The Fall of Moscow Station (18 page)

“Yes, sir,” the men replied. Silence ruled the room.

Cooke had said nothing. “Kathy, are you with me on this?” Rostow asked.

Cooke looked at the president, murder in her eyes. “We have our orders, don't we?”

“I'd rather hear that you're behind this. The Russians are about to cripple us, and they might have killed one of our own . . . one of
yours
. I would've thought that you'd want to hit them back.”

“More people will die if we do this, you know that,” Cooke said. She let the silence hang for a minute, then turned loose. “Mr. President, you don't know what you're saying when you call that missing analyst ‘one of my own,' ” she told him. “And I don't understand how you plan to define victory with this.” She held up the White House letterhead that Rostow had placed on the table. “After the Soviet Union fell, the Russian intelligence services practically fused with the mob. Organized crime is running that country, for all practical purposes, so this operation will look like mob warfare in Chicago in the twenties before it's over. You'll get your tit for tat, but it'll be a one-way ratchet of violence and every turn of the handle will be greased with blood. And, with all due respect, Mr. President, I don't think you've considered how we're going to break the cycle once it starts. The Russians assassinate their dissidents abroad by feeding them radioactive poison, and they just shoot the ones at home. So if you're not prepared to fight in the mud, it would be better to walk away now because the Russian security services like it down there.”

No one spoke. Rostow stared at the deputy DNI, frowning, but the woman refused to turn away. He saw pain in her eyes that he didn't understand. It was rare that he let a rebuke go, but an instinct, a voice somewhere in his mind, told him to let this one go.

Rostow finally broke the silence that no one else would break. “Thank you for your views, everyone, but I'm not going to back away from this. I consider it one of my primary duties as president to protect our citizens abroad, and I want the Russians to know that they can't just take out our people for free.” He turned to the men in the room. “I expect daily updates on this during my PDB briefings, understood?” There were nods and mutters of assent. The president of the United States closed the file on the table, and the meeting was over.

•  •  •

Rostow walked back to his desk as the subordinate stood. “Kathy, my people will need to coordinate with yours,” Menard said, his voice low.

“I'll have the Counterintelligence Center contact them,” Cooke promised.

“You knew the analyst who got taken down by the Russians?” Menard asked.

“We were close. Leave it there.”

“Sure. I am sorry.”

Cooke nodded. “Thank you . . . but right now we need to figure out how to manage the damage control on this,” she said. Only old Navy discipline was keeping her mind focused on anything other than her grief. “Between Maines feeding the Russians the names of our assets in Moscow and an open ground war between CIA, the GRU, and the FSB, maybe the SVR too? We'll be lucky if the Russians don't burn our embassy down.”

“Yeah,” Menard agreed. “But it'll take my people some time to get moving on this, maybe three days. If you can figure out a way to snuff this fuse by then, I'll be a happy man. If not, you said it—we have our orders.”

“I'll call you.”

U.S. Embassy

Berlin, Germany

“Nothing?” Kyra asked. She was sitting on the conference room table, hunched over, elbows resting on legs that were hanging over the side. Her stare was vacant and she'd hardly made eye contact with him for more than a day now. She was trying to keep it hidden, but Barron heard the anxiety in her voice. He was strangely relieved to hear it. It was the only emotion the woman had displayed since she'd returned alone from the Vogelsang base.

“The Germans swept Vogelsang over,” Barron told her. “The test site you reported was clean. They found a fair amount of blood where Jon went down, but nothing else.” It had been eighteen hours since the young woman had outrun the Spetsnaz.

“Did he bleed out?” she asked, her voice as empty as her eyes.

“They can't tell,” Barron admitted. “The ground was still wet from the rain . . . they couldn't tell how much blood might've soaked into the dirt.”

“No leads off that pistol?”

“I gave it to the Germans. The serial number was filed off and the ballistics on it didn't match anything on file. I'm not surprised. Those Makarovs are the Russian version of the Saturday night special. They're so common that just finding one doesn't narrow down the field of suspects,” Barron reported. “And Lavrov is gone. The Bundeskriminalamt says he took off for Moscow this morning . . . took an embassy car to the airport and the plane had diplomatic protection too. Without any physical evidence tying him to a crime, the Germans didn't feel they had enough evidence to even ask the Russian government to hold him in the country, much less withdraw his diplomatic immunity. Your testimony alone wasn't enough to convince them.”

“Was Maines with him?”

“The Germans aren't sure. Fifteen men traveled with Lavrov. He drove out to the airport in a caravan . . . one town car and two full-size vans. Maines could've been in one of them. The Russians do disguise work as well as we do,” Barron said. “But the Germans couldn't even get a good look inside the hangar, much less the people or cargo he took with him. They don't know who or what Lavrov loaded onto his plane before it took off.”

Kyra nodded. “What now?”

Barron sat down next to the younger woman, tempted to put his hand on her back. He refrained, not knowing how she would interpret the gesture. He couldn't tell if she was hiding her emotions, or simply had no energy left to feel anything at all. “We go home.”

“What?”

Barron offered her a sheet of paper. “We got a cable from Langley. Maines gave up the name of everyone in Moscow Station, every single one. And the Russians figured out that I was Agency a long time ago, so I can't get in there. POTUS has ordered the FBI and the DNI to hit the Russians back,” he said. “The Bureau has an open season on every Russian intel officer on U.S. soil, no bag limit. The DNI wants us to disrupt every Russian covert op we know of. Sounds like POTUS wants his own covert spy war.”

He expected an explosion from her, some loud expression of satisfaction. Kyra reacted not at all as she read the paper. “My name isn't on here.”

“Makes sense,” Barron said with a shrug. “You were never assigned to Moscow Station. What's it matter?” He was sure that he would find the answer disturbing, no matter what it was.

“I could go in. I'm not on Maines's list.”

“Not a chance,” Barron observed. “Maines knows who you are, and I'm sure Lavrov has your picture from the surveillance cameras at the embassy.”

“I was in disguise. I can wear a different one going into Moscow.”

Barron shook his head. “Even if you could get in, what's the point? In twenty-four hours, there won't be anyone in Moscow who can help you,” he protested. “You couldn't possibly save all of our assets over there by yourself. You'd be lucky if you could get to any one of them before the FSB or Lavrov's people did. The Russians have
thousands
of counterintelligence and security officers. And you don't know the exfiltration plans for any of our assets even if you could get to them.”

“We can't just walk,” Kyra said, her voice quiet and flat. She lifted her head and looked at the clandestine service director.

“Three years in the Red Cell has messed with your head. You'd be lucky to stay out of Lubyanka or whatever other hole the Russians use these days,” Barron said after a moment's thought. “I can't begin to count all of the things that could go wrong. You have no plan, you would have no close support. The losses we're going to take are bad enough. I'm not in the habit of giving the Russians freebies.”

“That's exactly what we'd be giving them. We stand back and Lavrov just takes out all of those assets for free,” Kyra countered. “And then he'll have a clear road for the next decade to keep giving away stealth technology and nuclear weapons designs and EMP bombs. Maybe the Brits or the Israelis will shut some of it down, but they don't have the resources to go after the GRU everywhere on the planet.”

“Nice argument. That's not why you want to go.”

“No, it's not,” Kyra admitted after a long silence, her voice quiet.

“So why?”

The woman turned her head away from the senior officer. “Lavrov and those Spetsnaz soldiers are the only ones who know what happened to Jon.” Kyra stared down at the floor, then looked back up at Barron. “I know that the mission always comes first,” she admitted. “I know that you would never approve a mission like this just to find out whether Jon's still alive. But he saved my life, last year, in Venezuela. I infiltrated that base where the Iranians were building their bomb. But their security came out, sweeping the buildings, and I was about to get overrun. Jon was up in the hills and he held off a whole regiment of soldiers with a sniper rifle, one of those big .50-caliber monsters that you use to destroy trucks and equipment.” Kyra's gaze was distant, like the memory she was describing was playing out on the wall in front of her. She smiled for the first time in days, amused at something only she could see. “He refused to shoot anybody . . . made a good show of killing jeeps, though. Steam and oil spraying everywhere. But he wouldn't kill anyone. He'd done that before, in Iraq during the war, and it still haunted him, so he refused to do it again. Probably saved the president from an international mess, too . . . but he could handle that rifle . . . ended up in a snipers' gunfight a day later with an Iranian Special Forces soldier. Jon was amazing.”

The personal movie of her memory ended and Kyra's focus returned to the room. She looked at Barron, focused on his face again. “I have to know what happened to him. If they did kill Jon and we don't try something, they'll never pay for it, and . . .” She stopped to force back a sob. It took her much longer than she'd expected, almost a minute. Barron refused to break the silence. “. . . and how am I supposed to live with that?”

“You'll learn.”

“How can you know that?”

Barron smiled, rueful. “I was chief of Moscow Station years ago. You ever hear how my tour ended?” Kyra shook her head. “I was running a night op with one of my officers, Manuela Saconi. I was driving. We were going to use a jack-in-the-box so she could bail out to meet an asset. The FSB had a bug up its butt about something and we drew three cars that night. One of them was aggressive . . . got right up on our rear quarter. The driver had to swerve for I-don't-know-what, turned right into us, and spun me out. Our car rolled, I don't know, five or six times. Ellie died on the scene, massive head trauma, even with her seat belt and airbag. I ended up in a Russian hospital, concussion, major laceration on my scalp. They found the jack-in-the-box in the wreckage. Kathy Cooke's predecessor worked out a deal with the FSB to keep it all quiet. The Agency recalled me and the Kremlin never declared me persona non grata and made sure the local news never covered the story. Ellie got shipped home and was buried before I ever left the hospital in Moscow. But I was furious. I wanted the Russians to apologize, to admit they'd screwed up. Took me a long time, but I realized that wasn't going to happen. I came to see it was for the best . . . that took longer. It's a funny game. The other side screws up and we help them save face, because if we don't, they'll do it anyway by coming after our people and making a big show when they catch one.”

“But if Jon's alive—”

“If he's alive, you'll never get near him,” Barron told her, his voice soft. “You'll never even get the Russians to admit they've got him. They'd be confessing to the illegal rendition and detention of a U.S. citizen, not that we have the moral high ground on that score anymore. They'd probably kill him and you both before they'd admit it if you did find out he was still alive. So you go in and you might die sooner than you think.”

Kyra turned her head away from him. “Even if I can't find him, somebody needs to work the EMP problem. We need to find out where it is, where it's going, how Lavrov is going to deliver it—”

“That's not our problem—”

“Yes, it is. Jon was the one who figured out that Lavrov is selling strategic technologies. We're the only ones who have the whole picture. Sure, the Israelis might catch the EMP coming into Syria, but Lavrov will still be running loose. He'll keep selling the tech and there will always be a buyer out there—”

“And how do you think you're going to stop the head of the GRU from running a global covert op?” Barron pronounced the letters of the acronym slow and precise. “That's like one Russian case officer trying to take on the whole CIA.”

“Maybe, but when you think about it, we do that all the time. We're all really on our own when we're on the street anyway. We plan things out, talk through radios, sometimes tell each other to go this way or that, but when the plan comes apart, it's one officer against a whole country, running for a safe house,” Kyra observed, not really talking to him. “I've always made it to the safe house. I can do it again.”

Barron frowned. “You want to be station chief Moscow that bad?”

“You can keep the title. I just want to get reimbursed for my travel expenses.”

Barron smiled. It was a small joke, but he would take whatever emotion he could get from her. “You're insane. You really are.”

“No, I'm just motivated. But you can demote me when I get home if it makes you feel better.”