But with exceptional responsibility came exceptional accountability. News had broken about Norway. His superiors back at headquarters were not happy. They wanted a report. How was that PRF cell discovered? Did any of its members survive? Was there anything linking them to Russia? What did the Norwegian authorities know? What was the status of the other cells? What changes did he plan to make?
They were overthinking it—reacting, instead of acting. The truth was, he didn’t plan on changing anything. Not without a good, solid reason. The rest of the cells were still in place and ready.
He didn’t know how the Norwegian cell had been uncovered. He was just as confused and angry as his superiors were.
Putting that cell together had taken a tremendous amount of work. Getting them into positions where they could be hired to service equipment in those caves had taken even more work. It had been a good plan, a solid plan.
Something, though, had gone wrong. Someone had talked, or had slipped up somehow. And while the GRU had plenty of spies across Norway, the information was slow in coming in.
Only a small piece of intelligence had made its way to him so far. At the last minute, just before the raid on the cell had been conducted, two investigators from NATO had been added to the assault team.
His source didn’t have any more information than that, but he was working on it.
Tretyakov was not surprised. There had been three attacks on NATO personnel up to this point. Per his instructions, the People’s Revolutionary Front had taken credit for each one. He wanted NATO chasing the organization down, wasting its time and energy—racking up bad press at every possible turn. What he needed to be careful about, though, was NATO making too much progress too quickly.
In the case of Norway, he had many questions. How had the authorities uncovered the cell? Had they done it on their own? Did they have help? And if they did have help, where had that help come from? NATO? The Americans? Finally, was there anything in Norway that could lead to the other PRF cells that had not yet been deployed?
There were countless moving parts, but that’s where Tretyakov excelled. His brain was incredibly flexible and its gears moved smoothly in concert with each other. That was until now, which was why he needed to escape the cacophony of his office.
Exiting the building, he walked down the broad Leninskiy Prospekt toward the Pregolya River.
It was cold. The sky overhead steel-gray. Snow was predicted soon. He turned the collar of his leather jacket up against the chill.
As he moved down the sidewalk, his dark, narrow eyes swept from side to side, taking everything in. He had been in the intelligence game for decades and there were certain habits that you never lost—even on your home turf.
He kept his dark, receding hair cut short—not military short, but rather businessman short. When he traveled from country to country on a range of different passports, businessman was his preferred cover.
For a man of fifty-two, he was in decent shape. He ran and did calisthenics almost daily.
Like most Russians he was a drinker. But unlike so many of his countrymen, he didn’t drink to excess.
He rarely drank in public and almost never with his colleagues or subordinates—unless he was trying to get one of them drunk, so he could squeeze information out of them.
When he drank, it was solely to unwind, and he always knew when he’d had enough.
Alcoholism was rampant in the Russian military. It was such a problem that soldiers’ field rations even included small bottles of vodka.
He saw it within the GRU as well. Empty bottles could be found on windowsills and toilet tanks in every men’s room. No doubt many full or half-full bottles were hidden away in desk drawers throughout the building as well. It was a national sickness—the means by which the masses numbed themselves while the politicians and oligarchs avoided having to answer for the people’s shitty existence.
Russia was better than this. His countrymen had lost their pride. The USSR had been a global superpower. It had demanded respect on the world stage. It had launched the first earth-orbiting satellite, had put the first man into space, as well as the first modular space station. It had introduced the world’s first regional jet and had invented the first artificial heart. It had carried out the first heart transplant, the first lung transplant, and the first liver transplant. It had grown to be the world’s second-largest overall economy.
As far as Tretyakov was concerned, Russia would not only be great again, it would be united again. And for that to happen, every Russian had to do his or her part. Tretyakov was committed to doing his.
Taking the long way around, he crossed the short Honeymoon Bridge where newlyweds came for photos and to fasten a padlock to the railing symbolizing their undying love.
Tretyakov was no romantic. He was a realist and found the practice ridiculous. There had to be thousands of rusting locks along both sides of the bridge. He could only imagine the weight it added. It was a trend he saw repeated throughout cities in Russia and across Europe.
Before World War II, the city of Kaliningrad had been the German city of Königsberg. The Soviets annexed what was left of it in 1945, and gave it its new name in 1946.
The twenty-five-acre island on the other side of Honeymoon Bridge was known as Kneiphof Island. Home to Königsberg Cathedral, it was also the final resting place of philosopher Immanuel Kant.
Tretyakov had always found the island’s walking paths, as well as its quiet cathedral, good places to collect his thoughts. The fact that Kant was entombed there was a bonus. Marxism, the philosophy of the Soviet Union, was built upon Kant’s work, which only made it feel more special.
Crossing the bridge, a sense of calm usually befell him—as if magically, his troubles couldn’t follow him onto the island. Today, though, that wasn’t the case.
With each step he had taken since leaving his office, his problems, like the locks, had only weighed heavier upon him. In addition to wanting a full report, his superiors were considering moving up his timetable. They were concerned over two pieces of intelligence that had recently come in.
One was about an odd meeting that was observed at the United Nations in New York City. It had involved the U.S. Ambassador, as well as the Ambassadors to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. No one knew precisely what to make of it, until another piece of intelligence had come in.
A small U.S. military convoy, leaving Poland for the very same Baltic nations, had been robbed. Allegedly, the cargo that had been stolen included upgrade kits for land-based, incredibly hard to defeat Gryphon cruise missiles. These were the same missiles that had been banned under a previous treaty between Russia and the United States. None of them should have existed, much less have been in Europe.
Even more troubling was the fact that Gryphon missiles were capable of carrying nuclear warheads. According to one of their Polish spies, a covert Polish intelligence team had been tasked with trying to recover the stolen upgrade kits. If the intelligence was accurate, and he had no reason to doubt it, the missiles represented a significant obstacle to the invasion. It was no wonder his superiors were nervous. Their entire calculus could very well be in jeopardy.
But if they were thinking of beating the upgraded missiles to the battlefield by accelerating his timetable, such a move wasn’t without risk. It was when one sped up operations that mistakes happened—often deadly mistakes—and he felt certain that would be the case here. It was a recipe for potential disaster.