Springing from his chair, he dashed past his secretary with a speed she’d never before witnessed. He eschewed the elevator and ran down the stairs to the ground floor, reining himself in to a brisk but officious walk as he exited the building. Decorum.
It was a crisp, sunny day, a tinge of burning wood in the air, distinctly fall-like, though the autumnal equinox was three weeks hence. He crossed Andropov Plaza and made his way toward a modern single-story building constructed a year earlier. The building housed the SVR’s administration and banking section.
He slowed to a suitable pace as he nodded to the two armed security guards situated on either side of the door. He continued past a reception area and down a long corridor. He stopped at a steel door, again guarded by two armed sentries.
“Open,” he said.
A guard pressed a buzzer. A voice asked who was there. He answered, “Director Borodin.” A loud, pleasing click as the lock disengaged. Borodin opened the door and entered the SVR’s private bank.
“Good morning, sir,” said the bank manager, a portly, pink-cheeked man with ginger hair, rushing to greet him. “This is a surprise.”
Borodin had never set foot in the building. It was not the director’s job to gather cash for an operation. In this instance, however, he could trust no one but himself. He dismissed the manager with a sideways glance and walked directly to the teller’s window. On a withdrawal slip, he filled in the boxes with a ten and six zeroes. There was a space at the bottom for two signatures, one for the case officer and one for the director. He scrawled his signature on both lines and handed it to the teller.
“Ten million euros?”
“That’s correct.”
“Needed?”
“Immediately.”
“Any particular denominations?”
“An even split of hundreds, two hundreds, and five hundreds. Vacuum sealed and placed in the smallest bag possible. I believe it should fit into a standard-sized suitcase.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Mr. Voroshin,” said Borodin. “Not a word.”
Voroshin flushed a violent shade of crimson and shook his head.
“You have fifteen minutes.”
Voroshin spun on his heel and double-timed it down the hall, punching a code into a security system before disappearing into the vault room where the SVR kept a permanently stocked selection of the world’s major currencies totaling over one hundred million dollars. The money was Borodin’s and Borodin’s alone to allocate, though it was by no means a private slush fund. He must account for every euro, yen, or pound at quarterly reviews led by the president’s much too diligent anticorruption squad.
Borodin paced the room, hands clasped behind his back.
The moment of truth, indeed.
So far all actions taken over the past years to further his private investigation could be ascribed to his official responsibilities. The meticulous, time-consuming assembly of dossiers listing suspicious activities, the interviews with retired agents, the prolonged interest in the pirated legal emails. All were natural activities to be performed by the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service.
This was different.
To take government money of your own volition with the intent to bring down the president constituted an act of high treason, nothing less, and if discovered would be punishable by death, the sentence carried out immediately, a bullet to the back of the head delivered most probably by the president himself.
A sobering thought. Yet such was Borodin’s confidence that he did not for a moment waver in the certainty of his actions.
He checked his watch, preparing to upbraid Voroshin for his lassitude, when the bank teller appeared, lugging a suitcase at his side.
“Ten million euros,” said Voroshin.
Borodin took the suitcase from his hand and left without thanking him.
Kurtz, his deputy, had pulled the car to the rear entrance as commanded. He stood by the open trunk. “Sir,” he said, “there is something you should see.”
“What is it this time? We need to get the money to the airport and transported to France. I don’t have time for anything else.”
“Major Asanova.”
