CHAPTER 12

Managua, Nicaragua

October 1991

ANDRENOV HAD BEEN WATCHING Oliver Grey for several weeks. The report from the psychologists back in Moscow was on his desk, but he merely skimmed it. He knew how to read people and how to exploit their weaknesses, their egos, and their desires; it was all about finding just the right button to push. For some it was money, pure greed. For others, it was sex: the honey trap was so successful that the KGB actually had schools where men and women were taught to seduce their prey. Individuals whose sexual preferences deviated from the mainstream made the juiciest targets; the more perverse the fetish, the easier the sell. For the Boy Scout types who didn’t have any overt vulnerabilities, blackmail was always an option. Drug a diplomat’s drink and take compromising photos with a young boy or girl, and you had them on the hook for life.

For Grey, though, Andrenov would need none of these techniques. All Grey needed was to be wanted. Andrenov would give him the missions that the Americans wouldn’t, give him the respect that his colleagues denied him, and become the father that he never had. He knew how he would recruit him, but at first, Andrenov couldn’t decide how to make his initial contact. Grey’s work rarely took him to the field, and he had the social life of a monk, so there weren’t many circumstances where an introduction would be natural. He decided on a “bump. ” What would look to Grey like a chance encounter would actually be a well-orchestrated interaction.

Grey was an avid photographer, and Andrenov knew that he often took to the streets in the mornings or evenings, when the light was best, to photograph the city and its people. He had a man watching Grey’s apartment near the embassy, waiting for the perfect moment.

His phone rang before dawn one morning with word that his subject was on the move. Andrenov quickly dressed and headed out, steering the Mercedes sedan north on 35a Avenida. He assumed that Grey was headed for the nearby coast. You had to be careful about radio communications, particularly in Russian, since the Americans were able to monitor almost everything. Andrenov’s team had devised a way around this problem, and it had cost only a few thousand có rdobas.

The taxi driver following Grey’s Volvo would radio his location, at reasonable intervals, back to his dispatcher. Andrenov’s radio was on the same frequency as that of the cab company and he spoke fluent Spanish, though the local dialect was a challenge. With so few vehicles on the road this early, Grey was easy to follow at a distance that wouldn’t expose the tail, and Andrenov would need only rough vectors to find his parked car. Sure enough, the cabbie reported that the station wagon pulled off the road’s shoulder near the beach. Andrenov drove another half kilometer down the beach before he parked, removed his shoes, and retrieved his camera bag from the seat.

The warm surf felt good on his feet as he walked along the hard-packed sand at the high-tide line. He could just make out the figure of Grey sitting on the beach in the predawn darkness, waiting for enough light to shoot. As he drew even closer, he discovered the likely subject of Grey’s photographic journey—a group of men working on a pair of wooden fishing boats on the beach, preparing them for a long day at sea. By the time that Andrenov reached Grey, the men were heaving the first boat down the beach and into the water. Grey was wearing a pair of jeans and a light sweater, kneeling in the sand so he could frame the shot he was looking for. He took several photos as the men dragged, carried, and shoved the boat into the surf. When they walked back up the beach to work on the second boat, Grey immersed himself in the controls of his Minolta SRT-101.

“May I join you? ” Andrenov asked in Russian.

Grey turned, startled by the man who had invaded his solitude without a sound and immediately aware that this was the situation the CIA counterintelligence division had warned their employees about.

“Umm, sure. By all means. How did you know I speak Russian? ”

Andrenov just shrugged. “What are you shooting? ”

Grey looked at his camera as if it were a foreign object: “It’s, um, a Minolta. I bought it in Japan. ”

“Very nice. I’ve this old German thing, ” Andrenov said, pulling the olive-green Leica M4 from his bag. He grinned to himself as he saw Oliver Grey’s reaction.

“Oh, wow, that’s one of the Leicas made for the German army! Where did you get it? ”

“The owner no longer had any use for it. Let’s not miss our shot here, my friend. ”

Andrenov nodded toward the men dragging the second boat and raised the rangefinder camera to his eye. Each man snapped a handful of photos of the local fishermen at work. When they were done, Andrenov walked toward Grey and extended his hand.

“Sorry if I was abrupt, but when we rise this early, we may as well get what we came for. I’m Vasili. ”

“I’m Oliver. ”

“Pleasure to meet you, Oliver. Are you a photojournalist? ”

“Me? No, I work for the U. S. government. ”

“Ah, an American. Diplomat? ”

“I work for the State Department. Nothing exciting. How about you? Are you a diplomat? ”

“Me? No, Oliver, I am a soldier. ”

⇐ Предыдущая 10 11 12 13 141516 17 18 19 Следующая ⇒