Black Wolf

The small group of Americans arrived at Minsk-2 airport through a thick blanket of gray clouds and rain. The airport sat within a vast tract of silver birch forests about twenty miles east of the capital city. From a distance, the building had looked impressive, modern. Inside was a different story.

Melvina Donleavy stood at the baggage carousel a few feet apart from her three travel companions, taking in the crumbling masonry and cracked marble, the dangling and exposed wires, and long stretches of dark hallways. It had been pointed out by Dan Hatton, their team leader, that lightbulbs, among many other things, were in short supply.

The passage through immigration had gone relatively smoothly. The guard processing Mel's paperwork scrutinized her closely, matching her face—pale, with wide-spaced dark eyes and a slightly elfin chin—to her passport photo. She knew that in photographs she often looked startled, like a forest animal caught in the road. She was tall and slender but, despite her appearance of fragility, surprisingly strong, as her physical fitness test instructors, first at Quantico and then at the Farm, had discovered. Her mother, a college drama teacher, would often say that Mel had the outward demeanor of an Ophelia but the stealth, and secretiveness, of a Hamlet. At twenty-six years old, she was the youngest in her party.

The guard's gaze kept returning to a space above her head. It wasn't until her passport had been stamped and she had moved away from the window that Mel noticed that large, tilted mirrors had been placed over every cubicle, allowing the guards to scrutinize the backsides of travelers. Perhaps looking for some aging babushka smuggling in a black-market chicken.

A braying laugh from Dan snagged her attention. Dan was ostensibly her boss, but she knew that, of the four Americans, all sent by the Central Intelligence Agency, she had the highest security clearance. So high, in fact, that Dan was completely unaware that she'd been handpicked by the CIA's deputy director of clandestine operations on direct orders from a select Senate committee back in Washington. What the others did know was that this was her first mission, as she'd only just completed her Agency training. Mel couldn't—and for purposes of her cover story, wouldn't—hide it: she was, by turns, nervous and exhilarated. Nervous because there was as yet so much unknown, and exhilarated for the same reason. As was customary in Agency protocol, she'd spent a few weeks stateside prior to their trip getting to know her colleagues. And though they'd been friendly, and reasonably open, the other three already had years of experience as foreign field agents. She knew they'd be watching her, saving their final assessment of her reliability for after their mission was completed.

She'd been warned by her trainers that, at some point, the goals of her mission might conflict with those of the other three, and that she might cause friction within the team. But under no circumstances was she to reveal her true mission to anyone. She would share that only with her American intermediary, who she'd been told would contact her shortly. It was this intermediary who would smuggle any intelligence she gathered out of Byelorussia and back to the States.

Her two other colleagues—Julie Reznik and Ben Franklin (born Benjamin Worthingham Franklin, according to his passport)—smiled indulgently at Dan's jokes. But she caught Ben throwing her a weary look and the slightest shrug.

He soon broke away and sauntered over, rolling his shoulders to ease the cramps in his back. It had been a long series of flights: DC to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Moscow, Moscow to Minsk, with delays in between. It was now early morning, and there were few travelers at the airport. But the Byelorussians who had gathered to collect their baggage all gawked unabashedly at Ben. They'd probably only ever seen a Black person on TV, when the Communist state–run news propaganda ran images of impoverished, diseased Africans, or riotous African Americans hell-bent on destroying their own cities in the decadent West.

Mel had witnessed how Ben's immigration guard looked suspiciously from his passport to Ben and back again. But then he'd frowned and asked incredulously, "Like American president?"

Ben had barely suppressed a grin and answered, "Sure."

The baggage carousel lurched into action for a few seconds and then stopped again.

"More bad jokes?" Mel asked now, chucking her chin at Dan.

Ben adopted a rigid, military posture. "What is difference between Russian pessimist and Russian optimist? Russian pessimist says, 'Things can't get any worse.' And Russian optimist says, 'Oh, yes they can.'"

Mel snorted. "At least he's stopped with the Chernobyl jokes."

The carousel started up again, but as soon as the battered suitcases and boxes began moving, the overhead lights went out, plunging them into darkness. Ever resourceful, Ben dug a flashlight out of his backpack, and soon the four Americans were trudging toward customs, wheeling their bags behind them.

Dan directed the group to the shorter line for those with diplomatic status, which was also populated by a few German and Swiss businessmen with special visas. But it was still a full twenty minutes before two guards took up their post and started slowly and methodically inspecting every piece of luggage.

"God, it stinks in here," Julie muttered to Mel, who'd been studying the line ahead, impatiently shifting from one foot to the other.

Julie had sharp, Mediterranean features, a full figure—what some people would call Rubenesque—and a dry, stoic demeanor. But she could cut through corrugated iron with one caustic look. Grabbing a handful of her thick, curly black hair, she brought it to her nose, grimaced, and said, "Oh, God."

In Mel's experience, every foreign place had a unique smell. Bombay, cumin and stale sweat. Frankfurt, sausage and wet concrete. Rio, sunscreen and motor exhaust. "How do you say 'fermenting cabbage and disinfectant' in Russian?" she asked.

"Kvasheniye kapusty i dezinfitsiruyusheye sredstvo."

Mel shook her head. "I'm not even going to try that one."

Her three companions all spoke Russian, Julie being the most fluent. Ben and Dan were fairly conversant. Mel could only speak a few phrases. Just enough to find the toilet or hail a taxi. But, with the exception of Julie, they were all to feign ignorance of the language. People were more inclined to speak their minds if they thought they couldn't be understood.

Dan and Ben were processed through quickly. When Mel finally approached the inspection station, a long table behind which the two unsmiling guards stood, her suitcase had already been completely emptied—clothes, shoes, and underwear spread out for everyone to see. Her cosmetics bag had been opened and the older of the two guards was pawing through it. He upended the bag, noisily spilling out its contents.

Irritated, Mel took in a sharp breath, preparing to say something, but Julie closed her fingers gently around her arm. "Good opportunity to practice self-restraint," she whispered. Noting that Mel was young and used to speaking her mind, this had been one of Julie's favorite pieces of advice in their earlier talks. "To the Soviets," she had said, "nothing screams Western exceptionalism more than a blatant show of impatience."

Mel nodded, keeping her expression a careful blank.

The guard unwrapped a cardboard tube and looked through it as if it were a tiny telescope. Pulling on the blue string, he eased out the cotton cylinder and held it hanging in front of his face. He turned to his younger partner, who shrugged.

"What is this?" he asked Mel in Russian.

Mel turned to Julie in disbelief. "He's kidding, right?"

Julie responded quietly, but the guard still looked perplexed.

"Shto?" he asked loudly. What?

Julie grinned wickedly and, now matching his blaring tone, began a long-winded explanation of what the cotton cylinder was for, and where it was applied.

When the guard looked back at Mel, she nodded, gave him a practiced innocent look, and added a visual aid to clarify: a forefinger thrust forcibly upward.

The man dropped the tampon as though it had caught fire, shoved everything back into the suitcase, and motioned for Mel to move along.

"So much for the glorious Revolution liberating women," Julie said as Mel grabbed her bag. "Wait till they find out American condoms are ribbed."

In the main lobby, the group was met by an unsmiling, portly man wearing a terrible haircut and even worse shoes, holding a sign on which was printed in archaic-looking letters: HATTON PARTY + 3. Standing next to him was a harried-looking woman who rushed forward to shake everyone's hands, welcoming them in heavily accented English, letting them know that her name was Elena and she would be accompanying them to their hotel.

The cover story for the team was that they were on a fact-finding mission on behalf of the US State Department, which was considering offering American financial support to the newly sovereign—although still technically Soviet—republic of Byelorussia. Dan and Ben were posing as accountants, protective of the American dime, Julie as their official translator. Their true job was to report back to the Department about the realities of the fracturing Soviet Union. And what threats would be posed by this new republic, which would be the gateway to Western Europe.

There had been clandestine Agency forays into Byelorussia all throughout the Cold War, but this was the first time an official American delegation would circumvent the centralized politburo in Moscow. They had been invited by the newly declared Byelorussian Ministry of External Affairs, which would have been unthinkable only a year ago, before the warming effects of glasnost and the destruction of the Berlin Wall shattered Soviet control. But now Byelorussia needed money, and Uncle Sam was determined to help fill their coffers before other countries, like Iran, stepped in. The country that controlled the purse strings helped control the further proliferation of military weapons.

Mel's cover was that she was simply Dan's secretary. Therefore, the least prioritized and, more importantly, the least scrutinized member of the team. Internally, she'd been introduced to her three team members as an "independent observer." Meaning, as far as the other members of the group were concerned, she was to report on the reporters. This was not uncommon, but usually left to more experienced agents. The fact that she was so young and on her first mission did not immediately endear her to her team.

So it had taken Mel weeks of concentrated effort to win over her colleagues before their arrival. With Ben, his open, relaxed nature made it easy to strike up a conversation. She was a good listener, and a few well-placed questions revealed their common interests: reading, traveling, and psychology, especially as it related to true crime. They'd spent some deliciously dark hours after dinner discussing the possible motivations of the Zodiac Killer, John Wayne Gacy, and David Berkowitz, among others, hours that, for Mel, felt effortless. And, as he'd spent time stationed with the army in Germany, he was familiar with that country's own spectacular serial killers.

Mel also formed a quick attachment with Julie, after encouraging Julie's inclination to take on a protective role. This was a relief, as Mel's experience with police officers, through her father, a thirty-year veteran sheriff in Madison, Wisconsin, was that women in the force were often very competitive. When you were constantly being hit over the head by machismo, it was easier to punch down. But Julie seemed eager to play the role of big sister, and with half a dozen clandestine missions to Eastern Europe in her file, she was the most experienced of them all at maneuvering through Communist Bloc countries. Mel planned to stay close to her side, absorbing as much knowledge as possible as quickly as possible.

Dan was a harder read. He wasn't unfriendly, but he held himself slightly aloof, especially with her. Tall and slender, his hair worn longer than most men with the Agency, he dressed in expensive but rumpled suits and well-worn loafers. In his midthirties, he looked to Mel like the perennial Ivy League poly sci graduate from a wealthy family who'd joined the intelligence service out of boredom at the thought of doing real State Department work.

And even though he was constantly telling jokes, Mel quickly understood they were both a mask and a barrier to more intimate, unguarded conversation. Only through continual chatter during her training had she gathered that he'd been in some dangerous hot zones, and more than once, which would explain his cautious nature in relaxing his guard around an inexperienced, untried agent.

The success of her mission relied on the goodwill and cooperation of all three, and she intended to continue cultivating both, even as she was vigilant in hiding her true mission. When, at the end of a long day, she'd expressed worry about that balance to one of her Agency trainers, he'd sighed and snapped, "You took theater, right? Make it work!"

She was the only child of Walter Donleavy, taught to be fiercely independent and outspoken. But she tamped down her natural inclination to defend herself and absorbed the rebuke. "Understood, sir."

Elena, having at last gathered the group and all their luggage, was ushering them out of the airport and into a waiting van—the portly man abandoning his sign to climb ponderously into the driver's seat. From the passenger seat, she gave a running commentary on all the points of interest they'd see as they approached Minsk. Their driver's name, she explained, almost as an afterthought, was Anton. He would be their driver for the duration of their stay.

"Unfortunately, Anton does not speak very good English," Elena said, frowning, as though it reflected poorly on her. "But he is excellent driver."

Ben gave Mel a subtle nudge. It was impossible that anyone would be assigned to foreign visitors without being fluent in several languages, including English. With his heavy brow, ham fists, and the bunched muscles Mel suspected hid under his stout build, Anton was most assuredly KGB.

As they entered Minsk from the northeast, Elena described in detail each notable building or park they passed.

"Here, as you can see," she said, pointing to a vivid redbrick building, "is the Red Church. Very famous."

A few minutes later: "Here is Victory Square…Here is Government House…Here is post office…Here is GUM, largest department store in Minsk, which you all must go and experience for yourself…"

To Mel, the dichotomy between the grandiose buildings and the somber, at times threadbare, pedestrians—the steep morning shadows engulfing the long lines of people waiting noiselessly to gain entrance into the state-run stores—was depressing. It worked to dampen her initial enthusiasm for being in an exotic, and until recently forbidden, country, despite Elena's rehearsed lauding of the city.

When Elena announced the KGB headquarters, a Western European–style four-story building in yellowish stone, Dan pointed and said, "That's the tallest building in Minsk."

When no one took the bait, he added, "'And why is that, Dan? Every building in this part of town is four stories.' Well, since you asked, it's because from the top floor you can see all the way to Siberia."

Elena stiffened visibly. But when Mel looked at Anton, he was smiling.

At last, Elena escorted them into the Planeta Hotel—a graying ten-story building, fronted along the roofline by a large blue sign—taking their passports and handing them personally to the manager. Their passports would be held until the group was driven back to the airport at the end of the trip. They were also all given rooms on different floors, in order to separate them, making it easier to monitor their movements. Mel had been briefed: their phones would be tapped, their rooms bugged, and the mirrors would be two-way.

As they waited for the elevator, Elena explained that the Planeta was of the highest order.

"It was built for party officials, high-ranking military, and only best athletes," she said emphatically.