His usual contact at Missing Persons came on the line after ten minutes.
“Do you have an MP in the name of N. I. Akopov?” asked Volsky. His contact checked the records and came back.
“Certainly do. Why?”
“Give me the details.”
“Reported missing July seventeenth. Never came home from work the previous night, not been seen since. Reporting party, Mrs. Akopov, next of kin …”
“Mrs. Lidia Akopov?”
“How the hell did you know? She’s been in four times asking for news. Where is he?”
“On a slab in the morgue at Second Medical. Went swimming and drowned. Pulled out of the river last week at Lytkarino.”
“Great. The old lady will be pleased. I mean, to have the mystery solved. You don’t know who he is ... or rather was?”
“No idea,” said Volsky.
“Only the personal private secretary to Igor Komarov.”
“The politician?”
“Our next president, no less. Thanks, Pavel, I owe you one.”
You certainly do, thought Volsky as he got on with his work.
Oman, November 1987
CAREY Jordan was forced to resign that month. It was not the matter of the missing agents. It was Iran-Contra. Years earlier the CIA had covertly sold arms to Iran to fund the Nicaraguan rebels. The order had come from President Reagan via the late CIA director Bill Casey. Carey Jordan had carried out the demands of his president and his director. Now one had amnesia and the other was dead.
Webster appointed as the new Deputy Director Ops a retired CIA veteran Richard Stoltz who had been gone for six years. As such, he was clean of any involvement in Iran-Contra. He also knew nothing of the devastation of the SE Division two years earlier. While he was finding his feet, the bureaucrats took over in force. Three files were removed from the departed DDO’s safe and relogged with the main body, or what was left of it, in the 301 file. They contained the details of agents code-named Lysander, Orion, and a new one, Delphi.
Jason Monk knew none of this. He was on vacation in Oman. Always hunting the sea-angling magazines for new hot spots to fish, he had read of the great shoals of yellowfin tuna that stream past the coast of Oman just outside the capital, Muscat, in November and December.
As a courtesy he had checked in with the tiny one-man CIA station at the embassy in the heart of Old Muscat close to the Sultan’s palace. He never expected to see his CIA colleague again after their friendly drink.
On his third day, having taken too much sun out on the open sea, he elected to stay ashore and do some shopping. He was dating a ravishing blonde from the State Department and went by cab to the souk at Mina Qaboos to see if, among the stalls of incense, spices, fabrics, silver, and antiques he could find something for her.
He settled on an ornate, long-spouted silver coffee pot, forged long ago by some smith high in the Jebel. The antique-shop owner wrapped it and put it in a plastic shopping bag.
Having got himself completely lost in the labyrinth of alleys and courtyards, Monk finally emerged not on the seaward side but somewhere in the back streets. As he came out of an alley no wider than his shoulders, he found himself in a small courtyard with a narrow entrance at one end and an exit at the other. A man was crossing the yard. He looked like a European.
Behind him were two Arabs. As they debouched into the courtyard, each reached to his waist and withdrew a curved dagger. With that they ran past Monk toward their target.
Monk reacted without thinking. He swung the bag with full force, catching one of the assailants full on the side of the head. Several pounds of metal moving at full bore caused him to crash to the ground.
The other knifeman paused, caught between two fires, then swung at Monk. Monk saw the glittering blade high in the air, moved under the arm, blocked it, and slammed a fist into the soiled dishdash robe at solar plexus height.
The man was tough. He grunted, retained his grip on his knife, but decided to run. His companion scrambled to his feet and followed, leaving one knife on the ground.
The European had turned and taken in the action without a word spoken. Clearly he knew he would have been killed but for the intervention of the blond man ten yards away. Monk saw a slim young man with olive skin and dark eyes but not a local Arab, wearing a white shirt and dark suit. He was about to speak when the stranger gave a brief nod of thanks and slipped away.
Monk stooped to pick up the dagger. It was not an Omani kunja at all, and indeed muggings by the Omanis are unheard of. It was a Yemeni gambiah, with its much simpler and straighter hilt. Monk thought he knew the origin of the assailants. They were Audhali or Aulaqi tribesmen from the Yemeni interior. What the hell, he thought, were they doing so far along the coast in Oman and why did they hate the young Westerner so much?
On a hunch he went back to his embassy and sought out the CIA man there.
“Do you by any chance have a rogues’ gallery of our friends at the Soviet Embassy?” he asked.