the country just over a year ago. “I’ll take it from here.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, walking back into the hall.
“You just rest up, Commander,” the doctor said, switching into military mode. “Katie, you can stay here with him if you’d like. Just promise me you will not bar the door again, no matter what powers of persuasion he attempts to exert.”
“I’ll be on my guard.”
As Dr. Port injected a micro dose of narcotic into Reece’s IV to assist with the transition out of his dream state, Dr. Rosen turned to Katie. “He’ll be up and walking around in a few hours, if you can believe that. He’s going to be fine.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
Moving toward the hallway with Dr. Port, the surgeon stopped and turned back toward Katie, who had again taken up residence at Reece’s side. “I hope you got the answer you were looking for, Ms. Buranek.”
Not taking her eyes off the frogman who had appeared to drift back to sleep, Katie replied, “I did.”
Alone again in the recovery room, Katie wondered if Reece remembered her questions. If so, she knew that memory would soon dissolve along with the remaining mixture of Versed fentanyl.
“Rest up, James. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
CHAPTER 7
SVR Headquarters, Moscow
ALEKSANDR ZHARKOV WASN’T SURE what his father was up to, but as the deputy director of Directorate S in the nation’s Foreign Intelligence Service, his ability to assist him was substantial. That was the entire reason he held the post; to be the eyes and ears of the bratva. Directorate S was responsible for the illegal intelligence operations of the former KGB: deploying strategic long term deep-cover operatives into foreign countries. They were more commonly referred to as sleeper agents. He commanded the nation’s most effective assassins.
Aleksandr knew that citizens of the West were getting soft. Most of them believed the red threat had ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and that Russian spies were now only found in eighties movies. The truth was that the SVR had more sleeper agents imbedded throughout the United States and Europe than they ever had during the Cold War. The open borders of the European Union and America’s current obsession with terrorism left them vulnerable for penetration. They remained blind even when sleeper cells were activated to kill Ukrainian military intelligence officers in 2017, a former employee of the current Russian president on the streets of Washington, D.C., in 2015, and almost one person a year in Great Britain since the beginning of the decade.
Unlike traditional intelligence officers, illegals lived a complete lie. Instead of operating under a semilegitimate “cover for status” position, usually a job at the embassy or consulate, illegals had to enter a nation with little aid from their own government and blend into their new country. Aleksandr knew he would have been a brilliant illegal because he had mastered the lie; he could do it without the slightest hint of remorse. As was his father’s wish, he had run illegals at postings across the world, and his success had driven him rapidly up the ranks of Directorate S, eventually landing him back in Russia in a position to pass intelligence to the family business. Aleksandr could create virtually bulletproof false identities as well as produce legitimate Russian Federation passports to match them. For someone trying to smuggle a person across international borders, Aleksandr Zharkov could work magic.
A posting in the intelligence world might seem like a strange place for the son of a mafia boss, but in Russia, as Aleksandr knew, there was a long history of associations between the government and organized crime that predated their Sicilian counterparts by almost a century. From the czars to Stalinist Russia through the waning days of the Soviet Union and into the heyday after the fall, the Red Mafia was imbedded in almost all facets of state affairs. The bratva was not an outside criminal threat, but rather part of the government itself. When Stalin betrayed his criminal ties during the Great Purge, he inadvertently created an even stronger organization that had survived and thrived to this day. What might raise eyebrows in other parts of the world was business as usual for the Russian Federation. Aleksandr was simply continuing the tradition.
The director had what he described as a “functional” relationship with his mob boss father, but there was an underlying rift between them that went beyond the traditional father-son power struggle, a chasm that developed when Aleksandr was still a boy.