Landslide, page 23
Borysko smiled. “You make good point. I like that. Okay, banker man, I will sit and read paper while you make a deal.” He opened the door and swept his arm across like a butler beckoning me to enter.
I headed straight for an open teller and smartly asked to see the manager, indicating I needed to make a significant withdrawal. A minute later, a flimsily built fellow with gray stubble on his chin and a teardrop belly emerged from the back.
He approached, extended his hand, and said in halting English, “Hello. My name is Symon. Can I help you?”
“My name is Mason Hackett with Ruttfield and Leason out of London, and I need to make a sizeable withdrawal. May we speak in private, please?”
The Ukrainian banker nodded and directed me toward a small cubicle enclosed by windows located at the end of the counter. Once Symon shut the door and sat down, he asked, “You say you are with Ruttfield and Leason?” his recognition of the firm evident.
“Yes, a partner. I’m on business here in Odessa and need to withdraw a large sum of cash. It will need to be wired, of course. Here.” I handed him a piece of paper. “This is the account number, routing number, institution, and amount required.”
The man’s face betrayed his shock when he saw the figure. “Yes, sir. Right away.”
“Do you have an account with us?”
“Not yet.”
“You must have an account with us to make a transaction.”
“Then open an account for me, please.”
“Yes. Splendid. But I need to make checks first. Passport? Do you have a passport?”
“Of course.” I smiled and handed over the smudged and creased document.
The banker left the tiny cubicle with its fishbowl windows and disappeared into the back offices to go through the protocol of identity verification and account opening. When I first walked in I noticed an ATM and a decent number of bank staff using computer terminals. I didn’t expect everything to happen at the speed of the London Stock Exchange, but I was hopeful. I wondered what language the actual withdrawal forms would be in.
I was adjusting my suit jacket when Symon suddenly returned.
“That was fast,” I remarked.
The banker smiled disingenuously, sat down, and handed me back my passport and the slip of paper. “My apologies, Mr. Hackett. I cannot open an account or make the transaction. The accounts are frozen.”
“Frozen?” I blurted incredulously, but my reaction was for show. I’d suspected this might happen. This smelled of Doug … And I’d just used my passport, albeit knowing the risks.
Symon the banker had undoubtedly run it through an international finance network, effectively bringing me back up on the grid. Ukraine didn’t belong to the European Union or NATO, so they weren’t linked with the border and immigration trap-lines like the other countries I’d passed through, but they did have Interpol, which made me wonder if the police were on their way.
I looked over my shoulder at Borysko, whom I found leaning forward and resting his forearms on his thighs, staring at me intently like he knew something had gone awry.
“You work with Mr. Borysko, yes?” asked Symon.
I twisted back around to face the banker. At the mention of Borysko’s name my spirits lifted, and I knew the police weren’t on their way to arrest me and toss me in a hole.
“Mr. Borysko and I are acquainted.”
“You arrived with him.”
I shrugged.
“I not call police. Your passport, it has notice to contact police. I not do this if you work with him.”
I thought for a moment, now willing to show the rest of my hand. “We have business together, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Symon nodded, then leaned to the side and waved for Borysko to join us. Borysko entered the tiny office, and he and Symon exchanged a few words.
Borysko turned to me. “So. You are wanted by Interpol.”
“I’m sure I told you that,” I replied.
“Yes, you did. But you didn’t tell me you don’t have money.”
“My accounts are frozen.”
“Yes, this man told me. This seems to be a problem for you.”
I exhaled a heavy breath. “I told you I could get the money, and I will.”
“How?”
“I’m going to make a phone call.”
“Phone call? To who? Mommy?”
I grinned. “You’re not the only one with connections. I thought this might happen,” I said. “So I have a backup option. But before I do this, I need you to do something for me.”
“Another favor? I’m not sure you have many left.”
“You’ll want to do this one.” I turned to Symon the skittish Ukrainian banker and told him what needed to happen.
CHAPTER FORTY
UKRSIBBANK, ODESSA
My call to Ike was brief and direct, just like last time. The old soldier was already awake, the time difference only two hours, and I suspect he’d made his rounds on Caroline’s property an hour or two before. I imagine when the phone rang he had a cup of coffee in his hand, turning the pages of a Sherlock Holmes story. All secure, as he liked to put it.
Inside of two minutes, I told Ike what I wanted, which was a bit different than my previous calls. I asked him to contact someone in London who was not expecting the call, pass very specific instructions, and convince this individual not to deviate from them no matter how unusual it seemed. I trusted Ike could do it, and I also trusted the man I needed to speak to would play along.
Thirty minutes later, I used the bank’s phone to dial the number to a small conference room in Ruttfield’s headquarters in London. Alistair, my boss, picked up on the second ring. I expected to hear a note of surprise in his voice, but there was none. He sounded cool and clear, just as he did every time I called him when on a trip. I’d told Ike to tell Alistair it was me who’d be calling; I guess he just took it in stride, which is probably why he’d risen to the level he had in life.
I didn’t regale Alistair with all the nasty details about what I’d been through since leaving London or how I’d landed in Odessa—and I’d told Ike not to either—but I knew the old gentleman wasn’t a fool. When I requested he wire two hundred thousand euros to an account in Odessa under another man’s name, however, the silence on the phone thundered. But I think that was just me assuming—it was just silence. Still, I felt my heartbeat crank up, and I imagined Alistair gazing out the window across London City’s skyline.
When Alistair did finally speak, he did so simply and precisely, as if nothing was amiss—pure businesslike. Yes, he would wire the money, acknowledging he understood I needed assistance to come home, and that I was suffering from an unexplained passport discrepancy. The money would come out of the firm’s account, with the understanding I would pay it back in full upon my return to London in the coming days.
However, he said my status with the firm would come under review once all the facts were available. Although much was still unknown, the very nature of the situation suggested it was not in keeping with Ruttfield & Leason’s professional and ethical standards. He said these things as if reading from a script, making me wonder if that mouse from personnel was standing beside him, listening in, and wagging his finger.
But Alistair’s final words caught me off guard. Once he’d finished telling me I was under review, he said, “Mason, this is off the record, not as your boss but as your friend. Be careful. I know generally where you are and that there are some nasty individuals running around. Nothing like you haven’t tangled with before, but I think these circumstances are different this time.”
“Thank you, sir,” was all I could say.
When I hung up, I stared at a spot on the desk for a long moment. Alistair was a good man, and I felt guilty putting him in this situation. But I had no choice.
I looked to Borysko and Symon and said, “Check the account.”
Both men got behind the computer terminal, and I heard Symon tap the keys to pull up the transfer record. I knew the money had arrived when Borysko grinned. He was about to open his mouth to say something, but the desk phone rang, cutting him off. All three of us watched it, rattling in the cradle with a ring that jarred the ears.
“Who would call this number?” Borysko asked, shooting me a look.
“I have an idea,” I said before Symon could answer. I reached for the receiver. “Hello?”
“Mason, I’d recognize your voice anywhere,” said a voice I also recognized.
“Hello, Doug. Not worried about names this go-around?”
“Not this time. And don’t bother asking how I got this number or how I’d know you’d be standing next to the phone when I called.”
“You’re fast,” I replied, guessing they’d been monitoring Ruttfield’s lines for something like this.
“It’s what we do, man. Don’t act surprised.”
“I hope you’re not going after my friends?”
“Nah. No reason to. Besides, they haven’t done anything I didn’t anticipate.”
“How fortunate,” I remarked. “You believe me about Prague, right?”
“I do. Don’t care about that right now.”
“What about Rick?”
“Good man. He was an ally on your side, but I’m not calling about that either. If you make it out of this alive, I’ll explain then.”
“All right. Fine. You obviously know where I am. What do you want?”
“I’m calling to give you a message.”
“What?”
“Good luck going after Delgado. He’s in play, doing what he set out to do. From here on out, we’ll do what we can. It isn’t much, no backup on strip alert, but the few people tracking this shit show are beating the turf with eyes and ears wide open. I hope you get him.”
“What? That makes no sense to me.”
“It will if you succeed in getting Delgado out. Can’t send the cavalry, but if we can support from afar, I got some good people on it.”
“Your caginess kills me.”
“Not like the people you’re about to go toe-to-toe with. Do you have access to the internet?”
“Yes,” I said warily.
“Good. Look up The Hess Group. You won’t find much, but that’s what you’re going up against. Good luck.”
The line went dead.
I replaced the handset in the cradle and locked eyes with Symon. “I need to use the internet.”
The Ukrainian banker swallowed and scooted back in his chair to make room for me in front of the computer, but I shook my head.
“Not here. Somewhere private. Where’s your office?”
Symon looked at Borysko, who shrugged indifferently. Symon then stood and led us toward the back. We walked down a narrow hall and entered a room with a metal-framed desk and single chair. There was a small rectangular window, no bigger than a TV tray, up near the ceiling that no one of average height could see out, but it cast the only light in the sterile room.
Symon sat behind his desk and typed in his password to unlock the computer. He then duly got out of the way, motioning for me to have at it.
I sat down only to realize the language on the screen was in Russian. Google was still Google, but everything else was in Cyrillic. Fortunately, I saw the keyboard had a dual English-Cyrillic setup.
“Can you switch this to English?” I asked, motioning at the screen.
Symon shook his head. “I don’t know how.”
Rolling his eyes, Borysko pulled out his phone and spoke harshly to someone on the other end. After he hung up he said, “I fix.”
Less than a minute later, one of Borysko’s henchmen from the van—Olek, I think—burst into the office out of breath, as if he’d sprinted from the street through the bank, racing to put out a fire. Borysko snapped instructions at him, causing Olek to display an eager, childish grin.
“Mr. Hackett,” Olek said, “I fix. No problem.” He squeezed into the room, forcing us all to crowd together with shoulders rubbing. He hunched over the desk, and his fingers danced over the keyboard until he tapped the mouse three times. “Bingo!” he announced, jabbing the enter key with a fencer’s thrust and raising back up to his full height, smiling proudly.
“Go, go,” ordered Borysko with an impatient wave of his hand before lighting a cigarette.
“Thank you,” I said.
Olek slid past me, unfazed by his boss’ abrupt dismissal and still smiling like a boy who finally got asked to play with the older kids.
I sat behind the desk again, brought Google back up, and typed The Hess Group in the search bar. Doug was right, not much came up, but there was enough, and I’d come across footnotes about the company in my travels the past few years.
Working my way through the links, I refreshed my memory. The Hess Group described itself as an international security firm providing various protective and investigative services to clients, but everything else—the media, forums, and the like—depicted Hess as a Russian private military company. It wasn’t as big or widespread as Russia’s larger firms, like Wagner, but Hess was on the field playing a similar game.
My own encounters in Iraq with members of DynCorp and the former Blackwater came to mind; former US military personnel turned private contractors who provided security and protective services to the US government. Some deemed these companies to be the latest form of organized mercenary work, and a few were straight-up soulless in how they did business, catering to the highest bidder and racking and stacking with lethal efficiency.
The Hess Group was registered in Argentina but had corporate offices in Caracas, Saint Petersburg, and Sochi. News outlets reported Hess had performed paramilitary work in Chechnya, Venezuela, and Lebanon, and most recently in Ukraine. The evidence was spotty, but a few media platforms accused Hess of being an extension of Russian military intelligence, their orders coming straight out of the Kremlin alongside millions of dollars in contracts.
I wondered if that crew I saw in Syria, my trip right before Frankfurt, was a Hess unit. The coincidence would be uncanny, including Alistair’s comments.
As I scrolled through more articles, I noticed Borysko leaning over my shoulder with his eyes scanning the screen. A cigarette dangled from his lips as the smoke wafted across my face.
“Would you like to take over?” I asked.
Borysko gave me an embarrassed look, snatched the cigarette from his mouth, and stood up. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Why do you look up Hess?”
“Do you know them?”
“Yes, of course. They are all over the Donbas. Very ruthless, crazy.”
“How so?” I asked, recalling a YouTube video showing a group of Russian mercs mutilating a bunch of bodies in Syria—sledgehammers, iron rods heated red hot, and hatchets.
“They like to torture and murder. I think many were too crazy even for Spetsnaz. They are, how you say, rejects. Or perhaps they are paid to do such things. Does not matter. Hess is very ugly.”
Yes, they are, I thought. “Are they where we’re going?”
Borysko shrugged. “Yes, maybe. Hard to tell. They not have name tags.”
“Could they be the ones holding my friend?”
He shrugged again. “Is possible. I ask if I see someone. I make inquiries. No problem.”
It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Right, sure.”
I returned my attention to the computer screen, but my thoughts shifted elsewhere. On the banks of the river Seine in Paris, Doug said Gomez was going up against the Russians and bad-actor corporations, and moments ago he’d pointed me in the direction of a private military firm doing Moscow’s bidding. He’d also hinted at tension between governments and international conglomerates, mentioning a change in the balance of power. And then there was Rick and Zach, suggesting someone connected to Doug’s special Program had been compromised …
What the hell had Gomez gotten himself into?
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
NORTHERN BLACK SEA COAST, UKRAINE
An hour later walking out the front door of the bank, I was still just as confused about Doug’s phone call and the connection to Hess, but I trusted what he told me. He actually wanted me to rescue Gomez, long shot that it was.
Borysko, six other men, and I got into two SUVs and drove northeast along the Black Sea heading toward Mauripol′. I rode in the front seat of the first vehicle with Borysko behind the wheel. I recognized the two men in the back from the night before, Serge and Denys.
Unlike yesterday, today everyone wore their best civilian threads: dark jeans, dark shirts, dark jackets, black boots, and sunglasses. Like the mafia, black was the unofficial national color for this kind of work. It matched the black assault rifles everyone carried, an accessory giving the outfit a nice pop, I thought.
Both vehicles were rolling arsenals. Every man had a tricked-out long-gun and pistol, with multiple magazines topped off with 7.62 and 9mm rounds. The backs of the SUVs, however, contained the real interesting stuff. PKM light machine guns, hand grenades, boxes of ammunition, and most notably, RPGs.
These little toys weren’t like the ones on the nightly news: worn-out tubes shouldered by men wearing headscarves and shouting Allahu Akbar. Those were RPG-7s first produced in the late 1950s and now commonplace among the world’s low-tech armies. No, the ones we had were later models, somewhere between an RPG-22 or 26, and dressed up to party with better optics, longer range, a higher explosive yield, and deeper penetration.
I supposed we might encounter almost anything. The international war correspondents who’d braved the conflict zone had captured it all on camera: infantry, tanks, helicopters, artillery. In the disputed zone, there’d been all-out battles with maneuver elements engaging in a full-scale conventional war.
We could find ourselves in a similar predicament. Best to be ready.
And the notion of what we were doing—driving into a war zone with the car radio jamming Okean Elzy—did nothing short of amuse me. Unlike some Hollywood war movie, where on patrol or right before a fight everyone is stone-faced and silent with ramrod military discipline cover-and-aligning nuts to butts, we were trucking along in style with toons playing.
