experts in the rough-and-tumble Russian oil industry. In addition, Gabriel
requested help from Unit 1400, the Israeli electronic eavesdropping service. As
expected, the Unit discovered that Volgatek’s Moscow-based computer networks and
communications were protected by high-quality Russian firewalls—the same
firewalls, interestingly enough, used by the Kremlin, the Russian military, and
the SVR. Late in the day, however, the Unit managed to hack into the computers
of a Volgatek field office in Gdansk, where the company owned an important
refinery that produced much of Poland’s gasoline. The material was forwarded
directly to the safe house in Surrey. Mikhail and Eli Lavon, the only members of
the team who spoke Russian, handled the translation. Mikhail dismissed the
intelligence as a dry hole, but Lavon was more optimistic. By getting their foot
in the door of Gdansk, he said, they would learn much about how Volgatek
operated beyond the boundaries of Mother Russia.
By instinct, they approached their target as if it
were a terrorist organization. And the first order of business when confronted
with a new terror group or cell, Dina reminded them needlessly, was to identify
the structure and key personnel. It was tempting to focus on those who resided
at the top of the food chain, she said, but the middle managers, foot soldiers,
couriers, innkeepers, and drivers usually proved far more valuable in the end.
They were the passed over, the forgotten, the neglected. They carried grudges,
harbored resentments, and oftentimes spent more money than they earned. This
made them far easier targets for recruitment than the men who flew on private
planes, drank champagne by the bucketful, and had a stable of Russian
prostitutes at their beck and call, no matter where they went in the world.
At the top of the organization chart was Gennady
Lazarev, the former Russian nuclear scientist and KGB informant who had served
as Viktor Orlov’s deputy at Ruzoil. Lazarev’s trusted deputy was Dmitry Bershov,
and his chief of European operations was Alexei Voronin. Both were former
officers of the KGB, though Voronin was by far the more presentable of the two.
He spoke several European languages fluently, including English, which he had
acquired while working in the KGB’s London rezidentura during the last days of the Cold War.
The rest of Volgatek’s hierarchy proved harder to
identify, which surely was no accident. Yaakov likened the company’s profile to
that of the Office. The name of the chief was public knowledge, but the names of
his key deputies, and the tasks they carried out, were kept secret or concealed
beneath layers of deception and misdirection. Fortunately, the e-mail traffic
from the Gdansk field office allowed the team to identify several other key
players inside the company, including its chief of security, Pavel Zhirov. His
name appeared in no company documents, and all attempts to locate a photograph
were fruitless. On the team’s organizational chart, Zhirov was a man without a
face.
As the days wore on, it became clear to the team
that the enterprise Zhirov protected was about more than just oil. The company
was part of a larger Kremlin stratagem to turn Russia into a global energy
superpower, a Eurasian Saudi Arabia, and to resurrect the Russian Empire from
the ruins of the Soviet Union. Eastern and Western Europe were already overly
dependent on Russian natural gas. Volgatek’s mission was to extend Russian
dominance over Europe’s energy market through its purchases of oil refineries.
And now, thanks to Jeremy Fallon, it had a foothold in the North Sea that would
eventually send billions in oil profits gushing into the Kremlin. Yes, Volgatek
Oil & Gas was about Russian avarice, the team agreed. But it was first and
foremost about Russian revanchism.
But how to plant an agent inside such an
organization? It was Eli Lavon who found a possible solution, which he explained
to Gabriel while they were walking in the tangled garden. After purchasing the
refinery in Gdansk, he said, Volgatek had made a local Polish hire to serve as
the refinery’s nominal director. In practice, the Pole had absolutely nothing to
do with the day-to-day operations of the refinery. He was window dressing, a
bouquet of flowers designed to smooth over hurt Polish feelings over the Russian
bear gobbling up a vital economic asset. Furthermore, Lavon explained, Poland
wasn’t the only place Volgatek hired local helpers. They did it in Hungary,
Lithuania, and Cuba as well. None of those managers fared any better than the
one from Gdansk. To a man, they were all marginalized, ignored, and cut out of
the loop.
“They’re walking coffee cups,” said Lavon.
“Which means they have no access to the kind of
closely held information we’re looking for,” Gabriel pointed out.
“That’s true,” replied Lavon. “But if the local