So: Who was missing? Who had disappeared?
The institute had a database of the world’s leading operators, indexed by niche, constantly updated. Spy novelists had gotten some things right! So he demanded of the mother lode before him:
List A (operation executive and administrative experts): Missing agents 01-01-13 to present.
There weren’t many. Anwar El-Waki, a veteran commando leader blooded heavily in Afghanistan, Iraq, and back in Afghanistan, had apparently quit the game and retired to a village in the northern Pakistan tribal area from which he had disappeared. But he was an AK-74 and RPG guy, not the sort to be involved in an international operation based on subtle financial manipulations. He threw grenades, he didn’t buy atom bombs. Dr. Jasmin Wafi, University of Saudi Arabia physicist who had been educated at King’s College, Oxford, was briefly missing, though later discovered on sex holiday in Bangkok, where his penchant for small boys attracted little attention.
Gershon sifted through the other categories.
Nuclear scientists?
Chemical-biological engineers?
EMP experts?
Missile technicians?
High-tech assassins?
Explosives professionals?
That yielded nothing except a few more names of small-potatoes guys like El-Waki and Dr. Wafi, of no particular potential for the kind of operation Gershon suspected might be building.
His next move was to go by area rather than specialty and to ask the institute’s database if, on a country-by-country or region-by-region basis, there were any missing men, units, whatever.
Again not much.
But . . .
But . . .
Yes, there was a little “but . . .” In Grozny, capital of Chechnya, a former sergeant in the Chechen army turned up as disappeared, though his vanishing was resolved when it was learned he had been in prison. However, on his release, whoever had been watching him stayed with him long enough to learn that he had formed a security group he called Intrusion Prevention Associates; he had hired fifteen members of his clan. The training, according to satellite blowups acquired routinely from either the Americans or the French or maybe even one of the seven Israeli birds, showed primarily drills on what would be called “area security.” That is, protecting something from somebody: where you set up outposts, how you run patrols, where your observation points are, how quickly can you get your people deployed to a point of attack. The idea, Gershon supposed, was to build a reliable cadre of security professionals in hopes of luring international corporations into establishing plants, factories, laboratories, what have you, in the Chechen postwar economy, which was going to take off any day now. Question from Gershon: Where’d he get the start-up dough? The training facility, while not up to Israeli or Western standards, looked surprisingly sophisticated. Where’d he get the moolah? Who paid?
It didn’t take long by routine network penetration maneuvers against the Chechen company for him to track down and view the accounting records. A check for $250,000 had cleared through a bank in Lausanne and was from a firm called Nordyne.
CHAPTER 25
Kolomiya
The Museum Annex
A certain donation had been made, and by and large the curator was quite helpful. He was young, fluent in Russian, eager to talk to Westerners, and took them to an outbuilding behind the museum proper.
“Times change,” he said. “Tastes change. We try to keep it interesting. Now we have the best of the big battle pictures on display, but it was a cottage industry in the old Soviet empire, particularly after the war. If you could paint a tank, you had a job for life under Stalin.”
“Do you think of it as art or history?” Reilly asked.
“It’s really politics,” he said honestly. “You see what the Russians valued and how they found those who could give them that and excluded those who could not. The paintings are technically correct, but that is the only kind of truth they tell. That’s not art, is it?”
He unlocked the door and took them in. It was like a library of paintings, most of them shelved edge-out in bins in the three or four rooms of the secondary building.
“I wish I could help you. No index, alas. I was not here when the restoration came and an earlier curator made the winnowing decision, picking the best by his lights. The museum draws well enough to keep going, so I am not going to second-guess him. Someday I’ll go through and see what’s here. I do think there is some sniper imagery here, it certainly seems logical, but I cannot address you to any particular bin or room.”
“We’ll be fine,” said Swagger.
“It’s two; the museum closes at six. If you need to come back tomorrow, that’s okay. And as I say, madam, any coverage that can appear in The Washington Post will be appreciated. Publicity: the new treasure.”