Alexei-The Russian Assassin

By James Reed

This is a story about elements of the CIA and the Russian FSB working together to eliminate threats to each country’s security and common interests. A Russian oligarch is running a large drug and arms smuggling near the city of Osh in Kyrgyzstan. Working with the Taliban, drugs are smuggled out of Afghanistan for distribution in Eastern Europe and Russia. The drugs are the major cause of the significant number of drug related deaths reported in the major cities of Russia.

The smugglers pay the Taliban for the drugs with arms purchased or stolen from old East European stockpiles. The weapons are then used against the Afgan army and the US Forces working in Afghanistan.

Information gleaned from the operation to shut down the smuggling operation in OSH lead to a covert meeting between the CIA operative and representatives of a Russian oligarch aboard a large yacht on the stormy Baltic coast. A trade is made, a small boy to be returned to his family for a list of names. Analysts back at Langley determined that all the names but one were Russian oligarchs that had gotten on the wrong side of the Russian government. One was in a Siberian prison for openly criticizing the Putin government. Another was living in exile in London. And the third was living in Moscow but with most of his riches taken away. They could find nothing on the name Alexei.

Alexei was with one of the last units to leave Afghanistan in’89 as the Russian army abandoned its efforts to control the country. He and his comrades were demobilised at a small army base outside Moscow. They were given their last months pay and thrown out into a Russia that was in recession. Some joined criminal gangs where their military experience could be useful. Others drank or drug themselves into oblivion. Alexei just disappeared. Years later when the FSB began looking for survivors of Aleksei’s unit, they learned that he had told no one where he was going or what he would be doing. More importantly, the FSB learned of Alexei’s successes as a sniper. His skills were such that he was awarded several medals.

Over the next two and a half decades, there were a significant number of assassinations in Russia and Eastern Europe. Political dissidents, criminal gang bosses, journalists and assorted politicians were targeted by long-range sniper fire. Ballistics analysis revealed that in most cases the killing rounds came from the same weapon. In all that time, there were no clues as to the identity of the shooter or even whether there was more than one shooter.

Alexei agreed to one final mission. He had plenty of cash in a Swiss bank account and several offshore banks. It was time to retire. In his mind, the risks if he were to continue, had become too great. He would take the final shot, disappear and be free of his employers. He’d already made arrangements for new ID and travel documents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Reed
• Release date: Nov 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005877699

James Reed

The author has held a nearly life long interest in the fields of intelligence and covert operations. It began while serving as a communications intelligence analyst in Germany with the US Army in the early sixties. Of particular fascination are the questions, 'What do we know?', 'What do we think we know?', and 'How do we know that we really don't know?'. Most of the time, on the major issues where intelligence is crucial, there is no certainty. We cannot know what is in the minds of our adversaries. The author lives the retired life in Northern Michigan with his wife, Janet and two Golden Retrievers. He spends his time writing, hiking and fishing from a kayak in the kettle lakes of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. He has an MS degree in Economics from Southern Illinois University.

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Prologue

Siberia-early summer

Boris Lipsky was escorted to the visitor center by a muscled security guard, one of the many that the prison administration used to maintain internal control of the prison. These guards were little more than thugs. Their greatest talent was in swinging the massive wooden club that was attached to their wrist by a leather strap. Boris had seen one swing of that massive club nearly rip an arm off of a prisoner. Those idiots seem to have been drawn from the lowest rungs of Siberian village society. Boris was afraid that one day he might not be able to control his anger over the way he was being treated and take a swing at one of their ugly faces. But he also knew that swing would be his last. Most of the visits were with his attorneys to discus appeals and the management of his remaining assets. His wife had only visited a total of three times during the same period. She apparently found the 5000 kilometers trip too much of a burden for a visit with a disgraced husband.

He was in the eighth year of a ten year prison sentence. Nine years ago he had been rich, famous and connected to some of the most powerful people in all of Russia. He had been admired, respected and feared among his fellow oligarchs.

Boris, along with a number of other connected bureaucrats, scooped up a large share of the Russian economy when privatization became an official policy of the Russian government. They had become rich buying natural resource companies, factories and real estate for pennies on the dollar. Boris used the connections he made during his career in the old KGB to gain control of the largest oil company in Russia.

After three years, he had become a billionaire, at least on paper. But, soon, it all began to crumble when he started to take seriously the public relations chatter of the Putin administration advocating more democracy and free speech for Russia. Boris became an early public advocate of democracy for the Russian people. He gave speeches, appeared on television and wrote columns for the newspapers. Boris had become immensely popular among the Russian people and finally announced a candidacy for Duma, the Russian legislative body.

The Putin regime finally lost patience with this upstart and raided the luxurious offices of his oil company. Boris was and arrested and charged with fraud and stealing massive amounts of money and oil for his own personal use. He was taken to court and convicted of all charges, in what most observers viewed as a sham trial, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Many people, both inside of Russia and out, thought that Boris had become a threat to the political power of the Putin administration.

Boris had misread the intentions of the President Putin. For Putin, democracy and free speech were desirable only to the extent that he could maintain power for himself and his cronies.

• • •

The visitor center was attached to the administration building and was the only structure that hadn’t been rehabilitated over the past 10 years. The camp had originally been built right after WWII to house dissidents, other assorted opponents of the Stalinist regime and criminals, petty and otherwise. Most of the other structures had been brought up to date, at least according to the standards of a modern Russian prison system in Siberia.

The Gulags from the old days were, for the most part, slave labor camps. In contrast, the modern Russian prison, like Chaka, provided many of the amenities that one would find in western prisons. There were athletic facilities, small plots of land that the inmates could use to grow seasonal crops and rehabilitation activities. Some of the Siberian prisons even operated large commercial farms.

The floor of the visitors center consisted of rough cut wood planks that had probably been removed from the surrounding forest by the prisoners themselves 50 years ago. It was scuffed and scarred from the boots of the prisoners and guards that had come and gone over the years. The cracks between the planks were filled with dirt and cigarette butts brought in by those same boots. There were a few small windows high up on the walls that let in some light and there was even an old unused wood stove still sitting in the corner. The room stank of unwashed bodies and ancient cigarette smoke. The single overhead florescent fixture did little to relieve the sense of being in a moldy, damp cave.

Boris didn’t know what to expect this visit. His lawyers were not scheduled for another month. And he’d not been notified that anyone else was coming. As he entered the visitors room he recognized one of his lawyers and, also much to his surprise an old acquaintance from his high flying days in Moscow, Mikhail Lenovich. Mikhail greeted Boris with a grand bear hug and said, It’s great to see you. What’s it been, nine years or so? I think the last time we met was at the Café Metro. We were celebrating Katya’s birthday party. Remember that?

Finally getting over his surprise at seeing Lenovich, Boris said, Well, I’m surprised to see you out here. What brings you to Chaka? Boris never liked Lenovich and couldn’t generate the enthusiasm that the other man had just shown. To Boris, Lenovich had always sounded like a barker in a second rate carnival show.

Lenovich was a short, stocky man with a small meticulously groomed goatee and jet black hair that looked like it had been swept back with used motor oil. Like many men suffering from chronic shortness, Lenovich attempted to compensate with fast cars, Rolex watches cheap blonds and the pretense that his mediocre intelligence was somehow quite special.

After university, he moved up in the KGB bureaucracy by being intensely loyal, never questioning his superiors nor offering an idea of his own. He was disliked by most of those around him but useful to those that held the power. He was rewarded when Boris Yeltsin came to power.

Back in the 90’s, as the economy was opening up, a few Russians, the new oligarchs were getting very rich. These men cut corners and used their clout and connections with various government institutions to accumulate assets on the cheap. But Lenovich was one of the worst. He lied, cheated and used bribes when it suited him. His gang connections were used to intimidate anyone that got in his way. He was known to be capable of extorting money from anyone including his own family. There was also talk that he was heavily involved with the Mafia-like gangs in the importing of drugs into Russia.

Boris had recently heard through the prison rumor mill that Lenovich had lost much of his wealth during the recent recession.

After a few more pleasantries, the lawyer accompanying Lenovich dug through his pile of papers, found what he was looking for and handed a sheet to Boris. Boris glanced at the paper, looked up and shook his head ‘no’ and said "Let’s go out for some fresh air. A good walk around the compound will do us all good.

Written on the paper was a question to Boris asking if the area they were in was secure.

Boris, followed closely by his lawyer, led them from the interview room out to the compound. The lawyer whispered, I don’t know why he’s here. He asked me to come here with him so that he could more easily get past the prison security people. He thought they would see me as a familiar face and not look any further. Be careful of Lenovich, he’s a slimy bastard.

The compound was roughly square and enclosed the four rectangular buildings housing the prisoners, a relatively modern central administration building with the attached visitors center and a small building where the prisoners took their meals. The entire compound was secured by a double chain link fence topped with razor wire. There were watch towers at each of the four corners but they were rarely manned. Boris always wondered about the high security. Even if one could get over the fencing, there was no place to go. The area surrounding the compound was nearly flat for many kilometers around and had, over the years, been stripped of most vegetation. In the early years, prisoners and local towns-people chopped down the surrounding coniferous forest to provide heat for the rough barracks and lumber for shipment to the big cities. There was no place to hide.

For much of the year the ground was snow covered and frozen. The nearest town was 15 kilometers away and it would be a long walk for even the most highly conditioned prisoners. Boris had heard rumors of men getting out but had not heard of any successful escapes. The only way anyone left was through the front gate when either their sentence was up or they were in a body bag.

There were still bits of the winter snows scattered around the compound where the sun had not yet penetrated. But the temperature was a balmy 45 degrees.

Once outside and away from the building they began walking along the inner edge of the fencing where Boris continued, They’ve placed listening devices all over that building. There’s no privacy there. Now, what do you want?

Lenovich began, You’ve been in this ‘Siberian hideaway’, as you’ve called it, for eight years. You’re due for release in two years. Now they have you up on new charges. If you lose the new court case, you’ll end up spending the rest of your life in prison. You know as well as I do that the court system is corrupt. The judges will do whatever Putin tells them to do. And if Putin wants you to stay in prison, so you’ll stay. You’ll be stuck out here in god forsaken Siberia, never to see your family again nor the bright lights of Moscow. That is no way to spend the rest of your life.

Boris interrupted, What do you want me to do? Break out of here? There’s is no place to go and it is a long walk to Moscow. My lawyers tell me that I have a chance in the courtroom. Maybe they will have had enough of me. Everyone knows that the latest charges are bogus. They say I stole my own oil. If so, where did I put it? My bathtub! They have no proof of anything.

Your lawyers are fools and the prosecution doesn’t need proof. All the court needs is for Putin to say you’re guilty and you will be.

So I’ll ask again. Why are you here?

Putin has taken away most all of my assets. He’s taken my companies and returned them to state control or given them to his friends. I’ve received just pennies on the dollar of what they’re worth. He has sent some of my friends into exile. And with the recession, he tells the banks who to help and who not to help. Most of us who are not on Putin’s list of favorites can’t get loans. He’s going to put me and a number of other legitimate businessmen out of business. We can’t continue like this. We need to get rid of him., said Lenovich

Boris thought ‘legitimate’? Ha, what a joke. Lenovich is no more legitimate than most of the men in this prison.

And just how are you going to get rid of him. Vote him out? Not likely. He controls the political parties and the Duma. He even has the bulk of the population behind him. Everyone in power is in debt to him. He put them in power. No one is going to force him out or challenge him in an election. You must be nuts to think that any successful political campaign can be waged against him.

We’re not planning to wage a political campaign. We want to get rid of him.

Looking around to see if anyone is watching or listening, Boris responded with, Now I know you’re crazy. You’ll never get away with something like that. And if anyone finds out what you’re thinking, you’ll end up six feet under in an unmarked grave somewhere. There would be no Siberian prison for you.

It could work, but we need your help. If we’re successful, you could be free and clear from this place in three or four months. We need your contacts in the Federal Security Service and in the administration. We also need money. And we know that you have resources stored in a couple of foreign banks.

Who is the ‘we’ that you continue to talk about and how do you expect to go about getting rid of Putin. His security is so tight that you won’t be able to get within 100 meters of him and he has informants everywhere.

"A friend of yours has been exiled to London, Sergei Politnakov. I think you knew him well. Putin stripped away most of his assets. Sergei now lives in his mansion in London. He is surrounded by security people and still afraid to go out for fear that Putin’s people will have him poisoned or shot.

As for getting close to Putin, let us worry about that. We’re already very close. A tentative plan has been put in place. Are you in or out?"

Suppose your plan succeeds, then what do you do?

Lenovich responded, "We force out all of Putin’s cronies. Now that Putin has made himself President again, we’re stuck for who knows how long. We need to get him out. He’s been a disaster for us. Maybe we will even hold mock elections within a year or two and select our own man as President. Maybe you could be President. You like politics, eh. That love of politics is what got you in here.

You would get your oil company back. I would get my businesses back and best of all we could regain our rightful place in society again, controlling the government and the economy."

I still think you’re crazy. On the other, I don’t want to spend the rest of my days in this hell hole. Give me a few days to think about it. How can we maintain contact?

"In three days you’ll be contacted by one of your fellow prisoners. He’ll identify himself with a small tattoo on his inner right arm, a small R. If you’re in, he will pass on some things that you can help us with and be your conduit to us in Moscow.

If you’re afraid to take the risk to join us or even consider going to the authorities, remember where you sit. You’re in a prison filled with murderers, thieves, rapists and other assorted unpleasant characters. And bad things can happen in a prison like this. Bad things can also happen outside the prison. How is your family these days? I’d suggest that you seriously consider our offer.

Let’s get back inside, I need to catch a plane and get out of this hell hole."

After Lenovich and the lawyer left, Boris Lipsky returned to his cell in building number four. Number four was one of the four rectangular buildings set side-by-side that typically held eighty to one hundred prisoners. But number four was the only one that held individual cells for the inmates. The prison administration felt that Boris would not survive if he were housed in the general population.

The other buildings were of the open bay type with stacked bunks in which prisoners of every ilk were mixed. These were not pleasant places. Violence and sickness were nearly epidemic in these old style buildings.

After speaking with Lenovich and pondering the possible freedom that could come from his plan, his eight by ten foot cell seemed awfully small and confining. In reality, Boris had become adjusted to his situation over the past eight years. But now, was there a real chance of this plan working? And if he decided not to go along, what would happen to him. He recognized the veiled threats that Lenovich had made as he was leaving against his family and himself. Chaka was a dangerous place. Even though he had a cell to himself, if someone wanted to get at him in this prison, it wouldn’t be too difficult. And if he chose not to participate, could he get word to his family in time for them to find safety?

The promise of freedom and perhaps revenge against those that had placed him in this prison seemed to Boris a better option than waiting around in Chaka prison for someone to stick a knife in his ribs. The more he thought about it, did he really have a choice? Even if he decided to keep his mouth shut and refused to participate, he was quite certain that Lenovich would have he and his family killed.

Chapter 1

Afghanistan-18 months years earlier

The old man seemed to be out watching the Marine patrol whenever it passed by the small village. Sometimes he’d be sitting at the base of an old, gnarled apple tree near the entrance to the village, or at other times, in a rickety chair leaning against a compound wall. His age was indeterminate by the Marines. They jokingly said that he could be anywhere between 50 and 100 years old and had no idea of his real name so they called him Clyde.

Clyde, the old man, was always dressed in the traditional garb of an Afghan. He wore the long white pants and white shirt typical of a village elder. The white shirt was partially topped with, what looked like a beaded vest. His beard was mostly white with flecks of gray and black. His head was covered with a dirty white turban.

The Marines were uncertain about whether he was a look-out of some sort or simply curious. But most of the time, he was the only person they saw as they passed by the village. They knew there were other people around but they all seemed to disappear when the troops passed the village. The goat herder in the nearby hills turned his back when the Marines went by as did the workers in the small apple orchard. While there were no overt acts of hostility, it was not a particularly friendly environment.

The unit had replaced another Marine unit at the patrol base earlier in the year. The previous unit had taken heavy casualties in driving the Taliban from the valley. The mission of the current unit was to prevent a recurrence of Taliban activity and attempt to develop a rapport with the Afghans. There were several small villages in the valley and Clyde, the old man, was in the first one the Marines passed when they left their patrol base at the head of the valley.

The village was located about eight kilometers down from the Marine base and was flanked on one side by some low, grass covered hills. The hills gradually gave way to nothing but a rocky, boulder strewn escarpment. The mountains of southern Afghanistan rose in the distance.

On the other side of the village was a narrow dusty road alongside a terrain that gave way more rapidly toward the high mountain peaks. There were a few scattered trees and low brush, but the ground was mostly rock covered.

A barely visible two-track led into the village square.

The village was thought to contain nearly one hundred mostly poor families. They lived in single story dwellings surrounded by the gray mud/clay walls that provided the necessary privacy for the inhabitants. The compounds surrounded a small village square that contained a waterwell and a deteriorating statue of some long ago village hero. Only the village cleric had a two story dwelling and this occupied a prominent place on the square. The home of the cleric also had a generator for electricity. His was the only one. The Marines could see two old Toyota pick-up trucks in the court yard. But they never saw them moving. The villagers made what little money they had from the small apple orchard and the herd of goats.

Captain O’Reilly, the Marine Commander of the patrol base, made periodic visits to the various villages in his operational area to meet with senior clerics and other community members. He hoped to develop some degree of trust between the Marines and villagers. He was also authorized to provide development assistance where appropriate. In fact, in the small village, his team had installed a solar powered well pump and water purifier. Whenever he visited the village, he brought along one of the Marines who was a good mechanic to maintain the pump because it seemed that the villagers were not interested. O’Reilly often wondered whether they resented or were humiliated by his attempt to help out in local affairs

The Captain also brought along a medic that would set up in a shady part of the compound and provide whatever assistance he could to the locals.

It was on one of these visits that the note was passed. The medic had just finished examining the progress of a young boy whose broken arm he had set during a previous visit, when the old man, the one they called Clyde, appeared. The old man placed his hand on the table and pointed at a small rash. The medic looked at the rash, reached into his medical kit and brought out a tube of ointment. He glanced at the old man and began applying the ointment. The old man nodded, as if to say thanks, and got up to leave. He glanced around, reached into his tunic, pulled out a folded piece of paper, handed it to the medic and walked away.

After the old man had left, the medic looked at the paper. Whatever was on the paper was incomprehensible to the medic. Thinking that it was probably a thank-you note or something similar, he stuffed it into his shirt pocket vowing to himself to give it to Captain O’Reilly when they were on their way back to the patrol base.

It was the following day before the Captain received the note. O’Reilly’s American trained interpreter couldn’t read the note. So the Captain reported the existence of the note in the daily situation report that was sent to higher headquarters via a secure radio link. The hard copy was placed in a secure pouch for delivery by courier when the next resupply chopper arrived.

The note was passed through the various higher level commands. The most that the various analysts and interpreters could get from the note were some vague references to the imminent arrival to the village of an important person. There were several mentions of Allah and family. But the note, written in Pashto, the language of the Pashtun people, was written as if by a child. It was very difficult to decipher.

It finally landed on the desk of an intelligence analyst at the Intelligence Support Activity of the Joint Special Operations Command in Kandahar. The ISA provided intelligence support to Special Operations Forces operating in Afghanistan. Specialist 4th class Vega had been working with the Joint Special Operations Group as an intelligence analyst for more than a year. He had access to everything there was to know about Taliban activities in the southwest part of the country. He had cell phone and radio intercept information and information gathered from human sources and high flying drones at his disposal. It was his job to bring this information together so that it made a coherent package that could be turned into actionable intelligence for the Special operators within the JSOG.

After receiving the note with the various interpretations, Vega’s first action was to take it to the best Pashto speaker he could find. The interpreter had little more to offer than what had already been determined. Vega returned to his desk and began to wonder what it could mean. He began flipping through transcriptions of some recent cell phone intercepts and much to his surprise found similar references to the ‘big man’ getting ready to travel. These particular intercepts had been traced to a known Taliban stronghold in an area where they had been chased into the mountains by the US military. Vega also recalled having seen references in statements of Afghans travelers from the area that someone was on the move, but had written most of that off as gossip. But now he wasn’t so sure.

Vega reviewed all of the information that he had on the area from which the cell phone intercepts had originated. There was only one conclusion that could be drawn. Hamzah was going to be on the move. He was the only ‘big man’ in the area and a leader that the military had been searching for over this past couple of years. Hamzah led a small army of 75-100 experienced fighters that had been giving Afghan and US forces trouble recently. He and his people were disciplined and knew the mountains in southern Afghanistan like they knew the family compound.

Hamzah and his men could hit convoys and patrols of US and Afghan forces and then vanish before the US could mount a counter attack or get air support. He seemed to have a sixth sense about how to inflict maximum damage and then withdraw so as to minimize his own casualties.

Vega went back to the files to find what he could about the man. Hamzah, whose name refers to ‘the very strong and defender of Islam’ had been an effective commander of a small group of fighters against the Russians in the late eighties. After the Russians were driven out he kept his small army of fighters together and managed to take control of a small part of the country in the south. He kept his force together with a nice payroll, constant training and praise.

His only known source of income was the drug trade. He would provide protection to the farmers, help them harvest and move the product to markets. When DEA and Afghan drug officials tried to convince the local farmers to convert from poppies to alternative crops, Hamzah would send his people in the next day and remind them about how dangerous it was to deal with the Americans and how much money they could make growing poppies. Hamzah maintained control over the poppy farmers with veiled threats and promises of greater wealth.

When the Taliban came to power, Hamzah played along and was able to continue to control the drug trade and maintain his forces in his part of the country. According to the files, he was not a fanatic. He would not send his men on suicide missions nor strap them with explosives and direct them to blow themselves up in a local market. At this stage of his life, Hamzah was pragmatic, he was a businessman.

Vega had access to Afghan army files. There he found the rest of what he needed to know. Hamzah was born and spend most of his early years in the small village where the note was passed to the Marine medic. Hamzah was going home.

Chapter 2

Bagram Air Base

Captain Clay Darby, US Army 3rd Special Forces Group, was working out in the facilities provided by the Joint Special Operations Command on a secure part of the base when the call came. He and his team had been on alert status for nearly a week and he was becoming concerned that they may be losing their edge. Perhaps, he thought, this call meant they were headed to action. He hustled over to the secure conference room in the JSOG headquarters.

Colonel Ryan, head of the Intelligence Support Activity and Specialist Vega were already present. Soon after, Clay’s boss, Colonel Spey and numerous staffers arrived. Despite the urgency, Ryan couldn’t resist and said, Nice outfit. You, didn’t have time to change into a real uniform?

Clay was dressed in soccer shorts, an Army t-shirt and running shoes. His hair was all over the place and he was still sweating. Everyone laughed but Clay, who responded, Hey, the called said urgent. So here I am. Clay understood the ribbing. There was a special camaraderie among Special Forces personnel of all ranks that didn’t exist in the regular Army. He tried to think of a clever response. Perhaps somehow referencing the overall conditioning, or lack thereof, of some in the room. He held his tongue though, and thought, ‘perhaps another time’.

Colonel Ryan began with an overview of the situation. He was followed by Specialist Vega who presented a detailed analysis that led to the conclusion that Hamzah was heading home.

Colonel Spey said, Clay, we want you and your team to get this guy when he arrives at his home village. We don’t know when he’ll arrive or how much time we’ll have to nab him. But we want to take him alive. We expect that he has intimate knowledge of Taliban operations in this area.

Clay asks, How much time do we have to prepare?

"We already have a drone up