Across the parking lot, the sallow-looking man in the black leather jacket was still astride his dark-red Ural Wolf motorbike, a 750-cc V-Twin Russian-made powerhouse. The handlebars were high, wide, and gleaming chrome, and the rakish-looking rider had the gear to match: studded leather trousers, cowboy belt from the US Midwest, and ex–East German border-patrol guard boots, black steer hide with a steel horseshoe running right around the heel. Kurt Petrov had spent the past half hour taking photographs of the distant mountains. And now, with the light fading, he was still snapping, still staring into the distance. But only with one eye. The other was focused on the main entrance to the airport, the only way in and out of the passenger lounge. At 6:45 p.m. he saw what he’d come for—the uniformed Russian Navy lieutenant commander Nikolai Chirkov exiting the building in company with a smartly dressed foreign visitor, about whom there was nothing remotely Russian, from the cut of his suit to his Burberry overcoat and leather briefcase.
