vehicles stopped and disgorged their drivers and passengers. Many hands worked to wrench open the driver’s door and the passenger door behind him. The driver’s door, however, was completely caved in. The steering column had crushed the driver’s chest and his head lolled unnaturally. The would-be rescuers muttered to each other that it was too late for him and set to work prying the rear door open.

Uniformed Tbilisi police rolled up in two unmarked cars followed by an ambulance. Brandishing batons, two policemen drove the civilians away from the wreck and demanded that they move their vehicles out of the intersection. The remaining officers took over the work on the rear door behind the driver’s seat. The paramedics wheeled a lumpy gurney to the Riva, ready to transport accident victims as they were extricated. The officers labored feverishly, shouting at each other to hurry, because the car sizzled and steamed. Thick black smoke roiled from under the car, and the smell of gasoline was everywhere.

With a tortured screech of metal, the door behind the driver’s seat gave way, and the paramedics pushed the gurney closer. Only one of the car’s occupants, the man in the far rear seat, stirred. He tried to move, but the mechanism that adjusted the seat ahead of him forward or back had given way. The passenger seat, along with the weight of the passenger’s dead body, sat on his right foot, crushing it. A woman sat beside him, behind the driver. Hands reached for her unconscious figure first, but the driver’s seat, pushed backward, wedged her in place.

The smell of gasoline . . . and the odor of something on the edge of burning filled the air with choking fumes. The conscious passenger struggled urgently to free himself and screamed for the officers and paramedics to help him.

“Hurry! Hurry! Please! My foot is stuck!”

The smoke thickened. Flames shot out from under the car’s crumpled hood, and onlookers shouted warnings. The police and paramedics backed away, their frustration apparent to the crowd as the heat began to scorch them.

It was too late to save the passengers.

The man in the rear seat shrieked with fear until—with a gasping whoooomp—the gas tank ignited and the back end of the car lifted six feet off the ground. When it crashed back down onto the street, fire and flaming debris rained down thirty feet in all directions.

Not all the onlookers had heeded the police’s commands to move back nor did they escape injury from the falling debris. Even the police and paramedics retreating from the burning vehicle suffered minor cuts and burns. A fire truck arrived to put out the inferno. The paramedics shook their heads, loaded their gurney into the ambulance, and drove away. Soon after, the police, too, left the scene.
—

Ten minutes after driving away from the tea room, Cossack arrived at the prearranged meeting place, an abandoned house with a partially caved-in roof. All seemed as it should be when he climbed from his motorbike and walked it up the drive to the house and its dilapidated garage. His men would have arrived before him and parked inside the garage. Their orders were to maintain the illusion of the abandoned house. No lights. No opened curtains. No signs of activity.

But something felt “off” to Cossack. He scanned the muddy drive, looking for tire tracks in the damp earth. He saw none. He pried open the side door to the garage and peered inside.

It was empty.

His stomach churned with sudden anxiety. Do not panic. They will be along shortly. Perhaps an accident stalled traffic on their route.

He stowed his motorbike inside the garage out of sight and waited. When they still did not arrive, he began to truly worry.

Where are they? How could they not be here by now?

He retrieved his motorbike, straddled it, and coasted down the drive to the road. He then started the engine and drove off, planning to backtrack along his men’s most likely route.

As he drove, he questioned himself and his planning. Could Sayed know that I came to Tbilisi? Could my plans have been found out? Is my cover blown?

He shook his head. I think not. I’ve been too careful. No one from Chechnya knows I am here, not even the most trusted captains in my militia who think me in Turkey buying arms. And for this meeting, I have used only men carefully recruited over the years, Chechen Christians whose families fled to Georgia because of the war, men who would be utterly unknown to my militia.

His analytical mind spoke back to him. You are thinking of your end of this operation. If there are leaks, they must be on the director’s end.

Cossack turned onto one of the busier streets his men might have taken. Traffic coming at him was not as dense as the traffic going the opposite direction.

Odd . . .

Lifting his eyes and searching far down the road, he spotted a smudge of black smoke. The discomfort in his gut intensified, and he tasted bile in his throat. He hawked, spat it out, and drove toward the source of the smoke.

That logical part of his mind spoke again. Could the operation at the director’s end have been compromised?

Yes, he admitted.

Could the moles in the director’s organization have had the director’s agent followed to Tbilisi?

Quite possibly.

He relaxed a little. If so, my end of the operation should be secure, my cover still safe.

Less than two minutes later he came upon the smoldering ruin of a car and the remnant of the crowd that had watched it burn. Cossack’s heart thudded as he recognized the Riva’s remains. The sedan had been pushed into a high stone wall. Whatever had hit the unfortunate vehicle had been big enough to pancake its front end against the wall and crush the driver’s seat.

Although the firemen had doused the vehicle, the car’s burned framework continued to smolder and radiate heat. The door behind the driver hung ajar on blackened, warped hinges.

What happened? Did anyone get out and escape the flames?

He dismounted and walked his motorbike past the wreck, staring into the rear seat, forcing his disbelieving mind to acknowledge what he saw. He slowed, stopped, put down the bike’s kickstand, and drew nearer to the charred wreckage.

He squatted a few feet from the open rear seat. Heat and residual smoke from the fire wafted around him as he took stock of what he saw.

The human remains within the wreckage were misshapen—spines twisted grotesquely, arms contorted by superheated flames, the jaws of the skulls frozen in agonized gapes or grimaces.

He swallowed and forced himself to count. Then recount. No, there was no mistaking the charred outlines of the corpses.

Four of them.

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