The Fall of Moscow Station (10 page)

“Strelnikov was GRU,” Barron said. “He was Spetsnaz, once upon a time, and the GRU controlled a lot of the Spetsnaz units back in the old days.”

Kyra picked up Maines's file and looked through the papers twice, but nothing caught her attention. She looked at the dead-drop letter again.

The answer finally broke through her subconscious mind. “Do we know who left Maines's dead drop in the woods at Banshee Reeks? It's not in the file.”

“Yes, a GRU officer, Russian military intelligence,” Barron replied. “The Bureau's going to pick him up the next time he leaves their embassy grounds. He's probably got diplomatic immunity, so State's going to declare him persona non grata and send him home. I don't remember his name . . . those Russian names all sound alike to me. But I can look it up.”

“Actually, it wasn't his name I needed, just the intel service.”

Jon nodded. “Bring up the files on the GRU leadership,” he suggested. “There are probably hundreds on the list, but might as well start at the top and work down.”

Kyra complied, and after a few minutes of searching, she opened the first file . . .

. . . and fell back in her chair, eyes wide. “That's him.” Kyra paused and stared at the photograph again, to be certain there was no mistake or trick of the light.

“Unbelievable,” Barron muttered. “Arkady Lavrov. Chairman of the GRU.”

Office of the Deputy Director of the National Intelligence

“What's the word?” Cooke asked.

“Maines's here,” Kyra said. The audio quality of STU secure phones had improved in recent years, but the static and noise mixing with Kyra's voice showed that the Agency's speakerphones had not. “I met with him.”

“What did you find out?”

“The Russians definitely are trying to screw him over,” Kyra replied. “I think that's why they let me see him, to ratchet up the pressure on him. But he admitted burning Strelnikov, but claimed that he hasn't given up anything since, and he's offering us a deal. He says that he'll walk out of the embassy and come home if he gets a full pardon from POTUS and fifty million in the bank. We don't deliver and he'll burn every operation we have in Moscow to the ground.”

“Amazing,” Cooke muttered. “He thinks he can burn an asset, then blackmail us and walk away?”

“Might be worth it.” Cooke recognized Barron's voice. “If they bleed him for what he knows and we get shut down in Moscow, it'll take us a decade and a lot more than fifty million to get things started back up.”

“True, but it's not our call,” Cooke said. “And it's extortion. We pay this and it won't be the last time. Every narcissistic slacker with a security clearance will think he can run a protection racket on us. Make us pay up to keep our assets safe. We can't do business like that. So I'll be stunned if the president approves it, but we have to give him the option.”

“Kathy, if I may?” It was Jonathan's voice now.

“What is it, Jon?”

“I've been studying General Strelnikov's file. I think there's a bigger problem than just Maines burning our Moscow operations to the ground.”

“As if that wasn't enough. What's your theory?” Cooke asked.

Jon's explanation took ten minutes. Cooke said nothing in response for almost another minute. “Jon, stay by the phone. I want you to explain that to the president. Then everyone hold tight until I get back from the White House.”

“Yes, sir,” Barron said. He pressed a button to disconnect the call from his end.

U.S. Embassy

Berlin, Germany

Kyra grinned at her partner. “You going to brief POTUS,” she said.

“At least I don't have to put on a tie,” Jon replied, deadpan.

She nudged him gently. “You'll kill it. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have to go shopping.”

“For
what
?” Barron asked, incredulous.

“A jacket,” she said. “Something in red today, I think.”

It took Barron a few seconds to absorb the implications. “You won't need it. The president isn't going to go for the deal,” he said, as though explaining it to a child.

“Maines doesn't know that,” she said.

The Embassy of the Russian Federation

Berlin, Germany

Kyra had expected that the president wouldn't approve a pardon for Maines, and he had neither surprised nor disappointed her. Jon wasn't happy about President Rostow's obstinance, but her partner was a logical man and the refusal wouldn't bother him for long. Jon was simply doing what he did, deconstructing a problem into the simplest parts to find the most efficient solution. Jon was very nearly a misanthrope and people were just variables to him at such times. If the best solution to a problem allowed one person to profit or suffer unfairly, that was just the price to be paid. He simply wanted the puzzles solved, and when his variables failed to make the decisions that would resolve matters, Jon would curse their stupidity and then look for an alternate pathway. It was a rare thing for him to care about such things on a personal level.

But Jon had never been a case officer, had never felt protective of an asset. Kyra had been responsible for a man's life. She had run through the streets of a hostile city, trying to fulfill the Agency's debt of honor and save a person from execution. The case officer unchanged by that didn't deserve the job. A man who was willing to see them executed for his own gain deserved the electric chair, Kyra thought, so just bruising Maines's ego and his manhood hadn't even come close to sating her sense of justice. Hunting traitors was never a business of cold calculation. There was always a layer of passion and hatred underneath it all.

Leading with your heart is a fine way to get killed?
she thought.
You're wrong, Jon. It's the only real edge we ever have in this business.
Training and tools could always be countered, but the will to act, to keep pushing on against the enemy . . . that was harder to match.

So it was ironic, she thought, that she was pushing against the enemy by standing still. Kyra leaned against one of the trees that lined the wide median between the opposing lanes of the Unter Den Linden, ignoring the tourists and locals walking behind her. Cars rolled past, almost within arm's reach, but she never moved or looked away from the embassy. The wind picked up, imparting a chill to the air.

Kyra zipped up the red jacket.

There were German Bundeskriminalamt officers hiding in tourists' clothing at both ends of the block, ready to seal off both ends of the street and take Maines into custody after he walked out the front door. The president of the United States had refused to offer a pardon to Alden Maines, but Maines didn't know that. With that realization in hand, Kyra had thought she might be able to shut down Maines's threat before nightfall. All he had to do was believe that his deal was within reach.

You asked for me, Maines
, she thought.
Get out here.

•  •  •

Alden Maines stared at the embassy sidewalk from the conference room window, failing to repress a smile.
The president signed off, and I get to go home
, he thought. Maines had sold out his country, made $50 million in the process, and the president himself had agreed to forgive it all. The world was dancing on his strings.

“It is a good view,” he heard Lavrov say. Maines turned and saw the Russian general come up behind him. “Not so nice as it was before the Wall came down, but it still has much to recommend it.”

“I wouldn't know,” Maines said. He had nothing left to say to the man.

Lavrov smiled, a small one. “She is quite a pretty girl, isn't she?”

“Who?”

“The young lady in the red coat down on the street,” Lavrov said. “The one I allowed you to meet yesterday.”

“Not my type,” Maines said. “I don't like the pudgy ones.”
I've got my pardon now, you moron
, he thought.
You don't want to pay, you get nothing.

“Oh, surely you recognize a disguise when you see one,” Lavrov protested. “Hers was a very good one, but I suspect that she is much prettier without it. She would make a most agreeable companion for an evening out, and good entertainment after if she were persuaded. But I doubt she would entertain any such notions with you. I'm told that she left you clutching yourself on the roof.”

Maines gritted his teeth but refused to look at the Russian. Of course Lavrov knew about his humiliation. Another reason to spit in Stryker's face when he walked out the front door of this building in a few minutes.
You won't be so full of yourself then, General.

“A woman of intelligence, beauty, and spirit,” Lavrov said, approving. “I would like to know her name.”

“She didn't tell me.” It was technically true.

“Perhaps, but I think you know who she is,” Lavrov suggested. He held out a large manila envelope.

Maines opened it and pulled out the contents, three photographs, medium resolution, clearly stills taken from security-camera footage. The first was an image from the roof, Stryker arguing with him yesterday, then driving her knee into his crotch. The time stamp confirmed what Maines's own memory told him.

The second picture was grainy, poor resolution with odd lighting. Even so, the detail was enough for the American to see that it was Stryker again, no disguise, dressed casual. She was handing something, likely her passport, to an airport customs officer.
China
, he thought, from the Mandarin lettering on a wall sign,
Beijing
, he supposed.

“This picture was taken in Beijing two years ago. Our facial recognition software says that there is a very high probability that it is the same woman despite the differences,” Lavrov said, confirming the guess. “Our Chinese friends sent it to us after the incident in the Taiwan Strait with the U.S. Navy, asking for help identifying the woman. Some days after this was taken, she helped a Chinese intelligence officer escape surveillance, likely as part of an operation to bring the man to the United States. She assaulted one Chinese officer during the escape, and another on the street some days earlier. That one spent a significant amount of time in a hospital after she beat him with a steel bar.”

Maines stared at the woman's picture.
You landed on your feet after Caracas better than I did
, he realized, and he felt a hatred for the woman welling up inside him. She'd moved on to lead a key operation while he had sat rotting at headquarters, even after he had saved her.
Should've been me.

“The man she helped escape had shared information on a research program that the People's Liberation Army had been running for seventeen years with my assistance,” Lavrov continued. “A few days later, your country's navy destroyed a unique stealth plane that was the focus of that project. The radar telemetry collected during the battle shows that your navy had established a system to detect the plane.”

Maines stared at the picture again. “Sorry,” he lied. “Still don't recognize her.”

Lavrov tapped the third photograph. It showed Stryker at another customs desk, this one in some Latin American country, judging by the Spanish signage. The picture was higher quality. Stryker was blond again, no glasses, athletic build, not a short, overweight brunette with bad eyesight like yesterday—

—then he recognized the place.
Caracas.

“Our Venezuelan friends shared this with us last year. The woman infiltrated a munitions factory near Puerto Cabello and was instrumental in stealing the nuclear device that the Iranians were building there with the help of their hosts. She assaulted the Venezuelan national intelligence director inside the base and later in an airport hangar. She crushed his nose and shattered his cheekbones with a rifle butt, and she detached one of his retinas. He identified her some days later from the airport security footage after his eyes could begin to focus again. Apparently, she had been in his country before and was wounded in a counterintelligence operation he had led. She seemed to take it quite personally.”

Maines gaped at the photograph and cursed silently in amazement.
Kyra broke into that military base last year?
He'd been wrong. It hadn't been an analyst who Cooke had tapped for that operation. He'd just assumed that Kyra had joined the Red Cell later.
You went back to Caracas.
He might have been impressed had his anger not been crushing every other feeling in his head.

Still, Lavrov had insulted him and Maines was in no mood to give the man free information, or even show that he was unhappy. “Yeah, I bet. Still can't help you,” he repeated.

“She is a concern. You see, the Chinese and the Iranians were both clients of an ongoing project that I oversee. This woman appeared and both efforts were disrupted within a few days. I do not believe that is a coincidence.” Lavrov pointed to yesterday's photograph. “And now she is here.”

Maines shrugged and dropped the picture on the desk.

Lavrov studied Maines, ran his eyes over the American's face, looking for some signal of deceit. There was no reason to bluff and Maines let the Russian watch him. “You are lying to me, Mr. Maines,” Lavrov finally announced. “One woman has disrupted two critical GRU operations that we were running in concert with important allies, and now she is here in Berlin while you and I are here while I am advancing a third. I think that your Agency knows about my operations, and I believe you know her name. You wish to say that is not the case?”

“Yeah, that's what I'm saying,” Maines protested. “Look, if the Agency is on to you, they figured it out some other way because I never heard a whisper about your big operation, whatever it is.”

Lavrov nodded slowly, took the pictures back, and replaced them in the folder. “It will be a shame to disappoint such a woman.”