Palace of Treason (51 page)

“Hundred percent Zarubina uses a simple safety signal—flick a lighter, take off a scarf, put a white paper sack on the railing,” said Proctor. “Positive signal, something he can see even in the dark.
She’ll
be telling us when he comes.”

“And that’s when we stick him,” said Fileppo. “No way the two of them are gonna say one word to each other, much less pass anything.”

“Yeah, Donnie gets spun up during takedowns. But you’re going to wait for me, right?” said Proctor to Donnie.

“I don’t get ‘spun up,’ ” said Fileppo. “Where do you get that shit?”

“You always do,” said Proctor.

Jesus, they sound like an old married couple,
thought Nate as he concentrated on his sandwich.

“Okay, you guys are down below,” said Nate, “and I want to be right up Zarubina’s ass, real close. Any ideas?” He was okay with asking these experts their opinion: Nate’s specialty was detecting and defeating hostile surveillance; these guys
were
surveillance and it would pay to listen to them.

“There’s only one place,” said Fileppo. “The wall of the upper terrace behind the upper pool has three deep alcoves with a candle-jet fountain in each—you know the fluffy columns of water about three feet high. You gotta stand in ankle-deep water at night, but with dark clothes, squatting behind the bubbles, and the noise of all the water—fountains, cascades, basins—you’re invisible. You just gotta wade across the upper pool and you’re right behind her.”

“Maybe wear a pair of knee-high rubber boots,” said Proctor.

“I scare her shitless coming out of the dark, speaking polite Russian and not letting her leave,” said Nate. “You guys put flex cuffs on dickhead, then you hit the button and call everybody in, right?” said Nate. Benford and Montgomery had arranged for a dozen Washington metro police units, three FBI vehicles, a van, and an ambulance to be in holding positions in a
ring four blocks away from the park. On receiving an electronic signal from Proctor’s SHRAPNEL message unit—essentially an encrypted pager developed by CIA—they would light up Columbia Heights. No other radios, cell phones, or electronics—the Russians listened as well as watched.

TRITON would be arrested. Zarubina, with her diplomatic immunity, would be courteously detained until the Russian Consul from the embassy could spring her. Per the well-known Cold War drill, he would serenely maintain that Zarubina had been walking in the park to take the night air. Then he doubtless would rave about fascist American police procedures. A PNG expulsion—persona non grata—would follow and Zarubina would return to the bosom of the
Rodina
to answer questions from a pair of blue eyes over a mouth pursed in annoyance.

And Dominika would avoid the cellars yet again,
thought Nate.
She would be safe.

Time check. 2219. 10:19 p.m. If something was going to happen, it could be now: Neither CIA nor SVR clandestine meetings were ever set exactly for the hour or half hour—too predictable. Despite the cool evening, Nate sweat under a black plastic hooded poncho and rubber boots as he crouched in the pitch-black of the fountain alcove behind the upper pool. The floor of the alcove was slick with algae, and the shin-high water smelled metallic and toxic. Looking through—around—the bubbling column of fountain water, Nate could barely see the empty terrace and silvery cascade basins below. Beyond the cascade the park was dark, backlit faintly by orange city-glow.

The damn fountain jets were fouled or something, and the water column pulsed irregularly, high then low, splashing Nate’s poncho, which was keeping him only moderately dry. Nate worried that the water would make a noticeable rattle off the plastic, but there was a lot of covering noise—the three echoing and splashy alcove fountains emptying into the upper pool, arpeggio waves spilling into cascade basins below. Two previous nights of waiting in this stinky water wonderland had made him wish he had assigned either Fileppo or Proctor to the fountain alcove—let one of them squat for hours in a recirculated, copper-pipe-rancid ribollita, with green things floating around his boots like Italian veggie soup. But he knew he had to be here up top: He had to freeze Zarubina, and FBI personnel had to be the ones to lay hands on an American citizen arrestee for legal reasons.
Okay, TRITON, you fucker, come on in.

Some vestigial Paleolithic instinct made Nate’s scalp creep—there was someone directly above his alcove, on the grassy mall level. There was no moonlight and no shadow; there were no voices. All was silent. But he could feel it, a scalp-crawly sense of a person approaching. A minute later, peering through the damn bubbling water, Nate saw a short figure glide soundlessly in front of him onto the terrace from the right. He held his breath and hoped he was invisible in the clammy black. It was Zarubina—Nate recognized her from the hundreds of photos in the FBI mug book on her.
She wore a camel-hair outer coat, a scarf knotted loosely around her neck. Her honey-blond hair was up in a bun, and sturdy legs beneath the hem of her long coat ended in clunky midheel shoes. Zarubina stood quietly by the balustrade above the first of the basins and looked to her left, then turned to the right. She was slowly scanning the reaches of the empty park below her.
You urban Apaches better be as good as you say you are,
thought Nate, telegraphing to Fileppo and Proctor out there in the dark. Zarubina finished her turns and stood still, head down, a seriously spooky sight, some ancient priestess on the elevated altar, calling in the bat-winged gods.
She’s listening, she’s feeling the vibe,
thought Nate.
Is she feeling the electrons coming out of the tips of my fingers? Jesus, this grandmother can kill DIVA tonight. No she won’t; it will
not
happen.

Zarubina turned to look up at the top of the wall at mall level—brilliant black eyes, slightly hooded, passed over Nate’s alcove—and nodded once. Her team would keep looser watch—she had signaled the all clear. She moved closer to the terrace balustrade, put both hands on the cement, and leaned forward like a dictator on a balcony giving a speech to the masses below. She reached up and loosened her scarf from around her neck and draped it over the balustrade so that a discreet corner of it hung down. Safety signal.
Wait, wait, wait,
Nate telegraphed to the men down below.

Nate didn’t move for two minutes—120 seconds that felt like two hours—and then he saw the head and shoulders of a tall angular figure come up the stairs from W Street. He moved slowly, and started up the left-hand staircase along the cascade.
Are you TRITON?
The man held his head down, his hands jammed into his pockets. Nate strained to see his face, to identify him from the halls of Headquarters.
Come on.
The man stopped climbing the broad stairs a third of the way up and raised his head to look at the upper terrace and Zarubina. He saw her darkened figure and took one hand out of his jacket and raised it briefly.
Yeah, wave hello.
Zarubina did not respond, but the man resumed trudging up the steps. He was halfway up now.

From the bottom of the stairwell the shadow of a spirit, a winged ogre, flew out of the thick border hedge, planted hands on the brick wall at the bottom of the stairs, vaulted onto the bottom step, and started running up the stairs. Fileppo. At the same instant—how had they timed their moves so closely?—Proctor materialized from inside a privet hedge bordering the
opposite stairwell, glided over the steps, and walked, arms outstretched for balance, along the lip of a lower basin to cross the cascade. It looked as though he were walking on water. This took four seconds. Zarubina bellowed like a man as the two figures converged on TRITON, who, with amazing quickness, ran up two steps then sideways straight into a hedge, which swallowed him up amid great crunching and snapping of branches. Proctor and Fileppo both broke right—one into the gap plowed by TRITON, the other through a break in the hedge two steps below. The Cape hunting dogs were on the impala.

On the fifth second of the action, a flashlight started shining on the lower part of the stairway, a voice called, and the light started coming up. Nate saw the silhouette of a flat-brimmed campaign hat—the lemon squeezers worn by frigging US park rangers. The ranger obviously had heard the sound of exploding foliage and the buffalo trumpeting of a Russian intelligence officer and appeared in order to chase away what he thought were kids. There was no time for this. Nate came out of the alcove, swung down to the pool, caught his poncho liner under one of his boots and went down on his hands and knees in the elbow-deep water. He got up, pounded to the edge, and swung his legs out—his boots were full of water. He shucked them off and looked for the old lady. Zarubina was gone, the terrace was empty. She hadn’t moved either to the left or right. Then he heard the splashing. Caught between Nate splashing like an asshole behind her, and the park ranger coming up at her, she had vaulted the balustrade and was sloshing down the cascade, one basin at a time, to evade contact. It was impossible to see her in the darkness, but she was noisily displacing a lot of water.

Nate vaulted the balustrade and started down after her.
How hard is it going to be running down a fifty-five-year-old woman?
The floor of the top basin was slimy and Nate skidded, then caught himself on the lip. He swung his legs over and lowered himself into the next, slightly larger, basin, a three-foot drop.
Eleven more.
He could barely see the cascade by the city-glow in the sky, but he could hear splashing below him—Zarubina was down there. He wondered about Fileppo and Proctor and imagined them on top of TRITON, pushing him facedown in the dirt. He could imagine the cricket zip of the flex cuffs as they secured his wrists. Nate slithered over the lip of the basin—
ten more
—and wondered where they were.
Where are the sirens?

They
had
to bag TRITON. He knew Dominika’s true name.

The night was brisk and quiet, even peaceful. Angevine had parked Vikki’s car—a ridiculous candy-apple red Kia Rio with a feathered Navajo dreamcatcher talisman hanging from the rearview mirror—a block from the park, against a wrought-iron fence on Ecuador Alley, a typical Washington alleyway used by garbage trucks that ran behind apartment buildings and the garages of row houses. He could cut unobserved through backyards, get to Fifteenth Street, and enter the park as the Russians had instructed him, from the W Street end. Vikki had asked him why he wanted to borrow her car when he had a perfectly good BMW—a sweet new gunmetal-gray M3, seventy-two thousand MSRP that he bought when he got tired of the Audi S7—but he could hardly explain that he wasn’t parking a BMW in a Washington alley while he went to meet the Russians.

He was looking forward to seeing Zarubina tonight. He had rehearsed a dramatic little speech about the immense value of the name he was about to provide, and how the bonus for the information should be commensurately large. He dallied with the idea of haggling over money before actually handing over Gamma. But haggling would serve no purpose; the Russians already had paid him handsomely and would continue to do so. Maintaining good will was important, especially since Zarubina had told him President Putin himself had sent respectful greetings to TRITON. Angevine imagined himself being hosted by Putin in some luxurious snow-draped dacha during a surreptitious visit to Moscow. A roaring fire, ice-cold vodka, and a long-legged Ukrainian beauty on a bearskin rug. There would be plenty of those—Putin liked fucking Ukrainians.

No, he’d hand over Gamma right away and save the daydreams for later. He rolled the memorized name around in his head, practiced saying it.
Dominika Vasilyevna Egorova.
Apparently the idiots in Operations were reduced to recruiting women now. He’d utter the name personally to amp up the drama, and Zarubina’s sweet, cake-baking grandmother’s expression would melt into the vulturine face of the Soviet raptor anticipating the kill. Angevine had seen that face.

He could hardly wait. All the money in the world, plus paying back the donkeys in the Agency who didn’t see fit to acknowledge him. He was across the park and starting up the stairs. There she was, a dark blob behind the
balustrade, and the tail of the light-colored scarf just discernible against the stone. There was a quiet scuffling behind him, and a rustling of hedge to the side. He turned and saw a banshee ape bounding up the stairs and another faceless nightmare approaching from his left. A bellow from Zarubina sent voltage up his spine, and Angevine moved before the conscious thought registered. He leaped up two steps, then plowed through a hedge to his right, feeling branches volleying against his outstretched arms and his face.

He exploded out of the hedge and ran through a stand of trees, hearing footsteps and the chuffing of a sprinting athlete behind him. His lungs were about to burst and he expected to feel arms around his legs in a flying tackle. Running with the desperation of a fugitive, Angevine dug into his pocket and took out CYCLOPS, a three-inch aerosol dispenser developed by CIA for the Second Gulf War containing a fine, pink powder compound of phenacyl chloride and dipropylene glycol methyl ether—intended as an alternative to pepper spray—which, if sprayed into the mucus membranes of the eye, caused severe pain and a temporary loss of sight. Angevine had palmed two CYCLOPS units after a laboratory demonstration he had attended as CIA associate director of Military Affairs. As the pink fog puffed out of the little dispenser, Fileppo’s exceptional reflexes saved him at the last minute: he ducked and only a few grains of the powder hit his face, but the pain was intense and his left eye shut down like an out-of-focus telescope lens. Fileppo grunted and toppled over, holding his eye. Angevine jammed the little aerosol into his pocket and kept running.

He was being chased like a common purse snatcher. Sobbing, Angevine vaulted over the low brick wall onto the sidewalk on Fifteenth Street, sprinted across the street, and cut behind a building. Tasting the phlegm in his throat, he crouched behind a Dumpster in the alley and listened. No footsteps. Was he clear? Normally he’d wait, but he had to get away from there. His hands and face were scratched and bruised. He crossed the alley, stepped over a low chain-link gate, skirted a building, and came out right where he had parked Vikki’s car. With shaking fingers he unlocked the door, started the engine, and drove down the alley with his lights off. He made himself drive slowly. At a dogleg in the alley he turned on his lights and saw a face, crimson in his taillights, growing in his rearview mirror. Someone running faster than he was driving—and gaining. Angevine floored it, came out on Fourteenth Street in a squealing turn, and barreled
down the street, turning right then left, then right again. Whoever it was had been close enough to read Vikki’s license plate.

Zarubina saw movement and understood in a flash of professional clarity. Her bellow was one of rage, of the
impossibility
that her will was being challenged. In the instant she saw TRITON crash through the hedge, she also heard splashy movement from behind, then spotted the bouncing beam of a flashlight coming up the far staircase. Yulia Zarubina,
Shveja,
the Seamstress, did not hesitate. She swung her legs painfully over the balustrade to drop into the uppermost basin. She was going to wade downstream, split the seam, and slip between them. As she moved forward, she shucked off her already waterlogged coat—it sank and hung suspended under the surface. Zarubina swung her legs over the rim and lowered herself into the next basin, losing her grip and sitting down in the water with a squishy bump. Ponderously, she got up and slogged forward. There was a moving pulse of pain—like a rose thorn being dragged across her inner wrist—and her hand felt numb. The sound of splashing from above made her move faster, to the basin rim, and over, and to the next, and over. Her shoes had come off and her matronly dress, buttoned up the front, was soaked and clung to her ample bosom and around her stubby legs. Her breathing was hard; her chest felt as if it were compressed.